American-born composer Alvin Curran (1938), a student of Elliott Carter (1963),
relocated to Rome in 1964.
In 1966, Curran and two other American expats, Frederic Rzewski and Richard Teitelbaum, founded the collective Musica Elettronica Viva, an agit-prop avantgarde and improvising group.
On his own, Curran crafted intensely-spiritual works that mixed natural sounds, live electronics, improvised voice and keyboard patterns:
Canti E Vedute Del Giardino Magnetico (1973), his most lyrical collage,
scored for for tape, voice, flugelhorn, synthesizer and tape of natural sounds (wind, high-tension wires, frogs, beach waves, etc);
Fiori Chiari Fiori Scuri (april 1975) for or ocarina, voice, piano, toy piano, synthesizer, and tape;
Libri D'armonia (1976) for conch shell, zither, voice, piano, synthi, and tape;
and especially Canti Illuminati (1977), a vast sonic montage based on
the human voice.
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Laureatosi in musica con Elliot Carter e vinta una borsa di studio, nel 1964
Alvin Curran (1938) parti' per Berlino per andare a studiare accanto ad altri giovani
compositori (fra gli altri, Bussotti); ma, piu' irrequieto dei compagni,
abbandono' presto l'austero ambiente classico, dirigendo su Roma.
E qui pianto' le tende, anche se cio'
significo' adattarsi a suonare piano-bar per guadagnarsi da vivere.
Nel 1966
fece lega con un manipolo di esiliati (fra cui il pianista Rzewski) e formo'
il collettivo Musica Elettronica Viva, dedito non solo all'elettronica, ma anche
alla musica dodecafonica e al folk tibetano. Due anni dopo si uni' loro il
jazzista Steve Lacy e l'esperienza si dilato' a dismisura, culminando in
happening pubblici durante le folli notte romane del Sessantotto.
In questo periodo Curran suonava con una tromba rotta e un bidone di benzina.
Raccoglieva inoltre registrazioni di rumori naturali: scrosci di fontana,
passi, chiassate di bambini. E, mentre progettava musica naturale, coltivava
amicizie importanti, da Giacinto Scelsi a Anthony Braxton.
Da questo background ebbe origine il primo disco di Curran,
Canti E Vedute Del Giardino Magnetico (1974), una serie di variazioni
improvvisate su un nastro di rumori ambientali, ispirate al minimalismo
mistico di Riley, ma improntate a una ben piu' profonda filosofia
naturalistica: nell'elenco degli strumenti compaiono anche
vento, fili d'alta tensione, passi e rane;
rondini di Roma, api di Lerici, un condotto d'acqua, la spiaggia.
Piu' armonica, scacciapensieri, kalimba, campane di vetro, filicorno, tubo di
plastica; e il sintetizzatore, con cui improvvisa raga che alla Riley.
E il progetto si avvale anche di arie popolari. Musica concreta,
musica minimalista, musica improvvisata e musica popolare confluiscono in un
ininterrotto poema sonoro.
Analogamente Fiori Chiari Fiori Scuri (1975),
la cui strumentazione include: un'ocarina, un piano giocattolo,
uccelli tropicali, una gatta che fa le fusa, grilli della riviera ligure,
un asilo londinese, una bambina giapponese. Cosi' anche i
Libri D'armonia (1976) for conch shell, zither, voice, piano, synthi, and tape,
e soprattutto i Canti Illuminati (1977),
vasto collage sonoro basato sulla voce umana in tutte le sue forme.
Works (february 1980), per voce, synth, pianoforte e nastro magnetico, e' composto da due
parti: nella prima si improvvisa con piano, synth incrociati e salmodie
mantra, in uno scenario naturale fatto di passi, ronzii d'insetti, abbaiare
di cani, eccetera; nella seconda il pianoforte si lancia in un assolo che
spazia sul jazz e sul folklore etnico.
Curran's catalog of composed (notated) works includes several for the piano
that diplay his characteristic ascetic and austere tone.
For Cornelius (1981) is a three-part sonata: a
quiet quasi-ambient prelude,
a Glenn Branca-like percussive/repetitive pattern emphasizing overtones that creates a hypnotic, fluttering, textured, and a barely audible chorale.
Era Ora (composed in 1985) prescribes the same score for two pianos, but to be
played slightly out of sync.
Rientrato in patria, Curran ha abbandonato i suoni naturali e le improvvisazioni dal vivo,
a favore del piu' tradizionale strumento da camera e della musica scritta.
