George Brecht

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George Brecht : biography

August 27, 1926 – December 5, 2008

‘[A] soprano was bugging everybody with temper tantrums during rehearsal. At a certain point the orchestra crashed onto a major seventh and there was silence for the soprano and flute cadenza. Nothing happened. The soprano looked into the orchestra pit and saw that my father had completely taken apart his flute, down to the last screw. (I used this idea in my 1962 FLUTE SOLO).’ George Brecht GB in interview with Michael Nyman, quoted in George Brecht Events; A Heterospective, Robinson, Walter König p284

Michael Nyman, the interviewer, responded that in Brecht’s work "sound-producing instruments [in the Event-Scores] have been made mute (the violin, in Solo for Violin Viola Cello or Contrabass, is polished, not played), and non-sounding instruments, or non-instruments, for instance a comb (Comb Music, 1962) are made sounding." Another piece, Solo for Wind Instrument, contained the single instruction (putting it down).

Later in his life, when asked about his father, Brecht replied that "[he] gave up music-making in the mid-’30s by lying down and not breathing any more on the couch at 165 W. 82nd Street, where we were living at the time."

The Yam Festival

As Brecht’s interest in Event Scores began to dominate his output, he started to mail small cards bearing the scores to various friends "like little enlightenments I wanted to communicate to my friends who would know what to do with them.Brecht quoted in A Heterospective, p70"

This method of distribution – soon to become known as mail art – would become the basis for the build up to the Yam Festival (May backwards), mid 1962-May 1963, organised with Robert Watts. The mailed scores were intended to build anticipation for a month long series of events held in New York and on George Segal’s farm, New Jersey. Featuring a large cross section of avant-garde artists, the festival was based around the idea of operating ‘as an alternative to the gallery system, producing art that could not be bought’.A Heterospective, p68 Artists participating in the festival included Alison Knowles, Allan Kaprow, John Cage, Al Hansen, Ay-O, Dick Higgins, Karlheinz Stockhausen and Ray Johnson. The festival has come to be seen as a proto-fluxus event, involving many of the same artists.

One of the recipients of the mail shots (as well as a participant in the festival) was La Monte Young. Young, a musician who had arrived in New York September 1960,Four musical minimalists: La Monte Young, Terry Riley, Steve Reich, Philip Glass By Keith Potter, p49 had been asked to guest edit a special edition of Beatitude East on avant-garde art, which evolved into the seminal compendium, An Anthology Of Chance (see ) Brecht was the first artist listed in the compendium; the graphic designer and publisher of the book was George Maciunas, who had been attending the same music classes, although by now they were being given by Richard Maxfield.

George Maciunas and the beginnings of Fluxus

Fluxus was to grow out of Maciunas’ friendship with the artists centred around these classes; his conception of Fluxus was based on LEF, a communist organisation set up in Russia in the 1920s to help create a new socialist culture Whilst it is unlikely Brecht agreed with Maciunas politically, he strongly agreed with the notion of the unprofessional status of the artist, the de-privileging of the author, and appreciated Maciunas’ ability at organisation and design.

‘The people in Fluxus had understood, as Brecht explained, that "concert halls, theaters, and art galleries" were "mummifying." Instead, these artists found themselves "preferring streets, homes, and railway stations…." Maciunas recognized a radical political potential in all this forthrightly anti-institutional production, which was an important source for his own deep commitment to it. Deploying his expertise as a professional graphic designer, Maciunas played an important role in projecting upon Fluxus whatever coherence it would later seem to have had.’ Brecht quoted in A Heterospective, p118