“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. Nakai (University of Tokyo, Japan)—who is a remarkable musician and “out-of-the-box” thinker—uses primary sources from the David Tudor Papers housed at the Getty Research Institute to take the reader through the many stages of creativity Tudor explored in his life. Filling the book with illustrations of various kinds, photos, charts, graphs, photocopies of original documents, and a plethora of schematics, Nakai tries to look inside Tudor’s mind and let the reader understand his thinking and musical development. 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. Each chapter stands on its own and covers one specific type of compositional “instrument” at a time. Thoroughly annotated throughout and with extensive appendixes, this book will convince the reader that Tudor’s life was rich indeed.”
–D. L. Patterson, emeritus, University of Wisconsin–Eau Claire
Summing Up: Highly recommended. Graduate students, researchers, faculty.
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