By Matthieu Saladin

Alvin Lucier was a North American composer of experimental music whose life work was the exploration of sound phenomena. Where many composers limited themselves to modelling material to fit with the requirements of the piece they were writing, Lucier seemed to prefer to exhibit acoustic properties as themselves, showcasing them earnestly in ways that allowed listeners to experience them anew. Starting with Music for Solo Performer, (1965), Lucier’s goal was not to show off the performer’s virtuosity, or the ingeniousness of a piece’s logical permutations, or any kind of compositional complexity. Instead, he sought to leave sounds for and to themselves. From here, the role of the musician appeared almost secondary. The musician sketched out something resembling a sidestep, pulling back with regard to the sound phenomena he or she was activating, so that all auditory attention could be focused on them.

In this regard, Lucier may be identified as a direct heir of John Cage, whose experimental approach requires the composer become a listener before all things, abandoning their own tastes and habits to “let the sounds be themselves¹”. Lucier reformulated this principle in his own singular manner, setting it on the path to phenomenal transformation: for him, the point was not to thwart preconceived aesthetic notions by opening himself or listeners up to sonic multiplicity, but rather to narrow the focus onto the activity of sounds themselves, from their propagation to the multiple interactions inherent in that propagation. As James Tenney, once remarked, Lucier in this respect belonged to the relatively small category of composers “whose work is so compelling and yet so different from that of both his peers and his predecessors that we find ourselves having to revise our basic (and often unconscious) assumptions – our ‘self-evident axioms’ – about music²”.

Listening to phenomena

The first work to show this kind of close attention was none other than Music for Solo Performer, subtitled “for enormously amplified brain waves and percussion”. As Lucier emphasized, the piece represented a real turning point in his work³. Following his return from Italy in 1962, where he had travelled on a Fulbright scholarship to complete his studies, the young musician experienced a fallow period as a composer. He no longer felt connected to the neo-classical music that had been the focus of his studies; nor did he find inspiration in the post-serialist music he had encountered at Darmstadt. While working as the director of Brandeis University’s Chamber Chorus, he met physicist and United States Air Force officer Edmond Dewan, who proposed that he experiment with musical uses for electrode equipment that captured brainwaves. Lucier was fascinated by the idea of generating alpha waves, which have a frequency between 8 and 13 Hz and which appear only when a subject is relaxed, with their eyes closed. While inaudible to the human ear, these waves were nevertheless a living phenomenon of vibration that Lucier was interested in making audible as such. Anticipating the method that would guide him throughout his career as a composer, Lucier refused to transpose the wavelengths to make them audible, or to make a tape piece that would allow him to circumvent their erratic nature: “I had to learn to give up performing to make the performance happen⁴”. In the manner of analog sonification, the composer designed a system that restituted the phenomena of alpha wave production in its very fragility, by considerably amplifying these capricious waves such that they could cause various resonant instruments (snare drum, gong, kettledrum, etc.), arranged on a stage with no musicians, to vibrate.

His research on whistlers, begun in 1966, was a natural next step. These sounds are caused by the propagation of waves produced by electromagnetic storms in the ionosphere traveling from one hemisphere to another and back, and although they are not a mechanical wave phenomenon, they are nevertheless audible to the human ear. A first piece, titled simply Whistlers, was tested in 1967, and consisted in playing an electronic processing of a recording of these waves published by Cook Laboratories. Unsatisfied with merely using a fixed representation of this phenomenon, Lucier soon began looking for a way to create a performance that picked up and broadcast the frequencies live. After several fruitless attempts, he abandoned the project, returning to it many years later in a new form, with Sferics (1981). This new work in this arena expanded to the entire range of naturally produced radio waves propagating in the ionosphere, and, among other projects, included an outdoor sound installation in New Mexico in 1984, where patient listeners could hear electromagnetic waves live via a panel of antennae.

Lucier’s research into natural phenomena narrowed in the 1970s to strictly acoustic ones. In Still and Moving Lines of Silence in Families of Hyperbolas (1973-1974; 1984), the composer explored stationary waves and their propagation in hyperbolic curves. Sine waves played over loudspeakers allowed Lucier to sketch out a sonic geography of fixed waves within the performance space. A first version of the piece involved dancers, whose movements followed the knots of “silence” of these fixed waves, using them “as a kind of guidance system⁵” which they followed through the space; musicians could inflect the wave propagation – Lucier described this as making them “spin” – by playing notes close to or in unison with the electronic frequencies, in this way gently disrupting the spatial arrangements of the initial sonic landscape. Not entirely pleased with the improvisational nature of the instrumental parts, the composer returned to the piece in 1980 and wrote a series of solos. The beating produced by the simultaneous propagation of proximate frequencies – the ones played by the instrument and the oscillator – which recurs in later pieces, as well, emerges all the more clearly here because the musicians are instructed to scan the minute possibilities for variation in the oscillation⁶. In Outlines of Persons and Things (1975) for microphones, loudspeakers, and electronic sounds, the phenomenon being “studied” is diffraction, or the way that sound waves bend when they encounter an obstacle. In the piece, a group of waves whose length is determined by the size of the objects (in the first version, for example, one of them was a canoe) and the people participating in the performance is played over a set of loudspeakers. In this way, Lucier draws the sonic outlines of these persons and things. At the same time, the score allows the performers to slowly move around during the piece, creating what appear to be sound shadows caused by the shifts in diffraction, while directional microphones linked to a second system of amplified loudspeakers help the audience to pick up these contours as they listen.

Exploring the spatial nature of sound

For Lucier, focusing his writing on pieces that explored the specifics of particular acoustic phenomena implied considering the spatial nature of sound as a starting point. This stands apart from other work on spatializing sound sources pursued by certain contingents of the avant-garde starting in the 1950s. The goal here was not to work on the arrangement or the distribution of sonic masses but rather to explore the propagative qualities of the waves themselves, to traverse the length and amplitude of their spatiality. As Lucier explained in an interview with Douglas Simon, “Thinking of sounds as measurable wavelengths, instead of as high or low musical notes, has changed my whole idea of music from a metaphor to a fact and, in a real way, has connected me to architecture⁷”. This interest in spaces’ resonance was already evident in pieces such as Shelter (1967) or Chambers (1968), but it was in Vespers (1968) that the composer first really settled into examining fully the acoustics of the actual place in which a performance was held. Based in the phenomenon of the echo, the composition invites the performers, who are blindfolded, to move through space using only a portable echolocation device. The instruments produce directional clicks whose echoes vary depending on the surfaces they encounter, as well as on the position of the performers; the way their patterns layer over the space and any objects within it is what informs the performer of the space’s configuration. While the score gives some instructions for setup, the real score is the space itself, a space one must crisscross patiently with one’s ears in order to experience every detail of its acoustic peculiarities⁸. The use of an extra-musical technical device as the only instrument is also significant. Similar to oscillators, which he frequently employed in his work, Lucier’s use of scientific tools is a way of stripping away all aesthetic considerations in an attempt to isolate and then not interfere with the observed acoustic phenomenon.

