David Tudor S & D

There's also a 2 CD set on New World called Rainforest II / Mureau, which has Cage slurring / moaning his texts loudly over the electronics

I also have this one and you do wish Johnny C. would just shut the fuck up

those two were the only ones available for a long time, and they're probably not the most interesting entry points. I remember getting built up, reading the scores & program notes in the packaging for both of those on the way home, then putting the music on, to be disappointed by somewhat rudimentary feedback sounds. Pulsers / Untitled in particular, totally brutal. But they've both grown on me -- not sure you can seperate the ideas from the sound -- once you enter in to the process, hearing the sounds in their basic state actually becomes a lot more interesting than a lot of the noise records that take Tudor's sounds and layer them into a meaningless overcooked goulash, Tudor lets you listen

the only other two Tudor discs I wouldn't recommend for a starting point are Microphone & David Tudor plays Cage and Tudor. not that they're bad -- the first is a very spare studio record, the second is a near-silent document of a live performance.

the two you want are Rainforest & Live Electronic Music. (& I hear hstencil preferring the LP version, it's the difference between a warm bath and a fist fight)

hey i don't like any of the "goulash" (no names, no names) either so i agree with you there. i somewhat regret selling neural synthesis as it did have a nice organic insect sound thing going. i just never listened to it enough to keep around.

i think i got these and other lovely label releases at the d.c. tower - robert ashley, gordon mumma, etc.

from the '85 Computer Music Journal review --

You know how people say "Oh yes, when such-and-such was premiered, people thought it was the ugliest thing they had ever heard, and now, of course we all see how beautiful it really is." Well, I'm absolutely positive you'll be able to play this record at a party in the year 2585, and everyone present will cringe in stunned dismay, except for a few hardy souls like ourselves who will throw back their heads and laugh at the sheer Zen lunacy of Tudor's sensibility.

another cool picture of a 1976 version of Rainforest. I think that's actually Laeticia Sonami in the picture: http://emfinstitute.emf.org/exhibits/rainforest.html

Tudor Pages

pictures of Tudor's self-built instruments / circuits -- this should answer as to why it's kind of a crime why his name doesn't come up a lot more often than it does as a cornerstone in reviews of recent noise music made with self-built / circuit bent electronics. Tablecore, 1965, Tudor.

there's a lot of terrible electronic music getting mainstream reviews, and six months after its release I can't find one review of Tudor's "Live Electronic Music" anywhere, not one.

I don't remember all of the details now, and I'm not sure where my program from that day is, so I'm not sure who all was part of this installation. I remember talking with Paul DeMarinis, John Driscoll, Ron Kuivila, Ben Manley, Matt Rogalsky, for sure, I could only guess at the rest now. I know I heard several negative comments on the Mode CD at the time, at least in part because the mix combines a number of recordings from different installations in such a way that the original binaural quality of the recordings is lost.

For those of us who haven't heard the installation in many settings, as the composer/performers who worked with Tudor had, the lack of the site-specific details of these recordings is perhaps only a notional loss, but it's something to consider. Perhaps the effect of these combined recordings is part of what seems like a fist fight to Milton Parker.

I don't have much else to add to what's been written above, except that there's also a fine Web site at the Getty Center, which owns Tudor's papers and instruments:

http://www.getty.edu/research/conducting_research/digitized_collections/davidtudor/index.html

the Mode CD is more of an ambient record.

http://classicaldrone.blogspot.com/2007/06/for-composers-in-both-new-york-and.html

the only review I've been able to find so far, at least it's an expert one. great blog there.

