Stefan Signer

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Steff Signer in a hippie smock from 1968 as leader of Infra Steff's Red Devil Band , 1982

Stefan Signer alias Steff Signer alias Infra Steff (born January 23, 1951 in Hundwil , Canton Appenzell Ausserrhoden ) is a Swiss composer , musician, writer and painter.

education

From 1963 Signer received piano lessons and instruction in music notation, and from 1966 he taught himself to play the guitar by means of a fingering table book. He also learned to compose for bands in the field of rock and jazz as well as in the field of contemporary music on an autodidactic path. Signer sees himself as a student to this day and is a believer in learning by doing ; this using what he calls Discipleen in Music (“Discipline” and “Spleen”).

plant

Steff Signer's work can be divided into three formative creative phases: the band leader years from 1966 to 1986, the composer years from 1986 to 1993 and from 2004 the writer years , in which he was published as a composer, musician, lyricist and painter occurs.

His love for non-European music, especially Arabian music, awakened at an early age , led him to grapple with micro-intervals that go beyond the scope of conventional keyboard instruments. Steff Signer came back to these early experiments from 2003 when he bought a Turkish saz and used it with the inclusion of quarter tones in the European sound code, with the intention of "renovating" the Appenzell songs.

Signer first found a lasting musical orientation towards the end of the 1960s in the polytonal sounds of American subculture bands such as Frank Zappa's The Mothers of Invention , which were characterized by frequent changes of time. Composers like Igor Stravinsky and Edgar Varèse also influence his work.

In 1970 he began his career as a self-taught rock musician and composer . Free music, spontaneous street music ensembles, the use of toy instruments and everyday objects in a Dadaist concept of self-proclaimed "different" tones and life in a rural commune shaped the early years. Signer founded various ensembles and bands under the name Infra Steff , more than 20 between 1966 and 1986. In 1974 he made the first record. In 1977 and 1978 he was awarded first prize at the annual Swiss Jazz & Rock Festival. At the same time, Steff Signer dealt with modern composers and received his first commission for a symphony orchestra, rock band and percussion ensemble in 1980, a premiere in Switzerland.

His rock opera I'm Alive (text and libretto: Signer / Müller), premiered in St. Gallen in 1984 , was the first rock music production in Switzerland by the federal government ( Pro Helvetia ), the canton and the municipality, along with private companies such as the Federation of Migros Cooperatives or Camel, financially supported. In 1987 Signer's More Music from the Gas Station appeared with chamber music compositions. The artwork was done by Cal Schenkel , who designed Frank Zappa's visual appearance in music for many years.

In addition to his work as a composer, Signer took on the mandate of producer from 1989 to 1995 for the CD series Musikszene Schweiz launched by the Federation of Migros Cooperatives . In 1990/91 he worked on behalf of the Swiss federal government as part of the anniversary celebration of 700 years of the Swiss Confederation as project manager for serious music and worked closely with the Swiss composer Rolf Liebermann . At the 1991 World Music Days, he worked on an animation concept by Emmy Henz-Diémand . In 1992 his chamber opera Late Afternoon in Paradise was premiered by ARBOS - Society for Music and Theater in Klagenfurt (Austria) and then at the Festival Kontraste in Hallein (Austria), the Rossini Opera Festival Rügen in Putbus (Germany) and the Festival Open Opera in St Gallen played. The Austrian broadcasting company ORF made a live recording of this production. In 1996, Signer designed and organized the Music from the Rhodes Festival for the Ausserrhodische Kulturstiftung and was managing director of the Concertino Basel chamber orchestra until 1990 . He took on his last mandate as a consultant and project manager in 1999 on behalf of Swiss television : Signer was in charge of his project, music of the third kind, designed for the millennium : four generations of jazz musicians received a composition commission for chamber orchestras.

Steff Signer then worked on chamber music works before he let his compositional work rest for a few years. In 2003 he returned with the chamber music piece I go to Turkey . With the musician Thomas Züllig he developed the musical concept Highmatt in 2007 , which he published in book form in 2008 and on CD in 2014 with music.

The "style-free space" and the "emancipation of instruments"

Steff Signer's work, after it was first spread out, recorded, commented on and classified in the Appenzell Ausserrhoden canton library in the years 2009 to 2011, including the New Appenzell songs created from 2004, comprises a few hundred compositions. Much of it is fully developed, but also in draft form or as digital data that has been created in the Mac programs Super Studio Session or Finale since 1988 .

Signer describes himself as a composer in the “style-free space” and already in 1972 propagated the “emancipation of instruments” in a manifesto for the future; This is mainly due to the repeated polarization of styles in light music (entertainment) and serious music (serious). As an alternative to this, he invented the term F-Musik (happy) in the 1970s .

Infra Steff's Futztz / Marilyn Monroe - 1970 to 1972

Signer's entry into the musical arena manifested itself in many ways between 1970 and 1972: in the style of acoustic and electric folklore, parodying hits, free improvisation ( free jazz / contemporary classical music), spoken theater, electro-jazz, rock and Pop . These are all appearances, still without a concept. The provocative band name Futztz (Vagina) originated in London in 1970 as Fuzz . It caused severe criticism and hostility; Posters were regularly removed.

Infra Steff's Jazz Futztz - 1973

The conductor with a toothbrush: Steff Signer on the occasion of a concert with Infra Steff's Jazz Futztz , 1973

Coming from rock, Signer first deliberately put the manifesto of the “emancipation of instruments” into practice in 1973 with the band Infra Steff's Jazz Futztz by replacing the obligatory electric guitar with three saxophones / flutes, baroque cello and bassoon and used within a rhythm group with electric bass, drums and Hammond organ . That opened up compositional and tonal space for him. The central piece of the program is set in 9/8: a rather unusual practice within the rock and jazz scene of the time. The handling of the composition is also the same as in classical music: Signer declares sentences, variations, overcoming, and inserts according to hand signals. There is an intro, a theme and a grand finale.

