Commentaries on Bob Cobbing - The Argotist Online

Lecture Notes on Bob Cobbing
[Much of ‘Lecture Notes on Bob Cobbing’ is little more than a few sheets of paper carrying key
words which refer largely to Cobbing and others who had been produced at or who worked at
Fylkingen in Stockholm in the early years of text-sound composition.
The notes resulted from my response to a situation where I had been asked to address issues of
sound art in the context of the Fylking. I would either present recordings or scores or both. The
actual talk would be improvised to a considerable extent, aiming to produce conversation.
Though I call them “Lecture Notes” they were used for a variety of purposes between 2006 and
the present day and were rarely the substance of a formal lecture.
Now and then I have developed sections of these notes elsewhere; and the cut material that leaves
may be a little disjunctive, a disjunction I would have smooth out extempore in delivery!]
The following, brief as they are, consider some aspects of Cobbing’s work beyond Fylkingen’s
studio; and use another preparation method whereby I would write out an argument or a
fragment of an argument but then actually deliver it extempore, the writing having been a kind of
rehearsal which I could then abandon or revise.
In Bob Cobbing & Writers Forum [1], Cobbing is listed as having provided documentation to it; but
my memory suggests that his involvement was more that of a contributing editor. The short essay
by Sten Hanson, for instance, was solicited by Cobbing in Stockholm in the summer of 1974—I
was in the room when he asked—but that may well have been discussed with Peter Mayer, the
editor, beforehand.
Thus the volume is an excellent source of reliable commentary; but it is also a volume that Cobbing
wanted and for which Cobbing, in current jargon, felt “ownership”.
Consider Hanson’s text therein: Bob Cobbing: The Sound Poet [2].
Hanson addresses the work as “sound poetry” rather than as “text-sound composition”, which
William Brunson, in his paper ‘Text-Sound Composition: The Second Generation’, declares to be
Fylkingen’s ‘expression of interests in multi-disciplinary art at the nexus of text, music and
technology’. Brunson stresses the Swedish gränsöverskridande, boundary crossing, as a
watchword of those concerned.
Hanson was Director of Fylkingen at the time of the essay—and was, later, its Chairman—but he
uses “sound poetry”, Cobbing’s term.
Bob would, when speaking informally of his work and sound poetry in general often say ‘the
Swedes, for instance, call it text-sound composition’. Now that is not entirely true.
It’s vague to refer to any artistic activity as applying across an entire national culture, especially
one that tends to value individual innovative creativity like the Swedish; and it may be that there