The John Cageblog

Some comments re: Finnegans Wake

2008-07-16T23:37:00.002-04:00

Time flies when you don't have recordings to review! However, over the course of this past May and June I did do something Cage-related...I read Finnegans Wake. I can see why he enjoyed it so much, and I feel the same way as Cage states in the introduction to "Alphabet," that I don't understand any of it. Even when I recognized phrases or puns or whatnot,, it was only as that--a reference, but devoid of useful context. Had I not bothered to read the introduction in the book, I wouldn't have likely even realized it was supposed to be about someone dreaming until the end when a motif of "Wake!" is seen over and over again.

I particularly enjoyed making notes of the points at which Cage-related words occur in the text, such as "Roaratorio." I also surprisingly recognized other musical names, including "Fadograph of a Yestern Scene" which I think was used for a piece by...Samuel Barber? I can't remember, but the net says I am right.

In terms of my Cage experience I think the experience of reading Joyce's book most reminded me of Cage's radio works--where incomprehensible static is punctuated by occasional fragmentary recognizable music and sounds and human voices.

I couldn't help, though, but note that almost all of the references I've seen elsewhere came from the very beginning or the end of the book! Not that I blame anyone...those are the most pleasing to read. There's a large section towards the middle of the book full of tight encyclopedia style text with meaningless footnotes that is far beyond anything else in the book in its impenetrable obscurity.

I was reminded when I read it of John Barton Wolgamot's In Sara Mencken, Christ and Beethoveen there were men and women, used in a composition by Robert Ashley. It features a large number of repetitions of the same sentence, changing only the names of historical persons in the sentence. The difference is that when I read through Wolgamot's text, there's the implication that I should be able to make the connections he makes, even though some are totally obtuse ("Hemingway" precedes "Keats" because "Earnest" sounds like "Urn") and impossible to decipher without a key. I also read David Jones' In Parenthesis shortly after finishing the Wake. It's an epic poem of World War I, and also features mountains of references, though from much more narrow sources, and I was upset because the author actually demanded that I read all his annoying footnotes!

By contrast, when I read Finnegans Wake, just reading it seemed sufficient; I did not feel like I needed to delve in to understand what, if any, connections there are between its words, and just hearing the words (I read a lot of it out loud) was sufficient.

So I'm glad I read it. Now I will understand Cage better when he discusses Joyce elsewhere in his interviews and writings and so on! One thing is very curious to me: Joyce mentions television all the time in the Wake. But it was written in the 30's. Wasn't it a pretty experimental device at the time? Surprising.

Variations VII

2008-05-18T20:47:00.003-04:00

So Experiments in Arts and Technology along with ARTPIX have begun releasing a series of documentaries on 9 Evenings, a series of artistic collaborations between dancers, musicians, visual artists and engineers from Bell Labs. One of them is some video and audio from a performance of John Cage's Variations VII. The basic premise is that lots of sounds are piped into a sound system, but with the limitation that all the sounds must be produced at the instance of performance.

I could go on and on, much like the documentary, and describe the multitude of sources of sounds. However, I don't see much point in that for reasons I'll mention later. The short story is that there are five broad classifications of sources:
1. David Tudor and his electronic control panel with assorted noise generators.
2. Various household with contact microphones (fans, blenders, etc.)
3. Telephone lines to locations including a press room, a water treatment plant, the New York SPCA, a restaurant, and other places around New York.
4. Alvin Lucier's brain
5. A big horn that produces air raid-like siren noises via some electronic device.

I'm uncertain about what's involved in the David Tudor source; it seems he had is own little area where he had a myriad of gadgets attached to generate sound.

The net result of all these sound sources is...well, lots of noises. But they all get collaged into a big barely-differentiated mass of swerving tones and loud ambient grinding noises. The documentary made a big deal of specifying the locations of the various telephone connections, but you can't make out any of them, so who cares?

What's more interesting are the electronics and the sirens, and the amplified items (I assume that's the source of much of the noise). Some of them sound like buzzing, some like intensely miserable grinding, almost like a piledriver being rammed against a steel wall or something. The best way to describe it is that it's similar to some of Einsterzende Neubauten's performances using industrial machines in the early 1980's, except that none of this sound is produced by anything so large, but just through the (shockingly massive) amplification of small sounds.

I'm not sure how much is the contact microphones and how much is under the control of David Tudor's booth. The siren is the most recognizable part of the performance, as it starts everything and you hear it throughout. The 69th Regiment Armory, the location of the performance, is intensely resonant so that everything seems louder and denser than it might have in another location.

The videos of the performance and the stories told by various participants in the documentary are interesting. However, I don't see much point in listening to the hour-and-a-half sound recording of the performance because it is largely undifferentiated.

If you do listen, I recommend using it as a background to something else. I, for example, cleaned my bathroom! As I write this, the performance just ended (very abruptly, during some applause).

Everything seems oddly silent now...

Sounds of Venice

2008-05-13T21:52:00.002-04:00

Well, it's been more than a year since my last post here, and what a year it's been! Or something like that, anyway. I got a job, moved to Kentucky, and finished another yearlong blogging project on a video game series. But in the meantime I need to catch up on plenty of new Cage recordings. Or, at least a few. I was inspired to this blog by the copy of Variations VII I picked up (to my surprise) at the local music store. But I'll probably save that for a future entry. I also need to write about One11, the Cage film, which conveniently enough comes with a performance of 103, one which I hope is actually performed according to the score, unlike the Asphodel CD.

I also need to buy the Mode with the first performance of Three, as well as the upcoming Il Treno recording, which is hopefully far superior to the obscure cassette in some Italian library in Florence that I still haven't gotten hold of!

Sounds of Venice
This is the first and only recording, on the Antes label, of a Water Walk-like work performed by Cage on the Italian quiz show, Lascia O Radoppia, which based on my Google-infused knowledge of Italian is something akin to Nothing or Double.

I like listening to this recording more than I enjoyed listening to Water Walk, just because the emphasis here seems to be more heavily on miscellaneous sounds (of Venice, no less!)--including birds, gondolier recordings, occasional bursts of music from a radio, a telephone, and what is supposedly a cat meowing, but what I swear sounds like a human just saying "meow." It does a pretty good job of capturing the sensation of what I imagine being in Venice would be like, and I don't feel as much is lost by losing the visual aspect as I feel is lost in the case of Music Walk and other performance art.

Telephones and Birds
I confess I don't have any idea what inspired this recording, because I'm not German--unlike the entirety of the liner notes! In any case, Telephones and Birds is a mixture of recordings of bird calls and telephone calls to various numbers that provide automated responses not requiring a response from the dialer. Alternation between these occur based on decisions made using instructions in the score.

It's a pretty oddball work, but entertaining. I can't quite decide why Cage chose the combination of recorded birds with telephone recordings. Since this was made in Germany, obviously the phone numbers dialed were not the ones envisioned by Cage, which may not exist anymore anyway, and I am not sure what the messages are saying...though one is obviously a phone sex hotline! I suppose you could say that birds enjoy sitting on phone lines, and therefore the combination makes sense. Yet I think that's probably a stretch! The performers, Zeitkratzer, make a point of recording the sound of the phone being dialed, which is pretty need.

The disc itself is tilted, The Force of Negation but I don't see the negation involved in the Cage piece--Except maybe in that familiar three-tone sequence indicating a failed telephone call, one of my favorite sounds, which is heard frequently towards the end of the recording. Th liner notes don't prove helpful, and don't even seem to mention Cage.

My favorite part of the disc, though, has to be the cover of Throbbing Gristle's Hamburger Lady, but that's the subject for someone else's blog!

It's good to be back! I hope someone is still paying attention :-)

Song Books

2007-02-13T21:20:00.000-05:00

I have often wondered why certain of Cage's Solos for Voice have been recorded while others have not. To answer that question I've authored a web page describing all of the Solos, based on the published score. I believe there are books and a thesis on the subject, but I don't think there are any other details about the piece on the web. Enjoy:

Guide to Cage's Song Books

By Request!

2007-02-07T17:25:00.000-05:00

Someone in comments recently requested the cummings poem that Cage set in Forever and Sunsmell.  Here it is.  Words actually present in the music are bold; those not bold were omitted by Cage.

      wherelings whenlings
      (daughters of ifbut offspring of hopefear
      sons of unless and children of almost)
      never shall guess the dimension of
      him whose
      each
      foot likes the
      here of this earth
      whose both
      eyes
      love
      this now of the sky
      --endlings of isn’t
      shall never
      begin
      to begin to
      imagine how (only are shall be were
      dawn dark rain snow rain
      -bow &
      a
      moon
      ‘s whis-
      per
      in sunset
      or thrushes toward dusk among whippoorwills or
      tree field rock hollyhock forest brook chickadee
      mountain.  Mountain)
      whycoloured worlds of because do
      not stand against yes which is built by
      forever & sunsmell
      (sometimes a wonder
      of wild roses
      sometimes)
      with north
      over
      the barn

The song also repeats several sections, particularly “foot likes the here of this earth.”

Postcard from Heaven

2007-01-02T01:24:00.000-05:00

Today I wrap up a few recordings that were left undone from last year—namely Eight and the items from “A Cage of Saxophones II.” Reportedly there will be another disc of saxophone music, but this seems surprising to me because I’m not sure what is left to perform for that instrument!  Also in this update is a review of ArpaViva’s first release, Postcard from Heaven, a work for harps that I had looked forward to hearing for a long time.
I also have the Cage movie One11 to review once I manage to go through it all.  I invited my mom to join me, but after a description of its content (changing patterns of light for 90 minutes) she refused and commented, “That sounds even worse that the one where he sits at a piano and doesn’t play anything for three minutes.”  Sigh.
     I now also have updated versions of the two unrecorded and unowned works lists, as well as a new index page featuring recent reviews and recording links.  I think the only 2006 releases I have yet to review at this point are two German releases—Telephones and Birds and Sounds of Venice which I have thus far been unable to buy.  Keep an eye out for them.
     In other news, I finally defended my Master’s thesis and am now once more hunting for a job, and in the meantime living at home.  I’m not sure what to do with these pages aside from continue the reviews as new releases emerge.   I had thoughts originally of compiling them into a more browse-able form.  One possibility is to use the idea of the “CageMap” and create a series of web pages of discussions of individual works, with each page linking to works of a similar nature; then, the index of pages and their links would be something like the CageMap I had initially envisioned.

Solo with Obbligato Accompaniment of Two Voices in Canon and Six Short Inventions on the Subject of the Solo
This piece from 1934 features one of Cage’s most longwinded titles, outdone only by But What About the Noise....  From the date, it’s clear it was written early in his career and shares many of the characteristics of the early music.  Specifically, it is plodding and pretty dull.  This performance is on saxophones, and in many of these early works I wonder if the instruments are left unspecified on purpose, or if the music was written primarily as an abstract exercise without much intention of performance.  The latter thought I reject because Cage always said his goal was performance, but these might predate that decision.
The music is melodic, of a sort, in that there are no sharp leaps from place to place, but very dissonant.  To my ear there is little sense of cooperation among the instruments, and frankly the “solo” section seems like an unending stair-step pattern that refuses to attract my attention.  The inventions have some degree of character.  The second is very brief and lively, while the third has a wistful, emotionally evocative character not normal in Cage’s music, as does the fifth to some degree.

Composition for Three Voices
     Musical titles do not come much more vague than this item from 1934.  According to johncage.info’s sources, this is another abstract piece which focuses on keeping rows of notes as far apart as possible.  The use of three voices doesn’t add too much to the music, and it was evidently hard to choose three instruments which would not inhibit one another in performance, and there doesn’t seem to be much intentional interplay between them.  I would describe it as boring mid-century atonal chamber music.  This was performed on the unusual combination of saxophone, accordion and cello.

Eight
Eight it a winds-only piece from 1991 for trumpet, clarinet, flute, trombone, horn, clarinet and tuba.  The exclusive use of winds makes it interesting, and gives it the same “sunlight” feel that I have noted in other wind-heavy number pieces; it seems as if this could be used as music in a desert scene in a movie, or anything featuring a glaring sun.  It follows the conventions I am used to in number pieces—short but rare bursts of single instruments, long but quiet tones from one or more.  I find it interesting that the short bursts seem to occur in groups in Eight, almost as if one instrument is responding to another, though it would not amaze me if this is an illusion.  Also of interest are a few occurrences of non-isolated tones in which instruments play multiple instances of the same tone in succession.  Still, beyond that, this is not a very distinctive number piece.
     My reaction to the music itself has been positive overall.  I like dense number pieces, but paradoxically I also have thing for silence.  In this case, there are no long stretches without sound, but plenty of long stretches with multiple instruments interacting in slowly evolving patterns.  Wind instruments are especially interesting in such long stretches because I am amazed at the players’ ability to keep on going.  It’s also fun to hear how subtle changes in breath (or in a few cases what I am guessing was loss of breath) can effect the music.  In the end, Eight is an enjoyable listen, but it doesn’t really go beyond its many similar relatives in Cage’s late works.

A Postcard for Heaven
     Being a fan of the harp, I have been eager to hear a recording of this 1982 piece for harp for a long time.  Victoria Jordanova gives an excellent performance in its only recording (so far).  I am a little skeptical of some aspects of this performance, though.  Cage specified that the strings should be vibrated using a particular electronic device, but such devices apparently don’t work as required and the same effect was produced using other means.  Also, there is an option for vocal performance by the harpist, but in this recording the voices are provided by someone else.  There is also overdubbing of different sections—a reasonable strategy in Cage’s work, but one which seems to me to be used a bit too often.
     Anyway, those concerns are pretty minor, and what is important is the sound, which I find very attractive.  After listening to the number pieces, I have always felt that the ethereal nature of the harp would make for a great instrument to use in that style.  This obviously predates the number pieces, but in its slow-moving, almost lonely texture it seems to have something in common with the ones for a few instruments.  In particular, I like the fact that I paired it with Eight in this review.  It can be distinguished from other number pieces by its use of repeated musical phrases in what seems to be an echoing pattern.  The vocal parts are simply slight “ahhh” sounds superimposed over the harp performance, and sound angelic, although I think they could be removed with no ill effects (they are optional in the score).  This music is quite beautiful and emphasize the facility with which Cage makes use of different resources to great effect.  It’s bizarre that no one had tackled it in the form of a recording until now.

Two3

2006-11-10T05:21:00.000-05:00

As I type, I am sitting outside my house in Alabama, enjoying this new OgreOgress recording Glenn was kind enough to send me recently.  I apologize for not updating lately—Reviewing the books was much more challenging than reviewing the music (with the music, I can listen and write immediate reactions; with the books I had to re-read multiple times to remember enough!).

This blog is not exactly conducive to a CD review because I am organized by piece of music.  As a result, I will talk about everything but Two3 up here, and talk about Two3 below.  This recording of Inlets is a better listen than the previously recorded version by Hêlios, simply because the balancing makes every detail of the bubbling conch shells audible, as is that wonderful snapping and flaming noise associated with the burning pinecone.  The conch-shell horn seems to fit in much better this way.  I think Inlets is one of my favorite Cage works.  It seems just so very natural, or “imitative of nature in its manner of operation” as I think Cage said music ought to be.

Two4 has never been my favorite Cage work, as I think I have something against the solo strings (although I do like the near competition between the sho sound and the violin sound when they play simultaneously).  I should probably review the version for violin and piano sometime.

Two3
This is the first solo recording of this music, which is for sho and conch shells.  The shells are filled with water, and in typical Cage fashion they are tipped to produce sound, or not, as they are indeterminate in their sound-producing ability.  The sho is the Japanese wind instrument featured previously in a discussion of Two4.  This is the first time Two3 has been recorded as such.  One9 is the same work, minus the conch sells, and has been recorded in combination with 108 and in a transcription(?) for accordion.

The recording I am hearing is a complete performance of the entire work, and thus it continues for two full hours, with no particular change or drama or conclusion.  It just continues until it doesn’t continue anymore.  I prefer that phrase to saying it “stops,” simply because the latter word implies some sort of finality, whereas hear you feel the potential for the music to continue forever (especially if you have been listening for two hours already...) but it doesn’t.

The sound of the sho is all in the treble range, but it is not especially loud.  The conch shells, well, they are barely there.  In the first half hour I heard about four different blurp noises.  This makes the conch sounds more surprising when they do occur, almost like a shock.  On the first one, I actually jumped.  However, an advantage of the low presence of shell noises is that I can load up my sound editor, delete all the conch shells, and save it as a new set of files called One9 :-) At least until someone records One9 on its own, anyway...

The overall texture is not exactly sparse, because when sound events do occur they are not as  brief as the events in any of the time-bracket piano works.  The sho distinguishes itself from the strings and brass involved in number pieces by having little or no intensity or power—The horns and violins and whatnot seem to have a strength to them that demands your attention, whereas I find the sho to be more ethereal and not particularly concerned with whether I listen to it or not.  This ties in with my perception of the piece not ever seeming to have a stopping point.

Silence, Part 2

2006-07-14T18:31:00.000-04:00

As expected, I have been pretty inefficient with getting my reading and comments done.  It’s been like 3 weeks, hasn’t it?  In any case, here are my comments on the next two essays, which are quite similar.

Experimental Music
In this essay Cage proveds a description of what he means by experimental music, and offers some more prophesies about the future direction of his (at least) musical output.  In particular, he says that music should merge with theater, which pretty well describes the direction he took in the 60’s, with the Variations series and other works.

Probably the most interesting part of the essay was his description of how the new (in 1958) ideas grew out of the freedom allowed by tape music—time was notated in space, because tape has so many inches per second; scales are abandoned or replaced because tape can record any sound and be modified in a continuous fashion electronically to any other sound.  Interestingly, he added morphology to the usual list of the characteristics of sound (timbre, pitch, duration, loudness), which I suppose is just a description of transition of the other characteristics over time.

Curiously, Cage really talks up the ability to generate sounds of any pitch and continuously move through them, without relying on the stair steps of scales, but he made little use of microtonal composition directly in his music.  I suppose he was more interested in the noise side of things.

I don’t quite comprehend his argument that any sound can be produced given, at a minimum, two tape recorders and one disc recorder. First, I don’t understand the significance of the disc recorder.  Second, he says any sound can be re-recorded with modifications from filters and circuits, but you certainly need all the filters and circuits in addition to the recorders!  I am also not confident in his assertion that tape manipulation through splicing and transformation of waveforms through electronic means are equivalent, either.

Experimental Music: Doctrine
This is largely the same discussion as the last essay, but in a different style, including a hypothetical “question and answer” session with Cage.  Most interesting is the final question and its curious response:

Question: But seriously, if this is what music is, then I could write it as well as you
Answer: Have I said anything that would lead you to think I thought you were stupid?

I am not certain how to take that.  The question is the usual criticism of Cage’s music, that it is too easy to write and that anyone could do it, although hardly anyone does.

The brief stories between the two essays were memorable.  One reminds us that the best way to get ideas is to do something boring, which I do quite often.  The other I never understood.  It is also recorded on the Indeterminacy CD set.  Cage describes moving to New York with only a a few dimes, and calling Max Ernst, who had previously invited them to live at he and Peggy Guggenheim’s home.  According to Cage, Ernst did not recognize his voice and asked if he wanted cocktails for some reason.  Cage told his wife what happened, and called again, at which point he was recognized.  This is rather confusing; did he not say, “This is John Cage” or something?

I wish rich people would invite me over for cocktails if I called them up at random, whether or not it is done in jest...

Silence, Part 1

2006-06-28T04:39:00.000-04:00

I have decided maybe a fun way to expand this blog would be to cover other aspect’s of Cage’s work, so I am going to begin offering my comments on his entire written output.  I’ll be taking a more or less direct route, beginning with the contents of Silence and moving forward in time (in terms of publication, anyway).  I get a little bit confused as to the ordering after M, but it will be quite awhile before I get there so I’m sure I will get clarification before then.  Off the top of my head, the books beyond M are X, I-VI, Empty Words, and a few others I see referenced but whose contents I am uncertain of.  There is also a collection of unpublished Cage out there that I had a copy of once, but I have forgotten the title :-/

My guess is that this may take as much as a year to do; I am busy so I am not going to be posting every day.  But let’s get started:

The Future of Music: Credo

This is a text given as a lecture in 1937.  It is interesting to look back on it and see what Cage “prophesies” were correct and which were not.  The form is a capitalized parageaph interspersed with explanations as particular terms—noise, music, etc. arise.  Cage describes the new opportunities for sound exploration allowed by electronic manipulation of recordings.

First off, I agree heartily with his criticism of performers of electronic instruments of his day; I hear many theremin performances that sound just like a glorified violin.  I wonder if Cage had any experience or interaction with the Futurists in Europe at about this time, with their noise boxes.  I know very little about them, but I wonder if this particular text was written as a result of their influence on Cage.

I like his reference to the “portrait of Beethoven repeated 50 times a second” producing a particular sound.  It reminds me of a fairly recent track by the electronic musician Aphex Twin, in which he apparently created a waveform that looks like his face when displayed.  Still, I don’t think Cage would find much of the pop electronic music available today to be interesting, because they still rely heavily on some pretty basic rhythms, and they tend to be so repetitive that they don’t hold my interest for long.

With respect to the 12-tone system, I did not realize it was intended as being “analogous to a society in which the emphasis is on the group...”  I always thought it was a way of democratizing the sound field, or making each tone equally important on its own.  I also don’t feel that percussion music has taken off as Cage predicted, although my view is limited.  I went to a concert of the percussion ensemble here at Virginia Tech, and most of the compositions were completely obscure and had never been recorded (which is the basic measure of the popularity of music these days).

I think the most basic thing Cage missed in his prophesy of the future was the complete dominance of the music recording.  I know the idea of, for example, an opera repertory did not exist until pretty recently (no one wanted to hear the old stuff), and I think recordings are partially to blame for the decline of interest in new music—Why take a chance on something new when you can listen to great things made before?   It doesn’t help that the new music can be quite challenging to someone who is used to clear, determinant forms, hum-able melodies and tap-able rhythms.

Indeterminacy Stories
Cage’s quick little stories are always charming, especially those from his childhood, as they usually are about events anyone can relate to.  This set also features a tounge-in-cheek take on Zen enlightenment as a means to avoid suicide.

The story I’d like to highlight is one in which Cage is embarrassed at hearing a crappy opera performance at someone’s house, in spite of his willingness to admit noises and other non-idealities into performances.  If a truck outside is not an interruption to a piano piece, why is a bad performance an interruption?  Or maybe it is only music that was intended to be open to outside sounds that should be considered not interrupted by those sounds?   Perhaps in Cage’s view music should be performed the way it was intended to be performed, so a truck passing by in a symphony would be no good, much as Cage could get very upset when performers failed to follow the instructions in his music.

As a side note, I used to hate Glenn Gould’s humming and his squeaky chair in many of his recordings.  Now I like it, and that might be a Cagean influence on me.

Cage, Mode, Stockhausen,&c

2006-06-18T00:34:00.000-04:00

So Mode is apparently planning several more saxophone discs.  I’m not sure there is any Cage saxophone music left to record.  Will these be transcriptions, or maybe recordings of all the open-instrumentation works.  It should be interesting, in any case.  Reviews of the latest recordings coming soon-ish.

Sometime soon I should have a job, and my first vacation will probably be a pilgrimage to New Yok City, to visit a friend in school there and also to visit the enormous Cage collection at the library.  I would like to find references to some of the poorly documented works out there, so I can add those to this site, even though they wil not, strictly speaking, be reviews of listening experiences.

www.classical.net could use a Cage page.  I wrote one three years ago but never submitted it; maybe I will revise it and send it in.  I swear they chose the photo of Cage that makes him look the most like a mad scientist.  Also, they have a little star by “songs” under Cage’s name.  Surely they don’t mean At East and Ingredients!  Maybe Song Books...which is one of several pieces I never heard due o its unavailability.  But even Stockhausen has a page on that site, and Cage’s lack of one seems unfair.

Speaking of our German friend, I am contemplating a Stockhausen blog. I figure it would be on a different site, with a different but still boring color scheme.  There are pros and cons to such a plan:
Pros

All his works are on recordings order-able from the same place

I like electronic music and he’s got an enormous amount of it

He’s alive, so I can imagine someone mentioning my blog to him, and him saying “Hmm” in a disinterested manner. This would make me smile.

Cons:

His catalog is pretty damned confusing. I don’t know if I want to hear an opera recording, and then also a whole bunch of parts of the opera too.

The prices are absolutely insane.

I figure I could buy all 80 CD’s for somewhere around $3000.  Once I am earning an income again, I figure I can just quit eating and/or live in my car until I save that up.

This sort of medium is great for recent composers, because they didn’t write all that much music compared to the older guys, and almost every work is very unique.  Imagine, say, a Haydn blog.  Once you got to the 80th baryton trio, what will you have left to say?

Now I’m going to go find out if anyone has a Haydn blog.  Goodnight!

Chess Pieces

2006-05-12T03:36:00.000-04:00

Well, as promised here are my reviews of the new pieces on the Chess Pieces and Works for Percussion 4 discs.  I’ve preordered Works for Saxophone 2 and Eight-Two-One5 from Amazon, and they should arrive by the end of next week (I hope).

Chess Pieces
This is an obscure work from 1944, which is written on a chessboard and was submitted to an art show, then purchased.  It was recently “rediscovered,” although I’m not really clear how it could have been lost in the first place—it’s known, and it couldn’t have been that challenging to look up who bought it.

The music is pretty straightforward, and I impressed myself by being able to follow portions of the score printed on the CD cover.  The liner notes describe the music as being a different piece for each square of the board, but on looking at the score it’s clear that many bars overlap different squares.  Thus it’s easiest to think of it as one relatively lengthy piano piece, usually with one dominant melodic line in the high notes, and the bass notes merely providing either additional color or rhythmic accompaniment.  The work has a pretty consistent “flavor” throughout: several bars of melody on one line, followed by more dramatic, loud sections.  It’s pretty simple stuff, with a focus on the “pretty.”

As a side note, I like Tan’s interpretation.  It’s annoying when people play Cage’s early work with the same sort of outlook that one might apply to, say, Music of Changes.  That leads to things like decidedly un-jazzy interpretations of Jazz Study.  Tan approaches this collection of straightforward melodies with a directness that is appealing.

Four Dances [What so proudly we hail]
This is a work for piano (with a few seemingly prepared tones) assorted percussion instruments from 1942.

The first dance actually sounds pretty dancable, and I swear the piano plays like a banjo might in some sort of hoe down.  The second dance begins with some strummings of the piano strings, and a bit of moaning.  Even non-strummed notes appear to be either plucked or are prepared.  A fairly generic fast rhythm is played on some drums before the moaning/singing resumes.  The third dance is primarily a set of fairly staccato and forceful piano rhythms.  The final dance consists of jazzy piano, claps and lyricless vocals, followed by more jazzy-ragtimish piano.

It sounds basically like a mix of other piano and ‘home performance’ percussion music Cage was doing at the time.

Cage Trends

2006-05-11T13:09:00.000-04:00

My discs arrived today, so I’ll post thoughts on Chess Pieces and the percussion works quite soon, probably this evening.

In the meantime, I’ve had a lot of fun experimenting with Google Trends, which plots popularity of search terms, and names of various composers.

It seems John Cage and Stockhausen get pretty decent results, and are quite similar to each other and with Philip Glass.  Cage beat out both except during early 2005 for some reason.  Other related composers barely even register or do not show up at all—Xenakis, La Monte Young, Morton Feldman...Cage also beats out the search term “Schoenberg.”

Sadly, most other composers do surpass Cage in popularity, but by less than one might suspect.  Chopin, Strauss, Schubert, Bach, Beethoven and Mozart all of course are well above Cage, but Cage is just about on part with Rachmaninov, and not too far below Brahms, Liszt, and Grieg.

In terms of locations, Cage had a lot of searches from Norway for some reason, with the USA coming in 8th.  However, NYC was far away the most popular city from which searches for Cage were run.  Schoenberg is also most popular in NYC, although in terms of region, it was the Philippines (!?!?) that saw the most searches.

In the meantime...

2006-05-07T21:14:00.000-04:00

Well the new reviews shall be pushed back awhile because I accidentally gave the wrong billing information, so now I’ll be waiting awhile longer. In the meantime, here’s another site I bumped into a few years ago:

http://www.sinologic.com/newmusic/stockhausen.html

Someone sent Stockhausen a bunch of music from electronic musicians, and he offers his thoughts, and the musicians reply. Aphex Twin asking whether Stockhausen danced made me smile.

New Discs Soon

2006-04-30T01:58:00.000-04:00

I finally purchased two new Cage discs—the new Percussion Works disc and the Chess Pieces disc.  It took me awhile to find them for a decent price without excessive shipping charges; I still have not found such a situation for the disc with Eight on it.  There’s also a new recording of 4’33” out there, one of the few around.  Something to look forward to in the coming week!  I will probably rewrite my old 27’... review since the version on the Percussion Works 4 disc is surely a lot better (apologies that I don’t remember the numbers after the decimal point for that title), and I’ve also heard that Tan’s performance of Sonatas and Interludes is one of the best ever.

I also happened upon the website for the “Positive Music” movement (http://www.dovesong.com/positive_music/movement.asp), the author of which spends a fair amount of time complaining about the “negative” music Cage and Schoenberg.  A key quote:
“My correspondence with John Cage, confirmed my belief that he was more a philosopher and a writer, than a composer.   He was a brilliant and gentle man.
His music was not intended to be meaningful, or moving, or listened to with any seriousness.   Young composers who admire his music, risk deluding themselves, believing there is musical and/or spiritual value--where there is nothing at all.   This was John Cage’s whole point---we create our own perception of value. That philosophy does not often translate into beautiful or lasting music”
Contrary to what the author states, I think “serious” would be among the first words I’d think of when it comes to describing Cage as a composer.  Margaret Leng Tan mentions this in an interview on www.allmusic.com last week, when describing Cage’s straight answers to her joking questions about his music: “...it wasn't that he didn't find my joking about his music funny - he didn't think there was anything funny about the making of music.”
If this were a different website I would comment on the author’s curious belief that  Backsteet Boys are a savior of modern pop music, but that would be too off-topic. :-)

How I Got Here

2006-04-09T04:43:00.000-04:00

If .there were more than about a dozen people that read my blog regularly, I imagine someone would write to me and ask how I got into John Cage in the first place.  I shall pretend someone did this and answer the question tonight.

I first encountered the name John Cage in 2000, when I wrote to a friend, “Do you suppose anyone has ever made an album with a song that is nothing but silence?”  He answered yes and pointed me in the direction of 4’33”.  The impetus for the question was the fact that I had just heard Lou Reed’s “Metal Machine Music” for the first time during my initial year of college, and I was trying to think of every unusual kind of music performance that I could.

A year later I actually broke down and researched Cage a little bit, discovering that nearly every piece of music sounded exciting.  I ordered one of the readily available discs of his music, The Seasons, from Amazon in spring 2002, and over that summer I heard most of the older music for percussion and prepared piano.  The next year, my third year of college, I found Silence in a local bookstore and devoured it; I also purchased M and A Year From Monday, and enjoyed them (albeit less than Silence).

It was awhile before I got into Cage’s later chance-determined performances, but it was a natural outgrowth of an interest in randomness that I already had.  In the fall of 1999 while still in high school, I had an awful lot of free time, so I created a “random activity generator,” which gave me an activity to do from a preset list of about 100.  I also programmed a “random time generator” so that I could plan an entire day of randomly generated activates, although in practice I never actually did this!.  I also used chance for entertainment purchases—one of my favorites was to go to Wal-Mart with the same friend who introduced me to Cage and flip a coin repeatedly until we had chosen some random object to purchase (I believe we found some fishing bait once, a car-mountable reflector once, but I cannot remember any others...).  We also enjoyed driving around downtown Birmingham (Alabama, my hometown) listening to the static on a radio between stations (on the same token I liked to listen to electronic equipment on the radio, listening to the EM fields they generate).

So in a way I guess I was primed to enjoy Cage long before I heard his music!

