Works for prepared piano by John Cage
Encyclopedia
American
avant-garde
composer
John Cage
(1912–1992) started composing for prepared piano
in 1940. The majority of early works for this instrument were created to accompany dances by Cage's various collaborators, most frequently Merce Cunningham
. In response to frequent criticisms of prepared piano, Cage cited numerous predecessors (such as Henry Cowell
). In the liner notes for the very first recording of his most highly acclaimed work for prepared piano, Sonatas and Interludes
, Cage wrote: "Composing for the prepared piano is not a criticism of the instrument. I'm only being practical." This article presents a complete list of Cage's works for prepared piano, with comments on each composition.
, this was the first piece Cage composed for prepared piano. Cage and Fort were both working at the Cornish School in Seattle, Washington
at the time. The room where the dance was to be performed was not large enough to allow for a percussion ensemble, but had enough space for a grand piano. Cage decided to try placing various objects on the strings of the instrument in order to produce percussive sounds, inspired by Henry Cowell
's experiments with extended piano techniques
. The whole piece was finished in just three days. Twelve notes are prepared, mostly using weather strippings
. In the score, in 11 cases out of 12, the performer is instructed to "determine position and size of mutes by experiment."
. Eleven notes are prepared, eight of them by screw
s. This is the only Cage-Cunningmham collaboration from the 1940s for which original choreography has survived.
. Ten individual notes are prepared, mostly with small screws, and a whole range from G1 to C3 is prepared using "two thicknesses of woolen material". This material is placed between the strings in the following manner: over the first string, under the second, over the third, under the fourth, etc.
(like in the lost prepared piano work Lidice (see Lidice
) from 1943). Piano preparation involves only screws or bolts. Various extended technique
s are used, such as producing sound by plucking strings. The piece starts with quiet, muted tones and gradually becomes louder, climaxing in several successions of large tone cluster
s, executed using the entire length of the forearm.
. Piano preparation involves bamboo
strips, as well as screws and nuts. The music and the dance were to be accompanied by a speaker reading a poem by Langston Hughes
about the condition of Black people
in the United States
.
. The music is written down on a single staff
and follows the structure 4, 7, 2, 5, 4, 7, 2, 3, 5 (numbers denote the number of bars dedicated to a particular part of the section), repeated twice.
at the very end of the work.
; Section 3 divides 100 half note
s into three groups of 23 and a coda. According to Cunningham, the subject of the work is fear: it describes "awareness of the unknown, struggle, and the final defeat".
. Contains nineteen sections. Thirty-nine notes are prepared.
Composed in 1947 for a segment of Hans Richter
's surrealist
film Dreams That Money Can Buy
. The film contains several segments designed by different artists, and Cage's music was composed for a segment designed by Marcel Duchamp
. The segment—a dream one of the characters is having—is titled "Discs" and consists mostly of Duchamp's rotoreliefs. These are designs painted on flat cardboard
circles, which are to be spun on a phonographic turntable
. The work was later choreographed by Merce Cunningham. The global structure is 11x11 (eleven sections of eleven bars each), the rhythmic proportion is 2, 1, 1, 3, 1, 2, 1. Similarly to Tossed As It Is Untroubled and The Unavailable Memory of, the work mostly builds on a single melodic line, which uses notes muted by weather strippings. This piece is one of the first to explore the idea of silence systematically: empty bars are juxtaposed with melodic passages throughout the piece.
A cycle of 20 short works (16 sonatas and 4 interludes) composed in 1946–48. Dedicated to pianist Maro Ajemian
. This is Cage's most famous work for prepared piano, and also the most complex: piano preparation takes about 2–3 hours and involves forty-five notes, and the proportions governing the structure of individual pieces include fractions
as well as natural number
s. Sonatas and Interludes was inspired by Cage's interest in Indian philosophy
and the Rasa aesthetic as explained in Ananda K. Coomaraswamy's writings. The pieces express the eight "permanent" emotions (the humorous, the wondrous, the erotic, the heroic, anger, fear, disgust and sorrow) and their common tendency toward tranquility.
