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THE MAGIC OF TONE and the Art of Music, by Dane Rudhyar. This long-awaited title, out-of-print since 1987, The Magic of Tone is now available free online at the Rudhyar Archival Project. Serious interest in Rudhyar's pioneering work as a composer is growing rapidly. The Magic of Tone comprises Rudhyar's last word (written in 1982, three years before his passing) on Sound, Tone, Music and the Rhythm of Civilization and Culture.



CULTURE, CRISIS AND CREATIVITY, by Dane Rudhyar First published in 1977, Culture, Crisis and Creativity is an extraordinary vision of existence that explodes the popular myth of cultural omniscience, omnipotence, and permanence, while broadening the meaning and value of art, music and dance. Exposes fascism in art and music, as well as in culture and politics.
   There comes a time, suggest Rudhyar, when for the sake of our spiritual heritage, we should consider breaking away from established patterns and values that have been imposed upon us through our culture. 'Spirit creates, culture reproduces.'
ADDED 28 Feburary 2018.   »Read it now

Musical Works

See the List of Musical Works by Dane Rudhyar

Musical Scores

For scores of Rudhyar's musical works, visit the site of the American Composers Alliance.

Musical scores 5 Stanzas and Granites are also available from SheetMusicPlus.com

Also Available Online

Available Offsite

Dane Rudhyar's Vision of American Dissonance, by Carol Oja. American Music, Summer 1999.

Also of Interest

Click to order this great recording at amazon.com
New Recording of
Rudhyar's Piano Music

Four Pentagrams; Paeans; Granites; Prophetic Rite
Ron Squibbs, Piano.


Click to order this great recording at amazon.com
The Music of Rudhyar & Satie
PARIS-X
Musica Obscura

Richard Cameron-Wolfe, Piano.

Hear a sound clip



Making Music Modern:
New York in the 1920s

by Carol J. Oja.




THE AMERICAN ULTRAMODERNISTS: 1920-1950, featuring piano compositions by by Dane Rudhyar, Ruth Crawford, Carl Ruggles and Henry Cowell. Performed by Steffen Schleiermacher. Buy it from Amazon.com.






As a result of the circumstances and scope of my life, my musical works are relatively few in number. Their value, I believe, is more in the potentialities they reveal than in what they have been able to actualize in sonic and instrumental terms. Early in my life I began to sketch a "Cosmophony," but neither the instruments, the public, nor the proper conditions of performance were available. Neither was I ready to realize a dream of such cosmic scope. Scriabin also had not been ready for the realization of his entirely different kind of dream, his barely started Mystrè which, moreover, the first World War made impossible by sounding the death-knell for the hope of transfiguring the old European culture. Scriabin died young and suddenly. I have kept living, presumably for the purpose of trying to formulate in words transformative ideas, which may serve as partial yet basic foundations for a future culture, having to try again to give concrete form to the spirit of the new phase of the process of civilization.
- from "Concerning My Musical Works"

Dane Rudhyar (1895-1985) was one of the first composers to consciously reject the forms and sonorities of traditional European art music in favor of exploring polytonic dimensions and new sound combinations. Soon after coming to America, his compositions were performed at the New York Metropolitan Opera on April 4, 1917 as an integral part of the multi-media performance art known as Métachorie. It was the first performance of dissonant polytonal music in America.

In New York and California, Rudhyar befriended other avant-garde composers of the 1920s - such as Charles Ives, Edgard Varèse, Leo Ornstein, Henry Cowell, Charles Seeger, Carl Ruggles, Ruth Crawford-Seeger. Together they formed a loosely-knit group known as the Ultra-Moderns. In a sense, Rudhyar acted as the "high-priest and spokesman" for the Ultra-Moderns and in a series of penetrating and uncomprising articles, challenged traditional European music and the "neo-Classicism" of Stravinsky and his followers. But the musical establishment "chose Stravinsky over Scriabin," as Rudhyar later stated, and the Ultra-Moderns were soon unwelcomed in the world of serious music. Now, almost a century later, the work of Rudhyar and his contribution to modern music is finally being widely recognized and accepted.


  
 Archived Books on Music by Dane Rudhyar
  

THE MAGIC OF TONE and the Art of Music by Dane Rudhyar. This long-awaited title, out-of-print since 1987, The Magic of Tone is now available free online at the Rudhyar Archival Project. Serious interest in Rudhyar's pioneering work as a composer is growing rapidly. The Magic of Tone comprises Rudhyar's last word (written in 1982, three years before his passing) on Sound, Tone, Music and the Rhythm of Civilization and Culture.
  

The Rebirth of Hindu Music by Dane Rudhyar. This compelling volume was one of the first modern books to examine the place and importance of Asiatic music in a sensitive, serious manner. First published in India in 1928 - when Indian music was being contaminated by Western influence and cheap Western instruments, like the Harmonium - in The Rebirth of Hindu Music Rudhyar urged Indian musicians to rediscover the sacred roots and power of Hindu Music.


  
 Archived Music Articles
  

Early Music Articles. Early Musical Writings - Seminal Writings on the New Music of the XXth Century by Dane Rudhyar. The Rudhyar Archival Project is pleased to announce Rudhyar's musical writings from the 1920s will be added to the online Archive during September 2004. These provocative and seminal writings include The Relativity of Our Musical Conceptions, Dissonant Harmony and 'Going Back' in Music - To Where?, as well as articles on the music of Varèse, Ruggles, Scriabin and others. See what's curently available online, visit the new Music Articles page.





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