Pauline Oliveros (May 30, 1932 – November 24, 2016)[Wagner, Laura, " Pauline Oliveros, Pioneer Of 'Deep Listening,' Dies At 84". Cited an Instagram post by flautist Claire Chase and confirmation by friends on Oliveros' Facebook page. Retrieved 2016-11-26.] was an American composer and .
Considered a central figure in the development of post-war experimental and electronic music, she was a founding member of the San Francisco Tape Music Center in the early 1960s, and served as its director. She taught music at Mills College, the University of California, San Diego (UCSD), Oberlin Conservatory of Music, and Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute. Oliveros authored books, formulated new music theories, and investigated new ways to focus attention on music including her concepts of "deep listening"[Theodore Gordon (2021) ‘Androgynous Music’: Pauline Oliveros’s Early Cybernetic Improvisation, Contemporary Music Review, 40:4, 386-408, DOI: 10.1080/07494467.2021.2001939]
Early life and education
Pauline Oliveros was born in
Houston,
Texas, on May 30, 1932.
She was of
Tejanos descent.
She started to play music as early as kindergarten,
and at nine years of age she began to play the accordion, received from her mother, a pianist, because of its popularity in the 1940s.
[Baker, Alan. "An interview with Pauline Oliveros". January 2003. American Mavericks American Public Media. ] She later went on to learn violin, piano,
tuba, and
French horn for grade school and college music. At the age of sixteen she resolved to become a composer.
[Tom Service. "A guide to Pauline Oliveros's music". The Guardian.]
Oliveros arrived in California and supported herself with a day job, and supplemented this by giving accordion lessons.
She earned a BFA in composition from San Francisco State College, where her teachers included composer Robert Erickson, with whom she had private lessons and who mentored her for six to seven years. During this period she met San Francisco-based musicians Terry Riley, Stuart Dempster, and Loren Rush, with whom she would later collaborate.[Smith, Steve. "Strange Sounds Led a Composer to a Long Career". The New York Times.]
Career
When Oliveros turned 21, she obtained her first tape recorder, which led to her creating her own electroacoustic pieces.
Oliveros was one of the original members of the San Francisco Tape Music Center, which was an important resource for electronic music on the west coast of the United States during the 1960s.
[Amirkhanian, Charles. "Women in Electronic Music – 1977". Liner note essay. New World Records.] The Center later moved to
Mills College, with Oliveros serving as its first director; there it was renamed the Center for Contemporary Music.
Oliveros often improvised with the Expanded Instrument System, an electronic signal processing system she designed, in her performances and recordings.
In 1967, Oliveros left Mills to take a position at the University of California, San Diego.
In 1987, Oliveros had the tuning of her accordion changed from equal temperament to just intonation.[Gagne, Cole. Soundpieces 2: Interviews with American Composers. Metuchen, N.J.: The Scarecrow Press, 1993, p. 215. ] She sings and plays the retuned accordion (without electronics) in the 1993 opera Agamemnon.
Oliveros was a member of Avatar Orchestra Metaverse, a global collaboration of composers, artists and musicians that approaches the virtual reality platform Second Life as an instrument itself.
Deep listening
In 1988, as a result of descending into the Dan Harpole underground cistern in Port Townsend, Washington, to make a recording, Oliveros coined the term "deep listening"
—a pun that blossomed into "an aesthetic...designed to inspire both trained and untrained performers to practice the art of listening and responding to environmental conditions in solo and ensemble situations".
[Ankeny, Jason. "Pauline Oliveros Biography". 98.5 Kiss FM.] Stuart Dempster, Oliveros and
Panaiotis then formed the Deep Listening Band, and deep listening became a program of the Pauline Oliveros Foundation, founded in 1985. The Deep Listening program includes annual listening retreats in Europe, New Mexico and in upstate New York, as well as apprenticeship and certification programs. The Pauline Oliveros Foundation changed its name to Deep Listening Institute, Ltd., in 2005. The Deep Listening Band, which included Oliveros,
David Gamper (1947–2011) and
Stuart Dempster, specializes in performing and recording in
resonance or
reverberation spaces such as caves, cathedrals and huge underground
. They have collaborated with
Ellen Fullman and her long-string instrument, as well as countless other musicians, dancers and performers. The Center for Deep Listening at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute in Troy, New York, initially under the direction of Tomie Hahn, is the steward of the former Deep Listening Institute. A celebratory concert was held on March 11, 2015, at the Experimental Media and Performing Arts Center (EMPAC) at Rensselaer Polytechnic.
