Alvin Lucier was an American composer, born in Nashua, New Hampshire, on 14 May 1931, who died at his home in Middletown, Connecticut, in 2021 at the age of 90. His work treated acoustic phenomena themselves as the subject of a piece. In Music for Solo Performer (1965) his own alpha brainwaves, picked up through a device designed by the physicist Edmond Dewan, set percussion instruments vibrating.
His best-known work, I Am Sitting in a Room, was first recorded at Brandeis in 1969 and again at his home in 1970: a spoken passage is played back into a room and re-recorded over and over until the room’s resonances dissolve the words into pure tone. Music on a Long Thin Wire (1977) let an oscillator excite a stretched piano wire, producing slowly shifting drones. He was a member of the Sonic Arts Union with Robert Ashley, David Behrman and Gordon Mumma, and taught at Wesleyan University for more than forty years, where his students included Arnold Dreyblatt.