Variations II/Eight Whiskus/Music for Two/Ryoanji

John Cage - Variations II/Eight Whiskus/Music for Two/Ryoanji

Performers:

Malcolm Goldstein - violin
Matthias Kaul - percussion, glass harmonica

When discussing John Cage's music, the word "anarchy" is never far away. There is nothing wrong with this, if the concept of anarchy is used discerningly, and if we remember that anything that lacks not just regimentation but also discipline is doomed to failure. Only those for whom others set the limits can proceed without consequences. By contrast, those who define the rules of their actions for themselves are best off being precise in those actions. Anarchy and discipline: the compelling logic of this combination is best demonstrated using the example of John Cage's lifework. For, however iconoclastic John Cage's thoughts and actions might seem, the open universe that he preached was always precisely surveyed.
Even in his early work, Cage revealed a marked preference for measurement. The sound explosions of his Constructions in Metal or his pieces for prepared piano occur within an exact grid of rhythmic structures, predefined subdivisions of time, within which Cage arranges the sounds and noises. And even in the Variations I of 1958, a (belated) birthday present for David Tudor, in which he proclaimed "anarchy by means of the negation of time" (Heinz-Klaus Metzger), he did not abolish measurement when he relinquished rhythmic structures. On the contrary, the "construction of a pure 'in itself,' the emancipation of every 'for other,'" as Metzger analyzes the situation of this composition, is based directly on operations involving measurement. Six transparent sheets - one of which has 27 different points, the others five lines each - can be superimposed in different ways. The lines represent different parameters of the sound event: pitch, volume, timbre, duration, and point of entry. When perpendicular lines are drawn through the points from each line, it gives values, distances to be measured or simply observed, as Cage puts it in his introduction to Variations I. If Cage's procedure for generating a musical text by means of points and lines might seem arbitrary, there is no denying the exacting subordination of the performer under this maxim of "measure and comply."
The same is true of Variations II, conceived four years later (and presented here in a version prepared by Malcolm Goldstein for violin and glass harmonica), where the plurality of possible results is even greater. The material provided by Cage consists of five small sheets with a point each, and six larger ones each with a line. The sheets can be superimposed in any way imaginable; five of the lines have the same function as in Variations I, while the sixth one determines the number of tones (in Variations I this was determined by the sizes of the points, which were fixed).
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The visual contrast between the conspicuous macroforms of the fifteen large stones and the raked gravel, which from a distance seems homogeneous but from up close reveals an anarchic micropattern, that characterizes the famous stone garden of the Ryoanji monastery in Kyoto inspired Cage first to the drawings and etchings of the cycle Where R=Ryoanji. The musical composition Ryoanji transforms that visual contrast into sound in a way that is as appropriate as it is original.
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Another variant of this surveying of preexisting materials so typical of Cage is found in the technique of writing through, in which texts of the most diverse provenance - from the Bible to James Joyce - are "filtered" through mesostichs. In Eight Whiskus for solo voice from 1984, Cage applied the method to a poem by the Australian poet Chris Mann, and since the poem is called whistlin is did, and since Cage used it as the source for eight haikus structured like mesostichs, he invented the word "whis-kus" for the results. Using chance procedures, Cage assigned the syllables to the notes of the F-minor scale, producing a piece of vocal music that is very unusual within his oeuvre: with a key signature of four flats and purely diatonic! The imaginary folk song that is generated by this abstract method was reworked by Cage for solo violin a year later, after consulting with Malcolm Goldstein, such that the vowel and consonant qualities of the poem are transformed into various bowing positions, gradations of bowing pressure, and forms of articulation. According to Goldstein, "The tonal melodies are thereby extended, as lines of timbre-texture qualities, expressive of the bowed violin sounding."
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Two extensive series of pieces - Music for ... of the years 1984 to 1987 and the 47 compositions, ranging from solo to orchestral works, that make up the so-called number pieces that began with Two - demonstrate that Cage had now found a solid and productive method for reconciling his anarchic ideals with the conventions of traditional concert practice. The numbers that the computerized I Ching generates are as "random" as the distances between the perpendicular lines connecting the lines and points in arbitrarily arranged transparent sheets, and just as the sheets of the Variations allow for an incalculable number of versions, the numbers of the I Ching oracle can be read as answers to a wide range of questions. The questions that interested Cage in the reductionist pieces of his later years were ones like: "How many successive sounds should I place in a 'time bracket' of one minute? How many components should make up these events? What pitch and what dynamic should these sounds have?" Music for ... provides 17 half-hour-long answers in the form of independent parts for different instruments that are not coordinated into a score, which can be played as solo parts or in any possible combination. (Peter Niklas Wilson)

Tracklisting:

1. Variations II {20:10}
(1961) realization for violin and glass harmonica

2. Eight Whiskus {5:21}
(1985) for violin

3. Music for Two {29:40}
(1985) for violin and percussion

4. Ryoanji {19:51}
(1983-85) for voice and percussion; voice part transcribed for violin by Malcolm Goldstein

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