Lectures on David Tudor

ABSTRACTS

hans w. koch:
What Module Would David Buy? David Tudor’s Legacy in the Modular Synthesizer Community

Abstract to follow

Paul DeMarinis:
David Tudor and the Secrets of Nature

In his lecture, Paul DeMarinis will discuss how David Tudor‘s creation of an esoteric body of knowledge about sound was encoded in collections of circuits, recipes and practices and to examine how the bodies of knowledge within David Tudor’s work (including ideas of resonance, circuit diagrams and even cooking recipes) have been collected, stored and propagated and re-performed during the years since his passing. This instance of a remarkably stable uncertainty (or “hidden”) is conceptualized with reference to the alchemical “books of secrets” that persisted from the dark ages until the early modern period.

Ron Kuivila:
David Tudor: Effacement as a Virtuosic Turn

As a performer, David Tudor sought to reconcile his training in the tradition of werktreue with his interest in the framing of virtuosity founding the writing of Ferrucio Busoni. The former focuses on meticulous, detailed score reading while the latter views notation as an impediment to be transcended. Tudor’s description of his interpretation of Music of Changes by John Cage demonstrates his approach to this seemingly impossible task: “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. What this did for me was to bring about freedom, the freedom to do anything, and that’s how I learned to be free for a whole hour at a time.”

The systematic dissociation Tudor describes is nowhere to be found in the literal text of the music. This in combination with his remarkable piano technique which gave little indication of physical effort, were his contributions as a virtuoso to the work and how it would be understood. Carolee Schneeman, who’s Meat Joy was a landmark performance artwork confronting cultural taboos surrounding corporeality, expresses her profound appreciation of the apparent discorporeality of Tudor’s approach as follows: “He had no way of dramatizing his deep merging with the material. The audience was just enveloped with what they heard. There was no way to know it [these intentions and feelings]. There was no gesture; [his performance] merged into the very first notes because there was no gesture. He was always so within what he was bringing forward. Really you thought of the music, not of him, to an extent that it was really different than with other performers.”

Cecil Taylor had a rather different view: “David Tudor is supposed to be the great pianist of the modern Western music because he‘s so detached. You’re damned right he‘s detached. He’s so detached he ain‘t even there. Like, he would never get emotionally involved in it; and dig, that’s the word, they don’t want to get involved with music.”

Kuvila‘s presentation will consider how this combination of virtuosity and effacement helped invent the neutral performing body that defined subsequent work in both performance art and composed performance. It will also consider how, with the addition of John Cage’s notion of ‘discipline’, it might serve as a working definition of what was meant by “experimental music” and the extent to which that comprises a distinct ethos in the overall corpus of composed and improvised music. It will conclude by considering how all those thoughts can inform the realization and performance of Tudor’s own music.

Matt Rogalsky:
NN

Abstract to follow

Michael Johnsen:
How it works: David Tudor’s work

Starting in the mid 60s, David Tudor made up a homemade electronic music by following his ears and his all-absorbing mind. He wanted new instruments and began a unique self-education which embraced brazilian hobby mags, engineering journals and countless trips to junk surplus outlets. His musical methods were as idiosyncratic as the tools he constructed. This talk will explain his instruments, the way they made his music – and vice versa.