Kairos Quartett

Zorn is thus very much in the tradition of the music of the 1950s and 1960s, in which attempts were made to detach musical form, its course, the playing and the interaction between the players from the sole responsibility of the composer on the basis of a predetermined playing concept. Examples of this approach can be found in Lutoslawski's String Quartet, in Stockhausen's Klavierstück XI, in Boulez's 3rd Piano Sonata, but also in Wolff's In Between Pieces or Robert Ashley's in memoriam ... series. However, the author never completely disappears, even if his function changes. He takes a back seat, directing the play as it were or, as with John Zorn in Cobra, as a ‘prompter’ (prompter).

The Dead Man – 13 specimen for string quartet (1990)

The Dead Man has rarely been performed in its complete form. The score was revised several times in the years following the original composition of 1990.
This complex of thirteen miniatures is inspired by the work of the same name by the French
philosopher/surrealist Georges Bataille (and of course Webern's Bagatelles).

It contains perhaps the most obvious S&M subtext in my entire oeuvre. Composed the same year as Torture Garden, I've always imagined these two suites as soundtracks to inevitably brief S&M scenes, perhaps performed in the Vault, Hellfire, at a private “black party”, in someone's personal dungeon, or as an underground happening in a dark, dank basement in Tokyo or the East Village.

John Zorn