A few words about James Tenney

I listened several times the CD with music by James Tenney and I ordered a book written by him about Gestalt Music. Probably after reading it I will know something more about this stuff. What I know so far is that Tenney has a theory about sounds, he used the term of clang, to designate a sound with all his characteristics (like pitch or volume), also he studied the influence of determined or random variations on these characteristics over music quality.

I listened meanwhile excerpts from Conlon Nancarrow, Charles Ives and Erik Satie. Satie is probably a more familiar name. Anyway, his music seems to me more accessible. As he had lived long before the others, the public had enough time to understand his compositions.

Interim, the first movie of Brakhage, is scored by Tenney. The movie was made in 52. Brakhage was nineteen, Tenney was eighteen. I watched it again yesterday. It seemed to me that the music was in the style of Erik Satie's Gymnopedies.

Another movie by Brakhage scored by Tenney is Desistfilm, made sometime in 53 or 54. Here music is much more difficult, alike to later compositions of Tenney.

The CD has pieces composed in the sixties. Tenney studied at the University of Illinois; the reason he had gone there was that they had all kind of devices for experimental music. He started there to compose music on the computer and became active in music algorithm development.

The CD starts with a tape collage of Blue Suede Shoes (the rock that was composed by Carl Perkins and was performed also by Presley). So Tenney created the variations on the rock by using the techniques of tape music - he took the tape record and processed it by speed changes, reversal, head echo, filtering, and the like. There are four variations: the first is worked on the drums, omitting voice; the second introduces some higher pitched timbres in dialog with the sounds from the first section, and you begin to recognize the original score; the third section has the voice much clearer; the last variation takes the voice in contrapuntal relationship with the other sounds. It is deconstruction and reconstruction from samples.

The rockability is kept - however Tenney takes care to shock us now and then with unexpected rhythm breaks.

I enjoyed mostly the second piece from the CD, Noise Study - it renders the noise of wind on a beach. No musical sound at all, only noise. It’s superb.

Actually Tenney rendered the noise made by cars in a tunnel – only for me it’s more like wind.

The next piece on the CD is named Dialogue - and it is actually a dialog between noise bands and pure tones. Tenney had a theory of equivalence; actually this was for him the most general principle in modern music: all sounds are equivalent; it means there are no musical sounds and non-musical sounds, just sounds, and any sound can potentially be in a musical structure. Dialogue is actually an attempt to follow this principle of equivalence: tones and noise were in dialog, as pairs.

The piece that follows, Phases, dedicated to Edgar Varèse is really difficult; it needs several auditions to become a bit accessible. After some auditions I would say that it has the delicacy of the music of Erik Satie (only it operates with totally different sounds, of course). It makes no concession to the public: it is Tenney himself.

A piece for player-piano is very interesting. A player-piano has a perforated tape reader (or a magnetic reader, or computer interface); the reader commands a pneumatic or electric mechanism to activate the keys – the music is on the tape (or on the computer). Basically the player-piano could execute scores that would claim a high degree of virtuosity from a pianist. Conlon Nancarrow was the great composer for player-piano – I’m waiting for one of his CDs.

A performer could play interactively on a player-piano – kind of jam session – that performer is a pianolist.

But let’s come back to Tenney‘s CD – Ergodos II is dedicated to John Cage; it’s very much like the Phases for Edgar Varèse. Ergodic is the term Tenney coined to designate the modern music. He was persuaded by the idea that other terms were emphasizing what the modern music was not that what it was: atonal music, interesting experiment, etc.

Then come Fabric for Che and For Anne (Rising) – both sound as the score is continuously ascending; it seems that the illusion of perpetual glissando is made by using for each sequence infra and ultra frequencies at the beginning and end.

I’ll come back on this stuff.

• Collage #1 (Blue Suede)
• Spectral Canon for Conlon Nancarrow
• Chromatic Canon
• For Ann (rising)
• Music for Player Piano
• Harmonium #1 (1976)

(By Brakhage)


(Musica Nova)