Voices of New Music on National Public Radio: Radio Net, Radiovisions, and Maritime Rites

Voices of New Music on National Public Radio: Radio Net, RadioVisions, and Maritime Rites Louise Elizabeth Chernosky Submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY 2012 © 2012 Louise Elizabeth Chernosky All rights reserved ABSTRACT Voices of New Music on National Public Radio: Radio Net, RadioVisions, and Maritime Rites Louise Elizabeth Chernosky This dissertation focuses on the relationship between new American music and National Public Radio (NPR) during the 1970s and 1980s. NPR directly supported American experimental music, most often billed as “new music,” through programming that both consolidated a tradition and extended it by commissioning new works. I address three exemplary broadcasts, proposing that public radio utilized existing historical narratives of musical experimentalism while simultaneously revising and strengthening those narratives. I demonstrate ways in which the shows themselves, as well as their planning phases and promotional materials, served to gather individuals and musical practices together, defining and constructing musical experimentalism in the process. Chapter 1 covers the importance of sonic experimentation in NPR’s original Statement of Purposes, claiming that author William Siemering’s attention to sound created a climate that was especially hospitable to musical and radiophonic experimentation. In Max Neuhaus’s Radio Net (1977), NPR’s very infrastructure became a musical instrument, showing the radical potential of NPR in its early days. Chapter 2 chronicles the production history of RadioVisions (1981) to establish the ways in which NPR’s imaginary listeners were essential during its planning phase: in the conception of the show, in the grant proposal to the NEA, and in the show’s content. I conclude that experimentalism’s potential for imagining an NPR audience allowed “new music” to become “American experimental music” as the RadioVisions project moved through the infrastructure of NPR. Chapter 3 explores the cultural valences and authorities of the musical voices in RadioVisions’s segments “Details at Eleven,” “Shoptalk,” and “The Oldest Instrument,” as well as Schuller’s hosting voice in the context of public radio broadcasting. Chapter 4 presents a history of the composition, production, and radio broadcast of Maritime Rites (1984). I argue that the differences between Maritime Rites and RadioVisions were, in part, representative of changes in NPR from 1981–85, particularly the role of the newly established Satellite Program Development Fund in supporting adventuresome programming. Maritime Rites served not only as a sonic documentation of the Eastern seaboard, but also as a sonic documentation of the landscape of improvisational experimental music in the mid-1980s, enhancing its fit on NPR as new music/radio documentary. Chapter 5 offers an analysis of the second segment of Maritime Rites, which featured Pauline Oliveros and her improvisation “Rattlesnake Mountain,” as well as the voice of Karen MacLean (the only female lighthouse keeper in the series). This dissertation contributes to a deeper understanding of NPR’s history by addressing lesser-known yet significant cultural programs, as well as to a broader musicological understanding of how public radio contributed to the construction of musical experimentalism. TABLE OF CONTENTS List of Examples, Figures, and Tables ......................................................................................................... iii Acknowledgements ...................................................................................................................................... iv Dedication .................................................................................................................................................... vi INTRODUCTION ......................................................................................................................................... 1 Creative Sound, NPR’s Sound, and New Music Programming ............................................................ 5 NPR and “American Experimental Music” ........................................................................................ 15 Performing Voices on Air ................................................................................................................... 23 CHAPTER 1: SONIC EXPERIMENTATION AND THE FLEDGLING NPR ......................................... 26 Siemering and New Music at WBFO-FM ........................................................................................... 28 Sound and NPR’s “Purposes” ............................................................................................................. 32 Experimental Sound on Air: Radio Net by Max Neuhaus .................................................................. 43 Conclusion ........................................................................................................................................... 50 CHAPTER 2: IMAGINING LISTENERS THROUGH AMERICAN EXPERIMENTAL MUSIC: NPR’S RADIOVISIONS ................................................................................ 52 Production History and Composition .................................................................................................. 54 Publicity and Press Coverage .............................................................................................................. 73 Projecting Listeners On Air: “The Challenge” ................................................................................... 76 Imagined Listeners: New to Experimental Music, or New to Public Radio? ..................................... 79 RadioVisions’s Resonance .................................................................................................................. 86 CHAPTER 3: VOCAL PRESENCE AND AUTHORITY IN RADIOVISIONS: “SHOPTALK,” “DETAILS AT ELEVEN,” AND “THE OLDEST INSTRUMENT” .............................. 88 The Word and the Body ...................................................................................................................... 90 NPR and its Voices of Authority ......................................................................................................... 93 i Gunther Schuller: A Guest in Your Living Room ............................................................................ 101 A Portrait of the Composer through Voice in “Shoptalk” ................................................................ 108 A Taxi Ride in NYC: “Details at Eleven” ......................................................................................... 115 “From the First Grunts and Cries” .................................................................................................... 121 Conclusion ......................................................................................................................................... 129 CHAPTER 4: VOICES OF IMPROVISATION BROADCAST FOR PUBLIC RADIO: MARITIME RITES (1984) ............................................................................................ 133 Maritime Rites: Curran’s “Signature Work” ..................................................................................... 135 “A Special Alchemy:” Maritime Rites and Public Radio ................................................................. 140 Improvisation, Voice, and Identity in Maritime Rites (1984) .......................................................... 152 Maritime Rites as a “Sonic Geography” of New Music .................................................................... 162 CHAPTER 5: THE VOICES OF SIRENS IN “RATTLESNAKE MOUNTAIN” ................................... 167 A Lonely Representation ................................................................................................................... 170 Bodies in Electroacoustic Music, Cavarero’s Sirens, and “Sonorous Articulation” .................................................................................................................... 174 Hearing the Sirens in “Rattlesnake Mountain” ................................................................................. 178 Conclusion ......................................................................................................................................... 186 CONCLUSION .......................................................................................................................................... 189 Public Radio and New Music ............................................................................................................ 192 The “Listeners” ................................................................................................................................. 193 American Experimentalism’s “Renegade Tradition” Revisited ........................................................ 198 REFERENCES ........................................................................................................................................... 201 ii LIST OF EXAMPLES, FIGURES, AND TABLES EXAMPLE 3.1: Rhythmic Ostinato for “Shoptalk” EXAMPLE 5.1: Initial Pitches and Order of Attack, Pitched Navigational Signals and Accordion EXAMPLE 5.2: Pitch Collection for Fluty Run, 3:09 to 3:14 FIGURE 1.1: Cartoon by Ed Owens Accompanying a Review of Neuhaus’s Radio Net TABLE 2.1: RadioVisions Segments, Descriptions, and Producers. Publicity Poster, 1981 TABLE 3.1: Possible

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