's short film
on sculptor Alexander Calder
, Works of Calder. The idea of the film was suggested by Burgess Meredith
, whom Calder met in spring 1948. The decision to ask Matter to direct was Calder's: the two had worked with each other previously when Matter made photographs of Calder's works. The 20-minute color film, produced and narrated by Meredith (narration by John Latouche) and photographed and directed by Matter, was completed in 1949, but since Matter insisted on asking Cage to compose the music, the team had to wait for about a year until Cage returned from Europe. The piece consists of three sequences, two of which (numbers 1 and 3) are for prepared piano, and one (number 2) is for tape: Cage recorded the sounds of Calder's studio while the sculptor was working —mobiles
bumping into one another, etc.—then edited the resulting two-hour recording in order to produce the desired sequence of sounds.
applied using charts of layers, sounds, durations, etc. and the I Ching
, similarly to Music of Changes
. Because the number of layers was smaller than in the latter work (specifically, there are just two layers), the texture of Two Pastorales is thinner, with long silences between notes. Like in Music of Changes, the notation is proportional, one inch equals one quarter note
. Extended techniques are used: strings are sometimes plucked by fingers or cymbal sticks, or muted by hand.
Composed in 1954, this work is one of the so-called "time length" pieces, in which the title refers to the length of the work. The piece was composed using chance operations and written down in proportional graphic notation
. The rhythmic structure is 3, 7, 2, 5, 11. Piano preparation is defined only by specifying the strings to be prepared and the materials to be used, the actual choice of objects and their position on the strings is left to the performer. This piece was composed for David Tudor
and is very difficult to play; its companion piece, 31'57.9864" For a Pianist, shares the same techniques but is much easier. Both works may be performed solo or together with other "time length" compositions.
and arpeggio
s and features much virtuosic writing. According to Cage, this was inspired his ideas on Mozart's music, which "strictly adheres to three different kinds of scales: the chromatic, the diatonic, and that consisting of the larger steps of thirds and fourths". The technique of rhythmic proportions is used in a new way: the proportion for each piece is defined for a particular tempo. A change in the tempo causes a change in the proportion.
technique. The rhythmic proportions — 16 groups of 16 bars divided 4, 3, 4, 5 — are defined in the score, but the music doesn't always rely on them.
The piano/prepared piano piece A Room (1943, see above) was intended to be third part of She Is Asleep. This piece is one of the earliest instances of the use of rhythmic proportions to govern the structure of individual movements and/or whole works. The proportion is 4, 7, 2, 5; 4, 7, 2, 3, 5 and it affects only the microstructure of the pieces.
Eighteen notes are prepared using 9 screws, 8 bolts, 2 nuts and 3 strips of rubber. Similarly to Bacchanale, the performer is instructed in the score to "determine position and size of mutes by experiment". This was one of Cage's earliest works to use Cage's rhythmic proportions technique. The structure of the second movement, for example, is based 10-bar units each divided into four sections: 3, 2, 2, 3. The proportion 3, 3, 2, 2 is used similarly in the second solo for prepared piano.
. Original title What So Proudly We Hail, also known as Suite of four dances. The four dances are:
(1950). Independently created sonorities (single notes, chords, aggregates) are arranged into rectangular charts; the music is composed by tracing geometric patterns on them. There are three movements. The piano part develops from free composition (movement 1) to following the orchestra using a parallel chart (movement 2) and then to sharing the same chart with the orchestra (movement 3). Piano preparation in the Concerto is rather complex and involves, among other things, a moveable plastic bridge that makes possible microtonal
effects.
, a Czech
village destroyed by German forces in 1942.
United States
The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...
avant-garde
Avant-garde
Avant-garde means "advance guard" or "vanguard". The adjective form is used in English to refer to people or works that are experimental or innovative, particularly with respect to art, culture, and politics....
composer
Composer
A composer is a person who creates music, either by musical notation or oral tradition, for interpretation and performance, or through direct manipulation of sonic material through electronic media...
John Cage
John Cage
John Milton Cage Jr. was an American composer, music theorist, writer, philosopher and artist. A pioneer of indeterminacy in music, electroacoustic music, and non-standard use of musical instruments, Cage was one of the leading figures of the post-war avant-garde...
