John Cage (1912-92)

[petrarch]

He said that a few months back http://www.nytimes.com/2010/01/10/arts/music/10boulez.html ...

...its no surprise that a musician of his calibre is right on the money, and it's a view shared by most accomplished serious musicians.

I like the veiled judgment through the use of "accomplished" and "serious", as if the appeal to majority would give the statement any credence and transitively back you up. We already know you don't like Cage and that you put Stockhausen in the highest pedestal. Luckily, I can listen to the 3 of them unencumbered by such judgmental shortcomings.

[jowcol]

I like the veiled judgment through the use of "accomplished" and "serious", as if the appeal to majority would give the statement any credence and transitively back you up. We already know you don't like Cage and that you put Stockhausen in the highest pedestal. Luckily, I can listen to the 3 of them unencumbered by such judgmental shortcomings.

It is a dangerous idea to listen with your ears and not with preconceived notions.....

Of course, irony aside, one of Cage's key themes was not applying preconceived notions, but one could say that insisting on the absence of preconceived notions is also a preconceived notion...

My take on Cage that his contributions were valuable and influential, -- but limited in specific guidance.


Sounds like a Cage vs Boulez poll is becoming likely.  Although World Wide Wrestling Federation steel cage match may have preserved more dignity....

[petrarch]

No that would be Bach not Stockhausen ... and I have listened to quite a bit of Cage well before I've read and talked to many a musicians who's opinions & doubts mirrored my own feelings about his flimsy musicianship.

Same here (talking to many musicians--and I mean professional composers here--who didn't care much about Cage), but that did not affect my great enjoyment of him or his works. In fact, you could replace Cage with Xenakis or Nono in that statement to gauge what composers have told me in conversation. A few others just couldn't stand Stockhausen or Boulez, even!

If it weren't for tastes, yellow would be in frank disuse.

[karlhenning]

All right, so this was a year and a half ago . . . .

Asymmetry recently visited Halberstadt, where a 639 year performance of Cage's Organ2/ASLSP is playing.

[some guy]

Not only that, but I did not make it to Halberstadt this July to hear the changing of the chord.

Yikes!! I've got only a little over six hundred years to get back there.

[karlhenning]

Time's a-wastin'

[canninator]

According to the reviewer on amazon.co.uk the Cage complete piano on MDG Scene is available as a complete box but I don't seem to be able to find it anywhere. Can anyone shed any light on whether this is true. I'd like to get this rather than pay a premium for the individual editions.

Cheers

[listener]

news from Gothic records today  01-04-11

New recording on the Wanamaker organ announced!

Gothic Records is pleased to announce a new recording by Peter Richard Conte on the fabled Wanamaker Grand Court Organ. In keeping with 21st century technology, this new recording will be available only by download, and not as a CD.  It is a single work---John Cage's eponymous work 4'33".  "This performance will be made available just before the 60th anniversary of its composition in 1952," said Conte.

To add to the excitement, an entire new division of the organ will be employed in the performance after extensive renovations were carried out earlier this year. "It will be the first time we will use these 120 ranks in a public performance---pipes which have not been heard since before Cage's work was composed," said Ray Biswanger, Executive Director of Friends of the Wanamaker.  "It seems particularly appropriate," adds Conte, "that this work will be performed on the largest, and loudest functioning musical instrument in the world."

Gothic Catalog President Roger Sherman said that the release of a "download only" performance is part of the company's strategy for more widely disseminating organ music. "The performance can be rendered globally on almost any device with loudspeakers and a mute switch."

[The new erato]

news from Gothic records today  01-04-11

New recording on the Wanamaker organ announced!

Gothic Records is pleased to announce a new recording by Peter Richard Conte on the fabled Wanamaker Grand Court Organ. In keeping with 21st century technology, this new recording will be available only by download, and not as a CD.  It is a single work---John Cage's eponymous work 4'33".  "This performance will be made available just before the 60th anniversary of its composition in 1952," said Conte.

To add to the excitement, an entire new division of the organ will be employed in the performance after extensive renovations were carried out earlier this year. "It will be the first time we will use these 120 ranks in a public performance---pipes which have not been heard since before Cage's work was composed," said Ray Biswanger, Executive Director of Friends of the Wanamaker.  "It seems particularly appropriate," adds Conte, "that this work will be performed on the largest, and loudest functioning musical instrument in the world."

Gothic Catalog President Roger Sherman said that the release of a "download only" performance is part of the company's strategy for more widely disseminating organ music. "The performance can be rendered globally on almost any device with loudspeakers and a mute switch."

I prefer it played on electronic organs, so I guess I won't buy that version.

