Christian Wolff
Alongside John Cage, Morton Feldman, and Earle Brown, composer Christian Wolff emerged in the 1950s on the New York experimental music scene and became a prominent champion of the aesthetics of musical indeterminism. His works, which became increasingly explicit in their political content as his career progressed, stress choice, artistic cooperation and interdependence, and an accommodating attitude toward the potential relationships between music, sound, and silence.
Wolff was born in Nice, France, but moved to the United States during his childhood. He took a rather indirect route to composition, studying classics and comparative literature at Harvard University, where he also taught, before taking positions in both music and literature at Mills College and later Dartmouth. Though active as a pianist and electric guitarist throughout his career, he was largely self-taught as a composer, and from the beginning his works relied more on careful aesthetic design than compositional "craft" in the traditional sense. This is not to say, however, that his compositions lack depth or complexity; indeed, they point up some of the most crucial philosophical issues of his time, and do so in a way that engages and invites close listening and careful consideration.
Although his works of the 1950s already conveyed a decidedly "democratic" subtext, with their reliance on freedom and reaction ("parliamentary participation"), they did so through traditional notation and sometimes invoked, however obscurely, traditional forms. The flexibility of their realizations owed to Cage's influence, while their sparse surfaces recalled Webern, and in some cases resonated with LaMonte Young's early works. Wolff's compositions from the late '50s and and the 1960s placed increased effort on real-time cooperation between performers, who worked somewhat freely within certain set parameters (set durations with unspecified pitches, for example), but were required to alter their performative decisions consequent to each other's actions.
Wolff explicitly drew analogies between his compositional methods and political views, and during the 1970s even set texts related to his democratic socialist positions. This effort coincided with similar artistic endeavors espoused by Cornelius Cardew and Frederic Rzewski, both of whom Wolff interacted with during this period. Later works turned inward to more specifically musical topics, perhaps due in part to Wolff's somewhat self-effacing assessment of the composer's role. As he observed in a 1991 interview: "Most political music, paradoxically enough, is for the converted; it's an instrument of cohesion for a group that already knows what it wants...."
Wolff remained prolific in the early 21st century, with releases on leading avant-garde labels such as Mode, Pogus, Wergo, Erstwhile, and Tzadik, and collaborations with Christian Marclay and Yasunao Tone, Keith Rowe, Michael Pisaro, John Tilbury, and numerous other artists.
© Jeremy Grimshaw /TiVo
Discographie
14 album(s) • Trié par Meilleures ventes
-
Christian Wolff: 8 Duos
Classique - Paru chez New World Records le 1 mars 2013
16-Bit CD Quality 44.1 kHz - Stereo -
Exercises and Explorations
Christian Wolff, Keith Kirchoff, Dominic Lash, Steve Noble
Classique - Paru chez Spoonhunt le 1 févr. 2021
16-Bit CD Quality 44.1 kHz - Stereo -
Trio
Christian Wolff, Larry Polansky, Kui Dong
Alternatif et Indé - Paru chez Henceforth Records le 1 nov. 2012
16-Bit CD Quality 44.1 kHz - Stereo -
A Complete Anthology Of Solo and Duo Violin Pieces
Électronique - Paru chez Black Truffle le 25 nov. 2022
16-Bit CD Quality 44.1 kHz - Stereo -
Christian Wolff: Exercises (1973-75)
Classique - Paru chez hat ART CD le 2 févr. 2015
16-Bit CD Quality 44.1 kHz - Stereo -
Christian Wolff: Early Piano Pieces
Classique - Paru chez hat[now]ART le 4 nov. 2008
16-Bit CD Quality 44.1 kHz - Stereo -
Angelica Music
Classique - Paru chez I dischi di angelica le 7 avr. 2015
16-Bit CD Quality 44.1 kHz - Stereo -
Christian Wolff: For Ruth Crawford
Roland Dahinden, Hildegard Kleeb, Dimitris Polisoidis
Classique - Paru chez hat ART CD le 2 févr. 2015
16-Bit CD Quality 44.1 kHz - Stereo -
QUINTETTE & QUATUOR
Quatuor Manfred, Marie Bereau, Luigi Vecchioni, Alain Pelissier, Christian Wolff, Vincent Coq
Classique - Paru chez Pierre Verany le 19 mai 1998
16-Bit CD Quality 44.1 kHz - Stereo -
The Possibility Of A New Work For Electric Guitar
Morton Feldman, Christian Wolff, Wendy Eisenberg
Classique - Paru chez Other Minds Records le 1 mars 2024
24-Bit 48.0 kHz - Stereo -
-
Melody (Live)
Classique - Paru chez Other Minds Records le 1 oct. 2014
16-Bit CD Quality 44.1 kHz - Stereo -
Christian Wolff: Lines / Accompaniments
Classique - Paru chez NWCRI le 15 oct. 2012
16-Bit CD Quality 44.1 kHz - Stereo