The Music of James Tenney: Quantity 1: Contexts and Paradigms (Quantity 1)

Parsing the works of the experimental music pioneer

Robert Wannamaker’s monumental two-volume examine explores the influential music and concepts of American composer, theorist, author, performer, and educator James Tenney. Delving into the entire of Tenney’s far-ranging oeuvre, Wannamaker supplies in-depth, aurally grounded analyses of works linked to the artist’s revolutionary theories of musical kind, timbre, and harmonic notion.

Quantity 1, Contexts and Paradigms, chronologically surveys Tenney’s inventive improvement and output. Wannamaker begins every part with biographical, aesthetic, and technical context that illuminates a definite interval in Tenney’s profession. From there, he analyzes a small variety of items that illuminate the issues, traits, and methods that emerged in Tenney’s music throughout that point. Wannamaker dietary supplements the textual content with musical examples, graphs, and diagrams whereas additionally drawing on unpublished materials and newly obtainable main sources to flesh out every work and the concepts that formed it.

A landmark in experimental music scholarship, The Music of James Tenney is a first-of-its-kind consideration of the experimental music titan and his work.