[petrarch]

Atlas Eclipticalis with Winter Music

[asin]B000MDH6AC[/asin]

Notes from the label here.

After listening to this performance of Winter music with Atlas eclipticalis, the question that arose in my mind was: What did John Cage mean by the title Winter music? What is its significance? I know of no explanation of it in Cage's writings or interviews. It does not fit into any of the titling schemes that he employed in the 1950s. At that time, Cage was partial to very plain, functional titles: Music for piano, Aria, 26' 1.1499'' for a string player. Occasionally he would name pieces for their dedicatees: For Paul Taylor and Anita Dencks, Williams mix. A handful of pieces have evocative titles derived from some aspect of their compositional means (Music of changes, Seven haiku) or from their sonic material (Sounds of Venice, Water music). I can't place Winter music in any of these categories. The title is not functional; the piece is not named after a Mr. or Ms. Winter; there is nothing in the manner or method of the piece that makes "winter" an obvious reference.

Without any obvious answers from the composer, I was left to make my own solution to this puzzle. The answer to which my mind turned was that the title refers to the content of the music: Winter music is about winter. What could this mean? Certainly it sounds severe, minimal, static. This suggests the stillness of winter. I began to explore this connection, a poetic image that reveals much about the work.

Before proceeding further, it is perhaps best for me to describe Winter music and its composition. The work consists of twenty pages of music that can be used by anywhere from one to twenty pianists. Varying numbers of events are scattered on the twenty pages, but all the events have an identical profile: single chords. The number of notes per chord and their specific locations on the staff were determined by chance procedures. The notation can be ambiguous with regards to pitch, and Cage provides precise rules on how to interpret these situations. But he is absolutely clear that each event should be played as a single attack. There is to be no breaking up of the chord in any way. If the notes are too widely-spaced for the pianist's hands to reach, then a technique involving sympathetic vibrations is used to compensate.

There is nothing in the notation of the piece to indicate time, sequence, or continuity. One could, perhaps, read the notations left-to-right and top-to-bottom on the page, but Cage does not indicate this in his instructions, and the way in which he has laid out the notations on paper does not encourage such a reading. Instead, each chord is separate from all the others, potentially sounding at any point in time, before, after, or during any other event.

The method of Winter music explains its severe quality. Other pieces of this same period in Cage's work may incorporate a wide range of possibilities, but Winter music limits itself to one. The same simple event -- the single attack -- occurs over and over again with no contrast, no development, no change. And because every event in the piece is an ictus -- a downbeat -- there is no sense of motion here at all. Events do not lead to one another. Events do not have the inner motion of a phrase or even an arpeggiation. It is not surprising that Cage was a little disappointed to find it becoming melodic to his ears over time.

Considered in this way, the title of Winter music begins to make sense. This is a music in which time no longer exists, or in which it is frozen. The sparse and isolated chords of Winter music have more in common with points in space than with events in time. They stand out in the silence, totally separated from one another, the way that twigs, stones, and trees appear against the blank whiteness of the snow.

Winter music is a work about space, separation, immobility, and timelessness. Considered in this way, its pairing with Atlas eclipticalis takes on additional meaning. Cage thought of Atlas eclipticalis as the companion of Winter music from the very first; his early sketches refer to the piece as "Winter music for strings." He discovered the key to the work when he found the astronomical atlas of the title. The star maps provided him with a way to discover the pitches of the music: he used elaborate chance operations to produce tracings of the stars on music paper. Tracings from the maps also determined the location of orchestral events ("constellations" as he called them) in the overall time of the piece.

The stars served more than technical ends, however. They provide another dimension to the theme of timelessness and space. Since the orchestral instruments cannot play chords, the events of Atlas consist of a number of tones played in succession. But as in Winter music, the pacing of the tones is glacial. The individual notes are as "really separated in space, not obstructing one another" as in Winter music. In a joint performance such as the one recorded here, the connection between the quiescent Winter music and the timeless quality of the starry Atlas eclipticalis is clear. It is a connection between earth and heaven; a look up into the sky on a cold, clear night.

James Pritchett

[petrarch]

Winter Music, for pianos (1957)

The piece consists of twenty pages of music to be played in whole or part by one to twenty pianists. There are anywhere from one to sixty-one chords scattered over each page. Each chord consists of one to ten pitches or it can also be a cluster. There are two clef signs for each chord. If the two clefs are identical (treble or bass), then all the notes of the chord are read in that clef. If the clefs differ, then some of the notes are read in one clef and some in the other. For chords with two notes, one note is read in each clef. For chords with more than two notes, a pair of numbers above the chord gives the proportion of notes to be read in the different clefs. The assignment of clefs to notes is decided upon by the performer. In performing Winter Music, each chord is to be played with a single attack, that is, with no arpeggiation.

