A truly mind-blowing deep dive into one of the most important works within the canon of 20th Century experimental music, stretching across 3 LPs and 2 CDs, as well as containing a 124-page book, Alvin Lucier's "I Am Sitting in a Room. Archival Recordings 1969–2019" on Sound On Paper Editions gathers 10 previously unavailable renderings of this astounding composition, created by the composer between 1969 and 2019. Illumining an unprecedented level of depth, nuance, and insight from a work that can never be the same thing twice, this stunning box set is issued in a limited edition of 500 hand-numbered copies and won't sit around for long. As highly recommended as they come!
Anthony Burr and Charles Curtis present this collection of curated compositions from Alvin Lucier and Morton Feldman. Two Lucier pieces, August Moon and Trio For Clarinet, Cello & Tuba are presented here for the first time. Liner notes are excerpted from a lecture on Morton Feldman given by Alvin Lucier.
astille musique presents its seventeenth release »Lucier & Bach: Sitting in a Room« featuring Hanna Herfurtner (soprano, voice), Clara Blessing (oboe), Joosten Ellée (violin), Linda Mantcheva (violoncello) and Elina Albach (harpsichord, organ). The album combines Alvin Lucier’s sound art piece I am sitting in a room with arias by Johann Sebastian Bach (from BWV 61, 1, 58, 199, 57, 36, 248, 68). Recorded in co-production with Deutschlandfunk, the set also includes a 48-page bilingual booklet (EN, DE) with articles by Thilo Braun, an interview with the singer and the producer, and the complete lyrics, as well as several photo leaflets of the composers and the performers.
Two conceptual compositions from Christoph Korn: the first, "Ich Spreche Diesen" (I appeal to this) where spoken word is placed in a loop and then slowly erased by custom software using aleatory procedures; then "Stille" (Silent), a Cage inspired work. The file sizes are not a mistake, as ridiculous as they may seem. Track 1 has many stretches of silence and track 2 is basically pure digital silence the whole way through. FLAC is not constant bit rate encoding so these files sizes are possible with very quiet / silent tracks that are still quite long.
A round or a canon is a musical form in which several voices or instruments perform the same material, but with staggered entries. For example, in a three-voice version of "Row, row, row your boat," some people don't get to sing the first line until others are singing "Gently down the stream," and others don't get to sing it until "Merrily, merrily, merrily, merrily." The last group to sing the opening line is the last to sing "Life is but a dream," and they sing it all by themselves. In a so-called mensuration canon, all of the voices end at the same time, which means that the later you enter the canon, the faster you have to sing – or the more you have to compress - to reach the end at the same time as everybody else. One might predict that as the canon approaches its end, its density increases arithmetically. And it does – with vertigo-producing results.
A short-lived but prodigiously gifted Genovese musician of the 17th century rediscovered. Better known now as the teacher of his nephew Simone Molinaro, one of the more important Italian composers of the post-Renaissance era, Giovanni Battista Dalla Gostena is worth knowing in his own right. Born early in the 1540s in Genova, he studied with the renowned Flemish polyphonist Philippe de Monte, composer to the Viennese court of Maximilian II, and he followed de Monte’s example by composing several volumes of sacred and secular vocal music during the 1570s and 80s before he was apparently murdered in 1593 (there are also records of a funeral Mass held for him five years later).