• Music for Piano with Magnetic Strings (1995)

• Theme (1994)

• Music for Gamelan Instruments, Microphones, Amplifiers and Loudspeakers (1994)

Music for Piano with Magnetic Strings

A work in which the strings of a piano sound by themselves. Several E-bows (small electromagnets used primarily with electric guitars) which would cause the piano strings to vibrate and sound are placed on the strings of the piano. The pianist works from a prose score which describes the process and suggests she freely position and reposition five E-bows on the piano strings, creating strands of sounds of varying density and texture. Much of her time is spent listening for harmonics, audible beating, occasional rhythms produced as one or more magnets vibrates against adjacent strings, and other acoustic phenomena.

Theme

Setting a poem of John Ashbery’s to music, Lucier didn’t want to violate the flow of the words of the poem by fragmentation or any other cut-up method. The stanzas seemed musical enough just as they were and he wanted the audience to hear the poem more or less in its pristine state, so, working intuitively and by ear, he wrote out the poem for four readers in the order it was written, repeating words and phrases, overlapping and superimposing them in various ways. To “set” the poem, he inserted microphones into the mouths of various vessels, including a small milk bottle, a sea shell, a vase and an empty ostrich egg, to pick up the words as they were sounding inside the vessels. The readers speak normally, allowing the pitches of their voices which match those resonances of the vessels to create musical sounds. Occasionally, however, a reader will tend to emphasize certain pitches more than others, reading in an almost chant-like way, to sound the resonances of the vessels more clearly. Theme is performed on this CD by Sam Ashley, Thomas Buckner, Jacqueline Humbert and Joan La Barbara.

Music for Gamelan Instruments, Microphones, Amplifiers and Loudspeakers

Wanting to make a work for Javanese gamelan, but wary of using someone else's music in his own work, it wasn't until he started imagining the bowl-shaped bonangs of the gamelan orchestra more as resonant chambers to be sounded than objects to be struck, that Lucier felt he could make a work for gamelan that he could call his own. During the performance four players place bonangs of various sizes over microphones, creating feedback, the pitch of which is determined by the shape and size of the bowl and the resonant characteristics of the room. Three gender players strike the bars on their metallaphones, searching for the pitches of the feedback strands. Since it is virtually impossible that a strand of feedback will match exactly a pitch on any fixed-pitch instruments, audible beats—bumps of sound which occur as sound waves coincide—occur. The closer the tuning, the slower the beating. When the players reach near-unison with a feedback strand they slow down or speed up their playing, creating beating patterns between the pitches of their instruments and those of the feedback.

• Carbon Copies (1989) for recordings “of any indoor or outdoor environment” and instrument
• Risonanza (1982) for resonant objects and optional electronics
• Music for Pure Waves, Bass Drums and Acoustic Pendulums (1980)
• Broken Line (2006) for flute, piano & vibraphone

Alvin Lucier (born 1931) is the great American poet of acoustic phenomena. He has a keen sensitivity to the way objects vibrate, the way sound waves travel to our ears, and to the way our brain processes those vibrations. Trio Nexus is a Berlin based ensemble specializing in New Music.

Carbon Copies seeks the recreation on musical instruments of sounds recorded in the environment. Here, the musicians prepare the piece by making their own fifteen-minute recordings “of any indoor or outdoor environment.” These are then played back simultaneously. The musicians then mimick the environment which they hear on their instruments; then the recording is faded out and they continue to play via looping, or by anticipating, delaying, truncating or elongating the sounds at will.

Risonanza takes the central idea to find an object that can be excited by sound such that it responds with a sound of its own, as though becoming, in the composer’s words, a “non-breathing player,” a fourth member of the ensemble.

Music for Pure Waves, Bass Drums and Acoustic Pendulums has the concept that electronic sounds – what Lucier calls a “slow sweep oscillator” which makes a slow, continuous glissando movement – excite the skins of four large bass drums, causing them to vibrate and to set in motion extremely light pendulums suspended in front of them. As the bass drums begin to vibrate under excitation from the oscillator, the pendulums begin to swing, as if by magic, more or less actively, gently striking the drumhead in a regular rhythm.

