Alvin Lucier was born in the United States in 1931 and is considered to be a pioneer in contemporary composition and performance, particularly in the field of electroacoustics. His work, based on the concepts of echolocation, the physics of sound, and psychoacoustics, explores sound’s natural properties in connection to space, propagation phenomena, and interference.

Lucier studied at Yale and Brandeis Universities, and in 1958 and 1959 studied composition with Aaron Copland and Lukas Foss at the Tanglewood Music Center. In 1960, he was awarded a Fulbright grant to travel to Rome, where he developed a friendship with Frederic Rzewski and attended performances by John Cage, Merce Cunningham, and David Tudor. The work of these composers opened up new creative horizons for Lucier, who had been classically trained. Returning from Rome in 1962, he was appointed director of the Chamber Chorus at Brandeis University, which performed mostly new music.

In 1966, at a Chamber Chorus at New York’s Town Hall, Lucier met experimental composers Gordon Mumma and Robert Ashley, with whom he founded the Sonic Arts Union, along with David Behrman. The group remained active until 1976. In 1970, Lucier left Brandeis for Wesleyan University in Middletown, Connecticut, where he taught until 2011. In 1972, he became the musical director of the Viola Farber Dance Company, a position he held until 1979.

While Lucier composed for traditional formations, he is best known for his electroacoustic compositions, for which he used devices that were generally employed for scientific research. For example, one of his major works, Music for a Solo Performer, was composed for percussion instruments and amplified brain waves. I Am Sitting in a Room, for two tape recorders and two playback systems, is another major piece in his catalogue. In it, he recorded himself reading a text in a closed space, played the recording back in the same space, and rerecorded it. This process was repeated thirty-three times, a process that gradually amplified certain frequencies as the words of the text became unintelligible and were replaced by the harmonies and resonances of the room itself. Another of his major pieces, Music on A Long Thin Wire, was created by stretching a piano chord across a room between two magnets, activated by an amplified oscillator, which produced constantly changing harmonics, overtones, and resonances.

Lucier frequently collaborated with theater and visual artists. In 1994, he composed music for Skin, Meat, Bone, a play by Robert Wilson. In 2004, he created Six Resonant Points Along A Curved Wall, a sound installation for a monumental sculpture by Sol LeWitt.

In 2013 and 2014, Lucier was invited to numerous international festivals, including Tectonics (Glasgow) and Ultima (Oslo), and gave multiple retrospective concerts, notably at the Louvre Museum in Paris and the Stedelijk Museum in Amsterdam.

Lucier was a key influence on an entire young generation of avant-garde musicians and composers, including Oren Ambarchi, Stephen O’Malley, and Jim O’Rourke. In the last years of his life, he composed for the Ever Present Orchestra, an instrumental ensemble founded in 2016 to perform his work. Lucier died 1 December 2021.

Awards and Honors

• Honorary Doctorate of Arts, Plymouth University, 2007
• SEAMUS Award, 2006