Form through a ‘Single Instrumental Gesture’
in Selected Works by James Tenney

Composer, theorist, conductor, pianist and educator James Tenney (1934-2006) has a unique place in American experimental music. He was an innovator in his exploration of computer music, just intonation systems, acoustics, perception and formalistic ideas. Tenney was one of the first composers to incorporate and apply Gestalt perception theory into his practice, drawing connections between visual and audible perception. His work explored the phenomenology of auditory perception, of the shaping of acoustic structure, all combined with a personal poetic sensibility.

 In this essay I will expand on the concept of “single instrumental gesture” (SIG) in works by Tenney, a compositional method that I define as utilizing one particular instrumental playing technique that predetermines the entire piece.  This method demonstrates Tenney’s ideas of  clang-form and sonic shape (time envelope), by making use of the temporal evolution of a SIG. These gestures and their evolutions are, in Tenney’s music, carefully designed, crafted, implemented and consist of the temporal trajectory of a single idea. The generated work becomes a heightened investigation into the nature of aural perception through one specific method of acoustic sound production, with the wish to focus on “sound for the sake of perceptual insight–some kind of perceptual revelation.” 

I have identified three main categories of SIG kind of works in Tenney’s music:

1. Work that consists of a single sonic event repeated ad Infinitum (e.g, For Ann(rising)(1969), Swell(1967), Swell 2(1971), Swell 3(1971) (from the Postal Pieces)).
2. Work where a continuous shape is realized over a period of time through the recurrence of a SIG (e.g, Forms 1-4 (1993), Diapason (1996), CLANG (1972)).
3. Work in which the physical, acoustic properties of instruments are used as the basis of the work’s structure and shape usually in solo work or a homogeneous ensemble (e.g, CELLOGRAM(1971), BEAST(1971), KOAN(1971)(from the Postal Pieces), Shimmer(1982)(from Glissade), Spectral CANON for CONLON Nancarrow(1974), Septet(1981)). 

I am particularly interested in works from the third category, because in those pieces, the overall structure and shape is predetermined by the nature of the process. 

 Although Tenney did not write much about his own works, from early on he did produce a rich body of theoretical texts that sheds light on his individual way of thinking.  I will begin by defining a SIG piece. Second,  I will draw upon several early texts by Tenney to explain the terms I mention like ‘shape’, ‘single gesture’,‘clang form’ and why they are integral parts of this particular process. Third, I will provide a short historical overview on Tenney’s developments and interests as a composer towards the early 1970’s in relation to this particular approach. Last, I will demonstrate how these works are structured and implemented by providing examples from four works by Tenney: For Ann (rising) (1969), Cellogram (from the Postal Pieces (1965-1971)), Spectral CANON for Conlon Nancarrow (1974) and Septet (1981).

The Cambridge dictionary defines gesture as “a movement of the hands, arms, or head, etc. to express an idea or feeling.” The Music Dictionary Online defines it as “musical content that indicates intention.” While I am not focused on examining the broad concept of a musical gesture I am interested in gesture as one singular action that prescribes a playing technique.  An action that makes a sound and that sound embodies a single idea. A single gesture piece means exclusive use of one type of playing method for sound production. That action then becomes the foundation for structuring an entire work through its repeated or continuous usage. While the gesture is repeated, it remains singular because the whole piece is derived from that one idea.

Tenney was interested in questions of unity, clarity, singularity and continuity –in constructing a piece that would be perceived as one continuous sound. It’s not a reflection of all of Tenney’s work but it is a reflection of a significant amount of work that he focused on, especially since the early 1970’s. 

Why is one work a SIG piece and another is not? OR What makes a certain piece a SIG and others not? Isn’t a pianist just hitting keys?  A harpist just plucking strings? Indeed,  it is not always black or white, except when it is. For the sake of treating this method as a particular compositional discipline, I argue that one playing technique used for the entire duration of the work is a crucial condition. In that sense pieces like Spectrum 4 (1995) for mixed ensemble or Spectrum 2 (1995) for wind quintet are not SIG pieces as they employ a variety of actions – playing long tones, taking rests and playing a variety of legato lines. My distinction for a single gesture piece is work which involves only one distinct playing method, for example: what Tenney called a “swell”, an enveloped tremolo, a repeated note or a continuous glissando among other things. That basic sound structure becomes a formalized unit for the shaping of an entire work.

