Christian Wolff
(b. 1934) American composer whose indeterminate scores redefined performer agency. As the youngest member of the New York School (with Cage, Feldman, Brown), his works like 'Burdocks' (1971) use graphic notation and chance elements to create unique democratic spaces where musicians become co-composers. Wolff's political engagement surfaces in pieces incorporating protest songs, while his later works explore fragile tonal relationships, proving that experimentalism need not abandon beauty.
(b. 1934) American composer whose indeterminate scores redefined performer agency. As the youngest member of the New York School (with Cage, Feldman, Brown), his works like 'Burdocks' (1971) use graphic notation and chance elements to create unique democratic spaces where musicians become co-composers. Wolff's political engagement surfaces in pieces incorporating protest songs, while his later works explore fragile tonal relationships, proving that experimentalism need not abandon beauty.
John Cage / Christian Wolff (LP)
1970 re-issue on Mainstream of the 1963 split LP on Time Records experimental music series curated by Earl Brown, with Cage's 1960 wild noise/industrial (20 years in advance) electronic piece performed with David Tudor, backed with three compostions by Wolff for duet and string quartet. Essential.
Sounday 15-6-78 (book)
Rare fully illustrated hommage to the composer published as the program for the 1978 première and recording of Sounday by KRO Radio in Holland, with texts by Pierre Boulez, Merce Cunningham, David Tudor, Christian Wolff, etc..
John Cage, Earle Brown, Morton Feldman, George Crumb, Lejaren Hiller, Christian Wolff, Stefan Wolpe, Jacob Druckman, Leon Kirchner
The Avant Garde String Quartet In The U.S.A. (3LP box)Cage's beautiful and unusual 1950 string quartet in a monumental compilation released as a 3LP box set by Vox in 1973 with a who's who of the American avant-garde, including Crumb's and Kirchner's outstanding quartets with electric amplification and electronics, with impeccable performances by the Concord String Quartet. With insert.
A Second Wind For Organ (LP)
Great 1967 album on Odyssey's "Music Of Our Time" avant-garde music series produced by David Behrman with three experimental works for organ performed by David Tudor, including Mumma's amazing ear-splitting Mesa.
Eight Lectures on Experimental Music (Book)
In this brilliant collection, path-breaking figures of American experimental music discuss the meaning of their work at the turn of the twenty-first century. Presented between 1989 and 2002 at Wesleyan University, these captivating lectures provide rare insights by composers whose work has shaped our understanding of what it means to be experimental: Maryanne Amacher, Robert Ashley, Philip Glass, Meredith Monk, Steve Reich, James Tenney, Christian Wolff, and La Monte Young. Collected here for th…
Trios
Trios is a collaboration between five musicians, over time, and over space. It combines instrumental and electronic improvisation with non-real-time computer processing and editing. Chris Mann, Douglas Repetto, and Larry Polansky recorded several hours of live improvised material in one session. Months later Repetto, Polansky, and Christian Wolff recorded some more.
The recordings were then sent off to Tom Erbe, who culled interesting sections from both sessions and then processed, edited, and m…
Air Maul - An Arnold Schönberg, 5860 Canyon-Cove, Hollywood, CA (2LP)
A strange 2LP compilation released by Murawski-Zimmermann Verlag in 1988 as a hommage to Arnold Schönberg, with piece for voices and intruments by Hans-Joachim Hespos, Howard Skempton, Dieter Schnebel, Christian Wolff, Michael Rumpf and Kurt Schwitters. With insert.
On Foot
2011 release **
"Shepard, in 2005, set himself the task of hiking 250 miles across Switzerland, composing a new piece each day (performing it as well, in some public setting). Six of these works are collected here, performed by various Wandelweiser-involved folk. The music has an aura of folk song to it, however attenuated, heard clearly in Christian Wolff's melodica rendition of "Crêt de la Neuve, le 20 juillet 2005" with it's gentle ups and downs, similarly the second brief track with Katie Po…
Goodbye 20th Century
25th Anniversary Edition. Goodbye 20th Century is a double album of covers of Avant-garde recordings by Sonic Youth and collaborators. SYR4 features works by avant-garde classical composers such as John Cage, Yoko Ono, Steve Reich, and Christian Wolff played by Sonic Youth along with several collaborators from the modern avant-garde music scene, such as Christian Marclay, William Winant, Wharton Tiers, Takehisa Kosugi and others. The album received mixed reviews, but most critics praised the gro…
For Piano I / For Pianist / Burdocks (LP)
Original 1972 LP of Christian Wolff's seminal chance compositions featuring David Tudor, David Behrman, Gordon Mumma, etc. on Wergo’s legendary Studio Reihe Neuer Musik series. Complete with insert.
