Chambers. Alvin Lucier

to make a living and how to speak to people, how to communicate verbally. I guess I’m trying to help people hold shells up to their ears and listen to the ocean again.

       VESPERS

      VESPERS (1969)

      for any number of players who would like to pay their respects to all living creatures who inhabit dark places and who, over the years, have developed acuity in the art of echolocation, i.e., sounds used as messengers which, when sent out into the environment, return as echoes carrying information as to the shape, size, and substance of that environment and the objects in it.

      Play in dark places, indoors, outdoors, or underwater; in dimly lit spaces wear dark glasses and in lighted spaces wear blindfolds. In empty spaces objects such as stacked chairs, large plants, or human beings may be deployed.

      Equip yourselves with Sondols (sonar-dolphin), hand-held echolocation devices which emit fast, sharp, narrow-beamed clicks whose repetition rate can be varied manually.

      Accept and perform the task of acoustic orientation by scanning the environment and monitoring the changing relationships between the outgoing and returning clicks. By changing the repetition rate of the outgoing clicks, using as a reference point a speed at which the returning clicks are halfway between the outgoing clicks, distances can be measured, surfaces can be made to sound, and clear signatures of the environment can be made. By changing the angle of reflection of the outgoing clicks against surfaces, multiple echoes of different pitches can be produced and moved to different geographical locations in the space. Scanning patterns should be slow, continuous, and non-repetitive.

      Move as non-human migrators, artificial gatherers of information, or slow ceremonial dancers. Discover routes to goals, find clear pathways to center points or outer limits, and avoid obstacles.

      Decisions as to speed and direction of outgoing clicks must be made only on the basis of usefulness in the process of echolocating. Any situations that arise from personal preferences based on ideas of texture, density, improvisation, or composition that do not directly serve to articulate the sound personality of the environment should be considered deviations from the task of echolocation.

      Silences may occur when echolocation is made impossible by the masking effect on the players’ returning echoes due to the saturation of the space by both the outgoing and returning clicks, by interferences due to audience participation, or by unexpected ambient sound events. Players should stop and wait for clear situations, or stop to make clear situations for other players.

      Endings may occur when goals are reached, patterns traced, or further movement made impossible.

      For performances in which Sondols are not available, develop natural means of echolocation such as tongue-clicks, finger-snaps, or footsteps, or obtain other man-made devices such as hand-held foghorns, toy crickets, portable generators of pulsed sounds, thermal noise, or 10 kHz pure tones.

      Dive with whales, fly with certain nocturnal birds or bats (particularly the common bat of Europe and North America of the family Vespertilionidae), or seek the help of other experts in the art of echolocation.

      Activities such as billiards, squash, and water-skimming may be considered kindred performances of this work.

      Based on the work of Donald R. Griffin.

      When was Vespers written?

      Let’s see, I got the idea for it in 1967, and like most of my pieces I thought about it for a long time before I actually made the final realization. I thought it was final, but the other day as I was resting in the middle of the gym, I started listening to the footsteps of a runner as he ran around the oval track. At first you’d hear a single echo, but then as he circled and got in a different place, the echo would begin to multiply—not really multiply but add—so that there would be three echoes for every step. This gave me the idea that perhaps I should keep the idea of the piece open. That’s a funny thing for me to say because in the original version, you know, the one with the Sondols, I don’t care about the speed at which the players play. I’m not interested in what goes out, I’m only interested in what comes back. But if I ever made a version of Vespers using runners, I would want to have runners of different styles and speeds—long distance runners, milers, sprinters. Whereas the Sondol version is for anyone to play, I’m beginning to feel that I ought to utilize the specialties that people have.

      I know that one of your instructions in playing the Sondols is rather than to play in a certain way, just not to change the way you play too quickly.

      The reason is so that the players are not self-conscious about trying to make the outgoing pulses interesting. I always tell them that if I wanted to make interesting rhythmic figures, I’m certainly prepared to do so. Often I find that people who have never played a musical instrument before, people I get off the street, so to speak, a few hours before the concert, do the best job because they don’t have preconceived ideas. You see, I want to make the space be the interesting thing, not the personalities of either myself or the people playing it; what goes out into the space, therefore, has to be neutral.

      It’s a curious performance piece though, because the point of it, it seems to me, is the way the environment responds to the ticks from the sound guns, and yet the sound guns themselves are such an unusual product. The idea is very general, playing your environment, but the instrument that you use is very specific.

      Yes, but I don’t enjoy stipulating that one has to use Sondols, I’d like to leave that open. They’re very expensive anyway. I don’t mind sending them around, but I only have four of them and that means that only four people can play the piece at the same time. Do you know these little tin toys called “crickets”?

      Oh, clickers.

      I think they’re called “crickets” after the insects. They make beautiful sharp sounds which, although not terribly directional, produce fairly clear echoes from reflective surfaces. A few years ago I bought a thousand of them to use in performances because I thought audiences might enjoy participating. The first time I tried using them was at the Concord Academy for Girls in Massachusetts. I had been asked to give a lecture-demonstration and thought that it would be educational for the girls to participate. The night before, I had instructed four of the girls how to use the Sondols. My plan was to have them start performing and at a certain point the girls with the “crickets” would gradually join in. During the performance, a transformation took place from the very sharp pulses of the Sondols to the more diffused echoing sounds of the “crickets.” The texture changed from one in which you could hear isolated echoes to one in which you could hear the room begin to ring or sing.

      Later that year I tried it in Helsinki. While my four Sondol players were playing, I passed out a hundred or so “crickets” to members of the audience who then began playing them. And while many of them undersood that the piece was about echoes and echolocation, some students from the conservatory who were there started making banal rhythmic figures. Instead of trying to hear the room, they played childish patterns. After the program was over, we packed up all our equipment and went into the town. It was early spring in Finland, that period of time when the sun finally comes out after a long period of darkness, and as we walked through the streets of Helsinki, we could hear people, singly, or in groups of two or three, playing their “crickets.” It was beautiful. Perhaps they got the point of the piece more after the concert than they did during it.

       The piece brings to mind all sorts of animal features and it’s whimsical to use cricket toys because they do sound like real crickets, but just how naturalistic were your ideas? Did you have animal ideas before you found out about the sound guns or vice-versa?

      All I remember is that I did—oh, I remember how it all happened! Mary was trying to find a studio where she could work on her sculpture. She put an ad in one of the Cambridge underground newspapers saying she wanted to form a communal studio and she got an answer from a fellow who had an empty garage. We both went over to see him. I started to talk with him and he mentioned that he worked for Listening