(1912–1992) started composing for prepared piano
Prepared piano
A prepared piano is a piano that has had its sound altered by placing objects between or on the strings or on the hammers or dampers....
in 1940. The majority of early works for this instrument were created to accompany dances by Cage's various collaborators, most frequently Merce Cunningham
Merce Cunningham
Mercier "Merce" Philip Cunningham was an American dancer and choreographer who was at the forefront of the American avant-garde for more than 50 years. Throughout much of his life, Cunningham was considered one of the greatest creative forces in American dance...
. In response to frequent criticisms of prepared piano, Cage cited numerous predecessors (such as Henry Cowell
Henry Cowell
Henry Cowell was an American composer, music theorist, pianist, teacher, publisher, and impresario. His contribution to the world of music was summed up by Virgil Thomson, writing in the early 1950s:...
). In the liner notes for the very first recording of his most highly acclaimed work for prepared piano, Sonatas and Interludes
Sonatas and Interludes
Sonatas and Interludes is a collection of twenty pieces for prepared piano by American avant-garde composer John Cage . It was composed in 1946–1948, shortly after Cage's introduction to Indian philosophy and the teachings of art historian Ananda K. Coomaraswamy, both of which became major...
, Cage wrote: "Composing for the prepared piano is not a criticism of the instrument. I'm only being practical." This article presents a complete list of Cage's works for prepared piano, with comments on each composition.
Bacchanale
Composed in 1940 for a choreography by the American dancer Syvilla FortSyvilla Fort
Syvilla Fort was an American dancer, choreographer, and dance educator.Born in Seattle, she was African American and drew on her heritage in her original dance works....
, this was the first piece Cage composed for prepared piano. Cage and Fort were both working at the Cornish School in Seattle, Washington
Seattle, Washington
Seattle is the county seat of King County, Washington. With 608,660 residents as of the 2010 Census, Seattle is the largest city in the Northwestern United States. The Seattle metropolitan area of about 3.4 million inhabitants is the 15th largest metropolitan area in the country...
at the time. The room where the dance was to be performed was not large enough to allow for a percussion ensemble, but had enough space for a grand piano. Cage decided to try placing various objects on the strings of the instrument in order to produce percussive sounds, inspired by Henry Cowell
Henry Cowell
Henry Cowell was an American composer, music theorist, pianist, teacher, publisher, and impresario. His contribution to the world of music was summed up by Virgil Thomson, writing in the early 1950s:...
's experiments with extended piano techniques
Extended technique
Extended techniques are performance techniques used in music to describe unconventional, unorthodox, or non-traditional techniques of singing, or of playing musical instruments to obtain unusual sounds or instrumental timbres....
. The whole piece was finished in just three days. Twelve notes are prepared, mostly using weather strippings
Weatherstripping
Weatherstripping is the process of sealing openings such as doors, windows, and trunks from the elements, or the materials used to carry out such sealing process. The goal of weatherstripping is to prevent rain and water from entering by either blocking it outright or by blocking most of it and...
. In the score, in 11 cases out of 12, the performer is instructed to "determine position and size of mutes by experiment."
Totem Ancestor
Composed in 1942 for a dance by Merce CunninghamMerce Cunningham
Mercier "Merce" Philip Cunningham was an American dancer and choreographer who was at the forefront of the American avant-garde for more than 50 years. Throughout much of his life, Cunningham was considered one of the greatest creative forces in American dance...
. Eleven notes are prepared, eight of them by screw
Screw
A screw, or bolt, is a type of fastener characterized by a helical ridge, known as an external thread or just thread, wrapped around a cylinder. Some screw threads are designed to mate with a complementary thread, known as an internal thread, often in the form of a nut or an object that has the...
s. This is the only Cage-Cunningmham collaboration from the 1940s for which original choreography has survived.
And the Earth Shall Bear Again
Composed in 1942 for a dance by Valerie BettisValerie Bettis
Valerie Elizabeth Bettis was an American modern dancer and choreographer. She found success in musical theatre, ballet, and as a solo dancer.-Biography:...
