BOLDTYPE ISSUE #54: Artwork By
La Monte Young and Marian Zazeela
The cover of this issue of Boldtype is a detail of a photograph photograph of minimalist composer La Monte Young standing next to a projection of The Well-Tuned Piano in the Magenta Lights. The installation screens Young's collaborative performance with his wife, Marian Zazeela, and is installed at the Kunst im Regenbogenstadl in Polling, Germany. Alan Licht chronicles the long and complex history of the work in Sound Art: Beyond Music, Beyond Categories (Rizzoli, 2007), citing it as an example of the closely intertwined relationship between experimental music and art.
In 1964, Young composed The Well-Tuned Piano in his downtown Manhattan loft. Performed using only intonation, the work was essentially site-specific, due to the sensitivity of the piano's tuning — it could not be moved, nor could the piece be readily performed on other pianos. After the work's public premiere in Rome a decade later, the Dia Art Foundation bought the piano itself and installed it in its New York performance space. The Well-Tuned Piano in the Magenta Lights is a separate video, light, and sound installation based on one of the piece's signature chords. As listeners navigate the enveloping environment of sound, they hear different tones — an effect achieved by creating a geometric, but purely aural tapestry of sustained synthesized frequencies. The work is currently on view at the MELA Foundation in New York through June 21.
A central figure in New York's early-'60s art scene, where music and art freely mixed, Young became known for his formal experiments with duration, instrumentation, tuning, and, later, whole sensory environments, which put him at the forefront of experimental music. He was an inspiration to the minimalist pantheon of Terry Riley, Steve Reich, and Philip Glass, as well as a collaborator with musicians like Tony Conrad, Yoko Ono, and original Velvet Underground drummer Angus MacLise. Due to his music's unconventional structure, however, Young continues to be influential, yet chronically underappreciated. - H.G. Masters