Infra Steff's Great Saturday Orchestra - 1974/75

The compositions from the years 1974 to the beginning of 1975 are real “chunks”: imaginative, unconventional, and can hardly be divided into any of the common categories. They are strictly notated, mostly in odd meters, with many changes, not just in tempo. The focus is closer to contemporary music than to jazz or rock . The Big Saturday Orchestra was more of an “electric chamber ensemble” than a “band”. The first pieces appeared in collage form, consisting of loosely attached pieces in different styles. Gefidelter Country & Western , which leads over monstrous sound chapades into a classical cadenza for electric violin (Fiddler's Passion) , pastiche of hits next to chords by Edgar Varèse .

Infra Steff's Red Sandwich Combo - 1975/76

The pure opposite of the Great Saturday Orchestra was the Red Sandwich Combo in 1975 and 1976 : as if the fundamentals and requirements of a completely normal rock band and their possible uses had to be explored. Even with the Red Sandwich Combo , the structure and structure of the songs did not correspond to a common cliché. There are too many abrupt changes, speaking choirs go beyond the framework of the danceable conventions of this milieu. The bassoon intro from Le sacre du printemps by Igor Stravinsky appears in a "tubular execution" in an improvisation by the English alto saxophonist Alan Solomon at Igor's Beach Party .

Holy Days in San Parucho - 1976

The "emancipation of instruments" in combination with the "style-free space" was also the basis for the conceptual design Holy Days in San Parucho in 1976 . The focus is on the stories and adventures of a twist / surf band, The Roaring Xylophones , who only meet during one summer and rehearse in Ant Bear Muller's garage . In addition to the milieu-faithful “3-minute songs, which prove the existence of the 3-minute truth, which in turn are part of the 3-minute doctrine carried out by the 3-minute policy, which ultimately takes place in the 3-minute -Krieg "can lead, can be found in the repertoire of twelve-tone edits an Anton Webern , including the song of Lulu by Alban Berg or the bassoon solo at the beginning of the Rite of Spring by Igor Stravinsky. This is Signer's dream of a rock band .

Infra Steff's Red Devil Band - 1976 to 1982

Signer's intention to go beyond rock / pop with contemporary chamber music can also be traced in his seven Red Devil bands . So he sets the title song of I Ain't Gonna Work No More at the Gas Station in variations: the Gas Station Reprise for a trio of winds with marimba and drums, the Vocal Variations a cappella and the Instrumental Variations using the multitrack method with numerous Instrumentarium, 30 in number, changing the sound statement through the different tape speeds in the recording process.

On the LP Average, Sized An 'Empty , the opening piece Tympanum Destroyer Opening is staged as a kind of small radio play, accompanied by brass music and a lot of percussion in the style of Edgar Varèse . The small orchestra was recorded again with great effort using the multitrack method. The expression Wise up an Suck Gas is chamber music, and the vocal title track Average is given an additional instrumental interpretation.

Orchestral Snack Music - 1980

Signer drew on the full in 1980 in collaboration with the St. Gallen Symphony Orchestra. In this collaboration Signer applied the principle of "emancipation of the instruments" to the full and interwoven the sound bodies in a musical spider web.

The Orchestral Snack Music (OSM) , composed and conceived especially for these performances on behalf of the St. Gallen Concert Association, can be described as a suite . It is loosely put together and consists of eleven more or less completed titles, sentences or individual pieces - so-called “tableaux”.

Infrasteff 1983/84 and Suzy Wong Hotel - 1985/86

In the mainstream repertoires of Infrasteff (1983/84) and Suzy Wong Hotel (1985/86) the usual peculiarities are almost completely absent: hardly any odd meters appear, no compositions in a style-free space and hardly any influences from styles outside of commercial pop .

Composer years from 1986

After years of dealing with electrical instruments, Signer focused on acoustic instruments in 1986. The often complex compositions of that time give the impression of being less in the “style-free space” and more in contemporary classical music. In fact, many of the compositions that are recorded and / or performed clearly fulfill these characteristics, even if the framework topic does not correspond to tradition, but is drawn from contemporary topics, often from the magazine Der Spiegel .

Super studio session and final from 1988

From 1988, thanks to the use of the Super Studio Session application on his Macintosh SE / 30 , Signer was able for the first time to give shape to his ideas of “style-free space” using computer technology - or at least to approximate them. The software is limited in the number of available staves; using odd meters or demanding note values ​​is complicated.

Instead of The Roaring Xylophones from the Parucho files from 1976, the virtual band Steve & the Europeans appears . Signer reads non-rock content into the computer. This creates small, harmless songs and extractions in odd meters up to complex or nested note values.

One example is Bar-BQ with Oliver North , which is dedicated to commercial radio and the music press. The piece is based on stereotypical little compositions that were popular in the 1960s ( Ghostriders in the Sky by The Shadows or Telstar by The Tornados , Early Bird by André Brasseur ) as well as other cheap musical glorifications of the technical inventions of the time. It was the Cold War era and the era of space heroism. Thousands of small twist combos, surf bands or beat groups found a truly ingenious formula to reflect the political, social and technical post-war spirit: the three-minute instrumental title to dance and feel better than the others behind the iron curtain.

Excerpt from the score Die Banane from the 12-tone song collection Ethic Trash for mezzo-soprano and piano, which was created in 1987 with texts from advertisements

Another example is the piece I'm on a Diet , which was read in with the same instrumentation, but which is beyond the scope of such an instrumentation . Signer describes this composition, which refers to the 12-tone song composition Dietmargarine from his Ethic Trash collection, as “a completely twisted thing” . Instead of the chamber ensemble instrumentation, Signer builds the arrangement around this post-twist combo.

