Alvin Lucier

Alvin Lucier (New Hampshire, 1931), one of the founders (with Robert Ashley, David Behrman, Gordon Mumma) of the Sonic Arts Union in 1966, contributed to modern music in 1962, during the period in which he began university teaching. Since then he has churned out experimental works repeatedly, exploiting techniques and manners of gestural, electronic, and vocal music, and demonstrating particular preferences for the use of unusual sound sources and even more unusual forms of performance: Action Music For Piano introduces a “score” also meant to annotate the performers’ gestures; Music For Solo Performer (1965) generates percussive sounds from the performer’s brain waves, captured through two electrodes and a set of loudspeakers (naturally every performance of this piece is different from all previous ones, since brain waves will never be the same); Whistlers (1967) exploits magnetic disturbances in the ionosphere (the first composition of music based on VLF, inspired by the ionosphere recording published by Millett Morgan in 1955); Chambers (1967) is built around the noises of various objects; Vespers (1967) moves the performers in a dark room like bats guided by electronic echo; The Only Talking Machine (1969) is orchestrated for “electronic ventriloquism.”

Bird And Person Dyning/ The Duke Of York (Cramps, 1975) was the first recorded document, containing the two pieces in the title: Bird and Person Dyning (1975) and The Duke Of York (1971). The latter is a simple manipulation of a street singer, but the former is one of his most unsettling compositions, a duet between electronic feedback and the chirping of a bird.

In the 1970s his interest shifted toward the sounds of environments, that is, sounds that originate from the acoustic and architectural properties of spaces. Reflections Of Sounds From The Wall (1970) is one of his boldest sound sculptures, consisting of a wall with hundreds of recorders that “listens” and “responds” to the sounds of the room. I Am Sitting In A Room (1970) degrades speech through overlapping resonances that progressively amplify the noise of the environment (which thus becomes the true voice of the piece).

Despite the difficult accessibility of his compositions, The Queen Of The South (1972) even marks the beginning of his collaboration with a dance company. These are conceptual pieces, works of rupture that outflank gestural music on the left and that aim to expand the notion of what is “musical”: even the environment can make music.

In the second half of the 1970s, side by side with an electronic engineer, Lucier launches his most ambitious works, monumental sound panels based on the acoustic manipulation of vibrations. Music On A Long Thin Wire (1977) for a 24-meter metal wire (driven by a tuning oscillator), Directions Of Sound From The Bridge (1978), and Shapes Of The Sound From The Board (1979) unify his research on ambient, minimal, electronic, and concrete music. They are flows of patterns that vary in volume, timbre, and rhythm, mono-dimensional harmonies whose model is in fact precisely the “d'Alembertian” vibrating string with its mathematical structure of normal modes.

Music For Solo Performer (1982) contains two compositions for brain waves: one obtained by superimposing several improvisations by Lucier himself and percussion instruments, and one consisting of four performances by Pauline Oliveros with different percussion ensembles.

At the center of his music the acoustic properties of environments will always remain. Lucier pushes to the extreme the intuitions of the early works in Spinning (1984): two tones tuned to almost identical wavelengths (whose difference is imperceptible to the human ear) are emitted from the two ends of the room so that their interaction gives rise to a sound that moves within the space. His most ambitious work, Still And Moving Lines Of Silence (1972), in eight parts, including one for percussion instruments and harmonic oscillator and one for clarinets, flute, French horn, female voice, and oscillator—where the ensemble sets small harmonic arabesques in motion that then break against the electronic wave—defines harmony as the simple interference of two sounds, and therefore as a simple means of filling an acoustic topography (for example, a room) with sound.

The entire series will be collected on Still and Moving Lines of Silence in Families of Hyperbolas (Lovely, 2003). Part 1 is scored for the interaction between pitches sounded by loudspeakers; Part 2 is for soloists who interact with a long tone played by a loudspeaker at a slightly different pitch (the interference patterns are the "music"); Part 3 lets snare drums resonate against the prepared tone; Part 4 includes dancers in the musical process.

