Robert Ashley (1930 to 2014) wrote operas for television, with characters who talk rather than sing over a slow electronic pulse, and in doing so invented a form that still has no proper name. Perfect Lives (1983), a seven part story about a bank robbery in a small Midwestern town, is its masterpiece; Automatic Writing (1979) turned his own involuntary speech into a whispered, hypnotic score. Born in Ann Arbor, he co-founded the ONCE Festival there in the 1960s, was a member of the Sonic Arts Union with Alvin Lucier, David Behrman and Gordon Mumma, and directed the Center for Contemporary Music at Mills College.