David Tudor papers, 1800-1998, bulk 1940-1996, bulk 1940-1996

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Summary

Creators:
Jennings, Terry, Kagel, Mauricio, Fine, Albert, Ichiyanagi, Toshi, 1933-, Experiments in Art and Technology (Organization), Tudor, David, 1926-1996, Feldman, Morton, 1926-1987, Cross, Lowell M., Cunningham, Merce, Stockhausen, Karlheinz, 1928-2007, Young, La Monte, Ono, Yōko, Corner, Philip, Richards, Mary Caroline, Nilsson, Bo, Wolpe, Stefan, Oliveros, Pauline, 1932-2016, Wolff, Christian, 1934-, Lucier, Alvin, Merce Cunningham Dance Company, Viola, Bill, 1951-2024, Cowell, Henry, 1897-1965, Cardew, Cornelius, Cage, John, Bussotti, Sylvano, Brown, Earle, 1926-2002, Brecht, George, Boulez, Pierre, 1925-2016, and Biel, Michael von
Abstract:
Papers of the avant-garde pianist and electronic music composer, David Tudor, comprehensively document his participation in post-World War II experimental music. Scores by other composers, notably John Cage, Earle Brown, Morton Feldman, Christian Wolff, Sylvano Bussotti, and Karlheinz Stockhausen, Tudor's realizations of their scores, and his own electronic compositional materials form the bulk of the collection. Archive includes correspondence, financial papers, programs and announcements, specifications and documentation for electronic equipment, and audio and video recordings.
Extent:
177.5 Linear Feet
Language:
English .
Preferred citation:

David Tudor papers, 1800-1998 (bulk 1940-1996), The Getty Research Institute, Los Angeles, Accession no. 980039.

http://hdl.handle.net/10020/cifa980039

Background

Scope and content:

The collection comprehensively depicts David Tudor's participation in post-World War II experimental and avant-garde music. Scores by other composers, notably John Cage, Earle Brown, Morton Feldman, Christian Wolff, Sylvano Bussotti and Karlheinz Stockhausen, Tudor's realizations of their scores, and his electronic compositional materials, form the most significant part of the collection. Extensive project files concern the scheduling and development of his piano concerts and electronic compositions. Electronic research files with equipment catalogs and notes show how Tudor taught himself complicated mathmatics, equipment systems, and circuitry in order to gain the requisite technical knowledge to compose his electronic work. Articles and reviews, a nearly complete set of Tudor's programs, a large collection of audio tapes, videotapes, and photographs augment the documentation of his performing and composing activities.

Letters from colleagues and friends, dating from 1938-1996, exhibit the respect and devotion Tudor commanded as a serious interpreter and creator of avant-garde music. The collection also contains personal effects, including recipes, notes, and various materials concerning his spiritual beliefs, and his financial records.

Biographical / historical:

Born in Philadelphia, Pa. in 1926, David Tudor studied composition and analysis with Stefan Wolpe, organ and theory with H. William Hawke, and piano with Irma Wolpe Rademacher. He began his professional work at 17 as an organist, and in 1950 established himself as a formidable talent in avant-garde music when he gave the American premiere of the Second Piano Sonata by Pierre Boulez. Until the late 1960s, Tudor gave first or early performances of works by Earle Brown, Sylvano Bussotti, Morton Feldman, Karlheinz Stockhausen, Christian Wolff, Stefan Wolpe, and La Monte Young. His virtuosity and imagination inspired many of these composers to write pieces for him, involving complex graphic notations and performance problems which they felt only Tudor could solve.

During the 1950s, David Tudor held positions as Instructor and Pianist-in-Residence at Black Mountain College, North Carolina, and at the Internationale Ferienkurse fur Neue Musik, Darmstadt. He expanded his performance activity to include the Merce Cunningham Dance Company and John Cage's "Project of Music for Magnetic Tape."

In the late '60s, Tudor gradually ended his active career as a pianist. He had begun to experiment with the electronic modification of sound sources in the late 1950s, departing from the then common practice of fixing music on magnetic tape beforehand. By the end of the '60s, Tudor became fully involved in "live electronic music," producing his own compositions which introduced a new form of "sound art." Many of Tudor's electronic works were associated with collaborative visual forces: light systems, dance, television, theater, film or four-color laser projections. For example, Bandoneon!, composed in 1966 for the E.A.T. performance series 9 Evenings: Theatre & Engineering, called for lighting and audio circuitry, moving loudspeaker sculptures, and projected video images, all actuated by the bandoneon. As a core artist invited to collaborate on the design of the Pepsi-Cola Pavilion for Expo' 70 in Osaka, Tudor worked with two sculptors and an environmental artist, and conceived and performed new electronic pieces for the pavilion space. Tudor's sound installation Rainforest IV (1973) involved collaboration with the video artist Bill Viola, who credits Tudor with helping him develop his approach to sound in video.