On another note, I found a lot of entertaining pages and quotes about Cage during my online research concerning his unrecorded works from the 80’s, such as Wishing Well.  In a performance of that work along with others, it, Aria, and Variations I were characterized as “minor pieces,” whose premises could be understood in one listen and which cemented Cage’s reputation as a man with ideas more interesting than his music.  Another author, mentions the humorous (well, probably not at the time!) situation of chatting with Cage, who tells him that his music is “irritating.”  I thought it was especially amusing because Cage often criticized others for not being open to “uninteresting experiences.”  Ah well.

Cage After 1970: Essential?

2006-03-31T02:06:00.000-05:00

So I was thinking about Cage’s output since 1970 again, and decided to show what I’m talking about graphically, by plotting the number of works for each year, 1932-1992 (I did include lost works from the 30’s and 40’s; I did not include some unscored events).

(view the original full size: http://vorlon.cwru.edu/~zwb2/byyear.jpg )
You can obviously see the huge increase in the 80’s and 90’s (obviously the 1992 dot is misleading; Cage completed 11 works by his August 12th death, so I’d project that his output that year would have been 18 works).

However, this graph is not very smooth, and I’d like something more explicit and easier on the eyes. Therefore I made a plot showing each year Cage worked, and the contribution of that year to his total output as a percentage. The result is a monotonically increasing function of the year, and you can relate the year to the percentage of his total output Cage had completed as of that year:
(view the original full size: http://vorlon.cwru.edu/~zwb2/totalworks.jpg )
This leads to an interesting conclusion:

The Cage biographies that ignore Cage’s work after 1969’s HPSCHD are ignoring roughly half of his output.

That is, what I said before about the later work being important too was an understatement. It would be better to say that ignoring work after 1969 is like discussing Bach’s music and not mentioning his cantatas!

January of 2005 I made a series of flashcards in Powerpoint that I had intended to use to mentally cluster Cage’s output (see previous post) by putting the cards in separate piles, grouping similar music together. I never finished the post 1970 stuff, and maybe now would be a good time to do that, since my library here has copious Cage material and I know more than I did then. I’ll see what I come up with.

Clustering Cage

2006-03-28T01:48:00.000-05:00

First, some useless knowledge: John Cage is the 116th most-recorded composer according to Arkivmusic’s count of recordings.  That puts him just above Alessandro Scarlatti and ready to surpass John Phillip Sousa at any moment!  This entertains me far too much.  I won’t be satisfied until he moves up 35 places and unseats CPE Bach! :-D

Some of you may wonder about that “CageMap” link to your left.  My original purpose in designing it was to plot out the relationships between different Cage works on an axis where x refers to the degree to which performance of a work is indeterminate and y refers to the degree to which chance operations was used in the composition process.  I wanted to expand it by color coding based on instrumentation, but I was unable to find an easy way to make those colors work.

So this evening I hit upon another idea.  I dug up my old program from a pattern recognition class that does k-means clustering on n-dimensional data fed into it.  I thought it would be fun to see how an automatic algorithm groups Cage’s output.  As a test, I placed the first 50 works (alphabetically from my index) into a spreadsheet, and rated all 50 on 8 attributes, referring to the indeterminacy and chance operations used (as mentioned) and use of instrument categories: voice, keyboard, strings, winds, percussion and electronics.  The numbers are somewhat arbitrary (for example, solo piano works had a 2 for keyboard and 0 for all else, but prepared piano has a 2 for piano and 2 for percussion).  It is moderately ad-hoc, but I thought the results were sufficiently promising to mention here.

After some testing with variable numbers of clusters, I found that 8 groups produces an interesting result, in that the groupings in my mind seem fairly intuitive.  I have given each group a category name and listed the works included in each of them below:  I’ve put asterisks by the names of groupings that I think will be subsumed into larger groups once all the works are added to the clustering program.

Vocal Music
Alphabet, Apartment House 1776, Aria, ear for EAR

Traditional (more or less) Piano Music
Ad Lib, Cheap Imitation for piano, Chess Pieces, Crete, Dad, Dream, Three Easy Pieces,

Wind Ensemble Music (???)*
Eight, Composition for Three Voices

Percussion Music
Amores, And the Earth Shall Bear Again, A Chant With Claps, The City Wears a Slouch Hat, First Construction, Second Construction, Third Construction, Credo in US, Three Dances, Four Dances, Daughters of the Lonesome Isle, Double Music, Bacchanale, A Book of Music

Orchestral Music
Atlas Eclipticalis, Cheap Imitation for orchestra, Concerto for Piano and Orchestra, Concert for Prepared Piano and Orchestra, Dance/4 Orchestras, Sixteen Dances

Indeterminate Instrumental Music*
The Beatles 1962-1970, Composed Improvisations, ASLSP, Cheap Imitation for violin, Chorals

Indeterminate Performances*
Alla ricarco della silenzio perduto, Branches, But What About the Noise..., Child of Tree

Indeterminate Music with Electronics
Bird Cage, Cartridge Music, A Dip in the Lake (all parts), Electronic Music for Piano

Now, I think if I were to do this for all 246 works in my listing, I will have something akin to the Cage Map (but it may not be quite as pretty) and a thematic catalog to boot.  Cage would probably hate me for it though ;-)  Still, for me I find it easy to think about Cage’s early work (he did serial or serial-like music and worked with percussion ensembles, then invented the prepared piano, then moved into chance compositions and “idea pieces” that became progressively more indeterminate by the late 60s).  But I have a much poorer grasp of Cage’s output after 1970.  Why is this?  Well, the popular discussions in encyclopedias and such ignore post-1970 Cage.  Even his biography, The Roaring Silence, seems to degenerate into a tiring list of Cage’s itinerary during the late 70s, 80s and 90s.  Also, a fair amount of his 80s output is poorly documented and/or unrecorded.  I feel like the threads are there to trace but I am just not seeing them.

I’ll work on this a little more tomorrow evening I hope.  Fortunately for me, this sort of music clustering is directly related to my thesis (except in the thesis I am generating the characteristics from audio files and using a better algorithm) so it’s not quite as useless as my glassy-eyed readers might be thinking ;-)

Music for Wind Instruments

2006-03-26T02:57:00.000-05:00

I really am done now! The Review Index is updated as of the publishing of this. The only gaps left are for works I anticipate buying pretty soon but haven't bought. I am going to gradually incorporate the "unrecorded" section into my Index as well, to encourage people browsing it to make recordings ;-)

Also of note--I have (finally!) gone back and added the reviews for Sonatas and Interludes (and others with it) and a few other 'blank' pages. I'm going backwards in time, finding all the empty spaces, and filling them in.

Anyway, there was another gap I thought I'd filled but didn't so here it is:

Music for Wind Instruments
This is music for some wind instruments, namely a flute, clarinet, basson, oboe and horn. The first movement is a trio that contrasts some melodies from the flute and clarinet with brief grumpy and thrust-like sounds from the bassoon. There is a distinctive call and response pattern between the duo and the bassoon. The oboe and horn go at it alone in the second movement. Actually, they seem mostly to cooperate on some cold modern melodies. The final movement has them all come in! It seems pretty much all staccato, and with very suddent breakouts of each instruments. It's a return to the frantic feel of the first movement. Overall, it's pretty enjoyable for an obscure and fairly slight Cage work.

One2

2006-03-25T03:53:00.000-05:00

Well, I still have a few blank spots on the list that somehow I missed earlier, so I need to fill those in.  I’m excited by all the new Cage releases!  Several first recordings including Four Dances, Composition for Three Voices, Chess Pieces, and Eight.  They all have finally all showed up on Arkivmusic, so I’ll be ordering soon!

Or maybe not, because their shipping fees are just awful.  Amazon will not be getting them in any time soon though, and I would prefer to order them all simultaneously.

Onward!

Freeman Etudes 25 – 32
Considering how much I whine about there, I’m surprised I missed them.  This time for a change of pace I actually tried to use them to help me sleep and, surprisingly, it worked pretty well.  The screeching complaints of the violin as it is tortured do not strike me as relaxing, but somehow the lack of melody or rhythm in the performance made it easy to break that concious focus that keeps me awake.  The only thing I don’t like about these Etudes is that there’s really nothing distinctive about any of them.  I guess I wish Cage had varied the materials subjected to chance operations a little bit—some pieces could have all possible sounds, others would have a more limited range.  That would be much more interesting ‘study’ I think.

One2
I am going from zero information on this one, besides the 1989 date and that it is for piano.  The performance seems more 50’s-like, because I hear the distinct sound of noises from outside the piano, but they do not distract me and do not feel like a gimmick.  Like other early number pieces, it seems to be composed from a wider variety of material choices, including single notes of varying duration and chords (many of the later pieces use primarily long, drawn out single tones).  To be honest, although I am nearly certain the work was composed using chance operations, I have a strong sense of melody when I listen to the music.  Maybe it’s just that I’ve listened to so much of this sort of music that my brain no longer tries to hear normal melodies and every sequence of notes is pleasing, or the style in which it is played simply makes the separate parts work together like magic.  In any case, it’s an effective and affecting performance.

49 Waltzes for the Five Bouroughs
This work from 1977 is a lot like Cage’s other “dance” work, which was for recordings and performances in Chicago.  This one, however, utilizes 147 addresses in New York, which on this Waltz Project record was taken as locations for recordings of waltez.  In general, it sounds pretty much like A Dip in the Lake except that additional music is added on top of the city sounds.  The city sounds themselves also feel a bit more powerful, somehow, in this recording.  The effect is like being enveloped.

I’m not so sure I agree with the music being added to the recordings, though.  It seems to me the reason Cage refers to dances in 49 Waltzes and A Dip in the Lake is that the scattered points on the map might resemble some kind of dance pattern, moving from one location to the other.  I don’t know how choreography works, but this idea came to mind seeing one of the maps.  Either that, or it’s simply an emphasis on the movement needed to get from one location to another in the city.

Reunion
This is a review of the awful quality recording on this site: http://www.toutfait.com/duchamp.jsp?postid=1457&keyword= .

This is an excerpt from a 1968 performance where the output of the sound system is connected to the moves made on a chess board.  I believe the original recording was in sad shape already, and adding to it the awful Quicktime compression artifacts (it sounds like a chicken, frankly) doesn’t do it much good.  That’s too bad because the sounds actually sound pretty cool: lots of birdlike forest noises (think Tudor’s Rainforest—except maybe these are real birds?) along with some ominous low and long tones.  The performance was to suggest the coming together of sound sources.  You can go hear it and judge for yourself.  It seems pretty cool to me.

My concentration on the game would stink with all that racket though ;-)

Dance/4 Orchestras

2006-03-16T03:55:00.000-05:00

OK, OK, so my last entry was like 4 weeks ago or something.  The real world got the better of me!  But here’s a few gaps to be filled in tonight.  There still remains just a few items I had forgotten about, plus reviews of two upcoming discs: Chess Pieces and Works for Percussion 4, featuring 4 Dances.

Dance/4 Orchestras
This is a case of a mysterious file I have but whose origin I cannot remember!  Probably it is a re-encoded version of the Real media file available on the Internet.  I’m a little bit surprised how much I like it!  It was written in 1982 and uses a time bracket notation.  Four orchestras are separated around the performance area, so there is a spatial element to the music that the recording does not represent.  What is most striking is the forceful nature of the music; the instruments seem to play uniformly short notes, and the notes are almost always played simultaneously with other instruments, so there is a forceful, chugging sense to the music.  That’s pretty rare in Cage’s other number works; this music is quite stormy!  The only thing that would make it better is actually being surrounded by the orchestras and hearing them from different locations.

Party Pieces
This is music for nonspecific instrumentation that Cage wrote in collaboration with Lou Harrison and Virgil Thomson.  If you wanted to stretch things you could claim it’s an early exercise in indeterminacy, since each composer would write a bar of music without seeing what the previous person had written save for two notes.  This performance is, I imagine, based on the instrumentation by Robert Hughues although I thought the LP was written before...but perhaps not since apparently the premiere was in 1982!

In this instrumentation, each section (there are 21) is played with a different set of instruments.  In general, each part is very short and follows the tempo markings.  Movements that stick out in my mind are #5, “Slowly yet flowing,” and #6, “Flowing broad,” both of which have a nice pastoral feel, along with #8, “Majestic-broad.” I would say most of the music is more typical of Thompson and Cowell than of Cage; none of Cage’s serial-ish experiments or rhythmic structures are heard.

Lecture on the Weather
This and the previous were generous donations from Andre.  It was written in 1975 for voices and tapes in three parts.  It begins with a boring reading of Cage’s preface where Cage expresses his typically uninteresting (IMO, of course) political views, and also discusses Thoreau.  The work itself has three parts.  In all parts, the performers read text from David Thoreau, sing, or play instruments (though everyone in this recording seems to read).  Some are pretty histrionic in their reading, and that offers a bit of comedy.  Most of it is unintelligible, due to the crowded situation.  I think the work is best appreciated without trying to focus in on any voice, and just listen to the babbling.

Each of the three parts features different background sounds: first wind, then rain, and then thunder.  In the last part a film featuring projected negatives of Thoreau’s artwork.  The wind is not that easy to hear because it’s a little tough to distinguish it from a thunder sound, or random microphone breathing noises.  I think the rain is a little more distinctive, but it’s still hard to hear since the sound seems a lot lower than the voices.  The thunder, finally, is quite obvious (as you might expect).  I can’t help imagining these text-reciting people standing around outside in a thunderstorm.  I think the projected images, probably unrecognizable in negative, would add a lot to the atmosphere of thunder and voices.

Haikai for Gamelan
This was a work written in 1986 for the Evergreen Club, and they recorded it something like 12 years later.  I guess they were not in a big hurry!  It’s for a gamelan, but I don’t quite recall which variety of gamelan it is.  But to be blunt, it doesn’t matter much.  To my ears gamelan music sounds distinctive primarily by the style in which it is played (there’s some great recording samples online worth checking out).  However, with Cage’s generall brief and quiet tones, it’s hard to tell much of a difference between the gamelan ensemble and any other group of instruments, especially most of the percussive sounds.  It has a feel similar to that of the later number pieces, but I don’t think it uses time brackets; each of the eight Haiku has seventeen events, with varying durations, and essentially the different parts cannot be distinguished.
I feel like this gamelan ensemble is best suited to loud, raucous music rather than the very slight performance that Cage has written for them.

One12

2006-02-22T01:49:00.000-05:00

Well, I have enough new material for a few new reviews!  They come from my “unowned” list, which has now been updated.  Thanks to Andre for One12 and others which I’ll tackle tomorrow.

Three Pieces for Flute Duet
This composition from 1935 has three parts titled (uncharacteristically for Cage) “Allegro giocoso,” “Andante cantabile,” and “Grave adagio.”  These more or less describe what the music sounds like.  The first piece is a brief, bouncy introduction of sorts.  The second is cheerful and the third, perhaps the most interesting, is fairly dramatic.  The pieces are all chromatic and seem overall cold and modern (I’d compare it to the atonal music I’ve heard), and basically typical of Cage’s early piano works.

Five Songs for Contralto
More early Cage songs from 1938.  The accompaniment is not especially overbearing, but a little more prominent than in the earlier Three Songs.  In all the songs, it’s played with brief notes and with great nervous energy.

The text is based on poetry from e. e. cummings.  “Little Four Paws” is a cute song about cats, but not particularly clear in its meaning.  “Little Christmas Tree” is a sad song addressed to a tree that has been cut down.  It becomes progressively more absurd with the narrator saying he will kiss the tree’s heart and hold it close like it’s mother would (don’t tree “mothers” pretty much toss their “kids” on the ground?).  The tree will then end up standing tall and proud, well-dressed in a window.  “In Just” seems to be discussing a spring day with children playing and a balloon man whistling.  It has little variation in melody.  “hist Whist” is mostly nonsense alliterative text and a somewhat clearer melody than normal; the vibrato in the voice obscures a lot of the text.  “Another comes (Tumbling-hair)” is slow and an appropriate (though not interesting) finale.  It discusses flowers in a field, primarily.  The images as a whole invoke a lot of rustic, homey imagery.

One12
This is an abnormal number piece, written for a lecturer.  The performer says a word with the number of letters specified by numbers in the score.  I’m not sure if words are provided or not; in this performance Cage seems to be pronouncing words in more than one language, with only a few obvious English words (including “river” and “red”).  Since each letter is given a tone, a song-like structure is produced.  At certain points, Cage uses strange vocal styles and seems to be choking a little.

If I were to compare to anything, I’d compare it to a reading of 62 Mesostics Re: Merce Cunningham, except witout such a...outrageous variety of sounds.  This is a much softer, more relaxed vocal performance.

The Seasons for piano

2006-02-07T00:43:00.000-05:00

And so it ends (except for everything else). The question is...What now? Well, for starters I need to go fill in all those reviews I didn’t quite finish writing! I’ll also be adding more and more as they show up. I did go ahead and buy the two missing easily-available Cage CD’s, and I have access to that Reunion recording. Once those all arrive, that will be a new review. Beyond that, I’ll look forward to new releases (there’s still plenty of stuff left to record, check the unrecorded list!) and comment on them as they arrive.

Oh, yeah, I should probably rewrite the unrecorded work list, and maybe put some effort into figuring out why particular works have never been recorded. For whatever it’s worth, here is my Top 10 list of unrecorded works, in no real order:

Speech 1955

Renga

Music for Carillon No. 4 (including all instruments)

One?, for cameraman

Marriage at the Eiffel Tower

Music for “The Marrying Maiden”

27’10 etc. for a Percussionist (a normal version)

Solos for Voice 1 & 2

Song Books, all solos performed in sequence (which I can then play simultaneously at random)

Unpublished early works: First Chapter of Ecclesiastes, Greek Ode, Chess Pieces, Piano Etudes (if they still exist), Haiku

Maybe someone thinking “Ugh, I want to record Cage, but I don’t know what to do!” will read this and do something from it ;-)

The blog format is not very convenient for my faithful readers, so I guess what I will do is begin the slow process of downloading the entire blog and moving it to a new website. I’ll extract all the references to eating noodles and so on, and reorganize it and try to find some sort of synthesis of this experience I have undergone. On the one hand, the random order of the experience has made it hard to see the threads between different works, but at the same time I know they are there, so “something” useful should result.

Maybe I can ad banner advertising and make a million dollars and go bribe the European librarians to send me all their prepared train and music box recordings. :-)

Music for Piano No. 2
This work consists of groupw of notes on four pages created via paper imperfections. Being an early piece in the series (1953), it doesn’t have anything besides note specified, so there are no extraneous piano noises. The music is not particularly sparse and there are plenty of sounds. Dynamics are chosen by the performer, and I would call this chance-determined but not indeterminate music.

Variations IV
Cage reached an extreme in the 1960’s, producing compositions which cannot reasonably be described as music (except insofar as “everything is music” in which case the word is worthless), in my opinion. Variations IV from 1963 is one such work. Creation of a performance begins with a map of the performance area onto which circles and points are peppered; these shapes represent the locations at which activities might occur. No indication of what these sounds are is given, and thus once again we have a performance that is, to me, much more the creation of the performer than the composer.

To go further, I’d call interpreting some of Cage’s more peculiar scores like this one and Variations III and others in the series something close to divination. Cage’s score is the tortoise shell; or the night sky, or the palm, or whatever.

Anyway...about this recording! It’s basically a bi mixture of sound sources scattered in a perofrmance space: many of them recordings of voices, some of them sounds of the street or a cafe. There’s also a lot of music. Curiously, no Cage music. The first time I heard it I thought, “This is a really long version of the Beatles’ Revolution 9.”

Overall it’s not much fun to hear, although I do like the cathedral bells and some of the strange radio and/or movie extractions. Once again, I’ll say this sort of thing is a lot of fun for performers and participants in the activity, but recording it is of not much use (even this recording is merely a bunch of excerpts from an all-day performance).

The Seasons for piano
This is the 1947 work, and I already heard the orchestral versions. Cage uses the Indian interpretation of seasons in a series of relatively brief pieces with interludes between them. The piano version has a lighter and more emotive feel to it than the orchestrated version, in my opinion. Listening to the spring section, in particular, just sounds more full of fluttering and more breezy in the piano performance. Additionally, I don't feel as distracted by certain elements that seem unique to the orchestral version (for example, the strings come in with notes during Spring that do not seem to be played by the piano at all). The theme of the first prelude returns in the finaly, and it is a theme I find haunting. That aspect of the music is the only part I prefer in the orchestral version. As I think I said in my comments on the other performance, I really like Spring, and like Winter some, but the other two don't do too much to excite me.

Music for Piano 85
Here’s a piece that is appropriate enough to end on. It was written in 1962 and is the last in the series of Music for Pianio. The instructions include refrences to feedback. The performance is very silent and begins with a scream of sorts. A glissando flies in, and a single held tone...Feeback is heard! Fortunately, the feedback is not as painful as in some of the other recordings. Most of the work, anyway, is taken up by single tones with long silences in between. The additional sounds of the piano body and the feedback add some entertainment. Oddly, I actually kind of like it!

Totem Ancestor

2006-02-05T21:41:00.000-05:00

Welcome to the 2nd to last day of the Cageblog.  Tonight I’ll cover a wide swath of miscellaneous pieces, and tomorrow we’ll end with a set of mostly piano music.

I should say this is not truly the second-to-last day of reviewing because there’s some forthcoming releases by OgreOgress of otherwise unrecorded works (I am personally rather excited about the harp work, Postcard from Heaven).  Andre of www.johncage.info is also donating a few obscure items.  That the list of “unowned Cage” is now down to 8, the first two I will break down and buy myself at some point (an aunt bought them for Christmas but they never arrived), two more are pretty irrelevant (an excerpt of a text piece and an arrangement).  The only truly significant work left is Song Books which is closer to theater than music, and thus hasn’t been recorded in a complete version very often at all.

The final of the eight items can now be removed, thanks to this website:
http://www.toutfait.com/duchamp.jsp?postid=1457&keyword=
which provides QuickTime audio of the Reunion performance.  I’ll need to add that to my list of things to cover; I only found it tonight!

Additionally, there’s apparently a recording of Eight from Megadisc out there, even though I can’t find it easily.  I continue to be on the hunt for Italians and Frenchpeople willing to assist in grabbing up the other two, Lullaby and Il Treno.

Anyway, here’s tonight’s playlist:

Crete and Dad
Both these were written in 1945, and are extremely brief character sketches of Cage’s mother Lucretia (Crete) and father John Milton (Dad).  Crete is soft and melodic, with a seriousness to it.  Dad is a bit more jovial and bouncy, almost.  It’s also much more brief; the piece ends with the theme from Crete, suggesting Cage’s mothers dominance.

Cheap Imitation for orchestra
This is a 1972 work for 24 to 95 performers, without conductor.  The piano composition is divided up among the orchestra members using chance operation, each phrase being also subjected to chance operations to determine which notes and played and for how long.

The reader might recall my dissatisfaction with the piano and violin versions of these works, which were certainly pretty boring.  The multitude of instruments makes this recording (one from radio donated by Lothar) much more beautiful, though.  Still, the piece does go on for awhile, and has a very dead feel to it.  Cheap Imitation, in my mind, is one of Cage’s least interesting works to hear.  Maybe it’s because it sounds, on the surface, like fairly traditional music, but yet it never seems to go anywhere the way a “normal” piece would.   And because the chance modifications to the original music are not, to my ear, as obvious as in the case of Apartment House 1776...I just can’t think of much to recommend it.  That being said, the orchestra version is easily the best of all the versions, and I don’t mind listening to it the way that the versions for violin and piano kind of annoyed me.

Well, OK, I have one complaint: the “finale” is a bit too extended.  Around minute eighteen you hear spaced single tones, played in almost a dramatic manner, which suggest the end of the music approaching...and approaching...and approaching...until it finally ends four minutes later.  I was eager for it to be done a bit sooner, I think!

Opening Dance for Sue L.
The last letters of the script titling the piece are illegible, but it’s probably for Sue Laub.  The work was likely written around 1940, and has a lot in common with other music from the period: strong rhythms, repeated themes, and a somewhat nervous, dramatic character.  It wouldn’t sound too out of place in Four Walls or The Seasons, actually.

Music for ...
There exist parts for voice, flute, oboe, clarinet, trumpet, horn, trombone, percussion, piano, violin, viola and cello, with multiple parts for some instruments, seventeen total.  They may be performed in any combination with the number of performers finishing the title.  The parts consist of time-bracketed sections with single held tones and sequences.  The piano is played by bowing (or at least one of the piano parts is).

This version is Music for Eight off the disc of the same title.  It features flute, clarinet, trumpet, two pianos (one bowed and one evidently not), two percussionists and one voice.  The music sounds much like a lot of the early number pieces, and bizarrely, I swear the clarinet is playing parts from Sonata for Clarinet, especially at the beginning.  Although there’s a wide variety of ways this work can be performed, I think they will all end up sounding rather similar.  I do miss not having any strings, but I expect they would sound a lot like the strings in the Freeman Etudes.  Cage does not specify or the instruments to be played as if brushed into existence, so the experience is (as is also true with early number pieces) maybe a little more like the chance-determined piano and orchestral works, but much less dense.  The tones are held, but not to any of the extremes as in later number pieces, and most of the sound events are brief; the keyboard-played piano especially.  The voice is not prominent and sounds like a cat at times.

This is a popular work to perform since essentially any ensemble can do a version, but I think of it as less interesting than what Cage did with the some of the same ideas later on.

Jazz Study
Cage may or may not have written this.  I don’t think the jazz elements are surprising in Cage’s work though: I read Cage didn’t like jazz, but then I listen to all his pieces and find jazzy themes appearing throughout his work from the 40’s!  Consequently I think this is a legitimate Cage piece, probably written in the early 1940’s.  It’s certainly jazzy, featuring several jumpy, frenzied sections introduced by a quieter, lower insistent theme. It’s pretty fun, and you could dance to it, probably, but not exactly in the same way you can dance to the pieces with actual choreography ;-).

Totem Ancestor
This is easily my favorite work of all the prepared piano pieces.  It was composed in 1942 for a dance.  The preparations include a rattling nut.

The first part is urgent and repetitive, almost siren like; it soon breaks into a fast-paced and exciting group of rhythms that grow in intensity.  I think one of the major reasons I like it so much is the particular preparations that give the piano a metallic feel; the powerful attacks at the end of each rhythmic section are very exciting too.  I was introduced to Cage by 4’33 and then by the Naxos disc containing this recording, and I listened to it over and over and over again.

Two Pieces for Piano 1935
This is the original (maybe?) version of a work that was revised in 1974.  It’s serial music, and I don’t really know what the 1978 revisions consisted of.  I’ll compare the two side by side here and see if I note any particular differences...

The slow movement does not advertise itself falsely, and is slow and straightforward.  I’m not sure about the differences here—one version is certainly played faster than the other, but that’s probably just the performer’s choice of tempo.  I feel like the revision might have some rhythms not present in the original...longtime readers might recall how I said it didn’t “sound” serial because so many notes were repeated in the rhythmic sections.  Perhaps this is the revision?  The faster part seems a little more melodic, and I really don’t notice any changes between the original and the revision.  It goes by a bit too quick for me to notice anything, though.

Concert for Piano and Orchestra

2006-02-05T02:01:00.001-05:00

Concert for Piano and Orchestra
This is among the most central works in all of Cage’s output, an example of individuals acting as individuals but producing a work as a whole, a kind of functional anarchy (although each part is specified in detail). All the parts were completed in 1958. Parts exist for piano, 3 violins, 2 violias, cello, double bass, flute, clarinet, bassoon, trumpet, trombone, tuba and conductor. The music combines a lot of the ideas Cage had been experimenting with up until that point. To begin with, the music has parts but no overall score, and the parts may be played in any combination, thus it is indeterminate. Secondly, the parts themselves were written using chance operations, including paper imperfections. The conductor has his own part, in fact, and emulates a clock. All of the solos involve a wide array of performance techniques, and the piano is the highlight: its score is in 63 pages with 84 different forms of notation, and is a bauty to look at.

The Mode performance I heard is interesting, mostly because it seems to involve percussion sounds that I didn’t realize were called for in the score. I appreciate that each of the instruments in the performance can be heard easily. The music certainly has a chance-determined feel to it; the various wind instruments interact in a most distrubing way, screaming and squeaking at each other (often sounding like howling animals). The string sounds are less easy to hear, and seem to consist mostly of short, quick strokes and plucks. The piano is heard through tone cluster, individual tones and chords, and what sound like actions on the piano body itself. Overall, none of the tones are held very long, which is a significant difference between this and Cage’s later works involving large groups of instruments. Maybe the most exciting sound of all are the stranges, banshee-like noise produced by playing the strings inside the piano directly.

I’m still a little confused about the percussion and the voices I hear, maybe this is a combined performance and I didn’t realize it. At one point it sounds as if someone went and threw the piano down a flight of stairs!

Music for Piano No. 53-68
From 1956 comes another in the long series of Music for Piano. This is perhaps a bit more indeterminate than the others in the series, since the performer chooses how to produce the indicated sounds.

The performance is generally sparse, with ocassional use of the strings inside the piano. Single tones are heard, without clusters or chords. Their duration and the use of pedaling seems to vary a lot. No doub every performance of this work will sound different; for all I know, performers could choose to use chords and so on if they wished.

A Room for prepared piano
I heard this 1943 work some time ago in a version for piano. Now I’ll hear a prepared piano version. It’s pretty much the same before: a rumbling sound, this time well prepared, and miscellanous other unprepared notes sprinkled in. I’d say the preparations help the music, because it makes the low rumbling mush together and sound a bit more like an engine than it did before.

Eight Whiskus for violin
Supposedly this is a 1985 transliteration of the text of the vocal work into the language of the violin, trying to make the vowel and consonant sounds observable. I obviously can’t quote the lyrics based on the violin sounds, but it’s an interesting effort nonetheless. I can definitely hear all kinds of scrapings and somewhat percussive sounds. It sounds an awful lot like the Freeman Etudes but slightly more melodious. Still not something I’d want to spend a great deal of time listening to, though.

Four Solos for Voice
This work was written in 1988, and actually might be called solos for voice 93, 94, 95 and 96. There are overlapping time brackets and the source text is from random books in Cage’s own home library.

The performance is very peculiar, with opera-style singing, spoken word singing, and other styles. Some of the lyrics strike out at me, “You know, I live in three dimensions” for example. Right. They are in various languages, and some of the singing sounds more like wailing and crying. It’s pretty fun to listen to, just to hear some of the more off the wall texts sung in such a dramatic and interesting manner: “America the telegraph...”

Ryoanji
This composition begun in 1983 was named after the rock garden in Japan, which Cage famously said was beautiful because the sand between the stones allowed the stones to exist and that the actual orientation of the stones was irrelevent. The music features solos for oboe, flute, contrabass, voice, and trombone with percussion (parts were added as the years went by). Each solo has 9 songs with retangles featuring tracings od stones; the curves are played. The percussion part features a metal and wood sound.

This performance, donated by Lothat, was evidently Cage’s favorite performance of the piece. Unfortunately it only includes the parts for bass and percussion (this is from the disc John Cage a Firenze), but it's also the only performance I have here that features the percussion (performers of this work have the odd habit of performing it on additional instruments, I might add). Anyway, it's mostly a low groaning sound, with a repetitive but fairly consistent percussive beat. It's not exactly consistant, but it's close enough. The groanings of the bass resemble a haunting of some kind, or perhaps the creaking of trees in a strong wind. I understand Cage's fondness for this performance. I think I definitely prefer the versions with percussion to the ones without; it gives the music a context.

In fact, I would go so far to say that performances without the percussion (or a similar orchestral accompaniment) miss the point entirely, providing the stones without the sand, so to speak.

In a Landscape for piano
I heard the harp version of this work from1948 and was a little dissatisfied, but the piano version comes off as very relaxing. Still, it seems like this music reminds me a little bit too much of tedious New Age piano music I hear in, say, elevators. Cage no doubt was inspired by Satie when he wrote this.

Th texture of the music is an awful lot like Dream, and it certainly feels dreamy. I think it's a bit more complicated though, with more surprises. For example, there is a familiar pattern of two notes that is repeated (although the tones change), yet the pattern is inturrupted sometimes by a three-note sequence. The overall feeling is restful and meditative, but with maybe a slightly ominous sense to the music, especially when it dips into the lower notes...