Broken Line, written for Trio Nexus, is about as close as Lucier has ever come to writing chamber music in the traditional sense. The piece consists of a series of flute glissandi spanning the intervals of a semitone, major second and minor third respectively. Vibraphone and piano play long tones during the glissandi, creating either unisons, octaves, or fifths and twelfths against the flute lines. Because the flute tone is continuously in motion this has the effect of creating beats – audible “wah wah” patterns in the sound. These gentle rhythmic fluctuations – which appear of their own accord without the performers needing to do anything – are like the flickering of a candle in the wind.

Liner notes by Bob Gilmore

• Three Translations of the Works of Maurizio Mochetti (2008)
  • Arrows for alto flute, clarinet, violin, cello and piano
  • Counting people for flute, clarinet, violin, cello and piano
  • Rebounds for flute, clarinet, violin, cello and piano
• Two Circles (2012) for flute, clarinet, violin, cello, piano and pure wave oscillators
• “I am Sitting in a Room” (1968) for speaking voice and electronics
• Fideliotrio (1986) für viola, cello and piano

Alvin Lucier’s (born 1931) work has been more often described in terms of science than of art and his scores often contain experimental procedures. Lucier perfectly represents the fusion of a scientist with an artist. His pieces arise from an inspection of a pure physical phenomenon.
The performers on Mode’s fourth disc of Lucier’s music are the Italian experimental music ensemble Alter Ego —  two of the works were written for or dedicated to them — and Alvin Lucier himself.
This new recording of his classic I am Sitting in a Room is from the Biennale Musica 2012 in Italy. This is Lucier’s first new recording of the work since the original from 1980.
The interaction of electronic and acoustic sounds is the central point of . These electronic sounds move from the same note in two glissandi, ascending and descending. The acoustic instruments interfere, generating beating (so-called binaural beats) from the interaction of closed frequencies. In some cases, these pulsations give the impression to expand the sonic space, whilst in others they appear to bring to an ending.
In a comparable way, Fideliotrio focuses its attention on the tonal interplays between instruments. In this case, cello, viola and piano form a steady flux: the central note of the piano designs a sort of line around which the string instruments move. When the viola and cello start to drift away from piano’s tone, one may have the impression that the sonic stream is bending and is losing its center of gravity.
Artist Mochetti’s work focuses on light, space, time; it explores the use of materials and often includes a unique conception of the geometry, made of trajectories, lines and surfaces. In the Three Translations of the Works of Maurizio Mochetti, Lucier transfers the exploration of these elements to sound as he literally designs sonic profiles, reflections and music shapes.
The booklet includes an interview with Lucier and flutist Manuel Zurria and liner notes by Riccardo Dillon Wanke and Alvin Lucier.

"Desert Plants" was a cult book in the seventies because it brought the first information about the US-American composer-performer scene to Europe. Numerous examples of sheet music and entire scores enrich this insight into a time of experimentation that needs to be brought back into consciousness.

The book, which has been reprinted unchanged, is dedicated to Carol Byl, who at the time transcribed the tapes largely literally in order to maintain the "stream of consciousness". The cover picture was drawn by Michael von Biel.

The edition is accompanied by a CD which makes the surviving sound documents available in restored form as mp3 files, including the famous telephone conversation with La Monte Young. Thus the original voices from 1975 can be heard – a contemporary document.

Walter Zimmermann's interview partners are Morton Feldman, Christian Wolff, John Cage, Philip Corner, Jim Burton, Phil Glass, Steve Reich, Robert Ashley, Alvin Lucier, Joan La Barbara, Pauline Oliveros, David Rosenboom, Richard Teitelbaum, Larry Austin, James Tenney, J. B. Floyd (about Conlon Nancarrow), La Monte Young, Charlemagne Palestine, Charles Morrow, Garrett List, John Mc Guire and Ben Johnston (about Harry Partch).

23 Sentences from DESERT PLANTS

MORTON FELDMAN: Something that is beautiful is made in isolation.