With the Finale application from 2010, Signer is getting closer than ever to his ideas of the “style-free space”. Now the technical conditions are better than ever. Finale masters all common tasks of classical music notation, has an infinite number of staves available, knows hardly any restrictions and enables access to a large sound library for playback.

From this point on, a lot of material is created in the "style-free space": revisions, additions, completion of drafts and also completely new - mostly within Signer's idea of ​​an "electric chamber orchestra", consisting of wood and brass, piano, a different number of Percussionists, especially marimba , vibraphone and tubular bells , electric bass and drums .

Signer picks up the thread on San Parucho again and works on Op. 5, Five movements for string quartet (1909) by Anton Webern for Two Cheap Organs, Baritonsax and Percussion , thus creating Homeless Beefeaters .

A very special collection was created in 2011 in the Doc Steff File . 23 years after the appearance of More Music from the Gas Station , Signer again refers to the small gas station in Edward Hopper's picture Gas . The scenario: Doc Steff alias the 60-year-old Infra Steff is sitting in the gas station building. On the edge of civilization, he tinkers with his music in the Gas Station Studio . He takes up themes and lyrics from the past and recites them in the calm and serenity of old age, beyond the pressure and density that drove him forward in his late twenties. In the computer program Audacity , he interchanges these recitations with musical quotations and recordings from the last decades, and so sometimes up to five different time levels appear in the new now. Such variations or miniatures - they last 30 to 90 seconds - fulfill the circumstance of a musical still life.

The sum of all these statements ends up in Steff Signer's Mars Music Archive - a collection for music “that comes from far away”.

Moldy Figs - 1993

In a three-part collage, Signer networks and spins recordings from the years 1970 to 1980. In weeks of work, he cut snippets with a razor blade and glued them together again: fragments of orchestra and band, but also sayings or toys and real instruments that were alienated in the studio his time in the municipality in 1971. The published result is the CD Moldy Figs .

Piano Concert No. 1 - 1993

A new style of music opens up in the electronic Piano Concert No. 1 , made on Signer's Macintosh SE / 30 . The piano part is “powerful”, like in rock. The melodies, previously transferred directly from the keyboard to the computer, where they are edited, are repetitive. Signer uses harp and percussion instruments as accompanying instruments, some of which are electronically modified. With this brutal, seemingly archaic execution, he describes the conflict scenes of the early 1990s. Each sentence bears the name of one of these locations, including Downtown Sarajevo or Berlin Kreuzberg .

Cold War Music - 1992

Another interpretation of the “style-free space” was created in 1992 in the Exposé Music from the Cold War with the comparison and characterization of the “tribes of popular music ” and the “tribes of serious music ”, confronted with one another on the same stage, in texts described in a funny and culturally critical manner.

In it Signer reacts to the "classical music scene" in Switzerland, in which he finds no points of contact, experiences himself in isolation and often feels negative feedback, which he attributes to the fact that, as a rock composer without training, he presumes to write contemporary music.

Subsequent years from 1992

There was never a turn away from composing, but first a reduction, then a break and finally a reorientation. Signer describes the years between 1993 and 2003 as "years of mourning and shadow".

With the project I go to Turkey , a stage work in which Signer appears with the Turkish Saz as a speaker and combines three classical musicians with three Kurdish musicians, he made his first public appearance again in 2003 in the Mediterranean restaurant Limon in St. Gallen.

From 2004 Steff Signer has composed almost exclusively new Appenzell music . Based on the Saz, he tries to break the framework of the taciturn Appenzell tradition in terms of expression and depth. He is looking for style-free spaces in a context that does not provide for such. These works, both in text and musical form, appear in the book Highmatt in 2008 and on a CD of the same name in 2014.

Highmatt - 2008 to 2014

Highmatt poet Steff Signer, 2008

The book bears the subtitle All sorts of weird stories, tracts, soul logs, sayings and songs from the hinterland and means Steff Signer's personal home in the Appenzell hinterland, in whose epicenter is the sawmill in Hundwil .

With Highmatt a circle comes full circle, which began in 1970 with Infra Steff's Futztz in the New Appenzell song and in the following years led through the most diverse styles of work under the motto Discipleen in Music (derived from “Discipline” and “Spleen”) .

inspiration

“The inspiration is the oil in the fire for music,” says Steff Signer. And that inspiration is anything but focused in the years 1970 to 1972. It shoots to the surface through various channels. On the one hand there are the impressions of an alternative life in a farmhouse commune , on the other hand the overcoming of the impressions from the youth that preoccupy him.

The songs for the band Infra Steff's Futztz with violin , guitar , bass and drums are written in the dialect of the Appenzellerland. They could be described as New Appenzell folk songs . At that time it was still unusual to sing in dialect in Switzerland. The most popular and well-known Swiss dialect rock singer Polo Hofer founded his band Rumpelstilz in 1971 .

Other compositions from this early creative phase deal with the light entertainment music and the corresponding mentality of the environment of his youth. Instead of direct criticism of the address of morality and philosophy in the 1960s, which his generation perceived as superficial and prudish, Signer prefers the medium of reflected exaggeration in the form of Schlager satirises. For the first time, compositions composed by Steff Signer and regularly provided with scores appear. Such "fooling" parodies were present in Signer's band repertoire until 1980.

Up to and including the Great Saturday Orchestra - a band with up to 18 musicians, probably the first electric big band in Switzerland that neither explicitly plays rock nor jazz - Signer caricatures clichés of pop music as well as the virtuosity and behavior of classical performers and show stars. In the meantime, Signer has been lavishly multimedia-oriented, also integrating theatrical, choral singing, jazz, modern chamber music and dance.