The compositional system of Winter Music used paper imperfections to generate points on a page. The subsequent application of staff lines and clefs turned these points into notes. Indeterminacy also results from the possibility of combining the pages of the score in different ways, and from not imposing any order on the chords within a page. The use of ambiguous clefs results in configurations of notes in each chord that can vary from performance to performance. These are like little mechanisms or mobile structures that are fixed only for a single performance.

Atlas Eclipticalis, for orchestra (1961)

Early compositional notes for this piece indicate that Cage was trying to compose a version of Winter Music for orchestra. Like in Winter Music, events contain from one to ten notes, divided randomly into two groups. Whereas in Winter Music this division is between the two clefs, in Atlas Eclipticalis it is between short and long durations. In the score, pitches are indicated unambiguously, although instead of accidentals, it is the spacings of the staff lines that reflect the number of semitones between them. The relative sizes of notes gives their amplitudes. Numbers above the events divide the notes with regard to durations--6-3, for instance, means to play either six short notes and three long ones, or three short ones and six long ones.

The compositional process is similar to others Cage used at the time: The random inscription of points followed by the superimposing of the staves to create musical notes. In this case, however, the points were to come from the large star charts of the Atlas Eclipticalis 1950.0. By placing tracing paper over any of the thirty-two star maps in any of several different orientations, Cage was able to trace the star locations, thus producing random points. The brightness of stars is shown in the maps by their size, which translated into the size of notes in the score.

The structure of each of the eighty-six orchestra parts is identical: Four pages with five staves each. The location of events in each page of a part, and then the individual notes within each event, were both determined using the star charts. In performance, the score can be played in whole or in part by any number of players up to a full eighty-six-member orchestra. The systems are to be read from left to right proportionally in time, but the tempo is not given: The conductor determines the duration of each system and then signals the passage of time to the performers.

Atlas Eclipticalis can be performed simultaneously with Winter Music, thus reflecting their compositional similarities.

(paraphrases and interpolations from the CD booklet and from The Music of John Cage by James Pritchett)

[petrarch]

Etudes Australes, for piano (1974-75)

[asin]B000069KOB[/asin]

The pieces consist of single tones and chords, derived from star charts of the southern hemisphere. In composing the chords, Cage made a table of all the possible chord formations that could be played by a single hand on the piano, and then used these tables in conjunction with his star charts. There are thirty-two etudes, and the number of chords increases through the series: The first is almost entirely single notes, the last is almost entirely chordal. Cage designed the etudes as a duet for two independent hands, with both the left and right hands having to cover the entire range of the piano. Hence the hands cross constantly, and the pianist must manage tremendous leaps within a single hand's part. The score does not prescribe a specific tempo, apart from the requirement of using a uniform tempo and also does not include any dynamic markings. Individual note durations are not indicated, with time to be inferred from the spacing between notes measured horizontally and the indication that closed note heads are to be played briefly and open note heads indicate notes that need to be held until just before the second following note in the same hand. At the beginning of each etude, up to a maximum of seven tones in the bass range are to be played mutely and then to be held, either with the middle pedal or on the keys themselves with wedges or pieces of rubber. These tones do not occur in the piece, but the free vibration of the strings forms a resonance space for the other tones, so that complete silence never really occurs. Even during the rests, some tones always continue to vibrate delicately, as if in the background.

(paraphrases and interpolations from the CD booklet and from The Music of John Cage by James Pritchett)

Additional information on Wikipedia.

[petrarch]

Etudes Boreales, for a percussionist using a piano (1978)

[asin]B00005AXPH[/asin]

Etudes Boreales is really a double set of etudes, one set for cello and another for piano, composed with input from star charts of the northern sky. The two sets were written independently, but can be performed together or as solos. The piano etudes are really more like percussion pieces, the player using beaters and making noises on the piano construction. In fact, Cage himself warned in the very first of his preliminary remarks that the piece was for solo piano but had to be performed by a percussionist. Rather than indicate precise pitches, Cage used star charts to determine where on the piano the performer is to play: Keyboard, strings or construction. The playing of traditional piano tones on the keys forms more of the exception in this piece. The music nonetheless remains piano music; it is only that here many more sounds are produced by employing the instrument as a whole than by mere playing on the keys. The prescriptions for how the piano is to be hit are spelled out in minute detail and do indeed make the piece seem more suited for a percussionist.

(paraphrases and interpolations from the CD booklet and from The Music of John Cage by James Pritchett)

Additional information on Wikipedia.

