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Christopher Burns
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Interpreting Alvin Lucier: Process, Economy and Perception
While Alvin Lucier's music has occasionally addressed the minimalist concerns of repetition and drone, it doesn't participate in the pulsing rhythmic patterns which characterize the canonic minimalist works of Terry Riley, Steve Reich and and Philip Glass. However, if we expand our understanding of musical minimalism beyond its typical textural appearances (drone or repetitive pulsation) to encompass a constellation of phenomena involving process, economy and perception, then Lucier's compositions appear central. This essay will consider the relationships between Lucier and minimalist musical practices, and then use the context of minimalism and conceptual art to illuminate the decisions involved in the realization and performance of a particular Lucier work, Still and Moving Lines of Silence in Families of Hyperbolas .
Lucier and the Expanded Field of Minimalism
The composer-critic Tom Johnson suggests that his March 30, 1972 Village Voice review, "The Minimal Slow-Motion Approach: Alvin Lucier and Others," describing a concert of works by Stuart Marshall, Mary Lucier, and Alvin Lucier, may have marked the first critical use of the term "minimal" in relation to music.1 (It took some time for the descriptor to catch on: a week later, Johnson described Philip Glass's Music In Twelve Parts as "hypnotic music.") While Lucier's music is often considered apart from that of the minimalists, it was no accident that the term first surfaced in connection with him.
Lucier and Reich, in particular, are connected through Sol LeWitt and the minimal and conceptual visual art of the late 1960s. Reich's essay, "Music as a Gradual Process," was inspired by LeWitt's "Paragraphs on Conceptual Art," and LeWitt and Lucier have collaborated on recent installation projects. Both Reich and Lucier employ a process- or system-oriented approach to making music--an approach presaged by LeWitt:
...I think that basically what my art is about is not making choices. It's in making an initial choice of, say, a system, and letting the system do the work. Only when there's a contradiction or an impasse of some sort do I have to decide one thing or another. For instance, I have to make a decision on color. Well, I decided white because it was the least color I could think of.... I just try, have always tried, to let the content determine the form of the piece.2
For LeWitt, the concept of an artwork is a mechanism; once the mechanism is designed, it generates the specific details of the work, with the minimum possible additional intervention on the part of the artist. Many of LeWitt's pieces are sets of prose instructions for creating a drawing; any individual drawing is only one of many potential instantiations, and it is usually created by assistants, without LeWitt's participation.
Reich and Lucier both extend LeWitt's idea by conceiving of musical form as a gradual process: a mechanism that acts slowly and perceptibly to transform some initial material or to illuminate a particular concept. These excerpts from Reich's "Music as a Gradual Process" serve equally well as a description of Lucier's music:
The distinctive thing about musical processes is that they determine all the note-to-note (sound-to-sound) details and the over all form simultaneously.... I am interested in perceptible processes. I want to be able to hear the process happening throughout the sounding music.... Though I may have the pleasure of discovering musical processes and composing the musical material to run through them, once the process is set up and loaded it runs by itself.... What I'm interested in is a compositional process and a sounding music that are one and the same thing.3
Reich emphasizes his concern for mechanism, process and perceptibility in these passages; his interest in economy is implicit in the terse writing style. His preference for reduced, simple, or direct means is suggested by another quotation: "The use of hidden structural devices in music never appealed to me. Even when all the cards are on the table and everyone hears what is gradually happening... there are still enough mysteries to satisfy all."4 Lucier echoes the same idea in a later interview: "Even though I've pared down certain aspects of it, the complexity is still there because physical phenomena are always complex." 5
The process approach to form both pre- and post-dates minimalism. As Reich acknowledges, Stockhausen's serialism and Cage's indeterminacy were both engaged with ideas of process in the 1950s, and its contemporary manifestations are as various as the postminimalism of Julia Wolfe, the "new complexity" of Brian Ferneyhough, and the spectralism of Tristan Murail. However, minimalism is a crystallizing episode in this larger historical continuity of compositional technique--a moment when economy, process, and perceptibility are integrated.
An additional parallel between Lucier and the minimalists involves their reliance on contemporary technology. Reich's classic "phase" pieces (the period from Piano Phase to Drumming and Clapping Music , 1967-1972) were directly inspired by his earlier work with reel-to-reel recorders and tape loops ( It's Gonna Rain and Come Out ); his latest work (since Different Trains ) uses sampling to explore relationships between music and recorded speech. La Monte Young's Dream House installations depend upon an oscillator's ability to sound continuously for years. Terry Riley was an early exponent of portable keyboard synthesizers, and the textures of many of Philip Glass's pieces are dependent upon amplification. Similarly, Lucier's music can only be realized using the technological repertoire of the contemporary acoustician-- oscillators, tape recorders, microphones, and loudspeakers, as well as occasional forays into more exotic scientific equipment like electroencephalograms and biofeedback sensors.
