Fontana Mix (1958)

As you know, my goal with this blog is to listen to and comment on all of John Cage's indeterminate music. But what exactly do I mean by "indeterminate music"? It may be worth saying something about how this is defined. Broadly, there are two basic types of indeterminacy: (1) music in which chance operations are used to write the composition, and (2) music in which relevant parts of the composition are left in some ways vague. In the case of (1), two performances of the same composition should sound pretty much the same: the composer might use chance to generate e.g. the pitches, but once the composition is written, the performers will play the same pitches every time it's performed. In the case of (2), however, two performances of the same composition might sound radically different, because e.g. exactly which pitches to play is simply left unspecified.

I mention this here because Fontana Mix is a wonderful example of indeterminacy in the second sense (and in the first, actually, but of course Cage had been using chance operations for years by this point). Part of this indeterminacy arises from its use of graphic notation: its score consists wholly of transparent sheets of grids, dots, and lines that are placed on top of each other. Ignoring the music for a moment, the score, like many Cage scores, is just a beautiful piece of visual art in itself:

A tangent: when Cage was younger he studied under Arnold Schoenberg, who supposedly agreed to teach him on the condition that he devote himself entirely to music. However, Cage had always been interested in visual art - perhaps he saw graphic notation as giving him a way to explore this interest while keeping his promise? (Of course, Cage would eventually flagrantly break the promise anyway, producing pure visual art at places like Crown Point Press (and I'm very thankful this, since much of his visual art is stunningly beautiful).)

Anyway, Fontana Mix pushes indeterminacy of type (2) to an extreme. First, the way that all the sheets are put together is determined by chance operations before each performance, so in fact no two performers of Fontana Mix will use the same score. Nor need they use the same sound sources, since it's for any number of performers using any kinds of instruments. Further, Cage says nothing about how the grids, dots, or lines are to be interpreted, so all of the elements are left undefined. The same dot might represent a one-second long violin note in one performance, and a ten-second sound of tearing paper in another. A line might represent a note rising in pitch in one performance; in another, it might be taken as a visual guide for how the performers are to be placed on the stage. Etc. All of this is to be determined by the performers.

It should go without saying that different performances of this may sound radically different. Indeed, literally none of the sounds you hear in a performance of Fontana Mix have been specified by Cage. With compositions like this, indeterminacy is so great that it calls into question the very nature of composition. What, exactly, has Cage composed here? I read a lovely comment on a youtube video of Fontana Mix (I don't have the link, but I'm pretty sure this is verbatim): "The realization of the score is itself a new composition. In a way, Cage did not compose this - he composed the opportunity for it to exist."

The recording that I'm listening to is, I think, the original version created by Cage himself on magnetic tape. It's very reminiscent of Cage's earlier Williams Mix: it consists mostly of a lot of static noise that seems to have been electronically processed in various ways. There's harsh white noise, soft radio static, and some of the static stops and start quickly, giving it a kind of staccato rhythm. Throughout the piece, there are also quick snatches of music, voices, electronic beeps and tones, and found sounds. Imagine somebody rapidly flipping through radio channels, landing mostly on static, and then processing the result. It is wonderfully chaotic!

It's definitely worthwhile to check out other versions of the piece - there's a few on youtube, last time I looked.

HPSCHD (1969)

This was composed with Lejaren Hiller, a composer famous (well, maybe not so famous, but known among those who are into modern classical) for his work in computer music. Unfortunately I haven't heard much else by Hiller - just a few pieces on youtube, but I enjoyed them all, and I can see why he'd be a good match for Cage given his experimental approach to composition ("experimental" both in the sense that his music is very weird, and in the literal sense of doing experiments with new ways of producing sound).

It's worth noting that the original performance of HPSCHD involved a whole load of visual material as well; plus, it was spread out over a wide space so that the audience could hear and see different things as they walked around. Obviously, all of these elements are unfortunately lost in this recording. Still, perhaps this isn't such a bad thing, since the music alone provides more than enough to digest. HPSCHD is complete chaos. It's one of Cage's most noisy, complex, and abrasive works.

