Concise and austere but not necessarily brief
April 24, 2017 8:51 AM   Subscribe

Postal Pieces is a series of 11 musical compositions (on 10 postcards) by written by James Tenney between 1965 and 1971. Details and images from an essay by Larry Polansky. I'm particularly fond of the look and sound of Cellogram.
posted by cortex (4 comments total) 9 users marked this as a favorite
 
I like A rose is a rose is a rose is a rose is.... It's very jingle rock bell rock bell jingle jingle!
posted by Secretariat at 11:27 AM on April 24, 2017


These are very cool: many thanks, cortex, for the post. I first happened upon Tenney’s name when digging about in Juergen Hocker’s YouTube videos of player-piano ‘performances’ which includes Tenney’s impressive Spectral Canon for Conlon Nancarrow.
posted by misteraitch at 1:35 PM on April 24, 2017


I discovered Tenney ages ago, when I was doing an independent project on Carolee Schneeman in high school (he co-starred in Fuses and made music for her movies and events).

His Collage no. 1, Blue Suede, from 1961, is the earliest example of digital audio mangling of pop music into noise that I'm aware of.

I hadn't heard the Postal Pieces before (though I'd read about them), so it's a treat to actually hear them performed well.
posted by idiopath at 2:31 PM on April 24, 2017


the score for "having never written a note for percussion" is gorgeous, nearly mathematical
posted by idiopath at 3:49 PM on April 24, 2017


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