HPSCHD (1969)

This was composed with Lejaren Hiller, a composer famous (well, maybe not so famous, but known among those who are into modern classical) for his work in computer music. Unfortunately I haven't heard much else by Hiller - just a few pieces on youtube, but I enjoyed them all, and I can see why he'd be a good match for Cage given his experimental approach to composition ("experimental" both in the sense that his music is very weird, and in the literal sense of doing experiments with new ways of producing sound).

It's worth noting that the original performance of HPSCHD involved a whole load of visual material as well; plus, it was spread out over a wide space so that the audience could hear and see different things as they walked around. Obviously, all of these elements are unfortunately lost in this recording. Still, perhaps this isn't such a bad thing, since the music alone provides more than enough to digest. HPSCHD is complete chaos. It's one of Cage's most noisy, complex, and abrasive works.

As far as I can tell, there are two basic types of music used here. The first thing we hear is the computer music. This consists of lots of atonal beeps and bloops, many of them with a scratchy timbre so it sounds rather like a primitive synthesizer. I find it reminiscent of Lou Reed's Metal Machine Music, though it's slower, less loud, and less industrial.

After about 10 seconds or so, a completely generic classical piece starts playing, possibly Mozart or something along those lines (Cage used a number of classical pieces in this, Mozart included), played on a harpsichord (hence HPSCHD). Classical harpsichord music continues throughout. Not much of it is particularly interesting in itself. It's all the sort of classical music that sounds familiar but that you can't place - the kind of thing you imagine being played on a film or TV show when the soundtrack calls for some generic classical. At first, the juxtaposition of this with the atonal computer music is kinda jarring and actually somewhat amusing. It's perhaps because this first piece has a jolly, carefree mood, as though it's blissfully oblivious to, or just doesn't give a shit about, all the terrible noise happening all around it. But ultimately, I think all the music meshes together well. As the piece continues, you soon become accustomed to the odd musical combinations; and it helps that the harpsichord has a very metallic, machine-like timbre, making a good complement to the computer music.

It would be interesting to hear the computer music on its own. Here, it functions more as a background to the harpsichord pieces. There's generally more than one harpsichord piece playing at once - and obviously there is no attempt to merge them together in any coherent way, just or two or three or however many tracks played simultaneously. Hence the complete chaos I mentioned earlier. In this context, all those uninteresting classical pieces becomes very interesting indeed. I love HPSCHD. It's a glorious, messy collision of future and past, with its odd clash of computerized sounds and generic classical melodies.