25 Instructions
Provo, UT: Tryst Press, 2024. Unbound. Fine binding. Item #9194
21" x 15." Limited to 12 variants. 27 leaves on handmade, cotton paper (title pages, path sheet, and instructions to 25 compositions) laid into a cloth portfolio with small paper illustration pasted to the front. The instructions and title page are made up of colored pulp painted grids, copper gilding, and letterpress printed in handset Samson Unical types; the path sheet being letterpress printed from photopolymer plate. A fine copy.
Longtime experimental composer, musician, letterpress printer, papermaker, and visual artist, Rob Buchert, merges two fields of artistic endeavor in 25 Instructions—visual art and the sonic and performative arts. Using a unique "alternative notation" of grids, medallions, paths, and minimal text, Buchert's "instructions" emphasize the improvisational character of his compositions. Providing just enough instruction to keep each composition coherent while assuring that the score itself is second to the performance.
Aside from the performative aspects of this work, each of these compositions constitutes an engaging piece of visual art—an artifact of the music that can stand on its own, independent of the composition. Neither the composition nor the visual aspect being of primary importance. This lack of hierarchy runs throughout the entire work, even down to Buchert's use of a "common case" typeface without capitalization or lower case—every expression of it being equal. And just as any performance of a piece of music is going to vary from another, the process of replication used by Buchert in creating these instructions necessitates variation. Except for the type, the pulp painting and copper gilding are sufficiently variable to assure that no two sets within this edition of 12 are exactly the same. A masterful production, it is and will surely remain one of the highpoints of Buchert and his press. Buchert's Tryst Press is represented in institutions across the United States and England including Library of Congress, Yale University, Brown University, University of California.
Price: $9,750.00