I am now ready to complete the promise I made this past Friday to account for five new recordings scheduled for release this coming Friday. The final release is an album devoted entirely to compositions by Alvin Lucier, who died on December 1, 2021. I first came to know Lucier during my student days, when he was teaching at Brandeis University and performing as a member of the Sonic Arts Group, which would later be known as the Sonic Arts Union.
As a composer, Lucier was primarily interested in the nature of sound itself and the role that sound contributes to the nature of what Martin Heidegger called “being-in-the-world.” (This is my own attempt at useful terminology. I never encountered any reference Lucier may have made to Heidegger!) One of the earliest of his pieces that I encountered involved the performers orienting themselves in darkness by drawing upon echo location. This involved devices that would simply click, requiring the performer to interpret any echo as an “orientation cue.”
Lucier’s best-known composition is probably “I Am Sitting in a Room,” in which he explored his own speech impediment. This involved reading a text which would then go through a series of re-recordings. His stammer would, from time to time, interrupt the fluency of his narration; and he designed the re-recording process, in his words, “as a way to smooth out any irregularities my speech might have.” One might say that this is a composition in which the devil was in the details; but, through the layers of multiple re-recording, that devil gradually transformed into an angel.
The title of the new album is Swing Bridge, which is also the title of the longest of the three tracks, situated in the middle of the sequence. It is the title of a work commissioned by the Australian Art Orchestra, completed in 2015 and scored for “organ, ensemble & pipe wavers.” The objective involved the exploration of natural harmonics, a rather challenging demand given the “acoustic rigidity” of most pipe organs.
Back cover of the album being discussed, showing the members of the Australian Art Orchestra performing with organist Austin Buckett (courtesy of Naxos of America)
The performance took place in the Melbourne Town Hall, which has its own “Grand Organ.” Fortunately, the city allowed this instrument to be manipulated according to the requirements of Lucier’s score. Those requirements included the removal of specific pipes, which were then relocated in three “offset chests,” each accommodating two pipes. Those six relocated pipes were then to be manipulated by three or more performers; and those performers were the “pipe wavers.” The result is that an instrument known for its rigid intonation was repurposed into one with a capacity for microtonality. Thus, as the performance progresses, the attentive listener becomes aware of sonorities that one might not expect from the usual pipe organ; and those sonorities are reinforced by the string players in the ensemble.
Those familiar with Lucier’s works will probably settle into the keen attention required to appreciate subtle shifts in those sonorities. Those encountering Lucier for the first time may well be perplexed, if not annoyed, by what he conceived as a listening experience. Since my own Lucier experiences now take in more than half a century, I have no trouble seeking out the subtleties and following them down the paths they lead. Those inclined to “standard” concert experiences are more likely to feel frustrated, if not annoyed.
Some of that frustration may be eased, however, by the tracks preceding and following “Swing Bridge.” These are two different performances of “Sizzles,” a composition for (to quote the full title) “organ, various drums & vibrating materials.” The music involves following a set of instructions, rather than the usual score notation. Lucier specified those instructions as follows:
Drums of various sizes are randomly placed throughout the performance space. Fine materials such as lentils, chickpeas, and candy hearts are sprinkled on the drumheads. As low organ tones are sounded, the skins of the drums vibrate sympathetically, causing the drums to sound and the material to move. Each drum is individually amplified with a contact or air microphone and a separate amplifier.
In other words, like most of Lucier’s other works, “Sizzles” is “about” how a diversity of sonorities emerge from a pre-determined physical setting. No two performances are (or should be) identical. Thus, having experienced both the “first version” of the opening track and the lengthier content of “Swing Bridge,” the attentive listener should be well prepared for the differences that emerge during the final track.
As has been the case with the previous four new recordings, Swing Bridge is available for pre-order from Amazon.com, whose Web page also includes a generously detailed account of the nature of the music being performed.
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