Wow, Pulsers. Wow.

http://roxanne.typepad.com/photos/uncategorized/malkinexplodes.jpg

http://www.amazon.com/David-Tudor-Bandoneon-combine/dp/B0033COPAI
http://blogcritics.org/music/article/music-dvd-review-david-tudor-bandoneon/

was just browsing at Amoeba and see that David Tudor's first electronic composition has been out on DVD since March

there's only about 15 minutes of it documented on the DVD, but that 15 minutes is noise ground zero

http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_z6QNg8oZ7O8/S6cHsJ4U1aI/AAAAAAAAFSw/ToT3oDvTLak/s1600-h/David+Tudor+DVD.jpg

http://www.shortandsweetnyc.com/2010/03/dvd-review-david-tudor-bandoneon-a-combine/
http://www.spiralcage.com/blog/?tag=bandoneon

The performance is of course of primary interest to me and I have to say it is quite spectacular. The video begins with Tudor and several engineers coming on to the stage and hooking things up and getting things ready. After a couple of minutes of this Tudor begins to play and I have to say based on all of the Tudor I have heard previously I wasn’t expecting this. Washes of sounding, stuttering out as he squeezes the bellows, layer upon layer of these as the Armory’s 5 -6 second reverberation throws the sound back and forth. The piece keeps building from this initial assault, each components lashed onto the howling structure previously built. After a bit of this four remote controlled sculptures each with its own loudspeaker begins wheeling around, throwing yet more sound all around the space. Meanwhile a video projection system, designed by Lowell Cross, is tracing out abstract shapes, lines and patterns that are being generated in direct response to the music. There are portions of the performance where the density is lower than others but primarily it is a hurricane roar of sound. Even so it is not a featureless wash of sound by any means, it is wholly alien, created not from the expected building blocks of synthesis, but of the bandoneon’s natural sound, feedback, amplification, echo, and tortured electronics. It is fractal like, always revealing more detail and fascinating detail at that, the closer you examine it. But then after just over eight minutes of actual playing it fades away and ends.

http://www.lowellcross.com/articles/tudor/1966.html

& here's the only other review I could find: http://www.shortandsweetnyc.com/2010/03/dvd-review-david-tudor-bandoneon-a-combine/

three reviews isn't bad for a $23 DVD with limited distribution I guess but I'm just sort of stunned this thing's been out for half a year without me even hearing about it

Just pointing toward the latest Wire - has a review by Ian Penman on Merce Cunningham box set by a guy who hasn't the patience for some of this music. Which is funny because I don't have much patience for some of the electronica he likes.

Its pretty good all the same - I mean, who doesn't share his distaste for cliques and bad writing in sleevenotes (a huge problem when it comes to archival recordings of the avant-garde), cuts through the (both sexual and non-) politics and I found the ear pretty er wired, in the end.

Anyway he, I think, correctly identifies David as the dude for this thing.

yeah I really do want a copy of this. 10 disc box about 40% of which is Tudor, but with many other promising things. Maryanne Amacher track for instance.

http://www.newworldrecords.org/album.cgi?rm=view&album_id=86954

Yeah it does have some other things, also a few bits from Gordon Mumma.

no doubt, it is a box that simply everyone should be talking about

And the cheapest place to buy it is Amazon USA: http://www.amazon.com/Music-Merce-1952-2009-Various-Artists/dp/B0047PNOLQ/

first paragraph of christian wolff's contribution to the music from merce liner notes:

One of the last times I saw Merce -- we were at Dia Beacon for an Event -- I told him about how once, when David Tudor made exquisitely quiet sounds -- or appeared to: at times, one could hear nothing, only see the movement of his hands, I asked David whether he really did make all the sounds or sometimes just made the movements. David smiled his mysterious smile and nodded, yes he sometimes didn't make any sound at all. Merce laughed loudly and, I think, in recognition.

/music for merce, sorry

box is lovely. jewel cases themselves minimally packaged but the 120 page booklet has me. haven't listened to a note yet, just been reading the book without listening.

http://www.spiralcage.com/blog/?tag=music-for-merce

Been listening to a playlist of just the Tudor tracks from this

And all I can say is: the whole box should have been the complete unedited Tudor performances, not these 15 minute edits. I'd pay twice as much as I paid for this, just to have those

Several completely unreleased Tudor pieces here, but even the pieces that exist in studio versions are drastically different here. The studio versions are often direct board recordings, or recorded in smaller rooms, or with controlled reverb spaces, then layered several times over to create more complexity. But these versions of the Merce box are straight-up room recordings, real live music, totally honest documents of the live electronic music

'toneburst' is just a howler, it sounds like being inside a stadium that is vibrating into pieces

That link has some neat impressions on how this stuff has operated as accompainment to dance - my first taste of Cunningham was the Radiohead composed piece (think Scanner was involved too - oh where is he now?) and it didn't make any impression. Which corresponds to what he is saying.

