CageCentennial: In Honor of the 100th Anniversary of John Cage's Birth (Collections 1 & 2)

Hope everyone is enjoying the week-long Cage fest so far. There's only two days left. I also hope everyone had a great Cage centennial on Wednesday.

I was planning to post this on Wednesday, but I was delayed by other activities that required my attention.

I put together a compilation or collection of recordings of performances of Cage's compositions. Many of these tracks will come from compilations and performers' albums that I posted and some will come from albums that I never posted. I thought this would help to have most of the Cage tracks in one place. This would also be ideal for those who may be new to the blog and/or Cage's music. The compilation is not quite comprehensive. In fact, it is a small humble collection. There are thousands of recordings of Cage's music.

I used chance operations to determine the order of the tracklisting. I didn't really feel like organizing them anyway. It doesn't really matter where the tracks are ordered. They don't have to be played in the order I ended up putting them in. It would probably be more fitting if one were to put whatever player is being used into shuffle or random mode.

I broke the compilation/collection into separate or smaller collections so that each collection will be a manageable file size where the file won't be too large rather than putting all of the tracks in one huge file.

Today the first two collections are posted here. Tomorrow, I believe about two more will be posted.

Collection #1 Tracklisting:

1.  Gentle Fire - Music for Carillon 3  {1:28}
from LP Gentle Fire ; composed in 1952 ; released in 1974

2.  Hans-Kristian Kjos Sørensen - A Flower  {3:46}
from CD Open Percussion ; composed in 1950 for voice and piano

3.  John Cage - Fontana Mix  {11:14}
from LP Electronic Music [compilation]

4.  Gentle Fire - Music for Carillon 1  {6:55}
from LP Gentle Fire ; composed in 1952 ; released in 1974

5.  London Sinfonietta - First Construction in Metal  {8:59}
from recording of Warp Records + London Sinfonietta at Ether 2004 ; composed in 1939

6.  Richard Bunger - The Perilous Night  {10:06}
from LP The Perilous Night (and Other New Sounds in American Music) ; composed in 1943-1944 for prepared piano

7.  Hans-Kristian Kjos Sørensen - The Wonderful Widow of Eighteen Springs  {3:05}
from CD Open Percussion ; composed in 1942 for voice and piano

8.  David Tudor - Music for Piano No. 52-56  {13:20}
from CD Piano Avant-Garde (Recordings 1956-60) ; composed in 1956-1957

Collection #2 Tracklisting:

1.  John Cage - Williams Mix  {5:44}
from CD OHM: The Early Gurus of Electronic Music [compilation] ; also originally released on The 25th Year Retrospective Concert of the Music of John Cage ; composed in 1952

2.  Richard Bunger - TV Koln  {1:37}
from LP The Perilous Night (and Other New Sounds in American Music) ; composed in 1958

3.  Chicago Symphony Orchestra - Atlas eclipticalis  {14:18}
from CD Cage/Carter/Babbitt/Schuller ; conducted by James Levine ; composed in 1961 ; recorded in 1990 & released in 1994

4.  Sonic Youth - Six 4th take  {2:10}
from CD Goodbye 20th Century ; composed in 1991 ; released in 1999

5.  Comma - Song Books  {7:08}
from CD (voices) ; recorded in 1997 ; released in 1998

6.  Richard Bunger - Bacchanale  {9:49}
from LP Prepared Piano: The First Four Decades [compilation] ; composed in 1940 ; recorded in 1979 ; released in 1983

7.  Max Neuhaus - Fontana Mix-Feed  {10:07}
from LP Electronics and Percussion: Five Realizations by Max Neuhaus ; released in 1968

8.  Margaret Leng Tan - Suite for Toy Piano: 1  {1:35}
tracks 8-12 from CD Daughters of the Lonesome Isle ; composed in 1948 ; recorded in 1993 ; released in 1994

9.  Margaret Leng Tan - Suite for Toy Piano: 2  {1:41}

10. Margaret Leng Tan - Suite for Toy Piano: 3  {1:34}

11. Margaret Leng Tan - Suite for Toy Piano: 4  {1:24}

12. Margaret Leng Tan - Suite for Toy Piano: 5  {1:04}

(1) and (2)