Author: David Tudor
Publisher: A-R Editions, Inc.
ISBN: 198720302X
Category : Music
Languages : en
Pages : 403
Book Description
When I think of music, I think of you and vice-versa, John Cage told David Tudor in the summer of 1951. Looking back years later, Cage said that every work he composed in the ensuing two decades was composed for Tudoreven if it was not written for the piano, Tudors nominal instrument. The collaboration of Cage and Tudor reached an apex in the Solo for Piano from Cages Concert for Piano and Orchestra (195758). None of Cages previous works had employed more than a single type of notation. In contrast, the Solo for Piano consists of eighty-four notational types, ranging from standard line-and-staff notation to extravagant musical graphics. The notational complexity of the Solo for Piano led Tudor to write outor realizea performance score, from which he played at the premiere of the Concert for Piano and Orchestra in May 1958. The next spring, when Cage requested music to complement his ninety-minute lecture Indeterminacy, Tudor created a second realization, for which he devised a new temporal structure to implement Cages notations. This edition of Tudors second realization of the Solo for Piano presents Tudors performance score in the spatial-temporal layout of its proportional notation. An introductory essay discusses the early collaborations of Cage and Tudor, as well as the genesis, creative process, and performance history of the Solo for Piano. The critical commentary examines each of Tudors methods of realization; which notations from Cages score Tudor selected and why; how Tudor interpreted Cages often ambiguous performance instructions; how Tudor distributed the resulting sounds temporally; and the ways in which Tudors realization fulfills, transcends, and sometimes contravenes the instructions of Cages score.