Been to a few dance pieces by others and you can tell that Merce, just by introducing this stuff, had a contagious effect - although it still sounds a bit too polite. But, as I said, small sample.

That link has some neat impressions on how this stuff has operated as accompainment to dance

It really hit me over the head listening to this box, and seeing the pieces that aren't on it that were also premiered to accompany Merce's pieces -- Cartridge Music, Indeterminacy, Tudor's Rainforest, David Behrman's Interspecies Smalltalk -- i.e. we're talking about oh say half of the landmarks in early live electronic music. And it hits me that many of the problems that continue to plague performers today, the basic audience alienation in not understanding the connections between a musician's gesture and the musical result that keeps this music too far to the fringe, was successfully overcome simply by giving the audience something else to watch

All of which is obvious now that I'm holding this box, but growing up, all those pieces I mentioned were mostly known through their recordings as standalone works of pure music and no other associations, so it is kind of a revelation to realize how the entire evolution of live electronic music as a performance discipline owes so much to Merce & interdisciplinary collaboration. you look at the pictures of Tudor in 1965 and you see the same tablecore mess of wires & pedals & mixers that are so much more familiar now, but it wouldn't have flown on the scale it did without the dancers

final performances of the company were on the 29th-31st, some friends of mine played in them, I am looking forward to hearing how they went. was pieces by Kosugi / Behrman / Wolff / King.

famous famous picture but who ever gets tired looking at the future

http://wordservents.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/09/Variations-VII-John-Cage-David-TudorGordon-Mumma-foreground-Caroline-Brown-Merce-Cunningham-Barbara-Dilley-background-1965.jpg

And it hits me that many of the problems that continue to plague performers today, the basic audience alienation in not understanding the connections between a musician's gesture and the musical result that keeps this music too far to the fringe, was successfully overcome simply by giving the audience something else to watch

Not sure if they are 'overcome' but yeah its a strategy. As a great way of presenting a more concentrated slab of this music compared to a film in which this would be given a heavy edit, but I wonder what the audience from a dance background makes of it. I've started reading a few dance reviews and its curiously underdiscussed. Maybe its not so surprising, when you have to look at the choreography, staging as well...but there is a certain lack of basic opinion.

Certainly when I watch I give more of the weight to music, as I'm still trying to understand gesture in dance. And then the movement and how it might relate to what I'm hearing is a whole other level to think about.

A lifetime's thinking...xp

Great picture, assuming the audience has a fairly clear view of both, whereas in performances attended the music is heard through the speaker or the musician is hidden away, like in opera.

I'm curious about that too, I'm not sure the electronic musicians were always quite as visible as they are in that shot. All the pictures of Rainforest for instance concentrate on the dancers and Warhol's reflective balloons.

The book with the Merce box set goes into the contentious history of audience & even dancer reception to the music. Sometimes it was too much. But I think often the response was more as it is with film, where you can get away with incredibly challenging scores as long as the focus is ostensibly on the visuals.

Lifetime's thinking for sure, I have been living and breathing Tudor interviews & music all week, it's endless

Rediscovering this one as well:
http://www.discogs.com/Karlheinz-Stockhausen-David-Tudor-Klavier-Stuecke/release/794867

Historic first recordings of the Klavierstücke I-VIII & XI (4 versions) by WDR Köln at the Funkhaus, Saal 2 on September 19th, 1958 and September 27th, 1959.

