Uploaded July 2026 | Updated September 2026, 2 weeks ago
Phases (for Edgard Varèse) (1963)
With “Phases”, Tenney returned to the use of trajectories for means and ranges of parametric values, including note duration, amplitude, amplitude modulation rate and filter bandwidth, and the upper limit of frequency spectra. The shape of change for each parameter is sinusoidal, but the sinusoids are of different frequencies and phases, so that a kind of formal counterpoint is heard between the salient musical parameters of the work. “Phases” also incorporates some significant timbral and formal extensions to Tenney’s own compositional software. By using a more continuous range of modulation values, the distinction between noise and pitch is blurred.
In “Phases”, the computer makes statistical decisions at three levels: the “clang” level (groups of lowest level events), the “sequence” level (groups of “clangs”), and the “segment” level (groups of sequences). In this work, Tenney is using the computer to help create a highly complex structure.
In “The Early Works of James Tenney”, I said that “’Phases’ is the most beautiful and interesting of the works of this period. It is impossible to describe the ungainly, almost other-worldly effect that it has, but often seems as if it were not composed by either man or machine, but by some goblin-hybrid of the two. It remains, as well, one of the strangest and least accessible of Tenney’s compositions, as it seems to exist for its own purposes entirely.” It now seems to me that much of Tenney’s extraordinary recent instrumental music (“Bridge, “Changes“, “Rune”, and other works) has a great deal in common, aesthetically and formally, with this important early work, especially in the uncompromising sonorities and almost mystical adherence to simple formal principles that generate complex and surprising musics. --Larry Polansky
“Phases” was first released on “Musicworks” cassette #27. This version was digitally remastered from the original analog tapes.
Art by Andriy Bludov
Phases (for Edgard Varèse) (1963)
With “Phases”, Tenney returned to the use of trajectories for means and ranges of parametric values, including note duration, amplitude, amplitude modulation rate and filter bandwidth, and the upper limit of frequency spectra. The shape of change for each parameter is sinusoidal, but the sinusoids are of different frequencies and phases, so that a kind of formal counterpoint is heard between the salient musical parameters of the work. “Phases” also incorporates some significant timbral and formal extensions to Tenney’s own compositional software. By using a more continuous range of modulation values, the distinction between noise and pitch is blurred.
In “Phases”, the computer makes statistical decisions at three levels: the “clang” level (groups of lowest level events), the “sequence” level (groups of “clangs”), and the “segment” level (groups of sequences). In this work, Tenney is using the computer to help create a highly complex structure.
In “The Early Works of James Tenney”, I said that “’Phases’ is the most beautiful and interesting of the works of this period. It is impossible to describe the ungainly, almost other-worldly effect that it has, but often seems as if it were not composed by either man or machine, but by some goblin-hybrid of the two. It remains, as well, one of the strangest and least accessible of Tenney’s compositions, as it seems to exist for its own purposes entirely.” It now seems to me that much of Tenney’s extraordinary recent instrumental music (“Bridge, “Changes“, “Rune”, and other works) has a great deal in common, aesthetically and formally, with this important early work, especially in the uncompromising sonorities and almost mystical adherence to simple formal principles that generate complex and surprising musics. --Larry Polansky
“Phases” was first released on “Musicworks” cassette #27. This version was digitally remastered from the original analog tapes.
Art by Andriy Bludov
