Lily Henriette Greenham (4 January 1924 - 31 October 2001) was an Austrian-born Danish visual artist, performer, composer and leading proponent of

sound poetry Sound poetry is an artistic form bridging literary and musical composition, in which the phonetic aspects of human speech are foregrounded instead of more conventional semantic and syntactic values; "verse without words". By definition, sound poe ...

and

concrete poetry Concrete poetry is an arrangement of linguistic elements in which the typographical effect is more important in conveying meaning than verbal significance. It is sometimes referred to as visual poetry, a term that has now developed a distinct mea ...

Early life

Vienna

Greenham was born in

Vienna Vienna ( ; ; ) is the capital city, capital, List of largest cities in Austria, most populous city, and one of Federal states of Austria, nine federal states of Austria. It is Austria's primate city, with just over two million inhabitants. ...

Austria Austria, formally the Republic of Austria, is a landlocked country in Central Europe, lying in the Eastern Alps. It is a federation of nine Federal states of Austria, states, of which the capital Vienna is the List of largest cities in Aust ...

, on January 4, 1924, the only child of

Rena Pfiffer-Lax Rena Pfiffer-Lax-Madsen (October 5, 1893 – October 8, 1943), usually seen as Rena Pfiffer-Lax, was a Polish soprano opera singer based in Austria and Denmark, and associated with Viennese opera houses in the 1920s. Early life and education ...

and Dr. Gabriel Lax, both of Polish/Ukrainian-Jewish descent. Her mother was a well-known

soprano A soprano () is a type of classical singing voice and has the highest vocal range of all voice types. The soprano's vocal range (using scientific pitch notation) is from approximately middle C (C4) = 261 Hertz, Hz to A5 in Choir, choral ...

opera singer from

Przemyśl Przemyśl () is a city in southeastern Poland with 56,466 inhabitants, as of December 2023. Data for territorial unit 1862000. In 1999, it became part of the Podkarpackie Voivodeship, Subcarpathian Voivodeship. It was previously the capital of Prz ...

who performed at the

Vienna Volksoper The Vienna Volksoper (''Volksoper'' or ''Vienna People's Opera'') is an opera house in Vienna, Austria. It produces three hundred performances of twenty-five German language productions of opera, operetta, musicals, and ballet, during an annual s ...

Vienna State Opera The Vienna State Opera (, ) is a historic opera house and opera company based in Vienna, Austria. The 1,709-seat Renaissance Revival venue was the first major building on the Vienna Ring Road. It was built from 1861 to 1869 following plans by ...

, and various international venues during the 1920s and ‘30s. Her father was a lawyer, impresario and former police commissioner from

Berezhany Berezhany ( ; ; ; , ''Bzhezhani''/''Bzhizhani'') is a small List of cities in Ukraine, city in Ternopil Raion, Ternopil Oblast, western Ukraine. It lies about from the administrative center of the oblast, Ternopil. Berezhany hosts the administr ...

. Her parents divorced in 1929 and her mother later remarried to Danish singer Egon Madsen in

Copenhagen Copenhagen ( ) is the capital and most populous city of Denmark, with a population of 1.4 million in the Urban area of Copenhagen, urban area. The city is situated on the islands of Zealand and Amager, separated from Malmö, Sweden, by the ...

in 1933. Lily was a pupil at the progressive Rahlgasse School in Vienna until April 1938, whose alumni also include philologist Gertrud Herzog-Hauser, actress and journalist Lina Loos, fashion designer (and life partner of

Gustav Klimt Gustav Klimt (14 July 1862 – 6 February 1918) was an Austrian symbolist painter and a founding member of the Vienna Secession movement. His work helped define the Art Nouveau style in Europe. Klimt is known for his paintings, murals, sket ...

) Emilie Louise Flöge, and nuclear physicist Marietta Blau.

Escape to Denmark

In April 1938 her father was amongst the first wave of prominent Jewish citizens arrested in Vienna and transported to

Dachau concentration camp Dachau (, ; , ; ) was one of the first concentration camps built by Nazi Germany and the longest-running one, opening on 22 March 1933. The camp was initially intended to intern Hitler's political opponents, which consisted of communists, s ...

, following the

annexation of Austria The (, or , ), also known as the (, ), was the annexation of the Federal State of Austria into Nazi Germany on 12 March 1938. The idea of an (a united Austria and Germany that would form a " Greater Germany") arose after the 1871 unifica ...

into the

German Reich German ''Reich'' (, from ) was the constitutional name for the German nation state that existed from 1871 to 1945. The ''Reich'' became understood as deriving its authority and sovereignty entirely from a continuing unitary German ''Volk'' ("na ...

