Cacioppo: Two Worlds

"Advance of the Funghi surveys the music of George Cacioppo, the Michigan born composer who died in 1984. Cacioppo's music was a fastidiously considered response to his formative interest in Varèse, Cage and Webern, and Cage's famous aphorism "let the sounds be themselves" was a credo for his creative life. At first works like Time on Time in Miracles (1965), Two Worlds (1962) and Advance of the Funghi (1964) sound like an adjunct to post-Boulez modernism, although it's quickly clear that something more profound is going on. Holy Ghost Vacuum Or America Faints (1966) is scored for electric organ, and Cacioppo works with the harmonic interference of tones that create 'beats' as their overtone partials clash. The flat and barren soundscape is projected through the organ's loudspeaker and flows directly from the physical DNA of the instrument itself. John Cage would have been in awe." The Wire