Live Performance: Alvin Lucier: Glacier for Solo Cello

Date: April 17, 2009
Location: Crowell Concert Hall, Center for the Arts, Wesleyan University, Middletown, CT
Performed by: Lucy Strother, cellist

It was nice returning to Wesleyan's Crowell Concert Hall, one of several unremarkable concrete buildings that comprise the university's Center for the Arts. It had been several years since the last time I attended a performance there, seeing faculty member and famed jazzer Anthony Braxton perform with a small ensemble of his graduate students.

Also among the faculty at Wesleyan is Alvin Lucier, a noted experimental composer. Lucier is well-known for his explorations of the physical properties of sound, and most of his work involves investigations into varied acoustic phenomena, including the resonance of performance spaces and natural reverb, the interactions of closely-tuned pitches, and phenomena involving auditory perception. And so it was, with a brief, soft-spoken introduction by Lucier himself, that his 30-minute piece Glacier was performed by Wesleyan student Lucy Strother.

A single sheet handed out at the door read as follows:

"During the course of a half hour performance of Glacier, a cellist slowly sweeps downward, tracking a graph of the mean mass balance of 30 glaciers over a 24-year period, from 1980 to 2004. Glacier was commissioned by Feet to the Fire, Exploring Global Climate Changes from Science to Art and was written for Lucy Strother."

Lucier implored the audience to listen very closely, reiterating that the piece was very slow and straight-forward, and that at various points during the descent of the pitches, certain subtle acoustic phenomena could be heard as the notes resonated within the performance space and the cello itself. Strother began slowly bowing an E on the cello's A string, drawing the full length of the bow across the string and again pushing back in a painstakingly slow, precisely controlled rate, sending a reedy, insectile drone into the concert hall, punctuated only by the changes in the direction she bowed, like brief pauses between deep in- and exhalations. Over the next 30 minutes, Strother would almost imperceptibly move her fingering down the strings, bringing the pulsing drone down not just through the chromatic notes but also touching upon many pitches in between. Upon reaching the open note on a string, Strother would deftly switch between the open string to the fingered note on the next lowest string. She continued in this fashion until she ended on the cello's low C.

And subtle the phenomena were. The slow descent was at times almost trance-inducing, the long notes wavering ever-so-slightly due to uncontrollable changes in the pressure with which Strother bowed. A few times she would find a note that was discretely doubled by the room, a higher-pitched tone riding with the deeper tone of the bowed note, producing an effect kind of like the ringing trail-off of electric guitar feedback. This was particularly noticeable as Strother bowed the open note on the G string, as the extra ringing tone immediately vanished as she shifted to a fingered G on the C string. At several points, though admittedly very briefly, I experienced what seemed to be an additional Tartini tone produced within my ear, though I'm not sure what accounted for the differing tones I would have to have heard if it was in fact a Tartini effect I was experiencing.

In the end, it was a pleasurable, hypnotic performance, though many audience members were noticeably fidgety by its end and a few rudely left in the middle. A few words must be said of Strother's impressive showing. Glacier is deceptively simple, and though the actual musical elements involved are basic, the stamina and concentration required on Strother's part to complete the piece was impressive. Maintaining the appropriate posture, bowing speed, and pressure must have been extremely difficult. Both taking and exiting the stage, Strother was smiling, almost bashful. During the performance, her face began to contort in concentration, and at times she almost looked pained, as though with the slow descent of the cello she was also descending into some dark, unspeakable subterranean depths. It's unfortunate that some of the more impatient audience members probably aren't in a position to appreciate just what it takes to perform what they find so boring. For those who took Lucier's advice and did indeed listen closely, boredom was an alien concept for that brief half hour.


