Pauline Oliveros

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Oliveros (right) playing in Mexico City in 2006

Pauline Oliveros (May 30, 1932 – November 24, 2016)<ref>Wagner, Laura, "Pauline Oliveros, Pioneer Of 'Deep Listening,' Dies At 84". Cited an Instagram post by flautist Claire Chase and confirmation by friends on Oliveros' Facebook page. Retrieved 2016-11-26.</ref> was an American composer and accordionist.

Considered a central figure in the development of post-war experimental and electronic music, she was a founding member of the San Francisco Tape Music Center in the early 1960s, and served as its director. She taught music at Mills College, the University of California, San Diego (UCSD), Oberlin Conservatory of Music, and Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute. Oliveros authored books, formulated new music theories, and investigated new ways to focus attention on music including her concepts of "deep listening"<ref>Template:Cite magazine</ref> and "sonic awareness", drawing on metaphors from cybernetics.<ref>Theodore Gordon (2021) ‘Androgynous Music’: Pauline Oliveros’s Early Cybernetic Improvisation, Contemporary Music Review, 40:4, 386-408, DOI: 10.1080/07494467.2021.2001939</ref><ref>Template:Cite journal</ref> She was an Eyebeam resident.

Early life and education

Pauline Oliveros was born in Houston, Texas, on May 30, 1932.<ref name=Britannica>Template:Cite web</ref> She was of Tejana descent.<ref name=":0" /> She started to play music as early as kindergarten,<ref name="Baker" /> and at nine years of age she began to play the accordion, received from her mother, a pianist, because of its popularity in the 1940s.<ref name="Baker">Baker, Alan. "An interview with Pauline Oliveros". January 2003. American Mavericks American Public Media. Template:Webarchive</ref> She later went on to learn violin, piano, tuba, and French horn for grade school and college music. At the age of sixteen she resolved to become a composer.<ref>Service, Tom. "A guide to Pauline Oliveros's music". The Guardian.</ref>

Oliveros arrived in CaliforniaTemplate:When and supported herself with a day job, and supplemented this by giving accordion lessons.<ref name="Baker" /> From there Oliveros went on to attend the University of Houston, studying with Willard A. Palmer. While attending the University of Houston, she was a member of the band program and helped form the Tau chapter of Tau Beta Sigma Honorary Band Sorority.

She earned a BFA in composition from San Francisco State College, where her teachers included composer Robert Erickson, with whom she had private lessons and who mentored her for six to seven years. During this period she met San Francisco-based musicians Terry Riley, Stuart Dempster, and Loren Rush, with whom she would later collaborate.<ref name ="Baker" /><ref name="Smith">Smith, Steve. "Strange Sounds Led a Composer to a Long Career". The New York Times.</ref>

Career

When Oliveros turned 21, she obtained her first tape recorder, which led to her creating her own electroacoustic pieces.<ref name="Smith" /> Oliveros was one of the original members of the San Francisco Tape Music Center, which was an important resource for electronic music on the west coast of the United States during the 1960s.<ref name="Amirkhanian">Amirkhanian, Charles. "Women in Electronic Music – 1977". Liner note essay. New World Records.</ref> The Center later moved to Mills College, with Oliveros serving as its first director; there it was renamed the Center for Contemporary Music.<ref name="HolmesHolmes2002">Template:Cite book</ref>

Oliveros often improvised with the Expanded Instrument System, an electronic signal processing system she designed, in her performances and recordings.<ref name="Sanden2013">Template:Cite book</ref> Oliveros held Honorary Doctorates in Music from the University of Maryland, Baltimore County, Mills College, and De Montfort University.

