About A Love Song:
“[Oliveros’] composition for voice and accordion A Love Song was composed in 1985 and was part of her album, The Well and the Gentle.
Oliveros used this as her mantra when writing and listening to music:
‘Listen all the time and remind yourself when you are not listening.‘
This creative work is concerned with finding the meditations within the earth. This is represented by the droning accordion and the sultry voice. The work is reflective, pensive – with dark undertones through the use of harmonics and electronics. The intent with this work is for the listener to be fully engaged, and the music will act as aural meditation. Between the modal vocal fluctuations, and the double-accordion chords this work is static in many ways. There is an other-worldly feeling throughout this whole work, and the heavy reverb that is used on the accordion tapes add to this extension of sound.
The sweeping changes in dynamics between the voice and accordion highlight the disciplined communication between the two instruments. There is a sense of love between the two, which is perhaps where the name came about. The lack of any tonal structure is very freeing for these instruments, and this creates the ‘sonic awareness’ that Oliveros was a pioneer of creating.
The clustered mass of sounds vibrating from the accordions is the real highlight and charm of this work for me. A Love Song is a great example of musical meditation and has been used as such. This is a fantastic work by the inspirational Pauline Oliveros, who sadly passed away in 2016.”
About Pauline Oliveros:
“Pauline Oliveros’ life as a composer, performer and humanitarian was about opening her own and others’ sensibilities to the universe and facets of sounds. Her career spanned fifty years of boundary dissolving music making. In the ’50s she was part of a circle of iconoclastic composers, artists, poets gathered together in San Francisco. In the 1960’s she influenced American music profoundly through her work with improvisation, meditation, electronic music, myth and ritual.
She was the recipient of four Honorary Doctorates and among her many recent awards were the William Schuman Award for Lifetime Achievement, Columbia University, New York, NY,The Giga-Hertz-Award for Lifetime Achievement in Electronic Music from ZKM, Center for Art and Media, Karlsruhe, Germany and The John Cage award from from the Foundation of Contemporary Arts.
Oliveros was Distinguished Research Professor of Music at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, Troy, NY, and Darius Milhaud Artist-in-Residence at Mills College. She founded ‘Deep Listening®,’ which came from her childhood fascination with sounds and from her works in concert music with composition, improvisation and electro-acoustics. She described Deep Listening as a way of listening in every possible way to everything possible to hear no matter what you are doing. Such intense listening includes the sounds of daily life, of nature, of one’s own thoughts as well as musical sounds.
‘Deep Listening is my life practice,’ Oliveros explained, simply. Oliveros founded Deep Listening Institute, formerly Pauline Oliveros Foundation, now the Center For Deep Listening at Rensselaer, Troy, NY. Her creative work is currently disseminated through The Pauline Oliveros Trust and the Ministry of Maåt, Inc.”
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