This is an extended review of the memorable performances and events at Darmstadt in September 1958, the year of John Cage and David Tudor’s most notorious visit. Like other commentators of Cage’s work in Germany, Hans Heinz Stuckenschmidt is dismissive of chance procedures and Asian philosophy, and regards the extended techniques as more “cabaret” than music. A musicologist, Stuckenschmidt correctly frames Cage as indebted to the Dada movement of 1916. Though he is not as categorically dismissive of the work as some of his central European colleagues, he does use Cage to pose ontological questions about the work: “What is this?”
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| Title | “Sessions on Modern Music Held Near Darmstadt,” Musical America, 18–19, 34 |
| Maker | H. H. Stuckenschmidt |
| Date | October 1958 |
| Type | press clipping |
| Location | Getty Research Institute, David Tudor Papers, 980039, box 62, folder 13 |
Cite
Stuckenschmidt, H. H. “Sessions on Modern Music Held
Near Darmstadt,” Musical America, 18–19, 34,
October 1958. Getty Research Institute, David Tudor
Papers, 980039, box 62, folder 13. In
The Scores Project: Experimental Notation in Music,
Art, Poetry, and Dance, 1950–1975, ed. Michael Gallope, Natilee Harren, and John
Hicks. Los Angeles: Getty Research Institute, 2025.
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