The Perilous Night (And Other New Sounds in American Music)

Richard Bunger - The Perilous Night (And Other New Sounds in American Music)

Richard Bunger - pianist

This is a recording of the live performances of avant-garde material at Warner Concert Hall on the campus of Oberlin College (Ohio, USA). Only "Prelude No. 4" for piano and electronic tape (1966) by Morton Subotnick was not recorded live, but recorded in a studio to have a separate stereo channel for the electronic tape. A Buchla synthesizer was used for "Prelude No. 4." It says on the back cover that all live performances are unedited.

Here are the selections performed live:

The Perilous Night, Suite for Prepared Piano (1943-44) by John Cage

The prepared piano was originally intended as an accompaniment to dance performances. This piece shows that the prepared piano could also be the center of attention at concerts. Cage's instructions for preparation of the piano for this piece includes the insertion of weather-stripping, flat pieces of bamboo and nuts, bolts and washers inserted between the strings. It takes about a half-hour for experienced pianists of Cage's music to prepare the piano.

TV Koln (1958) by John Cage

This is the first recording of "TV Koln." TV Koln is a television station in Germany that commissioned the work. It is about 32 seconds long. Bunger performs it twice.

Cadence IV (1970) by Henri Lazarof

This piece has moments where the performer plucks and plays the piano strings directly.

37 Songs (1971) by Barney Childs

Childs wrote this piece for a 16 year old student to play in a piano contest. Apparently this piece was too weird for either the student or the people that ran the contest so the student ended up playing something by Samuel Barber. Childs describes his piece as "anti-piano music in that it avoids the offensive (to me) genres both of the Official Masterpiece 19-century sounds, a large portion of the piano repertoire, and the current international-style total-piano piece."

Chorale for Quarter-Tone Piano (1903-04 and/or 1923-24?) by Charles Ives

Ives hoped that his quarter-tone piano music would be performed on a two-keyboard quarter-tone instrument. No such instrument existed at the time. Another performer, Lodi Bunger, was brought in to play the second piano. This was performed on one piano tuned at a normal pitch and on another piano tuned a quarter-tone higher. There is not a mention of who performed on which piano.

From the liner notes by Melody Peterson:

Dick found a copy of John Cage's Perilous Night at the back of a drawer in Brodt's music store in 1966. He was never the same again.
His first prepared piano was like a pregnancy. Every twinge counted for something. The pluck of a penny or a slat of bamboo or a wedge of felt between the strings sent him into ecstasies of a new consciousness.
He tried it out on Charlotte, North Carolina in the fall of 1967. Youngsters in the audience wanted to know how to prepare their pianos. Conservative elders were shocked. Perilous, then 23 years of age, still made waves.
Dick first met its composer in Rock Hill, South Carolina in the spring of '68. Cage was there with the Merce Cunningham dance troupe. In the midst of his laconic narrative in How to Pass, Kick, Fall and Run, the composer popped a champagne cork high into the air above the audience and right into Dick's lap. An omen.
Dick gave a command performance of Perilous and Cage offered his autograph on the by-now tattered score:

For Richard Bunger with gratitude for his

bringing this piece again to life. John Cage

In the fall of '68, Dick returned to Oberlin College, the Bach-and-Beethoven land of his undergraduate days. He taught there for a year, helping to radicalize an already astute student population by playing Ives and Cowell oldies, salty theatre pieces and, for the first time, duets with a tape recorder (in Subotnick's Prelude No. 4).

His colleagues composed for him. His repertoire expanded. And Dick moved West. By the end of 1970 he had done a jazz stint at L.A.'s International Hotel and concert premieres of things by Geroge Rochberg, Eliott Schwartz, Randy Coleman, Barney Childs and others. Question-and-answer previews became part of his concert format. His repertoire was all very American, and Dick preferred it that way. Other pianists thoroughly covered the modern European and Asiatic traditions, yet there was much fine new American music needing to be played and heard.

So, from Hawaii to Florida, from London to Berlin to Oslo, Dick lugged his preparation kit, his own specially designed "Bungerack" (a music rack which allows unobstructed access to the innards of the piano) and a suitcase full of tapes, mikes and American manuscripts.

In 1970, Dick offered the premieres of Lazarof's Cadence IV and Ricercar and, in '71, the first U.S. performance of his Textures for piano and orchestra. A Rockefeller grant (also in 1971) enabled Dick to commission additional new piano-and-ensemble works from Jon Appleton and Olly Wilson. Washington D.C.'s National Symphony, Paris' Ensemble Instrumental de Musique Contemporaine and student groups in Cincinnati, Minneapolis and Los Angeles were among the first partners in these adventures.

In 1972, Childs' 37 Songs mystified and enchanted audiences, while ragtime numbers appeared as footstomping encores. In addition to performing and teaching, Dick composed an electronic score for a California State College production of Oedipus Rex and, AT LAST!, completed the writing and illustration of his manual, The Well-Prepared Piano (published by the Colorado College Music Press).
This little book may well be said to mark the end of Dick's first stage and the beginning of his second as a new-music researcher and performer. The Well-Prepared Piano is a tribute to the past - to Cage and a once-scandalous musical technique now accepted with pleasure by most listeners. It is also a guide to the future - a sharing of knowledge directed toward the inquisitive student and gleaned from a tough lot of practical experiences.

This recording, similarly, is marked by the instant past and fleeting present of our future-shock world.
While you are listening to it, Dick may be in his Los Angeles studio playing through one of the dozens of new works he receives each year. He may be on a plane figuring out the logistics for a multi-media piece or examining the score of a work for electronic synthesizer.
Or, he may be standing in an auditorium in Toronto or Tampa answering questions like, "Why don't you play Chopin?" And he will answer that he loves to play Chopin and Brahms and Bach, but that his most important task now is to give us the opportunity to make contact with the music of our time.
Thank you Mrs. Brodt, wherever you are.

Tracklisting:

Side 1

1. The Perilous Night [composed by John Cage] {10:06}

2. Prelude No. 4 [composed by Morton Subotnick] {6:55}

3. TV Koln [composed by John Cage] {1:37}

Side 2

1. Cadence IV [composed by Henri Lazarof] {8:11}

2. 37 Songs [composed by Barney Childs] {4:38}

3. Chorale [composed by Charles Ives] {3:37}
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