By then, Lucier’s music had become so rarefied as to verge on the unlistenable. It is certainly (along with La Monte Young’s) the most “minimal” music ever attempted. To experience it, the listener must patiently decipher the twists of the overtones, the whirling of the feedback, the imperceptible motions of the frequencies. Lucier is also the most faithful to Cage’s motto: “experimental music is music whose outcome cannot be foreseen.”

Sferics (Lovely, 1988) contains Sferics (1980), a sound installation for ionospheric disturbances, Sound On Paper (1985), for framed paper, loudspeakers and audio oscillator, and Music For Pure Waves, Bass Drums And Acoustic Pendulums (1985).

Crossings, Septet, In Memoriam / Ridenour (Lovely, 1990) contains In Memoriam Jon Higgins (1985), for clarinet and pure wave oscillator, Septet For Three Winds, Four Strings And Pure Wave Oscillator (1985), Crossings (1984), for small orchestra and pure wave oscillator.

Letters (1991) Lucier used the shapes of letters as the graphic score for the musicians to play music.

Clocker for Amplified Clock (Lovely, 1994) contains the first recording of Clocker (1978), live electronics for performer with galvanic skin response sensor, digital delay system and amplified clock. The electrical current generated by the system (ultimately, by the skin of the "performer") causes polyrhythmic patterns of dissonance, which are then coupled with the ticking of the clock. Lucier mixes and warps the sounds of both so as to produce a continuum of discrete events, which also stands as a metaphysical meditation on the passage of time and what it does to the human body.

Panorama (Lovely, 1997) contains Wind Shadows (1994), for trombone playing along pure wave oscillators, Music For Piano With One Or More Snare Drums (1992), Music For Piano With Amplified Sonorous Vessels (1991), that relies on the resonances picked up by microphones placed inside wine glasses, sea shells, pots and cups which are in turn placed inside a piano, and Panorama (1993) for trombone and piano (trombone drones represent the mountains, whereas piano patterns represent peaks).

40 Rooms (Iear Studios, 1998) documents a 1996 installation for electroacoustic quintet.

Silver Streetcar For The Orchestra (Algen, 1998) contains the 1988 composition for amplified triangle.

Theme (Lovely, 1999) contains Theme (1994) for voices and sonorous vessels, Music For Gamelan Instruments, Microphones, Amplifiers And Loudspeakers (1994), and Music For Piano With Magnetic Strings (1996).

Still Lives (Lovely, 2001) contains three compositions for solo string instrument (twice a piano and once a koto) resonating with a pure-wave oscillator: Still Lives (25:10), eight vignettes that virtually bridge minimalism and futurism, Music for Piano with Slow Sweep Pure Wave Oscillators (16:31), that follows two drones with no overtones as they move away from a pitch and then return to it (while the piano sorts of sets the pace by playing their note over and over again), and especially On The Carpet Of Leaves Illuminated By The Moon (11:46), where the koto releases languid and ethereal gasps from one semitone above the electronic drone to one semitone below it. The effect is unusually lyrical and haunting.

Navigations for Strings; Small Waves (Mode, 2003) contains the 1992 string quartet and the 1997 piece for string quartet, trombone and piano, 2 dancers with 6 partially filled water containers.