. Ten individual notes are prepared, mostly with small screws, and a whole range from G1 to C3 is prepared using "two thicknesses of woolen material". This material is placed between the strings in the following manner: over the first string, under the second, over the third, under the fourth, etc.
Primitive
Composed in 1942 for a dance by Wilson Williams. Thirteen notes are prepared, all using screws or bolts.In the Name of the Holocaust
Composed in late 1942 for a dance by Merce Cunningham. The title references World War IIWorld War II
World War II, or the Second World War , was a global conflict lasting from 1939 to 1945, involving most of the world's nations—including all of the great powers—eventually forming two opposing military alliances: the Allies and the Axis...
(like in the lost prepared piano work Lidice (see Lidice
Lidice
Lidice is a village in the Czech Republic just northwest of Prague. It is built on the site of a previous village of the same name which, as part of the Nazi Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia, was on orders from Reichsführer-SS Heinrich Himmler, completely destroyed by German forces in reprisal...
) from 1943). Piano preparation involves only screws or bolts. Various extended technique
Extended technique
Extended techniques are performance techniques used in music to describe unconventional, unorthodox, or non-traditional techniques of singing, or of playing musical instruments to obtain unusual sounds or instrumental timbres....
s are used, such as producing sound by plucking strings. The piece starts with quiet, muted tones and gradually becomes louder, climaxing in several successions of large tone cluster
Tone cluster
A tone cluster is a musical chord comprising at least three consecutive tones in a scale. Prototypical tone clusters are based on the chromatic scale, and are separated by semitones. For instance, three adjacent piano keys struck simultaneously produce a tone cluster...
s, executed using the entire length of the forearm.
Our Spring Will Come
Composed in 1943 for a dance by Pearl PrimusPearl Primus
Pearl Primus was a dancer, choreographer and anthropologist. Primus played an important role in the presentation of African dance to American audiences. Early in her career she saw the needs to promote African dance as an art form worthy of study and performance...
. Piano preparation involves bamboo
Bamboo
Bamboo is a group of perennial evergreens in the true grass family Poaceae, subfamily Bambusoideae, tribe Bambuseae. Giant bamboos are the largest members of the grass family....
strips, as well as screws and nuts. The music and the dance were to be accompanied by a speaker reading a poem by Langston Hughes
Langston Hughes
James Mercer Langston Hughes was an American poet, social activist, novelist, playwright, and columnist. He was one of the earliest innovators of the then-new literary art form jazz poetry. Hughes is best known for his work during the Harlem Renaissance...
about the condition of Black people
Black people
The term black people is used in systems of racial classification for humans of a dark skinned phenotype, relative to other racial groups.Different societies apply different criteria regarding who is classified as "black", and often social variables such as class, socio-economic status also plays a...
in the United States
United States
The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...
.
A Room
Composed in 1943, originally conceived as the third part of She Is Asleep (see below). May be performed with or without preparations, which involve 11 notes. Most are to be prepared using bolts, one new material is a pennyPenny
A penny is a coin or a type of currency used in several English-speaking countries. It is often the smallest denomination within a currency system.-Etymology:...
. The music is written down on a single staff
Staff (music)
In standard Western musical notation, the staff, or stave, is a set of five horizontal lines and four spaces that each represent a different musical pitch—or, in the case of a percussion staff, different percussion instruments. Appropriate music symbols, depending upon the intended effect,...
and follows the structure 4, 7, 2, 5, 4, 7, 2, 3, 5 (numbers denote the number of bars dedicated to a particular part of the section), repeated twice.
Tossed As It Is Untroubled
Composed in 1944 for a dance by Merce Cunningham, and dedicated to Valerie Bettis. Originally titled Meditation. Only eight notes are prepared, mostly with weather strippings. Roughly two thirds of the piece are written down on a single staff; the melodic line which makes up most of the piece uses just five tones, all prepared with weather strippings. The two heavily prepared notes are only used for a trillTrill (music)
The trill is a musical ornament consisting of a rapid alternation between two adjacent notes, usually a semitone or tone apart, which can be identified with the context of the trill....
at the very end of the work.
