Description: An engaging inside view of experimental music
Review Quotes:
"Plain and direct-spoken and with an uncluttered prose style, Lucier easily blends analysis, anecdote and digression into a reader-friendly first-person account of some of the most interesting music to come out of the postwar period."--Daniel Barbiaro, Avant Music News
"I love Lucier's music and find his writing spare, friendly, but intelligent. For anyone who is exploring this period of music history for the first time--or wants to remember what it felt like to live thru such an interesting time--Lucier's Music 109 is an indispensable source."--Haskins, American Record Guide
"Though the book has much to offer relative experts on the topic, it's also the perfect introduction -- breezy, but not dumbed-down -- to the head-spinning innovations and intellectual breakthroughs that took place in the world of contemporary classical music from the 1940s to the 1980s, explained largely through stories and firsthand accounts. (Lucier even tosses in some basic and easily understood music theory.) For those already acquainted with this music, Lucier's descriptions of how it came to be reveal details of discovery and development that a non-insider could never know. With his unaffected but engaging tone, Lucier is simply writing, from an insider's singularly informed perspective, about the experiences of an extended group of friends: one that just happens to have changed the face of music."--Dave Mandl, Los Angeles Review of Books
"Alvin Lucier, in addition to being a groundbreaking composer of experimental music, is also a professor at Wesleyan University, and if this book is any indication, he is a uniquely gifted educator. (This book) compiles the best of his teaching on experimental music from the 1950s onward, with the kind of deep insight and fascinating personal stories that could only come from someone who lived through it."--Kevin Erickson, Future of Music
"A book that says what it needs to say and to which very little can be added. Its author takes up the task in a manner that more writers could stand to emulate.Lucier persuades you quietly with his point rather than bludgeoning you with the sturm und drang techniques of a lesser writer and a lesser mind."--Jedd Beaudoin, PopMatters
"In looking for a guide to the world of American experimental music, it would be hard to think of a better one than Alvin Lucier."--David Revill, Times Higher Education
"Plain and direct-spoken and with an uncluttered prose style, Lucier easily blends analysis, anecdote and digression into a reader-friendly first-person account of some of the most interesting music to come out of the postwar period."--Daniel Barbiaro, Avant Music News
"For those with the ears to hear, Lucier's warm prose will sound a few notes of welcome clarity."--J. Bryan Lower, Slate