This audio recording captures David Tudor’s performance of George Brecht’s Incidental Music (1961) in September 1961 at the Internationale Ferienkurse für Neue Musik. Also on the evening’s program were works by John Cage, Toshi Ichiyanagi, La Monte Young, and Terry Riley. Given that the audible events generated in the performance are made incidentally to otherwise quite visually oriented, theatrical actions made by the performer, we learn from the recording less about how the piece was performed by Tudor than we do about the audience’s enthusiastic reaction—in the forms of several waves of riotous laughter. Listen for one slight piano tone around 1′33″, possibly made when the performer attaches dried peas or beans to the piano keyboard with sticky tape.
© 2022 Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York / VG Bild-Kunst, Bonn.
