Hostname: page-component-84b7d79bbc-g5fl4 Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-07-26T10:22:55.498Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

‘Nature’ as an Organising Principle: Approaches to chance and the natural in the work of John Cage, David Tudor and Alvin Lucier

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  06 July 2010

Matthew Rogalsky
Matthew Rogalsky*
Affiliation:
School of Music, Queen’s University, Kingston, ON, K7L 3N6, Canada
*
E-mail: rogalsky@queensu.ca
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

This paper contrasts three composers’ relationships with the ‘natural’ and the uses of chance in electroacoustic works which follow from these relationships. John Cage is well known for use of chance methods as an organising principle in his works from the early 1950s onward, based on a professed desire to reflect ‘nature’ in art. Cage’s close colleague David Tudor presents a quite different relationship to the ‘natural’ in his live-electronic music, showing distinctly non-Cageian uses of chance means. Alvin Lucier, whose interaction with Cage and Tudor as a young ‘experimental’ composer was important, frequently describes his work as having a close connection to the ‘natural’, but shows a third quite different way of allowing this relationship to inform his work.

Type
Articles
Information
Organised Sound , Volume 15 , Issue 2: Organising electroacoustic music , August 2010 , pp. 133 - 136
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2010

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Bartlett, M. 1992. Personal communication, Vancouver, BC.Google Scholar
Cage, J. 1952. Letter from John Cage to Pierre Boulez, summer 1952. In Jean-Jacques Nattiez (ed.) The Boulez–Cage Correspondence. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993.Google Scholar
Cage, J. 1957. Experimental Music. In Silence. Middletown, CT: Wesleyan University Press, 1963: 7–12.Google Scholar
Cage, J. 1963. Happy New Ears. In A Year From Monday. Middletown, CT: Wesleyan University Press, 1967: 30–34.Google Scholar
Holzaepfel, J. 1994. David Tudor and the Performance of American Experimental Music, 1950–1959. PhD thesis, City University of New York.Google Scholar
Klüver, B. 1979. Interview with Billy Klüver in ‘Island Eye Island Ear proposal May 25 1979 for Boulder Island (Saranac Lake, Adirondacks)’. Los Angeles: Tudor Papers, Getty Research Institute, acquisition no. 980039, box 21 folder 9.Google Scholar
Lucier, A. 1992. CD notes for Music on A Long Thin Wire. New York: Lovely Music CD 1011.Google Scholar
Lucier, A. 1995. Reflections: Interviews, Scores, Writings. Cologne: Musiktexte, 326–330.Google Scholar
Lucier, A. Deforce, A. 2003. Interview with Alvin Lucier, 13 May 2003. Published online at http://www.arnedeforce.be/composerfiles_toelichtingen/LucierInterv.htm.Google Scholar
Lucier, A. Simon, D. 1980. Chambers. Middletown, CT: Wesleyan University Press.Google Scholar
Pritchett, J. 1993. The Music of John Cage. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Pritchett, J. 2004. David Tudor as Composer/Performer in Cage’s Variations II. Leonardo Music Journal 14: 11–16.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Retallack, J. 1996. Musicage: John Cage Muses on Words, Art and Music. Middletown, CT: Wesleyan University Press.Google Scholar
Rogalsky, M. Cameron, L. 2006. Conserving Rainforest 4: Aural Geographies and Ephemerality. Social & Cultural Geography 7(6): 909–926.Google Scholar
Tenney, J. 1995. The Eloquent Voice of Nature. In Alvin Lucier, Reflections: Interviews, Scores, Writings. Cologne: Musiktexte, 12–19.Google Scholar
Tudor, D. 1966. Programme notes for Bandoneon!. In 9 Evenings of Theatre and Engineering (programme book). New York: Experiments in Art and Technology.Google Scholar
Tudor, D. 1974. Note circa 1974. Los Angeles: David Tudor Papers, Getty Research Institute, acquisition no. 980039, box 109 folder 18.Google Scholar
Tudor, D. 1981. Liner notes to Rainforest IV. LP. Gramavision. GR-EB 1.Google Scholar
Tudor, D. 1989. Interview with Larry Austin, April 3 1989, Denton, Texas. Available from: http://www.emf.org/tudor/Articles/austin.html.Google Scholar
Tudor, D. Cage, J. 1985. Interview with Dick Witts at the Institute of Contemporary Arts, London. London: National Sound Archive.Google Scholar