Seven2

2006-02-03T18:38:00.000-05:00

I noticed some notes from listening last weekend that I don’t think I ever posted. I’ll work them in after dinner I think. These are the two things I bought used back in December. I’m adding to it tonight’s listening, which pretty much finishes off all the number pieces!

Five3
Ah, little info is available for this; the liner notes are fairly cryptic and the website only specifies that it’s for trombone and string quartet, and was written in 1991. It features microtonal changes and very long-held tones.

In any case, this is an incredibly quiet performance. The trombone sometimes comes in more loudly than the strings, and the strings give their usual sense of being fluid, but placid (this is emphasized by their softness). The work is, however, a bit on the "generic" side as number pieces go: long-held tones with significant silences between them. One frustrating fact about it, though, is that most of the sounds seem so quiet that I cannot hear the minute variations that make such lengthy explorations of single tones interesting in the first place. Perhaps if I had a more silent listening enviorment I might enjoy it more.

Four6
This is among the last (the very last perhaps?) things Cage performed himself and I am reviewing the performance he put on at Summerstage. The year was 1992, as you might guess. There are four performers who choose 12 sounds, and in effect this is four performances of One7.

For some reason, in the introduction La Barbara calls it just “Four.” All the sounds chosen by Cage are vocal, whereas other performers use other instruments, including percussion and piano. Cage's voice is pretty distinctive and frankly pretty disgusting when he gurgles and chokes and gags intentionally. Even his more normal vocal sounds are more like barks. La Barbara concerns herself mostly with loud oubursts, not quite yells. The percussion instruments tend to be fairly quiet, with lots of rattling and rumbling. THe low rumbling sounds like a barrel being rolled, whereas the clicking and tapping could be nearly anything. A triangle sound also peeks in sometimes. It's an interesting little performance, but probably no other performances will sound like it.

Seven2
This work was composed in 1990 for bass flute, clarinet and trombone, plus percussion, cello and contrabass. It’s one of Cage’s longer number pieces, stretching out for nearly an hour. The performance, overall, feels very stretched, almost as if a 20 minute performance were dragged out for a whole hour, just played more and more slowly. This might have been the effect Cage aimed for; in his choice of sound sources Cage chose low tones, and they do fit very easily into the background noise of my apartment.

The overall impression of the performance that I get is of a gently blowing wind that comes in, but does not really distract or disturb you. I guess you could call it “ambient,” but I usually associate the word with mind-numbingly dull and repetitive music (apologies to ambient fans out there). Comparing Seven2 with other Cage works I’ve heard, it seems among the most natural of all.

It’s very spacious, and I would like to distinguish between “spacious” and “sparse.” In sparse Cage music, there is a clear distinction between sounds and silence, but in a work such as this, they seem to blend together that if I am listening I sometimes don’t even notice the shift from one to the other.

As a final note, there’s a really cool percussion instrument used in this rendition; it sounds like a disembodied voice of some kind, or a ghost.

Six
A work from 1991, Six is scored for percussionists on unspecified instruments. I actually saw the score; it looked as if it took 5 minutes to write. The performance instructions follow those typical of other late Cage works: play as if by brushing, single tones, flexible time brackets.

This particular performance seems to be mostly gongs of sorts, and some chimes and rattles. Actually, it makes me think I have heard it before! Maybe I am just recognizing it from Three? Or maybe I posted about it before and simply forgot. At any rate, these highly indeterminate pieces never excite me that much because I feel I am listening to the ingenuity of the performers and not to anything the composer really did. This is all fine in terms of listening and enjoying the performance (which is wistful and winter like), but there’s not much I can say about the performance that would say anything about Cage, which is the main goal of the project in the first place.

It would be fun to hear several performances of works like Six side by side.

Furniture Music Etc.
The title refers to the Satie piece which is a part of the performance. The score is quite indeterminate, specifying performance of parts of Satie’s Musique d’ameublement and Etcetera’s piano part. Materials, tempo, and so one are up to the performer.

I haven’t heard the Saties piece specifically before, but it seems rather slow and peaceful, but not particularly mystical. I’m actually having trouble distinguishing between the Satie and the Cage. In any case, the music isn’t much more than a mish-mash of attractive music, with different music popping in sometimes. It reminds me of a less insane Beatles performance I guess. There are often gaps between different pieces being performed, so it’s not so much a collage as a sequence. Not exactly a highlight of Cage’s oeuvre, though.

Variations III
The second-to-last work I will cover in the Variations series is as indeterminate as its predecessors, but not as, well, insane as later works in the series. In this work, the performer builds a score out of superimposed circles, although apparently there’s no need for this to be a sound performance in the first place.

This is a Hat Art performance featuring Ebhard Blum on flute and other objects, plus percussion. See my comments above for why commenting on these works does not strike me as that useful. I’m first struck by the amount of vocal sounds here, as well as by an insistent tapping that at first I thought was merely a copying error! There’s babbling, munching, and one sound that resembled the sound of a giant scorpion in an old video game I have, Other sounds like whistles and miscellaneous dings show up as well.

I feel that this is one of those works Cage wrote that is far more interesting to perform than here. In fact, I’m not even sure in what sense this is really a Cage performance, since although he made some circles, all of the decisions that result in an expression of sound are essentially up to the performer. Many of Cage’s most extreme works are like that, and it makes them much less interesting for this project (and, in my opinion, to listen to in general).

Twenty-Nine

2006-02-01T22:46:00.000-05:00

Tonight, I’ll tackle a few more items.  I think doing it in 90 minute pieces is pretty easy.  Will I finish by Sunday?  We’ll see...:-D

Four3
This work was written in 1991 and is a little unusual in that there are four performers, but they are not assigned to particular instruments.  Instead, during each time bracket, the performers may play rainsticks, the piano, a violin, or do nothing.  The piano music, incidentally, is the same Lullaby on which the obscure work for music box is based.  Everything is performed softly and slowly.

As usual, the rainsticks sound vaguely like rain and perhaps a bit more like seeds falling slowly down a narrow tube ;-)  Nonetheless, the instrument is a great choice for a slow, quiet and peaceful work.  The rainsticks seem significantly more popular than any of the other sounds.  They are also conducive to the Cage idea of sounds being brushed into existence, as they start slowly, grow louder, and then fade.  The piano music sounds much as I expect Satie to sound in his more mystical moments, slow and meditative.  Satie and rainsticks complement each other nicely.  The violin is a little bit of a letdown, in a way, because the high C it is supposed to be playing does not feel very constant.  It also doesn’t show up much; I almost wish it had been a true oscillator, so that it would resemble a solid, unchanging tones around which the rest of the sounds could wrap themselves.

Overall I’d rank this among my favorite Cage number pieces.

Music for Piano 21-36
Didn’t I already listen to this?  It’s considered a single work along with Music for Piano 37-52.   I’ll hear it anyway since I don’t think I actually broke them up the first time through.  Do I even truly need an introduction here?  It’s another in Cage’s long line (85 long, I think) of chance-composed piano music; in this case, paper imperfections are involved.

There’s not especially much (new) to say about this music, except that the number of non-keyboard (or at least non-string) events is pretty low.  This performance is also not as sparse as others I’ve heard, and the pedaling keeps most of the sound in the air longer.  It has a more ambient feel than some of the other performances in the Music for Piano series.

Twenty-Nine
This piece is from 1991, and after Twenty-Three and Twenty-Six, I half expected it to be scored for a big mass of violins.  But it’s not!  It’s only scored for a big mass of strings, plus timpani and percussion.  No violins though.  Also, the famous bowed piano of Fourteen fame.

This is an awesome performance; the timpani adds an enormous amount to the ominous energy that is pouring from my speakers.  The strings, all by themselves, are dissonant and terrifying, but the additional rumblings from the timpani make it additionally terrifying.  This music doesn’t feel as natural as most of the other number piece, instead it seems very industrial?  In it I seem to hear the loud humming of machines and rushing and grinding of motors and gears.  Excellent!  Cage uses the large number of instruments at his disposal to great effect here, and the sound is overwhelming.  Special mention goes to the bowed piano.  While it’s not as prominent here as in Fourteen (probably because there’s such a wall of sound), it has that same terrifying power to it and you can hear it distinctly.

Four3 was peaceful, but this listening experience is intense and raises the hair on the back of my neck.  Wow.

Roaratorio

2006-02-01T02:32:00.000-05:00

Tonight I am following an inspiration.  A friend and I have been reading Joyce’s Ulysses to each other every Friday at midnight for an hour.  We will finish...in a long time.  But Cage was also a Joyce fan, and tonight I’ll hear his major Joyce-inspired work.

Roaratorio: An Irish Circus on Finnegan’s Wake
We can think of this work as a specific realization of ____: __ ______ Circus on _________.  Although this is a circus of simultaneous events, I feel this is far, far more suited to recording than any of the others, because there is no visual element.  Instead, the performance features a collage of Irish music, sounds mentioned in Finnegan’s Wake (and sounds from places that are mentioned), and Cage reading Writing for the Second Time Through Finnegan’s Wake, which if I recall right was one long chance-determined mesostic.  The same basic idea can presumably be applied to any other book, and probably to many other contexts.  For example, I would be entertained by an American Circus on Zac’s Archived E-Mail :-)

In listening to this performance, it’s hard to pick out specific sounds, with the exception of Cage’s tireless voice with its most peculiar pronunciations of certain words (non-words?).  The Irish music comes in a number of different forms, including drumming that seems to continue forever, some instrumental dance music, and a singer.  The other taped sounds give the impression at many points of standing in some old world market, with chickens squawking, lots of child and crowd noises, and so on.     Other things I hear are babies crying, various whistles, birdsong, running water, bells, choirs...an enormous variety, with perhaps a surprising emphasis on the water (I guess unlike a lot of other natural events, rivers and streams and oceans are almost always described by their sounds.

The performance extends for a bout an hour, without any significant changes or variation in style.  After awhile, it seems as if the sounds all just sort of meld together in my mind.  The only exception is when sometimes the tape and music get quiet together, and Cage’s voice comes to the forefront.  As I listen, I wonder how different the performance might be had the text used for it been, you know, a little more normal!

Quartet
I’m surprised I haven’t covered this one before.  It’s an early 1935 work for percussion.  Is this not Cage’s very first work for percussion, too? In any case, I believe it’s one of his longer non-prepared piano percussion works.  None of the instruments are specified and vary throughout the movements.

The first section is titled Moderate and, unsurprisingly, proceeds at a moderate pace.  The instruments sound to be metallic, hit with a wooden mallet.  There is also a bell.  The rhythm is followed primarily by the hammers, with the bell interjecting itself occasionally, with some minor variations in tone (usually the same tone is repeated several times).  It’s an attractive, quick work, and it doesn’t have the sudden starts and stops that I associate with Cage’s prepared piano dance music.

The Very Slow movement does not strike me as especially slow, and features some sort of loud, very resonant sound (almost like big fat horn) and a ‘ding’ item which might be a triangle.  Its rhythm is less identifiable than the Moderate section, and it varies in speed more often.  Some section are very slow, and the instruments do not sound simultaneously, although there is no easily discernable pattern in their soundings.

Next comes a section called “Axial Symmetry,” suggesting that I should be hearing sounds in two halves that are somehow symmetric in their performance.  I’m not sure where the axis is supposed to lie, though.   I can’t precisely hear anything that sounds too different from the rhythm of the Moderate movement.  The instruments are some low toned drums and some sort of metallic instrument, maybe a simple tube.  The tube vanishes for awhile about halfway through.

The Fast section sounds a lot like other Cage percussion works, especially, I think, parts of the Constructions, and sections from The City Wears a Slouch Hat and Trio.  The instruments sound a lot like the forks and cans and such he used often in those works; they are not instantly identifiable to me.  Anyway, the tempo is not as fast as I might have expected, but it’s certainly speedier than the others.  Somehow, because the instruments are nondescript, it doesn’t seem as interesting as the others.

Five Stone Wind

2006-01-27T22:00:00.000-05:00

I’m going to be silly and post the newest items before going and writing anything about the ones I posted the other day.  A huge disadvantage of listening one day and writing the next is that I forget what I wanted to say.  So I’ll fill those in as time goes on.

I also discovered a Cage group on MySpace, which I joined.  One person who posted a message is from Italy, and his presence has gotten my hopes up about getting that Silenzio Perduto recording from the Florence library!

Five Stone Wind
This 1988 work derives its title from its component parts, Five Stone for clay drums and an unspecified realization by David Tudor .  I can’t do much but quote André’s description here because I have little clue what it means: “Tudor used recordings of earth-vibrations, passed through an electronic gate, tuned both as to frequency and duration.”  Takehiso Kosugi played flute and pizzicato sounds on the violin for the Wind part, which starts late in the performance.

This performance comes from the Mode recording, and is full of electronically treated percussive sounds.  There is, like pretty much all of Cage’s late work, a natural feeling to this, almost like raindrops or bubbles popping.  The Five Stone part dominates the sound throughout, and the clay drums are pretty clearly heard.  There are certain electronic noises that resemble the bubbles, while there are other high-pitched chiming noises that remind me of falling water.  I’m not sure where they come from exactly.  The Wind portion is hard to hear, because the flute is played very lightly when it is played.  Unless that is a violin I (very barely) hear, in which case it is playing extended tones instead of pizzicato sounds.

It seems about 2/3 of the sounds, from all the performers, have electronic treatment of some kind, whereas others do not.  The electronics generally make those sounds much louder and more distinctive.  If I turn the volume way up (careful with the popping noises!) I hear some interesting sounds like an electronic hissing or very quiet cricket chirping.  Is this Tudor’s earth vibrations?

I was not looking forward to this recording, but it’s turned out to actually be one of my favorites of the late works because of the wide variety of sounds, and because it brings to mind some of the earliest percussion works.  Some of the lighter, more ambient noises also remind me of the music from Robert Ashley’s Automatic Writing.

Etcetera 2 / 4 Orchestras
This work is from 1986 and is fairly similar for the original Etcetera from 1973: soloists from each orchestra move to platforms and perform at particular times.  Four conductors beat, but the score calls for some sounds to occur at times off from the beats.  There is also a taped component to the music, featuring sounds of traffic and so on recorded in Cage’s New York apartment.  This makes the music less focused on nature sounds than the original (which had raindrop-like rustles, sounds of birds, and the like), and in my mind makes yet another case for the equivalence of sounds of the environment we think of as “natural” and those we think of as “artificial.”
The music sounds an awful lot like other Cage works for orchestras or large groups of instruments.  On the plus side, there’s plenty of variety and it’s recorded very well: I can distinctly tell the difference between each group of instruments, unlike such low quality recordings as 103.  I would say it sounds like a lot of quiet creaking, interrupted by occasional simultaneous groans of a large group of instruments.  Usually the brass seem to be loudest.  I don’t hear very much from the piano besides a few brief tones now and then.  Also there’s some percussive sounds that seem more like someone dropping his instrument than anything else!

The tape that is supposedly playing is worth a discussion on its won, because I don’t hear it.  Or maybe I do—I hear a kind of rushing sound in the background that could either be a tape or it could be air rushing over the microphone.  There are also other sounds that resemble the grunting of a truck moving down the street, but these may actually be instruments that happen to not be amplified.  I heard no evidence of telephones or any other “apartment” activities, though (unless that ringing sound towards the very end is a telephone and not some percussion instrument).

Sonatas and Interludes

2006-01-25T22:55:00.000-05:00

This one is going to take some time to write, but just to bring everyone up to date on my latest listening...Something like three hours worth here, maybe a little less.

Blogger for word is broken at the moment, so it is a bit more annoying to input these than normal.

Thirteen
This is a work for flute, oboe, clarinet, bassoon, trumpet, trombone, tuba, cello, violins (2), viola and percussion. Whew. It was written in 1992 and feeatures fairly typical time bracket notation, but it's written as a collection of parts without an overall score. I think this is about the right number of elements for an interesting number piece. I've generally been disappointed with the two really large ones I have heard (103 and 1O1), because it was hard to make out particular instruments, and the strings always seemed to dominate. In Thirteen the strings are present throughout, but they don't overpower the other instruments. I feel in listening that everyone gets to make itself known. The strings mostly serve to anchor the music, whereas the wind instruments sometimes engage in long sighs and other times whistle in for a sharp brief moment (sometimes even playing fragments of melody, it seems). The percussion in this recording seems to be a triangle or some other "ding" instrument (mentally I classify percussion instruments as "ding," "bomp," "whish," "thud" and "tingle"). Actually there are two percussionists playing so I'm not sure where the second one is at.

Overall, I like the music, but it's nothing really out of the ordinary as far as number pieces go--it's slow, atmospheric, and naturalistic. I probably won't remember it very well.

Etudes Boreales for Piano
There are two parts for 1978's Boreales, one for cello and one for piano. Curiously, they have never been performed together! This is the part for piano, which is not strictly a piano composition and involves lots of external piano construction sounds. In fact, I would go so far as to say that the keys on the piano are almost never actually pressed! However, there are a few tones created by manipulating the strings directly. Of course, the strings are also sometimes manipulated without intention, when the whole body is hit.

When the keys are hit, sometimes a single note is heard and other times a series or chord is heard. In this piece, Cage evidently tried to bring out all the sounds of the piano, but I find that the sounds are pretty limited. There's keypress, sring plucks, and thumps. The best parts are the rare but unidentifiable sounds-a strange creak, a twisting sound like a screw. One can only guess where the sounds came from, and making such guesses is part of the fun of listening.

Sixty-Eight
This is a work for piano, percussion, several brass instruments and a whole bunch of strings. It was written in 1992. I think the best parts about the music are the wonderful set of celestial chimes, as well as the very slow sliding tones of some of the brass instruments. The percussion plays a more significant part in this music than it did in Thirteen. I'm amazed by the amount of silence despite the large number of instruments, which is particularly interesting considering how loud some of the smaller number pieces have such loudness and excitement to them. There is about a minute with no sound (or not enough to overpower my computers fans) around the 20th minute of the recording I am listening to.

For me, this is one of Cage's most sucessful larger works. I like the lack of dominance of any one part of the orchestra, and the quiet, peaceful and meditative music that results from the cumulative action (or inaction!) of so many people. Best of all I like the more extensive use of percussion than is typical for most of the other number piece performances I have heard. As natural analogs go, I'd describe this as a day on the sea, with gusts of wind and a calm, lapping ocean that sometimes freezes into total stillness and perhaps even loneliness.

Sonatas and Interludes
This is Cage's supposed magnum opus for prepared piano, and barely needs an introduction. It's from 1948, and at least in concept is built around the Indian perception of emotions. Despite it's fame this has never been my most favorite of Cage's prepared piano works. This might because I listened only to Boris Berman's Naxos recording. While his renditions of the dance accompaniments on another Naxos release are some of the best of all the performances I've heard, I think the Sonatas and Interludes performance falls pretty flat. Here I am listening to the Schleiermacher version, which has a lot more "life" to it.

Two preconceptions have to be dispensed with right away. First, while the music is in theory based on the Indian emotions, you can't really tell which is which. In mood, I think all of the pieces are essentially very similar: subtle, quiet, mysterious. Second, if you're looking for the exciting rhythms found in some of Cage's dance works like Spontaneous Earth or Totem Ancestor, you are looking in the wrong place. In my view, SOnatas and Interludes was one of the first little hints of where Cage would be going in the 50's and beyond. The rhythmic structure in the work is extremely sophisticated, but I don't think anyone who has not seen the score and who is experienced with music analysis would have any hope of perceiving the rhythmic structure just from listening. That in itself is what makes me uncomfortable about Sonatas and Interludes' status as Cage's masterwork: it just seems strange to spend so much effort on something that can't be heard.

Another reason this work is considered so important is the sheer amount of piano preparation involved: there's many screws, bolts and bits of rubber added and the preparation takes several hours. Once again, though, it seems like all that work does not produce very many highly distinctive sounds: the music sounds like it's coming from a mildly modified piano and there are none of the heavily percussive elements I have come to expect from the prepared piano.

The two facts above make it pretty hard for me to get into the proper frame of mind to appreciate the pieces. I think headphones are called for here, and I think it needs to be approached in a vastly different way than Cage's other prepared piano output. I say it hints at where Cage would go later because the music is subtle, but it is not charming; it exists and has some tension, but there is no immediacy to it. It doesn't seem to care whether anyone is listening or not, and has no melodies or distinct rhythms that stay with you. That is, the music does not have a great deal of personality, and I guess I just feel like it should.

The big exception, for what it's worth, is Sonata XII, which I absolutely adore! I also find the Interludes to be quite interesting, too.

Branches

2006-01-20T21:38:00.000-05:00

So in order to more fully enjoy my classical music (using the most broad possible definition of the word) collection, this past week I wrote a straightforward program that provides a shuffled playlist of music while keeping all the parts of a particular work together and in the correct order.  I don’t know why music programs don’t have this feature already, except that different people label their music differently so it might be challenging to make a solution that works for everyone.  Of course, this particular probably won’t work for people who don’t sort their music the same way I do, that is, people who sort it badly... ;-)

It’s been very helpful because I like the surprise of hearing music I would not have selected to listen to on my own; instead the ‘chance operation’ of the shuffler chooses for me.  As I was listening a while ago, an as-of-yet un-reviewed Cage work came up, so I figured I should make the best of the opportunity that has presented itself!

Branches
I’m cheating a little here.  Branches is just a bunch of repetitions of Child of Tree, but because the first performance is considered to be Child of Tree, I extracted it and reviewed it earlier!  The extended version, Branches, was composed in 1976.  There are basically two types of sounds in Branches: The rattling noises, made with various pod rattles.  These have very similar timbres but some sound higher and others lower.  The second sound source is plucked cactus needles, which I always seem to mistake for dripping water.  They are amplified to such a degree that they sound like loud popping or bouncing noises (other sounds, such as leaves tearing and movement of other plant materials may be involved here too).  The effect is a lot like Cartridge Music, but because the sounds are more specific, I find it more pleasing to hear.

The performers generally seem to play the rattles with some pretty steady rhythms.  One of the rhythms they chose was not especially pleasing to my ears.  If it had just a little bit more creakiness to it, the sound would be identical to the sound of the couple who live upstairs from me, and because of whom I bought earplugs last year.  Actually, this particular pod-rattle shaking went on for much longer than those overheard noises, too: another difference.  Anyway, my favorite rattle rhythms are where the performer seems to be moving it slowly back and forth across a surface, rather than just shaking it in the air.

There is no discernable rhythm to the cactus plucking, except a few cases where several sounds seem to come in sequence.  Each tone is a little bit different, and some are exceptionally loud and resonant.  These particular cacti must have a huge number of spines considering how many plucks I hear, and apparently the removal is done with toothpicks.  I’m not clear how that works exactly!  Since I don’t hear any grunts, I presume none of the performers accidentally jabbed themselves...Sometimes the sounds are like bubbling noises, and I don’t really understand where that came from.

The key to this particular recording of the work is the resonant environment they chose to perform in, since it really brings the amplified noises to life.  It sounds good at high volumes, and I actually find myself ridiculously tapping my foot to the rattle shaking.

I think this work may also represent one of Cage’s first forays into the world of improvisation, something he normally disliked.  It is subtitled, after all, Improvisation I, and performers are instructed to “clarify the time structure” with their improvisations playing the instruments.

Europeras 3 and 4

2006-01-20T20:31:00.000-05:00

I guess I have more or less shifted to a new posting style, since I think interest in this project from others has dwindled somewhat.  I’m now listening to a few things and then posting every couple of days instead of every day.  This past week I specifically tried to get out of the way the music that I was looking forward to the least.  So here’s about three hours worth of reviews of things I don’t much want to hear again!

A Dip in the Lake: Waltzes 23-61; Marches 1-28; Marches 29-56
This is a continuation of the work for recordings of Chicago.  I went ahead and heard the last hour and a half the other day, which was interesting but just not interesting enough to warrant such an investment of time.  The best sounds were heard among the first two in the three remaining “chunks.”  In the first, I heard some nice siren noises and a few instances of people speaking.  It’s when there is a distinctive sound that you can pick up the rhythm of its re-use most effectively.  In the second (the first collection of marches), there was the clear sound of the Chicago airport, which made me smile.  I ended up there often when If flew home from Cleveland in college, even though going northwest is not the most efficient way to head to a location to the southeast.  The last section featured sounds that seemed to be recorded inside a car, but I wasn’t sure.

I’m also not sure of the rhythms associated with this music, whether there is a specific rhythm or not.  I could hear repetitions, and a few times they reminded me of waltz patterns and such, but I’m not totally sure.  Oh yeah, I heard two pieces of pop music: one rock song played in such a distorted manner that I could recognize the tune but not put a name on it, and one hip-hop track played on the street.

This work reminds me of N30, a recording by Christopher DeLaurenti.

Europeras 3 and 4
Oh man, this was the most boring thing I have ever heard in my life.  How do you come up with an experience more irritating than opera itself?  Simply pile a whole bunch of operas together!  Whew, what an experience.  This set (the two operas must be performed in sequence) is from 1990.  No. 3 involves six singers, two pianos, Victrolas, and the Truckera tape of loud, indecipherable opera superimpositions..  No. 4 has two singers, one piano, one Victrola, and Truckera once again.

A disclaimer for this review should be stated, if it’s not obvious by now...Basically, I find the singing used in opera to be utterly and completely repulsive.  Normally when I hate something, I try to expose myself to it more to see what I can get out of it, but it’s been a total failure with opera.  To those who say Cage’s Europeras are a parody of opera I say, “No; opera is a bloated and disgusting parody of itself.”  I remember reading a review of Scott Joplin’s Treemonisha that suggested the dialogue was hackneyed, but which also conceded that if the author could understand the language of all the “great” European operas, he’d probably feel the same way about them.

Now...with that off my chest, I’ll try to offer some thoughts while keeping my general hatred of the music in check :-)

The recording was generally pretty quiet in Europera 3, because the performers were scattered around the stage.  Often they would outsing one another.  I did not find that the Victrola players played anywhere near the significance that they played in Europera 5 (which I actually enjoyed because of its nostalgic, slightly sad atmosphere).  I didn’t feel as if the sound mixing in this recording worked well, either, since the piano seemed to be much louder than the singers ever were, and although I sometimes heard the Victrolas, it was rare that they managed to get my attention, totally unlike Europera 5.  The highlight of the recording was the Truckera tape which, I’m sad to report, didn’t actually show up that much.  I remember liking it a lot in Europera 5 and I thought it could be used to great effect here in this more exuberant performance, but it wasn’t.

I’m afraid I really didn’t tell much difference between Europera 3 and Europera 4, except that the latter was shorter (thank goodness).  I’d probably enjoy going to a performance of this, because the silliness of the activities on stage would probably be very entertaining and would distract me from the overbearing false intensity of the singers.  As an audio-only recording of a live event, though, I’m afraid I can’t enjoy it one bit—even the parts I liked the most from Europera 5 seemed to be minimized or too hard to hear.

Solo for Voice 2

2006-01-17T02:09:00.000-05:00

Well, I’ve been listening, but not posting so much.  I finished the First Meeting and will add my thoughts on the second part (actually, it’s all one big thing, not truly divided into parts) to the review from the previous day later.  Today I will add my thoughts on tonight’s listening and last night’s as well.  That should bring me up to speed, except I think I still have a few things from weeks ago to fill in.

Not many works remain, but they are all long ones.  We’ve got two Europeras coming, a bunch of lengthy number works (notable Thirteen and Five3), a recording of the Concert for Piano and Orchestra, two more sets of Variations, a few miscellaneous short piano works, and a few alternative versions of works I’ve already heard, including the highly anticipated Cheap Imitation version for orchestra!  Less anticipated, at least by me, are another hour or so of A Dip in the Lake and another bunch of Freeman EtudesI...:-(

My estimation is 22 days or fewer to finish up, which puts the end sometime during the week of Febuary 8th!

I contacted Claudia Gould of the Institute for Contemporary Art at the University of Pennsylvania (http://www.icaphila.org/contact/ ),  It was for her Music Box Project that Lullaby for music box was created.  I wanted to

verify that Cage created it himself for her project (as opposed to it being a transcription of sorts made following his death) and

See if she knew where a recording might be (a CD was sold at the original exhibition).

Because I’m a complete nobody, my email probably never got read.  Directors of art instutes no doubt have better things to do than answer questions about ridiculously obscure music ;-)

Anyway, maybe someone less irrelevant could try.  Otherwise I might try writing a “snail mail” letter on the letterhead of some nonexistent John Cage association, call myself the “director,” and see if that is noticed!  Persistence is the key, and my goal in life is to get a copy of this recording,

Actually, my goal in life is to get the prepared train recording that languishes in the Florence library.  This is a secondary goal!

Ten
This is a 1991 number piece for flute, oboe, trombone, piano, and string quartet.  It uses overlapping time brackets and single tones.  Ol’ www.johncage.info quotes the score with “Search with them for melisma, florid song,” which sends me straight to a dictionary for melisma.  It didn’t help, I’m afraid; the sentence still doesn’t make much sense, unless Cage is saying the performance should be seeking to find music suitable for melisma.

Anyway, I don’t think my Hat Art performance is very good.  I didn’t enjoy hearing it very much; there was a whole lot of silence in spite of the decent number of instruments, which is fine I suppose...I guess I’d say that no aspect of the performance really made the music sound like anything other than “generic number piece” with single tones.  In this case, none of the tones were held long enough for intense consideration.

In terms of the nature metaphor, I felt this performance sounded like animal noises, especially the strings which often brought to mind howling in the distance (perhaps this was because I was noticing the microtonal shifts Cage requires).  Perhaps I was just not in the right mood for enjoying it.

Solo for Voice 2
Now this performance, by contrast, was incredible, even if I believe it to not be a very authentic version of the work.  It’s the only performance of the 1960 Solo that exists, too, so it gets special consideration!  I don’t know why no one records the two Solos on their own, considering how popular Aria is.  Anyway, this particular one is indeterminate, and the recording I have uses human voices completely demolished by electronics.  David Tudor and Gordon Mumma created it on the “Extended Voices LP” (thanks, as is often the case, is owed to Lothar here).  It’s a whirlwind of screeches and groans and really horrific sounds, but it was also completely enjoyable.

Some of the time, you can make out distinct human voices underneath the layers of electronic modification, but sometimes it’s just near ear-shattering cacophony.  You get voices slowed down and buried in static, and some that are laced with feedback (at one extended portion of this type, I had to turn my speakers down lest someone above me have nightmares).

To what degree Cage wanted electronics to be used in this work is unknown to me, but I’m sure the rest of that LP would be fun to hear!

One8
This is a cello work from 1992, to be performed with a curious curved bow that allows sounds to be produced on up to four strings.  Like One9, it can be played simultaneously with One8.  The resulting sound is relatively sparse, although it does not need to be so since the time brackets overlap.  The cello sounds are especially intriguing, because I can often mentally break apart the chord being played into its constituent parts.  I think all the small number pieces also have a significant spatial aspect.  When tones are played long, it can be fun to shift my position around and hear how the note changes as I move in my room.

I’m afraid my ability to think of a natural analog of this music is failing me (it’s always harder with the Ones, as the music is not as much a landscape), except maybe some sort of fountain with multiple streams pouring at different times.  I’m afraid it sounds a little too much like some of the other string-based number pieces to be very exciting to me.

As a final note, the time of the work is 43’30, which is a Cage in-joke if I ever saw one...;-)

Twenty-Six

2006-01-13T02:44:00.000-05:00

Tonight I will be posting a combination of tonight and last night, since I was too tired at 3 AM to write anything yesterday.  I’m glad to say that my cold is slowly disappearing.  Die, you nasty rhinovrus, die, I say!

I randomly found a recording that claims to be Solo for Voice 1, which has never been independently recorded.  But I might be wrong.  We shall see.

Tossed As It Is Untroubled
This music for prepared piano is from 1943.  It consists essentially of a single melody repeated with minor variations, over and over.  It’s got a great rhythm, and I find the melody to be pretty memorable.  In my recording, a clanging in the prepared piano emerges towards the midway point.  I am curious if this is intentional, or just an artifact of the way the preaparations where made (i.e., something came loose).  I’d call this my 2nd or 3rd favorite prepared piano work, the favorite being the one I have put off to the end: Totem Ancestor.

