Talk:Tony Conrad

Why I think the current entry is not neutral
The phrase "Conrad would later attempt to retroactively redefine this work as a collaboration for which he should share authorship credit and control of recordings, a view which is not shared by the other group members except Cale to some degree." suggests a bias towards La Monte Young's take on the disputed authorship of the music that he made with Cale, Conrad, Terry Jennings, Maclise, and Zazeela.

... since both Jennings and Maclise are dead... then the viewpoints are split: Young and Zazeela on the side of Young's authorship (and of course, Zazeela is Young's life partner) vs. Cale and Conrad's claim to mutual authorship. - therefore this entry is biased in that it presents Young's claim as the majority view, which it obviously is not - it's half the story.

Since the composer idea is still controversial, and La Monte Young has no plans to release the music that Cale and Conrad were on unless they sign away their claim to authorship (to paraphrase Young in a recent Signal to Noise article "they can burn in hell...(!!!!)" I think it would be in the best interest of the music itself to relay more of a NPOV.

If Young can claim the music as HIS ALONE... then I suppose that we might as well think of him as The Fountainhead. See, I just don't buy this idea at all - but then I think it relates to Young's religious convictions and his idea of God vs. Tony's anti-religious Marxist view of the situation.

I'm not a good writer, so I hope that someone else could implement this stuff...

It would be helpful to add links to Just Intonation, and also add info on Tony's view of music as being related to our understanding of human speech. - this seems to be where the seeds of his interest in Just Intonation lie - which sets him apart from those musicians that use Just Intonation tuning systems in a similar way to Pythagoras, et al.. in that while they are basing their use of these tuning systems on an idea of the Music of the Spheres and mystical stuff, Tony is using these systems because they relate to the natural harmonic content in the vowel sounds of human speech - in fact there was some article online in which he described a particular tuning he was using and the intervals played as related to a specific vowel sound due to its harmonic content.

We could also link Revisionist History as an idea - because that's what Tony was doing with his Early Minimalism 4CD boxset - a sort of "what if?" - what if the music he made with Cale and Young, etc.. continued on - where would it lead? The idea is to try and stay true to what TOny saw as the initial thrust of their music, while Young has gone on to embrace the idea of THE COMPOSER even though his Fluxus roots would make it appear that he was initially questioning the idea of the composer in the first place.

see- that's why I'm not editing the thing myself, 'cause I'm biased... but I do think that this article currently has a bias that is not really helpful to the interesting questions (that remain unanswered) that the controversy over Cale, Conrad, Young, et als... early music is still steeped in.

As Young also said in the Signal to Noise article, he pretty much views this early work as not as important as his other work within the rest of his canon. OK then... why be so precious about it then?? Oh yeah - THE COMPOSER. eeeek!

interesting stuff. carry on.... — Preceding unsigned comment added by 7thharmonic (talk • contribs) 16:35, 11 August 2006 (UTC)


 * I have taken the liberty of removing the prior claims in this article which appeared to be the major source of contention. My own reading and reasearch on the subject from both Young and Conrad's points of view strongly suggests that the authorship of the TEM music is not indisputably known, and the prior version of this article actively intimated that Conrad had invented the authorship dispute. The previous version also ascribed motives to Conrad (i.e. he rejected the position of composer retrospectively based on his Marxism) without providing evidence that his political opinions were leading him to distort historical facts. Such extreme statements about living persons, particularly in their biographies, without documentary support, border on libel and certainly constitute violations of the standards established for Wikipedia. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 192.42.92.28 (talk) 20:17, 27 October 2006 (UTC)
 * I have taken the liberty of removing the prior claims in this article which appeared to be the major source of contention. My own reading and reasearch on the subject from both Young and Conrad's points of view strongly suggests that the authorship of the TEM music is not indisputably known, and the prior version of this article actively intimated that Conrad had invented the authorship dispute. The previous version also ascribed motives to Conrad (i.e. he rejected the position of composer retrospectively based on his Marxism) without providing evidence that his political opinions were leading him to distort historical facts. Such extreme statements about living persons, particularly in their biographies, without documentary support, border on libel and certainly constitute violations of the standards established for Wikipedia. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 192.42.92.28 (talk) 20:17, 27 October 2006 (UTC)

response to previous comments on discussion page
Some points regarding the discussion -

1. Tony Conrad was not an original member of the group that became known as the Theater of Eternal Music. The group was already around working in the same basic manner. So, the question of who was involved and thus seriously considered as having valuable insight cannot be limited to the group with Young/Zazeela/Maclise/Cale/Conrad; predecessors should also be considered. Furthermore, Maclise's opinion cannot be construed as going to one side or the other unless that side can produce a clear statement from him on the matter. As someone who is very familiar with his extant writings and work, I do not believe such a statement exists. Also, the fact that Zazeela is Young's wife does not degrade her right to an opinion on the matter.

