When, in Canto XXXII of “The Inferno” (The Divine Comedy, translated by John Ciardi), the medieval Italian poet Dante Alighieri requests that the Muses “assist my verse, / that the word may be the mirror of the thing” his desire is to find the precise language that reflects the perceivable reality – the inherent qualities and character – of his subject matter. This is quite the opposite of 20^th century author Gertrude Stein’s attitude, when (in Lectures in America) she says “I became more and more excited about how words which were the words that made whatever I looked at look like itself were not the words that had in them any quality of description.” Her idiosyncratic organization of language redesigns a personal expression of reality as did the Cubist painters visually; much of the poetry Stein developed over one hundred years ago remains controversial, and largely misunderstood, for its fragmented or repetitious syntax, ambiguous word combinations, collage-like juxtaposition of seemingly unrelated images, and puzzling, often enigmatic depictions of people, events, and things.

Yet these same unconventional and challenging procedures account for her work’s unique charm, unpredictability, and fascination. On the surface the words may appear to be chosen at random, intentionally ignoring rules of grammar, continuity, signification, or specific representation, however her frequent use of unexplained puns, homonyms (in XLVIII, is “polish” meant as in “polish the furniture” or “Polish” from Poland?), translations from and phonetically misspelled foreign words, transcribed conversations, and private associations suggests a playful, if radical approach to form as individual vision. One of her favorite ways to re-direct meaning and context is to divide words into syllabically-derived new phrases (such as “sew up” from “soap,” “won door” from “wonder,” “new sense” from “nuisance,” and “let us” from “lettuce”). Whether carefully constructed or spontaneously improvised, it’s apparent that she often plays it by ear, that is, her process allows the sound of words to echo their own relationships and combinations. From this derives a “sound poetry,” where the musical qualities of language take precedence over a singular meaning.

All of which explains the attraction of Stein’s poetry to the Swiss reedman/improviser/composer Christoph Gallio. With a lifelong broad-ranging interest in the arts, since obtaining a master’s degree in Transdisciplinarity from the Zurich University of the Arts he has for the last forty-plus years performed in collaborations with dancers, visual artists, and adventurous musicians from around the world (including the ongoing trio Day + Taxi, which he founded in 1988) with an emphasis on the nature of free improvisation. But a special affinity to the qualities of modern and contemporary poetry has led to his compositional settings of texts by such distinctive writers as the Austrian experimentalist Friederike Mayröcker and the French Fluxus artist Robert Filliou among others. Although familiar with Gertrude Stein’s work previously, it was a 1993 German language publication of selections from Stein’s posthumous collection Bee Time Vine that inspired him to begin corresponding his melodic impulses to the concise, abstract designs of her poetry. In 2010 and  then again later throughout the period of covid isolation he renewed his interest and worked on setting the long sequence “Yet Dish.” A new ensemble was established primarily to perform the intricate score, and this recording was the result.

Unpublished in her lifetime, “Yet Dish” is remarkable in its dense intensity and creative confidence. There are clues to Stein’s intent hidden throughout; Alice B. Toklas once told Virgil Thomson that “Yet Dish” was a transformation of “Yiddish” and thus could possibly be related to both Toklas and Stein coming from Jewish families. But Stein’s quote cited above confirms her lack of feeling for emotional description; words cannot substitute for the thing itself. By focusing on the sound of the language units (incorporating the familiar poetic techniques of alliteration, rhyme, assonance, and rhythmic phrasing in mercurial fashion) and the visual structures of the word patterns on the page (see especially the symmetry of XI and XXXVIII, and the brick wall repetition of XLIII), the individual sections of the poem become objects in themselves, rather than memory-triggered descriptions of an experience. Gallio’s music shrewdly reinforces the edges and angles of Stein’s abrupt rhythmic flow, gleefully renders the staggered wit and judicious humor (yes, humor) of her phrasing, and insinuates small jolts of instrumental color as interludes and introductions. Like Virgil Thomson’s famous operas on Stein’s texts, Gallio never overwhelms the words, but simplifies the melodic material with his own twisting contours, to underscore the brilliance of the poetry.

“To me there is no past or future in art. If a work cannot always live in the present it must not be considered at all,” as Picasso asserted in 1923. If it is therefore not necessary for Christoph Gallio’s concept to reclaim Gertrude Stein’s vision from the past, here they have met on an equal footing, and enhanced each the other.

Art Lange, Chicago, July 2025