If you think Morton Feldman is the king of spacious, painfully sparse textures, you haven’t met Alvin Lucier (b. 1931). His slowly unfolding soundscapes make Feldman seem like a speed demon by comparison. In 40 Rooms (1996) for quintet and digital reverberation system, single pitches gingerly protrude from a dark canvas of silence, up until about the eight minutes and 20 seconds mark, when the first chords appear. Letters (1992) consists of a violin, clarinet, and cello whose alternating slow sustained notes swim around each other while soft piano chords provide pulseless signposts. The piece ends abruptly, as if someone suddenly pulled out your CD player’s plug. Bar Lazy J (2003) for clarinet and trombone, and Fideliotrio (1987) for viola, cello, and piano showcase single pitches that move in glacial microtonal shifts. The remaining compositions follow similar principles, with help from electronic pure wave or closely tuned oscillators.
Like Mark Rothko’s bleak, late paintings, or Beckett’s most minimal stage works, Lucier’s single-minded, uncompromising aesthetic is borne out of extraordinary concentration and seriousness of purpose, and it demands these precise qualities from listeners. I find it best not to take in more than one or two pieces in one sitting, and to think of them as sculptures to observe rather than narratives that move in a tangible linear fashion. No doubt this music’s appeal always will be limited to highly specialized tastes and to listeners with patience and quiet time to spare. And I can’t pretend to love the oscillator pieces the way I absolutely adore Lucier’s riveting text masterpiece I Am Sitting In a Room (Lovely Music). Yet it must be said that Alvin Lucier usually manages to transform his conceptual and timbral aims into reality, with no loose ends or vagaries. That’s no mean feat for any composer. [10/20/2005]
