Robert Ashley
Robert Ashley (b. 1930), originally a trained classical pianist and jazz enthusiast, received an undergraduate degree from the University of Michigan and a graduate degree from the Manhattan School of Music, both in composition. He returned to Ann Arbor in 1956 to pursue a doctorate in composition, studying with Ross Lee Finney. Among his contributions to the ONCE Festival include:
The Fourth of July (1960), an electroacoustic composition, was performed on the first ONCE Festival and was ironically one of the most radical of the most controversial pieces. The Fourth of July is a mixture of “free improvisation” loops playing at “a hierarchy of speeds, durations, repetitions, and sectional groupings” and a recording of his friends’ Fourth of July party. This piece generated mixed reviews from critics. Waldrop called the piece, “a work of great imagination, in perfect control,” while Collins George of the Free Press compared it to a “faulty…radio circuit,” and H. Wiley Hitchcock walked out before the piece was finished.
Sonata (1959–1960) for piano was performed at the first ONCE Festival and explores changing rhythmic densities. Ashley’s goal was to create “a kind of ‘kaleidoscope’ of very rapidly changing ‘harmonies.’” The music uses a 36-note row with a combination of half-steps and whole-steps that produces dissonant sounds for any combination of pitches. The length of the phrases, instead of relying on melody or harmony, is determined by how long a note on the piano could be sustained, with or without pedal.
Fives (1962) revolves around the number five and is scored for two ensembles of five percussion instruments each, two pianists using five fingers each, and five string players. The pitches and rhythms are indeterminate in specified ranges and combinations. Ashley thinks of this piece as an “encyclopedia of proportions and combinations that I could make available to anybody (if I could find a publisher) who might want to use it—or any part of it—to make a performance piece, giving the person a nice set of possibilities without the person having to do the calculations.” Soon, however, Ashley realized that the score would be impossible for anyone to understand, but he has used the score/chart a few times himself to compose other pieces.
in memoriam…Crazy Horse (symphony) (1963), graphically notated and scored for 32 groups of four-piece ensembles and is the third in a group of four pieces Ashley wrote that present a social commentary on the parallels between European musical history—in particular, the emergence of musical form—and American social history—in particular, the emergence of the “social” idea of the American hero. The score for this piece is graphically notated as a 64-point circle, with lines converging from each point to the circle’s center. The format of the piece a lot of freedom to the performers and allows them to be an active part of the composition process, however, they have specific instructions on how to progress around the circle. As they progress, the sounds produced by the individual ensembles oscillate between dissonance and harmony, building in volume and fading out, and the interaction between groups is apparent.
Read more about this topic: ONCE Group