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“To Behold with Wonder”: Theory, Theater, and the Collaboration of James Tenney and Carolee Schneemann

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  16 January 2017

ERIC SMIGEL
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Abstract

During their partnership between 1955 and 1968, composer James Tenney (1934–2006) and artist Carolee Schneemann (b. 1939) engaged in what initially appear to be opposing modes of practice. Tenney developed theories concerning the perception of musical form and composed rationalized works based on carefully calculated algorithms. Schneemann, by contrast, was driven by spontaneity and sensuality, and her provocative artworks vehemently address sexual, gender, and political issues. This duality was especially evident in the mid-1960s, when Tenney was conducting psychoacoustic research at Yale University and Schneemann was producing her first theater events in downtown New York. Although his compositional productivity declined during this period, he participated in several of Schneemann's projects, scripted a few theater pieces of his own, and wrote extensive notes on artistic form as a perceptual model of physiological processes. Drawing from unpublished archival documents and personal interviews, this article provides an overview of Tenney's relationship with Schneemann and demonstrates how his simultaneous involvement in theoretical research and theatrical performance transformed his creative work. A close examination of Tenney's scores, journals, and correspondence reveals that he was deliberately exploring the distinctions between abstraction and collage and seeking to reconcile the apparent dualism of theory and theater.

Type
Research Article
Information
Journal of the Society for American Music , Volume 11 , Issue 1 , February 2017 , pp. 1 - 24
Copyright
Copyright © The Society for American Music 2017 

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References

References

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Carolee Schneemann Papers, 1959–1994 (Accession no. 950001). Special Collections. Getty Research Institute. Los Angeles.Google Scholar
Carolee Schneemann Papers, ca. 1954–2012 (MS 1892, currently unprocessed). Stanford University. Palo Alto, CA.Google Scholar
James Tenney Collection. James Tenney Estate. Valencia, CA.Google Scholar
James Tenney Fonds (ASC07220). Clara Thomas Archives and Special Collections. York University Libraries. Toronto.Google Scholar
Yale and New Haven Audio and Visual Recordings (RU 803). Manuscripts and Archives. Sterling Memorial Library. Yale University. New Haven, CT.Google Scholar
Belet, Brian. “Theoretical and Formal Continuity in James Tenney's Music.” Contemporary Music Review 27, no. 1 (February 2008): 23–45.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Brakhage, Stan. “James Tenney.” Perspectives of New Music 25, nos. 1–2 (Summer 1987): 470.Google Scholar
Enright, Robert. “Notes on Fuseology: Carolee Schneemann Remembers James Tenney.” Border Crossings 33, no. 4 (December 2014): 38–44.Google Scholar
Everett-Green, Robert. “Crossing Musical Fences.” The Globe and Mail, 3 October 1992.Google Scholar
Focillon, Henri. The Life of Forms in Art (1934). Translated by Charles Beecher Hogan and George Kubler. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1942.Google Scholar
Garland, Peter. “James Tenney: Some Historical Perspectives.” In A Celebration of American Music: Words and Music in Honor of H. Wiley Hitchcock, ed. Crawford, Richard, Lott, R. Allen, and Oja, Carol J., 477–86. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1990.Google Scholar
Garland, Peter, ed. Soundings Vol. 13: The Music of James Tenney. Santa Fe, NM: Soundings Press, 1984.Google Scholar
Kahn, Douglas. “Interview with James Tenney.” Leonardo Electronic Almanac 8, no. 11 (November 2000). http://www.leonardo.info/LEA/Tenney2001/tenneyinterview.html.Google Scholar
Kahn, Douglas. “Let Me Hear My Body Talk, My Body Talk.” In Relive: Media Art Histories, ed. Cubitt, Sean and Thomas, Paul, 235–56. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2013.Google Scholar
Juhasz, Alexandra, ed. Women of Vision: Histories in Feminist Film and Video. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2001.Google Scholar
McLuhan, Marshall. The Gutenberg Galaxy: The Making of Typographic Man. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1962.Google Scholar
McLuhan, Marshall. Understanding Media: The Extensions of Man. New York: McGraw-Hill, 1964.Google Scholar
Reich, Wilhelm. Selected Writings: An Introduction to Orgonomy. New York: Farrar, Straus, and Giroux, 1960.Google Scholar
Schneemann, Carolee. Imaging Her Erotics. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2003.Google Scholar
Schneemann, Carolee. More Than Meat Joy. Edited by McPherson, Bruce R.. Kingston, NY: McPherson, 1997.Google Scholar
Smigel, Eric. “Metaphors on Vision: James Tenney and Stan Brakhage, 1951–1964.” American Music 30, no. 1 (Fall 2012): 61–100.Google Scholar
Smigel, Eric, and Krausas, Veronika. “James Tenney Remembers: Excerpts from the Last Interviews.” Tempo 61, no. 241 (July 2007): 22–33.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Stiles, Kristine, ed. Correspondence Course: An Epistolary History of Carolee Schneemann and Her Circle. Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2010.Google Scholar
Tenney, James. From Scratch: Writings in Music Theory. Edited by Polansky, Larry, Pratt, Lauren, Wannamaker, Robert, and Winter, Michael. Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2015.Google Scholar
Tenney, James. Meta+Hodos: A Phenomenology of 20th-Century Musical Materials and an Approach to the Study of Form, 2nd ed. Lebanon, NH: Frog Peak Music, 1988.Google Scholar
Thompson, D'Arcy. On Growth and Form. Cambridge: The University Press, 1917. Reprint, Mineola, NY: Dover Publications, 1992.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Varèse, Edgard, and Wen-Chung, Chou. “The Liberation of Sound.” Perspectives of New Music 5, no. 1 (Autumn–Winter 1966): 11–19.Google Scholar
Schneemann, Carolee. Interview with the author. Springtown, NY (3 June 2007).Google Scholar
Schneemann, Carolee. Interview with the author. Springtown, NY (16 November 2013).Google Scholar
Schneemann, Carolee. Email correspondence with the author (27 July 2011).Google Scholar
Schneemann, Carolee. Phone conversation with the author (28 April 2016).Google Scholar