There are a couple of interesting points about this piece. First, it's an important milestone in Cage's work as, supposedly, it's his first use of time-bracket notation. I say "supposedly" because I'm unclear what those timings were in For Paul Taylor and Anita Dencks if not time brackets. But I've read in a few places that time brackets proper started here.
With the use of time-brackets, it's immediately tempting to connect this to the Number Pieces. Personally, I would be wary of that temptation. I'm not sure there's all that much continuity between this and the Number Pieces. You can see an important difference in the title alone. Thirty pieces. Five orchestras. Whereas the main feature of most Number Pieces, even the ones involving large numbers of musicians, is simplicity and stillness, the focus here is on multiplicity, complexity, extravagance. This is as related to something like HPSCHD as it is to the Number Pieces (in both cases, not much).
Another notable difference is its use of repetition. In almost all the pieces, there is at least one instrument repeating a single note. None of these seem to be following any particular rhythm. It reminds me a little of Hymnkus, though the music here feels much more organic, and because of the short length of each piece (there are thirty pieces in about thirty minutes), none of them have a chance to develop gradually like Hymnkus does. Just as you're feeling tempted to describe it as "minimalist", the music is cut short and some new part starts. Again, Cage's focus here seems to be multiplicity. Cram in as much as possible. Quantity creates quality. Don't be afraid of waste. (I should note that Cage crams in plenty of silence and quiet parts, too. This is not nearly as loud and chaotic as HPSCHD.)
Second, I think, though I may be wrong about this, that this was also the first time Cage derived his compositional method from his visual art, here the series of paintings On the Surface. I'm not sure if I've ever seen On the Surface. I have a few collections on Cage's visual art, but not on me where I am right now; and I couldn't find anything on a brief search on Google. So I can't say whether the music feels similar to the artwork.
Nevertheless there is something more generally interesting to note about the use of paintings here. Visual art is, of course, a medium that necessarily exists in space; music, on the other hand, is generally seen as being an art of time rather than space. Cage felt that any strict division here would be a mistake. Granted, time is essential to music; but space need not be neglected. Indeed, it's impossible to neglect space entirely: where the musicians are placed, where you are in relation to them, what kinds of room is used, etc, will make a difference to the sounds you experience no matter what composition is being played. Even so, very few composers have shown much concern with space. Questions such as "where to place the musicians?", "what kind of room should this be performed?" are not traditionally ones with which composers have concerned themselves. Cage, however, was deeply concerned with space, especially during his later career. He tried to erode the boundaries between time-art and space-art. And I think that his use of paintings in his music composition was very much an expression of this concern.
(Re space and music in general: here's an interesting talk by David Byrne about the significant influence that venue - space - has on music. Cage's interest in space had some justification.)
Importantly, the use of space extends to the music itself. The five orchestras are placed apart from each other and arranged in a pentagon around the audience. Unfortunately, I can't really comment on this aspect of the piece, as it's obviously impossible to preserve it in a recording. It's one of the things that makes being a fan of Cage somewhat frustrating. Much of his work is not really suited to recordings (which is one of the main reasons why Cage himself was fairly hostile to recordings). I will probably never hear anything more than a cheap imitation of Thirty Pieces for Five Orchestras.
Tuesday 28 October 2014
Tuesday 21 October 2014
One10 (1992)
This makes an interesting contrast to the piece I heard last time, the Freeman Etudes. Like those Etudes, One10 is for solo violin. Beyond this, the pieces could not be more different. The Freeman Etudes is a composition of extraordinary complexity, which jumps rapidly across the whole field of possible notes. One10 is a late Number Piece, and - well, you probably know the drill by now: it's extremely minimal, consisting simply of long drones separated by silences, played in a uniform way without vibrato, without plucking, without any other extended techniques. It's 24 minutes long and contains maybe 40-something notes overall.
I must say that listening to this is a thoroughly refreshing experience after 100 minutes of the Freeman Etudes! Maybe this is the best way to appreciate Cage's more extreme Number Pieces. But what's notable about it is that it shows Cage's skill as a composer, particularly his ability to use chance as a tool for achieving all sorts of different ends. When listening to Cage, it's important to remember that though chance is an important part of his aesthetic, it is only one part. Chance is Cage's way of removing his own voice and emotions. It's what allows him to explore and discover. But that doesn't mean he has no destination in mind: he reaches a determinate place in an unpredictable way. This fact is really brought home when listening to radically different pieces like the Freeman Etudes and One10: the different ideas they embody, and the different sounds that we hear.
