Mozart Manifest

Wolfgang Amadeus stands up
lifts both his musicians hands up
stretches, stops composing tunes
and steps into the Billiards room.

Wolfgang Amadeus lurches
over table where he perches
takes the cue and shoots a ball
and doesn't pocket one at all
likes to bang the balls together
colours run around forever
bouncing circles clack and click
behind the force of wooden stick
light reflects about the spheres
and music comes to Mozart's ears

Wolfgang Amadeus sleeps
and dreams of balls that in the night
will clatter round about the sky
and twinkle in the heaven's bright
and all the music of the spheres
rebounds about in Mozart's ears.

Billiards Billiards Billiards

Meeting Mozart

Billiards OVERTURE on a big piece of wood

The Birth of Opera

MC You Do The Mathewson has been busy giving birth to opera...


Ergo Phizmiz - The Birth of Opera from simon mathewson on Vimeo.

Music Music Music

On January 17th, the Overture to Ergo Phizmiz's BILLIARDS will be rehearsed and presented in London. Venue tba imminently.

Choice cuttings from recent e-mails...

The piece we are making is the Billiards Overture.

It's in three sections.

(1) Exquisite Corpse

(2) Funballs

(3) Music Music Music (possibly title of this bit will change)

All the sequences use sound-collage, video-collage, shadow-puppetry, voice, lip-sync, violin, harpsichord.

First a brief prologue, where Raymond Scott is tinkering with machines in his workshop. He accidentally generates a well-known phrase of Mozart on a chance-music machine. The universe explodes.

In "Exquisite Corpse" the rules of the game of Billiards are introduced, to a sound-collage music score which is a game of heads-bodies-legs with all of Mozart's overtures, chronologically, using common factors between them to interlink.

In "Funballs" we introduce Mozart, who plays Billiards and composes music simultaneously. The Billiard balls and the music shoot off into space and become stars.

In "Music Music Music" Omar Khayyam is watching the stars, then proceeds to play them as a musical instrument. Kepler's Music of the Spheres is referenced, as is Cage's Atlas Eclipticalis. We'll probably come to an end with the voice of Cage, sounding like a children's storyteller.

A brief epilogue, the universe implodes back into Raymond Scott's electronic music-machine.

Animation Sequences....

Manic edits of Billiard balls

Photographic details of sheet music

The universe exploding from inside an electronic music machine

Billiard balls on a table, in the shape of the Great Bear, turning into stars

Billiard balls shooting off into space

Music notes flying through space

Spinning planets

Spinning numbers

Victorian / Edwardian heads-bodies-legs books animated

Constellations of stars, different stars, one a time, light-up brighter

Billiard balls moving around a table, then forming into the world "BILLIARDS"

Raymond Scott's music machines (extremely fanciful versions of them)