From brainwave-generated music to reworked gamelan instruments for amplifiers and speakers, Alvin Lucier has rewired the way we hear sound.
Kris Serafin / Courtesy of the Black Truffle
hide captions
switch captions
Kris Serafin / Courtesy of the Black Truffle
From brainwave-generated music to reworked gamelan instruments for amplifiers and speakers, Alvin Lucier has rewired the way we hear sound.
Kris Serafin / Courtesy of the Black Truffle
Alvin Lucier, the groundbreaking American composer and educator, died Wednesday at his home in Middletown, Conn. after a long illness. He’s 90. Lucier has changed the way we think about sound through epic works like I’m sitting in my room and Music on long thin strings. He was diagnosed with Parkinson’s disease over a decade ago; NPR confirmed the news of his death to his daughter, Amanda Lucier.
Lucier was born on May 14, 1931, in Nashua, NH, into a musical family, an environment where, over time, he studied music theory and composition at Yale University and then Brandeis University. . Studying under Aaron Copland and Lukas Foss, Lucier was initially fond of the neoclassical style, but discovered the pioneering works of Luigi Nono, Pierre Boulez and Karlheinz Stockhausen while in Rome on a Fulbright fellowship. And having watched John Cage and David Tudor performances, Lucier knew that this was not just the music he wanted to make, but the sound he made to study, change, and discover. .
YouTube
But it wasn’t until 1965 that Lucier came up with his new way of thinking, literally letting his mind do the work making music. He was teaching at Brandeis when Edmond Dewan, a physicist designing a device to control brain waves, put his device to the test. With electrodes attached to Lucier and connected to timpani, gongs, bass drums and snare drums, Music for solo performers was the result – a combination of science and sound produced from Lucier’s own alpha brainwaves. In his 1995 collection Reflection: Interview, Score, Writing”
Soon after, Lucier founded the Sonic Arts Union with Robert Ashley, David Behrman, and Gordon Mumma. Four themed composers (along with Mary Ashley, Shigeko Kubota, Mary Lucier and Barbara Lloyd) will tour and share equipment – the collective exists to share innovations in tape and music technology .
“Our performances explore aspects of music and performance that are beyond the bounds of what contemporary music is generally accepted,” says Behrman. Perfect sound forever in 1997. “Part home-made electronics, part exploration of the essence of acoustics, part bridging boundaries between theatrical, visual arts, poetry and music.”
I’m sitting in my room – Firstly recorded at Brandeis in 1969, then again at Middletown, Conn., his home in March 1970 – is a study of resonance, decay and time. On it, Lucier recounted the following monologue as a guide and scored:
“I’m sitting in a different room than the one you’re in. I’m recording the sound of my voice and I’m going to play it back in the room over and over again until the frequencies resonate in the room. reinforce.
It is a piece of music – sometimes called acoustic art – that reinforces its premise not through repetition but through experience. Each subsequent playback of his recorded voice degrades in texture, adapting, and resisting the space in which it exists.
Music critic Tim Page writes in his 2002 book: “What at first seems unbelievable and intact (not to mention dull) turns into a listening experience that is, in fact, infinite passionate and, ultimately, strangely beautiful.” Tim Trang on music. “Words become music, sounds become shimmering and the natural process of acoustics is most elegantly expressed. There’s nothing like it. I’m sitting in my room and Lucier’s own recording is a complete version of a modern masterpiece. Sure, that is, unless you do your own performance – of course, this is entirely possible and will most likely be welcomed by Lucier. “
Other works – including, but not limited to, proto-vocoder Time capsule in North America (1966), Vespers (1968) and amplifier oscillator and piano string piece Music on long thin strings (1977) – talks about Lucier’s original innovation, but he doesn’t stop working. He installed solar sound systems, wrote solos for acoustic performers and orchestras, played radio signals, vibrated piano strings, and reworked gamelan instruments for loudspeakers.
“I have to confess that I’m working on crazy ideas that I’ve had in my head for years but never had the courage to put into practice,” he told me. New York Times in May, referring to a piece inspired by David Tudor’s “luxury eyelashes” and “a duet with a bat that lives in the bell tower of the Wesleyan Memorial Chapel.”
He counts composers Arnold Dreyblatt, Nicolas Collins and Ron Kuivila among his students at Wesleyan (where Lucier has taught for over 40 years) but also has fans across the musical spectrum. His music has been performed by Charles Curtis, Yo La Tengo, Barbara Held, Claire Chase, Yarn/Wire, Sunn O))) by Stephen O’Malley, Oren Ambarchi and Sarah Hennies, who tweeted“This man is responsible for every single note I’ve written over the past decade.” On his 90th birthday in May, the Issues Project Department presented a virtual performance of I’m sitting in my room with 90 performers, including Lucier himself (with his withered voice), surrounded by Fender amplifiers and long, continuous tones, whispering as much as they crack through space.
Alvin Lucier’s music rings and rings because he just wants know – the impact of time, established and extended boundaries, eroding boundaries between sound and science. Most of all, he just wanted us to listen. He once wrote: “Listening carefully is more important than making sounds.”