Stephanie Loveless is the current director of the CDL@RPI.
Sonic awareness
Heidi Von Gunden
[Von Gunden, Heidi (1983). The Music of Pauline Oliveros, p. 105. Scarecrow Press. . Foreword by Ben Johnston.] names a new musical theory developed by Oliveros, "sonic awareness", and describes it as "the ability to consciously focus attention upon environmental and musical sound", requiring "continual alertness and an inclination to be always listening" and which she describes as comparable to
John Berger's concept of visual consciousness (as in his
Ways of Seeing).
[Von Gunden, Heidi (Autumn 1980 – Summer 1981). "The Theory of Sonic Awareness in The Greeting by Pauline Oliveros", Perspectives of New Music, vol. 19, no. 1/2, p. 409.] Oliveros discusses this theory in the "Introductions" to her
Sonic Meditations and in articles. Von Gunden describes sonic awareness as "a synthesis of the psychology of consciousness, the physiology of the martial arts, and the sociology of the feminist movement",
[Von Gunden (1980), p. 410.] and describes two ways of processing information, "attention and awareness",
or focal attention and global attention, which may be represented by a dot and circle, respectively, a symbol Oliveros commonly employs in compositions such as
Rose Moon (1977) and
El Rilicario de los Animales (1979).
(The titles of Oliveros' pieces
Rose Moon and
Rose Mountain refer to her romantic partner
Linda Montano having gone by Rose Mountain at one time.
[Von Gunden (1983), pp. 128–129.]) Later this representation was expanded, with the symbol quartered and the quarters representing "actively making sound", "actually imagining sound", "listening to present sound" and "remembering past sound", with this model used in
Sonic Meditations.
[Von Gunden (1980), p. 412.] Practice of the theory creates "complex
possessing a strong
tonal center".
[Von Gunden (1980), p. 411.]
Personal life
Oliveros was openly
lesbian.
In 1975 Oliveros met her eventual partner, performance artist
Linda Montano.
[Mockus, Martha (2007). Sounding Out: Pauline Oliveros and Lesbian Musicality, p. 96. Routledge. (paperback), (hardback), (electronic).] The titles of Oliveros' pieces
Rose Moon and
Rose Mountain refer to Montano having gone by Rose Mountain at one time.
In her later years, Oliveros developed a 32-year romantic partnership and creative collaboration with sound artist IONE (Carole Lewis).
The couple worked together on several major musical theatre productions, dance operas, and films.
Sound artist
Maria Chavez, a friend and mentee of Pauline, describes Pauline and Ione: "when you saw them together, you saw love."
Oliveros was also a patron of Soundart Radio in Dartington, Devon, England.
Death
She died in 2016 in Kingston, New York.
Awards and honors
-
1994 Foundation for Contemporary Arts Grants to Artists award
-
2007, Resounding Vision Award from Nameless Sound
-
2009, recipient of the William Schuman Award, from Columbia University School of the Arts
-
2012, John Cage Award from the Foundation for Contemporary Arts
-
In 2025, Long Beach Opera dedicated its entire season to the works of Pauline Oliveros, reflecting her growing posthumous influence and recognition as a pioneering composer and innovator in experimental music.
Notable works
-
Sonic Meditations: "Teach Yourself to Fly", etc.
