This volume discusses the music-related works and collaborative projects of Dieter Roth in Concrete poetry, the Vienna Group, Fluxus and artists' music. It includes a DVD with an excerpt from the video recording of the Abschöpfsymphonie of 1979.

German-born Swiss artist Dieter Roth (1930-1998) worked in such widely varied media as drawing, painting, assemblage, installation, printmaking, artist's books, literature, action and film. Since 2008 one his most important works, the monumental Garden Sculpture (1968ff.), has been on display at the Nationalgalerie as a gift of the Friedrich Christian Flick Collection. Little known to date are Roth's numerous music-related projects, which are now being presented comprehensively for the first time.

Music played a major role for Dieter Roth all his life and finds its way into his oeuvre in a variety of ways. He integrated musical instruments into his assemblages as mute reliefs alongside cassette players and other audio devices, for example, and uses them as motifs in his paintings and works on paper. Roth also performed on stage as a musician, playing alone or as a member of the artist's collective in the series "Selten gehörte Musik" (Rarely Heard Music). As a keen listener to musical styles of all kinds, he owned an extensive vinyl collection and had his own recording studio. His favourite music was classical and he loved Schubert, Brahms und Schönberg in particular.

Among Roth's direct connections with Berlin are the "Berliner Dichterworkshops", multi-day artist workshops in which he took part in the 1970s, and several concerts in the "Selten gehörte Musik" series, recorded with friends including Günter Brus, Hermann Nitsch, Arnulf Rainer, Gerhard Rühm and Oswald Wiener. Roth also made music at home with his Viennese artist friends as well as with his children, and the artistic principle of "failure" established in these impromptu sessions led to astonishing musical results. In the exhibition, music proves to be an important dimension of Roth's multiverse.