Scholarly discussion of the music of John Cage.

[Matt Rogalsky <>]

On 2010-06-03, at 5:39 PM, Caleb Deupree wrote:

 If you're looking for a loose Cage connection, I'd suggest David Tudor's Rainforest. 

That's an interesting one. The title of the piece was inherited from Merce Cunningham's dance, already named at the time he commissioned the music from Tudor, and the original realization in 1968 as documented by DA Pennebaker was oscillator-drone-based and extremely minimal. Little sense of the title being programmatic at all. Over time, after dozens and dozens of performances, the piece seems to have become more and more populated with "creatures" however, and recordings from the early 70s with Tudor and Gordon Mumma performing are extremely lively and dynamic. All still electronic sound sources though. 

There is a letter to Tudor in 1970 from then-Cunningham Co manager Jean Rigg describing an "amusingly heated" debate among herself and company touring musicians Cage, Mumma and David Behrman over whether field recordings of an aviary should be employed in the piece. She recounts "it was finally agreed that the recordings were, to use David Behrman's tactful description, 'too literal'." (This letter is with the Tudor papers at the Getty Research Institute.)

I was just in London working for a couple of weeks with Rambert Dance Company musicians on a realization of Tudor's piece for their staging of Cunningham's dance, and it was a very interesting process. We had plenty of fun choosing and testing loudspeaker-objects and lots of discussion about what sounds might be appropriate for them. In the end, almost all sounds were electronically generated but if they were not, they were still post-processed in such a way that they sounded like they might have been. 

Tudor used field recordings of many kinds (animals, birds, insects, laboratory sonifications of neural activity) in his solo Rainforest 3 (1972) and then in the big group version Rainforest 4 (1973) sound sources of any origin were invited.

best

MattR

ps

Some review links below.

Rambert will be touring RainForest in the UK in the fall of 2010, with Robert Millet and John Bowers making the music.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/stage/2010/may/27/rambert-dance-company-review
http://entertainment.timesonline.co.uk/tol/arts_and_entertainment/stage/dance/article7137151.ece
http://www.ft.com/cms/s/2/83e52e44-68da-11df-910b-00144feab49a.html
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/culturecritics/sarahcrompton/5325126/Rambert-Dance-Sadlers-Wells-review.html
http://www.thisislondon.co.uk/theatre/review-23838492-carnival-mood-with-rambert.do
http://www.thestage.co.uk/reviews/review.php/28354/the-art-of-touch-rainforest-a-linha-curva
http://www.theartsdesk.com/index.php?option=com_k2&view=item&id=1572:davies-cunningham-galili-rambert-swt-review&Itemid=27
http://www.express.co.uk/posts/view/177311/Rambert-Dance-Company-Sadler-s-Wells-
http://www.musicomh.com/theatre/dance_rambert_0510.htm