Conversation with Alvin Lucier
Alvin Lucier, Arthur Margolin · Perspectives of New Music · 1981
AM: We're about to talk for an hour or two about your music, and I'd like to begin by asking how you feel about this talking. Your music seems to me quite saliently nondiscursive music, written as though in response to centuries of narrative music. Yet here we sit and talk about it. Should we be doing this at all? AL: The idea that some musicians have, that since music stands by itself it shouldn't be talked about, is not productive for me. Our talk doesn 't stand for the music. It keeps our interest in all types of music alive; it certainly aids and has aided my own musical evolution. Each piece of mine is based on a definite idea which has attained compositional clarity for me in all sorts of ways, including conversation and verbalized thought and, of course, musical intuition.