Tracks 1 to 4 dedicated to Marcelle Mercenier.
Tracks 5 to 12 dedicated to David Tudor

Also: that "David Tudor plays Cage & Tudor" cd I wasn't too hot on upthread; I just wasn't ready for it yet. It's spare, but for "Neural Synthesis No. 2" when the payoffs come they are inexplicably large

http://camalie.com/musicbox2/mbox2.htm

http://www.dustygroove.com/images/products/c/cage_johnca_musicofch_101b.jpg

mostly only this

in case that link ever goes away: it's the new Hat Art edition of David Tudor playing the complete version of Cage's 'Music Of Changes'. Definitely a piece that wouldn't exist if Tudor didn't exist, who else could have proven to the rest of the world that it was even physically possible to play it

this year's reissue has been remastered to bring some of the quieter details out of the far-field room recording, but they didn't kill the dynamic range too much; the loud notes are still shocking. this is the 1956 recording, the only one of Tudor playing the complete piece. I haven't heard the CRI LP of the 1953 recording of the 3rd/4th movement, but I'd better: http://www.discogs.com/Harry-Partch-John-Cage-The-Music-Of-John-Cage-And-Harry-Partch/release/1075718

http://www.lafolia.com/archive/covell/covell200604cage1951.html

now I'm just using ILM as a public postit note

http://www.geocities.jp/paganrail/exmusic/tudordisco.html
http://www.discogs.com/Various-Resonance-Volume-9-Number-2-Feedback/release/633546

Arcane Device needs a thread of his own as well

http://www.bruceduffie.com/tudor3.html

BD: Now you say you listen to the music and make changes so that you are a participatory member in this. How much involvement and participation do you expect out of the audience?

DT: (laughs) I don’t expect anything. I just hope.

BD: What do you hope for, then, from the audience?

DT: Well, I hope that they realize that it’s a human being that’s doing the music.

This may seem like an obvious comment, but after listening to one of his pieces for a good stretch while reading this interview, it strikes me as a fairly important point

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mmaN7J846-k

it's sinking in, this one's the best compilation of his piano music out there. those people at Editions RZ really know exactly what sounds good. I nearly, very almost nearly, would write a review of this myself I like it so much

Playing the Music for Piano sections atm, all killer.

(Mean the John Cage "Music for Piano (Number)" stuff)

Tudor in Darmstadt

Some believed that he was simply the greatest pianist of the twentieth century; others, like
his piano student Gertrud Meyer-Denkmann (one of the two enrolled students in his
piano course that year), noted his subtle power as a figure who hovered ‘quietly and
almost anonymously in the background’ while demonstrating tremendous influence
on the musical thinking of the people he encountered (Metzger, 1997 [1996];
Denkmann, 1997). His stoic yet virtuosic performances helped boost Cage’s position
in Germany, and, by association, the reputations of a whole generation of young
American composers.

not exaggerations

recently bought this: http://www.classical.net/music/recs/reviews/n/neo11213a.php

fantastic cage & tudor recording at darmstadt in 1958. cage reads a series of questions about the nature of music while tudor plays piano, then they end with an amazing version of 'variations I', the room increasingly exploding into laughter after each odd event from the radios & the piano really captures the sense of joy from the music, this isn't dry, it's inexplicable

Darmstadt 1958, nearly exhausted in its discussion of serial and electronic
approaches to parametric composition, has been well documented, and Cage’s role as
provocateur much discussed. Cage himself viewed 1958 as a turning point in his European
reception: ‘As late as [1954], David Tudor and I were thought to be idiots’, he said, but
added, ‘in 1958 there was a marked change’ since that year ‘we were taken quite seriously—for
the most part’. Tudor and Cage gave a two-piano performance with music by
Brown, Cage, Feldman, and Wolff on 3 September. They also collaborated in the
performance of Cage’s three lectures (‘Changes’, ‘Indeterminacy’ and ‘Communication’,
later published by Wesleyan University Press in Silence: Lectures and Writings by
John Cage [1961]). While Cage delivered his lectures, Tudor played from Cage’s
Music of Changes, Stockhausen’s Klavierstuck XI, and several other works by Cage, Bo
Nilsson and Christian Wolff. The Darmstadt audience that year, many members of
which witnessed these unconventional lecture-recitals, included dozens of established
or up-and-coming composers (Berio, Bussotti, Cardew, Davies, Kagel, Lachenmann,
Ligeti, Maderna, Misha Mengelberg, Nono, Paik, Penderecki, Pousseur, Stockhausen,
Xenakis, Isang Yun, and Bernd Alois Zimmermann, to name just a few), musicians
(Caskel, Paul Jacobs, the Kontarskys), and writers (Daniel Charles, Ulrich Dibelius,
Hans G. Helms, Heinz-Klaus Jungheinrich, Heinz-Klaus Metzger, Hans Heinz
Stuckenschmidt), who would come to steer the direction of new music—
aesthetically, critically and institutionally—in central Europe for decades to come.

