John Cage (1912-92)

[vers la flamme]

Well, yes and no.

Can you explain why no? Is it because the score is so open to interpretation?

[Mandryka]

Yes, that's why it's radical. Here's a rough and ready description of John Cage's contribution to a performance of the music of Variations II taken from johncage.org

The materials for this work consist of 5 small transparencies with a single point on each, and 6 larger transparencies with one line on each. These may be superimposed in any way, creating a configuration of points and lines, to be interpreted as a way of producing sounds. This is achieved by dropping perpendiculars from the points to all of the lines (creating a total of 30 perpendiculars). Measurements of the perpendiculars are used to obtain readings for frequency, amplitude, timbre, duration, points of occurrence within the established period of time, and structure of the event (number of sounds).

So you see each performance is based on different arrangements of the transparencies. And there are all sorts of choices which the performers then make too.

[vers la flamme]

Yes, that's why it's radical. Here's a rough and ready description of John Cage's contribution to a performance of the music of Variations II taken from johncage.org

So you see each performance is based on different arrangements of the transparencies. And there are all sorts of choices which the performers then make too.

I'd need to see a picture, or a video. Better yet, it'd be great to hear a musician well versed in this idiom of music-making give us a walkthrough. It is way over my head how someone can look at a score like that and create music that adheres to the notations in any meaningful way. If I didn't know better, I'd say that Cage didn't care what the music would sound like, and that the end result bears no meaningful relation to his score.

[Mandryka]

f I didn't know better, I'd say that Cage didn't care what the music would sound like, and that the end result bears no meaningful relation to his score.

Correct. Cage has relinquished control of the sounds the musicians make. Radical!

Is this classical music? I don't think so. care.

[vers la flamme]

Correct. Cage has relinquished control of the sounds the musicians make. Radical!

Is this classical music? I don't think so. care.

If that's the case, then doesn't the score itself come off as a little pretentious/meaningless? Why should Cage take credit for (what is essentially) the musicians' free improv?

Just playing the devil's advocate here—for the record I find the whole concept of the work fascinating. 

[Mandryka]

Why should Cage take credit

I don't think he wants to take credit for anything. But he has done something - he has come up with an idea, a set of tools, which musicians can use.

(what is essentially) the musicians' free improv?

No, not here.  In Variations II the chance operations result in a score which is pretty constraining, like the score of Music of Changes. There's nothing free and nothing improvised about it.

[Mandryka]

Re the relation between composition and improvisation, this review of this CD is quite interesting I think



https://www.discogs.com/Philip-Thomas-Comprovisation/release/5446804

"At first it is frustrating that, despite telling us that these pieces are a mixture of the fully notated and the partly improvised, Philip Thomas doesn't expand his sleevenotes to tell us which are which. But it emerges on listening that this is partly the point. The very word, comprovisation, no longer acknowledges a division between the two. From compositions by improvisers like Mick Beck and Chris Burn, to compositions informed by improvisation, like Finnissy's Jazz, to compositions that vehemently resist improvisation against all expectations, like Cage's Variations II, Thomas has found several interesting points between the two poles. Paul Obermayer, best known as a laptop improviser with FURT and Bark!, was a good place to start the debate with his (presumably intricately notated) coil. Fans of Obermayer's work with Richard Barrett will know what to expect here: music compressed like raw carbon into diamond shards. This makes a gritty start to the CD to which it doesn't really return. In the next piece Burn brings a more obviously improvisatory feel through the frequent returns to collections of related gestures, which feel jazzy in their loose rhythms and the wide, swinging movements they demand of the pianist; this sort of playing is more characteristic of the rest of the disc. The Finnissy is perhaps more intellectually stimulated - it jazz-es rather than is jazz-y - but it still retains that impression of delicate flexibility that characterises much of his piano music. Its wide registral spacing nods towards Jelly Roll and boogie woogie; and its sudden shifts of character - as though structured around 16-bar verses - recall a wider jazz idiom. Mick Beck calls for balls of various weights and sizes, which are bounced around the inside of the piano and occasionally out onto the studio floor, and Simon Fell takes a final, different approach to the issue of accident versus control, basing his Inventions on improvisations on Bach, and coming up with the some of the most emotionally involving music of this CD. Although the musical quality is sometimes uneven, Thomas's concept in this recording -and the series of concerts from which it sprang - remains as valid as ever, and continues to engage many of the most interesting voices in British music. Comprovising without compromise." Tim Rutherford-Johnson NEW NOTES

[vers la flamme]

I don't think he wants to take credit for anything. But he has done something - he has come up with an idea, a set of tools, which musicians can use.

No, not here.  In Variations II the chance operations result in a score which is pretty constraining, like the score of Music of Changes. There's nothing free and nothing improvised about it.