Music for Piano 37-52
This is a confusing one, because 1955’s Music for Piano 21-36; 37-52 is considered “one work,” and yet they are sperated by a semicolon.  I can only guess that the two sets are part of one work but result from different sets of paper imperfections.  Anyway, in this recording, they are played as distinctive items.

I gotta admit...the super sparse piano is wearing a little thin!  This music was all single tones, along with various thumping and slamming sounds, even more than usual.  It sounded more hollow than other music in the series, but I don’t know why that might be.  Ther e is much string-plucking as well.

Twenty-Six
This is a 1991 work for 26 violins, played on the OgreOgress recording, I believe.  The first one I bought!  I guess I have mixed feelings about the use of overdubbing, but having not heard any non-overdubbed performances to compare, and having some idea how the music “works” I don’t think it’s a problem.

The first thing I wrote down when I heard this music was “shimmering.”     I find it hard to consider listening to this as anything other than swimming; when I did my Cage presentation, this was the recording I used to suggest water.  I’d say it’s among my favorite Number Piece recordings of all; the music goes on for long enough for me to be hypnotized by it, but there’s enough variety in the entering and exiting violin sounds that I don’t go to sleep, and it’s not so long that my ears become tired of it.

Actually, maybe I am not thinking of swimming exactly, but something less active.  Perhaps simply being swept into a whirlpool...

Music for Piano 3
Another in the series, No. 3 is super-sparse and very short with only a handful of solitary notes (seven, in fact).  Nevertheless, the sound is continious thanks to the sustain pedal.  All of the sounds are produced using the keyboard, and seem to occur within a fairly limited range.  It sounds best played with others in the series, I think.

Spontaneous Earth
More prepared piano music, this time from 1944.  This one’s very tense and dramatic, another favorite of mine.  It has a lot of repeitions of the main dramatic theme, played progressively more forcefully.  The piano preparations result in a metallic sound added to most of the notes.  As I said, each repetition of the theme is played more and more forcefully, until the end of the piece, where it slowly fades out until a final long-held tone.  This seems to be a favorite effect of Cage’s.

The First Meeting of the Satie Society, part 1
I listened to this tonight, since it’s about 50 minutes long.

One6

2006-01-11T02:10:00.000-05:00

Another day, another annoying cold.  I took some of that new non-drowsy antihistamine to stop the faucets, but it’s left me feeling a bit on the floaty side.  Hopefully this review will be coherent in spite of that fact.

Reading the liner notes of Litany for the Whale today, I discovered that their performance of Experiences II omitted a line of text and reordered others.  This confuses me.  If you’re going to perform a work, why not do it right?  I mean, at least the conductor of that 103 recording had an explanation, however silly it was, for ignoring the score.  Hmm.

One6
This is a violin work intended to accompany a sound sculpture that causes string vibrations as it melts and is mostly a big pile of very long tones.  It should be appropriate for my stupor tonight, I think.  It was created in 1990.

Curiously most of the violin tones sound essentially the same, or else my ears are too inadequate to determine the differences.  Once in awhile, the particular note shifts though, sometimes lower and sometimes higher.  There are also extended silences.  As usual, the extended playing of the notes allows me to hear the subtle variations in timbre; at certain points, too, I can observe how the sound changes as the violinist increases or decreases volume.

The string music always brings to mind water, partially because of the rushing sound of the bowing.  On this case, I think of a rather placid lake, still for most of the time, but disturbed occasionally by a pebble falling in.  The resulting ripples are observed in extreme slow motion through this music, persisting for awhile, and then vanishing back into silence when the lake is still again.

And yes, the music did come close to putting me to sleep yet again.  I think that is a consequence of the extended silences, and the brush-like nature of performance.  It’s very soothing.

4'33"

2006-01-10T03:40:00.000-05:00

Tonight I had the strange experience of buying a $1.00 Cage CD.  The local record srore had exactly six used albums in their classical music section.  I bought four of them: an Arnold Bax Symphony, Cage’s “Litany for the Whale” disc (I have access to the disc but did not own it until now), Allegri’s Misirere, and a disc full, of all things, of music for harmonica and orchestra.  Total cost was $6.50.  If only I could meet whoever brought those in...

At the bookstore, I sat around reading some book about some female oboe player, and was amused to learn that the classical music world is as much a drugged-out oversexed freak show as the rock and roll world, except everyday people actually want to hear rock music.  ;-)

Tonight I will do a big pile of fairly short works, including a
WORLD PREMIERE RECORDING
of a never-before recorded Cage work

The size of that text was absolutely essential.

Oh, I also made recordings of part of Art is a Complaint ot Do Something Else lately.

4’33”
Here of course is Cage’s infamous silent work, scored for any number of performers, performed infamously by David Tudor not long after it was written in 1952—incidentally, the only date I know off the top of my head!.  I recorded this myself, and enjoyed the experience.  The recording features miscellaneous sounds, mostly the sounds of my computer whirring and me sitting in my chair.  I hear myself breath a few times, and I hear myself shift positions.  Interesting, because I wasn’t aware my microphone was so sensitive.

This may not be a legitimate recording, because I failed to not be playing an instrument...

The traditional way of interpreting this piece is that the incidental noises are what form the music.  However, one of the ways I like to hear it is to suppose that I have to listen behind all the extraneous noises, that the music is the silence produced by the performer but all the other sounds—my computer, my blood, the electrical impulses in my brain--are too loud and drown it out.  I guess that’s kind of the sad view of 4’33”.

The work is divided into three movements, although I did not do anything to indicate this in the recording since it would involve intentionally producing sound.  Maybe splitting the track into three parts would have been a way to do it?

Six
This is a three-minute work for unspecified percussion from 1991, and it brings to mind Three2 which I reviewed previously and may be from the same disc.  Similar rushing sounds are heard, and rattling as well.  It’s great for a windy, rustic night such as this.  Overall, though it’s atmospheric, but fairly nondescript.  The score is just about as simple as they come, featuring number superimposed on staff lines, indicating when the performers should start and stop their sounds.  I think i would have preferred a more radily recognizable percussion instrument ot two.

Music for Carillon No. 2
This work from 1954 was created using holes in cardboard, and can be adapted for any type of carillon.

Music for Carillon No. 3
This work, also from 1954, uses the exact smae materials as No. 2 but simply is read upside down.

0’00”
This work from 1962 is also called 4’33” No. 2, and is intended to be performed in any way by anyone, within certain specifications: It must be amplified, the actions taken must fufill an obligation to others, and the actions cannot be performing music.

This was recorded while typing up the revision of the Water Walk review last night, and this is a world premiere recording, but not technically the one I am referring to in the intro.  Primarily what I hear are keyboard sounds, including some rocking back and forth as a consequence of the way I amplified the sound.

I had no contact microphones, so I attatched the end of a stethoscope under my keyboard, and then used clay do fashion a tube leading from the earpiece directly into my microphone.  The result sounds pretty good; the keyboard is amplified and not much else can be heard.  It’s interesting how the spacebar has such a distinctive forceful sound to it.

Two
Two is an early number piece scored for flute and piano, and a pain to find!  Thanks to Lothar for a copy.  It was written in 1987, and to my ears seems pretty distinct from its followers in the same genre.

59 ½ for a String Player
Only one solo recording of this that I know of exists, and it’s on a “Wonderful Widows” disc that I now, annoyingly, have three copies of!  It was written in 1953, and the performer chooses what four strings are referred to by the notation.  Bowing pressure and auxillary sounds are indicated, too.

Five2
This work from 1991 is scored for three clarinets (one bass), a horn and timpani.  I’m grateful for the timpani, because it adds some fun to the music.

Intlets
This is a wonderful piece that’s depressignly hard to find a copy of; credit goes to Greg for this one.  The duration of the 1977 work is mostly taken up by the sound of water in conch shells being tipped over, which sometimes produces noises and sometimes does not.  Added to this is the sound of a burning pinecone and a single, drawn out blow on a shell.  I rather wish the last part wasn’t there; it is so loud that I have to keep the volume on my stereo down to avoid waking the dead.  However, when I do that, I have trouble healing the watery sounds, much less the pinecone.

One3
Cage’s first and only performance of this work in Tokyo in 1989 was in response to a request to perform 4’33”.  Feeling that silence had changed since the 50’s, he chose to do this.  he sound system of the performance area has its volume raised until the point that it is about to feedback.  I didn’t really get what this meant until I bought my microphone a few weeks ago, and annoyed my ears with lots and lots of feedback, and I subsequently felt like an idiot.

But after that, I realized that I could use this fact to produce my own rendition of One3.  So I set my volume levels and kept one hand on the mouse as I recorded, because my feedback is a little shaky.  There will be none for a long time, and then suddenly it explodes.  So in a way, my listening was even more intense than in the original 4’33”.  I also did as Cage did in the original performance, and measured time with my inner clock, resulting in a performance that made it to five minutes and thirty seconds.  A minute too long!

The sound is much the same, except I can hear a very vague moaning sound that might be a little feedback creeping in, and it does seem as if sounds in general are louder and more hollow-sounding.  I can hear myself breating in the One3 recording more than the 4’33” recording, anyway.  It was an awful lot of fun to record.

Music of Changes

2006-01-09T02:03:00.000-05:00

Well, I have returned!  Back in the sleepy college town where I will hear Cage each night, not coincidentally just before sleeping.  I can’t exaggerate how much I have missed my speakers.  Hearing Cage on headphones is a lot different and less fun than playing it loudly while I sit around and eat spaghetti and cheese.  I am feeling glad to be back and feel like tackling something big, so I’ll hear a work that is central to Cage’s output, and because it is shorter than I remembered, I’ll throw in a surprise.

Music of Changes
This is Cage’s first massive exploration of chance operations in compositions.  He allowed chance to dictate all the details of playing this piano music, from the keys pressed, the pedals, to the times when the performer should use the lid and the strings inside the piano.  It was written in 1951.

Of all the chance-driven piano music cage ever wrote, this is by far the most fun to listen to.  I think that’s because of the sheer array of different sounds: individual notes, chords, sustained and un-sustained sounds, plucks of the strings, tone clusters, glissandos, and even curious strings of fast notes that seem to me to be melodic.  It makes me wonder how Cage incorporated them into the music, or chose them in the first place.

Sometimes music from Berio or other composers seems almost like it is purposefully harsh and painful to listen to, but I have never gotten that sense with Cage.  I guess the chance-determined nature of the music results in chords and tone progressions that are sometimes ear-pleasing and sometimes not, but I never feel like they are being thrust upon me, but rather just presented for my examination.  It is hard to describe better what I mean.  I would also separate this from my experience of his later works by saying that it does not bring to mind natural processes the way the later ones do; in fact, I would say it seems very artificially constructed and goes to an opposite extreme.

Finally, the curious piano body noises are especially interesting in the Music of Changes because they are so rare.

Water Walk
This is a recording provided from German radio by Lothar.  It’s one of two works Cage composed for the Italian quiz show he won back in 1959.  The score is a timeline of events in which objects are manipulated and sounds are made as a result.  Most of the sounds are water-oriented, and it should be fun for me to try and figure out what they are.

Overall, I would describe the recording as a fair bit more successful than Water Music.  This is because I could readily identify most of the sounds, which were generally quite loud.  The bird whistles were obvious (waterfowl, I think) and the sounds of the blender crushing ice were also quite obvious.  The only thing I am unsure about is the loud blowing noise which seems to me to be an air horn.  The piece got especially interesting towards the end, with lots of noises from the radio and the ice crusher and so on.  Audience laughter suggests that the performance had some fun visual elements, too!

Quartets I-VIII

2006-01-04T18:45:00.000-05:00

Today I’ll hear a little orchestral music.  I head back to Blacksburg Sunday, at which point resuming more regular reviews will be easier.  Listening on my headphones constantly gives me a bit of a headache here.

Quartets I-VIII
This music follows the same precedent of Apartment House 1776 and Cheap Imitations and other works: music based on decompositions of other music.  In this case, it is various hymns played by an orchestra of 24, 41 or 93 players (I don’t remember how many players this version has, but because it was on a disc with Sixty-Four I am guessing 41 or 93).  As a consequence of the way they are composed, the music is atypically sweet and melodic.  Only four instruments play at any given time, and I believe in all cases the orchestra is primarily strings and wind instruments without use of keyboards or percussion, but I may be wrong   I’m afraid I can’t read orchestra notation, it just looks like a bunch of IP addresses to me.

I don’t hear any notes that seem ‘broken,’ so I don’t believe the music was substantially modified other than the removed notes (an exception is a few plucked string sounds that show up in unexpected places).  I do, however, hear a number of places where I think the missing notes were taken out.  Overall, the music is pastoral, and I have difficulty telling any of the compositions apart.  I always enjoy Cage’s “subtractions” but I wish he had done a little more with this music, mixing it up a little bit, maybe producing something like The Beatles.  Although I have not heard the original music, I suspect he has maintained their sense of peace and dignity in spite of his modifications of them.

Imaginary Landscape No. 5
This is a work for tape created through the use of 42 records spliced into a collage.  Cage used jazz records, and so naturally enough I am also hearing it in a version for jazz records.  I think Greg wanted to make a version for natural sounds, but I would tend to prefer creating it using pre-existing musical materials and like my version a lot.  This is a version whose origin is uncertain.  I found it by searching for “Imaginary Landscape mp3” on Google back in 2002, but I did not make note of the site.  It seems to be as accurate as the ones on the Online Recordings page of www.johncage.info (the site is down but still available via Google’s cache—you might wanna save a copy of it).  I say it’s accurate because the Maelstrom recording off Hat Art’s Imaginary Landscapes CD seems way too short to be a legitimate version; it clocks in at barely over a minute, as I recall, and unless I am mistaken the score is determinate in terms of length.

In this version, most of the recordings seem to be 20’s style big band tunes, but I’m the first to admit I have little knowledge of jazz music.  It’s got a nice groove to it, even though the particular groove I experience at any given moment is always interrupted.  I think the music gives an interesting snapshot of jazz, and I can tell pretty easily that these were originally records given the sound.  It’s a little hollow and old sounding.  I like this rendition a lot.  I note that a few of the recordings are speed-modified during the performance, and I wonder if this is correct because it only shows up towards the end...

Two2

2006-01-03T04:40:00.000-05:00

Today I didn’t feel like making a complicated playlist, so I picked Two2 which just happens to be 46 minutes long.  Some days I like to hear a variety of different styles, some days I just want to hear something constant.  Today was a beautiful day outside, around 76 degrees with a nice breeze.  Even in Alabama, that’s odd for midwinter!

Hope everyone is having a good new year.  I have enjoyed buying music for myself as of late.  Specifically, I’ve discovered that one of the local stores has a giant display of discs from Naxos.  What I like about that label is the number of times I say “I didn’t know...” when I examine their discs.  For example, I bought a disc of alpenhorn music yesterday.  And I like the harp, and their harp collection was one of the extremely few collections that included only works actually written for the harp as opposed to a million transcriptions of other random stuff.

I wrote to them and encouraged them to do more Cage recordings, especially of later works.  I really liked the 2nd prepared piano disc they released (I was less enthusiastic with the Sonatas and Interludes recording but that may because I am less enthusiastic about that work as a whole).  Anyway, it would be interesting to hear a version of some of the number pieces using an actual full contingent of performers instead of overdubbing and see if the result sounds any different, for better or worse.

Two2
From 1989 comes an early number piece for two pianos.  Oddly, it lacks the usual time brackets and instead there are 36 lines of music played at any tempo, though the ordering for both parts is strict.  The first result I notice is that the resulting sound is a little fuller and seems a bit less focused on individual notes.  The sustain pedal keeps the sound going a long while, and there’s an interesting mix of chords and single notes played.

I am guessing the chords were chosen by chance operations of some sort.  Unlike other sparse piano music, there’s not much silence here at all, even when there are no notes played, thanks to the sustained sound.  It’s much more like other number pieces than the early 50’s piano works in this regard.  I think it’s a good choice for a night time listen.  In fact, I think most of Cage’s number pieces would be ideally played in some kind of garden or other open natural space late in the evening.

Heh, it’s getting a little harder to say new things, at least with regards to the piano music, which there is so much of!

Second Construction

2005-12-30T21:59:00.000-05:00

Whew, it’s been awhile!  Sorry for the absence.  It’s interesting: when I’m in Alabama and it’s just my parents, I have way too much free time, but when my brothers arrive it completely vanishes.  My last one went back to Atlanta today, but being a lowly student I’m going to hang out here another week or so.  The last few bits of music I have heard via headphones, so this has been a slightly different listening experience from the other reviews.

The Christmas good news is that my brothers and aunt gave me a pile of Cage CD’s.  The bad news is that I already had nearly all of them.  My brother gave me the “Wonderful Widows” disc (with 59 ½” and Ryoanji as well) and “John Cage at Summerstage,” while my aunt also bought “Wonderful Widow” along with the CDs “Five3” and “The Sky’s the Limit.”  So of all those, I got one disc I did not already have, and I now have three copies of that “Wonderful Widows” disc.  I wonder if Amazon does returns.

Here’s a random question for anyone working in radio: Why do the announcers on the classical stations seem to speak so much closer to the mic than on other stations?  I always know when they’re about to speak because I can hear the spit sloshing in their mouths.  Yuck!

Second Construction
This is a work for percussion quartet.  There’s also a prepared piano involved; it was written in 1940.

The Second Construction is a very windy work, in my opinion.  I mean that it isn’t as harsh or forceful during most of the music as the others in the Constructions series.  It makes quite a bit of use of a triangle (I think) and chimes, too, so it just feels lighter than the other two. At most points, there are not a large number of instruments playing simultaneously, and there’s some really incredible gong sounds; they sound warped and distorted as they play.  I would add that most of the sounds are metallic, too.  The rhythm is clear but, as I said, not forceful.  I don’t think this is exciting as the other two, and I find it a good one for relaxation.

I wonder if the distorted gong is one of the water gongs or not.

Radio Music
This is a six-minute work for radio, much like Imaginary Landscape No. 4.  It’s from 1956. Apparently it’s in four parts, but they cannot be distinguished.  It seems to me that Cage uses more frequencies than I have available on my own radio (all the way down to 55 KHz), and that might explain some of the seriously bizarre static I hear as I listen to the recording.  It sounds an awful lot like the kinds of strange bleating and buzzing you get when you put your handheld radio near a computer or a hard disk or other such device.

I think it’s more full of sound than the Landscape is, but of course that would largely depend on the number of radios used (this seems to be only one radio, a maximum of 8 are allowed).

I really don’t understand why performances of the radio works manage to sound the way they do, almost exclusively full of speech and classical or jazz music plus static.  If I were to perform it here, the recording would be utterly buried in the latest pop and hip hop music, with a liberal dosage of country thrown in.  Almost no speech besides advertising would be heard.    I don’t think I heard a single pop song in this entire performance.  To me that smacks worryingly of intention, the same way my Cikada Duo recording of Landscape No. 4 ends very suspiciously with the finale of a symphony.

27’10.554 for a Percussionist
This is what I call a dubious recording.  The work itself was also from 1956, and features percussion instruments in several groups including electronics (mostly radios).  I say the recording is dubious because it’s three chunks from three different Max Neuhaus performances from 1964 and 1965, all stapled together.  I guess the idea is to show the way in which performances can vary.

In the first, you mostly hear metallic slam noises and bumps and so on, plus a radio (from which I could enjoy a few vintage 60’s pop fragments).  The second performance seems to use some kind of tape loop for the electronics, and stretching, scratched strings for the other elements.  The score calls for metal, wood and skin based percussion, but I don’t hear much besides metallic sounds.  The third has the same sort of tape-sounding music, plus more scraping and bonking.  Both it and the second also have a little feedback, which may or may not be intentional.  I still don’t hear much besides the metallic sounds and electronics, though.

Like most of the completely-indeterminate music, I don’t find this one very thrilling, largely because I know every performance is totally different.

A Chant With Claps
Here’s an obscure one, featuring clapping and a longwinded text about the changes Greek music incurred as the civilization which used it (and the Romans who adopted it) changed.  It was apparently a gift to Henry Cowell sometime in the 1940’s.  It sounds for all the world like someone reading a paragraph from a textbook; the text is written in that verbose and tiring style I associate with the humanities, anyway.  Still, I like listening to it just to hear the dramatic “Greek civil-i-zaaaaaay-TION!” at the very end.

Aria

2005-12-24T00:03:00.000-05:00

The holidays are nearly upon us.  I nonetheless have some free time, so I’ll try to squeeze reviews in...even if the rest of you just might have better things to do over the next day or two than read the CageBlog ;-)

Aria
In 1958, Cage composed this indeterminate work for voice, which consists of wavy lines indicating different types of singing, squares indicating non-singing vocal sounds, and text in assorted languages.  The performance is indeterminate, although there are 20 pages (each with 30 seconds), so most versions I have heard of are in the 10 minute or under range.  Now, there’s a wide array of ways to perform this, since the singing styles are determined by the performer.  I like the version I am hearing now (from the Music for Eight disc), because almost all the vocal sounds are pretty nice to hear.  I heard a different version a few years ago which went a little overboard with the whiny, screeching, or grating vocals that simply got on my nerves.  Here, the singer only goes into “old hag” voice a few times!

What you mostly hear are fragmented chunks of singing, which may or may not be from real songs (I do not know the languages), interspersed with periods of silences and the occasional nonmusical vocal noise.  These are almost always pops or clicks of various kinds, since there’s not that many options (others are throat noises, laughs, gasps, etc.).  I don’t expect that the experience of the music would vary a whole lot between performances, since the text and wavy lines are constant, even if the order or specific style may not be.  Interestingly, all the versions I have are done by women.

Music for Piano 4-19
Here’s another set of chance piano music from 1953, involving single tones produced via key presses, string plucks, and so forth with the piano.  Now, I understand that Cage says these can be performed as separate pieces or in any combination.  But I wonder why they were released as one block, as 4-19.  Was that just how he happened to publish them?  I’m also not clear as to whether Cage means they can be played in combination as in sequence, or as in simultaneously, with other pieces from others in the Music for Piano series.

I think of this series partially as an exercise in chance composition, but also as something of an extension of the prepared piano, because Cage’s instructions produce a pretty wide variety of different sounds.  Nonetheless, there’s not much to say that I haven’t said before, except that the use of sustains here helps me hear the different sounds.  It also means that silences are present, but not overwhelming.

Water Walk
Here’s a work that’s covered in my John Cage Theater Pieces book.  It’s from 1952, and because it involves a pianist running around performing actions with whistles, radios, cards and so on, it would be fun to see in person.  Each event is notated (many of them involve water, hence the title) and the work is chance-determined, but not indeterminate.

The recording loses something because a lot of the actions are not easily audible.

HPSCHD

2005-12-22T05:45:00.000-05:00

Well, I am once again back in Alabama.  It was a nice trip, faster than usual since I listened to the Cage/Tudor interview linked to on the Silence list, among other things,  as I drove.  Here is a double whammy of music, about a CD worth in terms of length.  Sort of...As will be seen in the first description. it’s not very nose on your face to determine if the first work is what I thought it was.

Alphabet
I’m not sure how accurate I am here.  I listened to a recording of James Joyce, Marcel Duchamp and Erik Satie: An Alphabet which I presume is the same thing as the Alphabet from 1982, but it’s ,ore like a text work than a music work.  Then again, Cage does rather blend the two, doesn’t he?  The work consists primarily of “conversations” of a sort between various characters, but generally they come off more like monologues, and very odd ones at that.  To summarize, the piece was a textual description of a stage play, usually involving actors who are dead (some are not) and strange actions that would not actually be presentable.  In general, the people are important to Cage (the title characters, plus an enormous number of names I don’t recognize offhand, probably poets) but not always...At least the people that actually say anything seem important.  This was a live recording, and the audience laughs regularly and I do not get the jokes at all, most of the time.  I did learn that I’ve been pronouncing “Duchamp” wrong every time I have said his name, and I also learned from the introduction (possibly my favorite part, in which Cage describes his experiences with Duchamp, Joyce and Satie) that “nose on your face” is a good substitute for “straightforward.”

The most memorable section was an extremely longwinded description of points of view based on rays of light striking objects in various dimensions.  I listened to this on the road, though, so I’ll scan over the recording here and add additional detail tomorrow.

I do remember thinking that if someone made a cartoon based off the work, that would be incredible.

HPSCHD
Ah, the classic “happening” from 1969.  Based on the description of the event (multicolored lights, space-image-slide shows, etc.) It seems to fit my mental image of the end of the decade pretty well.  Anyway, I wouldn’t really recommend the LP recording, since it obviously lacks all of the multimedia aspects of the performance.  The music consists of various harpsichord solos combined with taped computer music.  The computer music is a lot of fun to listen to simply by virtue of its age, and there’s lots of interesting timbres, from generic booping to ripping and tearing sounds.  Although the music doesn’t provide any melody, it does add an appropriate background to the shrill, “spiky” sound that I associate with harpsichord music.  They are similar in texture, I think.

I don’t recognize the harpsichord pieces, but they are a bit hard to hear anyway.  I know some are modern, and some are instances of Mozart’s dice-game pieces.  Hey, it just occurred to me that the dice game is not on the 260 CD Mozart collection.  Blasphemy!

Anyway. I wish someone relatively nearby would re-stage this.  I would enjoy hanging out for awhile, although at this point it might seem a bit “retro” and it might be hard to pull it off in a serious way.  Still, any chance to see (and probably make fun of) Trip to the Moon (one of the movies played at the original event) should be taken up.

A Dip in the Lake

2005-12-20T04:01:00.000-05:00

What better way to get through some recordings I am not exactly looking forward to than cleaning up for my trip home while listening? :-D   Tomorrow is a 7 hour drive to Birmingham for the rest of the holidays.  I plan to listen to a few things on the road, probably Alphabet and some unrelated opera.  I hate opera, so the only reasonable thing to do is make myself sit through it for 3 hours or whatever, and maybe I’ll like it.

I had a pretty infuriating experience trying to record a portion of “Art is a Complaint or Do Something Else” today, as my microphone produced scratchy garbage instead of a reasonable recording.  I reduced the gain to near-zero, same problem.  Eventually it worked perfectly, after I did nothing, and then apparently realizing it needed to be consistent, the scratching reappeared (again, after I did nothing).  Very, very annoying.

At one point, I came close to damaging my ears with feedback (and I probably REALLY annoyed my neighbors, too).  However, now that I have a feel for the appropriate volume levels, I should be able to do my own performance of One3 without much difficulty!

A Dip in the Lake: Waltzes Nos. 1 – 31
Wow, I actually detected a slight waltz rhythm among some of the recordings.  That was pretty cool, even if I don’t know if it was intentional.  Some of it was recorded at the lakeside, I believe, and others were recorded in direct public view (at a train station, I think).  It’s good to hear some human voices in these recordings, considering Chicago is a big city.  It was odd the last one lacked them!  The human sounds dominated at the beginning, but towards the end it was back to mostly traffic sounds (and a car alarm, interestingly).  A lot of recordings seemed to be just of the ambient breeze.

Freeman Etudes Nos. 17 – 24
When mentioned recordings I was not looking forward to hearing, I’m sure everyone guessed Freeman Etudes!  Fortunately, there’s only another half hour of these things to go.  I think Cage could have just written like 5 of them and my curiosity value would be satisfied...I am really running short on things to say about them.  Various tones, some long, some short, some painful.  The violin sounds depressed, I think.  I just realized that some of the shorter squeals sound a lot like the squeaking of shoes on a basketball court.  For whatever that is worth...

Cheap Imitation, for violin

2005-12-18T04:27:00.000-05:00

Tonight I decided to waste some money, so I bought crab to go with my noodles.  My food-related frugality usually makes me feel OK about spending a little extra for the bucket of crab every month or two.  I ate too much though :-(

My cold vanished in about 24 hours.  I think this is sufficient evidence to prove that I am basically immune to all disease, so I’m not going to bother with any hygiene practices from now on.

Ah, spending all day at the apartment, stepping out the door only twice all day, has left me incredibly lethargic.  I have nothing in particular to accomplish right now, though I need to head back to Alabama before Christmas, obviously.  Probably Monday or Tuesday, I guess.

So another note about the Allmusic “top composers” list.  Why is D. Scarlatti there?  I didn’t think he did much besides compose like 500 keyboard sonatas.

Ooooh...too much crab...

Cheap Imitation, for violin
This is the violin version of the Cagean manipulation of Satie’s Socrate from 1977.  This time, it’s a little more alive.  Cage’s playing in the piano version I heard was completely dead, but the violin with its longer tones makes it more pleasing, and there’s even a little bit of variation in dynamics.  Still, I’m just not getting a lot out of it...I feel like the music is being played, as with Cage’s piano performance, in a style more appropriate for the chance composed works, rather than in a style appropriate for Satie.  The last movement has a whole lot of squeaking from the violin too; I’m not sure if this is intentional or not, because it is not so prominent in the first two movements.  The very end features a repeated low note that to be honest sounds as if it’s coming straight out of a wind instrument.  Neat.

Child of Tree
This is the one-part piece for amplified plant materials, usually including cacti.  A pod rattle is required.  It becomes Branches if there are multiple performances; each performance lasts 8 minutes.  The score, such as it is, was made in 1975.  The sound is subtle, and this recording (the only one) is performed in some kind of highly resonant dam, so there’s plenty of reverberations to really bring out the quiet sounds of amplified cactus pluckings.  There’s also some dripping water-like sounds, whose origin is uncertain...Perhaps those are cactus, too!

In a lot of ways, this music is like Cartridge Music, especially in that not seeing the sounds being made makes it a little less interesting for me.  However, since I have a pretty clear idea of the parameters (and can identify the pod rattle, at any rate), it’s still a lot of fun.  Most of the sounds are scraping and popping noises, but others include curious clanking and crunching (possibly leaves being torn) and the sound of wooden objects rubbing together.

When I bought this CD off a fellow on eBay, he said, “I hope you enjoy your cactus music!” I certainly do.  I’ll say a more when I hear the full Branches performance later on (a review all by itself!)

Trio
I feel like I have reviewed this before, but maybe not.  It’s for three percussionists, playing woodblocks, tom toms, bamboo sticks, and a drum.   The first part, Allegro, consists mostly of stick tapping.  These sound like woodblocks; the rhythm is not as obvious as in the March movement that follows, which also brings in the bass drum.  I could see a marching band performing this, in fact.  Well, with some serious amplification anyway.  The bamboo sounds seem lighter than those of the woodblocks.  The third movement, Waltz, has a waltz rhythm, but played on percussion it sounds a little strange.  I believe only the woodblocks participate in this part, which is quite brief and not really all that interesting.

As a side not, the music lasts about three minutes, so it’s strange johncage.info describes it as a twelve minute work.

Fifty-Eight

2005-12-17T03:19:00.000-05:00

Today, I’m afraid I’m not feeling so hot.  Mostly a cold and some headaches.  Damn that excessive snow!  I should be leaving back for Alabama sometime around Tuesday I guess.  I will bring my computer with me, which will make posting and listening far easier since I won’t be competing with three brothers for access.

It just drives me batty when I am told a record is “out of stock.”  How about I just send you a CDR with my payment and you burn the tracks for me?  Maybe with an extra buck for the effort involved?   “Out of stock” is so 1990.

That brings to mind another memory: I recall being told by a Peters representative that to get my A Dip in the Lake score, they needed to “ink up the presses” for which they charged me an extra fee, and the whole process took like two months or longer.  It’s another case where I was not bold enough to say, “Hey, when you get done printing, can you just send me a PDF since it’s all text anyway and I don’t want to waste time and money on shipping?”  That was an even sadder case, because the score turned out to be basically useless; I already knew everything it said about producing a performance from the johncage.info website. :-(

Enough ranting for tonight!  Onwards to Fifty-Eight!

Fifty-Eight
This was written specifically to be performed in a courtyard in Graz, Austria.  It features, as one might expect, various flexible time brackets.

