aworks :: "new" american classical music

I Am Sitting in a Room (1969). Alvin Lucer /that will certainly survive/

Renewable Music on compositional anticipation versus actual result:

Part of Lucier's legerdemain — in this piece [Septet] and in others — is the move of saying that "this piece is about x" (in which X can equal acoustic interference beating or room resonances or feedback etc.) and — strategically, depending upon the composition — implicitly or explicitly putting other aspects of the piece into the "not about" box. In some cases, this is genuine sleight-of-ear stage magic: in I am sitting in a room (the one opera that will certainly survive from the 1960's) the piece is explicitly about a particular process but the composer's patter directing you in one way cannot but help the listener from also taking in elements of the piece — in particular a certain emotional drama — which he would appear to be excluding.

I Am Sitting in a Room (1970). Alvin Lucier /living minimally/

To represent various decades, New York Magazine profiled people whose fashion and style personify each era. For the nineties, some bloke is living minimally after selling most of his possessions:

Of the one small sofa, a George Nelson daybed, he says: “I can only sit in one place at a time.” ...Needless to say, Freeman isn't exactly stoking the economy; mostly he buys food. His few CDs -- hidden in a built-in drawer -- are minimalists Philip Glass, Steve Reich, and La Monte Young.

The sixties mod woman is at least respectable. The seventies rocker guy scares me.

I Am Sitting in a Room (1970). Alvin Lucier

Jason in Houston has an apt title for his new classical music blog, I Am Sitting in a Room. His explanation:

In Lucier's words, "what you will hear then, are the natural resonant frequencies of the room articulated by speech."...Something similar has been going on in my mind. Processes of reading, thinking, listening, and filtering have been working (I hope) to reinforce the resonant frequencies of my aesthetic, which I will be trying to articulate in writing.

Helen Radice blogged last year about musical aesthetics including Paul Morley on Alvin Lucier and ends with this thought:

How on earth are we to keep music apart from other art, and the experience of living, if we are ever even to feel we understand what it is, what it's for, and why we are writing about it in the first place?

Finally, we have photographic evidence, at least in this case, that The Standing Room does in fact stand when he blogs.

MP3 of I Am Sitting in a Room on ubuweb.