Listening to a sound’s spatial qualities is expressed in Lucier’s work in conjunction with his consideration of the sonic properties of propagation spaces; in other words, their acoustic signature. In this regard, “I am sitting in a room” (1970), which is probably Lucier’s best known piece, is exemplary. The process-based piece uses the principle of repeated reinjection of sound into the same space: the recording of a source text, which serves as a protocol, is immediately played into the space, where it is recorded again, immediately replayed into the same room, and so on. As the process continues, the resonance frequencies of the space shared by the voice of the narrator are reinforced. The meaning of the text grows gradually less intelligible as the speaking voice slowly becomes a drone, magnifying the acoustics of the architecture, in which only the rhythmic cadence of the original speech seems to remain. As Lucier wrote, “The space acts as a filter. We discover that each room has its own set of resonant frequencies in the same way that musical sounds have overtones⁹”. The text of the score nevertheless specifies that the work should not be a reduction to the demonstration of scientific fact; rather, its goal was rather to “smooth out” the composer’s stutter. This note underlines the extent to which the work is ultimately less about listening to the resonance frequencies of a given architecture than it is about the relationship between subject and space; in other words, the renewal of the attention likely paid by people to the places they live, and, in return, the influence their surroundings have on people’s individuation. This same impulse, in a different way, is also what lies at the heart of (Hartford) Memory Space (1970). Here, the performers explore the surroundings of the venue before the performance, taking in the sound environment using various tools (notes, recordings, memory) and then attempt to reproduce that environment on stage, using their instruments, once the concert begins.

The introspection of a space through listening can be found again in Bird and Person Dyning (1975). An electronic bird placed in the performance space intermittently emits high chirping sounds, while the performer, equipped with a binaural microphone linked to a stereo system set to create feedback, moves around slowly, seeking out acoustic phantoms of the mechanical bird – in reality, the heterodyne frequencies created when the birdsong collides with the feedback. As the score specifies, the piece seeks to “map the acoustic characteristics of the space […]¹⁰”. But the relationship to space here is envisioned dynamically, as the performer wanders through it following the reconfigurations produced by their own mobile and device-equipped listening.

In the 1970s, his work on space sparked an interest in sound installations, although he never made much of the different artistic categories into which his pieces ought to have fit¹¹. Pythagoras’ experimentation with a monochord inspired Lucier’s first installation, Music on a Long Thin Wire (1977), in which a long cable is stretched across a space between two bridges, and seems to vibrate on its own. Each of its ends is plugged into the loudspeaker terminal of an amplifier connected to a sine wave oscillator, and a magnet straddles the wire on one end. The interaction between the current running through the cable and the magnetic field of the magnet causes the cable to vibrate, and this vibration is picked up by contact microphones affixed to wooden bridges under the wire, and sent through a playback system. Independent of any musician’s intervention, the drone produced by the vibrating cable is propagated, evolving slowly and subtly as small differences in temperature or air currents in the space change the tension in the wire, and thus transform the sound.

Writing beats

During the first period of his career as a composer (1965-82), Lucier mainly used the tools of live electronic music, showing a marked preference for devices employed in scientific laboratories over classical instruments (thus, oscillators and amplifiers tended to be found alongside magnets, electrodes, sonars, and even Bunsen burners). By the early 1980s, however, he was beginning to explore instrumental writing more seriously. Over time, it would become central to his work. Crossings (1982-84), for small orchestra and slow sweep pure wave oscillator, marks the beginning of this new period. In the work, the oscillator sweeps the frequency range of the orchestra, in one slow upward and continuous movement. In this work, the oscillator sweeps the frequency range of the orchestra, from low to high, while the different instruments intervene when the sine wave crosses their own range. This creates audible beats, which slow down or accelerate as the rising frequency of the oscillator approaches or moves away from the notes played in unison by each instrument. As Lucier observed, the purpose of these interferences is not ornamental: they are mobilized from a “functional” and “structural” perspective in order to make it possible to hear the phenomenon the work seeks to stage¹². Here, and in the wake of Still and Moving Lines of Silence in Families of Hyperbolas, the focus of the piece is the beating produced by the simultaneous playing of two adjacent frequencies of similar intensity – periodic modulation, in other words. However, as he underlines in his piece for clarinet and oscillator In Memoriam Jon Higgins (1984), composed according to the same principle (here, the sine wave sweeps the range of a clarinet in A), this beating should be listened to not for the rhythm produced by the modulation but for its spatial dimension¹³. From this perspective, and in line with his early pieces, Lucier’s instrumental writing, as it developed starting in the 1980s, was still exploring the perception of sound spatiality. In an introduction to his article “The Propagation of Sound in Space” (1979), the composer, referring to the Western musical tradition his work was seeking to escape, wrote, “We have been so concerned with language that we have forgotten how sound flows through space and occupies it¹⁴”.

While many of Lucier’s pieces centered on beating involved the use of an oscillator, some used instruments or groups of instruments capable of producing a glissando of frequencies. In Fidelio Trio (1987), for viola, cello, and piano, which was the composer’s first venture into music without electronics, the strings act as the oscillators. Starting by playing in unison, the viola and the cello slowly move away from each other, continually varying their respective glissandos between a G-sharp at 208 Hz and a B-flat at 233 Hz, occasionally coinciding with each other, as the piano plays a single A at 220 Hz at irregular intervals. Beating is naturally produced as these sounds collide, but the absence of electronics inevitably makes it less distinct. Here, it is not so much the clear-cut modulation that is highlighted for the listener, but rather the change in timbres in each instrument that arises from this phenomenon.

Lucier’s research into the acoustic qualities of different instruments also led him to experiment with phenomena other than beating. For example, in Silver Streetcar for the Orchestra (1988), for amplified triangle, the performer patiently explores the instrument’s resonance. Gripping the triangle more or less tightly between the thumb and forefinger, the musician uses their other hand to strike the instrument at regular intervals, varying the speed and force of the gesture slightly from time to time, progressively revealing the different acoustic qualities of the bent metal rod. As is often the case, in pieces such as this one, microphones placed at very close distances from the instrument serve to amplify and magnify the sound, allowing the listener to perceive the phenomena displayed in the performance more sharply than would be possible without them. Listening to the tiny variations arising from the resonance of a given object in this way continues the experiment undertaken in Music for Pure Waves, Bass Drums and Acoustic Pendulums (1980). The piece is as much a sound installation as it is a performance piece. In it, a single sine wave sweeps across four identical bass drums. A ping pong ball hangs suspended in front of each drum head, like a pendulum. As the identical instruments slowly begin to vibrate, the balls bounce against the drum heads at different rhythms, making audible each resonance’s idiosyncrasies.

Hearing sound as the perception of the propagation of a wave phenomenon and the various resultant effects was a unifying thread in Lucier’s work throughout his life, all the way to his last compositions. Over time, this long-term research into the spatial nature of sound extended into the composer’s approach to notating certain scores. While the scores of his first experimental works were largely written as prose, occasionally with the addition of synoptic schematics for the set-up of the material, over time, in his instrumental period, he began to favor diagrammatic writing; it may be noted in passing that he approached the two-dimensional space of the page as a physical space that held the graphic representation of frequency motion. In each movement of Six Geometries (1992), for choir and slow sweep pure wave oscillators, the evolving settings of the sound wave generators “draw” a different geometric image (a right angle, the letter X, etc.), inspired by the poetry of William Carlos Williams¹⁵. Lucier subsequently used other motifs, notably landscapes, as the matrix of his compositions’ melodic lines. In Panorama (1993), for trombone and piano, the line traced by Alpine peaks guides the glissando of the trombone, while each individual peak is represented by a note punctuated on the piano. More recently, Ever Present (2002), for flute, saxophone, piano, and oscillators, was inspired by the hillside garden design by Robert Irwin for the Getty Center in Brentwood, Los Angeles. Glacier (2009), for cello, proposes listening to the curve of a graph representing, over the years, the progressive melting of the glaciers, since the already long-ago era of the first alerts to the looming climate crisis.