Etudes Australes

2005-12-16T02:53:00.000-05:00

I put together all the remaining files, with a few exceptions, into one gigantic playlist today, and the total time comes to about 32 hours.  Wow.  While I have this free time I should try to take some fairly big bites out of it, much as MacGruff takes large bites out of crime.  The difference between me and MacGruff is that I am not an animated dog in a trenchcoat.

I don’t know if he’s still around anymore, and it’s a safe bet no one in Europe has any clue what I’m talking about so I’ll just stop now.

So I spent an hour or so digging through the Library of Congress catalog on Cage, and was dispappointed to see that none of the rare items are among their collection (unsurprising, all are foreign).  I’m also considering emailing Claudia Gould, who was the curator of the Music Box Project of which Cage’s Lullaby was a part, to find out where I might uncover a recording.  I question whether this is an ‘actual’ work or not, since it appears to just be an arrangement for music box of Cage’s Extended Lullaby which was a part one of the number pieces.

Does anyone else see question marks all over the place when loading my Index and other pages?  I have to change my language settings to “Western” instead of “Unicode” to get them to go away (in Firefox) and it’s annoying.  Excel and Word must be inserting unfriendly tags into my uploads.  How sad.

Etudes Australes, volume 1 and 2
Ah, everyone’s favorite: sparse piano music based on an astronomical atlas!  Except this isn’t sparse at all; it’s actually full of notes.  Thus it’s a more pleasing listening experience, and not as likely to bring sleep.  The music was placyed quickly on my recording, and I would repeat a comment Cage once said about Winter Music: It has become melodic.  One thing in oarticular that was unusual with this music, as far as Cage’s various etudes are concerned, is that each one was fairly distinctive, and if I heard it a few more times I could easily distinguish one of them from the otherers.  This is surprising in basically random collections of tones and chords.  I found a few of them especially pleasing: The speedy number 2 and 7, the sort of explosive number 5.   Number 8  seemed especially melodic and 13 reminded me of thunder.  Very nice!

Chorals

2005-12-15T02:14:00.000-05:00

Alright, check out the new review list; I reorganized it totally alphabetically, made a few corrections (adding a few extra versions of a few pieces that are around) and most importantly, I have added the recordings used for each review.  I’ve used a wider variety than I thought I did, in fact!

I’ve decided to add some ratings, as a helpful tool for new listeners to Cage to answer the question, “what should I hear first?”  I’ve basically broken it down into stuff anyone who like music should hear, stuff anyone interested specifically in 20th century music should hear, stuff that probably only Cage aficionados would like, and then...the other stuff, like certain early works featuring three dopey songs for voice and piano....

I think if a Complete Cage box set were ever released, it should include readings of all of his lectures and poetry.  I would go so far as to say this might be a key project as far as recordings of Cage’s work go in any context.  I’d especially enjoy hearing a complete reading of all of the Indeterminacy-like stories floating around Silence.

Speaking of Cage’s poetry, here are some works completely unrelated to it.

Hymnkus
Hymnkus has a bunch of parts for various winds, voice, percussion, accordion, piano, violin and cello.  Fourteen parts in total; it was written in 1986.  The work involves repeated verses of seventeen events.  My recording has the saxophones, percussion, accordion, and piano.  From this the style of the work shines through pretty well.  Generally speaking, the music is like a number piece in texture, but with much shorter events overall.  I’m afraid I can’t directly hear the repetitions as I listen for them, but maybe someone with more careful ears could.

The music comes from Etcetera and as a result sounds rather similar.  But maybe that’s just the beginning of one of the parts and they decided to start later than the others, or maybe I just missed it previously.  I believe all the notes are played within a small range on all the instruments, which is readily apparent since the piano seems to be playing the same basic tones over and over again even if I can’t hear a pattern in the ordering really.

Basically I’m not really enthusiastic about the music, although it’s kind of neat that everyone is basically playing the same notes.  It doesn’t evoke any strong feelings for me.  Maybe I’d enjoy a different performance more, with more instruments.

Chorals
This is a microtonal violin arrangement of Solo 85 from Song Books and is based on a Satie work...one which is probably not microtonal itself.  The music comes to us from 1978.  The music is primarily a fairly high pitched whine, in several parts.  It’s frankly a pretty malevolent sound, and I do not feel very comfortable listening to it.  I like it, still, because it’s so haunting and strange.  I’d like to hear this on a late night road trip I think, past abandoned farmhouses and towering dark trees...I t sounds like regular violin music, just off somehow.  I’m not sure what a haikai is though.

Haikai for flute and zoomoozophone
This is sixteen microtonal duets.  The zoomoozophone is a wacky aluminum-tube based instrument.  Needless to say, this one isn’t recorded too often!  It sounds oriental, but I’m the first to admit I have no idea what I mean by that.  The flute produces clean wind tones, very soft and comforting, like leaves fluttering by.  I hear the zoomoozophone ‘ding’ occasionally, but surprisingly, not all that often.  It produces a quick, light sound, which seems almost as airy as the flute.

It’s a light work, nice and atmospheric.  It should surely be recorded more often.  Maybe there aren’t many zoomoozophone players out there, or maybe it’s just too annoying to type on liner notes...?

Nocturne

2005-12-13T04:32:00.000-05:00

Well, I’m back.  Another semester is completed and now I’ve got a week or so to kill before heading home for some holidays.  I will remember to bring the correct music this time!  Soon I’ll be done with all academia; if I ever become outrageously rich, I’m going to hire a composers to create new music for every product launch or life event.  It would just be an excuse to pay someone to compose, under the theory that great music shows up when people compose, regardless of why they are doing it.

I borrowed two books from the library, John Cage’s Theater Pieces and Conversations with Cage.  Both are highly enjoyable, although Conversations could really, really use an index.  I tend to just open it and read wherever I happen to be.  I didn’t realize I got to keep them for such a crazy amount of time, upwards of 3 months.  Good grief.

I finished up the two missing reviews below (Four4 and the stuff from yesterday) and will be ready to get back in full gear.  Tonight’s selections are below and I shall fill them out tomorrow.  But just to whet your appetite...

I’m thinking about putting the performer and album for my reviews in the index, since I’ve had some (exactly one) request for that information.  I honestly just don’t keep track of names very well, which is why I hardly ever mention them.

Music Walk
This is an indeterminate quasi-theatrical work from 1958 in which the performer plays the piano and makes other sounds according to the score he or she creates.  In my performance I believe I hear that duck whistle that’s also used in Water Music.  Otherwise, it’s mostly a collection of thumps and bumps.  Oh, and a very nice siren.  I think the work is theatrical but less so than Water Music where the performer plays cards and makes other actions that I just can’t see.  This one is more focused on the sound, and thus is significantly more listenable.

Nocturne for Violin and Piano
In this Nocturne Cage tries to make the violin and piano become one, apparently, but without much success in my mind.  It’s from 1947. To my mind it seems a little like a proto-Dream or In a Landscape.  The music is very sweet, soft and meandering.  The title is appropriate, since the piano mostly plays soft chords and brief, quiet glissandos.  Although the piano’s notes are often spaced far apart, the violin holds them together and gives this work a sense of quiescence.

Two6
Two6 is f violin and piano.  No other details seem readily available though, except it was quite a late work, April 1992.  The tones on the piano seem to uniformly move up the keyboard when they are played close together.  My suspicion that there’s many groups of upward-moving tones in the score.   The violin plays mostly sustained tones, but sometimes they shift into a different tone, but never in a very sudden manner.  It’s quiet at peaceful, overall.  I’d say it’s quite a bit like One that I heard yesterday, as in, like a view of the night sky, but with a chill wind blowing.  I might say this because that is precisely what I experienced about 10 minutes ago when I took the trash out...

Variations I
This is the cello version by Uitti, which is good for an example of a Variations performed by a single person.  The score is a set of dots and lines superimposed.  How to interpret this?  That’s pretty much up to the performer.  Uitti provides some intriguing noises with her cello, my favorite being a loud,  “boing” noise when she plucks a string.  But it doesn’t sound like a normal string pluck because it goes on for longer.  Some of the other sounds are rattling or tapping on the body, and various methods of playing the instrument, probably with different tools than the bow (the scraping seems to come in several flavors).  I guess the Variations are a lot like Cartridge Music, but even more free since you are not restricted to the sounds of objects with contact microphones.

Fontana Mix
This is the Max Neuhaus “Feed” version, although Cage originally created a version for magnetic tape.  This score is also highly indeterminate, using miscellaneous transparencies with points and a grid.  It seems like there’s exactly one photo of this score, and it shows up in almost every Cage book I read!  There’s also some curvy lines.  It’s a lot like Variations but there seems to generally be a preference for performing this work with some kind of electronics.
I have both a tape version and this Feed version, and I think I prefer this one.  The other, well, sounds pretty much like a longer Williams Mix but with a different gamut of sounds.  This version is actually rather scary, with some very low rumbling tones that sneak in.  The music seems to be glowing.  It’s produced presumably from various tone generators, though most of them seem to be in the high rather than the low range.  The particular file that I have is in very bad shape, and I’m not sure where it came from.  Full of nasty blips...unless those are intended!  Sometimes you don’t know with this sort of thing ;-)  I’ve heard this mentioned before as a very great version of the music, and I agree.  I really like it a lot; it’s a big deluge of shifting, sometimes frightening tones.

Mysterious Adventure

2005-12-11T04:52:00.000-05:00

I’m grumpy this evening due to my annoyances as I attempt to watch “Boudu Saved From Drowning” (DVD plays it but with no sound; computer won’t play it at all...)  So I’ll hear some Cage to calm me down before bedtime.

Sorry for the sparse updates, it’s exam time I’m afraid...

Thirty Pieces for String Quartet
A coincidence of solos for strings; the performers should be far away from the audience.  We get three kinds of music and time brackets, one of their first uses way back in 1983.  The work, to be totally blunt, reminds me of other orchestral works, since even in those the strings often, but not always, dominate everything else.  This music is nowhere near as frantic as the Freeman Etudes, but it’s not exactly charming either, the same way that Atlas Eclipticalis was.  It also doesn’t bring to mind other number pieces, because the majority of the tones seem to be fairly brief, and they don’t seem “swept in” as in most number pieces.

I believe this is a live recording based on the wide array of coughs.  The way I think of this works is as maybe a halfway point between some of the more forceful or “random sounding” music like Atlast Eclipticalis and the Freeman Etudes and Etudes Borealis and so on, moving more towards the later number pieces.  The lack of detail in the recording is a little disappointing because it’s harder to hear the specifics of the individual sounds, though I do note some unusual percussive playing of the instrument frame and perhaps some strumming noises.  Nothing is making the instruments seem to scream in pain as in the Freeman Etudes though!

One
More or less where it began, as far as number pieces are concerned—piano chords differing in loudness, written in 1987.  Now, I wonder if this is my imagination or what, but the earlier I go with the number pieces, the less “number piece like” they sound.  This one seems rather forceful; some tones don’t seem to be allowed to fade out.  I do like the performance of chords though.  I’m not exactly sure how Cage chose which chords to perform, because none of them seem totally bizarre.  I presume they are chance-determined within some range.  it’s very silent and meditative, and the only flaw might be that the speedy exit of the sound doesn’t really give me the chance to experience it fully.

I’ve said other number pieces bring to mind the sky or the moon or whatnot; perhaps this one brings to mind some of that but also a sky with lots of shooting stars, that zip through my field of hearing before I really have a chance to experience them, and then they’re gone.  This would frankly be a nice piece of music to hear when I am going to sleep, especially through earplugs: nothing too distracting, and sufficiently random-sounding to get my mind in the proper state for sleep.

Mysterious Adventure
And now for something completely different...Prepared piano dance music in five sections; apparently it is “trivial” but not “simple.” I’m not sure what that means!  It’s lower in pitch than other prepared piano pieces, it seems to me, and the rhythms seem ritualistic to me, and I think there’s some great sounds, very sharp and hard sounds, and a beat I can actually tap along to for parts of the piece.  I would say the opposite of johncage.info, that it’s pretty simple but not trivial, if for no other reason than it goes on a lot longer.  I especially like the second section with the quiet rhythm repeated over and over with a bell sound between each repetition.
Unfortunately, the second part is the only part that uses a slightly different set of sounds.  The other four seem largely similar: fragments of a rather similar rhythm played repeatedly.  The only exception is a shift into different material in the fifth part, almost like someone broke the machine performing the music!  Anyway, it ends with something close to a fade out, something I hear fairly regularly with Cage’s percussion music.  Did anyone use fade-outs before Cage?

Europera 5

2005-12-08T03:25:00.000-05:00

Tonight, an opera.  I’ll preface things by saying that I really hate opera: That awful, nauseating, and unnatural yelping/singing; the tedious melodramatic plots; the haughty arrogance of many of its fans....Blech.

Now, on that positive note, here we go!

Europera 5
This opera is a sort of scaled-down, traveling version of the other Europeras.  It features the same basic stuff, but in smaller scale:  two voices, a piano playing opera transcriptions, some randomized lighting, a television with a clock, and Victrola records of some seriously old operas.  For details you can consult the otherwise quite negative (and, in my opinion, nonsensical) essay on Cage’s Europeras here:
http://d-sites.net/english/cage.htm
The author takes the well-worn road of dismissing Cage’s music as irrelevant, and focusing on the ideas, which to him are just not interesting (apparently, the Europeras are merely rehashes of 4’33”).  I posted the link to the Silence list, though no one said much about it (then again, no one says much in general on there...giving its name an unintended meaning!).  I think this was another of a large number of works where Cage used existing musical sources to create his own compositions, from the mix-and-match of Apartment House 1776 (which has the most in common with the Europeras, I think) to the subtractions of Some of “The Harmony of Maine” and even the various versions of Cheap Imitation.  Then there’s the collages of records in Landscape 5 and elsewhere  Such repurposing is a key theme Cage returned to again and again.

Europera 5, like Four4, is sparse and even lonely.  The more you reflect on what you’re hearing, especially the Victrola performances (everyone involved in creating those recordings is almost certainly dead), the more of a lonely and almost frightening listening experience it becomes.  The variety of volume levels and the shifting positions of the singers mean that the performance is barely audible sometimes, and at others, very loud.  One ironic fact is that, being that I don’t know opera well and couldn’t understand the text even if I did, the piano often seems to accompany the singing pretty well, if unintentionally.  There’s also supposed to be the Truckera tape, a collage of opera music so densely layered as to resemble a truck passing by, but I didn’t hear very much from it; it doesn’t block out the sound as it does in some of the other Europeras.

I cannot find the source where I read this, but I swear I once saw a requirement that the performance of Europera 5 should include a dusty old table lamp.  I was tempted to buy one to have on as I listened, because it would add to the atmosphere of the experience, and to the loneliness.  I’ll also clarify what I said earlier about how I feel about this and how I left about Four4: the loneliness here is primarily distance in time, a separation from others who are now dead.  In Four4, I felt a separation from essentially everything, a bleak and overpowering emptiness.

I think Cage’s goal was to evoke the entire concept of European opera, especially as it seems to us (to me, anyway) in the 21st century, a distant, incomprehensible relic of the past.

Four4

2005-12-07T03:45:00.000-05:00

Today I spent an hour or so skimming through most of John Cage’s Theater Pieces which gave a useful rundown of some of the more obscure later works, and then I read some extracts of Conversing with Cage.  I have a perverse fear of checking out books from this library, so consequently I didn’t keep them.

I look forward to a new Cage biography, because I didn’t like The Roaring Silence very much.  Although it was pleasant to read, I frankly didn’t get much out of it since I had already read so much of Cage’s own writing (I was especially annoyed by the lengthy excerpts from them).  The last several sections, covering the final decades of Cage’s life, reads like an itinerary and are painfully dull.  The book’s casual dismissal of Cage’s homosexuality as “unimportant” also strikes me as insane.  I agree that it’s pretty much irrelevant to the music, but it was a biography, not a musical analysis book.  Good gravy.

On a random note, I really wish blogspot would accept Word’s superscripts.

Four4
Oh boy, this is not one I have been very eager to hear.  This was designed to fit on one CD, which had a length of 72 minutes at the time.  It features very sparse music for unspecified percussion instruments using the flexible time brackets Cage was fond of around 1991.  I am hearing the ‘original’ Amadinda Percussion Group version, for whom it was written.  My lack of eagerness is a consequence of long-ness and sparse-ness., but we’ll see how I react after I listen...

The music is some of the most lonely I have ever heard.  The sounds consist of low, slow growing rumblings, the occasional gong, and sometimes other miscellaneous percussive noises.  And wind chimes, it seems, very soft and ghostly.  It’s the gong and drum that seem to be coming in from a great distance away, something like the sound of a train horn blowing in the far off distance or a dog howling...really, really lonely.  I think this is great atmospheric music if you are depressed (or if you want to be!).

The most readily apparent sound, though, is that of your environment because Four4 has some extremely long silences contained in it.  I think the constant listening for the sounds from my speakers actually leads me to concentrate more fully on all the other sounds around me, maybe even more than I would when hearing 4’33” performed..

But it’s also suitable, I think, for meditation.  The distance you feel as you listen sort of gets sucked into you, and as a consequence you feel as if you remind is far away; I always seem to say the number pieces are trancelike, but each one seems to be in a different way.

Perhaps the best part of this piece is that you go on listening long after it’s over, thinking there will eventually be another sound to hear...

Music for Carillon No. 5

2005-12-06T03:18:00.000-05:00

So, my plan to review music before bed last night was caught off-guard by my having a pretty terrible flat tire on the interstate after coming home from a date.  So here I am tonight, doing this instead of the other work (writing a paper, specifically) that I really probably ought to be doing...

The impact of being a Cage fan on one’s romantic life is probably worth noting, but it will be saved for the 4’33” review.

I would like to ask if anyone knows how many players are on the Quartets I-VIII recording by Hat Art, since I do not have the liner notes handy and I may need them soon...

I think Cage was dead wrong about recordings.  I’ve been to numerous concerts this semester at Tech, and whether it is a Berio sequenza or a Mozart sonata, I have never gotten anything from the live performance that I did not get from a recording. Cage expressed his disdain for recordings all over the place.  Two extreme examples: In the film I have nothing to say and I am saying it, he gets upset, frankly whiny, when someone suggests that recordings “can sometimes be useful.” In Silence he comments, referring to Satie recordings, “it would be an act of charity, even to oneself, to smash them whenever they are discovered.”   By contrast, I think there’s little point in performing most music live anymore.  I guess I am a Gouldinist or something.

On a lighter note, I got some glares from the gals behind me at the concert I went to this weekend for tapping my fingers (silently!) to the rhythm of all the music (some boring romantic stuff and a Mozart sonata).  I think it would have required less energy to just look away if it bothered them so much...

Music for Amplified Toy Pianos
This is one of those crazy transparency-based indeterminate performances.  From 1960, the music features speakers distributed around and actions performed on a toy piano with contact microphones attached.  The music, consisting of tweaks, blips and scrapes brings to mind Cartridge Music, except that it is obvious these sounds are from a toy piano.  The sound is sparse, as I had expected, but it actually keeps my interest a little better than Cartridge Music since I know more or less where the sounds are coming from.  The only exception is the one that sounds an awful lot like a zipper...

One7 / One13
This 1990 music is (according to johncage.info, as always) the first part of Four6 performed as a solo, “for any way of producing sounds.”  In this particular case, the twelve sounds required for One7 are chosen such that the result sounds like One13, an incomplete number piece for cello (from available information, that piece conveniently seems to have been intended to last close to the same amount of time as One7).  Consequently, this piece of music features performances of single drawn out pitches (some continuing for a remarkably long time).  Or, I might say “pitch” because they all seem to be the same, performed at slightly varying amplitudes.  The notes that I scrawled during my listening session read, “Sounds like a freaking bee!”

Of course, being that this is a real instrument, there’s lots of variation even within the same pitch.  The sheer length, as with other number pieces, allows you to focus on the component sounds that make up the sound I describe as a cello.  Specifically, slight, vague warbling of the pitch is clear, and the scraping of bow on string is also apparent as a very light rubbing sound.  As I mentioned, the sound is subject to sudden increases in volume, and at a few points I think I hear more than one tone played simultaneously, but this might be an artifact of my stereo or my ears.

Overall I’m reminded of La Monte Young’s Drift Studies which featured a single long tone where the listener could explore the phase shifts and such as they occurred.  I remember hearing an excerpt of it off the Ohm electronic music compilation when I was in college, on the way back from dinner with my girlfriend at the time.  That was the only time she got truly angry about my selection of driving music...

Music for Carillon No. 5
Thanks to Greg for a nice live recording of this.  This is one of the most absolutely insane scores there is: ten photos of wooden boards having engraved musical staves; the knots and grain shifts of the wood to be interpreted into music during a performance.  It was written in 1967.  The performance is of the ten boards separated by silences.  I’m not really sure about how well it’s done because they all follow the same pattern—light playing, then increase volume, then end.  It would be surprising to me if ALL the boards had such a similar grain structure.  There is some variation though; I might describe the third as “curious” and the sixth has more single tones than the others.  The ninth and tenth both seem to follow a “stairstep” pattern.  It would be fun to see this score in its entirety.

Atlas Eclipticalis

2005-12-04T04:29:00.000-05:00

I see no early Cage fans have given any shouts to let themselves be heard.  I suppose that’s not entirely surprising ;-)

Cage invariably makes me hungry.  But it might be that being awake at 4 AM is what makes me hungry.  My typical Cage listening experience is to sit on the couch, with a pot of noodles boiling in soup in the background.  I have a stereo setup with two nice front speakers and two crappy rear speakers; also, the ambient noise from my loud computer is going constantly (all music is stored on the PC, which channels through my receiver).  I will wait for the noodles to boil down to the point that they are slightly burnt and all the water from the soup is gone, and then I will let them sit to cool and I’ll eat, usually about halfway through the particular 45 minute block of works.

Typically, I take some notes, unless I have heard the pieces several times before (tonight, for example).  I then write some skeleton reviews (date, brief description) to fill in later, especially if it happens to be very late.  I usually try NOT to do this while I listen, since it’s distracting, but some nights (like, again, tonight) I feel a little pressed for time.

Atlas Eclipticalis
In order to write about this 1961 work, I was going to break down and learn orchestra notation.  Fortunately, I don’t need to bother because it’s much clearer than usual.  Basically, the work is a collection of events for various instruments; I think the version I am listening to now uses all 86.  A star chart, from which the work gets its title, was used to compose the piece, with star brightness indicating the amplitude of notes.  The dedication is a who’s-who of people important to Cage at the time.

This recording is a little hard to listen to due to the huge range of dynamics; I have my music player do some gain to make all my music have approximately uniform volume, but with Atlas the result ends up clipping on some of the really loud instruments if I don’t limit it.  I blame the optional amplification, which seems to have been done in this performance, especially on the percussion and the timpani (which is totally shocking when it arrives!).

Mine is the Wergo recording.  Basically, what I hear is a low rumbling mix of strings and other instruments in the background, with occasional impositions of various instruments over the din.  I think the music is, in fact, a good analog for the universe from which it gets its title and notation: You have the omnipresent background radiation left over by the big bang, with singular points of light slicing out at you from assorted locations, often (when viewed from earth) seeming to twinkle.  Additionally, the brightness is sometimes amplified by viewing them through a telescope.

The only questions I have about my ‘view’ of the piece is whether a) Cage would approve (the point of chance operations was, after all, to remove intention)?  and b) do I just think this because I know what the title is?   The answer to a) I think might actually be “no” because even if I view the whole music as evocative of the night sky, then I will listen to it as I watch the night sky, with the possibility of focusing on sounds as they are.  To use an analogy, even though Cage might suggest the sky as a whole, he doesn’t draw constellations.  As for the second question, well, even if I made up my interpretation based on the title, I am no worse off than I am with practically every tone poem ever written.

As an aside—There is much Greek mythology to explain how gods and animals and so forth ended up in the night sky.  Is there any mythology to explain as to why they look like a bunch of dots now?

Soliloquy
This is a 1945 piano extract from Four Walls, which I have already heard.  I suppose I could probably figure out just which part this is...Hmm, it appears to be from part III of the dance.  I’m not sure if there are other extracts or not.  It doesn’t include the main theme.  Anyway, the music is mostly a faced spaced collection of rhythms that might sound good on a prepared piano as well!  There are pauses between each that most probably represent text in the dramatic dance that accompanied the music but which are not a part of it..

224 Reviews

2005-12-04T03:13:00.000-05:00

That’s how many there will be. Well, at least with my present selection of recordings (and ones I anticipate acquiring shortly). Check out the updated review index: it includes everything done so far, with links, as well as everything you will see in the future. I’m following absolutely no pattern in my reviews, so requests are certainly welcome!

Where are we now? Somewhere about halfway, but a lot of the works left are long, so not exactly...It’s going to be another month or two. Thanks to the new recordings I’ve been sent, I think we’ll be pushing Febuary at this point...

Three Easy Pieces for Piano

2005-12-03T22:59:00.000-05:00

So yesterday I wandered off to the local music store.  I’ve always been amazed that anyone buys those SACD versions of Sony “Living Stereo” recordings from the mid 50’s.  Even the back of the case says, “these are stereo recordings.”  In my mind, the only reason I’d ever buy an SACD is to get extra channels of audio (for example, four channels would be great for Dance/4 Orchestras, and if you could get all eight tapes of Williams Mix on a separate speaker?  Ahhh...).  But I can’t see the rationale in buying dusty old stereo recordings on SACD.  I guess so maybe your dog can hear an extra few kHz of tape hiss?

But what took the cake yesterday was a 1940’s era mono recording on SACD.  Wha...?

I may have said this on here before, but I’ll say it again—I’m pretty sure Sony made about 10-15 recordings back in 1955, and they’ve been selling the same ones ever since, over and over again.

Now, as I promised, today (technically last night, but I am posting today) is “old stuff” day.  But I didn’t have quite enough old stuff to fill up 45 minutes, so I will make it “old stuff...plus a bunch of Freeman Etudes” because I need to get through all of those soon.

Three Easy Pieces for Piano
These pieces from 1933 are, well, pretty easy to play, and easy on the ears.  The first is titled Round, and features a sweet and swift little ear-pleasing melody.  The second, called Duo, feels more austere and serious, but I’m not clear why it is a “duo.”  The final movement, the Infinite Canon, is not especially memorable and quite brief (although the name suggests it could be repeated over and over again, in which case it would be not especially memorable, but very long).  In this rendition, the whole track is 57 seconds, with about 15 inexplicable seconds of silence at the end.

Hmm, apparently the Round is in harmonic A minor, and I am impressed that I actually sort of remember what that means.

Three Songs for Voice and Piano
Of the music I listened to last night, this was the worst.  Again, 1933.  The piano doesn’t do much but provide a pretty sparse accompaniment to the voice, which sings in “Twenty Years After” basically a few permutations of the title.  I’m not clear what we’re twenty years after.

The second song, “It Is As It Was” is memorable because it starts with “If it was to be a s’prise.”  I presume this is short for surprise.  The rest of the song is just, again, permutations of the title, such as “it is to be what it was and it was so it was as it was as it is is as is as it is and as it is and as it is and as it was.”  Good gracious!

The third song has the wacky title of “At East and Ingredients.”  This time we don’t even get permutations, it’s just plain repetitions of the title for about a minute.

The tone of voice doesn’t seem to vary an enormous amount through any of the songs, but it does take on an operatic air, and consequently the songs are hilarious: our vocalist sings such ridiculous lyrics with such great passion!  You can tell he’s truly moved by being at East and Ingredients, and is deeply concerned about the fact that it was as it is is as is as...Anyway, this stuff is for completists only I think.  Text is by Getrude Stein, for what that’s worth.

Freeman Etudes Nos. 9-16
I’ll reiterate my previous comment that I bet these etudes (all from 1977) are way more fun for the performer to produce than for me to listen to.  I was entertained by the wildly high pitches the violin is capable of, such as a long whistling in number twelve.  The rapid shifting between extreme notes is also intriguing at times.  Still, the music does get a little tiring on my ears after half an hour.  I’d never make it through a performance of them all.  I went into a half asleep trance-like state this time, and was sort of dreaming about Cage.  I specifically noted in my head that the Etudes sound like furniture being moved across a gymnasium floor.  Then I wondered, could this be furniture music?  Then I decided, no, Furniture Music Etc. was scored for piano...

Sonata for Two Voices
This is a bit of atonal music in three movements from 1933, featuring repetitions of 25 tones with each instrument having a two octave range.  Often there is a degree of competition between the two voices, each trying to steal at the listener’s attention, with the possible exception of the second movement.  Cage succeeds in making the music appealing, even without the repetitions of melodies my brain is so desperate for.  The instruments are unspecified but appear to be too woodwinds in my recording.

Prelude for Six Instruments in A Minor
The disc I got this from called it a piano sextet, but it’s obviously not, and instead features flute, bassoon, trumpet, violin, cello and piano.   Apparently it’s the same as the second of the 1946 Two Pieces, which in turn contains stuff from The Seasons.  I rather enjoy this performance.  The strings, piano and brass seem to be subordinate to the flute throughout most of the work; they often seem almost random in comparison to the longing melody of the flute.  There is quite a bit of silence in the piece, in the beginning; the ending is rather anticlimactic.  It just sort of dies.  I wonder if it’s perhaps incomplete?

Two Pieces for Piano 1935 (revision)
Another bit of atonal music with the creative titles of “Slowly” and “Quite Fast.”  This is the 1974 revision of the 1935 work.  It evidently features repetitions of small fragments of melody, using a twelve tone row.  The first piece is pretty distinctive, and the last half or so features one of the hands playing a rhythmic repetition of two notes, which I didn’t expect would be allowed given the tone row constraints of the piece.  The second piece is, obviously, played very quickly.  I feel each hand is playing a quick competing and repeating melodic line, with the right having more notes.  There is no pause in the music; it continually climbs up, then falls down, and so on, and eventually just seems to fade out.  When I hear the original version, I’ll see if I can pinpoint what the revisions were!

Organ2/ASLSP

2005-12-02T16:16:00.000-05:00

I have updated the review index to include links to all posts from October!  I hope it’s useful.

Here’s a nice long recording to make up for a missing day or two.  The CageMap has been abandoned, in case anyone hadn’t noticed, at least until I can figure out how to get Excel to make me a less time-consuming and less arbitrary version!  I have a plan in mind, but I’ll have to teach myself a bit more Excel to get it working.  I’m not sure what I’ll do tonight yet; I’m thinking a collection of the very earliest of early works would be good, even though no one is very fond of them I don’t think.  If anyone’s a fan of them post a comment!

Question for the day: If 0’00” is considered music, and its performance instructions require that the obligation fufilled not be playing music, can it ever be performed?

Organ2/ASLSP
Thanks to Lothar for a recording of this work.  It takes up an entire CD and features one loud organ.  Nothing rattles my bones quite like organ music turned up at high volume here, and the ambience and strange, groaning chords of this music made it all the more terrifying.  The pieces are played with a variety of registers, some so low they make my living room rattle.  The higher sounds tend to be less chilling and more mysterious.  The piece is played so slowly, filling up a good 80 minutes, that it has become a number piece, I’d say.  What I think is the best part is the nature of this organ—as pieces are played and the sound fades slightly, the pitch changes, so there are often chords with this lovely, groaning effect in some of their component notes that resemble a voice crying out, then dropping in pitch as it disappears...Rather frightening, actually.

An unusual aspect of this recording is that the different pieces are recorded from different performances of the whole work at different parts of the day.  The intend was to give a “flavor” of what the 600-something year performance on the organ in Halberstadt will sound like, because you hear a wide array of background noises—automobiles, sometimes and best of all the sound of wind, trees, rain and thunder in one of the recordings.  This is great ambient music, especially given the cold weather here; it somehow seems appropriate for winter.  Heh, and the lowest of the low notes remind me I need to buy some better speakers!

This performance of the work includes all the parts, with one repetition of part V at the end, as Cage specified (a little different than the piano version, where he calls for a replacement in the middle of the work).  I’m not sure what my thoughts on the Halberstadt performance are; it seems perhaps a little too much intended to be shocking (“How can you make a 600 year concert!?”) and might be impractical.  But, perhaps in a few hundred years I will be proven wrong...

