The McGill Percussion Ensemble- Percussion (1978)

Here is some percussion music from some Montreal-based composers.

Notes excerpted from the back cover (enclosed):

Francois Morel- Rythmologue (1969)
is written for eight percussionists and a total ensemble of 90 percussion instruments of varied pitch, along with eight whistles, the latter being heard only at the beginning of the piece.
Rythmologue is built on prime numbers 3-5-7-11-13-17-19 and adopts a broadened form of rondo.Refrains enhance the various transformations of rhythmic characters, while the episodes are free in style and lean towards a thematic concept.There are no keyboard instruments (vibraphone, xylophone, marimba, tubular bells or glockenspiel) but only three groups of timbres: skin, metal and wood.
Avoiding any exotic aim, Rythmologue strives simply to give life to rhythm and color.

Alcides Lanza- Sensors I (1976-1) for percussion Ensemble. Written for four solo percussion players, the composer intended to create a "harmony of percussion", starting on a field of continuous stratified sounds and evolving into a field of granular, discontinuous sounds with a high density index. The compsition is structured on two parallel Fibonacci series, starting out of phase and slowly going into phase towards the end of the piece.
As the composer did in his earlier composition for Percussion Ensemble and electronic sounds Interferences II (1967-1), certain techniques were borrowed from the field of electronic music composition:
filtering:
by using a variety of mallets and modes of attack: by using new types of mallets.
modulation:
by striking different areas in the instruments, new mallets, new performing techniques,etc.

Serge Garant- Circuit I
was quickly organized between December 28, 1971, and the following January 10. It is the least "written" of my scores. In it, I continue the exploration of a series of proportions that come from an interval analysis of the theme of The Musical Offering. This basic series (3-4-1-9-7-2-5) affects, first of all, the duration of the seven principal sequences. These sequences are interrupted four times by digression of varying lengths. The series of proportions in turn gives rise to a large network of series, all built according to the principle of the Fibonacci series. The performers wander, more of less freely, across this network, tracing a "circuit"

Several versions are possible. I have intentionally used very vague indications of dynamics, timbres and modes of performance.

Andrew Culver-Signature- 
 
  










Composed during December 1976 and January 1977, is dedicated as a Christmas gift to his family. Culver has also done extensive improvisation, performance, and design of new sound sources and environments with le groupe mud/design musical.(*)
Andrew Culver was born in New Jersey in 1953. After several years of peripheral involvement in music of all styles, he took up music study in earnest at the age of 20. His guiding influences have been Bengt Hambraeus and Mario Bertoncini with whom he studied composition at McGill University.

* le groupe mud/design musical is also known by the group name "Sonde" Whose album "en concert" can be found here.


Side One:

a1: Francois Morel- Rythmologue (10:54)

a2: Alcides Lanza- Sensors I (1976-1) (12:14)

Side Two:

b1: Serge Garant- Circuit I (13:27)

b2: Andrew Culver- Signature (5:22)

The McGill Percussion Ensemble
directed by Pierre Beluse
 





















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John Cage - Sonatas And Interludes For Prepared Piano (Harmonia Mundi,1980)

Well, the CageCentennial week here in A Closet is officially over.
But- never let it be said that we here can't go above and beyond the call of duty.
Or, more accurately, never let it be said that I, DrEyescope, can't be counted on to be the consummate procrastinator, with more to add now which should have come before.
So, Here you go:

John Cage: Sonatas And Interludes For Prepared Piano. (recorded either 1950 or 1958) Maro Ajemian, Piano

The minimal notes are in French, and I won't torture you all with my half-assed translation.

This is a kind of a strange record.
It's one of those Harmonia Mundi releases with a thin, minimal cover without photos or liner notes (there is an enclosed strip of paper with minimal notes), the idea being (as I recall) that the money would be spent on superior performances and pressing.
This record clocks in at over 64 minutes, which means that the grooves are cramped.
Normally in cases such as this, the cramped grooves give a less defined sound than wider grooves, and this record is no exception- especially towards the end of each side, or when the music gets loud, the record suffers from distortion.
And, on top of that, Maro Ajemian is playing while sitting on a squeaky chair.
But the real problem with this record is that it is incomplete:
The center label lists track 1 on side two as "Sonata No.IX", but it is, in fact, Sonata No.X,

Sonata No.IX is entirely absent. (Either that, or silent.)

