Larry Austin at Eighty: A Fifty-Year Retrospective, Part I (review)

In celebration of composer Larry Austin’s 80th birthday, The Darm-stadt Festival and the Issue Project Room collaborated to present a program of his works. The concert featured Austin’s computer music compositions dating from 1982–2006, including virtuoso performances by double bassist Robert Black, saxophonist Steve Duke, tárogató performer Esther Lamneck, and flautist Jacqueline Martelle. The Issue Project Room’s nontraditional setting, fusing the industrial with the intimate, provided an ideal venue for Austin’s music. Eight loudspeakers surrounding the audience created a sonically immersive environment, and the space’s configuration allowed for detailed listening while maintaining an appropriate balance between the live instruments and the octophonic sounds. In addition to the outstanding concert, audiences visiting the foyer could view a newly released copy of Austin’s Source: Music of the Avant-Garde, 1966–1973. Co-edited with Douglas Kahn, the text collects Source Magazine’s original, provocative issues into a single repository. It was fitting that this new compilation received its first public viewing at Austin’s concert, as he was instrumental in Source Magazine’s development and evolution, and so much of his music reflects the experimentalism present within the book.

The program’s first piece, ¡Tárogató! (1998) for tárogató and octophonic computer music, was brilliantly performed by its commissioner, Esther Lamneck, whose compelling presence and flawless performance captivated the audience, setting the stage for the rest of the concert. The tárogató, a 19th-century Hungarian folk instrument (similar to a clarinet), was used primarily for dance and for rallying troops in battle. Austin’s ¡Tárogató! unifies these diverse worlds, blending the mystical and militaristic into an enveloping, evolving soundscape. Lamneck’s florid, melismatic tárogató lines soared through the Issue Project Room, evoking a sense of strength and conviction while revealing an underlying delicacy and fragility. The accompanying octophonic computer music bathed the audience in undulating, layered drones, always soothing even as the tárogató’s lines evolved into declamatory fanfares.

The boisterous climax of ¡Tárogató! found its foil in the ensuing piece, art is self-alteration is Cage is . . . (1982) for double bass and recorded bass ensemble. Austin describes this highly improvisational, aleatoric piece as a “uni-word omniostic, where all possible arrangements of the letters of one word (C A G E) appear adjacently, allowing one to spell the word, continually in sequence, following appropriate horizontal, vertical, and diagonal paths through the array of the word’s letters.” Bassist Robert Black’s meditative performance masterfully illustrated Austin’s homage to John Cage as he quietly and reflectively traced through the score, changing pitches intuitively when the directions instructed. Black’s contrabass harmonics blended perfectly with the tape, the two forces merging into a single entity wherein one was unable to distinguish the live contrabass from its virtual counterparts. On occasion, Black’s perfectly flowing, floating lines emerged from the texture as self-alterations, only to submerge again into the reflective sonic continuum.

Photo: Eric Somers.

Les Flûtes de Pan: Hommage à Debussy (2006) for flute/piccolo and octophonic computer music shifted the concert’s focus from internal alteration and singularity to external alteration and imitation, illustrating Austin’s historical proclivity along with interests in appropriation and transformation. Les Flûtes de Pan employs, as its source, sequences derived from Claude Debussy’s solo flute piece, Syrinx (1913). Austin quotes from and recomposes Debussy’s original materials to create florid, fluttering flute passages that float above an octophonic montage created by convolved versions of the same material. Commissioner Jacqueline Martelle’s ardent performance conjured images of the water nymph Syrinx fleeing from the clutches of Pan, with the octophonic material’s densely layered drones serving as a virtual “Greek Chorus,” abstractly foreshadowing and plaintively commenting on...