Everything about La Monte Young totally explained
La Monte Thornton Young (born
October 14 1935) is an
American composer and musician.
Young is generally recognized as the first
minimalist composer (Strickland 2001), and one of the four most celebrated leaders of the minimalist school, along with
Terry Riley,
Steve Reich and
Philip Glass, despite having little in common formally with Glass or Reich. Young is also probably the least heard and least well-known of the major minimalist composers.
His works have been included among the most important and radical post-
World War II avant-garde,
experimental, or
drone music. Both his proto-
Fluxus and "
minimal" compositions question the nature and
definition of music and often stress elements of performance.
Life
Born to a
Mormon family in
Bern, Idaho, his family moved several times in his childhood while his father searched for work before settling in
Los Angeles, California. He studied at
Los Angeles City College, and came out ahead of
Eric Dolphy in a
saxophone audition for the school's jazz band. In LA's jazz milieu, he played alongside notable musicians like
Ornette Coleman,
Don Cherry and
Billy Higgins.
He undertook further studies at the
University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA), where he received a BA in 1958, then at the
University of California, Berkeley, from 1958–60. In 1959 he attended the summer courses at
Darmstadt under
Karlheinz Stockhausen, and in 1960 relocated to New York in order to study
electronic music with
Richard Maxfield. His compositions during this period were influenced by
Anton Webern,
Gregorian chant,
Indian classical music, and
Indonesian
gamelan music.
A number of Young's early works use the
twelve tone technique, which he studied under
Leonard Stein at UCLA. (Stein had served as an assistant to
Arnold Schoenberg when Schoenberg, the inventor of the twelve-tone method, had taught at UCLA.) When Young visited
Darmstadt in 1959, he encountered the music and writings of
John Cage. There he also met Cage's collaborator, pianist David Tudor, who subsequently gave premières of some of Young's works. At Tudor's suggestion, Young engaged in a correspondence with Cage. Within a few months Young was presenting some of Cage's music on the West Coast. In turn, Cage and Tudor included some of Young's works in performances throughout the U.S. and Europe. By this time Young had taken a turn toward the conceptual, using principles of
indeterminacy in his compositions and incorporating non-traditional sounds, noises, and actions.
When Young moved to New York in
1960, he'd already established a reputation as an
enfant terrible of the avant garde. He initially developed an artistic relationship with
Fluxus founder
George Maciunas (with whom he published a text titled
An Anthology) and other members of the nascent movement.
Yoko Ono, for example, hosted a series of concerts curated by Young at her loft, and absorbed, it seems, his often parodistic and politically charged aesthetic. Young's works of the time, scored as short haiku-like texts, though conceptual and extreme, were not meant to be merely provocative but, rather, dream-like.
His
Compositions 1960 includes a number of unusual actions. Some of them are unperformable, but each deliberatively examines a certain presupposition about the nature of music and art and carries ideas to an extreme. One instructs: "draw a straight line and follow it" (a directive which he's said has guided his life and work since). Another instructs the performer to build a fire. Another states that "this piece is a little whirlpool out in the middle of the ocean." Another says the performer should release a
butterfly into the room. Yet another challenges the performer to push a piano through a wall.
Composition 1960 #7 proved especially pertinent to his future endeavors: it consisted of a B, an F#, a perfect fifth, and the instruction: "To be held for a long time."
In
1962 Young wrote
The Second Dream of the High-Tension Line Stepdown Transformer. One of
The Four Dreams of China, the piece is based on four pitches, which he later gave as the
frequency ratios: 36-35-32-24 (G, C, +C#, D), and limits as to which may be combined with any other. Most of his pieces after this point are based on select pitches, played continuously, and a group of long held pitches to be improvised upon. For
The Four Dreams of China Young began to plan the "Dream House", a light and sound installation where musicians would live and create music twenty-four hours a day. He formed
The Theater of Eternal Music to realize "Dream House" and other pieces. The group initially included
Marian Zazeela (who has provided the light work
The Ornamental Lightyears Tracery for all performances since 1965),
Angus MacLise, and
Billy Name. In
1964 the ensemble contained Young and Zazeela, voices —
Tony Conrad (a former mathematics major at Harvard) —
John Cale strings — and sometimes
Terry Riley, voice. Since
1966 the group has seen many permutations and has included, at various times,
Garrett List,
Jon Hassell,
Alex Dea, and many others, including members of the 60s groups. Young has realized the "Theater of Eternal Music" only intermittently, due to a lack of funding for such an expensive project, requiring extensive and exceptional demands of time in rehearsal and mounting.