From listening to natural phenomena to observing the curves of the landscape, Lucier’s work invites the listener to revive an understanding of perception not simply as a form of knowing, but also as a way of belonging to the world. The goal of this approach was never to grasp wave movements and the bodies attending to them as the manifestation of some kind of separate entity; to the contrary, it came from a perspective closer to environmental ethics, perceiving entities as interrelated and interconnected – as active, and even dependent, parts of a single ecosphere.

1. Richard Kostelanetz (ed.), Conversing with Cage, New York and London, Routledge, 2003, p. 44. See also John Cage, Silence: Lectures and Writings, Middletown, Connecticut, Wesleyan University Press, 1961.
2. James Tenney, “The Eloquent Voice of Nature,” in Alvin Lucier, Reflections. Interviews, Scores, Writings 1965-1994, Köln, MusikTexte, 1994, p. 16.
3. Cf. Alvin LUCIER, “The Propagation of Sound in Space. One point of view,” in Reflections, op. cit., p. 416-418.
4. Ibidem, p. 418.
5. Alvin Lucier, “Interviews with Douglas Simon,” Reflections, op. cit., p. 154.
6. Cf. Ibidem, p. 214. On the notion of scanning in Lucier’s work, see Hauke Harder, “Music on a Long Thin Wire: Music as a Self-Driven Process,” Leonardo Music Journal, vol. 22, online supplement, 2012, p. 4-6.
7. Alvin Lucier, “Every room has its own melody,” Reflections, op. cit. p. 88.
8. Cf. Alvin Lucier, “The Future of Our Music,” The Composition Area, San Diego, Department of Music, University of California, 2002, p. 7.
9. Alvin Lucier, “The Propagation of Sound in Space,” Reflections, op. cit., p. 418. The principle of this piece inspired many ensuing works by the composer, such as Quasimodo the Great Lover (1970), The Re-Orchestration of the Opera “Benvenuto Cellini” by Hector Berlioz (1974), or, later on, The Exploration of the House (2005) and Palimpest (2014).
10. Alvin Lucier, “Bird and Person Dyning,” Reflections, op. cit. p. 358.
11. On this critique of categories, cf. Alvin Lucier, “Thoughts on Installations,” Reflections, op. cit., p. 504.
12. Cf. Alvin Lucier, “Interviews with Daniel Wolf,” Reflections, op. cit., p. 244 and 276.
13. Cf. Ibidem, p. 276.
14. Alvin Lucier, “The Propagation of Sound in Space,” Reflections, op. cit., p. 416.
15. The poet’s influence may be found in the credo adopted by Lucier from the poem Paterson (1927): “No ideas but in things.” Cf. Alvin Lucier, “Thoughts on Installations,” Reflections, op. cit., p. 508.