Nevertheless, I enjoy this album very much. When it comes to the Sonatas and Interludes, I (who know these works only as a listener and not a performer or reader of scores, and am therefore only partially informed)  judge many of these performances to be very nearly "definitive".
There is a rhythmic vigor; a "dancing" quality in these interpretations which I find lacking in some other recordings, and even with the questionable reproduction, one can also hear a sensitivity and subtlety in some of the slower, more meditative pieces which gives them a broader emotional scope than other interpretations.

I plan to compare these interpretations with the (seemingly very dramatic) Steffen Schliermacher disc which was posted the other day by (timely and hard-working) grey calx.


John Cage: Sonatas And Interludes For Prepared Piano (composed 1946-48)

Side One:

a1: Sonata I (3:00)

a2: Sonata II (2:23)

a3: Sonata III (2:43)

a4: Sonata IV (3:04)

a5: Interlude I (3:42)

a6: Sonata V (1:28)

a7: Sonata VI (2:20)

a8: Sonata VII (2:31)

a9: Sonata VIII (2:54)

a10: Interlude II (4:22)
 
a11: Interlude III (3:04)
 
Side Two::

B1: Sonata X (3:35)

B2: Sonata XI (3:27)

B3: Sonata XII (4:18)

b4: Interlude IV (2:45)

B5: Sonata XIII (4:03)

B6: Sonata XIV (3:36)

B7: Sonata XV (3:36)

B8: Sonata XVI (5:02)
 
Maro Ajemian, Piano

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CageCentennial: In Honor of the 100th Anniversary of John Cage's Birth (Collections 3 & 4)

various artists compilation -  CageCentennial: In Honor of the 100th Anniversary of John Cage's Birth (Collections 3 & 4)

The week of Cage is near the end. This week went by really fast. There may be one or two more posts later today. In the meantime, the third and fourth collections arrive. For those who stumbled on this post, all of the background information for this compilation is mentioned in the previous post.

Collection #3 Tracklisting:

1.  Sonic Youth - Four6  {29:59}
from CD Goodbye 20th Century ; composed in 1992 ; released in 1999

2.  American Composers Orchestra - Seventy-Four Version I  {12:14}
from CD The Seasons ; composed in 1992 ; released in 2000

3.  Jonathan Faralli - Cartridge Music  {5:18}
from CD Percussion XX ; composed in 1960 ; released in 1999

4.  Gentle Fire - Music for Carillon 2  {1:25}
from LP Gentle Fire ; composed in 1952; released in 1974

5.  Bertram Turetzky - 26'1.1499" for a String Player  {16:05}
from LP The Contemporary Contrabass ; composed in 1955

Collection #4 Tracklisting:

1.  The Kroumata Percussion Ensemble - Second Construction  {6:51}
from CD The Kroumata Percussion Ensemble ; composed in 1940 ; released in 1983

2.  Sonic Youth - Six 3rd take  {3:03}
from CD Goodbye 20th Century ; composed in 1991 ; released in 1999

3.  Karen Phillips - Dream  {6:54}
from LP Viola Today ; composed in 1948 ; released in 1974

4.  Mieko Kanno - Freeman Etude # IX  {4:33}
from CD metaCage: Essays on and Around Freeman Etudes, Fontana Mix, Aria (accompaniment to book of the same title) ; composed in 1977-1980 ; released in 2009

5.  Victoria Looseleaf - In a Landscape  {11:58}
from LP Harpnosis ; composed in 1948 ; released in 1984

6.  Gentle Fire - Music for Amplified Toy Pianos  {11:57}
from LP Gentle Fire ; composed in 1960 ; released in 1974

7.  Cathy Berberian - The Wonderful Widow of Eighteen Springs  {2:29}
from CD Magnificathy: The Many Voices of Cathy Berberian ; composed in 1942 ; re-released in 1988

8.  The Brandeis University Chamber Chorus - Solos for Voice 2  {12:36}
from LP Extended Voices ; released in 1967

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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}

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John Cage/Lukas Foss - Concerto For Prepared Piano And Orchestra/Baroque Variations (Nonesuch 1970)

Notes excerpted from the inner cover notes (enclosed).

John Cage: Concerto For Prepared Piano And Orchestra
The Concerto for Prepared Piano...uses silence, but does not yet disdain disdain to frame it in sound, albeit extremely wispy sound.. Like the Sixteen Dances which Cage  wrote for Merce Cunningham's dance company in 1950, the Concerto, begun the same year was composed with the help of a set of large charts on which rhythmic structures were drawn up. In the first of the three continuous movements, Cage says, " I let the pianist express the opinion theat music should be improvised or felt, while the orchestra expressed only the chart, with no personal taste involvved. In the  second movement I made large concentric moves on the chart for  both painist and orchestra, with the idea of the pianist beginning to give up personal taste. The third movement had only one set of moves on the chart for both, and a lot of silence..."Until that time my music had been based on the traditional idea that you had to  say something. The charts gave me the first indication of the possibility of saying nothing".


