“Books with Songs and Dances” 1917-1922

Books 15, 16, 17, 18, 19, 20

After 1917, the illustrations of the “Books with Songs and Dances” (1917-1922) become rarer and rarer. They consist primarily of pasted reproductions of individual pictures or of several pictures in collage on large folded pages (100 x 70 cm). Wölfli fits the reproductions into one of the four corners or in the center of the page and supplements them with ornamental borders and frames made of the ornamental motifs "Ring of Bells" ("Glöggli-Ring") and "Steam-Propellor-Ring" ("Dampfer-Schrauben-Ring"). Imitating the column titles in the entertainment section of the magazines he saw, Wölfli often names his collage illustrations with such titles as "Puzzles" or "Humorous Pages."

In the Books of 1917-1925, the musical compositions are noted exclusively in solfège. The many repetitions of letters and syllables, the underlining of rhythm indicators, and the music signs themselves give the pages the visual appearance of decorative calligraphy. The decrease of narrative texts and drawn illustrations as time passes seems to indicate that Wölfli tired of the narrative work. In a forward in Book 20, titeld „Final Text“, Wölfli explains what hinders him from finishing his extensive narrative work: "The end. Esteemed reader and women readers, because of my painful disease and hideous further sufferings my undersigned humble person finds itself forced to directly conclude the great, instructive, entertaining and beautiful Book that should not be underestimated in any way in regard to its unfinished content; that should not prevent the eventuality of adding to the above-mentioned a number of meaningful, beautiful and memorable pictures, musical pictures, the musical execution of which I have sufficient energy and endurance to complete no longer. And yet after I have worked for 22 full years on this complicated oeuvre and have completed the third part of the whole Book, I should like to add to the aforementioned still another pretty final act, which certainly will give joy and pleasure to some musical genius. Here follows a beautiful, eleven-partite, Final-March-Blast, consisting of 11 songs. 1,922."

(Elka Spoerri)