The Nude Paper Sermon

Eric Salzman - The Nude Paper Sermon

* originally posted on November 16, 2006

Write-up by muse1453: A few weeks ago, I shopped for records and books here at the annual friends of the library sale. I was there on a Friday evening which was restricted to those who had paid membership dues to the friends of the library organization. The sale opened to the public on the following Saturday morning. I'm not a member, but luckily I have a friend who is and she let me accompany her since her husband was working that evening. The staff thought I was part of her family as she paid for a family membership. This worked out well for me since I got first dibs on the selections available. I think I did pretty well by buying 20 records that evening. The records cost a dollar each, and I managed to spend all 20 dollars I had at the moment. I had to wait until the next day to withdraw more money and buy some books. Anyway, I scored quite a few records including this one posted. There will be a few more records from the bundle in future posts.

Billed as tropes for actor, renaissance consort, chorus, and electronics, The Nude Paper Sermon is a conceptual audio theatre piece commissioned by Nonesuch Records in 1968. It features Stacy Keach, an actor known mainly by his starring role as Mike Hammer in the TV series of the same name. The piece revolves around texts from John Ashbery's "Three Madrigals" and "The Nude Paper Sermon" written by Steven Wade. According to the liner notes, "The Nude Paper Sermon is about the end of the Renaissance - the end of an era and the beginning of another. Therefore, it is about old and new means of communication, about verbal and non-verbal sound, about the familiar and the unknown, about human activity and the new technologies. It is not a 'neo-classic' work nor is it a collage; rather it is 'post-modern music, post-modern art, post-style,' a multi-layer sound drama that is itself an example of the kinds of experience which it interprets and expresses: the transformation of values and tradition through the impact of the new technologies."

The liner notes claim that The Nude Paper Sermon is "the first 'total' work to be shaped on, by, and through the medium of modern recording; the record is not a reproduction of anything at all but is the work itself. Like a print or film, it has been created to be duplicated in multiple copies."

The entire liner notes explain this interesting recording in more detail and are included in the file.

Tracklisting:

Side One

1. The Nude Paper Sermon [part 1] {20:56}

Side Two

1. The Nude Paper Sermon [part 2] {22:39}

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