Reveling in the Electronic Evolution

Look back at 20th century music, and one invention dominates every genre--the loudspeaker. Once electrified, music changed in the way it could be made, distributed and used. So it is only natural that the development and implications of electronic music would be a timely topic of investigation for the millennial edition of the Lincoln Center Festival, which began Tuesday. Amid an eclectic mix of opera, ballet, modern dance, classical and pop music, international theater and “nouveau cirque,” is a five-part series tracing the idiosyncratic history of electronic music and posing questions about its future.

An arcane, if interesting, investigation, you might think, given that the term “electronic music” still implies to many people the ‘50s practice of manipulating unearthly sounds in futuristically scientific ways. Yet about a half-hour before the second Electronic Evolution program, held Thursday night at the New York Society for Ethical Culture near Lincoln Center, a long line already snaked around the block, mostly made up of young people. Fans of DJ culture and electronica have begun to take an interest in the visionary and often wacky wizardry of the classical pioneers who made it all possible.

The highlight Thursday was Terry Riley’s “In C,” performed on electronic instruments. Pioneers young and old were invited to participate, and the resulting amount of musical eccentricity assembled on one stage was staggering. Dueling synthesizer inventors in the ‘60s, Robert Moog and Don Buchla, were on hand to play their inventions in the ensemble. The composer, Pauline Oliveros, was there, too, with her amplified accordion. Jaron Lanier, an inventor of virtual reality, had on electronic goggles and tapped out cosmic video imagery on two computer displays to Riley’s modular 1964 score.

This postmodern ensemble further included the Chapman Stick, Electronic Valve Instrument, clavinet, clavivox, each loonier than the next in its special-effects abilities. E-Tablas, electronic harp, electric guitar, Disklavier, turntables and samplers joined in. Two historic instruments, the Theremin and the Ondes Martenot, were played by their respective reigning virtuosos, Lydia Kavina and Valerie Hartmann-Claverie, each oscillating away like crazy.

Many of these instruments are a kind of dream factory, designed to create fabulous sounds never before imagined. When the conductor Michael Barrett asked each player for a brief demonstration before the performance, the result was a mini-electronic slam of astonishing sonic one-upmanship to the delight of an audience riveted and thrilled by it all.

Curiously, though, the sea of electrons flowing from all these instruments sounding together in “In C” turned into a smear of predominantly treble sound. The most fanciful electronic instruments produce whole sonic worlds unto themselves, and their inventors are often eccentric loners. Thus the irony of this performance was that “In C,” which breaks the mold of traditional ensemble music by allowing instruments the freedom to move through repeats of given patterns at their own pace, ended up reigning in maverick electronic personalities. Still, there were some great moments, one being the climax near the end in which expanding bass frequencies suddenly made the ground seem to sink while the atmosphere felt charged with crackling electricity.

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With other concerts in the series devoted to the authentic classics of electronic music and to its ongoing possibilities, this program concentrated on the field’s more quirky sidelines. It opened with “The Blackbird” by Messiaen, one of the featured composers of this year’s festival. In the familiar version for flute and piano, the piece sounds like birdsong translated into modern music. Replacing the flute with the Ondes Martenon, a Theremin-like keyboard instrument named for its inventor, it sounds like modern music translated into birdsong.

Martinu’s Fantasia for Theremin, oboe, piano and string quartet, from 1944, is odder still. The Czech composer operated on the assumption that the exotic “good vibrations” of the Theremin, its eerie glissandi created by Kavina waving her hands in the air, could be just one more ensemble instrument in this ingratiating score from 1944. The exuberant applause for the odd intruder, however, disproved that notion.

In an example from the Vietnam era--George Crumb’s antiwar string quartet, “Black Angels”--amplified strings become instruments of both terror and transport to ethereal realms, a point made when the music was chosen for the soundtrack of the film, “The Exorcist,” but much better made here by the impressively intense young Whitman String Quartet.

That, however, is all history. Today electronic devices are commonplace, and Scott Johnson’s “Worth Having,” which had its world premiere on the concert, treated them as such to uncommon effect. The instruments were a quartet of electric guitar (which the composer played) and amplified violin, cello and piano. The impulse for the score was mundane speech, casual comments from the violinist (Mary Rowell) and cellist (Erik Friedlander) captured by a tape recorder during a rehearsal.

“Hey, Erik, can I have one of these,” the prerecorded Rowell asks the cellist, her voice undergoing electronic alterations while the electronic instruments transform spoken rhythms into exciting groove. A listener loses footing as talk blurs into music and music into talk, as the banal becomes significant. And this proved ultimately the heart of the whole provocative issue of electronic music, which can stand for anything from the most quotidian to the most quixotic.

Still to be explored in Electronic Evolution will be tonight’s program in which DJs will deconstruct classics ranging from Rossini to Cage, and an evening next week of new works for the Theremin.

* Lincoln Center Festival 2000 continues through July 30 at Lincoln Center and surrounding venues. (212) 721-6500 or https://www.lincolncenter.org.