Tudor had been affiliated with the Merce Cunningham Dance Company since its inception in the summer of 1953. When John Cage died in August 1992, Tudor succeeded him as Music Director. The company commissioned many works from Tudor, including Rainforest I (1968), Toneburst (1975), Forest Speech (1976), Weatherings (1978), Phonemes (1981), Sextet for Seven (1982), Fragments (1984), Webwork (1987), and Virtual Focus (1990). Tudor's electronic piece Soundings: Ocean Diary (1994) comprised the electronic portion of Cage's last composition, Ocean, a work for dancers and large orchestral forces positioned around the audience.

List of Compositions
Date Event
1964
Fluorescent sound (for Robert Rauschenberg piece Elgin Tie), Moderna Museet, Stockholm, September 13
1966
Bandoneon! (with projected video images by Lowell Cross), 9 evenings: Theater & Engineering, New York, October 14 and 18
1968
Video III (with Lowell Cross), University of California, San Diego, May 10
Assemblage (with John Cage and Gordon Mumma), a production of KQED-TV film group, San Francisco, October-November
Reunion (with David Behrman, John Cage, Lowell Cross, Marcel Duchamp, Teeny Duchamp, and Gordon Mumma), Ryerson Polytechnical Institute, Toronto, March 5
Rainforest (for Merce Cunningham: RainForest, 2nd Buffalo Festival of the Arts Today, March 9
1969
Video/Laser I (with Lowell Cross), Mills College Tape Music Center, Oakland, California, May 9
1970
First week of June (John Cage and Gordon Mumma), Paris, France, June 5
Video/Laser II; (with Lowell Cross, Carson Jeffries), University of California, Berkeley, January-February; installed at the Pepsi Pavilion, Expo '70, Osaka, Japan
4 Pepsi Pieces: Pepsibird, Anima Pepsi, Pepscillator, Microphone (for the Pepsi Pavilion), Expo '70, Osaka, Japan, March/April
1972
Rainforest 3 (with John Cage: Mureau), Radio Bremen, Pro Musica Nova, Bremen, May 5
Melodics for Amplified Bandoneon (for Merce Cunningham: Events), February
Monobird (with John Cage: Birdcage), Musik/Film/Dia/Licht Festival, Munich, August 30
Untitled (with John Cage: Mesostics re merce Cunningham), Radio Bremen, Pro Musica Nova, May 8
1973
Laser Bird Center for new Performing Arts, University of Iowa, Iowa City, June 12-14
Microphone (1 to 9), research project in multitrack recording, Center for Contemporary Music, Mills College, May
Rainforest IV (group composition), New Music in New Hampshire, Chocorua, New Hampshire, July
Laser Rock Center for new Performing Arts, University of Iowa, Iowa City, June 12-14
Free Spectral Range II (with Lowell Cross), University of Iowa, Iowa City, June
Free Spectral Range I; (with Lowell Cross), Oberlin Conservatory of Music, Oberlin, Ohio, February 16
1974
Photocell Action with light composition by Anthony Martin (for Merce Cunningham: Event)
1975
Toneburst (commission for Merce Cunningham: Sounddance), Detroit, Michigan, March 8
1976
Free Spectral Range III (with Lowell Cross), 4th Cervantino Festival, Mexico City
Forest Speech (for Merce Cunningham: Event)
Pulsers, Festival d'Automne, Paris
1977
Free Spectral Range IV (with Lowell Cross), World Music Days, Bonn
Video Pulsers (collaboration with Viola Farber and Robert Rauschenberg: Brazos River), a production of KERA-TV, Dallas, Texas
1978
Pulsers 2, New York University, New York City
Forest Speech 2 (group work), The Kitchen, New York City
Weatherings (commission for Merce Cunningham: Exchange), New York City, September 27
1979
Laser Concert (with Lowell Cross), Xenon, New York City (This work evolved from Video/Laser III, first performed by Cross, William Hibbard and Carson Jeffries at Hancher Auditorium, University of Iowa, November 29, 1972)
Audio Laser (with Lowell Cross), videotape produced by Composers' Forum, New York City
1981
Phonemes (commission for Merce Cunningham: Channels/Inserts), New York City, January
1982
Sextet for Seven (commission for Merce Cunningham: Sextet), Paris, France, October 27 (N.B. in Cunningham chronology as Quartet)
Likeness to Voices/Dialectics (commissioned by the Gulbenkian Foundation and realized at the Metz Centre Europeen pour la Recherche Musicale) IRCAM, Paris
1983
Sea Tails (collaboration with Jackie Monnier and Molly Davies), three-channel video installation produced with a grant from the French government, June
1984
Dialects, Mills College Concert Hall, October 5
Fragments (for Merce Cunningham: Phrases), Angers, December 7
1985
Hedgehog, Mobius, Boston, September 28 and 29
Web, for John Cage, WDR, Cologne, April
1986
Electronics with talking shrimp, Clocktower, New York City, April 25
9 lines reflected (with Jackie Monnier), Whitney Museum at Philip Morris, New York City, September 17
Sea tails (sound totem version), Whitney Museum at Philip Morris, New York City, September 17
Line & cluster, Munich, November 17
1987
Web for John Cage II, Munich, October 17
Webwork (for Merce Cunningham), New York, March 4
Five stone (with John Cage), Berlin, June 16
1990
Virtual focus (for Merce Cunningham: Polarity), New York City, March 20
1991
Coefficient I
Coefficient: frictional percussion and electronics, S.E.M. Ensemble, Paula Cooper Gallery, February 26
1992
Neural network plus (for Merce Cunningham), November
1992-1994
Neural Synthesis nos. 1-9
1994
Untitled (1975/1994) (for Merce Cunningham, based on Toneburst, Lyons, France, November
Soundings: ocean diary (for Merce Cunningham), Bruxelles, Belgium, May 17
1996
Toneburst: maps and fragments (with Sophia Ogielska), Wesleyan University, September
Acquisition information:
Acquired 1994 (Accn. no. 940073), 1998 (Accn. no. 980039, 980045), and 2001 (2001.A.132, 2001.A.182, 2001.A.183, 2001.A.184).
Processing information:

The David Tudor papers were received in two large separate acquisitions between 1994 and 1998. Additions to the collection were received in 2001 from John Holzaepfel, Joy Nemiroff, Julie Martin and Billy Klüver, and Earle Brown. The first shipment arrived in 1994. It consisted of 9 linear feet of papers, mostly dating from the 1950s and 1960s and related to Tudor's piano performances. Gale Cohen and John Holzaepfel inventoried and organized this group of material prior to its acquisition. Philip Curtis processed and cataloged the collection in 1995.

The second shipment, which arrived in 1998, comprised 180 linear feet, covering nearly all aspects of Tudor's life and work. The supplement required extensive organization. Lynda Bunting began this work in June 1998. Farris Wahbeh organized series into chronological order as Bunting identified them. Kelly Nipper conducted final processing on many of the series. Nancy Perloff processed and cataloged small parts of the collection and wrote the Biographical Note. Joy Refuerzo numbered the folders.

Cataloging and processing of Series I-IX was completed in October 1999. Additions to the collection received in 2001 were processed and integrated in 2001 and 2002 by J. Gibbs: 7 audio tapes of Tudor performing in Darmstadt, donated by John Holzaepfel; personal papers and photographs of Tudor donated by Joy Nemiroff; a drawing for Island Eye Island Ear, donated by Julie Martin and Billy Klüver; and photographs of Tudor donated by Earle Brown.

From the summer of 1999 to early 2002, John D.S. Adams and Tom Erbe reformatted the audio tapes, except for a few that were damaged and a few blank and duplicate tapes. In 2011 Mary K Woods migrated the digital masters of the audio recordings and made them available online. Connect to digitized audio recordings. Access to audio recordings of Tudor composisitions is provided for private study, scholarship, and research purposes only. Access to other audio recordings is available only to on-site readers and Getty staff.

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Restrictions:

Open for use by qualified researchers.

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Preferred citation:

David Tudor papers, 1800-1998 (bulk 1940-1996), The Getty Research Institute, Los Angeles, Accession no. 980039.

http://hdl.handle.net/10020/cifa980039

Location of this collection:
1200 Getty Center Drive, Suite 1100
Los Angeles, CA 90049-1688, US
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