Theatre of Eternal Music

For the 80s group, see Dream Syndicate.
Theatre of Eternal Music
Origin East Coast, USA
Genres Experimental, drone, avant-garde, minimalism, noise
Years active 1963–2003
Labels Shandar, Table of the Elements
Associated acts The Velvet Underground
Just Alap Raga Ensemble
various other musicians
Past members La Monte Young
John Cale
Angus MacLise
Terry Jennings
Marian Zazeela
Tony Conrad
Billy Name
Jon Hassell
Alex Dea
Terry Riley
Sterling Morrison

The Theatre of Eternal Music, sometimes later known as The Dream Syndicate,[1] was a mid-1960s musical group formed by La Monte Young,[2] that focused on experimental drone music. It featured the performances of La Monte Young, John Cale, Angus MacLise, Terry Jennings, Marian Zazeela, Tony Conrad, Billy Name, Jon Hassell, Alex Dea and others. The group is stylistically tied to the Neo-Dada aesthetics of Fluxus and the post-John Cage noise music continuum.

Career

The Theatre of Eternal Music gave performances on the East Coast of the United States as well as in Western Europe that consisted of long periods of sensory inundation with combinations of harmonic relationships, which moved slowly from one to the next by means of "laws" laid out by La Monte Young regarding "allowable" sequences and simultaneities.

In 1964 the ensemble contained Young and Marian Zazeela, voices; Tony Conrad and John Cale, strings; and sometimes Terry Riley, voice. The Theater of Eternal Music's discordant sustained notes and loud amplification influenced Cale's subsequent contribution to the Velvet Underground in his use of both discordance and feedback.[3] Cale and Conrad have released noise music recordings they made during the mid-sixties, such as Cale's Inside the Dream Syndicate series (The Dream Syndicate being the alternative name given by Cale and Conrad to their collective work with Young).[4]

Most of the pieces performed by the Theatre of Eternal Music have long titles, such as "The Tortoise Recalling the Drone of the Holy Numbers as they were Revealed in the Dreams of the Whirlwind and the Obsidian Gong, Illuminated by the Sawmill, the Green Sawtooth Ocelot and the High-Tension Line Stepdown Transformer." Likewise, the works are often of extreme length, many pieces having no beginning and no end, existing before and after a particular performance. The Theatre of Eternal Music ensemble’s masterwork, begun in 1964, is titled The Tortoise His Dreams and Journeys and is divided into several sections, of which "Map of 49’s Dream: The Two Systems of Eleven Sets of Galactic Intervals Ornamental Light-Years Tracery," is the only one of which a fragment can be found on disc (forty minutes, with Jon Hassell on trumpet, Garrett List on trombone, Zazeela on voice and Young on electronics).[5] The longest Dream House performance was that given at the Harrison Street gallery in New York, which lasted uninterruptedly for six years, from 1979 to 1985.

Discography

Cover of La Monte Young Marian Zazeela, The Theatre of Eternal Music: Dream House 78' 17"

See also

Further reading

Notes

  1. ↑ BAD LINK Pitchforkmedia.com Inside the Dream Syndicate, Volume I: Day of Niagara (1965)
  2. ↑ Newmusicbox.org La Monte Young and Marian Zazeela at the Dream House: The Theatre of Eternal Music (2003)
  3. ↑ Steven Watson, Factory Made: Warhol and the Sixties (2003) Pantheon, New York, p. 157
  4. ↑ Steven Watson, Factory Made: Warhol and the Sixties (2003) Pantheon, New York, p. 103
  5. ↑ LaBelle, Brandon. Background Noise: Perspectives on Sound Art (2006) New York and London: Continuum International Publishing, p. 71
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