James Tenney (August 10, 1934 - August 24, 2006) was an
American
composer and influential music theorist.
Biography
Tenney was
born in Silver
City
, New
Mexico
, and grew up in Arizona and Colorado.
He
attended the University of
Denver
, the Juilliard School of Music
, Bennington
College (B.A., 1958) and the University of Illinois
(M.A., 1961). He studied piano with
Eduard Steuermann and composition with
Chou Wen-chung,
Lionel Nowak,
Paul
Boepple,
Henry Brant,
Carl Ruggles,
Kenneth
Gaburo,
Lejaren Hiller,
John Cage,
Harry
Partch, and
Edgard Varèse. He
also studied
information theory
under
Lejaren Hiller, and composed
stochastic early
computer music before turning almost
completely to writing for instruments with the occasional
tape delay, often using
just intonation and alternative
tunings. Tenney's notable students include
John Luther Adams,
Peter Garland,
Larry
Polansky,
Charlemagne
Palestine, and
Marc Sabat. He
performed with
John Cage, as well as with
the ensembles of
Harry Partch (in a
production of Partch's
The Bewitched in 1959),
Steve Reich, and
Philip
Glass (the latter two in the late 1960s).
He lived in New York during much of the 60s, where a large part of
his contribution to the music scene was funnelled through "Tone
Roads", a group founded with
Malcolm
Goldstein and
Philip Corner, and
for which his partner
Carolee
Schneemann designed beautiful flyers and programs. He was
exceptionally dedicated to his great New England forebear
Charles Ives, many of whose compositions he
conducted (including the first performance of "in re, con moto");
his interpretation of the "Concord" Sonata for piano was much
praised.
Tenney's work deals with perception (
For Ann , see
Shepard tone),
just
intonation (
Clang, see
gestalt), stochastic elements (
Music
for Player Piano),
information
theory (
Ergodos, see
Ergodic theory), and with what he called
'swell' (
Koan: Having Never Written A Note For Percussion
for John Bergamo), which is basically
arch
form. His earliest works show the influence of Webern, Ruggles
and Varèse, whereas his music from 1961-64 was largely computer
music, arguably the earliest significant body of such work in
existence. A gradual assimilation of the ideas of
John Cage considerably influenced the development
of his music in the later 1960s. To this was added an interest in
tuning and in the harmonic series, as first evident in the
orchestral work
Clang of 1972, an interest that continued
to develop for the rest of his life.
The majority of Tenney's mature works (post-1964) are instrumental
pieces, often for unconventional instrumental combinations (e.g.
Glissade for viola, cello, double bass and tape delay
system (1982),
Bridge for two pianos eight hands in a
microtonal tuning system (1982-84),
Changes for six harps
tuned a sixth of a tone apart, 1985) or for variable
instrumentation (
Critical Band, 1988,
In a Large Open
Space, 1994). His pieces are most often
tributes to other composers or colleagues and
subtitled as such. As his friend
Philip
Corner says,
For Ann (rising), "must be optimistic!
(Imagine the depressing effectiveness of it — he could never be so
cruel — downward)..."{ (Soundings 13, cf.further reading )| .
Tenney wrote the seminal
Meta (+) Hodos (one of, if not
the, earliest applications of
gestalt
theory and
cognitive science
to music ), the later
Hierarchical temporal gestalt perception
in music : a metric space model with Larry Polansky,
John
Cage and the Theory of Harmony (1983, the fullest exposition
of his theories of harmonic space), and other works. Nearly a
quarter of a 657-page volume of the academic journal
Perspectives of New Music was devoted to Tenney's music
(Polansky and Rosenboom 1987), and in 2008 the UK journal
Contemporary Music Review devoted a whole issue to his
work (vol. 27 part 1).
Tenney was
one of the four performers of the Steve
Reich piece Pendulum Music on
May 27, 1969 at the
Whitney
Museum of American Art
. The other three were:
Michael Snow,
Richard
Serra and
Bruce Nauman.
Tenney also wrote the in-depth liner notes to Wergo's edition of
Conlon Nancarrow's
Studies for
Player Piano. (Nancarrow, as a favor, punched the roll for
Tenney's
Spectral Canon for Conlon Nancarrow). Tenney also
starred nude in a 1965 silent film of collaged and painted
sequences of lovemaking between him and his then partner, the
kinetic-theater artist
Carolee
Schneemann, called
Fuses; he did much other music for
her, and participated in her events. (Haug 2007, 20 &
25–26).
He taught
at the Polytechnic Institute of
Brooklyn
, the California Institute of the
Arts
, the University
of California, and York University
in Toronto
.
He died on
24 August 2006 of
lung cancer in
Valencia, California.
Interviews
References
Further reading
- Garland, Peter (ed.). 1984. Soundings Vol. 13: The
Music of James Tenney. Santa Fe, New Mexico: Soundings
Press.
- Tenney, James. 1986. META+HODOS: A Phenomenology of 20th
Century Musical Materials and an Approach to the Study of Form, and
META Meta+Hodos. Edited by Larry Polansky. Oakland, Calif.:
Frog Peak Music. ISBN 0-945996-00-4.
- Tenney, James. 1988. A History of 'Consonance and
Dissonance'. New York: Excelsior Music Publishing Co. ISBN
0-935016-99-6.
External links
Groups who often perform Tenney's worksQuatuor
Bozzini*{http://www.quatuorbozzini.ca}The Barton Workshop
*{http://web.inter.nl.net/users/BartonWorkshop}Motion
Ensemble*
[37491]
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