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The Second Dream of The High​-​Tension Line Stepdown Transformer from The Four Dreams of China (1962)

by La Monte Young

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Composed while riding in a car on a trip from San Francisco to New York City in December 1962, The Four Dreams of China —of which this recording comprises the Second— forms a structural, stylistic and harmonic link between La Monte Young’s earlier, fully notated works composed of long sustained tones from the late ‘50s, and later works combining improvisation with predetermined rules and elements.

Stylistically, The Four Dreams of China continues the texture of long sustained tones and silences, and the extended-duration time construct set forth in his 1958 work Trio for Strings. Structurally, however, while the Trio for Strings is fixed in time by its method of conventional notation, The Four Dreams of China is the first work Young composed in the style of Trio that involves the process of improvisation. Inspired by the scores of Cage, Feldman, Brown, Wolff and Bussotti, which require performer interpretation, Young evolved a concept of composition that led to rule-based scores and crystallized in The Four Dreams of China. Strict rules in each of the four “Dreams” determine which of the four pitches may be sounded together. Within this framework of fixed rules, the musicians listen to each other and improvise. This process of actively listening to each other is one of the important aspects of The Four Dreams of China, and it has become a central principle for group improvisation in all of Young's subsequent ensemble music.

Since improvisation is a part of the performance process, each realization of The Second Dream of The High-Tension Line Step-down Transformer is different, and as a method of cataloguing the different recorded realizations of works of this nature, Young includes the date, time and city of recording within the titles. This 77-minute recording is the 9:35 PM, December 9, 1990 realization of The Melodic Version of The Second Dream of the High-Tension Line Step-down Transformer.

The Four Dreams of China represents yet a further expansion of time structure in Young's work: developing on the image of timelessness, Young determined that individual performances of the work had no beginning or ending. Each performance is woven out of an eternal fabric of silence and sound where the first sound emerges from a long silence, and after the last sound the performance does not end but merely evanesces back into silence until a group of musicians “picks up” the same set of pitches again, or from time to time, emphasizing the audible aspect of the performance. It was this concept, in fact, of a work which was eternal, with no beginning and no end, first set forth in The Four Dreams of China, that led Young to evolve the idea of the Dream House, a permanent performance place where such a work would be played continuously, eventually establishing a life and tradition of its own.

*included with purchase is a PDF of the original liner notes*

credits

released June 17, 2021

La Monte Young

90 XII 9 c. 9:35 — 10:52 PM NYC
The Melodic Version (1984) of
The Second Dream of The High-Tension Line Stepdown Transformer
from
The Four Dreams of China (1962)


Performed by The Theatre of Eternal Music Brass Ensemble
led by Ben Neill
Left Channel:
Rich Clymer, Pamela Fleming, James O'Connor, James Donato
Right Channel:
Ben Neill, Gary Trosclair, Richard Kelley, Stephen Burns

Music composed by La Monte Young

Produced by MELA Foundation
under the artistic direction of La Monte Young and Marian Zazeela.
David Farneth, Associate Producer
Bob Bielecki, Recording Engineer, Digital Mixing
Gene Paul, Digital Mastering and Processing

Jung Hee Choi, Digital Release Producer
Micah Feinberg, Digital Release Production Assistant

Cover, package design and booklet © 1991 La Monte Young and Marian Zazeela
℗ 1991 La Monte Young. All rights reserved.

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La Monte Young New York, New York

La Monte Young pioneered the concept of extended time durations in 1957 and for over 60 years contributed extensively to the development of just intonation and rational number based tuning systems in his performance works; his work had a wide-ranging influence on contemporary music, art, and philosophy, including Minimalism, Fluxus, performance art, and Conceptual art. ... more

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