A Valentine Out of Season
A suite of three pieces, composed in 1944. Choreographed by Merce Cunningham as Effusions avant l'heure / Games / Trio. The title references Cage's separation from his wife Xenia, which happened in 1945.Root of an Unfocus
Composed in 1944 for a dance by Merce Cunningham. A work in three sections: Section 1 contains seven parts, seven bars each; Section 2 juxtaposes bars in 4/4 and 3/4 metresMetre (music)
Meter or metre is a term that music has inherited from the rhythmic element of poetry where it means the number of lines in a verse, the number of syllables in each line and the arrangement of those syllables as long or short, accented or unaccented...
; Section 3 divides 100 half note
Half note
In music, a half note or minim is a note played for half the duration of a whole note and twice the duration of a quarter note...
s into three groups of 23 and a coda. According to Cunningham, the subject of the work is fear: it describes "awareness of the unknown, struggle, and the final defeat".
The Unavailable Memory of
Composed in 1944 for a dance by Merce Cunningham. Written entirely on a single staff, primarily scored as a single melodic line.Triple-Paced No. 2
This work, composed in 1944, is a revision of a 1943 piano piece titled Triple-Paced. The 1944 version was choreographed by Merce Cunningham.The Perilous Night
Composed in 1944. This is Cage's first large-scale work for prepared piano. Twenty-six notes are prepared with various materials. The piece contains six separate sections with different rhythmic structures. According to Cage, The Perilous Night expresses "the loneliness and terror that comes to one when love becomes unhappy". All of the six movements of this work are untitled.Mysterious Adventure
Composed in 1945 for a dance by Merce Cunningham. This is another large-scale work with moderately complex piano preparation, involving 27 notes. It contains five sections.Daughters of the Lonesome Isle
Composed in 1945 for a dance by Jean ErdmanJean Erdman
Jean Erdman is a dancer and choreographer of modern dance as well as an avant-garde theater director.-Early years:Erdman was born on February 20, 1916 in Honolulu, Hawaii...
. Contains nineteen sections. Thirty-nine notes are prepared.
Music for Marcel Duchamp
Hans Richter (artist)
Hans Richter was a painter, graphic artist, avant-gardist, film-experimenter and producer. He was born in Berlin into a well-to-do family and died in Minusio, near Locarno, Switzerland.-Germany:...
's surrealist
Surrealism
Surrealism is a cultural movement that began in the early 1920s, and is best known for the visual artworks and writings of the group members....
film Dreams That Money Can Buy
Dreams That Money Can Buy
Dreams That Money Can Buy is a 1947 American experimental feature color film written, produced, and directed by surrealist artist and dada film-theorist Hans Richter.The film was produced by Kenneth Macpherson and Peggy Guggenheim....
. The film contains several segments designed by different artists, and Cage's music was composed for a segment designed by Marcel Duchamp
Marcel Duchamp
Marcel Duchamp was a French artist whose work is most often associated with the Dadaist and Surrealist movements. Considered by some to be one of the most important artists of the 20th century, Duchamp's output influenced the development of post-World War I Western art...
. The segment—a dream one of the characters is having—is titled "Discs" and consists mostly of Duchamp's rotoreliefs. These are designs painted on flat cardboard
Paperboard
Paperboard is a thick paper based material. While there is no rigid differentiation between paper and paperboard, paperboard is generally thicker than paper. According to ISO standards, paperboard is a paper with a basis weight above 224 g/m2, but there are exceptions. Paperboard can be single...
circles, which are to be spun on a phonographic turntable
Phonograph
The phonograph record player, or gramophone is a device introduced in 1877 that has had continued common use for reproducing sound recordings, although when first developed, the phonograph was used to both record and reproduce sounds...
. The work was later choreographed by Merce Cunningham. The global structure is 11x11 (eleven sections of eleven bars each), the rhythmic proportion is 2, 1, 1, 3, 1, 2, 1. Similarly to Tossed As It Is Untroubled and The Unavailable Memory of, the work mostly builds on a single melodic line, which uses notes muted by weather strippings. This piece is one of the first to explore the idea of silence systematically: empty bars are juxtaposed with melodic passages throughout the piece.
