Get Free Shipping on orders over $79
Robert Ashley : American Composers - Kyle Gann

Robert Ashley

By: Kyle Gann

Hardcover | 14 December 2012

At a Glance

Hardcover


$299.75

or 4 interest-free payments of $74.94 with

 or 

Ships in 5 to 10 business days

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.

Industry Reviews
''Robert Ashley is one of the great living American composers, and Kyle Gann is one of the most active and vital commentators on the wider scene of which Ashley is a part. Informative and entertaining, occasionally even shocking, this book will be essential reading for anyone interested in Ashley, his life and times, and his music.'' Bob Gilmore, musicologist, editor of Ben Johnston's ''Maximum Clarity'' and Other Writings on Music

More in Music

Even the Good Girls Will Cry : My 90s Rock Memoir - Melissa Auf der Maur

RRP $36.99

$32.99

11%
OFF
In Love and Death : The Lost Notebook - Bert McCracken

RRP $99.99

$70.99

29%
OFF
My First Piano Adventure Lesson Book A - Nancy Faber

RRP $22.95

$18.75

18%
OFF
Hal Leonard Guitar Method: Book 1 (Second Edition) - Will Schmid
Pop Songs For Kids : Sheet Music Book for Piano / Keyboard - Hal Leonard Publishing Corporation
Mixtapes and MTV : Triumphs and Tragedies in 1980s Music - Tony Wellington
Star of the Show : My Life on Stage - Dolly Parton

RRP $85.00

$61.99

27%
OFF
Rumours of My Demise : A Memoir - Evan Dando

RRP $34.99

$28.75

18%
OFF
Cat On The Road To Findout : The Official Autobiography - Yusuf
White Male Stand-Up - Alan Davies

RRP $34.99

$28.75

18%
OFF
Punk : The Last Word - Stephen Colegrave

RRP $69.99

$65.99

The Way I Am - Eminem

Paperback

$53.75

My First Piano Adventure - Lesson Book : My First Piano Adventure - Nancy Faber
Big Blue Sky : A memoir - Peter Garrett

RRP $26.99

$22.99

15%
OFF
How to Make Gravy - Paul Kelly

RRP $26.99

$22.99

15%
OFF
This is Your Brain on Music : Understanding a Human Obsession - Daniel Levitin