From early on, Tenney blended theoretical studies with his own compositional investigations such that even as he might talk about another composer’s work, there is always a sense that he is sharing a private inquiry into his personal practice (which often is proven in later pieces).

1.On the Development of the Structural Potentialities of Rhythm, Dynamics ,and Timbre in the Early Non Tonal Music of Arnold Schoenberg (1959)

In one of his earliest essays, Tenney attempts to offer new theoretical perspectives into the analysis of 20th century music. It was an initial attempt to distill aspects of formal construction from aspects of traditional harmony: “we are faced with a situation in which harmonic-melodic analysis is obviously inadequate to describe the actual formal processes in the music.” Tenney continues to argue for a “partial systemization of procedures that Schoenberg already used” in Schoenberg’s post tonal pieces. This meta view on constraints as building blocks is a vital aspect in the process of constructing a continuous shape and a SIG.

While looking at timbral aspects in Schoenberg’s Peripetie, the fourth movement from Five Pieces for Orchestra op.16 (1909), Tenney remarks that “certain changes of timbre are an inherent feature in the particular shaping of thematic ideas” (emphasis mine). While demonstrating Schonberg’s orchestral layout, he notes that “the overlapping or dovetailing of its various parts and the singularity of gesture – an upward movement-indicate that it is to be considered a single musical idea, or to use Schoenberg’s term, a “basic shape.” This is the first documented reference by Tenney to this idea of singularity of gesture as a structural device. Interestingly enough, it relates to upward motion, dovetailing and basic shape, which we will see later, become important structural devices in works like KOAN, CELLOGRAM (Postal Pieces) and For Ann (rising), among others. Tenney concludes that “each of the nonharmonic parameters may attain structural importance at various levels, from that of the individual motivic and thematic ideas to that of the larger formal units.”  This prepares the ground for Meta ⌿ Hodos, in which he dives deeper into these particular ideas. 

2.Pre-Meta+Hodos (1959)

Larry Polansky states in the introduction to “From Scratch” that “even at the time of writing Pre-Meta+Hodos, he (Tenney) was interested primarily in those models― the phenomenology of his own perception.” Here, Tenney breaks down the processes of “what do we really hear when listening?” in a style of theoretical prose:

1.“The substance of it is SOUND, the essence, TIME. Sound and Time. Sound in time sounding time.

2.The sound perceived as a unit-whether a point, a line, plane or volume; image, object, word, shot, stroke, gesture, form, figure, shape-in short, a gestalt; a CLANG.

3.DURATION

4.The VOLUME (“weight” or “mass”) of the clang

5.SHAPE – “the clang has a certain shape in time…or at least QUALITY..shape is quality which changes in time–again, reciprocal…”

Tenney was preoccupied with shape early on, and it is “always a time-shape.”We will see later in the Postcard Pieces how an entire piece can be presented through a clear graphic presentation of sound in time – clang as a shape that delineates an entire work. 

3.Meta ⌿ Hodos: A Phenomenology of 20th-Century Materials and an Approach to the Study of Form 

Tenney wrote this seminal theoretical work as his master’s thesis in 1961. Meta pertaining to method or investigation and Hodos to way. Meta ⌿ Hodos (MH) is an original attempt by Tenney to provide new methods for the analysis of contemporary music by incorporating ideas from Gestalt psychology and phenomenology along Tenney’s own terms. 

Tenney aimed to distill the components of musical works (especially complex music that inspired him) in order to suggest a new system and vocabulary for “an examination of the many factors that produce this complexity and of some of its effects on our perception of the music.” Aside from providing an original method for analysis, MH allows for a unique insight to concerns and solutions that will be used later on by Tenney in his own works. Therefore, a few important concepts in relation to SIG works could be deduced from concepts Tenney presents in MH. 

Gestalt Psychology and Singularity 

Tenney’s innovative trajectory in MH is to incorporate ideas from Gestalt psychology to the perception of musical form as a Gestalt – an “organized whole” perceived as more than the sum of its parts:

Almost by definition, the sounds and sound-configurations we have been dealing with here exhibit that unity or singularity that – in the visual domain-is characterized by the term “gestalt”, and it is evident that some consideration ought to be given to the principles of gestalt perceptual psychology in our search for an expanded conceptual framework for twentieth-century music. 