V good article, I want to read everything Beal has written (more articles on her site btw). I listen to Lachenmann's Guerro for solo piano as a continuation of what Cage was doing but also of serial music, in parallel. The batton was then passed on to Mathias Spahlinger.

So its no surprise that its fruitful to think of many of these working the tension between post-Webern/Boulez and Cage. I find an irony in Cage's late music -- opera, those number pieces, slight sadness that the radicalism was incorporated into more classical modes, whereas Kagel or Nono were far more openingly questioning when writing an opera or re-inventing themselves (Nono's late music). Cage seemed to become more of a blank-avangardist. Tudor's departure from performing could have been a blow to a lot of those American composers. Perhaps another line to explore.

Because Tudor practically abadoned piano I wouldn't say pianist of the century. He became something else, equally interesting. A parallel between him and Richard Barrett (both of whom became electronic musicians, although Barrett carries on as a composer) could be worth a think.

This blog Post is relevant (came across Lauren's blog recently and its really great, wish I had more time to go right back) and specific to graphic notation and Tudor with this line:

In some ways this tradition can be seen as restrictive (many people try to emulate David Tudor’s performances, for example, so many performances sound similar for this reason), but it can also provide a basis of practice from which to work.

Anyone know where a geezer could find a vinyl rip of the version of Rainforest which is so tantalizingly bigged-up throughout this thread?

Say, WHAT?

http://thewire.co.uk/news/23057/david-tudor-recordings-collected-and-released-as-box-set

can not wait

I hope the 1980 Rainforest in that box is the Edition Block version Jon was in search of...

I hope it's a different one

I dug a bit deeper and apparently it is. Hope you can handle that!

I love that recording & it'll be nice to have a good digital transfer of it, but I would also buy a 20 CD box set of just performances of Rainforest IV, my only disappointment is that this is not a 21 CD box set

need to hear

http://www.discogs.com/Various-Musicworks-52-John-Cage/release/1003241

John Cage – Atlas Eclipticalis With Winter Music (Electronic Version, 1957) Excerpt- 14:35
Clarinet – Morton Subotnick
Conductor – Ramon Sender
Double Bass – Loren Rush
Electronics – Michael Callahan
Flute, Piccolo Flute – Ian Underwood
French Horn, Tuba – Pauline Oliveros
Horns – Douglas Leedy
Percussion – John Chowning
Piano – Ann Riley, David Tudor, Dwight Pelzer, Warner Jepson
Timpani – Jack van der Wyck
Trombone – Stuart Dempster
Trumpet – Stanley Shaff
Viola – Linn Subotnick
Viola, Viola [D'amore] – Robert Mackler

Makng my way through some of Tudor's cuts in Music for Merce. The world needs a longer version of 'toneburst'.

http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/819ZK2-U1OL._SL1500_.jpg

http://www.eastofborneo.org/articles/subcontinental-synth-david-tudor-and-the-first-moog-in-india

decent review - http://www.newmusicbox.org/articles/sounds-heard-the-art-of-david-tudor-1963-1992/

lead me to amazing article linked at bottom of page - http://www.newmusicbox.org/articles/cage-tudor-concert-for-piano-and-orchestra/

http://www.chicagoreader.com/chicago/david-tudor-cage-stockhausen-piano-electronics-indeterminacy/Content?oid=9991915

http://www.pointofdeparture.org/PoD44/PoD44Tudor.html

Posted a youtube of a film on John Cage/Roland Kirk, David Tudor makes an appearance

