This book explores the life and works of the pioneering opera composer
Robert Ashley, one of the leading American composers of the post-Cage
generation. Ashley's innovations began in the 1960s when he, along with
Alvin Lucier, Gordon Mumma, and David Behrman, formed the Sonic Arts
Union, a group that turned conceptualism toward electronics. He was also
instrumental in the influential ONCE Group, a theatrical ensemble that
toured extensively in the 1960s.During his tenure as its director, the
ONCE Festival in Ann Arbor presented most of the decade's pioneers of
the performing arts. Particularly known for his development of
television operas beginning with Perfect Lives, Ashley spun a long
series of similar text/music works, sometimes termed "performance
novels." These massive pieces have been compared with Wagner's Ring
Cycle for the vastness of their vision, though the materials are
completely different, often incorporating noise backgrounds, vernacular
music, and highly structured, even serialized, musical structures.
Drawing on extensive research into Ashley's early years in Ann Arbor and
interviews with Ashley and his collaborators, Kyle Gann chronicles the
life and work of this musical innovator and provides an overview of the
avant-garde milieu of the 1960s and 1970s to which he was so central.
Gann examines all nine of Ashley's major operas to date in detail, along
with many minor works, revealing the fanatical structures that underlie
Ashley's music as well as private references hidden in his opera
librettos.
