MHST 540A Topics in American Music: The New York School
The four-way meeting of John Cage, Morton Feldman, Earle Brown and Christian Wolff was a seismic event in the history of twentieth-century composition. Along with pianist David Tudor and choreographer Merce Cunningham, these four composers created a new way of thinking about and writing music through daily conversation, looking at each others’ works almost as the works were being written, and feeding off each others’ ideas. This course will chart the musical evolution of these four very different composers who came together briefly to change the way we hear and think about music. Selected influential works will be examined in detail with additional works creating an historical context. This course will focus 'in depth' on the work of the four composers, but referencing both immediate history (Cage's studies with Schoenberg and Cowell, Feldman's studies with Wolpe) and influences (Lucier, Rzewski, Lukas Foss, Cage's influence on Europe via the Darmstadt visits, and the less profound but more widely felt effects of their work on Berio, Lutoslawski, even Bernstein). Also to be actively considered are concurrent developments in the other arts (i.e., the work of Robert Rauschenberg, Jasper Johns, Merce Cunningham, Marcel Duchamp).