Enter the dreamspace of LITANY. Poets Anselm Berrigan and Kyle Dacuyan perform the joyously intimate, simultaneous columns of “Litany,” John Ashbery’s monumental meditation on knowing, memory, and presence, with the audience, located at the Hudson Area Library, seated in between them. At the same time, Jeffrey Lependorf and Mark Allen of The Flow Chart Foundation play selections from Ashbery’s own LP collection by following a chance-determined score created by Lependorf with the help of the John Cage Trust.

Text by John Ashbery. Theatre concept and music score by Jeffrey Lependorf. Featuring Anselm Berrigan and Kyle Dacuyan, with Mark Allen and Jeffrey Lependorf. Presented by The Flow a Chart Foundation (flowchartfoundation.org) as part of the 2020 Hudson Eye Festival. Broadcast live on Wave Farm Radio: WGXC 90.7-FM.

Program Note: Two Columns, Alone Together
—Jeffrey Lependorf

John Ashbery writes in the author’s note that his “Litany,” a two-columned poem in three parts, “is meant to be read as simultaneous but independent monologues.” Poet Ann Lauterbach, who has performed “Litany” with Ashbery, has shared that Ashbery revealed to her that the inspiration for writing the poem came from hearing a performance of Elliot Carter’s “Duo for Violin and Piano,” a music composition which could be heard as both a duet and two independent solos performed at the same time. The columns of “Litany” may similarly be independent. We hear or read them “simultaneously” (more likely moving our attention back and forth from one to the other), but we might also become aware of words jumping from one column to the next, and how each column circumscribes a unique personality, and then how the two might relate: is this a dialogue, a love duet, entirely independent streams of consciousness? The poem fluctuates between intimate and expansive, chatty and profound. As in much of Ashbery’s work, “Litany” makes great use of “parataxis," a literary device referring to phrases following one another without connecting words, conjunctions, or subordinating clauses to make clear their exact connection—it is up to us listeners to create all of the possible connections. Given Ashbery’s penchant for inducing multiple possibilities through juxtaposition, it is not surprising that throughout his life he made collages, an artform whose magic comes from the narratives we cannot help but create when we see two “unrelated” images placed side by side.

For LITANY, Ashbery’s duet expands into a quartet, the two additional “voices” consisting of music selections from his own collection of LP recordings. He is known to have listened to music while writing poetry. Tonight you can hear the poem that way, too. The music score of LITANY draws on LPs from the year leading up to the publication of the poem, with each turntable playing bits of tracks from two sets of LPs—one set from those that were in the New York apartment, and the other from those in Ashbery’s home here in Hudson. “John Cagean” chance-operation methods were used to select the tracks.

Here are the recordings used (with some played more than once):

HUDSON: Malcom Arnold: “Four Scottish Dances, Op. 59”
Anton Webern: “The Complete Works of Anton Webern”
Brian Ferneyhough: “Transit”
Barbara Cartland: “Album of Love Songs”
Lennox Berkeley: Symphony No. 2 Op. 51
Sylvano Bussotti: “Bergkristall”
Peaches & Herb: “2 Hot”
Alexander Borodin: “In the Steppes of Central Asia”
Déodat de Séverac: “L'Oeuvre de Piano”
The Outlaws: “Bring It Back Alive”
Carl Ditters von Dittersdorf: “Ester”
Karol Szymanowski: “King Roger”
Philip Glass: “Einstein On The Beach”

NYC:
Frédéric Chopin: “Etudes & Waltzes”
Alexander von Zemlinsky: “Lyrische Symphonie”
John Cage: “Etudes Australes For Piano”
Johann Strauss Waltzes “(arr. Schonberg, Berg, Webern)”
Brian Eno: “Music for Airports”
Janos Solyom: “Improvisationer”
Lucia Dlugoszewski: “Sonorous Explorations”
Goffredo Petrassi: “Trio e Quartetto Per Archi”