I'll have to take your word for it. I'm not well versed enough in this kind of music to comment upon it in any intelligent way. I think I will stick with "easy" Cage for now, the percussion works, etc., many of which are really holding my attention at the moment. But I expect I will graduate to the more "radical" music soon enough...

[San Antone]

If that's the case, then doesn't the score itself come off as a little pretentious/meaningless? Why should Cage take credit for (what is essentially) the musicians' free improv?

Just playing the devil's advocate here—for the record I find the whole concept of the work fascinating. 

Concerning Music of Changes, Cage spent hundreds of hours assembling the chart of gestures.  Here's some info from Wikipedia:

Music of Changes comprises four "books" of music. Cage used a heavily modified version of his chart system (previously used in Concerto for prepared piano). Every chart for Music of Changes is 8 by 8 cells, to facilitate working with the I Ching which has a total of 64 hexagrams. The I Ching is first consulted about which sound event to choose from a sounds chart, then a similar procedure is applied to durations and dynamics charts. Thus, a short segment of music is composed. Silences are obtained from the sounds charts: these only contain sounds in the odd-numbered cells. To introduce new material, all charts alternate between mobile and immobile states (the alteration governed by the I Ching as well); in the latter the chart remains unchanged, but in the former, once a particular cell is used, its contents are immediately replaced by something new.

Furthermore, a density chart is used in the same way to add "polyphony" to the piece. The above procedure results in a layer—a string of sound events—and then the I Ching is used to determine how many layers should there be in a given phrase. The layers are then simply combined with one another. There may be anywhere from one to eight layers in a phrase.

The structure of the piece is defined through the technique of nested proportions, just like in most of Cage's pieces from the 1940s. The proportion remains the same for the entire work: 3, 5, 6¾, 6¾, 5, 3⅛. So there are 29⅝ sections, each divided into phrases according to the overall proportion: 29⅝ by 29⅝. This is then divided into four large parts of one, two, one and two sections respectively. The tempo is varied throughout the piece, using the I Ching and a tempo chart. The rhythmic proportion is expressed, then, not through changing time signatures as in earlier works, but through tempo changes.

The notation of the piece is proportional: Cage standardized the horizontal distance between notes with the same rhythmic value.  A quarter note is equal to two and a half centimeters (almost exactly one inch) in the score. Each sound begins at a precise position indicated by the stem of the note, rather than its note head.  The tempo is indicated using large numbers above the staves, accompanied with instructions: whether to accelerate from a given value or to slow down. Various other alterations to standard notation are used to indicate unconventional performance techniques: some notes are depressed but not sounded, some are played on the strings rather than the keys, occasionally the pianist hits various parts of the instrument with specially provided beaters, or snaps the lid to produce a sharp percussive sound. Cage remarks in the foreword to the score that in many places "the notation is irrational; in such instances the performer is to employ his own discretion." The dynamics of the piece range from ffff to pppp.

The musicians do not have complete freedom of improvisation, their choices are to be made within boundaries created by Cage.

It bothers me when people ridicule or question the amount of work Cage put into his compositions.  He once wrote that the compositions where he used coin clipping, it took many days of his time to complete the process.

While it is true his philosophy demanded that he attempt to remove his ego or intention or taste in writing his music, but it is incorrect to trivialize his process.  When the New York Philharmonic did not take his score seriously he was angered to the point to castigating them and the conductor.  He also said that if one of his chance determinations produced a sound combination he did not like, he never changed the outcome, but changed his opinion.

[vers la flamme]

Concerning Music of Changes, Cage spent hundreds of hours assembling the chart of gestures.  Here's some info from Wikipedia:

The musicians do not have complete freedom of improvisation, their choices are to be made within boundaries created by Cage.

It bothers me when people ridicule or question the amount of work Cage put into his compositions.  He once wrote that the compositions where he used coin clipping, it took many days of his time to complete the process.

While it is true his philosophy demanded that he attempt to remove his ego or intention or taste in writing his music, but it is incorrect to trivialize his process.  When the New York Philharmonic did not take his score seriously he was angered to the point to castigating them and the conductor.  He also said that if one of his chance determinations produced a sound combination he did not like, he never changed the outcome, but changed his opinion.

You seem to be misinterpreting what I said. I did not ridicule or question the amount of work Cage put into his compositions, nor was I trying to trivialize his compositional process. That's not what I was talking about at all. Cage clearly expended tons of effort and energy into writing his scores. And for the record, I was also not talking about Music of Changes, but Variations II. Cage could have put 10,000 hours into writing the score of Variations II, and my point would remain that some performances would be of tenuous relation to Cage's score, depending on the degree to which Cage's instructions in the score actually result in specifics of music making—ie. if the musicians are actually able to interpret his score in a real way. I'd have to hear a musician well-versed in the idiom walk me through how these points and lines on the score translate to actual sounds, because clearly it's over my head.