Turning to the sounds in question, it is definitely sound that is the focus here. The drones are very long, so silence has a fairly minor role, unlike with most of the other Ones and Twos. Interestingly, the drones often don't seem so much like a violin. I believe that most of it was played on harmonics, resulting in lots of high-pitched, screeching notes, occasionally quite reminiscent of whistling wind. At first, the mood seems agitated, tense - certainly, the drones are too harsh to be ambient, so it demands attention, forcing us to focus on the tiniest variations in the sound. And as the piece continues, without building up or going anywhere, without piling on more tension or releasing it, you soon come to accept the sounds as they are. I don't really know of any listening experience quite like this (well, aside from a few other Number Pieces). But I love it.
I must say that listening to this is a thoroughly refreshing experience after 100 minutes of the Freeman Etudes! Maybe this is the best way to appreciate Cage's more extreme Number Pieces. But what's notable about it is that it shows Cage's skill as a composer, particularly his ability to use chance as a tool for achieving all sorts of different ends. When listening to Cage, it's important to remember that though chance is an important part of his aesthetic, it is only one part. Chance is Cage's way of removing his own voice and emotions. It's what allows him to explore and discover. But that doesn't mean he has no destination in mind: he reaches a determinate place in an unpredictable way. This fact is really brought home when listening to radically different pieces like the Freeman Etudes and One10: the different ideas they embody, and the different sounds that we hear.
Turning to the sounds in question, it is definitely sound that is the focus here. The drones are very long, so silence has a fairly minor role, unlike with most of the other Ones and Twos. Interestingly, the drones often don't seem so much like a violin. I believe that most of it was played on harmonics, resulting in lots of high-pitched, screeching notes, occasionally quite reminiscent of whistling wind. At first, the mood seems agitated, tense - certainly, the drones are too harsh to be ambient, so it demands attention, forcing us to focus on the tiniest variations in the sound. And as the piece continues, without building up or going anywhere, without piling on more tension or releasing it, you soon come to accept the sounds as they are. I don't really know of any listening experience quite like this (well, aside from a few other Number Pieces). But I love it.
Tuesday 14 October 2014
Freeman Etudes (1980/1990)
The Freeman Etudes for solo violin is one of Cage's most notorious compositions: a contender for his most devilishly difficult to perform, and this from a composer notable for his many devilishly difficult pieces. The dates he wrote it tell part of the story. Cage originally began this in the late 70s for Paul Zukofsky. As far as I understand it, Cage's basic method was that after writing a note, he would ask Zukofsky what notes (and with what playing styles) it would be possible to perform right away after it, then used chance operations to determine which of those notes would be next. The piece is written with extreme precision. For each note, Cage determines exactly the duration, the amplitude, the position of the bow on the string, the style of bowing (or fingering); slight microtonal variations in pitch, etc; and since all of these are determined for each note, all of these properties can change from note to note. Worse, it is to be played extremely fast.
Cage completed books 1 and 2, comprising etudes I-XVI, in 1980. But even Paul Zukofsky, an extremely skilled violinist, was complaining that the pieces were in some cases simply impossible to perform. Rather than compromise his vision for the composition and find a way to make it a little easier, Cage simply gave up the project.
Until, that is, he met Irvine Arditti, who not only could perform the first two books, but played them even faster than Cage had directed. This inspired Cage to return to the Etudes, completing books 3 and 4, etudes XVII-XXXII, in 1990. So thankfully we have a full set, but that hiatus is certainly telling. As far as I know, there is no other case of Cage writing a composition that even he concedes is too difficult to perform (and as I noted, he has plenty of very difficult compositions).
Anyway, I'm listening to the recordings by mode records, with Arditti on violin. There's probably nobody else in the world who can play this as well as Arditti. It's not that we lack skilled violinists, but there aren't many of them who are willing to spend years obsessively practising a composition that sounds more like a squeaky door than violin music. This point also brings me to the difficulties that confront any potential listeners. I'm not joking about this sounding like a squeaky door; and even with with Arditti's speedy playing, we still have about 100 minutes of this stuff.
Listening to it carefully, what immediately struck me was, unsurprisingly, its extreme complexity. This stands out from Cage's other impossible compositions in being so obviously impossible. For example, take the Etudes Australes for piano, which I reviewed in my first review on this blog. As I mentioned in that review, just listening to the Etudes Australes, it doesn't sound particularly difficult. Of course, I'm no pianist, so what would I know about that? But with the Freeman Etudes, though I'm no violinist either, it's immediately obvious that this must be an absolute bastard to play. And this, of course, was Cage's point. The Freeman Etudes, for Cage, has an important political message: in the face of an apparently impossible world situation, this composition demonstrates the possibility of the apparently impossible.
Fair enough, but that idea is communicated as well in twenty seconds as in 100 minutes. The impression I have listening to the whole thing is not so much an inspiring political message; it's more like watching an Olympic event. And the mere fact that it requires so much virtuosity is a novelty that sustains interest only for so long.