As far as I can tell, there are two basic types of music used here. The first thing we hear is the computer music. This consists of lots of atonal beeps and bloops, many of them with a scratchy timbre so it sounds rather like a primitive synthesizer. I find it reminiscent of Lou Reed's Metal Machine Music, though it's slower, less loud, and less industrial.

After about 10 seconds or so, a completely generic classical piece starts playing, possibly Mozart or something along those lines (Cage used a number of classical pieces in this, Mozart included), played on a harpsichord (hence HPSCHD). Classical harpsichord music continues throughout. Not much of it is particularly interesting in itself. It's all the sort of classical music that sounds familiar but that you can't place - the kind of thing you imagine being played on a film or TV show when the soundtrack calls for some generic classical. At first, the juxtaposition of this with the atonal computer music is kinda jarring and actually somewhat amusing. It's perhaps because this first piece has a jolly, carefree mood, as though it's blissfully oblivious to, or just doesn't give a shit about, all the terrible noise happening all around it. But ultimately, I think all the music meshes together well. As the piece continues, you soon become accustomed to the odd musical combinations; and it helps that the harpsichord has a very metallic, machine-like timbre, making a good complement to the computer music.

It would be interesting to hear the computer music on its own. Here, it functions more as a background to the harpsichord pieces. There's generally more than one harpsichord piece playing at once - and obviously there is no attempt to merge them together in any coherent way, just or two or three or however many tracks played simultaneously. Hence the complete chaos I mentioned earlier. In this context, all those uninteresting classical pieces becomes very interesting indeed. I love HPSCHD. It's a glorious, messy collision of future and past, with its odd clash of computerized sounds and generic classical melodies.

TV Köln (1958)

For a solo pianist, though this also includes percussive noises, which I assume were produced by hitting the piano, a radio, and in the middle of the piece there's a short, quiet creaking/groaning sort of sound. The radio is also quiet and produces snatches of foreign voices. Overall, it's reminiscent of Water Music - TV Köln has similar instrumentation, a similarly sparse arrangement, and the same night-time atmosphere.

Unfortunately, it's difficult to get much enjoyment out of this because it's so short: only 1'20", and really it's shorter than that since the last 20 seconds are silent. Don't get me wrong, it's certainly not bad: it has a nice mood and an interesting set of sounds, and at 1'20" it's hardly going to overstay its welcome. It all just seems rather inconsequential. It's a shame Cage didn't allow it to develop for a few more minutes... as it is, I'm left wondering what the point of it was (I guess the point was simply to make a few nice sounds, and to that extent I suppose it's successful).

Sixty-Eight (1992)

First of all, I apologise for my absence over the past week. I've been quite busy, mostly because I've just moved from home to university. My target when I started this blog was one review per day, and I'll try to get back to that - though of course it depends on how much work I have...

Anyway, onto one of my favourite Cage compositions: Sixty-Eight! Essentially, we begin with a number of instruments playing in unison. Then silence. Then, a number of instruments playing in unison, though this time on a different note. Another silence. Then a number of instruments playing in unison, again on a different note... and so on, to the end of the piece. Ultimately then this piece is a series of drones separated by silences, in which multiple instruments play a single note in unison. There are fifteen such drones, spread over half an hour.

Probably thanks to Cage's use of time-brackets, allowing the performers freedom over when to start and stop, the drones build up and recede gradually. They wax and wane in a cyclical manner; it's evocative of something like slow breathing, or perhaps the sea that washes in and out with each wave.

The "series of drones" structure is in itself quite interesting, but the style of playing is also notable. Unlike most Number Pieces, this is, of course, not especially dissonant (well, in fact, it doesn't sound quite as consonant as you'd expect from unison playing, so I wonder if this might have been one of the many Number Pieces in which Cage used slight imperfections of tuning, to produce imperfect unisons). It also features no sudden, loud sounds. So, this is as close as Cage comes to traditional ambient music - slow, not intrusive, doesn't demand attentive listening. This could easily fade into the background; you could even fall asleep to it, and it won't jolt you awake with sharp, loud bangs scattered randomly through it.