CHRISTIAN WOLFF: I try wherever possible to discourage competitive sort of careerism.

JOHN CAGE: So that it takes an old fogey like myself to suggest again as Thoreau did all of his life, revolution.

PHILIP CORNER: A lot of people hang up to restrictions which are not only in the external institutions. They are in your own mind.

PHIL GLASS: The quintessence of harmonic music is in cadence for me.

STEVE REICH: You must love music or be a duck.

ROBERT ASHLEY: If you record a conversation with fifty people in the United States about their ideas, and if you get into each conversation really deeply, that when you get to the end, you will have one of me, one of Steve Reich, but you will have fifty of yourself.

ALVIN LUCIER: But when you stutter, you scan the language. You are scanning your past.

JOAN LA BARBARA: You know, instead of trying to direct the voice, I try to let the voice direct me.

PAULINE OLIVEROS: I’m aware of my own physiology. And then I’m hearing it as a whole, and I’m aware of the various rates that are going on, the kinds of breaks in concentration that occur and how they are corrected.

DAVID ROSENBOOM: What I’m looking at really is the existence of regularly pulsing energy.

RICHARD TEITELBAUM: I played the same synthesizer for ten years. Me and it are very close to each other.

LARRY AUSTIN: Ives’ main thing, I feel, was the concept of layering and getting us out of the idea that the sounds always had to come from the same place; that is, right in front of you.

JAMES TENNEY: I realized in writing these pieces that this was one way to avoid drama, which I’m still trying to find ways to avoid.

J. B. FLOYD about NANCARROW: Somebody actually brought up what was going to happen to the piano roles after he died; and he said, “Why? Do you want one?”

LA MONTE YOUNG: You can always say that you wanted La Monte Young, but it was impossible. He was so mercenary, he wanted money.

CHARLEMAGNE PALESTINE: I’m searching for sort of this golden sonority.

CHARLES MORROW: The high art itself is a form of power consciousness, that in a way one listens to the high art in the same way that one walks around being a flirt.

GARRETT LIST: The only way for a one-world kind of feeling is where each nationality, each locality, has its own strength; so that people don’t need to have to take from another place.

FREDERIC RZEWSKI: It’s still true that most Americans care more about the price of meat than they do about the exploitation of Bolivian miners.

JOHN MC GUIRE: But sooner or later I am sure that I will return to America.

BEN JOHNSTON about HARRY PARTCH: He was really willing to be as direct and as simple and as corny as you like, as people are when they aren’t trying to be concert artists.

Contents

Prefaces

• Pauline Oliveros: Poet of Electronic Music
• James Tenney: The Eloquent Voice of Nature

Interviews with Douglas Simon

• “. . . to let alpha be itself”. Music for Solo Performer
• “. . . and listen to the ocean again”. Chambers
• Taking Slow Audio Photographs of the Space. Vespers
• “Every room has its own melody”. “I am sitting in a room”
• Imitating One Set of Sounds with Another. (Hartford) Memory Space
• A Metaphor for One’s Life. Quasimodo the Great Lover
• Composite Identities. The Duke of York
• Imaginary Imagery. Gentle Fire
• Seeing Sound. The Queen of the South, Tyndall Orchestrations
• Making Audible That Which Is Inaudible. Still and Moving Lines of Silence in Families of Hyperbolas
• “Do you know how robins turn their heads to listen?” Outlines of Persons and Things, Bird and Person Dyning
• The Poetry of Science. Music on a Long Thin Wire
• Sound Shadows. Directions of Sounds from the Bridge

Interviews with Daniel Wolf

• “The gods appear out of nowhere”. Crossings, Nothing is Real
• “The sound melts into the environment”. Fragments for Strings, Navigations for Strings
• “The simple is the difficult”. Panorama, Six Geometries