-
Sound Patterns for mixed chorus (1961), awarded the Gaudeamus International Composers Award in 1962, available on Extended Voices (Odyssey 32 16) 0156 and 20th Century Choral Music (Ars Nova AN-1005)
-
I of IV, included in the collection New Sounds in Electronic Music, published by Odyssey Records, 1967
-
Music for Annie Sprinkle's The Sluts and Goddesses Video Workshop—Or How To Be A Sex Goddess in 101 Easy Steps (1992)
-
Theater of Substitution series (1975–?). Oliveros was photographed as different characters, including a Spanish señora, a polyester clad suburban housewife, and a professor in robes. Jackson Mac Low played Oliveros at the New York Philharmonic's "A Celebration of Women composers" concert on November 10, 1975, and Oliveros has played Mac Low (see Mac Low's "being Pauline: narrative of a substitution", Big Deal, Fall 1976). (ibid, p. 141)
-
Echoes from the Moon (1987) which uses Earth–Moon–Earth communication or "moonbounce"
-
Crone Music (1989)
-
Six for New Time (1999), music score for Sonic Youth
-
"the Space Between with Matthew Sperry", (2003) 482Music
Books
Book chapters
She contributed a chapter to
Sound Unbound: Sampling Digital Music and Culture (The MIT Press, 2008) edited by Paul D. Miller a.k.a.
DJ Spooky.
Films
-
1976 – Music with Roots in the Aether: Opera for Television. Tape 5: Pauline Oliveros. Produced and directed by Robert Ashley. New York: Lovely Music.
-
1993 – The Sensual Nature of Sound: 4 Composers – Laurie Anderson, Tania León, Meredith Monk, Pauline Oliveros. Directed by Michael Blackwood.
-
2001 – Roulette TV: Pauline Oliveros. Roulette Intermedium Inc.
-
2005 – Unyazi of the Bushveld. Directed by Aryan Kaganof. Produced by African Noise Foundation.
-
2020 – Sisters with Transistors. Directed by Lisa Rovner.
Other works
Annie Sprinkle’s 1992 production
The Sluts and Goddesses Video Workshop – Or How To Be A Sex Goddess in 101 Easy Steps, which was co-produced and co-directed with videographer
Maria Beatty, featured music by Oliveros.
Some of her music was featured in the 2014 French video game NaissanceE.[ ]
Oliveros' work Deep Listening Room was featured in the 2014 Whitney Biennial.[Whitney Museum of American Art. "103 Participants Selected for 2014 Whitney Biennial, To Take Place March 7 – May 25, 2014". Whitney.org. N.p., 14 November 2013. Web. 1 February 2014.]
Notable students
Further reading
-
Duckworth, William, Talking Music, New York: Schirmer Books, 1995.
-
Zimmerman, Walter, Desert Plants – Conversations with 23 American Musicians, Berlin: Beginner Press in cooperation with Mode Records, 2020 (originally published in 1976 by A.R.C., Vancouver). The 2020 edition includes a cd featuring the original interview recordings with Larry Austin, Robert Ashley, Jim Burton, John Cage, Philip Corner, Morton Feldman, Philip Glass, Joan La Barbara, Garrett List, Alvin Lucier, John McGuire, Charles Morrow, J.B. Floyd (on Conlon Nancarrow), Pauline Oliveros, Charlemagne Palestine, Ben Johnston (on Harry Partch), Steve Reich, David Rosenboom, Frederic Rzewski, Richard Teitelbaum, James Tenney, Christian Wolff, and La Monte Young.
External links
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Deep Listening Institute
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Pauline Oliveros Foundation
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Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute: Faculty and Staff: Pauline Oliveros, Clinical Professor, Arts Department, School of Humanities, Arts, and Social Sciences
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The Sonic Rituals of Pauline Oliveros by Ron Drummond
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EST Interview
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Pauline Oliveros in conversation with Frank J. Oteri
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Listen to an excerpt of Oliveros' Alien Bog at Acousmata music blog
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Interview with Pauline Oliveros by Bruce Duffie, April 5, 1996
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Interview with Pauline Oliveros by Lutz Felbick, July 10, 1999
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Pauline Oliveros Papers MSS 102. Special Collections & Archives, UC San Diego Library
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Pauline Oliveros Papers in the Music Division of The New York Public Library for the Performing Arts
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Pauline Oliveros' entry, UbuWeb Film
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Pauline Oliveros' entry, UbuWeb Sound
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Pauline Oliveros Interview – NAMM Oral History Library (2016)
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exhibit in Athens, Greece, documenta 14, featuring many of Oliveros's manuscripts
Listening
