Pulse Music

Description

Presented together for the first time, the works from the Pulse Music series (1975-1979) by American composer John McGuire blur the popular narrative that minimalism was a reaction against angular, intellectual, and impenetrable European high modernism. John McGuire, born in California, studied at Occidental College in Los Angeles and the University of Berkeley before going to Europe to study with Karlheinz Stockhausen, Krzysztof Penderecki, and Gottfried Michael Koenig. His compositions trap the distorted geometries of serialism on a uniformly spaced grid, perfectly preserving the multidimensionality of serial music while smoothing out its wildest disjunctions and sharpest angles. The compositions of Pulse Music are an exuberant expression of the same materials and principles as serialism. Each layer of pulses is distinguished by its timbre, range, and tempo. We hear them as a plurality, organized like stars in the sky. From time to time, the sky turns, and the stars appear in a different arrangement. Our ear naturally begins to establish connections, and as we sweep from one layer to another, what was discrete becomes continuous. Pulses become flows; quantitative reality becomes a qualitative experience. Pressed on double vinyl.