John Cage (1912-92)

Started by Lethevich, October 02, 2008, 10:22:06 PM

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nathanb

Snyprrr I'm confused as to why this is disappointing according to the criteria you've mentioned. Sounds like this guy is your man, so pick up this recording and enjoy.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kPumMhlGmcw&list=PLooHI2XfK9jLSkKx6pAztgrhb68PGkCnv&index=27

snyprrr

Quote from: nathanb on August 27, 2016, 07:05:24 PM
Snyprrr I'm confused as to why this is disappointing according to the criteria you've mentioned. Sounds like this guy is your man, so pick up this recording and enjoy.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kPumMhlGmcw&list=PLooHI2XfK9jLSkKx6pAztgrhb68PGkCnv&index=27
Quote from: Mandryka on August 27, 2016, 09:36:39 AM
Well we should have a look at the score. As far as I know Cage doesn't tell you how fast to play them. I suppose Liebner plays them slow to make them sound simpler. Chrismani is so different from everyone else that in truth it's hard for me to be sure he's playing the same music, it's not just tempi, it's phrasing too. I enjoy him. Liebner and Sultan are the other ones I know and for me it's more of a challenge than a pleasure, but that's probably because I'm not zen enough.

Liebner took a long time, years, preparing the recording and there's something principled and uncompromising about the approach.

Who said it's written for two independent hands, Sultan or Cage? Sultan really does bring out the duet for two hands feeling, at least I remember thinking that last time I listened about two years ago!

Well, tah-daaa... YT has everyone but Scheleiermacher!! Soooo... last night I took Etude 1 and listened to all four (Drury only has 'live' versions of the latter Books). I must say that you really do "see" things differently this way; here's what I learned:

ETUDE 1

Sultan: I'm taking her premiere as the basic set-point, and, it appears everyone is on board (Liebner's approach precludes her at the moment). At @4mins., this piece serves to highlight a lot of what is in store for the next 31 pieces- a fascistic sense of randomness coupled with an unbounded sense of cosmic space, producing, at least for me, a curious sense of unease and peace at the same time, almost like there's something inherently "wrong" at work here, a non-foreboding sense of ... something foreboding? HA!! Anyhow...

For me, right from the get-go, Sultan maintains an almost digital-scan styled reading, with notes plopping and bleeping in as off-beat as radio signals, like the notes are actually being plucked out of the nothingness. This is like the sound of chimes in the breeze, the randomness, but with a strong wind behind it. Sultan keeps my interest throughout in this one.

Schleiermacher: sounds a lot like Sultan, but, what wasn't apparent, now is: Sultan's fairly dry recording HAD served to highlight her "pluck" style, whereas here, MDG give SS such a beautifully celestial acoustic that IT also becomes as much part of the rhythm of the piece as Sultan's LACK of acoustic shaped her aural image. See what I'm sayin" Scheliermacher doesn't at all have the same "plucked" sound, his rythm is somewhat indescribable to me, again, not Composed, yet not Improvised, it just IS? But, with the acoustic giving its 2cents, it's hard to tell if he really IS playing like her, but the acoustic is swallowing aspects of the interpretation? I mean, the acoustic gives its own really cool sound itself, so, I'm not really complaining. But, my forcus with him is totally different than with her: with her it's the actually notes of the piano, with him it's almost the interaction of the notes with the space (though, it's the same with her, just in reverse).

Liebner: her approach is to make every single Etude @8mins., usually twice the length of all the others. But, she keeps all the other aspects, so, really, it's like listening to Sultan at half-speed, which, with this kind of music, means what? HA!! Frankly, one or a few Etudes like this would be fine, but when I think of four discs I begin to need Dramamine. But, I understand that her approach is highly scientific and her reading is probably the most educational, and I am personally finding this reading quite creepy and delicious in a perverted way (Cosmic Devil?) and I can get into it, but ultimately.... I wouldn't kick it out of bed, but I wouldn't buy it either. But I give it credit, it's monstrous!!

Crismani: let me elaborate a little. I was sooo curious about this, and then found it on YT yesterday, and first listened to one of the shortest. OK, it was interesting, and I mostly liked it, but there seems to be some ugliness either in his playing or the recording, so that ffff sounds a bit harsh. And I think he's a little on the 'Lisztian' side of the equation here, no? The one I heard (17?) started off slower than anything, and then exploded into a furious blizzard of notes (that I should like, but here sound pretentious to me). So, in Etude1, Crisamni, at @4mins. like everyone else, sounds compleeetely different, as if it's other music completely. He TOTALLY exposes the Tonal undergirding of the piece, making it sound like Debussy+Ives+Scriabin? I kind of like it...

