Bilingual (English/German 656 pages) collection of writings about ideas concerning music by American composer Robert Ashley.

Contents

Prefaces
• At the Round Table – by Alvin Lucier
• Editor’s Preface – by Ralf Dietrich
• The Sparser the More Necessary – by Gisela Gronemeyer and Reinhard Oehlschlägel
• Acknowledgements – by Robert Ashley

Towards a New Kind of Opera
• Speech as Music. A Musical Autobiography
• Reinventing the Wheel. Different Periods in My Work
• The Dream of a Sound. Some Characteristics of My Music
• “. . . to begin again with music.” Important Elements in My Musical Life
• Variations on the Drone. A None-Timeline Concept
• Proportions in Music. The Meaning and Character of Numbers
• A New Kind of Opera. Contemporary Opera in the United States
• “. . . and break my heart.” The Difference Between Speaking and Singing
• “We need more music.” Opera versus Recital
• Stories from Real Life. Music with “Characters”
• A Typical Score. Production Notebooks and How They are Used
• “Where do the ideas come from?” Opera Subjects and Libretti
• “Everybody knows exactly what to do.” Working with Strict Formulas
• Style and Technique. Performance Practice
• Music has Become a Mystery Again. A New Definition of “Form”
• All Music Can Be Understood. Music with Roots in the Aether
• And So it Goes, Depending. Perfect Lives (Private Parts)
• The Magic of Collaboration. Perfect Lives and the “Template”
• Telling Stories in an Unusual Way. Atalanta (Acts of God)
• A Kind of History of America. A Grand Opera Tetralogy
• A Wonderful Jungle Full of Exotic Things. Celestial Excursion
• Letting Off Steam. The Immortality Songs
•
Discovering the Musicality of Speech. Mills College / Die Musikalität der Sprache entdecken. Mills College
• The Most Difficult Job in the World. Teaching at Mills
• Illusion Models
• Dreaming in Public. Three Works from the Seventies
• In Sara, Mencken, Christ and Beethoven There Were Men and Women
John Barton Wolgamot
• The Sound of Words
•
The ONCE Festival and/und the ONCE Group
• Public Opinion Descends Upon the Demonstrators
• in memoriam . . .
• Evening. Stage Version from in memoriam . . . Kit Carson
• The Wolfman for amplified voice and tape
• Kittyhawk (An Antigravity piece)
• Combination Wedding and Funeral
• Joy Road Interchange
• Unmarked Interchange
• Entrance
• Frogs
• The Trial of Anna Opie Wehrer and Unknown Accomplices . . .
• “Music has to be about something.” The ONCE Group
• Collections of Images. The ONCE Group Pieces
• Conceptual Pieces. Instructions and Annotations
• Thinking about the Sound of Speech. Lectures to Be Sung
• When the Virus Kills the Body . . .
• A Last Futile Stab at Fun
•
Program and Liner Notes
• The Fox (1957)
• Sonata . . . (1959–1960)
• The Bottleman (1960)
• Music for the ONCE Festival 1961–1966
• in memoriam . . . Esteban Gómez (quartet) (1963)
• The Wolfman (1964)
• The Wolfman Tape (1964)
• That Morning Thing (1967)
• She Was a Visitor (1967)
• The Wolfman Motorcity Revue (1967–1968)
• String Quartet Describing the Motions of Large Real Bodies (1974)
• How Can I Tell the Difference? (1974)
• Automatic Writing (1979)
• Perfect Lives (1978–1980)
• Atalanta (Acts of God) (1982–1987)
• Au Pair (1982–1987)
• Empire (1982–1991)
• Basic 10 (1988)
• Superior Seven (1988)
• Tract (1958–1992)
• Outcome Inevitable (1991)
• Now Eleanor’s Idea (1993)
• Foreign Experiences (1994)
• Balseros (1997)
• Dust (1998)
• Celestial Excursions (2003)
• Tap Dancing in the Sand (2004)
• Hidden Similarities (2005)
• Concrete (2006)

List of Works

Index