What I love most about Sixty-Eight is its fascinating exploration of timbre. Here, Cage has a full orchestra to play with, and he embellishes this with liberal use of non-standard instruments: for example, I heard something that sounded like a Tibetan singing bowl, evoking wind; then later, literally the sound of wind produced by a wind machine; one drone included an odd rattling noise; another, beautiful, sparkling chimes; another had something that sounded a bit like rainsticks (perhaps an appearance of the amplified cactus?); another included low, rumbling drums. Each drone has its own unique character. In fact, Cage could have probably taken each particular drone and extended it to, say, five minutes to form a stand-alone piece. This is definitely one of the most active and varied Number Pieces, despite its slow pace.

Five2 (1991)

A five minute piece for three clarinets, English horn, and timpani. The timpani is silent for the first two minutes, the English horn is silent for the last two, and the clarinets play throughout.

Anyway, there's not really much to say about this. It's a standard Number Piece: dissonant, slow, and with a few extended silences. Most of the notes are held for a long time, and the dynamics are consistently soft.

The horn seems to have much the same timbre as the clarinets - I couldn't really distinguish them - so the timpani provides some nice variety, in the form of a quiet, rumbling percussive sound, reminiscent of distant thunder. In contrast to the fairly bright sound of the clarinets and horn, it suggests anticipation and perhaps unease, giving the second half of the piece a somewhat darker tone. Not a particularly notable composition, but it's lovely as usual.

Four2 (1990)

A stunningly beautiful and in many ways fairly surprising Number Piece for choir. As with most Cage pieces, the pace is slow: each person sings a single note, held for a long time - I mean a very long time, what sometimes seems like a superhuman length of time - and then rests. There is always at least one person singing, usually more; so this is built from a number of often overlapping, long, single notes.

So far, so good, nothing unusual there. What's surprising about it is its extreme consonance. This is, without any doubt, the most consonant Number Piece. It actually reminds me much more of Cage's "imitations" (Cheap Imitation, Hymns and Variations, Quartets I-VIII) than his Number Pieces. Now as far as I know, this is an entirely original work. I think it was composed for a high school choir, which might explain why Cage chose to work with more traditional material. Anyway, frankly, coming from a steady diet of Cage, this is almost overwhelmingly consonant, sort of like eating really sweet chocolate cake after having had a month off all junk food. I'm not complaining though. I love chocolate cake. And this composition is absolutely beautiful, in a traditional way.

Interestingly, over the last two minutes, standard Cage seems to reassert himself a little: the piece takes a darker turn as slightly more dissonant notes emerge, some of which are high-pitch nearly to the point of being shrill. The mood becomes rather more uneasy. It ends on an unresolved tension.

This leads us to another surprising thing about Four2: whereas most Number Pieces don't seem to progress or go anywhere, this has a clear structure - a simple structure, to be sure, but given the relatively short length (7 minutes), it's easy to pick up. The volume gradually increases over the first minute, then is stable until about three and a half minutes, at which point the music goes fairly quiet. This lasts until five minutes, when the somewhat more dissonant notes come in, and the volume increases. This section lasts till the end. Hence: 0'00" to 3'30": consonant loud - 3'30" to 5'00": consonant quiet - 5'00" to 7'00": dissonant loud. It is of course entirely possible that this structure arose entirely by chance. Perhaps if Cage had written 70 minutes rather than 7, we would have lots of random changes in volume and consonance/dissonance (or perhaps it would have the same general structure, but this would be unnoticeable when stretched to that length). But as it is, it's very difficult not to hear this as evincing some sort of overall development.