Other Resources:
Alvin Lucier wikipedia entry
Alvin Lucier's website
Wesleyan University's Center for the Arts

Terry Riley's "In C"

"No one had done anything like this before-- where you just had a piece built all out of patterns, and the first concerts of 'In C' were kind of big communal events where a lot of people would come out and sometimes listen or dance to the music because the music would get quite ecstatic with all these repeated patterns."
-Terry Riley

As one of the "founding fathers" of minimalist composition, Terry Riley has spent much of his career demonstrating the ways simple, repetitive musical figures can be arranged to create sophisticated, dizzyingly complex, and wonderfully disorienting compositions. One of the most famous of these (in fact, arguably the first) is In C, originally recorded in 1968 and to this day a popular performance piece for progressive-leaning musical ensembles.

In C is in some ways an aleatoric piece, meaning that some elements of the composition are left to chance, i.e. the discretion of the performer. The sheet music for In C is accompanied by two pages of instructions from Riley which outline a few essential performance rules, as well as the portions of the composition in which the musician is permitted to vary their approach based on the developing mechanics of the music as the ensemble moves through the piece. In C is composed of 53 short musical patterns, to be played at any tempo and usually over a steady, eighth-note pulse of C notes (many times produced by a piano or a mallet instrument, though I've seen at least one classical ensemble employ an iBook). The piece can be played with any combination of instruments. Riley suggests a group of 35, though more or less performers can still render it effectively. (The original had 11 musicians, while one performance featured 124!)

Now, what makes In C such a landmark composition is its central rule, or lack thereof: though each instrument moves through the same 53 patterns, the duration a musician spends on each is not set. Each pattern is designed to not only be played in unison or canonically (think singing rounds) with itself, but also with the several patterns that surround it. It is here that In C dramatically comes to life: the polyrhythms and hypnotic shapes that emerge as patterns clash and merge and intertwine are fascinating. Generally, players are supposed to stay within three patterns of each other, a restriction that does little to hinder the variable nature of the results and lends an air of slowly transforming, over-arching development to the entire performance.

At least 20 recordings of In C exist, of which I've heard three. The best of the three is a 1998 live performance by the ensemble Bang on a Can, followed by Riley's original recording, and then Acid Mothers Temple & the Melting Paraiso U.F.O.'s 2003 attempt, which is very much in the spirit of the piece, but seems to spend a large part of the time disregarding some pretty essential elements (e.g., failing to have multiple instruments functioning polyphonically by varying patterns; much of the time it sounds like two guys playing the patterns in unison, in order, though admittedly it's difficult to tell underneath the several layers of shrieking, swooping synth drones). Still, AMT do sort of incorporate a few variations that I would be interested to try when performing In C. The first is abandoning a steady, time-keeping pulse of C notes in favor of a sustained drone (or even a very slow, droning "pulse" independent of keeping time). I envision a slightly distorted, noise-style drone in the neighborhood of C rather than a clear, sustained note using something like an organ, for example. Time keeping duties are then handed over to a drummer or percussionist, something permitted by Riley in his original instructions. With steady established rhythm and a drone acting as a pedal point to anchor the rest of the instruments, an ensemble comprised of typical jazz instrumentation (maybe an alto and tenor sax, clarinet, Fender Rhodes, guitar, bass, etc.) could churn out a pretty impressive reading of In C. Many ensembles seem hesitant to stray too far from the basic sound of Riley's first recording, which in my opinion leads to an occasionally dominating vibraphone or piano that draws undue attention to the eighth-note pulse instead of the evolving patterns.

But discussing In C can only take you so far. In many respects it's fairly simple, but it's also high-concept in its own unique and history-of-music-changing way. It's difficult to imagine via mere description, so take a few minutes to listen to some of the clips below.

Here's an excerpt from the performance of In C in Los Angeles with 124 musicians. It's just audio, and you should stick with it at least until the two minute mark, as it takes a little while for some of the patterns to really pick up. (In situations with an extremely large ensemble like this, a lot of the patterning decisions are made by a conductor, lest the whole thing devolve into a buzzing mess).


This is a brief excerpt from a performance by the Liminal group, showcasing a slower tempo:



And for those interested/intrigued/excited, you can download a .pdf file of the score to In C, complete with Riley's instructions, as well as listen to an excerpt of Riley's original 1968 recording at Other Minds:

• In C Sheet Music

• Excerpt from Riley's original recording of In C