This copy of George Brecht’s event score Incidental Music (1961) reached the hands of David Tudor, who performed the piece in September 1961 at the Internationale Ferienkurse für Neue Musik in Darmstadt, Germany. A July 1961 letter from Brecht to Tudor makes apparent that the work was added to the program without Brecht’s knowledge, and that his scores had a more rapid and wide distribution than anticipated. Brecht wrote, “Two people now have told me that a piano piece of mine is on the Darmstadt program. Hence curiosity; I don’t know of any such score in circulation. Have you any information on this?” Once Brecht’s confusion had been cleared, he wrote to advise Tudor, “Children’s alphabet blocks are convenient for 2. Disposition of the photograph is an aspect of 3” (Letters from Brecht to Tudor, 11 July and 11 August 1961, Getty Research Institute, David Tudor Papers, 980039, box 51, folder 8).
© 2022 Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York / VG Bild-Kunst, Bonn.