The mood throughout is one of yearning and devotion, with a religious/spiritual undertone. The use of the choir sets the religious atmosphere. Indeed, the choir sounds otherworldly, simply angelic (as I said, the notes are held for a superhuman length of time...). Part of this is that I'm listening to the recording by Mode, which boasts some incredible production. The voices are very resonant, and since there are no vocal acrobatics, no vibrato or whatever, each note rings out absolutely pure (this is probably partly why the consonance is so striking). I find it deeply moving. I don't know what prompted Cage to write this, but it really is an entrancing composition, well worth hearing.

Atlas Eclipticalis (1962)

One of the more infamous entries in Cage's catalogue, as it was the subject of a disastrous performance in 1964 by the New York Philharmonic, presented by Leonard Bernstein. The audience hated it, and so did the orchestra, who pretty much ignored Cage's score and just messed around. You can hear this performance here (Atlas Eclipticalis starts at about 11:30, but I'd recommend listening to the whole video as it includes an introduction by Bernstein and a free improvisation by the orchestra). Quite frankly, I really like it that performance. In fact I love it. It's right up my street, I think it sounds fantastic. I can see why Cage was annoyed though.

Beyond this disaster, Atlas Eclipticalis is notable for being the first composition that Cage wrote using star charts - I believe by simply copying the stars onto paper and placing staves over them, giving the notes (then using other properties of the stars, such as magnitude, to determine the volume and duration of the notes). Hence this is Cage's earliest composition in which natural phenomena plays a notable role. I'm not sure, however, whether there was any significance in the use of stars, or if it was simply a more expedient way of generating chance than the endless coin-tossing required for the I-Ching.

Certainly, at first blush, it doesn't really evoke starlight. Part of the reason for this is that it includes up to 86 instruments, of many different kinds, some of which seem to be nonstandard - for example, towards the beginning of the recording I'm listening to I heard what sounded like amplified rustling paper, then later, there was an occasional metallic rattling noise. With all of this variety, it's more evocative of, say, the complexity of the rainforest, than the minimal and austere image of the night sky.

That's at first blush. However, it soon becomes clear that the piece boasts extreme variation in dynamics. Scattered throughout it are a number of very short but very loud sounds, which force you to play it at a relatively low volume. Here is the waveform of the first 20 minutes in Audacity:

So you have to turn the volume down, and with that, most of the instruments fade into the background, barely perceptible or just plain imperceptible. There are occasionally fairly long stretches where I can't hear anything at all; and when I can hear the instruments, it's often difficult to distinguish them. They form a quiet but intricate canvas, with loud bangs suddenly and randomly popping out of it. And now, I very much have the impression of the night sky. (With the quiet music being the black background, and the short, loud sounds being specks of starlight. There are even a few drum rolls of mid-amplitude that remind me of clouds drifting across the sky.) In fact, if you amplify the quieter parts and the silences, you find that they are just as active as the louder parts - they even have similar extremes of dynamics - much as a telescope peering into apparently empty space will reveal lots of hidden stars and galaxies. It's a lot of fun to play around with the recording, and discover music hidden beneath its surface.

This piece allows for discoveries in more ways than one. The score is for 86 instruments, but a performance may use any combination of those. Eberhard Blum has a wonderful version for three flutes, which of course is a radically different take on the piece, very minimal and quiet. It doesn't evoke starlight, though... it doesn't really evoke anything, but it is lovely to listen to. So it's well worth checking out different recordings of this.

Some of "The Harmony of Maine" (1978)

This piece for solo organ is one of Cage's "imitations", this time based on The Harmony of Maine by Supply Belcher, hence its title. The Harmony of Maine is a collection of hymns from the late 1700s; Cage uses chance procedures to delete some notes, extend or shorten others, alter the registration of the organ, etc. So this is in the tradition of other imitations like Cheap Imitation, Hymns and Variations, and Quartets I-VIII. If you enjoy those, check this out, and vice versa.

As in those other pieces, the result of Cage's modifications is a composition whose melodic and harmonic content is surprisingly (for Cage) consonant and traditional, but that doesn't really go anywhere, doesn't develop musically. There is no tension and release, no emotional development, there are no cadences and no memorable melodies. If you've heard the first minute, you'll know exactly what to expect of the next forty minutes.

