Review of a performance by David Tudor and the
Audio-Visual Group, New York Herald Tribune
Maker
Paul Henry Lang
Date
8 April 1959
Type
press clipping
Location
Getty Research Institute, David Tudor Papers, 980039,
box 62, folder 15
Paul Henry Lang, a Hungarian-born musicologist, moved to
the United States in 1928 and earned a PhD in Musicology
at Cornell. He was then hired at Columbia University to
teach musicology in 1934. Lang also served as a critic for
the Herald Tribune during the heyday of the New
York avant-garde. His article below is openly hostile
toward the avant-garde (accusing it of nonsense,
destructive desires, and latent conformity). He bases his
opinions on the Audio-Visual Group concert under review,
an event that was something of a hybrid of a David Tudor
recital and a proto-Fluxus event. The review is entirely
scathing, describing works by Al Hansen and Dick Higgins
as childish, unthinking, “nightmarish,” and primitive, not
to mention that they exposed bodily rituals and habits
(burping, grunting, bathing, etc.). Christian Wolff and
John Cage are also described as seriously misguided.
Notably, Tudor comes off as the one respectable figure.
Lang, Paul Henry. Review of a performance by David
Tudor and the Audio-Visual Group,
New York Herald Tribune, 8 April 1959. Getty
Research Institute, David Tudor Papers, 980039, box
62, folder 15. 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.
https://www.getty.edu/publications/scores/object-index/334/.
The Scores Project
Experimental Notation in Music, Art, Poetry, and Dance, 1950–1975