Gestalt psychologists have outlined universal principles of perceptual organization that Tenney utilizes in his theory of musical perception. Three main principles are important in the understanding of SIG works and constitute the basis of Tenney’s theory in MH:

• Similarity –  when properties of a sound event are similar they will seem related. When they differ they will seem unrelated. Recurrence will increase our perception of their similarity.
• Proximity  – The relationship between sound events in time and how close they are to each other so we can evaluate their relationship and hence their similarity. How do we perceive how distant they are from one another? The closer they are, the more they will seem as one continuous sound. 
• Continuity – clear directionality will make for a smooth continuum. The more similar and proximate sound events are, the more they will unify and become a continuous sound event. 

Similarity and proximity will act as unifying forces for the construction of a continuous gestalt.

The first question that Tenney poses is important to the understanding of his concept of singularity of a sound unit as a structural device.  “What factors are responsible for their unity or singularity and what factors affect their relative insulation from other units”? If you are interested in continuity or constructing a continuous whole this is a crucial question. Singularity will be the uniqueness of a structure that will allow for our ongoing focus on its similarity and proximity in order to perceive its continuous structure and overall shape.

Temporal Gestalt Unit

In order to distinguish a sound figure as a part of a whole, Tenney states “only it’s function within the larger design can reveal this–its relation to other sounds and sound configurations.” He defines the basis for a musical structure as a clang – “a singular aural gestalt” will also be referred as temporal gestalt unit (TG).  The clang is the smallest part of a hierarchical organization scheme that represents the structural organization of a musical form. The clang “is a sound or sound-configuration that is more or less immediately perceptible as an aural gestalt.” The parts that make the clang are referred to as “elements.”  Tenney distinguishes the clang from a motive or phrase commonly found in classical music in that it is rather a kind of musical event and perceptual situation…” All of these levels of sound formations have in common “their perceptual immediacy and their singularity, i.e., their character as aural or musical gestalts.”This is an important distinction – a clang is actually a holarchical unit as it embodies its own musical gestalt. The hierarchical ordering of clang formations from small to large is – ‘element’, ‘clang’, ‘sequence’, ‘segment’, ‘section’ and ‘work’. A complete ‘work’ could also be referred to as a meta level TG. This inseparable relationship between part and whole is an important concept in Tenney’s SIG works.

It is important to note that while MH uses the word hierarchy to describe the order,  a correction by Tenney to preferred use of  the word holarchy, was published in Brian Belet’s Theoretical and Formal Continuity in James Tenney’s Music: 

In looking up the etymology of hierarchy, it has to do with orderings of power and value. And I don’t perceive what I was calling these hierarchical formal structures as having to do with power or value. They’re simply hierarchies of inclusion. So, a better term would be holarchy, which means an organization of wholes; and organization of gestalt units.

Factors for Singularity in Clang Formations

Now that there is a unit to structure, the next question Tenney poses is “what factors are responsible for the unity or singularity of the clang?” One main factor Tenney argues for  is similarity as a factor of cohesion within a clang or a sequence. Similarity becomes a way to offer a common ground for SIG pieces as “it is these parameters that do not change that give the clang or sequence its unity and singularity ,the duration of this relative constancy in these cohesive parameters actually establishing the boundaries of each gestalt.” That means if we put a clang through a singular process, in maximum proximity, we could differentiate it by a similar process mainly through the boundaries of duration. Tenney concludes that “in a collection of sound-elements (or clangs), those that are similar (with respect to values in some parameter) will tend to form clangs (or sequences), while relative dissimilarity will produce segregation, other factors being equal.”

Clang Form and Perception 

The concept and construction of the clang as a unit shaping an entire form is crucial in the understanding of SIG works. Tenney spends long paragraphs about the importance of the structure of the clang to the perception of the entire form as a clang. ‘Clang form’ in itself becomes a formal concept, one that once constructed efficiently could be perceived in its entirety as one conglomerate clang. When we combine the idea of SIG with the ideas of similarity we achieve continuity. The concept of the SIG as a clang that is used to construct a clang form becomes a method to solve issues of similarity and continuity and thus to arrive at a shape of a clang form through the structuring of a SIG. Proximity, intensity and repetition will unify the clangs into clang form and thus a proximate recurring SIG will be perceived as one continuous sound – one continuous shape.