Cage's technique strips almost everything away, leaving only a ghost of the original: a collection of notes that seem to float in the ether, unconnected to each other, and an impression of its overall mood. Or at least what I guess is its overall mood: I have never actually heard The Harmony of Maine (I did look it up on youtube but couldn't find any videos), but this piece clearly retains the religious overtones. The melodies are solemn and hymn-like; and, of course, the use of the organ immediately brings a monastic atmosphere to the music. Indeed, I think that the organ was an excellent choice in general. Aside from being well-suited to the religious theme, the weighty, magisterial quality of its sound contrasts beautifully with the unrelenting stillness of the composition. I always feel like organs are saying something deep and important, about God, or marriage, or death. Yet here the organ says nothing. It goes nowhere.

I also love the different variety of timbres that the organ produces. Since each note is allowed to ring out for a fairly long time, you can really focus on the various colours of the sounds. (With Cage's more traditional pieces, instrumentation can make a big difference. It's interesting to compare the version of this piece for guitar, produced by Marc Ribot, which can be heard here. As much as I like Ribot, I think this works far better on organ.) A lovely piece. Big thumbs up from me.

One5 (1990)

As is the norm for the smaller Number Pieces, this is extremely minimal and sparse. It's a twenty-minute piece for solo piano. The left hand is given 21 time brackets, the right hand is given 24; and each time bracket contains either a single note or chord. So we have just over two sound events per minute.

The instrumentation is stripped down to its basics: a completely standard piano, with no preparations or alterations, played in a completely standard way (i.e. pressing the keys). Cage specified that the notes are to be sustained for as long as possible, but since it's a piano, and since all the notes are played softly and quietly, they peter out pretty quickly regardless. Unsurprisingly, then, the most conspicuous element of this piece is the silence. Indeed I confess that when I listened to the whole thing earlier, it took me a little while to realize when it had finished! I guess that with a piece like this, it's pretty much impossible not to listen to the ambient sound (which for me, listening at 1a.m., was just the quiet drone of my laptop) as much as the music, and you don't immediately miss the music when it ends.

It's interesting that Cage chose to give each hand separate time brackets. I don't know what the reason for this was, but it calls to mind the Etudes Australes, which was conceived as a "duet for two hands". Now in fact, the Etudes did not seem much like a duet to me... similarly, in One5, I'm not sure what difference splitting the hands makes. It's just a load of notes scattered very sparsely on a canvas of silence. Perhaps somebody who actually plays the piano would be able to pick up more here.

In any case, I love One5. Its consistently soft dynamics, its slow pace, and its simple instrumentation with plenty of silence, make for a degree of tranquility and stillness that is extreme even by Cage's standards. It doesn't seem to matter whether it goes on for five minutes or five hours (yes, I could easily listen to five hours of this, at least as background music and with a few breaks).

Concerto for Prepared Piano and Chamber Orchestra (1951)

With this, we go right back to the beginning, at least as far as this blog is concerned, because this was the first composition by Cage in which chance operations played an important role. Well, in fact, they're not nearly as important here as they would become later. I was actually a bit unsure about whether to include this in this blog, as Cage was really only dipping his toes in the water of chance operations. It was not at this point the central element of his compositional methods. Still, this is undoubtedly an extremely important composition and a pivotal moment (the pivotal moment) in his career.

For writing the Concerto, he used a technique where he'd get charts of sounds, then he'd compose by moving through these charts. But he soon hit upon the novel idea that instead of choosing how to move through these charts, he could apply chance operations. The piece is split into three movements. In the first movement, the piano is entirely freely composed while the orchestra follows a chart, without chance. In the second, the piano and orchestra each follow different charts, again without chance. In the third, the piano and orchestra follow the same chart, and here Cage uses chance operations to determine how to move through it. So chance only appears in the third movement. It's also notable that the charts are only of the types of sound; the rhythms/durations are left to Cage's discretion. As you can see, then, chance does not play such a significant role.