© Ircam-Centre Pompidou, 2021

• Solo (excluding voice)
  • Sonatina for piano (1953)
  • Arioso and Allegro for piano (1955)
  • Action Music for piano [Book I] (1962), Material Press
  • Mafia for pianist and four assistants (1964)
  • Shapes of the Sounds from the Board for piano (1979-1980), Material Press
  • elec In Memoriam Jon Higgins for clarinet and slow frequency sweep sine wave generator (1984), Material Press
  • elec A Tribute to James Tenney for double bass and sine wave generators (1986), Material Press
  • Silver Streetcar for the Orchestra for amplified triangle (1988), about
  • elec Self-Portrait for flute and wind anemometer (1989), Material Press
  • Nothing is Real (Strawberry Fields Forever) for piano, amplified teapot, tape recorder and miniature sound system (1990)
  • Music for Piano with Amplified Sonorous Vessels for piano and amplified sonorous vessels (1991), Material Press
  • Music for Cello with One or More Amplified Vases for cello, with one or more amplified vases (1992)
  • elec Music for Piano with Slow Sweep Pure Wave Oscillators for piano with slow sweep pure wave oscillators (1992), Material Press
  • elec In Memoriam Stuart Marshall for bass clarinet and sine wave generator (1993), Material Press
  • Indian Summer for electric cello (1993), Material Press
  • elec Music for Accordion with Slow Sweep Pure Wave Oscillators for accordion and slow sweep pure wave oscillators (1993), 10 mn, Material Press
  • Stacks site-specific work for solo trombone and sculpture, Yale Art Gallery, New Haven, Connecticut (1993)
  • Hands for organ, with one or more instrumentalists (1994), Material Press
  • Spider Paths for extended lute, guitar or other plucked string instrument (1994), Material Press
  • elec Wind Shadows for trombone and sine wave generators (1994), Material Press
  • elec Still Lives for piano and slow sweep pure wave oscillators (1995), Material Press
  • elec On a Carpet of Leaves illuminated by the Moon for koto and sine wave generator (2000)
  • Piper for bagpipes (2000)
  • elec 947 for flute and sine wave generators (2001), Material Press
  • elec Violynn for violin and pure wave oscillators (2001), Material Press
  • elec Almost New York for five flutes (one player) with slow sweep pure wave oscillators (2002), Material Press
  • elec Charles Curtis for violin and slow frequency sweep sine wave generators (2002), Material Press
  • Tapper for violin (2002), Material Press
  • Glacier for cello (2009), 24 mn, Material Press
  • Coda Variations for 6-piston tuba in correct intonation (2011), Material Press
  • elec Double Himalaya for flute glissando and recorded flute glissando sound (2012), 17 mn 26 s, Material Press
  • Ricochet Lady for glockenspiel solo (2016), between 11 mn 30 s and 16 mn 30 s about , Material Press
• Chamber music
  • Fragments for string quartet (1961), 8 mn, Material Press
  • Fragments for strings for string quartet (1961), Material Press
  • Poem for string quartet (1963)
  • World Music System for bowed instruments (1972)
  • Fideliotrio for viola, cello and piano (1987), 12 mn, Material Press
  • elec Kettles for five timpani and two slow frequency sweep sine wave generators (1987), 12 mn 12 s, Material Press
  • elec Carbon Copies for saxophone, piano, percussions and environmental fixed sounds (1989), 20 mn, Material Press
  • Navigations for string quartet (1991), 15 mn, Material Press
  • Letters for clarinet, violin, cello and piano (1992), Material Press
  • Music for Piano with One or More Snare Drums (1992), Material Press
  • Navigations for Strings for string quartet (1992), 15 mn, Material Press
  • Panorama for trombone and piano (1993), 15 mn 54 s, Material Press
  • Disappearances for string quartet (1994), Material Press
  • elec 40 Rooms for quintet and LARES system (1996)
  • Canon (1996), Material Press
  • elec Q for quintet and sine wave generators (1996), Material Press
  • Twenty-Two for clarinet, trombone, violin, cello and double bass (1996), 3 mn 15 s about , Material Press
  • elec Ever Present for flute, saxophone, piano and slow frequency sweep sine wave generators (2002), Material Press
  • Bar Lazy J for tenor trombone and clarinet (2003), Material Press
  • Broken Line for flute, vibraphone and piano (2006), Material Press
  • Twonings for cello and piano (2006), Material Press
  • Four Kettledrums for four timpani (four instrumentalists) (2010), Material Press
  • ICEcles for alto flute, clarinet, tuba and piano (2010), Material Press
  • elec On a Carpet of Leaves illuminated by the Moon for koto, cello or guitar, and sine wave generator (2012), Material Press
  • Two Circles for flute, clarinet, violin, cello and piano (2012), Material Press
  • elec 13 Degrees of Darkness for two flutes, or for flute and pre-recorded flute sound (2013), 13 mn 45 s, Material Press
  • Criss-Cross for two electric guitars (2013), about , Material Press
  • elec December 12th for flute, violin, cello and piano with slow sweep pure wave oscillators (2013), 17 mn, Material Press
  • Firewood for clarinet, vibraphone, piano, electric guitar, cello and double bass (2013), 6 mn 3 s, Material Press
  • Shadow Lines for electric guitar, cello, doublebass, Bb clarinet and trombone (2013), 14 mn 30 s about , Material Press
  • Step, Slide and Sustain for horn in F, cello and piano (2014), 14 mn 5 s, Material Press
  • August Moon for horn in F, violin (or cello) and piano (2015), 14 mn 48 s, Material Press
  • Gondola for alto flute, clarinet in B flat, marimba, piano, violin and cello (2015), 3 mn, Material Press
  • Love Song for two violinists whose instruments are connected by a cable attached to the easel (2016), Material Press
  • One Arm Bandits for four cellos (2016), 60 mn, Material Press
  • Double Helix for four electric guitars played with an e-bow (2018), 16 mn, Material Press
  • EPO-5 for two guitars, soprano saxophone, glockenspiel and violin (2018)
• Instrumental ensemble music
  • Sonata da camera for brass and percussion (1956)
  • For Orchestra (1966)
  • elec Crossings for small orchestra and slow frequency sweep sine wave generator (1982), Material Press
  • elec Risonanza for flute, oboe, clarinet, resonant object with optional electronic processing (1982), Material Press
  • elec Precious Metals for brass and pure wave oscillators (1985)
  • elec Septet for three winds, four strings and pure wave oscillators (1985), Material Press
  • Distant Drums for amplified percussions (1994), Material Press
  • Music for Gamelan Instruments, Microphones, Amplifiers and Loudspeakers for Gamelan instruments, microphones, amplifiers and loudspeakers (1994), Material Press
  • Small Waves for string quartet, trombone, piano and two dancers with six partially filled water containers (1997)
  • Sweepers for orchestra (1997)
  • Cassiopeia, Five Stars in the Shape of a "W" for small orchestra (1998), Material Press
  • Diamonds for one, two or three orchestras (1999), Material Press
  • Sestina for contrabass flute, contrabass saxophone and contrabass tuba, or any other contrabass instrument (2000), Material Press
  • elec The Exploration of the House for orchestra, with live recording and feedback (2005), Material Press
  • elec Just Before Dark for small orchestra and slow frequency sweep sine wave generator (2010), Material Press
  • Just Before Dark (2) for small orchestra (2010)
  • Braid for alto flute, clarinet, English horn and string quartet (2012), Material Press
  • elec Serenade for thirteen winds and pure wave oscillators (1985-2012), Material Press
  • Hanover for violin, alto saxophone, tenor saxophone, 3 banjos, piano and bowed vibraphone (2015), 3 mn, Material Press
  • Swing Bridge for organ, two violins, cello, double bass, female voice, trumpet in C and from three to six pitch wavers (playing the organ pipes directly) (2016), 36 mn, Material Press
  • Semicircle for four electric guitars, three alto saxophones, four violins and piano (2018)
  • Titled Arc for four guitars, four saxophones, four violins, piano and bowed glockenspiel (2018)
• Concertant music
  • Concertino for oboe and string orchestra (1953)
  • Serenade for oboe and string orchestra (1993), 11 mn, Material Press
  • Sierpinski Lines for alto saxophone and twelve strings (1994)
  • Sizzles for organ and percussion, with fine strewn material (1997), Material Press
  • elec Ovals for chamber orchestra with slow sweep pure wave oscillators (2001), Material Press
