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INVENTORY OF THE DAVID TUDOR PAPERS, 1800-1998, bulk 1940-1996
980039
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Title: David Tudor papers
Date (inclusive): 1800-1998, bulk 1940-1996
Number: 980039
Creator/Collector:
Tudor, David, 1926-1996
Physical Description:
177.5 linear feet
Repository:
The Getty Research Institute
Special Collections
1200 Getty Center Drive, Suite 1100
Los Angeles, California, 90049-1688
(310) 440-7390
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.
Request Materials: Request access to the physical materials described in this inventory through the
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Language: Collection material is in
English
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.
| 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 | 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 | |
| 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 | |
| 1969 | Video/Laser I (with Lowell Cross), Mills College Tape Music Center, Oakland, California, May 9 |
| 1970 | 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 | |
| First week of June (John Cage and Gordon Mumma), Paris, France, June 5 | |
| 1972 | Melodics for Amplified Bandoneon (for Merce Cunningham: Events), February |
| Rainforest 3 (with John Cage: Mureau), Radio Bremen, Pro Musica Nova, Bremen, May 5 | |
| Untitled (with John Cage: Mesostics re merce Cunningham), Radio Bremen, Pro Musica Nova, May 8 | |
| Monobird (with John Cage: Birdcage), Musik/Film/Dia/Licht Festival, Munich, August 30 | |
| 1973 | Free Spectral Range I; (with Lowell Cross), Oberlin Conservatory of Music, Oberlin, Ohio, February 16 |
| Free Spectral Range II (with Lowell Cross), University of Iowa, Iowa City, June | |
| Microphone (1 to 9), research project in multitrack recording, Center for Contemporary Music, Mills College, May | |
| Laser Bird Center for new Performing Arts, University of Iowa, Iowa City, June 12-14 | |
| Laser Rock Center for new Performing Arts, University of Iowa, Iowa City, June 12-14 | |
| Rainforest IV (group composition), New Music in New Hampshire, Chocorua, New Hampshire, July | |
| 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 |
| Pulsers, Festival d'Automne, Paris | |
| Forest Speech (for Merce Cunningham: Event) | |
| 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 | Likeness to Voices/Dialectics (commissioned by the Gulbenkian Foundation and realized at the Metz Centre Europeen pour la Recherche Musicale) IRCAM, Paris |
| Sextet for Seven (commission for Merce Cunningham: Sextet), Paris, France, October 27 (N.B. in Cunningham chronology as Quartet) | |
| 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 & 29 |
| Web, for John Cage, WDR, Cologne, April | |
| 1986 | Electronics with talking shrimp, Clocktower, New York City, April 25 |
| Sea tails (sound totem version), Whitney Museum at Philip Morris, New York City, September 17 | |
| 9 lines reflected (with Jackie Monnier), 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 |
Open for use by qualified researchers.
Contact
Library Reproductions and Permissions .
David Tudor papers, 1800-1998 (bulk 1940-1996), The Getty Research Institute, Los Angeles, Accession no. 980039.
Acquired 1994 (Accn. no. 940073), 1998 (Accn. no. 980039, 980045), and 2001 (2001.A.132, 2001.A.182, 2001.A.183, 2001.A.184).
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.
The audio tapes in Series X were reformatted by John D.S. Adams and Tom Erbe from the summer of 1999 to early 2002. In 2011
Mary K Woods migrated the masters to digital audio files.
Connect to digitized audio recordings. Access is provided for private study, scholarship, and research purposes only. Audio recordings of Tudor composisitions are
available online. Access to other audio recordings is available only to on-site Readers and Getty staff.
620 published scores, books and periodicals were transferred to the Getty Research Library in 7 separate actions. These items
may be accessed by searching the Library's catalog. Search by Provenance: "David Tudor" to see a list of these materials.
3 linear feet (6 boxes) of maps, travel brochures, junk mail, catalogs and advertisements, all non-music related, were deaccessioned
March 1999. 3 linear feet (5 boxes) of travel brochures, junk mail, catalogs, out of scope clippings and newspapers, and objects
were deaccessioned August 1999. 4.5 linear feet (9 boxes, 1 oversize folder) of recipe clippings, ephemera related to food,
health and gardening, and unused postcards were deaccessioned September 1999.
Scope and Content of Collection
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.
Tudor, David, 1926-1996
Aleatory music
Avant-garde (Music)
Composers
Electronic music
Music--Interpretation (Phrasing, dynamics, etc.)
Musical sketches
Audiocassettes
Audiotapes
Photographs--20th Century
Recipes
Scores--20th century
Videotapes
Biel, Michael von
Boulez, Pierre, 1925-
Brecht, George
Brown, Earle, 1926-2002
Bussotti, Sylvano
Cage, John
Cardew, Cornelius
Cowell, Henry, 1897-1965
Cross, Lowell M.
Cunningham, Merce
Experiments in Art and Technology (Organization)
Feldman, Morton, 1926-1987
Fine, Albert
Ichiyanagi, Toshi, 1933-
Jennings, Terry
Kagel, Mauricio
Lucier, Alvin
Merce Cunningham Dance Company
Nilsson, Bo
Oliveros, Pauline, 1932-
Ono, Yōko
Richards, Mary Caroline
Stockhausen, Karlheinz, 1928-2007
Viola, Bill, 1951-
Wolff, Christian, 1934-
Wolpe, Stefan
Young, La Monte