It doesn't help that really, once you've heard one etude, you've heard them all. Despite the complexity of these pieces, they end up seeming very uniform. None of them develop or go anywhere, and there's no variation in arrangement; it's just an onslaught of completely unrelated notes. The wonderful free improv guitarist Derek Bailey once described his style as "playing without a memory". What Bailey meant was "playing without a memory of previous musical traditions*. But we could interpret that phrase to mean "playing without a memory of the other notes I have just played". This is the impression conveyed by the Freeman Etudes. Each sound connects to no past, and points to no future. Eventually, it all just becomes a fuzzy mass of scrapes and squeaks (there's not even any variation in length of the etudes, all being about three minutes). Consider changing patterns of static on a television screen: there is little to differentiate one from another.
What's sad, given the difficulty of performing this, is that I'm guessing that the response 99% of people would have to it is simply: look disgusted and say "my 3-year-old kid could play better than that!" Of course, that's a really stupid criticism. But it does hint at something important. This piece could be far easier, and the experience for the listener would not be much different. (That's not to say, of course, that you can't tell how difficult this is. Just that similar overall sounds and similar complexity could be produced far more easily.)
The above comments probably make me come across as much more negative about this piece than I actually feel. Don't get me wrong; I just wonder about Cage's intentions for the piece. In fact, I absolutely love the Freeman Etudes. Bear in mind, however, that if you gave your 3-year-old kid a violin and recorded whatever sounds they bashed out, I'd probably love that too.
Cage completed books 1 and 2, comprising etudes I-XVI, in 1980. But even Paul Zukofsky, an extremely skilled violinist, was complaining that the pieces were in some cases simply impossible to perform. Rather than compromise his vision for the composition and find a way to make it a little easier, Cage simply gave up the project.
Until, that is, he met Irvine Arditti, who not only could perform the first two books, but played them even faster than Cage had directed. This inspired Cage to return to the Etudes, completing books 3 and 4, etudes XVII-XXXII, in 1990. So thankfully we have a full set, but that hiatus is certainly telling. As far as I know, there is no other case of Cage writing a composition that even he concedes is too difficult to perform (and as I noted, he has plenty of very difficult compositions).
Anyway, I'm listening to the recordings by mode records, with Arditti on violin. There's probably nobody else in the world who can play this as well as Arditti. It's not that we lack skilled violinists, but there aren't many of them who are willing to spend years obsessively practising a composition that sounds more like a squeaky door than violin music. This point also brings me to the difficulties that confront any potential listeners. I'm not joking about this sounding like a squeaky door; and even with with Arditti's speedy playing, we still have about 100 minutes of this stuff.
Listening to it carefully, what immediately struck me was, unsurprisingly, its extreme complexity. This stands out from Cage's other impossible compositions in being so obviously impossible. For example, take the Etudes Australes for piano, which I reviewed in my first review on this blog. As I mentioned in that review, just listening to the Etudes Australes, it doesn't sound particularly difficult. Of course, I'm no pianist, so what would I know about that? But with the Freeman Etudes, though I'm no violinist either, it's immediately obvious that this must be an absolute bastard to play. And this, of course, was Cage's point. The Freeman Etudes, for Cage, has an important political message: in the face of an apparently impossible world situation, this composition demonstrates the possibility of the apparently impossible.
Fair enough, but that idea is communicated as well in twenty seconds as in 100 minutes. The impression I have listening to the whole thing is not so much an inspiring political message; it's more like watching an Olympic event. And the mere fact that it requires so much virtuosity is a novelty that sustains interest only for so long.
It doesn't help that really, once you've heard one etude, you've heard them all. Despite the complexity of these pieces, they end up seeming very uniform. None of them develop or go anywhere, and there's no variation in arrangement; it's just an onslaught of completely unrelated notes. The wonderful free improv guitarist Derek Bailey once described his style as "playing without a memory". What Bailey meant was "playing without a memory of previous musical traditions*. But we could interpret that phrase to mean "playing without a memory of the other notes I have just played". This is the impression conveyed by the Freeman Etudes. Each sound connects to no past, and points to no future. Eventually, it all just becomes a fuzzy mass of scrapes and squeaks (there's not even any variation in length of the etudes, all being about three minutes). Consider changing patterns of static on a television screen: there is little to differentiate one from another.
What's sad, given the difficulty of performing this, is that I'm guessing that the response 99% of people would have to it is simply: look disgusted and say "my 3-year-old kid could play better than that!" Of course, that's a really stupid criticism. But it does hint at something important. This piece could be far easier, and the experience for the listener would not be much different. (That's not to say, of course, that you can't tell how difficult this is. Just that similar overall sounds and similar complexity could be produced far more easily.)
The above comments probably make me come across as much more negative about this piece than I actually feel. Don't get me wrong; I just wonder about Cage's intentions for the piece. In fact, I absolutely love the Freeman Etudes. Bear in mind, however, that if you gave your 3-year-old kid a violin and recorded whatever sounds they bashed out, I'd probably love that too.
