Scholarly discussion of the music of John Cage.

[SEM Ensemble <>]

World Premieres:

Christian Wolff & Petr Kotik

Recently discovered in Petr Kotik’s archive –

American Premiere:

For 6 or 7 Players by Christian Wolff

Plus Morton Feldman and J. S. Bach

The Orchestra of the S.E.M. Ensemble
Petr Kotik, Conductor

December 21, 2010 at 8 pm
Paula Cooper Gallery
534 West 21st Street, New York

Christian Wolff – For 6 or 7 Players (Music for Merce Cunningham) (1958) American Premiere
Morton Feldman – Why Patterns? (1978)
Christian Wolff – Small Preludes (2009-10) World Premiere
J. S. Bach – Ricercata a 6 Voci from a Musical Offering (1747)
Petr Kotik – String Quartet No. 1 – Erinnerungen an Jan (2007-10) World Premiere (final version)

Tickets: $15 / $10
Ticket reservations & information , or 718/488-7659
http://www.SEMEnsemble.org/

Preview of the program
Sunday, December 19, at 8:30PM
26 Willow Place, Brooklyn Heights
(free of charge, RSVP requested)

Christian Wolff – For 6 or 7 Players

In 1964, during rehearsals with John Cage in Warsaw for the performance with the Merce Cunningham Dance Co. at the Warsaw Autumn festival, Cage brought a piece by Christian Wolff: For 6 or 7 Players (Music for Merce Cunningham). The piece was hand-copied by Cage, bearing his typical manuscript signature. The musicians were the Czech ensemble from Prague, Musica viva pragensis, which I founded few years back. Cage intended to perform the piece few days later, but it proved to be far too complicated to be ready in one or two rehearsals, so he gave up on the idea and left the material – the score and parts – with me. Going through my music archive last summer, I discovered the material and decided to perform the piece. Christian Wolff and I met to go through the score to resolve a few questions, and the performances are result of this effort.

—Petr Kotik

Christian Wolff composed For 6 or 7 Players in 1958, while serving in the United States Army. He mailed the manuscript to John Cage, not actually retaining a copy for himself. Cage regarded some of the aspects of the manuscript impractical and took it on himself to create a new version, painstakingly re-notating the piece into an exact score with parts. Despite his effort, the resulting score is far from simple to understand

For 6 or 7 Players has also been called “Music for Merce Cunningham,” and was originally written for the Cunningham dance “Rune.” The dance keeps coming back in [Cunningham’s] repertoire, but using other music of mine (For 6 or 7 Players has been too complicated to produce). The instrumentation is trumpet, trombone, piano, violin, viola, double bass and optional flute (hence 6 or 7). The duration is about 23 minutes, but that could have been tied to the duration of “Rune.” It can be shortened in a concert performance.

—Christian Wolff

Christian Wolff – Small Preludes

Originally composed for piano in 2009, Small Preludes (No. 1 – 9) have been adapted for an ensemble identical to For 6 or 7 Players. As usual, an adaptation is not just a straight instrumentation, but many different musical aspects enter into the equation, resulting in a new piece of music altogether. The piece uses many procedures typical of Wolff’s music, such as collaborative ensemble playing and ambiguity of clefs. As in For 6 or 7 Players, the flute’s participation is sparse and performed here by the conductor, who happens to a flute player as well. 

Morton Feldman – Why Patterns?

In the mid-70s, Feldman became the director of the Center of the Creative and Performing Arts and started to perform with the Creative Associates himself. He composed Why Patterns? in 1978 for the Center’s European tour. There, Feldman performed the piano part with the flutist Eberhard Blum and the percussionist Jan Williams. Feldman continued to compose for this ensemble (flute, percussion and piano), also composing Crippled Symmetry (1983) and For Philip Guston (1984). His student, the composer and pianist Nils Vigeland, performed the later works. Why Patterns? is written as an uncoordinated score, a technique typical for Feldman’s early music, especially from the 1950s. Musicians start together, but proceed independently. The scores of the two later trios are exactly notated and coordinated.

Petr Kotik – String Quartet No. 1 – Erinnerungen An Jan

String Quartet No. 1 – Erinnerungen an Jan was composed in autumn of 2007 and premiered in its first version by members of the S.E.M. Ensemble in December, 2007. Further changes and additional music was composed in January/February 2009 and in November, 2010, to be ready for a performance at Paula Cooper Gallery on December 21.

J. S. Bach – Ricercata A 6 Voci from A Musical Offering

J.S. Bach’s Ricercata a 6 Voci  from a Musical Offering will be performed as an example of an early avant-garde composition (Bach’s music only started to be appreciated by wider audiences 100 years after his death). The complexity of the 6-voice fugue from A Musical Offering rivals works by such contemporaries as Ligeti or Xenakis.