This leaflet presents the third edition of ‘Text-Sound Compositions’ festival, held at the Moderna Museet in Stockholm, 1970.

“The term ‘text-sound composition’ was first coined in 1967 by the two Swedish artists Bengt Emil Johnson and Lars Gunnar Bodin at an international radio broadcast meeting on radio art in Hilversum. As a genre, ‘text sound composition’ is closely related to both ‘poésie sonore’ and sound poetry, but differs by being more oriented towards electronic music than towards poetry (…)

In 1967 the members of the Language Group arranged a concert under the title ‘Text and Sound’, which, the year after, was followed by what later became the legendary annual Text-Sound festivals. The close collaboration with Swedish Radio was important, in terms of economics, logistics and dissemination. International artists were invited to Stockholm to perform at the festivals, and given the opportunity to record and produce pieces with professional technical assistance from the EMS studio. Swedish Radio also broadcast the performances and released some of the pieces on special promotional records.

The festival ran for seven years, three to four days each, presenting mainly recorded pieces, but also live performances, some of them with visuals”. — From ‘Boooook. The Life and Work of Bob Cobbing. Edited by William Cobbing and Rosie Cooper, p.154 & p.157.