Vespers (New World, 2002) collects early works. While interesting for historical purposes, these are largely pointless recordings, because half of them are not deterministic works (each performance is different) and because the other half are mainly about the performance space (which your stereo cannot reproduce).
The earliest is Elegy For Albert Anastasia (1963), a poem of musique concrete that predates the foundation of the Sonic Arts Union, and predates Lucier's aesthetic maniesto Music For Solo Performer (1965). The sounds produced here are deliberately low, so low that one can hardly hear them; the point being that we often don't "hear" things that are actually quite relevant (a reference also implied in the ironic title, an "elegy" to the mafia boss who was shot in a barber chair because he didn't "hear" what was going to happen to him although the rumour was out there).
North American Time Capsule (1967) employs a vocoder to produce a stream of grotesque alien-sounding voices (curiously similar to the voices devised ten years later in Spielberg's "Close Encounters of the Third Kind").
Chambers (1968) is musique concrete at its most literal, an exploration/collage of environmental sounds (voices) that are electronically processed to lose their original quality until they become abstract noise.
Vespers (1969) is more a psychological experiment than a musical composition, but it shows how Lucier came to be obsessed with the performance space. The piece is a dialogue between sonar devices and the acoustics of the room, and the listeners "are", in a sense, the object of that dialogue: the listeners are guided like bats in a dark room by the frantic clicks that bounce around the performance space, and slowly build an "image" of it; the point being that we are used to perceive music in front of us (thus removing the performance space from the equation) but not all around us (which would make the performance space the real protagonist). This is interesting but, needless to say, impossible to reproduce on record, so one wonders what we are supposed to do with this series of meaningless clicks that our stereo projects exactly like the traditional performer that Lucier was trying to remove.
(Middletown) Memory Space (1970) is a chamber work of a new kind, since it is scored for any number of performers, and the performers are free to produce pretty much any sound, as long as they do not interact among themselves and as long as those sounds are somehow related to sounds their heard in the city. This recording employs shakuhachi, koto, accordion, piano and guitar.
This album is only for collectors. These theories make for interesting reading, not for interested listening. Memory Space (Unsounds, 2013) documents a 2012 performance of the piece.

Almost New York (Pogus, 2011) contains pieces for acoustic instruments. Almost New York (2001) toys with the drones produced by five flutes played by the same performer, one at the time. The drones are made to bounce against two pure wave oscillators. The result is a concerto for drones that is continuously interrupted except for the extremely powerful and shrill background radiation. The seven Coda Variations (2005) compose a 47-minute sonata for solo tuba which is limited to eight tones that undergo "I Ching"-style permutations of notes. This combinatorial and microtonal aspect of the composition lends it a rather chaotic quality but every now and then an embryonic melody seems to appear. In what is perhaps the most "humane" piece, Broken Line (2006) juxtaposes flute drones against tinkling vibraphone and piano. Twonings (2006) is a sonata for cello and piano, tuned according to two different systems but playing in unison, and it's another work that abandons Lucier's stark drones for dissonant chamber music. Lucier's trademark scientific exploration of sound is easily recognized in the way these two "chamber" works focus on the acoustic phenomena that slowly emerge from the way the instruments have been set in motion. Of course it takes a lot of patience to go through 26 minutes of cello and piano that don't even try to express meaning. The whole concept is pure syntax, no less and no more than a chemist who tries different combinations of substances. Lucier long specialized in music for oscillators and amplifiers at the border between musique concrete and droning minimalism. His ventures into chamber music maintain the same austere aesthetic but are limited to what the acoustic instruments can deliver.

Old School (Zeitkratzer, 2011) includes also the first recording of Harmonium #2 Old School (Zeitkratzer, 2011) collects Fideliotrio (composed in 1987), Music for Piano With Magnetic Strings, Violynn, Silver Streetcar For The Orchestra and Opera With Objects

Almost New York (Pogus, 2011) contains Almost New York (2001) for five flutes played by the same performer, The seven Coda Variations (2005) for 6-valve tuba in just intonation, Twonings (2006) for cello and piano, and Broken Line (2006) for flute, vibraphone and piano.

Ricochet Lady (premiered in 2016) contains four 17-minute compositions for solo acoustic glockenspiel, performed by Trevor Saint, "recorded in four dissimilar spaces, ranging from the standard to extraordinary: a university rehearsal hall with walls of drywall and glass, a chapel made of oak and stone, an empty forge and foundry warehouse for steel railway wheels, and a 36-meter tall dilapidated cement grain elevator".

Alvin Lucier died at the end of 2021.