  • Slices for cello and orchestra (2007), Material Press
  • Copied Lines (titre initial Panorama II for trombone and thirteen strings (2011), Material Press
  • Orpheus Variations for cello, two flutes, horn in F, two trumpets in B flat and two trombones (2014), between 15 mn 50 s and 17 mn 50 s, Material Press
• Vocal music and instrument(s)
  • Kyrie for young women's voices and organ (1952)
  • Partita for soprano and string trio (1954)
  • I sing of a Maiden for soprano and instrumental ensemble (1958)
  • The Witch for female voice and three percussionists (1961)
  • Composition for pianist and mother composition for musical theater (1964), Material Press
  • elec The Duke of York for voices and synthesizers (1971)
  • Eleven Solos and a Duet for female voice, flute, clarinet, horn, mallet percussion and string quartet (1984)
  • elec Still and Moving Lines of Silence in Families of Hyperbolas new version for female voice, clarinet, flute, horn, mallet instruments, string quartet and pure wave oscillators (1984), Material Press
  • elec Fruits and Vegetables for baritone, piano and sine wave generators (2000), Material Press
  • Codex for soprano, violin, oboe, clarinet in B flat, guitar and harp (2013), Material Press
  • elec So You... (Hermes, Orpheus, Eurydice for voice, clarinet, cello, resonant objects and electronics (2017), 60 mn
• A cappella vocal music
  • Song for soprano (1962), Material Press
  • That the night comes unfinished work, for five voices (1962)
  • For Chorus (1966)
  • The Only Talking Machine of Its Kind in the World for speaker and tape delay system (1969)
  • I am sitting in a Room for voice, two tape recorders and two amplification systems (1970), 45 mn 21 s, Material Press
  • elec Tyndall Orchestrations for female voice, sensitive flame, performers handling bunsen burners and glass tubes, and recorded bird songs (1976)
  • Lullaby (for Amanda) for vocal solo, with or without amplification (1980), Material Press
  • Words on Windy Corners for voices, tape delay system and moving loudspeakers (1980), Material Press
  • elec Intervals for choir and lights reactive to sound (1983)
  • elec Six Geometries for chorus with slow sweep pure wave oscillators (1992), 15 mn 7 s, Material Press
  • elec Music for Baritone with Slow Sweep Pure Wave Oscillators for baritone and slow sweep pure wave oscillators (1993), 14 mn 10 s, Material Press
  • elec Music for Soprano with Slow Sweep Pure Wave Oscillators for soprano and slow sweep pure wave oscillators (1993), 15 mn, Material Press
  • The Sacred Fox for voices and resonant objects (1994), Material Press
  • Theme for four readers and resonant objects, to poems by John Ashbery (1994), Material Press
  • UNAMUNO for four equal voices (1994), Material Press
  • I Remember for choir and resonant objects (1997), Material Press
  • Opera with Objects for one or more performers with resonating objects (1997)
  • Rare Books for one or more performers, each with a book (1997), Material Press
  • elec Wave Painting Songs for soprano and slow sweep pure wave oscillators (1998)
  • Palimpsest for voice, two tape recorders and two amplification systems (2014)
  • elec Double Rainbow for deep female voice and sine wave generators (2016), 12 mn 8 s, Material Press
  • elec Performing Emily for female voice and six pure wave oscillators (2017), Material Press
• Electronic music / fixed media / mechanical musical instruments
  • elec Elegy for Albert Anastasia for magnetic tape (1962-1965)
  • elec Music for Solo Performer for percussion ensemble played in real time by the activation of electromechanical modules linked to the modulations of the performer's brain activities (1965), 39 mn 14 s
  • elec Music 16 for tape broadcast on sixteen channels (1966)
  • elec North American Time Capsule for voice and vocoder (1967)
  • elec Whistlers for recordings of ionospheric disturbances and electronics (1967)
  • elec Vespers for echolocation modules (1968), Material Press
  • elec Hymn for sculpting sounds amplified in real time (1970)
  • elec Gentle Fire for any number of synthesizers (1971)
  • elec RMSIM 1, The Bird of Bremen Flies Through the Houses of the Burghers computer-controlled sound environment (1972)
  • elec The Fires in the Minds of the Dancers for eight moving sounds broadcast in quadraphonic (1974)
  • elec The Re-orchestration of the opera Benvenuto Cellini by Hector Berlioz for voices and fixed sounds (1974)
  • elec Outlines of Persons and Things for microphones, speakers and electronic sounds (1975)
  • elec Music on a Long Thin Wire for taut piano strings which oscillate sympathetically by the induction of sine waves (1977)
  • elec Directions of Sounds from the Bridge sound installation and performance for string instrument, sine wave generator and sound reactive lights (1978), Material Press
  • elec Ghosts for audio oscillator, loudspeakers, and performer with sound-sensitive light (1978)
  • elec Solar Sounder I sound installation powered and controlled by sunlight (1979)
  • elec Music for Pure Waves, Bass Drums and Acoustic Pendulums sound installation and performance for pure waves, speakers, bass drums and acoustic pendulums (1980), Material Press
  • elec Reflections of Sound from the Wall for sine wave generator and moving wall (1981)
  • elec Sferics sound installation and recordings of ionospheric disturbances, for large-loop antennas, tape recorder and playback system (1981), 8 mn 12 s
  • elec Music for Alpha Waves, Assorted Percussion, and Automated Coded Relays electroacoustic music (1982)
  • elec Seesaw sound installation for one fixed and one slow sweep pure wave oscillator (1983)
  • elec Spinner sound installation for six closely tuned pure wave oscillators (1984) [program note]
  • elec Sound on Paper sound installation or performance for framed paper, loudspeakers and audio oscillator (1985)
  • elec Music for Snare Drum, Pure Wave Oscillator, and One or More Reflective Surfaces (1990)
  • elec Berlin is a Resonant City sound installation (1991)
  • elec Night Sounds with Flame (1994)
  • elec What Day Is Today? eight short pieces for tape, based on natural radio waves emitted by the Sun, Moon, Mars, Mercury, Jupiter, Venus and Saturn (1999)
  • elec Six Resonant Points along a Curved Wall sound installation created for Sol LeWitt's monumental sculpture (2004)
• Unspecified instrumentation
  • Shelter for vibration pickups, amplification system and enclosed space (1967)
  • Chambers for large and small resonant spaces (1968)
  • elec (Hartford) Memory Space for any number of instrumental players with recordings of environmental sounds (1970)
  • Quasimodo the Great Lover for amplification system network (1970)
  • The Queen of the South for players, responsive surfaces, strewn material and closed-circuit television systems (1972)
  • Still and Moving Lines of Silence in Families of Hyperbolas for singers, players, dancers and unattended percussion (1973-1974), Material Press
  • elec Bird and Person Dyning for performers with microphones, amplifiers, loudspeakers and electronic duck call (1975)
  • Clocker for performer with galvanic skin response sensor, digital audio delay system, amplified clock and small loudspeakers (1978)
  • Job's Coffin for amplified chest of drawers (1980)
  • RPM's for Kenneth Levy on his 60th birthday (1987)
  • elec Attaché Case audio tape, Metro North, New Haven to and from New York (1988)
  • Clackers and Swoopers for three fire alarms and dancers with pieces of wood (1989)
  • Amplifier and Reflector One for open umbrella, frying pan and amplified clock (1991)
  • elec Possible Time and Motion Reversals work-in-progress for five players and two pure wave oscillators (1991)
  • Music for Piano with Half-closed Lid sound installation or performance with dancers (1993)
  • Three Wall Drawings (1993)
  • elec Serenade sound installation in collaboration with the sculptor Trimpin (1994)
  • elec Spira Mirabilis for bass sustaining instrument and electric light (1994), Material Press
  • Two Stones for performer handling two pieces of basalt (1994)
  • Heavier Than Air for any number of performers with carbon dioxide balloons (1999), Material Press
  • Music with Missing Parts re-orchestration of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart's Requiem (2007)
  • Halo for one or more violinists in motion (2019)

