John Cage Marathon: Part I Program Notes

1. Collection/Song Title: Amores

   Performers:

   1. Stephen Drury
   2. Gunnar Folsom
   3. Matthew Kocmieroski
   4. Rob Tucker

   Amores (1943) consists of two solos for prepared piano, with the addition of two trios for percussion. The piano preparation is not elaborate. Nine screws, eight bolts, two nuts, and three strips of rubber, acting as mutes, were placed between the strings pertaining to eighteen keys. Upon this instrument an attempt was made to express in combination the erotic and the tranquil, two of the permanent emotions of Indian tradition. The second solo is written in the rhythmic structure 3, 3, 2, 2.

   The first trio is written in the rhythmic structure 10 times 10. The second employs fixed rhythmic patterns which are never subjected to variation; it was written several years earlier, being also a part of the 1936 Trio. —John Cage

   A note from Cage’s preface to the score of Amores: composer note: The total desired result has been achieved if, on completion of the preparation, one may play the pertinent keys without sensing that one is playing a piano or even a “prepared piano.” An instrument having convincingly its own special characteristics, not even suggesting those of a piano, must be the result. —John Cage

2. Collection/Song Title: Three

   Performers:

   1. Gunnar Folsom
   2. Matthew Kocmieroski
   3. Rob Tucker

   Three, written in 1991, is one of a large series of number-titled works that Cage began in the late 1980s. There are nearly fifty such works, which make up the vast majority of his musical output during his last few years. These works are for a wide variety of resources from soloist to 108-piece orchestra. There are traits common to most of them. The pieces are without score; that is, there is no predetermined coordination. Each player is free to choose the beginning and ending of each event within the limitations given. The material is generally presented as single notes or short phrases (or in the case of percussion, number of sounds, sometimes with the instrument(s) variously suggested and sometimes not) that are to be played within flexible time frames. That is, a sound or phrase may be begun anywhere between 0’15” and 1’ and end anywhere between 1’10” and 1’50”. Sometimes these time brackets overlap, whereby a player must solve the issue of the overlap by planning in advance or using techniques that allow for this, such as adding a second pitch while the first is sounding and so forth. Dynamics are generally low, with exceptions, some of which can only be plotted out through rehearsal and getting to know the piece. Sounds are often wisped or brushed in, avoiding a definite attack to the tone, and the later pieces more and more explore small pitch ranges, becoming increasingly microtonal. The pieces vary widely in length: Six for percussion lasts 3 minutes; Four for percussion lasts 72 minutes, the length of a CD. The titles have a written-out number which equals the number of players used, and if there is more than one piece with such a number, a second, Arabic numeral is used. Thus Three is for three players and is the second such piece written for three players. The flexible method of these pieces, as usual with Cage a blend of freedom and self-imposed restraint, allows for its use in a broad variety of situations and explorations. As well, Cage was able to use this formal device in a flurry of compositional activity, with over twenty such pieces composed in his last year. —Matthew Kocmieroski

3. Collection/Song Title: Cheap Imitation

   Performers:

   1. Stephen Drury

   Cheap Imitation (1969), like The Seasons, was written for a dance by Merce Cunningham, but it has a more convoluted history. After many years of Cage’s gentle urging, Cunningham created a dance to the music of Erik Satie’s “symphonic drama” Socrate. Satie’s cryptic comment best describes his own composition: “How white it is! No painting ornaments it; it is all of a piece.” In three movements, Satie’s music creates a portrait of the most famous of Western philosophers, using as text selected fragments of Plato, including (the final movement) the famous death scene.

   The original plan, to use Cage’s transcription of Socrate for two pianos, was thwarted when, at nearly the last minute, the French publisher of Socrate refused to grant permission for the performance. Since the invention of the prepared piano, Cage had responded to difficult compositional problems with true Yankee ingenuity, discovering creative and unorthodox solutions. (Perhaps this is why his teacher, Arnold Schoenberg, once referred to Cage as “not a composer, but an inventor—of genius.”) Taking the rhythm of Satie’s vocal lines as a basis (and occasionally using the rhythm of the orchestral accompaniment as well), Cage created new melodic shapes which, through the use of chance operations, deconstructed, distorted, refracted, and reassembled in an almost Cubist fashion Satie’s music. (Cage had by this time been using chance operations for many years as a compositional tool to free his music from expressing the intention or will of the composer.) The result was a single line in three movements, rhythmically identical to the original Socrate, which could then be used to accompany Cunningham’s unaltered choreography. The wandering melodic line of Cheap Imitation, while remaining absolutely true to the spirit of the original Socrate (which Satie himself called “an act of piety, an artist’s dream, a humble homage”) locates itself firmly within Cage’s aesthetic on nonintention. This newly discovered technique of imitation was to prove fruitful for the composer, to be employed in the Song Books and modified for compositions such as Apartment House 1776 and the Chorals for solo violin. —Stephen Drury

