SIX (NOT SO) EASY PIECES
concert

Author: The Group ‘Secondhanders’, Serbia
Aleksandra Damnjanović, viola, voice
Juliana Marović, violoncello
Gorana Čurguz, harp
Nebojša Ignjatović, double bass, voice, piano
Sanja Marković, voice, saxophone
Jugoslav Hadžić, accordion
Dijana Milošević, director

The Group ‘Secondhanders’ performs and resells little-used (second hand) music of renowned authors, repacked and ready for use under the title ‘Six (not so) Easy Pieces’. The music consists of segments and/or whole pieces of known compositions as well as of lyrics of anthological value, which lends this works a serious character, while the addition of more or less successful non-standard musical content achieves the necessary communicativeness which enables sales and quick profits. Majority of these compositions have been used in the productions of the DAH Theatre from Belgrade. The composition ‘Persifly’ uses the verses of the poem ‘Fly’ from William Blake’s collection named ‘Songs of Experience’, the leitmotif of Wagner’s ‘Parsifal’ in combination with the accords from the second movement of the second sonata for violoncello by Sergei Prokofiev and Mozart’s solo songs. The lyrics from the song ‘Yesterday’ by ‘The Beatles’ are used together with the adagio from Corelli’s concerto grosso in D-major, while Shakespeare’s love poem ‘Mistress Mine’ from ‘Twelfth Night’ is sung to different other music interventions, together with Sarabande from Bach’s Cello Suite No. 5. The Cut-Copy-Paste procedure in the composition ‘A Poison Tree’ can be observed in the way bass motif from Beethoven’s overture ‘Coriolan’ was used – turned into a tango motif it serves as a base for a song on Blake’s verses, accompanied by a riff from Debussy’s string quartet. Finally, the composition ‘Madopares, Jupreniles’, whose title is made of the names of two medications used for treating Parkinson’s disease, and composed of parts of Neapolitan songs and the viola solo from the second movement of Debussy’s string quartet. The number is dedicated to the recently deceased composer Mauricio Kagel with a ‘quote’ of silently performing the famous composition ‘Con Voce’. The composition ‘It from Bit’ uses the motifs from compositions by Svetomir Nastasijević and Wagner’s ‘Mastersingers from Nurnberg’.

The members of the ‘Secondhanders’ focus neither on the quality of the compositions nor on the level of their performance, they are only interested in their use value and profit value.