[San Antone]

You seem to be misinterpreting what I said. I did not ridicule or question the amount of work Cage put into his compositions, nor was I trying to trivialize his compositional process. That's not what I was talking about at all. Cage clearly expended tons of effort and energy into writing his scores. And for the record, I was also not talking about Music of Changes, but Variations II. Cage could have put 10,000 hours into writing the score of Variations II, and my point would remain that some performances would be of tenuous relation to Cage's score, depending on the degree to which Cage's instructions in the score actually result in specifics of music making—ie. if the musicians are actually able to interpret his score in a real way. I'd have to hear a musician well-versed in the idiom walk me through how these points and lines on the score translate to actual sounds, because clearly it's over my head.

Sorry, I thought the discussion was about Music of Changes.  However, you can find out all you need to know about Variations II by reading about David Tudor's realization here.

[vers la flamme]

Sorry, I thought the discussion was about Music of Changes.  However, you can find out all you need to know about Variations II by reading about David Tudor's realization here.

No worries, and thank you, this looks interesting. I read something about Tudor's (première?) performance, which spoke a lot about the extended techniques he employed with his piano, but not much about the "why" of it all; ie. how his performance relates back to the score. Anyway, it looks like the answers I'm looking for should be right here.

Music of Changes is a lot less perplexing to me; I've seen bits of the score, and it looks like a score. 

[San Antone]

For what it's worth, this recording contains several realizations of Variations II. 



John Cage - Two - Variations
Ensemble Spaziomusica

[vers la flamme]

For what it's worth, this recording contains several realizations of Variations II. 



John Cage - Two - Variations
Ensemble Spaziomusica

Wow, pretty cheap too. Looks great, thanks.

[Mandryka]

Music of Changes is a lot less perplexing to me; I've seen bits of the score, and it looks like a score. 

I may be wrong about this but as far as I can see there is no essential difference between Music of Changes and Variations II. Music of Changes was formed by chance operations with the I Ching and then redacted into a score. Variations II in performance is the result of chance operations with plastic transparencies and could also be redacted into a score. The most important difference is that Music of Changes is for piano, while Variations II leaves the choice of instrument free.

[Mandryka]

The musicians do not have complete freedom of improvisation, their choices are to be made within boundaries created by Cage.

As far as I know in Music of Changes and Variations II they don't have any freedom to improvise, no more (and probably less, since the duration of gestures are, I think, tightly specified -- I could be wrong about that) than in a score by e.g. Ravel.

(This, by the way, was a major weakness for Cardew, why Treatise is such a fundamentally different animal than Variations II.)

[vers la flamme]

As far as I know in Music of Changes and Variations II they don't have any freedom to improvise, no more (and probably less, since the duration of gestures are, I think, tightly specified -- I could be wrong about that) than in a score by e.g. Ravel.

Specified in terms of what, fractions of a second? That can't be, as all the realizations on record appear to be quite different in length. Is the judgment call of deciding for how long to play a certain gesture not a certain type of improvisation?

[vers la flamme]

I may be wrong about this but as far as I can see there is no essential difference between Music of Changes and Variations II. Music of Changes was formed by chance operations with the I Ching and then redacted into a score. Variations II in performance is the result of chance operations with plastic transparencies and could also be redacted into a score. The most important difference is that Music of Changes is for piano, while Variations II leaves the choice of instrument free.

This is part of the score to Music for Changes:



We can see notes, pitch, duration, etc. While this is part of the score for Variations II:



It appears to me that there are some essential differences between them...? But what do I know. I wonder if you could explain what you meant a little more.

[Mandryka]

Specified in terms of what, fractions of a second? That can't be, as all the realizations on record appear to be quite different in length.

I think so, I think the chance operations determined duration. And something I've read suggests that this is indeed in seconds. But I'm not sure.

Specified in terms of what, fractions of a second? That can't be, as all the realizations on record appear to be quite different in length.

There's a note that Cage made in the score re execution. He was aware that the chance operations may result in music which can't be played on the piano, and he asked the performer to use his discretion about whether to omit them or to change them, Some performers may use this as a reason to alter tempos, thinking that may render the details more audible and allow the listener to appreciate the  dynamic shading.

[San Antone]

As far as I know in Music of Changes and Variations II they don't have any freedom to improvise, no more (and probably less, since the duration of gestures are, I think, tightly specified -- I could be wrong about that) than in a score by e.g. Ravel.

(This, by the way, was a major weakness for Cardew, why Treatise is such a fundamentally different animal than Variations II.)

I stand corrected, the indeterminate aspect was limited to the work's composition.  But the resulting score is fixed and must be performed as written.  Variations II is not fixed but the performer's discretion is required to create a performable score based on their own interpretation of the graphic squares Cage provided.