Julio Estrada

• Der mexikanische Komponist Julio Estrada (Monika Fürst-Heidtmann)

• Das Entstehen des Mythos als Erklärung (Julio Estrada)

• „Mictlan“ aus der Oper „Pedro Páramo“ für Sängerin, Kontrabaß und Geräuscherzeuger (Julio Estrada)

• Transkriptionsmethoden in einem Kontinuum von Rhythmus und Klang (Julio Estrada)

• Werkverzeichnis

Klang und Stille

• Erfahrungen mit Klang und Stille in der neueren Musik (Ulrich Dibelius)

• Zum Paradigmenwechsel vom Klang zur Stille in der Musik des neunzehnten und zwanzigsten Jahrhunderts (Martin Zenck)

Kommentar

• Zum Medienbild der Internationalen Ferienkurse für Neue Musik Darmstadt (Reinhard Oehlschlägel)

Porträt

• Silvestre Revueltas und der mexikanische Nationalismus (Graciela Paraskevaídis)

• Der amerikanische Komponist Conlon Nancarrow (Julio Estrada)

Phänomen

• Gedanken zur Klanginstallation (Alvin Lucier)

Essay

• Über experimentelle Musik heute (Christian Wolff)

Bericht

• „Bang on a Can“-Marathon im New Yorker Lincoln Center (Kyle Gann)

• „Abende neuer Musik“ in Bratislava (Martin Erdmann)

• Das bulgarische Festival neuer Musik „Musika nova“ in Sofia (Lina Semowa)

• Uraufführung von Hans-Joachim Hespos’ „spink“ in Nürnberg (Eva-Maria Houben)Buch

• Anmerkungen zum musiksoziologischem Diskurs über „Ästhetische Technologie in der Musik“
  von Eberhard Hüppe (Stefan Drees)

Alvin Lucier

• Die Werkzeuge meiner Arbeit (Alvin Lucier)

• Alvin Lucier im Gespräch (Gisela Gronemeyer)

• Zu „Music for Pure Waves, Bass Drums and Acoustic Pendulums“ (Thomas DeLio)

• „Music for Pure Waves, Bass Drums and Acoustic Pendulums“ (Alvin Lucier)

• Vorwort zum Buch „Chambers“ von Alvin Lucier (Pauline Oliveros)

• Alvin Lucier – Composer in Residence 1981 in San Francisco (Jim Pomeroy)

• „Serenade“ (1985) for Thirteen Winds and Pure Wave Oscillator (Alvin Lucier)

• Werkverzeichnis, Diskographie und Bibliographie

Kommentar

• Frauenmusik und ihre Festivals (Gisela Gronemeyer)

• Neue Musik – Ideologie und Wirklichkeit (Wilhelm Zobl)

Porträt

• Der französische Komponist Alain Gaussin (Ivanka Stoianova)

  • Werkverzeichnis

Analyse

• Der erste Satz der Fünften Sinfonie von Ludwig van Beethoven (Olivier Messiaen)

Essay

• Über das Komponieren (Helmut Lachenmann)

Verleihung

• Laudatio für Karlheinz Stockhausen zur Verleihung des Ernst-von-Siemens-Preises (Wolfgang Rihm)

• Dankesworte des Preisträgers (Karlheinz Stockhausen)

Werk

• Aus: „Songs“ (1984) für Frauenstimme und Klavier (Zoltán Jeney)

Nachruf

• Peter Bockelmann

Bericht

• Vierzig Jahre Internationale Ferienkurse für Neue Musik Darmstadt (Reinhard Oehlschlägel)

• Sound-Symposium in St. John’s, Neufundland (Moniek Darge)

• Karlheinz Stockhausen bei den Berliner Festwochen (Rudolf Frisius)

• Zehn Jahre Gulbenkian-Festival in Lissabon (Reinhard Oehlschlägel)

• „Die schwarze Maske“ von Krzysztof Penderecki in Salzburg (Frieder Reininghaus)

• New Music America Festival 1986 in Houston, Texas (Gisela Gronemeyer)

• Das Insel-Festival 1986 in Hombroich (Reinhard Oehlschlägel)

Zeitschrift

• Morton Feldman in der Reihe „Musik-Konzepte“ (Reinhard Oehlschlägel)

Platte

• „Three Viennese Dancers“ von Gavin Bryars (Bernd Leukert)

Glosse

• Zur Polemik von Roger Scruton gegen neue Musik in der Frankfurter Allgemeinen Zeitung (Reinhard Oehlschlägel)

• Clocker (1994)

Through the means of a galvanic skin response sensor driving a digital delay on a miked clock, Lucier creates the illusions of time expanding and contracting, and of a room that is changing in size.

Three works for classical instruments and oscillators (1982–1985). Lucier explains the process:

“The three works on this compact disk explore interference phenomena between sound waves. When two or more closely tuned tones are sounded, their oscillations periodically coincide to produce audible beats of sound. The speed of the beating depends upon the distances between the pitches of the sounds. The further apart, the faster the beating; at unison, no beating occurs. Furthermore, under certain conditions, the beats may be heard to spin around the room . . . ”

• Piper (2000)

• Fan (2003)

• 947 (2001)

• Silver Streetcar for the Orchestra (1988)

• Ever present (2002)

Alvin Lucier’s works on this CD, for solos and trios, continue to explore his unique sound world, exploration of microtones, and use of unusual instrumentation.

