John Cage (1912-92)

[T. D.]

http://www.anothertimbre.com/cagetwo2.html

To get an idea of what Mark Knoop and Philip Thomas have done here, compare timings of Two2 (1991)

Josef Christoff, Steffen Schleiermacher -- 46m
Rob Haskins, Laurel Karlrik Sheehan -- 74m
Pestova, Meyer (naxos) - 42m
Edmund Niemann, Neurit Tilles - 34m


Mark Knoop, Philip Thomas - 128m

The result is really interesting. It's out of the question to try and see structure or pattern when it's taken at this speed. But what you can hear is sounds , you're led to focus on the character of the sounds as they decay. They make the listener aware of all that's contained in a chord on the piano, all the transient overtones.

And that makes Two2 sound like our contemporary, even though it was written 20 years ago. Because that's precisely what, I think, Éliane Radigue is trying to do in the Occam's Ocean pieces. Knoop and Thomas make Cage strangely prescient.

So an altogether stimulating release which projects Cage into the 21st century.

Thanks! Highly interesting.

After reading your various comments and notes on the timings, I thought "How is this possible? The Cage number pieces are based on specified tones and time brackets; how could the time brackets be stretched like that?"

But then I read on johncage.org: This is one of Cage's few "number" pieces that does not utilize time-brackets. Being inspired by a remark of Sofia Gubaidulina, i.e. "There is an inner clock," Cage created a composition consisting of 36 lines of music, each containing 5 measures. Within each line, 31 events occur: 5+7+5+7+7, as in Japanese Renga poetry. The pianists play a measure in their own tempo, but the next measure may only be played when both have completed the previous.

Now I have to hear this recording!

[amw]

This was one of my "recordings of 2019" and it still holds up. I think maybe they're a little slow in places, but who am I to question their inner clocks of course

I don't really have much to add though, except that the focus on the isolated sounds and silences yields a musical result that is... quite beautiful actually. I don't know if that was the intent but one ends up being reminded of the beauty and purity that's always inherent in the piano sound before it has musical meaning grafted onto it by people who try to write patterns. The engineering (as always with Simon Reynell) helps.

[Mandryka]

Yes, in the booklet they say that when they slowed it down they found the result wasn't at all boring, and I think they were right.

Sabine Liebner also takes Cage slowly, but the difference I think between her and Knoop/Thomas is colour. Liebner is monochromatic. She also tends to be more forceful, louder.  Anyway that's my first impression of things. Oh, and Liebner hasn't released Two2 of course!

Time for me to revisit Stockhausen's Naturliche Dauern - which precedes this by some 30 years I think. Stockhausen also plays a game of decay and colour.

[San Antone]

"Cage's noise can help them let go of false notions of order, to "let sounds be themselves, rather than vehicles for man-made theories", and to return within themselves to the sentiment of their own existence. Cage said, "Our intention is to affirm this life, not bring order out of chaos or to suggest improvements in creation, but simply to wake up to the very life we're living, which is so excellent.""

— Surprised by Beauty: A Listener's Guide to the Recovery of Modern Music by Robert Reilly

[T. D.]

I just ordered Rob Haskins's book on Cage. The book isn't very hefty, but I've been impressed by Haskins's writing on various liner notes. Read Kostelanetz's John Cage (ex)plain(ed) years ago. Considered Gann's No Such Thing as Silence a while back, but that seemed too specialized (focus on 4'33).

[Mandryka]

Yes, I've ordered it too. It hasn't arrived yet.

What I would very much like to see is Haskins's Ph.D thesis, which was about the number pieces, but it's not online anywhere as far as I can see, and I'm not a member of a university  library.

[Mirror Image]

Cage strikes me as quite a fascinating philosopher, but not a really great composer. I do like some of the piano works I've heard from him, but I believe the works I had heard came from earlier in his career and have a Satie-like feeling to them.

[Mandryka]

Cage strikes me . . .  not a really great composer.

Because you don't like the music, or is there another reason?

[Mirror Image]

Because you don't like the music, or is there another reason?

I believe the composer relies on a gimmicky approach to music. He's interested in sound and that's great and all, but music is much more than mere sound. I'm actually quite hesitant to call what he does 'music' given that nothing really happens. Works I've heard thus far: the number pieces and the early piano works. I do believe I heard The Seasons as well, but in it's orchestral guise.

[Mandryka]

I believe the composer relies on a gimmicky approach to music. He's interested in sound and that's great and all, but music is much more than mere sound.

He's interested in sound and silence. I know it sounds like a nit picky point but lately I've started to think that that makes all the difference. This is what I'm seeing: that the tension and release that you have in tonal music from harmonies comes in Cage  from the silences, the anticipation, the tense expectation, of the next sound, while reflecting on the resonances of the previous one.

Anyway, this is a relatively new idea for me, and it may be rubbish, I don't know. But it became clear to me that something like that was going on while I was exploring Four4. It may take a certain type of performance to get this effect. And it needs me to be in the right sort of mood of course.