Sixteen Dances

2005-11-29T04:26:00.000-05:00

I have created a preliminary list of works reviewed so far.  I will slowly add links to them and eventually sort them by title, date, etc. for convenient reference.  This is a bit of a project/exam time for me so it will be a pretty lengthy process.

Humorously, I discovered I reviewed A Book of Music twice!  I hope they are not completely different in the nature of my comments, or else that might imply that my reviewing is subjective...and I’m sure no one would ever think that...:-P

Sixteen Dances for Soloist and Company of Three
This work consists, obviously, of sixteen dances scored for flute, trumpet, piano, violin, cello and four percussionists.  It was written in 1951 and goes on for about an hour. Each dance has a specific title which, although I don’t have much other information about the work, presumably relates more to the dances it was written for than to the music performed, since the sounds seem chance-determined.

Well, my first impressions are quite wrong, the music definitely does not seem completely chance determined, although it feels as if in certain pieces at certain points, the orchestra is governed by chance operations (particularly the wind instruments).  The work is composed of nine named dances with interludes between most of them; often, the interludes are more interesting than the named work.  The most interesting to my ears is certainly the last dance, called Tranquility, which features a large number of gong hits surrounded by randomness, which suggests a feeling of floating quietly in space.  The sound rumbles and continues for a very long time, something like the piano in Fourteen, but not as loud.  The eighth dance, which is one of the interludes, also is charming, with its light piano sounds.  Most of the more interesting music seems to be towards the latter half of the work.

Throughout most of the music, the piano plays sharp, forceful notes, punctuated by chords from the two wind instruments and strings which I might describe as, “miscellaneous” and not very significant, although it does have a sort of ‘modern’ feel to it, not as much like later Cage works.  That is, it feels colder and more precise than most of his music.

Shrinking

2005-11-28T17:09:00.000-05:00

For what it’s worth, after a bit of buying, the unowned Cage list continues to shrink!  I’m down to about 17 works that I currently cannot review.  Two of those may not even really exist (the Tomato Marriage at the Eiffel Tower / Four Dances recording, specifically).  A few of them are expensive (the Europeras for example) or completely, insanely, totally outrageously expensive (Barton Workshop for example).

It’s interesting to me that many of Cage’s early works from the 30’s are scattered across miscellaneous compilations, and have never been incorporated into the “normal” Cage music collections and labels.

Perhaps Mode needs to make a new release:

John Cage Volume 38: Early Works Hardly Anyone Cares Much About
Winds
Sonata for Clarinet
Music for Wind Instruments
Three Pieces for Flute Duet
Vocal
Five Songs for Contralto
Three Songs for Voice and Piano
Greek Ode
First Chapter of Ecclesiastes
Piano
     Untitled Composition
Marriage at the Eiffel Tower
Unspecified
Composition for Three Voices
Sonata for Two Voices
Prelude for Six Instruments in A Minort
Solo with Obbligato Accompaniment...

I bet most of it would even fit on one disc, assuming of course the current owners of the unpublished scores are not  cruel and dastardly and would let them be used...

Mureau

2005-11-28T04:34:00.000-05:00

Today I’ll cover two items that were very kindly provided by readers!  It’s been awhile since I posted, but not since I listened.  Instead of posting one gigantic effort, I will interject some of the comments on pieces I heard this past week into the next couple of week’s reviews, so that the extra length is spread out a bit.  I’ll also make up for a little time by hitting some quite long items—the delayed Sonatas and Interludes, perhaps a Europera (or two?)—this week.

As some might know, the 23rd was my birthday and due to the Thanksgiving holiday it was celebrated on the 25th.  Sadly, I didn’t get any new Cage as gifts, but that just means I’ll be spending my own money on some used items from Amazon this week!

Two additional notes:  If anyone happens to be in or around Italy, and wishes to be extremely helpful, here is a library catalog entry for the book Il treno di Cage which features a cassette of music for “prepared train.” It’s one of the rarest items and it would be great if I could hear a copy of it to review!   Of course, since it’s fairly rare there may well be onerous restrictions on the ability to actually do anything with the book and cassette.  Still, it’s a starting point for a search:

Cage : il treno di Cage / foto: Nino Monastra .Bologna : Grafis & Fylkingen, 1979.
31, [51] p. : ill. ; 21 cm + 1 cassetta. ( Le trasgressioni ; 2.)
Complementi del tit. anche in inglese e francese. - Pubbl. in occasione delle Feste musicali tenute a Bologna nel 1978. - Tit. della cassetta: Alla ricerca del silenzio perduto / John Cage.
BNI 817306.
1. Cage, John - Bologna - 1978 I. Cage, John II. Monastra, Nino
780.92 (ed. 18) – MUSICISTI

Bibl. Nazionale Centrale di Firenze
    Collocazione: D.M.o.9
    Inventario: CF990272381     1 v.

My Italian is pretty limited, so it was fun trying to find this...

Secondly, where might one find the complete text to Empty Words?  I have enjoyed reading Lecture on Nothing to myself and to friends; it would be nice to try something a bit more challenging!

HMCIEX
This is a radio recording of a work that consists of chopped up country names and national anthems.  Actually, this particular recording features folk music from the relevant countries from the 1984 Olympic Games, rather than national anthems.  This is reasonable because frankly, national anthems pretty much all sound the same to my ears.  Anyway, the letters are pronounced in a curious manner, almost in a call-response form for two voices, one male and one female.  The effect is fairly hypnotic.

Mureau
This is a text work which was created by arranging by chance sentences, words, and so on from Thoreau’s journals that refer to music or sound.  If you have heard the text pieces on the Mode Cage Reads Cage album, you have heard this, except that Cage’s voice seems more forceful, and less quiet than he seemed on, say, the Mesostics on the Mode album.  The text is also interesting, and I can’t help but notice a large number of frogs making their appearance...rather similar, actually, to the ever-present frog in Williams Mix.  A connection!  Since there’s also a lot of water mentioned, I suppose the frogs make sense.  The text flows wonderfully off Cage’s tongue, as he has always been an ideal performer of his own vocal works.  It, like HMCIEX, is a little hypnotic.  At first, you try to derive meaning from the flow of words, syllables, and phrases; eventually, it just seems to enter your mind, generating an occasional image (the wind, music, the sky, frogs...more frogs...).  Even if it’s just spoken text, its performance thus has a similar effect on me as the performance of music does.  I think it will even replace Indeterminacy as my late night listening before bed...

101

2005-11-22T04:30:00.000-05:00

Thanks to an earlier rise than expected tomorrow (dentists always set out to make my life difficult), we’ll stick with skeletal reviews and a rant.  One of the key things I do when I come home to Alabama is to canvas the city in search of cheap music.  I hi the jackpot in a local Coconuts, where some person had abandoned a bounty of unexpected finds, including an awesome set of renaissance dance music on a French label for $2.99, as well as the most unexpected of all, a CD by Thomas Adès, which hilariously had an explicit lyrics label on it (perhaps the only classical-section album to receive such a distinction).  I don’t know much about Adès, except that a) he is really young and b) he’s on Allmusic’s “top 500 composers.”

That was a longwinded way to get to my main point: Cage is placed in the top 50 by the Allmusic editors, which was surprising to me—he was the only “contemporary era” composer to get such a distinction.  I’m not sure if it’s because they really like him that much, or if they had to choose someone from that period and picked Cage.

A Dip in the Lake: 10 Quicksteps
I didn’t quite realize how long this version of the music was!  Thus I will break it into a few different listens, similar to the various Etudes collections.  This version was downloaded off of the Internet and features actual recordings from Chicago.  The experience is interesting, if slightly hard to follow—specifically, I don’t know what, if anything, makes each collection of sounds a “quickstep.”  Anyway, each one is about a minute long and consists of snippets of sound from a location, sometimes played continuously and sometimes repeated.  A lot are natural sounds—wind, rain, etc. and a lot are man made including radios, cars, boats and the like.  As with one of the earlier listens, it’s interesting that the nature sounds and the manmade sounds all become equally ambient in this work.  One curious fact I noted was a lack of other humans lending their voices to the sound!  Only a few times did I hear anyone.  Maybe they went to the locations at unpopular times, or these quicksteps just happened to all be rather unpopulated areas.

Three Dances for Two Prepared Pianos
This is a complex work with elaborate and interesting preparations from 1945.  Each dance has a distinctive character.  The first is highly metallic and features a pretty wide array of different sounds.  The rhythms seems olid and more or less continuous; they are not as fragmented and rapidly changing as I have come to expect from percussive Cage music.  In my mind, the first dance is clearly the highlight.  The second feels more deliberate and maybe almost march-like in its pace, but because it’s a bit slower the rhythms become harder to follow.  It ends with a brief climax.  The third dance is more hectic than either of the other two.  Most pleasurable are the unexpected “blobs” (what I wrote in my notes) of unprepared tones that show up to my surprise.  Some of it feels very random and almost like static...towards the end, I even felt as if I was being pelted by music!

101
First a note—I sometimes see this work written as one-zero-one, or as one-o-one, where ‘o’ is the capital letter (i.e., O) rather than a zero.  I’m unsure if this is significant or a wacky typo.  Anyway, this is a large orchestral work with time-bracketed parts.  There is no conductor, and the Mode recording I have sounds pretty much like what I’d hoped the 103 recording would sound like!  It begins with a loud brass explosion.  Most impressively, I can hear all the percussion sounds and the piano completely clearly.  It sounds like there is something in the orchestra besides strings!  Otherwise, the music is much as I have come to expect from a number piece, although there are louder sections here than I am used to, and a wider variety of attacks on different instruments (notably the piano, which sounds a bit more like it does in the Music for Piano series).  Overall, it’s an effective refutation to the 103 recording.

Two4

2005-11-21T19:08:00.000-05:00

I’ll be posting twice today, so keep your eyes peeled in a non-literal manner.

Two4
Cage’s fourth piece for two instruments features either violin and piano or violin and sho.  Naturally, I chose the sho version!  Both were created in 1991.  It’s three section for the sho’s seventeen pitches and four movements for the violin, which is played microtonally.  The show plays relatively loudly in comparison to the violin in my version, with a bit more variation in dynamics.  The violin is played so softly that the bow’s scraping sound comes through very clearly, and I don’t hear the slow raising and lowering of volume that I observes from other number pieces.  The fairly high pitches used for both parts gives the music an airy quality, as if the listener is floating through it.

In terms of pace, the sho’s part is more rapid and more is happening; it seems as if the violin part mostly provides a generally unvarying contrast to the sho, as the tones it plays tend to extend much longer in time than the sho tones, which at their loudest totally overpower the violin.  To follow my nature theme from previous reviews, I’d compare this to crickets and fireflies, where there’s a only-very-slightly varying sound context of the violin while the sho flashes in and out unexpectedly.  Because of the way the sho is played (not sustained for a long time), I’m guessing the piano version is similar, but the attack would be different since the piano would not build up the ay the sho music does.

The Unavailable Memory Of
This prepared piano music from 1945 uses only five pitches.  The piano preparations are not very complicated, and the sustain pedal seems used throughout. The piano sounds a little more plucked than usual. The music begins with two sections that start relatively slow, but then move through the pitch material quickly.  Then the music becomes more rhythmic and a bit more dramatic (that is, played forcefully in this recording) but it still strikes a meditative mood because of the repetitions. Its ending is unusual in its non-abruptness.

Perpetual Tango
This is something like Cheap Imitation.  For this work, Cage manipulates the notes but keeps the rhythms of Erik Satis’s Sports et Divertissements.  It was written in 1984 for a tango collection.  The result is similar to other of Cage’s deconstruction efforts; you feel as if you hear a somewhat distorted version of the original music.  At first the recording sounded dead to me, but I warmed to it; it does capture some of the warmth and humor of the original Satie piece, but now it’s a little more confused.  The music is repetitive, obviously, but it’s fun to listen to.  I prefer this to Cheap Imitation by a pretty large margin.

Music for Piano No. 1
The series of piano music from the 50’s begins here, with notation based on imperfections of the paper on which it was written, one of several ways Cage sought to bring chance into his compositional process.   There’s a lot going on in the music, and seems almost melodic to my ears.  I do like the variety of tones, and the string plucks.  I’m not sure I really hear any chords though, except when to keys manage to be pressed at the same time.  It’s a quick selection of solid notes, cascading down rather like rain…

In a Landscape

2005-11-19T04:16:00.000-05:00

On my way back to Alabama, I listened for an hour or so to the NPR classical radio station. I was reminded why I don't listen to much of the stuff: it sounds totally and utterly dead. Well, not everything, but the stuff from the mid-to-late 19th century. Gah. I think one of the reasons I like Baroque-and-earlier music is the liveliness of it. Or maybe it has to do with how the music is transmitted to my car radio, perhaps somehow the life is sucked right out of it.

Here's today's Internet Cage Quote. I was discussing Cage with an acquaintance of mine, and he mentioned how much he liked Four6 as performed by Sonic Youth. I mentioned that it didn't really follow Cage's score, he said that was OK, it sounded great anyway; "they made it sound symphonic." He finally noted that Cage probably wouldn't be a stickler for the rules.

I tend to disagree; it seems to me that when you are given a relatively high degree of freedom, the non-free aspects become all the more important. But nevertheles, I will hear that ecording at some point, since it's the only version of it I have around ;-) Tomorrow I will begin the first part of the correctly-recorded version of A Dip in the Lake which is avilable on the Internet!

Triple-Paced No. 2
This is a 1944 prepared piano version of Triple-Paced, aparently identical besides the changed instrument/ I would describe it as actually rather cute, in a way. The melodic part is very bouncy and upbeat, so I smiled while listening. This is intersperesed with some forceful segments, but even they do not seem angry, just louder. Maybe the work is simply a bit childlike. The piano preparations seem pretty basic as well, without any substantial complexity.

In a Landscape
Last time I heard a Satie-themed piece, I said it would sound lovely on a harp. So, since Cage specified "piano or harp" for this music from 948, I chose a harp version! This piece, or at least a hideous, mangled monstrosity inspired by it on a William Orbit CD (experimental pop musicians would be way more experimental if they could drop the boring, repetitive beats).

It seems my harp version also involves a guitar, which is too bad. I would describe this one, like Dream, as subtly beautiful. I say that because it is so slight and slow, but very atractive. The reader who found Dream insipid probably won't like this one any more, although I feel it's a bit more complex. It seems to be a myriad of variations on an upward-moving 'revelaing' theme; I can almost imagine a curtain being opened in front of some amazing golden artifact when it arises. The emphasis here is on the implications of the word "artifact," because this music feels like it is putting me in touch with something ancient, some faded remnant of a lost history.

The only negative is that this sounds a bit too similar to modern "new age" music for my tastes, so I prefer to simply think o it as in the style of Satie: mysterious, quiet, and still.

A Book of Music
Here's a big virtuoso two prepared piano work composed in 1945. It strikes me as a curiously underheard item Cage's output. My suspicion is that it's very long at about half an hour, so it doesn't fit easily on a compilation CD, and it alone isn't as "central" a work as, say, the Concerto.

The music does not seem especially complicated; in fact, it seems more primitive and rhythm oriented than most; the music is largely a long series of single staccato thrusts of the beat. Virtually all of the preparations are either percussive in nature, or make the piano sound plucked instead of hammered. The second part speeds things up quite a bit. Homrously, I think of a spider as I listen, because the music seems to zip across the floor, and then pause suddenly, then zip again. Or, that miht be because I just saw a spider a little while ago.

To me it feels like the music is more complicated than its result; that is, it sounds like a lot of effort went into designing the sounds I hear, but at the same time the result seems fairly basic. I think the highlight of this work is the rapid fire use of multiple percussive sounds in the second part, which is pretty fun. Still, it's not overall very memorable.

Oops...

2005-11-18T03:38:00.000-05:00

Well, I drove to Alabama today, and I brought my music with me...or so I thought. I copied my entire classical music directory to a portable hard disk, but made a mistake--I copied the 'Classical/Classical' directory, which is Mozart and friends only, as opposed to the entire 'Classical' diretory which includes the 'Classical/Contemporary/Cage, John' directory that I need. Sigh.

It's obvious that the blame for this error lies on wheoever decided to call both the genre and the period by the same name ;-) Certainly not with someone who does not pay sufficient attention to what he is doing...

Anyway, I do have access to my PC in Virginia via remote desktop so I can still get at the music, it's just a bit more challenging now...I am once again glad I never turn that PC off.

Additionally, I'd forgotten how awful the speaker setup here is, with the right channel not functioning at all. Consequently, I will have to transport Cage via CD to the living room, much to the potential dismay of my mother...

Blogging will continue apace tomorrow! I'll probably start with some of my recent aquisitions, which I did manage to copy.

Oh, I enjoyed hearing Indeterminacy in the car. I won't review it, but it was nice to hear some of my favrite stories again. Heh, even if I've heard them all over and over for the past few weeks when I go to bed...

String Quartet in Four Parts

2005-11-16T04:57:00.000-05:00

Tonight I heard a pretty decent variety: orchestra, string quartet, piano, and vocal.  I received an ad for a 127 CD box set of the entire works of Mozart on CD from Arkivmusic today, and certified its quality by verifying that Adagio and Rondo for Glass Harmonica is, in fact, performed on a glass harmonica.  Anyway, it entertained me to imagine what a “complete Cage” box set would look like.  I have about 60 hours of Cage on my computer, and lack a lot, probably another 10 or more hours worth of music.  So I’d guess about 60 CDs would make a decent Cage box set, although you’d have to provide lots of versions of the indeterminate works.  Maybe a separate disc devoted to each Variations?

That’s not 127 CD’s of course, but when you get down to it, who ever plays or listens to Mozart’s 20,000 minuets?  I dare someone to buy that box set and do a blog on it...

Day 78: Yet Another Symphony
Mozart wrote this at the age where I was playing with He-Man action figures in the bathtub.  Geez, I’m depressed.

Anyway...

Seventy-Four
This is off the wonderful The Seasons CD which also features the rendition of toy piano music I reviewed some time ago.  I find this one to be much more dramatic in scope than the other number pieces I’ve heard; it doesn’t feel as peaceful as some.  The music is, like the other orchestral number works, dominated by strings and the brass (where is the percussion exactly?).  I would compare this to one of the others, which I described as a night ride on a raft, except this time, consider it a moonless late night trip through some sort of fairly barren landscape.  There’s a nervousness to the music, like something is constantly lurking just around the corner...It’s a great late night listen.   I think I get a similar feeling from other string-heavy number pieces, but this is stronger than usual.

Two Pieces for Piano, 1946
I have to use the year to distinguish this from a set from 1935.  Conveniently enough, the first piece (creatively titled ‘I’) continues the ominous mood set by Seventy-Four tonight.  In fact, these are directly related to The Seasons that I heard a few days ago, featuring music for certain sections.  I didn’t really associate the two with that work, but even now that I know, I am not sure how the second piece (‘II’) fits in; it seems extremely fragmented and does not, even as I listen to the winter section of The Seasons, really seem to be the same thing (except at certain points).  It feels fragmented, or maybe even unfinished.

String Quartet in Four Parts
This item from 1950 has four movements, the first three gradually becoming slower.  The first movement feels relatively conventional, except with curious dissonant shifts at certain points.  The second one pauses more often, and seems to become more fragmented, with sudden shifts in unexpected directions, and sudden sonic bursts where quiet was assumed.  Apparently this music has to do with the fall in America, but looking outside I’m afraid I don’t see the connection.  Anyway, the third part seems to continue in this progressively-more-distorted direction, and it seems as if the strings actually squeal and groan in protest at certain points.  It’s played a bit more quietly.  Throughout all three of these parts, there is a constant back and forth feeling that comes close to making me seasick (a nod to Glenn, who asked if Cage could make me ill, as I recall...).  The final movement, the quodibet, is totally shocking.  It’s really very attractive and feels fairly Baroque in nature.  And I swear one of the instruments sounds like bagpipe towards the end, or else I am just crazy (or both may be true).  It feels like a nice celebratory dance after the long voyage above.

Nowth Upon Nacht
Ahhh, I always know this piece by the SLAM of the piano lid at the beginning, which makes an excellent percussion sound!  I broke Cage’s score, which I recall requires that Wonderful Widow of Eighteen Springs be played first.  It’s got some Joyce text sung in a hilariously dramatic way (I’m amazed anyone can say “snicky sticks” with any seriousness).  The best part is definitely the “wooo-hwwwaaaaooo!” near the end.  I rather wish Cage had written more pieces like this.  Peacefulness is all well and good, but sometimes you need a bit of yelling and lid slamming!

Four Walls

2005-11-15T03:44:00.000-05:00

Well, it’s pretty obvious I should not do my listening so late at night, because then I become too sleepy to write the reviews ;-)  I will see what I can write about last night’s before I fade out.  Tonight I spent an hour hearing Four Walls, which is quite interesting even without the textual and dance component.

Oh, and an additional note: expect fragmented updating next week.  I am going home to Alabama for the duration of the Thanksgiving holiday, and though I will certainly hear my 45 minutes each day, the unreliable Internet connection at our house may make updates a bit slower.  My birthday will also be celebrated there, and hopefully it will include the unwrapping of some more Cage music!

And in my sleepy haze, I just had the following thought:  A big advantage of doing a CageBlog instead of a BachBlog is that there are fewer umlauts to type.

Four Walls
This is a major dance work featuring multiple characters (a dysfunctional family) and a storyline with related music written in 1944.   The introduction to the first act reminded me a whole lot of the beginning to Nixon in China, but slower.  I realize this is fairly silly, but they both strike a slowly-developing, nervous tone.  Hmm, not necessarily nervous, but sort of sad...I guess the best way to describe it is “worried.”  This mood persists, more or less, throughout all of the music.  I’m not going to go scene by scene, but rather mention some overall thoughts, and then a few points that caught my attention.

Four Walls was meant for a dramatic play, and there are a large number of pauses in the middle of the music that would normally be filled with spoken text and movements on stage.  In listening to a recording, these are gone, and replaced with silence, which makes it sort of an interesting forward-reference to a certain infamous Cage work...The music is structured very specifically in space-equals-time notation, so that you can’t very well “skip” those sections without going contrary to the score (the fifth part from act one features an especially long silence).  Aside from the silences, there are some particularly long spaces filled with only ‘punctuating’ notes, usually repeated over and over.  Without the text or movement between them, they take on the feeling of a heartbeat or other rhythmic process.  As I listened, I divided up the music into essentially two types: music associated with actions, and music that might be considered the theme of the dance (based heavily on the worried music mentioned first).  The action music is usually strongly rhythmic, with frequent pauses, and sometimes includes a dialogue effect, with one stomping sound contrasted against a higher, softer sound, almost a male-female comparison.  It makes me pretty curious what else would have been going on as the music was played!  I get the sense that the various musical types may be associated with different characters.

In act one, there’s a particularly dramatic sequence in part three, and its ending feature a neat use of an interesting echo-like effect of a repeated melody.  The best example of the dialogue technique shows up in part four.  One of the most forceful sections of music is in part one of act two.  The work ends on a much darker variation of the original theme.  Finally, there’s the part for voice in part seven, singing a poem involving throat gurgling (!?), which was written by Merce Cunningham.  It’s sung in a high voice, relatively slowly.  I’m not sure how it relates to the overall drama.

Imaginary Landscape No. 4

2005-11-14T04:34:00.000-05:00

Last night I listened to Sonatas and Interludes and was not very impressed.  I chose to hear a non-Berman version, but frankly I like Berman a lot because he gives a great deal og emphasis to the rhythm.  I forget the performer of the version I heard (I will look it up), but I found it very hard to follow any of the Sonatas (they all sounded about the same), and despite the enormous number of preparations, the gamut of sounds was exceedingly small.  I’ll have to review it again using Berman’s version.

I should add another note—yesterday I promised an unusual work, but then I discovered Dance/4 Orchestras was available from the net, so the person who sent it to me was not especially original.  Thus I went with a “big” work (Sonatas and Interludes) instead.  As usual, here’s the sketches tonight, I’ll fill in the holes later..

Oh, one final note!  Various errors in grammar/factual data/etc. have been pointed out to me (there’s some especially awful ones in my last post!).  Keep in mind that all I do is run over this writing with a spellcheck, and otherwise my thought flow freely with little editing.  I can take care of all that sort of thing when I write a “what I learned” essay in the future, and also take the contents of this blog and reformat it into a more readable webpage.

Seven Haiku
A chance determined piano work from 1951.  Each Haiku is devoted to various persons in Cage’s life.  The music is apparently related to Music of Changes.  I’ve heard a lot of sparse piano works so far, and each has a bit of a different flavor.  The seven haiku are spaceous, with frequent chords.  The attacks between different notes vary, sometimes fast and very sharp with no sustain, sometimes drawn out.  Most interesting are the strange melodic fragments that show up, beginning with those inthe third haiku.  The fourth begins with what sounds like the start of a melody, but it goes nowhere.  Such musical “slices” seem very common in the Haiku overall.

Five5
Some music for clarinet here, plus flute and percussion from 1991.  The number five plays various roles in the music.  As I listened to the music, I was given the obvious impression of watching the sky.  As usual, the strong continuous music from the wind instruments bring to mind the sun, but in this work there’s some amazing percussion work that feels like wind and clouds moving across the sound field.  The effect overall is very beautiful, with a particular emphasis on the very low percussive sounds that I can’t quite identify.  They raise my blood pressure a bit!  I feel a high degree of tension in some parts of the music, whereas others (especially the wind combinations) are totally the opposite.

Hymns and Variations
This work from 1979 is a choral piece for twelve voices, using subtraction techniques on hymns by William Billings.  It’s become clear to me that it’s simply impossible to make choral music in this style that doesn’t sound great; every possible combinations of tones by voices sounds good.  The music is sung in a fragmentary form, with subtraction techniques applied to each hymn, resulting in ten variations.  The singers also only sing vowel noises, but what is curious to me is that I can still detect a degree of the reverence that would have been a part of the original music and text, which was religious in nature.

Imaginary Landscape No. 4 (March No. 2)
This is one of Cage’s most infamous of all his works, the music for twelve radios and 24 performers.  It was composed in 1948.  Back in high school, a friend and I enjoyed driving around downtown Birmingham in his car late at night, and we highlighted the experience by tuning the radio between stations on its AM setting.  Radio static is an inherently lonely and unnerving sound.  I also took a bit of pleasure in using a handheld radio to “listen” to my computer, monitors, hard drives, etc.  Light switches would make a satisfying click, whereas my PC’s CPU would created buzzes and beeps as it operated.

So naturally, I like Landscape No. 4 a great deal.  I have two versions, one by the Cikada Duo which I believe uses 24 radios, and one by Maelstrom.  Both renditions are excellent.  Listening to this music never fails to get me very nervous because the sounds are completely ghostly and haunting, in the same way that listening to extremely old wax cylinder recordings will freak me out, no matter what the contents.  There are two things you hear in the music for radio: solid spaces of sound, where the fequency is constant, and the distinct rushing, shifting sound as the station is changed.  The collage-like nature of the work brings to mind Williams Mix, except that in this case the contents are dynamic and change any time it is performed.  But even though it changes, the experience of listening to it will always be similar.  It’s one of the Cage works I love the most and which I was very excited to get a recorded copy of!

For M.C. and D.T.
An extremely brief 1952 work for piano, for Merce Cunningham and David Tudor, unless there are others associated with those initials.  It’s directly related to Seven Haiku above.   They sound quite similar, and the length (longer than any of the Haiku) obviously has a wider selection of sounds to hear.  Nevertheles, it still manages to have long silences.  The melodic almost-beginning fragments are common.  If the initials are indeed for Cunningham and Tudor, I guess the music’s length is directly related to the importance of a person to Cage.  In that case, I feel a bit sad for a few of the names from the Haiku, who only merited about 23 seconds of music!

The Seasons

2005-11-13T03:03:00.000-05:00

Last night I heard a bunch of music of different types.  Actually, I guess much of it was for piano.  Here are my comments.  Tonight, I will be listening to...something a little unexpected that I managed to get a hold of recently.

A Room, for piano
This is the version of the work for piano, written in 1942.  There’s not too much to say about it:  It features a repeating rhythmic structure with only minimal ornamentations at various points.  There is a small degree of variation, and the repetitiveness makes them easier to detect.  It’s pretty ambient, and subtle shifts in tempo by the pianist are noticeable.

Rozart Mix
I’m not sure just how authentic this recording is.  Rozart Mix is for 88 tape loops played simultaneously.  In theory, the loops will break and are replaced, and the piece ends when the audience leaves.  How this recording was made I am unsure, except there are clearly a series of repeating tape loops that are played at various loudness and speeds.  I recognize a pretty enormous variety of music, from classical to pop and jazz, mixed with voices of all sorts of languages.  Sometimes loops come in and vanish for awhile, only to return later.  The crying baby (or maybe it’s just a squeaking toy) reminds me of Revolution 9, since the Beatles were on my mind (see below).  Overall, it’s neat, and the overlapping multilingual voices are a lot of fun.  I swear I heard Ronald Reagan.

Double Music
This was a 1941 collaboration with Lou Harrison, each composer writing half of the parts.  The instruments include brake drums, gongs, a thundersheet and other such metallic items.  There isn’t much development, although I think some of the points are nicely highlighted by thundersheet crashes (there is an especially loud section of them that I enjoy a lot near the end).  The work does not feature much variation in rhythm,  and is exciting throughout.  It’s one of the most straightforward percussion works.

The Seasons
Good grief, this has to be the most conventional music Cage ever composed!  It’s based on the Indian idea of the cycle of seasons, and begins on winter and ends in the destructive fall.  I detect a slight Eastern flavor to the music, especially with the flute (it was scored for a piano with orchestra in 1947, for a ballet by Merce Cunningham).

The most clearly dramatic section would seem to be winter, which has an especially powerful surge towards the end.  Spring is to some extent what I expect: fluttery sounds suggestive of cute little birdies and bunny rabbits, but there’s a nervousness to the music, and there’s a very negative-seeming explosion by the brass instruments that shows up sometimes.  I suppose cute little bunny rabbits are pretty nervous.  Summer offers a significant contrast.  It is much slower than the other movements, and has a rather languid pace.  I’d call it lazy and relaxed, but it’s only a little bit, there is a tension here too.  I’d imagine someone relaxing on his hammock, but keeping one eye open, as it were.  The final movement, fall, is full of curious string chirps during the prelude.  The meat of the music is quite forceful and nearly angry, which certainly suggests destruction, although with much more drama than just random, mindless destruction, so maybe destruction with a higher purpose in mind.  The last portion of the fall section is much quieter, and sounds like the prelude to winter, thus bringing the cycle back to its start.

A Valentine Out of Season
This is a set of three pieces composed in 1944, not too long before Cage separated from his wife, Xenia.  The first piece involving short melodic lines played slowly, with the only piano preparations having a muffling effect and a slightly metallic drum sound.  The second piece is faster and clearly rhythmic, but still very quiet and unornamented, using mostly the metallic drum-like sound.  Often the passages feel incomplete, adding to the tension already brought out by the first part, with only a few instances of forceful playing.  The last part feels like something between the first too; there is much silence and slowness, but ends at a faster pace that I am not sure what to make of.  Retreat?  Overall, the first section is so haunting and sad and that mood persists for the rest of the music being affected as I listened.

The Beatles, 1962-1970
Ah, Cage’s only real concession to pop music!  Aki Takahashi asked some composers to write a Beatles-related piece of music in 1989, so Cage took a, well, Cagean approach.  He bought a Beatles piano songbook, and extracted chunks drawn from their entire output, and then mixed them all together randomly into six piano parts.  The result is pretty entertaining; because the extracts were chance-determined they often do not necessarily represent recognizable portions of the music.  All of the parts are played overlapped on top of each other.  The tempo and octave do not necessarily match the Beatles songs, so it’s fun to see if I can pick out particular tunes.  My favorite part comes towards the middle, when all the piano parts go silent except for one, which plays the refrain to Eleanor Rigby, among my favorite Beatles tunes.