Gesture in Relation to Clang Form

The construction of the clang as a form bearing structure involves its relation to a unified gesture: “for this dynamic character of clang-form, the words gesture and movement seem appropriate. The concept of clang-form would include, then, both shape and gesture, structure and movement, the static and the dynamic.” And to make it more implicit, it is “the dynamic aspect of clang-form–namely the directionality implicit in gesture.” Gesture as implying directionality will become a unifying force in the continuous shapings of clang form. 

Shape

Tenney looks at clang form through its overall shape and structure.The focus on clang form is identical to the focus on shape and shape becomes synonymous with the attempt to perceive musical gestalt as shape.  Shape implies “an external aspect of form(relating to profile or contour)”, and structure “refers more to an internal aspect, connections or interrelations among component parts that are not necessarily apparent ““on the surface” of the form–i.e., in the shape.” 

When changes happen continuously and not through division into parts we will “perceive a form that can only be defined in terms of the parametric changes” over time. These parametric changes will bring forth “that other aspect of form—shape— whose temporal manifestation is again based on change, the perception of differences, etc.” Therefore in SIG works emphasis will be put into the parameters that are able to change while the SIG keeps recurring. The SIG becomes an immediate structural and formal constraint. Continuity will be achieved by offering parametric change in a particular direction while SIGs are continuous. The perception of continuous change comes from a perception of dissimilarity in specific statistical parameters. If perceived differences are continuous, the varying movement of the gestalt will be exposed over time and resulting in the shape of the Gestalt. SIG as a unit structure within a procedural system will become the source and  method for manipulating change continuously.

On the Physical Correlates of Timbre (1965)

In this text written after experiments in the Bell Labs in relation to timbre, Tenney emphasizes his interest in the “physical properties of natural sounds, and sounds produced by conventional instruments.” 

He suggests that due to the complexities of acoustically produced timbre it can not only be described by spectral analysis, but also by “transient phenomena and various kinds of quasi-steady-state modulation processes.” These were in essence affected by the “bandwidth of the spectrum as a whole” and “ the presence and nature of any noise components in the spectrum.”In order to achieve a ‘rich’ timbre it was useful to apply “random modulation of frequency and amplitude” while “rate and the range of the modulation process are determining factors in the resulting timbre.” The envelope of the sounding timbre will be attributed to its shape. 

Simple Harmonic Motion(SHM) is a term to describe a sinusoidal motion with smooth periodic oscillation in resonating sound waves(acoustic signal).  When two sounds share the same kind of SHM according to Ohm’s law we will perceive changes in frequency or amplitude but not in phases. Changes in frequency will result in changes in beats. Very slight changes in frequency will result in beatings through the periodic variation in intensity. Because of the multidimensionality of timbre, Tenney argues that it is not enough to offer a  description for timbre through SHM because “timbre is the attribute of sound perception that is determined by the nature and extent of the departure from “simple harmonic motion” in the acoustical signal.”(Tenney Italics)

This text is important in connecting his theory for constructing clang form and relating it to the challenges for its perception through acoustic instruments. This idea about perceptual changes in timbre will use SHM as a starting point – for example the opening unison in CELLOGRAM that gradually morphs through glissando, or the unison A in Swell 2, or the rising tremolo fifth in KOAN for violin. SIG works will become an ideal ground to bring this attention to timbre with an enhanced focus to its gradual change and variety through one method of sound production. It is also a way to bring focus to the granularity of sound through the use of a SIG.

In 1954 Tenney moved to New York to study piano at Juilliard. There he shifted his focus to composition and research, although he did perform notable concerts with works by Charles Ives and John Cage, among others. In 1955 he began a thirteen year relationship with radical performance artist Carolee Schneeman. During this period, Tenney was active in the contemporary music and art scene – hosting and participating in experimental Fluxus happenings, directing, conducting and performing in the Tone Roads Ensemble (which he founded with Philip Corner), and taking part in Scheenman’s experimental action-performances. 

Tenney took a research position at Bell Laboratories in New Jersey (1961-1964) where he explored the use of computer programming and experimented with electronic music. His first completed electronic work Noise Study (1961) explored gradual changes of noise generation in relation to tone, through a noise generator he designed. He became interested in using computer programming to construct work through constrained stochastic measures. It was then that he became interested in the concept of ergodicity–similar statistical conditions overtime – which led to electronic works like Ergodos I and Ergodos II (1964).