. Greenham escaped to Copenhagen to be reunited with her mother thanks to the efforts of her step-father who obtained an exit visa for her. At fifteen Greenham's mother started giving her formal singing lessons and she learnt a repertoire of lieder and operatic arias. Madsen later secured the release of Greenham's father from

Buchenwald concentration camp Buchenwald (; 'beech forest') was a German Nazi concentration camp established on Ettersberg hill near Weimar, Nazi Germany, Germany, in July 1937. It was one of the first and the largest of the concentration camps within the Altreich (pre-1938 ...

in November 1938. Her father travelled on to

Shanghai Shanghai, Shanghainese: , Standard Chinese pronunciation: is a direct-administered municipality and the most populous urban area in China. The city is located on the Chinese shoreline on the southern estuary of the Yangtze River, with the ...

to work as a journalist, where as many as 20,000 German, Austrian and Polish Jews sought refuge during

World War Two World War II or the Second World War (1 September 1939 – 2 September 1945) was a global conflict between two coalitions: the Allies and the Axis powers. Nearly all of the world's countries participated, with many nations mobilisi ...

. He died there in April 1944.

Escape to Sweden

Following the

German occupation of Denmark At the outset of World War II in September 1939, Denmark declared itself neutral, but that neutrality did not prevent Nazi Germany from occupying the country soon after the outbreak of war; the occupation lasted until Germany's defeat. The ...

in 1940, Greenham's mother attempted to escape to Sweden in October 1943 with a group of Danish Jews. A 'Kripo' (

Kriminalpolizei ''Kriminalpolizei'' (, "criminal police") is the standard term for the criminal investigation agency within the police forces of Germany, Austria, and the German-speaking cantons of Switzerland. In Nazi Germany, the Kripo was the criminal polic ...

) patrol discovered them and Greenham's mother was shot in the stomach and died of her wounds a few days later. According to Egon Madsen's memoirs, Greenham had affected her own dramatic escape by boat to Sweden, hiding in ditches and a church attic to escape Nazi patrols.

Post-war

After the war Greenham (appearing as Lily Pfiffer-Madsen) and her step-father toured and performed together in Sweden and Denmark, including a 1947 Danish radio broadcast where they performed pieces by

Georges Bizet Georges Bizet (; 25 October 18383 June 1875) was a French composer of the Romantic music, Romantic era. Best known for his operas in a career cut short by his early death, Bizet achieved few successes before his final work, ''Carmen'', w ...

Franz Lehár Franz Lehár ( ; ; 30 April 1870 – 24 October 1948) was an Austro-Hungarian composer. He is mainly known for his operettas, of which the most successful and best known is '' The Merry Widow'' (''Die lustige Witwe''). Life and career L ...

and

Anton Rubinstein Anton Grigoryevich Rubinstein (; ) was a Russian pianist, composer and conductor who founded the Saint Petersburg Conservatory. He was the elder brother of Nikolai Rubinstein, who founded the Moscow Conservatory. As a pianist, Rubinstein ran ...

. In 1948 Greenham moved to Paris to study painting, subsequently married poet Peter Greenham in Hendon, London in 1951, before returning to Austria with him in 1952 to study at the Academy of Music and Performing Arts in Vienna. She and Peter Greenham divorced in 1964.

Career and adult life

Vienna and sound poetry

Whilst studying in Vienna in the 1950s, Greenham developed a strong interest in contemporary art and became involved with the activities of the

Wiener Gruppe The Wiener Gruppe (''Vienna Group'') was a small and loose avant-garde constellation of Austrian poets and writers, which arose from an older and wider postwar association of artists called Art-Club. The group was formed around 1953 under the infl ...

(Vienna Group), an avant-garde constellation of Austrian poets and writers that included H. C. Artmann and

Gerhard Rühm Gerhard Rühm (born 12 February 1930) is an Austrian author, composer and visual artist. Biography Rühm was born in Vienna. He studied the piano and music composition at the University of Music and Performing Arts in Vienna. Following his st ...

. She became well known for radio broadcasts and performances of sound & concrete poetry by many writers, poets and artists, including Freidrich Achtleitner, Elena Asins, Alain Arias-Misson, Ronaldo Azeredo,

Bob Cobbing Bob Cobbing (30 July 1920 – 29 September 2002) was a British sound, visual, concrete and performance poet who was a central figure in the British Poetry Revival. Early life Cobbing was born in Enfield. He attended Enfield Grammar School and ...

