Leif Elggren; Pluralis majestatis
(Photo: Annika von Hausswolff)
Leif Elggren
Pluralis majestatis
Firework Edition Records FER 1010. Duration: 56:31.
It is hard to know how to approach this CD – as indeed any of the many CDs produced by the prolific Swedish label Firework Edition. The atmosphere around these releases is one of down-home subversion; a kind of Carl Jonas Love Almquist (1793 – 1866) introspection and elusiveness; a self-.destructive, auto-aggressive creativity reminding me of Lasse Lucidor (1638-1674), or perhaps the writings of 18th century enfant terrible Thomas Thorild (1759 – 1808); his “Passions” or “The Pleasures of Imagination”. This is a kind of high-brow trash culture, a tradition sweeping the more intellectual workings of the more intellectual personalities of Swedish history, and strange as it may seem at first, these late sound art works by, for example, Leif Elggren, have a lot in common with works of other disciplines in earlier centuries, as to their creative and intellectual attitude. This is very interesting, and one of the reasons why I have decided in favor of Firework Edition when it comes to the obvious question if these sound works are nothing more than cultural inadequacies, sonic new cloths of the Emperor… I have found this lineage of intellectual tradition in these works, and after this dawned on me, I keep these CDs on the shelf along books by Ehrensvärd, Thorild, Swedenborg et consortes, and enjoy them immensely! There is sex, austere poetry and the plague in these productions from Firework Edition; dirty feet inside clean socks – and a scent of mystery too, vinegar and heavenly revelations!
“Pluralis majestatis” was recorded at Fylkingen in Stockholm, the famous and by now very old cultural institution for the benefit of new and experimental art, including electronic music, sound art, installations, multi-media, ballet, poetry readings etcetera. The cover photograph – a very strange still life, as you can see above! – was taken by Annika von Hausswolff at the exhibition “Pluralis majestatis” by Leif Elggren at the Andréhn-Schiptjenko gallery in Stockholm.
The sound-source for this recording – delivered in one long track – was the metal bed pictured above, plus 102 tin can crowns! Elggren used contact microphones and a PA-system.
(Photo: Annika von Hausswolff)
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For this piece I had in mind to work with this bed, to try to squeeze out, to discover, a certain “voice” or a sound, and let go. I made some preparations and created a situation for the bed and the sound equipment, got it started and let it run for approximately one hour. It went on this way, it had its own life, its own voice, and that is the point for me: start it up and let it take its own direction, create its own life, its own voice, let it take over. I did not have any aesthetic plans for the sound, no compositional aspects, I just wanted to be open for what could happen, like a conversation.
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Elggren describes his creative attitude thus:
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My work is very much an on-going project, things are done and correspond to other things and vice versa. It’s a big structure here all phenomena are closely related to each other and where the total image depends on every small part there is.
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As to the philosophical or historical or perhaps mostly psychological prerogatives for “Pluralis majestatis”, Leif Elggren says:
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There is nothing higher in the human hierarchy than the position of the king, the bridge between Man and God, where the crowned head of the king represents the uppermost physical point in the vertical communication, a sender and a receiver of the exalted dialogue. The king has always been a focal point for the projection of society’s aspirations and longings. The king’s role requires a mental somersault where the ego, I, gets transformed, and, upon landing fulfills the almighty, royal We. The king, being the chosen one, with a supremacy bordering on divinity, naturally occupies the foremost position among humans as regards the possibility of achieving immortality. […] The role of the sovereign represents also the antipode of human shortcomings; hence, human vulnerability is balanced by human supremacy.
In the history of lunacy monarchies feature far more frequently than they ever do in the rest of the world, and the royal personage is also the symbol of the self, the protagonist of the ego’s own projections. I am, naturally, the hero of my own dreams. It is said that the socialization process involves the renouncement of the crown and the acceptance of one’s limitations. One abandons one’s “kingdom” in order to become a human being, to be at one with one’s fellow men. Only fools and small children dwell in their castles, autocratic and alone. We remain always, however, in our subconscious and in our dreams, the ruler of the world – he who is all and everything, he who fills the heavens and the earth, he who recreates the Creation and changes the course of history…
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When Elggren talks about lunacy and sovereign rulers in this artistic concept I can’t but recall a beautiful musical scenario dealing with our old dear mad Swedish king Erik XIV, as he huddled locked up in the Gripsholm Castle. It was a Swedish electronic music pioneer (who sadly later retorted to commercials and shallow New Age music) – Ralph Lundsten, who recorded his piece “Erik XIV” back in 1969, in eerie re-enactments of horrid lunacy and dark, cold walls of a king’s imprisonment… It remains one of my favorite works of sound art.
Leif Elggren’s “Pluralis majestatis” opens in an inconspicuous metallic workshop atmosphere, and you may think the sound scene originates in a tool shop at a steel works… but as the sound keeps repeating, over and over, or rather in a rhythmic metal-slapping progression with a slight room reverberation, it is clear that this is no steel works, but rather the forced thought-loop of a mad king… perhaps – or his bed!
At 7:37 into the work something else happens, in loud, roaring timbres, perhaps from contact microphones attached to the bed. It could be the bowing of the bed with amplified bows amplifying the vibrations of the metal bed insanely – but I don’t know for sure – or at all, really! The sound is mighty, though, over-powering, in the tradition and lust of Mr. Dror Feiler; another boy of boisterous booms in Stockholm. However, as I continue listening, this rough, timbrally rich bass sound with overtones is more reminiscent of Iancu Dumitrescu’s Romanian spectral music, which he has released on a multitude of CDs, or some of the a little less prolific issues of likewise Romanian mystic Horatiu Radulescu. The welling-forth of the sound meanders and winds like a jokk (brook) in Lapland, from the glaciers down through the valleys, turning violently enginish, and what is the sound of engines other than multilayered, brute timbres with halos of overtones; the khoomei singing of machinery! This bedtime music is an energizing kargiraa khoomei out of the self-destructive machinery of royal insanity, down the centuries!
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