I'm actually quite hesitant to call what he does 'music'

This I can well understand, and I think it's hard for a performer to turn a totally aleatoric score into music. In some cases it may not be even possible. There's no a priori reason why it should always be possible, unless you define it to be analytically true by extending the concept of music - which isn't a very interesting thing to do.

By "music" I just mean a bunch of sounds which will captivate the listener for the duration. So for me, the sound of the ocean is music.

[André]

Before music as we know it existed, there were sounds. Some pleasant, others not. Musical languages (Western, Eastern, traditional) derive from the organization of pleasant sounds, with the occasional unpleasant one used as a foil. My feeling is that Cage is rummaging through the ol' tool box and examines the contents without any intention to build a piece of furniture or anything useful. I find his quest fascinating by and of itself and don't feel the urge to compare it to other types of music.

[Mandryka]

Cage's compositions, or most of them, impose an organisation on sounds alright, there are scores which specify all sorts of things, and leave other things at the performers discretion - like all scores.


I'm not quite clear how to cash the metaphor of the piece of  furniture. What is the sound analogue of a piece of furniture or a useful thing?

Let me mention something which may show how naive I am really about music. I have a lot of difficulty telling apart totally aleatoric music like Bk 3 of The Music of Changes or the Freeman Etudes from serial music like Structures 1a. I know that structurally there are differences, I know that the composers used different procedures when they were at work. But as a listener those differences are hard for me to perceive - partly because they are all athematic.

And I want to say, if Boulez wrote music in Structures 1, so did Cage in those I Ching based pieces. And the performance challenges these pieces present are similar.

[Karl Henning]

"Cage's noise can help them let go of false notions of order, to "let sounds be themselves, rather than vehicles for man-made theories", and to return within themselves to the sentiment of their own existence. Cage said, "Our intention is to affirm this life, not bring order out of chaos or to suggest improvements in creation, but simply to wake up to the very life we're living, which is so excellent.""

— Surprised by Beauty: A Listener's Guide to the Recovery of Modern Music by Robert Reilly

Nice.

[Karl Henning]

Cage's compositions, or most of them, impose an organisation on sounds alright, there are scores which specify all sorts of things, and leave other things at the performers discretion - like all scores.

And I want to say, if Boulez wrote music in Structures 1, so did Cage in those I Ching based pieces. And the performance challenges these pieces present are similar.

Dead on!

[Karl Henning]

The proof is in the pudding, and it's no fairer to scorn Cage as a composer by reason of method, than to apply the same bludgeon to Schoenberg.

[vers la flamme]

http://www.anothertimbre.com/cagetwo2.html

To get an idea of what Mark Knoop and Philip Thomas have done here, compare timings of Two2 (1991)

Josef Christoff, Steffen Schleiermacher -- 46m
Rob Haskins, Laurel Karlrik Sheehan -- 74m
Pestova, Meyer (naxos) - 42m
Edmund Niemann, Neurit Tilles - 34m


Mark Knoop, Philip Thomas - 128m

The result is really interesting. It's out of the question to try and see structure or pattern when it's taken at this speed. But what you can hear is sounds , you're led to focus on the character of the sounds as they decay. They make the listener aware of all that's contained in a chord on the piano, all the transient overtones.

And that makes Two2 sound like our contemporary, even though it was written 20 years ago. Because that's precisely what, I think, Éliane Radigue is trying to do in the Occam's Ocean pieces. Knoop and Thomas make Cage strangely prescient.

So an altogether stimulating release which projects Cage into the 21st century.

Just out of curiosity: Are you listening to this Knoop/Thomas recording in one sitting?

I think this excerpt is really beautiful, captivating, even:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TL2fF7zFvNk

But I question if I have two hours worth of attention span for this music.

[Mandryka]

Just out of curiosity: Are you listening to this Knoop/Thomas recording in one sitting?

I think this excerpt is really beautiful, captivating, even:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TL2fF7zFvNk

But I question if I have two hours worth of attention span for this music.

This is what happened. The parcel with the set arrived. I put on the first CD. I was captivated. And I was really proud of myself that I had listened to the whole thing at once, my attention span has been so deformed by medieval music that I can stay the course for about 10 minutes and no more normally.

The next day, I noticed that there was another CD in the box, it's a two cd set.

So no, I haven't listened to it in one sitting.

[amw]

I have listened to the entire thing in one sitting probably 4-5 times, but it's easier when it's just 2 Apple Lossless files.

[Mandryka]

https://www.youtube.com/v/05wBPhWD44U     https://www.youtube.com/v/fdWAds8jyzo

Interesting to compare two performances of Fontana Mix, not only because the are so different, but also because one of them is by the composer. What matters, score or canonical performances? There's a whole hornets' nest here which I've hardly thought about, to do with authentic, HIP, performance of indeterminate music.

[Mandryka]

Can anyone help me find online or for purchase the "scores" for Cage's variations? I want to see the whole thing, all the details, not just a brief summary.