Verbal Brain-washing

General Goodfellow sets out to show how a perfectly ordinary young man who is about to do his military service can be changed into an efficient soldier.

Towards the end of the fifties a new psychology came into vogue in the army. The commanding officer was no longer supposed to be a bully, drilling the recruits with Prussian thoroughness. Instead he was expected to make himself popular, to be a jolly good fellow.

The recruit in General Goodfellow is represented by the small letter i and is submitted to a verbal brain-wash. i puts up quite a good fight, he refers to General Goodfellow as a bumble-bee and on another occasion General Goodfellow's name is travestied but in the end i's identity is broken down and replaced with a new one. i has turned into an efficient soldier, blindly obeying orders.

(General Goodfellow was first performed at a concretistic manifestation in Stockholm in 1963. Åke Hodell came on stage wearing a headlamp with the libretto on a music-stand. The lights went out. Hodell turned his headlamp on, blinding the audience; he turned it off and then on again, this time directing it towards his libretto. The verbal brain-washing could begin).

Electronic Purgatorium I

Charon rings the ship's bell. The ferry puts off. Short piercing boat sirens. Rattling anti-aircraft guns. The crows turn into attacking bombers and then turn back into cawing crows.

The ferry rolls heavily through the dark waters of the Styx. A living soul - a coloratura soprano - is discovered among the dead. The hunt for her ends in a long-drawn-out screech. With three tolls of the ship's bell Charon proclaims that no-one is left alive on board.

A mist envelopes the ferry. Short and long blasts from foghorns boom across the water. The ferry vibrates with light-dark sounds. The church bells ring out. Charon's crows circle over the ferry.

The ferry ploughs on through the mist, the motors throbbing monotonously.

Charon's musicians play for the dead.

(The work was commissioned by the music department of the Swedish Radio in 1972. The introductory poem is read by Åke Hodell).

Åke Hodell began writing poetry in the fifties during a long stay in hospital - the result of an accident in his job at that time as a fighter-pilot.

During the latter part of the sixties his production consisted of books, stage works and radio plays. He is a prominent representative of Swedish concrete poetry and frequently combines other means of expression - visual images, sounds, mimed episodes - with his texts. In his compositions Åke Hodell often gives voice to his moral indignation directed towards political oppression, racism, terror and militarism. With a style that is often witty, sarcastic and provocative, Åke Hodell stands up for freedom of the individual.