Etudes Australes (1975)

The first piece from my randomized list of Cage works, and it's a big one! Both in terms of its length, which on the recording I have is a hefty 2 hours 50 minutes (though actually, this is one of the shorter recordings - Sabine Liebner's version clocks in at over 4 hours), and its relative fame/importance in Cage's work. It's also a piece that I've listened to quite a lot already, being a favourite of mine.

The Etudes Australes is one of Cage's many pieces for solo piano - or, more accurately, a "duet for two hands" - and was composed specifically for Grete Sultan. The version I'm listening to was played by Sultan herself, so is among the definitive recordings. Like a few other Cage pieces, the composition is notorious for being extraordinarily difficult to play. Honestly, this doesn't sound particularly difficult to me (but I'm no pianist). With something like, say, the Freeman Etudes, I can tell just from listening to it that it must take an enormous amount of skill to perform. Here, the playing seems too slow to be all that difficult. Perhaps part of the difficulty arises from having to play with each hand independently? (Even this aspect is not obvious to my ear - it doesn't sound like a duet.)

In any case, the point is that enjoying this doesn't have to be a matter of approaching it like some sort of Olympic event and simply admiring the talent of the player.

Cage's compositional process was particularly interesting here, as he generated indeterminacy by using star charts, as he did thirteen years previously on Atlas Eclipticalis. In a way, I find the solo piano to be more suited to star charts than almost any other instrument. When you hear piano notes, they are points of sound surrounded by silence, just as stars are points of light surrounded by darkness. With the Etudes Australes, I have a very strong impression that I'm "listening to the sky".

Aside from being a beautiful and somewhat humbling, even spiritual, experience in itself, this makes Cage's ideas much more tangible. We all appreciate the beauty of the night sky, and many of us can even appreciate the beauty of a simple star chart printed on paper. On the other hand, the vast majority of people find it almost impossible to comprehend how anybody could see the slightest bit of beauty in the music of John Cage. Yet, in these Etudes, he's only doing for our ears what the stars do for our eyes. Cage spent much of his career inviting us to simply, as he said, "let sounds be sounds", and I feel like this composition pointedly adds: "...just like you let stars be stars." If you can understand why somebody might find the night sky aesthetically beautiful, you're well on the way to understanding why people like me find Cage's music aesthetically beautiful.

Etudes Australes is one of Cage's finest compositions - grand, majestic... yet also low-key and austere. Much like the night sky, I suppose.