Robert Ashley
American composer of television operas and pioneer of speech-based electronic music.
Robert Ashley (1930–2014) was an American composer best known for reinventing opera for television, most extensively across the Perfect Lives (1977–83) and Music with Roots in the Aether (1976) cycles. He co-founded the ONCE Festival and Group in Ann Arbor in the early 1960s and, in 1966, the electronic composers’ collective Sonic Arts Union with Gordon Mumma, David Behrman, and Alvin Lucier. His work developed a distinctive vocal style suspended between speech and song, built on close-miked, conversational delivery and layered electronics — heard most directly in Automatic Writing, drawn from his own involuntary speech.
Works in the Library
Robert Ashley ALBUM 1979
Robert Ashley's 1979 album exploring involuntary speech and Tourette's syndrome through electronics.
PERCEPTION LANGUAGE
Robert Ashley, Paul DeMarinis ALBUM 1974
In Sara, Mencken, Christ and Beethoven There Were Men and Women
Robert Ashley's 1974 setting of John Barton Wolgamot's poem for voice and modular synthesizer.
LANGUAGE
Related Groups in the Library
Robert Ashley, David Behrman, Alvin Lucier, Gordon Mumma
Robert Ashley, David Behrman, Alvin Lucier, and Gordon Mumma's live-electronics collective, active 1966-1976.
INSTRUMENTS
