Jon Catler

I first met La Monte Young at a 1981 performance of his piece The Well-Tuned Piano at the Dia Art Foundation’s beautiful Harrison Street space. When I got a chance after the show to speak with La Monte and his wife, Light artist Marian Zazeela, I was surprised at their friendly demeanor and sense of humor. We began working together shortly after that. Since then, I have been playing music in Harmonic Series tuning.

When Brian [Chase of Chaikin Records] first spoke to me about the possibility of composing a more drone-oriented piece for a recording, I remembered once hearing Terry Riley refer to La Monte Young as "The Young Mountain Of The East" - and I thought of the mountain of music and concepts La Monte has given us. For this project, I wanted to go higher up the ‘mountain’ and build upon the Opening Chord section from The Well-Tuned Piano. This composition uses what's known as a 7-limit Harmonic system; my vision was to add to this some pitches from the 13-limit Harmonic system that I have been working with for 30 years.

Structurally, The Young Mountain of the East develops its pitch sets through a series of twelve movements, or, in the language of the piece, emanations. In each of these emanations, there is an upward unfolding of the Harmony, followed by a downward descent back to the unity - like going up and down a mountain. The beginnings and ends of the twelve emanations are indicated by very brief instances of silence.

I believe Nature can provide many of the answers that humans seek. This concept has motivated me to translate things like birdsong and the Fibonacci Series into Harmonic Series pitches. The Harmonic Series provides an infinite range of distinct pitches and unique intervals. Each step up the Series yields a brand new interval, and all of these pitches live harmoniously together, all related to the fundamental tone. This seems to indicate a strength and unity to infinite diversity, as if Nature is answering us ‘yes, all living things can coexist’.