The work also reminds me that the Beatles seem totally over-hyped (although considering the colossal amount of hype, it’s hard to imagine how anyone could live up to it), but that is a rant for another blog :-)  The final section, for some reason, brings in a whistle, and then it ends quite abruptly...more or less like the Beatles, I suppose.  It’s a fun work to listen to; I really like Cage’s collage pieces like this and Apartment House and plenty of others.  It’s an effective encapsulation of the Beatles into a short eight minutes.

Concerto for Prepared Piano and Orchestra

2005-11-11T05:09:00.000-05:00

Another few works including a longish number piece continue tonight.  I spent part of today hunting for Cage scores.  We apparently do have the Solo for Piano from the Concert at Virginia Tech, which I was excited to see.  Sadly, I never found it.  The score has vanished or is checked out.  I did dig up a few books on Cage, as well as a book on his correspondence with Pierre Boulez.  I was not aware they got along.  I also read Conversing with Cage for awhile, until some lady came up the same aisle that I and the book were on.  She stood in the same section as I, so perhaps she was checking out Cage.  More likely she was looking at Brahms or someone else nearby.

Ah, if only she had been looking at the cage and had not been twice my age...

Concerto for Prepared Piano and Orchestra
Just a quick pet pieve: the “and orchestra” in titles of concertos always sort of bugs me: Doesn’t a concerto by default include an orchestra?  Hmm.

This work sounded more interesting on paper than in reality, I’m afraid.  The key instrument is the prepared piano,. I am aware of the premise of the music: the piano and orchestra operate through different means for the first two movements, and in the third come together.  The liner notes also suggest that the piano tends to be played in a more ‘traditional’ style than the orchestra, which is governed by very complex pitch charts of various sorts.

It is true, the few fragments of the prepared piano I hear do seem conventional, but their fragmented nature makes them sound in my mind pretty much like the orchestra.   There are only a few extended sections where the piano plays alone, and there I think it sounds a lot less conventionally expressive than in most of the short prepared piano works like A Valentine Out of Season or The Earth Shall Bear Again.  As a result the loss of the expressiveness in the third movement just isn’t very shocking (to be totally honest, I didn’t really tell much difference).  More interesting are the silences that fill the last movement, which apparently highlight the rhythmic structure.

The work does feature some interesting parts for the percussion section of the orchestra, but I wish the prepared piano sounded more like it did in Cage’s other works for the instrument.  Still, the music does combine a lot of Cage’s ideas up until when it was written in 1951, and even suggests 4’33” a year before that work was composed, so it’s central to Cage’s output even if I don’t really enjoy it much..

One10
This is a work for a solo violin featuring single sounds played without vibrato.  This is one of the Ones (pun intended) where Cage seems to be emphasizing the complexity of even the simplest sound when it’s heard in isolation and extracted from a harmonic or melodic context.  The length of the tones (they are played generally long) and the types of tones used (only natural ones without microtones) allow for very detailed listening.  What I heard included the natural scraping sound associated with the act of bowing that becomes more and more obvious as higher pitches, along with warbling variations in the tone resulting from the impossibility of applying truly constant pressure and speed.  I think it’s these two characteristics that make the number pieces for strings seem “watery” to me.

This work also highlights a possible reason why Cage dislikes vibrato: it seems to cover up a lot of these details, and makes the violin sound less natural and less human (especially when it covers up the ‘imperfections’ of pitch).  It got me to thinking back to how I used to hat listening recordings of Glenn Gould playing the piano, because he hums.  But now I don’t mind it at all, because the idea that a person is making the music doesn’t bother me.  That is, I don’t think I should be offended when the fact that a human is performing is somehow highlighted.

Two5

2005-11-10T02:38:00.000-05:00

Tonight I decided to tackle one of the fairly long number pieces I have floating around.  There’s a Zachary W. Bond who plays trombone at Yale and shares my name down to the initial.  One of the works is one he should play!

I’ll post the skeleton reviews tonight and fill them in the morning...I updated the unowned works list to remove items donated recently or that I expect to have very soon.  Thanks to all those who have offered!

Every night for the past few weeks I have been listening to Indeterminacy as I go to bed.  Cage’s voice is very soothing, especially as I hear him through my earplugs, a little muffled.  I keep wishing that one day I would meet another Cage aficionado with whom I could share the following in-joke (or any like it):

Him: “So, Zac, what do you think of the international situation?”
Me: “The thing to do...is to develop...foreign...trade.”
Both: (cackling)

Two5
No johncage.info on this one, I’m afraid, so all I know is what it’s scored for, trombone and piano, and that it was written in 1991.  My rendition features a whole lot of silence, which is to be expected as pianos don’t hold their tone quite so long.  The music lasts nearly 40 minutes, and I pumped it up to a very high volume for my enjoyment.

The trombone tends to play very long single tones, whereas the piano plays chords as well as single tones, often several in a sequence.  The piano seems consistent in the softness of its music, and never overpowers me with loud strikes the way some of Cage’s works do.  Since often the two instruments play together, you get the distinct feeling of the piano “poking around” the solid tone from the trombone, so I like to think of this work as being like rain falling through a beam of light.

I was amazed by how much I like this work.  I think it’s a powerful accompaniment to natural sounds, thanks to its extended silences.  My apartment door opens onto a hallway open to the outside air, and when it’s fall and windy out, leaves often rustle as they blow past my door.  This music accompanied the sound impressively.  I often get the feeling that Cage’s late work is intended to emulate nature, and so it makes sense that it accompanies nature so well.

Experiences I
Another in Cage’s set of Satie-like piano works from the 40’s.  This one’s from 1945 and is a simple work utilizing only the white keys.   I really enjoy the music, despite (because of?) its simplicity.  I guess it’s instantly appealing.  It also has clear similarities to the Experiences for voice.  The most interesting aspect of this piece may be the way it pauses so abruptly, leaving unexpected spaces between similar-sounding passages.    My recording is not so great; there seems to be a lot of odd noise on top.

Some of "The Harmony of Maine"

2005-11-09T03:57:00.000-05:00

Today there was not an especially clear highlight, but that’s OK.  I heard more sparse piano music, some grossly edited organ music and a prepared piano work.  I tried to enjoy the recordings with a cool glass of pumpkin pie soda, being the second-most-palatable flavor of holiday cola.  Unfortunately, I was unable to get much of it down.  I love pumpkin pie, but this tasted far too spicy for me.  Specifically, there seemed to be some nutmeg, which I consider to be one of the most noxious substances known to mankind.

More unfortunately, it’s all downhill from here.  Tomorrow I will be having a cool glass of carbonated turkey and gravy.

Music for Piano 69 – 84
This is my second listen in the series of Cage’s sparse chance-created piano music.  It’s very weird to say, but I find this kind of music more enjoyable to hear than the Variations or Cartridge Music even though they are just instances of sounds, bearing no relation to each other, separated in space.  This group, from 1956, can be performed separately (all 16 were separate in this recording) or with others in the same series.

The performance was very nice, and you could really hear a wide array of timbres among each of the types of piano tones, depending on how hard the key is pressed, for how long, and where it is located on the board.  The variety of sounds that can be achieved from a nonprepared piano is quite impressive in its own right!  The most interesting parts of this recording were the very curious high ringing noises which sounded more like the tapping of a wine glass than piano sounds.  I also got to hear a variety of strumming, plucking, and slapping sounds.

It feels odd to say, but this sort of music becomes more interesting and actually fairly entertaining the more I hear of it.

Primitive
An aptly named work for prepared piano that is definitely not over-complex.  It was written in 1942, and is pretty nice to listen to with very consistent rhythm and repetitions.  My favorite rhythm is the one towards the 1:30 mark, which seems pretty mysterious to me, and it leads directly into the most dramatic section with a faster, very repetitive and very simple rolling rhythm.  Most of the music seems pretty laid back, though.  Well, not so much inactive but rather less “dramatic” and more “fun.”  The exceptions are the middle section I already mentioned, and the ending which is pretty tense and forceful.  This work doesn’t stick in my mind as a great prepared piano work, but it’s nice and solid nonetheless.

Some of “The Harmony of Maine”
This music is a modification of Supply Belcher’s “The Harmony of Maine” from 1794, and thus relates in my mind to Apartment House.  The music is for organ, and Cage did chance modifications of the work so that some notes are deleted and others are changed in length.   Cage’s experiments in this work modification area are always interesting to me; in this one, you can hear both Cage and the original music at the same time.  You can picture how it once sounded without hearing it.   The gaps and distensions make you wistful, so there is a sadness to listening to the music.

Essentially, the experience is one of echoes.  There were two things that crossed my mind as I listened.  The first thought was Fadograph of a Yestern Scene, a phrase from Joyce that is also the title of a Samuel Barber work (which is why I know the phrase).  That came to mind because both Joyce’s nonsense wording and this music evoke a image in my mind: it seems like a faded and distorted reflection of the original music.

Another, more interesting thing that came to mind was mushrooms.  Cage once commented that the job of mushrooms is to remove old rubbish from the world, through the process of decomposition.  Cage’s modifications of this music definitely strike me as decomposition, because the work is losing notes, becoming torn apart, and if the process continued it would be reduced to simple tones devoid of context: the very materials from which it was created in the first place.  This isn’t a negative thought at all, to me.

Cage was the mushroom, but fortunately he isn’t poisonous.

Cartridge Music

2005-11-08T03:48:00.000-05:00

Tonight, I enjoyed a few number pieces, plus the first of what will be a three-part set of Cheap Imitations.  I also am enjoying a cranberry sauce soda while I listen, the most palatable of a “holiday soda” gift pack I purchased today.  I’ve also included my comments on Cartridge Music from last night.

Four2
This is a curious work for a chorus (another choral work, for the person who asked about them!) with the letters of “Oregon” sung.  Now as I listen, I can’t really make out the lettering, but I certainly enjoy it a lot.  The music (along with my speaker set up) completely surrounds me and I feel like I am engulfed in a thick mist of voices.  I think a lot of Cage’s vocal works really highlight the beauty of the unornamented voice, and here I get to listen to several such voices singing simultaneously in single, solid tones. The result is very attractive, especially when the voices continue for so long that they seem less to be voices and more like ambient noise that you miss when it vanishes.

Cheap Imitation for Piano
Cage arranged the third movement of Satie’s Socrate for two pianos, but copyright problems prevented its completion.  So in 1970 Cage took a curious route, and used chance operations to transform the original Satie work, transposing notes and modifying the dynamics completely from the original.

This was supposed to be a violin rendition of the work, but it turns out that eMusic lied to me, and I wasted three of my downloads on another piano version when I already had them.  That’s very annoying.  I did not read sufficiently carefully; the review they quote from allmusic is way off, but the fact that his is Cage himself performing should have made it clear it was not for violin!

Anyway, this work is totally boring.  In fact, I am breaking one of my rules right now, in that I am writing the discussion while I listen to the third part, which has another interminable 15 minute remaining.  The music is one long melodic line that goes nowhere.  Each note seems played so alike that any variation in dynamics is subtle enough that I may as well be listening to an old MIDI file.

There are certain exceptions—sudden shocking parts where Cage sounds as if he is hitting a sour note, but which presumably are just modifications of the original piece.  These seem to be emphasized by the playing, as do some portions of the final part.  But overall, I’m just twiddling my thumbs, waiting for it to end...

A Flower
This is a 1950 vocal work that includes piano lid tapping.  There is no text, but in my performance Joan LaBarbara sings long, slow tones, while the tapping on the piano tends to be fast and rhythmic.

She scared me suddenly when she basically began quacking like a duck at one point.  So up until there, it seemed like a fairly conventional Cage vocal work—solid tones, no vibrato, highlighting as I said above, the unadorned voice.  For this work Cage added other animalistic noises, such as gargling.  Apparently the dance was about a flower, so Cage decided the music should seem more animal-like.  To be honest, after some bewilderment, I got a good laugh out of the music.  It reminds me of the horse-neighing part of Stockhausen’s Stimmug that never fails to leave me howling.

As a side note, it’s too bad I didn’t do a Stockhausenblog, because a) the word is fun to say, and b) maybe he’d write to me and tell me I have no comprehension of his music ;-)

Cartridge Music
Sometimes with works like the Variations series, Cartridge Music, Branches and others, I feel like Cage wrote them so as to be more interesting for the performers than for the listeners, and whatever listening enjoyment might occur really needs to be accompanied by watching the performers in action, or at least a detailed description of that’s going on...I’ll discuss this more below.

Anyway, this is a work for various objects placed into phonograph cartridges and amplified, as well as the sound of furniture with contact microphones.  The material provided for the music consists of various shapes and transparencies such that every performances is different.  Indeed, the number of performers depends on the number of cartridges available.

In listening to it, much like Variations, I found it difficult to pay a lot of attention.  Most of the sounds were indeed interesting, but all sounded mostly like scrapes and scratches that varied by pitch.  I understand the concept of the work: small sounds that would otherwise be totally inaudible are being amplified.  But for me, unless I know what is making the sound, the sound itself is a bit less exciting.  On the other hand, I can imagine how I would feel being one putting objects into the cartridges and becoming excited as I wonder, “What sort of sound will this make?”

But as for this recording, I particularly enjoyed certain short, loud sounds, as well as the “twang” sounds I associate with springs.  Some other noises were curious, like chains dragging and something shattering.  But most were just creaks and scrapes.  I would have loved either a video of the performance, or a text description of some of the parts that the performers found most interesting to play.

Sorry, just a shameless plug tonight...

2005-11-07T03:06:00.000-05:00

I listened to Cartridge Music and another work tonight, but I will write tomorrow.  Right now, I would just like to make a quick shameless plug for two of my recent music purchases: Music of the Ancient Greeks and Music of the Ancient Sumerians, Egyptians and Greeks as performed by De Organographia.  I’ve always been fond of early music, and there’s not much earlier than this stuff.

A lot of the ancient Greek music has been recorded before, but the most recently discovered papyri fragments are recorded on the second CD, including a nearly-complete Christian hymn, the earliest ever discovered.  It also features a nice recording of the complete Hurrian hymn to a moon goddess deciphered by Anne Kilmer in the 70’s.  She also released an LP, which I bought from her (apparently it did not sell very well since they still had plenty of copies in 2001...) but I like the Organographia version a fair bit more.

Be warned though, the Egyptian music is totally dubious.  For example, a horn call is recreated based on a description of it sounding like the bray of a donkey.  Of course all interpretations of music notation this old are fairly dubious, but the Egyptian stuff is the most dubious of all. ;-)

I have this theory that my interest Cage and new music has also driven my interest in early music.  It’s possible this is true for others as well, so I’m tossing this out...

Suite for Toy Piano

2005-11-06T02:18:00.000-05:00

Today was a night full of piano music, although not exactly by intent.  I think I am still a little bit ill, but the consequence is fatigue rather than any real symptoms.

Later I describe how a number piece put me to sleep.  It’s interesting how some of Cage’s works really wipe me out.  His text readings are especially effective at that; the way Cage reads his mesostics in the Mode text pieces CD’s (among the most enjoyable Christmas presents I’ve ever received, I might add!) is veer calming and the nonsense of the text as you try to follow it sends me straight into the dream world.  I don’t know if anyone else has experienced this.

Metamorphosis
This is an early piano work composed in 1938 using a serial style.  None of the five movements really strike my fancy.  The third is significantly longer than the rest, but moves quite slowly.  There are certain fairly rhythmic passages, and the sixth movement starts out in a peaceful relaxing style that shows some promise, but it seems I hear too much stair-stepping.  On the plus sides, certain melodic fragments recur fairly often; I understand part of the point of the music is the presentation of certain fragments of a tone row.  Nevertheless, I am unsure what the title signifies (except insofar as the row fragments are modified over time), because each movement seems quite similar to its predecessors.  I guess on paper, maybe the title has significance, but I really can’t hear it as I listen.

TV-Köln
This work is from 1958 and features music for various parts of the piano and external noises.  One advantage of smacking a piano is that it’s pretty hollow and has a nice loud sound to it.  This one uses a radio for external noise, which is nice, but when you get right down to it, it’s a bunch of creaks, thumps and bumps.  Oh, and a few tone clusters and string plucks and a very few key presses.  The end is, thankfully, fairly silent.

I understand the principle behind works such as this, in that you are listening to sounds being themselves.  But the sounds just aren’t very interesting.  Or maybe I’m in a bad mood tonight?  Hmm, I guess I could follow the principle of listening to it another four, then eight, then sixteen etc. times until I decide it’s interesting, after all...;-)

Suite for Toy Piano
This work takes advantage of the limitation of the toy piano, namely that it has only nine white keys.  Two of the movements in fact only involve five tones!  Curiously, there is an arrangement for orchestra ten years after its creation in 1948,  and it is occasionally played on a real piano.   I choose to stick with the toy version, however.

Cage does a thorough exploration within the ridiculous limitations he placed on the music (note that the toy piano also cannot play chords); we have some quick rhythms, and the melodies are usually fun, relying heavily (for obvious reasons) on repetition of the same note or notes over and over again and plenty of arpeggios.  But what I think I like most is just simply the sound of the toy piano.  It has a unique, very light timbre, and even more interesting is the loudness of the clicking when a key is pressed.  This compliments the upbeat texture of the music, and also gives it a slightly mysterious feel, something like harp music.  The variety of dynamics possible on such a frankly crappy instrument is interesting, too.  I don’t see much point in playing it on a piano, although I’ll admit I’ve never listened to a piano versions.

Of the five movements of the suite, I think I prefer the fifth, as it has a slow, strong rhythm and a theme that I like a lot.

One5
In One5, each hand gets different time brackets; the work features 97 notes throughout its entirety.  It was composed in 1990.  I’m afraid this one put me to sleep practically instantly after I started listening to it.  Now it might be that I was tired, but even as I put it on right now while I type, there’s something about it that just really zonks me out.  I think of the music as something akin to starlight: brief specks that persist for awhile, but not usually loudly and that don’t really demand your attention.  Between them are long, long pauses, as you listen to the particular note fade into nothing.  Between the notes there’s nothing for your mind to hold on to, and as I listen to the sound alter and warp ever so slightly as it fades away, my brain tends to fade away too, until I am totally unconscious.

But presuming you manage to stay awake, it’s interesting to note how you respond to each tone, and experience the subtleties of the sound of a piano.  For example, as I just heard one tone played, I can feel the vibrations on the strings seeming to go back and forth and back and forth until the sound is gone.  Unlike some of the other sparse piano works, there are no sounds other than single keypresses.

Apartment House 1776

2005-11-05T03:09:00.000-05:00

Tonight I heard two items I like a lot, one I found very boring, and one that sounded un-Cage.  I also wandered over to the local bookstore, and picked up a book about “music and ecstasy” which went to some effort to try to explain why people like music.  Some of it was interesting, and out of boredom I looked up Cage in the index—I found him several times, once being criticized because his chance operations never ‘produced any memorable melodies,’ once because he created graphic scores that were more ‘efforts at visual art with no real concern for the music they might result in,’ and once in the context of his Europera which was one of a list of examples of music that no one would listen to for pleasure.  Nothing beats listening to some academic pointyhead jab music he dislikes with his-oh-so-sharp skull...

He also lamented the fact that there have been not been any composers with Beethoven-ish stature since...well, since Beethoven.  I suspect it’s a lack of time and the fact that everyone is buried in music 24/7.

Six Short Inventions for Seven Instruments
Well, I can’t say this one did much for me.  That’s not too surprising since it was written in 1934 and thus among the earliest works of all.  The first features some very harsh melodies.  The third and fourth are fast-paced but consequently extremely short.  The fourth is perhaps the most interesting, played in this recording with plucked strings.  The fifth is the most successful at providing a comforting melody, while the sixth is the most extravagant and longest, yet still fairly forgettable.  Interestingly, the instruments for the composition are not specified; in this case it seemed to be some strings and a flute.

Third Construction
One of Cage’s several great percussion works, this Construction from 1943 has a very tribal feel due to the use of skinned drums and more “wooden” sounds in addition to the good ol’ tin cans.  There’s some sort of especially loud metallic item similar to the metal sheet used in the First Construction, which breaks in at appropriate points for some added drama.  There also are points during the work where certain instruments show off more or less by themselves.

As I said, there is a tribal feel to the work, which comes into the picture most clearly about halfway through, when a toned sound that reminds me of some sort of bird or animal noise enters the music; later, there is a similar effect from some sort of horn call.  Occasionally there’s a barely audible very low sound too, which adds to the tension. The intensity seems to keep going up and up throughout, with only a few lulls, and reaches its forceful climax at the end.

Today I read that the use of tin cans and various other unusual items was partially motivated by the fact that Cage had essentially no money for normal percussion instruments.  I don’t think the music was hurt by it!

Apartment House 1776
Apartment House is one of my all-time favorite works from Cage.  It was written for the American bicentennial in 1976.  I generally consider this work to be in the same class as Roaratorio or the Europeras, in the sense that it is a collage of sounds of various sources associated with a unifying theme.  In this case we get two main aspects: musical works and singing.  Cage intended it to represent the sounds one might have heard in an apartment house in 1776.

The music is a mixture of various nice melodic instrumental music collected from late 18th century composers.  The music selections complement each other well, even though they are played all on top of each other.  But these are not precise renditions of the melodies; instead, they have had chance-selected modifications, including shifted pitches, dropped notes, and so on.  The effect is stronger on some parts of the music than others, resulting in kind of an eerie feeling as certain pieces sound distorted as if played on a warped record.  The skipped notes and the distortion seem to emphasize the distance of the music from the here and now.  The slow works seem eeriest; since their rhythm does not stick out very much, all the notes from the works intermingle heavily and the result is unsettling.  The unsettled-ness is quite appropriate, because my favorite aspect of the work, drum solos from an old marching band book come in at random points, disturbing the music and suggesting impending violence and war.  Those solos are played appropriately very loud and drown everything else out.

The vocal music features works that are representative of four groups living in New England at the time of the revolution: the Protestants, the Sephardim (American Jews), the slaves, and the Native Americans.  All of them sing traditional material including hymns, work songs and chants, depending on the group.  The volume seems relatively low, such that it’s difficult to make out specific lyrics, but they are generally religious in nature (as expected).  The fact that it’s performed simultaneously suggests the discord that the clash of cultures resulted in, and the drum solos drown out all the multitude in a cacophonous conflagration.

I would love to hear this performed in person!

Ad Lib
I listened to this expecting a bland 40’s Cage piano work, from 1943 in this case.  It is much different than I’d expected.  It has a ragtime feel to it, and is very bouncy for most of the work.  But there’s a bit of a dark undercurrent to it, and strangely seems to suggest both Satie and Joplin to me practically simultaneously.  Well, maybe not exactly at the same time; it seems to shift between the two.   The last minute or so goes pretty crazy with the glissandos.  It’s a fun listen; not a heavyweight certainly, but pretty cute.  Sometimes it’s good to go in with low expectations, I suppose.

Three2

2005-11-03T21:42:00.000-05:00

Today was an entertaining day, Cage-wise.  Since my students finished their electronics lab earlier than usual, I has time to wander off to the Virginia Tech library.  My initial reason for going was to look up a book on the Choctaw Indians, but since I couldn’t find it, I went to wander through the rows upon rows of PhD and MS theses (staking out the competition, more or less).  Lo and behold, right around the corner was Tech’s collection of sheet music!  They were all rather haphazardly arranged, but I learned quickly to yank out anything with a ‘C’ in the call number.  I managed to find manuscripts for Daughters of the Lonesome Isle, Music of Changes, One4 (I might be wrong on the superscript), and Six in this manner.

Someone asked how Cage notated the piano preparations.  It looks pretty much like a vague list of equipment (“small bolt,” “typewriter bolt,” “rubber”) and notation for the particular note to modify, as well as the location at which to play it.  I presume there is some agreed-upon idea of how long a “long bolt” is in performance.

Music of Changes was curious; in the intro Cage specified that the shape of the note heads mattered, but it seems hard to believe anyone can distinguish the shape of the note heads in his manuscript!  He also had the humorous comment that some of the music would appear completely “irrational,” in which case the performer should use his judgment.  If I recall correctly, one inch was equal to approximately two and a half seconds.

The two numbers pieces were less interesting, consisting of parallel rows of staves superimposed with notes in the case of One4 and number in the case of Six (the numbers indicating which instrument is to be played).  Each also had time bracket indications.

Next time I get the chance, I hope to dig around a little more (yes, maybe I will even break down and go look in the catalogue) and try to find some of the graphic scores with transparencies and so on.  I’ll note one last thing that struck me as hilarious: something like 200 volumes of Bach’s works printed in super-tiny books, almost like a “travel edition” similar to those tiny versions of Scrabble or whatnot.

Seven
Seven is one of the earlier number pieces, written in 1988.  Each of the instruments (flute, clarinet, piano, and string trio) plays a number of notes in its specified time bracket, the number depending on the particular instrument.  A percussionists is specified to make any sounds, but with a specified instrument for each time bracket.

This performance comes on much stronger than I am used to from Cage’s number pieces; the instruments start up rapidly, play frequently, and don’t wash in and out as usual.  The percussion instruments feature primarily some hideous scraping and creaking sounds, which are actually pretty unnerving if heard in the dark.  There is a sense that all of the instruments are striking out at the listener, and so if I compared another work to floating slowly down a forested river, I’d refer to this one is a terrified run from a monster in the same forest, with vines and branches all reaching out to trip and entangle you.  Even strings are ominous, since they seem to be playing Freeman Etudes-esque scrapes and such, whereas the warbling of the two wind instruments adds to the tension.
I’m not sure if it’s the work or the performance, but the character of Seven is much different from what I am used to.

Sonnekus2
This is a group of nine songs from 1985 that consist of mesostics on the Biblical Genesis.  It’s partially a performance piece, as the singer may change costumes and sing songs by Satie elsewhere during the performance.

The portions Cage wrote are obviously biblical in origin (the use of “begat” is a dead giveaway), so even without reading about it I would have known rapidly.  Also, Jacob shows up all the time, so I suspect this was not a mesostic over the entire book of Genesis.  LaBarbara’s singing is not audience directed during the mesostics, but it is sweet and melodic; very satisfying to pop ears that like a clean, smooth female voice.  The cabaret songs are an interesting touch.  The image I have is something like a chant in a monastery spontaneously breaking out into a song with a piano appearing out of nowhere.  Alternatively, you can imagine a church that is most unfortunately located right next to a club where someone is singing, interrupting the readings.

The novelty wears of quickly though.  My desire was to listen to Cage, not to Satie, so the fact that the songs are always much, much longer than the mesostics makes me tire of them quickly.  I understand that this work was also a part of The First Meeting of the Satie Society, so in that context it would make sense to have so much spontaneous Satie, but on its own, it’s pretty annoying.

Three2
This is the second of cage’s percussion number pieces that I have heard, written in 1991.  In the fall of 2003, right about this time of year, I hosted a two-day “student-taught session” on the music of John Cage.  The first day was an hour and a half of electronic or other unusual-instrument music, while the second day focused on works written late in Cage’s life (the majority of biographical sketches seem to think Cage died in 1952 or so).  Two people showed up, an art student and his girlfriend, but the girlfriend arrived early and then left, thinking she’d be alone.  Anyway, part of my theme for the number pieces for the second day was a set of four reflecting earth, air, fire and water.  This was the recording I chose for air, for very obvious reasons.

Every instrument played in this rendition suggests movement: the slowly rising gongs reflect gushing wind that drives the other two sounds, a curious metallic fan-like rhythm and wind chimes.  The feel of the work is like a loud gust of wind blasting you, that eventually dies down, only to start up again.  I doubt very many other performances would sound quite like this though, depending on whether or not the percussion instruments are specified.

As a side note, I am very much looking forward to the OgreOgress release of Three for recorders.  I fondly (or maybe not) remember playing the recorder very badly in grade school, and I like hearing the instrument.  To my displeasure, a lot of old recorder works are now performed on flute for some reason.  I’m glad Cage wrote something for the instrument!

Imaginary Landscape No. 1

2005-11-03T00:31:00.000-05:00

Tonight, some electronics, some prepared piano, and some rain.  Sometimes it is entertaining to imagine Cage sitting on the other side of the couch listening with me.  He seemed to say various things about recordings during his life, so I’m not sure what his thoughts on the premise of this experiment would be, or if he would have been offended by my falling asleep during Etcetera (see below)...

Our Spring Will Come
A 1943 work for prepared piano, Our Spring Will Come follows a typical pattern for works of this type: relatively short segments of alternating rhythmic passages.  Many of the passages include melodies from unprepared piano keys, or sometimes single tones.  The work is very upbeat and the rhythms are uniformly fast. There are a few points where a single rhythm, with four sounds, is played for a fair amount a time, with no other notes.  Also, Cage punctuates things in the latter half of the work with some very abrupt silencing of the piano.  The piano preparations generally produce a rattling, metallic sound.  The different types of rhythm are recognizable when they repeat.

Improvisations IV (Fielding Sixties)
This is an online recording of a 1982 work that I obtained, which features speed-modified recordings of a classical violin piece.  They all seem to be the same piece, but overlapping each other and played either fast, resulting in a screeching, banshee sound, or else played slow with a warbled, mournful, groaning sound.  The effect is interesting, and I think the choice of violin music highlights it nicely.  The imagery in my mind is, for some reason, strands of DNA being bent and twisted around one another.  I’d say it’s haunting, but maybe unsettling is a better word.

Etcetera
In this work from 1973, performers move between three stations; as each station reaches is maximum occupancy, the play.  As this occurs, percussionists play boxes in a light manner that resembles the rain or rustling leaves.  Of course, I hadn’t read this description before I listened to the piece, and I was debating whether the light tapping sound was bubbling stew or raindrops.  There were also taped bird sounds involved, and sometimes what sounded like dog or something else non-avian.  The instruments, strings, wind and piano, play slightly rhythmic and sometimes lyrical bursts of tones.

The music was relaxing to listen to.  In fact, maybe it was too relaxing.  In a way it felt like a number piece on a larger scale, with different instruments playing for awhile but then fading away in a non-abrupt manner; sometimes, all the instruments disappeared leaving just the percussive sounds.  It was during an extended passage of this almost-silence in the last five minutes or so that I went into either a trance or dozed off; the piece is so soft and comforting that I really didn’t notice it had ended until I heard the buzzing of the record players in the next work!  I look forward to hearing the orchestral version.

Imaginary Landscape No. 1
While I was driving to a bookstore in the summer of 2003, I heard a soft drink ad on the radio which paid tribute to, “the guy who first realized a turntable could be an instrument.”  I felt the need to yell out, “1939, dude!”  Of course, I was wrong—apparently some Dadaists did it in the 20’s, and I think Resphigi used recorded birdsong in The Pines of Rome even before that (as a side note, apparently there were riots; but that’s OK, classical music audiences rioted over everything back then.  Maybe their monocles were in too tight).  Nevertheless, Imaginary Landscape No. 1 for variable-frequency turntables, piano and cymbal stands out in my mind as a key work in early electronic music, even if today some of the turntable bleating reminds me of a truck backing up.
The music consists of frequency test recordings at various speeds, mixed with short piano passages of only a few notes, and cymbal crashes.  Between these sections, the piano strings are strummed.  The loudest part of the whole performance is certainly the strumming of the piano strings, which like in Fourteen produce a powerful rumbling sound.  Each strumming is progressively louder each time, building an ominous tension.  The frequency tones provide a backdrop to the whole thing; sometimes their speed is varied slowly and you hear the pitch shift, and other times it is too rapid to notice anything but a stairstep increase.  The work follows a pretty clear pattern, and there aren’t any surprises.

Personally, I like to listen to this Landscape at very high volumes such that the piano strings make my walls shake, perhaps to the annoyance of my neighbors...

Fourteen

2005-11-01T22:58:00.000-05:00

Tonight I listened to two pieces I’m only slightly acquainted with, plus Cage’s first work for prepared piano.  I’m happy to say they were all a lot of fun.  Yesterday I suffered from a bad cold which oddly seems to have vanished altogether at this point.  I have some free time this evening so I may be posting again.   I confess I have been saving some of the most well know items, like HPSCHD, Sonatas and Interludes, Landscape No. 4, etc. For a few works, namely HPSCHD and the Europeras, I would like to at least recreate some of the visual elements.  I remember reading somewhere that Europera 5 calls for a dusty table lamp and a television, which I can certainly use.  I may also construct a computer screensaver full of NASA imagery to at least give a flavor of the sort of thing seen at the HPSCHD event.

