This life of sounds : Evenings for new music in Buffalo

Author(s)

    • Levine, Renée

Bibliographic Information

This life of sounds : Evenings for new music in Buffalo

Renée Levine Packer

Oxford University Press, 2010

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Note

Bibliography: p. [227]-231

Includes index

Description and Table of Contents

Description

This Life of Sounds portrays an important and previously unexplored corner of the history of new music in America: the Center of the Creative and Performing Arts int eh State University of New York at Buffalo. Composers Lukas Foss (the Center's founder), Lejaren Hiller, and Morton Feldman were the music directors over the life of "the Buffalo group," during the years 1964-1980. Based on Foss's plan, the Rockefeller Foundation provided annual fellowships for young composers and virtuoso instrumentalists to live in Buffalo for up to two years, thus creating a cadre of like-minded musicians who would spend their time studying, creating, and performing difficult - often controversial - new work. The new legendary group of musicians (some would say "musical outlows") who participated in the Buffalo group included Pulitzer Prize winner George Crumb, Terry Riley, Cornelius Cardew, Maryanne Amacher, Frederic Rzewski, David Tudor, Julius Eastman, and many more. Composers John Cage, Jim Tenney, Iannis Xenakis and others all figure int he story as well. The book provides valuable accounts of the Center's influential concert series, Evenings for New Music, performed in Buffalo, New York and throughout Europe; its famous recording of Terry Riley's In C; the political activism of the time; and the intersection of academic, private, and institutional funding for the arts. Life magazine declared in an article about the 1965 Fest of the Arts Today titled, "Can This Be Buffalo?", "Buffalo exploded last month in a two-week avant garde festival that was bigger and hipper than anything ever held in Paris or New York..." The concerts, the festivals, and the adventurous musical climate attracted filmmakers and young visual arts resulting in what one person called "one of those kinds of places the way people talk about Vienna in 1900-1910."

Table of Contents

  • ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
  • INTRODUCTION
  • PRELUDE: A STUDY IN SONORITY
  • CREATING THE CENTER
  • GETTING THEIR GONGS WET
  • SETTLING IN
  • "CAN THIS BE BUFFALO?"
  • "ADAGIO" AND "CANTO"
  • DAVID TUDOR
  • NEWS FOR YOU
  • EXCAVATING RICHES
  • COMPOSER-PERFORMERS
  • RENEWAL AND INTERNATIONAL INFLUENCE
  • THE BERKELEY OF THE EAST
  • DIAMONDS AND MUD
  • AQUARIUM
  • TECHNOLOGY RISING
  • CONTINUANCE
  • ILLIACS AND OSCILLATORS
  • MUSIC AND THEATER
  • A HOLIDAY ANGEL
  • JULIUS EASTMAN
  • FUSION
  • CORNUCOPIA
  • TURMOIL
  • EARLY SEVENTIES
  • MAD KINGS AND MAKING DO
  • THE TENTH YEAR
  • CLOSER TO HOME
  • SHAKEUP
  • THE CONTINUOUS PRESENT
  • JUNE IN BUFFALO
  • BOSTON HARBOR
  • ULTRASONICS, SUBLIMINAL LIGHT AND SOUND
  • A LECTURE ON THE WEATHER
  • LATE JANUARY 1977
  • MUSIC OF CHANGES
  • A CRITICAL FALL
  • "IT'S LIKE THE LOVE CANAL"
  • HPSCHD AND BEYOND
  • NON-CONTINUANCE
  • AFTER IMAGE
  • APPENDIX 1: CHRONOLOGY
  • APPENDIX 2: LIST OF INTERVIEWS
  • APPENDIX 3: LIST OF CREATIVE ASSOCIATES
  • APPENDIX 4: LIST OF CREATIVE ASSOCIATE GRADUATE FELLOWS
  • APPENDIX 5: SELECTED DISCOGRAPHY
  • ENDNOTES
  • BIBLIOGRAPHY
  • INDEX

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