John Cage - Music For Prepared Piano (Sonatas & Interludes For Prepared Piano) (1946-1948)

John Cage is one of 20th-century America’s great musical innovators. He experimented with prepared pianos, unusual percussion instruments, electronics, weird notation and even silence, as well as introducing the element of chance into the performance of his music. Schoenberg described him as "not a composer, but an inventor of genius." His most notorious work consists of 4'33" of silence, written in 1952. It was inspired by Cage's visit to Harvard's anechoic chamber, designed to eliminate all sound; but instead of promised silence Cage was amazed and delighted to hear the pulsing of his blood and the whistling of his nerves.

John Cage was undoubtedly the composer who put the "prepared piano" concept on the world map, and coined the term. He credited Henry Cowell and (to a lesser extent) Erik Satie for contributing to the idea. Cage first prepared a piano when he was commissioned to write music for "Bacchanale", a dance by Syvilla Fort in 1938. For some time previously, Cage had been writing exclusively for a percussion ensemble, but the hall where Fort’s dance was to be staged had no room for a percussion group. The only instrument available was a single grand piano. After some consideration, Cage said that he realized it was possible “to place in the hands of a single pianist the equivalent of an entire percussion orchestra... With just one musician, you can really do an unlimited number of things on the inside of the piano if you have at your disposal an 'exploded' keyboard.” Cage would often quip that by preparing a piano he left it in better condition than he found it.

In Cage's use, the preparations are typically nuts, bolts and pieces of rubber to be lodged between and entwined around the strings. Some preparations make duller, more percussive sounds than usual, while others create sonorous bell-like tones. Additionally, the individual parts of a preparation like a nut loosely screwed onto a bolt will vibrate themselves, adding their own unique sound. By placing the preparation between two of the strings on a note which has three strings assigned to it, it is possible to change the timbre of that note by depressing the soft pedal on the piano (which moves the hammers so they strike only two strings instead of all three [the soft pedal is traditionally called "una corda" on a grand]). Other prepared piano sounds can be reminiscent of mbiras, marimbas, bells, wood blocks, Indonesian gamelan instruments, or many other sounds less easily defined.

"Wherever we are, what we hear is mostly noise. When we ignore it, it disturbs us. When we listen to it, we find it fascinating. The sound of a truck at 50 m.p.h. Static between the stations. Rain. We want to capture and control these sounds, to use them, not as sound effects, but as musical instruments."
Cage on the future of music - from a lecture given in 1937

John_Cage_Music_Prepared_Piano_256.rar

posted by Paxjorge @ Thursday, June 01, 2006