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Alchemy of the avant-garde: David Tudor and the new music of the 1950s

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Alchemy of the avant-garde: David Tudor and the new music of the 1950s

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Content ALCHEMY OF THE AVANT-GARDE: DAVID TUDOR AND THE NEW MUSIC OF THE 1950s by Eric Smigel A Dissertation Presented to the FACULTY OF THE GRADUATE SCHOOL UNIVERSITY OF SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA In Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY (HISTORICAL MUSICOLOGY) December 2003 Copyright 2003 Eric Smigel Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. UMI Number: 3133336 Copyright 2003 by Smigel, Eric All rights reserved. INFORMATION TO USERS The quality of this reproduction is dependent upon the quality of the copy submitted. Broken or indistinct print, colored or poor quality illustrations and photographs, print bleed-through, substandard margins, and improper alignment can adversely affect reproduction. In the unlikely event that the author did not send a complete manuscript and there are missing pages, these will be noted. Also, if unauthorized copyright material had to be removed, a note will indicate the deletion. ® UMI UMI Microform 3133336 Copyright 2004 by ProQuest Information and Learning Company. All rights reserved. This microform edition is protected against unauthorized copying under Title 17, United States Code. ProQuest Information and Learning Company 300 North Zeeb Road P.O. Box 1346 Ann Arbor, Ml 48106-1346 Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. UNIVERSITY OF SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA THE GRADUATE SCHOOL UNIVERSITY PARK LOS ANGELES, CALIFORNIA 90089-1695 This dissertation, written by under the direction o f h_ dissertation committee, and approved by all its members, has been presented to and accepted by the Director o f Graduate and Professional Programs, in partial fulfillment o f the requirements for the degree o f DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY Director Date Decem ber 1 7 , 2003 Dissertation Committee f^V Vv— &-• — > Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. ii ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS Many thanks are due to Nancy Perloff for her contagious enthusiasm, and the Special Collections staff at the Getty Research Institute—especially Kenneth Brown, Charlie Rossow, and Margaret Honda—for their friendly assistance and inexhaust ible patience retrieving box after box. I am also indebted to John Holzaepfel for his keen eye for editing, and for allowing me access to his extraordinary knowledge of virtually every aspect of Tudor’s life. I greatly appreciate Christian Wolff and the late Earle Brown, whose animated accounts of their colleagues turned many legendary figures into flesh and blood, and reminded me that this was not merely an academic study. It is unlikely that I would have completed this dissertation without the guidance of my advisor Bryan Simms, who continually served as a model of efficiency. Robert Moore introduced me to much of the avant-garde repertory in this study, and has perpetuated my general curiosity of several arts. Bruce Brown offered valuable suggestions, refreshing encouragement, and tasty meals. I would also like to extend my gratitude to David James, who made a supreme sacrifice to sit on my committee during his sabbatical leave. I am grateful to Christopher Rowan for his mathematical expertise and, more importantly, for the occasional diversions away from this project. Special thanks to Phoebe Jevtovic, my best friend. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. iii Acknowledgment is made to the publishers who allowed me to reproduce excerpts from the following works: Pierre Boulez, Second Piano Sonata: © 1950 by Heugel Edition (Alphonse Leduc). Used by permission. Morton Feldman, Intersection 3, Intersection 5, and Intermission 5; Christian Wolff, Duo fo r Pianists: © 1962 by C. F. Peters Corporation. Used by permission. John Cage, Music o f Changes: ©1961 by Henmar Press, Inc. Used by permission of C. F. Peters Corporation, New York. Earle Brown, Perspectives: © 1959 by Ars Viva Verlag. Used by permission of Schott Musik International. Henri Pousseur, Variations I: © 1963 by Sugarmusic SpA. Used by permission. Earle Brown, 25 Pages: © 1975 by Universal Edition (London) Ltd., London/UE15587. Used with kind permission. Karlheinz Stockhausen, Klavierstuck I: © 1954 by Universal Edition (London) Ltd., London/UE12251; Stockhausen, Klavierstuck VI: © 1965 by Universal Edition (London) Ltd., London/UE13675B. Wolff, For Prepared Piano: © 1951 by Christian Wolff. Used with permission. Thanks also to Laura Kuhn of the John Cage Trust for allowing me to include an excerpt from Cage’s Music fo r Piano 21. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. iv TABLE OF CONTENTS ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS.................................................................................. ii LIST OF F IG U R E S ............................................................................................... v ABSTRACT............................................................................................................ vii INTRODUCTION “New Music: New Listening”: Intersection of the American and European Avant-Garde............................................................................... 1 1. RECITAL HALL OF CRUELTY David Tudor and Antonin A rta u d ...................................................... 18 2. CONVENTIONAL COMPLEXITY AND UNCONVENTIONAL SIMPLICITY Rhythmic Features in Tudor’s Repertory......................................... 75 3. OBJECTIFICATION OF TIME Tudor’s Courses at Darmstadt ......................................................... 147 4. ALCHEMIST OF THE AVANT-GARDE David Tudor and Esotericism............................................................ 198 BIBLIOGRAPHY.................................................................................................. 256 APPENDIX A Tudor’s Recital Programs of the 1 9 5 0 s ................................................... 269 APPENDIX B Tudor’s Call Slips from the New York Public L ib ra ry ......................... 283 Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. V LIST OF FIGURES Figure Page 1-1. Feldman, Intersection 3, beginning.............................................. 59 2-1. Boulez, Second Piano Sonata, mvt. 1, mm. 32-37 .................... 87 2-2. Stockhausen, Klavierstuck /, mm. 4 -9 ........................................... 95 2-3. Stockhausen, Klavierstuck I, mm. 1 and 1 1 ................................. 96 2-4. Boulez, Second Piano Sonata, mvt. 2, m. 7 ................................. 96 2-5. Stockhausen, graph indicating the “curve of the principal-tempo” ............................................................... 99 2-6. Stockhausen, first version (unpublished) of Klavierstuck VI, p. 1 ......................................................... 99 2-7. Stockhausen, published version of Klavierstuck VI, p. 3 .... 100 2-8. Stockhausen, Studie I, p. 1 ........................................................... 101 2-9. Pousseur, Variations I, mm. 1-6.................................................. 106 2-10. Cage, Music o f Changes, mvt. 1, mm. 1 - 6 ................................. 112 2-11. Cage, Music for Piano 21, first two sy ste m s............................ 114 2-12. Feldman, Intermission 5, mm. 1 -1 8 ........................................... 118 2-13. Feldman, Intermission 5, mm. 55-60 ........................................ 118 2-14. Feldman, Intersection 3, beginning............................................ 121 2-15. Brown, Perspectives, mm. 8 -1 1 .................................................. 123 2-16. Brown, Perspectives, mm. 34-35 ............................................... 124 2-17. Brown, Twenty-Five Pages, excerpt from p. 1 2 ......................... 127 Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. vi Fig. Page 2-18. Brown, Four Systems, excerpt..................................................... 129 2-19. Wolff, For Prepared Piano, mvt. 1, mm. 1 -1 0 ......................... 130 2-20. Wolff, Duo for Pianists, second piano part, p. 1 ...................... 132 3-1. Tudor’s programs, 1956 (abridged)............................................ 159 3-2. Tudor, structural outline for Music o f Changes, mvt. 1 .............. 170 3-3. Tudor, “Hans Rademacher’s Formulas” ...................................... 171 3-4. Tudor, mathematical worksheet for Music o f Changes, mm. 1-26 ......................................................................... 173 3-5. Cage, Music o f Changes, p. 1 ...................................................... 174 3-6. Tudor’s equation for determining elapsed time in a constant tem po.................................................................. 175 3-7. Tudor’s equation for determining elapsed time in a changing te m p o ............................................................... 176 3-8. Tudor, total elapsed time after the first three bars of Music o f C hanges............................................................ 176 3-9. Tudor, chronometric boundaries for Music o f Changes (mvt. 1 ) ............................................................................ 177 3-10. Tudor, cumulative elapsed time for Music o f Changes (mvt. 1 ) ............................................................................ 178 4-1. Rudolf Steiner’s “Planetary Evolution of the Arts” ................... 224 Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. vii ABSTRACT This dissertation views avant-garde works of the 1950s from the perspective of pianist David Tudor, the foremost interpreter of this repertory. The study derives from Tudor’s claim that he underwent a “change in musical perception” that facilitated his legendary performances of notoriously difficult works. I will examine— from musical, psychological, and spiritual standpoints—the terms in which the pianist approached the new music. In the first chapter, I will address the catalyst of Tudor’s change in perception: his exposure to and appropriation of the writings of dramatist Antonin Artaud. In Chapter Two, I will examine the profile of Tudor’s subsequent repertory, which includes the works of Europeans Pierre Boulez, Henri Pousseur, and Karlheinz Stockhausen, and Americans Earle Brown, John Cage, Morton Feldman, and Christian Wolff. The analysis of selected works will focus on rhythmic innovations, which were key in defining the new idiom. In the following chapter, I will aim to clarify Tudor’s unique performance practice by reconstructing the contents of courses in piano interpretation and performance that he led at the Internationale Ferienkurse fur neue Musik at Darmstadt, courses that featured Cage’s Music o f Changes. In the final chapter, I will argue that Tudor’s steadfast devotion to the avant-garde repertory was inextricably related to his quest for spiritual illumination. His involvement in Eastern philosophy and Western occultism— Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. viii especially Rudolf Steiner’s Anthroposophy—reflects a larger cultural trend that was sweeping across the United States in the post-war era. This period witnessed a revitalized interest among artists and intellectuals in the secret art of alchemy, which I propose can serve as a useful analogy in the consideration of Tudor’s craft. This study draws primarily from unpublished documents in the David Tudor Papers, recently acquired by the Getty Research Institute in Los Angeles. The collection consists of correspondence with numerous figures, an almost complete set of programs, scores and realizations, recordings, personal notebooks, and an assortment of photographs of Tudor, his friends, and collaborators. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 1 INTRODUCTION “NEW MUSIC: NEW LISTENING”: INTERSECTION OF THE AMERICAN AND EUROPEAN AVANT-GARDE “Sound in space may need no excuse, but one has to know how to get it there.” — Peter Yates to John Cage, 1953 In the 1950s, such avant-garde composers as Pierre Boulez, John Cage, and Karlheinz Stockhausen produced a repertory that is notorious for its technical complexity and its aesthetic inaccessibility. The difficulty of their works stems from their collective re-evaluation and radical reconstruction of the conventional idiom that characterized the pre-war musical culture in Europe and America. “If a new and better world was to be created out of the ashes of World War II,” Robert Morgan remarks, “it would require a new kind of music, fundamentally different from anything known before.. . . A complete break was needed with all previous notions of music, of how it should be composed and of how it should sound.”1 Naturally, such a “complete break” severed some of the precious remaining ties that connected modem composers to their audiences. Since the values of the avant-gardists in the 1950s have not yet served as a foundation for the musical culture of later Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 2 generations, some have remarked on the isolated nature of the experimentation and its general ineffectiveness and invalidity as an artistic phenomenon—an aesthetic dead-end that never amounted to more than a historical curiosity. The composers themselves readily acknowledge the difficulty of their experiments, which were aimed at the drastic reformulation of the modem musical language. In 1968, Boulez delivered a lecture titled “Where Are We Now?” in which he reflected on the years immediately following the Second World War: Some of our solutions were no doubt exaggeratedly strict in character, a discipline that irked but represented a necessary stage. Why necessary? Because in order to forge a language strict disciplines are necessary and so is a knowledge of the via negativa, the phenomenon of negation. If you do not negate, if you do not make a clean sweep of all that you have inherited from the past, if you do not question that heritage and adopt an attitude of fundamental doubt towards all accepted values, well!, you will never get any further.2 John Cage, who from the late 1940s to the early 1950s maintained a congenial relationship with Boulez both personally and artistically, also advocates extreme compositional decisions. But the American was less interested in “forging a language” than in fostering personal development: I think there is a didactic element in my work. I think that music has to do with self-alteration; it begins with the alteration of the composer, and conceivably extends to the alteration of the listeners.. . . A mind that is interested in changing . . . is interested precisely in the things that are at extremes. I’m certainly like that. Unless we go to extremes, we won’t get •j anywhere. Both Boulez and Cage believed that radical steps needed to be taken to ensure the progress of modem music. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 3 Exceptionally radical in the workshop of avant-garde composition were the works drafted for solo piano. “Music for keyboard is a traditional outlet for experimentation,” explains Charles Rosen in a discussion of Boulez’s piano sonatas, “it allows an immediate control over the musical idea. . . . [Piano music] has therefore become, starting with Beethoven, a convenient form of announcing a revolution in style.”4 To be sure, many of the compositional innovations of the post war avant-garde were introduced by the piano. Milton Babbitt’s Three Compositions for Piano (1947) is widely recognized as the first work organized according to principles of total serialism. Olivier Messiaen’s Mode de valeurs et d ’ intensites (1949), although not a serial work itself, suggested the possibilities of integrated serialism to the European avant-garde community at Darmstadt. The first work with which Boulez claimed to “break from the idea” of dodecaphonicism was the Second Piano Sonata (1948), and Structures la for two pianos (1951) was his most rigorous venture into integrated serialism. Cage’s first complete work to be composed by chance operations, Music o f Changes (1951), was written for the piano (as were, of course, his previous essays exploiting the instrument in its prepared state). Stockhausen’s first instrumental works to reflect his experience in the electronic music studio were his Klavierstucke I-VIII (1952-55), which he refers to as his “drawings.”5 Dedicated to the production of these new works were such pioneering organizations as the Internationale Ferienkurse fur neue Musik in Darmstadt, the Donaueschingen Music Festival, and Musik der Zeit in Cologne. A prominent venue Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 4 for new music in the United States was the Evenings on the Roof concert series in Los Angeles directed by Peter Yates. (After 1954 the series continued as the Monday Evening Concerts under the direction of Lawrence Morton.) A devoted advocate of the American avant-garde, Yates championed the works of Cage, with whom he maintained a regular correspondence for twenty years. But in a letter to the composer in the summer of 1953, Yates acknowledges a problem inherent to the performance of Cage’s music: The chief difficulty with your work . . . is that I can’t do anything about it. You are out of reach of any performer not specially trained, and I can’t afford to bring you or a trained protagonist out here to overcome this lag. Sound in space may need no excuse, but one has to know how to get it there.6 Yates identifies a practical aspect to the production of any composer’s work: a performer must be capable of realizing, if not the intended effect, at least an aesthetically viable one. By all accounts, pianist David Tudor deftly navigated the most treacherous works in this repertory. During the 1950s and early 1960s, he premiered dozens of new pieces by an illustrious host of avant-garde composers from Europe and n America, many of whom wrote specifically for his virtuosity. But as John Holzaepfel states in his dissertation on Tudor, this unique musician not only lent his pianistic expertise to the scores of the composers: “Tudor’s role as a performer of new music after 1950 was not merely interpretive but generative: more than one composer has said that without Tudor’s insight, imagination, and pianistic virtuosity Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 5 his music would not have come into being.”8 Art Lange expresses similar sentiments in his notes to a recording of Tudor performing in the 1950s: It is safe to say that without performers capable of transforming these ideas into real music, they would have remained merely conceptual controversy. David Tudor, as pianist and collaborator with many of these composers, was the single, manifest presence who premiered and produced the most important of these works, set the standard for craft and diligence in their creation and performance, and gave them not only life but a conscience.9 Tudor collaborated most closely with John Cage, who always offered his highest praise of the pianist: “[Tudor] was such an extraordinary musician that if you were near him, and even now if you’re near him, you don’t need anything else. The world is immense through him, has no limits, has only inviting horizons.”1 0 The body of work to which Tudor dedicated himself is anything but inviting as it continues to defy conventional aesthetics. After examining why this repertory has been difficult for audiences, I will suggest that Tudor is uniquely qualified to offer a new means of experiencing these elusive works. As an epigraph to his dissertation, Holzaepfel cites George Steiner: “in respect of meaning and of valuation in the arts, our master intelligencers are the performers.”1 1 In this respect, we may learn from Tudor, but the true subject of the present study is not the pianist at all: it is the inviting horizons of the repertory that he famously performed. The works in Tudor’s repertory have not lost their notoriety; from the 1950s to the present, befuddled audiences have questioned the aesthetic validity of such a perplexing idiom. Generally, audiences and critics today acknowledge the historic import of the works, and consequently are slightly more polite than their 1950s Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 6 counterparts, who often reacted violently against what they perceived as either an intentional assault or a pointless joke. Even those among the preeminent authorities of modem music such as Theodor Adorno struggled with the new musical language. (Recall Stockhausen’s famous account of the theorist’s difficulty with Karel Goevaerts’s Sonata for Two Pianos, performed at Darmstadt in 1951: “Adorno couldn’t understand at all. He said, there is no motivic w ork.. . . I said, but 19 Professor, you are looking for a chicken in an abstract painting.”) But however scathing the review of the compositions, the performer was almost always given praise. Here are some samples of typical reviews of Tudor’s recitals in the 1950s: “It was a weary and confused audience that left the League of Composers ‘Evening of first Performances and Revivals’ in Carnegie Recital Hall last night. But it left 1 -5 certain that it had heard a pianist of unique and stunning virtuosity.” “David Tudor was the justly acclaimed pianist of the evening.”1 4 “Four intrepid explorers in the aural stratosphere collaborated in a program at Cherry Lane theatre Tuesday night, with David Tudor as their able navigator and pilot.”1 5 A recital of truly avant-garde music for the piano was played . . . last night by David Tudor, the one man in the world, perhaps, who could do it and do it right. Mr. Tudor is, in fact, so highly regarded by European and American leading avant-gardists that they have written, and are writing, pieces exploiting his capabilities and discoveries.1 6 Almost without exception, reviewers in Europe and America regarded Tudor with high esteem, even if they were divided about the music that he performed. At its surface, the profile of Tudor’s repertory of European and American works also appears divided. In Europe, the primary form of experimentation was Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 7 total serialism—the extension of Schoenberg’s strict ordering principle to musical elements other than pitch. While the composers of the Second Viennese School had seemingly exhausted harmonic possibilities within the realm of equal temperament, the next generation of avant-gardists made what Ernst Krenek holds to be a more elemental break from the traditional construction of music in the rhythmic domain: “serial ordering of the factor of time (i.e. premeditated fixation of points of entrance and duration of the individual musical elements) caused fundamental changes in the structure, appearance, perceptibility, and meaning of music.”1 7 At the same time that serialism began to attract European avant-gardists, a group of composers in New York began experimenting with indeterminacy—the 1 R technique of subjecting specific compositional or performance elements to chance. Just as total serialism altered the basic perceptibility of music, so did the use of chance procedures: while some element of uncertainty is present in virtually all performances—as Cage points out in his lecture “Indeterminacy,” J. S. Bach’s Art o f the Fugue is indeterminate with respect to timbre and amplitude since the composer does not specify the performing medium or dynamics—the systematic use of chance methods to determine aspects of formal continuity (resulting in so-called “open- form” works) was unprecedented. In her book To Boulez and Beyond, Joan Peyser identifies the aesthetic division between serialism and indeterminacy as a deeply-rooted polemic: “at its heart the quarrel was between the Old and New Worlds, between Europe and the United States, between a serially derived language and virtually no language at Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 8 all.”1 9 The most famous episode of this quarrel occurred in 1958 when Cage was invited to present his ideas at the Ferienkurse in Darmstadt. Here Cage delivered a lecture and also organized a performance of works for two pianos that he, Feldman, Brown, and Wolff had recently composed. Many identify 1958 as the year in which the opposed camps converged, the year in which Cage produced, as described by Brigitte Schiffer, “what was almost a shock” at the “citadel of the European avant- garde.”2 0 But the years immediately preceding were far from silent: Cage was not invited to Darmstadt by chance. The contentious relationship between the American and European avant- garde did not commence, but rather culminated in Cage’s appearance at Darmstadt. The most significant factor in this relationship was a dawning awareness of the new music of the rival camp, and here Tudor was crucial. By the middle of the decade, the composers working in either idiom had first-hand knowledge of the latest exploits of their cross-Atlantic colleagues due to Tudor’s performances of their most recent work. Consistently lauded by composers for his insight into the recent music of both schools, Tudor effectively functioned as musical liaison between serialism and indeterminacy. Despite the extreme opposites of their working methods, the two repertories are fundamentally compatible. Many have remarked on the irony that the extreme opposites of compositional intention—the aesthetic poles of “ultra-rationality” and “anti-rationality” —often produce a similar sound product. The paradox dissolves when one considers the basic principle of both repertories and certainly their most Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 9 radical feature: the reassessment of the traditional role of the composer’s will in the creative process. The composer, whether working with serial or indeterminate procedures, creates a situation that facilitates a musical process, the moment-to- moment details of which he has either limited or no control. As Krenek relates: Whatever happens at any given point [in a serialized composition] is a product of the preconceived serial organization, but by the same token it is a chance occurrence because it is as such not anticipated by the mind that invented the mechanism and set it in motion.2 3 Thus, the removal—or more properly, the relocation—of the composer’s intuition was an essential factor in the formulation of both avant-garde idioms of the 1950s. Krenek explains: [T]he composer has come to distrust his inspiration because it is not really as innocent as it was supposed to be, but rather conditioned by a tremendous body of recollection, tradition, training, and experience. In order to avoid the dictations of such ghosts, he prefers to set up an impersonal mechanism which will furnish, according to premeditated patterns, unpredictable situations.2 4 According to Christian Wolff, composers of the new music renounced traditional notions of expression in favor of depersonalized “anonymity”: What is, or seems to be, new in this music? . . . One finds a concern for a kind of objectivity, almost anonymity—sound come into its own. The ‘music’ is a resultant existing simply in the sounds we hear, given no impulse by expressions of self or personality. It is indifferent in motive, originating in no psychology nor in dramatic intentions, nor in literary or pictorial purposes. For at least some of these composers, then, the final intention is to be free of artistry and taste. But this need not make their work ‘abstract,’ for nothing, in the end, is denied. It is simply that personal expression, drama, psychology, and the like are not part of the composer’s initial calculation: they are at best gratuitous.2 5 Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 10 Through the extreme objectification of the musical product, which effectively masked any conventional signs of the personality who fashioned it, composers working with either serial or indeterminate methods succeeded in creating a repertory that aggressively defied the musical establishment. In the face of what the composers knew would be an unprepared critical audience, it is natural that several of them documented their working methods and aesthetic intentions. The overwhelming majority of these writings—which often shadow the music itself in terms of its impersonality and complexity—tend toward formalistic description, thereby emphasizing the theoretical aspect of the music. Edward Cone indicates that such description, given the nature of total serialism and indeterminacy, is unavoidable: In a word, this music is composed prescriptively, and the only possible or appropriate analytic method is to determine the original prescriptive plan. This is not analysis but cryptanalysis—the discovery of the key according to which a cipher or code was constructed.2 6 Discussions of the prescriptive construction of a work typically result in the criticism of the composer’s disregard for the musical reality, that a theoretical apologia for the music unrightfully takes the place of the listening experience. If the problem of reception was one of perceptual confusion, then the theoretical explanations only served to complicate the issue. Roberto Gerhard, a Catalonian composer and student of Schoenberg who brought the music of the Second Viennese School to Barcelona, comments on the limitation of a theoretical discourse in the attempt to understand modem music: Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 11 We are up against the fallacy that music can be explained; that more knowledge about how the piece is made will lead to a better understanding of the music. But it is evident that knowledge—here as in many other fields— • 27 does not necessarily lead to understanding. Gerhard insists that this fallacy is a result of reversed priorities: Paradoxically, understanding must come first. One must have grasped intuitively the heart of the matter before the factual bits of knowledge can even begin to make sense.. . . The direction is from the center of an intuitive understanding outwards to the factual data, never the other way round. Technique is only illumined from within, from the core of the creative experience, with the composer, or from the core of the perceptive experience, with the listener or the critic.2 8 Here, Tudor’s experience may offer a valuable alternative to approaching these demanding works. The pianist claimed that, in the early stages of grappling with the new idiom, he underwent a “change in musical perception” that resulted in his decision to focus exclusively on the avant-garde repertory.2 9 As a performer, Tudor did not concern himself as much with how a piece was made, as with how he might enliven what he took to be the essential effect of the work. (Strangely, Gerhard fails to include the performer, whose unique vantage point encompasses the experience of both creation and perception.) Thus, the key to understanding the new music is not in the theoretical description of the compositional process, but in the much more daunting task of altering the perceptive experience. Each of the composers advocates a new mode of perception when approaching this repertory. In the conclusion of his lecture “Current Investigations,” Boulez envisions a revolution in perception: “These reflections on musical composition lead one to hope for a new poetics, a new way of listening.”3 0 Cage puts Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 12 the matter more succinctly: “New music: new listening.”3 1 Henri Pousseur states that the new music requires a “revolution within one’s perceptual organization,” a force of change that should be abrupt, even jolting, in order to counteract the staying power and conditioning of familiar modes of perception: The pedagogy of new musical idioms, unknown modes of expression, must therefore be dominated by the need to clear the ground, to reject, to make contact with people’s consciousness. And it will be found that in this respect the most fruitful hints are purely negative ones—hints as to what the listener must not expect, types of recollection that he must exclude. This encourages a new organisation, puts the existing one in parenthesis, and renders it harmless. One does not work at the gradual comprehension of a piece, and perform an act of will that synthesises one’s ‘sensory impressions’; there is a sudden revolution within one’s perceptual organisation, an abrupt illumination of one’s consciousness.3 2 Earle Brown believes that the majority of negative terms used to describe the avant- garde repertory betrays a reluctance to venture from conventional modes of perception: Of course there is no such thing as a ‘formless’ thing. It’s like what we call ‘disorder;’ as [Henri] Bergson says, disorder is merely the order you are not looking for, and that’s the way it is with ‘formless.’ If something were really formless we would not know of its existence in the first place. It is the same with ‘no continuity’ and ‘no relationship.’ All of the negatives are pointing at what they are claiming does not exist. It is the same when people claim that there is ‘no communication.’ It is obviously a matter of attitude . . . mental inertia .. . calcification of outlook . . . so much easier to say ‘no’ than to confront the actual situation and find the new way of accepting ‘yes.’3 3 Brown remarks that audiences find avant-garde music impenetrable on account of ingrained listening habits that resist change: “Apart from the general prevailing indolence, the difficulty people experience in experiencing this music is directed expectancy . . . which is to a degree natural as in physics; ‘a body in motion tends to Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 13 remain in motion’ ”3 4 To complete the reference to Newton’s First Law, or the Law of Inertia: “a body in motion tends to remain in motion unless it is acted upon by an outside force.” Acting upon the conventional notions of perception with almost impudent force, the works in Tudor’s repertory were designed to redirect the vector of experiential complacency in the musical arts. Evidently, an important element of the new perceptual strategy is to deny expectation by focusing on the present—to focus on the process instead of the goal. Stockhausen explains that, following the Second World War, there was a trend in avant-garde artists— and, as he likes to point out, in the sciences as well—that centered on the details of process: There was similar thinking everywhere: reduction of the process of forming to the smallest possible element. When I use the word ‘forming,’ I mean it in the sense of the crystallized result of the creative act, the form being just an instant in a process, and that what was happening among scientists as well as artists in the early fifties was that attention was increasingly focusing on the process.3 5 The reduction of musical gestures to the “smallest possible element” led to the pointillist style reminiscent of Anton Webern, whom the avant-gardists regarded as their torchbearer. Pousseur describes, in poetic terms, the sensation of listening to Webern’s work: The perceptual type to which [Webern’s] music appeals is no longer the understanding of an abstract form, heard ‘through’ the material and standing in transcendent relationship to its actual incarnation—a quasi-etemal archetype; one must attentively grasp, in its particularity, every single moment of ‘here and now’; one has the wonderful experience of feeling time shoot forward—the field of consciousness constantly renews itself; phenomenal reality is constantly regenerated; one enters a world that is held firmly open, imperfect until further notice, constantly breaking-up.3 6 Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 14 The practice of focusing on the present is, of course, contrary to the conventional practice of anticipating upcoming material, a mode of perception that is fostered by structural repetition. Most of the avant-garde composers deliberately frustrated the listener’s attempts to make predictions by reducing or even eliminating redundancy. As Leonard Meyer explains, this affected not only the comprehensibility of the work, but the “psychic security” of the listener: Redundancy facilitates learning not only because order is easier to remember and comprehend than disorder, but because order and regularity make prediction possible.. . . Manifest irregularity or randomness, on the other hand, precludes predictability; and, by weakening the listener’s sense of control, discourages learning. It is probable that new music angers listeners not because their aesthetic sensibilities are offended but because their psychic security—their sense of control—is seriously threatened.3 7 While virtually all of the avant-garde composers and a handful of insightful critics appeal for a new mode of perception, suggestions for undergoing such a change have been vague and of limited applicability. In the following chapters, I will examine the circumstances surrounding Tudor’s “change in musical perception” and how this change affected his performance practice. I will also contend that the pianist’s partiality toward this “offensive” and “threatening” repertory was largely on account of its ability specifically to upset one’s “psychic security,” to overturn the status-quo of perception and, ultimately, to enhance spiritual awareness. I hope that this study, an attempt to understand more clearly Tudor’s engagement with the avant-garde works of the 1950s, will convey some of the discoveries of this unique musician and contribute to an increased familiarity with a rich, but mysterious repertory. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 15 NOTES 1. Robert Morgan, Twentieth-Century Music (New York: W. W. Norton and Company), 333. 2. Pierre Boulez, “Where Are We Now?” Orientations, trans. Martin Cooper (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1986), 446. 3. Cole Gagne and Tracy Caras, Soundpieces: Interviews with American Composers (Metuchen, NJ: Scarecrow Press Inc., 1982), 78. 4. Henri Pousseur, “Music, Form and Practice,” Die Reihe 6 (1960, Engl, edition 1964), 77-93. 5. Charles Rosen, “The Piano Music,” Pierre Boulez: A Symposium, ed. William Glock (London: Eulenburg Books, 1986), 85. 6. See Robin Maconie, The Works o f Karlheinz Stockhausen (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1990), 63. 7. Letter from Peter Yates to John Cage, 8 August 1953. Deering Music Library, Northwestern University, John Cage Correspondence, C7 (1950-1959). 8. In his dissertation, John Holzaepfel provides a comprehensive index of works premiered by Tudor in the 1950s. Some prominent composers included in this extensive list are: Pierre Boulez, Earle Brown, Sylvano Bussotti, John Cage, Cornelius Cardew, Henry Cowell, Franco Evangelisti, Morton Feldman, Lou Harrison, Dick Higgins, Mauricio Kagel, Bruno Madema, Olivier Messiaen, Bo Nilsson, Henri Pousseur, George Rochberg, Ralph Shapey, Karlheinz Stockhausen, Christian Wolff, Stefan Wolpe, and La Monte Young. See Holzaepfel, “David Tudor and the Performance of American Experimental Music, 1950-1959,” PhD diss. (CUNY,1994), 328-362. 9. Holzaepfel, “David Tudor,” vii. 10. Art Lange, liner notes, hatART CD 6181 (1995). 11. Duckworth, William. Talking Music: Conversations with John Cage, Philip Glass, Laurie Anderson, and Five Generations o f American Experimental Composers (New York: Schirmer Books, 1995), 20. 12. Holzaepfel, “David Tudor,” xxv. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 16 13. Karlheinz Stockhausen, Stockhausen on Music: Lectures and Interviews (London and New York: M. Boyar, 1989), 36. 14. Carter Harman, New York Times, 18 December 1950. 15. Diether de la Motte, Rheinische Post (Cologne), 23 September 1958. “David Tudor war der zu Recht gefeierte Pianist des Abends.” 16. Peggy Glanville-Hicks, New York Herald Tribune, 3 January 1952. 17. “A. H.” New York Herald Tribune, 20 March 1959. 18. Ernst Krenek, “Extents and Limits of Serial Techniques,” Problems o f Modern Music, ed. Paul Henry Lang (New York: W.W. Norton & Co. Inc., 1962), 73. 19. Cage made a distinction between chance music and indeterminate music: “chance” is the use of randomness in the act of composition, while “indeterminacy” refers to the variability of a work’s realization. See Cage, “Indeterminacy,” Silence (Middletown, CT: Wesleyan University Press, 1961), 35-40; and James Pritchett, The Music o f John Cage (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993), 107-109. 20. Joan Peyser, To Boulez and Beyond: Music in Europe Since The Rite o f Spring (NewYork: Billboard Books, 1999) 197. 21. Brigitte Schiffer, “Darmstadt, citadel of the avant-garde,” The World o f Music 11:3 (1969), 38. 22. “Ultra-Rationality and Electronic Music” and “Anti-Rationality and Aleatory” are chapter headings in Eric Salzman’s Twentieth-Century Music: An Introduction (Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall, Inc., 1967). 23. Virgil Thomson notes: “between a numerically integrated work of sound and one showing arrangements and orders that reflect only hazard, there is not of necessity much recognizable difference. A similar degree of complexity is bound to be present, provided the variable elements are sufficiently numerous and the game of chance used to control them sufficiently complex.. . . ” Thomson, American Music Since 1910 (New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1970), 72-73. Gyorgy Ligeti also addresses the issue: “The postulation of series means, here, that each element should be used with equal frequency and should be given equal importance. This leads irresistably [sic] to an increase of entropy. The finer the network of operations with pre-ordered material, the higher the degree of levelling-out [sic] in the result. Total Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 17 consistent application of the serial principle negates, in the end, serialism itself. There is really no basic difference between the results of automatism and the products of chance; total determinacy comes to be identical with total indeterminacy.” Ligeti, “Metamorphoses of Musical Form,” Die Reihe 1 (1960, Engl. ed. 1965), 10. Also see Leonard Meyer, Music, The Arts, and Ideas, 283- 293. 24. Krenek, “Extents and Limits,” 90. 25. Ibid. 26. Christian Wolff as cited by John Cage in “History of Experimental Music in the United States,” Silence, 68. 27. Edward Cone, “Analysis Today,” Musical Quarterly 46 (1960), 176. 28. Roberto Gerhard, “The Composer and his Audience,” Twentieth-Century Music, ed. Rollo Meyers (London: Calder and Boyars, 1960), 80. 29. Ibid., 81. 30. David Tudor, “From Piano to Electronics,” Music and Musicians 20:12 (1972), 24. 31. Boulez, “Current Investigations,” Stocktakings from an Apprenticeship, trans. Stephen Walsh (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1991), 18. 32. Cage, “Experimental Music,” Silence, 10. 33. Pousseur, “Outline of a Method,” Die Reihe 3 (1957, Engl, edition 1959), 45- 46. 34. Earle Brown, “Form,” Darmstadter Beitrage zur Neuen Musik 10 (1966), 61. 35. Ibid., 67. 36. Stockhausen, Stockhausen on Music, 37. 37. Pousseur, “Outline,” 47. 38. Meyer, Music, The Arts, and Ideas, 278. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 18 CHAPTER ONE RECITAL HALL OF CRUELTY: DAVID TUDOR AND ANTONIN ARTAUD “From the point o f view o f the mind, cruelty signifies rigor, implacable intention and decision, irreversible and absolute determination. . . — Antonin Artaud, 1932 In the final weeks before the United States premiere performance of Pierre Boulez’s notoriously challenging Second Piano Sonata, David Tudor, the designated performer, was in a precarious situation. While fully competent in terms of technique, he was unable to determine how to maintain musical continuity in such a turbulent work. Tudor recalled, “I’d always been well known for my ability to handle complex scores—it could be black as sin and I could still play it—but this time I found a sort of constant breakdown in the continuity.”1 Unlike the repertory with which the young virtuoso was familiar, as vast and sophisticated as it was, the piece by the young French composer posed a problem of a new order. Tudor felt that the sonata was practically devoid of any conventional hierarchies; there did not appear to be a central line by which all the peculiarities of musical gestures could be structurally identified: “Boulez had written no Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. counterpoints, no second voices, and you couldn’t subordinate any voices at all, as there was nothing leading, nothing on which the music centered itself.” Understandably, the pianist’s conception of musical continuity was, at that time, governed by the long-standing tradition of classical forms, a tradition that Boulez had purposely set out to demolish. With a diligence that would always characterize his preparation of a score, Tudor studied French in order to examine Boulez’s critical writings in an effort to gain some insight into this outlandish compositional method. To date, Boulez had published three articles in two journals: “Propositions” and “Incidences actuelles de Berg” in Polyphonie (1948), and “Trajectoires: Ravel, Stravinsky, Schonberg” in Contrepoints (1949). Tudor gravitated towards “Propositions” (“Proposals”) as it was the only article that included musical examples from the recently composed sonata. In the article, Boulez provides a brief survey of modem techniques of rhythmic organization, citing examples from Messiaen, Stravinsky, and his own work. He indicates that such innovation was necessary in the rhythmic domain in order to achieve a “balance” of musical syntax: “Why aim for such complexity? So that techniques as varied as those of dodecaphony can be balanced by a rhythmic element itself perfectly ‘atonal.’” Taking his lead from Webem, Boulez sought to disavow any traditional reliance on rhythmic regularity: Only Webem—for all his attachment to rhythmic tradition—succeeded in breaking down the regularity of the bar by his extraordinary use of cross- Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 20 rhythm, syncopation, accents on weak beats, counter-accents on strong beats, and other such devices designed to make us forget the regularity of metre.4 Boulez makes it very clear that many avant-garde composers following the Second World War were in the process of redefining the conventional use of rhythm, a topic that will be addressed in the following chapter. In the final paragraph of the article, Boulez tentatively reveals his aesthetic aims in a mysterious passage that Tudor enthusiastically embraced: “Finally, I have a personal reason for giving such an important place to the phenomenon of rhythm. I think that music should be collective hysteria and magic, violently modem—along the line of Antonin Artaud . . . .”5 The comments provided by Boulez in “Proposals” confirmed Tudor’s speculation of the work’s fragmented nature. More importantly, the article introduced Tudor to a name whose revolutionary ideas about theater would permanently alter the pianist’s conception of the performance of modem music: Antonin Artaud. Dutifully, Tudor next sought guidance in the theoretical writings of the dramatist. Tudor procured a copy of Le Theatre et son Double, a collection of essays written by Artaud between 1931 and 1936, first published in France in 1938. In the collection, Artaud insists that “where simplicity and order reign, there can be no theater nor drama, and the tme theater . . . is bom out of a kind of organized anarchy.”6 Using traditional Oriental theater as a model, Artaud rejects the Occidental practice of constructing a narrative based on text, in favor of a theater in which various components of the mise en scene (including speech, movement, and Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 21 light) are rigorously projected towards the audience as if they were physical objects. “The stage,” he declares, “is a concrete physical place which asks to be filled, and to be given its own concrete language to speak . . . [a language] intended for the senses and independent of speech.”7 In what came to be known as the Theater of Cruelty, Artaud calls for a production “in which violent physical images crush and hypnotize the sensibility of the spectator seized by the theater as by a whirlwind of higher forces.”8 Recognizing the pertinence of “chaotic violence” to Boulez’s sonata, Tudor began to interpret the disjunct series of pitches as physical objects being projected into the performance space. The musical product was to be experienced not in terms of a developmental narrative requiring the application of memory, but rather as a visceral engagement with the present. Tudor stated: I recall how my mind had to change in order to be able to do it.. . . All of a sudden I saw that there was a different way of looking at musical continuity, having to deal with what Artaud called the affective athleticism. It has to do with the disciplines that an actor goes through. It was a real breakthrough for me, because my musical consciousness in the meantime changed completely. . . . I had to put my mind in a state of non-continuity—not remembering—so that each moment is alive.9 Reflecting on the profundity of his realization, Tudor acknowledged, “the most important thing for me about this period is a change in musical perception. . . . I recall this as a definite breaking point, as the moment I became aware another kind of musical continuity was possible, and from then on I began to see all other music in those terms.”1 0 Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. That Tudor was influenced by the writings of Artaud is indisputable—the ideas in Le Theatre et son Double, as will be demonstrated, circulated noticeably around the pianist and his associates. The manner in which he was influenced, on the other hand, is much less clear. The very nature of identifying interdisciplinary inspiration is, at best, troublesome; especially in dealing with abstract theories, as was Tudor in reading Artaud’s writings, terms used to describe phenomena of one medium often refer to something utterly different in another. Besides, within the few months that he had to prepare the sonata, it is extremely unlikely that Tudor attended a theatrical performance dedicated to the application of Artaud’s ideas; the idealistic rhetoric of Artaud’s book remained, for the pianist, purely theoretical. Further, it must be remembered that the pianist sought the writings of Artaud with the express intention of gaining insight into Boulez’s Sonata from the perspective of a performer—he needed a concept with which to approach the work. It is reasonable to presume, therefore, that Tudor read Le Theatre et son Double not so much to grasp the dramatist’s new theatrical ideas, but to surmise how these ideas might resonate with Boulez’s work. Finally, Tudor certainly did not adapt the totality of Artaud’s theories. In all probability, Tudor either re-interpreted or even misinterpreted many of the dramatist’s ideas—after all, the pianist was required to translate Artaud’s text with his allegedly newly acquired French. Nevertheless, by his own admission, Tudor’s experience with Boulez’s Second Sonata, as informed by the writings of Artaud, facilitated a drastic transformation in the sensibility of the pianist. How Le Theatre et son Double might Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 23 have contributed to this transformation is the subject of the present chapter. In order to clarify the effect that Artaud’s presence had on Tudor’s approach to modem music, I will attempt to identify “those terms” in which the pianist thereafter “began to see all other music.” That is, I will consider what, specifically, changed in his perception. First, a brief biographical sketch of Artaud will include an explanation of his revolutionary vision for modem theater as it is expressed in Le Theatre et son Double. Then, I will trace how Artaud’s life and ideas intersected with those of Boulez and extended to Tudor and several of his close associates including Mary Caroline Richards, who undertook the first English translation of Artaud’s seminal text. Finally, two prominent works that entered Tudor’s repertory shortly after his experience with Boulez’s sonata—John Cage’s Music o f Changes and Morton Feldman’s Intersection No. 3—will be considered in relation to Le Theatre et son Double, the catalyst of the pianist’s transformation. Bom in Marseille in 1896, Antonin Artaud came to Paris in 1920 to pursue a career in acting and soon became affiliated with Andre Breton and the Surrealist movement.1 1 In 1927 he broke from the Surrealists and co-founded, along with Roger Vitrac and Raymond Aron, the short-lived Alfred Jarry Theater, named after the French philosopher and playwright best known for his satirical play Ubu Roi (1896).1 2 Of the four projects produced by the Alfred Jarry Theater, Stephen Barber writes: No sets would cushion the hysterical sensory overload of the planned performances. Artaud expected to exert an extreme and visceral captivation upon his audience. The subject matter would be a ‘synthesis of all desires and Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 24 all tortures,’ and its performance would sustain this with [an] exclamatory surge of sound. . . . Even during the performance intervals, loudspeakers would be used to intensify the atmosphere, ‘to the point of obsession’.1 3 Each of the productions of the Alfred Jarry Theater received scornful reviews. Frustrated with the conventions of traditional Western theater, and dejected by the indifference with which his own projects were received, Artaud found refuge in the theoretical formulation of a new theatrical idiom. A pivotal event in the evolution of Artaud's thought was the Colonial Exposition of 1931 in Paris, where he witnessed performances of the Balinese theater. Nicola Savarese, in his article “Antonin Artaud Sees Balinese Theatre at the Paris Colonial Exposition,” examines the circumstances surrounding the spectacle to which the dramatist was exposed—a spectacle that resulted immediately in a review that became the basis of his famous treatise on modem theater, Le Theatre et son Double. Savarese emphasizes the sensationalism of the six-month exposition, which was designed to celebrate the colonizing efforts of several Western nations at a time when the practice of colonization was beginning to face severe criticism: “The Balinese dancers, appearing for the first time in the Occident, were placed on display along with other Asian, African, and Polynesian artists, in the ostentatious context of an exotic amusement park.”1 4 The friction resulting from this conflict made for good publicity, as over eight million visitors attended the exposition. The Dutch pavilion, which housed the Balinese troupe, received particular attention in the media not only for its attractive displays and exceptional dancers, but also on account of a devastating fire that completely destroyed the magnificent stmcture. A new pavilion Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 25 was erected with alarming rapidity, and the exhibits were more popular than ever, as Savarese attests: “the Balinese theatre was always full to capacity and it was often necessary to turn people away.”1 5 For Artaud, who attended the Exposition in early August of 1931 (just over a month after the fire), the performance was nothing less than a revelatory affirmation of his own budding theories. As Savarese explains, “Artaud’s reaction to Balinese theatre seems rather like an idea that had been nascent in him for a long time and which suddenly took form as a visionary concept. It seems, in other words, like a veritable enlightenment.”1 6 Above all, it was the physicality of the dancers’ movements that impressed the dramatist, as Barber indicates: “Artaud perceived no text in the Balinese theatre. He was attracted by fragmentary, violent gestures which were suddenly cut and abandoned... .”1 7 It is important to note that Artaud experienced the imported product of Balinese theater as a Westerner—it is natural that the dramatist perceived the performance as a ritualistic display of disjunct gestures, devoid of narrative. The impact of the event, then, was reliant to some degree on Artaud’s ignorance of the context of such a performance in Balinese culture and, as Savarese suggests, on the dramatist’s aggravation with his professional disappointments: “Artaud had no particular predilection for Asian theatre. His energetic inclination toward Otherness was fueled instead by a complete rejection of Occidental civilization and by a state > 1R of constant revolt against his unsuccessful professional life.” This is not to belittle the influence that the Balinese spectacle had on Artaud’s formulation of the Theater Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 26 of Cruelty. In fact, Artaud is part of a distinguished history of French modem culture in which painters, composers, and poets have appropriated and assimilated “primitive” and “exotic” elements into their work. Recall that it was Pablo Picasso’s appropriation of the art of “primitive” cultures (i.e. African tribal masks) that led to his experiments with Cubism, the quintessential expression of modernism in the Western art tradition. Artaud articulated his newly formed visionary concept in a series of essays, as Barber notes: “When Artaud saw the performance of Balinese dance theater. . . it released a great influx of imagery and formulations about theatre and the body into his writings. Very soon, he began to call this new stage of his work ‘The Theatre of Cruelty’.”1 9 Artaud immediately wrote a review of the Balinese production, which was published in Nouvelle Revue Frangaise that October. The review was then revised as “On the Balinese Theater,” the first essay that Artaud wrote for inclusion in Le Theatre et son Double. In the essay, Artaud praises the Balinese artists for preserving an ancient tradition of theater, a tradition that has eluded modem Westerners. “This dazzling ensemble,” states Artaud, “. . . composes a sovereign idea of the theater, as it has been preserved for us down through the centuries in order to teach us what the theater never should have ceased to be.” He praises their highly stylized and calculated production, the subtlety of the dancers’ gestures, and notes what appeared to him as the conspicuous absence of a choreography based on a narrative. Artaud views the production as a sort of primordial ritual, with the subtle and highly stylized Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 27 movements of the dancers symbolizing abstract “spiritual states” rather than being a representation of mundane movements designed to put forward a storyline: “There is in [the Balinese productions] something of the ceremonial quality of a religious rite, in the sense that they extirpate from the mind of the onlooker all idea of pretense, of 01 cheap imitations of reality.” According to Artaud, the Balinese dancers are able to bypass the text-based narratives of the conventional Western stage by using a vocabulary of gestures that is specific to the stage production: The drama does not develop as a conflict of feelings but as a conflict of spiritual states, themselves ossified and transformed into gestures—diagrams. In a word, the Balinese have realized, with the utmost rigor, the idea of pure theater, where everything, conception and realization alike, has value, has O ' ) existence only in proportion to its degree of objectification on the stage. Artaud credits the Balinese with having developed what he calls “pure theater,” a production comprised of elements that do not derive their meaning from references external to the medium. The fundamental elements that constitute theater— movements, sounds, lights, sets, and costumes—are, in a sense, the subject of what Artaud calls a “pure” production: “The themes selected derive, one might say, from the stage itself. They have reached such a point of objective materialization that one cannot imagine them outside this close perspective, this confined and limited globe of performing space.” For Artaud, “pure” theater has eluded Western practitioners of the modem stage on account of the prominence given to text: Of this idea of pure theater, which is merely theoretical in the Occident and to which no one has ever attempted to give the least reality, the Balinese offer us a stupefying realization, suppressing all possibility of recourse to words Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 28 for the elucidation of the most abstract themes—inventing a language of gesture to be developed in space, a language without meaning except in the circumstances of the stage.2 Because the “language of gesture” is comprehensible only in its theatrical context, it does not lend itself easily to verbal paraphrase, a characteristic common to “absolute” music and recent developments in modem painting. Artaud’s predilection for an art form whose language is specific to the elements that comprise it parallels art critic Clement Greenberg’s statement less than a decade later that modem painting is characterized by its “medium specificity.” In his essay "Towards a Newer Laocoon" (1940), Greenberg asserts that the primary task of nineteenth-century avant-gardists was to rid their respective media of extra- artistic, and especially literary, ideas: As the first and most important item upon its agenda, the avant-garde saw the necessity of an escape from ideas, which were infecting the arts with the ideological stmggles of society.. . . This meant a new and greater emphasis upon form, and it also involved the assertion of the arts as independent vocations, disciplines and crafts, absolutely autonomous, and entitled to respect for their own sakes, and not merely as vessels of communication. It was the signal for a revolt against the dominance of literature, which was subject matter at its most oppressive. Like Artaud, Greenberg holds that the appropriate subject matter for modem art is the interaction of elements out of which it is constructed: The arts . . . have been hunted back to their mediums, and there they have been isolated, concentrated and defined. It is by virtue of its medium that each art is unique and strictly itself. To restore the identity of an art the opacity of its medium must be emphasized.2 6 Both Greenberg and Artaud rejected the use of their respective media to portray something that they believed to be more properly suited to another medium: the art Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 29 critic denounced the depiction of sculptural depth in modem painting, a medium that is restricted to two dimensions, and the dramatist rejected the need for theater to be subservient to literature by imparting a narrative based on text. Just as Artaud refers to a medium-specific stage production as “pure” theater, Greenberg designates as “pure” that art which takes as its only subject matter the elements of line, shape, and color. Greenberg became a tireless champion of a selection of New York artists working in what the critic believed to be the “pure” idiom of abstract expressionism in the late 1940s and 1950s. An important connection between Artaud and the abstract expressionists is the influence on their work of myth and primitivism. Many of the representational works of such New York artists as Jackson Pollock, Mark Rothko, and Adolph Gottlieb during their formative years were based on mythological themes. Art historian Irving Sandler explains that most of the artists working in the abstract expressionist idiom at that time “were attracted to ancient myths and primitive art and employed automatism to reveal what they believed to be on universal symbols that inhabited the inner mind.” The inclination of modernists toward mythology and the art of primitive cultures can be witnessed in Robert Goldwater’s classic study, Primitivism in Modern Art (1938), published the same year as Artaud’s Le Theatre et son Double. In the preface to his revised text of 1966, Goldwater explains that while many modem artists drew their inspiration from the artwork of primitive cultures, “both the social purposes and the aesthetic achievements of primitive art—its forms and its Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 30 functions—are widely different from those of modem art.”2 8 He divides the modem artists who appropriated primitive art into three categories: Romantic Primitivism (Paul Gauguin and the Fauves), Emotional Primitivism {Die Brucke and Der Blaue Reiter), and Intellectual Primitivism (Picasso, Purism, and Constmctivism). Goldwater singles out Intellectual Primitivism as the only type that appropriates the formal elements of primitive art while either ignoring or being ignorant of its indigenous context or function: Their intention, indeed, was . . . to consider only the formal aspects of primitive work, disregarding not only its particular iconographical significance, of which they were entirely ignorant, but also the more general emotional expression and the effect induced by the form and composition of the objects that they knew. For Goldwater, artists such as Picasso (during his Cubist period), Piet Mondrian, and Kasimir Malevich were unified by their desire to objectify the elements specific to their respective media. In respect to Goldwater’s classification, Artaud maybe considered an “Intellectual Primitivist” in that the dramatist isolated the formal aspects of the Balinese performance without regard for its ethnographic function. Savarese supports this notion by explaining that the spectacle Artaud witnessed at the Colonial Exposition was a popular dance-drama known as a “janger”—a relatively mundane genre by Balinese standards: [T]he janger does not belong to the genre of Balinese dance that one might expect to be the catalyst for Artaud’s enlightenment. It is not one of the most sacred and mysterious rituals, nor is it particularly moving... . Janger is a little ‘family playlet’ (unconventional in Bali but certainly not in Paris), and does not, moreover, have a particularly elaborate choreography. It is not part Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 31 of the great tradition of ancient dances and is purely ‘recreational.’ It must therefore have been the dancers themselves that so overwhelmed Artaud. Hence, it was not the theme of the drama that so impressed him, but the art of * 30 the performers, their powerful scenic presence. Thus, Artaud’s essay “On the Balinese Theater” is a remarkably powerful response to a well-executed, but modest, production; it is clear that the dramatist was motivated by his own agenda. As Barber notes, “Artaud’s perception of the Balinese dance theatre was certainly exaggerated, and was expanded in scope to help build upon his fledgling proposals.. . . Artaud’s commitment was to creating a new theatre, not to interpreting an ancient one.”3 1 Savarese concurs with Barber’s view (“No matter how exceptional and impressive we might imagine the Balinese performance to have been, Artaud’s reaction seems out of proportion.” ), and interprets Artaud’s exaggerated reaction to the Balinese dancers as an attempt to disrupt the conventions of traditional Western theater: Artaud was in fact not interested in Balinese culture; he used the Balinese performance because its extraneousness to his own culture made it possible for him to delineate a difference. Artaud, finally, did not want to increase knowledge about Balinese dance but to use it to create a short-circuit.3 3 Artaud, in other words, used his commentary on the Balinese dancers to criticize traditional Occidental practices, while at the same time setting the foundation for what he would call the Theater of Cruelty, his modem vision for the Western stage. Artaud wrote his first manifesto on the Theater of Cruelty in 1933. In this first definitive statement of his new theater, Artaud rejects outright several facets of the traditional practice of Western theater in favor of the Balinese model. Chief among these is the text-based model of theater and its tendency to make the Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 32 fundamental function of theater a vehicle for psychological import. “Instead of continuing to rely upon texts considered definitive and sacred,” insists Artaud, “it is essential to put an end to the subjugation of the theater to the text, and to recover the notion of a kind of unique language half-way between gesture and thought.”3 4 Rather than treating the voice as a vehicle for the expression of text, it is here to be regarded primarily as an articulator of sound, like a musical instrument: This language cannot be defined except by its possibilities for dynamic expression in space as opposed to the expressive possibilities of spoken dialogue. And what the theater can still take over from speech are its possibilities for extension beyond words, for development in space, for dissociative and vibratory action upon the sensibility.3 5 For Artaud, this modified function of theatrical speech restores the primordial power of language as a source of physical and metaphysical stimulation: To make metaphysics out of a spoken language is to make the language express what it does not ordinarily express: to make use of it in a new, exceptional, and unaccustomed fashion; to reveal its possibilities for producing physical shock; to divide and distribute it actively in space; to deal with intonations in an absolutely concrete manner, restoring their power to shatter as well as really to manifest something; to turn against language and its basely utilitarian, one could say alimentary, sources, against its trapped- beast origins; and finally, to consider language as a form of Incantation?6 Artaud’s appeal for the use of language as incantation suggests a ritualistic quality common to myth and primitive art. Artaud’s plea for a new and pure theater was based largely on ideological rather than practical considerations. Jacques Derrida notes that “the texts in The Theater and Its Double . . . are more solicitations than a sum of precepts, more a system of critiques shaking the entirety of Occidental history than a treatise on Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 33 theatrical practice.”3 7 Consequently, as Barber points out, it was difficult to stage a “pure” work based on its principles: “The Theatre of Cruelty has often been called an impossible theatre—vital for the purity of inspiration which it generated, but - 5 0 hopelessly vague and metaphorical in its concrete detail.” Two years after he published the “Theater of Cruelty,” Artaud produced an adaptation of Percy Shelley’s play The Cenci, his first and only attempt at a theatrical realization of the principles set forth in his writings.3 9 Wallace Fowlie describes the general features of the production: [Les Cenci] initiated the fundamental notion of a "theater in the round," which has been especially developed in America, and which was destined by Artaud to establish a closer contact between actors and spectators than the normal theater could ever realize. In this production mechanical devices were used to create a visible and audible frenzy: strident and dissonant sound effects, whirling stage sets, the effects of storms by means of light, unusual speech effects.4 0 The play, which ran for only two weeks and seventeen performances, was unsuccessful. Discouraged by several years of rejection, Artaud gave up the theater. Retreating from his dejected life in Paris, Artaud undertook a series of journeys between 1936 and 1937. According to Barber, the travels “were impelled by Artaud’s constant yearning for a wild, apocalyptic force which would violently erase his humiliating experiences in the Parisian theatre, thereby resuscitating his dreams and his life.”4 1 Artaud first went to Mexico where he delivered lectures and, in efforts to gain primordial insight, spent time with the Tarahumara tribe that celebrated traditional rituals with peyote. He returned to France in June 1936, began interpreting horoscopes, and published an “apocalyptic pamphlet” on the Tarot. The Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 34 next year, after acquiring a stick that he believed to have belonged to St. Patrick, Artaud went to Ireland espousing messianic prophesies. He was arrested and deported back to France where he was admitted into the psychiatric hospital of Rodez. In 1946, after nine years in the asylum (including at least two years of electric-shock therapy), Artaud was released with frail health and an addiction to opium. The year after his release from Rodez, Artaud gave two public readings of his own work: the more notorious reading took place at the Vieux-Colombier Theater in January of 1947; the other, in July, was at the Pierre Loeb Gallery in conjunction with an exhibition of his numerous drawings, many of which he completed at Rodez. Later that year, Artaud prepared a recording for the radio broadcast of his poem Pour en finir avec le jugement de dieu. The director of the radio station, fearing a scandal, cancelled the broadcast. Defeated and soon after diagnosed with rectal cancer, Artaud died on March 4, 1948. Artaud was an eccentric character who made a strong impression on anyone who came in contact with him. “Those who witnessed these last performances,” remarks Mary Caroline Richards, who published the first English translation of Le Theatre et son Double, “found them insupportable, lacerating, a frenzied incantation and mingling of shrieks and spit.”4 2 The twenty-two-year-old Pierre Boulez, who had recently been appointed music director of the celebrated Renaud-Barrault theater company in Paris, was present at one of Artaud’s public readings. An account of the Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 35 reading at the Vieux-Colombier may provide a sense of what Boulez encountered at the Pierre Loeb Gallery: There were about 700 people in the theatre, a hundred of them standing at the back. The majority were young, but the audience included Gide, Barrault, Breton, Paulhan, Adamov, Camus, and Roger Blin. ‘Artaud made his entrance, with this emaciated, ravaged face . . . his impassioned hands flew like two birds round his face, groping at it tirelessly. . . he began to declaim his beautiful, scarcely audible poems with his hoarse voice broken by sobs and tragic stammers.’ After the three poems . . . he talked about electric- shock treatments and about black magic. Sensing that the whole audience was skeptical, he appealed for ‘at least someone’ to share his belief.. . . According to some reports, Artaud fled from the stage in terror; according to others, he went on talking, shouting abuse and roaring, for more than two hours, until his voice gave out.4 3 Helga Finter, in “Antonin Artaud and the Impossible Theatre,” interprets the dramatist’s animated reading as a prototype for performance art: What some . . . saw as the unbearable exhibition of a mental patient was for Artaud the unprecedented attempt at exploding the boundaries of a theatrical event. The recitation of his poetic texts, which meant a representation of the text’s voices and thereby constituted a theatrical form in nuce, had to be followed by a new form that might today be called ‘performance,’ that is, the manifestation of a subject’s presence by his doing... .4 4 According to Finter, because it was advertised as a “reading,” and took place in a theater, there were preconceptions regarding the presentational aspect of the performance, which treaded a fine line between sincerity and sensationalism: “In the context of the symbolic contract implicit in a lecture on a theatre stage, the irruption of the R eal. . . in the form of sickness, suffering, and insanity was perceived as sensational exhibitionism and histrionics.”4 5 For all its sensationalism, Artaud’s performance made a powerful impact on Boulez, who was in the midst of composing the violent Second Piano Sonata. The Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 36 composer recognized in Artaud a kindred spirit in his aggressive efforts to expand the possibilities of artistic language. Just as the dramatist renounced the conventional use of a narrative to propel the theatrical production, the composer set out to demolish conventional forms of musical continuity. In an interview with Celestin Deliege, Boulez recalls the destructive temperament that motivated the composition of the Second Sonata: I tried to destroy the first-movement sonata form, to disintegrate slow movement form by the use of the trope, and repetitive scherzo form by the use of variation form, and finally, in the fourth movement, to demolish fugal and canonic form. Perhaps I am using too many negative terms, but the Second Sonata does have this explosive, disintegrating and dispersive character, and in spite of its own very restricting form the destruction of all these classical moulds was quite deliberate.4 6 Boulez claimed to have inherited his aesthetic ferocity from such ultramodern figures as poets Stephane Mallarme and Rene Char, writer James Joyce, painters Wassily Kandinsky and Paul Klee, and composers Anton Webem and Olivier Messiaen. Joan Peyser, in her book on Boulez, notes a commonality in these figures as “artists who have rejected tradition in favor of moving into unexplored worlds.”4 7 While Boulez does not hesitate to include Artaud’s name among those who influenced him, the dramatist proves to be a special case in that, aside of having witnessed the public reading, the composer did not experience the artistic fruit of Artaud’s labor first-hand—his influence on Boulez was indirectly through Jean- Louis Barrault, the director of the Theatre Marigny for which the composer served as A O musical director from 1946 to 1956. Barrault, a talented mime, had captured the attention of Artaud in a performance in 1935. They spent a good deal of time Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 37 together, with Artaud tutoring the enthusiastic Barrault: “They met almost everyday. [Artaud] introduced Barrault to Tantrist Yoga, Hatha Yoga, the Tibetan Book o f the Dead, the Upanishads, the Bhagavad-Gita. . . . He talked about magic and metaphysics. He taught Barrault about the Cabbala... .”4 9 Their discussions, then, often concerned various facets of spirituality which both felt were vital to the experience of theater. Barrault, for his part, adapted into his company’s productions many of Artaud’s principles—a practicality that Artaud himself could not afford after his own company, the Alfred Jarry Theater, succumbed to financial difficulties in 1929. Ronald Hayman describes the continued dedication that Barrault exhibited towards Artaud’s ideas following the dramatist’s death: Barrault’s theatre was like a stewing pot in which Artaud’s ideas went on fermenting for a very long time. Having once discussed with Artaud the possibility of finding a theatrical coefficient of the idea in ‘The Theater and the Plague,’. . . . Barrault commissioned Albert Camus to dramatize his novel La Peste. The play, L ’ Etat de siege, was produced in October of 1948, seven months after Artaud’s death.5 0 Although the production of L ’ Etat de siege was a failure, the fact that it was mounted at all is testimony to Barrault’s steadfast dedication to the principles of Artaud. It is also noteworthy that by October of 1948, Boulez had been with the company for two years; almost on a nightly basis the music director was exposed to some theatrical manifestation of Artaud’s ideas. In his Reflexions sur le Theatre (1949), Barrault dedicates a chapter to the discussion of Artaud and proclaims the unequivocal authority of his work: “Le Theatre et son Double is far and away the most important Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 38 thing that has been written about the theatre in the twentieth century.. . . [It] should be read and read again.”5 1 The impact of Artaud’s public reading would continue to reverberate in the consciousness of Boulez for several years. In 1948, the composer completed the Second Piano Sonata and published “Proposals,” the article with the reference to Artaud that sent Tudor in search of Le Theatre et son Double. In a later article, “Son et verbe” (1958), Boulez re-evaluates the relationship between poetry and music, arguing that when the distinct properties of each medium are combined a transformation occurs that renders intelligibility of the text unnecessary. Once again he cites the dramatist, this time making an explicit reference to the reading that he had attended over a decade before: I am not qualified to discuss Antonin Artaud’s use of language, but I can observe in his writings the basic preoccupations of music today; hearing him read his own texts, accompanying them with shouts, noises, or rhythmic effects, has shown us how to effect a fusion of sound and word, how to make the phoneme burst forth when the word can no longer do so, in short how to organize delirium. What nonsense and what an absurd concatenation of terms, you will say! But why? Is improvisation the only form of intoxication you will accept? ‘Primitive’ spells the only form of consecration? I increasingly believe that to create effective art, we have to take delirium and, yes, organize it.5 2 Boulez notes that the performance of the dramatist reflected the “basic preoccupations” of avant-garde composers in the 1950s. During this decade, many experiments in the “fusion of sound and word,” with such notable exceptions as Boulez’s Le Marteau sans maitre (1954), took place in electronic music studios, a subject that I will address in the next two chapters. The performances of Artaud Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 39 both motivated and validated Boulez’s desire to “organize delirium,” a frequently- noted description of his music.5 4 Boulez never told Tudor to read Le Theatre et son Double and there is no evidence that they even discussed Artaud—they experienced the dramatist’s ideas in very different contexts. Consequently, the composer and the pianist, although converging on the same work, differed considerably in their application of the dramatist’s principles to their respective tasks. Boulez’s understanding of Artaud’s principles was shaped by his experiences with Barrault, the Theatre Marigny, and Artaud’s public performance, in addition to any theoretical writings the composer may have read. Tudor’s adaptation of Artaud, on the other hand, was informed exclusively by the texts of the dramatist and its relationship to the pianist’s experience with Boulez’s sonata. Consequently, the differences between Tudor and Boulez in the interpretation of Artaud and the application of his theatrical principles to music were destined to be particularly acute. So too were the differences in the musical paths that each of them would undertake in the years immediately following the American premiere of the Second Sonata. After the triumphant performance of Boulez’s sonata in December of 1950, Tudor developed a special rapport with John Cage. Encouraged by the virtuosity and like-mindedness of Tudor, Cage began working on a large-scale work for piano. Music o f Changes (1951), the first complete work by Cage in which various elements were determined entirely by chance operations, was written specifically for the pianist. “At that time,” as Cage’s well-known statement goes, “[David Tudor] Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 40 was the Music o f Changes.”5 5 As was his custom in recent works, Cage decided upon a fixed rhythmic structure and then established a gamut of musical materials— consisting of sonorities, durations, and dynamics—which were the product of compositional choice. The tossing of coins then determined the character and sequence of the musical materials as well as the number of superimposed layers of activity. While in the midst of composing Music o f Changes, Cage wrote to Boulez and underscored the influence of the dramatist: I have been reading a great deal of Artaud. ([This] because of you and through Tudor who read Artaud because of you.) . . . I will soon send you a copy of the first part of the piano piece [Music o f Changes]. The essential underlying idea is that each thing is itself, that its relations with other things spring up naturally rather than being imposed by any abstraction on an ‘artist’s’ part, (see Artaud on an objective synthesis)5 6 Cage’s reference to “an objective synthesis” concerns Artaud’s description of the “magic and sorcery” of the mise en scene, “the burning projection of all the objective consequences of a gesture, word, sound, music, and their combinations.”5 7 “Each of these means,” writes Artaud, “has its own intrinsic poetry, and a kind of ironic poetry as well, resulting from the way it combines with the other means of expression.”5 8 For Cage, the individual elements of the gamut of musical materials—the sonorities, durations, and dynamics—had their “own intrinsic poetry,” with which the composer did not wish to interfere. The “ironic poetry” was what Cage considered the “natural” result of their compositional arrangement by chance operations. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 41 In remarks given before a performance of the Merce Cunningham Dance Company in 1956, Cage explains that the “meaning” of their productions is intrinsic to the objectified movements and sounds: We are not, in these dances and music, saying something. We are simple- minded enough to think that if we were saying something we would use words. We are rather doing something. The meaning of what we do is determined by each one who sees and hears it.... I may add there are no stories and no psychological problems. There is simply an activity of movement, sound, and light. 9 Cunningham puts it in a more succinct fashion that recalls Greenberg’s appeal for medium-specific art: “The subject of dance is dancing itself. It is not meant to represent something else, whether psychological, literary, or aesthetic.”6 0 Like Artaud’s Theater of Cruelty, the productions of the Merce Cunningham Dance Company purposefully avoid both the common preconceptions of narrativity and the transference of a specific psychological message. The objectification of the elements that comprise the artistic work was a common aesthetic goal of Artaud and Cage, but the two artists had divergent ideas regarding the manner in which that objectification could be achieved. Recall that Artaud praised the mathematical precision of the Balinese dancers—the dramatist did not advocate the deliberate use of chance to create theatrical hysteria: Here is a whole collection of ritual gestures to which we do not have the key and which seem to obey extremely precise musical indications, with something more that does not generally belong to music and seems intended to encircle thought, to hound it down and lead it into an inextricable and certain system. In fact everything in this theater is calculated with an enchanting mathematical meticulousness. Nothing is left to chance or to personal initiative.6 1 Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 42 To be sure, Cage was extremely meticulous in the implementation of the chance procedure he used for Music o f Changes. Further, once the procedure had assembled the musical gestures, Cage notated them as precisely as possible, even to the exclusion of practical considerations: “It will be found in many places,” the composer indicates in the performance notes, “that the notation is irrational; in such instances the performer is to employ his own discretion.”6 2 But Artaud sought to develop a precise language of theatrical gestures, a systematic vocabulary in which £ -1 the actors would resemble what he called “animated hieroglyphs.” Also, Cage and Artaud were motivated by aesthetic positions that are poles apart. The composer’s optimistic viewpoint is well-known: Our intention is to affirm this life, not to bring order out of chaos nor to suggest improvements in creation, but simply to wake up to the very life we’re living, which is so excellent once one gets one’s mind and one’s desires out of its way and lets it act of its own accord.6 4 Artaud, on the other hand, was essentially a pessimist who perceived the human condition as fundamentally flawed and tragic. For the dramatist, a theatrical performance should reveal the “terrible and necessary cruelty which things can exercise against us. We are not free. And the sky can still fall on our heads. And the theater has been created to teach us that first of all.”6 5 In the end, Cage’s reference to Artaud in the letter to Boulez appears to be more gratuitous than substantive. It is more likely that Cage was operating not under the spell of Artaud, but as is commonly cited, under the influence of Zen. Cage attended the lectures of the famous Zen educator Daisetz Teitaro Suzuki at Columbia University from 1949 to Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 43 1951. The composer would make allusions to the teachings of Suzuki almost continuously for the remainder of his life; Zen was a much stronger presence in Cage’s thought while he was composing Music o f Changes than Artaud. This is not to say that Cage was not influenced by Artaud at all, but it is more likely that he appropriated what little he understood about the Theater of Cruelty in order to validate his own current vision of modem music. For example, the dramatist’s concept of the “objective synthesis” can be considered the theatrical counterpart to the Zen notion of “unimpededness and interpenetration.” In a 1958 lecture, Cage described these terms: Unimpededness is seeing that in all of space each thing as each human being is at the center and furthermore that each one being at the center is the most honored one of all. Interpenetration means that each one of these most honored ones of all is moving out in all directions penetrating and being penetrated by every other one no matter what the time or what the space.6 6 Thus, to interpenetrate Artaud and Zen: the “unimpeded” musical materials have their “own intrinsic poetry,” while the “interpenetration” of these materials results in an “ironic poetry.” Also, it is not certain whether the composer’s interest in the dramatist had been animated by Boulez. Curiously, if Boulez shared his enthusiasm for Artaud with Cage during their time together in Paris in 1949, Cage made absolutely no reference to the dramatist until Tudor undertook the study of The Theater and Its Double while preparing Boulez’s sonata. The first time Cage mentions Artaud is in a letter to Boulez dated December 18, 1950, the day following Tudor’s performance. Cage explains that, in preparation for the performance, the pianist “studied French in Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 44 order to read your articles in Contrepoint and Polyphonie (by the way, they never send me these, —although I subscribed) and he has made a collection and study of Artaud.”6 7 It was, therefore, independent of Cage that Tudor procured the writings of Boulez, and subsequently those of Artaud. This seeming triviality is significant. When he first met Cage in 1949, Boulez was definitely interested in Artaud: his article “Proposals” had been published only the year before and he continued to refer to the dramatist in several writings after Cage’s visit. It is possible, but unlikely, that Boulez simply did not mention Artaud to Cage. Probably, Cage found no immediate use for the ideas of the dramatist until their applicability—that is, their correlation to such Zen principles as “unimpededness and interpenetration”—was made evident by Tudor, with whom he was now collaborating. Cage was very interested not only in hearing his collaborator play what the flipped coins of the day had determined, but also in what experiences the pianist might have had while playing his music. “Not being with you is very sad,” Cage wrote to Tudor, “especially because of writing this music for you which I am always wanting to show you and because I am anxious to hear it and know what your <ro adventures with it are.” It must have piqued Cage’s curiosity to learn that Tudor’s adventures with Music o f Changes were guided by the writings of Artaud. Recall Tudor’s description of the mental process required for the performance of Boulez’s sonata, “I had to put my mind in a state of non-continuity— not remembering—so that each moment is alive,” and compare it with the pianist’s description of performing Cage’s new work: “I had to work on moment-to-moment Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 45 differences.. . . I had to learn how to be able to cancel my consciousness of any previous moment, in order to be able to produce the next one... .”6 9 Both of Tudor’s comments speak to the absence of teleological development, which is a salient characteristic of the Theater of Cruelty. There is, however, a subtle but significant difference in the descriptions, one that reflects a knowledge of how Music o f Changes was composed: Cage was striving for a uniqueness to each musical gesture, a distinct contrast to the structural remnants of sonata form, scherzo, and fugue that can be found in Boulez’s piece. In another letter to the pianist, Cage offered the following suggestion: “the guiding principle for performance should be to act so that each action is itself (that means infinitely different and incomparable, single, never before or ever later to occur, so that each moment makes history).”7 0 The “guiding principle,” which follows suit with Artaud’s insistence that “all words, once spoken, are dead and function only at the moment when they are uttered,”7 1 represents a common ground between Zen and the Theater of Cruelty: both de-emphasize memory and anticipation—psychological processes inherent to teleological principles—and assert the importance of the present. The most crucial correlation between Artaud’s notion of theater and Tudor’s new perception of musical continuity concerns the objectification of the materials. “To change the role of speech in theater,” Artaud suggests, “is to make use of it in a concrete and spatial sense, combining it with everything in the theater that is spatial and significant in the concrete domain; —to manipulate it like a solid object, one Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 46 which overturns and disturbs things.”7 2 One must conceive of sound as a discrete physical object, an occupant of both space and time. An essential feature of Music o f Changes relevant to the notion of sound as object is the manner in which it was notated. Cage used a standardized “time-space notation” whereby each note encompasses an amount of space in relative accordance with its duration, a concept which had had precedence in electronic music studios. Electronic technology and magnetic tape affected many composers’ concept of various temporal aspects of composition—the duration of sound was literally represented by a physical object: the length of a section of tape. Cage observes, “Counting is no longer necessary for magnetic tape music (where so many inches or centimeters equal so many seconds): magnetic tape music makes it clear that we are ' j ' l in time itself, not in measures of two, three, or four or any other number.” While Tudor collaborated with Cage in the Project of Music for Magnetic Tape (1951-53, the first American group to work with electronic tape) he was never particularly interested in working in a medium the performance of which was exclusively recorded—he was, after all, a performer. By converting all of Cage’s tempo markings in Music o f Changes into clock time, Tudor, as a live performer, was able detach himself from the production of the sound. The pianist explained: The notation treated lengths of space as equal to lengths of time, so that four beats equaled four inches. This led to things like a rest of three-sevenths of a beat, and there [were musicians] trying to feel it in [their] physical organism, as musicians were taught to do up to that tim e.. . . But I could, because by Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 47 that time I was in a different musical atmosphere. I was watching time rather than experiencing it. That difference is basic.7 4 Tudor’s keen distinction between the experience and the observation of time is crucial and clearly reflects his propensity for perceiving sound as a physical phenomenon, a discrete sonic object which can be manipulated by the performer but exists separately from him. On July 5, 1951, Tudor gave a recital in Boulder, Colorado which included the performance of both Boulez’s Second Sonata and the first part of Cage’s Music o f Changes. In a draft of a letter to Cage, Tudor described one of the “adventures” of detaching himself from the sounds of the unfinished piece: There is an important difference between it [Music o f Changes] and Boulez: in Boulez the space seems to be in front of one, in one’s line of aural vision, as it were; in your piece space is around one, that is, present in a new dimension. It appears of the utmost importance to me now to be able to explain this phenomenon—I had such different experiences with my work (in general) this time that I almost wonder about the possibility of audial [sic] ‘mirages’ due to high altitudes! I have several interesting theories which we nc can talk about at great length in a while.. . . Unfortunately, such a conversation does not seem to have taken place in print. But Tudor’s comments reveal much about his spatial perception of the music, one that evokes Artaud’s design of the theater space. Artaud insisted that the spectators in the Theater of Cruelty must be surrounded by the spectacle, to be “engulfed and physically affected” by the feverish action.7 6 As Roger Copeland explains in “Brecht, Artaud and the Hole in the Paper Sky,” the design of theater-in-the-round encourages a participatory experience for the audience members that more closely resembles ritual than theater: Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 48 . . . the very word ‘theater’ is derived from the Greek word Theatron, or ‘seeing place.’ (Ritual by contrast is not a ‘thing seen,’ but rather a dromonon or ‘thing done.’) In the sacred space where primitive ritual is performed, there are no seats for spectators. Ritual is a wholly ‘participatory’ activity.7 7 The implication of Artaud’s brand of theater is that the audience members are not merely witnesses to a performance, but they are an integral part of the performance itself. The audiences of Tudor’s performances were, on occasion, arranged around the musician(s) in a sort of recital-in-the-round. Sometimes this arrangement was deliberate, as at the Donaueschingen Festival in November of 1954, where “The artists were circled by their audience on the floor of the hall.”7 8 Other times the arrangement was unintentional, such as a well-attended recital on New Year’s Day in 1952: Those interested in experimental piano music turned out in force last night for David Tudor’s recital at the Cherry Lane Theatre in Greenwich Village. They filled all 220 seats of the little playhouse, overflowed onto the stage and 70 into the pit and stood at the sides and back. Although there were performances that consisted of the audience seated around the performers, Tudor presented the majority of his recitals of unconventional music in a traditional context, complete with black suit and tie for the stoic performer. But another viewpoint of Tudor’s performances in relation to Artaud’s theater-in-the-round offers a more interesting picture. Tudor’s description of the space in Cage’s piece conjures a fascinating image of the pianist in the center of a spectacle of sound produced by his own “impassioned hands” which fly “like two birds round his face” (to borrow from the earlier description of Artaud at his public Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 49 reading). From this perspective, the analogy between the “new dimension” in which Tudor perceived sound space and Artaud’s insistence on a stage space that envelops the spectators conspicuously places the performing pianist in the role of the audience. Of course, performers of all disciplines set themselves at a critical distance from their activities to varying degrees in order to make subtle adjustments in “real time.” That is, the objectification of one’s own performance usually serves a critical function. But in Tudor’s case, the distance that he sought to maintain served no such function; rather, it stood as an ideological performance condition. Late in the summer of 1951, immediately following his work in Boulder, Tudor made his first trip to Black Mountain College, the experimental arts community in North Carolina—it was the first of three consecutive summer residencies. During each of his residencies, Tudor provided musical accompaniment for dance concerts and gave recitals of modem piano music. Prominent in Tudor’s programs were Boulez’s Second Piano Sonata and Cage’s Music o f Changes, each of which was performed twice over the course of the three summers. Among those present at Tudor’s recitals was the poet Charles Olson, who had taught writing and literature at Black Mountain since 1948. Upon the pianist’s performance of Boulez’s Second Sonata, according to Tom Clark, a recent biographer of the poet, “both Tudor and Boulez were instantly enshrined in the writing teacher’s canon of approval, and Boulez was solemnly proclaimed ‘the first O 1 composer since Bach.’” In addition to his approval of the music, Olson was Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 50 fascinated by his discussions with Tudor regarding the dramatist: “Olson was especially interested in Tudor’s statement that Artaud’s influence on Boulez was the idea that ‘music should be evutement [sic] & hysterical.’ By evoutement they concluded that Boulez meant ‘cast [a] spell, & be instant;’ by hysteria, ‘the wildness of the instant as giving birth to life.’”8 2 The phrase in question came from the last paragraph of Boulez’s article “Proposals,” the passage that had initially sent Tudor in search of Artaud’s writings. Significantly, it was the typically reserved Tudor who drew Olson’s attention to Artaud, not the outspoken Cage, whose activities the poet viewed with suspicion. While Tudor and his performances at Black Mountain certainly enlivened discussion concerning Artaud, the name of the dramatist was not unknown in the college before the pianist arrived. The ceramicist and writer Mary Caroline Richards was another particularly sympathetic individual who developed an intimate relationship with Tudor. The writings of Artaud first came to the attention of Richards in 1951, shortly before Tudor arrived at Black Mountain. Richards, who taught writing and literature and occasionally directed plays at the college since 1945, was introduced to the dramatist by the recently published English translation of Barrault’s Reflections on the Theater. She explained the surprise of her discovery: I had been teaching English in colleges across the country and had supposed myself reasonably well-informed in theatrical criticism. I was therefore amazed to come upon a chapter in Jean-Louis Barrault’s Reflections on the Theater, devoted entirely to the influence of a man of whom I had never heard. And I was even more astounded to hear Barrault say that Artaud’s The Theater and its Double was the most important writing to have been done on theater in the 20th century.8 3 Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 51 Naturally, Richards was eager to learn more about this obscure figure and was struck by the manner in which additional information about the dramatist came to her: “It wasn’t easy in those days . . . to find anything by [Artaud] in the United States. And it is significant.. . that when I did locate a copy, it had been typed by a musician OA from a paperback imported by a dancer.” The “musician” holding the typescript of The Theater and its Double was, of course, David Tudor. His copy had been used in preparation for the performance of Boulez’s sonata, and he had brought the typescript along with him to his first residency at the college in 1951. (Tudor came to Black Mountain directly from Boulder, where he was accompanying the dance company of Jean Erdman, who was probably the “dancer” to whom Richards referred.) Richards said that she “was O f immediately aware of the incendiary character of the work” and that summer, Tudor and Cage enticed her to undertake what would become, in 1958, the first published English translation of Artaud’s collection. By the summer of 1952, Richards was reading selections of her translation to interested listeners in both Black Mountain and New York. Throughout the 1950s, Tudor and Richards (who began living together in 1951) had many occasions to discuss the implications of Artaud’s work. Since it is probable that Richards’s conclusions reflected, or at least influenced, those of Tudor, it would be instructive to consider her interpretation of the dramatist. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 52 Two years after the publication of her translation, Richards delivered a lecture on Artaud at the Living Theatre in New York. A typescript of the lecture, currently unpublished, exists in the M. C. Richards Papers at the Getty Research Institute. In her lecture notes, Richards interprets Artaud’s theatrical adaptation of cruelty in an arresting manner: Get your audience by the throat, by the breath. Seduce their bodies with scientific precision, transfix their nervous systems, pulverize them, and THEN, when they cannot resist the experience, give them the treatment, give them the poetry, give them the transcendent cosmic reality; dissolve their guard; blast away their armor.8 6 The violence sought after by Artaud in the theater, according to Richards, was in effort to subvert any psychological resistance to an immediate, visceral impact. The role played by the spectator’s intellect is only peripheral, as Richards explains: [Artaud] knew that intellect and logic and explanation and discursive language are only one element in man’s capacity for participating in reality. And he passionately believed that to restrict theater to the psychological and literary logic which seems to characterize its modem form in the west, is to reduce its life.. . . It is an art with a language of its own, and its practices are much closer to magic and to ritual than to reporting.8 7 In fact, Richards interprets the title, The Theater and its Double, as a reference to the spiritual counterpart of sensory experience: It is not a question of dualism: body and soul, stage and psychology, performance and effect. It is a question of alchemy: man in the flame, the states of matter imaging the states of the spirit.. . . The theater is like alchemy because neither art carries its end in itself. . . . In both arts, gold was o o the issue: spiritual gold: wisdom, freedom, psychic potency. Richards placed Artaud directly in the occult tradition, a tradition that was central to the interests of Tudor and several of his associates in the years following the Second Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 53 World War. The subject of Tudor and esotericism will be explored in the last chapter of this dissertation. Richards claims that one of the “practical results” of her translation of Artaud was “a kind of first experimental performance” at Black Mountain College in the summer of 1952.8 9 The several slightly varying accounts of this well-known “happening” are a testimony to the pluralistic nature of the event.9 0 Here is Richards’s own recollection of the occasion: [The event was] composed by John Cage, who announced it as a lecture: while he lectured, at a podium in a somber black suit, all hell broke loose, with the audience seated squarely in the middle of it: David Tudor played the piano, Merce Cunningham danced, Bob Rauschenberg played a grind-up victrola, I climbed a ladder and recited a poem, members of the audience—- among them Charles Olson and Stefan Wolpe—talked and laughed on cue, a painting by Franz Kline hung like a glyph. All done to stopwatch. John’s words rose and fell in the ear; while the overlaid transparencies of image gave density and refreshment. If the consternation of the audience was any clue—prevented, as it thought, from hearing the lecture clearly—instead, submitted to a black magic, as one of them complained—we did SOMETHING.9 1 Cage’s description of Artaud’s influence reads like a program note to the “happening” at Black Mountain: The idea I had from reading [The Theater and its Double] was that all the elements of theatre can be viewed independently one from the other, with none being subordinate to a narrative thread that goes through everything.. . . I really think it’s important to be in a situation, both in art and in life, where you don’t understand what’s going on. The event at Black Mountain displays many affinities with the ideas put forward in The Theater and its Double. Surrounding the audience was an “objective synthesis” of a number of seemingly unrelated activities, each with its own internal logic, but Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 54 the whole presented in a non-narrative fashion. The words of the lecture, the poem, and the conversation—reduced to incomprehensible babble by their simultaneous projection— would have been identified primarily by their sonorities rather than by any semantic message. Finally, the timing of the chaotic event was strictly governed by a stopwatch. Cage began to use that measure of clock-time after Tudor’s practice of mathematically translating the time-space notation of Music o f Changes into minutes and seconds, the key to the pianist’s realization of many subsequent pieces. The year after the event at Black Mountain College, Tudor faced numerous unconventional notation systems and the facility with which he deciphered these musical codes soon became legendary. As John Holzaepfel demonstrates in his dissertation “David Tudor and the Performance of American Experimental Music, 1950-59” (1993), Tudor’s realizations of the indeterminate pieces from the 1950s, without exception, were meticulously notated by Tudor and then executed Q 'i flawlessly. Contrary to what one might expect in the realization of a graphically notated score, Tudor was not interested in improvisation. Even when the composer specifically intended for the performer to engage in an improvisatory realization, Tudor persisted in charting out a specific performance strategy beforehand. Here we find another similarity between Artaud and Tudor: the depersonalized exactitude with which they believed their respective crafts should be executed. “Everything in this theater is calculated with an enchanting mathematical meticulousness,” asserts Artaud. “Nothing is left to chance or to personal Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 55 initiative.”9 4 In fact, it is precisely this sense of discipline that defines Artaud’s concept of “cruelty”: Cruelty signifies rigor, implacable intention and decision, irreversible and absolute determination.. . . Cruelty is above all lucid, a kind of rigid control and submission to necessity. . . . This may perhaps shock our European sense of stage freedom and spontaneous inspiration, but let no one say that this mathematics creates sterility or uniformity. The marvel is that a sensation of richness, of fantasy and prodigality emanates from this spectacle ruled with a maddening scrupulosity and consciousness.9 5 The fact that Tudor exerted such time and effort toward the extremely tedious task of translating non-implicative graphics—that is, visual designs that in no manner resemble conventional music notation—into conventional notation is evidence enough that Tudor had an affinity for “maddening scrupulosity.” While the composers of the New York School may have left certain musical parameters to chance, Tudor did not. Inevitably, Tudor’s peculiar practice of converting notation systems has raised an important question regarding the authorship of a given work: at what point does the performer of an indeterminate work become the composer?9 6 Another examination of the writings of Artaud may help to delineate more precisely the multiple roles that Tudor assumed in realizing an indeterminate score. In his description of the Theater of Cruelty, Artaud made clear distinctions between the author, the director, and the actor. “The author who uses written words only,” declares Artaud, “has nothing to do with the theater and must give way to specialists Q7 • in its objective and animated sorcery.” Derrida explains that Artaud’s intention was not to eradicate words, but to reconstruct the hierarchy of the production staff: Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 56 “Speech and its notation . . . will be erased on the stage of cruelty only in the extent to which they were allegedly dictation: at once citations or recitations and orders. The director and the actor will no longer take dictation.”9 8 In his theater, Artaud sought to reduce the role of the author (and therewith, the authority of the text) in order to focus on the direct manipulation of the theatrical components. The “director,” then, plays a key role in the production: “It is a theater which eliminates the author in favor of what we would call. . . the director; but a director who has become a kind of manager of magic, a master of sacred ceremonies.”9 9 In effect, Tudor would assume the role of “director” when he carried out the task of notating an indeterminate score given him by the composer, or “author.”1 0 0 Further, Artaud states that “the old duality between author and director will be dissolved, replaced by a sort of unique Creator upon whom will devolve the double responsibility of the spectacle and the plot.”1 0 1 Similarly, just as the distinction between the composer and performer was tenuous in much of the repertory under consideration, eventually the distinction would no longer exist: in the late 1960s Tudor would become the “unique Creator” of performances of live electronic music. After he had scrupulously translated the score into conventional notation, Tudor the “director” then fulfilled an entirely separate function. “The actor,” explains Artaud, “is both an element of first importance, since it is upon the effectiveness of his work that the success of the spectacle depends, and a kind of 1 09 passive and neutral element, since he is rigorously denied all personal initiative.” As Rustom Bharucha points out, Artaud acknowledged the crucial function of the Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 57 actor, the only character in the production who maintains a physical connection with the spectator: Obsessed as he is by the vision of the theater hypnotizing the spectator with violent images, Artaud knows that images will have no effect, however torrential and evocative, if the actor does not know where to ‘reach’ the spectator. The attack on a spectator’s dormant sensibility has to be rigorously concentrated if it is to have either momentum or lasting impact. An actor has to know how to scream.1 0 3 The role of the actor in Artaud’s theater is clearly analogous to that of the performing Tudor. The pianist also assumed the role as a “passive and neutral” performer, since he would play the realization precisely as he (functioning as the “director”) notated it. Ordinarily, the denial of “all personal initiative” might seem too rigorous a performance condition, but for Tudor such restrictions were commonplace and essential to the successful realization of certain unconventionally notated scores. The experience that Morton Feldman underwent with his graph-paper notation serves to illustrate a central issue in the indeterminate procedures of the New York composers and the reliance that such procedures had on Tudor’s sympathetic realizations. Influenced by the abstract expressionist movement in painting (the “New York School” from which the group of composers derived their name), Feldman described his intention for utilizing indeterminate notation: The new painting made me desirous of a sound world more direct, more immediate, more physical than anything that had existed heretofore. . . . My desire here was to project sounds into tim e.. . . In order not to involve the performer (i.e. myself) in memory (relationships), and because the sounds no longer had an inherent symbolic shape, I allowed for indeterminacies in regard to pitch.1 0 4 Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 58 Feldman’s reference to sound as a physical object, detached from symbolic implications, echoes the principles of Artaud: “sounds, noises, cries are chosen first for their vibratory quality, then for what they represent.”1 0 5 Recalling the interest that the New York composers had in Boulez’s work, Feldman remarked: What attracted us to Boulez was not his ideas—we were very excited about Boulez because his work was the result of a crush on Artaud.. . . The poetry was new, and that was what we were interested in. Just as we were interested in the poetry of Webem, and not so much in how he arrived at the poetry.1 0 6 The “poetry” to which Feldman refers was the new soundscape derived from the pointillistic isolation of pitches that characterizes much of Webern’s serial music, not the serial procedure itself which is based on pitch relationships. Feldman reasonably identifies his idea, or rather, the realization of his idea, as a historic innovation. Certainly since the eleventh century, when neumes became graphically represented and organized by their relative position on a staff, have musicians primarily conceived of pitches in terms of their relationship between one another. It is not a coincidence, then, that when Feldman and the other composers of the New York School began to investigate music outside the realm of conventional pitch relationships, they found themselves grappling with various forms of unconventional notation. One of Feldman’s compositional efforts to “project sounds into time” was his Intersection No. 3 (1953), for which Tudor provided his first notated realization. Feldman’s graph-paper notation allowed the composer to focus entirely on the manipulation of timbre and texture, or what he called the “weight,” of a piece. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 59 Rectangular blocks designate the general range of the piano (low, middle, high) in which the performer is to play. The number of pitches is indicated within each block, but the specific locations of the pitches are indeterminate. The brisk tempo is constant at 176 vertical columns per minute. The performer may initiate and terminate the pitch(es) at any point within the block’s envelope of time. Figure 1-1. Feldman, Intersection 3 (beginning) Feldman’s notation was readily grasped by Tudor, who, with his experience with Boulez’s Second Sonata and Cage’s Music o f Changes, had come to perceive sound as a physical phenomenon. The blocks, as visual occupants of space, were a congenial representation of the physicality of sound. The composer’s idea was to “free the sounds” by emphasizing timbre and density rather than melody and harmony. Essentially, Feldman sought to exhibit the sonic gestures as a sequence of discrete objects by de-emphasizing the relationship between them— familiar territory for the pianist. Feldman’s desire to create a “more direct, more immediate, more physical” sound world is closely akin to Artaud’s advice on how to achieve theatrical immediacy, or what he referred to as “danger”: “The best way. . .to realize this idea of danger on the stage is by the objective unforeseen, the unforeseen not in situations but in things, the abrupt, untimely transition from an intellectual image to a true image.”1 0 7 Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 60 There is ambiguity in Artaud’s emphasis on the “objective unforeseen” (his italics). He simply could be iterating the object itself, the “thing” which will make its unprepared impression on the audience member. For Feldman, this referred to an isolated sonic event. If this is the case, then Artaud is pointing toward a mode of perception, a way of experiencing the theatrical object. On the other hand, he could be referring to a quasi-scientific objectification of the process by which the theater comes to life—that is, its technical realization. In this case, Artaud is speaking of a mode of production, a way of making the theatrical object appear unprepared. Here, the emphasis is on the compositional technique. In all probability, it is the dynamic relationship between how the object was conceived and the manner in which it is perceived that results in any aesthetic experience. It is important to recognize Artaud’s distinction between unforeseen situations and unforeseen things; for the dramatist, the situation must not only be foreseen, but it must be painstakingly organized: “the spectacle will be calculated from one end to the other, like a code.”1 0 8 Similarly, Feldman also insisted that the situation be deliberately planned—his scores dictate a precise, if unconventional, set of instructions to be realized in a disciplined manner. “If we introduce random elements,” Feldman asserts, “we introduce them quite calculatingly.”1 0 9 The aim, then, of both the dramatist and the composer was to vivify the theatrical and musical objects respectively by placing them in a particular context where they were relieved of their traditionally cerebral associations. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 61 The intended effect of such a technique is literally sensational. Five years before Artaud’s pronouncement of the “objective unforeseen,” the American poet e. e. cummings—whose formal and syntactic idiosyncrasies attracted both Cage and Boulez—expresses his “theory of technique” in the witty guise of a burlesque gag: ‘“Would you hit a woman with a child?—No, I’d hit her with a brick.’ Like the burlesk [sic] comedian, I am abnormally fond of that precision which creates movement.”1 1 0 The “precision which creates movement” to which cummings refers holds a remarkable correspondence to Artaud’s notion of the “abrupt, untimely transition from an intellectual image to a true image”—in other words, the shocking and sudden transformation of a concept into a sensation. While Tudor was very much aware of the performance conditions necessary for such a transformation to occur in Feldman’s music—that is, he understood the foreseen situation—Feldman was not so fortunate as to compose for an entire world of Tudors. In fact, after several unsatisfactory realizations of his pieces by musicians other than Tudor, Feldman abandoned the graph notation, for he “began to discover its most important flaw. I was not only allowing the sounds to be free,” explained the composer, “I was also liberating the performer. I had never thought of the graph as an art of improvisation, but more as a totally abstract sonic adventure.”1 1 1 The error was that once the blocks had been notated, it was the performer—not Feldman—who became immersed in the indeterminacy and, as such, subject to memory relationships. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 62 Tudor, with a profound understanding of this tendency, deliberately avoided the potential problem altogether by denying himself “all personal initiative”—he simply would not improvise. Instead, in his carefully calculated realizations, he sought to avoid any conventional pitch relationships. “Because,” as Tudor explained, “the moment you see a relationship between several sounds there is an intellect at work, not the sounds themselves.”1 1 2 The desire to “let sounds be themselves,” the oft repeated mantra of the New York composers, was devotedly chanted by Tudor: The one thing John [Cage] and I have in common is an interest in sound for its own sake. What I mean is that we’re interested in leaving a sound to itself, and we’re not interested in manipulating a sound, in imposing a concept on sound. Cage used to preach that sounds should be themselves. He no longer 1 1 T does, but I ’ m willing to preach it, because I’ve experienced it. Tudor implies that his experience as a performer has placed him in a privileged position—even to the exclusion of Cage—to perceive the “abrupt, untimely transition [of a sound] from an intellectual image to a true image.” An important aspect of Tudor’s exceptionality may have been identified in a letter in which Cage admits to not having much physical dexterity: “my frequent explanation for the chance that you are a pianist and not a composer [is that] you have a strong kinesthetic sense.”1 1 4 Tudor’s experience with “sound for its own sake” was a physical sensation, it was not limited to a compositional concept. Similarly, Artaud considered “the musical quality of a physical movement” made by the actor a crucial component of the Theater of Cruelty.1 1 5 Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 63 Tudor had an uncanny ability to transcend the facade of notation in order to realize the characteristics of a budding sound world, even before the composer was able to articulate clearly such a world. In fact, Tudor saw this as a performer’s innate responsibility: “Otherwise what excuse has the poor pianist for existing? Sometimes composers hear their own visions imperfectly, and interpreters must then infuse what they know from positive knowledge to be missing into their performances.”1 1 6 Feldman conceded, “this kind of music is more than merely a specialty of Tudor’s. In some ways he’s entirely responsible for it. Meeting David enabled me to hear and 117 see possibilities I never dreamed of. I’m sure that’s true for Cage too.” In a letter dated June 15, 1953, Feldman expressed his sincere admiration for the pianist: When M. C. [Richards] came over . . . the other evening, I realized for the fiftieth time this year how much I have taken your friendship and desparately [sic] (yes desparately) needed devotion to my work. Hardly a day passes when I don’t think of you in either some connection with my work which you helped make permissiable [sic] for me to do, or the humanness of just our lonely selves. Needless to say, I am just saturated with sentimentality as I 1 IQ write this short note. Continuing, Feldman offers a vivid depiction of the type of music he was striving to create: The work goes on and the months ahead have exactly the same blackness as the kind of music I would like to write—a music like violently boiling water in some monstrous kettle. But I can’t seem to get the water hot enough or the kettle large enough to do it. The last Intersection [Intersection No. 3], which I wrote for you, is just an unrealized hint of what is to come.1 1 9 Feldman’s image of “violently boiling water in some monstrous kettle” bears an uncanny resemblance to Artaud’s description of Balinese theater from which he drew in the formulation of his Theater of Cruelty: Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 64 There is something that has this character of a magic operation in this intense liberation of signs, restrained at first and then suddenly thrown into the air. A chaotic boiling, full of recognizable particles and at moments strangely orderly, crackles in this effervescence of painted rhythms in which the many fermatas unceasingly make their entrance like a well-calculated silence.1 2 0 Like Artaud, Feldman was engaged in the “intense liberation of signs,” a common preoccupation of avant-gardists in several artistic disciplines. Tudor’s role in the realization of such pivotal works as Boulez’s Second Piano Sonata, Cage’s Music o f Changes, and Feldman’s Intersection No. 3 was essential; he was not merely the medium through which the composers would articulate their sonic visions. Following Artaud, these and other composers were dedicated to formulating a new artistic language, but the dramatist’s idea of using a language to “express what it does not ordinarily express” is certainly not unique to the modem era. Historical accounts of the stylistic evolution of all of the arts have, to varying degrees, assumed the rhetoric of Arnold Schoenberg: “Art means New Art.”1 2 1 But Artaud was not interested merely in saying something new or in saying something familiar in a new way. Rather, he advocates a theatrical discourse in which the function of familiar materials undergoes a transformation—he asks “to make use of [language] in a new, exceptional, and unaccustomed fashion.” If Artaud’s new theatrical language concerns a change in function, then he is proposing not only an innovative organization of the materials from the standpoint of production, but also a transformation in the mode of reception—he is imploring the audience not merely to be engaged in the experience, but to experience the materials Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 65 differently. Richards explains that Artaud was all too aware of the magnitude, even the futility, of his goal: In passing from his dreams to events, Artaud encountered one cruelty the more: the most far-out means are not enough to bring to life a spectacle which can transport us into another state of being. It is not a formula we are involved with here, it is a mystery. A bombardment of our senses may excite us. But other elements must be present: The readiness of the spectator to see and to be moved; and the poetry that precedes and flows underneath all the languages it serves.1 2 2 The writings of the dramatist, in conjunction with the bombardment of Boulez’s Second Sonata, inspired a “change in musical perception” for Tudor, just as the Balinese dancers had facilitated a “veritable enlightenment” for Artaud. Appropriating the theatrical ideas expressed in The Theater and its Double, Tudor abandoned the traditional practice of subjectively feeling musical time in favor of the modem practice of objectively observing it. Ultimately, the depersonalized objectivity espoused by Artaud and practiced by Tudor was not a rejection of the freedom of artistic expression, but of the conventions in which notions of expressivity are grounded. In other words, Tudor, like Artaud, opposed any mannered mode of perception that restricted the use of his senses and the freedom of his spirit. The idiosyncratic productions of the Merce Cunningham Dance Company operate under a similar precept. According to dance historian Roger Copeland, Cunningham and his collaborators never valued spontaneity of expression, but spontaneity of perception: “Freedom for Cunningham is not to be found in ‘nature’ or instinct. This marks a decisive break with the tradition of modem dance. . . . [For Cunningham] tme freedom has more to do with seeing (and hearing) clearly Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 66 than with the (often illusory) sensation of moving freely.”1 2 3 Enhanced perceptual experience was a priority for Artaud, and the inspiration for his theatrical vision: “What is important is that, by positive means, the sensitivity is put in a state of deepened and keener perception, and this is the very object of the magic and the rites of which theater is only a reflection.”1 2 4 Artaud’s Theater of Cruelty concerns the strictest discipline of spiritual exploration. As Bharucha explains: “The ‘secret mathematics’ of Artaud is less an illustration of the techniques of Oriental theater than a haunting phrase that sums up the polarities of his art—utmost rigor and innermost spirituality.”1 2 5 In the last chapter of this study, I will argue that the rigor with which Tudor approached his work is inseparable from his quest for spiritual insight. The pianist’s personal notes contain an inscription which may well serve as the manifesto for the “Recital Hall of Cruelty”: “Music exists as a spiritual reality which will continue to exist after every composer and every page of notes and dynamics are destroyed, and every performer must struggle to make the positive facts of this reality audible to a listener.”1 2 6 The ideas that Artaud presented in The Theater and its Double resonated with those already nascent in the pianist, and the Boulez sonata served as an initiating spark: it was the first work in a blazing repertory that both nourished and was nourished by Tudor’s new musical perception. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 67 NOTES 1. David Tudor, “From Piano to Electronics,” Music and Musicians 20:12 (1972), 24. 2. Ibid. 3. Pierre Boulez, Stocktakings from an Apprenticeship, trans. Stephen Walsh (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1991), 54. 4. Ibid., 49. 5. Ibid. 6. Antonin Artaud, The Theater and Its Double, trans. M.C. Richards (New York: Grove Press, 1958), 51. 7. Ibid., 37. 8. Ibid., 82-83. 9. John Holzaepfel, “David Tudor and the Performance of American Experimental Music, 1950-59” (Ph.D. diss., CUNY, 1994), 131. 10. Tudor, “From Piano,” 24. 11. Biographical information on Artaud from Ronald Hayman, Artaud and After (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1977). 12. For a thorough discussion of Jarry and his relationship to the fm-de-siecle avant-garde, see Roger Shattuck, The Banquet Years, rev. ed. (New York: Vintage Books, 1968), 187-251. 13. Stephen Barber, Antonin Artaud: Blows and Bombs (London: Faber and Faber Ltd., 1993), 38-39. 14. Nicola Savarese, “Antonin Artaud Sees Balinese Theatre at the Paris Colonial Exposition,” trans. Richard Fowler, The Drama Review 45:3 (Fall 2001), 51- 77. 15. Ibid., 66. 16. Ibid., 53. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 68 17. Barber, Blows and Bombs, 45. 18. Savarese, “Colonial Exposition,” 53. 19. Barber, Blows and Bombs, 43. Barber identifies three encounters of 1931 that “provided the essential groundwork” for Artaud’s theory: the Balinese dancers, a painting in the Louvre by Lucas van den Leyden, and Marx Brothers films. See Barber, 44. 20. Artaud, Theater, 59. 21. Ibid., 60. 22. Ibid., 53. 23. Ibid., 61. 24. Ibid. 25. Clement Greenberg, “Towards a Newer Laocoon,” Partisian Review 7 (1940), 301. 26. Ibid., 305. 27. Irving Sandler, The Triumph o f American Painting: a History o f Abstract Expressionism (New York: Praeger Publishers, 1970), 62. 28. Robert Goldwater, Primitivism in Modern Art, enlarged ed. (Cambridge, MA and London: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 1986), xvii. 29. Ibid., 144. 30. Savarese, “Colonial Exposition,” 68. 31. Barber, Blows and Bombs, 45. 32. Savarese, “Colonial Exposition,” 52. 33. Ibid., 71. 34. Artaud, Theater, 89. 35. Ibid. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 69 36. Ibid., 46. 37. Jacques Derrida, “The Theater of Cruelty and the Closure of Representation,” Theater 9:3 (Summer 1978), 8. 38. Barber, Blows and Bombs, 44. 39. The music for Artaud’s production of Les Cenci was written by Roger Desormiere, a film composer and music director of the Orchestre National. Desormiere was the first conductor to perform the works of Boulez, who became a loyal friend. 40. Wallace Fowlie, Dionysus in Paris: A Guide to Contemporary French Theater (New York: Meridian Books, 1960), 207. 41. Barber, Blows and Bombs, 73. 42. Mary Caroline Richards Papers, 1928-1994, Getty Research Institute, Research Library, Accession no. 960036 (MCR, GRI), Box 30, Folder 3. 43. Hayman, Artaud and After, 134-35. 44. Helga Finter, “Antonin Artaud and the Impossible Theatre: The Legacy of the Theatre of Cruelty,” trans. Matthew Griffin, The Drama Review 41:4 (Winter 1997), 17. 45. Ibid., 18. 46. Pierre Boulez, Conversations with Celestin Deliege, trans. anon. (London: Eulenburg Books, 1975), 41-42. 47. Joan Peyser, To Boulez and Beyond: Music in Europe Since The Rite o f Spring (New York: Billboard Books, 1999), 219. 48. While it is most likely that Barrault provided the introduction and the daily exposure of Artaud’s ideas to Boulez, it was Paule Thevenin, according to Jameaux, “who made him read Artaud.” See Dominique Jameaux, Pierre Boulez, trans. Susan Bradshaw (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1991), 32. Thevenin, who edited and published Boulez’s first collection of essays, was a close associate of Artaud during his late years: she took dictation for the weakened poet and was one of the readers of Pour en finir avec le jugement de dieu, the poem recorded in 1947 for what was intended to be a radio broadcast. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 70 49. Hayman, Artaud and After, 100. 50. Ibid. 51. Jean-Louis Barrault, Reflections on the Theater, trans. Barbara Wall (London: Rockliff Publishing Co., 1951), 49-50. 52. Boulez, Stocktakings, 43. 53. Among the more prominent works for tape that focus on the fragmentation of the voice include: Symphonie pour un homme seul (1950) by Pierre Schaeffer and Pierre Henry; Karlheinz Stockhausen’s Gesang der Jiinglinge (1955-56); Thema— Omaggio a Joyce (1958) by Luciano Berio; and Edgard Varese’s Poeme Electronique (1958). The early electronic music studios also offered these composers and others an environment that fostered the development of rhythmic techniques that will be discussed in the next chapter. 54. One of Boulez’s early references to “delirium” in regard to composition is in a letter to John Cage dated January of 1950, while Boulez was in the process of preparing the Second Piano Sonata for publication. Upon receiving a copy of James Joyce’s Finnegans Wake from Cage, Boulez writes: “Now we have to tackle real ‘delirium’ in sound and experiment with sounds as Joyce does with words.” See Jean-Jacques Nattiez, ed. The Boulez-Cage Correspondence, trans. Robert Samuels (Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press, 1993), 45. 55. John Cage, For the Birds (Salem, NH, London and Melbourne: Marion Boyars, 1981), 178. 56. Nattiez, Boulez-Cage, 96. 57. Artaud, Theater, 73. 58. Ibid., 39. 59. John Cage, Silence (Middletown, CT: Wesleyan University Press, 1961), 94- 95. 60. Merce Cunningham, The Dancer and the Dance (New York: Marion Boyers, 1985), 139. 61. Artaud, Theater, 57-58. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 71 62. Cage, Music o f Changes (New York: C. F. Peters, 1961). 63. Artaud, Theater, 54. 64. Cage, Silence, 95. 65. Artaud, Theater, 79. 66. Cage, Silence, 46. 67. Nattiez, Boulez-Cage, 77. 68. The David Tudor Papers, 1884-1998 (bulk 1940-1996), Getty Research Institute, Research Library, Accession no. 980039 (DT, GRI), Box 107, Folder 2. 69. Tudor, “From Piano,” 24. 70. DT, GRI, Box 52, Folder 3. 71. Artaud, Theater, 75. 72. Ibid., 72. 73. Cage, Silence, 70. 74. Tudor, “From Piano,” 24. 75. DT, GRI, Box 52, Folder 3. 76. Artaud, Theater, 96. 77. Roger Copeland, “Brecht, Artaud and the Hole in the Paper Sky,” Theater 9:3 (Summer 1978), 44. 78. C. B., Musical America (January 1,1955). DT, GRI. 79. Ross Parmenter, New York Times, 2 January 1952. 80. Clement Greenberg taught art history and criticism in the summer of 1950, the year before Tudor arrived. A few of the abstract expressionist artists themselves also taught at Black Mountain including Robert Motherwell (1945 and 1951), Willem de Kooning (1948), and Franz Kline (1952). Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 72 81. Tom Clark, Charles Olson: The Allegory o f a Poet’ s Life (Berkeley: North Atlantic Books, 2000), 209. 82. Mary Emma Harris, The Arts at Black Mountain College (Cambridge: MIT Press, 1987), 238. 83. M. C. Richards, “The Theater of Antonin Artaud,” Ararat: A Decade o f Armenian-American Writing, ed. Jack Antreassian (New York: Armenian General Benevolent Union of America, 1969), 347. 84. Ibid. 85. Ibid. 86. MCR, GRI, Box 30, Folder 3. 87. Ibid. 88. Ibid. 89. Ibid. 90. Other accounts of Cage’s 1952 happening at Black Mountain College may be found in: Calvin Tomkins, O ff the Wall (New York: Penguin Books, 1980), 73- 75; Harris, Black Mountain, 226-28; David Revill, The Roaring Silence (New York: Arcade Publishing, 1992), 161. 91. MCR, GRI, Box 30, Folder 3. 92. Geoff Smith and Nicola Walker, New Voices: American Composers Talk about their Music (Portland: Amadeus Press, 1995), 76. 93. Holzaepfel, “David Tudor,” 56-59. 94. Artaud, Theater, 58. 95. Ibid., 101-02. 96. James Pritchett argues that Tudor effectively assumed the role of composer in Cage’s work in the early 1960s. See Pritchett, “David Tudor’s realization of John Cage’s Variations II” (2000), <www.music.princeton.edu/~jwp/texts/ Var2.html>. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 73 97. Artaud, Theater, 73. 98. Derrida, “Closure of Representation,” 11. 99. Artaud, Theater, 60. 100. One should avoid the temptation to compare a traditional musical “conductor” with a “director” of the Theater of Cruelty for the reason cited by Derrida: the function of the conductor is subservient to that of the composer whose “text” is being dictated. 101. Artaud, Theater, 93-94. 102. Ibid., 98. 103. Rustom Bharucha, “Eclecticism, Oriental Theater and Artaud,” Theater 9:3 (Summer 1978), 51. 104. Morton Feldman, liner notes for Durations I-IV (Mainstream, MS/5007, 1960- 1961). 105. Artaud, Theater, 81. 106. Paul Griffiths, “Morton Feldman,” Musical Times 113 (Aug. 1972), 758. 107. Artaud, Theater, 43-44. 108. Ibid., 98. 109. Harold Schonberg, “The Far-Out Pianist,” Harpers Magazine (June 1960), 51. 110. e.e. cummings, “Foreword to Is 5,” E.E. Cummings: Complete Poems 1904- 1962, ed. George J. Firmage (New York: W.W. Norton and Co., 1991), 221. 111. Feldman, Durations. 112. Tudor, “From Piano,” 26. 113. Ibid. 114. DT, GRI, Box 52, Folder 3. 115. Artaud, Theater, 55. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 74 116. DT, GRI, Box 61, Folder 4. 117. Schonberg, “Far Out,” 52. 118. DT, GRI, Box 53, Folder 7. 119. Ibid. 120. Artaud, Theater, 61. 121. Arnold Schoenberg, “New Music, Outmoded Music, Style and Idea,” Style and Idea, ed. Leonard Stein (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1984), 115. 122. MCR, GRI, Box 30, Folder 3. 123. Copeland, “Beyond Expressionism,” 192. 124. Artaud, Theater, 91. 125. Bharucha, “Eclecticism,” 53. 126. DT, GRI, Box 61, Folder 4. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 75 CHAPTER TWO CONVENTIONAL COMPLEXITY AND UNCONVENTIONAL SIMPLICITY: RHYTHMIC FEATURES IN TUDOR’S REPERTORY .. we’re witnessing a change in the notion of time.” -Olivier Messiaen After struggling with Boulez’s Second Piano Sonata and appropriating the theoretical ideas of Artaud, Tudor declared, “I became aware another kind of musical continuity was possible, and from then on I began to see all other music in those terms.”1 In order to investigate further the specificity of “those terms” in which the pianist approached a score, it is necessary first to consider his repertory—for virtually all of the “other music” to which he would dedicate himself over the course of the decade was conspicuously limited. While Tudor continued to perform new works by several composers, the pieces of a core group remained relatively fixed in his programs. “At this time,” wrote Tudor in late 1957, “I play most often works of the Americans Earle Brown, John Cage, Morton Feldman, Christian Wolff (& others), and of Pierre Boulez, Bo Nilsson, Henri Pousseur, Karlheinz Stockhausen. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 76 .. .”2 The profile of Tudor’s repertory in the 1950s, following his self-described “change in musical perception,” was distinctive: the composers named by the pianist neatly comprise the most celebrated figures of the American and European avant- garde. (See Appendix A for a list of Tudor’s programs in the 1950s.) If Tudor had a “change in musical perception,” then the works for which he thereafter displayed a consistent affinity must have been congenial to this change and, thus, must share certain characteristics. To be sure, several of these characteristics are extra-musical in nature—practical, social, and political motivations all contributed to the formulation of Tudor’s programs. But there is also a prominent musical feature that conjoins the repertory: an innovative handling of the rhythmic component. After considering the extra-musical features which lend Tudor’s repertory its distinctive profile, I will survey the contemporary rhythmic interests of the composers whose works held a consistent position in this repertory. The chapter is organized into two sections: “Conventional Complexity,” in which I will discuss works by the European composers, and “Unconventional Simplicity,” where I will focus on the innovations of the New York avant-gardists. One of the reasons that Tudor performed the works of relatively few composers was simply a matter of practicality: the amount of time required to prepare many of these compositions, particularly those indeterminate ones for which he had to supply realizations, was extraordinary. According to an article printed in a local paper while Tudor was performing in Boulder, Colorado in the summer of 1951: “Tudor says he usually goes on tour only twice a year, since it often takes him Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 77 three to six months to master some of the complex modem pieces.” It is reasonable that once the pianist had mastered a collection of works, he gave a series of recitals that featured those pieces. Additionally, from 1953 until his death in 1996, Tudor toured regularly with the extremely active Merce Cunningham Dance Company. Many of the works in Tudor’s repertory were used by Cunningham in the early productions thereby creating some preparation overlap, but performing with the company was a time-consuming responsibility that made the frequent scheduling of solo recitals impractical.4 More significant are the social conditions that influenced the pianist’s selection of repertoire: Tudor most frequently performed the works composed by his closest friends, the composers of the “New York School.”5 “The group that was really strong,” acknowledges Tudor, “where we really had a sense of togetherness, was John Cage, Morton Feldman, Christian Wolff and Earle Brown in New York around 1951 and 1952.”6 The members of the group remained in close contact with each other until 1954, when Cage and Tudor moved from New York City to Stony Point. Many of the works for piano that were written by the New York composers in the early 1950s were specifically intended to be performed by Tudor. “It was an extraordinary period,” Cage recalls, “We [Tudor and I] worked together with Morton Feldman and Christian Wolff. Earle Brown joined us a little later.. . . We composed everything thinking it would be performed by David.”7 Tudor was not the only one who contributed to the production of the works of the New York composers: each of the composers themselves loyally and consistently lent support to the production of Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 78 one another’s work. “What was so beautiful about the early fifties,” Wolff recalls, “[is] that it was really a group. To be sure, it was just these four people, and each has gone his separate way. But the idea was that we would appear together. And • R everything was done so that all of us would be involved wherever possible.” But their relationship was not entirely a social one. Feldman nostalgically acknowledges that the New York composers shared an aesthetic bond with such abstract expressionist artists as Philip Guston, Willem de Kooning, Jackson Pollock, and Mark Rothko, the original “New York School” from which the name of composer’s group was derived: Anybody who was around in the early fifties with the painters saw that these men had started to explore their own sensibilities, their own plastic language . . . with that complete independence from other art, that complete inner security to work with what was unknown to them. That was a fantastic aesthetic achievement. I feel that John Cage, Earle Brown, Christian Wolff and I were very much in that particular spirit.9 For Feldman, the “New York School” was more than just a social clique—they shared aesthetic objectives—but their objectives were not stylistically or technically distinct. Cage recalls with approval an occasion when his teacher and friend, Henry Cowell, identified a slightly less abstract objective of the New York composers: [Henry] Cowell remarked at the New School [for Social Research] before a concert of works by Christian Wolff, Earle Brown, Morton Feldman, and myself, that here were four composers who were getting rid of glue. That is: Where people had felt the necessity to stick sounds together to make a continuity, we four felt the opposite necessity to get rid of the glue so that sounds would be themselves.1 0 Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 79 While Cowell and Cage address the composers’ desire to eradicate a conventional sense of continuity, they fail to identify a specific stylistic distinction-—“getting rid of the glue” does not altogether describe the manner in which they altered continuity. The “strong sense of togetherness” to which Tudor referred was not really a stylistic commonality; it is arguable that the most distinguishing feature of the “New York School” is not musical at all. According to Wolff, to group the avant-gardists together was to neglect the obvious differences between the works of each composer: All four of us were lumped together as the “Cage School,” usually dismissively, but with no sense of difference. Yet right from the very beginning, it seemed to me that our music was notably different... . Never mind how the pieces were made, or what the composers were interested in, or any of that stuff. It’s just that the actual physical presence of those pieces was very different.1 1 While each of the composers experimented with various types of indeterminacy, the resultant sound phenomena of their works were distinct. “Cage and his younger contemporaries were thus more a ‘group’ than a ‘school,’” concludes James Pritchett, “they were united only in their mutual support for the widening of musical 1 9 possibilities.” Tudor was a strong advocate of “widening musical possibilities,” from both an aesthetic standpoint and a geographic one: the list of composers supplied by the pianist illustrates that an underlying political agenda was in operation. Dedicated to the exposure of avant-garde music on both sides of the Atlantic, Tudor played a 1 T critical role in the relationship between the American and European avant garde. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 80 “I was .. . interested in finding new things in Europe and taking them back home,” recalls the pianist. “I was like a messenger between the States and Europe.”1 4 Tudor’s role as musical liaison began with his first European tour, which he undertook with Cage, in the fall of 1954. It was during this tour that Tudor established a close relationship with Karlheinz Stockhausen, the most outstanding proponent of the European avant-garde. In November of 1954, Tudor wrote to the composer to express his admiration: “please know that it was a great joy to meet and be with you, and that I like your music ‘the best’, and that I will devote myself to it and play it wherever possible.”1 5 “The meeting with Stockhausen,” Tudor later acknowledged, “was the start of a creative exchange that lasted for about ten years.”1 6 An invaluable contact, Stockhausen was largely responsible for introducing the pianist to the most visible figures in the renowned new music centers of Cologne, Darmstadt, Donaueschingen, and Venice among others.1 7 Stockhausen’s affinity for the music of the New York composers was a great advantage in the arrangement of concert performances in Europe, as Tudor recalls: Stockhausen was our-man-in-Europe, the most friendly to Cage’s music and that of the other Americans, and up to say 1960 he would encourage me to come over, and would tell the sponsors that they should have this music. Maybe it was also because I played his music too, but there was a definite rapport.. .. Stockhausen would arrange solo concerts for me, including the works of all these other com-posers as well as his own, and he would travel i o with me and give lectures... . During the 1950s, Tudor had great respect for the European composer, placing his music on par with that of the New York composers: “[I am] having marvelous talks with Karlheinz,” Tudor wrote to M. C. Richards while staying at Stockhausen’s Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 81 home in Cologne in June 1956, “he is doing interesting things and it is clear that he is the only composer in the world besides John and our friends.”1 9 The political savvy of Tudor’s repertory had an economic advantage as well. A program for a performance in Cologne, for example, that advertised “Neue Klaviermusik aus Amerika” and “Europaische Erstauffuhrungen” naturally made for good publicity, effectively giving a marketable edge to the pianist’s recital. Tudor was aware that his performances, no matter how well advertised, would not attract a mass audience, but he was eager to reach those who were willing to listen: “With my kind of repertoire, people wouldn’t come [to a large venue]. It’s much better to have a small hall and an interested public.” Throughout the decade, Tudor’s dedication to the international exposure of new music was genuine and steadfast. In a letter of February 8,1960 to Wolfgang Steinecke, the founder of the Ferienkurse in Darmstadt, Tudor proclaimed, “what interests me most is the possibility of a real interchange between the artistic life here [in America] and in Europe.”2 1 A basic aspect of this interchange was the performance of the most recent music from each faction, and here Tudor played an indispensable role. “I think David Tudor had a lot to do with this movement of ideas [between the United States and Europe],” acknowledges Cage, “Even more than I.”2 2 By the end of the 1950s, the relationship between the American and European avant- garde was strengthened by Tudor’s mediating influence and loyal commitment to the new music of both schools. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 82 Tudor obviously felt that the new music included in his programs was musically distinct from repertories which he did not play—the pianist placed the works that he performed in stark contrast with that of standard “classical music.” He did not merely contrast the repertories, but indicated that the preparations necessary for the performance of the avant-garde works precluded concurrent preparations of compositions of the standard repertory: “It has been too difficult for me to maintain a repertoire of classical music,” Tudor admitted to conductor Hermann Scherchen, “because the time-conception (in performing the American works particularly) is so different that the player’s rhythmic organization has to be entirely changed.”2 3 Tudor drew the line of distinction explicitly in reference to the “time- conception” of the new works. While practical, social, and political considerations were all relevant to Tudor’s decision in selecting a program, the principal compositional concern of the post-war avant-garde was the component of rhythm and its natural correlates, form and time: how to organize temporal relationships. Innovations in the rhythmic domain were a necessary corollary to the abandonment of the tonal system, as Roger Sessions explains: . . . the rhythmic aspects of music are bound closely and inevitably to the other elements of the musical vocabulary; in this sense one can say that the development of music away from the tonal and cadential principle has also created a whole new set of rhythmic premises and requirements.2 4 This “new set of rhythmic premises,” according to Ernst Krenek, “caused fundamental changes in the structure, appearance, perceptibility, and meaning of Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. music.”2 5 The new sound world created by the young composers was not so much due to the use of new pitch collections, but largely the result of a new manner of organizing the placement of these collections in musical time. CONVENTIONAL COMPLEXITY: RHYTHMIC FEATURES OF THE EUROPEAN AVANT-GARDE The pronounced interest in rhythm among European composers had an important precedent in the work of Olivier Messiaen, who remarked, “we’re • 9 f\ witnessing a change in the notion of time.” Messiaen made a profound study of rhythm and established a system of rhythmic procedures for his own music that exerted a strong influence on the next generation of European composers, many of whom studied with him. He assigned a critical role to the component of rhythm—“I feel that rhythm is the primordial and perhaps essential part of music”2 7 —and believed that the investigation of rhythmic procedures was “probably the most important characteristic of twentieth-century music, the one that will set our era apart from previous centuries.” Clearly, the investigation of a new sense of time was of paramount interest to most of the avant-garde composers after the Second World War as many of them documented their thoughts on the subject in prose essays. Boulez, one of Messiaen’s most illustrious students, has written extensively on the formulation of a new concept of rhythm. In “Proposals” (1948), the article in which Tudor found the link between Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 84 the Second Piano Sonata and Artaud, Boulez surveys modem techniques of rhythmic organization, underscoring the significance of Stravinsky and Messiaen. Boulez had learned about Stravinsky’s use of rhythmic cells while attending Messiaen’s courses in analysis at the Paris Conservatoire: The first to make an immense conscious effort in the field of rhythm was Stravinsky. His original technique was based on the idea of cells.. . . Stravinsky further uses a system of superimposed rhythmic pedals; that is, with a polyphonic layout made up to some extent of clearly characterized levels, he will give each level an independent rhythmic period. The sequences of these different superimpositions will not recur at the same time intervals, so that a varied disposition is ensured. These are the main lessons Messiaen • 90 has helped us to learn from Stravinsky. Following Messiaen, Boulez emphasizes the variable quality of Stravinsky’s rhythmic cells, which shift metric positions without losing their identity as an autonomous unit. Boulez also remarks on the significance of Messiaen’s investigations in the rhythmic domain: Messiaen’s researches lay down certain principles which it is essential to regard as established. First the added value, which Messiaen defines as ‘half of the smallest unit of rhythm added to the rhythm, in the form of either a note or a dot.’ This gives irregular rhythms, even in quick time. Next the extremely important principle of the rhythmic canon: exact, augmented, diminished, or by addition of a dot.3 0 One of Messiaen’s contributions to the development of rhythmic procedures was the systematic use of added values, a feature that generates irregular rhythmic collections. The absence of rhythmic regularity, according to Messiaen, is the hallmark of music that is truly rhythmic: “Rhythmic music is music that scorns Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 85 repetition, squareness, and equal divisions, and that is inspired by the movements of o i nature, movements of free and unequal durations.” By emphasizing the asymmetry of rhythmic figures in the music of Messiaen and the shifting superimposition of rhythmic cells in the music of Stravinsky, Boulez points toward a technique of kaleidoscopic rhythmic transformation that he considers analogous to the “developing variations” to which melodic themes are subjected in the music of Schoenberg: “The principle of variation and constant renewal,” states - 3 9 Boulez, “will guide us remorselessly.” But he dismisses the works of Schoenberg for their lack of rhythmic inventiveness (a subject which would become the basis of a more biting criticism four years later in the article, “Schoenberg is Dead”3 3 ) and praises Webern for disturbing the regularity of traditional meter: One can but stress the total indifference to these problems of Schoenberg and Berg, who remain attached to the classical bar and the old idea of rhythm. However much accents may get displaced in a variation, nothing can distract attention from the regular beat. Only Webern—for all his attachment to rhythmic tradition—succeeded in breaking down the regularity of the bar by his extraordinary use of cross-rhythm, syncopation, accents on weak beats, counter-accents on strong beats, and other such devices designed to make us forget the regularity of metre.3 4 The features of Webern’s music that succeed in “breaking down the regularity of the bar” are the starting point not only for Boulez’s development of rhythmic procedures, but also for that of the majority of the European avant-garde. The second volume of the journal Die Reihe, the most prominent mouthpiece for the European avant-garde in the 1950s and 1960s, is dedicated exclusively to the study of •3 C Webern—it is the only issue concentrating on the work of a single composer. The Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 86 volume contains articles by key figures whose works Tudor frequently performed, including Pierre Boulez (from whose contribution, “The Threshold,” the above excerpt was taken), Henri Pousseur, Karlheinz Stockhausen, as well as Christian Wolff. The articles are a testament to the influential role that Webern played in the establishment of a post-war repertory that re-evaluated conventional notions of musical teleology. According to Boulez, Webern set a precedent for more extensive investigation into the rhythmic domain, and the article “Proposals”—although not published in Die Reihe—proceeds with examples of such investigation drawn from Boulez’s own works. Boulez composed his Second Piano Sonata with the intention of destroying conventional structures, which according to the composer, accounts for its “explosive, disintegrating and dispersive character.” By disintegrating thematic units into athematic fragments, Boulez sought “to draw attention more to the rhythmic elaboration than to the intervals, whose function now is secondary.”3 6 A salient characteristic of Boulez’s rhythmic elaboration is the use of what he calls “irrational rhythms,” or aperiodic collections of note values that are uneven subdivisions of a fundamental unit of duration. In his comments on the work, Charles Rosen states, “Perhaps the most important [innovations] relate to rhythm,” and he identifies one of these innovations as “a dramatic use of certain rhythmic conflicts which temporarily annihilate a sense of metre.”3 7 The “rhythmic conflicts” in the sonata arise from the juxtaposition of different subdivisions of the beat. Triplets, eighths, sixteenths, and Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 87 sextuplets are freely conjoined resulting in an ambiguous meter, a technique that Webern frequently employed. tr b s m a rq u i e t ire s sec Fig. 2-1. Boulez, Second Piano Sonata, mvt. 1 (mm. 32-37) As in most of the keyboard scores by Messiaen, there are no metric markings in Boulez’s sonata. While barlines are present, they do not mark regular groupings of duration; the number of beats per measure varies from 2 !4 to 5 V z. Nevertheless, Boulez achieves large spans of a homogeneous texture by virtue of the varied repetition of similar rhythmic motives, or what Messiaen and Boulez called “cellules” in the analysis of Stravinsky’s work. “I might next be asked how I proportion the rhythms, and this is a question to which there is no verbal answer,” Boulez admits, “but whose only answer is the music one writes.”3 8 The lack of an established verbal discourse is a clear indication of the exploratory nature of Boulez’s rhythmic procedures. Such exploration, writes Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 88 Boulez in “Stravinsky Remains” (1951, publ. 1953), is necessary in order to afford rhythm the same level of attention as has been granted to other musical parameters: I might well be taken to task for such a one-sided attitude to rhythm, or at least for attaching to it such inflated importance. Indeed it seems to me that the problem of language itself is much nearer solution with the—increasingly widespread—adoption of serial techniques; from now it is essentially a question of equilibrium. Compared to musical disciplines as a whole, rhythm in fact enjoys only the most cursory treatment in the standard textbooks. Is this nothing more than a defect of theory? It would be more useful to recognize that, since the end of the Renaissance, rhythm has not been regarded as the equal of the other musical parameters, but has been left too -JQ much to intuition and good taste. Such rhetoric is indicative of Boulez’s penchant for aesthetic research, the experiments of which must not be inhibited by the limitations of acquired taste.4 0 While Boulez advocates the research and development of rhythmic procedures and acknowledges the potential difficulty that a performer may have when faced with a complex configuration, he does not express interest in the adaptation of new notational systems: After all this there remains one further difficulty: how to adapt the bar to complex combinations, especially in an orchestral score? To my mind the best way is still to follow the natural metre of one’s writing as closely as possible, and not be afraid of irregular bars, even with orchestra.. . . I must admit that the actual complexity sometimes outstrips such a simple method of notation; and I would then suggest putting dotted barlines in front of notes which coincide.4 1 Unconcerned with notational innovation, Boulez speaks instead of the “complex combination” of conventional rhythmic figures—figures which, however “irregular” their arrangement, are conducive to metrical placement. Essentially, Boulez’s notion Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 89 of rhythmic innovation remains governed by principles of conventional musical time as dictated by the beat—that is, within the realm of instrumental music. With the advent of magnetic tape music, many composers had an opportunity to reassess their rhythmic procedures. It is significant that most of the composers whose works comprise Tudor’s repertory spent a good deal of time in electronic music studios: developments in instrumental composition went hand-in-hand with those in the recording media. Boulez produced two etudes for magnetic tape (1951) while working with the Groupe Recherche de la Radiodiffusion Frangaise, the musique concrete studio of Pierre Schaeffer in Paris. Boulez articulated his thoughts on the new medium in the article “At the Edge of a Fertile Land,” published in Die Reihe in 1955 (English edition, 1958). In the article, Boulez addresses the profound influence that experiments in the studios had on the concept of musical time: The real problem of the encounter with electronics is that they overturn every conception of sound to which one’s education or personal experience has accustomed one; there is a total reversal of the limits imposed on the composer; more than a reversal, almost a photographic negative: everything that was a limitation becomes unlimited, everything one thought ‘unmeasurable’ suddenly has to be measured with absolute precision. Moreover precision becomes a myth in its turn, having long been an obsession: the more one wants to reduce error, the less it will allow itself to be circumscribed.4 2 The necessity for perpetual measurement in the electronic music studio compelled many composers to reconsider the phenomenon of duration and its relationship to tempo. Boulez explains the temporal distinction between the performance of instrumental music and the production of electronic music: Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 90 These two musical worlds share a certain definition of duration, but they are equally capable of opposed definitions which fundamentally separate them and give them their individuality. Let me sum up the contradictions in broad terms: in the one case, an unvarying ‘tempo’ but with rhythmic values capable of almost unlimited variation; in the other, an extremely variable ‘tempo,’ but with certain limitations to the subtlety of rhythmic variation.4 3 Boulez accepts the “extremely variable ‘tempo’” as a human factor inherent to the performance of instrumental music, and mentions it only to clarify its distinction from the electronic medium. In an attempt to systematize the “almost unlimited variation” of rhythmic configurations possible in the new medium, Boulez calls for a “completely new conception of rhythm” based on a “registration of durations,” or a temporal scale comprised of rhythmic units: This involves recourse to a series of rhythmic units, whose extreme values will be in the ratio of two-to-one. This will enable us to compile a registration of durations, if I may combine the two terms in this elliptical fashion. The intention here is to translate into tempo a concept previously reserved only for pitch, applying to the unit series modifications which will enable it to cover every eventuality of tempo the composer needs. The main contrast with instrumental music will lie in the idea of basing the music not on a single pulse, but on a series of units. So this is a completely new conception of rhythm, whose sole relation to the past is the use of the 2:1 and 3:2 (dotted note) ratios.. . . Ultimately what we are dealing with is a registration of durations based on a mobile rhythmic unit.4 4 Boulez’s notion of a “mobile rhythmic unit,” which for him has become the basic temporal unit in the electronic realm, is analogous to the rhythmic cell in instrumental music. The similarity of the electronic rhythmic unit and the instrumental rhythmic cell is, for Boulez, the closest contact between two media that are otherwise distinct. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 91 While he made poignant observations about his experiences with electronic music, Boulez did not adapt these rhythmic principles into the composition of instrumental music; rather, he established an opposition between what he believed to be the intrinsic principles of the respective media. Of his composition for tape and chamber orchestra, Poesiepour pouvoir (1958), which was completed after his article on electronic music, Boulez states: Right from the start I had been continually struck, in all attempts to combine instruments with taped music, by the heterogeneous character of the two media and the break dividing them.... [T]he passage from the one to the other suggested that the two had no point of contact.4 5 Aside of the two etudes for magnetic tape and the hybrid work Poesie, instrumental music remained the mainstay of Boulez’s compositional output in the 1950s. Of the composers listed by Tudor, Boulez is the most conventional in terms of notation and, consequently, of the performer’s responsibility in the creative process. Significantly, in Tudor’s programs of European music in the 1950s, Boulez’s compositions appear less than those of either Stockhausen or Pousseur 4 6 One might associate Boulez’s conventionality with his reluctance at the time to draw a connection between instrumental and electronic media, a connection that Stockhausen made with enthusiasm. During the 1950s, Stockhausen devoted a great deal of time and energy to composing electronic music in Herbert Eimert’s studio at the Nordwestdeutscher Rundfunk in Cologne. He produced two Studien (1953-54), one for sine-wave generator and the other for white-noise generator, Gesang der Jiinglinge (1955-56), Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 92 in which he combined electronically generated sound with the procedures of musique concrete, and Kontakte (1959-60), the monumental work that established “contact” between electronic music and live instrumental performance. The knowledge that Stockhausen gained in the electronic music studio guided his exploration of the instrumental realm, and his writings on the development of new temporal structures are a testimony to his experiences. A notable example is his article, “... how time passes . . .,” which was published in Die Reihe in 1957 (English edition, 1959). Written shortly after the completion of Klavierstiicke V- VIII and Gesang der Jiinglinge, Stockhausen’s article reflects not only his discoveries in the studio, but also the manner in which electronic music informed his compositional approach to instrumental music. In the essay, Stockhausen asserts that we do not perceive differences of duration as such, but proportions of time intervals, or what he calls “phases.” Beginning with a fundamental phase (the largest time-continuum), a hierarchy is established in which shorter phases, or “formants,” are perceived in different logarithmic relationships to the fundamental phase—in other words, the formants are various subdivisions of the fundamental phase. With a simple systemization of these proportions, Stockhausen proposes that musical time be arranged into “time- octaves,” divided by a “tempered chromatic scale of durations”4 7 that could be readily subjected to serial organization. The delineation of “time-octaves” is not unlike Boulez’s “registration of durations,” complete with the 2:1 proportion that establishes the temporal Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 93 boundaries. But Stockhausen’s “formants,” which consist of the hierarchic arrangement of durations based on even subdivisions, differ in focus, if not also in principle, from Boulez’s concept of “mobile rhythmic units,” which, like rhythmic cells, are based on the addition of uneven units. The distinction is comparable to that of a measured grid and the events that occur within that grid. In the electronic realm, Stockhausen continues to conceive of musical time as being equally divided as it is in metrically organized instrumental music, while Boulez prefers to use the concrete duration of a rhythmic group as the fundamental temporal unit. The rigidity with which Stockhausen organized temporal divisions eventually yielded to the inevitable flexibility of these divisions in live performance. In regard to instrumental music, Stockhausen addresses an issue to which Boulez referred only in passing: the effect that the notation of complex rhythms has on live performers. “In some recent scores,” observes Stockhausen, “the notation of duration- relationships has become extremely differentiated. The result has been that, with an increase of metric-rhythmic complexity, the degree of precision in playing correspondingly decreased.”4 8 Boulez refers to this degree of precision as the “extremely variable ‘tempo’” inherent to the performance of instrumental music and his remarks were intended merely as a comparison to the “fixed” tempo of electronic music. But according to Stockhausen, the complexity of rhythmic notation influences the performer’s sense of tempo and duration: “from the mere relationship between various methods of notation and the resulting degrees of precision in performance there arises a fluctuation in one’s conception of time.”4 9 Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 94 Stockhausen indicates that these zones of perception fluctuate between the apprehension of single events (what he called a “pointillist” perception) and that of a cluster of events (“statistical” perception). He refers to these zones as “time-fields,” and proposes, as he had done with the division of time-octaves, that they be organized in a “series of field-sizes” and used as a compositional element.5 0 The “switch, from ‘pointillist’ to ‘statistical’ perception of time has become a further occasion for the statistical composition o f fields. But this means that the elements themselves are no longer presented as discrete degrees of some scale or other.... Rather, a field-size . . . is substituted for each discrete value.. .. Such field-sizes are now the ‘elements,’ and composition thus includes the statistical character o f mass-structure among the elements. A ‘pointillistic ’ time-structure can now be presented, vice versa, as a special case of mass-structure—the case when field-size equals zero, and each time- process is fixed in the time-continuum by a point instead of by a field.5 1 “Such ‘statistical’ criteria of forming,” claimed Stockhausen several years later, “will open up a completely new, hitherto unknown perspective on the relationship between instrumental and performance factor.”5 2 Stockhausen explored this “unknown perspective” of instrumental music in a series of piano pieces that he refers to as his “drawings.” Stockhausen completed his first set of piano pieces, Klavierstiicke I-IV (1952- 53), before having met Tudor in the fall of 1954, after which the pieces immediately entered the pianist’s repertory. Klavierstiick I is rhythmically characterized by frequent and unusual changes of meter, unequal subdivisions of a fundamental pulse, and extreme differentiation of durational values. (See figure 2-2.) Conspicuously Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 95 -11: 12- 7:8' ■13:1% m ■7:8- t i------------- 14:12- — --- Fig. 2-2. Stockhausen, Klavierstuck I (mm. 4-9) missing from these rhythmic techniques is the juxtaposition of different subdivisions, a technique that was common to Boulez’s work. The rhythmic collections (or as Stockhausen calls them, “constellations”), which change abruptly almost from measure to measure, each form an identity as an autonomous event, marking the composer’s self-described transition from “points” to “groups.” As a consequence, the texture of Stockhausen’s Klavierstuck I is less homogeneous than that of Boulez’s Second Sonata. One particular figure in Klavierstuck I that has drawn much attention is the additive and subtractive principles derived from electronic music. The figure is a collection of different durational values, each given a different dynamic level, that Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 96 are either articulated individually with pedal and sustained (Fig. 2-3 a) or articulated simultaneously without pedal with different release points (Fig. 2-3b). The result is a 7:5 7 :5 - Fig. 2-3a. Stockhausen, Klavierstuck I (m. 1) Fig. 2-3b. Stockhausen, Klavierstuck I (m. 11) gradual accumulation or reduction of an envelope of sound, resembling the construction or filtering of a sound-complex by additive or subtractive principles in the electronic studio. Rosen shows that the second movement of Boulez’s Second Sonata contains a similar figure. (See Fig. 2-4.) Rosen compares this effect with a type of retrograde technique: “It is evident that the exploitation of the release of avec pedate sans pedate Fig. 2-4. Boulez, Second Piano Sonata, mvt. 2 (m. 7) Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 97 sounds is a small-scale effect of retrograde motion.”5 3 Rosen properly associates this figure not with electronic music, but with a technique derived from the transformation of rhythmic cells. When Boulez completed his Second Sonata in 1948, he had not yet experimented with electronically generated sound. (Moreover, his first experience composing tape music—resulting in the two etudes of 1951— took place in the musique concrete studio of Schaeffer, who at the time denounced the use of sine-wave generators.) Stockhausen, on the other hand, who presents these figures much more deliberately by isolating their several occurrences, seems to be drawing a conscious parallel to additive and subtractive procedures of electronic sound production, a technique that may be heard prominently in his two Studien and Gesang der Jiinglinge, works that he composed in the Cologne studio in the years immediately preceding and following the first two groups of Klavierstiicke. Stockhausen states that his Klavierstiicke V-VIII (1954-55) were conceived— and extensively revised—as a result of his experiences in the electronic studio: If after a year and a half spent working exclusively on electronic compositions, I now work on piano pieces at the same time, it is because in the most strongly structured compositions I am brought up against essential musical phenomena which are non-quantifiable. They are no less real, recognizable, conceivable, or palpable for that. These I am better able to clarify—at the moment anyway—with the help of an instrument and interpreter, than through the medium of electronic composition. Above