Lukas Foss: Baroque Variations
The use of silence in the Baroque Variations of Lukas Foss may suggest a parallel with Cage, but the purpose of this music (...) completed in 1967 is entirely different. Cage sets up the situation for a piece of music but leaves the result to chance (nature). Foss, in his ensemble improvisations 1957-62 and in indeterminate  moments of his most recent music, sets up a situation which will control the result.

Notes by the composer:

Variation I, on Handel's Concerto Grosso, Op.6,No.12. Groups of instruments play the Larghetto but keep submerging into inaudibility,(rather than pausing). Handel's notes are always present but often inaudible. The inaudible moments leave holes in Handel's music (I composed the holes). The perforated Handel is played by different groups of the orchestra in three different keys at one point, in four different speeds at another. Emerging fragments never render the original unrecognizable.

Variation II, on Scarlatti's Sonata No. 23. The entire Sonata is heard in the distance (harpsichord) but is often obscured by the foreground (orchestral groups playing Scarlatti fragments, emerging, submerging). In this variation the loveliness of the original wants to be preserved, a form of neo-Classicism, a piece of music in love with a piece of music, like  setting a poem, complete in itself (Scarlatti's Sonata does not need my setting), an unsolicited present, an abuse, an Hommage.

Variation III, "Phorion"... On the Prelude from Bach's Partita in E major for solo violin. The submerging and emerging out of inaudibility  is rendered  more hazardous for the players because it is executed at moments varying with each performance. Though the conductor cues the various instruments in and out, he himself cannot keep track of the point at which an instrument will have arrived in it's inaudible rendition when he calls upon it to emerge. As in Variation I, where only Handel's notes were used, Variation III's are entirely made  out of Bach''s violin solo. Even the glissandi are Bach-derived. What I wanted  can perhaps best be described as "torrents of Baroque sixteenth-notes, washed ashore by ocean waves, sucked in again, returning"- a Bach Dream- abruptly changing situations, some humorous, (two flutes racing each other-the xylophone spelling out "Johann Sebastian Bach" in morse code-etc.), some frightening- (the organ and percussion duel at the end).


Side One: John Cage:Concerto For Prepared Piano And Orchestra 

Yuji Takahashi-Piano
Buffalo Phiharmonic Orchestra
cond.Lukas Foss


Side Two: Lukas Foss-Baroque Variations

b1: No.1- On a Handel Larghetto

b2: No.2- On a Scarlatti Sonata

b3: No.3- On a Bach Prelude "Phorion"

Lukas Foss conducting the Buffalo Philharmonic Orchestra

























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John Cage 100th Anniversary

At last, the big day has arrived!

There's more to come later today. Stay tuned.

Works for Percussion

John Cage - Works for Percussion

CD released in 1991

performed by Quatuor Helios

Recorded "live in studio" July 1989 at the Centre Culturel Andre Malraux in Vandoeuvre-Les-Nancy (France)

A collection of most of Cage's percussion works. It is nice to have many of these in one place. (There was another Quatuor Helios CD released that included Cage's other percussion works.) I've featured other performances of many of these pieces that are played on this album yet I can't really get enough of Cage's percussion music. I've found this one somewhere online (can't quite recall where, but the site is likely no longer in existence). I thought it deserves a reposting.

Tracklisting:

1.  Second Construction  {7:32}

2.  Imaginary landscape No. 2  {5:30}

3.  Amores: I.  {1:06}
Isabelle Berteletti - prepared piano

4.  Amores: II.  {3:20}

5.  Amores: III.  {1:20}

6.  Amores: IV.  {3:32}
Isabelle Berteletti - prepared piano

7.  Double Music  {4:44}
composed by John Cage and Lou Harrison

8.  Third Construction  {10:14}

9.  She is Asleep: I.  {4:28}

10. She is Asleep: II.  {7:16}
Isabelle Berteletti - prepared piano ; Martine Ward - voice

11. First Construction (In Metal)  {10:04}
Philippe Chaignon - percussion ; Anne Berteletti - piano ; Eva Payeur - other [assistant]

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A Few Links to Cage Material

 

One more day until the big day. 

Here are a few links to Cage material that I found on the nets during the past few years. I think these would be of interest.