BUT...

a) it's just too "sexy" or something??... for the "cosmos"???.... I like it but I feel I shouldn't?


Yea, Crismani is doing whatsoever he pleases at whatever moment in time, so it's almost impossible to judge ANYTHING about this, other than it's not your grandpa's Etudes!!

MORE TO COME...

Mandryka

Here's an intyeresting review of Liebner's Etudes on amazon

Quote from: scarecrow at https://www.amazon.com/Cage-Etudes-Australes-Sabine-Liebner/dp/B006EVD7G8#customerReviewsThese Etudes were written for Grete Sultan, 1974-75, they occupied a cultural stasis, a void in some respects,i.e. the Seventies, when structuralism was fashionable; the word "(or term) "post-modernity" was fast becoming the new buzz, perhaps because of Frederic Jameson's book, but also Jean Baudrillard, Jean Lyotard.

Etudes, conceptually are like a "holding-patter" in the serious trajectory of music,. It always has been, Debussy at the end of his life wrote 12 Etudes, didn't know anywhere else to proceed but to his "comfort zone" of Diatonicisms, He knew of Stravinsky, Igor as well, utilized traditional chords, only without traditional function; Both knew of 12 Tone thinking,Mahler as well- well Atonality; But had no sensibility for it. . .

Cage's work is divided into 32 etudes,into 4 Books, each book having 8 Etudes.Each Etude is more or less about 8 minutes.But there is no strict sense of that. . .
The title comes from Cage's affinity with the natural order of things of physical space, So here he utilized "Atlas Australis"; a book of star maps.How stars look from Australia. a great distance from New York City where he was living at the time. . .
I recall the original vinyl with Grete Sultan. It had a page of these star-maps with the rubber wedges needed in this etudes to hold down designated tones for one entire etudes, these are designated with diamond shapes tones, and change with each Etude.. . The cover(not the music) actually won a prize for graphics. . .

So interesting that there is a constellation, a configuration of harmonics that cycle thru the etudes,like revolving tones of the ether- that introduce themselves into the etudes, but we as listeners--- never really know how or when harmonics partials occur, unless we listen intently. Certainly the performer knows, and can also excite the tones that would produce more or less overtones, Dynamics are left to the performer's discretion, so if you know for example what lower piano tones are being continually held down, without the damper pedal you can shape your dynamics to excite those overtones.

The "study", the "chore", the "work" in generic terms-- here is to read four staves, 2 for each hand, and to read/project the tones as in real space, so the closer the tones are together, the faster you hear them in proximity to the others.And this can be "asa fast as possible" or gradations from that. . . Given the amount of density of the graphics one sees, it would be almost impossible to play fast, but there are sections that lend itslef to this "reading" . . . So the graphic depictions on the page should resemble what we hear in real space--time. Neither Tempo or dynamics are given by Cage. So the pianist performer is free to shape things as they want.

The challenge here really is what the pianist brings to these etudes. They are interpreted, or "read"; so the listener does in fact get some psychological "snapshot" of the emotive dimensions of the performer. The subjectivity of this is at a lull, at third person point, yet is still there.

I've heard Stefan Schleirmacher play these in his complete recording,wonderful, a bit harder to listen,relatively speaking; and Grete Sultan,who brings a sense of beauty to it;
Frederic Rzewski and Stephen Drury played these together,(different Books ) at the Festival d"Automne in Paris this last November 2011.

Sabine Liebner, is thus far the most interesting interpretively. Well, to my sense of hearing; In the aesthetic philosophy of Cage recall there is no good or bad, just technically accurate, astute and/or interesting or not, you must decide. . .
Liebner brings a kind of lyricism,a playfulness,plaintive moments, and serious all simultaneously--- (if that is possible) to these etudes.
You need to have a free sense of time, and acoustic space, which all the performers certainly do. . .You must also sense the endlessness of time itself. So there are many dimensions of these etudes that are hidden conceptual things, ideas, that never get imparted into the music itself;So the etudes do become like a personal odyssey---a leftover from modernity of tradition; But if these ideas are not there, one knows it, or should know it; Many of the intervals, do in fact resemble traditional harmonies, of course always disrupted, and non-functional. But each pianist to the best of their ability cannot escape the arresting beauty, the threadbare beauty of this great work.
Wovon man nicht sprechen kann, darüber muss man schweigen

snyprrr

Quote from: Mandryka on August 29, 2016, 10:36:33 AM
Here's an intyeresting review of Liebner's Etudes on amazon

LOL, yea, love 'scarecrow', but he is sometimes hard to understand!!



