John Cage: Piano Music

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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 around 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 22 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 February 27 performance of Sonatas and Interludes.

Tonight's program is weighted towards the period of Cage's most intensive concentration on writing for piano in the 1940s and early 1950s, along with two works from much later in his output.

While this music is aggressively abstract, titles that refer to location (A Room, In a Landscape) and the natural world (The Green Frog's Voice) invite engagement with the texture of the here and now. Some of these works were written expressly to be accompanied by dance, pushing rhythmic pulse and intersecting patterns to the forefront.

A Room (1943) performed by Cong Feng, a student of Gabriel Chodos
The earliest work on this program, this two-minute piece already shows Cage's enduring interest in music germinated by arbitrary numbers. It can be performed with or without preparing 11 notes of the piano, and is based on a sequence of bar groupings (4-7-2-5-4-7-2-3-5) repeated twice.

Two Pieces 1946 (1946) performed by Christopher Lim, a student of Alexander Korsantia
The rhythmic bar structure for these pieces resembles that for A Room. Harmony draws on Cage's emerging "gamut technique" involving a pretermined set of unrelated sonorities that become the only sonorities available within each work.

In a Landscape (1948) performed by Yundu Wang, a student of Hung-Kuan Chen and Vivian Hornik Weilerstein
Using muted piano, Chinese cymbal, and two variable-speed turntables playing a frequency record and a constant note record, this is believed to be one of the earliest electroacoustic works ever composed.

Suite for Toy Piano (1948) performed by Hexin Qiao, a student of Veronica Jochum
The extremely limited range of the specified instrument is the most obvious numerical "rule" governing this work.

Five Haiku (1951) performed by Yijuan Geng, a student of Veronica Jochum
This transitional work straddles Cage's previous use of rules determined by choice, and his emerging interest in chance operations. But narrative is also implied by the reference for the first four pieces to specific haiku (poems): "for my dead friend, Who" - "What Stillness" - "The Green Frog's Voice" - "The River Plurabelle"

Water Music (1952) performed by Henry Burnam, a student of Stephen Drury
This key work introduces extensive beyond-the-piano actions for the performer to execute based on both extremely precise instructions and chance elements.

Etude Austral VIII (1975) performed by Grace Kim, a student of Vivian Hornik Weilerstein
This late work is based entirely on chance, as the notes come from lining up paper imperfections with score lines.

Music for Two (1987) performed by Jody Sharninghausen and Shaoai Zhang, students of Stephen Drury
In this extremely late work, from a large series of "number pieces" written during the last years of Cage's life, two performers play short notated fragments at any tempo within indicated time constraints.