[petrarch]

101, for orchestra (1989)

[asin]B000000NYU[/asin]

In 1987 Cage started his series of more than forty works generally called the "number" pieces, named after the number of performers used. All of these pieces have a common compositional technique: That of the time bracket, fixed or flexible.

A bracket is a small fragment of notated music, from single notes to small phrases of two to four notes, with a time indication of when the bracket is to start and another time indication of when it is to end. The times are given in ranges, which means the exact placement and duration of the music is free within the ranges. The times are indicated in elapsed time in relation to the whole piece.

All the number pieces consist of several independent parts which are series of such brackets, one after the other. Performers do not coordinate their interpretations of the brackets with each other. Parts can overlap, so it happens at times that two or more sounds follow each other directly, without a break. At other times, a pause of some duration may occur while a performer, having finished a phrase, waits for the next time bracket to begin.

Cage has favored bracket configurations that result in long notes (of at least 10 seconds in duration) rather than short. In some of the later pieces, the durations became even longer, with notes extending for several minutes.

Although early pieces in the series indicated dynamics for each note, with later pieces the indication became simply that if the notes are long they should be very quiet and when short they may be somewhat louder. The attacks of notes should be unclear: Notes should be "brushed into existence".

The overall result of this approach is that of fragments of sound floating within a total space of time; single sounds, mostly quiet and long, with silence surrounding them. These works are of an exquisite beauty, because they show Cage's compositional strengths: Concentration, spaciousness and simplicity. Because each bracket contains a single sound, there is an intensity to each and every note, a focused concentration to every event. Nothing here is "filler"--every note is meant deeply. The relationships among sounds arise of themselves, springing forth from silence. The music is effortless and transparent.

101 is one of the largest pieces in the series. It is greatly expanded chamber music, with each musician having a separate part and playing without being conducted. Strings, piano, harp, flutes and clarinets all play quietly throughout, creating a kaleidoscopic web of sound that shifts almost imperceptibly from chords of only three or four notes to massive clusters. This continuous net is punctuated by a number of events from the piano, harp and a large percussion section. The rest of the winds and brass play only two short, loud, screeching outbursts, one near each end of the work.

Each of the instrumental parts of 101 contains the following commentary by the composer:

Thoreau said, "The best form of government is no government at all and that is the form we'll have when we are ready for it".

This piece rightly or wrongly assumes we are ready for it. Though we don't have them, we need utilities: Good air, good water, good homes, good food, transportation, clothing, communication, etc., including intelligence. But we don't need government: The struggle for power between nations, the protection of the rich from the poor, the deprivation of the poor, and the demoralization of both the poor and the rich, the ruination of the environment by means of government's collaboration with the military and the corporate.

A performance of music can be a metaphor for society.

In this music there is no conductor. There is no score. The parts are written in flexible time brackets. You may use a stopwatch, or you may find that an ordinary watch will do. Or you may use your own "built-in" sense of time. This twelve-minute piece is not complicated. It opens with a ragged burst of high, loud sound from the brass and all of the woodwinds except the flutes and clarinets. At the same time, the sound of strings playing col legion and mezzo-piano begins. Now and then it is accompanied by pianissimo events from the flutes and clarinets that one is not always sure he has actually heard. Other percussion events take place sporadically: Two soft timpani rolls, seven angklung events, twelve bowed piano events and a single whirring bullroarer intensified sometimes by one, two or three other bullroarers joining in.

Towards the end, but not at the exact end, actually, but approximately between 9'00" and 10'15" from the inexact beginning, the brass and all the woodwinds except flutes and clarinets are heard fortissimo and in their highest range, a second and last time, falling apart, so to speak, rather than holding together as a group. The strings, flutes and clarinets and the percussion continue, and then after a minute or so stop playing, each at his own time.

Throughout there is another kind of music being played on the piano and on the harp. It is mezzoforte, more articulate. It stands out like a duet or two solos, and though we hear them, we hear everything else too and not in the background.

(paraphrases and interpolations from the CD booklet and from The Music of John Cage by James Pritchett)

[petrarch]

Apartment House 1776, for four vocalists and chamber orchestra (1976)

Ryoanji, version for four soloists with orchestra (1983-85)

[asin]B000000NYU[/asin]

Apartment House 1776, for four vocalists and chamber orchestra (1976)

This work was a commission to commemorate the bicentennial of the American Revolution and Cage thus wanted to do something with early American music that would let it keep its flavor at the same time that it would lose what was so obnoxious to him: Its harmonic tonality.