Musical content from the early twentieth century emerged as a new source of inspiration, primarily related to the composer Edgar Varèse , whom Signer quotes in his 1974 composition Varèse by reversing the beginning of his piece Arcana . Signer builds dissonant chords in the style of Varèse on this.

In the work with the Great Saturday Orchestra , complex bar numbers and metric shifts, sound colors and strange harmonic extrapolations appear for the first time. Such sometimes bizarre themes or abrupt changes in tempo can be traced back to an influence from Igor Stravinsky .

Tour and LP poster of I Ain't Gonna Work No More at the Gas Station with Infra Steff's Red Devil Band , 1979

In 1975 the groundbreaking composition I Ain't Gonna Work No More at the Gas Station was created . It is the hour of birth of Steff Signer's conceptual engagement with the topic of gas stations , which has lasted for decades . The gas station forms the basis for his philosophical, musical and graphic work. In 1975 this era began with the invention of a song. In 1979 the album I Ain't Gonna Work No More at the Gas Station was released and in 1987 the chamber music collection More Music from the Gas Station . Countless variations in different instrumentations, styles and performances can be derived from the Gas Station theme. On the LP I Ain't Gonna Work No More at the Gas Station alone , the motto runs through four titles as a conceptual red thread: Gas Station Main Theme, Gas Station Reprise, Gas Station Vocal Variation and Gas Station Instrumental Variations , which in turn appears within Orchestral Snack Music as Xylophonic Gas Station . The main theme is implemented as an orchestral gas station and, in pomp and instrumentation, is reminiscent of the last bars of Igor Stravinsky's Firebird . Together with the Gas Station , the spirit of cheap takeaways, grills, diners, liquor stores, ie the entire American lifestyle in “cheapness” and superficiality, is given a cult or art status by Signer. Steff Signer has repeatedly addressed the dreary apocalyptic mood of lost souls in cheesy, cheap surroundings in his work.

From 1986 Signer's horizons for sources of inspiration expanded. So he increasingly sets life stations of people to music: 1987 in Meyer Lansky - 1947 that of the US Mafia paymaster Meyer Lansky or in 1993 in the solo pieces The Man and the Secrets the biography of the legendary US top policeman J. Edgar Hoover . But current articles from magazines - for example from Spiegel or Stern - form the basis for compositions. In 1987 the 12-tone song collection Ethic Trash was created with texts from advertisements. Nothing Without Fear , an electronic composition based on a Spiegel report on AIDS. And the opera Late Afternoon in Paradise finds inspiration in a report of the same name by Evelyn Holst in Stern . The Salzburg writer Walter Müller wrote the libretto in 1991.

Signer also thematizes the loss of real feelings and rituals that can only be found in substitute acts. Ethic Trash deals with “the phenomenon of artificial problems” with which humans in the western hemisphere have been struggling with increasing difficulty since the late 20th century. With the help of a libretto made up of quotations and passages - found in and taken from German magazines - scenes from the life of a young woman are shown. They are short-lived, loosely strung together images; constantly interrupted by additional film sequences.

Literary texts also find their way into Signer's music. Diet Pepsi & Nacho Cheese (1991) for soprano and piano is based on a text by Nila NorthSun . The Dakota Days song collection contains texts from the poetry anthology Stechäpfel with poems by women from three millennia.

A radically different manifestation of inspiration came to the fore from 2004 onwards. Signer changes his way of life: from then on the focus is no longer on looking at external appearances, but on one's own state of mind, one's own soul. This is how written and musical soul protocols , as Signer calls them, are created, similar to the treatises and expressions in the blues .

Musical expression

Steff Signer describes himself as a supporter of idiosyncrasy in music. He showed and shows consistently an individual behavior that deviates from the group or groups and an affinity for abnormal characteristics of the music. “Idiosyncratic” for Signer refers to his handling and understanding of performance and application of music, in which it is assigned more or less distant or stubborn meanings.

Regarding his compositional style and his compositional technique, Signer says: “Classical music, to put it simply, is formula music. I use my own rules for composing, and as it is, rules that I have invented are difficult to enforce in an existing set of rules that are based on tradition. My favorite compositional applications, after which an idea, a motif, emerged, are extension , expansion, expansion, juxtaposition , the creation of a “close proximity”, alteration , a chromatic change, derivation , a derivative of education a new sound statement, and finally the variation , the melodic, harmonic, rhythmic or dynamic change of a theme. With dodecaphony , the 12-tone technique, I also use conventional composition methods. "

Beat and rhythm

Tico Tico Le Thema for bassoon, trumpet and trombone or wind quintet from 1972

What is striking in Signer's compositions from 1973 to 1975 and from 1986 onwards is the metric , the frequent use of different time signatures, which also frequently change within a piece. Especially unusual, odd time signatures are characteristic of Signer during this period. These include the 3/8, 5/8 and 7/8 time. Signer takes such time signatures from composers of classical modernism, above all Igor Stravinsky . As early as 1972, with a first presentation of pieces in the post-hippie era, he set the main piece Tico-Tico Le Theme in 9/8 (4-2-3).

In the Big Saturday Orchestra , in addition to the 4/4 time, which is mainly used in rock or jazz solos, but only rarely, there is also the 10/8 time, which creates tension due to its 3-3-2-2 polarization, as a venue for solos in appearance.

In the years 1976 to 1986 Signer used odd time signatures rather sparingly, less for compositional reasons and more for pragmatic ones, because many of his musicians find it difficult to get used to them, and so he uses the compositional substance differently.

In 1978 the Gas Station Reprise was added. Signer wrote the piece with a chamber ensemble for alto sax, trumpet , bass trombone , percussion and drums , a short piece, but in odd meters, changing almost after every bar.

