1964
Megan Elizabeth Murph, 'Max Neuhaus and the musical avant-garde', Louisiana State University and Agricultural and Mechanical College, 2013
Megan Murph, “Max Neuhaus and the Avant-Garde” (Master’s Thesis, Louisiana State University, 2013).
(duration 17’28”)
“The max is (or was) a new music percussionist famous for filling entire stages with tons of equipment for works of Cage, Feldman, Stockhausen, and all the like.
The afterwards makes a performance of Max’s taking down all this stuff, and being the last piece of the program, permitted him for once to enjoy the party afterwards. First formulated as intermission (Charles Ross’s dance sculpture being restructured) and then expanded in concept to any purposeful work done before, after, or during.”
. “From Thaïs” (1962)
records into Wollensak tape recorder, mixed with Y-branch connector (duration 09’42”)
“I believe that i have been the only composer to have made a music at the request of Yvonne Rainer.
My music for Yvonne was a tape piece, collaging mostly extracts from ‘Thaïs’ by Massenet. which is what she asked for. If i remember right it was for the section, a duet, where Trisha Brown throws a black brasserie up in the air and catches it on her breasts. (This is just as nice to imagine as to remember).
Unforgettable moment in the making…… Mix after Mix made to get the thrown-around fragments of the opening - through two cables going into a Y-branch plug (- -the cheapest kind of electronic hardware) until it is all down on one tape and then, into the remaining channel to be Mix’d with all that Mess, goes the heroic trombone passage from the Overture, tuneful coherence making a mighty crescendo through.”
As Philip Corner wrote about those experiences: “remember? when you made those things at home, on the best equipment you or your other poor friends could find? the dancers all had portable Wollensaks; and you had that japanese taperecorder with the built-in mike, not too bad as quality but only affordable because you bought it (for $100 if memory is right) in the Army PX in Seoul, before lugging it with you back across the Pacific in a troopship. Indeed that was the only piece of furniture on your tatami floor on the Lower East Side that summer in 1961 when Jim Tenney came over who is to become one of your greatest friends met through the tape he brought with his Seeds and you turned him on to the new piece you had just done in Korea.
What was i doing there? A testing of fundamentals. : refusal to be banished as junior faculty somewhere in the Middle West- - -orthodox career. HigherEducation students stupid enough…..let me try teaching at the bottom. “Uptown” and “Downtown” more than the mere geography of Manhattan Island; around 14 St a spiritual dividing line- -separate the predictably official from a promise, a creative adventure. maybe even “a magnificent life.”
a group of dancers and musicians, and visual artists interested in performance, and writers were already meeting once a week in a loft on the Lower East Side. The rule was……………well there just were no rules. Just generosity of spirit and spirits burning with imagination and enthusiasm. Everyone was willing to try whatever any one of the group wished to try out. Neither was there any group, and kind of recognized belongingness; community of interest produced a cooperative unity. There was, as a line of research, that art = everyday-life equation. Choreography made by non-dancers.”
(duration 17’28”)
“The max is (or was) a new music percussionist famous for filling entire stages with tons of equipment for works of Cage, Feldman, Stockhausen, and all the like.
The afterwards makes a performance of Max’s taking down all this stuff, and being the last piece of the program, permitted him for once to enjoy the party afterwards. First formulated as intermission (Charles Ross’s dance sculpture being restructured) and then expanded in concept to any purposeful work done before, after, or during.”
. “From Thaïs” (1962)
records into Wollensak tape recorder, mixed with Y-branch connector (duration 09’42”)
“I believe that i have been the only composer to have made a music at the request of Yvonne Rainer.
My music for Yvonne was a tape piece, collaging mostly extracts from ‘Thaïs’ by Massenet. which is what she asked for. If i remember right it was for the section, a duet, where Trisha Brown throws a black brasserie up in the air and catches it on her breasts. (This is just as nice to imagine as to remember).
Unforgettable moment in the making…… Mix after Mix made to get the thrown-around fragments of the opening - through two cables going into a Y-branch plug (- -the cheapest kind of electronic hardware) until it is all down on one tape and then, into the remaining channel to be Mix’d with all that Mess, goes the heroic trombone passage from the Overture, tuneful coherence making a mighty crescendo through.”
As Philip Corner wrote about those experiences: “remember? when you made those things at home, on the best equipment you or your other poor friends could find? the dancers all had portable Wollensaks; and you had that japanese taperecorder with the built-in mike, not too bad as quality but only affordable because you bought it (for $100 if memory is right) in the Army PX in Seoul, before lugging it with you back across the Pacific in a troopship. Indeed that was the only piece of furniture on your tatami floor on the Lower East Side that summer in 1961 when Jim Tenney came over who is to become one of your greatest friends met through the tape he brought with his Seeds and you turned him on to the new piece you had just done in Korea.
What was i doing there? A testing of fundamentals. : refusal to be banished as junior faculty somewhere in the Middle West- - -orthodox career. HigherEducation students stupid enough…..let me try teaching at the bottom. “Uptown” and “Downtown” more than the mere geography of Manhattan Island; around 14 St a spiritual dividing line- -separate the predictably official from a promise, a creative adventure. maybe even “a magnificent life.”
a group of dancers and musicians, and visual artists interested in performance, and writers were already meeting once a week in a loft on the Lower East Side. The rule was……………well there just were no rules. Just generosity of spirit and spirits burning with imagination and enthusiasm. Everyone was willing to try whatever any one of the group wished to try out. Neither was there any group, and kind of recognized belongingness; community of interest produced a cooperative unity. There was, as a line of research, that art = everyday-life equation. Choreography made by non-dancers.”