Sequenza21/The Contemporary Classical Music Weekly

Robert Erickson's
Pacific Sirens

Robert Erickson (1917–1997) is one of the more unjustly neglected American composers of the latter half of the twentieth century. He was also a revered teacher and author of two important books on music. Early in his career, under the guidance of his teacher Ernst Krenek, he flirted with then abandoned atonality. After relocating to California in 1956, he developed the characteristics for which his work became most recognized: a heightened interest in the atmosphere of a piece, an obsession with timbre, ways of varying the sound of a work with experiments in new technique, and explorations into the new worlds uncovered through the invention of tape recording.

He was one of the first American composers to work extensively with sounds recorded on tape, both for its own sake and as combined with live performers on conventional instruments; and he
wrote distinguished music requiring improvisation, by both solo instruments and ensembles. In later years he moved away from the pioneering experiments of the 1960s and '70s toward a simpler, ultimately stripped-down style, characterized by frequent drones, long slow passages, and hypnotic rhythms which were influential on a number of younger "minimalist" composers.

Erickson composed for virtually every medium except opera, and was performed and commissioned by the Minneapolis, San Francisco, Oakland, and Los Angeles Symphony Orchestras, the American Composers Orchestra, and such celebrated ensembles as the Arch Ensemble, Continuum, the Kronos Quartet, and SONOR. He received fellowships from the Ford Foundation and the Guggenheim Foundation and awards from the National Endowment for the Arts, the American Academy and Institute of Arts and Letters, and, in 1985, the Friedheim Award for chamber music for his string quartet Solstice, performed at the Kennedy Center.

He taught at the College of St. Catherine's in St. Paul, the University of California at Berkeley, and the San Francisco Conservatory of Music, before becoming one of the founders of the Department of Music at the University of California, San Diego, in 1967. He also served as Music Director of KPFA Radio in Berkeley from 1955 to 1957 and as a director of the Pacific Foundation, KPFA's parent body, for several years thereafter. He was the teacher of Paul Dresher, Pauline Oliveros, Terry Riley, Loren Rush, Charles Shere, and Morton Subotnick, among others.

Erickson published two books: The Structure of Music: A Listener's Guide in 1957 and Sound Structures in Music in 1975. Many of his compositions were recorded, and he was the subject of two biographies, by John MacKay and Charles Shere, both of which appeared in 1996.

Pacific Sirens
Composer: Robert Erickson
Performer: Cleveland Chamber Orchestra, et al.
New World Records #80603

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