Piper is probably one of the few avant-garde pieces composed for the bagpipe. The piper is asked to walk slowly around the performance space, sounding his instrument as he does so. From time to time he detunes the chanters, creating beating patterns of slightly varying speeds and minor spatial disturbances (imaginary dopplers).

In Fan, 4 koto players play a long series of plucked tones over a 12-minute time span, gradually stepping up to 4 semitones above the starting tone and slowing down to 1 beat every 2, 3, 4, and 5 seconds. As they do so, audible beating at various speeds occurs among the plucked sounds of the instruments.

During the course of 947, 4 pure tones are sounded in all their combinations. As they do so a flutist sustains closely tuned long tones against them, creating audible beats at speeds determined by the distances between her tones and those of the pure waves. The farther apart the faster the beating. At unison no beating occurs. Occasionally the flutist bends her pitches a few cycles per second causing the beating patterns to slow down and speed up.

In Silver Streetcar, the player dampens the triangle with the thumb and forefinger of one hand while tapping the instrument with the other. The performance consists of moving the geographical locations of these two activities and changing the pressure of the fingers on the triangles as well as the speed and loudness of the tapping. During the course of the performance, the acoustic characteristics of the folded metal bar are revealed.

Ever Present is inspired by Robert Irwin's garden at the Getty Center in Los Angeles. Tone waves in constant motion sweep up and down as the players sustain long tones across them, creating beating patterns at speeds determined by the closeness of the tunings.

Liner notes by the composer.

Four first recordings.

• I am sitting in a room (1970)

In this fascinating exploration of acoustical phenomena, Alvin Lucier slips from the domain of language to that of music in the course of forty minutes and thirty-two repetitions of a simple paragraph of text.

In I am sitting in a room, several sentences of recorded speech are simultaneously played back into a room and re-recorded there many times. As the repetitive process continues, those sounds common to the original spoken statement and those implied by the structural dimensions of the room are reinforced. The others are gradually eliminated. The space acts as a filter; the speech is transformed into pure sound. All the recorded segments are spliced together in the order in which they were made and constitute the work.

I am sitting in a room was composed in 1970 and was first performed at the Guggenheim Museum in New York City that same year. A second version was made in 1972 to accompany the dance, Dune, performed by the Viola Farber Dance Company at the Brooklyn Academy of Music. Since that time, numerous versions of this composition have been realized in various ways by other musicians, including a Swedish radio broadcast version.

This recording was made by Alvin Lucier on October 29th and 31st, 1980, in the living room of his home in Middletown, CT. The material was recorded on a Nagra tape recorder with an Electro-Voice 635 dynamic microphone and played back on one channel of a Revox A77 tape recorder, Dynaco amplifier and a KLH Model Six loudspeaker. It consists of thirty-two generations of Alvin Lucier’s speech and was made expressly for Lovely Music, Ltd.

• Music on a Long Thin Wire (1977)

A fifty-foot length of taut wire passes through the poles of a large magnet and is driven by an oscillator; the vibrations of the wire are miked at either end, amplified and broadcast in stereo. The thin wire is set vibrating four times at four different frequencies; what results is not the low drone one might expect from a long, vibrating wire, but a complexity of evocative, ethereal chords. First released on Lovely Music in 1980, Music on a Long Thin Wire is a classic example of Alvin Lucier’s investigations into the physics of sound and the sonic properties of natural processes.

• Navigations for Strings (1991)

• Small Waves (1997)

Navigations for Strings (1991) was commissioned by the Hessischer Rundfunk (German Radio). Musically it consists of four tones, for which a long stream of continually changing melodic and instrumental combinations occur. As the players move through the combinations, they raise and lower the pitches in imperceptibly small increments, some smaller than the human ear can hear. As the size of the interval contracts, the players gradually lower the dynamic level and slow down the tempo, allowing the sounds to lengthen like shadows and recede into the ambiance of the room. Because of the closeness of the tunings, audible beats are heard at speeds determined by the distances between the pitches.

In Small Waves (1997), six glass vessels, some partially filled with water, are mounted on pedestals scattered around the performance space. Microphones are inserted into the mouths of the vessels, then routed through compressor-limiters to amplifiers and monitor speakers. During the course of the performance, the volume levels of the amplifiers are raised and lowered, causing feedback at pitches determined by the size and shape of the containers and their proximity to the loudspeakers. Following a sequence notated in the score, the players closely tune with the feedback strands causing interference patterns. At times, two water pourers empty water from one container to another, raising and lowering the pitches of the sounds from those containers.

• Wind Shadows (1994)

• Music for Piano with One or More Snare Drums (1992)

• Music for Piano with Amplified Sonorous Vessels (1991)

• Panorama (1993)

A gorgeous recording of works for trombone and piano, transformed by Lucier’s electronics and oscillators. Wind Shadows, Music for Piano with One or More Snare Drums, and Panorama were written for the Swiss musicians Roland Dahinden and Hildegard Kleeb, who play them on this CD. Also included: Music for Piano with Amplified Sonorous Vessels, which was originally written for Margaret Leng Tan.

Zur Zeit nicht auf Lager!

• Sferics (1981)

• Music for Solo Performer (1965)

Lovely Music issued two previous versions of Music for Solo Performer on LP in 1982. This recording of Spherics was originally released on LP in 1987.