Realizing Still and Moving Lines of Silence in Families of Hyperbolas
The first version of Alvin Lucier's Still and Moving Lines of Silence in Families of Hyperbolas (1973-74) is a vivid demonstration of the composer's reliance on technology to create specific acoustical effects. At its core, Still and Moving Lines of Silence is about the creation of hyperbolic patterns of sound and silence in the performance space. These patterns can appear as a static spatial phenomenon, when two loudspeakers project a single sine wave, or they can manifest as a moving phenomenon, if two sine waves, or a sine wave and a performer's pitch, are slightly out-of-tune with one another. In the latter case, a listener in a fixed position perceives a rhythmic effect, as regions of relative silence and sound pass by in succession. Since the effect is at least partially dependent upon the presence of "pure" sinusoidal waves, the piece is inconceivable without oscillators and loudspeakers.
Still and Moving Lines of Silence also represents the composer at his most conceptual. The piece suggests an enormous range of possible activities which might or might not be used in any specific realization, including performance by vocalists, instrumentalists, and dancers. A few excerpts from the score (written entirely in prose) illustrate this range:
Any number of dancers discover troughs of quiet sound....Play any number of sine tones, simultaneously in chords or clusters, or sequentially, through any configuration of loudspeakers. Any number of singers sing long pure tones....Play any number of brass and wind instruments.... Pluck any number of stringed instruments....Deploy any number of snare drums (metal snares) anywhere in space....Parts of this work may be performed singly or in any combination simultaneously, in any order.6
The instructions attempt to embrace any and all possibilities which support the concept of the work: the activation and mobilization of the hyperbolic patterns of sound and silence.
The challenge of this work lies in negotiating its abundance. Which of the possible activities should be used, in what combinations, and in what sequence? Because of the extremely open nature of the score, performers bear an enormous amount of responsibility for the meaningful presentation of the work. Both broad outlines of the performance and the specific details of the event are left to the performer for interpretation (if not composition). How best to make these decisions? Bearing in mind the contexts of minimalism, and Lucier's concern for process and economy, I would argue that perceptibility is the crucial issue. The patterns of sound and silence must be evident to the audience. All other interpretive decisions flow from that premise.
A discussion of realizations I made for performances of the work in California in 2002 and 2004 may help to illuminate the issue. Perhaps the most basic determination is the nature and number of different types of activities to include in the piece. I chose to pursue simplicity. The 2002 version used electronics alone (the only required element of the score). The 2004 version added four unattended snare drums, which tend to resonate or rattle when the crest of a moving sonic hyperbola crosses the drumhead. While the refusal of singers, instrumentalists, and dancers abandons the "happening"-style potential suggested in the score, it emphasizes the characteristic economy of Lucier's work. Versions for larger forces require each performer to commit to the "slow-motion minimalism" and the conceptual rigor of the piece. When Lucier made a version with renowned vocalist Joan La Barbara, economy was paramount: "one of the things we decided was that her voice should be inaudible; she should use it to move sounds, not to create them."7
My choice to present electronics (nearly) alone immediately suggested details about the electronic sound. The conceptual core of the work is the conveyance of the hyperbolic patterns of sound and silence to the audience. If the patterns are static, they are to be articulated visually through movement, or set in motion by instrumental or vocal performance. In the absence of such performance, the "moving lines of silence" are essential, as the only way to make the hyperbolas perceptible to a seated listener. The 2002 version of the work used six pairs of oscillators, with the two oscillators of each pair slightly detuned from one another to produce the mobile crests and troughs specified in the score: "Closely tune any number of oscillators, causing hyperbolas between loudspeakers to spin in elliptical patterns through space at speeds determined by the tunings and in directions toward the lower-pitched loudspeakers." I chose six oscillator pairs to correspond with the six unique combinations of loudspeakers possible with the quadraphonic sound sytem installed in the performance space.
The oscillator frequencies were selected to correspond with the lowest available modes of the room, excluding integer multiples of the very lowest resonances. Through testing, standing wave phenomena were located at six frequencies between 94 and 245 Hz. While all of these frequencies were eventually set in motion in performance through oscillator detuning, the choice of standing-wave frequencies responds in some way to the "still lines of silence" aspect of the work. The choice of frequencies is also a deliberate minimization of choice--letting the performance space determine the content of the work, rather than emphasizing the intuition or ideas of the performer. As with LeWitt's example, wherever possible, decisions are deferred to the compositional system, or additional systems are created that minimize further decision-making.
