The Theatre of Eternal Music, sometimes later known as The Dream Syndicate, [1] was a mid-sixties musical group formed by La Monte Young [2] that focused on experimental drone music. It featured the performances of La Monte Young, John Cale, Angus MacLise, Terry Jennings, Marian Zazeela, Tony Conrad, Billy Name, Jon Hassell, Alex Dea and others. The group is stylistically tied to the Neo-Dada aesthetics of Fluxus and the post-John Cage noise music continuum.
The Theatre of Eternal Music gave performances on the East Coast of the United States as well as in Western Europe that consisted of long periods of sensory inundation with combinations of harmonic relationships, which moved slowly from one to the next by means of "laws" laid out by La Monte Young regarding "allowable" sequences and simultinaeities.
In 1964 the ensemble contained Young and Marian Zazeela, voices; Tony Conrad and John Cale, strings; and sometimes Terry Riley, voice. The Theater of Eternal Music's discordant sustained notes and loud amplification influenced John Cale's subsequent contribution to the Velvet Underground in his use of both discordance and feedback. [3] John Cale and Tony Conrad have released noise music recordings they made during the mid-sixties, such as Cale's Inside the Dream Syndicate series (The Dream Syndicate being the alternative name given by Cale and Conrad to their collective work with La Monte Young).[4]
Most of the pieces performed by The Theatre of Eternal Music 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. Likewise, the works are often of extreme length, many pieces having no beginning and no end, existing before and after a particular performance. The Theatre of Eternal Music ensemble’s masterwork, begun in 1964, is titled The Tortoise His Dreams and Journeys and is divided into several sections, of which Map of 49’s Dream: The Two Systems of Eleven Sets of Galactic Intervals Ornamental Light-Years Tracery, is the only one of which a fragment can be found on disc (forty minutes, with Jon Hassell on trumpet, Garret List on trombone, Zazeela on voice and Young on electronics). [5][6] The longest "Dream House" performance was that given at the Harrison Street gallery in New York, which lasted uninterruptedly for six years, from 1979-1985.
Contents |
Discography
- La Monte Young Marian Zazeela, The Theatre of Eternal Music:
Dream House 78' 17" (Shandar, 1974) - Inside the Dream Syndicate, Volume I: Day of Niagara (Table of the Elements TOE-CD-74. Recorded April 25, 1965 in New York City / Released in 2000) Personnel: La Monte Young, Marian Zazeela, Angus MacLise, John Cale, Tony Conrad :: Bootleg recording of dubious title, credits, and quality Not authorized by La Monte Young [4]
- Inside the Dream Syndicate Vol.II: Stainless Steel Gamelan (Table of the Elements, 2002) Personnel: John Cale, Angus MacLise, Tony Conrad
- Inside the Dream Syndicate Vol.III: Stainless Steel Gamelan (Table of the Elements, 2002) Personnel: Terry Jennings, Angus MacLise, John Cale, Sterling Morrison
References
- DeLone et al. (eds.), Aspects of Twentieth-Century Music (1975) Englewood Cliffs, New Jersey: Prentice-Hall
- Paul Hegarty, Noise/Music: A History (2007) Continuum International Publishing Group
- Hermann von Helmholtz,On the Sensations of Tone as a Physiological Basis for the Theory of Music (1885) 2nd English edition. New York: Dover Publications
- [5] S. Murray, (2000) Inside the Dream Syndicate, Volume I: Day of Niagara (1965) web published at Pitchfork
- LaBelle, Brandon. Background Noise: Perspectives on Sound Art (2006) New York and London: Continuum International Publishing, p. 71
- Jim Samson, Music in Transition: A Study of Tonal Expansion and Atonality, 1900–1920 (1977) New York: W.W. Norton & Company
- James Tenney, A History of "Consonance" and "Dissonance" (1988) White Plains, NY: Excelsior; New York: Gordon and Breach
- Steven Watson, Factory Made: Warhol and the Sixties (2003) Pantheon, New York
- [6] La Monte Young and Marian Zazeela at the Dream House: The Theatre of Eternal Music (2003) at Newmusicbox.org
- [7] Piero Scaruffi, La Monte Young
Footnotes
- ^ [1] Inside the Dream Syndicate, Volume I: Day of Niagara (1965)
- ^ [2] La Monte Young and Marian Zazeela at the Dream House: The Theatre of Eternal Music (2003)
- ^ Steven Watson, Factory Made: Warhol and the Sixties (2003) Pantheon, New York, p. 157
- ^ Steven Watson, Factory Made: Warhol and the Sixties (2003) Pantheon, New York, p. 103
- ^ LaBelle, Brandon. Background Noise: Perspectives on Sound Art (2006) New York and London: Continuum International Publishing, p. 71
- ^ [3] Piero Scaruffi, La Monte Young
External links
- [8] Photograph of The Theatre of Eternal Music: La Monte Young, Voice and Sine Waves; Marian Zazeela, Voice; Jon Hassell, Horn; Alex Dia, Voice; Wayne Forrest, Tuba; Sharon Stone, Voice.
See also
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