Even if I did like Liebner better, the mere thought of four discs of this is a little much. The more I listen to the Etudes, the pissier I get, so, it's time to move on to the 'Freeman Etudes'.




btw- videos of Drury playing the latter Etudes are on YT, and you can see clearly how both hands are doing lots of stuff.

snyprrr

Quote from: Thatfabulousalien on August 29, 2016, 07:28:29 PM
Will 4'33 ever die? Will people ever actually listen to his other works?  :(

that's prettty funnny?!! :laugh:

snyprrr

Etudes Australes, Book II

For some reason, I enjoyed this more than what I'd been listening to before. Maybe there's more activity? Then I listened to the last two Etudes of Book 3 (23-24), 23 being the most cosmic I'd heard yet. It's interesting with Schleiermacher, because sometimes he's on the Sultan tangent, timings wise, and then sometimes he offers a comparison to Liebner, with his 8min. renditions.




SOME E.A. CRITICISM:

Just read the WikiP. entry- when they describe HOW each Etude was created... he puts the 3in. strip of see-through over the star chart, which seems like such a small strip. For some reason I thought each Etude was like a WHOLE PAGE of the chart, or whatever.

So, it seems kind of "capricious" him choosing which stars to keeps, or what. Are we supposed to hear the "positions" of the stars, so that if we knew Astronomy we would be able to discern the "shapes" or outlines of the constellations??? In other words, since this isn't a true representation of the cosmos, then, that might explain why it doesn't sound all that cosmic???

gggaaaaahhhhhh :(

What would Messiaen have done?



And then he does his throwing of the dice thing, so, I assume, the representation of the stars is even more obscured? I mean, I would think that a knowledge of Astronomy would be a prerequisite for writing a piece like this.

Is Cage actually just being lazy?


These Piano Works have got me more flustered than Philip Glass!!!!!!!!


Well... yea, no.... not quite the same level of .....





Anyhow, is anyone else making progress on their ... "appreciation" of these pieces?

YOU'RE RIGHT- how can one pick a "good" one? You'd have to hear each one done in at least 2-3 different ways in order to get a handle ... or maybe just "look" at the score?

One reviewer said these pieces are better to look at than hear...


I will review Book2 in the car....

Mandryka

#486
Well I listened to Étude 9 Bk 2 played by Liebner, Crismani and Sultan. Sultan sounds like a faster version of Liebner and it's hard to convince myself that Crismani is playing the same music. Crismani is sweeter, warmer., more lyrical., more like a planned and coherent musical entity than a pussy cat walking across the piano.  I repeated the experience with Étude 11, and got the same results


Wovon man nicht sprechen kann, darüber muss man schweigen

Mandryka

Quote from: snyprrr on August 30, 2016, 09:35:38 AM

YOU'RE RIGHT- how can one pick a "good" one? You'd have to hear each one done in at least 2-3 different ways in order to get a handle ... or maybe just "look" at the score?


My favourite is Bk 3 Et ii (Crismani)
Wovon man nicht sprechen kann, darüber muss man schweigen

nathanb

snyprrr, trying to figure out the nature of your preferences always has me baffled. One would think, based on your other tastes, that these etudes, Lachenmann, and so on, would be right up your alley. I guess you're original to the core.

snyprrr

Quote from: Mandryka on August 31, 2016, 03:47:13 AM
Well I listened to Étude 9 Bk 2 played by Liebner, Crismani and Sultan.

Sultan sounds like a faster version of Liebner


and it's hard to convince myself that Crismani is playing the same music. Crismani is sweeter, warmer., more lyrical., more like a planned and coherent musical entity than a pussy cat walking across the piano.



I repeated the experience with Étude 11, and got the same results

X1000 on Crismani. Debussy+Ives+Scriabin?



b) I just wish Liebner had maybe done everything at @5-6mins., rather than 8?

c) Schleiermacher lies in between Sultan's fierce attack and Liebner's spaciousness...

Quote from: Mandryka on August 31, 2016, 04:50:29 AM
My favourite is Bk 3 Et ii (Crismani)

Yes, Crismani threatens to make one love his "way"!! Very interesting there manny!!

Quote from: nathanb on August 31, 2016, 03:15:49 PM
snyprrr, trying to figure out the nature of your preferences always has me baffled. One would think, based on your other tastes, that these etudes, Lachenmann, and so on, would be right up your alley. I guess you're original to the core.