During that time Tenney conceptualized and wrote a variety of Fluxus works like Chamber music which  premiered in Carnegie Hall in 1964 as part of the Fluxus Symphony Orchestra Concert. It was a set of cards with abstract minimal instructions like “Prelude: in preparation”. He considered this type of work theatrical and distinct from his research and musical writing. Aspects of SIG work relates to influences from the Fluxus movement in the 1960s in addition to influence from works like LaMonte Young’s set of text scores Compositions 1960 and the surge of Minimalism in the U.S.  

Entrance/Exit

One of the first examples of a ‘single gesture’ process attempt, suggested to me by Robert Wannamaker, is music Tenney made for Fluxus artist George Brecht’s short film “Entrance and Exit” in 1962.  Tenney used Bell Labs to program a single sine wave (sinusoid) with a frequency around the middle C, that gradually morphed to white noise in the span of six minutes. The program could also perform the process in reverse order.

Meanwhile, Schneeman developed her own practice of “kinetic theater.” She toured in Europe and then made the erotic film Fuses (1964-1967) with Tenney. His text scores gradually became more sound production specific, especially since 1965 with Maximusic, which is constructed from three parts – soft sustained cymbal roll, open loud improvisation and back to soft cymbal roll. 

Sound, theory, science, theater and performance were much of his interest in the 1960’s. Eric Smigel tells of an interesting statement Tenney made in a lecture about electronic music in Yale University (1965). “At the end of the lecture, Tenney described the etymological kinship of the words theory and theater, and remarked that a distinction between these practices they present may no longer be useful.”As Fluxus artists wanted to break the divides between art and life, I suggest that SIG pieces were also an attempt by Tenney to blur the boundaries between theory (composition) and theater (performance), science and art. This also ties into Tenney’s fascination with the Japanese concept of the Koan  – a contemplation through a paradoxical question like ‘What is the sound of the one hand clapping?’ How can one contemplate on the perception of an audible Koan?  

In The Early Works of James Tenney (1983) Polanksy  analyzes most of Tenney’s pieces from the 1960’s and 1970’s. He defines the main concept central to Tenney’s early works as “economy of idea” and “monothematic in that they systematically and exhaustively explore the ramifications of a particular sonic idea, using the various musical parameters to directly re-enforce the perception of that idea.” I see the SIG work as an enhanced and distilled model of the single idea approach.  In an interview,Tenney supported this monothematic approach: “I’m interested in something that’s more monolithic: like, ‘Okay, let’s do this one thing and do it completely, and be totally dedicated to just that, and pull out of that everything that we can.” The ‘doing’ in SIG is very much the ‘doing of one thing’ from the composer’s perspective but also from the player’s perspective.

Continuity

In a private conversation with Robert Wannamker he stated that Tenney’s main concern from the early 1970’s was the concept of continuity.  In Eric Smigel’s “To Behold with Wonder”; Theory, Theater, and the Collaboration of James Tenney and Carolee Scheenmann” there is a supporting quote from Tenney in his 1971 correspondance with Schneeman: “My work has been developing in a way that I’m very happy about. Hard to describe ,except to say that Continuity and  perhaps Singularity are very important characteristics of it. Also Simplicity. The key word is Continuity–as though the whole piece were one single sound, and it often is just that.”

Predictability and Perception

Predictability was another conceptual idea of Tenney’s work in the early 1970’s. He wanted to avoid drama in the sense of subjective emotional manipulations on musical material. In order to focus on the sheer sensation of sound, direction and execution had to be clear and concise: “I’m interested in a form that as soon as you’ve heard a couple of minutes of it, you get a pretty good idea of what you’re going to hear later. So you can sit back and relax and get inside the sound.”

An important breakthrough concerning conceptual and perceptual ideas which consist of a singular gesture came with the completion of For Ann (rising). The piece began with experiments Tenney made at Bell Labs and was completed on tape in 1969. Tenney talked about the importance of the piece in his development: “In fact, that’s the watershed. Everything before that I think of as a kind of different world. Everything after that is where I still am now.”  It is one of the last electronic pieces Tenney composed before leaving for California. The piece is made of a sine wave glissando rising for four octaves, that recurs at fixed times and fades in and out at its lowest and highest hearing thresholds. The effect is of an acoustic illusion of a constantly rising tone that never stops rising yet never reaches its highest peak. The acoustic phenomena (discovered by Tenney!) became known as Shepard-tone, named after the psychologist and cognitive scientist Roger Shepard who was also working at the Bell Labs during that time. Originally a tape piece, For Ann (Rising) was reproduced digitally in 1991 by Tom Erbe with Csound. Tenney discussed with Erbe the exact process: “The piece consists of 240 sine wave sweeps, each of which lasts 33.6 seconds long and rises 8 octaves (4.2 seconds per octave). Each sweep has a trapezoidal amplitude envelope which rises from 0.0 to 1.0 gain in the first two octaves, stays at 1.0 for the 4 mid octaves, and drops from 1.0 to 0.0 for the top two octaves of each sweep. A new sweep starts every 2.8 seconds.”

