ROVNER: Mr. Lucier, you are a composer with a very interesting, individual style of contemporary music, featuring a lot of new inventions with technology as well as a kind of conceptual style which often could be said to go beyond the level of music or expand the realm of music into new realms. Could you tell us about how you came up with this style, about how it evolved (such as some of your your first pieces like "Vespers" or "I am Sitting in a Room" from the late 60's)? How did this style come up, what were some of your influences in your youth? What people, who were active around that time, or any musical or extramusical concepts influenced your musical style?
LUCIER: After I got home from Rome, where I studied for two years on a Fulbright, I have been trying to find the kind of music that I could really call my own. I was not satisfied with the trends of contemporary music that I had heard in Europe. I was satisfied with it as music but I realized that these were not the directions in music which I could adhere to. I realized that if I would write music in some of those styles, such as the post-serial or other similar trends, I would be talking in a dialect, not in my own personal language. So, when I came home, I just waited and thought about different things - my mind was a blank because I was not doing any work on composition, for a while. Then, soon after that, I happened to have some fortunate accidents, which brought me to the realization of my personal style. It all began when I came into contact with a young man who was working for a company in Boston which was designing hand-held pulse-wave oscillators that made these sharp sounds that would go out into the environment and make echoes at time lags off of different materials - walls, celing, glass, metals, trees and so forth. This opened up a sound world for me which, while being electronic in a way, deviated from the usual electronic music, made in a studio, whose end result was on tape.
I was also influenced by the sonic experiments of John Cage as well as his colaboree David Tudor, who were doing wonderful concerts with their own home-made electronics, which freed them from having to belong to an institution. Usually, if you wanted to make electronic music you had to go to studios of an educational institution, such as, for instance, the studios of Princeton university. Such studios were very confined in their attitude towards contemporary music, and they were not open to everybody. If you made your own electronic music on home-made instruments, you were freed from dependence on the confining atmosphere of such institutions. That was what I started getting interested in.
As I was starting my new musical experiments with the new sound world, which I have recently discovered, I met Edmund Dewan, a scientist, who suggested for me to make a brain-wave piece and I followed his advice using Edmund Dewan's equipment. I was very much open to all sorts of new musical ideas, not yet having come up with any real new ideas of my own. When you are in that state you can really accept and absorb new ideas freely and utilize them in your own work. At that time, I started creating a series of works which used sounds in various acoustical environments. One of the pieces is called Chambers, which consists of putting sounds into various small objects and carrying them around through larger spaces. Another composition, which I wrote, was Vespers, in which players send sharp pulse-waves into a room, as a result of which the listener can hear the acoustics of the room in its various gradations. I created a series of works like that and that got me on that track.
ROVNER: It is always very interesting to observe the kind of contemporary music scene, that was going on at that time, since it is well-known that in the late 60's, there were many other American composers who were trying to find many different new and experimental trends in music. The composers of that musical trend of that time include John Cage, Christian Wolff, James Tenney and Daniel Goode, as well as many others. Who were some of the other musicians with whom you associated at that time and with whom you still associate among that generation?
LUCIER: Yes, it was very important for my musical development that I met Gordon Mumma and Bob Ashley, from Ann Arbor, Michigan at that time. They were involved in their own private electronic studio, which, in fact, was quite a public studio, since it was open to any young composers who were interested. Both Bob and Gordon were doing a new kind of music that I never, never heard before. Bob was working with elements of musical theater in his compositions in very imaginative ways, while Gordon was doing the most extraordinary electronic music with home-made equipment, designing his own equipment. I never reached the stage where I could really design my own electronic equipment, nevertheless associating with them was very inspiring to me. Together with Gordon, Bob and David Behrman, another composer who wrote electronic music, using his own equipment, we formed a group for experimental contemporary music, which we called the Sonic-Arts Union. We organized hundreds of concerts in the United States and Europe where we each would perform a work of our own. While we did not work as a group, we performed or own works individually, in addition to which, we each performed a work of each others on each concert - this created a very inspiring artistic setting.
