So You . . . (Hermes, Orpheus, Eurydice)

Alvin Lucier’s So You . . . (Hermes, Orpheus, Eurydice) is inspired by poet H.D.’s 1916 feminist retelling of the Greek myth of Orpheus’s descent into the underworld to bring back his wife Eurydice. This one-hour-long narrative epic unites two fields of musical exploration Lucien is known for mining: interference patterns and spatial resonance, which create an extended journey from high to low C and back again. This work was originally composed for Documenta 14 in Athens in 2017 and was written specifically for longtime Lucier collaborators Charles Curtis, cello, and Anthony Burr, clarinet, and vocalist Jessika Kenney.

This piece brings together the sustained tones of a cello, a clarinet and vocals alongside three sweeping sine waves and nine speakers positioned inside Greek amphorae. Orpheus, famous for his command of the stringed lyre, maps onto the cello, while the swift-footed Hermes, the only god able move freely from Mount Olympus down to Hades, is represented by the clarinet. As H.D.’s defiant Eurydice, Kenney stretches two-word snippets of the poem into feats of extended vocalization, taking Orpheus to task for his assumption that she wanted to be rescued in the first place.

For this New York premiere, Burr, Curtis, and Kenney will reperform their roles for the first time since Alvin Lucier’s death in 2021. This March 11th performance will also include a conversation with poet Susan Howe.

Three Solos

In 1972, Lucier inaugurated his exploration of the phenomenon of audible beating and spinning created by colliding sound waves with his open-ended four-part work Still and Moving Lines of Silence in Families of Hyperbolas—the idea, in Lucier’s words, was that “rhythm can be created by tuning.” Jessika Kenney will perform part one, no. 2, from Lucier’s 1984 revision of the piece. In this solo, 16 long vocal tones separated by silences interact with a fixed oscillator. The slight differences between these closely tuned notes cause them to shatter and spiral around the room.

In Memoriam Jon Higgins, a work for clarinet and sine wave written in 1984 to commemorate the life of the Wesleyan musicologist and Carnatic vocal performer, marks Lucier’s first use of sine wave sweeps in combination with solo instrumentation. Over 20 minutes, the wave moves from the top of the clarinet’s register to the bottom, while clarinetist Anthony Burr plays tones lasting about a minute. These sustained tones interact with the constantly shifting pitch of the wave and result in beating of different tempos depending on the distance between notes.

Written for and with cellist Charles Curtis, Slices for Cello and Pre-recorded Orchestra (2007–2011) utilizes a recording of a 53-piece orchestra, each member of which plays a unique sustained note taken from the cello’s 53 note chromatic scale. As the cellist sounds melodic sequences of these pitches, the corresponding musician from the orchestra falls silent. This continues until only the soloist is playing, at which point the orchestra slowly joins back in. The cycle is repeated seven times with different melodies.

This event is co-presented by Amant and Blank Forms.