No CrossRef data available.
We use cookies to distinguish you from other users and to provide you with a better experience on our websites. Close this message to accept cookies or find out how to manage your cookie settings.
We use cookies to distinguish you from other users and to provide you with a better experience on our websites. Close this message to accept cookies or find out how to manage your cookie settings.
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 01 September 2020
Archival evidence indicates that Anthony Gnazzo was a major figure within the Bay Area avant-garde music scene of the 1960s and 1970s who retired from composition by 1983 and has since been largely forgotten. Historical documents reveal, however, that a study of Gnazzo enables us to better understand the complex network of influences and artists working on experimental music in the Bay Area during the 1960s, 70s, and 80s. This article outlines Gnazzo's career and work, from his earliest academic compositions to his late electronic pieces, and concludes with a consideration of the ethical and moral issues inherent in musicological research on living subjects, particularly in the case of a composer who consciously avoids discussion of his personal aesthetic or compositional output. Should one study music that appears to have been ‘abandoned’ by the artist?
1 Anthony Gnazzo interviewed by Charles Amirkhanian, Ode to Gravity, aired 25 January 1982.
2 For example, Gnazzo is briefly mentioned by Wendt, Larry in Zurbrugg, Nicholas, ed., Art, Performance, Media: 31 Interviews (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2004), p. 345Google Scholar. Gnazzo also receives passing mention in regard to the Tape Music Center's establishment at Mills College in Gann, Kyle, Robert Ashley (Urbana-Champaign: University of Illinois Press, 2012), pp. 46–7CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
3 Gnazzo similarly receives brief mention alongside Myron Schaeffer and Gustav Ciamaga in the context of Robert Moog and Herb Deutsch demonstrating their early voltage-controlled oscillators and amplifiers to the trio at the Toronto Electronic Music Studio in 1964. For more information, see Braun, Hans-Joachim, ed., Music and Technology in the Twentieth Century (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2002), p. 71Google Scholar.
4 For more information on Kontakte, see Maconie, Robin, Other Planets: The Complete Works of Karlheinz Stockhausen, 1950–2007 (New York: Rowman & Littlefield, 2016), pp. 201–10Google Scholar.
5 Kramer, Jonathan, ‘Moment Form in Twentieth Century Music’, The Musical Quarterly 64/2 (1978), p. 180Google Scholar. See also, Gaël Tissot, ‘The First Electroacoustic Pieces by Karlheinz Stockhausen: Technologies and Aesthetics’, Organized Sound: An International Journal of Music Technology 13/3 (2008), pp. 173–4.
6 For an overview of 9 Evenings in the broader context of its importance as a harbinger of the development of hybrid art and technology practices, see Goodyear, Anne, ‘Launching “Hybrid Practices” in the 1960s: On the Perils and Promise of Art and Technology’, in Hybrid Practices: Art in Collaboration with Science and Technology in the Long 1960s, ed. Cateforis, David, Duval, Steven and Steiner, Shepherd (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2019), pp. 24–37Google Scholar.
7 Miller, Leta, ‘Cage, Cunningham, and Collaborators: The Odyssey of Variations V’, The Musical Quarterly 85/3 (2001), pp. 559–60CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
8 Fetterman, William, John Cage's Theatre Pieces: Notations and Performances (New York: Routledge, 1996), pp. 136–7Google Scholar. See also ‘Miller, ‘Cage, Cunningham, and Collaborators’, p. 546.
9 Michelle Kuo, ‘Beginning 9 Evenings’, in The Long 1968: Revisions and New Perspectives, ed. Daniel Sherman, Rudd van Dijk, Jasmine Alinder and A. Aneesh (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2013), pp. 277–8. A helpful technical explanation of the vochrome and how it was used in Tudor's Bandoneon! (a combine) is provided in Leeker, Martina and Steppat, Michael, ‘Data Traffic in Theater and Engineering: Between Technical Conditions and Illusions’, in Traffic: Media as Infrastructures and Cultural Practices, ed. Näser-Lather, Marion and Neubert, Christoph (Boston: Brill Rodopi, 2015), pp. 161–8Google Scholar.