Conversations

• “Creating a new kind of a music for me” (Barney Childs)
• “. . . when you stutter, you scan the language” (Walter Zimmermann)
• “With and without a purpose” (Robert Ashley)
• “Discovery is part of the experience” (William Duckworth)
• “I’m cutting things down to their simplest form” (James Tenney)
• “The form of the piece is a search” (Arne Deforce)
• “You never know what’s going to happen” (James Saunders)

About Own Work

• Music for Solo Performer 1965
• The Making of North American Time Capsule
• Program Proposal for Pepsi-Cola Pavilion
• The Propagation of Sound in Space
• The Tools of My Trade
• Clocker
• Sferics
• Seesaw
• Wall with Vertical Slit
• Sound on Paper
• Pasta for Tired Dancers
• Thoughts on Installations
• Skin, Meat, Bone
• String Quartets
• Origins of a Form
• My Affairs with Feedback
• Fruits and Vegetables

About Others    

• A Letter to Frederic Rzewski
• An Open Letter to the Artistic Director of the Ojai Music Festival
• I Remember Morty
• Collaborations with John Cage
• Soba
• The Sonic Arts Union
• Avant-garde and Experiment
• The Future of Our Music
• Preface to Robert Ashley’s book Outside of Time
• Notes on Verbal Notation
• The Local is the Universal
• In Memoriam David Tudor, Robert Ashley, Reinhard Oehlschlägel, Pauline Oliveros                                     

Scores      

• Music for Solo Performer
• Shelter
• Chambers
• Vespers
• The Only Talking Machine of Its Kind in the World
• “I am sitting in a room”
• (Hartford) Memory Space
• Hymn
• Quasimodo the Great Lover
• The Duke of York
• Gentle Fire
• The Queen of the South
• Tyndall Orchestrations
• Still and Moving Lines of Silence in Families of Hyperbolas
• Outlines of Persons and Things
• Bird and Person Dyning
• Music on a Long Thin Wire
• Directions of Sounds from the Bridge
• Ghosts
• Words on Windy Corners
• Lullaby
• Music for Pure Waves, Bass Drums and Acoustic Pendulums                                                                  
• Risonanza
• Precious Metals
• Attaché Case
• Silver Streetcar for the Orchestra
• Carbon Copies
• Music for Snare Drum, Pure Wave Oscillators and One or More Reflective Surfaces
• Indian Summer
• Music for Cello with One or More Amplified Vases
• Music for Piano with Half-closed Lid
• Empty Vessels

Program and Liner Notes

• Partita, Fragments for Strings, Action Music
• Music for Solo Performer
• Vespers
• (Hartford) Memory Space
• “I am sitting in a room”
• Quasimodo the Great Lover
• The Queen of the South
• RMSIM 1
• Still and Moving Lines of Silence in Families of Hyperbolas
• Bird and Person Dyning
• Music on a Long Thin Wire
• Shapes of the Sounds from the Board
• Music for Pure Waves, Bass Drums and Acoustic Pendulums                                                                  
• Sferics
• Crossings
• Seesaw
• Spinner
• In Memoriam Jon Higgins
• Serenade (1985)
• Septet
• Homage to James Tenney
• Kettles
• Fideliotrio
• Silver Streetcar for the Orchestra
• Self-Portrait
• Nothing Is Real
• Music for Piano with Amplified Sonorous Vessels
• Amplifier and Reflector One
• Navigations for Strings
• Possible Time and Motion Reversals
• Music for Piano with One or More Snare Drums
• Music for Piano with Slow Sweep Pure Wave Oscillators
• Six Geometries
• Sol 432
• StacksMusic for Piano with Half-closed Lid
• In Memoriam Stuart Marshall
• Serenade (1993)
• Panorama
• Serenade (1994)
• Wind Shadows, Distant Drums, Music for Gamelan Instruments Microphones, Amplifiers and Loudspeakers
• Disappearances
• The Sacred Fox
• Spira Mirabilis
• Spider Paths
• Two Stones
• Unamuno
• Night Sounds with Flame
• Sierpinski Lines
• Chinese Space
• Theme
• Music for Piano with Magnetic Strings
• Still Lives
• Sound on Glass
• Empty Vessels
• Small Waves
• Opera with Objects
• Wave Painting Songs
• Heavier than Air
• On a Carpet of Leaves Illuminated by the Moon
• Piper
• Ovals
• Almost New York
• Ever Present
• Charles Curtis
• Fan
• Tapper
• Coda Variations
• Man Ray
• Twonings
• Broken Line
• Bumps
• Slices
• Trio for Clarinet Cello and Six-valve Tuba
• Miniature                                                                    
• ICEcles
• Check
• Two Circles
• Braid
• Codex
• Criss Cross
• Palimpsest
• Shadow Lines
• Orpheus Variations
• Hanover
• Gondola
• Audibles
• Love Song
• Sickle
• Double Helix
• V
• Flight Paths
• Tilted Arc
• Corner Church and High
• Monteverdi Shapero
• Halo, Bone Moon
• Arrigoni Bridge
• Flips
• Key West
• Three Cardboard Boxes

