Originally released March 10, 2002, this essential double CD reissues two long-out-of-print Lovely Music LPs (1983, 1984) with four previously unreleased string parts recorded in 2001. Alvin Lucier's monumental four-part work, initiated in 1972 and documented here across recordings from 1983-84 and 2001, stands as one of the most rigorous and beautiful explorations of acoustic phenomena in contemporary music history.
Still and Moving Lines of Silence in Families of Hyperbolas represents a defining achievement in Lucier's lifelong investigation of sound's physical properties—resonance, phase interference, and the transmission of acoustic energy through space. The work consists of twelve pieces in Part II: solos and one duet for voice, clarinet, French horn, flute, string quartet (violin, viola, cello), and four mallet instruments (marimba, xylophone, glockenspiel, vibraphone). In each piece, musicians sound sixteen long tones separated by silences against one or two fixed oscillator tones, slightly raising and lowering their pitch to produce audible beats of various speeds.
The result is music of extraordinary concentratio - sound art that makes audible the normally invisible architecture of acoustic space itself. As beat frequencies interact with room resonances, they create shifting patterns of reinforcement and cancellation, "troughs" and "valleys" of sound and silence that move through physical space in hyperbolic curves. Lucier treats the performance space not as passive container but as active collaborator, revealing the room's characteristic frequencies through patient, precise investigation.
Performed by Thomas Ridenour (clarinet), William Winant (percussion), Dan Panner (violin), Rebecca Armstrong (voice), Conrad Harris (viola), Susan Palma (flute), Gregory Hesslink (cello), and James de Corsey (horn), these recordings document Lucier's work at its most crystalline. The performers' extraordinary control allows listeners to hear minute variations in beating patterns as sustained tones interact with sine waves tuned to create specific interference phenomena.
First performed in various versions throughout the 1970s - at Festival d'Automne in Paris (1974), Museum of Modern Art San Francisco (1975), The Kitchen NYC (1976), and Mills College Oakland (1984)- Still and Moving Lines has influenced generations of composers investigating the intersection of acoustic science and artistic practice. The work connects directly to Lucier's other landmark investigations: I Am Sitting in a Room (1969), Music on a Long Thin Wire (1977), and Crossings (1982).
Alvin Lucier (1931-2021) pioneered experimental music for over five decades as composer, performer, and longtime professor at Wesleyan University. A founding member of the Sonic Arts Union (with Robert Ashley, David Behrman, and Gordon Mumma), Lucier developed a singular approach to composition: creating minimal experimental frameworks that allow acoustic phenomena to reveal themselves. His work revolutionized our understanding of how sound behaves in physical space, making audible what usually remains below our threshold of perception.
This reissue presents the complete Part II instrumentation for the first time, combining the original 1983-84 wind, brass, voice, and percussion recordings with the 2001 string quartet performances. The result is an indispensable document of post-war experimental music—essential listening for anyone serious about acoustic ecology, sound art, minimalism, or the radical investigation of music's fundamental materials.
Music of the highest concentration. Sound revealing its own nature through patient observation. A landmark work of American experimental composition, finally complete.
