LUKAS FOSS
Echoi, Fragments of Archilochos ...

Catalog number: EM105

The three works on this disk, composed by Foss in the 1960’s, exemplify the composer’s fascination in with the intersection of process and intuition. In the liner notes to Echoi I-IV, Foss reconstructs his compositional method, describing to the reader how he generated 132 tone rows, pasted them around the room, circled the good parts, and laid them out proportionally for the performers. The result is a fast-paced and dynamic work, always seemingly on the verge of falling apart, but coming together at just the right moments.

The performance is superb with Jan Williams, percussion, Douglas Davis, cello, Edward Yadzinski, clarinet, and Foss himself on the piano. The same quartet performs Foss’s Non-Improvisation, a dense mass of sound, with brief glimmers of melodic and gestural material that evolve into delicately pulsed material before dying out. Foss’s choral work The Fragments of Archilochos, continues with the idea of process and intuition. Performers choose material from a matrix while the conductor manages starting points of looped material. Like Echoi, Archilochos is characterized by fragmented starts and stops, while maintaining something of a formal pulse that ties the work together.

Track Samples:

1. Echoi I (1963)

2. Echoi II (1963)

3. Echoi III (1963)

4. Echoi IV (1963)

5. The Fragments of Archilochos (1965)

6. Non-Improvisation (1967)

Lukas Foss's Bio