The chamber music pieces that have been in the foreground since 1986 are mostly written in odd meters. Often the focus is on rhythm. Now be propagated addition triplets or quintuplets also septuplets or more complex rhythmic structures used, for example a 10/16 via a 3/4-clock or a 9 / 8- over a 3 / 4- to short out the melody in a 7 / 8- appear over a 2/4 time. Such nested tuplets , or nested note values, result in pitch shortening or pitch lengthening conflicts that can cause unexpected effects. The tempo, i.e. the number of basic beats per minute, remains the same. Such applications can be found, for example, in Agrochemical Exercises # 1 + 2 . Polyrhythmic applications - the superposition of several different rhythms in a polyphonic piece - can be found in The Grand Chinee Opening from 1989: In the bass the 5/8-6 / 8 motif can be heard as ostinato; Above it, laid out polytonally in 4/4 time, there is an additional melody line that repeats itself after five bars. Each round is varied, supplemented and rebuilt. Maurice Ravel's Bolero serves as a model .

melody

The melody enjoys great esteem and attention in Signer's work. In addition to a typical shout style with blues notes, there are always and everywhere set melodies, often in contrast to the usual distribution of tone sequences in rock music . In a division of the intervals based on jazz , the third, as the primary consonance, is assigned a special euphony, while the major seventh is rated as a dissonance . The fourth is described as differing in its effect, for example.

Signer's application of tone sequences outside of this doctrine - especially in instrumental pieces - shows its own range and is a characteristic style element of his music. Not least because of this, he is referred to as the “student of Zappa ”.

Harmony

The harmonic systems and connections used by Signer are generally more conventional in the band years, which does not exclude that in individual cases, tension-generating and contrast-creating modulations and applications can be found again and again.

It looks different in his chamber music compositions, which are mostly dissonant, atonal or 12-tonal, offset with complex bar numbers and metric shifts, sound colors and strange harmonic extrapolations. The primacy of timbre over pitch are hallmarks of Edgar Varèses work. But Igor Stravinsky's anti-puristic, material-rich and constructive conception in the head and the will to translate this into the current overall musical scene are behind it.

Collages

The number of collages that are performed live is fewer than those that were created in the studio or on the computer. It is worth mentioning Fiddler's Passion , which is performed with the Great Saturday Orchestra in 1974/75.

Liquor Store Music (LSM) has a medley character and is composed of a series of different motifs of individual short compositions or pieces that have never been written to the end. In principle, there is a specially made arrangement by Liquor Store Music for each of the formations listed , due to the diversity of the line-up and the current use of the compositions. Often the limits of the recording studio are reached due to the many successive dubbings.

For the CD Moldy Figs (1992/93) Signer uses the collage-like composition technique, in which he intersperses pieces that were recorded between 1970 and 1980 but never published with musical snippets, sounds or conversation material in weeks of detailed work.

Collages of a different character were created in 2010/11 in the form of miniatures, which Signer calls "musical still lifes". For example, he varies and reduces the middle section, the “bridge” , of his key piece I Ain't Gonna Work No More at the Gas Station . With the recitation of the text and a look at the time when it was written, the result is the self-contained Fresh Mountain Air Oracle, which lasts only 53 seconds .

Fresh Mountain Air Oracle
fresh mountain air 'stead of car coughing fume
warm sandy breeze, stead of car coughing fume
fitfty-five insufficient trustful young rats
chasing through a nation full of dead sea cats
happened as far back as June 1976
when the weather was hot and the girls' hearts cold
the volcanoes were sleeping and the rivers could not wash the rice away

When recording the voice, Signer constantly changes the “pitch” , the pitch of the sonorous and calm voice, from deep bass to the “Mickey Mouse” area, and accentuates this with percussion fragments from another time. In Fresh Mountain Air - An Orchestral Maneuver , he implements the original rock riff in orchestral variations (1:19).

Another still life was created from the chorus line Hey-a-ho My Mission Will Be Spread through the Charts in the parodic Country & Western closing part of I Ain't Gonna Work No More at the Gas Station . In My Mission Mantra (0:27) Signer collages different levels of time. In addition to the recited text, he fades in the mezzo-soprano Hedwig Fassbender , who sings Trust me in 1987 , a Hoo-Bla from rock singer Pino Buoro from 1975 and finally an electronically alienated toy rattle from 1972.

With these airy musical experiments, Signer expresses his calm, serenity and the space of old age compared to the pressure and density of his young years. Such work also symbolizes “reconciliation with the past” or is an act of “closing circles”.

The result is a whole collection of miniatures, all of which are based on the same scenario: (Infra) Steff is sitting in the gas station in Edward Hopper's painting Gas . On the edge of civilization, he tinkers with his music in the Gas Station Studio . The graphic artist Silvia Gogesch implemented the scenario as an animation on the steffsinger.ch website.

Game lengths

“ Bringing chutzpah to steam” is a saying by Signer in relation to the often short duration of his compositions, especially within his contemporary works. They are often the length of a rock song.

In Signer's list of works there are enough compositions that have the usual standard playing time: Orchestral Snack Music for orchestra , rock band and percussion ensemble lasts about 60 minutes, the opera Late Afternoon in Paradise about 120 minutes, but also chamber music works, collections or Song cycles can last 20 to 30 minutes. The shortest piece, the composition Nevada for piano , has a playing time of 54 seconds.

Verbal expression

Verbal expression - the writing of texts of various kinds - is very important in Signer's work.

Text author

The first serious texts in the field of music were written in 1971. They deal with and mystify a (romantic) hippie communal life in a farmhouse in the country. Characterized by this mood, Signer writes a large number of songs in the Appenzell dialect, including the Holder Blues and Häxe and Zwerge . Such “New Appenzell songs” are intoned with violin , guitar , bass and drums and placed with toy instruments in an improvised setting reminiscent of free jazz .