Etudes Boreales
Here I’m listening to the cello version of the work.  As a test, I stuck in a Freeman etude to see of I could tell the difference.  There was no question; the Boreales etudes use a lass dizzying variety of sounds.  In a way, the music sounds almost melodic, even though it was composed in 1978 through the use of astronomical charts.  I enjoyed it much more than I enjoyed the Freeman Etudes, probably a direct result of Frances-Marie Uttui’s comforting way of playing them.  Also, I’m not coming to my listening experience with the same “this work was hideously complex” preconception that I had with the Freeman Etudes.  Consequently, listening on my couch was quite pleasing; it was fun to wonder where the not-quite-a-melody would go next.  It’s totally unpredictable.  So far, this has been the most enjoyable of the totally chance-determined works I have listened to outside of the Number Pieces.

Bacchanale
Cage’s first prepared piano work was written in 1940, originally for a percussion ensemble for which there was not enough room in the performance space.  In texture it’s straightforward, with the usual muted piano sounds combined with a few metallic percussive noises.  The majority of the work is spent on a very fast rhythmic playing; in a lot of prepared piano works, there is the sense of lots of different rhythms played, with sudden sharp gaps between them.  Bacchanale is different and simpler in this regard.

Towards the middle of the work, there seems to be a bit of an interlude which focuses more heavily on the percussive sound, is played quieter, and shifts the theme slightly.  My overall impression is of physical movement, which is certainly not surprising since it was written for a dance!  The fast paced sections suggest running, with pauses for reflection at certain points.

Fourteen
Originally I was going to title this post Bacchanale under the theory that it would be the most-preferred item tonight, but I changed my mind after listening to Fourteen.  It was written in 1990 and features piano, assorted wind and strings, and two percussionists.  The most distinctive aspect about the work is that the piano is played by bowing it with fishing line.  Mode called this a “Piano Concerto” for their collection.

I am glad to say that I can hear all of the various instruments distinctly, especially the often ominous tone of the bowed piano.  It often manifests as a low, rumbling, but at other times is a higher, warbling cloud.  It’s hard to explain the sound; I guess I could say it sounds like a solid tone, but warped and bent out of shape as it increases in loudness.  The experience is pretty unnerving, something like thunder or the wind.  Add to that the rain-like sound of some of the wind instruments that are played so that the sound seems to break in and out of existence, and the tingling sound of some particular type of percussion, and the result is a musical storm, accentuated also by the wind-like slow playing of a gong.  There are certain points of silence, as well.  Honestly, the music is a bit frightening (especially some of those extremely low piano bowings), but very pleasing.

Williams Mix

2005-10-31T04:02:00.000-05:00

Tonight, it’s on to a few works that I happen to enjoy.  And one I don’t.  And one I’ve never heard!  I’ll add that it was late when I wrote much of this, and I was pretty punchy, so there may be a higher percentage of silliness in these reviews...

Williams Mix
This is pretty much the most depressing work in the entirety of Cage’s career, in my opinion.  This was one gigantic tape-splicing operation that took a year or so to complete, with a myriad of problems.  Cage apparently co-opted anyone who wandered by to do some splicing.  I say it’s depressing simply because a huge amount of effort (Cage apparently gave instructions on how to complete if he died working on it) went into something that could now be replicated in a tiny fraction of the time.  It’s essentially a mixture of several hundred recordings that fall into the category of city, country, electronic, manual, wind and amplified “small” sounds (as a side note, there is a Yahoo! group devoted to such amplified sounds).  The splicing and all operations were determined using the I Ching, the Chinese oracle and one of Cage’s favorite means of performing chance operations.  The version I listened to is a beautifully re-recorded copy of the original work from 1952 on the “Octo Mixes” CD, which also has a new realization.  I originally heard it on the 25th Anniversary recording, but it was full of chatter and laughter from the audience.

My experience in listening to it is pretty wild.  It’s almost like some sort of incredibly fast out-of-body experience, as if you are rushing through all of human civilization, with rapid blasts of highly distorted speech, rumbling noises of electronics, tiny snippets of music...All that and a seemingly omnipresent frog.  It feels like a compression of all of modern life into a few minutes of sound, and it’s exhilarating to listen to.  As a bit of trivia, the two speech fragments I can actually make out are “gonna find a winner” and “thing that sing.”

When I heard Revolution 9 from the Beatles, I thought it was a wild idea.  Then I heard this from well over a decade before and the poor Beatles just weren’t interesting anymore.

Living Room Music
I challenge anyone to listen to this and not enjoy hammering out the rhythm on whatever furniture is available.  Which is perfectly fine, since the 1940 work itself is to be played on household objects, window frames, and whatnot.  The second movement is hilarious to me, featuring several performers rhythmically hissing and singing some Gertrude Stein about the world being round.  I especially enjoy the male voice in this recording who says, “round and round and rooooound.”  The first and last movements feature pure percussion, and the solid, hard sound of the strikes are very appealing and easy to beat along to.  The melody section, the third movement, is a simple melody with percussion accompaniment.  It has something of a ritualistic feel, I think.

One of the reasons I find the second movement so hilarious is that it allowed the work to be included, somewhat absurdly in my opinion, on the Mode “Choral Works” release.

One4
This was my first One, and my first number piece for percussion, in this case a solo drummer.  It was written in 1990.  Since the drums obviously don’t take on the same sort of extended sounds as strings or wind instruments, the feel is pretty significantly different.  Moe importantly, there is a wider variety of sounds, from the metallic drum rolls, to harsh bass hits, and so on.  Each of these loud events is surrounded by long bouts of silence.  Thus, my natural analog for this would be floating through space (even though mentally I am space out, I will admit that I’ve never physically been there).  Of course, you wouldn’t actually hear anything in space, but I think the various sounds are analogous to bumping into space debris.  I’m guessing most Ones, even for strings and other instruments, are pretty sparse affairs.  Sparseness highlights the unique characteristics of each sound, and in this case you hear certain rolls longer than you would ever hear them in other music, bringing out some of their peculiarities (such as, in one case, a curious ringing sound).  This was fun, although I think the more sparse the number piece, the more it needs to be approached like the mass of sparse piano works from the 50’s.

Music for Marcel Duchamp
Dedicated to the artist, this work from 1947 was originally written for Dreams that Money Can Buy.  The piano doesn’t have a massive number of preparations, although it is heavily muted.  To my ear, the effect is that it makes the keyboard sound more like a plucked instrument than it otherwise would.  The work has a fairly characteristic rhythm, and extensive repetitions towards the end (and other though less extensive repetitions of similar phrases towards the end.

I have a definite feel for the style of music, but it’s hard to describe exactly.  It very much reminds me of some of the music from ancient Greece that I have heard when played on various types of lyres.  Similarly, when I see a movie about Egypt, there’s typically a soundtrack that reminds me of this.  So I’ll go out on a limb, risk some chastisement, and claim that this sounds west Asian to me.

Waiting
The title isn’t kidding around.  Waiting is from 1952, and really doesn’t have much to it besides, well, a lot of waiting.  A little over a minute’s worth, followed by a few brief piano notes.  Then you wait awhile longer.  It’s sort of fun, actually.  You might even be able to scare someone by passing it off as a recording of 4’33”.

Variations II
In 1961, Cage wrote the second in his Variations series for any number of players and any means of producing sound.  I knew I was going to have to tackle these, possibly the absolutely hardest to approach of  anything Cage ever wrote, eventually.  Basically, the work is a series of transparencies with points and lines, which are superimposed on each other and used, after some manipulations, to determine readings for frequency, duration, etc.  I am not really sure what I can add to that.  My recording, one of several that I have, is from one of the “New York School” albums, and features what seems to be sandpaper, some percussion (wooden sticks, some kind of gun I think, and a rattle), along with a slide whistle.  Every single performance would sound completely different, and I’m not sure if there’s any general suggestion I can offer other than to listen to the sounds, as Cage might say, as just sounds, without any substantial relationship to the other sounds.

I personally feel that the performers, who effectively create the performance, are the ones who get the most out of this work.  I would actually rather like a copy of the score, because it might be attractive.

cComposed Improvisations
In 1990, Cage was commissioned for a work for Steinberg bass guitar.  He created this, which also includes parts for snare and “one sided drum with or without jangles.”  A snare drum solo version has been recorded, as has the guitar and snare, but the poor potentially-jangly drum has been ignored. :-(

Like most of the late works it includes time brackets, during which events may be played, their exact number, duration, etc. to be determined by chance operations.  I’m afraid that on this recording, by Robert Black (the same one who requested it), I do not get the feeling that chance operations were been used; instead it sounds basically like a very experimental jazz tune, with the drums playing some fairly recognizable beats at points.  On the other hand, it is not a continuous performance.  I’m not therefore convinced as to the authenticity of this performance.  I’ll have to refresh my memory of the liner notes.

Exactly one person known to read this blog will have any hope of understanding what I mean when I say that the sound reminds me of the experimental (and obscure) jazz group El Guapo, who not coincidentally are the only experimental jazz group I have any familiarity with whatsoever.

103

2005-10-30T00:13:00.000-04:00

Tonight I tackle one of the least approachable and longest of all the pieces music of any kind that I own: 103 for a large orchestra.  One of the big advantages of having MP3s of this performance as opposed to the original disc is that I can hear it played continuously, exactly as I would have heard it in concert.  The size of this piece was the justification for skipping Thursday, since i am for about 45 minutes of Cage per day.

103
103 is a number piece, the second largest of all of them, written in 1992, and uses time brackets and a series of single tones produced by each instrument.  This recording, the only recording, was for various reasons conducted even though the score calls for no such thing.  Obviously, with 103 instruments, there’s a pretty decent variety of sounds, but as I expected the strings are pretty dominant.  This is primarily, I suppose, because they can hold tones for much longer periods than the other instruments, although with circular breathing the winds manage it too.

The first thing that comes to mind is that this work is extremely long; at 90 minutes it’s the longest orchestral music work I own.  That presents a pretty significant problem for those of us with attention spans that tend towards the 15-20 minute range with orchestral music.  The problem is accentuated in a Cage work like this, since the overall texture and large-scale structure of the piece is static, without development or ending.

I went through it in jaunts; listen for half an hour, then I cleaned with Cage in the background, then listened for awhile longer, then sent some email, and for the last half hour or so I entered a quasi-meditative state and came close to falling asleep.  I’m not sure how I would react to this in a concert hall; most probably I would doze off ;-)

As with pretty much every number piece I’ve heard, this one feels very organic; it grows and swells like a plant, with different wisps of sound suggesting different moods and emotions.  For example, passages where the timpani come rumbling in seem more dramatic and forceful than others.  Throughout much of the work, there is a sense of tension built up as more instruments add unrelated tones, and then relaxation as they withdrawal.  Depending on the tones and instruments, each tension takes on a different character.  Sometimes the sensation is pensive and nervous; other times, it is foreboding, and other times it’s what I might call a forceful relaxation, like a strong massage.  The silences are welcome after several minutes of being overwhelmed with slow moving sound.  Of course, there are also some quick sounds: fast horn blasts and quick string scrapes.  In some cases they seem like conversations over the rest of the music, sometimes having an eagerness about them that forces you to pay attention.

In spite of the length and the difficulty this work would seem to impose upon a listener, it turns out to be pretty inviting.  The various chance-determined orchestral works seem almost angry or at least cold and uncaring by comparison with this.  My only criticism is the same basic criticism I have of orchestral music in general: I get really bored of hearing endless, endless strings.  There is a percussion performer, but apparently only one, and he is not especially active, only popping in with a bell or a triangle ding (or various unidentified but always resonant and metallic sounds)  now and again.  The score also calls for two pianos, but I never heard them.

All and all, it was an interesting experience.  I don’t know if I’ll repeat it because of the sheer length and the fact that, thanks to the total dominance of the strings, most of the work sounds the same as all the rest.  I wonder if a non-conducted version would sound different.

Credo in Us

2005-10-28T22:30:00.000-04:00

For those who are curious, only a mere 140 recodrings remain!

Tonight I was going to go to a concert by the Virginia Tech choir, but sadly it was a ticketed event, and there were no tickets being sold at the door.  Since Tech’s music department calendar does not list ticketing information, it’s always sort of a toss up as to whether I will actually be able to attend the events I attempt to go to.  Fortunately, the recitals by students are always free, even if there is some cost in being stared at because I am the only person there who is not a professor, a family member of the performer, or a music student required to attend.  On the plus side, I hear music I wouldn’t otherwise, often by composers who aren’t even dead yet!  Even when they are, I doubt I’d hear them otherwise. Two weeks ago, a clarinet player performed some Berio which would have no doubt made a traditional audience huff, collectively adjust their monocles, and walk out in annoyance for being presented with something they haven’t heard 28,000 times previously.

Yes, my perception of classical music audiences is based entirely on caricatures I’ve seen on The Three Stooges.

Anyway, no more cynical ranting!  There’s Cage to discuss.  I skipped listening yesterday; you’ll find out my rationale tomorrow.

But what about the noise of crumpling paper which he used to do in order to paint the series of “Papiers froisses” or tearing up paper to male “Papiers dechires?”  Arp was stimulated by water (sea, lake, and flowing water like rivers), forests
In 1985, Cage composed this work with and gave it an outrageously long title, which was based on a letter from the Arp Foundation; the work being a celebration of Jean Arp.  As usual for the later work, there is a strong sense of the natural world here.  There are ten parts for various resonant instruments.  In my recording, I hear various wooden and metal percussive sounds.  This is mixed with the sounds of crumpling paper and the various noises produced by water.  The effect is very peaceful and meditative.

The percussion instruments are apparently following a beat, but I could not detect what it is by measuring the time between different sounds.  Yet, I felt like there was a guiding rhythm even if there is no specific one.  The most prominent instruments produced this feeling, whereas some of the others—blown jugs or bottles, a rolling ball—only creep in at unexpected times.  The jugs, in fact, came in halfway through with a very low pitch that gave everything else a sense of dread.  The paper and water noises come once in awhile, and do not seem rhythmic to me.  Instead, it feels like the other instruments give these sounds a context in which to exist.  The water noises are a little more common and include boiling sounds, pouring sounds and the like.

As a side note, I heard various noises as this piece played on my computer.  I heard a knocking noise that may have been someone knocking on a door upstairs, or might have been part of the music.  Similarly, there was a moderately loud scraping noise that might indicate a damaged audio file.  Or, it too might be part of the music.  I’m not sure!  I guess this music is sort of like 4’33” in this respect; I hear (possibly) external sounds and they become part of the performance.

Music for Carillon No. 1
For some reason, no one likes to record the Music for Carillon series.  This is off of the live recording of Cage’s 25th Anniversary Concert from 1958, and to be honest I don’t think it was a very good recording.  The carillon’s kind of muddy, and there’s a fair amount of tape hiss, too.

Anyway, the music seems to feature various chunks of sound.  You hear a few bells, then a big wash of them, and then a few individuals.  This pattern continues throughout, and in this recording it just doesn’t seem very interesting, even though I like the sound of a carillon.  There’s an ancient LP featuring another recording of this work and three of the others in the series (but not No. 4 for some reason).  If anyone has unearthed it I’d love to have a copy.   Or, if anyone has access to a carillon, these are obvious choices for improved recordings!

Credo in Us
I think of this work as the masterpiece of Cage’s percussion music phase.  It was written in 1942, for percussionists using cans, buzzers, and gongs, as well as a radio and a piano.  It opens with the radio, and throughout most of the work, the radio is hidden by the percussions, like it is locked inside a cage (no pun intended).  The piano, on the other hand, has a few solos where it plays some simple rhythmic melodies, one of which is distinctly jazzy in sound, which is surprising since as far as I know Cage did not like jazz.  The whole performance seems divided up into pieces of intense percussion or piano playing, separated sometimes by silence or by quiet, but insistent rhythms.  Later, the radio becomes freed and it is played alone, surrounded before and after by piano rather than being buried in percussion.

The jazz melody, towards its end, is engulfed by a low, intense piano rhythm that is very foreboding, and which to me suggests the war going on at the same time Credo was completed.  Unlike some of the other items Cage write around the time, there’s no peace here; the music is completely active and exciting.  My favorite aspect is certainly the radio. In spite of the fact that it could potentially sound like anything, I hear it as “the radio” rather than as whatever the radio happens to be playing (static, speech, other music).  It’s interesting that something so indeterminate fits in so well to the rest of the music.  As percussion music goes, I like this one even more than Antheil’s monstrous Ballet mécanique.

And the Earth Shall Bear Again

2005-10-26T23:14:00.000-04:00

Tonight I shall listen to eight relatively brief works that span nearly the entirety of Cage’s career.  Three of them are works I have never listened to before, so it should be a fun evening!

The Wonderful Widow of Eighteen Springs
One of what I presume is a rare setting of Finnegan’s Wake to text, this 1942 work is for voice and piano—at least in theory.  The piano is actually played with the lid closed as a percussion instrument.  For that, it is surprisingly effective, with the various finger taps and knuckle rapping producing different percussive sounds.  This is in contrast to the slowly sung text, suing a very limited range of pitches.  The style is as always without vibrato and it seems to me rather more dramatic than usual.  Here Joan LaBarbara actually seems aware that she has an audience (see Mirakus2 below).

Cage does some interesting things within an extremely limited range here, so it’s pretty interesting in that respect.  But I’ll confess my favorite part has little to do with the music: It’s the quote of the phrase “child of tree,” the name of a later Cage work for amplified plant materials.

Sonata for Clarinet
Ah, one of Cage’s very first works that has ever been recorded, from 1933.  It features three movements, Vivace, Lento and Vivace, with one theme that seems to predominate throughout.  It has the sound of “complicated music” and it twists in turns in ways that reminds me of serial music even though I know it’s not serial.  I find the two faster movements to be inquisitive and birdlike; they seem to be eager to explore different tones.  The second movement is simply restful.

Souvenir
Here’s an extremely rare organ work from 1983.  When I heard it, I assumed it was written four decades before, because it has a feel similar to In a Landscape and Dream except more strongly rhythmic and repetitive.  I’m pretty astounded that Cage composed it so late, since it’s a straightforward piece of organ music, with clear themes albeit seemingly no development.  From what I can tell, it seems to be a four part pattern repeated over and over again, including a main theme that sounds like it would be good for a TV or movie theme, and a monstrous rumbling at the very low end of the organ’s pitches, so low that my poor speakers choke on them.

It’s pretty dramatic, overall, and does not feel as restful as the work it was supposed to be similar in style to (Dream).  This one’s a real oddity by virtue of the fact that it sounds so normal.

Sports: Swinging
Swinging was one of a planned set of works after Satie written in 1989, although it was the only one finished.  There’s a repetitive wistful melody underneath one that seems to me to be longing, and I certainly hear the Satie connection.  Much like Souvenir, I’m surprised this is from 1989.  It’s extremely brief and fairly simple.  I wish Cage had written more in the series, although he has certainly prompted me to listen to more Satie.

Music for Piano No. 20
Yep, nothing says 1953 quite like extremely sparse piano music in the Music for Piano series.  It features eleven notes, to be played in sequence as desired by the performer.  It continues the pattern of several of Cage’s sparse piano works, allowing me to hear different tones fade out.  Notably, there are no note clusters here, they all seem more or less evenly spread out, giving the work the feel of a dripping faucet, but less consistent.

I wonder if I will ever run out of things to say about the Music for Piano series.  I believe I have eight more entries to go!

Haiku
Haiku from 1951 is considered on the border between intention and chance, and you can certainly hear it.  Certain aspects seem very 1940’s Cage-ish: the long notes that reach into space, and the spontaneous explosions of sound as the keyboard is pounded.  The latter still manage to jolt me when I hear them, though you would expect I’d be used to it!  Anyway, the first movement begins with something of an airy, basic melody, but that collapses in on itself as it progresses and you can get a strong sense of motive slipping away, especially when the loud, interrupting blasts I mention come out of nowhere in the second movement.  It is a pretty striking picture of Cage’s transitional period.

Mirakus 2
This piece consists of twelve songs of twelve notes on a French text.  The two things that strike me about this are that the pitch almost always moves upward, and that the text is sung in a fragmentary manner.  As a result, nothing ever feels “finished,” the melodic progression is left hanging, as is the text itself.  To me, it suggests snippets of conversations heard as you pass by people on the street, ripped out of context and in this case in a language I do not know.  One of the best things about LaBarbara’s performance of this and a lot of other works is, I think, the fact that she does not really seem to be singing to an audience, but rather just sort of singing to herself.  That’s one of the major reasons I get that “overheard snippets” feel from this work, as well as the “person humming to a song on their headphones” from a previous vocal work.  I wonder if this is intentional or not, because this manner of performance makes the music oddly inviting.  I have not yet to meet a Cage vocal work I don’t like!

And the Earth Shall Bear Again
This is definitely a favorite prepared piano work, played by the sometimes-criticized Boris Berman on Naxos.  If he has a flaw, I think it’s just playing too fast.  But this work especially seems to benefit from it.  And the Earth Shall Bear Again is from 1942.  Cage had an excellent grasp of the sounds made by the prepared piano, and in this one the sound unusually tight, in that each kepress seems to have a distinctive sound that is not “blended” into other tones, the way a lot of other works are.  The piano is played with a lot of force here, so the rhythm really grabs for my attention.  I especially like the sharp wooden sound that recurs throughout the rhythm.  The rhythm is more consistent throughout than I am used to, and it’s exciting to listen to.  A final distinctive feature to note is the spontaneous generation of a jazzy melody played seemingly without preparation (or precedent)  about halfway through.  It’s just out of nowhere.  Maybe the steady rhythm has been working a field, and this is the fruit that the earth has borne?

Experiences II

2005-10-25T21:14:00.000-04:00

For those who might be interested, I have posted a link to a "CageMap" image that represents how I mentally associate various pieces by placing them in a 2D image. Of course, it's hard to show complex relationships with only two dimensions, so in the future I might try adding some color. This is my rough draft, anyway...

Tonight I chose mostly piano works, although at least one is only for piano in the broadest sense possible.  And the other is also for various honking noises.

ASLSP
Standing for “As Slow As Possible,” ASLSP is a piano (or organ) work commissioned for a contest in 1985.  The work consists of eight parts; in performance, one is repeated, replacing a part.  In this case, part VIII replaced part IV.  I rather wish all the parts had been included so that I could create my own performance each time I listened, because now I can’t help asking myself, “I wonder what part IV sounds like!”  The answer is that it probably sounds a lot like the other parts—piano notes played slow enough that, if there were any relationship between them melodically, it is completely lost on me.  Similarly, I have no clue if there is a rhythmic structure.  Actually, the work suggests an interesting idea, one that someone has probably already done: take an existing piece of music, and play it so slowly that you can no longer listen to it in the same way as before.

It has a feel similar to Winter Music in that you hear isolated tones, but there are fewer of them and more silence between.  About a quarter of the musical events are chords, and it is pretty fun to listen to them change shape and distort as they fade out into nothingness.  I also noted that some parts did not seem to be played quite as slow as, well, possible.  On the other hand, excessive slowness would probably be impractical, and Cage certainly considered the practicality of performances of his work important.

For Paul Taylor and Anita Dencks
Four sound events, notated so that space is equivalent to time, comprise this work from 1957.  At about three minutes long, it’s obviously very sparse!  In theory, it is for piano, but only two of the sounds involve the piano and even those use its interior construction.  To be honest, I only managed to hear three events.  Towards the beginning, I heard a barely audible fuzzy sound, like someone was adjusting a microphone.  A bit later, there was a (somewhat annoying) high pitched squeaking sound, probably feedback.  The next was a solitary wooden creak.  I guess I missed the last one somehow.  But, then again, all of this music is on my computer, and it may be the whirring of the fans drowned it out.  I spent the piece listening intently to hear something and hear everything except what I am listening for.

Oh, by the way:  never, ever listen to this on headphones.  Or at least never turn up the volume loud wondering if something is wrong, unless you like shattering your skull when the ear-piercing feedback arrives...I hope the next person to perform this picks a more pleasant auxiliary sound!

Experiences II
One of Cage’s rare vocal works, and the work which impressed me the most tonight.  It sets a poem by Cummings to music, and is much like Experiences I, which was for piano.  This style of singing is very beautiful to me; it has a slightly mournful feel to it.  I am absolutely certain that this music is very similar to some particular style, but I am having trouble putting my finger on it.  I want to say it is a bit like some of the field recordings I have heard by Alan Lomax from the 1930’s, but I may be wrong.

The voice has a strong accent, and I find it hard to hear the lyrics.  I do hear, “It is a moment after I dream of the rare entertainment of your eyes” and later, something about “the intolerable brightness of your charm.”  A rewarding listen.  I really like Cage’s vocal music.

Five4
Here’s a number piece, from 1991,  that’s quite different from the others I’ve talked about thus far.  It’s scored for two saxophones and three percussionists (Cage wrote more for the sax than I’d realized).  Whereas the last saxophone work I reviewed felt like a beating sun, this one is much less constant, but the sax parts still remind me of glaring light.  The percussion amounts primarily to smacking and thumping, though I am having trouble determining the exact instruments.  With a lot of silence between the appearances of the saxophones, which often play very brief tones, this has a cavernous feel to it.  I mean that literally; it feels as if I am exploring a cave: the percussion suggests movement in the darkness, dripping water, and so on, while the saxophones are the beams from my flashlight, occasionally reflecting off shiny surfaces but otherwise just fading into the blackness.

Two Pastorales
Here we have another in Cage’s wide array of sparse, chance-determined piano works from the 50’s (1952, in this case).  What’s a bit unusual is that it’s actually for prepared piano.  At certain points, the strings are played by plucking, and there is an explosive tone cluster about three fifths of the way through the first of the Two Pastorales.  Cage seems to enjoy scaring me when I am at my most attentive!  The preparations are modest and only a few notes seem affected by them.

The second Pastorale is a little more surprising, because it features a variety of external sounds, mostly various types of whistles.  At one point I think I hear water being poured.  If the piano being played weren’t obviously a prepared one, I would think I was playing the wrong track.  I think in style this is pretty similar to Winter Music and Music of Changes (it was composed with the same chance operations as the latter), but it seems slower, and at a few points certain keys are played repeatedly and rapidly.  I think I like the other two more, though..

26'1.1499" for a String Player

2005-10-25T20:47:00.000-04:00

Last night I tackled another piece for a stringed instrument that I didn’t expect to enjoy, but which I found fun.  But first, some percussion!  I just discovered that my spellcheker lacks the word “theremin.”  Read on to find out why I use the word...

Amores
Here’s a classic percussion work from 1943.  It features prepared piano, tom-toms, and wood blocks.  The first two movements are for the former two instruments.  One of the greatest challenges I have in listening to most of Cage’s percussion works is my pop music background.  In pop music, the rhythm is usually extremely simple and very constant, but here it seems to change rapidly and I can get confused easily.  This was particularly the case for the tom-tom heavy second movement, where in a few cases the drumming sounded like me when I accidentally screw up a beat while tapping along to a song.  On the plus side, there were plenty of tom-toms taking part, so there seemed to be a variety of patterns to hear.  Plus the parts where the rhythm seems to “break” add a lot of tension; it snatches away the feeling of resolution I’d get, similar to the same sort of experience I have with melody elsewhere.

I much preferred the last two movements.  I’m always excited to hear solos from instruments I don’t ordinarily hear very often, and I think wood blocks rank pretty far up there!  Being what they are, the music has a pretty natural sound, and I just enjoy the timbre of wood pieces clopping together.  The final prepared piano movement has some interesting sounds.  In addition to the usual metallic sounds, popping sounds, and rattles (rattles which are interesting, I might add, because they are triggered at different intensities by different notes) were some very lush sounding pitched notes as well, as well as a sound from one of the rightmost keys that sounded even more hollow than normal, as if it was the sound of the keypress, disconnected from triggering anything, that was the focus.  Overall, I found the work rather fragmented, but fun.

26’1.1499” for a String Player
These “time length” pieces are some of Cage’s most annoying, not in terms of sound, but in terms of my ability to remember their titles!  I wonder by what process Cage chose to measure the seconds to the ten-thousandth place?  This piece, written in 1955, combines a number of earlier 1953 pieces of a similar type, such that they may be played in duos, trios, or in any combination.  In all cases, the graphic score indicates where strings are to be stopped.  This performance on cello by Frances-Marie Uitti was novel in several respects.  First off, there were numerous sounds that did not come from the cello, but from Uitti herself and, interestingly, a radio.  She wheezed, gasped, hissed, and made various guttural sounds throughout.  I know that some of Cage’s works have notation calling for external sounds of various sorts, so presumably this score did as well and Uitti chose vocalization.  The radio was very surprising; I didn’t expect it but heard vague static noises that I thought might be a radio, a suspicion confirmed when I heard a random bit of piano music!  I have a particular fondness for the radio works, so this was a pleasure for me to hear, even if I’m not sure if the score really called for it.

I had expected Uitti’s cello music to resemble the Freeman Etudes, but I was wrong.  She plucked and zipped across the strings, at varying speeds.  Some notes sounded fairly normal, while others sounded like scratching a vinyl record. But my favorite sounds were those that changed pitch rapidly and varied in intensity, or which had a strange, ghostly vibrato.  The effect was that the cello was trying to sound like a theremin.  That’s funny, because I’m pretty sure most theremin players were trying to sound like strings.  So they meet halfway here, I guess.  Some of the more brief scraping noises suggested speech to me, and I could almost pick out which cello sound was in a “question” tone or in an “angry” tone, among others (laughter, sad, and so on).  The work is indeterminate (based on the “imperfections of the paper” on which it was written), but Uitti’s realization makes it very inviting.

Bird Cage

2005-10-24T00:08:00.000-04:00

Tonight, something I was not much looking forward to. There are some Cage works that anybody can enjoy, and then there’s the rest ;-)

Bird Cage
“Twelve tapes, to be distributed by a single performer in a space where people are free to move and birds to fly” reads the 1972 score. I guess in that respect, the performance is pretty straightforward. I’m not sure if it was ever realized after the recording I have was made. At any rate, what we end up is a sound collage of tapes, with speed, repetition and duration varied by chance operations, overlaid with the sound of birds. I’m not sure what to say precisely here, other than that the sounds of the birds mix in well with the various sounds from the tapes (machine noises, electronics, talking) and I am left with the impression that there is less of a difference between the sounds of nature and the sounds of machines and people than you might expect. Maybe one day you’ll be able to go to the record store and see “bathtub noises” and “cars engines” next to all the “nature sound” collections.

Since there’s not much else to say, maybe it would be entertaining to make a list of some of the sounds I heard.

The most recognizable sound was Cage talking to a parrot, which would ask his name, and he would say “My name is John.” Since I can imagine him staring at a bird and saying that, I laughed whenever I heard it.

There were a lot of water-based noises. Splashing, gushing, gurgling, tinkling...

I think Cage wore a contact microphone somewhere around his mouth and recorded the results, because I got to enjoy hearing someone brush his teeth on several occasions. I think some of the strange crunching, cracking noises might have been the sounds of someone eating.

On several occasions, I heard such mundane sounds as a car start, a telephone being dialed, and a typewriter being used. It occurred to me that in a few years a lot of people wouldn’t recognize the latter two!

Almost all of the work featured a recording of Cage mumbling. Actually, he probably wasn’t mumbling, but he was reading some text or another, possibly Mureau or Empty Words. Either of them would have vocal sounds that resemble human speech without actually being human speech, I think.

Electronic noises: feedback, whooshes, and so on. There was a giant wave of these the forced me turn the volume down about halfway through.

Sounds of the city. I heard hallway-walking, traffic-idling, and church bell-ringing. Or maybe these were all separate.

That’s only seven, I suppose. Probably these were separated up into different groupings. Additionally, I’m pretty sure some or all of the birds were recorded, because the chirping would suddenly cut out at certain points, not a very probable event in a real group of birds.