Max Neuhaus
Encyclopedia
American musician Max Neuhaus (August 9, 1939 – February 3, 2009) was a percussionist and interpreter of contemporary music of the 1960s who moved on to become a pioneer in the field of sound art
, a term he rejected but with which he is nonetheless associated. He has created numerous sound works (including sound installation
s) that have extended sound as an autonomous medium into the domain of contemporary art.
Born in Beaumont
, Texas
, Neuhaus grew up in Pleasantville
, a Westchester-County suburb of New York City. The music of jazz percussionist Gene Krupa
inspired Neuhaus to become a drummer. The teenage Neuhaus studied with Krupa for a year before taking up with "Sticks" Evans. In 1957, after finishing high school in Houston, Neuhaus enrolled in the Manhattan School of Music
, where he would receive both his bachelors and master's degrees in music. At the Manhattan school, Neuhaus studied jazz percussion with Paul Price. Yet, during his studies, he encountered the work of a group of American experimental composers who had composed music for percussion: Harry Partch
, Henry Cowell
, Lou Harrison
, John Cage
, Morton Feldman
, Earle Brown
, and Christian Wolff
. For his graduation recital, Neuhaus decided to perform Karlheinz Stockhausen's Zyklus
, a notoriously difficult piece for solo percussion.
Upon his graduation from the Manhattan School, Neuhaus toured the United States with the Contemporary Chamber Ensemble and Pierre Boulez
.Impressed with Neuhaus' performance of Zyklus, Stockhausen invited Neuhaus to perform it during Stockhausen's first American tour in 1963-4. In 1963, Neuhaus began to use feedback as a musical device and used it in a realization of John Cage's open-ended graphic score Fontana Mix. He placed contact mics on percussion instruments placed in front of loudspeakers, allowing the microphones to pick up room sound, feed it back to the mic, and resonate the instrument. Neuhaus' performance consisted of setting up the equipment and modulating the amplification of the channels. Neuhaus' performance of the piece not only pioneered the use of feedback in music but was also among the first instances of what would come to be known as "live electronic music."
In 1964, Neuhaus' made his solo debut at Carnegie Recital Hall. The same year, supported by a Rockefeller Grant, he served as artist-in-residence at the University of Chicago
. Neuhaus won the Young Concert Artists International Auditions in 1965 which led to a Europe tour as a percussion soloist in 1965-66. In 1968 he recorded his solo percussion repertoire on Electronics and Percussion: Five Realizations by Max Neuhaus, an LP released by Columbia Masterworks under the direction of fellow experimental composer David Behrman
. The record's cover featured a bare-chested Neuhaus surrounded by percussion equipment, amplifiers, and electronics. With this release, Neuhaus, then only 28, bade farewell to percussion and to live performance.
Neuhaus went on to pioneer artistic activities outside conventional cultural contexts and began to realize sound works anonymously in public places, developing art forms of his own. Neuhaus' initial foray into this practice was a project titled Listen!, which extended Cage's idea that environmental sound could be heard as music. Neuhaus would invite audiences to a venue, stamp their hands with the word "listen," and then take them on a tour of local urban and industrial soundscapes. Utilizing his sense of sound and people's reactions to it gained after fourteen years as a musician, he began to make sound works which were neither music nor events and coined the term 'sound installation' to describe them. In these works without beginning or end, the sounds were placed in space rather than in the ordinary time frame of the musical composition. Starting from the premise that our sense of place depends on what we hear, as well as on what we see, he utilized a given social and aural context as a foundation to build a new perception of place with sound. With the realization of these non-visual artworks for museums in America and Europe, he became the first to extend sound as an autonomous medium into the field of contemporary art.
He continued his activities in music with his Networks or Broadcast Works, virtual architectures which act as forums open to anyone for the evolution of new musics. In the first Public Supply in 1966, he combined a radio station with the telephone network and created a two-way public aural space
twenty miles in diameter encompassing New York City, where any inhabitant could join a live dialogue with sound by making a phone call. Later, in 1977 with Radio Net, he formed a nationwide network with 190 radio stations. In one of his latest projects, Auracle (2004), he constructs a twenty-four hour a day global entity for live interaction with sound over the Internet.