To create the individual pieces, Cage transformed music from the period of the American Revolution with the aid of chance operations. Forty-four of the pieces (not all the material provided need be performed) are variants of four-part hymn settings from which some of the original notes in each of the four voices have been subtracted, either leaving the gaps as silences or extending the remaining notes to fill them (as though they have faded over the distance of two centuries, allowing us to hear more clearly the underlying silence). Each of the four lines became a series of extended single tones or silences.

The cadences and everything disappeared; but the flavor remained. You recognize it as eighteenth century music; but it's suddenly brilliant in a new way. It is because each sound vibrates from itself, not from a theory . . . The cadences which were the function of the theory, to make syntax and all, all of that is gone, so that you get the most marvelous overlappings.

--John Cage

These "Harmonies" can be performed by quartets or keyboard instruments (the instruments are not specified). Similar to the Harmonies are the two Imitations (one each for clarinet and cello), single lines based on Moravian church music. Isolated notes from these different pieces often intermingle, creating lines which move about from player to player, piece to piece, making a kind of virtual counterpoint with the independent pieces themselves. Along with the Harmonies and Imitations, Cage provides four Marches for solo drums and fourteen Tunes for melody instruments, each of which is a set of four variations on a dance or military tune of the period. In addition, the composer calls for four singers who perform unaltered songs of the Protestant, Sephardic, Native American and African American traditions. With the given materials, the players create their own performing schedules within a pre-determined time length, making each performance of Apartment House 1776 unique.

This piece follows Cage's "musicircus" principle--a number of independent, non-coordinated, overlapping pieces presented simultaneously, each piece occupying its own center. Like a three-ring circus, or an apartment house, many events, lives, or musics take place at the same time.


Ryoanji, version for four soloists with orchestra (1983-85)

The twenty musicians of the orchestra each independently choose a single sound which they use for the entire performance. Cage asks them to play in "Korean  unison"--in the style of traditional Korean music, their attacks close but not exactly together. The parts are an identical series of quarter tones and rests, the same as the original percussion part. Added to each note are indications (different in each part) to play slightly before, slightly after, or "more or less on" the beat, as well as notations for microtonal slides around the chosen pitch, and the occasional staccato. The soloists play "music of glissandi", sliding pitches in various ranges, whose shapes were traced from the outlines of fifteen stones Cage had used throughout his series of musical and graphic works named after Ryoanji, the celebrated Zen rock garden in Kyoto which itself contains fifteen large stones. The orchestra supports the soloists as the raked sand of Ryoanji supports the stones, not as accompaniment, but "imperceptibly in the foreground". The placement of stones within an empty space begs the comparison with Cage's own conception of music as "sounds thrown into silence".

(paraphrases and interpolations from the CD booklet and from The Music of John Cage by James Pritchett)

[karlhenning]

Ryoanji, version for four soloists with orchestra (1983-85)

The twenty musicians of the orchestra each independently choose a single sound which they use for the entire performance. Cage asks them to play in "Korean  unison"--in the style of traditional Korean music, their attacks close but not exactly together. The parts are an identical series of quarter tones and rests, the same as the original percussion part. Added to each note are indications (different in each part) to play slightly before, slightly after, or "more or less on" the beat, as well as notations for microtonal slides around the chosen pitch, and the occasional staccato. The soloists play "music of glissandi", sliding pitches in various ranges, whose shapes were traced from the outlines of fifteen stones Cage had used throughout his series of musical and graphic works named after Ryoanji, the celebrated Zen rock garden in Kyoto which itself contains fifteen large stones. The orchestra supports the soloists as the raked sand of Ryoanji supports the stones, not as accompaniment, but "imperceptibly in the foreground". The placement of stones within an empty space begs the comparison with Cage's own conception of music as "sounds thrown into silence".

(paraphrases and interpolations from the CD booklet and from The Music of John Cage by James Pritchett)

The fine flutist I frequently have the privilege to work with, Peter Bloom, was talking about this very piece (version w/o orchestra, I suppose) a couple of times while we were working on How to Tell.

[petrarch]

One⁹, for sho, with 108, for large orchestra (1991)

[asin]B00006JYAG[/asin]

Cage scored 108 for the largest number of players in any of the number pieces. Its duration of 43'30" makes an oblique reference to his groundbreaking 4'33" (1952). The work can be played on its own or with either of two solo works from the same year, One⁸ for cello and One⁹ for sho, a mouth organ with bamboo pipes that acts as one of the harmony-producing instruments in japanese gagaku. Both solo works were composed for artists very important to Cage in his final years. The cellist Michael Bach had invented a curved bow that permitted him to play sustained chords, while Mayumi Miyata had pioneered the sho as a contemporary concert instrument. Cage first met Miyata during his historic return to the 1990 Darmstadt summer course; the composer was enchanted with the sound of her instrument and produced in all three works for her.

