Dika Newlin, in and out of recital

The University of North Texas Digital Library has made available some materials relating to the singular Dika Newlin, who began her musical career as a child-prodigy student of Schoenberg and ended as a punk-rock performance artist, with many notable publications, provocations, and pedagogical achievements in between. Especially striking is a 1972 recital that begins somewhat normally, with an eclectic grouping of Joplin, Feldman, and Ives; ventures into the electronic-experimental, with works by Julia Morrison and Newlin herself; and finally leaps into the absurd, with a pseudo-Babbitty lecture on "Serial Music" and a rendition of Cage's 4'33" that goes completely off the rails. Broken chords, Newlin tells us, are "non-simultaneous simultaneities."