Sonatas and Interludes
A cycle of 20 short works (16 sonatas and 4 interludes) composed in 1946–48. Dedicated to pianist Maro Ajemian
Maro Ajemian
Maro Ajemian was an American pianist. Ajemian's career in contemporary music got its impetus from her Armenian heritage; she became known as a contemporary pianist after performing the U.S...
. This is Cage's most famous work for prepared piano, and also the most complex: piano preparation takes about 2–3 hours and involves forty-five notes, and the proportions governing the structure of individual pieces include fractions
Fraction (mathematics)
A fraction represents a part of a whole or, more generally, any number of equal parts. When spoken in everyday English, we specify how many parts of a certain size there are, for example, one-half, five-eighths and three-quarters.A common or "vulgar" fraction, such as 1/2, 5/8, 3/4, etc., consists...
as well as natural number
Natural number
In mathematics, the natural numbers are the ordinary whole numbers used for counting and ordering . These purposes are related to the linguistic notions of cardinal and ordinal numbers, respectively...
s. Sonatas and Interludes was inspired by Cage's interest in Indian philosophy
Indian philosophy
India has a rich and diverse philosophical tradition dating back to ancient times. According to Radhakrishnan, the earlier Upanisads constitute "...the earliest philosophical compositions of the world."...
and the Rasa aesthetic as explained in Ananda K. Coomaraswamy's writings. The pieces express the eight "permanent" emotions (the humorous, the wondrous, the erotic, the heroic, anger, fear, disgust and sorrow) and their common tendency toward tranquility.
Music for Works of Calder
Composed in 1950 for Herbert MatterHerbert Matter
Herbert Matter was a Swiss-born American photographer and graphic designer known for his pioneering use of photomontage in commercial art...
's short film
Film
A film, also called a movie or motion picture, is a series of still or moving images. It is produced by recording photographic images with cameras, or by creating images using animation techniques or visual effects...
on sculptor Alexander Calder
Alexander Calder
Alexander Calder was an American sculptor and artist most famous for inventing mobile sculptures. In addition to mobile and stable sculpture, Alexander Calder also created paintings, lithographs, toys, tapestry, jewelry and household objects.-Childhood:Alexander "Sandy" Calder was born in Lawnton,...
, Works of Calder. The idea of the film was suggested by Burgess Meredith
Burgess Meredith
Oliver Burgess Meredith , known professionally as Burgess Meredith, was an American actor in theatre, film, and television, who also worked as a director...
, whom Calder met in spring 1948. The decision to ask Matter to direct was Calder's: the two had worked with each other previously when Matter made photographs of Calder's works. The 20-minute color film, produced and narrated by Meredith (narration by John Latouche) and photographed and directed by Matter, was completed in 1949, but since Matter insisted on asking Cage to compose the music, the team had to wait for about a year until Cage returned from Europe. The piece consists of three sequences, two of which (numbers 1 and 3) are for prepared piano, and one (number 2) is for tape: Cage recorded the sounds of Calder's studio while the sculptor was working —mobiles
Mobile (sculpture)
A mobile is a type of kinetic sculpture constructed to take advantage of the principle of equilibrium. It consists of a number of rods, from which weighted objects or further rods hang. The objects hanging from the rods balance each other, so that the rods remain more or less horizontal...
bumping into one another, etc.—then edited the resulting two-hour recording in order to produce the desired sequence of sounds.
Two Pastorales
Composed in November 1951 (first piece) and January 1952 (second piece). Both pastorales use chance operationsIndeterminacy in music
Indeterminacy in music, which began early in the twentieth century in the music of Charles Ives, and was continued in the 1930s by Henry Cowell and carried on by his student, the experimental music composer John Cage beginning in 1951 , came to refer to the movement which grew up around Cage...
applied using charts of layers, sounds, durations, etc. and the I Ching
I Ching
The I Ching or "Yì Jīng" , also known as the Classic of Changes, Book of Changes and Zhouyi, is one of the oldest of the Chinese classic texts...
