Pollex Christi ("The Big Toe [or Thumb] of Christ") is a work by the mysterious N.Senada, which had never been recorded until The Residents created this album. It is one of Senada's "blueprints" and was created around 1936-37, just before he fled Germany for northern Canada.

A "blueprint" is a set of instructions on how to construct the piece out of existing works. Essentially, Senada steals bits from other people's compositions and has the performer assemble them into a "house of bricks", much as some of the composers being plagiarized used existing folk music to build their own works on. The difference is that not one note of Senada's composition is original.

N.Senada's blueprints often had "holes" in them, meant to be filled with whatever the performers felt should go in. His reasoning, based on his "house" metaphor, was that the people should contribute to the construction of their homes. In this recording, The Residents fill the three holes with famous television theme songs. In part 1, they use the theme form Peter Gunn. Later, they use the original Star Trek theme (part 2) and the Popeye the Sailor Man song (part 5).

N. Senada
(1907-1993)
Pollex Christi

When first introduced as a "composer" to the artists-who-were-soon-to-be-known-as- The Residents, N. Senada quickly explained that he was a poor composer, but an excellent "architect." He explained that he built "houses of bricks." His bricks were chunks from the works of various composers.

"I am not the composer of the bricks, I just cement them together," he said. "I am the composer of the house. It is the house that is important: its form, its usefulness, its sense of joy."

N. Senada thereby explained his most important theorem, which, in 1935, launched him into Pre-Post-Modernism. His native Germany had no idea what to make of him, citing him as a plagiarist, a thief, and a cultural pagan. Nonplused, N. Senada agreed, but asked, "If a man steals philosophy from many great thinkers and combines them into a new philosophy, is he not yet another great thinker?"

A great thinker he was, but that proved of so little value in prewar Germany that in 1938 he moved to Northern Canada to escape what he perceived as a nation gone mad. He continued to think, but refused to create new compositions, stating only that the music in him was "too frightened."

Though most of his work was destroyed, some of his compositions, which he called "Blueprints" did survive. Much of his published philosophical writings can still be found in libraries.

Pollex Christi, which means either The Big Toe of Christ or The Thumb of Christ, is one of the Blueprints that N. Senada brought with him to Canada. Written in 1936-37, it stands as a model of N. Senada's philosophy.

It is a massive collision of Germanic themes. "Stealing from the best," he would say. He meant that the composers he admired most: Wagner, Beethoven, Orff, Bach; had also lifted folk tunes to integrate into their works. He felt that music was constant and he was merely another in the long human line bringing these ancient tunes into the present. Not one to hide, even for a moment, behind the romantic illusion of "the artist," he launched Pollex Christi unabashedly with the opening four notes of Beethoven's Fifth Symphony. These are arguably the most well known series of notes in history.

Beethoven made a statement when he wrote those notes. He wished it understood that this was the entire piece of music in its most perfect form. N. Senada used the same four notes to tell the listener something entirely different: "I didn't write these notes, nor, probably, any of the others." Therefore, this music was not about notes.

Sections of Pollex Christi, and his other works, were difficult to perform because he felt that the pace of life in 1936 was so much faster that music had to be played faster as well. N. Senada's belief was that the attempt to play his compositions at impossible speeds became their most interesting aspect. "It will continually offer unimaginable variations," he would say.

"If the audience wants perfectly played music, let them listen to angels. Human music should stumble along most pitifully." Pollex Christi was particularly known for its pitiful, though plaintive "guitar tuning" solo.

The most curious aspect of N. Senada's compositions, Pollex Christi included, were the holes. If he were indeed building brick houses, then he intentionally left out some of the bricks. He believed it was imperative for their happiness that the person who lived in a house contribute to the building of that house. These compositional spaces required the performer or conductor to "fill in the holes."

The type of hole-filler he encouraged were short popular pieces that were in contrast to the surrounding composition. He often said that those were the only parts he truly enjoyed when he heard his work performed.

As this is the first recording of Pollex Christi in its 60 year history, N. Senada, who would have been 90 this year, must be pleased to hear something other than perfectly played angel music.

This recording could not have been realized without the aid of Max Steinway, N. Senada's life companion and assistant. Max not only provided the Blueprint, but explained it to The Residents. About half of the composition was input into the computer by Max, and it is Max you will hear pounding away on the piano.

Produced by The Cryptic Corporation and Max Steinway
Performance Rights 1997, The Cryptic Corporation.
Ralph America Special Release 001 (1997)