Catalog sources and details

Compositions pour le théâtre

• Dr. Faustus (Christopher Marlowe, 1958)
• The Maids (Jean Genet, 1959)
• The Waters of Babylon (John Arden, 1965)
• Antigone (Sophocle, 1967)
• Fire! (John Roc, 1969)
• King Henry V (Shakespeare, 1969)
• Children’s Games (Dick Wheeler, 1967)
• Chinese Space (en collaboration avec le poète Mei-Mei et le sculpteur Richard Tuttle, 1994)
• Skin, Meat, Bone, The Wesleyan Project (en collaboration avec l’acteur Keith Mcdermott et le metteur en scène Robert Wilson, 1994)

Compositions pour le cinéma

• Shelter 9999 (Takahiko Iimura, 1967)
• White Caligraphy (Takahiko Iimura, 1968)
• Circles (Takahiko Iimura, 1969)

Compositions pour la télévision

• Philoctetes, de Sophocle (WGBH Educational Foundation-Television, 1967)

• 2019
  • Halo for one or more violinists in motion
• 2018
  • Double Helix for four electric guitars played with an e-bow, 16 mn, Material Press
  • EPO-5 for two guitars, soprano saxophone, glockenspiel and violin
  • Semicircle for four electric guitars, three alto saxophones, four violins and piano
  • Titled Arc for four guitars, four saxophones, four violins, piano and bowed glockenspiel
• 2017
  • elec Performing Emily for female voice and six pure wave oscillators, Material Press
  • elec So You... (Hermes, Orpheus, Eurydice for voice, clarinet, cello, resonant objects and electronics, 60 mn
• 2016
  • elec Double Rainbow for deep female voice and sine wave generators, 12 mn 8 s, Material Press
  • Love Song for two violinists whose instruments are connected by a cable attached to the easel, Material Press
  • One Arm Bandits for four cellos, 60 mn, Material Press
  • Ricochet Lady for glockenspiel solo, between 11 mn 30 s and 16 mn 30 s about , Material Press
  • Swing Bridge for organ, two violins, cello, double bass, female voice, trumpet in C and from three to six pitch wavers (playing the organ pipes directly), 36 mn, Material Press
• 2015
  • August Moon for horn in F, violin (or cello) and piano, 14 mn 48 s, Material Press
  • Gondola for alto flute, clarinet in B flat, marimba, piano, violin and cello, 3 mn, Material Press
  • Hanover for violin, alto saxophone, tenor saxophone, 3 banjos, piano and bowed vibraphone, 3 mn, Material Press
• 2014
  • Orpheus Variations for cello, two flutes, horn in F, two trumpets in B flat and two trombones, between 15 mn 50 s and 17 mn 50 s, Material Press
  • Palimpsest for voice, two tape recorders and two amplification systems
  • Step, Slide and Sustain for horn in F, cello and piano, 14 mn 5 s, Material Press
• 2013
  • elec 13 Degrees of Darkness for two flutes, or for flute and pre-recorded flute sound, 13 mn 45 s, Material Press
  • Codex for soprano, violin, oboe, clarinet in B flat, guitar and harp, Material Press
  • Criss-Cross for two electric guitars, about , Material Press
  • elec December 12th for flute, violin, cello and piano with slow sweep pure wave oscillators, 17 mn, Material Press
  • Firewood for clarinet, vibraphone, piano, electric guitar, cello and double bass, 6 mn 3 s, Material Press
  • Shadow Lines for electric guitar, cello, doublebass, Bb clarinet and trombone, 14 mn 30 s about , Material Press
• 2012
  • Braid for alto flute, clarinet, English horn and string quartet, Material Press
  • elec Double Himalaya for flute glissando and recorded flute glissando sound, 17 mn 26 s, Material Press
  • elec On a Carpet of Leaves illuminated by the Moon for koto, cello or guitar, and sine wave generator, Material Press
  • elec Serenade for thirteen winds and pure wave oscillators, Material Press
  • Two Circles for flute, clarinet, violin, cello and piano, Material Press
• 2011
  • Coda Variations for 6-piston tuba in correct intonation, Material Press
  • Copied Lines (titre initial Panorama II for trombone and thirteen strings, Material Press
• 2010
  • Four Kettledrums for four timpani (four instrumentalists), Material Press
  • ICEcles for alto flute, clarinet, tuba and piano, Material Press
  • elec Just Before Dark for small orchestra and slow frequency sweep sine wave generator, Material Press
  • Just Before Dark (2) for small orchestra
• 2009
  • Glacier for cello, 24 mn, Material Press
• 2007
  • Music with Missing Parts re-orchestration of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart's Requiem
  • Slices for cello and orchestra, Material Press
• 2006
  • Broken Line for flute, vibraphone and piano, Material Press
  • Twonings for cello and piano, Material Press
• 2005
  • elec The Exploration of the House for orchestra, with live recording and feedback, Material Press
• 2004
  • elec Six Resonant Points along a Curved Wall sound installation created for Sol LeWitt's monumental sculpture
• 2003
  • Bar Lazy J for tenor trombone and clarinet, Material Press
• 2002
  • elec Almost New York for five flutes (one player) with slow sweep pure wave oscillators, Material Press
  • elec Charles Curtis for violin and slow frequency sweep sine wave generators, Material Press
  • elec Ever Present for flute, saxophone, piano and slow frequency sweep sine wave generators, Material Press
  • Tapper for violin, Material Press
• 2001
  • elec 947 for flute and sine wave generators, Material Press
  • elec Ovals for chamber orchestra with slow sweep pure wave oscillators, Material Press
  • elec Violynn for violin and pure wave oscillators, Material Press
• 2000
  • elec Fruits and Vegetables for baritone, piano and sine wave generators, Material Press
  • elec On a Carpet of Leaves illuminated by the Moon for koto and sine wave generator
  • Piper for bagpipes
  • Sestina for contrabass flute, contrabass saxophone and contrabass tuba, or any other contrabass instrument, Material Press
• 1999
  • Diamonds for one, two or three orchestras, Material Press
  • Heavier Than Air for any number of performers with carbon dioxide balloons, Material Press
  • elec What Day Is Today? eight short pieces for tape, based on natural radio waves emitted by the Sun, Moon, Mars, Mercury, Jupiter, Venus and Saturn
• 1998
  • Cassiopeia, Five Stars in the Shape of a "W" for small orchestra, Material Press
  • elec Wave Painting Songs for soprano and slow sweep pure wave oscillators
• 1997
  • I Remember for choir and resonant objects, Material Press
  • Opera with Objects for one or more performers with resonating objects
  • Rare Books for one or more performers, each with a book, Material Press
  • Sizzles for organ and percussion, with fine strewn material, Material Press
  • Small Waves for string quartet, trombone, piano and two dancers with six partially filled water containers
  • Sweepers for orchestra
• 1996
  • elec 40 Rooms for quintet and LARES system
  • Canon, Material Press
  • elec Q for quintet and sine wave generators, Material Press
  • Twenty-Two for clarinet, trombone, violin, cello and double bass, 3 mn 15 s about , Material Press
• 1995
  • elec Still Lives for piano and slow sweep pure wave oscillators, Material Press
• 1994
  • Disappearances for string quartet, Material Press
  • Distant Drums for amplified percussions, Material Press
  • Hands for organ, with one or more instrumentalists, Material Press
  • Music for Gamelan Instruments, Microphones, Amplifiers and Loudspeakers for Gamelan instruments, microphones, amplifiers and loudspeakers, Material Press
  • elec Night Sounds with Flame
  • elec Serenade sound installation in collaboration with the sculptor Trimpin
  • Sierpinski Lines for alto saxophone and twelve strings
  • Spider Paths for extended lute, guitar or other plucked string instrument, Material Press
  • elec Spira Mirabilis for bass sustaining instrument and electric light, Material Press
  • The Sacred Fox for voices and resonant objects, Material Press
  • Theme for four readers and resonant objects, to poems by John Ashbery, Material Press
  • Two Stones for performer handling two pieces of basalt
  • UNAMUNO for four equal voices, Material Press
  • elec Wind Shadows for trombone and sine wave generators, Material Press
• 1993
  • elec In Memoriam Stuart Marshall for bass clarinet and sine wave generator, Material Press
  • Indian Summer for electric cello, Material Press
  • elec Music for Accordion with Slow Sweep Pure Wave Oscillators for accordion and slow sweep pure wave oscillators, 10 mn, Material Press
