Alvin Lucier
with Ev Grimes
Middletown, Connecticut
June 6, 1986
TABLE OF CONTENTS
Side a: pp. 1-12
Earliest memory of music--parents' influence--Werner Janssen--Schoenberg--Serenade--Thomson Portraits--drum lessons, and influence later on Music for Solo Performer--Schoenberg, Grieg, Wailer, and other early musical experiences--writing music as a child--deciding to be a composer, Yale, and Howard Boatwright.
Side b: pp. 12-23
Phil Saltman and Pop Wilson, early teachers--Yale teachers, Simonds (musicology) and Donovan (composition), and fellow students, Blackwood and Cortes--learning theory with David Kraehenbuehl--French composers--concerts and recording at Quincy Porter's home--conducting Yale Apollo Glee Club--"Contemporary Techniques" with Donovan--antagonism toward the avant-garde, including Bartók, Ives, and Cage--Yale in the fifties and the Un-American Activities Committee.
Side c: pp. 24-33
Reading James Joyce, and going to prep school--Portsmouth Priory--sentimentality and bad religious art--Trappist monks, contemplation, and "pure thought"--bumming around for a year--Brandeis--Shapero, Berger, and Fine--Hofbrau orchestra in the Catskills--Tanglewood--losing the "blood and guts" in his compositions.
Side d: pp. 33-45
The arts at Brandeis--Fulbright to Italy--bad compositions--composition classes with Ghedini--Nono, Berio, and other Italian composers--stopping composing--studying with Petrassi and Porena--drinking with Rzewski--Darmstadt--Tudor's piano classes.
Side e: pp. 45-56
Talking music at six a.m. in a bar with Rzewski--organizing avant-garde concerts in Rome--non-traditional notation--starts composing avant-garde pieces, like "jumping off a cliff"--Fragments for Strings--invited to be choral conductor at Brandeis--Feldman/Brown concert at Town Hall--making Odyssey record: Mumma, Tudor, Ishiyanagi, Ashley, Oliveros--tape pieces--Elegy for Albert Anastasia--"the brain wave piece," and breaking away from tape.
Side f: pp. 56-67
Performing modern music in art galleries--Reflections of Sounds from the Wall--music with sculpture and dance--"discovery...not control"--formal structure--Wolff's idea of "zero time"--Vespers--Chambers--Oliveros--I am Sitting in a Room--articulation of sound in spaces--sine waves, pure waves and La Monte Young--Still and Moving Lines of Silence in Families of Hyperbolas--pieces for solo players and pure waves--teaching--The Queen of the South.
Side g: pp. 67-79
"The material demands a certain way of working"--Steve Reich--New World Consort--Septet--teaching modern music courses--"crass relationship" between teaching and composing--Outlines of Persons and Things--interest in natural phenomena--Directions of Sounds From the Bridge--Intervals--The Shapes of Sounds From the Board (an "emperor without any clothes")--binaural microphone techniques--Bird and Person Dyning--Crossings--new technique for every piece--Serenade (for Fromm Foundation)--pieces as explorations of natural phenomena, architectural spaces, and the sculptural shape of sound.
Side h: pp. 79-89
Sonic Arts Union--Ashley, Berman, and Mumma--tour of Europe--Pousseur--European audiences--various pieces on tour--solo tour in England--installations: Music on a Long Thin Wire, Seesaw, and Spinner--radio broadcast of Music on a Long Thin Wire, in Amsterdam, and for five straight days in Albuquerque--the possibilities of recording Seesaw and Spinner on CD.
Side i: pp. 89-101
Tour in Australia--Indonesia--gamelan and Balinese instruments--"the sensitivity and delicacy of the Orient"--ethnomusicology--fishing in Bali--music director of Viola Farber Dance Company--the genesis of Music on a Long Thin Wire--stringed instrument performance.