As was his habit, Cage wanted to learn as many possibilities for a new instrument or medium as he could before composing a work, and among his papers are copious notes indicating all of the single tones and clusters (aitake) that the sho could play, both familiar and unfamiliar. With this material in place, he could then use chance operations to choose which of all these possibilities would become the sounds for his new pieces, thus producing results that he hoped would surprise and interest him when he finally heard them performed.

When either One⁸ or One⁹ are performed with 108, they become concertos. The concerto formed by One⁹ and 108 is a very unusual one, and a fine example of Cage's aesthetic. The delicate sounds of the sho enter almost imperceptibly, reminding us of Cage's suggestion (in the performance notes for 101) that tones be "brushed into existence as in oriental calligraphy where the ink (the sound) is not always seen or, if so, is streaked with white (silence)." Both orchestra and soloist remain completely silent for the first minute and a half of the piece. The orchestra disappears again in other two sections, but not to herald a grand cadenza: The sho music continues much as it had before, a quiet, serene, almost timeless utterance.

[petrarch]

One¹¹ with 103 (1992)

[asin]B000HEV7SS[/asin]

Cage has always linked various media and tried out new techniques in his work. He never loses the will to try out new experiments: 'I am quite old now, and so when I have the opportunity to do something I take it immediately, rather than hesitating, as I don't have much time left.' Cage said this about his first and only film, produced in the year he died. He started to address the perception of emptiness and at the same time the random quality of what happens in a prescribed space as early as 1952 in his piece 4'33", which consisted entirely of silence. Forty years later he says: 'Of course the film will be about the effect of light in an empty space. But no space is actually empty and the light will show what is in it. And all this space and all this light will be controlled by random operations.' This simple concept was implemented professionally and with a great deal of technical input in a Munich television studio under the direction of Henning Lohner.


The film One¹¹ and the musical piece 103 run in parallel, without relating directly to each other, but each has 17 parts. Each of the parts is based on approximately 1200 random operations devised by computer and determining how the lighting is controlled in a completely empty television studio and the movements of a crane-mounted camera. The distinguished cameraman Van Theodore Carlson thus becomes the exponent of the compositions. The result is a film entirely without plot or actors, which Cage hopes will create scope beyond economic and political problems and enable viewers to find themselves.

http://www.medienkunstnetz.de/works/one11-and-103/

One¹¹ is a film without subject. There is light but no persons, no things, no ideas about repetition and variation. It is meaningless activity which is nonetheless communicative, like light itself, escaping our attention as communication because it has no content. Light is, as McLuhan said, pure information, without any content to restrict its transforming and informing power. Chance operations were used with respect to the shots, black and white, taken in the FSM television studio in Munich.

103 is an orchestral work. Like the film, it is ninety minutes long. It is divided into seventeen parts. The lengths of the seventeen parts are the same for all the strings and the percussion. The woodwinds and the brass follow another plan. The shots of the cameraman still another. Following chance operations, the number of wind instruments changes for each of the seventeen parts. Thus the density of 103 varies from the solo trombone of Section Eleven, the trumpet and horn duo of Section Ten, the woodwind trio of Section Six, to the tutti of Section Five and the near tuttis of Sections One, Eight, Thirteen, Fourteen and Sixteen.

--John Cage, notes from the DVD Mode 174

This will be very much to the taste of a specific group, so I'll try to describe as precisely and succinctly as possible, so that all readers will know what they're getting into. I also think that this most unlikely of art pieces is profoundly and surprisingly beautiful.

John Cage's One¹¹ is the composer's only feature-length film. This is not a documentary; rather, it is a piece Cage made—to paraphrase Seinfeld—about nothing. Or more exactly, he describes it as "a film without a subject." And of course there is a subject, but it's the play of light on a wall, in interaction with the actions of the cameraman filming it. The title comes from the structure of the "number" pieces Cage was making in his final period: i.e., it is the 11th in a series of works for one performer (in this case the cinematographer). It is 90 minutes long, and for its entirety it is accompanied by a contemporary piece of equal duration, 103 (for orchestra).

First, the visuals: The film is in black and white, and one watches slow changes of intensity and patterns of light and shadow cast on a white surface. These are often quite complex, because the compositional process required multiple cross fades between simultaneously shot materials. The effect is of a "transcendental" abstract painting animated. If you are familiar with the Suprematist work of Malevitch, late Rothko, or paintings of Robert Ryman or Agnes Martin, this starts to suggest the purity, starkness, and subtlety of the image. I also couldn't help referencing X-rays and photos from outer space. It is quite dreamlike, and if one starts to internalize its pace, one can become mesmerized.