all it has to do with conveying a new sense of musical timing, more truly expressed by the infinitely subtle ‘irrational’ nuances, stresses and agogics of a good interpreter, than by any measurement in centimetres.5 4 The “interpreter” who helped Stockhausen clarify the non-quantifiable musical phenomena was Tudor, who the composer met in the fall of 1954. Writing to Tudor Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 98 on January 16, 1955, Stockhausen acknowledges the influence that he had on his compositional development: After all I feel, that there has something changed in my work, my thinking, since I met you . . . : not really changed, but pouched [sic], forced, opened. Say it to Cage. You had reason to say: there is necessary a real synthetic feeling to compose ‘statistique’ structures. You know, what I mean with this word ‘statistique’ when I say structures in the same time, I want to say, that in all compositions nothing may be more important than other things: pitch is as important as rhythm and intensities a.s.o. [and so on.] But Cage has ‘space’, and we are too dense, and we do—myself before all—too much which is not necessary, which has not the most efficacity. Cage is good.5 5 Stockhausen was still working on his Klavierstiicke V-VIII when Cage and Tudor arrived in Europe in 1954. After meeting the Americans, Stockhausen revised the pieces and dedicated the completed set to Tudor. In a letter dated March 13,1955, Stockhausen discusses two of the pieces in this set. Stockhausen’s description of the constantly changing tempos owes much to Cage’s Music o f Changes, Tudor’s performance of which had impressed the German composer the previous fall. Below the text description, Stockhausen draws a graph to illustrate the “curve of the principal tempo” (Fig. 2-5): One play[s] in two speeds in each moment: one speed, which determines the attacks and the other which determines the ‘tails’ [decays]. [This]... will be a principal direction of my works: the different ‘quantum’ of approximation become a functional value: series of approximation-quants: statistical phenomenon of groups in time. You understood me wonderfully], and I was very happy to read that you saw it exactly in the text, which is really bound in a negative manner by traditional notation. That will be changed in new pieces as soon as possible.. . . And now you will see, that I involved many kinds of tempo-changements [sic], superpositions in tempo-changing, so that you play sometimes in 5 or 6 different speeds. I gave the indication in the score. One question only: if there is a ‘principal’ tempo-changing determined, the ‘dependent’ tempo-changings are relative and indicated by the curve of the principal-tempo in their beginning speeds.5 6 Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 99 >»<» A - - . /*••*'> — r > * > < » * Fig. 2-5. Stockhausen, graph indicating the “curve of the principal-tempo” Research Library, The Getty Research Institute, Los Angeles (980039) Stockhausen completed Klavierstuck VI in 1954, but it underwent revision before it was finally published in 1965. The difference in versions concerns the notation— specifically, the notation of the “many kinds of tempo-changements.” In the version that Stockhausen initially gave to Tudor, the constant fluctuation in tempo was carefully notated in a conventional manner: Fig. 2-6. Stockhausen, first version (unpublished) of Klavierstuck VI (excerpt from p. 1) Research Library, The Getty Research Institute, Los Angeles (980039) Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 100 For the published version of Klavierstuck VI (Universal Edition, 1965), Stockhausen dispensed with the complex tempo markings and settled on an idiosyncratic notation to indicate changes in tempo. Here is the same passage as above in its new version: bounds is a PP K. m p <zmp P e_. Fig. 2-7. Stockhausen, published version of Klavierstuck VI (p. 3) The graded line above the grand staff indicates the sliding scale of the principal tempo. The durational value of each conventionally notated rhythmic figure is determined by its relation to the graphically depicted tempo: when the line slants up or down, the performer is to accelerate or decelerate respectively; when the line is Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 101 horizontal, tempo is to remain constant. The notation clearly derives from the composer’s schematic of his electronic work Studie I (1953), written the year before Tudor arrived in Europe: Z t/f M cm. i .sec j i*tt. I P rgtt O * U o n * . * * * > (fttm fstK .) P e g m / 0» P + * ‘ * 0 * * * > Z m t M : * . ‘ 2 0 (H c m fs tc .) F retfU tnz (Hz) j * - 4 o o o Peg# O * f O P X .2B ( < # o ) A ft Z elt M • . * . * > (Hem P r e g u o n x (Hz.) P itg o J O - * C t,U -7*(db} H&nst.pfy h * t b z * ' t M\ * :2 o /»t i m Fig. 2-8. Stockhausen, Studie I (p. 1) The notation of Studie I, like that of the electronic parts to such later works as Gesang der Junglinge and Kontakte, does not comprise a performance score; the Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 102 graphs are not instructions for the realization of the work.5 7 More properly, the notation is a crude transcription of what has already been committed to tape—it is intended as an architectural schematic which predominantly reveals density of activity over time. Studie I, along with other electronic works composed at the Cologne studio, received its premiere performance on October 19, 1954, as part of Musik der Zeit, a concert series dedicated to new music sponsored by the Nordwestdeutscher Rundfunk. Curiously, the other half of the program featured David Tudor performing new piano works by the New York composers. (For the performance of Cage’s 23 ’ 56.176”, a work for two pianos, Tudor was joined by Cage.) The notes for the concert, written by studio director Herbert Eimert, do not offer an explanation for the peculiar programming—it was billed simply as a concert of new piano music from America and new electronic music from Europe. But the pairing of Tudor’s performance of new works for piano with electronic music was prophetic: not only did it forecast the pianist’s virtually exclusive involvement with live electronic music from the late-1960s to the end of his life, but it placed side-by-side for the first time live instrumental performance and electronic music, whose relationship became increasingly recognized as mutually influential. Tudor played a practical role in Stockhausen’s formulation of time-field composition, as Robin Maconie explains: Tudor was able to bring his performer’s experience to bear on the issues of time perception which Stockhausen’s new pieces were examining from a more theoretical viewpoint, and to demonstrate that there were degrees of Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 103 accuracy in performance related to complexities of notation and to the physical and mental limitations of the human performer.5 8 Stockhausen acknowledges that conventional notation is not an effective means of representing fluctuating field-sizes and, unlike Boulez, supports the adaptation of new notational systems: “It would be reasonable to describe such field-sizes directly, by choosing a suitable notation. This is possible neither for duration nor for pitch, if one uses the signs used hitherto, because we have only discrete values in discontinuous scales.”5 9 Presumably drawing from his conversations with Tudor, Stockhausen provides a description of Cage’s use of time-space notation in Music o f Changes from the standpoint of performance-perception: Instead of ‘counting’—dividing up the durations into quanta—the eye measures the time-proportions, and converts them into the action of playing. Optical size-relationships must be translated into acoustical relationships of durations. Each event in time does indeed receive a field-size that is psychologically determined, but this field-size is the same for all time- proportions, and is thus not proportioned.. . . [Cage] makes all proportions less distinct than ever before (logically enough, he is in fact not at all interested in proportional time-relationships), and the result is a continual disorientation in time, as a result of which the duration of a time-lapse is felt unusually strongly. Instead of the suspension of time-consciousness, perhaps intended, time is bound to one plane, and is therefore equally strongly present at each moment.6 0 The description reveals at once the similarity and difference between the efforts of Cage and Stockhausen. Both composers replace durations determined by quantified differentiations with those suggested by qualified proportions. But the primary idea behind Stockhausen’s time-field composition is that the sizes of the fields vary according to the performer’s response to the notation. Cage’s notation, on the other hand, operates according to one measurement system (i.e., 2 V z centimeters equals Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 104 one quarter note), and thus remains “bound to one plane,” or one time-field. Nevertheless, Stockhausen’s interest in liberating durations from strict quantifiable measurements made the European composer a sympathetic supporter of the New York composers. Another European who was interested in the qualified relationship of durations was Belgian composer Henri Pousseur, whose Variations I and Impromptu et Variations II (both 1957) were dedicated to Tudor and appeared frequently in the pianist’s programs. Pousseur was devoted to a new music largely characterized by innovations in the rhythmic domain, and his compositional ideas, like those of Stockhausen, were strongly influenced by his work in electronic music studios. In 1954, Pousseur monitored Stockhausen’s electronic studies in Cologne and four years later founded an electronic music studio in Brussels. Naturally, his work in the electronic studio affected his concept of the time continuum in instrumental music. In his article “Outline of a Method” (1957), which appeared in the same volume of Die Reihe as Stockhausen’s “... how time passes . . . , ” Pousseur describes how one may achieve, using conventional notation, relational time events without the reliance on a periodic, underlying pulse: One may write two successive notes, crotchet and dotted quaver, within a group of seven semiquavers, not so as to suggest to the hearer the exact comprehension of a numerical relationship 3:4 (which would of course mean the perception of a common factor, a regular pulsation), but so as to make him aware of two durations, approximately equal and yet palpably different, and to prevent the establishment of any apparent periodicity. Thus the relationship between the two note-values loses its quantitative character and becomes a connection exclusively between different time-qualities, a time- tension of essentially dynamic character—whereas pulsation is indeed Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 105 movement, but is stationary, and thus the most static of all possible forms of movement. The numerical ratio of the two members is therefore significant only in so far as it decides their qualitative relationship, and altering them will only have relevance (positive or negative) in proportion to the perceptible alterations it produces in qualities actually present, and in the dynamics of their confrontation.6 1 Pousseur is iterating neither the transformative nor the proportional aspect of rhythmic relationships as did Boulez and Stockhausen, respectively. Rather, he is concerned with a means of liberating note values from the “perception of a common factor,” that is, from the idea of a steady beat. Traditional notions of rhythm presuppose the existence of an underlying pulse, and Pousseur sought to redefine the boundaries of durational measurement. Instead of the term “rhythm,” Pousseur prefers to use the term “chronometry,” by which he means “the totality of duration-relationships, seen in themselves; this definition frees the word ‘rhythm’ from the confusion [of the traditional metric implications] attaching to its meaning, and makes it available for the expression of a more complex significance.”6 2 It is reasonable that Pousseur, in exploring “the totality of duration-relationships,” felt restricted by the temporal limitations of conventional notation. Like Stockhausen, Pousseur considered the possibility of notational alternatives that might yield a more authentic performance of “chronometric” music: One may accordingly ask whether it would not be more promising to find a more direct form of representation for determinant formal qualities and the dynamics of their co-ordination—a qualitative notation of time-phenomena as we perceive them. Such a notation, relieved of the demand for absolute quantitative exactness, would make use of every possible and acceptable threshold of approximation. It would free the performer from a whole series Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 106 of difficulties that are merely those of communication, unconnected with the meaning of the work. Certainly it would impose on him other problems, new difficulties of understanding and imagination; in particular, he would be faced by the task of finding and respecting not the letter but the spirit of a musical text.6 3 Although Variations I and Impromptu et Variations II are notated conventionally, they clearly demonstrate that Pousseur was experimenting with notational devices that defy “absolute quantitative exactness.” Lento vp Piii lento mp i V P accel Tempo I (Lento) r m pp' \ Fig. 2-9. Pousseur, Variations I {mm. 1-6) Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 107 As in Boulez’s Second Sonata, there is not a time signature in Pousseur’s Variations I (Fig. 2-9), and barlines mark off irregular groups of durations. There are two main rhythmic features that separate Pousseur’s work from that of Boulez and, to a lesser degree, that of Stockhausen: the preponderance of grace notes and the frequent use of fermatas that sustain both sounds and silences. Although he still relied on conventional “letters,” Pousseur effectively shifted the function of the notation. Grace notes, instead of acting in their traditional role as ornaments, more precisely serve the rhythmic function of upsetting metric regularity. Also, Pousseur handles silence with much more conscientiousness than the other Europeans, as he distinguishes four types of phrase breaks (marked by commas) in addition to two types of fermatas, each designating a relative durational value. Included in the score published by Edizioni Suvini Zerboni in 1963 is an entire page of notes explaining the composer’s performance markings. The overwhelming majority of these notes concern the various nuances of duration. Pousseur was interested in a notation that liberates musical time from the constructs of conventional rhythm and meter, a notation that could bypass the “letter” and communicate more directly the “spirit” of a composition. The rhythmic interests of the European avant-garde may be characterized as conventionally complex: conventional in the sense that the notation is still intimately related to the idea of pulse, and complex in terms of the manner in which rhythmic figures relate to that pulse (i.e., irrational subdivisions, juxtaposition of different subdivisions, fluctuating pulse, and grace notes). Thus, in terms of rhythmic Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 108 considerations, the intentions of the European composers surveyed to this point differed from those of such earlier mainstream modernists as Schoenberg, Stravinsky, and Bartok, not so much in concept, but in degree. Tudor dedicated the majority of his work, however, to performing the most recent compositions of the New York avant-gardists. Further, the pianist drew a distinction between the European and American works in his repertory, stating that the “time-conception (in performing the American works particularly)” issued new rhythmic concepts.6 4 UNCONVENTIONAL SIMPLICITY: RHYTHMIC FEATURES OF THE NEW YORK AVANT-GARDE Compared to the composers of the European avant-garde, Earle Brown, John Cage, Morton Feldman, and Christian Wolff have been less technical in the explanation of their rhythmic procedures. An important reason for this is that many of the specified rhythmic features of their music is left indeterminate. That is not to say that they dismissed the element of rhythm—on the contrary: rhythm was so fundamental to the faithful realization of each of their respective sound worlds that they deemed conventional notation insufficient. The earliest scores by the New York composers in Tudor repertory, written primarily between 1951 and 1953, were, for the most part, conventionally notated. But certain idiosyncrasies in these works defy rhythmic and metric conventions—it is evident that the composers were struggling with a language that was incompatible with their desired mode of expression. In his Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 109 own way, each composer experimented with alternate types of notation that he believed would better serve his compositional objectives. In order to understand better these objectives, the rhythmic features of two works from each composer will be examined: one that was conventionally notated and the other that adapted a new notational system. The New York composers’ adaptation of unconventional notation was inextricably linked to their interest in indeterminacy. Cage emphasizes the relevance of the unexpected: “Rhythm is not at all something periodic and repetitive. It is the fact that something happens, something unexpected, something irrelevant. When I compose, I don’t try to interrupt that irrelevance, that freedom from being controlled, which characterizes the sounds I encounter.”6 5 For Cage, the avoidance of regular beats is critical in order for the “sounds to be themselves,” the composer’s oft repeated desire: “When you listen to sounds that share a periodic rhythm, what you hear is necessarily something other than the sounds themselves. You don’t hear the sounds—you hear the fact that the sounds have been organized.”6 6 Of course, sounds are organized in any given musical situation, including those that have been ordered according to principles of indeterminacy. But Cage is not rejecting organization as such; rather, he is contesting the perception of an organization that is predetermined by the composer. Ironically, Cage arrived at his antithetical view of “organization” through the use of an exacting structural principle. From 1939 to 1956, Cage used a formal structure based on the systematic recurrence of durational proportions—what he Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 110 called a “micro-macrocosmic rhythmic structure.”6 7 Stating that “rhythm in the structural instance is relationships of lengths of time,” Cage underscores the universal neutrality of measurement: “Measure is literally measure—nothing more, for example, than the inch of a ruler—thus permitting the existence of any durations, to any amplitude relations (meter, accent), any silence.” Thus, Cage’s structures, while not necessarily articulated by any particular musical gestures, are strictly organized by temporal units—in effect, these structures resemble empty containers of specific sizes into which anything can be placed. Cage’s initial interest in the structural function of durations came from his experience providing percussion music for modem dance troupes. Writing for instmments that lack definite pitch led Cage to reconsider the conventional practice of basing stmcture on harmony. Instead, he arrived at a principle based on what he believed to be the fundamental element of composition: If you consider that sound is characterized by its pitch, its loudness, its timbre, and its duration, and that silence, which is the opposite and, therefore, the necessary partner of sound, is characterized only by its duration, you will be drawn to the conclusion that of these four characteristics of the material of music, duration, that is, time length, is the most fundamental.6 9 Cage’s practice of separating functions of pitch with those of rhythm attracted the interest of Boulez, who asserted that rhythm and counterpoint are independent compositional elements.7 0 The lively correspondence between the two composers in 71 the early 1950s is a testament to their mutual interest. Cage’s Music o f Changes (1951) was the first complete work in which the composer used chance operations based on the I Ching, or the Chinese Book o f Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. I l l Changes. It was also Tudor’s most frequently performed solo recital work. In a program note for early performances of the work, Cage writes: The Music o f Changes employs a way of composing derived from the way of obtaining an oracle from the I Ching (Chinese Book of Changes), involving mobile and immobile tables of sounds and silences, dynamics, durations, tempi, and densities, and the appearance of elements from these tables, according to the tossing of coins, in a pre-established rhythmic structure (modified by changing tempi).7 2 To compose Music o f Changes, Cage made three charts (one each for durations, sounds, and dynamics). Each chart consisted of sixty-four cells in order to have a direct correspondence to the sixty-four hexagrams of the I Ching. In the chart for sounds, the odd-numbered cells contained sonorities ranging from a single note to complex “constellations,” while the even-numbered cells contained silences. Whichever sound element was then assigned a duration. To be sure, this arrangement of the elements of the chart for sounds increased the probability of an equal distribution of sounds and silences. But another factor that Cage subjected to chance was the number of events to take place at any given moment, thereby admitting the possible superimposition of up to eight layers of activity. The musical reality resulting from these arrangements is one of an extreme variety of textures and durations in unpredictable flux. In Music o f Changes, as in most of his works for percussion and prepared piano in the 1930s and 1940s, Cage used the “micro-macrocosmic rhythmic structure.” “The rhythmic structure,” the composer explains in the performance notes of the published score, “is expressed in changing tem pi.. . . Accelerandos and retards Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 112 are to be associated with the rhythmic structure, rather than with the sounds that happen in it.”7 3 Cage’s use of a structural tempo recalls Stockhausen’s description of the “‘principal’ tempo-changing” in his Klavierstuck VI, which was greatly influenced by his 1954 encounter with the Americans. A conspicuous notational feature of Music o f Changes is the presence of evenly-spaced barlines in a non-metric context. (See Fig. 2-10.) This feature is reminiscent of the practice of both Messiaen and Boulez, who position unevenly- spaced barlines with no time-signature in order to facilitate phrasing for the i Fig. 2-10. Cage, Music o f Changes, mvt. 1 (mm. 1-6) Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 113 performer. But with Cage’s work, the barlines simply articulate exact intervals of time-space, irrespective of the musical content of each measure. There are two main rhythmic characteristics of the work: a wide assortment of durational values, juxtaposed in an unpredictable manner, and an extraordinary amount of silence. Both of these characteristics are directly related to the composer’s use of chance procedures to determine the musical content of the strict rhythmic structure. In many regards, Music o f Changes is indebted to the complexities of the European avant-garde, as Wolff remarks: The European music at that time affected us a lot. I think Boulez had a considerable influence on Cage, for instance. The Music o f Changes owes a lot to the Second Piano Sonata of Boulez, even to the point where the pitch choices that John makes involve using up all twelve tones of the chromatic scale. And the density and complexity, that came from Europe, essentially. We were affected by that. And then there was a certain element of violence in that music. That has some Zen relationship; you knock the student on the head occasionally. And also that aesthetic of Boulez’s, a very pure, violent quality in the music.7 4 Cage and Boulez, who maintained an enthusiastic correspondence between 1949 and 1952, acknowledged in each other’s work a remarkable similarity of direction: both were investigating structures based on the numeric relationships of rhythmic modules rather than those based on harmony. In the article “Possibly. . . ” (1952), written after the completion of his hyper-serialized Structures I and Polyphonie X, Boulez expresses interest in Cage’s use of rhythmic structures: I would again draw attention to [Cage’s] way of conceiving rhythmic structure as something dependent on real time, expressed through numerical relationships in which the personal element plays no part. Moreover, a given number of units of measure yield an equal number of units of development. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 114 We thereby arrive at an a priori numerical structure which John Cage calls ‘prismatic’ but which I prefer to call ‘crystallized.’7 5 Boulez focuses on the temporal-structural units, which are systemized independently of the musical content. But by the end of 1952, it was clear that Boulez was disenchanted with Cage’s increasing interest in indeterminate procedures and experiments in notation, and their correspondence abruptly ceased. Cage insists that rhythm is most vivacious when the individual durations are not “fixed” by conventional notation: “[Rhythm] is liveliest, most unpredictably changing, when the parts are not fixed by a score but left independent of one another, no two performances yielding the same resultant durations.”7 6 One of Cage’s early excursions into unconventional notation was Music for Piano (1952-56), a series of eighty-four pieces, each of which was written with a similar chance procedure that James Pritchett refers to as the “point-drawing system.”7 7 Here is an excerpt from number 21 of the series: Fig. 2-11. Cage, Music fo r Piano 21 (first two systems) In this compositional system, Cage placed a sheet of transparent paper on top of a sheet of manuscript paper, and ordinary imperfections on the upper page were intensified with a pencil so as to leave marks on or around the staff lines of the lower Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 115 page. He then inked these marks as pitches. The number of sounds per page, accidentals, clefs, and the manner in which the sounds were to be produced on the piano (“normal,” “muted” or “plucked”) were each determined according to chance operations, but durations were left indeterminate. Cage described the function of such a compositional approach: “analogous to the Rorschach tests of psychology, the interpretation of imperfections in the paper upon which one is writing may provide a music free from one’s memory and imagination,” things Cage considered to be limitations to perceptual experiences.7 8 Just as Stockhausen referred to his Klavierstiicke as “drawings” (Klavierstuck I was written in a mere two days), Cage explained that he “wanted to have a very rapid manner of writing a piece of music. 70 Painters, for example, work slowly with oil and rapidly with watercolors.” Throughout the 1950s, Tudor performed different numbers of Music for Piano, many of which were versions for two pianos (which he performed with Cage). The composer’s comments on the work were published in the same volume of Die Reihe as the articles by Stockhausen and Pousseur discussed above: A performance is characterized by the programmed time-length calculated beforehand and adhered to through the use of a stop-watch. This is primarily of use in relation to an entire page, secondarily of use in relation, say, to a system; for it is possible that, though the space of the page is here equal to time, the performance being realized by a human being rather than a machine, such space may be interpreted as moving, not only constantly, but faster or slower. Thus, finally, nothing has been determined by the notation as far as performance-time is concerned.8 0 In the Music fo r Piano series, Cage maintains the time-space relation that he used in Music o f Changes, but the notation is dramatically simplified to abstract points on Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 116 (and around) the staff. These points are devoid of the stems or flags that traditionally determine a note’s rhythmic relation to an underlying pulse; at what time a pitch is to be articulated is determined by its point in space, and individual durations are left indeterminate. Pritchett notes the advantage and disadvantage of Cage’s “point- drawing system”: “speed and flexibility (particularly of rhythm) had been obtained at the expense of the complexity and diversity of the basic musical materials.”8 1 In efforts to diversify his musical output in the following years, Cage became increasingly preoccupied with indeterminacy and more unusual notational systems, culminating in the Concert for Piano and Orchestra (1957-58), the piano part of which is a compendium of eighty-four different types of notation. Where Cage’s structural discipline led to the use of indeterminate procedures within that structure, Feldman’s indeterminate procedures facilitated the formulation of a style that eventually could be notated conventionally. Feldman, who distrusted compositional systems, sought a music devoid of a regular pulse, and he felt that the Europeans were approaching the problem in a circular fashion: “you only got rid of the beat by pulverizing it, which means . . . that you were working with the beat, you see. And I felt the thing about the beat was to ignore it.”8 2 Rather than “pulverising” the pulse as the Europeans had done, Feldman focused his efforts on the abstract space between the notes: The reason my music is notated is I wanted to keep control of the silence, you see. Actually, when you hear it, you have no idea rhythmically how complicated that is on paper. It’s floating. On paper it looks as though it were rhythm. It’s not. It’s duration.8 3 Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 117 Feldman’s preoccupation with the distinction between rhythm and duration and its relationship to notation is evident in virtually all of his earliest compositions. Typical of Feldman’s early, conventionally notated works are the six Intermissions for piano (1950-53), which Tudor performed in various combinations beginning in 1951. In a program note that was used for a number of early performances of the work, Feldman writes: “Intermission means between; I wrote a number of them as a part of living, that is, I did many other things during the day than just writing music. The writing of one of them never took more than two hours.” Thus, Feldman’s Intermissions are not unlike Stockhausen’s Klavierstucke and Cage’s Music fo r Piano in that each series was intended as a collection of quickly drafted pieces, a musical shorthand for the composers’ most recent experiments. Intermission 5 (1952) begins with the strike of a fourteen-note cluster marked fff. (See Fig. 2-12.) This is followed immediately by a sparse, pointillistic assortment of notes marked ppp in registers higher and lower than the range of the cluster. In the first half of the piece there are three more instances of this opening gesture: subito f f f strikes surrounded by quiet, isolated sound events. Because the sustain pedal is to be held throughout the entire piece, a rich array of accumulated overtones results. Intermission 5 displays several rhythmic characteristics that are common to Feldman’s works at the time. There is no indication of a time-signature, and even though barlines visually demarcate a regular 3/8 meter, one does not perceive any sense of meter. A slow, steady pulse is barely perceptible, but it gradually dissolves Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. ¥ Hold sustain and una corda pedals throughout g 8va 8va P = 3 f ^ f f f SB? ----------------- 1 ------ r .........r 3 -—: i- 1....■ 8va 8va if 2-12. Feldman, Intermission 5 (mm. 1-18) among the isolated grace notes and long silences. The last quarter of the piece consists of the unaltered repetition of a two-bar figure: 8 v a 8va 8va Fig. 2-13. Feldman, Intermission 5 (mm. 55-60) This ostinato produces what might be perceived as an eighth-note pulse, but due to the isolated grace note, the pulse “limps.” (This repetitive figure anticipates Feldman’s notion of “crippled symmetry” in such later works as Why Patterns? Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 119 [1978] and Crippled Symmetry [1983].) Thus, the grace notes, similar to those used in Pousseur’s Variations I, serve a rhythmic function rather than an ornamental one: they not only contribute to the pointillistic texture, but they also add to the metric ambiguity by being “just slightly o ff’ whatever pulse may be evident. But it is the function of rests in Intermission 5, and in most of Feldman’s work, that is paramount. (This is another similarity to Pousseur’s Variations I, but again taken to extreme measures.) Rather than “pulverizing” the pulse as Boulez and Stockhausen had done, Feldman, as cited above, focuses on the abstract space between the notes: “The reason my music is notated is I wanted to keep control of the silence.” In their works of the early 1950s, Boulez and Stockhausen sought to disrupt metric regularity and “pulverize” the pulse by juxtaposing irrational subdivisions of the beat—they were, as Feldman states, “working with the beat.” To clarify the function of the beat in relation to meter, Jonathan Kramer discusses the concept of the “timepoint”: [Meter refers to] a succession of timepoints (as opposed to timespans) of varying intensity or degree of accentuation. But what is a timepoint? Whereas a timespan is a specific duration (whether of a note, chord, silence, motive, or whatever), a timepoint really has no duration. We hear events that start or stop at timepoints, but we cannot hear the timepoints themselves. A timepoint O f is thus analogous to a point m geometric space. Meter, in other words, is the result of fulfilled expectations of the occurrence of events that mark timepoints, or beats. Boulez and Stockhausen, then, in their works of the early 1950s, obscured meter either by complicating the events that took place at a regular timepoint or by constantly changing the metric implication of events. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 120 Feldman, on the other hand, denied the existence of the timepoints: he achieved this largely by calling for extremely slow tempos where the pulse in a sparse texture is more difficult to detect, and by simply not articulating any timepoints whatsoever for two or more successive measures. Further, the constant engagement of the sustain pedal results in extended durations of individual pitches or pitch collections—their release is not determined by a fixed timepoint in the metric scheme, as is the case with the analogous figure that begins Stockhausen’s Klavierstiick I. Concurrent with the composition of the Intermission series, Feldman experimented with unconventional notation systems. Feldman believed that the notation used by a composer is a critical determinate of the style of a composition: How you notate determines more about the piece than any kind of system using this or that. Of course, if you’re into a certain type of system, a certain type of tradition of how best to notate that system does develop.. . . Notation, at least for me, determines the style of the piece.8 6 His earliest use of graph-paper notation was the Projection series (1950-51) and the Intersection series (1951-53), each for various instruments. Feldman’s graph-paper notation allowed the composer to focus entirely on the manipulation of timbre and texture, or what he called the “weight,” of a piece. Three tiers of blocks designate the general range (low, middle, high) in which the performer is to play. The number of pitches is indicated within each block (if the work is for piano), but the specific locations of the pitches are indeterminate. The tempo, indicated by number of blocks per minute, is constant. The performer may initiate and terminate the pitch(es) at any point within the block’s envelope of time. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 121 While Tudor continued to play many works by Feldman, the pianist performed Intersection 3 (1953) more than the others. Beginning in 1954, Tudor performed the work throughout the United States and Europe, including at the Musik der Zeit concert that he shared with the composers of the Cologne studio. Along with its predecessor Intersection 2 (1951), Intersection 3 differs from virtually all of Feldman’s other works in respect to its complexity. John Holzaepfel describes Feldman’s brief excursion into a complex idiom: “stimulated by the stunning musical and intellectual virtuosity of his friend David Tudor, Feldman composed two of his most unbridled and technically demanding scores. They may be the most uncharacteristic works he ever wrote.”8 7 The striking differences between Intersection 3 and the other works on graph paper are the frequency and density of sound events, and the tempo (a brisk 176 columns of blocks per minute instead of a leisurely 72). Here is an excerpt from the beginning of the work: Fig. 2-14. Feldman, Intersection 3 (beginning) Similar to the works of the European avant-garde, the unrelenting differentiation of events in rapid succession creates a homogeneity of texture. Also, as an event is assigned to the majority of blocks, which proceed at a steady rate, there emerges a uniform pulse that is foreign to most works of this period. In fact, the constant leaps in register and the stream of evenly-spaced events recalls the second movement of Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 122 the Variations for piano, op. 27, by Webern, whom Feldman held in high regard. In spite of the increased complexity, there are still extended periods of silence that are not characteristic of the European works. In some respects, Intersection 3 is an anomaly not only in Feldman’s development, but also in the pattern established by the other New York composers. While Feldman experimented with various types of notation in the 1950s and 1960s, he never entirely abandoned conventional notation, which he used exclusively by the 1970s. Thus, rather than his conventional notation simply leading unilaterally to his unconventional notation, his experiments gave him the insight necessary to develop his innovative style using traditional notation. Earle Brown undertook a path from conventional to graphic notation that differed greatly from that of Feldman. Like Boulez, Brown was trained as an engineer and he displayed an affinity for mathematics and ordering systems—from 1946 to 1950 he studied and then taught the Schillinger method, a mathematical approach to composition developed by Russian emigre Joseph Schillinger. Brown was also interested in the spontaneity and immediacy of jazz and the drip paintings of Jackson Pollock. But he found his closest aesthetic relation in the mobile sculptures of Alexander Calder, as the composer explains: In Calder, the construction of units and their placement in a flexible situation which subjects the original relationships to constant and virtually unpredictable but inherent change (the movement of the units as well as the movement of the viewer), led me to construct units of rhythmic groups,. . . modify them according to previously mentioned “generative” techniques, and assemble them rather arbitrarily. . . accepting the fact that all possible assemblages were inherently possible and valid.8 8 Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 123 Such was Brown’s approach to composing three twelve-tone works between 1950 and 1952, the last of which was Perspectives for solo piano. Dedicated to Tudor, Perspectives (1952) is a complex, highly determinate work, the rhythmic characteristics of which bear a close resemblance to Boulez’s Second Sonata: Fig. 2-15. Brown, Perspectives (mm. 8-11) As in Boulez’s score, there is no time-signature, and barlines delineate unequal metric units. Also resembling Boulez’s work is the complexity of rhythmic configurations, which consist of the juxtaposition of various subdivisions of the beat. Composed according to an adaptation of the Schillinger system, Perspectives consists of “rhythmic groups” (not unlike “rhythmic cells” in the music of Stravinsky and Boulez) that undergo constant permutation, variations which do not lend Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 124 themselves comfortably to metric regularity. The complex arrangement of the rhythmic figures is exacerbated by frequent and unpredictable changes in tempo ranging from forty to 145 beats per minute—in fact, without a sense of pulse to gauge relative rates of speed, one is more likely to perceive changes in density rather than changes in tempo. While in Boulez’s sonata, themes and motifs dissolve into fragmentary intervals, in Perspectives, extreme fragmentation is further reduced to mere pointillism: rit* * * - K?5 ■ * 1 i 1 * K * ........J tfF ...w ..■*= ■ d f c f a = * ---------Jj.......: ■ y m f - J H B R y *tr w = — 4 — , — a -------- .’ I f f ................ *...................... : .: : ... t . . . ... k ff ? I = y 5 * , 1 - J.— J . ... ...............*.. J , 1 . mf + + + + + • + * — * Fig. 2-16. Brown, Perspectives (mm. 34-35) In a program note for early performances of Perspectives, Brown writes: The title of this piece is not to imply a picture but is merely a recognition of perspective as a property of space relating to sound objects as well as to visual objects. The construction is based on the interaction of sound components and the possibilities of spatial and temporal projection inherent in their serialization. Through serialization of the sound elements, one obtains a set of phases of varying and variable periodicities, the correlation of which can produce regular or irregular configurations. These configurations, activated themselves, may, through the functioning of terms as coefficients, become activated on many planes of larger phasic scope, bringing about a total master pattern based on the smaller units. Through permutation, phasic rotation, application of various forms of serial projection, etc., it is possible to obtain a multiplicity of sound relationships, or ‘perspectives’ of the original relationships.8 9 Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 125 Brown’s analogy between space and sound not only accommodates his fondness for the mobile sculptures of Calder, but it also anticipates his move to graphic notation. Brown explains that the advent of new notational systems in the 1950s was the consequence of a new awareness of “sound as the subject” of composition, rhetoric derived from Clement Greenberg, the art critic who championed the “New York School” of painters. Sounds and relationships that are aesthetically acceptable and artistically necessary today (largely as a result of the accelerated process of innovation and change brought about by our awareness of electronic possibilities) were never in the vocabulary of music when the traditional notation was devised. The function of the latter was based on sonorous and rhythmic patterns that have been superseded by more inclusive concepts of technical and aesthetic ‘function.’ The notation could survive the change from harmonic to atonal concepts, but it cannot survive the change from atonality and serial concepts to the concept of sound as the ‘subject’ of present and future music. This is because a notation based on the indication and measurement of discrete steps on the time and frequency coordinates is incompatible with the concept of a sound continuum.9 0 Brown’s explanation of the futility of conventional notation in the face of a sound continuum echoes Stockhausen’s proposal for a new notation for field-time composition, which was “possible neither for duration nor for pitch, if one uses the signs used hitherto, because we have only discrete values in discontinuous scales.”9 1 Stockhausen, Brown, and many others recognized the same problem, but they offered different solutions: Stockhausen experimented with a fluctuating pulse in the attempt to represent all points of the time continuum, while Brown embraced graphic notation. Like Boulez and Stockhausen, Brown acknowledges that increasingly complex notation results in a proportional decrease in performance precision: Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 126 My particular view that rhythmic fragmentation in standard notation of serial works had reached a point of ‘diminishing returns’ is not necessarily so, generally, but it seemed that the possible notational accuracy on paper bypassed its maximum point of producing finite control in performance and proceeded into a realm of human response where it again became only an approximation and suggestion of actions.9 2 But where Stockhausen developed “time-fields” in an effort to control the “fluctuation in one’s conception of time,” Brown focused on the “suggestion of actions” and left the response to the notation up to the performer. Like Feldman, Brown explains that the alternate notational systems employed by the New York composers served a “functional role” in defining the style of a composition: “By ‘really functional role,’ I mean that the piece could not be notated traditionally and that the sound of the work is of an essentially different character because of the new notation.”9 3 The close ties between musical notation and musical style are not unique to the New York school: from neumes and ligatures to Franconian notation to figured bass, changes in notation have always gone hand in hand with innovations in musical style. The absence of a rhythmically determinate notation does not mean the absence of rhythm itself—rather, it indicates music of “an essentially different character,” as Brown put it, of which rhythm is a decisive component. Brown’s first venture into what he called “time-notation” was Twenty-Five Pages (1953) for one to twenty-five pianos. It is also his first open-form work in that the twenty-five pages of the score may be performed in any order. Tudor gave the premiere performance of the work in 1954 at Carl Fischer Hall in New York. The Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 127 score specifies pitch location on the staff, but there is no indication of clef, and the notation is such that the score can be positioned either side up. Duration is relatively indeterminate: the performer must determine the relative duration of each pitch or pitch collection in proportion to the spatial length of each system, whose rate of speed Brown indicates should be constant (no more than fifteen seconds per system). Each system varies in the density of events, but single pitches and silence are most prominent: Fig. 2-17. Brown, Twenty-Five Pages (excerpt from p. 12) Brown provides a detailed note on his use of this innovative notation: The notation which is used in this work is what I call a “Time-Notation.” I have developed and use this notation because it clearly represents sound relationships in the score as I wish them to exist in performance; independent of a strict pulse or metric system. It is a “time notation” in that the performer’s relationship to the score, and the actual sound in performance, is realized in terms of the performer’s “time sense perception” of the relationships defined by the score and not in terms of a rational metric system of additive units. The durations are extended visibly through their complete Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 128 space-time of sounding and are precise relative to the space-time of the score. It is expected that the performer will observe as closely as possible the “apparent” relationships of sound and silence but act without hesitation on the basis of his perceptions. It must be understood that the performance is not expected to be a precise translation of the spatial relationships but a relative and more spontaneous realization through the involvement of the performer’s subtly changing perceptions of the spatial relationships. The resulting flexibility and natural deviations from the precise indications in the score are acceptable and in fact integral to the nature of the work. As the score is practiced, the performer will quickly discover the relative time of each duration as it relates to each of the other durations and to the total time of each system. The end of each system is a point of orientation and the “time- sense” of this duration soon becomes accurate within one or two seconds. The performer may slightly increase or decrease his speed through each system to compensate for these differences.9 4 With Brown’s time-space notation, the relationship between experiments in tape music and notation that was suggested by Cage’s Music for Piano now emerges clearly: in the electronic music studio, the duration of any sound is directly represented by the physical length of a piece of tape. (Tudor, along with all four composers of the New York School, collaborated on the “Music for Magnetic Tape” project in 1953, a series of tape compositions including Cage’s Williams Mix, Feldman’s Intersection, W olffs For Magnetic Tape, and Brown’s Octet.) The important differences between the notation of Twenty-Five Pages and that of Cage’s work at the time are the absence of a staff and the relative determinacy of duration: Brown’s notation replicates more accurately the continuum of time and sound that characterizes electronic music. A further venture into graphic notation can be observed in Brown’s Four Systems (1954), dedicated to Tudor for his twenty-eighth birthday. (See Fig. 2-18.) Here, Brown appears to have maintained the time-notation of earlier works like Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 129 Twenty-Five Pages, but he dispensed with the notation of specific pitch locations— one is left with a torrent of horizontal rectangles of varying lengths and widths spread across a single staffless page. The diastemic positioning of the graphics establishes a spatial relationship between events that is similar to time-space notation. Essentially, Brown places pitch into the same condition as that which he had prescribed for duration: Fig. 2-18. Brown, Four Systems (excerpt) Research Library, The Getty Research Institute, Los Angeles (980039) Strictly in terms of rhythmic characteristics, Four Systems is essentially identical to works such as Twenty-Five Pages: the notation encourages an interpretation of durations based on the totality of the time-continuum, unencumbered by metric division or pulse. Wolff was the only composer of the New York School not to have had conventional musical training—his earliest “formal” studies in composition were Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 130 with Cage. The sixteen-year-old student began with exercises in species counterpoint (as Cage had done with Schoenberg), but his studies soon turned to the analysis of Webern’s Symphony, op. 21. W olffs early compositions, like those of Cage at the time, were based on predetermined rhythmic structures and limited collections of pitches. One of W olffs early works, For Prepared Piano (1951), appeared in many of Tudor’s programs in the 1950s, including the Musik der Zeit program in Cologne in 1954: m dm mf arf p r-h £ £ * f £ m l _ s — f 8 - - , 8----- - iS j l ‘ 1 a 1 = i ............................6 - * = ) h = = ± — = SP p f * f mp % f ~ f - ■f* * j P * . . . 1 - Fig. 2-19. Wolff, For Prepared Piano, mvt. 1 (mm. 1-10) The composer provides the following program note for several early performances of the work: Each piece has its own gamut of a varying number of sounds (7, 10, 11, 9). A “sound” may be a single note or chord or an aggregate of notes and/or chords. Amplitude and register are fixed for each sound whenever it occurs; Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 131 duration tends to be fixed. The sounds are composed in a structure which is, for each piece, a different pattern or combination of patterns within a square of twenty-five measures (i.e. with dimensions of 5 x 5). The order in which the measures are composed may vary (according to the nature of the pattern). In short, sounds are fixed in a preconceived space without regard for linear continuity.9 5 In For Prepared Piano, Wolff uses determinate compositional procedures and conventional notation, but like the other composers surveyed to this point, he is obviously interested in denying a clear sense of meter. Although each of the four movements has a common time-signature with an unchanging tempo (to be selected between sixty and seventy-two beats per minute), Wolff offers no rhythmic figure to affirm any metric arrangement. Similar to Feldman’s early works, most of the musical events in For Prepared Piano are single articulations of varying duration interspersed with rests of varying duration, which effectively denies a perceptible pulse. In the few instances when an event is defined by two articulations (and in one case, five articulations), the duration values are irrational subdivisions of the beat, which discourages the identification of an underlying pulse. As with most of W olff s early works of 1951 and 1952, For Prepared Piano is characterized by the use of a severely limited amount of musical materials. The identity of each event derived from these materials is underscored by its peculiar timbre resulting from the piano’s preparations. Another factor adding to the clear identity of each event is its recurrence. But the subsequent appearance of any given event is rarely confined to the same metric position, recalling the rhythmic cells found in the music of Stravinsky, Boulez, and the early works of Brown. W olffs interest in the absence of Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 132 meter and pulse eventually led to his own distinctive experiments in unconventional notation and indeterminacy. Compared to the other New York composers, Wolff came to use unconventional notation relatively late. In the late 1950s, Wolff developed a new compositional technique for ensuring a music devoid of pulse: he composed music that required the performers to respond spontaneously to auditory cues provided by one another within the context of the performance, or what he called “social music.” The impetus behind the conception of such music, recalls Wolff, was the production of rhythms liberated from a conventional metric context: Originally it had to do with ideas about rhythm, which is that you produce a certain kind of rhythm by these kinds of coordination and these techniques of coordination, which I found you could hardly produce any other way. It’s a rhythm that has to do with being surprised, and having to wait on other people . . . [before you do] what you are supposed to do.9 6 An early example of W olff s “social music” is Duo for Pianists (1957), first Q 7 performed by Tudor and Cage at Harvard University in December of 1957. Fig. 2-20. Wolff, Duo fo r Pianists (second piano part, p. 1) The score requires each performer to select and play a given number of pitches from a predetermined gamut within a given time frame, or what Wolff calls a “structural Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 133 unit,” as determined by cues played by the other performer. There are fifteen structural units ranging in duration from 1/16 of a second to 42 1/5 seconds. Two primary factors contribute to the defiance of pulse in Duo fo r Pianists: the irrational duration of the structural units—especially since these values are being interpreted by live performers—and the inherent spontaneity of the performers responding to an auditory cue. Once again, silence plays a functional role in the formulation of the rhythmic profile, as many of the structural units include silence as an event. Similar to the other New York composers, Wolff relied on silence as a crucial component of his works, regardless of how the scores were notated. The control of silence was of the utmost interest to each of the New York composers, and their idiosyncratic methods of achieving that control are essential to their individual style. “Silence,” as Michael Nyman states, “was perhaps as important a feature of the early experimental music as performance indeterminacy and chance procedures.”9 8 The prominent interest in silence among the American avant-gardists can be traced to Webern. While the Europeans were more interested in total serialism as it was suggested by Webern’s music, the Americans were impressed by the isolation of sound events, largely facilitated by the important role of silence. But this feature did not go unnoticed by the Europeans, as Boulez acknowledges in the article “Incipif ’ (1952): It is one of the hardest truths to demonstrate that music is not simply ‘the art of sounds,’ but is better defined as a counterpoint between sound and silence. Webern’s sole, but also unique, innovation in the rhythmic field: this Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 134 conception which links sound to silence in a relation so precise as to exhaust the power of auditory perception. Musical tension is enriched by a genuine respiration, comparable only to that which Mallarme brought to poetry." Cage recognized that Webern was a common source for two seemingly divergent movements in the post-war avant-garde. In April of 1956, Tudor and Cage offered a program of “new” music for piano at the Harvard Radio Broadcasting Company (WHRB). The program began with Webern’s Variations, op. 27 and was followed by works of Boulez and Stockhausen on the first half, and works by the four New York composers on the second half. The program note by Cage posits his view of the relationship between Webern and the two factions: The present program illustrates two divergent directions characterizing advanced contemporary music, both stemming from the work of Anton Webern. Webern’s later music, in contrast to that of Berg and Schoenberg, suggested the application of serial methods to other aspects of sound than frequency. The compositions of Boulez and Stockhausen, the leaders of the ‘avant-garde,’ respectively, in France and Germany, demonstrate this application. Though in no sense neo-Classical, these works continue the European concern with a ‘musical dialectic’ (to quote Boulez) and with the integration o f ‘form’ and ‘content.’ Webern’s music also suggested the autonomy of a sound in time- space, and the possibility of making a music not dependent upon linear continuity means. The American works, setting out from this essentially non- dualistic point, proceed variously.1 0 0 While the “autonomy of sound” refers to the pointillistic isolation of pitches that derives from a conscious placement of rests, “time-space” is an explicit reference to the notion of a time-continuum that motivated their experiments with graphic notation systems and indeterminacy. The New York composers’ collective use of indeterminate procedures was based on specific compositional objectives that create a unified body of work, the Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 135 rhythmic characteristics of which set them apart from the European avant-garde. Wolff addresses the liveliness of the indeterminate works and how they differ from the ultra-rationalized compositions of the Europeans: I’m also convinced that the music has a character because of this indeterminacy that it would not otherwise have. Opening it up that way does, in fact, change the music quite drastically. This is harder to verbalize, I think, but I would say the music has more life. It comes alive much more easily when it has that indeter-minate quality about it. And that’s what I liked about it. The thing that we were beginning to feel pretty soon about this hyperorganized, European/Darmstadt music was that it could be just as dead as a doornail. Theoretically it was very exciting and interesting, but somehow it was like machinery. It just didn’t swing. Whereas if you introduced these other dimensions, whether it was in the compositional process as John did, or in the performing situation as I did and, in different ways, as Earle did, then you got something much more interesting.1 0 1 The intangible quality to which Wolff refers, that which gives the indeterminate music its characteristic “swing,” takes place in the realm of rhythm. Wolff describes, in terms relating to conventional notation, the rhythmic realm in which he prefers to compose: I was interested in two things. One was indeterminacy and the other was this thing of being just slightly off a fixed point. The fixed point is abstract in any case, but in classical music the notion of fixed points is very important: bar lines and all of that stuff. What I got interested in was the idea of just being a little bit off of it... [In conventional notation,] grace notes and fermatas, you might say, are the two models for the kind of rhythm I’m interested in. If you have a grace note and you remove the beat, which is one way of looking at it, or if you have only fermatas, that would be the situation in which I operate.1 0 2 The commonality between grace notes without a target note and fermatas is the denial of a referential pulse. As discussed above, a preponderance of grace notes and fermatas exists in Pousseur’s Variations I, and grace notes inundate Stockhausen’s Klavierstiicke V- VIII, Webern’s Variations op. 27, and to a much lesser extent Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 136 Boulez’s Second Sonata. These European works, each of which held a position in Tudor’s repertory in the 1950s, exhibit a kinship with W olffs description of “being just slightly off a fixed point”; they are the conventionally notated counterparts to the indeterminate rhythmic domain that Wolff advocates. In fact, Stockhausen refers to grace notes as a conventionally notated example of “differentiated field-sizes.”1 0 3 Boulez acknowledges the use of grace notes to disrupt a sense of pulse, but he has reservations about the loss of control that the notation of such music requires: But there is also a kind of music that seems to float, and in which the writing itself makes it impossible for the performer to keep in line with a pulsed tempo: grace notes, ornaments, or a profusion of differences in dynamics will make the performer give so much attention to what is happening that temporal control recedes into the background. At such times the activity itself is more important than its control, so that at times mensural notation is no more than a visual aid. Such notation will not be respected because it can’t be.1 0 4 The use of grace notes to fracture the constructs of rhythmic regularity warrants further consideration in a separate study. The popular distinction between the American and European avant-garde in the 1950s, the one that generated most discussion, is the apparent opposition of control and chance. But even here, as Wolff explains, it is more a matter of where a composer exerts control: What was so shocking intellectually to everybody was this notion of randomness, that you gave up control. And yet it was clear that control operates at many different levels or angles, and that there was just as much control in John’s work as there might be in Stockhausen’s or Boulez’s. It was just a question of where you applied it and how you focused it.1 0 5 Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 137 In their conventionally notated works of the early 1950s, each of the New York composers exerted particular control over rhythmic elements, carefully notating durations and silences in order to break free from the tyranny of pulse and meter. The indeterminate features and notational peculiarities of their later works emerged as a consequence of their musical objectives with respect to the time-continuum. In other words, indeterminacy as a compositional technique did not consist in the relinquishing of control, but the conscious re-direction of control. “If we introduce random elements,” Feldman asserts, “we introduce them quite calculatingly.”1 0 6 If the European rhythmic procedures can be referred to as conventionally complex, then the New York composers’ approach to rhythm might be described as unconventionally simple: the notation typically simplifies the execution of what in conventional notation would be extremely complex—the succession of musical events whose durations are not conceived in relation to a beat. The adoption of new notational systems was not merely a novelty, it was inextricably connected to specific compositional objectives. The New York composers’ procedures of indeterminacy, along with the unconventional notation systems that accommodated these various procedures, were motivated largely by a desire to be “just slightly o ff’ the fixed points of traditional rhythm and meter. Like their European colleagues, the Americans were interested in creating music that was devoid of metric regularity, and which often was not governed by an underlying pulse. All the composers whose works held prominent positions in Tudor’s recital programs were interested in redefining musical time. In Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 138 their distinct ways, they discouraged the perception of any type of meter by either bombarding or denying what had been the longstanding basic unit of rhythm. Regardless of the compositional technique, these rhythmic innovations were designed to make a visceral impact, as Messiaen explains: It’s not essential for listeners to be able to detect precisely all the rhythmic procedures of the music they hear, just as they don’t need to figure out all the chords of classical music.... The moment that they receive a shock, realize that it’s beautiful, that the music touches them, the goal is achieved!1 0 7 The shocking new sound resulting from innovative rhythmic techniques was the primary motivating factor behind the composers’ experimentation. The rhythmic innovations of both the European and American composers challenged performers and, as a direct consequence or not, audiences as well. Edward Cone asserts that the apprehension of rhythm, and therewith form, is crucial to the interpretation of a work: . . . valid performance depends primarily on the perception and communication of the rhythmic life of a composition. That is to say, we must first discover the rhythmic shape of a piece—which is what is meant by its form—and then try to make it as clear as possible to our listeners.1 0 8 So exceptional was the “rhythmic life” in the works of Tudor’s repertory that the pianist was obliged to discontinue the performance of the standard literature in order to cultivate a performance practice appropriate to the repertory. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 139 NOTES 1. David Tudor, “From Piano to Electronics,” Music and Musicians 20:12 (1972), 24. 2. The David Tudor Papers, 1884-1998 (bulk 1940-1996), Getty Research Institute, Research Library, Accession no. 980039 (DT, GRI), Box 51, Folder 7. 3. Anon., The Boulder Daily Camera, 25 June 1951. 4. See John Holzaepfel, “The Roles of David Tudor in the Early Repertory of the Merce Cunningham Dance Company,” Choreography and Dance 4 (1997), 5. For a study of the composers and their relationship to the “New York School” of painters after whom they are named, see Steven Johnson, ed. The New York Schools o f Music and Visual Arts (New York: Routledge, 2002). 6. Tudor, “From Piano,” 24. 7. John Cage, For the Birds (Salem, NH, London and Melbourne: Marion Boyars, 1981), 124. 8. Walter Zimmerman, Desert Plants: Conversations with Twenty-Three American Musicians (Vancouver: A.R.C. Publications, 1976), 41. In an interview with the author, Wolff insisted that Tudor, as a pianist, was just as much a member of the “School” as the composers (19 May 2001). 9. William Duckworth, Talking Music: Conversations with John Cage, Philip Glass, Laurie Anderson, and Five Generations o f American Experimental Composers (New York: Schirmer Books, 1995), 189-90. 10. John Cage, “History of Experimental Music in the United States,” Silence (Middletown, CT: Wesleyan University Press, 1961), 71. 11. Michael Nyman, Experimental Music: Cage and Beyond (New York: Schirmer Books, 1974), 51. 12. James Pritchett, The Music o f John Cage (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993), 106. 13. For a discussion of the role played by American composers, performers, and musicologists in post-war Germany, see Amy C. Beal, “Negotiating Cultural Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 140 Allies: American Music in Darmstadt, 1946-1956,” Journal o f the American Musicological Society 53:1 (Spring 2000), 105-39. 14. Michael Kurtz, Stockhausen: A Biography, trans. Richard Toop (London: Faber and Faber, 1992), 75. 15. DT, GRI, letter from Tudor to Stockhausen, 8 Nov 1954. 16. Kurtz, Stockhausen, 75. 17. Tudor was the ambassador of a more limited contingent of the American avant- garde: the pianist’s programs were overwhelmingly dominated by the works of the New York composers; the music of Milton Babbitt and Elliot Carter, for example, made virtually no appearance in his programs. 18. Tudor, “From Piano,” 25. 19. Mary Caroline Richards Papers, 1928-1994, Getty Research Institute, Research Library, Accession no. 960036 (MCR, GRI). 20. Harold Schonberg, “The Far-Out Pianist,” Harpers Magazine (June 1960), 49. 21. DT, GRI, Box 15, Folder 2. 22. Cage, Birds, 126. 23. DT, GRI, Box 51, Folder 7. 24. Roger Sessions, “Problems and Issues Facing the Composer Today,” The Musical Quarterly 46 (April 1960), 166. 25. Ernst Krenek, “Extents and Limits of Serial Techniques,” Musical Quarterly 46 (April 1960), 73. 26. Claude Samuel, Conversations with Olivier Messiaen, trans. Felix Aprahamian, (London: Stainer and Bell, 1976), 82. 27. Ibid., 67. 28. Ibid., 83. 29. Pierre Boulez, “Proposals,” Stocktakings from an Apprenticeship, trans. Stephen Walsh (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1991), 47-48. For a brief discussion Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 141 by Messiaen of Stravinsky’s innovations in rhythm, see “Le rythme chez Igor Strawinsky,” Revue Musicale 191 (1939), 91-92. For a survey of Messiaen’s own idiosyncratic use of rhythm, see chapters 1-7 of Messiaen, The Technique o f my Musical Language, trans. John Satterfield (Paris: Alphonse Leduc, 1956). 30. Boulez, Stocktakings, 48-49. 31. Samuel, Messiaen, 67. 32. Boulez, Stocktakings, 54. 33. Boulez, “Schoenberg est mort” was originally published in English in The Score 6 (February 1952), 18-22. It has been reprinted as “Schoenberg is Dead” in Stocktakings, 209-14. 34. Boulez, Stocktakings, 49. 35. Die Reihe 2 (1956): Anton Webern. 36. Boulez, Conversations with Celestin Deliege, trans. anon. (London: Eulenburg Books, 1975), 40. 37. Charles Rosen, “The piano music,” Pierre Boulez: A Symposium, ed. William Glock (London: Eulenburg Books, 1986), 92. 38. Ibid., 53. 39. Boulez, “Stravinsky Remains,” Stocktakings, 108-9. 40. Often, Boulez explicitly refers to composition as “research” in the description of his work as well as that of others. In the article “Proposals,” “Messiaen’s researches lay down certain principles which it is essential to regard as established” (“Proposals,” Stocktakings, 48); in reference to the isorhythmic techniques of late Medieval and early Renaissance composers: “What better precedent could one invoke for modem research than a period when music was considered not just as an art, but also as a science, thereby avoiding all sorts of convenient misunderstandings (and despite the existence of a no less convenient scholasticism)?” (“Stravinsky Remains,” Stocktakings, 109); and in a letter to Cage dated January 11,1950, Boulez writes: “sometime during February I have to go to Liege [did not go] to give a lecture on your research and m ine.. . . After a lengthy consideration of your percussion research, I shall move on to the prepared piano.. . . And when we have heard your discs, I shall play my second Sonata (two movements of it, at any rate), explaining what Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 142 may link us in researching a work’s structure by means of rhythmic structures.” Jean Jacques Nattiez, ed. The Boulez-Cage, trans. Robert Samuels (Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press, 1993), 44. 41. Boulez, Stocktakings, 54. 42. Ibid., 158. 43. Ibid., 166. 44. Ibid., 165. 45. Boulez, “An Interview with Dominique Jameux,” Orientations, ed. Jean Jacques Nattiez, trans. Martin Cooper (Cambridge, Mass: Harvard University Press, 1986), 201-2. 46. The only works by Boulez that Tudor performed were the first two sonatas and the Sonatine pour flute et piano. Conspicuously missing from Tudor’s programs are two of Boulez’s most significant works for piano: Structures I (1951) and his Third Piano Sonata (1961). Also, as the decade progresses, Boulez’s works appear on Tudor’s programs with less frequency. This may have been due to the personal and artistic differences that developed between Boulez and Cage, which culminated in the sharp criticism of the New York composers in Boulez’s article “Alea,” La Nouvelle Revue frangaise 59 (November 1957), 839-57. “Alea” was reprinted in Stocktakings, 26-38. 47. Karlheinz Stockhausen, “ . . . how time passes . . . , ” Die Reihe 3 (1957, Engl, ed. 1959), 21. 48. Ibid., 30. 49. Ibid. 50. Ibid., 31. 51. Ibid., 32-33. 52. Robin Maconie, The Works o f Karlheinz Stockhausen (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1990), 71. 53. Rosen, “Piano Music,” 93. 54. Maconie, Stockhausen, 71. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 143 55. DT, GRI, Box 59, Folder 7. 56. Ibid. 57. Stockhausen designed the score for Studie 7/(1954), on the other hand, so that a studio engineer may undertake a realization of the work. 58. Maconie, Stockhausen, 71. 59. Stockhausen, “ . . . time . . . , ” 33. 60. Ibid. 61. Henri Pousseur, “Outline of a Method,” Die Reihe 3 (1957), 54-55. 62. Ibid., 48. 63. Ibid., 54-55. Jonathan Kramer refers to chronometric time differently: chronometric time: “timespans are measured quasi-objectively not by an external clock nor by an unreliable biological clock, but by music’s internal clock, the ticking away of beats (not pulses).. . . If metric regularity were inseparably connected to absolute time or to a subjective clock, then it would be destroyed whenever tempo changed. If, on the other hand, music’s chronometric time is its internal clock, then we can understand how it is possible to experience a change of tempo without an attendant change of meter.” Jonathan Kramer, The Time o f Music (New York: Schirmer Books, 1988), 99. 64. Tudor was not the first to draw a distinction between American and European concepts of rhythm. Delivering the prestigious Charles Eliot Norton lectures at Harvard University in 1951 and 1952, Aaron Copland remarked: “Confining ourselves to serious music, there seems to me no doubt that if we are to lay claim to thinking inventively in the music of the Americas our principal stake must be a rhythmic one.” Copland, Music and Imagination (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1952), 83. Also see Roy Harris, “Problems of American Composers,” American Composers on American Music: A Symposium, ed. Henry Cowell (New York, 1962), 149-66. 65. Cage, Birds, 222. 66. Ibid., 201. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 144 67. For a discussion of the “micro-macrocosmic rhythmic structure,” see Pritchett, Cage, 13-16. 68. Cage, “Forerunners of Modem Music,” Silence, 64n. 69. Cage, “Defense of Satie,” John Cage: An Anthology, ed. Richard Kostelanetz (New York: Da Capo Press, 1970, republished 1991), 81. 70. Boulez, Stocktakings, 47. 71. See note 38 above: Nattiez, Boulez-Cage, 44. See also Virgil Thomson, “Atonality today” (New York Herald Tribune, 29 January and 5 February 1950) reprinted in A Virgil Thomson Reader (Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company, 1981), 339-40. 72. Program notes for a recital given by Tudor at the Festival of Contemporary Arts, University of Illinois, 22 March 1953. DT, GRI, Box 70, Folder 11. 73. John Cage, Music o f Changes (New York, London: C. F. Peters Corporation, 1961). 74. Duckworth, Talking, 192. 75. Boulez, Stocktakings, 135. 76. Cage, “Experimental Music: Doctrine,” Silence, 15. 77. Pritchett, Cage, 94. 78. Cage, “Experimental Music,” Silence, 10. 79. Cage, Birds, 44. 80. Cage, “To describe the process of composition used in ‘Music for piano 21- 52’,” Die Reihe 3 (1957, English trans. 1959), 43; reprinted in Silence, 61. 81. Pritchett, Cage, 94. 82. Zimmerman, Desert Plants, 7. 83. Ibid. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 145 84. Program notes for a recital given by Tudor at the Festival of Contemporary Arts, University of Illinois, 22 March 1953. DT, GRI, Box 70, Folder 11. 85. Kramer, Time o f Music, 82. 86. Cole Gagne and Tracy Caras, Soundpieces 2: Interviews with American Composers (Metuchen, NJ: Scarecrow Press Inc., 1982), 169. 87. Holzaepfel, “Painting by Numbers,” Johnson, ed. New York Schools, 159. 88. Brown, liner notes: Time Records MS 58007. 89. Program notes for a recital given by Tudor at the Festival of Contemporary Arts, University of Illinois, 22 March 1953. DT, GRI, Box 70, Folder 11. 90. Brown, “Some Notes on Composing,” The American Composer Speaks, ed. Gilbert Chase (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1966), 304. 91. The present study is limited to the investigation of the sound continuum in regard to duration (rhythm) since the piano, Tudor’s instrument at the time of his change in perception, is enslaved to the “discrete steps” of the frequency coordinates. But it is noteworthy that Tudor ceased his activity as a pianist in the late 1960s in order to undertake the composition and performance of live electronic music, a medium that is capable of embracing the entire frequency continuum. 92. Brown, “The Notation and Performance of New Music,” Musical Quarterly 72:2 (Spring 1986), 193. 93. Ibid., 180-81. 94. Brown, notes for Music for Cello and Piano (1955), DT, GRI: Box 172, Folder 3. 95. Program notes for a recital given by Tudor at the Festival of Contemporary Arts, University of Illinois, 22 March 1953. DT, GRI, Box 70, Folder 11. 96. Zimmerman, Desert Plants, 26. 97. For other discussions of Duo for Pianists, see Wolff, “On Form,” Die Reihe 1 (1960, English trans., 1965), 26-31; and Nyman, Experimental Music, 66-69. 98. Nyman, Experimental Music, 60. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 146 99. Boulez, Stocktakings, 216. 100. The program included: Anton Webern, Variations, Op. 27; Pierre Boulez, First Piano Sonata; Karlheinz Stockhausen, Klavierstiicke VII- VIII (VII = World Premiere); John Cage, Water Music', Christian Wolff, Suite (World Premiere); Earle Brown, Perspectives', Morton Feldman, Two Pieces for Two pianos (World Premiere); Morton Feldman, Intersection 3; John Cage, Music for 2 Pianos. DT, GRI. 101. Duckworth, Talking, 197-98. 102. Gagne and Caras, Soundpieces 2, 446-47. 103. Stockhausen, “ . . . time . . . , ” 34. 104. Boulez, Conversations, 69. 105. Duckworth, Talking, 197. 106. Schonberg, “Far-Out,” 51. 107. Samuel, Messiaen, 83. 108. Edward Cone, Musical Form and Musical Performance (New York: W.W. Norton and Company, 1968), 38-39. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 147 CHAPTER THREE OBJECTIFICATION OF TIME: TUDOR’S COURSES AT DARMSTADT “You don’t think I count this, do you?” — David Tudor to Earle Brown Largely guided by recent experiments in the realm of electronic music, the composers represented in Tudor’s repertory provided an alternative to the conventional teleological passage of musical time by rejecting such traditional temporal articulators as pulse and meter. Such an objective challenged Tudor to re evaluate the manner in which he, as a performer, might realize these rhythmic innovations. The new “time-conception” of these works, as Tudor called it, precipitated a fundamental difference in the pianist’s preparation of a score: contrary to the findings of clinical studies in rhythm perception and to the common experience of musicians, Tudor did not rely on counting beats. The pianist reveals his unique strategy for formulating the new performance practice in preparatory notes for seminars in interpretation and piano performance that he led at the Internationale Ferienkurse fur Neue Musik at Darmstadt in 1956. In the present Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 148 chapter, I will clarify how Tudor’s change in perception affected his performance practice by examining these notes in relation to selected works in Tudor’s repertory—especially John Cage’s Music o f Changes, which featured most prominently in the seminars. In his correspondence with conductor Hermann Scherchen, Tudor explains that the reason he did not maintain a repertoire of classical music was “because the time-conception . . . is so different that the player’s rhythmic organization has to be entirely changed.”1 A corollary to the new time-conception in these scores, according to Tudor, is the responsibility placed on the performer to modify his “rhythmic organization,” or the manner in which the player relates a succession of durations. Such a modification appears necessary: these often notoriously complex works have in common an innovative approach to the element of rhythm that, at the surface, would seem to require a machine to execute them with accuracy—that is, if one insisted on counting and subdividing the rhythmic configurations as was and continues to be the mainstay of reading conventionally notated music. Tudor’s change in perception, however, was accompanied by a change in reading techniques that rendered the practice of counting rhythms irrelevant. Cage remarks that it was the advent of magnetic tape that made the conventional reading of rhythms obsolete: Counting is no longer necessary for magnetic tape music (where so many inches or centimeters equal so many seconds): magnetic tape music makes it clear that we are in time itself, not in measures of two, three, or four or any other number. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 149 Boulez agrees with Cage, and goes on to address the “problems” inherent to a conception of rhythm derived from work in the electronic studio: I have emphasized elsewhere the possibility the composer has, when working with magnetic tape, of using any duration he likes—including durations that could not be played by live performers—since all he has to do is cut the tape at the length which corresponds to the duration in question. The simplicity of this technique conceals three problems: the perception of duration, the definition of tempo, and the continuity of any unarticulated tempo that may be placed at the composer’s disposal. While both composers refer to the medium of magnetic tape, they also raise important questions of perception, suggesting that one must now take into consideration a temporal realm that is foreign to that of conventional instrumental music. In fact, Boulez purposely excludes instrumental music from his observations; he reserves the notion of a temporal continuum for the electronic medium. But it is clear that Tudor engaged the same perceptual issues as a live performer. Brown recalls a discussion with Tudor that illustrates the pianist’s renunciation of that practice seemingly basic to reading rhythms. The discussion concerned Brown’s Perspectives (1952), a recent addition to the pianist’s repertory. Composed according to an adaptation of the Schillinger system, Perspectives consists of “rhythmic groups” (not unlike “rhythmic cells” in the music of Stravinsky and Boulez) that undergo constant permutation, variations which do not lend themselves comfortably to metric regularity.4 After recognizing the antagonistic nature of the notation, Brown offered to re-notate the score for Tudor within a more clearly defined metrical context. The composer was taken aback by the pianist’s response: Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 150 [I]n 1950-52,1 came to a point of indicating rhythmic complexity and durational subtleties which seemed to me to be beyond counting and beyond performers’ conscious or unconscious control of metric divisions on which standard notation is based. This was in essence confirmed by a conversation with David Tudor concerning my Perspectives for piano (1952), which is dedicated to him. . .. Before I made a final copy, I asked Tudor if he would prefer that I renotate it so that the durations would be countable in terms of a uniform pulse. He said, no, that it did not really matter because he practiced it in terms of duration relative to tempo and simply added and multiplied temporal units in their phraseology until he arrived at the definition of the individual groups, and so on, up through the entire structure of the work. At least this is how I understood his way of performing such ‘beat-less’ pieces.5 According to Brown, Tudor approached such “beat-less pieces” as Perspectives “in terms of duration relative to tempo,” by adding and multiplying temporal units. This practice recalls Stockhausen’s description of time-field sizes (at least a year before Tudor and Stockhausen met) and, more precisely, Boulez’s description not of “rhythmic cells,” but of “rhythmic units” the term he used in relation to electronic music: “basing the music not on a single pulse, but on a series of units.”6 Boulez wrote about the “completely new conception of rhythm” exclusively in the context of electronic music; he did not imagine that it could facilitate the live performance of an instrumental composition. But this is apparently what it had been doing for Tudor since, at the latest, 1953, the year that Brown’s Perspectives began to appear in the pianist’s recital programs. Recently, Brown acknowledged that his conversation with Tudor regarding Perspectives “was the key” to his musical life: Eventually I realized that, “Why am I putting all those stupid little rests in there if he’s not counting? He’s playing it proportionately.” That’s what led me to proportional notation, what I call time-notation. And I [thought], “If he’s not counting it, I think I can put it in a context which makes it easier to Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 151 play, because I can put it in proportional relationships and he doesn’t have to read all that; there doesn’t have to be all this little garbage in here.” And that was a big, big, big, big thing in my life—it lead me into a brand new notation.. . . I wanted to free time, unencumbered by counting.. . . I always heard my classical music as kind of floating in space, freely. And that one comment of David’s—“You don’t think I count this, do you?”—was the key to my life, in effect.7 Tudor unquestionably influenced the composers with whom he associated. But the pianist offered much more than his formidable technical skills: he also provided a valuable alternative to the performance practice of rhythmically complex music. Since his student years, Tudor had been a precocious sightreader of challenging but rhythmically conventional music. Presumably, for a significant part of his musical life, Tudor subdivided rhythms in a metrical context—he did “count” at some point. A significant factor in the pianist’s change in perception was a new manner of rhythmic organization, one that re-evaluated the cognition of successive durations. In order to understand better Tudor’s new mode of perception, one must determine first what constitutes a “standard” mode of rhythm perception. It would be instructive, then, to consider the deductions of eminent research on rhythm perception in the field of experimental psychology. Many of the experiments in rhythm perception have been extremely elementary in terms of the musical sophistication of the sound materials. Swedish psychologist Alf Gabrielsson explains why the typical research conditions are simplified: Most empirical research on rhythm has not directly dealt with musical rhythm, but rather more generally with auditory rhythm. There are at least two reasons for that. One is that it is much easier to generate and manipulate Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 152 simple sound sequences than the complex stimuli found in real music. In many experiments the stimuli are thus sequences of short click sounds ..., which are varied with regard to durations, intensities, pitches (frequencies), etc. While this reason is mainly of technical nature, the second reason is more substantial. According to this, musical rhythm may be seen as an application of more general and fundamental principles common for all or many rhythmic phenomena in various fields. Hopefully these general principles would be easier to find in ‘simplified’ situations, in which various o confounding effects may be avoided. Studies in experimental psychology, while not capable of addressing the complexities of music perception, can provide a discourse in which to discuss important phenomena associated with a listener’s response to temporal patterns. Paul Fraisse, whose celebrated study The Psychology o f Time (1963) has been the basis of much research on the topic, describes how time is determined by the experience of change: “The birth of the notion of time is no doubt the result of the experience of successions, of which some are periodic and others not, of continuous and discontinuous changes, of interwoven renewals and relatively permanent states.”9 But the notion of the perception of temporal successions, Fraisse explains, may initially appear paradoxical: The nature of any perception depends to a great extent on the past experiences of the individual, but it can always be defined as the apprehension of present stimuli without the explicit intervention of memories and without intellectual elaboration. From this it is immediately clear that the perception of change poses a problem. To speak of change is to say that what is, ceases to be or is transformed.1 The very concept of succession rests on the supposition that one is cognizant of at least two points of time, effectively surpassing the perception of “present stimuli.” Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 153 But Fraisse resolves this issue by making a distinction between the actual event and one’s knowledge of the event: To speak of succession is to say that when a new phenomenon occurs, the old one is no longer present. At least this is the analysis prompted by our idea of succession. If we define perception as the apprehension of the present, perception of a succession seems impossible; this is the conclusion reached by logical analysis, which might be reinforced by hasty introspection. The Wurzburg school has fortunately put us on our guard against objective error, which consists in confusing the phenomenon observed with our knowledge of the object.1 1 Thus, a psychological relationship exists between temporal phenomena which allows one to speak of succession. This relationship is made clearly evident in one of the most basic rhythmic experiments in psychology. The classic study of rhythm perception in experimental psychology concerns the manner in which a series of uniform pulses tends to be grouped by the subject. Fraisse refers to such grouping of an undifferentiated sequence of sounds as “subjective patterning” (Gabrielsson calls it “subjective rhythmization”): If we listen to a succession of identical sounds following each other at regular intervals, they will seem to us to be grouped in twos or threes; to our perception they are no longer individual sounds but successive groups. Through this phenomenon, which has been called ‘subjective patterning’ to emphasize the fact that it does not correspond to a physical reality, more than through any other, we are able to analyze the perception of succession. This grouping is the result of a comprehensive and, as it were, simultaneous apprehension of several elements which form one unit of perception.1 2 Fraisse, following the preeminent American psychologist William James, identifies this unit of perception as the “perceived present,” a critical concept in the apprehension of temporal events: Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 154 [There exists] a perceived present which can last only for the duration of the organization which we perceive as one unit.. . . There is order in this present, there are intervals between its constituent elements, but there is also a form of simultaneity resulting from the very unity of my act of perception. Thus the perceived present is not the paradox which logical analysis would make it seem by splitting time into atoms and reducing the present to the simple passage of time without psychological reality. Even to perceive this passage of time requires an act of apprehension which has an appreciable duration.1 3 The phenomenon of the perceived present—-variously known as the “specious present,” “sensible present,” “psychic present,” “mental present,” “conscious present,” and “actually present”—is acknowledged by virtually all practitioners of experimental psychology. Fraisse remarks, “The organization of successive elements into units of perception is . . . such a fundamental part of our experience that we no longer notice it. It is the basis of our perception of rhythm, of melody, and even of the sounds of speech.”1 4 In the tradition of Western music, meter standardized the perceived present by organizing its successive elements not only into units, but into regularly subdivided units. Such subdivision has proliferated the practice of counting rhythms. But as Christopher Hasty explains, the psychological phenomenon of the perceived present is by no means restricted to metric order: It is customary to view the present logically as the durationless instant (like the extensionless point of mathematical space) separating past from future. The findings of psychology which corroborate simple introspection, however, point to an enduring present. Listening to a tone which lasts for one second, one perceives spontaneously the duration of the tone without counting or measuring the duration against a surrogate activity such as breathing or the tensing of muscles.. . . Likewise a series of pulses can be perceived as a unit which can be either reproduced or compared with another series to determine whether the two consist of the same number of elements. Again, this can be done without recourse to counting.. . . The fact of this unitary perception of Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 155 succession has led psychologists to posit the reality of a perceived present. . . . This conception, which will prove very useful in the investigation of musical phenomena, describes a special sort of duration, one in which the successive contents are integrated to such a degree that they cannot be said to have disappeared from immediate consciousness and are therefore not past. The unity of the contents in this perception could be thought of as a sort of simultaneity, and yet the contents are clearly ordered and the duration is a sensing duration and most information concerning the perceived present comes from auditory investigations.1 5 Significantly, Hasty emphasizes that within the temporal unit of the perceived present, the rhythmic profile of a series of durations can be determined “without recourse to counting.” Here one may make a distinction, as Feldman does, between rhythm and duration. Recall Feldman’s remark regarding the conventional notation of such works as his Intermission series: “On paper it looks as though it were rhythm. It’s not. It’s duration.”1 6 Feldman’s curious distinction between rhythm and duration raises two separate but related issues, both of which, as will be demonstrated, are central to Tudor’s new mode of perception. First is the potential discrepancy between how a piece is notated and how it sounds. Throughout his career, Feldman was particularly concerned with questions of notation—in the 1950s and 1960s he experimented with at least three different notational systems. The second and more decisive issue is the perception of rhythm versus that of duration. The perception of rhythmic movement, according to theorist Maury Yeston, 17 necessarily presupposes an underlying pulse. That is to say, once a rhythm is perceived as such, a hierarchy has automatically been established and what the listener experiences is the relationship between stratified layers of motion. Without Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 156 at least two layers of motion, rhythm does not exist; instead, one experiences a series of durations. Both layers, of course, need not be aurally present: as demonstrated by studies in experimental psychology, whether or not the series of durations exhibits any perceivable periodicity, the listener will tend to supply the underlying pulse by grouping the sounds. Rhythm can thus be distinguished as a collection of durations whose placement is recognized and identified within a hierarchic network of pulses. While many avant-garde composers in the 1950s made an effort to disrupt the regularity of the pulse (as did Boulez), or to mobilize the pulse in accordance with the complexity of the notation (as did Stockhausen), Feldman set out to negate it entirely by shifting the focus to duration. A succession of durations, as opposed to a rhythmic configuration, may be apprehended without the hierarchic network—that is, without counting. The distinction between rhythm and duration, then, is psychological, not physical; there is no difference in the resultant sound of a given rhythmic configuration and its corresponding collection of durations. That is not to say that the distinction is meaningless: in any multivalent art form, it is integration of the physical medium and one’s psychological construct that generates a perceptual response. Leonard Meyer explains that perception is nurtured through cultural experience, and therefore should be directed towards the mind: [P]erceptual capacities, though dependent of physiological and neural capabilities, are not ‘given’ or genetically imprinted in the nervous system. Perception in any meaningful sense is not the nai've act of an empty, primitive neural receptor; it is an act of learned discrimination. The world is not presented to us as a set of intelligible relationships.. . . Thus, while it is Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 157 commendable for composers to be concerned with the limitations of the senses, it is well to remember that music is directed, not to the senses, but through the sense and to the mind. And it might be well if more serious attention were paid to the capacity, behavior, and abilities of the human mind.1 8 He also points out that behavioral responses of the mind are affected to a large extent by an accompanying physical activity: Our ability to learn to perceive visual and auditory patterns is not solely a function of what the senses feed into our nervous system but depends in important ways upon the presence of concurrent motor behavior which is, so to speak, fed back into and thereafter guides the discoveries of the senses.1 9 Meyer’s comment implies that the performer is at an advantage in training the perception mechanism: the physical act of performing the avant-garde works in his repertory helped Tudor perpetuate his new perceptual habits. Meyer explains that tonal music, “our musical vernacular,” dominates the perceptual habits of Western culture due to its roots in the experiences of infancy and early childhood. But he acknowledges that one can, with much difficulty, cultivate a “new mode of perception”: [0]nce established these first patterned pathways become tremendously powerful. Like a deeply channeled river bed, they function as the conduits through which sensory input, motor behavior, and cognitive patterns tend ‘naturally’ to flow. The formation later in life of new channels and pathways deep and clear enough to insure new modes of perception and cognition is not an impossible task, but certainly it is a formidable one. Tudor undertook this formidable task, and in seminars that he taught at Darmstadt, he explained how he did it. Tudor was scheduled to conduct seminars in interpretation and piano performance at the Ferienkurse in Darmstadt for the sessions of 1956,1957, and Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 158 1958. In an undated draft of a letter to Wolfgang Steinecke, founder of the Ferienkurse, Tudor discusses plans for the upcoming seminar: I would prefer to give 3 seminars in new music, discussing the realization of the new findings of Boulez, Stockhausen, Cage and the young Americans.. . . Because of the lack of published material of some of these composers, the seminars probably will have to be somewhat in the nature of demonstration- sessions (or just lectures)... .2 1 What appear to be preparatory notes for one of the seminars exist in Tudor’s papers, but they are undated, so there is some uncertainty as to when precisely they were written. The notes, which consist of fragments of sentences jotted down in several pages of a small wire-bound notebook, probably served as a rough outline for an otherwise impromptu lecture-demonstration; there is no evidence of a more thoroughly worked-out version of these notes. It is possible, although unlikely, that the notes were intended for the course in 1957 since Tudor cancelled his trip to Darmstadt that year. More likely, they were prepared in 1956 for his first appearance at the festival. The references in the notes to specific works that he performed that year, as well as the pianist’s correspondence with Steinecke and Stockhausen around the same time suggest this conclusion. Tudor illustrated the points of his discussion with excerpts of over a dozen works, almost all of which were written by the New York composers between 1951 and 1955. In his notes, the pianist cites the following works, most of which were surveyed in the previous chapter: Music o f Changes (1951), Music for Piano 21,26, 34, 36 (1955), and Water Music (1952) by John Cage; Four Systems (1954) and Perspectives (1952) by Earle Brown; Three Pieces Nos. 2 and 3 (1954), Extensions 3 Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 159 (1952), Intermission 5 (1952), and Intersection 3 (1953) by Morton Feldman; and For Piano I (1952), For Prepared Piano (1951), and Suite (1954) by Christian Wolff. In fact, these works comprise the core of Tudor’s repertory during five crucial years. Of the approximately thirty recitals given by Tudor from his New York recital debut on January 1, 1952 to the end of 1956, there are only three instances of programs that do not include at least one work from those listed above: a performance at Black Mountain College in July of 1953, a recital dedicated to the works of Henry Cowell at the New School for Social Research in November of 1953, and the American premiere performance of Stockhausen’s Klavierstiicke I-VIII at Carl Fischer Hall in New York in December of 1954. The programs of 1956, however, feature these works with unsurpassed zeal, particularly in various performances immediately surrounding his presence at Darmstadt in July of that year. Below is a list of Tudor’s programs from 1956, abridged to highlight the works in question. April 20, 1956 WHRB [Harvard Radio Broadcasting Company] John Cage, Water Music Christian Wolff, Suite (First performance) Earle Brown, Perspectives Morton Feldman, Intersection 3 May 18,1956 Merce Cunningham Dance Company University of Notre Dame [with choreography by Cunningham] Christian Wolff, For Piano I [Untitled Solo] Earle Brown, Four Systems [Galaxy] John Cage, Music for Piano [Suite fo r Five in space and time] Fig. 3-1. Tudor’s programs, 1956 (abridged) Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 160 July 11-22, 1956 Darmstadt: Internationale Ferienkurse fur Neue Musik [with Severino Gazzelloni, flute] Pierre Boulez, Sonatine pour flute et piano (First performance) Karlheinz Stockhausen, Klavierstiicke V- VIII November 23, 1956 Staatlich Hochschule fur Musik Koln in Verbindung mit der Gessellschaft fur neue Musik Koln Morton Feldman, Extensions (First Cologne performance) John Cage, Music o f Changes (First Cologne performance) November 24,1956 Galerie der spiegel John Cage, Music o f Changes Christian Wolff, For Piano Morton Feldman, Intersection 3 John Cage, Water Music November 30,1956 Internationale Gesellschaft fur Neue Musik (IGNM), Osterreich Christian Wolff, Suite Christian Wolff, For Piano Earle Brown, Four Systems Morton Feldman, Intersection 3 John Cage, Music o f Changes—parts 1, 3, 4 December 6 and 8, 1956 Milan and Venice: Concerti degli Incontri Musicali John Cage, Music o f Changes—parts 1, 4 December 12,1956 Kunstgewerbemuseum Zurich Earl Brown, Four More Christian Wolff, Suite John Cage, Music o f Changes December 15,1956 Les Concerts du Domaine Musical, Association Culturelle John Cage, Music o f Changes—parts 1,4 (First French performance) Fig. 3-1. Tudor’s programs, 1956 (abridged) [cont.] Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 161 December 17, 1956 I.M.A. Concert Earle Brown, Four Systems Christian Wolff, Suite John Cage, Music o f Changes—parts 1, 4 (First London performances) Fig. 3-1. Tudor’s programs, 1956 (abridged) [cont.] The numerous references that Tudor makes to Music o f Changes, in particular, strongly suggest that he prepared the notes for the seminar of 1956 since the performances he gave both before and after his appearance at Darmstadt that year included the work, while those in 1958 did not. In the draft of the letter to Steinecke cited above, Tudor refers not only to Cage’s work, but to those by Boulez, Stockhausen, and Wolpe: In the Studio-concerts, besides works of Stefan Wolpe, I am anxious to present by all means the Klavierstiicke 1-8 (or 5-8) of Stockhausen and the Music of Changes by John Cage (which is 40 min. long). The Music of Changes is an important work which has not yet been heard in Europe, and it will be much in the foreground during my seminars. I will also be very happy to perform the Sonatine of Boulez with Sig. Gazzelloni.2 2 As the programs above demonstrate, Tudor did perform Stockhausen’s Klavierstiicke V-VIII and Boulez’s Sonatine pour flute et piano (with Severino Gazzelloni) at Darmstadt in the summer of 1956. Although Tudor did not present Music o f Changes in a studio recital at the festival, he did perform the first movement to help illustrate part of Wolpe’s lecture, “On new (and not-so-new) music in America,” which took place that summer. In fact, in his letter to Steinecke, Tudor makes an explicit Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 162 reference to the lecture that would be given by his friend and former teacher: “I have not heard in any detail as yet, about your arrangements with Stefan Wolpe.”2 4 Further corroboration for dating the notes 1956 is a letter from Stockhausen to Tudor in which the composer asks the pianist to submit an article on Cage’s music for inclusion in the fourth volume of Die Reihe: “We think, that just in this moment we have to do and we can do something for John’s contact in Europe, and an article by yours [sic] is the best one. I think of something like you did in your last lecture about Music o f Changes”2 5 Although this letter is not dated, another one in which Stockhausen complains of not having received a response from the pianist regarding the solicited article is dated August 18,1956, one month after Tudor directed the seminar at Darmstadt—undoubtedly, this was his “last lecture about Music o f Changes.” Tudor responded to Stockhausen’s letters in September of 1956, only to buy additional time: “in one week’s time you will have my answer about the article - 1 am thinking about it and must decide whether I can say what I want.”2 6 Finally, in a letter dated October 11, 1956, the pianist apologized for not having written the requested article: “profound regrets and an apology, because I have failed to produce 01 the article that you want so much . . . you must be greatly disappointed.” Regardless, by the time the fourth volume of Die Reihe was published in 1958 (without Tudor’s unwritten article), Cage’s “contact in Europe” had already been well established by his presence at Darmstadt and other prominent new music centers, primarily due to Stockhausen’s assistance. Thus, Tudor’s correspondence Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 163 with both Steinecke and Stockhausen, and the focus of the preparatory notes on Music o f Changes and other works performed numerously in the fall and early winter of 1956, convincingly indicate that the notes were prepared for Tudor’s seminar at Darmstadt in the summer of 1956. In what appears to be a draft of introductory remarks, Tudor provides a brief account of the current activities of avant-garde composers in order to direct the discussion towards “graphic music,” or time-space notation, the pianist’s specialty. Twice he mentions a “change in attitude”—certainly a reflection of his own transformation since he justifiably assumes an authoritative role in the new music as director of the seminar. [Sjince 50s marked change in attitude of comps, towards conception of what can take place in a musical composition an intemtl phenomenon characterized by advent of mag. tape use of chance methods, statistical fields, noise methods dealing with these recall as student the ardent desire for discover of new ‘forms’ (eg, sonatas, quarts, etc)—work brought thru impact of change in attitude now shows that new forms (in exterior sense) have actually ‘crept’ into our horizon, one of these is graphic music.2 9 After appropriately identifying the avant-garde movement as an “international phenomenon”—he is, of course, directing a seminar at an international music festival dedicated to new music—Tudor calls attention to the advent of magnetic tape.3 0 Electronic technology made a large impact on the manner in which musical time is conceived, and just as the new sound materials available in the electronic studio stimulated composers, the new technology appears to have challenged and encouraged Tudor’s new performance practice. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 164 “Before plunging too deeply into actualities,” continues Tudor in his notes, “[I] wish to mention a few facts to help orient.” The pianist then offers the following simple formula for the initiate facing either time-space notation or graphic notation: “starting out from space = time.” Tudor explains that the basis for understanding the new rhythmic organization was to conceive of space as being equal to time, a familiar equation for those accustomed to working with magnetic tape. Jonathan Kramer explains the “spatialization” of duration in the studio: Tape recording technology spatializes time in a literal way: 7 Vi inches of tape equal one second of sound. It does not matter how much or little the activity that second contains, nor does it matter whether it seems to be a long or short second. Its literal duration is measurable along a spatial dimension.3 1 Cage remarks on the influence that magnetic tape had on time-space notation and the resulting effect on rhythm: Whether one uses tape or writes for conventional instruments, the present musical situation has changed from what it was before tape came into being. . . . Since so many inches of tape equal so many seconds of time, it has become more and more usual that notation is in space rather than in symbols of quarter, half, and sixteenth notes and so on. Thus where on a page a note appears will correspond to when in time it is to occur. A stop watch is used to facilitate a performance; and a rhythm results which is a far cry from horse’s hoofs and other regular beats.3 2 Cage indicates that the use of magnetic tape has affected “the present musical situation.” This situation includes the realm of possibilities not only in regard to composition, but also to performance and listening. The manner in which a tape machine operates encouraged Tudor to reflect on his own relationship with the performance materials, and here the distinction he made between watching time and experiencing time is key. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 165 Indicating that the “relation of [the] score to [the] performer [is] visual” by nature, Tudor suggests that one should allow the graphic notation to lend the sound what he calls a “visual dimension,” thereby placing the sensibility of the “performer in [the] space of time.” Presumably, he turned next to the graph paper notation of Feldman for clarification: “Quote Feldman,” Tudor instructs himself in the notes, “not [the] idea of gravity but rather a visual dimension given to sound.” Feldman often referred to the textural density and orchestration of his works as “weight” and he claimed to have adopted the graph paper notation in order to focus his compositional effort on the manipulation of these densities. Possibly influenced by the abstract expressionist painters whom he frequently cites, Feldman provides an esoteric description of compositional “weight”: What determines the initial conception of my Projections and Intersections is a weight either reminiscent or discovered. Weight for me does not have its source in the manipulation of dynamics or tensions but rather resulting from a visual-aural response to sound as an image gone inward creating a general synthesis.3 3 Accordingly, Tudor emphasizes the visual aspect of the notation, seeing the blocks as a graphic depiction of the tones. Tudor’s choice of words is noteworthy: he refers not to a visual representation of the sound, but to a visual “dimension,” as if it were an actual extension of the aural properties of sound. As will be illustrated in the following chapter, Tudor’s statement on the interrelation of perceptual fields reflects his interest in various forms of mysticism. As previously discussed, Feldman was keenly aware of the potential discrepancy between how a score looks and how it sounds—it was this discrepancy Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 166 that led him to experiment with several notational systems. While it might be argued that conventional notation is also a visual counterpart to sound, it functions more properly as an abstract symbol. The situation is analogous to the difference between a phonetically-based language and one comprised of pictograms. With a phonetic alphabet, words are comprised of abstract figures (signifiers) that bear no visual relation to the objects or concepts for which they stand (signified). In a pictographic language, on the other hand, the stylized symbols do resemble the object or concept that they are meant to signify. If one is operating according to the postulate that space is equal to time, then both graphic notation and time-space notation can be considered an earnest depiction of a note’s temporal characteristics. In a seeming paradox, Tudor took the trouble to transcribe each of the graphic pieces into what resembles conventional notation in order to have a performance score.3 4 But typically, Tudor’s notated realizations differ from conventional notation in at least two distinct ways, both in regard to rhythmic determinates. First, his notes lack the flags that indicate the durational divisions inherent to the traditional rhythmic hierarchy. The notation appears as a horizontal succession of rhythmically undifferentiated pitch collections. Thus, he was not subdividing quanta in order to determine rhythmic relationships. Second, Tudor’s notation often identifies periodic vertical articulations with measurements of clock time, a feature which had become standard practice for his realization procedure since Music o f Changes. Cage admits that his adoption of time-space notation was the result of Tudor’s practice of converting all aspects of temporal Velocity- Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 167 including tempo changes, rubatos, accelerandos, and ritardandos—into “chronometric time,” or a specific location of minutes and seconds: “due to David Tudor’s studying a form of mathematics, to take the trouble out of my notation and doing it successfully, I dropped all notation of meter and went directly into plain space equals time, which has enormously facilitated the writing of new music.” For Tudor, the time-space notation also enormously facilitated the performance of new music, the events of which he recognized as happening within a single level of motion, as is evidenced by his use of chronometric markings. The form of mathematics to which Cage refers is a series of formulas introduced to Tudor by Hans Rademacher, a German mathematician whose path intersected with that of the pianist. Rademacher was a professor at the University of Hamburg, and then at Breslau where he was forced out of his position by the Nazi regime in 1933 due to his political pacifism. The following year he left Germany for the United States where he spent the rest of his life. He accepted a position at Swarthmore College and then at the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia. In 1949, Rademacher married concert pianist Irma Wolpe, the sister of a colleague at the University of Pennsylvania, and former wife of composer Stefan Wolpe. Irma had joined the faculty at Swarthmore in 1943, the year that Tudor began to study piano and composition with her and Stefan respectively. Although Tudor left Philadelphia for New York in 1947, he maintained close contact with both Stefan and Irma Wolpe, so it is not clear which of the Wolpes introduced Tudor to the mathematician. In fact, Stefan Wolpe appears to have used Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 168 the mathematician’s work the same year that Tudor prepared Music o f Changes. In the Wolpe archive, there are sketches dated 1951 of Wolpe’s Enactments for three pianos, a work with which Tudor was familiar. The sketches include rhythmic charts containing the mathematical work of Rademacher.3 6 Also, on Tudor’s recommendation, Wolpe taught music at Black Mountain College from 1952 to 1956. Irma Wolpe and Rademacher were present at the college during the summer ” 5 « 7 session of 1953, coinciding with Tudor’s last residency. But the summer of 1953 was not the first time that Tudor became aware of Rademacher and his ideas. Cage admits that he switched to time-space notation on account of Tudor’s “studying a form of mathematics,” and the first work by the composer that features non-metric notation is Water Music of 1952. It is likely, then, that Tudor began working with Rademacher’s formulas in 1951 at the latest, in conjunction with his preparation of Music o f Changes. In essence, the formulas posit a mathematical relationship between space, time, and velocity—vital elements in Tudor’s realization of Music o f Changes. The compositional structure of the work is not articulated specifically by the musical materials, the sequence of which was determined by chance operations. Consequently, the pianist decided upon a mathematical means for determining the precise temporal occurrence of the musical events without relying on conventional groupings. Tudor focused more on the real-time measurement of space than on the notated events that took place within that space, a practice that befits Cage’s Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 169 compositional focus on the structure of a work rather than what is placed into it. In the performance instructions of the score, Cage explains: [T]he rhythmic structure of the work, 3 5 63 A 63 A 5 3 'A, is expressed in changing tempi (indicated by large numbers)(beats per minute). A number repeated at the succeeding structural point indicates a maintained tempo. Accelerandos and ritards are to be associated with the rhythmic structure, rather than with the sounds that happen in it.3 8 (In his seminar notes, Tudor cites the last phrase verbatim.) The musical elements, in other words, do not articulate the form of the work; structural velocity exists independently of pitch, duration, timbre, and dynamics. Below is a chart from Tudor’s papers that outlines the structural plan for the first movement of Music o f Changes. (See Fig. 3-2.) The outline shows eighteen divisions of durational units, arranged into three large groups of six units each. In the first column is the number of beats that comprise each unit. The sequence of the number of beats is the same for each of the three large groups: 12, 20,27,27,20, 12!