Side j: pp. 101-114
North American Time Capsule--vocoders--Quasimodo, The Great Lover and Tyndall Orchestrations--the solar-powered bank piece, the "look-at-me" attitude, and what's really interesting in music--Gentle Fire and Hartford Memory Space--altered and normal instrumental techniques--passing out clickers to the audience (including Elliott Carter)--audiences for contemporary music--notations of physical gestures for performers--Action Music for Piano--the Doctor Chicago films--Muzak--the calming effect of Spinner--Music for Pure Waves, Bass Drums, and Acoustic Pendulums.
Side k: pp. 114-118
"I'm a composer, that's what I do"--finding the edge of the definition of music--two quotes on art and music--making the inaudible audible.
AMERICAN MUSIC SERIES 176 l, m
Alvin Lucier
with Vivian Perlis
Wesleyan University, Middletown, CT
April 28, 1993
TABLE OF CONTENTS
Side l pp. 1-18
Quasimodo, intention of a piece; concepts for pieces; Cage and Tudor; string quartets; encouraging students to make their own musical works; Chicago Symphony piece of 1982; piece for oboe and string quartet; interference patterns and audible beats; Sol LeWitt; piece based on Sol LeWitt drawing; Cynthia Novak{sp}; piece with burglar alarm in piano in Italy; theatrical element of his work; piece for Arditti string quartet; traditional musical training; piece for piano, trombone and sine wave oscillator.
Side m pp. 18-32
piece for Joan La Barbara and Tom Buckner; American vs. European music scene; humor and seriousness in his music; discipline and Cage; process; vocoder, notation; brain wave piece; Alp piece; choral piece for Finnish Radio Choir; William Carlos Williams; music for a children’s play and Bruegel paintings; visual element in his work; framed paper installation; meaning in his music.
AMERICAN MUSIC SERIES 176 n-q
Alvin Lucier
with Ingram Marshall
Wesleyan Univ., Middletown, CT
July 24, 2000
TABLE OF CONTENTS
Side n pp.1-18
1994 Wesleyan retrospective—different types of Lucier works—recently completed koto piece: On a Carpet of Leaves Illuminated by the Moon—written-out directions for his music—Crossings—three orchestra piece: Diamonds—new piece with sine waves and orchestra—pieces based on visual objects—Panorama—Music on a Long Thin Wire: its performance with a double wire in a German church and in Boston—artist Sol LeWitt—concert in the Richard Serra gallery—Music on a Long Thin Wire—piece for Max Neuhaus—installation art.
Side o pp.18-36
Festschrift for Lucier—students—Ron Kuivila: Spark Harp—Nick Collins--Ellen Zwilich’s concert series—work with Sumarsam—Theme—The Queen of the South—traveling to Indonesia—piece with stones: Two Stones [sp]—Lucier as an “experimental” composer—Music for Pure Waves, Bass Drums and Acoustic [Pendulums]—I am Sitting in a Room—Theme—John Ashbery—John Cage—work with sculptor, inventor and composer Trimpin—American Eccentrics Festival—Skin, Meat, Bone—working with Robert Wilson at his summer workshop—performance pieces vs installation pieces—Andy Warhol—Rainforest, with Merce Cunningham—Music for Pure Waves, Bass Drums, and Acoustic Pendulums used as incidental music in an Albee play.
Side p pp.36-55
Lovely Music—new CD with Music for Piano with Slow Sweep Pure Wave Oscillators and On a Carpet of Leaves Illuminated by the Moon—Fragments for Strings—Navigations for Strings—DAAD grant—performances of Navigations--Sferics—journals about his work—meeting his wife and becoming a fisherman—Paul Fromm and Aspen—memorial pieces—John Cage—Harold Shapero—Cage and Tudor concert—randomness and chance—relationship with Cage—Imaginary Landscape—traveling and teaching—Sonic Arts Union--Theme--piece using Greek amphorae—“exploration of the house” piece—piece with Indian veena player—I am Sitting in a Room done at festival in France-- Chambers—Reflections—influence of Frost, Hemingway--Ives--American Music.
Side q pp.55-55
Lucier as an American composer—Stockhausen.