Sound Against Music

Abstract

The Judson generation of artists (Rainer, Forti, Childs, Paxton, and others) introduced a conceptual distinction between music and sound that amounted to a soft critique of the institution of music. Dance in the 1960s was a fitting site for this critique due to the generative work of John Cage and the increasingly widespread availability of the technological means for working with sound. These two conditions undermined the institutionalization of musical expertise and opened up the field to amateurs from other disciplines.