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.
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