  • elec Music for Baritone with Slow Sweep Pure Wave Oscillators for baritone and slow sweep pure wave oscillators, 14 mn 10 s, Material Press
  • Music for Piano with Half-closed Lid sound installation or performance with dancers
  • elec Music for Soprano with Slow Sweep Pure Wave Oscillators for soprano and slow sweep pure wave oscillators, 15 mn, Material Press
  • Panorama for trombone and piano, 15 mn 54 s, Material Press
  • Serenade for oboe and string orchestra, 11 mn, Material Press
  • Stacks site-specific work for solo trombone and sculpture, Yale Art Gallery, New Haven, Connecticut
  • Three Wall Drawings
• 1992
  • Letters for clarinet, violin, cello and piano, Material Press
  • Music for Cello with One or More Amplified Vases for cello, with one or more amplified vases
  • Music for Piano with One or More Snare Drums, Material Press
  • elec Music for Piano with Slow Sweep Pure Wave Oscillators for piano with slow sweep pure wave oscillators, Material Press
  • Navigations for Strings for string quartet, 15 mn, Material Press
  • elec Six Geometries for chorus with slow sweep pure wave oscillators, 15 mn 7 s, Material Press
• 1991
  • Amplifier and Reflector One for open umbrella, frying pan and amplified clock
  • elec Berlin is a Resonant City sound installation
  • Music for Piano with Amplified Sonorous Vessels for piano and amplified sonorous vessels, Material Press
  • Navigations for string quartet, 15 mn, Material Press
  • elec Possible Time and Motion Reversals work-in-progress for five players and two pure wave oscillators
• 1990
  • elec Music for Snare Drum, Pure Wave Oscillator, and One or More Reflective Surfaces
  • Nothing is Real (Strawberry Fields Forever) for piano, amplified teapot, tape recorder and miniature sound system
• 1989
  • elec Carbon Copies for saxophone, piano, percussions and environmental fixed sounds, 20 mn, Material Press
  • Clackers and Swoopers for three fire alarms and dancers with pieces of wood
  • elec Self-Portrait for flute and wind anemometer, Material Press
• 1988
  • elec Attaché Case audio tape, Metro North, New Haven to and from New York
  • Silver Streetcar for the Orchestra for amplified triangle, about
• 1987
  • Fideliotrio for viola, cello and piano, 12 mn, Material Press
  • elec Kettles for five timpani and two slow frequency sweep sine wave generators, 12 mn 12 s, Material Press
  • RPM's for Kenneth Levy on his 60th birthday
• 1986
  • elec A Tribute to James Tenney for double bass and sine wave generators, Material Press
• 1985
  • elec Precious Metals for brass and pure wave oscillators
  • elec Septet for three winds, four strings and pure wave oscillators, Material Press
  • elec Sound on Paper sound installation or performance for framed paper, loudspeakers and audio oscillator
• 1984
  • Eleven Solos and a Duet for female voice, flute, clarinet, horn, mallet percussion and string quartet
  • elec In Memoriam Jon Higgins for clarinet and slow frequency sweep sine wave generator, Material Press
  • elec Spinner sound installation for six closely tuned pure wave oscillators [program note]
  • elec Still and Moving Lines of Silence in Families of Hyperbolas new version for female voice, clarinet, flute, horn, mallet instruments, string quartet and pure wave oscillators, Material Press
• 1983
  • elec Intervals for choir and lights reactive to sound
  • elec Seesaw sound installation for one fixed and one slow sweep pure wave oscillator
• 1982
  • elec Crossings for small orchestra and slow frequency sweep sine wave generator, Material Press
  • elec Music for Alpha Waves, Assorted Percussion, and Automated Coded Relays electroacoustic music
  • elec Risonanza for flute, oboe, clarinet, resonant object with optional electronic processing, Material Press
• 1981
  • elec Reflections of Sound from the Wall for sine wave generator and moving wall
  • elec Sferics sound installation and recordings of ionospheric disturbances, for large-loop antennas, tape recorder and playback system, 8 mn 12 s
• 1980
  • Job's Coffin for amplified chest of drawers
  • Lullaby (for Amanda) for vocal solo, with or without amplification, Material Press
  • elec Music for Pure Waves, Bass Drums and Acoustic Pendulums sound installation and performance for pure waves, speakers, bass drums and acoustic pendulums, Material Press
  • Shapes of the Sounds from the Board for piano, Material Press
  • Words on Windy Corners for voices, tape delay system and moving loudspeakers, Material Press
• 1979
  • elec Solar Sounder I sound installation powered and controlled by sunlight
• 1978
  • Clocker for performer with galvanic skin response sensor, digital audio delay system, amplified clock and small loudspeakers
  • elec Directions of Sounds from the Bridge sound installation and performance for string instrument, sine wave generator and sound reactive lights, Material Press
  • elec Ghosts for audio oscillator, loudspeakers, and performer with sound-sensitive light
• 1977
  • elec Music on a Long Thin Wire for taut piano strings which oscillate sympathetically by the induction of sine waves
• 1976
  • elec Tyndall Orchestrations for female voice, sensitive flame, performers handling bunsen burners and glass tubes, and recorded bird songs
• 1975
  • elec Bird and Person Dyning for performers with microphones, amplifiers, loudspeakers and electronic duck call
  • elec Outlines of Persons and Things for microphones, speakers and electronic sounds
• 1974
  • Still and Moving Lines of Silence in Families of Hyperbolas for singers, players, dancers and unattended percussion, Material Press
  • elec The Fires in the Minds of the Dancers for eight moving sounds broadcast in quadraphonic
  • elec The Re-orchestration of the opera Benvenuto Cellini by Hector Berlioz for voices and fixed sounds
• 1972
  • elec RMSIM 1, The Bird of Bremen Flies Through the Houses of the Burghers computer-controlled sound environment
  • The Queen of the South for players, responsive surfaces, strewn material and closed-circuit television systems
  • World Music System for bowed instruments
• 1971
  • elec Gentle Fire for any number of synthesizers
  • elec The Duke of York for voices and synthesizers
• 1970
  • elec (Hartford) Memory Space for any number of instrumental players with recordings of environmental sounds
  • elec Hymn for sculpting sounds amplified in real time
  • I am sitting in a Room for voice, two tape recorders and two amplification systems, 45 mn 21 s, Material Press
  • Quasimodo the Great Lover for amplification system network
• 1969
  • The Only Talking Machine of Its Kind in the World for speaker and tape delay system
• 1968
  • Chambers for large and small resonant spaces
  • elec Vespers for echolocation modules, Material Press
• 1967
  • elec North American Time Capsule for voice and vocoder
  • Shelter for vibration pickups, amplification system and enclosed space
  • elec Whistlers for recordings of ionospheric disturbances and electronics
• 1966
  • For Chorus
  • For Orchestra
  • elec Music 16 for tape broadcast on sixteen channels
• 1965
  • elec Elegy for Albert Anastasia for magnetic tape
  • elec Music for Solo Performer for percussion ensemble played in real time by the activation of electromechanical modules linked to the modulations of the performer's brain activities, 39 mn 14 s
• 1964
  • Composition for pianist and mother composition for musical theater, Material Press
  • Mafia for pianist and four assistants
• 1963
  • Poem for string quartet
• 1962
  • Action Music for piano [Book I], Material Press
  • Song for soprano, Material Press
  • That the night comes unfinished work, for five voices
• 1961
  • Fragments for string quartet, 8 mn, Material Press
  • Fragments for strings for string quartet, Material Press
  • The Witch for female voice and three percussionists
• 1958
  • I sing of a Maiden for soprano and instrumental ensemble
• 1956
  • Sonata da camera for brass and percussion
• 1955
  • Arioso and Allegro for piano
• 1954
  • Partita for soprano and string trio
• 1953
  • Concertino for oboe and string orchestra
  • Sonatina for piano
• 1952
  • Kyrie for young women's voices and organ

