Gordon Mumma: Cybersonic Arts: Adventures in American New Music (2015)

13 May 2021, dusan

“A candid account of a broad artistic community by an active participant and observer

Composer, performer, instrument builder, teacher, and writer Gordon Mumma has left an indelible mark on the American contemporary music scene. A prolific composer and innovative French horn player, Mumma is recognized for integrating advanced electronic processes into musical structures, an approach he has termed “Cybersonics.”

Musicologist Michelle Fillion curates a collection of Mumma’s writings, presenting revised versions of his classic pieces as well as many unpublished works from every stage of his storied career. Here, through words and astonishing photos, is Mumma’s chronicle of seminal events in the musical world of the twentieth century: his cofounding the Cooperative Studio for Electronic Music; his role in organizing the historic ONCE Festivals of Contemporary Music; performances with the Sonic Arts Union; and working alongside John Cage and David Tudor as a composer-musician with the Merce Cunningham Dance Company. In addition, Mumma describes his collaborations with composers, performers, dancers, and visual artists ranging from Robert Ashley and Pauline Oliveros to Marcel Duchamp and Robert Rauschenberg.”

Edited with Commentary by Michelle Fillion
Foreword by Christian Wolff
Publisher University of Illinois Press, November 2015
ISBN 9780252039430, 0252039432
xxxiv+339 pages

Reviews: Eric Smigel (Intersections, 2015), Daniel Barbiero (Avant Music News, 2016), Aurelio Cianciotta (Neural, 2016).

Publisher
WorldCat

PDF (updated on 2022-11-21)

George Antheil: Bad Boy of Music (1945–)

9 April 2021, dusan

George Antheil (1900-1959) was a radical American composer active in the early part of 20th century. He was recognised by the Parisian avant-garde literary community as a musical spokesman for their ideas. In the late 1920s Antheil participated in the operatic renaissance in Germany, and, after his return to America in 1933, he attempted to synthesize an American musical idiom in his neoromantic film, symphonic, chamber, and operatic scores.

In his autobiography, Antheil gives a fascinating account of the creative activity in Berlin, Paris, Vienna, New York and Hollywood, discussing his encounters with Igor Stravinsky, Hedy Lamarr, James Joyce, Man Ray, Ezra Pound, Sylvia Beach, W.B. Yeats, Erik Satie, Pablo Picasso, Cecil B. DeMille, Fritz Lang, Salvador Dalí and others.

First published by Doubleday, Doran & Co., Garden City, NY, 1945
Published in the UK by Hurst & Blackett, London, 1947
Reprinted by National Book Association / Hutchinson & Co., London, 1949
295 pages
via Tom Whitwell

Reviews: Milfred Norton (Hollywood Quarterly, 1946), Linda Whitesitt (American Music, 1984).
Commentary: Guy Livingston (ABC Radio National, 2015).

WorldCat

PDF (12 MB)

Curtis Roads (ed.): Composers and the Computer (1985)

8 April 2021, dusan

An early anthology focusing on the aesthetics and compositional techniques in computer music.

With essays by Curtis Roads, Charles Dodge, Tod Machover, Jean-Claude Risset, Iannis Xenakis, and an interview with Herbert Brün by Peter Hamlin with Curtis Roads.

Publisher William Kaufmann, Los Altos, CA, 1985
Computer Music and Digital Audio series
ISBN 0865760853, 9780865760851
xx+201 pages

Review: Jon Appleton (The Musical Quarterly, 1986).

WorldCat

PDF (57 MB)

See also Roads’s Composing Electronic Music: A New Aesthetic (2015).