Scholarly discussion of the music of John Cage.

[Eric Theise <>]

Hey all,

Since Andrew mentioned Tania Caroline Chen's recording to kick off this thread I emailed her and Gino Robair in case they wanted to participate in the discussion of this piece. Gino generously responded with:

I’d like to respond to Rod’s comment, and if you don’t mind posting it to the list, I would very much appreciate it. I think the approach we took is unusual for this piece and the [silence] listers may enjoy hearing about it from our perspective:
 
In response to Rod’s last comment, one reason this piece is not played often (as far as I can tell) is because musicians trained in contemporary music performance are afraid that the work requires a particular (and unspoken or unacknowledged) approach to improvising with the “material”. (Improvisation was something that Cage spoke out against at times, but it was a practice that was no doubt a major part of the Cage/Tudor duo performance practice during the period that this piece was scribbled onto hotel stationery.)
 
It is clear to me that their artistic relationship was so highly attuned at that point that they both knew what the other wanted or could do, so very little had to be said/written down. And it allowed them a degree of freedom of real-time discovery during a concert from within the “frame”, if you will, of their particular “performance tradition” at that time.
 
So, in my mind, there are two ways to approach this piece (both of which are not necessarily mutually exclusive). The first is to take an historical approach and use only the technology available to Cage/Tudor at the time this was conceived; the second is to take a fully contemporary approach, technologically, while adhering to what the words in the score mean to us in the present day. It was the latter approach that we took for Tania Chen’s recording, although the final version of it was the result of a change in concept after the initial recording.
 
For example, the piece was recorded as three multitrack duos (Tania + Jon Leidecker, Tania + David Toop, Tania + Thurston Moore), but I suggested that it would be more in the spirit of Cage’s work if we were to overlap the three versions and use chance operations to determine which of the 20+ microphones would be turned on at any given point (and for how long). That gave rise to very interesting combinations and sounds (e.g. listening to an interior piano mic from Thurston’s duo (where you hear the guitar bleeding in) at the same time as, say, one channel of digitally processed piano from a different take).
 
Two additional things I want to mention. The first is that a limited-edition (not-for-sale) LP version of the piece was pressed, which we presented to the huge number of people (and libraries) who helped put on our concert at Pomona College (September 28, 2018). Because a stereo LP record cannot hold as much music as a CD, I used chance operations to create a new, shorter edit of the CD version. The LP is pressed on red vinyl and was manufactured through Omnivore Recordings (the label that released the CD) in coordination with the John Cage Trust. (Thank you, Laura!)
 
Second, Tania is planning a CD release of the duos as recorded (Tania + Jon, Tania + David, Tania + Thurston), without the overlapping/chance-chosen track combination. These provide a wholly different experience of her take on the work, primarily because you can hear the full-length approach to the piece by each duo.
I believe she is still ironing out the details of when (and through whom) that CD will be released.
 
Best regards,
Gino

 

On Fri, Aug 21, 2020 at 8:32 PM Rod Stasick <> wrote:

I have, I think, 4 or 5 recordings of this work.
What makes it a wonderful work, for me, is its
openness with semi-relations to other works like,
for example, Cartridge Music or the Variations series.
The dedication to Tudor seems apt considering that
the notes touch on various suggestions that Cage surely
felt that Tudor could realize the work in his own special way.

The electronic leaning of a work of the 60s like this was toward
feedback, but I think today’s performers have an enormous wealth
of possibilities with the relative ease of access as well to do justice to
a work like this. Fragments of the score do refer to 4-84 with specific
mentions of sound produced on keyboard (K), muted (M), and “P”
being pizzicato played with noises outside or inside the piano (O & I).
I seem to remember a reference to Atlas Eclipticalis too with the
possibilities of star chart transcriptions placed over the controls of
the sound rather than ways of directly notating sounds.

I think it’s not played often because most performers want to be told what to do.

Rod

http://stasick.org

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