, Peter Greenham,

Helmut Heißenbüttel Helmut Heißenbüttel (21 June 1921 – 19 September 1996) was a German novelist and poet. Among Heißenbüttel's works are ''Das Textbuch'' (''The Textbook'') and ''Marlowe's Ende'' (''Marlowe's End''). He received the Georg Büchner Prize in 196 ...

and

Ernst Jandl Ernst Jandl (; 1 August 1925 – 9 June 2000) was an Austrian writer, poet, and translator. He became known for his experimental lyric, mainly sound poems (''Sprechgedichte'') in the tradition of concrete and visual poetic forms. Poetry Inf ...

. Greenham spoke several languages aside from her native German and adopted Danish, as evidenced in her BBC Radio 3 ''Sound Poetry Concert'' in 1970 where she delivered sound poems in their original Spanish, French and English.

Paris and visual art exhibitions

In 1964 Greenham had moved back to Paris where she joined the Groupe de Recherche d'Art Visuel (GRAV) (Research Group for Visual Art) of opto-kinetic artists, part of the broader Nouvelle Tendance (New Tendency) art movement. Greenham's innovative

Op art Op art, short for optical art, is a style of visual art that uses distorted or manipulated geometrical patterns, often to create optical illusions. It began in the early 20th century, and was especially popular from the 1960s on, the term "Op ...

works became widely recognised and were shown in several major exhibitions, including ''Mouvement 2'' (Galerie

Denise René Denise René (born Denise Bleibtreu; June 1913 – 9 July 2012) was a French art gallerist specializing in kinetic art and op art. Life and work Denise René believed that art must invent new paths in order to exist. The first exhibitions organ ...

, Paris, 1964), ''The Responsive Eye'' (

Museum of Modern Art The Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) is an art museum located in Midtown Manhattan, New York City, on 53rd Street (Manhattan), 53rd Street between Fifth Avenue, Fifth and Sixth Avenues. MoMA's collection spans the late 19th century to the present, a ...

(MoMa), New York, 1965), ''Light and Movement'' (Museum of Modern Art, Paris, 1967), ''Formas computables'' (Computer Centre, University of Madrid, 1969) and the 35th

Venice Biennale The Venice Biennale ( ; ) is an international cultural exhibition hosted annually in Venice, Italy. There are two main components of the festival, known as the Art Biennale () and the Venice Biennale of Architecture, Architecture Biennale (), ...

in 1970.

London and 'lingual music'

Greenham moved to London in 1972, where she based herself for the remainder of her life, and began to focus on her own sound poetry experiments. She consciously distanced herself from being regarded as merely an interpreter of other people's poetry, particularly as one of the few female practitioners in an overwhelmingly male-dominated field. Her sense of being an outsider was something she wrote about in ''Un Arte de Vivir'' (An Art of Living), originally published in the Spanish literary magazine ''Inventario 5'' (1995). Greenham coined the term ‘lingual music’ in 1973 to describe her experiments with layering and processing reel-to-reel tape recordings of her own voice. She explained her approach in the catalogue for the exhibition ''Tekst in geluid (Text in sound)'' at the Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam, in 1977.

Composing and performing

In 1974 she worked at the

BBC Radiophonic Workshop The BBC Radiophonic Workshop was one of the sound effects units of the BBC, created in 1958 to produce Incidental music, incidental sounds and new music for radio and, later, television. The unit is known for its experimental and pioneering ...

to realise ''Relativity'', using words from Einstein's

Special Theory of Relativity In physics, the special theory of relativity, or special relativity for short, is a scientific theory of the relationship between space and time. In Albert Einstein's 1905 paper, "On the Electrodynamics of Moving Bodies", the theory is presen ...

and playing on the linkage between the word electron as used in both physics and electronic music. Under Greenham's detailed direction, ''Relativity'' involved the considerable engineering, editing and mixing skills of

Paddy Kingsland Paddy Kingsland (born 30 January 1947) is a composer of electronic music best known for his incidental music for science fiction series on BBC radio and television whilst working at the BBC Radiophonic Workshop. Educated at Eggar's Grammar Schoo ...

