Ein Kleid aus Noten

This interdisciplinary and richly illustrated anthology takes as its theme the books of the Basel State Archives clothed in sheet music. The focus is on the objects in their entire material appearance. After the Reformation and until the late 18th century, Basel bookbinders used parchment pages of obsolete medieval chant manuscripts as book bindings. The Basel State Archives house a large number of such objects, most of which come from the archives of the Basel monasteries. The documents bound with chorale fragments are archival late medieval and modern records, including inventories of the revenues and expenditures of the respective institutions. The present anthology is interdisciplinary in nature: The books clothed in sheet music in their entire material appearance and the visibility of the historical layers contained therein - tangible in traces of use and damage, inscriptions, cuts, labels, as well as the peculiar discrepancy between cover and cladding - are the focus of the texts as well as the photographs. A piece of cultural history can be read in the 'found objects' treated and photographically staged in the publication. It is no coincidence that the term objet trouvé refers to the aesthetics of Dadaism and is aimed at the visually powerful moments of de-contextualization and de-semanticization inherent in these volumes.