With the help of a Revox tape recorder , the first absurd, time-critical or already parodying texts were recorded in studio quality, often closer to a contemporary-classical version than a popular musical version. The Zeitgeist-critical piece of picture disturbance with spoken words was recorded on a small cassette player and expanded on the Revox. While recording, Signer pressed the record and pause button alternately ; the resulting sound fluctuations represent a kind of "drunk state".

Signer sees writing as a definition of where he is: to recognize in his own words how he is doing something, what he is doing and where it should go. In 1972/73 - in the transition from hippie to future composer and parallel to composing pieces of music - he writes manifestos and thus lays down his timetable: approaches to “composing in 'free space'” and “emancipating the instruments” are recognizable.

In the bandleader years, a distinction can be made between “inner-musical” and “extra-musical” texts. In the internal music area, the texts were written in German until 1975. They are mostly time-critical statements in the medium of reflected exaggeration. The main part of the musical repertoire consists of instrumental compositions.

From 1976 - the music is increasingly oriented towards the Anglo-American scene - the lyrics to the songs are written in English. Usually observations or experiences from everyday life are processed, implemented in a funny, ironic, even absurd or surreal mode. The form of exaggeration is still expressed.

Until 1977, work with the bands was accompanied by Infra's Depesche , an urgent message that Signer distributed to his musicians and the press. In it he addresses the status quo of the band, short and long-term goals and, last but not least, more complex compositions.

During the composer years from 1986 onwards, texts were used differently. In the internal musical area, which differs less and less from non-musical, the proportion of own texts is reduced to three compositions. In addition to a large number of instrumental compositions, song cycles are created in which texts by third parties are processed: In the Ethic Trash collection , texts and phrases from advertisements are used. Darius Milhaud was the inspiration for these songs with his Machines agricoles, op. 56 (1919) with texts from a catalog for agricultural machines. 1992 in Diet Pepsi & Nacho Cheese (Duck Down Press, Fallon Nevada, 1977) Signer sets poems by Nila NorthSun to music . The third source of inspiration exhausted by the composer is called Dakota Days : During the work on the collections The Lost Weekend and Nothing without Fear , based on an article in the German news magazine Der Spiegel about AIDS ( nothing goes more without fear ) in winter Made in 1992/93, Steff Signer reads Stechäpfel , an anthology with poems by women from three millennia, and a biography about John Lennon . The latter describes a phase in Lennon's life in the second half of the 1970s, which he spent in the greatest seclusion with Yoko Ono and his son Sean in the Dakota Building in New York . The impressions of the aforementioned reading give the Dakota Days song collection its name and allow the music for selected poems to be created from thorn apples , composed for guitar , banjo , marimba , vibraphone and tubular bells .

The texts in the I Go to Turkey program from 2003 come on the one hand from Turkish travel guides; in Turkish and English. On the other hand, Signer wrote the framing narrative text himself in broken German and also recited it in the role of the narrator Sidir el Menachir .

writer

The texts were given a completely different status from 2004, when Signer saw himself more and more as a writer , and the medium of text appeared independently, without music. It is true that songs in a New Appenzell tradition or actual radio plays in the Talking Polka Blues style or in LSD folk theater style are still created , but they are only supplemented with music in a second way. The Talking Blues Polka is a appenzell-hinterländische form of rap or poetry slam , building on the melody and the rhythm of the dialect. LSD-Volkstheater describes the associative narrative form that runs like on an LSD trip: stimulated by one emotional word load, an associative transition into the next etc. takes place. Double meanings are wanted and desired; the pun is also used as a stylistic device. The style of the Appenzell dialect has its peculiarities. The taciturn expression is interspersed with expressions of strength and curse, which have an independent, emotional expressiveness and often say more than a whole sentence, which, if it is used, often remains unfinished.

In winter 2006/7 Signer invented his pirate radio station Radio Bergwand with the help of Roland's Digital Studio Workstation VS-840 and recorded his text material in this way.

As a result, two strands of text manifest themselves: texts for songs that will be released on CD Highmatt in 2014 and performed live by the Duo Sägerei-Buebe , and texts that are collected in book form and published in 2008 under the title Highmatt by Limmat Verlag in Zurich.

Signer describes the texts from 2004 as soul protocols . They are all very personal statements of his "life's work". Related to the blues in terms of expression , they are hardly ironic, surreal or exaggerated.

Analytical texts

Musicological or music-analytical considerations or reflections on his work as a composer are missing in Signer's text repertoire. Analytical texts are only created in project descriptions for the attention of applications for cultural funding. At the beginning of the 1970s, Signer saw himself as an advocate for his own concerns and practiced translating the abstract language of his art into the technical-monetary one. From 1989 he benefited from this experience in various mandates as a producer, managing director or project manager.

Visual expression

The visual complement to music or as an independent form of representation is present in Signer's life early on. In the absence of the possibility of founding his own band in rural Hundwil as a 14-year-old , the secondary school student Stefan Signer looked for a way out in the creation of sketches and drawings of a desired band. As a cantonal school student he painted and drew “Pop Art” , clothing, accessories, watercolors to songs ( As tears go by from the Rolling Stones ), abstract objects in plasticine or created poster collages of role models such as the Kinks . Visually, he created a world that was not yet tangible or livable for him.

Graphic work

The first graphic works began in 1971: either as a supplement to a band project or a composition, or as an independent medium. Steff Signer benefited from his father's modern office infrastructure in Hundwil. Photocopiers were rare in 1971. The machine he used in 1971 is still a wet copier. Signer experimented with photocopiers until the 1990s. A large part of his artistic graphics are based on electrophotography .

