Week 5

The Experimental Tradition

Alvin Lucier, Pauline Oliveros, Robert Ashley


A selection of Tom Johnson's columns in the Village Voice, 1972–77, with links to pieces.

 

A selection of readings from Alvin Lucier, Music 109: Notes on Experimental Music (Wesleyan: Wesleyan University Press, 2012), 70–93, 144–49, 158–76.

 

Trailer for No Ideas But in Things: documentary on Alvin Lucier.

 

David Gutkin, ‘“Meanwhile, Let’s Go Back in Time”: Allegory, Actuality, and History in Robert Ashley’s Television Opera Trilogy’, The Opera Quarterly, vol. 30, no. 1 (2014).

 

Pauline Oliveros, "Sound Observations," Source: Music of the Avant Garde (1967) and Software for People: Writings 1963–1980 (Smith pub., 1982).

 

Pauline Oliveros, Selections from Deep Listening: A Composer’s Sound Practice (Lincoln, NE: iUniverse), 29–45.

 

Music

 

Alvin Lucier, I Am Sitting in a Room, (1969).

Alvin Lucier, TaPir Lab, Music on a Long Thin Wire

Robert Ashley, Perfect Lives (7 roughly half-hour episodes; watch at least two!)

Episode 1, The Park

Episode 2, The Supermarket

Episode 3, The Bank

Episode 4, The Bar

Episode 5, The Living Room

Episode 6, The Church

Episode 7, The Backyard

Pauline Oliveros, Stuart Dempster, remastered Deep Listening

 

Scores

Alvin Lucier, Chambers: Scores 1980

Pauline Oliveros, Sonic Mediations 1974

 

Extra readings

 

Philip Auslander, "Fluxus Art-Amusement: The Music of the Future?[revised and expanded version]," Contours of the Theatrical Avant-Garde: Performance and Textuality, ed. James Harding. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2000.

 

Kenneth Goldsmith, "Living in Television Time: an interview with Robert Ashley," New York Times, April 14-20, 1999.

 

Tyrus Miller, "The-Approach-of-the-End-of-the-World-Feeling: Allegory and Eschatology in the Operas of Robert Ashley," Ars Aeterna -Unfolding the Baroque: Cultures and Concepts 2/1 (2010): 40-51.

 

Extra listening:

 

Alvin Lucier, “Bird and Person Dyning" performed by Yvonne Harder, Sophiensaele Berlin 2009

 

Staged Perfect Lives at USC