Above the Clouds

For many years, the name Peter Schmidt was uniquely associated in my mind with Brian Eno. It was Schmidt who did the cover art for Taking Tiger Mountain (By Strategy) and Evening Star, it was also he who made the four prints included with early pressings of Before and After Science and who collaborated with Eno on Oblique Strategies, and Eno often spoke of him in interviews, mentioning his sadness at Schmidt’s untimely death. Attracted by the work, impressed by the high esteem in which Eno held him, and admittedly intrigued by the relative lack of information that seemed to be available about him, I recall sniffing around for anything I might find out about Peter Schmidt in the pre-internet days of the late ’70s and early ’80s but came up with nothing of consequence and eventually gave up.

Well, nowadays of course it’s people and things that don’t exist on the internet that are the exception, and fortunately that is no longer the case of Peter Schmidt. In January 2008 John Emr created a website and a blog devoted to Schmidt, and both are invaluable resources for those who wish to learn more about the artist and view a broad sampling of his work. The blog in particular is interesting in that it contains examples of finished pieces, preparatory sketches and notes for paintings, writings, and a variety of ephemera about Schmidt, public showings of his work, etc. Through his contact with Schmidt’s family, friends, and collectors Emr is able to present many pieces that I imagine have never been displayed publicly before. Collectively, they give an idea of the surprising breadth of Schmidt’s work, and allow us better appreciate what he was able to accomplish in his unfortunately brief life.

I’ll admit a bias for his watercolor still-lifes and landscapes, many of which are striking examples of the understated beauty of otherwise mundane objects and unspectacular scenes and views. These to me embody what is most interesting about Schmidt’s work: its indifference to the monumental and the superlative, and its focus on the quiet, the “insignificant,” the intimate. For this reason I have always thought that Schmidt’s phrase, “In a roomful of shouting people, the one who whispers becomes interesting,” was a perfect epigraph to both his work and the position he occupied in the art world of his time.

You can see a selection of Peter Schmidt’s paintings in the Peter Schmidt gallery. Having visited the gallery, I hope you will feel sufficiently inspired to explore John Emr’s website and blog, listed below.

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• Peter Schmidt Web
• Peter Schmidt Weblog

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The following sampler from ShortWaveMusic is intended to fire your imagination. If it catches your ear as well I recommend that you visit the site and work your way through the archive; you won’t be disappointed. The truly smitten may also wish to download the catalog of more than 100 recordings that had appeared on the blog between 2005–’08, and will find instructions on how to do so here. Now, on to the sounds…

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Dark Radio

“[This is] a short layer piece incorporating what sounds like three or four radio sources. I’m pretty sure this is just a brief recording of one of my all-night sleep installations.”

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SWM09.04: आकाशवाणी

“I would have remained a music-illiterate myself, had I not been in bed one monsoon with asthma, and listened to the radio to fill the hours. Around 2 a.m., I chanced upon some haunting music being played on the General Overseas Service of All India Radio. While the rest of India slept I listened, and was converted…” – Ramachandra Guha

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SWM09.00: Qrv Qrv Qrv de ShortWaveMusic

“Station: Unidentified XMTR Test Sequence
Frequency: 11885 kHz
Transmitter: Unknown
Rec Date: Wed 09-Sep-2009 : 0406 UTC”

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SWM09.08: Modernizing Khan Asparuh

“This piece is an example of ‘arranged folklore’ attributed to the Upper Thracian region of Southern Bulgaria, most likely performed by Donka Koleva, a Bulgarian-born and trained singer now living in New York.”

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Duelling XMTRs! #3

“…a collision of modern Eastern electronics and Qu’ranic recitation which sounds so natural to our world-fusion-softened ears that it hardly registers as an accident of propagation at all. You could probably even dance to it …”

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KJES (“King Jesus Eternal Savior”)

“…in certain fluke moments of peculiar propagation and signal chaos, KJES [“one of the weirder evangelical shortwave stations”] occasionally crosses the line from lip-biting strangeness to an inexplicable burlap-dress beauty.”

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If you are as captivated by the beauty of these disembodied sounds as I am, you might consider purchasing a copy of At the Tone, Weiskopf’s “ ‘Little History’ of NIST Radio Stations WWV and WWVH” (you’ll find a teaser for it here). Be sure to keep an ear out for his forthcoming Historical Longwave CD Project, too. In the meanwhile, you can enjoy his first “catalog mix,” 833-45: Howth St PART/SEQ (Pananorama Mix), a sound collage incorporating “shortwave elements, Qur’an recitation, and music,” which you can read about and download here.

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