In his Moment works,http://www.max-neuhaus.info/soundworks/vectors/moment/ a series of large scale sound works for whole communities, he utilizes the cessation of sound to create a periodic sense of silence throughout the community, both marking time and creating reflective moments. The most recent of these is a commission from the Dia Art Foundation for the Dia:Beacon Museum in Beacon, New York.http://www.diaart.org/exhibs_b/neuhaus/timepiecebeacon/
Over the last four decades of his life, he created a large number of sound works for various environments, including permanent works in the United States (Times Square
in New York
and the Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago
) and Europe (CAPC Musée d'Art Contemporain, Bordeaux
, France; the AOK Building, Kassel
, Germany; the Castello di Rivoli, Museo d'Arte Contemporanea, Italy; and the Kunsthaus Graz
, Austria), along with numerous short-term works in museums and exhibitions (the Museum of Modern Art
, the Whitney Museum of American Art
, and the Clocktower in New York City; ARC, Musée d'Art Moderne de la Ville de Paris, the Centre National d'Art Contemporain, Grenoble
, France; the Kunsthalle Basel
and the Kunsthalle Bern, Switzerland; Documenta
6 and 9, Kassel, Germany; and the Venice Biennale
, Italy), and numerous one-person exhibitions of his drawings.
His interests were diverse. He designed the sound generation and projection systems which realized his work, himself. He originated new concepts of aural urban design, and utilized his knowledge of sound technology and the psychology of sound to design a more humane and safer set of sounds for emergency vehicles. He began a ten-volume series of retrospective books on his oeuvre with the publication of Max Neuhaus: Sound Works, vols. I-III (Ostfildern-Stuttgart: Cantz, 1994).
Sound art
Sound art is a diverse group of art practices that considers wide notions of sound, listening and hearing as its predominant focus. There are often distinct relationships forged between the visual and aural domains of art and perception by sound artists....
, a term he rejected but with which he is nonetheless associated. He has created numerous sound works (including sound installation
Sound installation
Sound installation is an intermedia and time based art form. It is an expansion of an art installation in the sense that it includes the sound element and therefore the time element...
s) that have extended sound as an autonomous medium into the domain of contemporary art.
Born in Beaumont
Beaumont, Texas
Beaumont is a city in and county seat of Jefferson County, Texas, United States, within the Beaumont–Port Arthur Metropolitan Statistical Area. The city's population was 118,296 at the 2010 census. With Port Arthur and Orange, it forms the Golden Triangle, a major industrial area on the...
, Texas
Texas
Texas is the second largest U.S. state by both area and population, and the largest state by area in the contiguous United States.The name, based on the Caddo word "Tejas" meaning "friends" or "allies", was applied by the Spanish to the Caddo themselves and to the region of their settlement in...
, Neuhaus grew up in Pleasantville
Pleasantville, New York
Pleasantville is a village in Westchester County, New York, United States. The population was 7,019 at the 2010 census. It is located in the town of Mount Pleasant. Pleasantville is home to a campus of Pace University and to the Jacob Burns Film Center...
, a Westchester-County suburb of New York City. The music of jazz percussionist Gene Krupa
Gene Krupa
Gene Krupa was an American jazz and big band drummer and composer, known for his highly energetic and flamboyant style.-Biography:...
inspired Neuhaus to become a drummer. The teenage Neuhaus studied with Krupa for a year before taking up with "Sticks" Evans. In 1957, after finishing high school in Houston, Neuhaus enrolled in the Manhattan School of Music
Manhattan School of Music
The Manhattan School of Music is a major music conservatory located on the Upper West Side of New York City. The school offers degrees on the bachelors, masters, and doctoral levels in the areas of classical and jazz performance and composition...
, where he would receive both his bachelors and master's degrees in music. At the Manhattan school, Neuhaus studied jazz percussion with Paul Price. Yet, during his studies, he encountered the work of a group of American experimental composers who had composed music for percussion: Harry Partch
Harry Partch
Harry Partch was an American composer and instrument creator. He was one of the first twentieth-century composers to work extensively and systematically with microtonal scales, writing much of his music for custom-made instruments that he built himself, tuned in 11-limit just intonation.-Early...
, Henry Cowell
Henry Cowell
Henry Cowell was an American composer, music theorist, pianist, teacher, publisher, and impresario. His contribution to the world of music was summed up by Virgil Thomson, writing in the early 1950s:...
, Lou Harrison
Lou Harrison
Lou Silver Harrison was an American composer. He was a student of Henry Cowell, Arnold Schoenberg, and K. P. H. Notoprojo Lou Silver Harrison (May 14, 1917 – February 2, 2003) was an American composer. He was a student of Henry Cowell, Arnold Schoenberg, and K. P. H. Notoprojo Lou Silver Harrison...
, John Cage
John Cage
John Milton Cage Jr. was an American composer, music theorist, writer, philosopher and artist. A pioneer of indeterminacy in music, electroacoustic music, and non-standard use of musical instruments, Cage was one of the leading figures of the post-war avant-garde...
