Bernie, that's indeed quite funny. I just found a recording of Kurt Schwitt=
ers dadaistic performance:
http://www.ubu.com/sound/schwitters.html
After listening to that recording, I believe that Schwitter was actually in=
spired by birds and he is one who his guilty due to his own unauthorized pe=
rformance of the birds compositions :-)
Regards,
Raimund
--- In Bernie Krause <> wrote:
>
> This just in from a colleague:
>
> Years ago, a German artist, Kurt Schwitters http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki=
/Kurt_Schwitters
> traveled to the Norwegian island of Hjert=F8ya, where he used to spend =
> his summer holidays back in the 1930s and perform his sound pieces
> (poems). Hearing them, a number of starlings on the island began to
> imitate one of his performances, "Ursonata," in their songs. 70 years =
> later, another person published the recordings of the birdsongs he'd
> recorded on a CD and quickly ran into conflict with the copyright
> owners of Schwitter's work. A pretty funny exchange about the
> "unauthorized" performance of the starlings followed...http://www.heise.d=
e/tp/r4/artikel/7/7934/1.html
> (Unfortunately, the text is only in German, but if you have a
> translator on your computer, it's easily done).
>
> Guess you gotta be very careful who you play your stuff to.
>
> Bernie Krause
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