Building Environmentally Attuned Communities: The Politics of Alvin Curran's Maritime Rites

Alvin Curran (1938–) has always spent time near bodies of water and this fact has arguably left a mark on his compositions from his important work Songs and Views of the Magnetic Garden (1975) for live performance and sounds of gentle water waves, which Curran recorded on tape, to his ongoing series Maritime Rites (ca. 1975–) for musicians in boats on bodies of water. This essay examines Curran's use of water as a compositional resource while also considering ideas such as music outside of the concert hall and building environmentally attuned communities.