, Morton Feldman
Morton Feldman
Morton Feldman was an American composer, born in New York City.A major figure in 20th century music, Feldman was a pioneer of indeterminate music, a development associated with the experimental New York School of composers also including John Cage, Christian Wolff, and Earle Brown...
, Earle Brown
Earle Brown
Earle Brown was an American composer who established his own formal and notational systems...
, and Christian Wolff
Christian Wolff (composer)
Christian G. Wolff is an American composer of experimental classical music.-Biography:Wolff was born in Nice in France to German literary publishers Helen and Kurt Wolff, who had published works by Franz Kafka, Robert Musil, and Walter Benjamin. After relocating to the U.S...
. For his graduation recital, Neuhaus decided to perform Karlheinz Stockhausen's Zyklus
Zyklus
Zyklus für einen Schlagzeuger is a composition by Karlheinz Stockhausen, assigned Number 9 in the composer's catalog of works. It was composed in 1959 at the request of Wolfgang Steinecke as a test piece for a percussion competition at the Darmstadt Summer Courses, where it was premièred on 25...
, a notoriously difficult piece for solo percussion.
Upon his graduation from the Manhattan School, Neuhaus toured the United States with the Contemporary Chamber Ensemble and Pierre Boulez
Pierre Boulez
Pierre Boulez is a French composer of contemporary classical music, a pianist, and a conductor.-Early years:Boulez was born in Montbrison, Loire, France. As a child he began piano lessons and demonstrated aptitude in both music and mathematics...
.Impressed with Neuhaus' performance of Zyklus, Stockhausen invited Neuhaus to perform it during Stockhausen's first American tour in 1963-4. In 1963, Neuhaus began to use feedback as a musical device and used it in a realization of John Cage's open-ended graphic score Fontana Mix. He placed contact mics on percussion instruments placed in front of loudspeakers, allowing the microphones to pick up room sound, feed it back to the mic, and resonate the instrument. Neuhaus' performance consisted of setting up the equipment and modulating the amplification of the channels. Neuhaus' performance of the piece not only pioneered the use of feedback in music but was also among the first instances of what would come to be known as "live electronic music."
In 1964, Neuhaus' made his solo debut at Carnegie Recital Hall. The same year, supported by a Rockefeller Grant, he served as artist-in-residence at the University of Chicago
University of Chicago
The University of Chicago is a private research university in Chicago, Illinois, USA. It was founded by the American Baptist Education Society with a donation from oil magnate and philanthropist John D. Rockefeller and incorporated in 1890...
. Neuhaus won the Young Concert Artists International Auditions in 1965 which led to a Europe tour as a percussion soloist in 1965-66. In 1968 he recorded his solo percussion repertoire on Electronics and Percussion: Five Realizations by Max Neuhaus, an LP released by Columbia Masterworks under the direction of fellow experimental composer David Behrman
David Behrman
David Behrman is a US composer and the producer of Columbia Records' Music of Our Time series. He was also a founding member of the Sonic Arts Union. He toured with the Merce Cunningham Dance Company and has worked with Ben Neill. He was a part of Robert Ashley's Music with Roots in the Aether...
. The record's cover featured a bare-chested Neuhaus surrounded by percussion equipment, amplifiers, and electronics. With this release, Neuhaus, then only 28, bade farewell to percussion and to live performance.
Neuhaus went on to pioneer artistic activities outside conventional cultural contexts and began to realize sound works anonymously in public places, developing art forms of his own. Neuhaus' initial foray into this practice was a project titled Listen!, which extended Cage's idea that environmental sound could be heard as music. Neuhaus would invite audiences to a venue, stamp their hands with the word "listen," and then take them on a tour of local urban and industrial soundscapes. Utilizing his sense of sound and people's reactions to it gained after fourteen years as a musician, he began to make sound works which were neither music nor events and coined the term 'sound installation' to describe them. In these works without beginning or end, the sounds were placed in space rather than in the ordinary time frame of the musical composition. Starting from the premise that our sense of place depends on what we hear, as well as on what we see, he utilized a given social and aural context as a foundation to build a new perception of place with sound. With the realization of these non-visual artworks for museums in America and Europe, he became the first to extend sound as an autonomous medium into the field of contemporary art.
He continued his activities in music with his Networks or Broadcast Works, virtual architectures which act as forums open to anyone for the evolution of new musics. In the first Public Supply in 1966, he combined a radio station with the telephone network and created a two-way public aural space
Aural space
Aural space is a term sometimes used by soundscape designers to describe moments when listeners are hearing a space - that is, a lack of noticeable sound...
twenty miles in diameter encompassing New York City, where any inhabitant could join a live dialogue with sound by making a phone call. Later, in 1977 with Radio Net, he formed a nationwide network with 190 radio stations. In one of his latest projects, Auracle (2004), he constructs a twenty-four hour a day global entity for live interaction with sound over the Internet.