The timing between the recurring glissandos are key here for the success of the illusion and also for getting a minor 6th between the next ascending tone and the previous ascending tone. The piece lasts less than twelve minutes, but could also last for any duration as it goes on continuously without any new material added or distracted. As listeners we are faced for twelve minutes with an endless sonic phenomena that invites us to marvel at this acoustic event.

Tenney orchestrated the piece in 1971 for an acoustic string ensemble of two double basses, three cellos, three violas and four violins and named it For 12 Strings (rising). He crafted a meticulous dovetailing glissando between the instruments to get the entire range of the string ensemble for each ascending sweep. While the process is repeated without alteration the listener is free to get deeper into the subtle varieties of texture and nuance within this repetitive acoustic pattern. 

In both versions audible acoustic perception is the focus of the compositional attempt. However these two pieces are very much experimental in the sense that their sonic shape is repetitive in its temporality and thus we almost perceive an ongoing multiplicity of one gesture. Our total experience of the work is through the summation of many multitudes of that one shape of a SIG. 

The Postal Pieces were a set of eleven scorecards Tenney composed between 1965-1971.In summarizing the set of scorecards, Larry Polansky states that “each is a kind of meditation on acoustics, form, or hyper-attention to a single performance gesture.”In a 1978 interview,  Canadian composer Gayle Young asked Tenney about these works: “your postcard pieces, for example, are essentially a single musical gesture that continues until it’s over?”and Tenney responds that “those pieces have a lot to do with this attitude toward sound, but also with something else, which is the notion of the avoidance of drama.” This avoidance of drama is enhanced through the use of SIG as predictability clears the way for a deeper concentration into the acoustic behaviour of the temporal shaping of the SIG.

 I see most of the pieces in the set as  SIG works: KOAN, BEAST, August Harp, Haven’t Written a Note for Percussion, Swell Piece, Swell Piece # 2, Swell Piece # 3 and CELLOGRAM.

Similar to KOAN for violin, Tenney is utilizing adjacent strings to allow for continuous smooth glissandos in the span of fifths, yet here they are played molto legato and not in a constant fast tremolo as in KOAN. It is a study of the inherent structure of the cello as a base for the structure of a musical piece. The main challenge for the player is to keep a constant flow of glissando bowing while also exchanging strings seamlessly. Unlike Koan that only ascends, CELLOGRAM begins on a G plateau and proceeds for three gradual ascents. Each one increases in duration till a final coda of a change of direction where we finally descend from G to the low open C(the lowest note on the cello) only to ascend back to G. The durational ratio of the four stages is 1:3:5:1. Elegance here is in the way Tenney directs the player to transition between adjacent strings that will seem as continuous as possible. Here again Tenney demonstrates his meticulous craft of dovetailing to allow for a continuous shape throughout the process. 

One can point to the question whether this is a singular shape.I would argue that it is, but it’s a shape that follows four stages – or four conditions. Larry Polansky sees it as  the “idea of inner canonical form and replication of small shapes at large levels.” The canon here is generated from the historical build of the cello, while the shapes are built through the exploration of the potential of unisons in adjacent strings. The coda which descends to the low C string, marks the only string that doesn’t share its open note with an adjacent string and thus ascends back to the initial unison G plateau. 

CELLOGRAM also demonstrates Tenney’s interest in structuring change in frequency band through the use of glissando: “I think one of the things that the glissando does is to remind us that frequency is a continuum and we don’t have to think of it in scale steps.” This idea is manifested in other works using only glissando technique for strings like Koan (from Postal Pieces), Beast (from Postal Pieces), Shimmer (from Glissade (1982)) and PARABOLAS and HYPERBOLAS for Edgard Varese (from Quintext (1972)).