ROVNER: This new music, since it involves a lot of new, interesting combinations of technology, cau-ses new problems and new challenges in terms of performance. Can you tell us a little bit about how do you meet these challenges in performance of your music especially when there are diffe-rent equipment used. It is especially interesting to hear how are some of your compositions, which many people know through recordings, such as "I am Sitting in a Room," are performed live. Also, could you tell something about your own career as a performer?
LUCIER: Some of my compositions are indeed problematical for performance. For example, my composition, which uses the echo locations devices with the oscillators, is very hard to perform because I own those devices and they are not manufactured any more. Nevertheless, in the score for that piece, I do suggest other ways of performing that composition. You can either design your own devices or use special toy tin devices which are pushed in so that they would make a clicking sound - either way is possible to perform that work. In I am, I have been performing my composition, I am Sitting in a Room, in live concerts, using a long tape loop. I spoke into a microphone recorder at the beginning of the loop, the loop went accross the room and the sound of my voice was played back through the other recorder. I have performed this work on several occasions. Since this score, similarly to many of the scores of many of my other works, is a set of instructions written in English prose, without any notated music, I have suggested in the score several diferent ways to perform the work. I think of these works, which consist of prose texts, as "open form," since they are subject to many different ways of performances and not merely one way.
Recently I have written a number of works for solo musical instruments, such as piano, clarinet, flute or voice, accompanied by sine-waves; the latter are recorded on DAT tape and the recording is played into the performance space with the performer playing his or her own solo part against that tape. Unlike the works mentioned earlier, the scores of these solo works are more or less conventionally written. In general, some of my works are hard to perform, because they do require special equipment, while other works, which require more commonplace equipment or do not require any equipment at all, do not pose such problems for performance. I have recently written an orchestral piece that does not use any electronic equipment at all as well as a quartet for strings, which is likewise purely acoustical, and the latter work has had many performances. So my attitude about those things is quite broad.
I infrequently perform some of my own works in concerts. For example, there is one work which I have performed, called Bird and Person Dyning, which is a piece with an electronic bird call and a pair of microphones that I wear on my ears. In the performance I walk through the performance space with the microphones on my ears, creating feedback, which alters itself depending where I am in reference to the speakers; the strands of feedback interfere with the sound of the bird calls, creating combination tones, which seem to locate themselves in space. To my knowledge, I have been the only one who has performed that piece, however, if anyone else wants to perform it, all that is needed is the score for that piece and a recording of the bird-call, of the latter I can make a tape for a performance. I have also performed my work for piano and sine-waves on DAT tape. Occasionally I perform in certain works of mine, though, most of the time, I oversee or supervise performances of most of my works, when I am there to do it.
ROVNER: You have a book published, entitled "Chambers," which has a number of your prose scores and interviews with you. The works of yours, published in the book, do not involve any written music, but contain texts, which are verbal instructions on how to perform each of the works. You have also a composition, named "Chambers," which is one of the works contained in the book. Can you tell a little bit more about this book and when was it published and which of your scores are in it?
LUCIER: This book with my scores and interviews with a former student of mine, Douglas Simon, was first published by Wesleyan Press in 1980. It is, by now, out of print, however it has been subsumed in another book entitled "Reflections/Reflexionen." The book, as well as its title, is bilingual and contains everything which has been in "Chambers:" twelve interviews with Mr. Simon and fourteen prose scores, including Chambers, Vespers, I am Sitting in a Room, the brain-wave piece Music for Solo Performer, Music on a Long Thin Wire, and other pieces. In addition, the book has been greatly expanded with the inclusion of additional material. It also contains interviews with William Duckworth, composer James Tenney, and three interviews with Daniel Wolff, as well as a number of other of my scores and selected writings of mine, including an article written by me for the Musical Quarterly, and other articles for various other publications. It also has some diagrams for some of my compositions and some excerpts from my more conventionally written scores as well as a list of my compositions.