My friend Caitlyn recently posted on her blog the 2 LP Sonatas & Interludes for Prepared Piano performed by Gerard Fremy. Fremy's playing of Sonatas & Interludes sounds to me the most percussive of all the "Sonatas & Interludes..." I've listened to so far.

She also posted the Time Records LP that has Cage's "Aria with Fontana Mix" featuring Cathy Berberian. You'll want these for sure.


During 2008, John Kannenberg released Audio Tour: The 4'33" Museum on the Stasisfield net label. The album is a free download. All of the tracks are "performances" of 4'33'' at various museums. It can be argued that he is not actually performing it properly as he is not "not playing" an instrument especially in front of a crowd. They are field recordings of the audio environment at those places and they are quite good. His angle is that he is realizing one of Cage's motivations of 4'33'' in the encouragement of active listening. If so, then I think the album is successful.


In early 2009, the Chapel Hill, North Carolina station WXYC broadcasted a show about Cage on a program called Feedback Farm. WXYC is run and broadcasted by students of the University of North Carolina. The program's hosts discuss Cage's life and concepts, attempt to put in practice some of Cage's ideas and perform a few of his pieces. Yes, it is available for download.


In 1942, Cage wrote and conducted music for Kenneth Patchen's radio play "The City Wears a Slouch Hat." The original entire 1942 broadcast was played on the Wavelength radio program. Wavelength is broadcast on London-based Resonance FM. "The City Wears a Slouch Hat" takes up the entire first half-hour of the episode. A recording of William Burroughs takes up the rest of the episode. Scroll down to find the episode titled "Radio Narratives".


NPR (National Public Radio) also did a Cage overview for the Cage centennial as a tribute on its Hearing Voices podcast. It features recordings of performances of Cage's music. I don't think it's as fun as the Feedback Farm show, but it's suitable for those who prefer a more professionally put-together show.


I plan to feast on some cake tomorrow for the big day. After I indulge myself on the delicious yet calorie-abundant food, I'm going to take a hard look at this site. In the later part of his life, Cage lived on a macrobiotic diet which was introduced to him by his friend Yoko Ono. Cage wrote an overview about the macrobiotic diet. He includes a few recipes and explanations of foods in the macrobiotic diet as well as tips on how to cook those foods.

John Cage/Steve Reich: Three Dances/Four Organs (Angel 1974)

 






















From the back cover notes (enclosed):
 
John Cage:Three Dances For Two Amplified Prepared Pianos

The prepared piano, a Cage innovation, is a grand piano with screws, bolts, washers, plastic, rubber, felt etc. inserted according to precisely detailed instructions between the strings- completely changing the tone color, attack and volume and duration of each note.
More simply, it transforms the piano into a kind of percussion orchestra of steel drums, gamelans, rattles and low congas, all under the control of one keyboard player. Cage used the prepared instrument first in the dance piece Bacchanale in 1938 and subsequently in many pieces of the '40's- all concerned with dance rhythms and exotic Eastern color and mood. By 1945 Cage's ideas had advanced to the point of writing his most ambitious prepared piano work, these Three Dances.

Cage calls them "virtuoso" pieces, and indeed they are in many ways. Most obviously, the third dance is a moto-perpetuo tour-de-force of pounding jungle rhythms.But the subtleties of the gamelan-like music of the first dance and the melodic second dance provide plenty of finger and brain numbing complexities. "Virtuoso" too is the preparation of the instruments (the most complex he ever devised; with as many as
six objects altering the sound of a single note. Finally there is the composition itself, a maze of ostinati, rhythmic canons, talas, mirror images, number series and changing textures all totally determined by the composer.

Perhaps most remarkable in these pieces is Cage's ability to escape entirely from thinking in terms of the keyboard - of G's and A-flat's - and to plunge into uncharted regions of complex and then-unknown sounds that the prepared piano actually produces. (For the performer this is enough of a problem to produce temporary schizophrenia, as he fingers his ever trustworthy A-flat only to have it go "Kahbong".

For Cage to have solved this problem so brilliantly is a testament to his compositional technique, imagination, and taste - all of which are plainly revealed in these Three Dances. -Michael Tilson-Thomas


Steve Reich: Four Organs

Four Organs was composed in January 1970. It begins with a short pulsing chord which gradually gets longer and longer in duration. As the chord stretches out, slowly resolving and unresolving, a sort of slow-motion music is created. The maracas lay down a steady time grid of even eighth notes throughout, enabling the performers to play together while mentally counting up to as much as 200 beats and more on a given cycle of sustained notes.

