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Alvin Lucier Source: Leonardo Music Journal, Vol Origins of a Form: Acoustical Exploration, Science and Incessancy Author(s): Alvin Lucier Source: Leonardo Music Journal, Vol. 8, Ghosts and Monsters: Technology and Personality in Contemporary Music (1998), pp. 5-11 Published by: The MIT Press Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/1513391 Accessed: 07/05/2009 02:37 Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of JSTOR's Terms and Conditions of Use, available at http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp. JSTOR's Terms and Conditions of Use provides, in part, that unless you have obtained prior permission, you may not download an entire issue of a journal or multiple copies of articles, and you may use content in the JSTOR archive only for your personal, non-commercial use. Please contact the publisher regarding any further use of this work. Publisher contact information may be obtained at http://www.jstor.org/action/showPublisher?publisherCode=mitpress. Each copy of any part of a JSTOR transmission must contain the same copyright notice that appears on the screen or printed page of such transmission. JSTOR is a not-for-profit organization founded in 1995 to build trusted digital archives for scholarship. We work with the scholarly community to preserve their work and the materials they rely upon, and to build a common research platform that promotes the discovery and use of these resources. For more information about JSTOR, please contact [email protected]. The MIT Press is collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to Leonardo Music Journal. http://www.jstor.org ARTIST'S ARTICLE Origins of a Form: Acoustical Exploration, Science and Incessancy ABSTRACT JohnCage's use of chance operationscoupled with David Tudor'sconfigurations of found electronicdevices formed a radical Alvin Lucier departureintwentieth-century mu- sic compositionand performance. Inspiredby this collaboration, au- thor-composerLucier, along with composersRobert Ashley, David Behrmanand Gordon Mumma, formedthe Sonic Arts Union, a live JOHN CAGE AND DAVID TUDOR ourselves the Sonic Arts Group, electronicmusic ensemble de- but we votedto thepperformance of each On 24 September 1960, I attended a concert by John Cage, Ashley suggested we change other'sworks. The author used sci- ourobut name to Sonic Arts Union be- David Tudor, Merce Cunningham and Carolyn Brown at La entificexperiments, as well as au- Fenice Theater in Venice. I had come to Venice that summer cause we were not really a group diotest equipment,to compose that or made collabo- worksthat explored the natural on a Fulbright Scholarship to study at the Benedetto improvised rative works. We were like- characteristicsof sound. Along Marcello Conservatory before going on to Rome, where I simply withcertain other in- minded who to- composers, would spend the next 2 years. The Cage-Tudor event came composers got cludingRobert Ashley, Tom to share and like a bolt out of the blue-all the protocols of the concert gether equipment Johnson,James Tenney and Steve we lived in dif- Reich,who created works in which situation were violated. The concert began, as I remember, perform concerts; ferent of the When simpleprocedures yielded com- with David Tudor striding down the aisle of the theater and parts country. wefirst started the Sonic Arts plexresults, the author helped cre- diving under the piano, hitting the underside to make the atea newmusical form. Union, Bob and Gordon first sound of the concert. Cage made an appearance playing Ashley Mumma lived in Ann Arbor, a piano that rose up into the pit hydraulically. The four per- David Behrman lived in formers had cards upon which were written instructions re- Michigan, New York and I was at Brandeis in garding sounds or actions to be made and where to make teaching University Massachusetts. In the moved on them. The entire theater was used-stage, aisles, balconies. Waltham, early 1970s, Ashley to Mills in Mumma the The work was Music Walk with Dancers (1958). During that College Oakland, California, joined Merce Dance in New and I trans- concert a man walked down the aisle and struck the piano Cunningham Company York, ferred to in Connecticut. with an umbrella and announced: "Now I am a composer!" At Wesleyan University Middletown, I was at first and Mumma's attitudes the height of the pandemonium, Cage was tuning a radio surprised by Ashley's toward music Their musical looked neither west that he used as a sound source, and the Pope came on asking making. gaze to nor east to but was rooted in the American for peace on earth. Europe Asia, Midwest. looked and listened the That concert forever altered the way I thought about mu- Ashley at, carefully to, for and which sic. Until that time I had followed the conventional pattern of Michigan landscape images speech