ROVNER: Can you tell us about your experiences in electronic music or your connections with electronic music? It is known that many of your works involve new technology. At the same time, most of your compositions, which are more well-known, could not really be called pure electronic music, because they involve synthesis of electronically processed sounds with live sounds or with sounds created by different technological instruments or effects. Do you have any compositions involving pure electronic or computer music? If not, then is there a big connection with electronic music in your music? How much electronic equipment do you use in your compositions in general?
LUCIER: I do not involve myself much with electronic music. The expression, "new technology," should be applied in very relative terms in the case of my music. I use rather basic technical equipment, which is most often used as test equipment - simple sine-wave oscillators or pulse-wave oscillators, that I use in acoustical testing. I use this material to obtain certain new sonic and acoustic effects, not being very interested in the fact that they are electronically generated. In my compositions, which make use of pure waves I have an engineer who records the pure waves for me. I design the form of the waves, which then they sweep up and down for a certain sonic range, and then I bring in musical instruments which play against them. The only reason I use pure waves is that they are pure and do not have overtones, therefore the acoustical phenomen, including audible beating, interference patterns and the way the sounds react in space, become much more obvious. It is not possible to obtain that effect with an ordinary orchestral instrument, such as a violin, since the latter has a such an intersting and complex sound of timbres. You can say that I do use electronic equipment but in a very minimal way. For my composition, which uses the brain-waves, I simply used a brain-wave amplifier that enormously amplified the alpha signal in my brain. So you could say that I am really not an electronic composer in that sense, though I use experimental equipment and concepts to expand the world of new sounds in contemporary music.
ROVNER: Since you have been teaching at Wesleyan College since 1970, you have taught electronic music and experimental music. Can you tell about your activities as a professor at Wesleyan College, how do you teach your students there and how does your activity of teaching electronic music relate directly or indirectly to your own composing.
LUCIER: I started my teaching career at Wesleyan College, by teaching electronic music, since there was nobody else at the time to do it, then I switched to teaching experimental music, which I have been doing since then. I have been writing a series of compositions for my students, which they have performed as part of their classes. Recently I composed a piece, entitled "Opera with Objects," in which the students tap on different objects that they find, exploring the timbre resonance of those objects. I also composed a piece called "I Remember," where the students sing into milk bottles, tin cans and similar objects, searching for the resonant frequencies of those objects. I wrote a quartet for four students who comprised a string quartet, in which they explore different interference patterns, which you can create with string instruments by de-tuning. We also performed a piece of Christian Wolff's which incorporates stones - the students went out and gathered stones, after which I came in and we performed this composition with the stones.
In general, I am much more interested in these sonic experiments with non-musical objects, than I am in the latest electronic programs. So in a certain sense I have an anti-technological approach in music, though I am not really against new technology, but I find it much more effective and fruitful to create musical experiments with the simplest and most basic objects, including objects found in nature, to expand their perception of sound and music - this is what I teach my students and let them carry out such experiments in my classes.
ROVNER: You have a reputation not only in the United States as a composer but also in many European countries. Can you tell us about whether you have pieces performed in Europe very often, do you go to Europe often to do concerts there and how are you received there?
LUCIER: My compositions are often performed in Europe and I, myself often go to Europe. Between September and November of 1997, I have been to Europe four times. I have been to Germany and Russia. Very often I perform my compositions in concerts in Europe. In addition, these new works of mine for solo instruments and purewaves, which I have told you about, are starting to receive more and more performances in Europe by other musicians. A wonderful clarinetist in Germany, named Jorg Frei, has just recorded my piece for sinewaves and clarinet on compact disc. There is a young group of German and Swiss younger composers who seem to be more on the wavelength that I am than they are on the wavelenth of traditional European music. I have been writing a great deal more purely instrumental music, without any installed effects and the more I write these acoustical pieces, the more they get played. My string quartet, which I wrote for the Arditti Quartet, was performed by them six or eight times in Europe in the last two years. After many years of working with new equipment in my music, I am now taking on, to a greater extent, the activities of an old-fashioned composer, who writes something and then it gets played in various places, without him necessarily always being at every performance.