Second, the sound: it contributes to the effect described above. 103 uses Cage's "time bracket" technique, which gives each player in an ensemble a part within which are indicated a series of prescribed periods where a sound (note or notes) must occur. Thus the players perform an action within one "bracket," then move to the next and wait until its indicated time is reached, at which point they can choose to start anew somewhere within that time field. Though this may sound complex, it's actually quite straightforward in its execution—all the performer or conductor needs is a stopwatch, and these pieces tend to open out into ample fields of sounds, with long sustained tones dappled by little pointillist outbursts. I don't know if Cage knew Scelsi's work at this point (which it resembles), but it does seem that he'd learned a thing or two from his onetime "student" Morton Feldman. Whatever the case, the music seems more "natural" than many would associate with the composer, but it still keeps the sense of non-directionality he prized, even if it sounds more continuous. When combined with the rather glacial pace of the images' development, these tectonic plates of sound start to take on a real drama, even grandeur—though of course that's my construction, not the composer's. Mode also provides the neat option of two different soundtracks, a German and American performance of the same piece, which works because the original film was shot silently, and the accompanying piece's duration is always exactly the same as that of the film.

This was in fact Cage's last piece, and in some ways it feels like a summa. There is a poignant moment in an interview where he says he decided to make the film because "when one is this age one seizes any opportunity . . . because time is short [laughs]." He would be dead within the year, though there's no hint of that in his wonderful impish demeanor. Cage was always a great innovator in media other than music (his visual artworks stand up beautifully in various museum contexts when I've encountered them), and it shouldn't be too surprising that his film would be utterly original. What may surprise, though, is also how beautiful it is. Let me be clear—the effect is literally more like "watching paint dry" than the metaphor usually implies. Thus viewers are forewarned. But I was seduced by its purity and subtle sensuality. And having watched it with a visual artist who was thrilled by it, I think I'm not alone. In fact, this may be one of Cage's great masterpieces.

--FANFARE: Robert Carl

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Etcetera, for orchestra (1973)
Etcetera 2/4 Orchestras, for large orchestra (1978)

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Etcetera, for orchestra (1973)

The mechanism

In orchestral music, the conductor plays the role of government. Cage was politically uncomfortable with exploiting this role in his composition.  Thus, in Etcetera, the musicians begin without a conductor (in a state of nature?) and move at their own option to one of three stations. Each station is provided with two, three, or four chairs respectively, facing one of three conductors. When a station is fully occupied, the conductor begins beating.

The two pianists, unable to move with their instruments, are given their own notated instrumental music, which they may play at any time. The become, in effect, stations that consist of one player only.

The notation

Players in each ensemble are provided with music which outlines but does not specify pitch and rhythm. Dynamics are notated conventionally. Rhythm is notated in space, distance measured horizontally being read as time, and divided into conventionally metered measures (2/4, 3/4, 4/4). Within each measure slash marks show the location of each beat. Each player's part consists of a small number of pitches which are not fixed absolutely but notated only relative to each other and chosen by the player. There are four phrases for each ensemble (the conductors have "score" pages without notes, showing only the metrical structure). Each phrase is successively longer, each adds more material onto the previous phrase. Each phrase is to be repeated any number of times. In rehearsal, Cage asked that the notations for the pianists (who play alone) be read as full chords, inviting virtuosity in performance.

Performing forces

Etcetera is written for an ensemble of any size. Music is provided for flute, oboe, clarinet, bassoon, trumpet, horn, tuba, strings, size percussionists and two pianists. The performing ensemble may deviate from this setup, as Cage's instructions indicate: "Substitutions, additions and subtractions may be made".

Imagery

The sounds of nature pervade Etcetera. Created in the countryside, when Cage was still living in the rural community of Stony Point, the materials of the composition include a tape recording made outside the composer's home. Ninety minutes long--enough to be played throughout the piece (which may last any length)--the tape fills the performance with outdoor sounds (birds, wind, distant traffic) and transforms the musicians' gestures. The repeating loops of the duo, trio and quartet become animal cries and birdcalls. The quiet thumping on cardboard boxes becomes the rustling of leaves and the gentle patter of raindrops.

Unpitched solos

Tapped out on a "non-resonant cardboard box", the non-repeating rhythms of the solos played independently throughout the piece are interrupted by single held tones quietly sustained on one's instrument.