Most realizations of the piece have long titles, such as
The Tortoise Recalling the Drone of the Holy Numbers as they were Revealed in the Dreams of the Whirlwind and the Obsidian Gong, Illuminated by the Sawmill, the Green Sawtooth Ocelot and the High-Tension Line Stepdown Transformer. His works too are often of extreme length, conceived by Young as having no beginning and no end, existing before and after any particular performance. In practical terms, too, Young and Zazeela are also on an extended sleeping-waking schedule – with "days" longer than twenty-four hours.
Beginning in
1970 interests in Asian classical music and a wish to be able to find the intervals he used by ear led to studies with
Pandit Pran Nath. Fellow students included calligrapher and light artist
Marian Zazeela, composers
Terry Riley and
Yoshi Wada, philosophers
Henry Flynt and
C.C. Hennix, and many others.
Young considers
The Well Tuned Piano — a permutating composition of themes and improvisations for
just-intuned solo piano — to be his masterpiece. Performances have exceeded six hours in length, and so far have been documented twice: first on a five-CD set issued by Gramavision, then a later performance on a DVD on Young's own
Just Dreams label. One of the defining works of American
musical minimalism, it's strongly influenced by mathematical composition as well as Hindustani classical music practice.
Together Young and Zazeela have realized a long series of semi-permanent "Dream Houses" — combining Young's just-intuned
sine waves in elaborate, symmetrical configurations and Zazeela's quasi-calligraphic light sculptures — in long-term installations. The effect is rigorous yet sensual, utilizing aspects of the viewer/auditor's perception to create sensory overload within a barely defined physical space.
Influence
La Monte Young's use of long tones and exceptionally high volume has been extremely influential — notably on
John Cale's contribution to
The Velvet Underground's sound — and with Young's associates:
Tony Conrad,
Jon Hassell,
Rhys Chatham,
Michael Harrison,
Henry Flynt,
Charles Curtis (musician), and
Catherine Christer Hennix. Young's students also include
Arnold Dreyblatt and
Daniel James Wolf.
The album by the band
Spacemen 3 is influenced by La Monte Young's concept of "Dream Music," evidenced by their inclusion of his notes on the jacket.
Lou Reed mentions (and misspells) La Monte Young's name on the cover of his album
Metal Machine Music: "Drone cognizance and harmonic possibilities
vis a vis Lamont Young's Dream Music"
Drone rock pioneer
Dylan Carlson has stated Young's work as being a major influence to him.
Since 1962 La Monte Young has worked very closely with
Marian Zazeela. Most of his mature works are performed with light designs created by Zazeela.
Quotes about Young
- "If you were going across the prairie in a Conestoga wagon, La Monte was the father and he always had a wife and everything was like his scene. Everybody was there playing with him, but he was the hierarchical chief." Billy Name
Discography
Inside the Dream Syndicate, Volume One: Day of Niagara with John Cale, Tony Conrad, Marian Zazeela, and Angus Maclise [Recorded1965] (Table of the Elements, 2000. Bootleg recording of dubious title, credits, and quality Not authorized by La Monte Young)(External Link
)
31 VII 69 10:26 - 10:49 PM Munich from Map of 49's Dream The Two Systems of Eleven Sets of Galactic Intervals Ornamental Lightyears Tracery; 23 VIII 64 2:50:45-3:11 AM the volga delta from Studies in The Bowed Disc [a.k.a.The Black Record] (Edition X, West Germany, 1969)
La Monte Young Marian Zazeela The Theatre of Eternal Music - Dream House 78' 17" (Shandar, 1974)
The Well Tuned Piano 81 X 25 (6:17.50 - 11:18:59 PM NYC) (Gramavision, 1988)
90 XII C. 9:35-10:52 PM NYC, The Melodic Version (1984) of The Second Dream of the High-Tension Line Stepdown Transformer From the Four Dreams of China (Gramavision, 1991)
Just Stompin': Live at The Kitchen (Gramavision, 1993)
Compilations
Small Pieces (5) for String Quartet ("On Remembering a Naiad") (1956) [includedon Arditti String Quartet Edition, No. 15: U.S.A. (Disques Montaigne, 1993)]
Sarabande for any instruments (1959) [includedon Just West Coast (Bridge, 1993)]
"89 VI 8 c. 1:45-1:52 AM Paris Encore" from Poem for Tables, Chairs and Benches, etc. (1960) [includedon Flux: Tellus cassette magazine #24]
Excerpt "31 | 69 c. 12:17:33-12:24:33 PM NYC" from Drift Study; "31 | 69 c. 12:17:33-12:49:58 PM NYC" from Map of 49's Dream The Two Systems of Eleven Sets of Galactic Intervals (1969) [includedon Ohm and Ohm+ (Ellipsis Arts, 2000 & 2005)]
566 for Henry Flynt [includedon Music in Germany 1950–2000: Experimental Music Theatre (Eurodisc 173675, 7-CD set, 2004)]Further Information
Get more info on 'La Monte Young'.
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