Cage & Tudor - 1963

The famous lecture/performance of John Cage with David Tudor
in Germany, in january 1963,

"Musik Im Technischen Zeitalter"

 with a patient and intrigated audience, who reacted largely with incomprehension.

The purpose was indeterminacy, chance, change and new aspects of music
with new technicals ways and tools for creative process.

In the winter of 1962–63 the writer on music and supporter of contemporary music Hans Heinz Stuckenschmidt, professor at the Technische Universität in Berlin, ran the international lecture series Musik im technischen Zeitalter. John Cage was invited to give a lecture with musical examples. He transformed the live broadcast into a performance of, in Stuckenschmidt’s words, “methods of surprise and terror” determined by chance operations, in which he and the pianist and composer David Tudor performed two compositions by Cage (Variations II, 1961, and Fontana Mix, 1958) simultaneously.


Filmed by the former German public television broadcaster SFB in West Berlin.


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