Piano

Abstract

Tudor switched from the organ to the piano in his late teens. His approach to the new instrument, whose nature he regarded as percussion, centered on harnessing its mechanism of escapement, which resulted in the control of all parameters as a function of precise timing of attack and release. This proved especially well-suited to the pointillistic works being written by composers on both sides of the Atlantic. But close examination reveals that the relationship between Tudor and the composers around him, which gave birth to new methods of chance operations, indeterminacy, or graphic scores, was actually led by the pianist’s exploration of his instrument, many times at the bewilderment of others as to what captivated his attention. At the core of Tudor’s singular realizations was a focus on the physical bias of the score given to him, which he referred to as “material.” As the degree of indeterminacy in the composer’s materials increased throughout the 1950s, Tudor would more and more shift his attention to another kind of material involved in the realization of music: the physical nature of instruments, including his own self, which composers had already begun regarding as such.