James Tenney


James Tenney was an American composer, music theorist, and pianist. He made significant early musical contributions to plunderphonics, sound synthesis, algorithmic composition, process music, spectral music, and microtonal tuning systems including extended just intonation. His theoretical writings variously concern musical form, texture, timbre, consonance and dissonance, and harmonic perception.

Biography

James Tenney was born on August 10, 1934, 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 and the University of Illinois. He studied piano with Eduard Steuermann and composition with Chou Wen-chung, Lionel Nowak, Paul Boepple, Henry Brant, Carl Ruggles, Kenneth Gaburo, John Cage, Harry Partch, and Edgard Varèse. He also studied acoustics, information theory and tape music composition under Lejaren Hiller. In 1961, Tenney completed an influential master's thesis entitled Meta Hodos that made one of the earliest applications of gestalt theory and cognitive science to music. His later writings include "Temporal gestalt perception in music" in the Journal of Music Theory, the chapter "John Cage and the Theory of Harmony" in Writings about John Cage, and the book A History of Consonance and Dissonance, among others.
Tenney's earliest works show the influence of Ruggles, Varèse, and Anton Webern, while a gradual assimilation of the ideas of John Cage influenced the development of his music in the 1960s. In 1961, he composed the early plunderphonic composition Collage No.1 by sampling and manipulating a recording of Elvis Presley. His music from 1961 to 1964 was largely computer music completed at Bell Labs in New Jersey with Max Mathews; as such, it constitutes one of the earliest significant bodies of algorithmically composed and computer-synthesized music. Examples include Analog #1 and Phases.
Tenney lived in or near New York City throughout the 1960s, where he was actively involved with Fluxus, the Judson Dance Theater, and the ensemble Tone Roads, which he co-founded with Malcolm Goldstein and Philip Corner. He was exceptionally dedicated to the music of American composer Charles Ives, many of whose compositions he conducted; his interpretation of Ives' Concord Sonata for piano was much praised.
Tenney collaborated closely as both musician and actor with his then-partner, the artist Carolee Schneemann, until their separation in 1968. With Schneemann he co-starred in Fuses, a 1965 silent film of collage and painted sequences of lovemaking. Tenney created the sound collage soundtracks for Schneemann's Viet Flakes and Snows and performed in the New York City production of Meat Joy.
In 1967, Tenney gave an influential Fortran workshop for a group of composers and Fluxus artists that included Steve Reich, Nam June Paik, Dick Higgins, Jackson Mac Low, Joseph Byrd, Phil Corner, Alison Knowles, and Max Neuhaus. Tenney was one of four performers of Steve Reich's Pendulum Music on May 27, 1969, at the Whitney Museum of American Art, alongside Michael Snow, Richard Serra, and Bruce Nauman. Tenney also performed with Harry Partch in a production of Partch's The Bewitched in 1959, John Cage, Reich, and Philip Glass.
All of Tenney's compositions after 1970 are instrumental music, and most since 1972 reflect an interest in harmonic perception and microtonality. Significant works include Clang for orchestra, Quintext for string quintet, Spectral CANON for CONLON Nancarrow for player piano, Glissade for viola, cello, double bass and tape delay system, Bridge for two pianos eight hands in a microtonal tuning system, Changes for six harps tuned a sixth of a semitone apart, Critical Band for variable instrumentation, and In a Large Open Space for variable instrumentation. His pieces are often tributes to other composers or colleagues and subtitled as such.
Tenney taught at the Polytechnic Institute of Brooklyn, Yale University, the California Institute of the Arts, the University of California, Santa Cruz, and York University in Toronto. His students include John Luther Adams, John Bischoff, Michael Byron, Allison Cameron, Raven Chacon, Daniel Corral, Miguel Frasconi, Peter Garland, Douglas Kahn, Carson Kievman, Julie King, Catherine Lamb, Ingram Marshall, Andra McCartney, Charlemagne Palestine, Larry Polansky, Marc Sabat, Carl Stone, Chiyoko Szlavnics, Eric de Visscher, Tashi Wada, and Michael Winter.
Tenney died on 24 August 2006 of lung cancer in Santa Clarita, California.

Selected recordings

As sole composer

  • The Music Of James Tenney: Selected Works 1963–1984
  • Selected Works 1961–1969
  • Bridge and Flocking
  • The Solo Works for Percussion
  • Music for Violin and Piano
  • Forms 1–4: In Memoriam Edgar Varèse, John Cage, Stefan Wolpe, Morton Feldman
  • Pika-Don
  • Postal Pieces
  • Melody, Ergodicity And Indeterminacy
  • Arbor Vitæ: Quatuors + Quintettes
  • Spectrum Pieces
  • Old School: James Tenney
  • Having Never Written a Note for Percussion
  • Bass Works
  • ''Harmonium''

    Individual works

  • Saxony
  • * David Mott, Composers Recordings, Inc. 1985
  • * Henrik Frisk, Inventions of Solitude, Hornblower Recordings 1995
  • * Ulrich Krieger, Walls of Sound, OODiscs 1996
  • * Ryan Muncy, ism, Tundra/New Focus 2016
  • Ergodos I For John Cage
  • * James Tenney, A Chance Operation: The John Cage Tribute, Koch International Classics) 1993
  • Koan: Having Never Written a Note for Percussion
  • * Sonic Youth, Goodbye 20th Century, SYR 1999
  • * William Winant, Five American Percussion Pieces, Poon Village 2013

    Listening

  • dedicated to the music of James Tenney
  • recording of premiere at DNK Amsterdam by Ciarán Maher
Groups who often perform Tenney's works:
*
Category:1934 births
Category:2006 deaths
Category:20th-century American classical composers
Category:American experimental musicians
Category:Canadian classical composers
Category:Canadian experimental musicians
Category:20th-century Canadian composers
Category:20th-century Canadian male composers
Category:Computer music
Category:Just intonation composers
Category:Microtonal composers
Category:Fluxus
Category:Minimalist composers
Category:Spectral music
Category:American electronic musicians
Category:American music theorists
Category:Pupils of John Cage
Category:Pupils of Carl Ruggles
Category:Pupils of Chou Wen-chung
Category:Pupils of Eduard Steuermann
Category:Pupils of Edgard Varèse
Category:Pupils of Harry Partch
Category:Pupils of Henry Brant
Category:Pupils of Kenneth Gaburo
Category:Polytechnic Institute of New York University faculty
Category:California Institute of the Arts faculty
Category:Academic staff of York University
Category:People from Silver City, New Mexico
Category:Musicians from New Mexico
Category:Musicians from Denver
Category:Bennington College alumni
Category:Experimental Music Studios alumni
Category:University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign alumni
Category:University of Illinois alumni
Category:American male classical composers
Category:Deaths from lung cancer in California
Category:20th-century American musicologists
Category:20th-century American male musicians