I guess, lol! I was shocked by my not going for Lachenmann, so there ya go. But... I have noticed that there is a certain Modern Music sound that I don't like, I call it the "ennui factor"... and it's hard to tell where/when it will show up, but it is almost as if I can hear the Composer's... "hate"????... I mean, Modern Composers can be an onerously "religious" bunch

lol, it's just not happening this morning!! :laugh:


I do like "science" like in Xenakis. I really go for mathematical, bouncing games in Modern Music, not so much the Angsty-stuff.



oy- I just got the "met new guy, really like him" text, so, Avant Garde Theory isn't workin so well for me right at the moment :'( :laugh: :'( :laugh:

snyprrr

Quote from: jessop on August 20, 2016, 03:41:47 PM
What do you like about Music of Changes???

Got Martine Joste/Mode 'Music of Changes' yesterday. I found it infinitely more interesting than the 'Etudes Australes' I've been complaining about for a week. 'MoC' sounds like a furry, fuzzy jungle of a maze of a labyrinthe... I would have thought Boulez?!?!

Anyhow, I like the just smashing the piano tones just for the sake of hearing the timbres. 'MoC' seems to be THE piece for just "hearing the piano". Joste is quite aggressive, fistfulls of notes....




I did just order Fusi's newer Stradivarius recording of the 'Freeman Etudes, Books 1-2'. His tone and ambience are soooo different from Arditti's. Hear them both on YT.

Mandryka

Quote from: snyprrr on September 03, 2016, 06:57:29 AM
Got Martine Joste/Mode 'Music of Changes' yesterday. I found it infinitely more interesting than the 'Etudes Australes' I've been complaining about for a week. 'MoC' sounds like a furry, fuzzy jungle of a maze of a labyrinthe... I would have thought Boulez?!?!

Anyhow, I like the just smashing the piano tones just for the sake of hearing the timbres. 'MoC' seems to be THE piece for just "hearing the piano". Joste is quite aggressive, fistfulls of notes....


I think this is a credit to Martine Joste, which is fabulous, if she recorded the etudes I'd buy it.

Wovon man nicht sprechen kann, darüber muss man schweigen

snyprrr

Quote from: Mandryka on September 03, 2016, 11:29:08 PM
I think this is a credit to Martine Joste, which is fabulous, if she recorded the etudes I'd buy it.

She also has a Bussotti recital on Mode. Bussotti and Cage do seem to go together in a way...




snyprrr

A Cage of Saxophones Vols. 1-4 (Mode)

Ulrich Krieger (saxophonist) has recorded four volumes of Cage's music that could be interpreted by the sax. I am bubbling over with praise here, these discs are packed with interest.

I just wanted to tempt you with Vols.3/4, which include versions of 'Cartridge Music', 'Fontana Mix', and '4'33"', along with the "open" forms of 'Four6' and 'One7'.


Just listened to 'Four6'- hey, this really tickled me, sounding a little like Xenakis in a way. I am getting more and more impressed with Cage's way here, but, again, it does take a sensitive musician to realize Cage at this point.

Anyhow, you can't even really tell anything's a sax here, which was fine by me- I think it may be the perfect Cage instrument along with the piano...

I do love lots of fun sounds, and Krieger delivers a very thoughtful Cage programme.






ME??? Having a Cage-a-thon???? I certainly wouldn't have thunk it...

Mandryka

Quote from: snyprrr on September 04, 2016, 07:08:45 AM
She also has a Bussotti recital on Mode. Bussotti and Cage do seem to go together in a way...

She has an interview on YouTube, amusing, where she comes across as an agreeable person.
Wovon man nicht sprechen kann, darüber muss man schweigen

Mandryka

Quote from: snyprrr on September 04, 2016, 07:16:54 AM
A Cage of Saxophones Vols. 1-4 (Mode)

Ulrich Krieger (saxophonist) has recorded four volumes of Cage's music that could be interpreted by the sax. I am bubbling over with praise here, these discs are packed with interest.

I just wanted to tempt you with Vols.3/4, which include versions of 'Cartridge Music', 'Fontana Mix', and '4'33"', along with the "open" forms of 'Four6' and 'One7'.


Just listened to 'Four6'- hey, this really tickled me, sounding a little like Xenakis in a way. I am getting more and more impressed with Cage's way here, but, again, it does take a sensitive musician to realize Cage at this point.

