La Monte Young

Young, La Monte
born 1935 in Bern, Idaho (USA); studies clarinet, saxophone and composition from 1951 to 1954 at UCLA, California, and from 1958 to 1960 60 in Berkeley (USA). Following a series of preparatory starts, in the 1950s attends the summer course in Darmstadt, Germany, with Karlheinz Stockhausen and John Cage; was greatly influenced in the late 1950s by classical Indian and Japanese Gagaku music, and participates in the Fluxus Movement. Dating from this period are Minimalist pieces with sustained or repeating tones of an extreme duration, for example «Composition 1960 #7,» containing only two tones, with the instruction for the interpreter «to be held for a long time». During the ongoing developmental period of «The Well-Tuned Piano» since 1964, develops his second, compositional emphasis based on absolute tonality systems and their complex, mathematical relationships. In 1963 he marries the artist Marian Zazeela, with whom he since then collaborates on numerous «sound/light environments,» among others «Dream House».
GF