Elodie Lauten

Elodie Lauten (born October 20, 1950 - died June 3, 2014) is a composer described as postminimalist or a microtonalist. She is a former student of her father Errol Parker and of LaMonte Young, Dinu Ghezzo, and Akhmal Parwez. A writer of operas, theater pieces, orchestral, chamber and instrumental music, she is recognized in North America and Europe as a pioneer of postminimalism and a force on the new music scene with over 20 releases on a number of labels including Lovely Music, Point/Polygram, 4-Tay, O.O. Discs, and New Tone (Italy). Her music has a strong mystical streak, reflected in correspondences between astrological signs, hexagrams of the I Ching, animals, and the modes of her system of improvisation, called Universal Mode Improvisation (UMI).

Lauten's music has always been a combination of two contradictory streams, one of them a cloudy, beatless stasis derived from minimalism, the other a neoclassical attachment to tonal melody and ostinato. These two were present from the beginning of her recording career, the first in her Concerto for Piano and Orchestral Memory (1984), the second in her Sonata Ordinaire (1986) for piano. Her 1987 opera The Death of Don Juan—feminist tract and Zen meditation combined—was one of the major postminimalist works of the 1980s; it has recently been revived in a 2-week run (April 2005) at Franklin Pierce College, NH, directed by Robert Lawson. Her neoclassical tendency blossomed into a full neo-baroque idiom in her Deus ex Machina Cycle for voices and Baroque ensemble (1999). Variations On The Orange Cycle (1991, recorded by Lois Svard for Lovely Music in 1998) is one of the cloudier works, an improvisation in a Terry Riley-ish vein that was recorded and transcribed (as few of her piano works have been) for performance by others. The work has been included in Chamber Music America's list of 100 best works of the 20th century.