A number of excellent John Cage recordings have been issued lately, John Tilbury and Sebastian Lexer?s superb “Electronic Music for Piano” on their ?Lost Daylight? album (Another Timbre) and Tania Chen?s ?Music of Changes Book 1? (Knitted) among them, and few of the artists behind them fit the standard mould. The new breed of interpreters has in common an unconditional, natural embrace of indeterminacy, and a full engagement with improvisation which acknowledges few of the traditional genre demarcations. The best shrug off the ?historic? weight of post-modernism and use Cage?s compositions?particularly the later, more avowedly non-prescriptive ones?as sounding boards for a new electronic or electro-acoustic music that has more in common with post-AMM and ?lower-case? improvisation. Cage?s use of chance elements (consulting the I-Ching) and randomization (scoring for prepared instruments) makes his open-ended compositions ideal as vehicles for the non-idiomatic sonic explorations that place significant emphasis on sound texture as a key factor in the music. Of the two discs under consideration in this review, the Percussion Group Cincinnati release is part of an ongoing effort by the Mode label to document all of Cage?s works, staying faithful to the composer?s own suggestions and prescriptions for their realization. The Another Timbre album, by contrast, sets a late Cage score in the context of an evening otherwise devoted to non-idiomatic improvisation. One thread does, however, link the two albums: “Credo in Us”, from The Percussion Group Cincinnati album, was Cage?s first collaboration with choreographer Merce Cunningham, while “four6”, from the Another Timbre quartet, was his last. Cunningham first choreographed “four6” in the year of its composition, 1992, which was also the year of Cage?s death.

Farmer | Kilyamis | Hughes | Cornford

“No Islands”

(Another Timbre)

The performers on ?No Islands? are Patrick Farmer, turntables and electronics; Kostis Kilyamis, electronics; Sarah Hughes, chorded zither; and Stephen Cornford, amplified piano. The session was recorded live at Oxford Brookes University in 2011 by Another Timbre?s Simon Reynell, who has captured the unique acoustic signature of the event while rendering individual musical details with clarity, pinpointing intricacies beneath the surface turbidity of the group sound. The first two pieces are improvisations, the first lasting 9:24, the second 17:40. In these works, much capital is made of the raw materiality of electro-acoustic sound itself. Neither zither nor piano are used idiomatically. Someone occasionally unleashes a window-rattling skein of sub-bass drone, but musical events mostly unfold on a microscopic level, amplified stresses and strains attenuated to coalesce in a rather beautiful, and certainly engrossing, bacterial sonic collage. There are sudden flurries of actual meta-musical activity toward the end of the second improvisation, with the first being soon blanketed by that headache-inducing drone. There?s no shortage of this type of closely observed timbrally-fixated improv on the market at the moment (not least on the Another Timbre label), but these are worthwhile additions.

The Cage piece that Farmer et al. elected to tackle is subject to the same basic methodology as the improvisations but is, perhaps unsurprisingly, more clearly, even delicately, structured. “four6” is a late Cage work for any means of sound production (vocal, instrumental, electronic etc.). The performers are each instructed to choose twelve different sounds, each sound being of fixed amplitude, overtone structure etc., and must play within flexible time brackets. None of the ensemble chooses to sing, though much use is made of recorded birdsong, into the grain of which bowed or electronic sounds are woven, and percussion sounds (small rustlings, sharp reverberations) mingle. Here the piano and zither are evident as sound sources, and the performative aspect of the piece can be more readily visualized (though just how Cunningham made it danceable cannot). It?s enough fun, however, mentally to relax into the soundscape and meditate on the implicit drama. The birdsong, although subtly deployed, imparts continuity to the performance, which lasts just over half an hour, and dramatically contextualises the listening experience.

This recording of “four6” is, incidentally, the second to be released on Another Timbre. The earlier version was included on ?Decentered? (2009), in an interpretation by another group of seasoned improvisers: Tom Chant, saxophones & bass clarinet; Angharad Davies, violin; Benedict Drew, electronics; and John Edwards, double bass.

Percussion Group Cincinnati

John Cage: The Works for Percussion 1

(Mode)

The Percussion Group Cincinnati operates more conventionally than Farmer and co. While the Another Timbre quartet certainly seem to abide by Cage?s score, the Cincinnatis go further, adhering closely to Peters Edition scores, and conforming to all of Cage?s recorded stipulations and preferences in order to record definitive versions. But that shouldn?t obscure the vital contribution that each player makes to the process by applying improvisational skills in a collective effort. They are asked to perform on instruments that otherwise have little or no place in the classical arena, including radios, adapted phonographs, tin cans and coils of wire. In one piece they even use a Slinky. Their performances are realized in much the same way as those, for example, that interpret the graphical notations of Anthony Braxton or Wadada Leo Smith, albeit they express a different idiomatic language.