, Peter Howell and

Richard Yeoman-Clark Richard Yeoman-Clark was a British composer and sound engineer who worked at the BBC Radiophonic Workshop from 1970 to 1978. Richard joined BBC Radio direct from St Albans School as a Technical Operator at Broadcasting House, moving to the Ex ...

and was broadcast on the BBC the following year, though being somewhat short for the designated radio spot (at just over 8 minutes) the piece was actually broadcast twice in succession with a short link spoken by broadcaster Richard Baker dropped into the gap. ''Relativity'' went on to win a prize for electro-acoustic music at the prestigious 5th Bourges International Festival of Experimental Music in 1975. That same year she worked with the mercurial Hugh Davies in the Electronic Music Studios at

Goldsmiths, University of London Goldsmiths, University of London, formerly Goldsmiths College, University of London, is a constituent research university of the University of London. It was originally founded in 1891 as The Goldsmiths' Technical and Recreative Institute by ...

, to create the piece ''Traffic''. On ''Circulation'' (1975/6), a stereo French-language version of her poem ''Traffic'', Greenham explored early digital sampling techniques - long before the availability of commercial samplers - using a

PDP-8 The PDP-8 is a family of 12-bit minicomputers that was produced by Digital Equipment Corporation (DEC). It was the first commercially successful minicomputer, with over 50,000 units sold during the model's lifetime. Its basic design follows the pi ...

computer at University College in Cardiff with software created by programmer Marcus West. Greenham continued to perform live across Europe, North Africa and North America throughout the 1970s and into the 1980s, with free improvisation performances alongside Danish saxophonist

John Tchicai John Martin Tchicai ( ; 28 April 1936 – 8 October 2012) was a Danish free jazz saxophonist and composer. Biography Tchicai was born in Copenhagen, Denmark, to a Danish mother and a Congolese father. The family moved to Aarhus, where he s ...

and the

Bob Downes Robert George Downes (born 22 July 1937 in Plymouth) is an English avant-garde jazz flautist and saxophonist. He is known for his work with Mike Westbrook and for leading the Open Music Trio since 1968. Downes is also a composer, arranger, and ...

Open Music Trio. In 1976 she toured in Holland with Hugh Davies and Peter Cusack. Greenham again featured at the Bourges International Festival of Experimental Music in 1978, where ''7 Consonants in Space'', ''Traffic'', and ''Circulation'' were performed. Alongside her own work, Greenham was involved in many performances of contemporary music during the 1960s and '70s, providing voice and other parts for works by

George Brecht George Brecht (August 27, 1926 – December 5, 2008), born George Ellis MacDiarmid, was an American conceptual artist and avant-garde composer, as well as a professional chemist who worked as a consultant for companies including Pfizer, Johnso ...

John Cage John Milton Cage Jr. (September 5, 1912 – August 12, 1992) was an American composer and music theorist. A pioneer of indeterminacy in music, electroacoustic music, and Extended technique, non-standard use of musical instruments, Cage was one ...

Cornelius Cardew Cornelius Cardew (7 May 193613 December 1981) was an English experimental music composer, and founder (with Howard Skempton and Michael Parsons) of the Scratch Orchestra, an experimental performing ensemble. He later rejected experimental mu ...

Dieter Schnebel Dieter Schnebel (14 March 1930 – 20 May 2018) was a German composer, theologian and musicologist. He composed orchestral music, chamber music, vocal music and stage works. From 1976 until his retirement in 1995, Schnebel served as professor of e ...

Edgard Varèse Edgard Victor Achille Charles Varèse (; also spelled Edgar; December 22, 1883 – November 6, 1965) was a French and American composer who spent the greater part of his career in the United States. Varèse's music emphasizes timbre and rhythm; h ...

and

La Monte Young La Monte Thornton Young (born October 14, 1935) is an American composer, musician, and performance artist recognized as one of the first American minimalist composers and a central figure in Fluxus and post-war avant-garde music. He is best k ...

. One example was 'Materiels pour Monuments' at La Vieille Grille, Paris, in January/February 1968, with Greenham appearing alongside performers that included Keith Humble and

Serge Tcherepnin Serge Alexandrovich Tcherepnin (; born 2 February 1941) is a Russian-American composer and electronic-instrument builder of Russian-Chinese parentage. Tcherepnin is noted for creating the Serge Modular synthesizer. Biography Serge Tcherepnin was ...

, the latter being one of the developers of the Serge Modular synthesizer system.

Teaching and later life

Greenham was a visiting tutor at a number of educational establishments during her lifetime, including

Morley College Morley College is a specialist adult education and further education college in London, England. The college has three main campuses, one in Waterloo on the South Bank, and two in West London namely in North Kensington and in Chelsea, the ...

in London,

North East London Polytechnic University of East London (UEL) is a public university located in the London Borough of Newham, London, England, based at three campuses in Stratford and Docklands, following the opening of University Square Stratford in September 2013. The ...

