Chambers: Scores by Alvin Lucier

188 Pages·1980·5.399 MB·English

by  Alvin Lucier, Douglas Simon

CHAMBERS
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CHAMBERS
Scores by ALVIN LUCIER
Interviews with the composer
by DOUGLAS SIMON
Wesleyan University Press
Middletown, Connecticut
Scores copyright © 1980 by Alvin Lucier
Interviews copyright © 1980 by Alvin Lucier and Douglas Simon
Several of these scores and interviews have appeared in similar or
different form in Arts in Society; Big Deal; The Painted Bride Quar-
terly; Parachute; Pieces 3; The Something Else Yearbook; Source
Magazine; and Individuals: Post-Movement Art in America, edited
by Alan Sondheim (New York: E.P. Dutton, 1977).
Typography by Jill Kroesen
The authors gratefully acknowledge the support of a Wesleyan
University Project Grant.
Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data
Lucier, Alvin.
[Works. Selections]
Chambers.
Concrete music.
Bibliography: p.
Includes index.
1. Concrete music. 2. Chance compositions.
3. Lucier, Alvin. 4. Composers—United States-
Interviews. I. Simon, Douglas, 1947- II. Title.
M1470.L72S5 789.9'8 79-24870
ISBN 0-8195-5042-6
Distributed by Columbia University Press
136 South Broadway, Irvington, N.Y.
Printed in the United States of America
First edition
For Ellen Parry and Wendy Stokes
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CONTENTS
Preface ix
1. Chambers 1
2. Vespers 15
3. "I Am Sitting in a Room" 29
4. (Hartford) Memory Space 41
5. Quasimodo the Great Lover 53
6. Music for Solo Performer 67
7. The Duke of York 79
8. The Queen of the South and Tyndall Orchestrations 93
9. Gentle Fire 109
10. Still and Moving Lines of Silence in Families
of Hyperbolas 127
11. Outlines and Bird and Person Dyning 145
12. Music in a Long Thin Wire 159
Bibliography 171
Index 173
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PREFACE
I first met Alvin Lucier in 1968 when he came to Wesleyan University,
where I was an undergraduate, to offer a course in new music. He
was still teaching at Brandeis University then and traveled to Middle-
town, Connecticut, once a week from Waltham, Massachusetts. It
was an exciting class that had a strong influence on my own ideas,
and when I chose a subject for an honors thesis in 1969, I decided to
write on Alvin's work.
At that time, I was most familiar with his piece Chambers. I had
watched it taking shape in 1968 and had helped perform it more
than once by the time I began my project, so it seemed a good can-
didate for my choice of subject matter. A major portion of the thesis
was to be devoted to a careful, objective description of a single per-
formance of Chambers at the Museum of Modern Art in New York,
in which I had performed, and I felt I needed a block of personal
information from Alvin to balance that. If the description of the
piece were to be of a specific performance, the idea of a specific
conversation, an interview, seemed a promising parallel. And so
it was.
In December of 1968, we sat in the greenroom of the Slosberg Music
Center at Brandeis, a very resonant, intimate space, and talked with
each other. I have a clear memory of the effort involved in making
oneself understood with a tape recorder running, but Alvin and I
were both pleased with the results.
When we examined the transcription, we found more to please us.
Alvin felt his ideas were stimulated and organized by the questions
and enjoyed seeing his thoughts on paper. I appreciated that, and
also found that his observations and, perhaps more importantly, his
ix