Lousadzak "The Coming of Light" (1944). Alan Hovhaness

Before I return to the Carter concertos, I'm grinding through my relatively small collection of concerto MP3s. Vivaldi good, the Brandenburgs of course good, Mozart played by Isabelle Van Keulen surprisingly good, Hovhaness and Glass prolific but maybe good...

Classical Net on Hovhaness' Lousadzak: ...individual sections of the orchestra are instructed to continuously repeat a cycle of melody without temporal reference to other members of the ensemble. Most obviously, this technique (one of the most common components of the "Hovhaness style"), creates a gorgeous sense of rhythmic mystery from which (in "Lousadzak") the solo piano slowly emerges... at other times, the technique clearly foreshadows the work not just of modern minimalists such as Terry Riley and John Adams but also the entire Ambient/New Age school of composition...

Riley good, Adams good, ambient good, new age not so good...

lousadzak: armenian premiere
hovhaness quote: i wish to create for the unconscious mind, not for the conscious mind.

Comments

[Daniel Wolf]

There were a number of composers at mid-century using techniques that could be considered at least somewhat indeterminate with respect to performance in advance of either the New York School or the west coast experimentalists -- among them Milhaud, Hovhaness, Brant, Britten. With them in mind, it's interesting to reconsider such indeterminancy as a broader concern rather than a narrow preserve. From this perspective, there is indeed a continuum of shared interests, for example in loosening up an ensemble structure or extending rubato, which would include both Christian Wolff's cues and Britten's curlews.

[Ed]

I love this piece! And I just found by accident that it is possible to listen to the whole thing online here:

http://artofthestates.org/cgi-bin/piece.pl?pid=330

I used to share your opinion of "New Age" music. But I realize now that the the distinctions between that and other categories is pretty fluid and that good music can exist in any category. The main complaint against New Age music is usually that it is too simple. But that is what many say about Hovhannes as well.