List of Works

Text Credits

Photo Credits

Index of Names

Kommentar

• Akustische Ökologie: eine Chance für die Musikwissenschaft (Britta Sweers)

SELBSTlaut

• Lichtpunkte im Raum. Dichtung und Musik (Annette Schlünz)

Zur künstlerischen Forschung

• „Forschung“ im Studium der Komposition und der Philosophie (Johannes Abel)
• Die Sichtung des Hebels. Der Impuls der künstlerischen Forschung (Karin Wetzel)

Gegenwart der Tradition

• Vom Neuern der alten Musik (Christoph Haffter)
• Jörg Birkenkötters „Schumann ist der Dichter“ (Rainer Nonnenmann)

Musik kommentiert

• Jörg Widmann über György Kurtágs „Hommage à R. Sch.“ (Hans-Peter Jahn)

Achtundsechziger

• Die Isolation aufbrechen. Wolfgang Hamm im Gespräch (Werner Klüppelholz)

Werkgeschichte

• Alvin Luciers „I am sitting in a room“ (Jan Thoben und Bernhard Rietbrock)

Akustische Ökologie

• Der Schweizer Komponist und Umweltakustiker Marcus Maeder (Julia Schölzel)
• Wahrscheinlich (Elias Nurmi Schomers)
• Forest Scapes. Klangerfahrungen in kenianischen Wäldern (Sophia Bauer)
• Der wohltemperierte Regenwurm. Zur Naturbeziehung digitaler Musik (Bernhard König)
• Künstlerische Forschung im Regenwald Amazoniens (Marcus Maeder)

Nachruf

• großzügig und bescheiden. ein adieu für peter behrendsen (hans w. koch)

Bericht

• Wer oder Was? „Donaueschingen global“ (Rainer Nonnenmann)
• Da und nicht da. Darmstädter Ferienkurse für Neue Musik (Karl Ludwig)
• Übergänge, allenthalben. Klangspuren Schwaz (Bernd Lederer)
• Haus ohne Treppen. „A House of Call“ von Heiner Goebbels (Karl Ludwig)
• Nonos „Intolleranza 1960“ bei den Salzburger Festspielen (Bernd Künzig)
• Taschenopernfestival Salzburg mit neuen „Undinen“ (Rainer Nonnenmann)

Buch

• Musik-Konzepte-Band über Martin Smolka (Carolin Naujocks)
• Klare Stellungnahme. Texte von Nikolaus Brass (Max Nyffeler)

Platte

• Musik von Mauricio Sotelo und Christophe Bertrand (Manfred Karallus)

Neue Musik im Radio

• Michèle Bokanowski, Georgia Koumará, Iris Szeghy, Jagoda Smytka, Catherine Lamb

Kommentar

• Der futurologische Turn. Welche Zukunft hat neue Musik? (Rainer Nonnenmann)

SELBSTlaut

• Wie ich auf dem Weg zum ersten internationalen Festival für psychologische Musik in Barcelona meinen eigenen Tod vortäuschte (Nico Sauer)

