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Robert Ashley. By Kyle Gann. Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2012. xvi + 152pp (softcover). Examples, Illustrations, Works List, Bibliography, Discography, Index. ISBN 978-0-252-07887-3. Price: $25
In a world where Jonny Greenwood of the band Radiohead has collaborated with Krzysztof Penderecki, one might think Robert Ashley's day has finally come. He has devoted the better part of his career to a new form of opera that is rooted in the tradition of serial television; despite its highly complex literary style and intricate compositional structuring, his operas depend to a great extent on the contributions of other artists and, in particular, on the kind of technology and thinking more familiar to the production of popular music. The music itself is a fascinating bricolage of many styles with only very remote affinities to any kind of avant-garde music that one might name. More than any other composer, perhaps, Ashley has created music from materials inextricable from contemporary life.
Kyle Gann is certainly unstinting in his praise. In...