Scholarly discussion of the music of John Cage.

[David P Miller <>]

Dear Tom -

Sounds like a wonderful project - and it's great that you have a receptive 
and inquisitive student ensemble. Since you already found my article, I 
won't cite it :-). I'll interpolate a couple of thoughts, though I realize 
you're really asking for responses from others.

On Mon, 25 Mar 2013, Tom Bickley wrote:

> Dear Silence Colleagues,
>
> I'm working on a realization of Cage's Variations Ii for our student new 
> music ensemble (Orchestre dB at California State University East Bay where 
> I'm on the faculty and sitting in as a guest with the ensemble). I've enjoyed 
> the various articles and chapters on Variations II, especially the ones 
> written by people I know from this list (wonderful work!). I've searched the 
> SILENCE archives, and found remarkably little on Variations II. I'm 
> interested in ideas/examples/etc. of your experiences in realizing Variations 
> II.
>
> Our ensemble will likely have 13 - 14 performers for the Spring Quarter, in a 
> fairly balanced mixture of woodwind, brass, strings and three pianists. The 
> students are marvelously open to this genre of experimental music, and I give 
> great thanks to my colleague Jeff Miller, who directs the ensemble, for 
> encouraging their engagement with a wide range of styles.
>
> David Miller does a great job of describing his method(s) of realizing this score (see Miller, 
> David P., 2003. "The shapes of indeterminacy: John Cage's Variations I and Variations 
> II." Frankfurter Zeitschrift F?r Musikwissenschaft 6, 18. RILM Abstracts of Music 
> Literature, EBSCOhost (accessed March 25, 2013)). James Pritchett similarly explains David 
> Tudor's approach. (Pritchett, James, (Author). 2004. "David Tudor as composer/performer in 
> Cage's Variations II." Leonardo Music Journal 14, 11. RILM Abstracts of Music Literature, 
> EBSCOhost (accessed March 25, 2013)).
>
> I'm particularly curious about the approach others have taken in developing 
> performances of Variations II for western musical instruments such as we have 
> in our ensemble.
>
> I'm also intrigued by the playful aspect of dealing with the lines and dots 
> on the transparencies. Presently I'm holding and dropping the lines one at a 
> time from about 15 inches above a sheet of letter-size paper (i.e., 8.5 x 11 
> in). I fix those in place temporarily, then drop the dots similarly. (I am a 
> bit puzzled by the benefit of dropping all five dots then measuring, vs 
> dropping one dot, measuring that, removing that dot, dropping a second, 
> measuring that and so on. I am working from the understanding that one dot = 
> one event.)

I doubt that there's any particular benefit to working with all dots at 
the same time, as compared with one at a time. I used all of the dots 
simultaneously, as I recall, and the illustration in my article shows 
this. But it probably doesn't matter - it saves a trivial amount of 
repetitive effort.

How is actually dropping the transparencies working for you? I didn't do 
that, because what with air resistance it seemed to me that the dot might 
just float away from the lines, or by contrast fall with a thud. I 
semi-closed my eyes and laid the dots on top of the lines with a hoped-for 
lack of intention. Nothing significant here either - just that the 
physical transparency material is a little hard to work with. For 
Variations VI, with a lot of tiny transparency pieces, it was hard to drop 
more than a couple at a time - they fell in clumps.

> I'll risk asking further questions: my inclination is to make a separate 
> realization for each performer: the disadvantage being the amount of work 
> involved; the advantage being greater variety of sonic textures. Any guidance 
> based in your experience?

I made a single score of events, and assigned the events to different 
performers. But I was working with a very heterogeneous collection of 
household objects, so an event-based score made sense. With 
instrumentalists, if you didn't make a separate score for each player, 
you'd need to distinguish the outcome in some way appropriate to each 
instrument, I'd think - so it might turn out to be something like an 
individual score anyway.

> I'm envisioning a duration of 11 minutes, and likely each performer having 6 events to 
> perform (which will include the complex events that emerge from the 
> "castings"). Our ensemble performs silence well, and my thought is that this 
> approach will allow opportunities for that silence.
>
> Thanks for your thoughts! Pax, -Tom
>
> ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
> Tom Bickley
>
>
> http://about.me/tombickley

If you should happen to have a video or recording available, please point 
us to it. I'd love to hear it.

Best wishes,

David M.
Jamaica Plain, Mass.