Alvin Lucier

Alvin Lucier (14 May 1931 - 1 December 2021) was an American composer of experimental music and sound installations that explored acoustic phenomena and auditory perception. A long-time music professor at Wesleyan University, Lucier was a member of the influential Sonic Arts Union, which included Robert Ashley, David Behrman, and Gordon Mumma. Much of his work was influenced by science and explored the physical properties of sound itself: resonance of spaces, phase interference between closely tuned pitches, and the transmission of sound through physical media.

Works

• Chambers: Scores by Alvin Lucier. Interviews with the composer by Douglas Simon, Wesleyan University Press, 1980, 177 pp.
• Reflections: Interviews, Scores, Writings / Reflexionen. Interviews, Notationen, Texte, MusikTexte, 1995, 544 pp. [1] (English)/(German)

Catalogues

• Matrix 79, Wadsworth Atheneum, 1984.

Writings

• "Homage to James Tenney Double Bass and Pure Wave Oscillator (Written for Roy Wiseman)", Perspectives of New Music 25:1/2, Winter-Summer 1987, pp 521-527.
• "Origins of a Form: Acoustical Exploration, Science and Incessancy", Leonardo Music Journal 8: "Ghosts and Monsters: Technology and Personality in Contemporary Music", MIT Press, 1998, pp 5-11.
• "On Stuart Marshall: Composer, Video Artist and Filmmaker, 1949-1993", Leonardo Music Journal 11: "Not Necessarily 'English Music': Britain's Second Golden Age", MIT Press, 2001, pp 51-52.
• Music 109: Notes on Experimental Music, forew. Robert Ashley, Middletown, CT: Wesleyan University Press, 2012, xi+215 pp.
• editor, Eight Lectures on Experimental Music, Middletown, CT: Wesleyan University Press, 2017, xi+144 pp.
• more

Interviews

• John Douglas Simon, "Vespers: An Interview with Alvin Lucier", Arts in Society: The Communications Explosion, ed. Edward Kamarck, Summer-Fall 1972, pp 276-285.
• "Klang sehen. Douglas Simon im Gespräch mit Alvin Lucier", in Katalog Wien Modern 2001, eds. Berno Odo Polzer and Thomas Schäfer, Saarbrücken: Pfau, 2001, pp 111-115. (German)
• Walter Zimmermann, Interview with Lucier, n.d.

Literature

• Nicolas Collins, "Alvin Lucier: I am sitting in a room", 1990.
• Douglas Kahn, "Alvin Lucier: I Am Sitting in a Room, Immersed and Propagated", Oase 78: "Immersed. Sound and Architecture", 2009, pp 24-30.
  • "Alvin Lucier: Ik zit in een kamer, ondergedompeld en voortgeplant", Oase 78, 2009, pp 25-29. (Dutch)
• Nicolas Collins, "Epiphanies", The Wire 312, Feb 2010.
• Everything is Real: Alvin Lucier in Den Haag, eds. Anne Wellmer, Janet Leyton-Grant, and Hicham Khalidi, The Hague: TAG Publishing, 2010, 63 pp.
• Alvin Lucier: A Celebration, intro. Michael S. Roth, Wesleyan University Press, 2011, 48 pp, EPUB. Essays by Nicolas Collins and Ronald Kuivila and an interview with Andrea Miller-Keller and Alvin Lucier.
• Douglas Kahn, "Birds: Memories and Meditations on Alvin Lucier", Disclaimer, 2021.

Links

• http://www.wesleyan.edu/cfa/lucier.html
• http://www.alvin-lucier-film.com
• http://rwm.macba.cat/en/sonia/alvin-lucier/capsula
• ARG
• Wikipedia