“Lorelei” (the Long Distance Sonata) features Dieter Roth on piano along with his children, Vera and Björn. The work is comprised of two parts, 38 cassettes of music and a radio/cassette player that was prepared so that the radio and cassette could only be played simultaneously. "Lorelei" was released in 1978 by Hansjörg Mayer and Audio Arts in an edition of 20, each of which contained 38 cassettes and the prepared radio/cassette player in a hand-painted box. This selection from the edition is culled from the original tapes and the works are missing the accompanying radio playback.

For more information on Dieter Roth or Primary Information, please visit www.primaryinformation.org. These recordings were originally presented on http://blogs.fhnw.ch/dieterrothmusic/publikation/ 

Special thanks to Michel Roth and Meike Olbrich for their help in collecting these works and to the Dieter Roth Estate and Hauser & Wirth for allowing us to present them here.

© Dieter Roth Estate 
Courtesy/Hauser & Wirth


Dieter Roth: Lorelei (10), Basel/Stuttgart, April 18/April 21, 1978

Primary Information is a non-profit organization founded in 2006 to publish artists’ books and artists’ writings. Our mission is to publish out-of-print books that remain vital to ongoing conversations around artistic practice and to publish contemporary books by emerging, mid-career, and established artists. All of our publications are distributed internationally and priced at cost so that they are affordable and accessible to the largest possible audience.