Long Piano
The melodic and, in the case of the solo piano music, timbral materials from which Christian Wolff's (b 1934) music is made are rarely unusual; these are ordinary, everyday things. However, Wolff's rhythmic invention is of great range and variety: complex polyrhythms, speech-like-rhythms, the music flowing at a freely fluctuating rate or proceeding in a plain, straightforward manner, silences. This mix of unusual and ordinary results in a music unlike any other. And, in a piece of such length as…
An Anthology
Essential and visually stunning 1963 anthology edited by Young and Maciunas featuring most of the artist who would be take part in Fluxus. Very rare second edition published in 1970 of this important book.
The Possibility of A New Work for Electric Guitar
Other Minds is proud to present The Possibility of a New Work for Electric Guitar, a new limited-edition 12” 45 RPM vinyl disc of music by Morton Feldman and Christian Wolff, performed by Wolff and Wendy Eisenberg. Side A features two performances of Morton Feldman’s The Possibility of a New Work for Electric Guitar, written for Wolff (who professes to be “not really a guitar player”) in 1966 as an experiment on the instrument. On his way to perform The Possibility of a New Work for Electric Gui…
Sveglia
In May 2022, at the age of 88, Christian Wolff performed once again at AngelicA, nine years after the monographic concerts the festival had dedicated to him in 2013 (documented on the cd album Angelica Music, IDA 030). Among the greatest and most singular living composers (in 1950, at a very young age, he was already a member of the legendary New York School along with Morton Feldman, Earle Brown and John Cage), for the opening of the thirty-second edition of the festival he presented a world-ex…
A Complete Anthology Of Solo And Duo Violin Pieces
Black Truffle is pleased to announce its second release from New York violin duo String Noise (Conrad Harris and Pauline Kim Harris), following on from their self-titled double-disc collection of compositions by Alvin Lucier (BT061). Here they present A Complete Anthology of Solo and Duo Violin Pieces by legendary American experimental composer Christian Wolff. The youngest and in some ways most radical of the composers of the New York School (alongside Earle Brown, John Cage, and Morton Feldman…
Trio IX / Exercises
The American composer Christian Wolff (b. 1934) is the last living representative of the New York School (Rauschenberg, Rothko, etc.). Wolff was not even an adult when he studied with Grete Sultan and John Cage. Wolff’s music was much more politically motivated than that of Feldman and Cage, which is evident on this new Wergo album by Trio Accanto. The album features first recordings made in close collaboration with Wolff in the studios of Deutschlandfunk Cologne/Germany. Wolff's great “Trio IX …
I Like To Think Of Harriet Tubman
*2022 stock* 'A true Leninist would argue that art in a smoothly running socialist state would become redundant and disappear, though while waiting for such a perfect society to come about, we have an idea of what socialist literature, painting, sculpture and cinema are like. But what does socialist music sound like? Luigi Nono? Eisler? Robert Wyatt? The Ex? Well, all four. and you may add Christian Wolff to the list. Like fellow experimental composers Cornelius Cardew and Frederic Rzewski, Wolf…
3 String Quartets
Starting with his music of the 1960s and early 1970s, with works such as For 1, 2 or 3 People (1964), the Prose Collection (1968–71), and Changing the System (1974), Christian Wolff (b. 1934) quietly re-invented chamber music. He created music in which the activities of the performers— timing, cueing, assembling and selecting materials—were foregrounded. Although to some extent these activities were always a part of classical music, Wolff opened them up for creative decision-making by the musici…
For Piano I / For Pianist / Burdocks
With the legendary “Studio Reihe Neuer Musik” series, Wergo created a trademark of advanced contemporary music in the Sixties of the past century already. On the occasion of its 50th anniversary, the label now releases these highlights of 20th-century music history in an excellent sound quality on CD for the first time.Werdo's unique “Studio Reihe” series continues with Christian Wolff: The works by Wolff recorded on this CD by the legendary pianists David Tudor and Frederic Rzewski and their …
Look She Said (Complete Works For Bass)
** 2021 Stock ** “The double-bass – the paradox of its large size and basically quiet sound, and its low registral grounding – has long attracted me. I’ve also been fortunate in knowing outstanding double-bass players.” – Christian Wolff This disc collects all of Wolff’s large body of works for the bass, including a piece for solo electric bass guitar. Two of the works were written specifically for Robert Black, who prepared these pieces with Wolff. The composer attended all of the recordings se…