The first ever vinyl release to attend to James Tenney's legendary "Postal Pieces", marking the first ever appearance of five of the suite's works on vinyl, drawing upon recordings made in 2003, by the Amsterdam based ensemble, The Barton Workshop, under the direction of James Fulkerson.
Among the most important and highly regarded efforts in Tenney's canon of compositions, as well as within the history of 20th Century music, these five pieces represent a crucial bridge between Fluxus-oriented conceptualism, minimalism, and the microtonal complexities that would emerge in their wakes. Issued in a highly limited vinyl edition of 300 copies, it includes exact replicas of the original postcard graphic scores, and features newly commissioned liner notes by Bradford Bailey, Blume's brand new edition takes great steps to centring Tenney at the eye the storm during some of experimental music's most important years.
"The Postal Pieces" stands among Tenney's well known and celebrated compositions, and illuminates the dualities embraced by the composer, notably his use of sound to develop consciousness in and of others, and his willingness to draw on elements and observations of everyday life; citing his strong dislike of writing letters as being the primary inspiration for their inception. In lieu, he conceived to send his friends—John Bergamo,
Alison Knowles,
Pauline Oliveros,
La Monte Young,
Harold Budd,
Philip Corner, Joel Krosnick, Buell Neidlinger, Susan Allen,
Max Neuhaus, and Malcolm Goldstein—short scores on the back of postcards. The suite is composed around three themes: Tenney's concept of swell form (utilizing repetition and progressing through a structurally symmetrical arch), intonation, and the desire to produce "meditative perceptual states".
James Tenney's "Post Pieces" is issued in a highly limited vinyl edition of 300 copies, which includes a exact replicas of the original postcard graphic scores, and features newly commissioned liner notes by Bradford Bailey.
James Tenney (1934-2006) was an American composer and music theorist. A student of composition under Carl Ruggles,
John Cage, Harry Partch, and Edgard Varèse—remaining close to all of them, and later performing in both Cage and Partch's ensembles—as well as acoustics, information theory, and tape music composition under Lejaren Hiller, Tenney carved a wide path within the contexts of experimental and avant-garde music during the second half of the 20th Century. Not only was he a tangible bridge between the generations of composer's who laid much of the groundwork and the later movements of
Fluxus,
Minimalism, and the broader practices of experimental music, but Tenney is credited as having contributed one of the earliest applications of gestalt theory and cognitive science to music in 1961, before helping to pioneer the field of computer music at Bell Labs, during the following years.
Over the course of his career, Tenney produced music of such complexity and sophistication—paying little mind to the seductions of taste or dominant tropes of its own moment—that his work and legacy have largely remained under-recognised by the broader publics that have attended to most of his peers. Perhaps more pertinently, the body of work he produced can be perceived as too varied and complex to fit neatly within standard creative histories or critical frameworks, comprising harmonically complex works for acoustic instrumentation, musique concrète, the groundbreaking 1961 "plunderphonic" composition, "Collage No.1 (Blue Suede) (for tape)"—sampling and manipulating a recording of Elvis Presley—as well as algorithmic and computer synthesized music. Even here, within this single decade, a clear image of Tenney's endeavours remains elusive. In addition to penning important theoretical texts, he collaborated and / or played with
Max Neuhaus,
La Monte Young, Steve Reich, Philip Glass,
Michael Snow,
Terry Riley, and numerous others; was an active member of Fluxus; starred in and composed music for Stan Brackage's films; regularly worked with the Judson Dance Theater; co-founded and played in the ensemble, Tone Roads, with Malcolm Goldstein and
Philip Corner; was a vocal advocate of the works of Conlon Nancarrow and Charles Ives, playing a significant part in the revival of both of their legacies; and regularly collaborated as a composer, musician, and actor with his then-partner, the artist
Carolee Schneemann, notably co-starring in her film, "Fuses" (1965) and her legendary 1964 performance, "Meat Joy", as well as creating sound collages for her films "Viet Flakes" (1965) and "Snows" (1970). Curiously, for a relatively absent figure in the historical and critical narratives, Tenney seems to have been the thread that bound multiple generations and disciplines of avant-garde practice in New York during this period.
Tenney was deeply invested in the quality and perception of sound. By 1970, this led him back to composing exclusively for acoustic instrumentation (though sometimes processed with tape delay)—in most cases utilising non-well tempered tuning systems to explore harmonic perception—a practice that he would remain steadfast to for the remainder of his life. This development roughly corresponded with his relocation to California, at the outset of the 1970s, following an invitation to teach at the newly founded music department at
California Institute of the Arts (CalArts) in Valencia. Finding himself in regular contact with the harpist Susan Allen and the artist
Alison Knowles, as well as at a great distance from many of his friends, in 1971 he completed (with the assistance of Knowles and Marie McRoy) "The Postal Pieces", a project he had begun in 1965.