Pathological avoidance of the title of composer

http://rosewhitemusic.com/piano/2013/12/22/unclear-boundary-david-tudor-john-cage/

http://www.amazon.com/Music-Tudorfest-Francisco-Tape-Center/dp/B00NY2TFUC

Music from the Tudorfest: San Francisco Tape Music Center, 1964

Disc: 1
1. 34'46.766" for two pianists
2. Duo for Accordion and Bandoneon with Possible Mynah Bird Obbligato
3. Music for Piano No. 4
Disc: 2
1. Music for Piano No. 4, Electronic Version
2. Variations II
3. Music Walk
Disc: 3
1. Atlas Eclipticalis with Winter Music, Electronic Version
2. Concert for Piano and Orchestra
3. Cartridge Music

^^ that compilation is good; need to play through it again. disc 3 is my kind of fun.

came here to post this, though. hope this gang tours with this version -- I saw Driscoll play at Mills a few months ago, probably in my top 2 shows of this year

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dWs-iqdny7s&feature=youtu.be

Published on Dec 10, 2014
December 10, 2014 - First day of 2 day performance of David Tudor's RAINFOREST IV at Granoff center, Brown University,
Steve Bull John Driscoll Matt Rogalsky Phil Edelstein and the gang

This weekend at Wesleyan

Idiopreneurial Entrephonics: Workshops and Talks
Saturday, February 21, 2015 at 11:00 AM
Music Rehearsal Hall 105, 60 Wyllys Avenue
FREE!

Saturday, February 21, 2015 at 2:00 PM
World Music Hall
FREE!

Saturday, February 21, 2015 at 11am in Music Rehearsal Hall 105, 60 Wyllys Avenue: "The David Tudor and David Behrman Collections of Electronic Instrumentation"

A working session on the electronic instruments, instrumentation, and associated paraphernalia included in Wesleyan World Instrument Collection, including the David Tudor and David Behrman collections of electronic instrumentation.

Saturday, February 21, 2015 at 2pm in World Music Hall: “Compadres Inside Electronics"

Michael Johnsen (Pittsburgh Modular) will present his archeological investigations of the electronics of David Tudor, Gordon Mumma, and David Behrman; Mark Verbos (Verbos Electronics) will demonstrate his own line of Eurorack analog modules and discuss his work with the Buchla synthesizer; Thom Holmes will discuss his work at developing a definitive history of the Moog Synthesizer; Asha Tamirisa will provide a detailed peek into the functioning of the legendary ARP 2500 synthesizer; John Driscoll and Phil Edelstein will show their current work on “Rainforest V” and their work with Matt Rogalsky on realizing David Tudor’s microphone; and Matt Wellins will recount some of his adventures with homemade electronics.

are you going?

and did the Dreyblatt actually sound like Tudor?

John Driscoll's reconstruction of 'Rainforest V' online. Sounds authentic to me.

http://www.moma.org/explore/inside_out/2016/06/01/moma-collects-david-tudors-rainforest-v-variation-1

https://mroztronium.blogspot.com/p/david-tudor-instruments-presented.html?fbclid=IwAR3WpLw6C-OsH1IjTaZfOtAWXk0912ZGqnROBToVHLf6cFaKBcXa2SMM3iM

Cool.

https://www.moma.org/calendar/events/5965?happening_type=performances&preview=true&fbclid=IwAR0GqdHRmqLFY5XLmL4gn_3iVW3cwqPrSgopoTdnkkhVdqG4p73vv4bOjYA#occurrences

luckily I'm in NYC for the November shows

"a lot of the tapes are reconstructions of birds"

https://www.thewire.co.uk/in-writing/interviews/electronic-india-moog-interview-paul-purgas

Good stuff