/2. This sequence corresponds to the number of measures in common time that dictate the rhythmic structure of the work (3, 5, 6 3 A 6 3 A 5 3'/s). As Cage states, the units are defined by changes of tempo, and Tudor indicates the tempo marking for each unit in the second column. Where two tempos are separated by an arrow, the unit features either an acceleration or deceleration. The column on the far right refers to the number of textural superimpositions, or layers of activity (between one and eight), that chance procedures assigned to each unit. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 170 3 f t J 4 iVr 5 3% ' I. IX t i -> n t k 1. 20 1 1 1 , -* loo 1 3. XI loo k XI |00 1 s. Xo 100 T?' St 3 ■ k. \ A St l ■ i. 1 1 St f t. 10 St i t 3 i. 11 Ik i /». 11 log S a. Xo lot I . IX. iAi lot 7 ■ 1 3 - IX lot S I*f. Zo lot — ? 1 i IS. zi I** s it. XT l»H- 2 n- Zo IS t-? fc3 2 ,i» . \xk k t s Fig. 3-2. Tudor, structural outline for Music o f Changes (mvt. 1) Research Library, The Getty Research Institute, Los Angeles (980039) Tudor prepared the temporal delineations of the rhythmic structure separately, using for that purpose Rademacher’s mathematical formulas. There are four pages of notes in Tudor’s papers that detail the mathematical process by which IQ space can be converted into time. One of these pages—the one that neatly presents Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 171 the simplified derivations of a flurry of algebraic equations that occupy two other pages—is plainly marked, “HANS RADEMACHER’S FORMULAS.”4 0 .S M J on IMCHES ~ t ■ ' se co^os a P .A T J ^ eceteR ftT 'O 'J J ) •• 6 1 * * ' i J G V v e t o c 7"/ t Tl M f \ X i H-is } * = T" ^ ~ V * ~ * ^ t U _ t « V /. - V.1 t = V a - V* -V„ + + CS, 1 IVAiJ S RA D fM AC He R S FoRm u LAS Fig. 3-3. Tudor, “Hans Rademacher’s Formulas” Research Library, The Getty Research Institute, Los Angeles (980039) Tudor used these formulas to calculate precise stages in clock-time throughout Music o f Changes, taking into account any changes in tempo. To solve for the total time in seconds (t) of a given unit that is either accelerating or decelerating, Tudor inserted Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 172 the following into the last formula: the number of quarter notes or inches subsumed in the first measure of the tempo change (s), the total number of quarter notes or inches in the entire unit (si), the initial tempo or velocity (vo), and the final tempo or velocity (vi). Below is Tudor’s worksheet for the first twenty-six measures of Music o f Changes (Fig. 3-4) followed by the first page of the score (Fig. 3-5). Next to number 5 (the fourth measure of the score) and number 23 (the twenty-second measure), Tudor writes out the entire formula with the appropriate values inserted. In the five measures between the tempo changes, there are twenty inches (according to Cage’s template printed in the score, one quarter note is equal to one inch of space). Twenty multiplied by two equals forty, which is the numerator of the first fraction. The denominator consists of the square of the final tempo (100 quarter notes, or inches, per 60 seconds) minus the square of the initial tempo (176 inches per 60 seconds). This fraction is then multiplied by the negative of the initial tempo plus the square root of the following: the final tempo squared minus the initial tempo squared multiplied by four, which is the number of quarter notes (inches) subsumed by the initial tempo change in the measure in which it occurs, plus the square of the initial tempo multiplied by twenty (the total number of inches between the tempo changes), all divided by twenty (again, the total number of inches between the tempo changes). The resultant of this equation is 1.4132265 seconds, which is the amount of time that it should take to perform measure four of the score—that is, the first four beats of a twenty-beat deceleration from 176 to 100 beats per minute. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 173 X 1 . o 2 . 3 . f. f o i if .Jfj C z 7 7 s 's 'io J O 'f o s r. v ° f c • 7 . f j J, - 8 S', ~ l .f; - it : ^S, Tr , [ t - a - j ■ 7 . i-biftfinjuj to. b o IC O i 2 -i it. " • i }.i ... n. * ♦ 1 f t It * w . ! f .. ‘It U M I t ■ 2 0 il.. if. f e r 1 1 1 ■If tff ih. T * ‘If Iki n. • • •H 1 1 . 2 i y . 1 1 > 3 1 2 1 . 1 ■ iff l - f 2 0 . • • . . . ,2 ,1 , f 1 ■is XU .ft 3 1 . 2 1 0 0 to 2 4 . U ; s - i 3 t S * » 2 J ; V to a t, 2 3 ; V if 20 J Fig. 3-4. Tudor, mathematical worksheet for M usic o f Changes, mm. 1-26 Research Library, The Getty Research Institute, Los Angeles (980039) Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. I M fr f Fig. 3-5. Cage, Music o f Changes, p. 1 Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 175 In the entries that directly follow the complete equations are new values for si to accommodate four additional quarter notes (or inches) for each subsequent measure. For example, in number 6, Tudor specifies that for the value of si in the formula from number 5, 8 should be substituted for 4, and in number 7,12 should be substituted for 4, etc. Obviously, when there is no change in tempo within a given unit, the elapsed time for each measure is constant. Once again, Tudor relies on mathematics for precise temporal measurements: number of beats x 2 tempo constant: --------------------------- tempo 60 Fig. 3-6. Tudor’s equation for determining elapsed time in a constant tempo From measure 9 until measure 21 in the score, for instance, the tempo is a constant 100 beats per minute. On his worksheet, Tudor calculates the elapsed time in seconds of each measure within this unit by multiplying the number of seconds (60) per each hundred beats by the accumulated number of quarter notes (or inches) for each subsequent measure. Thus, for number 10: sixty divided by 100, multiplied by four is 2.4 seconds; for number 11: sixty divided by 100, multiplied by eight is 4.8 seconds; etc.4 1 These figures are the time in seconds elapsed from the structural juncture marked by the change in tempo. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 176 Because Tudor was interested in determining the exact time placement of each measure during a gradual change in tempo over several measures, he needed to make a mathematical distinction between average acceleration and instantaneous acceleration, which is the change in velocity at a given instant of time. For this purpose, Tudor used the following formula: number of beats x 2 changing tempo: --------------------------- tl + t2 60 Fig. 3-7. Tudor’s equation for determining elapsed time in a changing tempo On one of his worksheets, for example, Tudor calculates the total elapsed time in seconds after the third measure of the score (twelve quarter-notes, or inches), which completes an acceleration from 69 to 176 beats per minute: 2.12 24 1440 288 = — = 5.877551020408 176 69 245 245 49 ~6c T + 60 ~60~ Fig. 3-8. Tudor, total elapsed time after the first three bars of M usic o f Changes (The result corresponds to the figure in number 4 on his master chart.) Tudor extends the resultant time in seconds to twelve decimal places, or to the nearest trillionth of a second. To attempt such accuracy in performance would be absurd; clearly, Tudor is engaging in a mental exercise that reveals his customary meticulousness. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 177 At every tempo marking in his performance copy of the score, Tudor indicated chronometric boundaries for acceleration or deceleration until the following tempo marking. The following sequence of numbers corresponds to the chronometric boundaries, rounded by Tudor to the nearest second, for the ninety measures that comprise the first movement of Music o f Changes. According to Tudor’s calculations, the movement is to last 3 minutes, 36 seconds. (In the score, Cage indicates that the approximate duration of the first movement is 3 minutes, 37 Vi seconds.) The brackets are Tudor’s. Measure 1: [.0 ^ .6-] 52: .24+ [-» .35+] 4: .6- [-» .14+] 57: .35+ [-» .42+] 9: .14 + . 3 1 - ] 61: .42+ [-» .49+] 15: .31- [-> .47-] 64: .49+ [-» .57+] 22: .47-[-» 1:2+] 69: .57+ [-> 3:6+] 27: 1:2+ [-» .15+] 75: 3:6+ [-» .15-] 31: .15+ [-> .27+] 82: .15- [-> .25-] 34: .27+ [-» .45+] 87: .25-[-» .36+] 39: .45+ [-» 2:7-] 90: .36+ OFF 45: 2:7- [-> .24+] Fig. 3-9. Tudor, chronometric boundaries for M usic o f Changes (mvt. 1) The numbers correspond to the minutes and seconds elapsed on a stopwatch, which became a common accessory to Tudor’s performances. (Note that the pianist even indicates at the end of the movement to turn off the stopwatch.) For example, from measure one (mm = 69, accelerando) to the next tempo marking in measure four, six seconds should elapse. From measure four (mm =176, ritardando) to the next tempo marking in measure nine, eight seconds should elapse, resulting in a reading of fourteen seconds on the stopwatch, and so on. The bracketed information that Tudor Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 178 provides at each tempo marking not only indicates the cumulative elapsed time, but it also provides him with a type of custos by preparing him for the relative rate of speed that he is required to play in the following section—that is, whether he is to accelerate (+) or decelerate (-). After calculating the temporal placement of each measure, Tudor constructed a chart that presents the cumulative elapsed time of each unit of Cage’s rhythmic structure (i.e., each tempo marking): 1. 5.87 5.87 2. 8.69 14.57 3. 16.2 30.77 4. 16.2 46.97 5. 15.18 1’ 2.16 6. 12.93 1’ 15.09 7. 12.41 1’ 27.5 8. 17.91 1’ 45.41 9. 21.31 2’ 6.73 10. 17.6 T 24.34 11. 11.1 T 35.45 12. 6.94 T 42.39 13. 6.6 T 49.06 14. 8.21 T 57.28 15. 8.8 y 6.08 16. 8.8 y 14.89 17. 9.71 3’ 24.6 18. 11.9 3’ 36.51 Fig. 3-10. Tudor, cumulative elapsed time for M usic o f Changes (mvt. 1) The first column shows the duration in seconds of each unit in the rhythmic structure, while the second column shows the total elapsed time. As mentioned above, it is unreasonable to suggest by these mathematical charts that Tudor executed the durational units of Music o f Changes to the nearest Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 179 hundredth of a second (let alone to the nearest trillionth of a second). Whether or not Tudor’s performances held fast to the prescribed chronometry of Music o f Changes or any other work is irrelevant to the reasons for engaging in such a practice. Rather, it is the attitude cultivated by such a practice and the resulting perception of the music that is of concern. Just as Cage used chance operations as a rigid discipline to bypass what he considered to be the limitations of his imagination, so did Tudor use Rademacher’s formulas to transcend the limitations of temporal subjectivity, which creates durational units based on musical patterns. By relying primarily on an objective measurement of the passage of time, Tudor was able to evade the psychological tendency to group events into individual groups of durations, or what Fraisse refers to as “subjective patterning.” In other words, Tudor redefined the temporal boundaries of the “perceived present” by psychologically turning rhythm into duration. By relying on chronometric time, Tudor was able to maintain a perspective of a uniform temporal progression. From this point of view, Tudor explains, it is “not correct to say [a musical gesture is] slow, because [there is] no felt rhythmic movement. [Rather, a given collection of notes is either] ‘sparse’ [or ‘dense’].” That is, musical events do not progress at a certain rate of speed, but each event, having its own duration, simply occurs at a particular point in time: “durations,” explains Tudor, are articulated by “sounds ([at] points of time).” In light of Tudor’s comments regarding the distinction between counting and measuring, “tempo” refers not to the speed of the music, but to the rate at which the performer measures increments of Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 180 space. This concept of tempo, in other words, is immaterial to the listener—a point that is substantiated by the musical reality of works devoid of a perceivable pulse. For Tudor, the rate of the passage of time did not alter according to the musical context—that is, the pianist removed himself from the conventional flux of subjective time. A number of analogies may be drawn to illustrate Tudor’s practice of engaging the notation in a steadily measured flow of time. The most obvious and germane analogy is the manner in which a tape machine, without a sense of anticipation or memory, reads the data on a strip of magnetic tape as it passes by the sensor at a relatively fixed rate. It is reasonable that Tudor, as a performer surrounded by composers who were greatly inspired by the possibilities of magnetic tape, looked to his electronic counterpart for guidance. Similarly, the mechanical operation of a player piano is analogous to Tudor’s performance practice: the sensors respond to the perforations only as they rolls pass them. Or as Stockhausen illustrates, the fluctuating time-fields “‘flow,’ as it were, continuously past an ‘acoustical window,’ like a motion-picture.”4 2 Cage, citing Brown’s inventive scheme for achieving ensemble synchronization, writes about “a moving picture of the score, visible to all, a static vertical line as coordinator, past which the notations move.”4 3 Each of these analogies relate Tudor’s practice of replacing “felt rhythmic movement” with a steady passage of time, observed by the performer in a detached manner. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 181 Boulez, like Stockhausen, rejects the possibility of a fixed tempo in instrumental performance, let alone a performer with “no felt rhythmic movement.” Reminiscent of Stockhausen’s description of fluctuating time-fields, Boulez maintains that an underlying “rhythmic pulsation” dictates the tempo in the performance of any given musical figure. He places the situation of the live performer in direct contrast with that of the electronic medium. One thing tempo is not is a kind of river, with a certain rate of ‘flow’ of notes. While a quick tempo may involve a low density of flow and a slow tempo may involve a high density, they are still felt as typically quick and slow. Clearly the rate of harmonic change is a factor, as are the more or less ornamental character of the note-flow and what one might call the developmental agogic. In instrumental music such questions are not unduly difficult to answer satisfactorily, with the help of a few rules of thumb; moreover there exists a whole network of markings which help the player decide what meaning to give to the durations, and, if there is one idea which has never been given much attention in instrumental music, it is the idea of the ‘proper’ duration of a note in absolute time; on the contrary, it is always the relation of one tempo to another which comes out, or else the continuity of this or that tempo. Behind everything is a more or less complex rhythmic pulsation which is physically or mentally felt; and all bearings are taken on this internal pulsation. But if one makes a tape piece, one deals essentially with the absolute, calibrated duration of each note; there is no possibility of any ‘psychological’ marking, but only of strict measurement. One must therefore accept an absence of pulse or ‘tempo’ as such.4 4 Boulez points out that the “internal pulsation,” the psychological determinate of tempo in live instrumental or vocal performance, is non-existent in the electronic realm. While Boulez claims that “the idea of the ‘proper’ duration of a note in absolute time” has been neglected in instrumental music, it is precisely here that Tudor directed his attention as a performer. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 182 In order to clarify the context in which the ‘proper’ duration of a note may be situated, Boulez demarcates two types of musical time: “pulsed time” (or “striated time”) and “amorphous time” (or “smooth time”). Conventional notions of meter and rhythm are operative in pulsed time: In pulsed time, the structures of duration will be related to chronometric time as landmarks, or, one might say, systematically placed regular or irregular beacons: these constitute a pulsation, either of the smallest unit (the smallest common multiple of all the values used), or of a simple multiple of this unit (two or three times its value).4 5 The “beacons” articulate key points of time in the hierarchic network of pulses that constitutes meter. It is in this metrical context that one may speak of quantified rhythm and tempo. In the framework of amorphous time, on the other hand, one must refer to the relative density, rather than the velocity, of events: Amorphous time is only related to chronometric time in a global sense; durations, whether with defined proportions (not values) or having no indication of proportion, appear in a field of time. Only pulsed time is susceptible to speed, acceleration or deceleration: the regular or irregular referential system on which it is based is a function of a chronometric time of greater or lesser delimitation, breadth or variability. The relationship of chronometric time to the number of pulsations will be the index of speed. Amorphous time can vary only in density according to the statistical number of events which take place during a chronometric global time-span; the relationship of this density or an amorphous time-span will be the index of content4 6 Boulez’s description of amorphous time, intended here as an account of the temporality of electronic music, is similar to Tudor’s newly adapted perspective for live performance. Such a concept of musical time belies not only traditional notions of tempo but also those of continuity, which according to Tudor is another irrelevant psychological remnant of the “classical music” not included in his repertory. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 183 “Rhythms create no necessity of continuity of movement,” indicates Tudor, “but are rather constellations (complex situations) in time.” The denial of continuity is the condition upon which rhythm and tempo lose their conventional implications. If a given event is perceived as leading to another, then one may adopt the discourse of movement and, therewith, velocity. But pitches, in and of themselves, with the acoustical exception of the innate activity of their waveforms, do not “move.” A sound, Cage reminds us, “does not exist as one of a series of discrete steps.”4 7 One may introduce into the argument the question of a sliding scale: a glissando or a crescendo, for example, by taking place gradually over time, suggests movement. Here it is particularly noteworthy that Tudor played the piano, an instrument that, by virtue of its construction, is not capable of producing such gestures in a single articulation. A pianist can only produce the effects of a crescendo by playing each subsequent, but in reality isolated, pitch a degree louder than the previous one. This is not meant to quibble over inaudible technicalities, but it can serve as an indication that Tudor’s “change of perception” was closely related to the instrument with which he was most intimate. After all, Tudor did not come to his realization while singing or playing the trombone, performance media which might be less conducive to the psychological disconnection of a succession of sounds (in spite of what studio teachers may argue). The music in Tudor’s repertory, to borrow from 1950s art critic Clement Greenberg, can be said to be “medium specific” to the piano. Discontinuity in and of itself is hardly an objective characteristic—rather, it consists of the constant thwarting of expectations which are based on the recognition Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 184 of conventional patterns and gestures. In the works under consideration, the undermining of any perceivable pattern intentionally occurs with such high frequency as to essentially eliminate any expectations whatsoever—the repertory aspires towards, to conflate familiar phrases, the emancipation of implication. But the notions of implication and continuity, much like “subjective patterning,” are psychological phenomena which are capable of being reinterpreted—they are not physical facts. Hasty explains that the psychological relationship between successive events, that which is known as “musical continuity,” is formed specifically on the basis of differentiation: It is customary to regard time as a ‘medium’ in which events may take place or to identify time with the process of change.. . . Time is neither a substance independent from events, nor itself change or process. It is rather a form of relationship between events. And this relationship or order is expressed in the terms before and after. But the apprehension of difference, far from separating discrete events, requires that we bring events together into a relation, otherwise we could not be aware of difference. This bringing together is the mark of continuity and always involves some sort of overlap since the terms of a relation are mutually dependent and together create a context which could not arise apart from their relation. Succession, the fundamental temporal relation, is continuous in this sense for we cannot isolate before and after. Neither one has any meaning apart from the other; thus succession requires a duration which encompasses both.4 8 Two successive events can not be deemed unalike without considering them in relation to each other. The relationship, then, between any given musical events may be identified in terms of the temporal positions of those events—in other words, the durational proportion. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 185 Where most performers concern themselves with connecting musical gestures in order to produce a sense of continuity, Tudor considered himself to be engaged in a “true activity of measurement.” “Measuring],” professes the pianist, “creates awareness.” To recall Cage’s description of rhythmic structure: “any durations, any amplitude relations . . . [and] any silence” may occur within any given measurement. Similarly, Tudor’s predilection for a performance practice based on the “true activity of measurement” ensures an unbiased acceptance of all events that happen within that measurement. “Anything may happen,” explains Tudor in the words of Cage: “a ‘mistake’ is beside the point, for once anything happens it authentically is.”4 9 Making a physical distinction between counting and measuring, Tudor indicates that, “counting belongs to rhythmic muscular activity,” and “measuring [belongs] to [the] eye.” Stockhausen concurs: “Rhythm is always counted with bodily movements. Without the counting process, we have very little experience in estimating the absolute duration of a sound. We always subdivide it as multiples or subdivisions of a certain unity which we count periodically.”5 0 As one counts, every musical gesture is gauged in relation to an underlying pulse, however erratic the pulse may be. The pulse, whether audibly present or not, is typically felt by the performer, particularly one who is said to possess a “good sense of rhythm.” “Rhythm” continues Tudor, is “connected to [the] bloodstream” and should be felt “only when necessary; watch instead.” The purpose of relinquishing the muscular activity of counting, says the pianist, is “not to abolish [one’s] connection [to the music] but thru watching instead of body feeling [one can] make new kinds of Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 186 rhythm.” Here is another reference to Tudor’s admission that he was ' ’ ''watching time rather than experiencing it.”5 1 In terms relating to experimental psychology, Tudor emphasizes the “phenomenon observed” while minimizing his “knowledge of the object”—the two elements that, when balanced, contribute to the perceived present. Gunther Schuller stands in stark opposition to the principle of measuring time as a means of executing a rhythmic configuration: I seriously doubt... that the human ear can accurately translate into physical impulses that which is in the first instance determined only by arithmetic calculations . . . or by notational mannerisms which actually represent ideas essentially external to music itself. For rhythms must ultimately be felt if they are ever to be played accurately. As far as performance goes they simply cannot remain at the level of intellectual apprehension, but must be translated c'y into physical impulses. Naturally, Tudor translated the notation of each of the scores into “physical impulses”—the pieces were, in the end, performed—but the stimuli that produced these impulses were visual, not visceral or even auditory. Accordingly, Tudor always performed with a score in front of him; on principle, the pianist did not memorize the pieces that he performed. “You don’t want to memorize [modem music],” Tudor explains, “because if you do, you’ll be missing something, because you’re creating it.... Physical movements are written on another sheet of paper and memorized, not the music.” The “something” which would be missing is the “new kind of rhythm” created by the live performer responding to visual stimuli. While Boulez agrees with Schuller in principle, he weighs the advantages of the mechanistic precision of electronics and the incalculable flexibility of a live performer: Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 187 What a machine can do is at once much and little compared with the performer: measurable precision as against an imprecision that is impossible to notate exactly. . . . [0]ne is tempted to say that the extreme of measurable precision has only a limited effectiveness as compared with an imprecision that goes beyond the limits of notation.5 4 Schuller’s assertion that “rhythms must ultimately be felt if they are ever to be played accurately,” correctly identifies the very quality that distinguishes the live performer from a machine: the inevitable inaccuracy, however slight, resulting from a physical encounter with the notation. What Boulez emphasizes (and what Schuller disregards) is the fact that it is specifically the tension resulting from this physical encounter that lends the performance a distinctive vivacity that is often left wanting in an electronically produced performance. Essentially, Tudor adapted the mechanistic execution of the electronic medium insofar as a human is capable, but without neglecting the principles inherent to live performance. In fact, by reducing the alleged liberties of rhythmic accuracy that one typically associates with expressivity, he made the qualified interpretation of quantified durations more evident. That is, Tudor objectified the process of live performance. Tudor acknowledges that the tendency for a performer to subjectively “feel” a rhythm is, due to conditioning, very strong. But the pianist suggests that one should inhibit such tendencies in the performance of the repertory under consideration. “If [the] perf[ormer] prepares[,]” advises Tudor, “he must wait until [the] rhythmic sense of preparation disappears.” The key to avoiding a sense of preparation is, once again, in the objective measurement of the durations: “In measuring [there is] no rhythmic preparation.” Tudor further explains that one should not be limited to Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 188 measuring note values: “likewise silences have length which does not prepare or anticipate so [they] have beginnings and ends.” Tudor’s sensitivity towards the duration of silences recalls Feldman’s explanation for why he returned to conventional notation after experimenting with graph paper: “The reason my music is notated is I wanted to keep control of the silence. .. .”5 5 In other words, he “composes” the silences as well as the notes.5 6 Similarly, silences can be “performed” with as much conscientiousness as one performs notes. (Tudor had been especially aware of this fact since the summer of 1952 when he gave the premiere performance of Cage’s 4 ’ 33” .) Tudor indicates that “Space is not empty,” just as time is not empty. In this regard, notes the pianist, “silence [is] equivalent to sound,” since there is “no anticipation or relaxation inherent in silence.” According to Tudor’s practice, then, one must measure both notes and rests without a psychological sense of preparation. Traditionally, a performer “prepares” a score by developing a visceral relationship with the rhythmic configurations which, by the time of the performance, are typically memorized. Tudor, on the other hand, recommends that a performer respond immediately to a measured succession of visual stimuli. This is not to eradicate practice time—on the contrary, as Tudor points out, to develop the physical movements needed to respond proficiently to the notation requires a great deal of rehearsal. By analogy, a martial artist must train diligently to master the physical movements necessary to deflect an incoming strike, but he must not anticipate the Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 189 strike in the actual confrontation. Tudor is not advocating a spontaneous reaction to the notation, but an immediate one. One type of situation that ensures an immediate reaction is that which has an element of surprise. In the notes, Tudor refers inexplicably to a “surprise method.” The method probably concerns the generation of a sense of surprise by a performer who is confronted with visual cues that have not been anticipated. (As Cage said, rhythm is “something unexpected.”) Such a method is related to a compositional technique developed by Wolff, even though Tudor’s notes predate the technique by at least a year. In the late 1950s, Wolff developed a new compositional technique for ensuring metric ambiguity. As discussed in the previous chapter, he composed music that required the performers to respond spontaneously to auditory cues provided within the context of the performance. Recall that his intention for creating what he called “social music” was to produce “a rhythm that has to do with being cn surprised.” W olffs For A Pianist (1959) was “social music” conceived for a single performer—David Tudor. While it was W olffs intention to frustrate Tudor’s practice of notating the musical choices of an indeterminate piece, the pianist simply wrote out the totality of possible events. It is revealing that Wolff never felt that Tudor misrepresented his piece in performances: the pianist obviously achieved the rhythmic sense of “surprise” sought by the composer without recourse to a spontaneous realization—he utilized the “surprise method” mentioned in his notes, an unanticipated and immediate response to the score. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 190 Tudor explains that the musical consequence of an immediate visual engagement with the notation was a revolutionary sense of musical timing: “[a] new kind of rhythm [is] created when visual and aural impressions overlap”—a rhythm, as Cage said, “which is a far cry from horse’s hoofs and other regular beats.” Tudor had discovered a way to achieve new rhythms without indulging in improvisation, a practice which is limited to the source of one’s imagination colored by happenstance. While the range of one’s imagination is undeniably immense, it is informed and largely governed by past experiences. Typically, when improvising, one will either be restricted to rhythmic designs that have been ingrained in the memory, or one will produce inconsistent results. To borrow Boulez’s criticism of chance techniques, one might be required to endure a million uninteresting events in the expectation of eventually hearing one that is interesting.5 8 Tudor’s approach, on the other hand, yielded consistency without the monotony of exact repetition. Tudor’s imagination provided the framework in which he could consistently produce a uniform realization within the specified boundaries of an innovative rhythmic world. But this new world, as is clearly seen in Tudor’s realizations of the indeterminate works in particular, was conceived largely on the pianist’s own terms. As Stockhausen indicates, the human performer has no choice but to interpret the proportion of a succession of durations, even if, as in the case of Cage’s time-space notation, the proportion remains psychologically fixed—or, more accurately, if it remains psychologically controlled by the performer, not the composer. Cornelius Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 191 Cardew, who attended Tudor’s seminars in interpretation at Darmstadt in 1958, makes this important distinction. Cardew, the pianist-composer who founded the experimental Scratch Orchestra, was a close associate of Tudor in the 1960s and performed much of the piano music of the New York composers. In his article “Notation-Interpretation, etc.” (1961), Cardew describes the time-space notation that often faced Tudor: [T]he spacing and lengths of the notes on the page, are put into a more or less direct relation to the timing and duration of the sounds.... The space can be measured or observed, or the eye can travel along it at a constant or fluctuating pace. The idea’s attraction lies in the fact that it dispenses with any sort of symbolic time-notation.5 9 The important difference between Stockhausen’s depiction of “fluctuating time- space” and the “fluctuating pace” described by Cardew concerns the source of control: for Stockhausen, it is the responsibility of the composer to organize time- field sizes; for Cardew, the “eye” that “can travel along [the notation] at a constant or fluctuating pace” belongs to the performer. Cardew’s comments correspond to Tudor’s notion of projecting time from the standpoint of observation rather than visceral experience: “your relationship to time is different [when watching], because you are now able to telescope some periods and to microscope others at will.”6 0 Rather than allowing the composer to dictate the performer’s relationship to the temporal flow as with Stockhausen’s series of time-field sizes, Tudor preferred to assume control of his own senses. In terms related to experimental psychology, Tudor controlled the temporal boundaries of the perceived present. He achieved this by resisting the tendency to group a series of durations according to such Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 192 conventional criteria as proximity or periodicity. In effect, Tudor rebelled against the defined limitations of perception. The psychological determinates of musical continuity are cultivated by experience, and Tudor, like his New York colleagues, sought to liberate himself from the dictates of convention and allow his senses to operate afresh. If Tudor “let the sounds be themselves,” he also insisted that they let him be himself, on his own terms. Tudor refers with approval to a conversation between Cage and the popular Zen author Alan Watts in which the latter remarks that the New York composers “are not writing music but doing ear-cleaning.”6 1 Just as many of the avant-garde composers with whom Tudor associated sought to compose upon a slate wiped clean by electronic technology, so too did the pianist seek a new and appropriate performance practice. To fortify Cage’s dictum: New music: new performance', new listening.6 2 Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 193 NOTES 1. The David Tudor Papers, 1884-1998 (bulk 1940-1996), Getty Research Institute, Research Library, Accession no. 980039 (DT, GRI), Box 51, Folder 7. 2. John Cage, “History of Experimental Music in the United States,” Silence (Middletown, CT: Wesleyan University Press, 1961), 70. 3. Pierre Boulez, “At the Edge of Fertile Land,” Stocktakings from an Apprenticeship, trans. Stephen Walsh (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1991), 164. 4. See the previous chapter for a more detailed discussion of Brown’s Perspectives. 5. Earle Brown, “The Notation and Performance of New Music,” Musical Quarterly 72:2 (Spring 1986), 191. 6. Boulez, “Fertile,” 165. See the previous chapter for a discussion of Boulez’s concept of rhythm. 7. Earle Brown, interview with the author, 21 May 2001. 8. Alf Gabrielsson, “Rhythm in Music,” Rhythm in Psychological, Linguistic and Musical Processes, ed. James R. Evans and Manfred Clynes (Springfield: Thomas Books, 1986), 132. 9. Paul Fraisse, The Psychology o f Time, trans. Jennifer Leith (New York: Harper and Row, 1963), 1. 10. Ibid., 68-69. 11. Ibid., 70. 12. Ibid., 72. 13. Ibid., 84-85. 14. Ibid., 72. 15. Christopher F. Hasty, “Rhythm in Post-Tonal Music: Preliminary Questions of Duration and Motion,” Journal o f Music Theory 25 (1981), 185-86. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 194 16. Walter Zimmerman, Desert Plants: Conversations with Twenty-Three American Musicians (Vancouver: A.R.C. Publications, 1976), 7. 17. Maury Yeston, The Stratification o f Musical Rhythm (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1976). 18. Leonard B. Meyer, Music, The Arts, and Ideas, 2n d ed. (Chicago and London: University of Chicago Press, 1994), 271. 19. Ibid., 275. 20. Ibid. 21. DT, GRI. Box 15, Folder 2. 22. Ibid. 23. For a typescript of his lecture at Darmstadt, see Stefan Wolpe, “On new (and not-so-new) music in America,” trans. Austin Clarkson, Journal o f Music Theory 28:1 (Spring 1984), 1-45. 24. DT, GRI. Box 15, Folder 2. 25. DT, GRI. Box 59, Folder 7. 26. Ibid. 27. Ibid. 28. Tudor seems to have jotted down his ideas as they occurred to him, without a clear sense of organization. Excerpts from these notes will therefore be presented below in a different sequence than they appear in his notebook. 29. Unless otherwise noted, all of the following citations of Tudor are from DT, GRI, Box 107, Folder 10. 30. A series of lectures and discussions on the aesthetics of electronic music took place at Darmstadt in 1950, 1951, and 1956. See Gianmario Borio, “New Technology, New Techniques: the Aesthetics of Electronic Music in the 1950s,” Interface: Journal o f New Music Research 22:1 (Feb. 1993), 77-87. 31. Jonathan Kramer, The Time o f Music (New York: Schirmer Books, 1988), 71- 72. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 195 32. Cage, “Experimental Music,” Silence, 11. 33. DT, GRI. Box 62, Folder 4. Feldman’s statement, along with those of Boulez, Cage, and Wolff, was intended to be used by Henry Cowell for an article to appear in Musical Quarterly in 1951. The composers’ writings were deemed “incomprehensible” by the editor and the article was rejected. Instead, it was published in the short-lived journal Transformations under the title “Four Musicians at Work.” It has been reprinted in Jean-Jacques Nattiez, ed. The Boulez-Cage Correspondence, trans. Robert Samuels (Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press, 1993),104. 34. Feldman’s Intersection 3 (1953) was Tudor’s first written-out realization of an indeterminate score. The notation of Tudor’s realization of this work is basically conventional, with one quarter-note value for every graphic block, although there are no barlines. 35. Richard Kostelantez, “John Cage and Richard Kostelanetz: A conversation about radio,” Musical Quarterly 72:2 (1986), 219-20. 36. In the summer of 1951, when Tudor first performed the first part of Music o f Changes at the University of Colorado at Boulder and Black Mountain College, the pianist also performed Wolpe’s Battle Piece. Austin Clarkson convincingly argues that Feldman’s early indeterminate works notated on graph paper (such as his Intersection 3) as well as Tudor’s realization of them were strongly influenced by the work of their teacher Wolpe, and not so much by Cage. See Clarkson, “Stefan Wolpe and Abstract Expressionism,” The New York Schools o f Music and Visual Arts (New York: Routledge, 2002), 175-112. 37. During the 1953 summer session at Black Mountain College, Rademacher gave lectures on “What is Mathematics,” “On Lines and Surfaces,” and “On Prime Numbers.” Besides Rademacher and Tudor, other instructors participating in the concert and lectures series that summer included Merce Cunningham, Charles Olson, Irma Wolpe, and Stefan Wolpe. See Mary Emma Harris, The Arts at Black Mountain College (Cambridge: MIT Press, 1987). 38. Cage, Music o f Changes (New York, London: C. F. Peters Corporation, 1961). 39. DT, GRI. Box 107, Folder 3. The mathematical notes are not part of the notebook that includes the preparatory notes for the Darmstadt seminar. 40. The equations, although marked as “HANS RADEMACHER’S FORMULAS,” are not unique derivations of the mathematician. In fact, they are elementary physics that Rademacher must have simply introduced to Tudor. Nevertheless, Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 196 for convenience and consistency, I will refer to these equations as Rademacher’s formulas. 41. Tudor makes a simple arithmetical error at number 11: sixty divided by 100 and multiplied by eight is 4.8, not 3.2. 42. Karlheinz Stockhausen, “ . . . how time passes .. .,” Die Reihe 3 (1957), 31. 43. Cage, “Experimental Music: Doctrine,” Silence, 15. 44. Boulez, “Fertile,” 166. 45. Boulez, Boulez on Music Today, trans. Susan Bradshaw and Richard Rodney Bennett (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1971), 88. 46. Ibid., 88-89. 47. Cage, “Doctrine,” 14. 48. Hasty, “Succession and Continuity in Twentieth-Century Music,” Music Theory Spectrum 8 (1986), 60. 49. Cage, “Four Musicians,” Nattiez, ed. Boulez-Cage, 107. Reprinted as “To Describe the Process of Composition Used in Music o f Changes and Imaginary Landscape No. 4,” Silence, 59. 50. Jonathan Cott, Stockhausen: Conversations with the Composer (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1973), 91. 51. David Tudor, “From Piano to Electronics,” Music and Musicians 20:12 (1972), 24. 52. Gunther Schuller, “American Performance and New Music.” Perspectives o f NewMusic 1:2 (Spring 1963), 6. 53. John Holzaepfel, “Reminiscenses of a twentieth-century pianist: an interview with David Tudor,” Musical Quarterly 78:3 (Fall 1994), 54. Boulez, “Fertile,” 161. 55. Zimmerman, Desert Plants, 7. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 197 56. A comparison can also be made with abstract expressionist artist Franz Kline, whose works are characterized by a few thick, black brush strokes on a white ground. Kline emphasized that he painted both the black and the white forms on his canvases. For a thorough discussion of the relationship between Feldman and Kline (and other abstract expressionist artists), see Jonathan W. Bernard, “Feldman’s Painters,” The New York Schools o f Music and Visual Arts (New York: Routledge, 2002), 173-215. 57. Zimmerman, Desert Plants, 26. 58. Boulez, Conversations with Celestin Deliege, trans. anon. (London: Eulenburg Books, 1975), 84. 59. Cornelius Cardew, “Notation-Interpretation,” Tempo (Summer 1961), 21. 60. Tudor, “From Piano,” 24. 61. Harold Schonberg, “The Far-Out Pianist,” Harpers Magazine (June 1960), 49. The reference comes from a 1951 letter from Cage to Tudor when the pianist was in Boulder, Colorado accompanying the dance company of Jean Erdman. Cage writes: “I saw Alan Watts twice, and you . . . will probably see him in Boulder when he passes through. He says we are not writing music but doing ear-cleaning. I said whatever you call it makes little difference.” DT, GRI. Box , Folder. 62. Cage, “Experimental,” 10. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 198 CHAPTER FOUR ALCHEMIST OF THE AVANT-GARDE: DAVID TUDOR AND ESOTERICISM “At last, I began to consider my mind's disorder a sacred thing.” -Arthur Rimbaud, A Season in Hell The works comprising David Tudor’s repertory of the 1950s are notorious for their complexity and, more often than not, their inaccessibility. Tudor had a remarkable ability to realize these perplexing scores with unperturbed grace. Variously described as “shy,” “quiet,” “mystical,” and “permanently concentrated,” the pianist was as enigmatic as the works that he performed. By all accounts, his performance practice was marked by such seriousness of demeanor and efficiency of physical movement that, given the chaotic nature of much of the music, it often gave the impression that the pianist was indifferent to the sounds that he was producing. But while emotional detachment was certainly characteristic of the aesthetic shared by Tudor and his associates, to identify their work with the modernist axiom “art for the sake of art” is slightly misleading. According to an inscription in the pianist’s personal notes, the “separation of thought and sense experience puts [the] Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 199 forces of [the] soul into sense experience.”1 Seemingly antithetical to the depersonalized objectivity of the avant-gardists, Tudor believed that the true essence of art is the spirit. The David Tudor Papers at the Getty Research Institute include an entire box labeled “Spiritual” which contains notes, transcripts, articles, and pamphlets collected by the pianist in the 1950s and ‘60s. Mysteriously strewn with mathematical equations, meditation exercises, and metaphysical reflections, Tudor’s notes reveal that he took a keen interest in various forms of Western esotericism and Eastern philosophy, including Anthroposophy, astrology, Indian yoga, Theosophy, Zen Buddhism, and many others. The present chapter will demonstrate that the very complexity of the works performed by Tudor was a functional aspect of his personal search for occult knowledge. Such a study will offer insight into the celebrated interpreter’s perception of what continues to be a necessarily baffling repertory. The spiritual interests exhibited by Tudor were relatively widespread from the early part of the century to the years following the Second World War; many prominent composers were influenced in distinct capacities and to varying degrees by occultism. Some of Tudor’s closest associates also displayed an affinity for esotericism and Eastern philosophy including Brown, Cage, and Stockhausen, although there appears to have been very little exchange of spiritual ideas between the composers and the pianist. Before surveying the contents of Tudor’s “Spiritual” file, it will be useful to provide a definition for occultism and to consider why Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 200 esoteric knowledge was sought after by many twentieth-century artists and intellectuals. In his article “Occult Movements in America,” Robert S. Ellwood offers an excellent general description: Occultism refers to ‘secret truth.’ Occult movements are those whose adherents believe they are custodians of significant truth about reality—truth unknown to most people either because it has been deliberately concealed or because it is by its very nature unknowable without special training or initiation. This esoteric knowledge characteristically concerns little-known laws of nature, unexplored psychic and spiritual capacities of the human being, or superhuman hierarchies—gods, spirits, masters—ranged between the human being and ‘ultimate reality.’ In occult lore, these hidden laws and superior beings invisibly guide the world and assist the sincere aspirant toward higher wisdom. Initiations, rites, and meditation techniques are frequently part of an occult movement’s equipment—aids to the attainment of occult truth, and to tapping its power.4 Elwood’s definition will serve as a basis upon which specific occult movements that interested Tudor may be discussed. All of the movements under consideration were active in the twentieth century, and most of them continue to flourish in the present day. Initially, adherents of occultism may seem naive to the post-Enlightenment mind, which prides itself on scientific accountability. On closer inspection, however, it becomes evident that one of the most appealing features of occult movements in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries was exactly their claim to scientific rigor. “The occult world view,” Elwood explains, “typically postulates an impersonal, monistic Absolute, which operates the universe through law rather than by caprice. Hence occultism claims an affinity with the scientific approach.”5 In The History and Philosophy o f the Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 201 Metaphysical Movements in America, J. Stillson Judah points out that most occultists “have preferred the concept of an impersonal God, a God of science, often called by such names as Christ Principle, Infinite Principle, etc.,”6 a preference that lends itself to a quasi-scientific objectivity: Therefore, all [practitioners] consider their philosophies to be scientific as well as religious. They seek to be united with their God as Principle or Law through the understanding and utilization of spiritual or psychic laws. By their use they believe they can gain health, prosperity, peace of mind, or inner occult development according to their respective goals. The claim to be scientific allures many Americans to their fold.7 Another intersection of mysticism and science is the relationship between numerology and mathematics, both of which use numbers as abstract symbols to articulate what are deemed universal principles. From Pythagoras to Stockhausen, many musicians have postulated the correlation between numerical ratios and musical intervals. The correlation became particularly acute in the 1950s when composers began to experiment with total serialism and the electronic generation of sound. Many of the contributors to Die Reihe, the principal journal of the post-war European avant-garde, seemed to be seeking scientific justification for their musical activities by adopting a quasi-mathematical language—one that is often misinformed from a strictly scientific perspective. John Backus, after ruthlessly criticizing the technical language used in several of the articles in Die Reihe, claims to have revealed what was “nothing more than a mystical belief in numerology as the fundamental basis for music.”8 Technical legitimacy aside, the propensity for scientism accounts in part for the widespread interest in occultism among Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 202 intellectuals who were fanatical about technological advancement. They believed that the progress of science and technology would guide the post-war culture to a modem utopia. Elwood gives additional reasons why occultism might have appealed to the modem individual who found himself in an increasingly pluralistic culture: First, occultism’s intellectual emphasis affirms the intelligence and learning of those who might otherwise feel overwhelmed by multitudinous choices. Second, occultism’s self-proclaimed compatibility with science appears positive in a new and confusing world. Third, particularly in its diffuse mode of expression, occultism fits well with the spirit of modem individualism and pluralism; at the same time, personal occult study and practice need not be inconsistent with participation in conventional religion. Finally, the yearning for roots often felt in a world in which so many traditionalisms seem shattered is met by occultism’s claim to represent antique lore, going back to ancient Egypt or India, or even to the world of the Paleolithic shaman.9 Furthermore, Elwood argues that one cannot properly place occultism directly at odds with the “wave of progress” valued by advocates of the Enlightenment: But the eighteenth century understood, in a way perhaps more difficult subsequently, that three seemingly disparate causes—Enlightenment rationalism, occultism, and democratic revolution—could go together. From the eighteenth-century vantage point, the three shared the ultimate common values of human dignity and of a universe governed by laws accessible to the human mind; all, moreover, served to undermine autocrats and their religious props. Thus Freemasonry and even rationalism helped make the occult appear again, as in the Renaissance, to be allied with the wave of progress.1 0 Not only has occultism maintained a legitimate existence within modem society, but it has also proved to be a functional component of cultural development. According to Edward Tiryakian, “the esoteric tradition. . . has been a catalyst in the modernization process (spanning many centuries).”1 1 He posits that when the Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 203 presence of occult groups in a culture becomes broadly visible, it is indicative of an important shift in sociological priorities: If we think of ‘normal’ social life as ‘routinely’ unfolding along the lines of a basic cultural paradigm underlying social institutions, then the analysis of changes in the structure of cultural paradigms gives us greater sensitivity to periods of transition, that is, to periods of normative crises ..., cultural revolutions, and renovations. It is in these crucial periods that esoteric doctrines, and occult groups and practices, surface from their covert level in society and attain public visibility. The flourishing of the esoteric and the occult has, therefore, a definite sociological significance. It might, conceivably, be an indicator of a very advanced state of cultural decadence; it is also conceivable that it may be a harbinger of a new cultural paradigm.1 2 In the aftermath of the Second World War, the desire to create a “new cultural paradigm” was practically a universal interest among artists and intellectuals in the Western world. This desire can be witnessed among musicians in the post-war establishment of several institutions devoted specifically to the production of new music, including those at Brussels, Cologne, Darmstadt, Stockholm, Venice, and Warsaw. Elwood, Judah, and Tiryakian have demonstrated that occultism, although having ancient roots and enjoying a more widespread popularity in the pre- Enlightenment era, was congenial to the modem mind and has occupied a significant segment of twentieth-century culture. In fact, Tudor’s interest in various forms of mysticism and the occult is exemplary of a larger cultural trend that was sweeping across the Western world at that time. The years following the Second World War saw a revival of interest in esotericism that generated an unprecedented volume of writings on mystical practices by figures prominent in both literary and scholarly Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 204 fields. Mircea Eliade, the esteemed historian of religion, remarks on the distinction between earlier writings on the occult and those of the mid-twentieth century: While the nineteenth-century writers’ involvement in the occult was not accompanied by a comparable curiosity on the part of historians of ideas, the reverse situation has come about in the past thirty or forty years.. . . [T]he decisive and illuminating contributions to the understanding of occult traditions have been made by historians of ideas. As a matter of fact, one can almost say that the fantastic popularity of the occult which started in the middle sixties was anticipated by a series of fundamental scientific books on esoteric doctrines and secret practices published between 1940 and I960.1 3 The two decades marked by Eliade coincide precisely with Tudor’s developmental years—the period in which he decided to focus his attention on the piano instead of the organ—and with the years that the pianist exploded onto the international contemporary music scene. In addition to numerous studies on occultism, the same period saw important English translations of classic Eastern and Western mystic texts such as R. B. Blakney’s Meister Eckhart (1941), Cary F. Baynes’s English edition of Richard Wilhelm’s German translation of The I Ching (1950)—the same edition given to Cage by Christian Wolff, whose parents owned Pantheon Books—and Swami Prabhavananda’s and Christopher Isherwood’s collaboration on the Bhagavad-Gita (1954). Additionally, the post-war decade saw the first English translations of the hugely popular novels Siddhartha by Hermann Hesse (translated by Hilda Rosner in 1951) and Zen in the Art o f Archery by Eugen Herrigel (translated by R. F. C. Hull in 1953, with an introduction by D. T. Suzuki). The post-war generation also witnessed the first English-written texts of Zen scholarship by such prominent authors as D. T. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 205 Suzuki, whose work will be discussed shortly, and Alan Watts, whose best-selling The Way o f Zen (1958) was also published by Pantheon Books (as well as ten other titles by Watts). Altogether, Watts published over twenty titles between 1938 and 1973, the bulk of which appeared in the 1960s. It is worth noting that Watts, who moved to the United States in the early 1950s, was friends with Joseph Campbell, the preeminent scholar of mythology, and his wife Jean Erdman, the modem dancer and choreographer for whom Tudor provided piano accompaniment throughout the 1950s. While in Boulder, Colorado, accompanying the dance company of Erdman in the summer of 1951, Tudor was in correspondence with Cage, who was in the midst of composing Music o f Changes. (Tudor gave the first performance of Part I of the work in a solo recital on July 5, 1951 at the University of Colorado, Boulder. This recital predates the official premiere of the entire work, which took place in New York at the Cherry Lane Theatre on January 1,1952.) Cage informed the pianist that he had recently met with Watts and that the Zen lecturer would be passing through Boulder. “I saw Alan Watts twice, and you and Jean [Erdman] and Jo [Campbell] will probably see him in Boulder when he passes through. He says we are not writing music but doing ear- cleaning. I said whatever you call it makes little difference.”1 4 Tudor cited with approval Cage’s account of his conversation with Watts.1 5 The wave of mystical writings that washed over the United States during this period primed the post-war culture for a spiritual renaissance; these writings served as precursors to the heightened (and popularized) spiritual awareness of the 1960s Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 206 and the “occult explosion” of the 1970s and ‘80s that eventually led to New Age movements of the present day. As Eliade indicates, the literature that served as a foundation for this renaissance had begun to circulate widely by the 1940s, making its way into the collections of public libraries. In the early 1950s, Tudor frequently patronized the New York Public Library and he made a gathering of the call slips he had accumulated— 130 of these slips can be found in his papers. Also in Tudor’s collection are various sheets of scratch paper and envelopes on which the pianist jotted several other titles on subjects closely related to those on the official call slips. The subjects of these titles can be placed into one of three categories: botany and cooking, science and mathematics, and occultism and Eastern philosophy. As it is not in the scope of the present study to consider what is undoubtedly an interesting connection between Tudor’s spiritual beliefs and his lifelong passion for cuisine, and the general relationship between science and the occult has already been addressed briefly, the discussion here will focus on the pianist’s collection of materials concerning the last category of titles. (See Appendix B for a list of these titles.) While these titles document Tudor’s reading interests at the time, the degree to which he was influenced by them remains uncertain. Fortunately, it was a common practice of Tudor—and of many others who lived in an era before photocopy machines—to make either typescript or, more frequently, longhand copies of excerpts deemed interesting enough to preserve. Many of these notes are written in small wire-bound notebooks, which undoubtedly proved convenient while the Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 207 pianist was touring extensively. In fact, some of the notebooks contain prayer-like reflections and inspirational poetry—most notably that of seventeenth-century metaphysical poet Thomas Traherne1 6 —transcribed in a clearly legible hand that suggests their use as a compendium of daily affirmations. Such notes differ markedly from those on loose sheets of larger paper containing long prose passages hurriedly scribbled, replete with time-saving abbreviations. These notes, together with printed articles, pamphlets, and other paraphernalia, faithfully document the pianist’s spiritual interests in the 1950s and 1960s. Tudor’s collection of spiritual writings can be organized into three basic subgroups: Western esotericism, Eastern philosophy, and most prominently, occult movements that seek to join the two traditions. I will survey a selection of this collection, including astrology, Zen Buddhism, “Mentalphysics,” Theosophy, and Anthroposophy. Astrology, or the study of how the stars and planets influence human affairs, is the most common form of occultism in the West. Astrological studies operate according to the theory of correspondence, which Judah describes: In Western occultism there is a belief in the correspondence between the natural and spiritual worlds, expressed as the ‘Hermetic principle’ in the dictum, ‘As above, so below.’ This concept is basic to a spiritual alchemy or spiritual science through which it was believed a person might be transformed spiritually.1 7 The theory of correspondence, Judah explains, makes astrological studies congenial to almost all occult practices: Besides his physical body man has an astral body. The word ‘astral,’ which is derived from the Greek word aster, or star, is a term used by early occultists and alchemists such as Paracelsus. Paracelsus held that since man was a Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 208 microcosm corresponding to the macrocosm, he therefore contained astral matter. This belief, predating Paracelsus, becomes basic to the idea that the heavenly bodies may affect mankind, and that their relative positions at the moment of each man’s birth exert an influence upon the course of his life.1 8 This last point finds its most popular guise in the modem horoscope found in countless newspapers, magazines, and now websites. Tudor’s interest in astrology is revealed in several descriptions of the Zodiac signs, including a forty-six page booklet by Isabelle M. Pagan called An Astrological Key to Character (1907, reprinted 1954). Tudor, bom on January 20, 1926, was classified as an Aries by Pagan’s text and on at least one occasion he had a personalized astrological mapping created for his own reference. According to Pagan’s booklet, those bom under the Aries sign are strong-willed pioneers, “giving a ready welcome to new ideas and experiences.”1 9 A prominent manifestation of the astrological belief system is Tarot cards, a mystical medium through which practitioners seek divination. Several items in Tudor’s papers reveal the pianist’s fascination with these symbolic cards: he collected information on shuffling techniques and various spreads, as well as numerous descriptions of the archetypical figures that comprise the so-called Major Arcana. Typescripts of essays on the subject are also included in Tudor’s collection. One of the essays, “The Tarot and the Accomplishment of the Great Work” by Berthe MacMonnies Hazard, posits that the original conception of the Tarot system was not principally that of a fortune-telling device, but rather as a “psychological therapeutic system”—in other words, a form of meditation: Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 209 Its purpose . . . was solely that of eliminating integrated illusion and self- deception in the student, and fostering such honesty, self-awareness and integrated individuality as would prepare the ground for the much desired experience of rebirth or regeneration. This was called the “Great Work,” and the process, “The accomplishment of the Great Work.” Paul Foster Case . . . says: “Realization is a state of consciousness; it is the illumined perception of things as they are, supplanting the deluded acceptance of things as they look. The Tarot keys were designed to bring about this change of consciousness. He who impresses their symbols deeply upon his brain cells, plants within himself the seeds of illumined realization.2 0 Hazard indicates that it is specifically the cards of the Major Arcana “which have been chiefly used for psychological purposes,” and she outlines the advantages of using Tarot cards to this end: Each card . . . was used by esoteric students as subjects for meditation and contemplation, in the exercises which they undertook with the purpose of obtaining enlightenment. The special advantage of the technique as compared with others was that it combined several training requirements in one activity. Thus while the student studied the symbols, he unconsciously practiced concentration, visualization, accuracy, analysis and synthesis, evaluation of color and form, and above all that all-important faculty of correlating abstract ideas.2 1 The activity of reading Tarot cards, according to Hazard, is essentially ritualistic in nature: it is a task set aside of one’s practical life with the purpose of engaging in meditation. Another transcript in Tudor’s possession was that of a paper by Elizabeth Whitney, delivered before the Analytical Psychology Club of California in 1940. Whitney draws an illuminating comparison between the function of Tarot cards and that of the I Ching, the ancient Chinese text that served both Cage and Merce Cunningham in their use of chance procedures: Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 210 As a method of divination, the Tarot set corresponds to the Y Ging, the Chinese Book of Changes. It undertakes to tap the unconscious forces at work in a given situation, and by the understanding of them to permit them to change our too one-sided or superficial realization. Such an attempt rests on the assumption . .. that there is a source of energy within the unconscious expressed in a great jumble of symbols and directed towards the development of the complete personality.2 2 The limitations of “our too one-sided or superficial realization,” mentioned by Whitney, are those which confine one to ideas that are either preconceived or derived from a conscious thought process. In other words, the disciplined engagement with chance procedures allows one the freedom to perceive a more diverse interpenetration of the “great jumble of symbols.” This strongly suggests that when Tudor discourages one from apprehending the relationship between sounds in order for the sounds to be themselves, he is more properly encouraging the listener to apprehend the boundless interrelatedness of the totality of sounds. It is a conventionally fixed relationship between sounds that Tudor is rejecting. According to the authors of each essay, the Tarot system affords the practitioner a means for transcending the limitations of conventional, or rational, lines of thought. Both essays refer to Arthur Edward Waite’s The Pictorial Key to the Tarot, a source evidently examined by Tudor as it appears on one of his New York Public Library call slips. Waite, an English occultist and a member of the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn, wrote extensively on esotericism and his text on the Tarot cards, as well as its accompanying deck, is widely acknowledged as an authority. According to Waite, if the Tarot cards contain esoteric knowledge, it is not on Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 211 account of some specific tradition passed exclusively from one initiate to another, but rather due to the universal symbolism inherent to the images of the cards: The Tarot embodies symbolical presentations of universal ideas, behind which lie all the implicits of the human mind, and it is in this sense that they contain secret doctrine, which is the realization by the few of truths imbedded in the consciousness of all, though they have not passed into express recognition by ordinary men.2 3 Waite remarks that the power of the cards is universally accessible—it is only hidden to those who have not yet undertaken what Elwood refers to, in his definition of occultism cited earlier, as the “special training” required to experience it. At the close of the volume, Waite includes “notes on the practice of divination,” a list of suggestions anonymously “provided by one who has more titles to speak than all the cartomancists of Europe.” They are intended to guide the practitioner to a more effective reading of the cards: 1. Before beginning the operation, formulate your question definitely, and repeat it aloud. 2. Make your mind as blank as possible while shuffling the cards. 3. Put out of the mind personal bias and preconceived ideas as far as possible, or your judgment will be tinctured thereby. 4. On this account it is more easy to divine correctly for a stranger than for yourself or a friend 2 4 These guidelines emphasize the importance of a detached clarity of purpose in the practitioner’s attempt to conduct an effective reading. Properly utilized, the Tarot cards offer a means for gaining insight into universal ideas that Waite claims are readily accessible to disciplined individuals. Another field of Tudor’s interest, Zen Buddhism, has long recognized spiritual enlightenment as a universally accessible experience. In addition to the Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 212 many call slips of books on Japanese Zen and Indian Buddhism from which Zen originated, there exist in Tudor’s papers lengthy transcriptions, both typed and handwritten, of the writings of Japanese Zen scholar, Daisetz Teitaro Suzuki. While D. T. Suzuki’s association with the post-war avant-garde is most well-known through the stories propagated by Cage, who attended lectures delivered by Suzuki at Columbia University in the late 1940s, the Zen scholar’s influence on American post-war culture was immense. With numerous texts including Essays in Zen Buddhism (three volumes, 1927-33 ), Introduction to Zen Buddhism (1949), Studies in Zen Buddhism (1955), and Zen and Japanese Culture (1959), D.T. Suzuki introduced Zen principles to the English-speaking world with a fervor that was unprecedented. Tudor transcribed by hand several pages of Suzuki’s explanations of Zen concepts. In one passage, Suzuki explains that contradictions are inherent to the process of rationalization: Zen knows no contradictions; it is the logician who encounters them, forgetting that they are of his own making. While the human mind is capable of creating concepts in order to interpret reality, it hypostatizes them and treats them as if they were real things; not only that, the mind regards its self- constructed concepts as laws externally imposed upon reality, which has to obey them in order to unfold itself. This attitude or assumption on the part of the intellect helps the mind to handle nature for its own purposes, but the mind altogether misses the inner workings of life and consequently is utterly unable to understand it; this is the reason we have to halt at contradictions and are at a loss as to how to proceed.2 5 One of the contradictions put forward by Zen philosophy is that the rational thought process is the source of irrationality. This contradiction explains the customary Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 213 practice of Zen masters individually assigning each of their students a series of koans, paradoxical riddles designed to upset the course of logical reasoning. Ironically, it is through the application of logic that one’s realization of its futility comes to light. Suzuki explains that this sense of contradiction is inherent to the process of identification, the means of perception by which one thing is necessarily distinguished from another: We cannot remain forever in a state of undifferentiation; we are so made as to give expression to every experience we go thru; a dumb experience is no experience at all; it is human to express, that is, to appeal to differentiation and analysis. Tathata [“suchness,” the identifiable existence of specific objects] cannot remain expressionless and undifferentiated; it has to that extent to be conceptualized. While to utter, to express, is to come out of the identification, and, hence, to be no more of tathata, this coming out of itself, this negating itself in order to be itself, is the way in which we all are constituted. And this conceptualization inevitably leads to contradictions which can only be dissolved in the synthesis of prajna-intuition [or intuitive “wisdom”]. Metaphysically speaking, absorbing identification and awakening to differentiation are simultaneous; and this simultaneity takes place in an absolute present... 2 6 According to Zen, any attempt to discuss a perceptual phenomenon will necessarily result in a concept, or a fixed form, that is by nature contradictory to the experience. Only by an intuitive understanding of this dichotomy can one transcend concepts and experience what Suzuki calls Rupadhatu. In another passage transcribed by Tudor, Suzuki explains that Rupadhatu, or “Heaven of form,” is a mode of perception that is untainted by value judgments: The aesthetic state is related to sense-perception; it pertains exclusively to the senses. Because your senses are always deluded you are not able to see the pure aesthetic world. You continually observe the outside thru the medium of Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 214 your ideas. But logically there must be a pure aesthetic world. This world is termed the Rupadhatu. In the Rupadhatu no value is associated with things; man is entirely disinterested in everything that takes place outside. In the Rupadhatu things can be measured but they cannot be evaluated; things are not seen in terms of value, are not judged from the personal standpoint. Everything in this state of aesthetics exists as it is, without any artificial or extraneous features.2 7 This passage is particularly revealing in terms of Tudor’s performance practice. Just as Suzuki indicates that in the Rupadhatu, “things can be measured but they cannot be evaluated,” the pianist painstakingly measured the precise placement of each musical event in an entirely dispassionate manner. Further, the resultant sound sought by Tudor “exists as it is,” that is, as sound unencumbered by concepts. Tudor also had in his possession a typescript (probably his own transcription) of the second chapter of D. T. Suzuki’s translation of the Lankavatara Sutra, a collection of Zen principles said to have been given by the Buddha to his chief disciple. In the introduction, Suzuki speaks of an “important psychological event” known as Paravritti in much Buddhist literature: Paravritti literally means “turning up” or “turning back” or “change”; technically, it is a spiritual change or transformation which takes place in the mind, especially suddenly, and I have called it “revulsion” in my Studies in the Lankavatara, which, it will be seen, somewhat corresponds to what is known as “conversion” among the psychological students of religion. It is significant that the Mahayana has been insistent to urge its followers to experience this psychological transformation in their practical life. A mere intellectual understanding of the truth is not enough in the life of a Buddhist; the truth must be directly grasped, personally experienced intuitively penetrated into; for then it will be distilled into life and determine its course.2 Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 215 By his own account, Tudor underwent such a conversion in his experience in 1950 with Boulez’s Second Piano Sonata, facilitated by the writings of Artaud. Recall the pianist reflecting upon the significance of his psychological transformation: [T]he most important thing for me about this period is a change in musical perception.. . . I recall this as a definite breaking point, as the moment I became aware another kind of musical continuity was possible, and from then on I began to see all other music in those terms.”2 9 Tudor’s revelatory change in perception, like Suzuki’s description of Paravritti, was a psychological transformation that greatly shaped the course of his musical life. The experience of revelation is common to mystic practices of both Eastern and Western traditions. A relatively obscure establishment seeking to combine these traditions is the Institute of Mentalphysics, a Los Angeles based organization claiming to be the first church of mystic Christianity. The Institute of Mentalphysics was founded in 1927 by Edwin Dingle, an Englishman who spent over twenty years in China on which he was recognized as a geographic authority. In China, and later Tibet, Dingle sought the esoteric teachings of the East and returned to teach aspirants of the West the mysteries of the ancient science of Brahma Vidya, or what he called Mentalphysics. A mystical aspect of the Hindu tradition, Brahma Vidya (“Science of God”) is based on the notion of an individual’s revelatory experience, expressed in the Bhagavad-Gita as “direct intuitional knowledge.” In his book Kingly Science Kingly Secret, Sri Swami Sivananda describes the “Royal Science” undertaken by practitioners of Yoga: Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 216 Brahma-Vidya . . . is the Science of sciences. The knower of Brahma-Vidya . .. knows everything. His knowledge is full. He has the whole experience through intuition or revelation.. . . All secular sciences have their own limitations. A scientist works on the physical plane with a finite mind and with instruments. He knows the physical laws. He has some knowledge of the elements, atoms and physical energy. His knowledge is fragmentary. He has no experience of the whole. He has no knowledge of transcendental or super- • in sensual things. While Sivananda draws a clear distinction between the practices of Western scientists and those of Eastern Yogis, he explains that the principles of Brahma Vidya ultimately accommodate both traditions and create a unity between conventional notions of science and religion. It is precisely this unity that Dingle sought to foster by introducing Brahma Vidya to the West in the form of Mentalphysics. An assortment of pamphlets from the Institute of Mentalphysics exists in Tudor’s papers. An excerpt from a pamphlet entitled “Science at Last Finds God” demonstrates the rhetoric adopted by the Institute: [MJaterial thing[s]. . . are simply differing concentrations o f energy and waves. And these are just other names for thought or spirit.. . . Every atom of visible, material substance, when scientifically examined, is found to be kept in motion by this energy, or thought or spirit - in other words, by a Universal Intelligence within itself. Ancient scientists and the prophets who declared that the Holy Spirit is everywhere, pervading everything, appear to be right, after all - though men led themselves astray into the belief that “God” was something away, apart, beyond, separate; and we have awaited the findings of science to prove otherwise. Many intelligent people, influenced by a formerly materialistic science, have abandoned religion. Now, guided by the very science that led them astray, they are returning to a new and deeply spiritual interpretation o f life?1 Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 217 It is not an ironic claim that the development of modem science has led to a more universal embracement of its counterpart, spirituality; at the investigative extreme of both fields lie the inexplicable. In this unknown region exists the intersection of the seemingly opposed doctrines of East and West. A unique faction of the occult practiced by Eastern and Western adherents alike is Spiritualism, the belief that one can communicate with spirits of the departed. The movement was initiated in the United States and made famous by the “Rochester rappings” in 1848 when the Fox sisters fraudulently claimed to exchange tapped codes with a resident ghost. Spiritualism is based on the practice of mediumship: Spiritualists commonly hold ritualistic seances in which a host, usually in a trance like state, acts as a medium through which communication with the deceased is said to occur. A post-war phenomenon closely linked to the obsession with spiritual communication is the quest for extra-terrestrial life. A subject of intrigue for both laypeople and scientists, sightings of “unidentified flying objects” (UFOs) were first reported in 1947, triggering the establishment of UFO groups in the following decade. According to Elwood, such groups as the Aetherius Society in England (founded by George King in 1954) and Understanding, Inc. in America (founded by Daniel Fry in 1955) were closely related to the Spiritualist movement: Individuals came forward with claims to being ‘contactees,’ persons contacted by the visitors from other worlds who rode the mysterious vessels. Usually the ‘contacts’ were said to be beings so superior to earthlings as to be virtually godlike. They had important messages for us, warning us on our destructive ways, and promising that if earthmen—or believers—reformed, Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 218 they could be initiated into a higher galactic civilization. So similar in structure were many of these encounters to the religious revelations of the past that the analytic psychologist C. G. Jung spoke of the spacemen as ‘technological angels,’ the gods and saviors of another day reclothed in space-age dress.3 2 Tudor, like other seekers of a “space-age” utopia, made a collection of newspaper articles concerning “supernormal phenomena,” “other worlds,” and the possibility of “Intelligent Life . . . on Some Far-Distant Planets.” In fact, Tudor’s fascination with the advancement of technology and the potential role that it plays in the development of human consciousness was probably a significant factor in his gravitation towards live electronic music in the 1960s. One highly regarded Spiritualist, the Russian aristocrat Helena Petrovna Blavatsky, went on to establish one of the most formidable forces in modem occultism. Madame Blavatsky, along with American Colonel Henry Steel Olcott, founded the Theosophical Society in New York in 1875, thereby initiating what Elwood identified as “the most important movement to grow out of the Spiritualist awakening, and one that has spawned a further set of occult groups.”3 4 So influential was Blavatsky on twentieth-century occultism in the United States, that she has been referred to as the “Founding Mother of the Occult in America.”3 5 The first of Blavatsky’s important works, Iris Unveiled (1877), displays an affinity for the Western esoteric tradition by describing the three elements which constitute both the universe and human beings: matter, spirit, and consciousness. Her next work, The Secret Doctrine (1888), written after a sojourn to India, reflects the Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 219 influence of the Eastern mystic tradition. Theosophy, then, similar to Dingle’s Mentalphysics, is a blend of principles from the East and West. Most prominent among Blavatsky’s writings in Tudor’s possession is a typescript of “The Three Fundamental Propositions (from the Proem of The Secret Doctrine).” Directed primarily toward the student, the text was considered by Blavatsky to be basic to an understanding of all Theosophical teaching. Each proposition is stated and then immediately followed by an explanatory note. The first proposition is an acknowledgement of the “unthinkable and unspeakable” God- principle: An Omnipresent, Eternal, Boundless and Immutable PRINCIPLE, on which all speculation is possible, since it transcends the power of human conception and can only be dwarfed by any human expression or similitude. It is beyond the range and reach of thought - in the words of the Mandukya, ‘unthinkable and unspeakable’.3 6 Blavatsky’s remarks on the first proposition indicate that the “One Absolute Reality” remains beyond the grasp of “current” European philosophy, and is symbolized in the Theosophical doctrine as the dual notions of “Abstract Space” and “Abstract Motion.” On the one hand, absolute Abstract Space, representing bare subjectivity, the one thing which no human mind can wither exclude from any conception, or conceive of by itself. On the other, absolute, Abstract Motion representing Unconditioned Consciousness. Even our Western thinkers have shown that consciousness is inconceivable to us apart from change, and motion best symbolizes change, its essential characteristic.3 7 Blavatsky’s ideas of space and motion must have appealed to Tudor’s sensibility for the time-space notation that became standard fare for the pianist. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 220 The second proposition, which is concerned with the natural rhythmic cycles of the universe, also must have resonated with Tudor’s concept of musical time in the indeterminate, or “open-form,” works that often faced him: The Eternity of the Universe in toto as a boundless plane; periodically ‘the playground of numberless Universes incessantly manifesting and disappearing.’ called the ‘Manifesting Stars’, and the ‘Sparks of Eternity’. ‘The Eternity of the Pilgrim is like a wink of the Eye of Self-Existence’, as the Book of Dzyan puts it. ‘The appearance and disappearance of Worlds is like a regular tidal ebb of flux and reflux.’3 8 The comments following the second proposition indicate that the “law of periodicity,” inherent to all natural processes, is a basic principle to the most grand of universal processes. The third proposition reflects the Hindu principle of atman, whereby the ultimate reality (or Brahma) exists in the soul of each individual: The fundamental identity of all Souls with the Universal Over-Soul, the latter being itself an aspect of the Unknown Root; and the obligatory pilgrimage for every soul - a spark of the former - through the Cycles of Incarnation, or Necessity, in accordance with Cyclic and Karmic Law, during the whole term.3 9 The notion of a “Universal Over-Soul,” the unknown destination of each individual, recalls Waite’s description of the “Universal idea” embodied by the symbolism of the Tarot cards. Theosophical ideas exerted their strongest influence on Tudor indirectly through Rudolf Steiner, an Austrian who broke from the Theosophical Society to found his own occult organization. The overwhelming majority of Tudor’s spiritual papers is comprised of excerpts from the writings of Steiner, whose ideas of the spiritual realm are based on the supposition that “behind the visible world there is an Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 221 invisible one, a world that is temporarily concealed, at least as far as our senses and sense-bound thinking are concerned.”4 0 Further, it was Steiner’s contention that “by developing human capacities that lie dormant in us, it is possible to enter this hidden world.”4 1 According to Steiner, supersensory perception could be consciously developed through disciplined meditation, or what he referred to as “intuitive thinking.” By “penetrating deep into thought experience,” Steiner explains in a phrase noted by Tudor, “spiritual reality comes to meet this thought-exp[erience].”4 2 “If knowledge is to enter the realm of reality,” another note indicates, one must have “reverence for all that to which thought brings us.”4 3 Steiner claimed to have created a system of intuitive thinking that permitted the initiate to undertake an objective investigation of the spiritual world. He called this investigation the “spiritual science” of Anthroposophy and in 1913 he founded the Anthroposophical Society. Tudor was formally acknowledged as a member of the Society in July of 1957, and he collected anthroposophical newsletters and catalogues until the end of his life. That Steiner called his practice “spiritual science” reflects his desire to articulate his convictions about the spiritual world in a manner that would be satisfying to the intellectual inquisitor. Indeed, in the occult literature Steiner is exceptionally well-informed from a philosophical and scientific standpoint. A comparison might be made to many contributors of Die Reihe who were inclined to appeal to the scientific orientation of their readers for the aesthetic validation of a new sound world. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 222 Steiner distinguishes three types of knowledge that are associated with different manifestations of the human body. These are placed into a hierarchic relationship with spiritual awareness, as Robert McDermott concisely outlines: Sensory perception is made possible by the physical body; imaginative knowledge is made possible by the etheric body; inspirational knowledge is made possible by the soul, or astral body; and intuitive knowledge (also called spiritual knowledge) is made possible by the I, Ego, or Spirit.4 4 Built on the theory of correspondence, Steiner’s system constructs a bridge between material and spiritual entities, and here the arts play a crucial role. Steiner, himself an amateur sculptor and architect, held that the arts serve a practical function in the development of spiritual literacy by providing passage between the sensory and supersensory realms. Fortunately the abyss on the edge of which man lives, the abyss opening out before him in religion and cognition, can be bridged. But not by contemporary religion, nor yet by a cognition, a science, derived wholly from the earth. It is here that art enters. It forms a bridge across the abyss. That is why art must realize that its task is to carry the spiritual-divine life into the earthly; to fashion the latter in such a way that its forms, colors, words, tones, act as a revelation of the world beyond. Whether art takes on an idealistic or realistic coloring is of no importance. What it needs is a relationship to the truly, not merely thought-out, spiritual.4 5 It is important to note that, for Steiner, the artist must strive not to represent the divine, but to reveal its presence in physical forms. “What is essential in art,” Steiner asserts, “[is] not embodying something supersensible, but transforming sensory reality.”4 6 Steiner’s views on the relationship between the sensory and extra-sensory worlds were influenced largely by Goethe. In 1883, when Steiner was only twenty- Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 223 two years old, he began to edit Goethe’s scientific writings for the Deutsche Nationalliteratur, an extensive and popular compilation edited by Joseph Kurschner. Steiner’s engagement with the edition gave him the opportunity to formulate his own ideas regarding the sensible-supersensible world as postulated by Goethe. Steiner felt a kinship with Goethe’s work in natural science, in particular his theory of metamorphosis as exhibited by the Urpflanze, the organic unity of the archetypal plant. (In his collection of lectures, The Path to the New Music, Webern also points to Goethe’s Urpflanze as natural validation for seeking the most comprehensive formal expression of organic unity in composition.) The well-known conversation between Goethe and Schiller on the subject served as a spiritual affirmation for Steiner, who describes the discussion in his autobiography: They agreed that nature should not be treated in a piecemeal way. . . . Goethe sketched for Schiller, in a few strokes, his archetypal plant. It represented the sensory/suprasensory form of the plant in its totality, from which leaf, petal, and so on form, thus reproducing the whole within the parts. Schiller, who had not yet overcome his Kantian perspective, was able to see that whole as only an “idea” created by human reason by observing the details. Goethe could not accept that. He saw the whole spiritually, just as he saw its details physically. And there was no fundamental difference between the spiritual and the physical perception—only a transition from one to the other. He saw clearly that both need to be thought of as belonging to empirical reality. Schiller, however, could maintain only that the archetypal plant is not an experience, but an idea. Goethe, according to his way of thinking, replied, “In that case, I saw my ideas with my eyes.”4 7 Steiner admired not merely Goethe’s scientific writings, but his world view which placed science and art on an equal level with the revelatory experience. Clearly, this perspective resonated with Tudor, who noted Steiner’s following remarks: Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 224 It must be the ideal of the spiritual life of the present day again to gain a knowledge which can realize what Goethe has already surmised: that science should lift itself to art. Not to symbolic or allegoric art, but to real art, to tonal and vocal creating and fashioning, to an art which at the same time deepens itself into a direct religious experience.4 8 Tudor shared Steiner’s belief that the critical function of both science and art is to create experiences of spiritual revelation. So central were the arts in Steiner’s ideas about spirituality that he systematized—in the form of an evolutionary diagram—the relationship between specific art forms, heavenly and physical bodies, and states of human consciousness. Included in Tudor’s papers is a chart that illustrates Steiner’s “Planetary Evolution of the Arts,” in which several arts are organized into a type of spiritual hierarchy: PLANETARY EVOLUTION OF THE ARTS Past: Laws of Saturn—Physical Body (architecture)—Deep-trance Consciousness Laws of Sun—Etheric Body (Sculpture)—Deep-sleep C. Prest: Laws of Moon—Astral Body (Painting)—Dream-picture C. Laws of Earth—Ego-organization (Music)—Clear-day C. Futr: Laws of Jupiter—Spirit-Self (Poetry in Relation to Music)—Imaginative C. Laws of Venus—Life-Spirit (Eurhythmy)—Inspirational C. Laws of Vulcan—Spirit-Man—Intuitional C.4 9 Fig. 4-1. Rudolf Steiner’s “Planetary Evolution of the Arts” The conspicuous alignment of Music with the “Present” Laws of Earth indicates the urgency lent to this art form by Steiner—an urgency with which Tudor undoubtedly identified. The chart also provides corroborating evidence for Tudor’s interest in the sounds of poetry, the art form associated with the next level of Steiner’s spiritual Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 225 evolution. In a letter to Richards, Tudor urged her to remember the sonic essence of poetry: “When you’re thinking about language don’t forget that everything springs from the sounds. Do delve into ‘eurythmy as visible speech’-it’s very helpful and furthers that alchemical perception of words that’s so important for poetry.”5 0 “Eurythmy as visible speech” refers to the speech and movement practice that was initiated by Steiner and, according to the chart, designates the final stage of artistic evolution before “Intuitional Consciousness” is achieved. By identifying the sounds of the words—not their meaning—as the fundamental aspect of language, Tudor was advocating the “alchemical perception of words,” an approach to poetry that is closely related to his approach to music. That Tudor contemplated such issues and their relation to the musical experience is demonstrated in the following passage of Steiner’s, transcribed by the pianist: [I]n shaping the poetic material it is as if the words (which one of necessity still holds in the larynx when speaking in prose)—try to run away and one has to run after them, they inhabit the atmosphere which surrounds us rather that what is within us. [M]usical tones also animate their whole environment. [W]e forget space and time, or at least space, and life takes us out of ourselves into a sphere of moral existence. [I]n poetry we feel having to immerse ourselves in an indeterminate element which spreads out in all directions and by thus immersing ourselves, of being ourselves dissolved.5 1 Steiner’s reference to “an indeterminate element” most assuredly resonated with the pianist, whose experience with the scores of the New York composers provided much opportunity for immersion and dissolution in indeterminacy. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 226 The “indeterminate element” in which Steiner suggests we immerse ourselves refers, like virtually all of his images, to a feature of a thought process. Elsewhere in Tudor’s notes, Steiner elucidates this process whereby an element is deemed rational or determinate once a mental concept is formulated. Steiner considers such a formulation “crude,” and advocates an “irrational” approach to perception that befits the musical experience: While we, with our crude ideas about the outer world, live continually in our brain, we forsake the realm of Music the very instant we form Concepts. For Music lies especially in a realm so situated that the formation of Concepts lies above it.. .. Everything must tend to make us say: Only a truly irrational, non-rational, understanding of the human-being will lead us to the point of being able to reach feelingly what is musical and to be able to apply it to him.5 2 For Steiner, the ideal musical experience is a quintessential embodiment of “intuitive knowledge.” In a note taken from one of Steiner’s lectures, “The Etheric World and Music,” Tudor writes, “The Human-being realizes himself inwardly conjointly with the world, when he realizes himself musically.” One of the books in Tudor’s possession was The Arts and Their Mission, a series of lectures delivered by Steiner in 1923. In one lecture, Steiner describes how music is uniquely qualified to enhance one’s perception of the spiritual realm: With music . . . [we] enter directly into that which the soul experiences as the spiritual or psycho-spiritual; leave space entirely. Music is line-like, one dimensional; is experienced one-dimensionally in the line of time. In music man experiences the world as his own. Now the soul does not assert something it needs upon descending into or leaving the physical; rather it experiences something which lives and vibrates here and now, on earth, in its own soul-spirit nature.... What is experienced musically is really man’s hidden adaptation to the inner harmonic-melodic relationships of cosmic existence out of which he was shaped.5 4 Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 227 Revealing a kinship with the classic notion of the Music of the Spheres, Steiner’s comment finds echo in a letter Tudor drafted to a friend: “Music exists as a spiritual reality which will continue to exist after every composer and every page of notes and dynamics are [sic] destroyed, and every performer must struggle to make the positive facts of this reality audible to a listener.”5 5 In a letter to Richards, Tudor claims always to have been able to perceive the spiritual reality of sounds, but that now he needs to expand his efforts to transcend the materiality of the visual world as well: Now if only I can learn to ‘look’ thru what I see (which I’m now aware is only a projection of my own inner weakness), I’ll be able . . . to see things hit with their own nature (as one saw them as a child). I’ve never lost this ability in regard to sounds; but of course one is not just a listener.”5 6 Tudor was using principles of Anthroposophy to augment the spiritual experience that he was already seeking through music. The anthroposophical system of spiritual development proved remarkably accommodating to various fields, and it led Steiner to accomplish innovative work in the arts, education, and agriculture. Indirectly, he is also responsible for the Camphill communities for the mentally disabled, a project launched in Scotland in 1940 by Austrian pediatrician and anthroposophist Karl Konig. Richards, who was associated with these communities from their inception in the United States in 1962 until her death, describes the Camphill concept: These schools and villages incorporate and build upon Steiner’s research and contributions in biodynamic agriculture, homeopathic medicine, community- forming, architecture, and the other arts, as well as the schooling of normal adults in new social forms and in a way of life which may become a path of meditation. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 228 In addition to establishing the Camphill project, Konig was also active as a lecturer, espousing anthroposophical principles. In Tudor’s collection is a typescript of an anonymously written report on a series of lectures on “Sensology” delivered by Konig. According to the report, the lectures were prepared in response “to the mistaken view held by many people today that there exist only ‘subjective impressions’ and that therefore we live in illusion and self-captivity, in an unreal world, unable to know or to share the real world.”5 8 The typescript reports on only the first of Konig’s lectures, which is entitled, “The Circle of the Twelve Senses: Touch, Life, Movement, Balance, Smell, Taste, Sight, Warmth, Hearing, Word, Thought, Ego.” These twelve senses are organized, as is typical in anthroposophical systems, into a hierarchy: “Through the 4 lower senses, man experiences himself inside his own body, in sensations. Through the 4 higher senses, man experiences the world in relation to his body, in percepts. And through the 4 highest senses, man experiences the spiritual world in concepts.”5 9 By this arrangement, one can compare Konig’s hierarchy of the senses with Steiner’s “Spiritual Evolution of the Arts” and note the consistency: the sense of hearing holds a privileged position as the transition from earthly to spiritual experience just as music serves as the transition between the art of the present to that of the future. While Tudor admits, “one is not just a listener,” the act of listening is central to spiritual development in Steiner’s system. In fact, the sense of hearing is, to the anthroposophist, a primordial function of the spirit, as the report of Konig’s lecture describes: “Hearing, according to Rudolf Steiner, existed Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 229 before man was created. The ear is the archetype . . . but it is still with us, and reveals to us what we will reach in the highest senses, which reveal to us our spirituality.”6 0 Just as the arts and the senses are arranged hierarchically, so too are the auditory stimuli by which the sense of hearing is capable of spiritual perception: [First, there is] NOISE, which may be described as disorganized sound, which keeps us in the certainty of our existence on earth; a physical element. When noise becomes rhythmical, it turns into SOUND, which is an organic power that works in all that is living, which can be heard in a ringing bell or whatever is around us; an etheric element. When the sound comes from within, it is VOICE (Laut), which may be animal or human, and which is ensouled. TONE is enspirited sound, “the last part of creation, what man has added to what god created”: music.6 1 While the physical distinction posited here between noise and sound is essentially a scientific one (and one that has been acknowledged by Stockhausen in the electronic music studios), the distinction between sound and tone is much more ambiguous. But as will be demonstrated below, it is precisely this ambiguity between levels of perception—between the perception of sound and music, in particular—that interested Tudor. In another passage noted by Tudor, Steiner underscores the importance that the sense of hearing lends to spiritual development. As one proceeds along the road to the Spirit, the faculty of listening grows more inward & all-encompassing, no longer does one harken to words alone, but also to thoughts, sensations, impulses of the will, to memories pervaded with cosmic moods, to the voice of conscience & the instructions of destiny, to the Spirits of the Departed... .6 2 Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 230 Steiner describes the act of listening as a series of progressive levels meant to draw one nearer to spiritual awareness. A noteworthy precedent to Steiner’s ideas in the United States and the first important presence of Eastern philosophy in the history of American thought is the tradition of the New England Transcendentalists. The “sages of Concord,” indicates Elwood, “established an American style of mystical thought and introduced the spiritual Orient, providing intellectual foundations for later American occult... movements.” As is well documented, the writings of Ralph Waldo Emerson and Henry David Thoreau strongly influenced Charles Ives and John Cage.6 4 Ives expresses his understanding of Transcendentalism in terms strikingly similar to those used by Steiner in his description of spiritual science. In his Essays Before a Sonata, for example, Ives remarks: [T]he philosophy of the religion (or whatever you will call it) of the Concord Transcendentalists is at least more than an intellectual state . . . it is a spiritual state in which both soul and mind can better conduct themselves in this world. . . . The search of the [Transcendentalist was] of reason spiritualized.6 5 In Music and American Transcendentalism, James Vincent Kavanaugh describes Ives’s notion of the “indefinite subjective,” a transcendental mode of thought that closely resembles Steiner’s “intuitive thinking”: The emphasis that Ives places on indefiniteness as a characteristic of Emerson’s ‘symphonies of revelation’ recalls the special value that both Thoreau and Hawthorne attached to that which is indefinite to perception but spiritually immediate to the intuition. Thoreau associated the distant and indistinct object, in either visual or aural perception, with the spiritual reality of existence. Hawthorne attached spiritual significance to Hester Prynne’s perception of the distant sounds of Arthur Dimmesdale’s Election Day sermon: “ . .. the sermon had throughout a meaning for her, entirely apart Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 231 from its indistinguishable words. These, perhaps, if more distinctly heard, might have been only a grosser medium, and have clogged the spiritual sense.” Ives shares this point of view. He characterizes the Transcendental mode of thought and expression with the term “indefinite subjective” in contrast to what he interprets as the logical objectivity of the Puritan frame of mind. The nature of this subjectivity, however, should not be construed as the ego-centric self-expression of the Romantic artist but rather as a form of moral witness to universal truths.6 6 Kavanaugh’s emphasis on the distinction between the “indefinite subjective” and the subjectivity associated with Romantic expression is crucial to understanding the objective “God principle”—that is, the “universal truths” common to many occult systems. “Intuitive,” another term for Ives’s “indefinite subjective,” has been used by several of the proponents of occultism and Eastern philosophy surveyed to this point. A. E. Waite states that Tarot cards reveal the “implicits of the human mind,” D. T. Suzuki speaks of “pray'na-intuition” (or intuitive wisdom), Sri Swami Sivanandi translates Brahma Vidya (“Mentalphysics”) as “direct intuitional knowledge,” and the system of Rudolf Steiner’s spiritual science is based on “intuitive thinking.” It is understandable that intuition should figure so prominently in occultism and the arts, both of which often bypass logical reasoning in order to achieve their ends. The role of logic in the scientific method of the post-Enlightenment era has all but made the role of intuition (and for that matter, mysticism and the arts) obsolete, but these roles have not always been incompatible. While the tradition of mysticism’s connection with science has always existed, it has gone through varying degrees of acceptance in the cultures of different Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 232 historical periods. That Tudor’s spiritual pursuits went hand in hand with his interests in science and mathematics appears paradoxical only when viewed from a post-Enlightenment perspective. While the modem mind deems spirituality and science basically separate fields of study, to the medieval or Renaissance mind they were considered related facets of a unified quest for knowledge. Evidently, it was Tudor’s conviction that the unification of spirit and matter renders the senses capable of divine perception. Such a conviction had a conspicuous historical precedent in the esoteric discourse of the medieval and Renaissance mystics; the notion of a spiritual union of science and art was commonplace, particularly among practitioners of alchemy. In fact, the “hermetic art” of alchemy, as Titus Burckhardt explains, was allegedly founded by Hermes Trismegistos, who corresponds to Thoth, the Egyptian god who presides over the arts and sciences.6 7 In the past, most proponents of modem culture have neglected the significance of alchemical studies, as Eliade points out: “Until recently, alchemy was regarded either as protochemistry, i.e., an embryonic, naive, or prescientific discipline, or as a mass of superstitious rubbish that was culturally irrelevant.” But to isolate the physical component of the alchemist’s work is to overlook the very life force behind its practice: “From the alchemist’s point of view,” writes Eliade, “chemistry represented a ‘Fall’ because it meant the secularization of a sacred science.”6 9 The mystical Renaissance of the mid-twentieth century saw a revitalized interest among artists and intellectuals in this hermetic discipline. A key figure in the resurgence of alchemy as a metaphor for artistic activity was the French symbolist Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 233 poet Arthur Rimbaud. Boulez was one of the first among Tudor’s associates to cite Rimbaud as an aesthetic influence. In January of 1950, nearly a year before Tudor’s performance of the Second Piano Sonata, Boulez wrote to Cage: Now we have to tackle real ‘delirium’ in sound and experiment with sounds as Joyce does with words. Basically - as I am pleased to discover - 1 have explored nothing as yet and everything remains to be looked for in fields as varied as sound, rhythm; orchestra, voices; architecture. We have to achieve an ‘alchemy’ in sound (see Rimbaud) to which all I have done so far is merely a prelude and which you have greatly clarified for me.7 0 The “alchemy in sound” is a reference to Rimbaud’s A Season in Hell, a collection of prose-poems documenting a tormented existence. In a passage titled “Second Delirium: Alchemy of the Word,” Rimbaud describes the “story of one of [his] insanities” in which a sort of poetic alchemy becomes the means for spiritual salvation. Here is the opening segment of the passage as translated by Paul Schmidt: My turn now. The story of one of my insanities. For a long time I boasted that I was master of all possible landscapes and I thought the great figures of modem painting and poetry were laughable. What I liked were: absurd paintings, pictures over doorways, stage sets, carnival backdrops, billboards, bright-colored prints; old-fashioned literature, church Latin, erotic books full of misspellings, the kind of novels our grandmothers read, fairy tales, little children's books, old operas, silly old songs, the naive rhythms of country rimes. I dreamed of Crusades, voyages of discovery that nobody had heard of, republics without histories, religious wars stamped out, revolutions in morals, movements of races and continents: I used to believe in every kind of magic. I invented colors for the vowels! — A black, E white, I red, O blue, U green. — I made mles for the form and movement of every consonant, and I boasted of inventing, with rhythms from within me, a kind of poetry that all the senses, sooner or later, would recognize. And I alone would be its translator. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 234 I began it as an investigation. I turned silences and nights into words. What was unutterable, I wrote down. I made the whirling world stand still.7 1 Rimbaud’s references to insanity, magic, and aesthetic revolution, a notable precedent to the images evoked by Artaud in The Theater and Its Double, were common to the aesthetic rhetoric adopted by Boulez when he wrote the Second Piano Sonata and the article “Proposals.” When Tudor played Boulez’s Second Sonata at Black Mountain College in the summer of 1951, he brought with him Artaud’s writings as well as Boulez’s remarks from “Proposals” that “music should be collective hysteria and magic, violently modem.” These remarks, along with Tudor’s performance, drew the attention of poet Charles Olson, who was rector of the college during the pianist’s visit. While lively discussions on the subject of Artaud took place, it wasn’t until poet Robert Duncan arrived at Black Mountain five years later that the poetic alchemy of Rimbaud began to exert a powerful influence on the work of Olson. In his recent biography of Olson, Tom Clark notes: “the final decisive influence on [Olson’s] April-May 1956 verse advances was a ‘magic view’ of the poem as spiritual alchemy, which he found—following up on Duncan’s advocacy— in the work of Rimbaud.”7 2 Clark describes how Olson’s “magic view” effected the poet’s production of his epic work, The Maximus Poems: As the poem changed, so too did Olson’s writing habits. His verse was now coming not in poems but in pieces, improvisational, notational, fragmentary. Further, the secondary compositional stages of editing and revision, once a routine element in any Olson writing project—and indeed the source of much painful and protracted labor—had all but ceased to take place. As a result, the Maximus began to fill up with the raw stuff of the creative process: found Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 235 notes, journal musings, the ongoing log of the raging immediacy of the experiential moment. Not all the ore contained gold, of course; much of what he wrote— and kept—was cryptic, wayward, or uninspired.7 3 Excepting the improvisational element, Olson’s poetry—the “alchemical” method of writing in cryptic, discursive fragments with an emphasis on the immediacy of poetic effect—can be compared with the works of the New York composers, thereby suggesting a mode of perception that befits Tudor’s propensity for a performance practice based on meditation. Clark interprets Olson’s work of this period as the product of meditative reflection, and he provides a rich description of the spiritual transformation undergone by the poet that seems so applicable to Tudor that it is quoted here at length: The Olson who was forever departing into himself—his long poem was already a chart of the successive unfoldings and castings-off of all those earlier trial selves—thus began his final departure, heading ‘straight into himself, leaving everything behind’ in his quest for a paradoxically impersonal mythological vision of individual identity. It was a quest that would gradually make a religious poet of him, though hardly one of any recognizable or conventional persuasion. Adopting a religious attitude he ascribed to ‘the ANCIENTS’ (that ‘world outside and before Christianity’ plus such isolated ‘EXCEPTIONS inside it circum 1200 A.D.’ as the alchemists and Arab and Vedic philosophers), following the semimystical autonomic discipline of self-measure, and intent to ‘write a poem simply to create a mode of priesthood in a church forever,’ Olson became during these years an intuitive dogmatist of private vision, a shamanic votary as committed to his own spiritual exercises as the Greek poet-priests to the mysteries of the earth goddess they guarded at Eleusis.. . . The ‘voice of a sense of religion’ which he had projected to student disciples at Black Mountain was now to find its ultimate home in a fetishlike analogical poetry transmitted as runic spell, inaccessible to the point of incomprehensibility to the general public, but to a small audience of acolytes nothing less than necessary data, the hermetic doctrines and protocols of ‘secret rites practiced by the initiates alone, just like mysteries.’7 4 Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 236 Clark’s description of the poet’s transformation, laden with unmistakable references to occultism, is comparable to Tudor’s “change in musical perception,” or Suzuki’s discussion ofparavritti, the experiential turning point in one’s spiritual initiation. It is also revealing that Olson’s initiation into the world of the occult yielded poetry that was “inaccessible to the point of incomprehensibility to the general public,” often a necessary consequence of the attempt to articulate what mystics deem the ultimate reality. It was M. C. Richards, Olson’s colleague at Black Mountain, who became Tudor’s closest companion and spiritual confidant. It has been demonstrated that Tudor enlivened the curiosity that Richards already had for Artaud, and less than a decade later, he reintroduced Richards to the work of Steiner as well.7 5 Richards left Black Mountain to live with Tudor in New York. She describes her preoccupations during this time: For five years I forswore academia and lived in an atmosphere of avant-garde artists, musicians, dancers, and craftspeople in New York. Pottery opened up for me as an art of transformation. Challenged to my depths by the events of life, I was drawn to the images of alchemy and transmutation. It was at this time that I came in touch with Rudolf Steiner’s work again. Its language of soul and of living forms spoke, as the Quakers say, to my condition. I translated Antonin Artaud’s The Theater and Its Double, moved by his vision of “The Alchemical Theater,” which would transform society. With friends I was reading aloud James Joyce’s Finnegans Wake, that alchemy of speech. And I was turning gingerly through the pages of C. G. Jung’s Psychology and Alchemy. Meeting Steiner again at this time seemed like joining a companion on the path.7 6 Rimbaud’s “Alchemy of the Word” catalyzed the transformation of Olson and to a certain extent Boulez, and Artaud’s “The Alchemical Theater” fascinated Tudor and Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 237 Richards, who was “turning gingerly through the pages” of Jung’s studies of alchemy.7 7 In this light, it would be instructive to consider Jung’s ideas on alchemy as a crucible in which the various elements of Tudor’s spiritual and musical interests may be dissolved and congealed into a unified theory of artistic perception. Jung made an extensive study of alchemy in the 1930s and 1940s, culminating in the books Psychology and Alchemy (1944), Mysterium Coniunctionis (1956) and Alchemical Studies (1967). (Incidentally, each text was made available in English translation by R. F. C. Hull, whose English edition of Zen in the Art o f Archery was published in 1953, the same year as his translation of Psychology and Alchemy.) Jung was intrigued by the uniformity of symbolic imagery in the history of alchemical writings, which he felt substantiated his theory of a collective unconscious. According to Jung, the most pious alchemists were engaged not only in a physical activity—transmuting base metals into gold—but also in the process of inner transformation. “From its earliest days,” explains Jung, “alchemy had a double face: on the one hand the practical chemical work in the laboratory, on the other a psychological process, in part consciously psychic, in part unconsciously projected 7 0 and seen in the various transformations of matter.” Jung argues that the alchemist’s quest was motivated less by the potential acquisition of a metallic treasure than by the promise of a psychological reward: However barren of useful or even enlightening results its labours were, these efforts, notwithstanding their chronic failure, seem to have had a psychic effect of a positive nature, something akin to satisfaction or even a perceptible increase in wisdom. Otherwise it would be impossible to explain why the alchemists did not turn away in disgust from their almost invariably Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 238 futile projects. Not that such disillusionments never came to them; indeed the futility of alchemy brought it into increasing disrepute. There remain, nevertheless, a number of witnesses who make it quite clear that their hopeless fumbling, inept as it was from the chemical standpoint, presents a very different appearance when seen from a psychological angle . . . there occurred during the chemical procedure psychic projections which brought unconscious contents to light, often in the form of vivid visions . . . the old Masters . . . had discovered, as was only to be expected, that though their 7Q purses shrank their soul gained in stature. While the experiments may not have yielded true wealth from the physical standpoint, the alchemist, in order for his soul to gain stature, was required to be possessed of the utmost in discipline and humility while executing a painstakingly strict and precise set of operations. To the practicing adept, there was no difference between the physical experiment and the psychological experience. Alchemical theory is based on the notion of an inextricable unity of the cosmos, every element being present in every other element. The procedure by which metallurgical transmutation was to be achieved consisted of the dissolution, or the smoldering (in Greek, al khyma), of the basic materials (prima materia). Incited to a turbulent state by heat, the antagonistic forces were said to be brought into a synergistic union (coniunctio), from which the desired element would be bom. The resulting gold represented both a physical and spiritual renewal. The reciprocal relationship of spirit and matter, a concept facilitated by the esoteric theory of correspondence, is described by Steiner in an excerpt from Tudor’s notes: The painter proceeds from the eye. He strengthens the sense impression until it becomes feeling. He takes his course thus from the sense to the soul. The spiritual investigator. . . has a spiritual experience, and lets it grow within Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 239 him until, from within, it takes possession of the feeling, which seeks for the sense impression, in order to express itself. He descends from the spirit, through the soul, into the sense. 