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Salvatore
Martirano

by Dorothy Martirano

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Politico MC Holloway Sal Martirano, MC Holloway and Ron Nameth Sal Martirano, MC Holloway and Ron Nameth
L'sGA
for Gas-Masked Politico, Helium Bomb, 3-16mm Movie Projectors, and 2-Channel Tape Recorder.
  • Tape by Salvatore Martirano
  • Films by Ronald Nameth
  • Script from Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address + excerpts from “Dance Wreck” by M.C. Holloway.
    Fourscore and seven. Seven? Seven Sections!
  1. Forksore, a stomach real and imagined. Imagine a real storm-ache; the bottom ascends, swirling sauce, muddy brown it boils down eudiometrically. Intergastric electricalization. Fango-therapy, it's delizioso
  2. Boom, Boom Boom, Boom! Eat and be eaten by the calefactive cannonball of Kiln 574.5.
  3. L'sA.H. rises slowly, draws from his pocket a paper and when a commotion subsides, in a sharp unmusical treble voice, reads the brief and pithy remarks. (end of quotation)
  4. Speeded-up. A lion caged? A Cagey lion a the blat in Mudville.
  5. A case of canned knots and furthermore would knocks. L'sB.J. saith: Thou shalt not; Thou shalt not; Thou shalt not; plus 7.
  6. Ox-tongue mined are raids. Look out! Sirenes wail. Intermedium? The General clubwoman said: War is, hell, raw electro-anathesia.
  7. Babies. Babies slobbering, dribbling saliva. A megaton of spit orbits and slides. Two hundred and fifty men, a link and a chain toward epiphany. Whose hearts, whose sweet voice, cry music, when soft voices die, lingers in the Memor-eye?
(Taken from the program notes to the West Coast Premiere of L'sGA at Shoenberg Hall, UCLA, Jan 24, 1969)

"...this is not a verbal analog or a description of the composition but a literary companion to it, complete in itself. Perhaps it should be read a day or two before or immediatley after one hears the music. LsGA was chosen for one simple reason: of the approximately two hundred mixed media works that were considered for a series presenting only two concerts a season, Martirano's savage, tender and elegantly crafted work proved the most artistically successful... If one is shocked, stunned and , in the conclusion, edified by this powerful experiential statement, one is then made aware, through art, of a very creative exposition of today's Weltanschauung. This work goes far beyond the possible "campy" interpretation of its title (a wrong interpretation) into regions of terrifying violence and equally vivifying hope. From Monteverdi to the work under discussion, the theatre piece of any consequence aims for the solar plexus, delivering a haymaker. Martirano not only delivers the haymaker, but presents us with a deus ex tempore who haymakes the haymaker." --From a statement by Charles Whittenberg, (Music Director University of Connecticut Nov 17,1969)

Articles on L'sGA

I-80 Avant-Garde
--- A review by Kyle Gann, printed in the November 17, 1987 issue of the Village Voice.

Lincoln Address Distorted in Poem: Electric Ear Offers Antiwar, Mixed-Media Assault
--- A review by Theodore Strongin, printed in the Village Voice.

Avant Garde Entices Oberlin With Mixed-Media 'L's GA'
--- An article by Wilma Salisbury.

Performing Unmet Hopes: Salvatore Martirano’s L’s GA
--- by Thomas J. Kernan.

List of Performances