patterns, he used in a series of works with his composer-performer-audience relationships. One would speech, including many for television. For in She Was compose a work, wait for some soloist, ensemble or orchestra operas example, a Visitor(1967), for the last of "visitor" was to perform it, then hope that the audience would like it. It spoken chorus, syllable pro- nounced not as is in the more standard was a lonely life; a waiting game. I had studied at Brandeis "er," "or," customary North American vocal In his vocal works he University with the gifted composer Harold Shapero, who, pronunciation. made no to hide the Midwestern he after having composed the stunning Symphonyfor ClassicalOr- attempt twang; instead, it for its musical works were al- chestra(1947), suffered the bitter humiliation of a long hiatus exploited qualities. Ashley's even his acoustical were before another orchestra performed the work and propelled ways theatrical; explorations staged in In Four four men in busi- his career along. It was a lesson to me. It was not until a few imaginative ways. Ways (1967), ness suits and close the lids of attache the years later, when I got back to the United States and worked open cases, altering acoustics of sounds hidden inside them. In The directly with Cage and Tudor, that I fully realized the ramifi- Wolfman a work about feedback-a is cations of their pioneering work. At that time, Tudor was de- (1964), essentially microphone so close to the veloping systems of homemade and consumer electronic de- positioned performer's mouth that changes in the size of the oral about in the vices primarily for realizing the live electronic compositions cavity bring great changes feedback sound-the the of a of John Cage. Devoted to live performance, Tudor would performer projects image or used to scour electronic stores searching for inexpensive compo- nightclub singer political demagogue. Ashley say that music was "about From 1957 to nents, mixers, phonograph cartridges and contact mics, always something." 1964, and Mumma directed the Studio for Elec- which he combined in ingenious ways, creating his own por- Ashley Cooperative tronic Music in Ann table orchestra capable of an immense range of expression. Arbor, Michigan. Behrman and Mumma designed their own equipment rather than relying on the banality of the synthesizer or the THE SONIC ARTS UNION institutional electronic studio, to which they did not have ac- In 1966 I started working with composers more my own age: Robert Ashley, David Behrman and Gordon Mumma, with Alvin Lucier (composer, author, teacher), Department of Music, Center for the Arts, whom I formed the Sonic Arts Union. For a few years we called Wesleyan University, Middletown, CT 06457, U.S.A. E-mail: <[email protected]>. ? 1999 ISAST LEONARDO MUSIC JOURNAL, Vol. 8, pp. 5-11,1998 5 cess. For Hornpipe (1967), Mumma de- Also called "square waves," pulse waves struck by how much of the acoustic signed what he called a "Cybersonic consist of all the odd-numbered over- space one can hear. Conceiving this Console," a small metal box worn on the tones or harmonics. The nomenclature piece as a quasi-improvised perfor- performer's belt, which consisted of a of these wave forms is derived from the mance work, Behrman allowed ample microphone and eight variable reso- shapes they assume when viewed on an time for the possibilities offered by his nance circuits. As Mumma played oscilloscope-a device consisting of a circuitry to unfold. This time-space, as sounds into the space on his French cathode ray tube and fluorescent screen, well as the repetitive rhythmic figures horn, the microphones would pick up the vertical axis representing the ampli- that dominate the performance, served the room acoustics articulated by the tude (loudness) of the signal, and the to articulate the acoustic characteristics horn sounds, gradually mapping the horizontal, the frequency (pitch). A volt- of the space-they became additional resonances of the space. Gordon had age control amplifier is simply an ampli- components in the work. In Hornpipe designed the circuits to change, depend- fier that can be controlled by an exter- and Runthrough,there were no scores to ing on the sounds and how the space re- nal signal. A ring modulator produces follow; the scores were inherent in the sponded to them-he never explained the sums and differences of two or more circuitry-that was a new idea for me. exactly how they did that. It was as if the frequencies fed into its input, while sup- circuits were alive and had the the It was a capacity pressing original signals. MAKING MUSIC of memory. Sometimes the system would simple device to make; its name is de- WITH FOUND get out of balance and try to balance it- rived from the ring-like arrangement of EQUIPMENT self, hence the prefix "cyber" from cy- its four diodes.
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