Cage: Sonatas and Interludes + Music for Piano

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A battery of 85 separate works, most of which can be performed sequentially or simultaneously, with or without overlapping or silence between pieces. That's John Cage's Music for Piano, a sprawling collection that is performed here tonight in its entirety for the first time, 50 years after its completion. It's paired with Cage's equally monumental Sonatas and Interludes, written a few years previously. Both are milestones in his evolution as a composer.

Sonatas and Interludes

"After reading the work of Ananda K. Coomaraswamy, I decided to attempt the expression in music of the 'permanent emotions' of Indian traditions: the heroic, the erotic, the wondrous, the mirthful, sorrow, fear, anger, the odious and their common tendency toward tranquility."
—John Cage

Officially on record with the musicians' union as a concert pianist, Cage's first breakthroughs as a composer were with that instrument. In the 1930s he introduced unpredictability into the sounds produced by the piano's 88 keys through his invention of a meta-instrument, the prepared piano. Objects placed in the piano stringbed alter their sound, and the act of preparing the piano in this fashion becomes an integral part of preparing a performance.

In writing Sonatas and Interludes (1946–48), Cage created a magic toyshop of his work with prepared piano that summarized the potency of indeterminacy in scores that still nod to the idea of a "melody line" and the 88 pitches of the instrument. With all due humility, Cage declined to take credit for his ideas, writing that

"when Bach societies couldn’t obtain eighteenth century harpsichords they employed thumb tacks on the piano hammers. Hot jazz pianists have used the newspaper idea for years. Just as you go along the beach and pick up pretty shells that please you, I go into the piano and find sounds I like."

Sonatas and Interludes is performed by: Alexander Zhu (Sonata 1), Santiago Lomelin (Sonatas 2, 3), Grace Kim (Sonata 4), Samantha Angstman (Interlude I, Sonatas 5, 6), Luyang Hao (Sonata 7), Christopher Lim (Sonata 8), Henry Burnam (Interlude 2), Janet Lee (Interlude 3), Younggyo Lee (Sonata 9), Nayoung Kim (Sonata 10), Yijuan Geng (Sonata 11), Lucy Tan (Sonata 12, Interlude IV, Sonata 13), Emely Phelps (Sonatas 14, 15, 16)

Music for Piano

With Music for Piano 1 in 1952, Cage began a series of giant steps to remove traces of intention or "authorship" from his works for piano. The random imperfections that occur in paper due to its organic source as fiber pulp became notation. Anywhere Cage could see an imperfection, he drew a note onto the score paper, fall where it may. All other performance decisions are left to the performer: duration and intervals between notes, how the note is struck by the performer, etc.

Eventually Cage wrote 83 more of these works through 1956, plus an 85th Music for Piano in 1962 while in Osaka, Japan. Different rules and non-rules, with specifics determined by I Ching chance operations, distinguish each work in the series. The importance of indeterminacy—and playfulness regarding conventional piano technique—escalated through the creation of these works, ensuring many layers of unpredictability when they are performed. And even though this is their first complete performance, it is also fair to say that no two future performances will ever be alike.

For the listener, this guarantees that an evening of paying close attention will be rewarded with surprise upon surprise.

This work is particularly appealing to New England Conservatory, home to more than a hundred students and teachers of piano in the classical, jazz, and improvisation traditions. You will see many of them on stage in the course of this evening's premiere.

Music for Piano is performed by:
1 JeeHae Ahn
2 Henry Burnam
3 Shuangning Liu
4-19 Shaoai Zhang, Grace Kim, Henry Burnam, Younggyo Lee, Yijuan Geng, Alexander Zhu, Christopher Lim
20 Christopher Lim
21-84 Qing Li, Luyao Liu, Siyu Li, Wesley Chu, Yuan Zhuang, Shinae Hwang, Xiaopei Xu, Benjamin Woo, Samantha Angstman, Lucy Tan, Julien Beurms, Shanshan Wang, Christian Gamboa,  Ran Bi, Jody Sharninghausen, Kristina Nyberg, Jingsi Lu, So Hee An, Jiwon Moon, Steven Gordon, Yijuan Geng, Alexander Zhu, Evan Allen, Santiago Lomelin, Janet Lee, Younggyo Lee, Lu Shen, In-Hyun Lee, Zhiqing Peng, Paul Moon, Ji Young Chung, Wei-Liang Kung, Jiannan Zheng, Yan Cheng, Jia Shi, Shicong Liu, Sanwei Zhang, Tsotne Tsotskhalashvili, Nino Bakradze, Ahran Kim, Konstantine Alekseev, Lana Anikina Suran
85 Christian Gamboa

Video: Stephen Drury prepares the piano used in Sonatas and Interludes.

Read Cage's full note on Sonatas and Interludes.

The Wikipedia article on Music for Piano provides a good overview of the work's 85 component parts. Wikipedia also outlines the I Ching's influence, which for Cage included the 1950 publication of a comprehensive English-language guide in Princeton University's Bollingen Series, shortly before Cage began work on Music for Piano.

About these concerts

Composer John Cage (1912–1992) paid attention to the 99% of sound that was not previously called "music." This even led him to explore what was previously thought of as "silence." Because he challenged existing notions of music in such a fundamental way, his ideas still provoke and inspire.

Cage visited New England Conservatory for a festival of his music in 1991. In 2012, we celebrate his centennial with performances by NEC's musicians here and elsewhere in Boston.

Cage.88@100

Under the rubric of "Cage.88@100," NEC's piano department chair Bruce Brubaker and project director Stephen Drury bring together piano students from the entire spectrum of NEC's teaching studios for tonight's concert and concerts on February 6 and 27.

Stephen Drury's work with Cage during the composer's lifetime included the 1991 NEC visit, premiering the solo part of Cage's 101 with the Boston Symphony Orchestra, and commissioning new work from Cage. Drury has coached students for these performances and has prepared the piano used in the tonight's performance of Sonatas and Interludes.