aworks :: "new" american classical music

(Middletown) Memory Space (1970). Alvin Lucier

Of my 150 or so posts, this may be the American "classical" work I like least. It could be an outtake from Keith Jarrett's Spirits CD. As bad as my reaction is, it helps me appreciate yesterday's North American Time Capsule. Although ultimately dreadful, at least that was marginally interesting and fun. I suspect Alvin Lucier's music is better in person.

26 from the Library: Intro & Lucier Lang Antheil Rzewski Adams Lucier Nancarrow Antheil Lucier

North American Time Capsule (1967). Alvin Lucier

North American Time Capsule is like a proto-Autechre experiment gone awry. It is certainly novel and fun in a ghastly kind of way. Real sample.

Piero Scaruffi, in a page dedicated to Lucier's music comments: North American Time Capsule (1967) employs a vocoder to produce a stream of grotesque alien-sounding voices...

Scaruffi, to his credit, acknowledges the CD is of historical importance but "pointless" since either every performance is intended to be different or else the rendition is a function of the performance space, which cannot be captured on a recording. Michael Broyles, in Mavericks and Other Traditions in American Music, also comments how recordings are only an incomplete fascimile of a work, and yet, American mavericks were enticed to record their works for distribution etc.

I think I'll wait for the Autechre homage to Alvin Lucier, but until then, I found mathpunk who lists both Autechre and Alvin Lucier on his favorite music page.

26 from the Library: Intro & Lucier Lang Antheil Rzewski Adams Lucier Nancarrow Antheil

Chambers (1968). Alvin Lucier

This piece is based on a seemingly random set of ambient field recordings: maybe a German airport terminal, something that sounds like a sewing machine, some background music etc. I am ok with listening to "organized sound" rather than "music" but on the recording, there was not enough organization to make it worthwhile. The sounds weren't unpleasant, though.

Lucier in an Ukrainian interview:

I was very much open to all sorts of new musical ideas, not yet having come up with any real new ideas of my own. When you are in that state you can really accept and absorb new ideas freely and utilize them in your own work. At that time, I started creating a series of works which used sounds in various acoustical environments. One of the pieces is called Chambers, which consists of putting sounds into various small objects and carrying them around through larger spaces.

So this ends up being a performance piece that does not necessarily translate to recording. Amazon Real sample.

26 from the Library: Intro & Lucier Lang Antheil Rzewski Adams