David Tudor is remembered today in two guises: as an extraordinary pianist of post-war avant-garde music who worked closely with composers like John Cage and Karlheinz Stockhausen, and as a founding figure of live-electronic music. His early realization of indeterminate graphic scores and his later performances using homemade modular instruments both inspired a whole generation of musicians. But his notorious reticence, his esoteric approaches, and the diversity of his creative output—which began with the organ and ended with visual art—have kept Tudor a puzzle, strangely befitting for a figure who was known for his deep love of puzzles.
 
Reminded by the Instruments sets out to solve the puzzle of David Tudor by applying Tudor’s own methods for approaching the materials of others to the vast archive of materials that he himself left behind. You Nakai deftly coordinates instruments, electronic circuits, sketches, diagrams, recordings, letters, receipts, customs declaration forms, and testimonies like modular pieces of a giant puzzle to reveal the long-hidden nature of Tudor’s creative process. Rejecting the established narrative of Tudor as a performer-turned-composer, this book presents a lively portrait of an artist whose activity always merged both of these roles. In simulating Tudor’s distinct focus on what he called “the specific principles which exist inside each material,” Nakai undermines discourses on sound and illuminates our understanding of the instruments behind the sounds in post-war experimental music.
 
"You Nakai's book is a remarkable achievement that illuminates the breadth and depth of David Tudor's life and work as a composer-performer. Based on extensive analytical research and interviews with Tudor's surviving creative associates, it charts his evolution from organist and virtuoso pianist to his innovative live-electronic music, ending with his final explorations of sound and space. Engagingly written and eminently readable, this extraordinary study offers fresh insights into Tudor's reclusive personal life and elusive creative complexities."
- Gordon Mumma, composer, Professor Emeritus, University of California
 
"A groundbreaking book that not only provides unique insight into the work of one of America’s most influential if enigmatic electronic pioneers, but shifts the very paradigm of musical analysis in the aftermath of the transistor."
- Nicolas Collins, Professor, Department of Sound, The School of the Art Institute of Chicago, Author, Handmade Electronic Music: The Art of Hardware Hacking (Routledge)
 
“Nakai’s work illuminates the mystery between the inputs Tudor used to activate his electronic systems, the actions he took during his performances and the output of the sounds the audience hears. Reminded by the Instruments, one can say with confidence, is the definitive book on Tudor’s compositions and compositional practices and is invaluable for scholars, musicians and composers who want to understand Tudor’s processes and, in the future, perform them.”
- Julie Martin, Director, Experiments in Art and Technology
 
* The companion website for the book (remindedbytheinstruments.info) contains many photographs of instruments, redrawn diagrams, and transcripts of interviews and talks by Tudor

 

(Written by NAKAI You, Associate Professor, Graduate School of Arts and Sciences / 2021)

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Reviews:
“Reminded by the Instruments is not a biography per se, but rather an elaborately detailed consideration of Tudor’s music as a biography-of-sorts. This aim is pursued with full diligence by way of examining the many instruments (primarily electronic) Tudor utilized to achieve his works. […] While Tudor rarely left a totally clear indication of exactly what he did in every performance, or even precisely which instrument(s) he applied and how, Nakai’s relentless pursuit allows him to reconstruct much, if not all, of what Tudor was up to on such occasions. This required an impressive amount of backward-looking detective work, with Nakai drawing upon every clue possible, from receipts to audience/observer commentaries along with Tudor’s itineraries and his own (usually quizzically misleading) recorded responses to queries.”- Patrick James Dunagan, rain taxi, Jan. 2022
https://www.raintaxi.com/reminded-by-the-instruments-david-tudors-music/
 
“Based on the research materials explored to create this book, it’s fair to say that this isn’t a biography. It really is a document of David Tudor’s music through and through, and to some extent David Tudor as a legendary or somewhat mysterious person will remain elusive as you read this book. But you will likely understand his work and his methods, and to the degree that he seemed so deeply invested in his work, perhaps this is enough.” - Scott E. Scholz, Polley Music Library Show, Sept. 2021
https://lincolnlibraries.org/bookguide/staff-recommendations/staff-recommendations-index/staff-recommendations-september-2021/
 
"The narrative is pieced together from painstaking archival research, interviews with Tudor’s associates, and through Nakai’s own music making experiments. By exploring practical ways of discovering and knowing alongside his archival and analytical research, the author created for himself the “hunting and testing grounds” for the ideas he elaborates and interrogates in the book. Nakai’s style is clear, elegant and refreshingly free of academic jargon and intellectual posturing. Anyone can pick this book up and become engrossed, from the level of the casual and curious all the way to postgraduate researchers and musicologists." - Leah Kardos, The Wire  July 2021
https://www.thewire.co.uk/issues/449
 
“Throughout the book, Nakai demystifies Tudor and his process. Electronic music of the past is often portrayed in a dreamy, magical light—a hazy historical landscape filled with misty, otherworldly sounds. But while the music of a bygone era may seem ineffable, it is not inaccessible. Listening to it can be a glorious and transcendent experience, but its inner workings can be made legible. Writers, historians, and researchers can help make those sounds understandable to the wider audience by exploring hidden meanings and developing a vocabulary to explain them more fully. Making the past legible empowers us. These composers weren’t perfect, omniscient geniuses. While there will never be another David Tudor, shedding light on his creative process makes one think, ‘Maybe I could do something like that, too.'” - Geeta Dayal, Experimental Music  June 2021
https://4columns.org/dayal-geeta/reminded-by-the-instruments
 
"On page 85 at the moment. At this point, words are inadequate to express my admiration for You Nakai’s achievement with this book, and the depth of its effect on my understanding of not just its subject (Tudor) but the entire world of postwar avant-gardeism. […] About every 15 pages I have to put the book down and try to assimilate the revelations that “Reminded…” dishes out, and then get out other books on Cage and Stockhausen, and recordings, and dig the new perspectives Nakai’s research and insight have bestowed upon them. And this is still chapter one I’m talking about!" - Tom Djll, goodreads, April 16, 2021
https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/3927986484?book_show_action=true&from_review_page=1

"It is not unusual to have scholarly books written about the output of one composer, but it is rare to find one of such length written with such passion and with such complete and extensive information ... . One is presented with a creative thinker who is not just a pianist/organist, not just a composer, but also an electronics genius and an experimenter with sounds that had not previously been used in the context of classical music ... this book will convince the reader that Tudor's life was rich indeed." - D. L. Patterson, CHOICE

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