In 1967, Oliveros left Mills to take a position at the University of California, San Diego.<ref name="Baker" /> There, Oliveros met theoretical physicist and karate master Lester Ingber, with whom she collaborated in defining the attentional process as applied to music listening.<ref>Template:Cite web</ref> She also studied karate under Ingber, achieving black belt level. In 1973, Oliveros conducted studies at the university's one-year-old Center for Music Experiment; she served as the center's director from 1976 to 1979. In 1981, to escape creative constriction,<ref>Template:Citation</ref> she left her tenured position at UCSD and relocated to upstate New York to become an independent composer, performer, and consultant.<ref name="CV">Template:Cite web</ref>

In 1987, Oliveros had the tuning of her accordion changed from equal temperament to just intonation.<ref>Gagne, Cole. Soundpieces 2: Interviews with American Composers. Metuchen, N.J.: The Scarecrow Press, 1993, p. 215. Template:ISBN</ref> She sings and plays the retuned accordion (without electronics) in the 1993 opera Agamemnon.

Oliveros was a member of Avatar Orchestra Metaverse, a global collaboration of composers, artists and musicians that approaches the virtual reality platform Second Life as an instrument itself.<ref>Template:Cite web</ref>

Deep listening

Oliveros at Other Minds 20 in San Francisco in 2015

In 1988, as a result of descending Template:Convert into the Dan Harpole underground cistern in Port Townsend, Washington, to make a recording, Oliveros coined the term "deep listening"<ref name="Baker" />—a pun that blossomed into "an aesthetic...designed to inspire both trained and untrained performers to practice the art of listening and responding to environmental conditions in solo and ensemble situations".<ref>Ankeny, Jason. "Pauline Oliveros Biography". Template:Webarchive 98.5 Kiss FM.</ref> Stuart Dempster, Oliveros and Panaiotis then formed the Deep Listening Band, and deep listening became a program of the Pauline Oliveros Foundation, founded in 1985. The Deep Listening program includes annual listening retreats in Europe, New Mexico and in upstate New York, as well as apprenticeship and certification programs. The Pauline Oliveros Foundation changed its name to Deep Listening Institute, Ltd., in 2005. The Deep Listening Band, which included Oliveros, David Gamper (1947–2011) and Stuart Dempster, specializes in performing and recording in resonant or reverberant spaces such as caves, cathedrals and huge underground cisterns. They have collaborated with Ellen Fullman and her long-string instrument, as well as countless other musicians, dancers and performers. The Center for Deep Listening at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute in Troy, New York, initially under the direction of Tomie Hahn, is the steward of the former Deep Listening Institute. A celebratory concert was held on March 11, 2015, at the Experimental Media and Performing Arts Center (EMPAC) at Rensselaer Polytechnic.<ref>Template:Cite web</ref>

Sonic awareness

Oliveros at the Sonic Acts festival in 2012

Heidi Von Gunden<ref>Von Gunden, Heidi (1983). The Music of Pauline Oliveros, p. 105. Scarecrow Press. Template:ISBN. Foreword by Ben Johnston.</ref> names a new musical theory developed by Oliveros, "sonic awareness", and describes it as "the ability to consciously focus attention upon environmental and musical sound", requiring "continual alertness and an inclination to be always listening" and which she describes as comparable to John Berger's concept of visual consciousness (as in his Ways of Seeing).<ref>Von Gunden, Heidi (Autumn 1980 – Summer 1981). "The Theory of Sonic Awareness in The Greeting by Pauline Oliveros", Perspectives of New Music, vol. 19, no. 1/2, p. 409.</ref> Oliveros discusses this theory in the "Introductions" to her Sonic Meditations and in articles. Von Gunden describes sonic awareness as "a synthesis of the psychology of consciousness, the physiology of the martial arts, and the sociology of the feminist movement",<ref name="VG410">Von Gunden (1980), p. 410.</ref> and describes two ways of processing information, "attention and awareness",<ref name="VG410"/> or focal attention and global attention, which may be represented by a dot and circle, respectively, a symbol Oliveros commonly employs in compositions such as Rose Moon (1977) and El Rilicario de los Animales (1979).<ref name="VG410"/> (The titles of Oliveros' pieces Rose Moon and Rose Mountain refer to her romantic partner Linda Montano having gone by Rose Mountain at one time.<ref name="Von Gunden 1983, p.128-129">Von Gunden (1983), pp. 128–129.</ref>) Later this representation was expanded, with the symbol quartered and the quarters representing "actively making sound", "actually imagining sound", "listening to present sound" and "remembering past sound", with this model used in Sonic Meditations.<ref>Von Gunden (1980), p. 412.</ref> Practice of the theory creates "complex sound masses possessing a strong tonal center".<ref>Von Gunden (1980), p. 411.</ref>

