Synopses & Reviews
and#147;Benjamin Piekut takes scholarship on late twentieth century music to new heights with this inventive and compelling study of the networks of experimental music. Weaving a historical ethnography of performances, practices, sounds, and subjectivities together with insights from recent social and anthropological theory, uncovering new perspectives on key figures from John Cage and Henry Flynt to Carla Bley and Charlotte Moorman, he gives us and#145;actually existing experimentalismand#8217; free from idealization or dilution.and#8221;
and#151;Georgina Born, author of Rationalizing Culture: IRCAM, Boulez, and the Institutionalization of the Musical Avant-Garde
and#147;Ben Piekutand#8217;s methodologically astute and#145;history of actually existing experimentalismand#8217; provides a brilliantly focused, yet ultimately expansive interrogation of the musical networks that flourished in New York City around the year 1964. Engaging, insightful, and important, Experimentalism Otherwise is certain to prove an indispensable reference not only for musicologists, but for anyone interested in the tangled cultural history of the period at large.and#8221;
and#151;Branden W. Joseph, author of Beyond the Dream Syndicate: Tony Conrad and the Arts After Cage
and#147;Buttressed by interviews with surviving participants and close examination of scores, texts, images, and ephemera, Piekut erects a framework within which the sometimes poignant, sometimes absurd network of semi-failed interactions that defined the space of and#145;experimental musicand#8217; can take shape in the mind of a delighted reader. Experimentalism Otherwise deftly escapes the hagiographic mode: figures like John Cage, Henry Flynt, and Charlotte Moorman appear in its pages as scrappy improvisers of aesthetic contingency, not plaster saints of the avant-garde. This is late-twentieth-century music history as it ought to be written!and#8221;
and#151;Robert Fink, author of Repeating Ourselves: American Minimal Music as Cultural Practice
and#147;Experimentalism is never only that, is the meta-argument of Experimentalism Otherwise. With a focus on participants of four moments in four explicitly experimental music scenes in a single year and in a single city, Piekut and#145;follows the actorsand#8217; not only to their appointments with the new as isolated from other events, but along historically grounded routes too ordinary to have received prior notice. In doing so, he achieves something of an anti-and#145;experimentalism for experimentalismand#8217;s sakeand#8217; historiography of select New York experimental music events of the 1960s. That this gripping analysis of historical experimentalism is so rich with difference and contradiction, so illuminating of the challenges of producing the and#145;newand#8217; in the and#145;nowand#8217; is precisely due to Piekutand#8217;s diligence in opening a world of the ordinary where we didnand#8217;t expect it. This book is a revelation of the relationship between ordinariness and newness that will change how cultural historians think about experimentalism.and#8221;
and#151;Sherrie Tucker, author of Swing Shift
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"Objective, insightful prose"--All About Jazz
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and#8220;Experimental Otherwise crafts a surprisingly strong narrative.and#8221;
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and#8220;This is an important book, and should be part of every academic music library.and#8221;
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and#8220;An original and important book. . . . Impressive in its scope. . . . A concise and focused account.and#8221;
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and#8220;Richly deserving superlatives, [Experimentalism Otherwise] is a memorable, exciting, rigorous, and beautifully written book of considerable importance.and#8221;
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“Objective, insightful prose” Clemens Greeser - Notes (Music Library Assoc)
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“Experimental Otherwise crafts a surprisingly strong narrative.” Thomas Fogg - Current Musicology
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and#8220;Objective, insightful proseand#8221;
Synopsis
In Experimental Otherwise, Benjamin Piekut takes the reader into the heart of what we mean by and#147;experimentaland#8221; in avant-garde music. Focusing on one place and timeand#151;New York City, 1964and#151;Piekut examines five disparate events: the New York Philharmonicand#8217;s disastrous performance of John Cageand#8217;s Atlas Eclipticalis; Henry Flyntand#8217;s demonstrations against the downtown avant-garde; Charlotte Moormanand#8217;s Avant Garde Festival; the founding of the Jazz Composers Guild; and the emergence of Iggy Pop. Drawing together a colorful array of personalities, Piekut argues that each of these examples points to a failure and marks a limit or boundary of canonical experimentalism. What emerges from these marginal moments is an accurate picture of the avant-garde, not as a style or genre, but as a network defined by disagreements, struggles, and exclusions.
About the Author
Benjamin Piekut is Assistant Professor of Musicology at Cornell University.