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INART 55
History of Electroacoustic Music
David Tudor
 David Tudor performs at The Kitchen in New York City c. 1972-74. Photo courtesy of San Rices (Photo copyright stanries.com). |
He became the principal pianist of the avant-garde movement, specializing in music of composers such as Pierre Boulez and Karlheinz Stockhausen. By the early 1950s he had begun an association with John Cage, performing his music and becoming the pianist for the Merce Cunningham Dance Company. Cage was to declare in 1970 that everything he composed after 1951 was written for Tudor. Tudor's pianistic virtuosity left Cage free to capitalize on openness and indeterminacy in his works. Instructions such as "play anything you want for x minutes" could be safely entrusted to a performer like Tudor, who would invariably be able to fill "anything" with interesting material.
Tudor was also a participant in the Darmstadt courses, and frequently premiered American avant-garde pieces there, as well as premiering European avant-garde works in the United States. Tudor was also associated with the Fluxus movement. La Monte Young's Piano Piece for David Tudor No. 2 recalled Cage's 4'33" by calling for Tudor to open and shut the keyboard lid repeatedly, more and more softly, until the openings and closings were completely silent. Fluxus artists George Brecht and Yoko Ono also dedicated pieces to Tudor.
Cage had begun working with electronics as early as the 1930s. His later works involving electronics were often realized by Tudor. Indeterminacy (1959) was a series of short anecdotes read by Cage; each was to last sixty seconds, so that shorter anecdotes had to be read slowly, and longer anecdotes more quickly. The readings were accompanied by Tudor on piano and electronics -- while it is unclear what the nature of the electronics were, it is likely that they were an augmentation of the Fluxus movement. prepared piano, with contact microphones placed on objects in the piano. Cartridge Music (1960) involved removing the needle from phonograph cartridges and replacing them with everyday objects (pipe cleaners, matches, slinkies, feathers, etc.). Performers manipulated these amplified objects to create new and unusual sound combinations.
For Cage's Variations II (1961), Tudor recognized a new degree of openness in Cage's instructions. The score left it up to the performer what instrument was to be played, and there was no specification as to how many performers/instruments should be used for the piece. In an effort to break new ground, Tudor decided to perform the piece on amplified piano, translating Cage's instructions to a detailed score of operations to be performed on the amplification controls.
Gradually, Tudor's interest shifted from the piano to electronics. While Fluxus artists were creating short word pieces, Tudor took this way of thinking into creating drawings of electrical circuits. Through the 1960s he began to develop custom electronic systems, creating performances and sound installations in which electronics were cultivated for their unpredictability so that they were in effect collaborators in the musical realization. He was initially reluctant to call himself a composer. His program notes for Bandoneon! (1966) read:
Bandoneon! is a combine incorporating programmed audio circuits, moving loudspeakers, TV images, and lighting instrumentally excited...[it] uses no composing means, since when activated it composes itself out of its own composite instrumental nature.
He did not care for commercial synthesizers and their more fixed patterns of input and output. He relished the unpredictability of the feedback systems he designed. For him, performances were discoveries of the personalities of these configurations. He was exploring their potential, rather than making them do something he wanted them to do. Each performance was a unique event with no predetermined outcome.
Tudor's most famous work was Rainforest, commissioned in 1968 by the Merce Cunningham Dance Company. This piece, which was revised repeatedly in succeeding years, featured "instrumental loudspeakers." These were small contact speakers placed onto objects and sculptures that Tudor had found were effective as resonators -- sheets of aluminum, plate glass, steel trays, and wooden planks. The speakers played electronic tones at resonant frequencies of the objects, thus bringing the objects into sympathetic vibration. Audience members could wander through the "forest" of objects, interacting with them however they liked -- placing their ears against them, feeling the vibrations with their hands, or even biting an object to allow the vibrations to be picked up by the bones in the head.
SOURCES:
LEONARDO Music Journal v. 14, "Composers inside Electronics: Music after David Tudor.