Tenney was fascinated by Conlon Nancarrow’s use of and approach to composition for the player piano,early on in his career from an early stage. By 1964, while at Bell Labs, he composed Music for Player Piano, based on a two minute computer generated score that was then punched into a piano roll. As Brian Belet notes, “the algorithmic score was designed to generate variety at the small scale while the large scale was predetermined.” The composition was to be executed through four possible permutations available in the mechanical use of the roll – forward, backwards, flipped over and flipped over backwards. The recorded performance was explained by Polansky as “original, retrograde inversion, inversion, and retrograde, so that the piece is a palindrome, or mirror image of itself.”

Spectral CANON for CONLON Nancarrow came about from an amalgamation of this continued fascination into the mechanical abilities of the player piano along a new interest in the harmonic series as a natural phenomena – an inherent system to generate formal structure and exploration of tuning and harmony. In an interview Tenney explained: “I’m using it because of its special properties or the special properties of the auditory system in relation to it. It’s a unifying structure. It’s a structure that our auditory systems have built into them: the capacity to reduce to a unity, to a singularity, right? And that’s a very useful formal idea. And I try to take advantage of that, formally—to use it so there is that sense of coming into a higher degree of unification.”

It was conceived in 1972 and first performed and recorded in 1974 in Santa Cruz, California. Tenney wrote notated the music by hand and it was later transferred by Nancarrow himself in Mexico to a piano roll. 

The work is based on the properties of the harmonic series of the second low A note on the piano (the first one being the lowest key on the instrument) and uses its first 24 partials in their natural just intonation. The attention to orchestration here is thoughtful, as using the lowest note of the piano would sound muddy and distracting, nor using the highest octave of the piano, with its piercing thinner sound. Therefore, the bandwidth between A1 and E5 seems like a logical and meticulous placing for this work. 

In the formalization of the piece, Tenney makes a correlation between interval as distance between frequencies, but also as a distance in duration – a temporal ratio. He is incorporating Henry Cowell’s idea of Rhythmicana, where rhythmic values are proportional to their partial ratio in the harmonic series. The equal tempered tuned player piano is retuned for these exact first 24 partials, and they are the only struck keys in the work as illustrated in figure 4.

Unlike CLANG for Orchestra from 1972, which was also based on pitches derived from the harmonics series (of E), here Tenney for the first time keeps every partial at its original natural placement throughout the work. The hitting of the first note of the work embodies the totality of the work as all of the pitches are an inherent part of the fundamental, naturally sounding from its physical structure-nature. In its totality, the work becomes a microscopic close up perception for the gradually exposed 24 partials implied from that initial hit. Moreover, the instrumental choice of the player piano here is at once mechanically functional but also sheds light on the extramusical complexities and potentialities that are available through this sound making machine. The SIG is at once the first piano note and in essence the various repetitions of the various partials always in relation to the starting pitch of A – both harmonically, rhythmically and temporally. 

Each of the 24 partials (struck keys) behaves as part of a 24 voice canon. The canon unfolds gradually in the process of the work only in terms of the amount of attack repetitions increased in each voice. This repetition is created by a gradual acceleration that after reaching 192 stages retrogrades till a complete stop. The increase of attacks in all voices is the based on the logarithm Duration = k*log(2)8+n/7+n. Tenney’s starting point is based on the 9/8 ratio of the eighth overtone.  The reason for that, as Polansky notes, is “to make the initial duration in any given voice four seconds.” This gives the mathematical explanation that log(2)*9/8 = 4. 

Pitches enter gradually according to their placement in the harmonic series – partial one first – partial twenty four last. It is so meticulously scheduled that the highest voice enters exactly when the lowest voice begins its retrograde process. The piece ends when this process is completed and the highest voice is about to begin its own reversed process. The music reaches such rhythmic complexity that it becomes impossible for the ear to differentiate the high voices; they begin sound as one sound mass in relation to the lowest tones. What begins to sound chaotic in the high partials distracts from the retrograde procedure that begins to unfold in the low voices, which reveals a sudden perceptual awareness and clarity to this new morphology. Wannamaker adds: “as this happens, the instrument seems to begin to ‘ring’ as though it were sustaining a single shimmering complex tone.”