10 Lowell Cross, ‘Remembering David Tudor: A 75th Anniversary Memoir’, www.lowellcross.com/articles/tudor/ (accessed 6 September 2018). See also Kahn, Douglas, Earth Sound Earth Signal: Energies and Earth Magnitude in the Arts (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2013), pp. 115–21CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
11 Goldman, Jonathan, ‘The Buttons on Pandora's Box: David Tudor and the Bandoneon’, American Music 30/1 (2012), p. 46CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
12 For more information on the early history of the Tape Music Center, see David Bernstein, The San Francisco Tape Music Center: 1960s Counterculture and the Avant-Garde (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2008). Gnazzo does not appear in this book because Bernstein's focus encompasses only the earliest years of the Tape Center up to its move to Mills College in 1966. The beginning of Gnazzo's tenure following the departure of Pauline Oliveros in 1966–67 is confirmed, however, in Gann, Robert Ashley, 46–7.
13 The American Society of University Composers, Newsletter 1/1 (1968), p. 2.
14 The American Society of University Composers, Newsletter 1/1, p. 1.
15 Anthony Gnazzo interviewed by Howard Hersh, Panel Discussion on the Firing of Two Co-directors of the Mills College Tape Music Center, aired 20 April 1969.
16 Pritchett, James, The Music of John Cage (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993), p.158Google Scholar.
17 Charles Amirkhanian, ‘Radio Event No. 19: An Orchestra is Born’. http://radiom.org/detail.php?et=intermedia&omid=RE.1972.09.15 (accessed 14 September 2018). See also Pritchett, The Music of John Cage, pp.156–7.
18 Pritchett, The Music of John Cage, pp. 157–8.
19 For the original Bay Area Synthesizer Ensemble concert notice and description, see KPFA Folio 25/2 (1974), p. 11.
20 Anthony Gnazzo interviewed by Charles Amirkhanian. Morning Concert, aired 28 January 1983.
21 Charles Amirkhanian, ‘Pâte de Pas de voix’, Perspectives of New Music 26/2 (1988), p. 33. An overview of the exhibition can be found in James Cuno, Fiorades/Fizzles: Echo and Allusion in the Art of Jasper Johns (Los Angeles, CA: Grunwald Center for the Graphic Arts, 1987).
22 While it is difficult to verify with absolute certainty, the author has consulted the recordings of both Asparagus and ‘Giving Up the Ghost’ and concurs with the findings posted at WhoSampled. For more information, see www.whosampled.com/sample/74568/DJ-Shadow-Giving-Up-the-Ghost-Anthony-Gnazzo-Asparagas/ (accessed 6 September 2018).
23 Jan Pusina, ‘Review of Peanut Butter & Marshmallow Pizza’, EAR Magazine, March 1975.
24 Kostelanetz, Richard, ‘Text-Sound Art: A Survey (Concluded)’, Performing Arts Journal 2/3 (1978), p. 82CrossRefGoogle Scholar. See also his earlier article, ‘Making Music of the Sound of Words’, The New York Times, 24 July 1977.
25 Kostelanetz, ‘Text-Sound Art: A Survey (Concluded)’, p. 82. For examples of Kostelanetz's anthologizing efforts, see Breakthrough Fictioneers: An Anthology (Barton, VT: Something Else Press, 1973) and Text – Sound Texts (San Francisco: Contemporary Arts Press, 1980).
26 Malcolm, Janet, The Journalist and the Murderer (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1990), p. 3Google Scholar.
27 Grimshaw, Jeremy, Draw a Straight Line and Follow it: The Music and Mysticism of La Monte Young (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2011), p. 9CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
28 La Monte Young, ‘On the Oxford University Press Publication of Draw a Straight Line and Follow It: The Music and Mysticism of La Monte Young’, https://drawastraightlineandfollowit.com/ (accessed 14 September 2018).
29 Terry Riley, ‘Letter to Suzanne Ryan’, https://drawastraightlineandfollowit.com/terry-riley-letter-to-s-ryan.html (accessed 15 September 2018).