In his Moment works,http://www.max-neuhaus.info/soundworks/vectors/moment/ a series of large scale sound works for whole communities, he utilizes the cessation of sound to create a periodic sense of silence throughout the community, both marking time and creating reflective moments. The most recent of these is a commission from the Dia Art Foundation for the Dia:Beacon Museum in Beacon, New York.http://www.diaart.org/exhibs_b/neuhaus/timepiecebeacon/
Over the last four decades of his life, he created a large number of sound works for various environments, including permanent works in the United States (Times Square
Times Square
Times Square is a major commercial intersection in the borough of Manhattan in New York City, at the junction of Broadway and Seventh Avenue and stretching from West 42nd to West 47th Streets...
in New York
New York
New York is a state in the Northeastern region of the United States. It is the nation's third most populous state. New York is bordered by New Jersey and Pennsylvania to the south, and by Connecticut, Massachusetts and Vermont to the east...
and the Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago
Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago
The Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago is a contemporary art museum near Water Tower Place in downtown Chicago in Cook County, Illinois, United States. The museum, which was established in 1967, is one of the world's largest contemporary art venues...
) and Europe (CAPC Musée d'Art Contemporain, Bordeaux
Bordeaux
Bordeaux is a port city on the Garonne River in the Gironde department in southwestern France.The Bordeaux-Arcachon-Libourne metropolitan area, has a population of 1,010,000 and constitutes the sixth-largest urban area in France. It is the capital of the Aquitaine region, as well as the prefecture...
, France; the AOK Building, Kassel
Kassel
Kassel is a town located on the Fulda River in northern Hesse, Germany. It is the administrative seat of the Kassel Regierungsbezirk and the Kreis of the same name and has approximately 195,000 inhabitants.- History :...
, Germany; the Castello di Rivoli, Museo d'Arte Contemporanea, Italy; and the Kunsthaus Graz
Kunsthaus Graz
The Kunsthaus Graz, Grazer Kunsthaus, or Graz Art Museum was built as part of the European Capital of Culture celebrations in 2003 and has since become an architectural landmark in Graz, Austria...
, Austria), along with numerous short-term works in museums and exhibitions (the Museum of Modern Art
Museum of Modern Art
The Museum of Modern Art is an art museum in Midtown Manhattan in New York City, on 53rd Street, between Fifth and Sixth Avenues. It has been important in developing and collecting modernist art, and is often identified as the most influential museum of modern art in the world...
, the Whitney Museum of American Art
Whitney Museum of American Art
The Whitney Museum of American Art, often referred to simply as "the Whitney", is an art museum with a focus on 20th- and 21st-century American art. Located at 945 Madison Avenue at 75th Street in New York City, the Whitney's permanent collection contains more than 18,000 works in a wide variety of...
, and the Clocktower in New York City; ARC, Musée d'Art Moderne de la Ville de Paris, the Centre National d'Art Contemporain, Grenoble
Grenoble
Grenoble is a city in southeastern France, at the foot of the French Alps where the river Drac joins the Isère. Located in the Rhône-Alpes region, Grenoble is the capital of the department of Isère...
, France; the Kunsthalle Basel
Basel
Basel or Basle In the national languages of Switzerland the city is also known as Bâle , Basilea and Basilea is Switzerland's third most populous city with about 166,000 inhabitants. Located where the Swiss, French and German borders meet, Basel also has suburbs in France and Germany...
and the Kunsthalle Bern, Switzerland; Documenta
Documenta
documenta is an exhibition of modern and contemporary art which takes place every five years in Kassel, Germany. It was founded by artist, teacher and curator Arnold Bode in 1955 as part of the Bundesgartenschau which took place in Kassel at that time...
6 and 9, Kassel, Germany; and the Venice Biennale
Venice Biennale
The Venice Biennale is a major contemporary art exhibition that takes place once every two years in Venice, Italy. The Venice Film Festival is part of it. So too is the Venice Biennale of Architecture, which is held in even years...
, Italy), and numerous one-person exhibitions of his drawings.
His interests were diverse. He designed the sound generation and projection systems which realized his work, himself. He originated new concepts of aural urban design, and utilized his knowledge of sound technology and the psychology of sound to design a more humane and safer set of sounds for emergency vehicles. He began a ten-volume series of retrospective books on his oeuvre with the publication of Max Neuhaus: Sound Works, vols. I-III (Ostfildern-Stuttgart: Cantz, 1994).