New paths emerged between 1974 and 1976 around the Great Saturday Orchestra . Marcel Zünd , photographer and draftsman of posters, accompanied the activities right down to private. The composition Der Orange Combi-Tick is based on a colored photo from this period .

The entry of guitarist and graphic artist Pierre Bendel into the Red Sandwich Combo in 1975 gave Signer a "house graphic artist " for the next few years. Bendel is the originator of the Red Devil ; implemented in numerous variants and on different carrier materials.

For the performance of Orchestral Snack Musik for symphony orchestra , rock band and percussion ensemble in 1980, Signer designed an alternative poster in collage form, the content of which has shown his inspirational milieu since 1970: Motifs by Mike Borgeaud , who invented the name Infra Steff in 1970 , the Red Devil -Band logo in a Chinese version or the absurd transistor radio "Toaster", which will appear again on the steffsinger.ch website in 2011.

The cover of the LP Average, Sized An 'Empty (1980) by Steve Harding and Liz Fouliz is simple and nostalgic. It draws on productions from the early 1960s in terms of typography and colors. 16-year-old Steff Signer is shown sprinkling the lawn with a water hose.

LP cover I'm Alive , 1984

Istvàn Deér designed and drawn the cover of I'm Alive (1984) and also designed the set for the tour.

The cover of More Music from the Gas Station (1988) shows Edward Hopper's painting Gas . The additional artwork, a roadmap , a fluorescent key ring and stationery were created by : Cal Schenkel , Frank Zappa's graphic artist for many years .

In 1993 Signer published the CD Moldy Figs (moldy figs) on his own label Wong Records and used a picture from an old family doctor book: A hand opens an eye and rinses it out. Also under Wong Records , Signer's Piano Concert No. 1 , created on the computer in the Finale program, was released in 1993 with variations of images of a so-called Cheap Organ from the 1960s.

After the turn of the millennium, Signer switched to the Polaroid camera medium . The fascination for this medium not only resulted in the concepts for Highmatt , but also photo series for the visual concepts of his other text works. One product of this phase is the cover of the book Highmatt : Signer in civil defense uniform , bare foot on a Harass Appenzeller beer , the Saz in hand.

The CD Highmatt (2014) appeared with a classic photo on the cover, on which the sawmill Buebe Thomas Züllig and Steff Signer pose with their instruments in front of a canton flag that Signer has alienated. The images are from Laura Signer, photographer and daughter of Steff Signer.

painting

In 2009 the Pläss was created as a separate theme in the medium of painting , an independent visual implementation of the Appenzeller Sennenhund . Signer paints it abstractly with a triangular yellow head and red eyes. The style is “traditionally naive”, deliberately close to Art brut . The painting bases are initially "Villiger Original-Krumme-Schachteln"; later it is thick, hand-made papers. Instead of brushes, Signer used matches and fingers, limited the colors to yellow (leather knee breeches from the Appenzell traditional costume ), red (vest from the traditional alpine costume), blue ( Seealpsee ) and black (soul). Each picture is labeled with an accompanying sentence in Appenzell dialect, with a statement or a motif, bringing the Pläss closer to human feeling: Pläss Subaru noosieche (Pläss runs after a Subaru, the typical “Appenzell farmer's car ” of the 1990s). Later Signer also uses the Yiddish language: Wek mi nit oif (Don't wake me up).

In 2015 the Pläss was presented in Hengelo (Netherlands) at an international Art brut exhibition. The origin of these works, animals with triangular heads, can be found in 1965 in Signer's youth work Cats in the Night and Taurus in the Arena . It is a chance archival discovery that anticipates much of what can be observed in Steff Signer's work: the cyclical use of motifs in sound, text and images.