The structure of the piece was intended to show a conflict and then reconciliation between the piano and the orchestra. Throughout, the orchestra embodies the ideas of non-expression, of Zen, of "letting sounds be sounds" and of removing the emotions of the artist, etc, that had taken centre stage in Cage's aesthetic by this time. On the other hand, the piano in the first movement is expressive and relatively (relative, that is, to the orchestra) conventional. It's much along the lines of Cage's earlier prepared piano work, particularly the Sonatas and Interludes. The second movement brings it somewhat closer to the orchestra, and diminishes its voice, by using the chart technique for it; then in the third, both the piano and orchestra are unified under the same chart, and the use of chance operations underscores the surrender of self-expression.

In fact, this narrative isn't particularly obvious to me. The opposition between the piano and orchestra in the first movement is clear enough, but the second and third movement don't seem notably different. The main difference is that the third movement is somewhat sparser, with sections of silence, though these only last a few seconds each so are not nearly as pronounced the silences in much of his later work. Beyond this there isn't much to tell them apart (which is perhaps a good indicator of how tentative Cage's use of chance in the third movement was). Perhaps those with more musical training would get more out of this than me.

The piano has extensive preparations, so of course it sounds utterly gorgeous, with some notes sounding more like percussion than piano. Apparently, some rather unusual instruments were used in the orchestra, including an amplified slinky and a radio - but unfortunately I couldn't hear either of these, except possibly a little radio static in the third movement. It seemed pretty much like a standard orchestra to my ears (this is not a criticism, just a comment; standard orchestras are fine too... it sure would be interesting to hear an amplified slinky, though).

The Concerto is not among my favourites of Cage - I prefer his full-blooded chance music - and maybe some of the ideas behind it don't quite work out, but it is in any case a beautiful piece, and an important part of his artistic development. Definitely one that anybody with the slightest interest in Cage should check out.

Nowth Upon Nacht (1984)

This one is bizarre. In fact, it's frankly hilarious. It's a very short (just over a minute) composition for voice and piano, though the piano is more of a percussion instrument here since it's played by simply slamming down the piano lid a few times. The lyrics consist of text from Joyce's Finnegans Wake and are half-sung half-screamed using high-pitched notes in an extremely dramatic, operatic manner. The oddness and the unrelenting shrillness of the piece are really quite comical.

It's difficult to know how to make sense of it, but it helps to note that it was written to be performed right after Cage's 1942 The Wonderful Widow of Eighteen Springs, another composition for voice and piano based on Finnegans Wake. I suppose it doesn't help that much, though. Besides the instrumentation and the lyrics the songs aren't much alike - Wonderful Widow is far calmer, with a fairly straight vocal performance and some light tapping on the piano. I imagine that Nowth Upon Nacht would be something of a shock coming right after it.

One minute of shrill vocals with a few loud bangs. Hardly one of Cage's best compositions, but I think it might take the title of the most incongruous composition of the latter half of his career (and probably all his career). I can't really place it with anything else he was doing during this time. It almost seems like it might have been something of a joke. It's definitely amusing.

Child of Tree (1975)

A solo piece for amplified plant materials, this is an extremely interesting and important composition, a pivotal moment in Cage's later artistic development. What's notable about it is that it allows the performer a massive degree of improvisation. As far as I know, all that's specified in the score are the instruments and time-lengths; within the time-lengths, the performer's job is simply to "clarify the time structure by means of the instruments" (johncage.org). How exactly the performer does this, the sounds and rhythms and so on that are used, is left entirely open.

The significance of this is that up until this point, Cage had been deeply averse to improvisation. It's easy to lump Cage in with improvisers; especially with regard to stuff like free jazz/free improvisation, it's easy to see it all as merely various kinds of chaotic noise. But in fact, Cage was worlds away from this genre. His resistance to improvisation had two sources. First, there was a purely practical worry: if you allow improvisation, people might just take that as a green light to mess around and do whatever they want in a totally undisclipined way. This is exactly what happened in an infamous 1964 performance of Atlas Eclipticalis, conducted by Leonard Bernstein, who allowed the orchestra to improvise (against Cage's wishes; there should be no improvisation in Atlas Eclipticalis). However, by the mid-70s, Cage was much more respected as a composer, so getting performers to take his music seriously was not such an issue.