0 Similarly, Jung explains that the basis of the alchemist’s process of transformation is also governed by this reciprocal relationship, indicating that one element is constantly being transformed into the other: “In reality [the alchemist’s] labours elevated the body into proximity with the spirit while at the same time drawing the • • • 81 spirit down into matter. By sublimating matter he concretized spirit.” Jung points out that alchemists did not engage in their work because of their belief in the theory of correspondence, but because they “experienced the presence of pre-existing ideas • • 89 in physical matter.” He concludes that the motivating force behind alchemical experimentation was the psychic benefit resulting from a projection of the practitioner’s individual unconscious: The real root of alchemy is to be sought less in philosophical doctrines than in the projections of individual investigators. I mean by this that while working on his chemical experiments the operator had certain psychic experiences which appeared to him as the particular behaviour of the chemical process. Since it was a question of projection, he was naturally unconscious of the fact experience had nothing to do with matter itself (that is, with matter as we know it today). He experienced his projection as a property of matter; but what he was in reality experiencing was his own • 83 unconscious. It is conceivable that Tudor’s manner of perceiving the materials of his musical experiments was, like that of the alchemist’s, the result of a psychological projection meant to effect a spiritual transformation. Chaos, a veritable condition of any transformation, is crucial to the alchemical process. Jung emphasizes that the confusion leading to the coniunctio Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 240 was necessary for this renewal to occur: “In order to enter into God’s Kingdom, [one] must return to the dark initial state which the alchemists called the ‘chaos’. In this massa confusa the elements are in conflict and repel one another; all connections are dissolved.”8 4 According to Artaud, it is only from this mass confusion that “true theater” may emerge: “where simplicity and order reign there can be no theater nor o c drama, and the true theater . . . is bom out of a kind of organized anarchy.” Just as chaos is fundamental to change, destruction is inseparable from creation. “Dissolution,” Jung says, “is the prerequisite for redemption. The celebrant n /r of the mysteries had to suffer a figurative death in order to attain transformation.” In a lecture on Artaud, Richards indicates that destmction is essential to the creative process: “The utmost disordering is necessary in order for new forms to be bom, new awareness of new depths and interpenetrations. Destmction is required, not in the 87 spirit of nihilism but in the knowledge of the regenerative process.” Steiner, coincidentally pre-appropriating a Jungian expression, underscores the importance of process: If we really want to ascend to the archetypes of things, to what is unchanging within constant change, then we cannot contemplate the finished thing, because it no longer fully corresponds to the idea that is expressed in it. We must look back to the thing in the process of becoming; we must listen in on nature in the process of creating.8 8 While the discourse on the process-orientation of art is rich and discussion plentiful, the alchemical notion of process is unique. Clement Greenberg, the prominent art critic who championed the abstract expressionist painters in the post-war decade, traces a lineage of modem poets whose works focus on a specific point in the Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 241 alchemical process: “The attention of poets like Rimbaud, Mallarme, Valery, Eluard, Pound, Hart Crane, Stevens, even Rilke and Yeats, appears to be centered on the effort to create poetry and on the ‘moments’ themselves of poetic conversion, rather than on experience to be converted into poetry.”8 9 The focus here is not on the transformation of a poetic subject, but on the process by which a string of words becomes poetry, just as alchemy is focused on the process by which a base metal becomes gold. It is, in other words, a distinctly perceptual transformation, not necessarily a physical one. Richards explains that “The Greek word for poetry was used by alchemical writers to designate the operation of their transmutation itself. Poetry attempts to accomplish through an external transmutation an internal change . . . an alteration of consciousness.”9 0 To clarify: much indeterminate music is considered “process music” because, analogous to the action paintings of Jackson Pollock, the act of performance becomes the composition; also, minimalism is often referred to as “process music” because the focus of the composition is a gradual, uniform transformation of some musical element; Tudor’s interest in process, on the other hand, was based distinctly on perception. As discussed earlier, the report of Konig’s lecture on the “Twelve Senses” drew a distinction between three levels of aural perception: noise, sound, and tone (or music). Interpenetration of these levels may occur as, for example, when an uninvited car horn (sound) and the screeching of brakes (noise) interrupt a solo violin recital (tone), but the level to which a given stimulus belongs typically remains distinct. Cage advocated such interpenetration in his compositions, and Tudor was Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 242 not disapproving, although this was not the primary interest of either. Rather, as Greenberg suggests, it is the moment of poetic conversion, the process by which one experiences the movement from one level of perception to another that seems to have fascinated Tudor. That is, at what point in the listening experience does one’s perception of sound or noise register as music? Cage remarks, “My music basically consists in bringing into existence what music is when there is not yet any music.”9 1 Similarly, Tudor states that he prefers a musical condition in which the prima materia are left in their “incomplete” state: I tend to like things that either fall into a situation where it’s recognized that music is not a finished product or into a situation where one is actually trying to find something that is not yet music, or where one is endeavoring to find the things which may make music.9 2 In alchemical terms, Tudor was fascinated with the possibilities of the dissolved, dynamic state of the prima materia, the phase of the transmutation that directly precedes the coniunctio, where most performers prefer to polish the gold that follows it. It also appears that Tudor, like the alchemists whose perseverance was described by Jung, was not overly concerned whether or not gold issued from his experiments. The following reflection, clearly valuable to Tudor, was inscribed in at least three separate notebooks: “judge thou not, only hear; wonder (puzzle) not, only behold; shun thou not, only search; ward off not, only endure; speak thou not, only O '? • • . . • hear.” This meditative reflection, which encourages indiscriminate observation, confirms that Tudor sought indifference to the often boisterous sounds emanating Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 243 from his instrument. But Sigmund Freud’s reflection on Leonardo da Vinci, also transcribed in Tudor’s personal notes, may account for why the pianist assumed such an objective demeanor: His affects were controlled and subjected to the investigation impulse. He neither loved nor hated, but questioned himself whence does that arise which he was to love or hate, and what does it signify; and thus he was at first forced to appear indifferent to good and evil, to beauty and ugliness.9 4 No less than Tudor’s reflection on himself—or more specifically, on his ideal self— this passage reveals that the pianist did not simply disregard the tumult of his performances (emanating from the piano and audience alike); rather, his concentration was redirected toward the underlying source from which any emotional response is made manifest, a realm in which he was “actually trying to find something that is not yet music.” Cage frequently described Tudor as “noble,” a term that the composer reserved for those exhibiting a meditative detachment from surface details: Nobility is an expression that I take from the Buddhist tradition. To be ‘noble’ is to be detached, at every instant, from the fact of loving and hating. . . . The absence of nobility occurs, in a performer, for example, when, instead of behaving faithfully by doing what he is asked to do, he decides that what he has to play is unworthy of him. He has heard it said that this music is indeterminate, left up to chance, etc.—and refuses to play.. . . [‘Nobility’ is] treating all things equally. And having equal feelings toward all beings, whether sentient or non-sentient.9 5 In the context of such detachment, making no differentiation between “sentient” and “non-sentient” beings, one may conceptualize the possibility of letting sounds be “themselves.” Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 244 In order for the alchemical coniunctio to take place, explains Jung, the adept “should not identify himself with the figures in the work but should leave them in their objective, impersonal state.”9 6 Here a parallel exists with the “Notes” included in Waite’s text on Tarot cards, where it recommends to “Put out of the mind personal bias and preconceived ideas as far as possible” in order for one to access more readily the “universal ideas” offered by the cards themselves. Similarly, as Steiner states in a note jotted by Tudor, the purpose of spiritual science was to “make th[in]k[in]g an instrument] whereby the obj[ect]ts can express themselves.”9 7 The desire to “let sounds be themselves,” the oft repeated mantra of the New York composers, was devotedly chanted by Tudor: The one thing John [Cage] and I have in common is an interest in sound for its own sake. What I mean is that we’re interested in leaving a sound to itself, and we’re not interested in manipulating a sound, in imposing a concept on sound. Cage used to preach that sounds should be themselves. He no longer does, but I ’ m willing to preach it, because I’ve experienced it.9 8 “Tone itself,” according to Steiner, “is a spiritual thing,”9 9 and Tudor insisted on “leaving a sound to itself’ so that its essence could radiate like gold, unblemished by personal expression or the materialistic shortsightedness of reason. Tudor’s “Great Work,” like that of the alchemists, was “hidden” only in the sense that it was not governed by reasonable thought patterns. Jung explains that the darkness of the unknown can only be illuminated by that which is foreign to reason, since it is the boundaries of the dominating epistemology that determine what is rational and what is not: Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 245 The longing of the darkness for light is fulfilled only when the light can no longer be rationally explained by the darkness. For the darkness has its own peculiar intellect and its own logic, which should be taken very seriously. Only the Tight which the darkness comprehendeth not’ can illuminate the darkness. Everything that the darkness thinks, grasps and comprehends by itself is dark; therefore it is illuminated only by what, to it, is unexpected, unwanted and incomprehensible.1 0 0 And “Who,” Tudor asks in a draft of a letter to a friend, “can comprehend anything incomprehensible?”1 0 1 So far as the pianist was concerned, any attempt to rationalize the irrational was not to be trusted. Tudor refused to relegate his spiritual beliefs to idle banter. In an interview shortly before his death, Tudor admitted: “Part of my interest in life is spiritual endeavors, which I don’t speak about. . . because I don’t want them to be identified.”1 0 2 Tudor’s reluctance to identify his spiritual endeavors recalls the cautionary epigram that begins the Tao Te Ching: “The Tao which can be called the Tao is not the true Tao.” D. T. Suzuki clarifies this apparent apprehension of language with respect to Zen principles: Zen is not necessarily against words, but it is well aware of the fact that they are always liable to detach themselves from realities and turn into conceptions. And this conceptualization is what Zen is against.. . . Zen insists on handling the thing itself and not an empty abstraction.1 0 3 Speaking for virtually everybody who knew Tudor, Earle Brown remarks, “David was more Zen than John was, actually,” furthermore, “[he] was very silent, and he didn’t give away his secrets easily.”1 0 4 The reserved nature of the pianist was a distinct contrast to the outspoken disposition of his associates. For all of Cage’s charismatic preaching about “not saying something” in their musical-theatrical Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 246 activities but rather “doing something,” it must be admitted that in the process he said quite a lot. Tudor, on the other hand, was uninterested in, even frustrated by the heated discussions that invariably followed his performances. During his first European tour in 1954, the pianist wrote an unusually candid letter to Richards that reveals his frustration with the constant chatter: [I]n Paris one talks incessantly about the situation intemationelle [sic] des arts an intellectual tour of what goes on in the world of art how can one have conversation without movement of the mind it’s dirtying up the street with words sometimes I think I will retch if I hear another word about chance or control or ‘very interesting’ or ‘very importante parce que’ closing in quickly to make a judgment and John just as bad as the rest everything to be ‘vivante’ but this seems to function like masturbation so that’s really how I feel about it being ‘clear,’ and then claiming that this same clarity is ‘mysterious’ really don’t you say so let’s go somewhere else - where there’s no need for clarity or just no-need-period . . . if I go any farther with this it might turn into a polemic - dio mio1 0 5 Tudor, skeptical of any rational discourse on the meaning of the music, felt that that which is obscure should remain obscure. Brown concurs, indicating that too much emphasis is given to understanding rather than simply appreciating the “meaning” of an artwork: “[to] be appreciative of the unintelligible meaning . . . is the understanding.”1 0 6 The alchemical dictum, “obscurum per obscurius, ignotum per ignotius” (the obscure by the more obscure, the unknown by the more unknown), is an apt description of the severe complexities of the fiercely modem works of which Tudor was a recognized master. Not unlike the intentional obscurity of occult knowledge or the carefully-designed irrationality of a Zen koan, the unintelligibility of the music in Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. Tudor’s repertory served a crucial meditative function—to borrow from Rimbaud, the pianist “began to consider [his] mind's disorder a sacred thing.”1 0 7 By transcending the limitations of rational thought and ego-driven expression, touchstones of conventional musical rhetoric, the new music became Tudor’s philosopher’s stone in his quest for psycho-spiritual transformation. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 248 NOTES 1. The David Tudor Papers, 1884-1998 (bulk 1940-1996), Getty Research Institute, Research Library, Accession no. 980039 (DT, GRI), Box 107, Folder 2. 2. Early twentieth-century composers who have been influenced by occultism include: Claude Debussy, Erik Satie, Maurice Ravel, Alexander Scriabin, Gustav Holst, Edgard Varese, Arnold Schoenberg, and Anton Webern. See Ellen Barbara Crystall, “Esoteric traditions and music in the early twentieth century with an appraisal of composer Cyril Scott,” PhD diss. New York University, 1996. One could also note the influence of Eastern philosophy on such mid-century composers as La Monte Young, Alan Hovhaness, Lou Harrison, and Harry Partch. For more specific discussions on Scriabin’s involvement in Theosophy and the effect that it had on his music, see Boris de Schloezer, Scriabin: Artist and Mystic and James M. Baker, “Scriabin’s Music: Structure as prism for mystical philosophy,” Music Theory in Concept and Practice. John Covach has written much on the subject of Arnold Schoenberg’s relationship with occultism, in particular the writings of Emanuel Swedenborg. See “Schoenberg and the Occult: Some Reflections on the Musical Idea.” Theory and Practice 17 (1992), 103-118. “Schoenberg’s Turn to an ‘Other’ World.” Music Theory Online 1:5 (Sept. 1995), 30. “The Sources of Schoenberg’s ‘Aesthetic Theology’.” 19^h -century music 19:3 (Spring 1996), 252-62. Although Covach is uncertain of Schoenberg’s familiarity with the precepts of anthroposophy, he indicates that Wassily Kandisky consulted Steiner’s writings while preparing his expressionist manifesto, Concerning the Spiritual in Art. “Sixten Ringbom [in The Sounding Cosmos] has been able to demonstrate that, during the period surrounding the writing of Concerning the Spiritual in Art, Kandinsky studied the writings of Rudolf Steiner very closely, especially Steiner’s writings on Goethe. Ringbom asserts that Kandinsky’s abstract painting developed in an attempt to portray the higher spiritual realm in painting” (Covach, 109). That Tudor and Kandinsky were attracted to the same occult movement initially appears paradoxical: a common “aesthetic theology” inspired both an expressionist and an expressionless repertory. This topic is worthy of a study in and of itself. Steven Johnson addresses Henry Cowell’s long-time relationship with a Theosophical community in California in “Henry Cowell, John Varian, and Halcyon,” American Music 11:1 (Spring 1993), 1-27. Also see Judith Tick, “Ruth Crawford’s ‘Spiritual Concept’: The Sound-ideals of an Early American Modernist,” Journal o f the American Musicological Society 44:2 (Summer 1991), 221-61. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 249 3. Writing in 1955, Earle Brown admits, “I have always been drawn primarily to magic and mathematics . . . in that order. To magic in the sense that everything is and as it is, it is magical. . . I don’t understand it... the impenetrable infinite complexities and connections of all things.” See Earle Brown, “Form,” Darmstddter Beitrage zur neuen Musik 10 (1966), 66. In the mid-1940s, a few years before he met Tudor, Cage was influenced by Indian philosophy as it appears in The Gospel o f Sri Ramakrishna, Aldous Huxley’s The Perennial Philosophy, Ananda Coomaraswamy’s The Transformation o f Nature in Art and The Dance o f Shiva. Another important spiritual influence for Cage was his experience with Zen Buddhism, most notably his attendance at the lectures D.T. Suzuki’s lectures at Columbia University in the late 1940s. In addition to being interested in Eastern modes of thought, Cage also made a study of the writings of Meister Eckhart, the medieval Christian mystic. For a thorough discussion of the influence that Indian philosophy had on Cage and his music, see David W. Patterson, “The Picture that is not in the colors: Cage, Coomaraswamy, and the impact of India,” John Cage: Music, Philosophy, and Intention, 1933-1950 (New York: Routledge Publishing, Inc., 2002), 177-215. Also see James Pritchett, The Music o f John Cage (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993), 36-39; 74-77 and David Revill, The Roaring Silence (New York: Arcade Publishing, 1992), 89-93; 107-25. A comprehensive discussion of Stockhausen’s interest in occultism and its relation to his music can be found in Gregg Wager’s Symbolism as a Compositional Method in the Works o f Karlheinz Stockhausen (College Park, Maryland: 1998), 120-80, especially 155-57. Wager remarks on Stockhausen’s awareness in the 1980s of two of the same occult factions that interested Tudor: Theosophy and Anthroposophy. Curiously, Stockhausen’s close contact with Tudor from the mid-1950s to the mid-1960s does not seem to have influenced the composer’s spiritual ideas, which at this time were mostly limited to Catholic mysticism. This is not to say that Stockhausen lacked a spiritual affinity in the early 1950s. On the contrary, his tendency to associate serialism with spirituality proved instrumental in his friendship with Karel Goevaerts, the Belgian composer whose Sonata for Two Pianos greatly impressed Stockhausen at Darmstadt in 1951. Goevaerts, who took music to be a manifestation of the spirit—“Music is the objectification of a spiritual idea within a particular structure of sound” (Mark Delaere, CD liner notes, Megadisc Classics 7845)— recalls that Stockhausen was the only one who understood his work. See Michael Kurtz, Stockhausen: A Biography, trans. Richard Toop (London: Faber and Faber, 1992), 35; 182-199. It is probable that Stockhausen and Tudor simply acknowledged a mutual interest in spiritual issues, while the former saved his grandiose expositions for the public arena and the latter preferred to keep them to himself. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 250 4. Robert S. Ellwood, “Occult Movements in America,” Encyclopedia o f the American Religious Experience, Vol. 2, ed. Charles H. Lippy and Peter W. Williams (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1988), 711. 5. Ibid. 6. J. Stillson Judah, The History and Philosophy o f the Metaphysical Movements in America (Philadelphia: Westminster Press, 1967), 13. 7. Ibid. 8. John Backus, “Die Reihe: A Scientific Evaluation,” Perspectives o f New Music 1:1 (Fall 1962), 171. 9. Elwood, “Occult Movements,” 713. 10. Ibid., 714. 11. Edward Tiryakian, “Preliminary Considerations,” On the Margin o f the Visible: Sociology, the Esoteric, and the Occult (New York: John Wiley & Sons, 1974), 3. 12. Ibid. 13. Mircea Eliade, “The Occult and the Modem World,” Occultism, Witchcraft, and Cultural Fashions (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1976), 54. In addition to writers mentioned by Eliade, Canadian philosopher and author Manly P. Hall (1901-90), who founded the Philosophical Research Society in 1934, published and lectured extensively on Eastern and Western esoteric traditions. 14. DT, GRI, Box 52, Folder 3. 15. Harold Schonberg, “The Far-Out Pianist,” Harpers Magazine (June 1960), 49. 16. Two manuscripts of Thomas Traherne (1636-74) were discovered in London in 1896 and published soon after. See Traherne, Centuries o f meditations, ed. Bertram Dobell (London: the editor, 1908) and Traherne, Poems o f Felicity, ed. H. J. Bell (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1910). 17. Judah, History and Philosophy, 49. 18. Ibid., 103. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 251 19. Isabelle M. Pagan, An Astrological Key to Character (London: Theosophical Publishing House, 1907 reprinted 1954), 22-23. 20. DT, GRI, Box 101, Folder 1. 21. Ibid. 22. Ibid. 23. Arthur Edward Waite, The Pictorial Key to the Tarot (Blauvelt, N.Y., Rudolf Steiner Publications, 1971, orig. 1909), 59. 24. Ibid., 311-12. 25. DT, GRI, Box 101, Folder 9. 26. Ibid. 27. Ibid. 28. DT, GRI, Box 101, Folder 4. 29. David Tudor, “From Piano to Electronics,'"Music and Musicians 20:12 (1972), 24. 30. Sri Swami Sivananda, Kingly Science Kingly Secret 31. DT, GRI, Box 101, Folder 7. 32. Elwood, “Occult Movements,” 717. 33. DT, GRI, Box 68, Folder 2. 34. Elwood, “Occult Movements,” 717. 35. William Henry, One Foot in Atlantis (Anchorage: Earthpulse Press, 1998), 11. 36. DT, GRI, Box 101, Folder 1. 37. Ibid. 38. Ibid. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 252 39. Ibid. 40. Rudolf Steiner, Outline o f Esoteric Science, trans. Catherine E. Creeger (Gt. Barrington, MA: Anthroposophic Press, 1997), 4. 41. Ibid. 42. DT, GRI, Box 108, Folder 12. 43. DT, GRI, Box 107, Folder 2. 44. Robert A. McDermott, “Anthroposophy” in Encyclopedia o f Religion, ed. Mircea Eliade (New York: Macmillan, 1987), 321. 45. Steiner, The Arts and Their Mission, trans. Lisa D. Monges and Virginia Moore (New York: Anthroposophic Press, 1964), 45. 46. Steiner, “The Aesthetics of Goethe’s Worldview” Art as Spiritual Activity, ed. Michael Howard (New York: Anthroposophic Press, 1998), 129. 47. Steiner, Autobiography: Chapters in the Course o f My Life, trans. Rita Stebbing (New York: Anthroposophic Press, 1999), 71. 48. DT, GRI, Box 108, Folder 12. 49. DT, GRI, Box 108, Folder 2. 50. Mary Caroline Richards Papers, 1928-1994, Getty Research Institute, Research Library, Accession no. 960036 (MCR, GRI), Box 26, Folder 2. 51. DT, GRI, Box 107, Folder 2. 52. DT, GRI, Box 101, Folder 10. 53. Ibid. 54. Steiner, Arts, 36-37. 55. DT, GRI, Box 61, Folder 4. 56. MCR, GRI, Box 26, Folder 1. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 253 57. M. C. Richards, Toward Wholeness: Rudolf Steiner Education in America, (Middleton, CT: Wesleyan University Press, 1980), 14. 58. DT, GRI, Box 101, Folder 10. 59. Ibid. 60. Ibid. 61. Ibid. 62. DT, GRI, Box 108, Folder 1. 63. Elwood, “Occult Movements,” 716. 64. The writings of Thoreau (in particular, Walden Pond) exerted much influence on John Cage, but in a different manner than they had on Ives. Christopher Shultis draws a distinction between Ives’s control of and Cage’s co-existence with the musical materials. See Silencing the Sounded Self: John Cage and the American Experimental Tradition (Boston: Northeastern University Press, 1998). 65. Charles Ives, Essays Before a Sonata, ed. Howard Boatwright (New York: W.W. Norton & Co., 1962), 17. 66. James Vincent Kavanaugh, Music and American Transcendentalism, PhD diss. (Yale University, 1978), 196-97. 67. Titus Burckhardt, Alchemy, trans. William Stoddart (Baltimore: Penguin Books Inc., 1971), 15-16. 68. Eliade, “Occult,” 55. 69. Eliade, The Forge and the Crucible, trans. Stephen Corrin (New York: Harper, 1962), 11. 70. Jean-Jacques Nattiez, ed. The Boulez-Cage Correspondence (Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press, 1993), 45. 71. Arthur Rimbaud, Complete Works, trans. Paul Schmidt (New York: Harper & Row, 1967), 203-4. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 254 72. Tom Clark, Charles Olson: The Allegory o f a Poet’ s Life (Berkeley: North Atlantic Books, 2000), 255. 73. Ibid., 281. 74. Ibid., 282. 75. Richards, Toward Wholeness, 20. 76. Ibid. 77. Richards, a ceramicist, was engaged in her own alchemical discipline: pottery, which entails the laborious process of firing the kiln in order to transform physical substances, bears a remarkable resemblance to alchemy. I am indebted to Bruce Brown for making this keen observation. 78. C. G. Jung, “Religious Ideas in Alchemy,” Psychology and Alchemy, trans. R.F.C. Hull (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1953), 270. 79. Jung, “Rex and Regina,” Mysterium Coniunctionis, trans. R.F.C. Hull (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1963), 319-20. 80. DT, GRI, Box 101, Folder 2. 81. Jung, “The Conjunction,” Mysterium, 536. 82. Jung, “Religious Ideas,” Psychology, 245. 83. Ibid. 84. Jung, “Rex,” Mysterium, 283. 85. Antonin Artuad, The Theatre and Its Double, trans. M.C. Richards (NewYork: Grove Press, 1958), 51. 86. Jung, “Rex,” Mysterium, 283. 87. Richards, “Antonin Artaud: The Theater and Its Double” (lecture at The Living Theater, 1960), MCR, GRI, Box 30, Folder 3. 88. Steiner, “Aesthetics of Goethe’s Worldview,” 121. 89. Clement Greenberg, Art and Culture (Boston: Beacon Press, 1961), 7. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 255 90. MCR, GRI, Box 26, Folder 2. 91. John Cage, For the Birds (Salem, NH, London and Melbourne: Marion Boyars, 1981), 222. 92. Larry Austin, “Is the Composer Anonymous?” Source: Music o f the Avant-Garde 1:2 (July 1967), 17. 93. DT, GRI, Box 107, Folders 2, 12. 94. DT, GRI, Box 107, Folder 1. 95. Cage, Birds, 201-02. 96. Jung, “Introduction to the Religious and Psychological Problems of Alchemy,” Psychology, 37. 97. DT, GRI, Box 101, Folder 10. 98. Tudor, “From Piano,” 26. 99. DT, GRI, Box 68, Folder 3. 100. Jung, “The Personification of the Opposites,” Mysterium, 255. 101. DT, GRI, Box 101, Folder 7. 102. Tudor interviewed by Matt Rogalsky, “In Rehearsals, or Preparation, or Setup, or from One Performance to Another: Live Electronic Music Practice and Musicians of the Merce Cunningham Dance Company,” M.A. Thesis (Wesleyan University, 1995), 137. 103. D.T. Suzuki, Zen and Japanese Culture (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1959), 5. 104. Earle Brown, interview with the author (Los Angeles, 21 May 2001). 105. MCR, GRI, Box 26, Folder 1. 106. Brown, “Form,” 66. 107. Rimbaud, Collected Works, 205. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 256 BIBLIOGRAPHY PRIMARY SOURCES Archives The David Tudor Papers, 1884-1998 (bulk 1940-1996), Getty Research Institute, Research Library, Accession no. 980039. Mary Caroline Richards Papers, 1928-1994, Getty Research Institute, Research Library, Accession no. 960036. John Cage Correspondence. Deering Music Library, Northwestern University. Interviews Earle Brown, Los Angeles, 21 May 2001 Christian Wolff, Los Angeles, 19 May 2001 SECONDARY SOURCES Adorno, Theodor W. “Modem Music is Growing Old.” The Score 18 (December 1956), 18. __________ . “Technique, Technology and Music Today.” Ordini: Studi sulla nuova musica 1 (July 1959), 77. Alburger, Mark. “Onward Christian Wolff.” 21st Century Music 7:7 (July 2000), 1- 12. Artaud, Antonin. The Theatre and Its Double, trans. M.C. Richards. New York: Grove Press, Inc., 1958. 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London: Stainer and Bell, 1976. Sandler, Irving. The Triumph o f American Painting', a History o f Abstract Expressionism. New York: Praeger Publishers, 1970. Savage, Roger W. H. Structure and Sorcery: The Aesthetics o f Post-War Serial Composition and Indeterminacy. New York and London: Garland Publishing, 1989. Savarese, Nicola. “Antonin Artaud Sees Balinese Theatre at the Paris Colonial Exposition,” trans. Richard Fowler. The Drama Review 45:3 (Fall 2001), 51- 77. Schiffer, Brigitte. “Darmstadt, Citadel of the Avant-Garde.” The World o f Music 11:3 (1969), 32-44. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 266 Schonberg, Harold. “The Far-Out Pianist.” Harpers Magazine (June 1960), 49-54. Schuller, Gunther. “American Performance and New Music.” Perspectives o f New Music 1:2 (Spring 1963), 1-8. Schwartz, Elliott and Barney Childs, eds. Contemporary Composers on Contemporary Music. New York: Da Capo Press, 1978. Schwartz-Salant, Nathan, ed. Jung on Alchemy. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1995. Smalley, Roger. “Stockhausen and Development.” The Musical Times 107 (1967), 794. Smith, Geoff and Nicola Walker. New Voices: American Composers Talk about their Music. Portland: Amadeus Press, 1995. Smither, Howard E. “The Rhythmic Analysis of Twentieth-Century Music.” Journal o f Music Theory 8 (1964), 54-88. Snyder, Ellsworth J. “John Cage and Music Since World War II: A Study in Applied Aesthetics.” Ph.D. diss., University of Wisconsin, 1970. Stacey, Peter. Boulez and the Modern Concept. Aldershot, England: Scolar Press, 1987. Steiner, Rudolf. Autobiography: Chapters in the Course o f My Life, trans. Rita Stebbing. New York: Anthroposophic Press, 1999. __________ . Anthroposophy (A Fragment), trans. Catherine E. Creeger and Detlef Hardorp. New York: Anthroposophic Press, 1996. __________ . The Arts and Their Mission, trans. Lisa D. Monges and Virginia Moore. New York: Anthroposophic Press, 1964. __________ . Creative Speech: The Formative Process o f the Spoken Word, trans. Winifred Budgett, Nancy Hummel, and Maisie Jones. London: Rudolf Steiner Press, 1978. __________ . The Inner Nature o f Music and the Experience o f Tone, trans. Maria St. Goar. Spring Valley, New York: Anthroposophic Press, 1983. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 267 __________ . Intuitive Thinking as a Spiritual Path, trans. Michael Lipson. New York: Anthroposophic Press, 1995. Stiemotte, Alfred P. Mysticism and the Modem Mind. New York: Liberal Arts Press, 1959. Stockhausen, Karlheinz. “. .. how time passes ...” Die Reihe 3 (1957, Engl. ed. 1959), 10-40. __________ . Stockhausen on Music: Lectures and Interviews. London and New York: M. Boyar, 1989. __________ . “Structure and Experimental Time.” Die Reihe 2 (1956, Engl. ed. 1958), 64-74. Stone, Kurt. “Stockhausen Impact.” Musical Newsletter 2 (April 1972), 13-17,24. Tiryakian, Edward A., ed. On the Margin o f the Visible: Sociology, the Esoteric, and the Occult. New York: John Wiley & Sons, 1974. Tomkins, Calvin. The Bride and the Bachelors. New York: Penguin Books, 1976. __________ . O ff the Wall: Robert Rauschenberg and the Art World o f Our Time. New York: Penguin Books, 1981. Tudor, David. “From Piano to Electronics.” Music and Musicians 20:12 (1972), 24- 26. Vaughan, David. “A Chronology.” Dance Perspectives 34 (Summer 1968), 54-65. __________ , ed. “Merce Cunningham: Creative Elements.” Choreography and Dance 4 (1997). __________ . Merce Cunningham: Fifty Years. New York: Aperture, 1997. Wager, Gregg. Symbolism as a Compositional Method in the Works o f Karlheinz Stockhausen. College Park, Maryland: 1998. Waite, Arthur Edward. The Pictorial Key to the Tarot. Blauvelt, NY: Rudolf Steiner Publications, 1971. Walsh, Stephen. “Musical Analysis: Hearing is Believing?” Music Perception 2 (1984), 237-44. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 268 Westergaard, Peter. “Some Problems in Rhythmic Theory and Analysis.” Perspectives o f New Music 1:1 (1962), 180-91. Wilson, Peter. “Stockhausen.” Neue Zeitschrift fu r Musik 149 (May 1988), 6-11. Winold, Allen. “Rhythm in Twentieth-Century Music.” In Gary E. Wittlich, ed., Aspects o f Twentieth-Century Music, (Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice Hall, 1975): 208-69. Witchel, Leigh. “Merce In and Outside Time.” Ballet Review 25:4 (Winter 1997), 35-41. Wolff, Christian. “Movement.” Die Reihe 2 (1956, Engl. ed. 1958), 61-63. Wolpe, Stefan. “On New (and not-so-new) Music in America,” trans. Austin Clarkson. Journal o f Music Theory 28:1 (Spring 1984), 1-45. Yates, Peter. Twentieth Century Music. New York: Pantheon Books, 1967. Yeston, Maury. The Stratification o f Musical Rhythm. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1976. Zimmerman, Walter. Desert Plants'. Conversations with Twenty-Three American Musicians. Vancouver: A.R.C. Publications, 1976. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 269 APPENDIX A: DAVID TUDOR’S RECITAL PROGRAMS (1950-59) This list was compiled from the David Tudor Papers at the Getty Research Institute, which houses a comprehensive collection of programs from Tudor’s performances as a pianist and as a live-electronics musician, including those with the Merce Cunningham Dance Company. (Programs for Tudor’s performances between 1943 to 1960 are located in boxes 70-72.) March 11, 1950 Composers’ Forum in cooperation with the New York Public Library McMillin Academic Theatre, Columbia University Stefan Wolpe, Battle Piece (first performance) December 17, 1950 League of Composers Carnegie Recital Hall, New York Pierre Boulez, Second Piano Sonata (first American performance) March 20,1951 Juilliard School of Music Town Hall, Juilliard School of Music Alkan, Comme le vent, En rythme molossique Ferruccio Busoni, Toccata (1921) Stefan Wolpe, Toccata (1941) April 1, 1951 International Society for Contemporary Music (ISCM) McMillin Theater, Columbia University Arnold Schoenberg, Five Piano Pieces, Op. 23 June 26,1951 University of Colorado at Boulder University Library Music Room Igor Stravinsky, Piano Rag Music Arnold Schoenberg, Three Piano Pieces, Op. 11 Bela Bartok, Three Etudes Stefan Wolpe, Battle Piece Anton Webern, Variations, Op 27 July 5,1951 University of Colorado at Boulder University Library Music Room Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 270 Henry Cowell, The Banshee Hauer, Atonale Musik Roslavetz, Etude No. 2 Woronoff, Sonnet Pour Dallapiccola Pierre Boulez, Second Piano Sonata Morton Feldman, Three Intermissions Christian Wolff, Four Pieces for Piano John Cage, Music o f Changes—part 1 August 19, 1951 Black Mountain College Arnold Schoenberg, Five Piano Pieces, Op. 23 Stefan Wolpe, Battle Piece Morton Feldman, Three Intermissions Womoff, Sonnet pour Dallapiccola Christian Wolff, Four Pieces for Prepared Piano John Cage, Music o f Changes— part 1 Pierre Boulez, Second Piano Sonata Anton Webem, Variations, Op. 27 January 1, 1952 Living Theatre Cherry Lane Theatre, New York Pierre Boulez, Second Piano Sonata Christian Wolff, For Prepared Piano (first New York performance) Morton Feldman, Intersection 2 (first performance) John Cage, Music o f Changes (first performance) May 2,1952 New School for Social Research Christian Wolff, For Prepared Piano—4 pieces Morton Feldman, Extension 3 (first performance) Morton Feldman, Intermission 5 John Cage, 66 W 12 (first performance) Christian Wolff, For Piano John Cage, Music o f Changes—4 parts August 9 and 11,1952 Black Mountain College Morton Feldman, Extensions 3 Christian Wolff, For Piano John Cage, Music o f Changes Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 271 August 12, 1952 Black Mountain College Stefan Wolpe, Presto furioso John Cage, Two Pastorales Pierre Boulez, First Piano Sonata Morton Feldman, Intermissions 4 and 5 Stefan Wolpe, Passacaglia John Cage, August 12, 1952 Henry Cowell, Banshee August 29, 1952 Woodstock Artists Association Maverick Concert Hall John Cage, Aug 29, 1952 Christian Wolff, For Piano Morton Feldman, Extension 3 Earle Brown, 3 Pieces for Piano Pierre Boulez, First Piano Sonata Morton Feldman, 5 Intermissions Christian Wolff, For Prepared Piano John Cage, 4 ’ 33” (30” —2’23” — 1’40” ) Henry Cowell, Banshee October 26,1952 The Friends of Music at Princeton Princeton University Olivier Messiaen, Mode de Valeurs et d ’ intensites Christian Wolff, For Prepared Piano—4 pieces Pierre Boulez, Second Piano Sonata John Cage, Procter Hall G. C. Morton Feldman, Intersection 2 Morton Feldman, Intermission 5 March 22, 1953 Festival of Contemporary Arts University of Illinois Morton Feldman, Extensions 3 Morton Feldman, Intermission 5 Pierre Boulez, Second Piano Sonata Christian Wolff, For Prepared Piano—4 pieces Earle Brown, Perspectives (first performance) John Cage, Music o f Changes Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 272 July, 1953 Black Mountain College Pierre Boulez, Second Piano Sonata Stefan Wolpe, Displaced Spaces John Cage, Music fo r Piano—4-20 Earle Brown, Perspectives July, 1953 Black Mountain College Olivier Messiaen, Mode de valeurs et d ’ intensites Stefan Wolpe, Battle Piece Anton Webern, Variations, Op. 27 Christian Wolff, For Piano II Earle Brown, Three Pieces Henry Cowell, Tiger November 1, 1953 Hartford Athenaeum Morton Feldman, Extensions 3 Pierre Boulez, First Piano Sonata Earle Brown, Perspectives Christian Wolff, For Prepared Piano—4 pieces John Cage, Music o f Changes November 16, 1953 New School for Social Research: Cowell Retrospective Concert for 25th Anniversary Henry Cowell, Three Piano Pieces: Maestoso, Banshee, Tiger March 28,1954 ISCM McMillin Theater, Columbia University Rene Leibowitz, Duo for Cello and Piano, Op. 23 (first performance) April 14,1954 Carl Fischer Concert Hall, New York John Cage, 4 ’ 33” (first New York performance) John Cage, Music o f Changes Earle Brown, 25 Pages (first performance) Christian Wolff, For Piano II (first New York performance) April 28, 1954 Carl Fischer Concert Hall Pierre Boulez, First Piano Sonata Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 273 Olivier Messiaen, Mode de valeurs et d ’ intensites Morton Feldman, Intersection 3 (first performance) Earle Brown, Four Systems (first performance) Stefan Wolpe, Battle Piece Christian Wolff, For Prepared Piano—4 pieces John Cage, Water Music October 19, 1954 Musik der Zeit, Nordwestdeutscher Rundfunk Koln Morton Feldman, Intersection 3 Christian Wolff, For Prepared Piano—4 pieces Earle Brown, Perspectives John Cage, 23 ’ 56.176” fur zwei Pianisten (First European performances) October 29,1954 Institute of Contemporary Arts Programme, England Stefan Wolpe, Battle Piece Morton Feldman, Extensions 3 John Cage, Water Music John Cage, Music fo r Piano—4-19 Earle Brown, Perspectives Christian Wolff, For Prepared Piano—4 pieces November 3,1954 Donaueschingen [with John Cage, piano] Morton Feldman, Intersection 3 Morton Feldman, Extension 3 Earle Brown, Four Systems Christian Wolff, For Piano I John Cage, Water Music John Cage, 34 ’ 46.776” for 2 Pianists December 15,1954 Carl Fischer Concert Hall, New York Karlheinz Stockhausen, Klavierstucke I-VIII (first American performance, first performance o f Klavierstucke VI- VIII) John Cage, 34 ’ 46.776” for two pianists (first American performance) “Following an intermission the program will be repeated” Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 274 November 18, 1955 Portland State College [with John Cage, piano] John Cage, 26’ 29.283” for two pianists Morton Feldman, Two pieces for two pianos Pierre Boulez, First Piano Sonata Christian Wolff, For Prepared Piano Earle Brown, Four Systems John Cage, Music fo r Piano—22, 24, 26, 33, 34, 36, 37, 42 December 2,1955 University of British Columbia [with John Cage, piano] John Cage, Music o f Changes—part 1 Morton Feldman, Intersection 3 Morton Feldman, Two pieces for two pianos Christian Wolff, For Prepared Piano—4 pieces Earle Brown, Four Systems John Cage, 12 ’ 55.6078” for two pianists John Cage, Music fo r Piano—4x/3y April 20,1956 WHRB [Harvard Radio Broadcasting Company] [with John Cage, piano] Anton Webern, Variations, Op. 27 Pierre Boulez, First Piano Sonata Karlheinz Stockhausen, Klavierstucke VII-VIII(V1I = first performance) John Cage, Water Music Christian Wolff, Suite (First performance) Earle Brown, Perspectives Morton Feldman, Two Pieces for two pianos (first performance) Morton Feldman, Intersection 3 John Cage, Music for Two Pianos May 18, 1956 Merce Cunningham Dance Company University of Notre Dame [with choreography by Cunningham] Christian Wolff, For Piano I [ Untitled Solo] Earle Brown, Four Systems [Galaxy] Pierre Boulez, Etude a un son and Etude II [Fragments] Christian Wolff, For Piano II [Lavish Escapade] John Cage, Music fo r Piano [Suite for Five in space and time] Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 275 July 11-22, 1956 Darmstadt: Internationale Ferienkurse fur Neue Musik [with Severino Gazzelloni, flute] Pierre Boulez, Sonatine pour flute et piano (First performance) Karlheinz Stockhausen, Klavierstucke V- VIII November 23, 1956 Staatlich Hochschule fur Musik Koln Arnold Schonberg, Klavierstucke, Op. 23 Morton Feldman, Extensions (First Cologne performance) Henri Pousseur, Variations (First Cologne performance) Anton Webern, Variations, Op. 27 Karlheinz Stockhausen, Klavierstucke I, II, V , III, IV (First Cologne performance) John Cage, Music o f Changes (First Cologne performance) November 24,1956 Galerie der spiegel John Cage, Music o f Changes Henri Pousseur, Variations Christian Wolff, For Piano Karlheinz Stockhausen, Klavierstucke I-IV Morton Feldman, Intersection 3 John Cage, Water Music November 30,1956 Internationale Gesellschaft fur Neue Musik (IGNM) Sektion Osterreich Christian Wolff, Suite Christian Wolff, For Piano Karlheinz Stockhausen, Klavierstucke Via V Vib VIII Vic Earle Brown, Four Systems Morton Feldman, Piano Piece 1956 Morton Feldman, Intersection 3 Bo Nilsson, Schlagfiguren John Cage, Music o f Changes—parts 1, 3, 4 December 6 and 8,1956 Milan and Venice: Concerti degli Incontri Musicali Morton Feldman, Piano Piece 1956 Henri Pousseur, Impromptu Henri Pousseur, Variations II Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 276 Andre Jolivet, Cinq incantations Karlheinz Stockhausen, Klavierstucke V- VIII John Cage, Music o f Changes—parts 1, 4 Pierre Boulez, Sonatine pour flute et piano [with Severino Gazzelloni] December 12, 1956 Kunstgewerbemuseum Zurich Karlheinz Stockhausen, Klavierstucke I-IV Morton Feldman, Piano Piece 1956 Earl Brown, Four More Christian Wolff, Suite John Cage, Music o f Changes December 15,1956 Les Concerts du Domaine Musical, Association Culturelle (Sponsors: Madeleine Renaud, Jean-Louis Barrault, Pierre Boulez) John Cage, Music o f Changes—parts 1,4 (First French performance) Henri Pousseur, Impromptu Henri Pousseur, Variations II December 17,1956 I.M.A. Concert Earle Brown, Four Systems Henri Pousseur, Impromptu et Variations II Christian Wolff, Suite Karlheinz Stockhausen, Klavierstucke V-VIII Morton Feldman, Piano Piece 1956 Bo Nilsson, Schlagfiguren, Op 8 John Cage, Music o f Changes—parts 1,4 (First London performances) February 7,1957 Hobart and William Smith Colleges, Geneva New York [with John Cage, piano] Christian Wolff, Suite Henri Pousseur, Impromptu et Variations II Earle Brown, Four Systems Karlheinz Stockhausen, Klavierstucke VI-VIII John Cage, Winter Music Bo Nilsson, Schlagfiguren Morton Feldman, Two Pieces for Two Pianos John Cage, Music for Two Pianos Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 277 April 22, 1957 Carl Fischer Concert Hall, New York Bo Nilsson, Schlagfiguren (first New York performance) Karlheinz Stockhausen, KlavierstUck VI Henri Pousseur, Variations I (first United States performance) Karlheinz Stockhausen, KlavierstUck X I (first performance) Bengt Hambraeus, Cercles (first United States performance) Bo Nilsson, Bewegungen (first performance) Henri Pousseur, Impromptu et Variaions II (first New York performance) Karlheinz Stockhausen, KlavierstUck X I (different version) April 30, 1957 Carl Fischer Concert Hall, New York [with John Cage, William Masselos, Grete Sultan, piano] John Cage, Music for Four Pianos Morton Feldman, Extensions 4 for Three Pianos Christian Wolff, Improvisation Earle Brown, Four Systems for 4 Pianos Morton Feldman, Piece for Four Pianos John Cage, Winter Music October 14,1957 242 East 52n d Street, New York Karlheinz Stockhausen, KlavierstUck X I November 17,1957 The Nonagon: Composers’ series John Cage, Two Haiku Christian Wolff, Suite Morton Feldman, Piano Piece 1956 John Cage, Haiku Earle Brown, Four More Karlheinz Stockhausen, Klavierstucke VII, X I John Cage, Haiku Morton Feldman, Piano Piece 1956 Nilsson, Bewegungen John Cage, Music for Piano Bo Nilsson, Schlagfiguren December 15,1957 Harvard University [with John Cage, piano] Henri Pousseur, Variations II Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 278 Bo Nilsson, Schlagfiguren Bo Nilsson, Bewegungen Karlheinz Stockhausen, KlavierstUck XI Earle Brown, Four Systems Morton Feldman, Piano—3 Hands Morton Feldman, Two Pianos 1957 John Cage, Winter Music Christian Wolff, Duo for Pianists January 7, 1958 B. de Rothschild Foundation for the Arts and Sciences A Concert of Contemporary Chamber Music [with Samuel Baron, flute] Pierre Boulez, Sonatine pour flute et piano (first New York performance) January 12, 1958 Composers’ Showcase series: MUSIC OF HENRY COWELL Antinomy Maestoso Piece fo r Piano with Strings The Banshee Aeolian Harp Advertisement Tiger February 9, 1958 Composers’ Showcase series: MUSIC OF STEFAN WOLPE Two Studies fo r Piano Suite in Hexachord Three Studies on Basic Rows March 15,1958 The Woman’s College of the University of North Carolina: Arts Festival [with John Cage, piano] John Cage, Variations Morton Feldman, Intermission 6B Christian Wolff, Duo for Pianists Earle Brown, Four Systems Karlheinz Stockhausen, KlavierstUck XI May 15,1958 25-Year Retrospective Concert of the Music of John Cage Town Hall, New York University Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 279 [with Manhattan Percussion Ensemble and others] Music fo r Carillon (First performance) Concert for Piano and Orchestra (First performance) May 25, 1958 Music of John Cage Village Vanguard Concert for Piano and Four Instruments Music fo r Carillon Concert for Piano, Voice, and Four Instruments September 3, 1958 Darmstadt: Internationale Ferienkurse fur Neue Musik [with John Cage, piano] John Cage, Music for Two Pianos Earle Brown, Four Systems for Two Pianos Morton Feldman, Two Pianos - 1957 John Cage, Variations Christian Wolff, Duo for Pianists John Cage, Winter Music Christian Wolff, Duo II (First performance) (First European performances) September 19, 1958 Musik der Zeit, Westdeutscher Rundfunk Koln [with Severino Gazzelloni] Karlheinz Stockhausen, KlavierstUck X I [twice] John Cage, Concert for piano and orchestra (first European performance) Pierre Boulez, Sonatine for flute and piano September 29, 1958 Fylkingen, Sweden [with John Cage, piano] Bo Nilsson, Bewegungen Bo Nilsson, Schlagfiguren Bo Nilsson, Quantitaten Bengt Hambraeus, Cercles Karlheinz Stockhausen, KlavierstUck X I John Cage, Winter Music Morton Feldman, Two Pianos Christian Wolff, Duo for Pianists Earle Brown, Four Systems for two pianos John Cage, Variations Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 280 October 8, 1958 Joumees intemationales de musique experimentale, Bruxelles [with Marcelle Mercenier and John Cage, pianos] John Cage, Music for Three Pianos Christian Wolff, Sonata for Three Prepared Pianos Olivier Messiaen, Le merle noir John Cage, Winter Music for Three Pianos October 14, 1958 Studio fur Neue Musik Galerie 22, Dusseldorf [with John Cage, piano] Karlheinz Stockhausen, KlavierstUck X I Christian Wolff, For Piano with Preparations John Cage, Variations Franco Evangelisti, Proiezioni Sonore Earle Brown, Four Systems Morton Feldman, Piano 3 Hands - 1957 John Cage, Music Walk (First performance) October 28,1958 Das Neue Werk, Offentliche Veranstaltung des Norddeutschen Rundfunks [with John Cage, piano; Merce Cunningham and Carolyn Brown, dancers] John Cage, Suite for Two Morton Feldman, Piano Piece 1956 Earle Brown, Four Systems Christian Wolff, Changeling Morton Feldman, Intermission 6 Earle Brown, Duet from Springweather and People January 15, 1959 New Music Concerts Carl Fischer Concert Hall, New York [with Gerald Tarack, violin; Eric Simon, clarinet; Seymour Barab, cello] Messiaen, Quatour pour la fin du temps (first United States performance) March 2, 1959 Composers’ Showcase Series: MUSIC OF MORTON FELDMAN [with Matthew Raimondi, violin; Morton Feldman, piano] Extensions 1 for violin and piano Projection 4 Piano Piece 1952 Three Piano Pieces 1954 Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 281 Piano—Three hands, 1957 Piano—Four hands, 1958 March 19, 1959 La Maison Francaise of New York University Olivier Messiaen, Mode de valeurs et d ’ intensites Franco Evangelisti, Proiezioni Sonore Henri Pousseur, Impromptu et Variations II Bo Nilsson, Bewegungen Pierre Boulez, First Piano Sonata Christian Wolff, For Prepared Piano Christian Wolff, For Piano John Cage, Music for Piano—27, 21, 32, 35, 36 September 21, 1959 Musik der Zeit, Westdeutschen Rundfunks Cornelius Cardew, Third Piano Sonata (First performance) Bo Nilsson, Zwanzig Gruppen fur drei Holzblaser (First German performance) Claude Debussy, Chansons de Bilitis Anton Webern, Satz fur Streichtrio (First performance) Anton Webern, Konzert, Op. 24 October 28,1959 Staatliche Hochschule fur Musik Koln Cornelius Cardew, Two books of study for pianists Sylvano Bussotti, Aus den “Pieces de chair II” Christian Wolff, For Pianist (First performance) John Cage, Winter Music Karlheinz Stockhausen, Refrain fur drei Spieler November 12,1959 Musica d’oggi, Conservatorio B. Barcello Sala dei concerti Henri Pousseur, Impromptu et Variations II Franco Evangelisti, Proiezioni sonore (First Italian performance) Karlheinz Stockhausen, KlavierstUck VI (First Italian perfomance) John Cage, Music for Piano Frank Amey, Piece for 2 (First performance) Sylvano Bussotti, Piano Pieces for David Tudor—parts 5,2,3 (First Italian performance) Christian Wolff, For Pianist (First Italian performance) John Cage, Winter Music Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 282 November 14,1959 Centro d’Arte degli Studenti dell’Universita di Padova Sylvano Bussotti, Piano Pieces fo r David Tudor Cornelius Cardew, Third Piano Sonata Earle Brown, Four More Franco Evangelisti, Proiezioni Sonore Karlheinz Stockhausen, KlavierstUck VI Morton Feldman, Last Pieces Christian Wolff, For Pianist November 19, 1959 Musikalische Jugend Osterreichs: Internationale gesellscaft fur neue Musik John Cage, Klavierkonzert 1. version Kurt Schwertsik, KlavierstUck Morton Feldman, Extensions 1 Sylvano Bussotti, KlavierstUck fur David Tudor—parts 3, 5 Earle Brown, Cellomusic Cornelius Cardew, Two books of study for pianists Christian Wolff, Music for Merce Cunningham John Cage, Klavierkonzert 2. version Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 283 APPENDIX B: TUDOR’S CALL SLIPS FROM THE NEW YORK PUBLIC LIBRARY In the 1950s, Tudor paged the following titles on occultism, metaphysics, or Eastern philosophy from the New York Public Library on 42n d St. Not included in this list are titles on science, mathematics, botany, and cooking. (The library call slips are located in the David Tudor Papers, Box 106, Folder 2.) Boldt, Ernst. From Luther to Steiner. London: Methuen, 1923. Boyile, Veolia. The Fundamental Principles ofYi-King. Los Angeles: Los Angeles Institute of Numerical Research, 1938. Frichet, Henry. Le Tarot Divinatoire. Paris: France-Edition, 1924. Gould, Rupert Thomas. Oddities. London: G. Bles, 1944. Hasbrouck, Muriel. Pursuit o f Destiny. New York: E. P. Dutton & Co., 1941. Hertz, Richard. Chance and Symbol. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1948. Iredale, Q. Thomas Traherene. Oxford: B. Blackwell, 1935. Koester, Hans. Anthroposophy in India. Calcutta: Thacker, Spink, & Co. 1927. Kolisko, Eugen. Reincarnation and other essays. London: King, Littlewood & King Ltd., 1940. Kroeber, Alfred L. Handbook o f the Indians o f California. Washington: Gov’t Printing, 1925. Leishman, James Blair. The Metaphysical Poets: Donne, Herbert, Vaughan, Traherne. New York, Russell & Russell, 1934. Seabury, William. The Tarot Cards and Dante’ s Divine Comedy. New York: Private printing, 1951. Steffen, Albert. Voyage to the Other Land. Domach, Switzerland: Verlag fur schone wissenschaften, 1939. Steiner, Rudolf. The Interpretation o f Fairy Tales. New York: Steiner Publishing Co. 1929,1943. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 284 __________ . The Mystery o f the Human Temperaments. New York: Anthroposophic Press, 1944. __________ . Mystics o f the Renaissance. New York, London: G. P. Putnam's Sons, 1911. __________ . The Nature and Origin o f the Arts. London: Steiner Publishing Co., 1945. __________ . The Problems o f Our Time. London: Steiner Publishing Co., 1943. __________ . The Three Paths o f the Soul to Christ. New York: Anthroposophic Press, 1942. __________ . Ways to a New Style in Architecture. New York: Anthroposophic Press, 1927. __________ . Why Is Spiritual Investigation Misunderstood? London: Steiner Publishing Co., 192-. Sung, Z. D. The Symbols ofYi King. Shanghai: China Modem Education Co., 1934. Thierens, A. E. Natural Philosophy. London: Rider & Co., 1928. Traherne, Thomas. Centuries o f meditations by T. Traherne, ed. Bertram Dobell. London: the editor, 1908. __________ . Felicities o f Thomas Traherne, ed. Sir Arthur Quiller-Couch. London: P.V. & A.E. Dobell, 1934. __________ . Four meditations from Traherne’ s “Centuries”. Pawlet, VT: Banyan Press, 1953. __________ . O f magnanimity and charity, ed. John Rothwell Slater. New York: King’s Crown Press, 1942. __________ . Traherne’ s Poems o f Felicity, ed. H. J. Bell. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1910. Wachsmuth, Guenther. Reincarnation as a phenomenon o f metamorphosis. New York: Anthroposophic Press, 1937. Wade, Gladys I. The Poetical works o f Thomas Traherne. London: P. J. & A. E. Dobell, 1932. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 285 Wade, Gladys I. Thomas Traherne. Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press; London: Oxford University Press, 1944. Waite, Arthur Edward. The Pictorial Key to the Tarot. London: W. Rider and Son, 1922. Waley, Arthur. Zen Buddhism and Its Relation to Art. London: Luzac, 1922. White, Helen C. The Metaphysical Poets: A Study in Religious Experience. New York: The Macmillan Co., 1936. Wirth, Oswald. Le Tarot des Imagiers. Paris: Le Symbolisme; E. Nourry, 1927. Woodroffe, Sir John. The Garland o f Letters. Madras: Ganesh, 1951. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission.

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Creator Smigel, Eric (author)

Core Title Alchemy of the avant-garde: David Tudor and the new music of the 1950s

School Graduate School

Degree Doctor of Philosophy

Degree Program Historical Musicology

Publisher University of Southern California (original), University of Southern California. Libraries (digital)

Tag Biography,music,OAI-PMH Harvest

Language English

Contributor Digitized by ProQuest (provenance)

Advisor Simms, Bryan (committee chair), James, David (committee member), Moore, Robert (committee member)

Permanent Link (DOI) https://doi.org/10.25549/usctheses-c16-494686

Unique identifier UC11340079

Identifier 3133336.pdf (filename),usctheses-c16-494686 (legacy record id)

Legacy Identifier 3133336.pdf

Dmrecord 494686

Document Type Dissertation

Rights Smigel, Eric

Type texts

Source University of Southern California (contributing entity), University of Southern California Dissertations and Theses (collection)

Access Conditions The author retains rights to his/her dissertation, thesis or other graduate work according to U.S. copyright law. Electronic access is being provided by the USC Libraries in agreement with the au...

Repository Name University of Southern California Digital Library

Repository Location USC Digital Library, University of Southern California, University Park Campus, Los Angeles, California 90089, USA