In this Book
- Chambers: Scores by Alvin Lucier
- Book
- 2012
- Published by: Wesleyan University Press
summary
Chambers is a virtually complete collection of composer Alvin Lucier's major works from 1965 to 1977, interspersed with twelve interviews with the composer by Douglas Simon. Each score is written in prose and may be read by musicians as instructions for performance or by general readers as descriptions of imaginary musical activities. In response to Simon's searching questions, Lucier expands on each composition, not only explaining its genesis and development but also revealing its importance to the vigorously experimental American tradition to which Alvin Lucier belongs.
Many of his compositions jolt conventional notions of the role of composer, performer, and listener, and the spaces in which they play and listen. His works are scored for an astonishing range of instruments: seashells, subway stations, toy crickets, sonar guns, violins, synthesizers, bird calls, and Bunsen burners. All are unique explorations of acoustic phenomena - echoes, brain waves, room resonances - and radically transform the idea of music as metaphor into that of music as physical fact.
Many of his compositions jolt conventional notions of the role of composer, performer, and listener, and the spaces in which they play and listen. His works are scored for an astonishing range of instruments: seashells, subway stations, toy crickets, sonar guns, violins, synthesizers, bird calls, and Bunsen burners. All are unique explorations of acoustic phenomena - echoes, brain waves, room resonances - and radically transform the idea of music as metaphor into that of music as physical fact.
Table of Contents
Download Full Book
- 1. Chambers
- pp. 1-14
- 2. Vespers
- pp. 15-27
- 3. "I Am Sitting in a Room"
- pp. 29-39
- 4. (Hartford) Memory Space
- pp. 41-52
- 5. Quasimodo the Great Lover
- pp. 53-65
- 6. Music for Solo Performer
- pp. 67-78
- 7. The Duke of York
- pp. 79-91
- 9. Gentle Fire
- pp. 109-125
- 11. Outlines and Bird and Person Dyning
- pp. 145-158
- 12. Music in a Long Thin Wire
- pp. 159-170
- Bibliography
- p. 171
Additional Information
ISBN
9780819573087
Related ISBN(s)
9780819550422
MARC Record
OCLC
815481744
Pages
190
Launched on MUSE
2012-12-20
Language
English
Open Access
No