Anyhow, you can't even really tell anything's a sax here, which was fine by me- I think it may be the perfect Cage instrument along with the piano...

I do love lots of fun sounds, and Krieger delivers a very thoughtful Cage programme.






ME??? Having a Cage-a-thon???? I certainly wouldn't have thunk it...

That's good. I knew Ulrich Krieger through  his saxophone rendition of Hymnkus, but I hadn't heard Four6 before, thanks for pointing it out, I enjoyed the way the sounds emerge (organically? randomly? Is it indeterminate in some way? )

One thing I keep coming back to is that these pieces are too long. It's as if there's not enough content to merit music which lasts half an hour. Part of what's going on for me is just that I'm not comfortable about the absence of narrative. I need to find a more zen way of listening.

(And it may be that part of the reason I appreciated Crismani's etudes is that he imposes a narrative on the music. I'm not sure, these are just informal impressions.)
Wovon man nicht sprechen kann, darüber muss man schweigen

snyprrr

Quote from: Mandryka on September 04, 2016, 10:31:12 PM
That's good. I knew Ulrich Krieger through  his saxophone rendition of Hymnkus, but I hadn't heard Four6 before, thanks for pointing it out, I enjoyed the way the sounds emerge (organically? randomly? Is it indeterminate in some way? )

One thing I keep coming back to is that these pieces are too long. It's as if there's not enough content to merit music which lasts half an hour. Part of what's going on for me is just that I'm not comfortable about the absence of narrative. I need to find a more zen way of listening.

(And it may be that part of the reason I appreciated Crismani's etudes is that he imposes a narrative on the music. I'm not sure, these are just informal impressions.)

I know I wouldn't want them to be ANY LONGER than 30mins!!!! I feel ya there... maybe 20 would have been golden? I know that 20min 'Four' by the Arditti is just about perfect there.



I did like the 'Hymnkus', sounding a bit like Feldman's "scatchy" phase ('Spring of Chroseseses').


Krieger's 'One7', at 30mins., MIGHT have benefited from a 20min. run time. Again, it was ok, but I sure wouldn't have wanted it to go on for any longer. I was expecting more non-musical sounds, but he does it pretty straight.




Yea, I'm still thinking Cage is a bit of a ________, but I have certainly gained an appreciation for what he - what his "presence" did- when he came to SerialTown. I suppose i can prefer him to quite a few academic Serialists of the second rank. At least he did a lot of DIFFERENT stuff, so, there should be something for everyone - even if you like, gasp, "melodyies", lol.







Since Cage was the object of most of my scorn over the decades, this "coming around" almost represents a FullCircle for me. I'M DONE?? I've traversed the Masters of the 20th Century? I don't care anymore? I don't think my mind will be blown any more?


Yea, no... 'Die Soldaten' remains "my" Opera... maaaybe i'll check out 'Le Grand Macabre' later, but I'm no longer all that eager to hear too many more Modern Operas...Lachenmann... Nono (maybe the best chance, with 'Sole...').... 'Prometeo' doesn't really hold me....

don't really care for all that much ArvoP either....



sigh :(

nathanb

Any of my contemporary brethren here celebrating Cage's birthday (well, it was yesterday, but it kicked off what's likely to be a week-long binge)?

I did all the saxophone volumes today; well, ok, I'm on volume 4 right now, and yes, One7 could be a tiny bit shorter, but Four6 could stand to be even a little bit longer. But I've always thought that the "One" pieces usually struggled a bit relative to the other numbers. Ulrich Krieger's timbral variety is astounding, though.

Yesterday I listened to some classic piano stuff and even ventured into a delicious new (to me) Cage work: The City Wears A Slouch Hat. So very different for Cage, and yet, so very Cage. Very intriguing, can't believe I'd never heard it until now.

arpeggio

I am new here. 

I am not a big fan of Cage's output.  But I have always tried to treat his music and the aficionados of his music with respect.

I have been a member of two other classical music forums that I left because of the animas against contemporary music.

I was invited to join this forum and was informed the atmosphere was much more congenial.

I decided to check out this thread.  As far as I am concerned this is the best thread I have read on John Cage.  There is very little of the Cage bashing I have seen elsewhere.  Even the criticisms I read where very reasoned.

Outstanding.   

ComposerOfAvantGarde

Welcome to GMG my bassoon playing friend! (Is that you?) ;D

I hope you are an avid fan of the composition entitled 'Seventeen' which is by far the most innovative and meaningful piece of 'music' Cage ever 'composed!' I am a big fan of it! 8)