Tuesday 7 October 2014
Two6 (1992)
A twenty-minute Number Piece for piano and violin; as you can probably guess, its most distinctive features are its slow pace and minimal arrangement.
It does however have a few distinctive features. Notably, some of the piano parts are derived from Cage's piece Extended Lullaby (1991), which itself is one Cage's Satie pieces, derived from Satie's Vexations. Unfortunately I've never heard Extended Lullaby. But the parts excerpted here clearly show the strong Satie influence: consonant, delicate, meandering melodies. The rest of the piano parts, penned by Cage, are just ascending scales. Again, they're consonant, and played softly, so merge well with the Extended Lullaby excerpts (indeed, without careful listening, it probably won't be obvious which parts are derived from Satie and which aren't). They do stand out in a way, though, since a simple move up a scale leaves you with the distinct impression that the music is going somewhere; in contrast to the meandering mood of the piece overall.
At first, for about two minutes, the violin plays a high-pitch, airy drone - it's more reminiscent of whistling wind than a violin, very atmospheric, and makes for an interesting contrast with the piano. It would have been cool if this kind of thing had gone on longer. After this, however, the violin becomes relatively active. Passages contain a number of notes, that get higher and lower and higher and lower in a narrow pitch range, like the kind of style used in Ten, and as in that piece, the music here evokes a rocking motion (imagine a person saying "ee-oo-ee-oo-ee-oo"; that's sort of what it sounds like). The mood of these parts is surprisingly plaintive. Maybe it's something about the particular timbre of the violin combined with that kind of playing, but the result definitely seems more emotive than usual for Cage. Anyway, these passages alternate with the quiet drones (though unfortunately, the lovely wind-like sound of the first drone never makes another appearance).
So this is Two in two ways: two instruments, the piano and violin; and each instrument plays two kinds of things: the piano alternates between Satie and Cage, the violin, between quiet drones and more active, emotive parts. Very interesting listening, and often very beautiful. (When I listened to this yesterday, I wasn't quite so keen on it. The violin and piano seemed kinda incongruous, they didn't fit together well. I think I felt that the sad mood of the violin clashed with the extreme tranquility of the piano. And indeed I still think that they seem incongruous. But that tension between the two moods has very much grown on me. There's a famous Zen story that Cage liked to tell about a monk who achieves Enlightenment and, when he's asked how it feels, responds: "I'm just as miserable as ever." This piece, with its contradictory moods, reminds me of that.)
It does however have a few distinctive features. Notably, some of the piano parts are derived from Cage's piece Extended Lullaby (1991), which itself is one Cage's Satie pieces, derived from Satie's Vexations. Unfortunately I've never heard Extended Lullaby. But the parts excerpted here clearly show the strong Satie influence: consonant, delicate, meandering melodies. The rest of the piano parts, penned by Cage, are just ascending scales. Again, they're consonant, and played softly, so merge well with the Extended Lullaby excerpts (indeed, without careful listening, it probably won't be obvious which parts are derived from Satie and which aren't). They do stand out in a way, though, since a simple move up a scale leaves you with the distinct impression that the music is going somewhere; in contrast to the meandering mood of the piece overall.
At first, for about two minutes, the violin plays a high-pitch, airy drone - it's more reminiscent of whistling wind than a violin, very atmospheric, and makes for an interesting contrast with the piano. It would have been cool if this kind of thing had gone on longer. After this, however, the violin becomes relatively active. Passages contain a number of notes, that get higher and lower and higher and lower in a narrow pitch range, like the kind of style used in Ten, and as in that piece, the music here evokes a rocking motion (imagine a person saying "ee-oo-ee-oo-ee-oo"; that's sort of what it sounds like). The mood of these parts is surprisingly plaintive. Maybe it's something about the particular timbre of the violin combined with that kind of playing, but the result definitely seems more emotive than usual for Cage. Anyway, these passages alternate with the quiet drones (though unfortunately, the lovely wind-like sound of the first drone never makes another appearance).
So this is Two in two ways: two instruments, the piano and violin; and each instrument plays two kinds of things: the piano alternates between Satie and Cage, the violin, between quiet drones and more active, emotive parts. Very interesting listening, and often very beautiful. (When I listened to this yesterday, I wasn't quite so keen on it. The violin and piano seemed kinda incongruous, they didn't fit together well. I think I felt that the sad mood of the violin clashed with the extreme tranquility of the piano. And indeed I still think that they seem incongruous. But that tension between the two moods has very much grown on me. There's a famous Zen story that Cage liked to tell about a monk who achieves Enlightenment and, when he's asked how it feels, responds: "I'm just as miserable as ever." This piece, with its contradictory moods, reminds me of that.)
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