For Paul Taylor and Anita Dencks (1957)

For Paul Taylor and Anita Dencks is a minor, three-minute piece for solo piano. In fact, from the sounds alone, you'd probably never be able to tell that a piano is involved. Two of the sounds are produced by using the interior of the piano, rather than the keys; the other two sounds are "auxiliary sounds" - that is, they are produced elsewhere, so have nothing to do with the piano.

You might have noticed from that description that we have a grand total of four sounds. Obviously, then, this piece is extremely minimal, especially since each sound appears only once. Here's what happens:

- At 0'12", a very quiet, very short (about half a second) snippet of what sounds like white noise;
- from 0'24" to 0'33", a rather loud, high-pitched drone;
- from 0'59" to 1'12", a quiet, rapid tapping noise;
- at 1'02", a quiet, short (about a second) groaning/creaking sound.

This is followed by slightly over two minutes of complete silence.

It's difficult to know what to make of this piece. It's so brief and sparse that it feels more like an experiment than a serious composition. But at the time it was written, Cage had been using chance operations and "non-musical" sounds for years; he didn't really any experimenting left to do with them. Certainly, this doesn't push any musical boundaries that he hadn't already demolished.

A couple of things did catch my eye on this piece's entry on johncage.org: it notes that the first two sounds are "produced somewhere between 0'36" and 1'00""; the next two "between 1'24" and 1'36"." First, as you can see from my description, none of the sounds in the recording I have occur during those times. Would Schleiermacher make such an elementary mistake as playing the sounds at a completely wrong time? Second, and more interestingly, was this piece an early use of Cage's time-bracket technique? (The time-bracket technique is explained here; I might talk more about it when I come to one of the Number Pieces.) If so, perhaps it would be of some historical interest.

Overall, rather baffling and not especially interesting to listen to.