, similarly to Music of Changes
Music of Changes
Music of Changes is a piece for solo piano by John Cage. Composed in 1951 for pianist and friend David Tudor, it is Cage's earliest fully indeterminate instrumental work. The process of composition involved applying decisions made using the I Ching, a Chinese classic text that is commonly used as a...
. Because the number of layers was smaller than in the latter work (specifically, there are just two layers), the texture of Two Pastorales is thinner, with long silences between notes. Like in Music of Changes, the notation is proportional, one inch equals one quarter note
Quarter note
A quarter note or crotchet is a note played for one quarter of the duration of a whole note . Often people will say that a crotchet is one beat, however, this is not always correct, as the beat is indicated by the time signature of the music; a quarter note may or may not be the beat...
. Extended techniques are used: strings are sometimes plucked by fingers or cymbal sticks, or muted by hand.
34'46.776" For a Pianist
Graphic notation
Graphic notation is the representation of music through the use of visual symbols outside the realm of traditional music notation. Graphic notation evolved in the 1950s, and it is often used in combination with traditional music notation...
. The rhythmic structure is 3, 7, 2, 5, 11. Piano preparation is defined only by specifying the strings to be prepared and the materials to be used, the actual choice of objects and their position on the strings is left to the performer. This piece was composed for David Tudor
David Tudor
David Eugene Tudor was an American pianist and composer of experimental music.- Biography :Tudor was born in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. He studied piano with Irma Wolpe and composition with Stefan Wolpe and became known as one of the leading performers of avant garde piano music. He gave the...
and is very difficult to play; its companion piece, 31'57.9864" For a Pianist, shares the same techniques but is much easier. Both works may be performed solo or together with other "time length" compositions.
31'57.9864" For a Pianist
Composed in 1954. A companion piece to 34'46.776" For a Pianist, it uses similar notation and compositional techniques, but is much easier to play. The rhythmic structure is also identical to 34'46.776".A Book of Music
Composed in 1944. Like the later work, Three Dances (1945), A Book of Music was commissioned by pianists Robert Fizdale and Arthur Gold. It was Cage's first work written on request from professional performers. There are two movements, each divided into several smaller sections (four in the first movement, three in the second). The music makes much use of scalesMusical scale
In music, a scale is a sequence of musical notes in ascending and descending order. Most commonly, especially in the context of the common practice period, the notes of a scale will belong to a single key, thus providing material for or being used to conveniently represent part or all of a musical...
and arpeggio
Arpeggio
An arpeggio is a musical technique where notes in a chord are played or sung in sequence, one after the other, rather than ringing out simultaneously...
s and features much virtuosic writing. According to Cage, this was inspired his ideas on Mozart's music, which "strictly adheres to three different kinds of scales: the chromatic, the diatonic, and that consisting of the larger steps of thirds and fourths". The technique of rhythmic proportions is used in a new way: the proportion for each piece is defined for a particular tempo. A change in the tempo causes a change in the proportion.
Three Dances
Composed in 1945. This work is similar in style (large-scale virtuosic writing) and technique (rhythmic proportions dependent on the tempo) to A Book of Music and too was commissioned by Fitzdale and Gold.Second Construction
Composed in 1939–40. This piece is scored for various percussion instruments and piano. The score instructs the performer to insert a screw and a strip of cardboard between several strings, but the piano part is written essentially for the string pianoString piano
String piano is a term coined by American composer-theorist Henry Cowell to collectively describe those pianistic extended techniques in which sound is produced by direct manipulation of the strings, instead of or in addition to striking the piano's keys...
technique. The rhythmic proportions — 16 groups of 16 bars divided 4, 3, 4, 5 — are defined in the score, but the music doesn't always rely on them.