, and the internationally renowned Barry Summer School at the Glamorgan College of Education in Wales, where she taught on the Fundamentals of Creativity and Colour Kinetics courses, and other mixed media projects. Barry was famous for its pioneering approach to arts education that annually attracted students from around the world, with other courses offered in areas as diverse as Welsh literature, sailing, millinery, rugby and puppetry. Notable arts tutors included

Jeffrey Steele Jeffrey LeVasseur (born August 27, 1961), known as Jeffrey Steele, is an American country music singer and songwriter. Along with recording his own material, Steele has become a prolific Nashville songwriter, having co-written more than 60 hit ...

, Patrick Hughes, Ann Sutton, and Tom Hudson. In later life Greenham increasingly devoted her time to writing, making art work using early computer graphics programmes and collaborating with film-makers, including Lis Rhodes & Jo Davis on ''Hang On A Minute'' (1983), part of a series of short films created for Channel 4. Greenham died on 31 October 2001 in London, aged 77.

Legacy

''Lingual Music'', a double CD collection of her work, was released by Paradigm Discs in 2007, with liner notes from composer Michael Parsons. Her only published book of poems, ''Tune in to Reality!'', was republished by Distance No Object in 2022, having originally appeared in 1974 as an edition of around 100 copies through Bob Cobbing's

Writers Forum Writers Forum is a small publisher, workshop and writers' network established by Bob Cobbing. The roots of Writers Forum were in the 1954 arts organisation Group H, and the ''And'' magazine that Cobbing edited. The writers' branch of Group H was ca ...

. Her archive of audio recordings, artworks and papers is now held in the Special Collections at

, having been rescued from her council flat following her death, and subsequently looked after, by close friends and colleagues Hugh Davies, Michael Parsons, Max Eastley and former husband Peter Greenham. The first large-scale retrospective exhibition of her sound and visual work - ''Lily Greenham: An Art of Living'' - opened at the Badischer Kunstverein in

Karlsruhe Karlsruhe ( ; ; ; South Franconian German, South Franconian: ''Kallsruh'') is the List of cities in Baden-Württemberg by population, third-largest city of the States of Germany, German state of Baden-Württemberg, after its capital Stuttgart a ...

, Germany, on 8 March 2024 (running until 26 May). It marked the centenary of her birth and was realised in collaboration with Goldsmiths, University of London and the journal ''Bricks from the Kiln''.

Discography

Under own name *''Internationale Sprachexperimente Der 50/60er Jahre/Tendentious Neo-Semantics 1970 In English'', Edition Hoffmann, S-1 (LP) (1970). *''Tune In To Reality'', edition OT london, (tape) (1974). A limited edition of 100 stereo 1/4" reel-to-reel tapes, with typewritten tracklisting on coloured card. *''Lingual Music'', Paradigm Discs, PD22 (2CDs) (2007). With various artists *''Konkrete Poesie – Sound Poetry – Artikulationen''; Anastasia Bitzos (LP) (1966). Limited edition of 100; documentation of performances at Kunsthalle Bern, Switzerland. *''Poésie Sonore Internationale 1 & 2'', Éditions Jean-Michel Place, K7 No. 1/10006 & K7 No. 2/10007 (2 cassettes) (1979). (Greenham, Lily; ''Seven Consonants In Space''). *''Breathingspace/79 (Sound Poetry)'', Watershed Tapes, C-2003 (2 cassettes) (1979). (Greenham, Lily; ''7 Consonants In Space'')

References

External links

lilygreenham.org
The Lily Greenham Archive. *Pacifica Radio Archives
Ode To Gravity: Sound poetry of Lily Greenham
interview by Charles Amirkhanian (1972).
Lily Greenham art works
held by ZKM (Center for Art and Media), Karlsruhe, Germany.
Lily Greenham, ''Collage'' (1964)
in the collection at the Victoria & Albert Museum, London.
Lily Greenham - Informel, Op Art, Lingual Music (2007)
Neue Gallerie Graz, Austria.
Lily Greenham, ''Tune in to Reality!''
(Distance No Object, 2023). {{DEFAULTSORT:Greenham, Lily 1924 births 2001 deaths Austrian emigrants to Denmark Austrian emigrants to England Austrian people of Polish-Jewish descent Austrian people of Ukrainian-Jewish descent Austrian women composers Musicians from Vienna