Selected compositions

  • Tico Tico Le Thema for bassoon, trumpet and trombone or wind quintet - 1972
  • Bull-necked Saturday Afternoon Vibrations for Clarinet, Trumpet, Violin and Drums - 1974
  • Orchestral Snack Music for symphony orchestra, rock band and percussion ensemble - 1980
  • 29 Palms for Piano for Piano - 1981
  • Slot Machine Maniac for Piano - 1981
  • Does jazz hurt? for 2 marimbas and percussion - 1986
  • Preston's day-off in St. Monica for flute, clarinet, two horns and two trombones - 1986
  • Jazz does not hurt - live does! for chamber orchestra - 1986/2003
  • Trust me for piano - 1987
  • Exercise for Guitar for guitar - 1987
  • Meyer Lansky - 1947 for clarinet and small ensemble - 1987
  • Nan's Luncheonette Part I for percussion ensemble and piano - 1987
  • Trust me - in the Name of Reverend Kamm for mezzo-soprano - 1987
  • Theme for the Blue Moon Motor Court & Lodge for mezzo-soprano and small ensemble - 1987
  • Nans's Luncheonette Part II for brass quartet - 1988
  • Trust me - the Reader's Digest Version for wind quintet - 1988
  • Agrochemical Exercises # 1 for two pianos - 1988/2010
  • Agrochemical Exercises # 2 for oboe, bassoon, vibraphone and piano - 1988/2011
  • Bar-BQ with Oliver North for baritone sax, cheap electric organ / piano, electric guitar, electric bass, drums & percussion - 1988
  • The Sheriff's Collection for Wind Quintet - 1989
  • Does jazz hurt? for two marimbas and drum set - 1989
  • Boulez Dream for flute, violin, violoncello and percussion - 1990
  • Won Ton Night for English horn, bassoon, trombone, mandolin, piano and tambourine - 1990
  • Diet Pepsi & Nacho Cheese (songs) for soprano and piano - 1991
  • The Black & Blue Town for clarinet and piano - 1991
  • The Beauty Salon , Chamber Opera (unfinished) - 1991
  • Late afternoon in Paradise , chamber opera with the libretto by Walter Müller & Herbert Gantschacher - 1992
  • Piano Concert No. 1 - 1992
  • Annada Question # 1 for mechanical piano - 1992
  • The Man and the Secrets, monologues for alto flute, clarinet, bassoon, horn and piano - 1993
  • Dakota Days (song collection) for soprano, banjo, guitar, marimba, vibraphone and tubular bells - 1993
  • I go to Turkey for soprano, flute and piano - 2002
  • Lowbrow Snacks for soprano, flute and piano - 2003
  • Meet me at the Grill-O for soprano, flute, bass clarinet, guitar, banjo, piano, marimba and maracas - 1975/1983/2003
  • Jazz does not hurt - life does! for piccolo, three saxes, three brass, mandolin, marimba, vibraphone, piano, electric bass and drums - 1989/2003
  • On Tour with FZ for guitar quartet - 2004
  • Akureyri Sadness for flute, violin, viola and violoncello - 2009
  • Absinth Kitchen for oboe, clarinet, alto sax (horn), bass clarinet and bassoon - 2009
  • Delta Hotel Pain for oboe, clarinet, alto sax (horn), bass clarinet and bassoon - 2009
  • Grand Café Bagatella for three saxes, three brass, piano, electric bass, drums and percussion - 1972/2010
  • Monsieur Le Tico Tico for three saxes, bassoon, three brass, marimba, vibraphone, piano, electric bass, drums and percussion, 1972/2010
  • Moonlight Romance in Paris for three saxes, bassoon, three brass, marimba, vibraphone, piano, electric bass, drums and percussion - 1972/2010
  • Hot Dog Music for three saxes, bassoon, three brass, marimba, vibraphone, piano, electric bass, drums and percussion - 1986/2010
  • Ethic Trash (song collection) for mezzo-soprano and piano - 1987/2010
  • Grand Café Bistro de Paris for three saxes, bassoon, three brass, piano, electric bass, drums and percussion - 1989/2010
  • Ant Bear Muller's Hot Garage for three saxes, trombone, mandolin, marimba, organ, electric bass and drums - 2010
  • On Safari with Igor for three saxes, trombone, mandolin, marimba, organ, electric bass and drums - 2010
  • Lost in the library for flute, oboe and bassoon - 2010
  • Gas Station Reprise # 1 for Trumpet, Horn, Bass-Trombone, Tuba, Mandolin, Marimba and Drums - 1978/2010
  • Gas Station Reprise # 2 for trumpet, horn, bass trombone, tuba, mandolin, marimba and percussion - 2010
  • Prelude to the afternoon (of a member of the Mother's of Invention) for chamber orchestra - 1977/1988/2010
  • Sinless Electric Plastic Jesus for chamber orchestra - 1989/2010
  • The Arrow for trumpet, horn, trombone, tube, piano and baritone - 2017
  • Balancing Still Lives - three miniatures for mandolin, harmonium and baritone - 2017

Discography

  • Infra Steff's Great Saturday Orchestra - POP - Made in Switzerland - May 1975 (Sampler)
  • Infra Steff's Red Devil Band / Tico Tico Strings and the Moldy Figs Brass Section - Rock Jazz, Vol. 3, Augst - June 1978 (sampler)
  • Infra Steff's Red Devil Band - I Ain't Gonna Work No More at the Gas Station - June 1979 (LP)
  • Infra Steff's Red Devil Band - Average, Sized an 'Empty - April 1980 (LP)
  • Infra Steff's Red Devil Band - Open-Air Arbon - June 1982 (Sampler)
  • Infra Steff's Red Devil Band - Live in Picadilly - 1982 (Sampler)
  • Infrasteff with Billy Cobham and Craig Twister Steward - I'm Alive - April 1984 (LP)
  • Suzy Wong Hotel - Tonight - October 1985 (LP)
  • Infrasteff - More Music from the Gas Station - April 1988 (LP / CD), 2nd edition 1993
  • Infrasteff - Moldy Figs - 1993 (CD)
  • Infrasteff - Piano Concert No. 1, The Icebreaker Concerto - April / May 1993 (CD)
  • Steff Signer / Sägerei-Buebe (Stefan Signer and Thomas Züllig) - Highmatt - January 2014 (CD)

Books

  • Stefan Signer: High matt. All sorts of weird stories, tracts, soul protocols, sayings and songs from the hinterland. Limmat Verlag, Zurich 2008, ISBN 978-3-85791-560-4 .
  • “I would be everywhere and nowhere.” Appenzell anthology. Literary texts since 1900. Edited by Rainer Stöckli and Peter Surber. In collaboration with Eva Bachmann, Heidi Eisenhut, Doris Ueberschlag and Peter Weber. Appenzeller Verlag, Schwellbrunn 2016, ISBN 978-3-85882-733-3 .

Awards

  • 1st prize at the Swiss Jazz & Rock Festivals - 1977 and 1978
  • Contribution to music from the Ausserrhodischen Kulturstiftung - 1991

literature

  • Herbert Gantschacher: Signer and Rossini - two brothers in spirit? 1992.
  • Hanns-Werner Heister and Walter-Wolfgang Sparrer (Hrsg.): Composers of the present (KDG). Loose-leaf collection. edition text + kritik, Munich 2014, ISBN 978-3-86916-349-9 .
  • Urban Gwerder: Under the sign of the magical monkey. WOA Verlag, Zurich 1998, ISBN 3-9512180-2-9 .

Web links

personal data
SURNAME Signer, Stefan
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Steff Signer Infra Steff
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Swiss composer and musician
DATE OF BIRTH January 23, 1951
PLACE OF BIRTH Hundwil , Canton of Appenzell Ausserrhoden