*Podcast with Alvin Lucier
<
http://rwm.macba.cat/en/sonia/alvin-lucier/capsula>*
Link:
http://rwm.macba.cat/en/sonia/alvin-lucier/capsula
A key figure in post-Cage experimental music, Lucier is one of a kind, a
composer who, as James Tenney says, makes his fellow musicians find
themselves “having to revise our basic (and often unconscious) assumptions
– our self-evident axioms about music.” Driven by a curiosity to understand
“how things work” (an innocent and unprejudiced curiosity that Tenney
compares to that of a child), Lucier always seems ready to disappear within
sound. It is as if his fascination with the sound phenomenon leads him to
avoid interfering in its manifestation. His work is thus by no means based
on self-expression or on compositional interventions. Instead, he allows
sounds to “be themselves” without pushing or directing them in any way.
In this podcasr, Alvin Lucier talks about the need to listen carefully, the
composers that have accompanied and influenced him over the years, and the
role of space and technology in his work, among many other things. Near the
end, he also explains some interesting facts about “I am Sitting in a
Room”, one if his best known and most enigmatic works.
*Background music: "Music on a Long Thin Wire 1", 1977*
*Timeline*
*00:00* Not just listening
*00:46* Revealing implicit sounds
*02:53* Let it happen: on "Music for Piano and Magnetic Strings"
*07:18* Transparency of sounds
*08:35* The question of space
*10:48* Music that happens in a loudspeaker
*13:16* Letting the players play
*14:59* "I'm Sittting in a Room"... live: something wonderful about real
time
*17:30* "All I wanted to do is to tell people what I was doing"
*Enjoy!*