Four Organs is the only piece of work I am aware of that is composed exclusively of the gradual augmentation (lengthening) of individual tones within a single chord.From beginning to end there are no changes of pitch or timbre..All changes are rhythmic and simply consist of gradually increasing durations.

The original idea for Four Organs came out of anelectronic musical device I built in 1968-69 with the help of an engineer from Bell Labrotories. This device, the Phase Shifting Pulse Gate,  could gradually alter the phase position between a number of continuously pulsing tones. If all tones were in phase (pulsed at the same instant) a  repeating chord would be heard. If the tones were moved slightly out of phase a repeating rippling broken chord would be heard, and if moved further out of phase, a repeating melodic pattern would result. There was also a control on the device to shorten or lenghtn the duration of each pulse. I began to think of gradually extending the durations of individual pulsing tones but like a sort of horizontal bar graph in time.

since I was becoming disenchanted with electronic devices, largely because of their mechanical sounding rhythms and pitches and the lack of bodily involvement in making music with them, I began to think instead of simply holding down individual notes longer and longer on an organ. Insted of a digital clock to count and produce regular pulses, I began to think of a musician playing a steady pulse with a rattle (maracas) which the organists could then count  together from.

Four Organs is thus an example of a piece of live music with a rhythmic structure, the basic idea of which derives from an electronic device.This feedback of ideas from electro-mechanical devices to instrumental and vocal music has been important in several compositions of mine and has brought me to think of electronic music as primarily an interlude filled with new ideas for the ongoing history of instrumental and vocal music. -Steve Reich

Side One:John Cage: Three Dances For Two Amplified Prepared Pianos (1945)

a1: No.1 (6:29)
a2: No.2 (7:07)
a3: No.3 (8:52)

Michael Tilson-Thomas & Ralph Grierson : Prepared Pianos

Side Two: Steve Reich: Four Organs (1970) For four electric organs and maracas

b1: Four Organs (24:13)

Michael Tilson-Thomas
Ralph Grierson
Roger Kellaway
Steve Reich: Electric Organs
Tom Raney: Maracas

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Updates about Past Posts Featuring Cage

John Cage has been featured in several posts in this blog. The posts have been about recordings devoted only to Cage's compositions, compilations that include Cage or performers' recordings that include one or a few more works by Cage. Since we are focusing on Cage this week, we encourage you to explore these past posts if you have not already done so. Some of the past posts include:

John Cage - Cheap Imitation

John Cage - Empty Words Part IV

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

John Cage - Complete Piano Music Vol. 1: The Prepared Piano 1940-1952

John Cage - Litany for the Whale

Amadinda Percussion Group - Works by Varese, Chavez, Cage and Harrison
includes a few of Cage's pieces including "Amores", "Double Music" [collaboration with Lou Harrison] and an excellent performance of "4'33""

Stefan Hussong and Mike Svoboda - Anarchic Harmonies -- Frescobaldi Cage
some tracks are some of Cage's "Forty-Four Harmonies"

John Cage and Lejaren Hiller/Ben Johnston - split release
side one of the LP is Cage and Hiller's "HPSCHD"

various artists compilation - New Electronic Music from Leaders of the Avant Garde
side one of the LP is Cage's "Variations II" performed by David Tudor

The posts above have been re-upped recently.

Some other additional past Cage posts include:

John Cage - Imaginary Landscapes

John Cage/Christian Wolff - split release
side A is Cage's "Cartridge Music" performed by Cage and David Tudor

John Cage - Variations IV

John Cage - Variations IV Volume II

Harry Partch and John Cage - Music of Harry Partch and John Cage

various artists compilation - Concert Percussion for Orchestra

There are also more posts featuring Cage's works. Not every post including his name as a label has been re-upped yet. We're trying to work on it.

What we have posted so far is only a very small portion of recordings featuring Cage's works. There are many more out there and we encourage to explore those too.

This Week of Cage (in Honor of the Cage Centennial)

This week sees the 100th anniversary of the birth of John Cage on the day of Wednesday, September 5, 2012.

John Cage is arguably the most influential musical thinker of the twentieth century.

A pioneer of musical methods which have been adopted by numerous composers who have come after him, Cage has followed many paths: chance, extended instrumental technique, found sound, silence and graphic scores, to name but a few.

Information about Cage is readily available to anyone who is interested, and Cage wrote a number of books which remain in print.

To celebrate this occasion, a number of new posts of Cage's music will appear this week, and new links will be posted for past Cage posts which have gone offline.

We hope you enjoy them.