4. INTERMISSION

5. Collection/Song Title: The Seasons

   Performers:

   1. Stephen Drury

   The Seasons (1947) was originally composed to accompany the choreography of Merce Cunningham. It was created for the New York City Ballet in 1947 and featured the Ballet Society dancers with Cunningham as soloist, and costume and set design by Isamu Noguchi. The piece was first completed for piano, and then an orchestral arrangement followed. (The orchestration was made with the help of Lou Harrison and Virgil Thomson.) The piece reflects Cage’s interest in Indian aesthetics. In Hindu philosophy time is viewed as cyclical, and this is reflected in the cycle of the four seasons: Winter as quiescence, Spring as creation, Summer as preservation, and Fall as destruction. The Seasons consists of nine movements. The four distinct seasons are each preceded by a prelude, and the piece concludes by repeating the opening prelude to Winter. Cage employs the use of rhythmic structures, a procedure that he had focused on throughout the 1940s. This work’s overall rhythmic structure—2, 2, 1, 3, 2, 4, 1, 3, 1—is manifested in various ways within the piece, including in the relative lengths of each of the nine movements. In addition, he selects a gamut of sound aggregates as the preliminary phase of composition and occupies himself with placing these into an order within the predetermined rhythmic structure, a procedure he would investigate further in String Quartet in Four Parts, Concerto for Prepared Piano and Chamber Orchestra, and Sixteen Dances. —Jarrad Powell

6. Collection/Song Title: Ryoanji

   Performers:

   1. Stuart Dempster
   2. Jessika Kenney
   3. Matthew Kocmieroski
   4. Paul Taub

   Ryoanji (1983–1985) is named after the famous Zen garden in Kyoto, Japan, consisting of raked sand in which there are set a number of rocks. Cage suggests that the percussion part may be thought of as the sand and the solos as the rocks. The percussion part consists of a series of pulses without any discernible pattern. The music for the solos appears as a series of shapes, which were created using actual rocks (which Cage was fond of collecting) as templates. The solos are performed within a given microtonal range and time frame; each has the possibility of up to three additional prerecorded parts played simultaneously. There are a number of simultaneous solos for various instruments and/or voice which may be used, or not, in any combination. Today’s performance will feature solos for voice, bamboo flute, and trombone (with prerecorded parts) and the percussion obbligato. The solo for voice was written in Seattle in November of 1983 during one of Cage’s residencies at Cornish. The other solos may also be related to Cornish. —Matthew Kocmieroski

   Personal Note: On the morning of a performance and recording of Atlas Eclipticalis with Winter Music which John conducted at Cornish in 1983, several of us went beachcombing and rock collecting. John made lunch, and we had a very enjoyable time (I’m sorry to say, we were a bit late for the performance). John took a large, heavy bag of these rocks with him (as hand luggage!) on the plane home to New York. I would like to think that it was the rocks John collected that morning that were used as templates for Ryoanji. —Matthew Kocmieroski

John Cage Marathon: Part II Program Notes

1. Collection/Song Title: Music for Marcel Duchamp

   Collection/Song Title: Prelude for Meditation

   Collection/Song Title: Root of an Unfocus

   Performers:

   1. Stephen Drury

   Music for Marcel Duchamp (1947) has a simple piano preparation: seven pieces of weather stripping, one of rubber, and a small bolt. Notated in the alto clef, the rhythmic structure is 11 times 11 (extended); 2, 1, 1, 3, 1, 2, 1. The performance depends on sustaining resonances with the pedal. —John Cage

   Prelude for Meditation (1944) uses four tones in a rhythmic structure 5 times 5. —John Cage

   Root of an Unfocus (1944) is in a rhythmic structure corresponding to that of the dance by Merce Cunningham for which it was written. The piece is dramatic in character and the piano preparation is not extensive. —John Cage

2. Collection/Song Title: Imaginary Landscape No. 2 (March)

   Performers:

   1. Pacific Rims Percussion Quartet
   2. Bonnie Whiting Smith

   Imaginary Landscape No. 2 (March) (1942) has a rhythmic structure of 3, 4, 2, 3, 5. The percussion instruments (tin cans, conch shell, ratchet, bass drum, buzzers, water gong, metal wastebasket, lion’s roar) are combined with an amplified coil of wire. —John Cage

3. Collection/Song Title: Selections from Eight Whiskus

   Performers:

   1. Jessika Kenney

   Chris Mann (Launching Place 3139 Australia) sent me an untitled text which begins as follows: “whistling is did be puckrin up th gob n blowin thru a ol a brownie sod th box n I seen a compo front up n stack on a blue a bit of a spoon th doodlers hump arguing by buying up all buns n juice crack a fudge a droopie go th roy n late th light….”

   Using MESOLIST, eight mesostics were written on the first three words of Chris Mann’s text. In contrast to my Writing Through a Text by Chris Mann, these eight mesostics are short poems (cf. haiku). Therefore I call them Whiskus. All lines follow the mink rule for a pure (100%) mesostic; that is, between two capitalized letters neither of the two appears. The last line of the first Whisku is an exception. —John Cage

4. Collection/Song Title: A Flower

   Collection/Song Title: The Wonderful Widow of Eighteen Springs

   Performers:

   1. Jessika Kenney
   2. Matthew Kocmieroski

   A Flower (1950), for voice and closed piano, is in the rhythmic structure of the dance by Louise Lippold for which it was written. The dance being suggestive of Flora, an attempt was made to suggest fauna in the music. The vocalise within a single octave may be sung in any transposition low and comfortable for the singer. —John Cage

   The Wonderful Widow of Eighteen Springs (1942), voice and closed piano: The voice production is without vibrato, as in folk singing. The singer may make any transposition of the written notes in order to employ a low and comfortable range. The accompaniment is percussive, fingers and knuckles on the wooden structure of a closed piano. The music resulted from impressions received from the text from Finnegan’s Wake. —John Cage

5. Collection/Song Title: Third Construction

   Performers:

   1. Pacific Rims Percussion Quartet

   Third Construction (1941) has a rhythmic structure of 24 times 24. This is differently expressed in each part. An attempt was made to compose rhythmic “cadences.” The instruments used are rattles, drums, tin cans, claves, cowbells, lion’s roar, cymbal, ratchet, teponaxtle, quijadas, cricket caller, and conch shell. —John Cage

6. INTERMISSION

7. Collection/Song Title: Sixteen Dances

   Performers:

   1. Julia Tai
   2. Pacific Rims Percussion Quartet
   3. Richard Eckert
   4. Justin Emerich
   5. Paris Hurley
   6. Roger Nelson
   7. Paul Taub

   Sixteen Dances was composed in 1951 to accompany the dance by Merce Cunningham entitled Sixteen Dances for Soloist and Company of Three. The two overriding features of this piece are Cage’s interest in the principle of Hindu aesthetics known as rasa, and his exploration of the relationship between freedom and control in compositional methodology. The nine rasa of Hindu aesthetics represent nine distinct universal emotions or moods. In Sixteen Dances, each odd-numbered movement is meant to depict a specific rasa and is then followed by an interlude. The final movement depicts tranquility.

   Previous work with the prepared piano had led Cage to thinking about musical material as a gamut of sounds, rather than as specific pitch content. A number of interesting ideas resulted about how to structure music using rhythmic and durational schemes, as opposed to harmonic or interval-related organization. In both the Concerto for Prepared Piano and Chamber Orchestra (1950–1951) and Sixteen Dances, Cage is exploring deeply the relationship between freedom and control in his compositional methodology. He began by composing a gamut of sounds and sound events. The elements of this gamut could then be represented symbolically in a chart, which became a graphic representation of the sound material for the composition from which Cage could draw various elements at will to create the actual music. These sounds were then arrayed within predetermined rhythmic structures. Perhaps most telling for the future direction of his composition was that in addition to freely choosing sounds from the chart, Cage began to explore other procedures for choosing sounds: procedures that involved what he called “unaesthetic” choices. That is, procedures that removed to some degree the making of direct aesthetic choices according to taste. Sixteen Dances is certainly one of Cage’s most compelling works, teetering at the threshold between his beautiful early works, where rhythmic structures provide a framework for the exercise of his expressive musical intuition, and the aesthetic challenge of his later chance-determined pieces. —Jarrad Powell