The 2004 performance used only two loudspeakers and five paired oscillators. As in 2002, the oscillator frequencies were determined by locating standing waves in the performance space, this time between 112 and 455 Hz. The primary difference in this version is that the tuning between the oscillator pairs changes over time. The tunings evolve according to sinusoidal shapes. Here again, the principle of economy is in effect: if you already have sinusoids in the piece, why add a second shape? It also forms a kind of metarhythmic idea--a periodic, predictable variation applied to the periodic, predictable beating of the detuned sine waves. The sinusoidal tuning changes also produce a phenomenon similar to the action of a singer's vibrato. The voice, and particularly the experience of working with Joan La Barbara, was clearly important to Lucier's conception of the piece:
With a singer it's particularly beautiful because it's a study in vibrato. Can you visualize a singer singing against an oscillator without vibrato, creating beating at certain speeds? Then if she adds vibrato, her frequency changing according to the speed of her vibrato, she creates an unstable situation. As her pitch goes up, the beating gets faster, and as her vibrato speeds up... well, you can see the complexity. 8
An additional difference is the presence of the four snare drums. While in some ways the drums complicate the situation (adding rattling noise and a more complex rhythmic element to the pure sounds of the sine wave oscillators), at the same time they help to clarify the basic principle of the moving hyperbolas. Lucier explains: "In one of the versions, I deploy four snare drums anywhere in the space so that as the crests spin by each drum, it vibrates. In that way, the audience can clearly hear the movement."9 The drums are a tangible demonstration of the way in which the crests and troughs of sound move through the performance space.
Both the 2002 and 2004 versions were designed as process forms, with the frequencies fading in one at a time, and fading out in the same order. This sort of direct process, which Lucier describes as "constant unidirectional action," is a formal shape he has favored since "I am sitting in a room" .10 At this point, one might wonder why a performer is necessary, since the precise timings and frequencies could be planned and programmed ahead of time, and then played back in performance. Part of the answer lies in the need to fit these versions to the particular performance spaces. More importantly, the performer serves as a model listener for the audience. Only when the current aspect of the sound becomes overly familiar should the performer add to or vary the situation. The performer's challenge is patience--doing as little as possible, as slowly as possible, in order to concentrate the audience's attention on the moment.
This approach to performance is not so much an act of refusal as it is an allegiance to economy. Lucier challenges the performer to create the content of the work, but not to do too much, just as he resist that which is too "composerly" or "poetic" in his own work. For instance, he has written that "scientific experiments have often given me ideas for pieces; sometimes I do little more than frame them in an artistic context."11 Lucier's work emphasizes the ethical responsibility that comes with freedom. A performer of Still and Moving Lines of Silence can do nearly anything, but in context, restraint is the most meaningful choice. As a composer, it's precisely the opportunity to engage with another artist's aesthetic that makes the realization process compelling--the constraint is far more interesting than the freedom.
For Lucier, economy goes hand in hand with perceptibility. The works aren't pared-down simply because of aesthetic preference; their lean aspect is strategic, in that it allows the audience to perceive and understand the acoustic phenomena involved. "It's an interest in the poetry of what we used to think of as science.... I seem to be a phenomenologist in some ways; I would rather discover new sound situations than invent new ways to put materials together."12 The situation needs to be clear and perceptible, beyond the threshold of an acoustical demonstration, but not so "composerly" as to obscure the basic phenomenon for the listener. The principles shared by Lucier and Reich--process, economy, and perceptibility--help the performer to navigate Still and Moving Lines of Silence in Families of Hyperbolas , and to reveal the minimalist conception behind the seeming abundance of the score.
Christopher Burns
March, 2007
Notes
1 Tom Johnson, "The Minimal Slow-Motion Approach: Alvin Lucier and Others" in The Voice of New Music , (Eindhoven: Het Apollohuis, 1989), 23.
2 Alexander Alberro and Patricia Norvell, editors, "Sol LeWitt," interview by Patricia Norvell, in Recording Conceptual Art (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2001), 114-115.
3 Steve Reich, "Music as a Gradual Process," in Writings About Music (Halifax: The Press of the Nova Scotia College of Art and Design, 1974), 9-10.
4 Ibid., p. 10.
5 Alvin Lucier, "Making audible that which is inaudible," interview by Douglas Simon, in Reflections / Reflexionen (Köln: MusikTexte, 1995), 170.
6 Alvin Lucier, "Still and Moving Lines of Silence in Families of Hyperbolas," in Reflections / Reflexionen (Köln: MusikTexte, 1995), 358-360.
7 Lucier, "Making audible that which is inaudible," 164.
8 Ibid., pp. 158-160.
9 Ibid., p. 158.
10 Alvin Lucier, "Origins of a Form: Acoustical Exploration, Science, and Incessancy," Leonardo Music Journal 8 (1998): 10.
11 Ibid., p. 8.
12 Alvin Lucier, "The Poetry of Science," interview by Douglas Simon, in Reflections / Reflexionen (Köln: MusikTexte, 1995), 194.
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