“Credo in Us” (composed in 1942) is a work for pianist, two percussionists on muted gongs, tin cans, electric buzzer and tom-toms, and one performer who plays a radio or phonograph. There are two versions here. The records and radios splice into Cage?s music that of other composers. Cage suggested works by Dvorak, Beethoven, Sibelius or Shostakovich: the two versions here use Shostakovich’s and Beethoven’s Fifth Symphonies respectively. With its quick transitions between raw percussives, piano, and the recorded orchestral music, “Credo” is every bit as satirical as Cage intended. It?s easy here to imagine the dramatic gestures of Cunningham?s ensuing dance-drama, as the piece moves through various ?scenes? with a breathless gusto that also evokes the cinema of the early to mid-twentieth century. The second version, which closes the album, has perhaps a heightened sense of drama, and gives the pianist a higher profile.

In between the versions of “Credo” that top and tail the album, the Cincinnatis present all five completed works in the “Imaginary Landscapes” series, composed between 1939 and 1952. No. 2 and No. 3 are the only pieces for percussion per se, rather than for broadcast or pre-recorded sound. The series is presented out of chronological order, setting the first three at the album?s centre, which makes for a lively listening experience with some neat conjunctions.

“Imaginary Landscape No. 5”, 1952 is a score for a recording to tape, using as material any 42 phonographic records. Only duration and amplitude are notated on a block-graph score, the notation determined according to the I-Ching?s chance operations. Each square on the score represents three inches of tape. Cage didn?t specify what kind of recorded music should be used, but he favoured jazz recordings of the time, reputedly in order to overcome his own dislike for the genre. The piece is presented in two versions. One does use ?50s jazz records while the other, in a neat inversion, uses original recordings of works by Cage. Perhaps this will appeal to listeners generally averse to his music. The jazz version flits between snatches of Bessie Smith, Charlie Parker, and many other often instantly recognisable selections, and if the ensemble didn?t essay many run-throughs there are a surprising number of serendipitous juxtapositions in this mix. 

“Imaginary Landscape No. 4 (March No. 2)” is for twelve radios. Two performers are stationed at each radio, one dialling while the other controls amplitude and timbre. Again, durations are conventionally notated, but Cage used the I-Ching to create charts. Half of the fields in those charts denote silences, and fewer still call for any change in dynamics. Each of the two versions offered here concocts a melange/montage from snippets of audio broadcast history snatched from the ether. It would make an interesting project to record a version in every major capital city on the same day each year, to take the pulse of the times. There?s everything in here from Herbie Hancock?s “Rockit” to Dusty Springfield?s “I Only Wanna Be with You” and much else besides, much of it seemingly from the furthest-flung reaches of broadcastable sound.

“Imaginary Landscape No. 1”, 1939, for four musicians, is one of the earliest electro-acoustic works ever composed. Its performance involves two variable-speed phono turntables, on which two sides by a men?s? choir and a high-pitch ?constant note? test recording are played; also muted piano and cymbal. This is purportedly the first time No. 1 has been recorded on original instruments, using the specific Victor recordings that Cage stipulated in his score. Mode?s liner notes accurately suggest that with this piece Cage created “a disembodied soundscape”. “No. 1” was used appropriately by Merce Cunningham to accompany a dance piece about dismemberment.

“Imaginary Landscape No. 2 (March)” and No. 3, both dating from 1942, are for percussion instruments (tin cans, conch shell, ratchet, bass drum, buzzers, water gong, metal waste-basket and lion’s roar, accompanied by an amplified coil of wire attached to a phonographic tone arm in the case of No. 2; more tin cans and a muted gong, as well as electronic and mechanical devices including oscillators, vari-speed turntables playing frequency recordings, a buzzer, an amplified coil of wire, and amplified marimbula for No. 3). Both pieces were apparently composed as commentaries of sorts on the Second World War, and yes I do hear the intended undercurrents of “doom” and “impending destruction”, but I also hear Chinese carnival, and it is quite possible (other than at the conclusion of No. 3, which really is apocalyptic) to hear this music, which Cage intended to speak of insuperable trauma, as perfectly joyous. There?s no saying what a given listener?s ears might bring to the piece. That?s the sort of irony that Cage, with his devotion to indeterminacy, would no doubt have approved.

Tim’s Star Ratings;

Farmer/Kilyamis/Hughes/ Cornford-3 Stars

Percussion Group Cincinnati-4 Stars

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