La Monte Young

Introduction
La Monte Young is an American avant-garde composer who was the first recognized minimalist composer. He was born in Bern, Idaho on October 14th, 1935. His music has been used as perfect examples of post-war experimental music and contemporary music. Young is more famously known for pioneering work in Western drone music also known as dream music. La Monte also experimented with twelve-tone technique with his early works.

Work Analysis
The work I will be analyzing is La Monte Young's The Well-Tuned Piano. This solo piano work is long, improvisatory and was debut in 1974. A normal performance lasts close to six hours and has been described as "one of the great achievements of 20th-century music" by The Guardian. The most important aspect of this piece is the tuning of the piano. The years of 1973 to 1981 experienced drastic changes in the tuning systems. This piece is usually played on a standard acoustic piano including 8 complete octaves. Young described the tuning of the piano being derived from partials of the overtone series with a low E-flat fundamental. The Well-Tuned piano though improvised is based on perfect fifths and harmonic sevenths. The performance is broken up into 7 major sections between a half hour and hour long sections. The beginning of the piece is slow and subtle before opening up into a heavy and abrupt kaleidoscope of sounds. The piano, though just a regular classic piano takes on the sound of almost windchimes in a way blowing in the wind. Young gives his highest regards to naturally made sounds like wind blowing items inspiring him to create certain pieces. Young was inspired by Dennis Johnson a former schoolmate at UCLA to write ''The Well-Tuned Piano. Right before Young began his work Johnson wrote an improvisatory solo piano piece titled November ''which helped Young to create his piano piece with similar aspects.

Comparisons
Young's strongest influence came in his early life. He says the very first sound he recalls hearing was the sound of the wind blowing under his family's log cabin. Man-made noises fascinated him and he explains that he was often drawn to the sound of droning. The 4 pitches of his "dream chord" are influenced by the sound of telephone poles in his hometown. La Monte has explained that Bartók, Stravinsky, and Debussy were major classical influences along with Schoenberg and Webern which would explain his use of the twelve-tone series.

Observations
I learned a lot more research wise from this piece then I feel I did musically. I was not to allured when I heard the piano because it didn't sound like a piano it sounded like a windchime. I never enjoy songs that don't use the instruments classically and with their original sounds. However, I respect Young as a composer and think that the idea of this piece being almost 6 hours long is incredible.