Gli Electric Rags II (1988-1990), composti per il Rova Saxophone Quartet
e diretti da un computer,
costituiscono forse l'apice di quest'ultima fase della sua carriera.
Curran resta uno degli apostoli piu' sinceri, se non geniali, di una
francescanesimo musicale che si ispirava in egual misura alla musica
concreta e all'improvvisaione del jazz.
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Curran's Electric Rags I+ were scored for sampler, computer, piano and found sounds.
Musica Elettronica Viva released:
Spacecraft (Mainstream, 1968),
Friday (Polydor, 1969),
Soundpool (Byg, 1970).
United Patchwork (november 1977 - Horo, 1980), contains
a 23-minute Teitelbaum composition, Via della Luce, and
a 14-minute Curran piece, Psalm, plus shorter works by Steve Lacy,
Karl Berger, Frederic Rzewski and Garrett List.
Original (1997) and Rome Cansrt 1968 (1999) collect vintage
performances.
Other Curran collaborations included
Realtime I & II (december 1977), with Evan Parker and Andrea Centazzo,
and Threads (may 1977 - Horo, 1978), with Steve Lacy.
In the 1980s,
Curran created large-scale "environmental" installations such as Maritime Rites, a series of ten environmental concerts for radio, Waterworks, Monumenti, Tufo Muto, Notes From Underground.
Several Curran compositions were released on cassettes:
Maritime Rites (What Next, 1980), for ship and fog horns,
Natural History (Editions Gianozzo, 1982),
Field It and Lenz (Radio Art Foundation, 1985),
Maritime Rites II (Good Sound Foundation, 1985).
He also experimented with distributed ensembles (communicating via radio) in
A Piece for Peace (1985), Crystal Psalms (1988),
for 7 European radio choruses and chamber groups,
and an ambitious
Erat Verbum (1997) for sampler and four percussion.
New collaborations included
First Octave (BMG, 1991), with David Keberle on clarinet,
and
No World Trio (march 1991 - OO Discs, 1991), with Joe Celli and Jin Hi Kim.
Schtyx. VSTO. (april 1993 - CRI, 1994), collects two chamber compositions,
one for a trio of violin, piano, percussion, and the other one for string quartet
(1991 and 1993, respectively)
that rank among his most unpredictable, enigmatic and erudite works.
He also composed for mixed chorus, namely
Music is Not Music (1996) and My Body In The Course of a Dream (1996), and chamber orchestra, namely In Hora Mortis (1996) for 25 instruments.
Among his dance and theater pieces, notable is Footprint Of War (1997).
Land Im Klang (1996) was a multimedia piece for piano, electric violin, sampler, four percussion.
Animal Behavior (november 1993 - Tzadik, 1995) was constructed from dozens of sampled "found sounds".
Theme Park (Tzadik, 1998) was a percussion quartet with electronics.
The Twentieth Century (1994),
Inner Cities I,II,III (1994) as well as
Endangered Species (1997) were solo piano (and sampler and computer) pieces.
Lost Marbles (Tzadik, 2004) collects compositions that date from
1987 till 2003.
Our Ur (Rossbin, 2004) is a collaboration with electronic musician
Dominco Sciajno.
Toto Angelica (ReR, 2005) continues Alvin Curran's venture into the
collage of samples. The eponymous composition, Toto Angelica, is
constructed from recordings collected over the ten years of the "Angelica"
festival of new music. The piece collates both vocal and instrumental
passages. Curran achieves a sense of urgency, that, towards the end, manifests
itself in a crescendo of glorious cacophony.
It's Not My Fault focuses on extreme tones instead of rhythm.
Basically, the previous one was the dadaist version, and this one is the
expressionist version.
Finally, Aspettiamo che Venga la Luce is the futuristic version: the
samples are sequenced in a way to evoke interstellar messages of robotic
languages.
The 4cd-set
Inner Cities (2006) collects the entire work for solo piano (more than four hours) that he completed in 2003.
The double-CD
Apogee (may 2004) is a collaboration between Musica Elettronica Viva
and AMM (Alvin Curran, Eddie Prevost, Keith Rowe, Frederic Rzewski,
Richard Teitelbaum, John Tilbury). The first disc contains the three-movement
Apogee (april 2004). The second disc contains two separate live performances,
one by AMM and
one by MEV (may 2004).
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