The second source was a fundamental element of his aesthetic: his belief, inspired partially by the Zen idea of overcoming one's ego, that art should not be a form of communication or expression. For Cage, the artist should not try to express himself; art should not contain the voice or emotions of the artist, but should instead simply "imitate the operation of nature". But it's difficult to see how to make improvisation compatible with this. How could a person improvise without drawing on their personal tastes, memories, skills, and emotions? Improvisation always involves some sort of self-expression.

... or does it? Child of Tree was written for various amplified plant materials. Consider a plant. All plants, even plants of the same species, are different, and you can't become familiar with one - you can't learn how to play one - because if you practice on it too much, it will disintegrate. Hence, an improvisation on a plant simply can't be based on taste and memory, because you'll have little knowledge of how it sounds and you won't be able to develop a memory for it. Instead, the improvisation will involve discovery, exploration, and problem-solving. This is good. This is improvisation without ego. Some instruments are such that the problem of expression simply cannot arise, even during an improvisation.

In fact, I think that Cage was simply wrong about this. Listening to this recording of the piece by Simone Mancuso, it doesn't sound to me like there is no room for expression. Mancuso appears to know her way around these instruments perfectly well. In general, a skilled percussionist who has practised a little with various plants would probably have little difficulty expressing herself here. Still, whether or not we take Cage's expectations for the piece to be misguided, this marks the start of an increasing acceptance of improvisation, something that would become an important part of his work later work. He later developed the "time-bracket" technique to extend improvisation to all instruments; almost all of his Number Pieces use this to a significant degree. So Child of Tree is a real turning-point in his work.

What's more, it's a fascinating and beautiful composition simply on its own terms. What's immediately notable on actually listening to it is the instrumentation: amplified plant materials. This was in fact the first appearance of the famous amplified cactus. (What - amplified cacti aren't famous? well, they should be.) I love cacti in general; I have a lot of them and I've tried playing all of them (without amplification). The best species from what I've tried is echinocactus grusonii: they're big and round, which makes them fairly resonant; and since many of the spines do not touch each other, they can vibrate freely and hence produce clear notes that have a sort of watery "plop" sound. Where the spines do touch, the note is muted and becomes a percussive rattle or thud. It's actually kinda reminiscent of the prepared piano.

Cage doesn't specify a particular cactus, so you might not get those exact sounds. The performer does however use up to ten different kinds of plant materials, producing scrapes, shakes, rattles, thuds, notes, all sure to sound fairly unlike the instruments that are standardly used in Western music. The noises tend to have a watery, organic timbre to them. Being a solo performance, the arrangement is fairly sparse, but the wide variety of organic sounds calls to mind forests and nature. Particularly forests at night - whereas in the day, one might be surrounded by all sorts of noises, the sparseness and calmness of this piece gives it a nocturnal mood. Anyway, it's certainly one of the clearest examples of Cage drawing on the natural environment as a source of music. This wasn't the first time - Atlas Eclipticalis and the Etudes Australes, for example, were both composed using star charts. But nature became increasingly prominent in his later work, probably due to his readings of Henry David Thoreau, the 19th-century writer who lived alone in the woods for two years.

Child of Tree is absolutely essential for any fan of Cage's work. It heralds an acceptance of improvisation and a greater focus on ecology and natural phenomena. It also makes for a intriguing and beautiful listening experience, full of surprises and interesting sounds. Cage was wrong that the use of amplified plants would prevent expression. But he was right that they would lend a sense of discovery and exploration to the music. I'm not sure there was anything else quite like this at the time he wrote it. It's certainly a little bit silly (he's playing a cactus, for goodness' sake!), and it's fairly simple in its structure and execution - but it's also so much fun. I love this one.