Repetition

Cage's notation provides for the cardboard boxes to be tapped on various points on their surfaces. There is but a limited variety in the quality of sounds. Like the sound of raindrops, like the repeated (conducted) phrases, there is constant, subtle variation--always the same, always different. As well as referring back to Cage's studies with Schoenberg, particularly Schoenberg's observation that music is variation, and variation is but repetition with some elements changed, this constant repetition/variation looks forward to the obsessive repetitions of the late works.

Etcetera 2/4 Orchestras, for large orchestra (1978)

The mechanism

In much of Cage's orchestral music, the conductor functions as a kind of moving clock-hand, showing time lapsed but not indicating precise beats. In Etcetera 2/4 Orchestras, the four conductors beat somewhat more conventionally, giving single downbeat cues for the orchestral chords. Cage had noticed that musicians often prefer to be conducted--to be governed--rather than be given the freedom and responsibility which his own music customarily offered. Thus the players are given a choice: Beginning under one of the conductors, the musicians may move at their own option to one of eight stations, where they play solo material, unconnected.

The notation

Soloists are provided with music similar to that given the ensembles of Etcetera. Each solo consists of two, three, four or five tones, chosen by the performer. The orchestral chords are notated conventionally, with additional markings indicating notes to be played ever so slightly before or after the beat, and calling for microtonal glissandi up or down, toward, away from, or through some pitches--the same technique Cage used in the orchestration of Ryoanji. Although based on a non-repeating metrical scheme, the pulses of the orchestral music are extremely slow (to the point of requiring chronometric rather than rhythmic notation--that is, minutes and seconds rather than quarter notes are used to indicate timing) and are impossible to hear in any rhythmic context.

Performing forces

Etcetera 2/4 Orchestras is for large orchestra, divided into four smaller ensembles, each with its own conductor. The instrumentation is fixed for each ensemble, with between 16 and 23 instruments per ensemble.

Imagery

In Etcetera 2/4 Orchestras, city imagery takes the place of nature imagery, beginning with the thirty-minute tape recording made in Cage's apartment on Sixth Avenue and punctuated with the ringing of the composer's telephone, which plays throughout the fixed length of the piece. In addition, the sound of the orchestral chords bring to mind the squealing of car brakes, car horns in traffic, the scraping of metal against metal.

Freely pitched solos

In the score, Cage suggests "after succeeding in rehearsal in playing a solo having two tones, try one with three, etc." In addition, the solos include an auxiliary short sound, notated with an "x". This sound may or may not change pitch within a single solo.

Repetition

The orchestral chords are repeated several times, with microtonal and microrhythmic variations distributed among the instruments as noted above. As in many of the other late works, the nearly unchanging repetition of sounds can be heard not only as the perpetual renewing of the presumed familiar, but also as an image of the final, unchanging silence at life's end.

(notes taken from the booklet of the CD)

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Roaratorio, for speaker, Irish musicians and 62-track tape (1979)

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In Roaratorio, the second "writing through" Finnegans Wake served as both musical material and as structural guide. The work, a composition for magnetic tape, is a translation of Joyce's 628-page novel into sound. Making use of the abundant indices, gazetteers, and other specialized inventories for Finnegans Wake, Cage listed all the references to sounds and music in the book, then grouped them into various categories and made chance-determined selections from these. Similarly, a random selection was made from the huge number of place-names found in the book. With the help of others world-wide, Cage then collected all these sounds on tape, finding instances of all the specific sounds mentioned (such as bells, dogs barking, water running, etc), and recording ambient noises at all the places mentioned.

The tapes were then assembled and mixed. The first step was to record Cage reading the entire text of "Writing for the Second Time Through Finnegans Wake." This tape served as the template for the placement of the other recorded sounds. Since Cage's text goes through the entire book from start to finish, and includes running page references to the original, the recorded sounds could easily be superimposed upon the reading of Cage's text at the exact point that they are referred to in Joyce's book. Thus, the piece opens with the sound of a viola d'amore ("Sir Tristram, viola d'amores, fr'over the short sea") and closes with the cries of gulls ("Whish! A gull. Gulls. Far calls. Coming, far!"). Chance controlled the duration of sounds, their relative loudnesses, and other aspects of the mixing process. Several multi-track tapes were made in this fashion and then mixed together, along with recordings of Irish folk musics, to form a single two-track tape. The effect of this is a thick, joyous collage of sounds, music and reading--as the subtitle explains, this is "An Irish Circus on Finnegans Wake." Although Cage later published an "a posteriori" score for the work which generalizes the process so that it could be applied to any book at all, it is hard to imagine any novel that would be as perfectly set by such an incomprehensible, phantasmagoric soundscape as this.

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