Personal life

Oliveros was openly lesbian.<ref name="advocate">Template:Citation</ref> In 1975 Oliveros met her eventual partner, performance artist Linda Montano.<ref>Mockus, Martha (2007). Sounding Out: Pauline Oliveros and Lesbian Musicality, p. 96. Routledge. Template:ISBN (paperback), Template:ISBN (hardback), Template:ISBN (electronic).</ref> The titles of Oliveros' pieces Rose Moon and Rose Mountain refer to Montano having gone by Rose Mountain at one time.<ref name="Von Gunden 1983, p.128-129"/> In her later years, Oliveros developed a 32-year romantic partnership and creative collaboration with sound artist IONE (Carole Lewis).<ref>Template:Cite web</ref> The couple worked together on several major musical theatre productions, dance operas, and films.<ref>Template:Cite web</ref> Sound artist Maria Chavez, a friend and mentee of Pauline, describes Pauline and Ione: "when you saw them together, you saw love."<ref name=":0">Template:Cite web</ref>

Oliveros was also a patron of Soundart Radio in Dartington, Devon, England.

Death

She died in 2016 in Kingston, New York.<ref name=Britannica />

Awards and honors

Notable works

  • Sonic Meditations: "Teach Yourself to Fly", etc.
  • Sound Patterns for mixed chorus (1961), awarded the Gaudeamus International Composers Award in 1962, available on Extended Voices (Odyssey 32 16) 0156 and 20th Century Choral Music (Ars Nova AN-1005)
  • I of IV, included in the collection New Sounds in Electronic Music, published by Odyssey Records, 1967
  • Music for Annie Sprinkle's The Sluts and Goddesses Video Workshop—Or How To Be A Sex Goddess in 101 Easy Steps (1992)
  • Theater of Substitution series (1975–?). Oliveros was photographed as different characters, including a Spanish señora, a polyester clad suburban housewife, and a professor in robes. Jackson Mac Low played Oliveros at the New York Philharmonic's "A Celebration of Women composers" concert on November 10, 1975, and Oliveros has played Mac Low (see Mac Low's "being Pauline: narrative of a substitution", Big Deal, Fall 1976). (ibid,Template:Clarify p. 141)
  • Echoes from the Moon (1987) which uses Earth–Moon–Earth communication or "moonbounce"<ref>Template:Cite journal</ref>
  • Crone Music (1989)
  • Six for New Time (1999), music score for Sonic Youth
  • "the Space Between with Matthew Sperry", (2003) 482Music<ref name=FCA />

Books

Book chapters

She contributed a chapter to Sound Unbound: Sampling Digital Music and Culture (The MIT Press, 2008) edited by Paul D. Miller a.k.a. DJ Spooky.

Films

Other works

Annie Sprinkle’s 1992 production The Sluts and Goddesses Video Workshop – Or How To Be A Sex Goddess in 101 Easy Steps, which was co-produced and co-directed with videographer Maria Beatty, featured music by Oliveros.

Some of her music was featured in the 2014 French video game NaissanceE.<ref name="naissancee">Template:Cite web Template:Self-published source</ref>

Oliveros' work Deep Listening Room was featured in the 2014 Whitney Biennial.<ref>Whitney Museum of American Art. "103 Participants Selected for 2014 Whitney Biennial, To Take Place March 7 – May 25, 2014". Whitney.org. N.p., 14 November 2013. Web.Template:Clarify 1 February 2014.</ref>

Notable students

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References

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Further reading

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Listening

Template:Deep Listening Template:Gaudeamus International Composers Award Template:SEAMUS Lifetime Achievement Award Template:Portal bar Template:Authority control

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