Catalog source(s)

Compositions pour le théâtre

• Dr. Faustus (Christopher Marlowe, 1958)
• The Maids (Jean Genet, 1959)
• The Waters of Babylon (John Arden, 1965)
• Antigone (Sophocle, 1967)
• Fire! (John Roc, 1969)
• King Henry V (Shakespeare, 1969)
• Children’s Games (Dick Wheeler, 1967)
• Chinese Space (en collaboration avec le poète Mei-Mei et le sculpteur Richard Tuttle, 1994)
• Skin, Meat, Bone, The Wesleyan Project (en collaboration avec l’acteur Keith Mcdermott et le metteur en scène Robert Wilson, 1994)

Compositions pour le cinéma

• Shelter 9999 (Takahiko Iimura, 1967)
• White Caligraphy (Takahiko Iimura, 1968)
• Circles (Takahiko Iimura, 1969)

Compositions pour la télévision

• Philoctetes, de Sophocle (WGBH Educational Foundation-Television, 1967)

Liens Internet

• Site de l’éditeur Material Press : www.materialpress.com/lucier.htm
• Site du label Lovely Music Ltd : www.lovely.com
• Site du label Black Truffle : www.blacktrufflerecords.com
• Entretien avec Alvin Lucier, par Evan Ziporyn, 2014, à voir sur le site du MIT Center for Arts, Science & Technology (CAST) : https://arts.mit.edu/cast/symposia/seeing-sounding-sensing/participants/alvin-lucier/
• « Hommage à Alvin Lucier » dans L’Expérimentale de François Bonnet sur France Musique le 6 février 2022.
• « Grand entretien avec Alvin Lucier », par Thomas Baumgartner, dans L’Atelier du Son, France Culture, 1er mai 2012.
• Entretien avec Alvin Lucier par Thomas Moore le 12 janvier 1983 au Marymount Manhattan College, New York, à lire sur le site de Thomas Moore : https://thomasmoore.info/interview-alvin-lucier/

(liens vérifiés en mai 2023).

Bibliographie sélective

Textes d’Alvin Lucier

• Alvin LUCIER, Le Même et le Différent, entretien avec Matthieu Saladin, Paris, Editions MF, 2023.
• Alvin LUCIER, Musique 109. Notes sur la musique expérimentale, Genève, Éditions Héros-Limite Genève, 2019.
• Alvin LUCIER, Eight Lectures on Experimental Music, Middletown, Wesleyan University Press, 2017.
• Alvin LUCIER, Douglas SIMON, Chambers, Middletown, Wesleyan University Press, 2012.
• Alvin LUCIER, « Origins of Form: Acoustic Exploration, Science, and Incessancy », Leonardo Music Journal, vol. 8, 1998, pp. 5 - 11.
• Alvin LUCIER, Reflections. Interviews, Scores, Writings, Cologne, Musik Texte, 1995.

Textes sur Alvin Lucier

• Robert ASHLEY (Éd), « Landscape with Alvin Lucier », in Music with Roots in the Aether. Interviews with and Essays about seven American composers, Musik Texte, Cologne, 1999.
• Christopher COX, « The Alien Voice: Alvin Lucier’s North American Time Capsule », in Mainframe Experimentalism: Early Computing and the Foundations of the Digital Arts. Berkeley, University of California Press, 2009.
• Andrea MILLER-KELLER (Éd.), A Celebration, Wesleyan University Press, Middletown, 2012.
• Walter ZIMMERMANN, Desert Plants. Conversations with 23 American Composers, Berlin, Beginner Press, réédition de l’ouvrage initialement publié en 1976 par ARC Vancouver, 2020.

Discographie sélective

• Alvin LUCIER, « I Am Sitting In A Room », 1 coffret 3 vinyles et 2 CD Sound On Paper Editions, 2021.
• Alvin LUCIER, Tilted Arc ; Double Helix ; EPO-5 ; Semicircle ; Two Circles ; Braid, dans « Works For The Ever Present Orchestra », 2 CD Black Truffle, 2020, BT060.
• Alvin LUCIER, Tapper ; Love Song ; Halo, dans « String Noise », 2 CD Black Truffle, 2020, BT061CD.
• Alvin LUCIER, Vespers ; Chambers, dans « Vespers », 1 LP Blume, 2020, 017.
• Alvin LUCIER, « Ricochet Lady », 1 CD Black Truffle, 2019, BT045.
• Alvin LUCIER, « Orpheus Variations », Charles Curtis, violoncelle ; SEM Ensemble ; Petr Kotik, direction, 1 CD Important Records, 2019, IMPREC 469.
• Alvin LUCIER, August Moon ; Trio for Clarinet, Cello & Tuba ; Step, Slide and Sustain, dans « Chamber Music », Charles Curtis, clarinette ; Anthony Burr, clarinette, 1 CD Important Records, 2019, IMPREC 468.
• Alvin LUCIER, « Criss Cross / Hanover », 1 LP Black Truffle, 2018, BT033.
• Alvin LUCIER, « So You… (Hermes, Orpheus, Eurydice) », 1 CD Black Truffle, 2018, BT044.
• Alvin LUCIER, I am Sitting in a Room ; Music for Solo Performer ; Charles Curtis ; Double Rainbow ; Nothing is real (Strawberry Fields Forever) ; Braid ; Two Circles ; Hanover ; Step, Slide and Sustain ; One Arm Bandits, dans « Illuminated by the Moon », 4 LP + 1 CD ZHdK Records, 2017.
• Alvin LUCIER, Diamonds for One, Two or three Orchestras ; Slices ; The Exploration of the House, dans « Orchestra Works »,**Janáček Philharmonic Orchestra ; Christian Arming, Petr Kotik, Zsolt Nagy, direction, 1 CD New World, 2013, 80755-2.
• Alvin LUCIER,« Sferics & Music for Solo Performer », 1 CD Lovely Music, 2010, LCD 5013.
• Alvin LUCIER, « Wind Shadows », The Barton Workshop, 2 CD New World, 2005, 80628-2.
• Alvin LUCIER, « Still and Moving Lines of SIlence in Families of Hyperbolas », 2 CD Lovely Music, 2004, LCD 1015.
• Alvin LUCIER, « Navigations for Strings / Small Waves », The Arditti Quartet, 1 CD Mode, 2003, mode 124.
• Alvin LUCIER, « Vespers and Other Early Works », 1 CD New World, 2002, 80604-2.
• Alvin LUCIER, « Still Lives », 1 CD Lovely Music, 2001, LCD 5012.
• Alvin LUCIER, « Theme », 1 CD Lovely Music, 1999, LCD 5011.
• Alvin LUCIER, « 40 Rooms »*,* 1 CD + CD-ROM iEar Studios, 1999.
• Alvin LUCIER, Wind Shadows ; Music for Piano with One or More Snare Drums ; Music for Piano with Amplified Sonorous Vessels ; Panorama, dans « Panorama », Roland Dahinden, trombone ; Hildegarde Kleeb, piano, 1 CD Lovely Music, 1997, LCD 1012.
• Alvin LUCIER, « Fragments for Strings », The Arditti Quartet, 1 CD Disques Montaignes, 1996.
• Alvin LUCIER, « Clocker », 1 CD Lovely Music, 1994, LCD 1019.
• Alvin LUCIER, « Music on a Long Thin Wire », 1 CD Lovely Music,1992, LCD 1011.

Filmographie

• Hauke HARDER, Viola RUSCHE, No Ideas but in Things. The composer Alvin Lucier, 2012.
• Robert ASHLEY, Music with Roots in the Aether: Opera for Television. Tape 3: Alvin Lucier, 1975.