About this work:
Loosely based on a large project I undertook during the period 1974-1978 using multiple percussion, large chorus, soloists, and instrumentalists plus electronic tape called "Mysteries from the Ancient Nahuatl," this work captures the essence of the early Nahuatl culture -- its sense of natural wonder and its transcendent outlook on life. This work is filled with dreamy passages, encased in a timeless web of timbral richness. Composed before computers were available, the work utilizes extensive tape loops, musique concrete sounds, multitrack 8 channel tape, and the state of the art (at the time) Synthi 100 synthesizer, at the Indiana University-South Bend studio. The premiere, given at the University of Miami in Coral Gables, featured an 8 track configuration. This stereo version is a mixdown and enhancement of that.
Quad electronic tape. Now only stereo version available. Dur. 17:08. Premiered as 8-channel version at U. of Florida, Coral Gables, 1979 at ASUC National Convention. Quad & 8-track versions no longer exist. Recorded on Folkways/mithsonian, available as a CD one-off Folkways FTS 33450 LP. Recorded in revised and greatly enhanced version 1997 on CRI CD 764. Slightly updated version recorded on EM Records in Japan in 2006 as EM 1060CD with excerpts from the visual score made by Gary Pyle in a 24 page booklet. The complete score illustrated by Gary Pyle accompanies this recording. You can access both score and tape through multiple windows on your browser and follow along as the music plays.
My website (where you can find my email as well)
http://www.fairpoint.net/~rainfor1/McLean_MAXMSP/Main_page.html
Phone: 518 658 3595
YouTube playlist (with 32 videos and counting)
https://www.youtube.com/view_play_list?p=3ACAB7BAD86CE7B4
Also check out my entry in Wikipedia
Although I, Barton McLean, hold the copyright, I nontheless hereby gladly authorize anyone to make copies and perform the work for noncommercial and/or educational purposes providing that my name is reasonably displayed as the composer. I do not under any circumstances authorize selecting portions of the work to appear intact in another person's composition, or to appear under any other composer's name, without my written signed authorization.
Regarding the audio file accompanying this work: I, Barton McLean own the copyright to the composition itself. Being aware that this work has been released on a commercial CD, and that the CD company might possess the copyright to that particular sound recording of the composition, I nonetheless claim copyright to this specific sound recording posted here, because it is not the exact recording released on CD. Rather, it is another mix down and revision of that work which may approximate the commercial CD in most respects but nevertheless is a distinct sound recording of which I claim the copyright.