The Royal Library - The Music and Theatre Department - Musik at One

KATALOG (Catalogue) by Fuzzy

– a musical decoration of The Black Diamond.

The music piece Katalog by the composer Fuzzy is a new artistic decoration for The Black Diamond, commissioned by The Royal Library. As a sounding ornament in "The Gap" - as the atrium with the wavy balconies is called in the library - every day for about three minutes one of the 52 compositions sounds, written in the musical genre electro-acoustical compositional music.

With this project an outstanding concert hall has been created for this kind of music, and the project gives the opportunity of the daily playing of Katalog. The 52 parts of the work - one for each week of the year - get their inspiration from one of the treasures of the library - a manuscript, a photo, a book, or a piece of music. The composition thus functions at the same time as a memory of the presence of music in the library in an interplay with the painter Per Kirkeby's decoration of the ceiling at the C-level and a promotion of the collection supplemented by an indication of the passing of time.

The music is played via a permanent installation based on a computerized 12-channel "orchestra of loudspeakers", in which every loudspeaker can be programmed with its individual "orchestral part". Four loudspeakers are installed in the ceiling of each of the three balcony levels.

One may think that sound and reading rooms do not directly harmonize, and that students and scholars can be disturbed in their work. The library is already filled with real life sounds from the rolling travelators, general speech and activities at the A-level around The Queen's Hall, in the Restaurant søren k, the café Øieblikket and GAD's bookshop.

At 1 p.m. you have the possibility to look up from your books, strech your leges and - for three minutes, no more no less - enjoy that the huge space is filled with music. Music which is experienced differently according to where you stand or move around.

The project Music at One and the composition KATALOG has been made possible through grants from the Year 2000-Foundation under the Ministry of Research and from receipts from state lotteries.

Below you can see the pictures and a short description of the individual objects from the library, which have inspired Fuzzy for the music. They can also be seen on posters at the A-level of The Black Diamond.

More information, please contact Lone Ømann, Tel. 33 47 43 62, mail: loe@kb.dk

January-February - Week 1-9

March-April - Week 10-17

May-June - Week 18-26

July-August - Week 27-35

September-October - Week 36-44

November-December - Week 45-52

Comments to the Music and Theatre Department
Updated August 2004