| Main Performers | John Cage,
David Tudor
Bob Woolford - performer |
| Set List | 'Rainforest', Tudor,
'Mureau', Cage,
'Untitled', Tudor,
'Mesostics, re. Merce Cunningham', Cage |
| Performance Notes | John Cage and David Tudor were early pioneers of post-war avant-garde music and the non-standard use of musical instruments. This was their only visit to the Hall and some visitors were shocked at the radical nature of the music.
The Times reviewer reported the next day that the sound grew progressively louder and more violent with ferocious bursts of sound assaulting the senses. After about half an hour, reckoning my duty to readers being rather to preserve my hearing for future occasions than to see this concert through, I left.
"CAGE'S MUSIC GETS SPARSE AUDIENCE.
A lively public relations campaign having built up John Cage as the father of the new music it afforded me a measure of morbid oedipal satisfaction to find the Albert Hall very sparsely populated last night for the first British performance of works by him and by his closest camp-follower David Tudor.
Not unexpectedly the programme book bristled with heart-renderingly earnest accounts of electrical devices used in the production of Mr Tudor's "Rainforest".
Mr Cage, on the other hand, proudly announced his success in freeing the English language from syntax with his translation of a Japanese haiku, always mindful of Buckminster Fuller's rule to prefer flexibility to fixity when offered the choice (we weren't)..."
(The Daily Telegraph, 23 May 1972) |
| Related Archival Material | Programme (RAHE/1/1972/79),
Digital Photograph |