James Tenney

This volume collects, for the first time, essential interviews and aesthetic writings from throughout James Tenney's five-decade artistic career.



The eminent American-Canadian composer James Tenney (1934–2006) made groundbreaking contributions to sampling culture, digital sound synthesis, algorithmic composition, minimalism, spectral music, music in non-standard tuning systems, contemporary theories of form and harmony, and the consolidation of an American experimental-music tradition. This book documents both his own work and his involvements with influential figures in mid-century American music, film, art, and technology. The writings are accompanied by photographs, artworks, compositional sketches, archival documents, and previously unpublished scores. Appendices supply, for the first time, exhaustive lists of Tenney's compositions and published writings, as well as performance chronologies that capture his influential contributions to the experimental arts in New York City and elsewhere in the 1960s and 1970s.