2. the above discussion aside, the authorship issue is not subject to a retroactive democratic vote; it is what it is, regardless of what those involved at the time might now think. Collaborators do not get to redefine themselves as writers or primary authors solely on the basis of their wish to be seen that way; authorship is determined by the nature of the work made by each person, although there is still an inescapable subjective component since those involved can see and characterize that work or the context in varying ways.

3. Most people that delve into this topic by starting with Conrad's statements are lacking a complete understanding of the compositions themselves and the working methods of the group. When that perspective is added, the authorship issue recedes, because compared to a broader context of views on authorship, the actual specific contributions made by musicians on the compositions played to the TEM are considerably less than in any other musical situation where it is traditionally deemed that a musician can accompany or perform but not be a writer.

Specifically, all of these compositions consisted of a predefined, very limited set of pitches to be played by the group members, except for Young who was free to improvise so long as his notes were in the same harmonic series as the composition itself, and MacLise during his tenure who improvised his percussion parts. Youngs' playing was not restricted to any particular rhythmic choices. However, every other player, all of whom were on "pitched" instruments, was charged with sustaining their note or notes as perfectly as possible for the duration of the piece. This kind of score precludes those players from introducing rhythmic ideas or changing their notes once they pick an available one from the "pool" of notes for that composition as the piece begins. The performer thus has an extremely limited and defined role in what they can do when playing this music, which has a lot to do with the minimalist character that connects this music to other early works by Young. Literally, any musician in a classical orchestra, or a pop group of any kind, or most any traditional music from anywhere on the globe, had more leeway than the players in the TEM to add their own input in note or time. For that reason, to accept Conrad's claim of authorship in this context is to also say that anyone that ever follows a score while performing a composed piece, down to a person that plays a triangle once in a symphony, or provides any accompaniment in any other kind of music, is equal to the composer who wrote the score that included that person's part, in terms of authorship. While Conrad is free to hold and debate these concepts, they clearly fly in the face of what is generally accepted as composition vs. performance and Conrad does not make this clear as a part of his argument, preferring to let the details of his involvement be left vague, which suggests that they may be larger than they are.

4. Tony Conrad did raise confontations with La Monte Young for a time in the TEM days over the strictness of the composition and performance. He was not happy about not being able to introduce other tones or melodic ideas, or to change tones during a performance. At the time, there were confrontations about these issues, but Conrad did not succeed in getting more freedom, and stayed on afterwards working in the same way for several years. Furthermore, when they worked together again in the late 60s, occasionally into the early 70s after a break, Young made it a condition of the collaboration that all the players including Conrad sign at least one agreement that acknowledged Young as the sole author of the compositions they would be playing, which Conrad did agree to. While I have not seen this document personally, (or any others that may exist) my understanding is that it was tied to a particular performance and not specifically retroactive to earlier works; however, the compositions were of the same type. The main differences were the lineup of the group and that Young was by that time doing vocal improvisations rather than saxophone. These facts suggest that at the time, while not totally comfortable with the situation, Conrad did subscribe to the basic concept of his role in the group being the performance of a pre determined composition and accept Young as the sole arbiter of what that composition was.

5. Regarding the removed material, Conrad's writings, published and otherwise, have in fact clearly stated his reasoning for his arguments including some that are political in nature and deal with Marxism and his concept of Democracy. I will add to this page with specific references in order to make the same point.

I know Young, Conrad, and others that were involved, personally and have heard first person accounts of many aspects of this issue in general and various specific anecdotes over the years, some of which are alluded to above. In order to be informed about this topic, it is essential to read all of the published writings and interviews by Young and by Conrad as well as other contemporary accounts. Specifically, the booklet to the Well Tuned Piano release, "Selected Writings" by Young, Conrad's article in Film Culture on the TEM published in the 60s, Conrad's liner notes for his 90s and later releases, all published interviews with all parties, Young's statement about the release of the TOTE CD, and Tony Conrad's online posts on message boards and excerpts of private emails which were shared to the MELA Foundation email list group in the past. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 67.39.24.250 (talk) 18:31, 10 November 2006 (UTC)

Conrad named intervals?
Can anyone supply evidence or even a possible truthful interpretation for the following assertion?:
 * Conrad created the naming scheme for the intervals used today by most musicians involved in "Just Intonation"

If not, I'm going to delete or alter it. Harry Partch did a lot of theoretical work in this area long before Conrad came around. Kylegann 02:20, 13 April 2007 (UTC)

Place of birth removed
This edit removed Concorde, NH as place of birth, using MOS:DOB as reason. I don't see anything there about places of birth. Since there is no proper bio section in the article, it's hard to see where else to put it. However there is no source as of now, so the fact it's unreferenced is a good enough reason to leave it out I guess. Wwwhatsup (talk) 18:10, 22 April 2013 (UTC)

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Hollis Frampton?
No mention here of film maker Hollis Frampton, who was also at Suny Buffalo 2600:8805:A011:7300:9529:83E5:5516:13BD (talk) 15:27, 30 August 2023 (UTC)