ROVNER: I have heard many of your pieces from the late 60's and the early 70's, many of which have become famous, like "Music on a Long Thin Wire," "I am Sitting in a Room," "Vespers," "Music for Solo Performer" and it would be interesting for us to hear about some of the pieces, which you have written lately, in the 1990's, whether they follow the same tradition of your well-known pieces, or are they totally different. Do you have any projects as far as composing any new works in the near-future?
LUCIER: I just composed a work for the Donau Eschingen Festival which was an installed work. I have two different kinds of compositions - I do performance pieces and I do installed works; in the latter I create sounds using equipment or prose directions, and then I organize a performance of the resulting installed piece in a public space, such as a concert hall or an art gallery. The work, which I have just composed for the Donau Eschingen Festival, is called "Empty Vessels." I had eight glass water containers, that I bought at Pierpont Imports which I've used as bases for the composition. I mounted them on a stage in a little space and I put a microphone in each one - all the microphones are rooted through amplifiers to speakers. Then I raised the volume in the amplifier, which creates feedback, in such a way that each strand of feedback corresponds to the size of the empty vessel that the microphone is in. As a result, there are eight separate pitches and the feedback from the microphones, so when you walk into that room, not only do you hear the eight separate pitches, but the presence of your body interferes with the feedback and that moves the sounds around and changes the sounds, distorting them in many different ways. Sometimes it can almost stop the sounds in a vessel. I have just finished that work a few months ago so that is one of my latest compositions. I can imagine doing a performance version of that piece where there would be a dancer or a number of dancers, that could rock through the room in a certain pattern causing the sounds to change.
ROVNER: You mentioned a few compositions, which you have been writing lately, which are purely acoustic, written for conventional orchestral instruments and do not use any installations, new technical devices or conceptual prose instructions. You mentioned a string quartet, which you have written for the Arditti String Quartet, among your other compositions. In these acoustical pieces do you follow the same tradition of your more well-known installed compositions or are they written in a completely different style? Can you tell us about this string Quartet in greater detail?
LUCIER: My purely instrumental compositions generally follow the tradition of my installed pieces, in that they explore unusual acoustical phenomena and work on developing a new sound-world, as my installed pieces do. There is no deviation from my usual compositional principles in these acoustical pieces - I merely use orchestral instruments as sound sources in a similar way as I have used pure-wave oscillators in my installed works. The String Quartet that I was referring to, is the "Navigations for Strings,"a quartet I wrote for the Arditti String Quartet based in London. It is purely acoustic without any installed technical devices. Over a 15-minute time span, the players squeeze the interval of a minor third into a unison by gradually micro-tuning extremely small intervals, some of which are too small to be heard. The intention to do so is important - audible beating results which is fairly vivid, not quite so much so as with sine waves. The work is similar to my other works in that a physical phenomenon is explored. The beats are the thing. All other aspects, including melody, rhythm, and others, are reduced so that the audience can focus on the beating and related phenomena.
ROVNER: Can you tell us what composers in Europe and the United States who are living and working now you are most friendly with and whose music you like the most or find the most affinity in or the most amount of closeness to your own?
LUCIER: There are several composers like that. There are two younger American composers, whose work I admire. The name of one of them is Ron Kuivila, who is a colleague of mine (although I do not mention him just because he is my colleague).. He does beautiful work with computers, micro-computers and sound installations. The second composer that I have in mine is Nicholas Collins - he lived in Amsterdam for a few years, now he lives in Germany. He makes wonderful home-made electronic pieces with instruments, such as, for instance, trombones, that are modified to drive micro-computers and things of that kind. In Berlin there is a composer named Walter Zimmermann, who is a professor at the Berlin Hochschule, and whose music seems to have the spirit of American experimental music. Recently I heard a composition by a Dutch composer and pianist, living in Germany, Anton Beuger, who had a beautiful orchestral work performed at the Donau Eschingen Festival. There's also a wonderful composer in Berlin, named Peter Ablinger, and a sound artist named Rolv Julius who makes exquisite sound pieces that he installs in various spaces - I am interested in those people's work. Of course I love the music of LaMonte Young, Christian Wolff, Bob Ashley, David Behrman, Gordon Mumma and composers of that kind.