Futurologie

• Music (she/her) (Franz Rieks)
• Inventur 2121. Beobachtungen zur Entwicklung des Kulturlebens im ersten Drittel des 22. Jahrhunderts (Stefan Drees)
• Symbiotischer Lychenismus. Transkription der Aufzeichnung des Kongressbeitrags von Nord-Pankow/Eiche 18 (Wolfgang Heiniger)
• Postkoloniales Mind uploading. Musikalischer Multikulturalismus im 21. und 22. Jahrhundert (Saemi Jeong)

Donaueschinger Musiktage

• Logik des Spuks. Laudatio, geflüstert beim Festakt „100 Jahre Donaueschinger Musiktage“ (Mara Genschel)
• Die Rampen zu exterritorialen Welten ... und was alles schiefgehen kann … (Frank Hilberg)

Ghost-Zuspielung

• Meine Nachtodeserlebnisse mit K. Stockhausen (Nicolaus A. Huber)

Dialog

• Vom Neuen, das immer schon da war. Peter Ablinger im Gespräch (Nikolaus Gerszewski)

Musik kommentiert

• Straßenkarte durch die Musikgeschichte. Claus-Steffen Mahnkopf über Luciano Berios „Sinfonia“ (Hans-Peter Jahn)

Elektronische Musik

• Boten des Retrofuturismus. Das Synthesizer-Trio „Lange//Berweck//Lorenz“ (Leonie Reineke)
• „Neuinterpretationen, die dem Heute wieder etwas sagen“. Gedanken zur Aufführungspraxis elektronischer Musik (Sebastian Berweck)
• Wie könnte eine Synthesizernotation aussehen? Zur Restauration von Bernard Parmegianis „Stries“ (Sebastian Berweck)

Analyse

• Der urbanen Klanglandschaft abgelauscht. Marcelo Alejandro Rodríguez: „nuevos contornos“ (Wolfgang Rüdiger)
• Zwischen Notation, Klangvorstellung und Klang. Franck Bedrossians „La conspiration du silence“ (Ivana Petrač)

Notationspraxis

• Hybride Schreibszenen. Ein Blick in die Kompositionsateliers von Malin Bång, Jennifer Walshe und Jannik Giger

Alvin Lucier ✝

• Bernhard Rietbrock, Viola Rusche, Hauke Harder, María de Alvear, Arnold Dreyblatt, Judy Dunaway, Matt Rogalsky, Ron Kuivila, Nicolas Collins, Alvin Curran, David Behrman, Christian Wolff

Dokument

• Eine Kontroverse zwischen Alvin Lucier und Pierre Boulez (Bernhard Rietbrock)
• Ein Kämpfer seit Urzeiten (Joan Peyser)
• Richtungswechsel (Alvin Lucier, Robert Ashley)
• ... der immergleiche Scheiß (Alvin Lucier)
• Boulez ist nicht der Feind (Frederic Rzewski)
• Irrglaube (Alvin Lucier)

Nachruf

• „Ein Garten der Zeit“. Udo Zimmermann (Annette Schlünz)
• Radikaler Denker. Gottfried Michael Koenig (Martin Supper)

Bericht

• Glasaugen in Aspik. „Der futurologische Kongress“ in Karlsruhe (Rainer Nonnenmann)
• Von der Vielfalt des Hörens. bonn hoeren: Internationales Symposium „Listening/Hearing“ (José Gálvez)
• Ein X für ein U vormachen. Queerness bei Frau Musica Nova (Rainer Nonnenmann)

Platte

• Revolutionäre Methodik. Bernard Parmegianis „Stries“ bei mode records (Reinhold Friedl)
• Die Banalisierung des Bösen. Musik von Gordon Kampe und Konstantia Gourzi (Manfred Karallus)

Buch

• Donaueschinger Nabelschau. „100 Jahre Place of New Music“ (Juana Zimmermann)
• Komprimierte Botschaften. Helmut Lachenmann: der ästhetischen Schriften zweiter Band (Frank Hilberg)

Neue Musik im Radio

• Malte Giesen, Neo Hülcker, Annea Lockwood, Samir Odeh-Tamimi, Clara Oppel