The increasing attacks per time unit in each voice are made out of what Wannamaker refers to as “harmonic duration series”, beginning from the 8th partial as earlier observed. Each voice enters after eight attacks of the lower voice, yet this low voice keeps accelerating; the distance between each eight attacks decreasing is proportionate, so that all of the entrances of the rest of the voices “themselves fall in a harmonic duration series.” This structure brings forth awareness to the complex relationship between the harmonic partials and the increasingly polyrhythmic texture. The ratio between the various pitches is maintained and exposed along the intricacy of  their rhythmic ratios and placement in a vertical pile.

Another perceptual aspect that I noticed is how my ear quickly begins to differentiate the activity between the various registers. If in the beginning I would assume melodic or any contour between the first partials, as the partials get higher and frequencies and much closer in a bandwidth my ear begins to perceive them as separate units of the timbral complex. 

The work is a clear example of SIG work, generating an entire formal design out of the natural properties of the first note struck while using the natural properties of the playing object. This can be seen as a demonstration of how theory and theater become an audible Zen palindrome in Tenney’s vision. The score in itself is a kind of SIG as well, representing as a graph the exact sounding process.

I would like to briefly mention a similar way in which Tenney explored this practice in his Septet(1981) for six just-tuned electric guitars and electric bass. Here, Tenney uses the first eleven partial of the A harmonic serie, but in an ascending gradual process that eventually transitions and descends to pitches derived from the harmonic series of E. In this case, E being the third partial of A, Tenney creates a harmonic relationship to A in a 3:2 ratio. 

Furthermore, we see again the attention to the physical build of the instruments as Tenney builds a “meta guitar” through the accessible possibilities of guitar tuning. The process here exposes the natural properties of the two lowest strings on the guitar which are commonly tuned to: A and E.  The SIG here is a repeated note, similar to Spectral CANON. The pitches accumulate in a process which is arranged as a Rhythmicana type of canon, like Spectral CANON. Pitches begin vacating the space gradually as the process reaches E5, and then pitches from the harmonic series E are gradually added until all six guitars gradually descend to E3.

Towards the end of MH, Tenney provides a quote from Antonin Artaud’s The Theatre and its Double, which succinctly sums up the concept of a SIG piece:

It is certain that this aspect of pure theater, this physics of absolute gesture which is the idea itself and which transforms the mind’s conceptions into events perceptible through the labyrinths and fibrous interlacings of matter, gives a new idea of what belongs by nature to the domain of forms and manifested matter. 

In conclusion, it is useful to distinguish between Tenney’s methods and operations for these SIG pieces from pertaining solely to a single idea. Tenney produced work that extends beyond common musical discourse to integrate investigations of historical use of instruments, acoustics, and perception into a holistic craft that symbiotically combined shape, gesture, idea, instrument, object, and sound production. He arrived at an innovative model for the experience of formalized acoustic sound. SIG work is a useful concept for composition, pedagogy, analysis, experimentation, and research into the areas of sound phenomena, perception, and acoustic instrumental capabilities. Personally, I find this body of work extremely inspiring as it holds together, in an interdisciplinary fashion,  aspects of science, art, theatre, sound, performance, and meditation. Above all, it is a contemplation on our physical capabilities of perception and of the physical capabilities of what exists with us in the cosmos, resonating objects, morphing sounding shapes.

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Polansky, Larry.Extended liner notes to New World Records release of James Tenney: Selected Works 1961-69. 

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http://repmus.ircam.fr/_media/depaiva/smc2013.pdf

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Tenney, James. For 12 Strings (rising) for © Sonic Art Editions.Smith Publications, USA.

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———On the Development of the Structural Potentialities of Rhythm, Dynamics, and Timbre in the Early Nontonal Music of Arnold Schonnberg (1959). 1-13.

———On the Physical Correlates of Timbre (1965). 128-131.

———Pre-Meta ⌿ Hodos(1959). 397-407.

———Meta ⌿ Hodos: A Phenomenology of Twentieth-Century Musical Materials and an Approach to the Study of Form (1961). 13-96. 

——–Computer Music Experiences, 1961–1964 (1964). 97-127.

——–META Meta ⌿ Hodos (1975). 166-79. 

——–Hierarchical Temporal Gestalt Perception in Music: A Metric Space Model (with Larry Polansky)(1978).

——–Review of Music as Heard by Thomas Clifton (1985).” 309-26. 

——–About Diapason (1996). 394-96. 

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