Robert Ashley / Kyle Gann.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Gann, Kyle.

Series:

American composers

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Ashley, Robert, 1930-2014.

Ashley, Robert.

Composers--United States--Biography.

Composers.

Avant-garde (Music).

History.

Television operas.

United States.

Ashley, Robert, 1930-2014--Criticism and interpretation.

Criticism and interpretation.

Television operas--History and criticism.

Music--20th century--History and criticism.

Music.

Avant-garde (Music)--United States--History--20th century.

Genre:

Biographies.

Physical Description:

xiii, 150 pages : illustrations ; 22 cm.

Place of Publication:

Urbana : University of Illinois Press, [2012]

Summary:

This book explores the life and works of Robert Ashley, one of the leading American composers of the post-Cage generation. Ashley's innovations began in the 1960s when he, along with Alvin Lucier, Gordon Mumma, and David Behrman, formed the Sonic Arts Union, a group that turned conceptualism toward electronics. He was also instrumental in the influential ONCE Group, a theatrical ensemble that toured extensively in the 1960s. During his tenure as its director, the ONCE Festival in Ann Arbor presented most of the decade's pioneers of the performing arts. Particularly known for his development of television operas beginning with Perfect Lives, Ashley spun a long series of similar text/music works, sometimes termed "performance novels." These massive pieces have been compared with Wagner's Ring Cycle for the vastness of their vision, though the materials are completely different, often incorporating noise backgrounds, vernacular music, and highly structured, even serialized, musical configurations.

Drawing on extensive research into Ashley's early years in Ann Arbor and interviews with Ashley and his collaborators, Kyle Gann chronicles the life and work of this musical innovator and provides an overview of the avant-garde milieu of the 1960s and 1970s to which he was so central. Gann examines all nine of Ashley's major operas to date in detail, along with many minor works, revealing the fanatical structures that underlie Ashley's music as well as private references hidden in his opera librettos. Book jacket.

Contents:

1 Oh, How We Misunderstand: Introduction 1

2 The Vessel of the Eternal Present: The Early Years 7

3 When Slow Starts to Mean Something, We Crave Fast: The ONCE Years 23

4 Incredibly Slowly Our View Begins to Slide: The Mills College Years 46

5 I'm Not the Same Person That I Used to Be: Perfect Lives 57

6 Who Could Speak If Every Word Had Meaning?: Atalanta (Acts of God) 77

7 If You Have to Ask You Can't Afford One: Now Eleanor's Idea 87

8 One Thing Follows the Next and I Just Do It: Dust, Celestial Excursions, Concrete, and Smaller Pieces 110.

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references, discography and index.

ISBN:

9780252035494

0252035496

9780252078873

025207887X

OCLC:

788273584