She Is Asleep
An unfinished suite of different pieces, composed in 1943. The two completed movements are:- Quartet for 12 tom-tomTom-tom drumA tom-tom drum is a cylindrical drum with no snare.Although "tom-tom" is the British term for a child's toy drum, the name came originally from the Anglo-Indian and Sinhala; the tom-tom itself comes from Asian or Native American cultures...
s - Duet for voice and prepared piano
The piano/prepared piano piece A Room (1943, see above) was intended to be third part of She Is Asleep. This piece is one of the earliest instances of the use of rhythmic proportions to govern the structure of individual movements and/or whole works. The proportion is 4, 7, 2, 5; 4, 7, 2, 3, 5 and it affects only the microstructure of the pieces.
Amores
Composed in early 1943 after Cage moved to New York City, as a concert piece. Choreographed by Merce Cunningham in 1949. Amores contains four movements:- Solo for prepared piano
- Trio for 9 tom-toms and a pod rattleRattle (percussion)A rattle is a percussion instrument. It consists of a hollow body filled with small uniform solid objects, like sand or nuts. Rhythmical shaking of this instrument produces repetitive, rather dry timbre noises. In some kinds of music, a rattle assumes the role of the metronome, as an alternative to...
- Trio for 7 wood blockWood blockA woodblock is essentially a small piece of slit drum made from a single piece of wood and used as a percussion instrument. It is struck with a stick, making a characteristically percussive sound....
s - Solo for prepared piano
Eighteen notes are prepared using 9 screws, 8 bolts, 2 nuts and 3 strips of rubber. Similarly to Bacchanale, the performer is instructed in the score to "determine position and size of mutes by experiment". This was one of Cage's earliest works to use Cage's rhythmic proportions technique. The structure of the second movement, for example, is based 10-bar units each divided into four sections: 3, 2, 2, 3. The proportion 3, 3, 2, 2 is used similarly in the second solo for prepared piano.
Four Dances
Composed in 1943–44 for a choreography by Hanya HolmHanya Holm
Hanya Holm is known as one of the “Big Four” founders of American modern dance...
. Original title What So Proudly We Hail, also known as Suite of four dances. The four dances are:
- Dance No. 1 for percussion and piano
- Dance No. 2 for tenor soloist (wordless) and piano
- Dance No. 3 for piano
- Dance No. 4 for tenor soloist (wordless), percussion and piano
Concerto for Prepared Piano
Composed in 1950–51. The work is scored for a prepared piano and a chamber orchestra and was written using the gamut technique Cage developed in String Quartet in Four PartsString Quartet in Four Parts
String Quartet in Four Parts is a string quartet by John Cage, composed in 1950. It is one of the last works Cage wrote that is not entirely aleatoric. Like Sonatas and Interludes for prepared piano and the ballet The Seasons , this work explores ideas from Indian philosophy.-General...
(1950). Independently created sonorities (single notes, chords, aggregates) are arranged into rectangular charts; the music is composed by tracing geometric patterns on them. There are three movements. The piano part develops from free composition (movement 1) to following the orchestra using a parallel chart (movement 2) and then to sharing the same chart with the orchestra (movement 3). Piano preparation in the Concerto is rather complex and involves, among other things, a moveable plastic bridge that makes possible microtonal
Microtonal music
Microtonal music is music using microtones—intervals of less than an equally spaced semitone. Microtonal music can also refer to music which uses intervals not found in the Western system of 12 equal intervals to the octave.-Terminology:...
effects.
Lidice
Composed in 1943 for a dance by Marie Marchowsky. The title refers to LidiceLidice
Lidice is a village in the Czech Republic just northwest of Prague. It is built on the site of a previous village of the same name which, as part of the Nazi Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia, was on orders from Reichsführer-SS Heinrich Himmler, completely destroyed by German forces in reprisal...
, a Czech
Czechoslovakia
Czechoslovakia or Czecho-Slovakia was a sovereign state in Central Europe which existed from October 1918, when it declared its independence from the Austro-Hungarian Empire, until 1992...
village destroyed by German forces in 1942.
External links
- List of works by John Cage at the John Cage Database
- The Sound collector – The Prepared Piano of John Cage, essay by Tim Ovens
- Audio Interview to Margaret Leng Tan: Through the silence. John Cage in Memoriam 1912–1992, 51st International Festival of Contemporary Music, La Biennale, Venice, 2007