Customer Reviews

Music from the ONCE Festival, 1961-1966 [Box Set]

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...not all of the frankly experimental music has worn as well in the past half-century or so. And some of what's here would no doubt benefit from being able to see, as well as hear, the action onstage. Gordon Mumma's "Meanwhile, a Twopiece" prompted laughs from the audience, but without the visual component, it's hard to tell why.

Some of the music I found downright irritating, partly due to the somewhat flat and harsh recorded sound. Even while acknowledging that Donald Scavarda's "Matrix for Clarinetist" is a groundbreaking study in multiphonics, I have no desire to listen to it ever again.

Still there is a lot of good music here, including four early but strong works by Roger Reynolds and some facinating magnetic tape music (with and without other instruments) by Mumma, Robert Ashley and Pauline Oliveros.

So I have mixed feeling about this release, but if you have an interest in, or perhaps nostalgia for, those over-the-top days of sixties avant-garde-isms, this is certainly worth checking out.

Very nice 136 page booklet, with the history of the festival, remarks by some of the participants, and lots of photos (including the "scandalous" 1964 ONCE Festival poster).

The ONCE Festival (actually there were many of these over the course of the 1960's) was an amazing phenomenon, in that it sprung up in Ann Arbor, Michigan, a very unlikely place for a festival of avant-garde music. But the superbly gifted composers of that place and time (Roger Reynolds, Robert Ashley, Gordon Mumma, and many others) provided a strong basis for the festivals, and their provocative and absorbing music helped to attract many other great composers of that era, most notably John Cage.
So, this is a very welcome document, both musically and historically. The original source tapes are not of the greatest quality, it must be admitted. Sounds to me as if the tapes recorded at the festivals were done on a standard reel-to-reel recorder, using a common vocal-type microphone or such. The sound isn't bad, but it does lack the presence and depth that a modern digital recording would have. But don't let that minor quibble prevent you from picking up this set; it is a collection of superb gems from a long-gone era of freewheeling experimentation. The excitement and freshness of the music comes through intact. A set that is a must-have for all fans of avant-garde "classical" music of the mid 20th Century. The design and packaging is superior; very much what this kind of musical and historical document deserves.