Eight (1991)

For four woodwinds and four brass, and one of the longer Number Pieces at a few seconds short of an hour.

The standard form for a Number Piece like this is: lots of long, droney notes played very quietly, with a few short, loud bursts scattered among them. Here, the dynamics are far more varied, with a number of loud long notes and quiet short notes, and a number of notes that start quiet then grow very loud and vice versa. There are plenty of silences too - or at least there seem to be; since there are so many loud notes I had to listen to it at a low volume so may have missed some of the music. But certainly, in this more than perhaps any other Number Piece, the dynamics really come to the forefront. Hence, despite the long length and slow pace, there is nothing ambient about this; it absolutely demands attention.

Presumably, this was yet another Number Piece where Cage used exaggerated imperfections of tuning to create a microtonal feel. Indeed, there are even quite a few times when the music seemed to produce binaural beats - these are an illusion of rapid pulsing sounds created by playing two tones of slightly different frequencies in each ear. It would happen if two instruments play, say, an A, but they are tuned slightly differently. That the piece uses only winds with similar timbres probably makes the effect more noticeable.

I adore the longer Number Pieces because they really allow you to get lost in their gradually evolving landscapes. In this case, the variety of dynamics, the more equal use of both long and short notes, and the interesting note relationships make for a very diverse and intriguing vista (despite the more uniform timbres).