John Cage

John Cage & Marcel Duchamp - Reunion (1968) {LP Takeyoshi Miyazawa} (Released on VINYL but not CD)
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© 1968 Takeyoshi Miyazawa | [none]
Electronic / Non-Music / Fluxus / Avant-Garde / Spoken Word

The year 2008 marked the fortieth anniversary of Reunion, a performance in which games of chess determined the form and acoustical ambience of a musical event. The concert – held at the Ryerson Theatre in Toronto, Canada – began shortly after 8:30 on the evening of March 5, 1968, and concluded at approximately 1:00 a.m. the next morning. Principal players were John Cage, who conceived (but did not actually “compose”) the work; Marcel Duchamp and his wife Alexina (Teeny); and composers David Behrman, Gordon Mumma, David Tudor, and Lowell Cross. Except for a brief curtain call with Merce Cunningham and Dance Company in Buffalo, NY five days later (March 10, 1968), Duchamp made his last public stage appearance – in the role of chess master – in Reunion.

John Cage - Early Music - Edwin Alexander Buchholz, Joanna Becker (2007) {Edition Wandelweiser Records ‎EWR 0711}
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© 2007 Edition Wandelweiser Records | ‎EWR 0711
Classical / Avant-Garde / Modern Classical / Minimalism

An enchanting suite of ‘Early Music’ composed by John Cage and performed by Edwin Alexander Buchholz (accordion) and Joanna Becker (violin), including: ‘Dream’ [1948]; ‘In A Landscape’ [1948]; ‘Six Melodies’ [1950]; and ‘Souvenir’ [1983]. Serving to upend preconceptions of Cage being more valued for his concepts than his music, this set holds some truly magickal sound organisation that requires no prior knowledge of the artist or his ideas in order for it to be enjoyed.

This collection features works by various luminaries in the international avant-garde performing works by or in memoriam of the iconoclastic composer John Cage. Performances range from David Tudor's electronic explorations to Patrick Moraz's performance of Cage's "Dances for Prepared Piano." The irony will not be lost on fans of Cage's work that a recorded tribute album for a composer who disliked the recorded medium is at best a strange tribute.

John Cage - Complete Piano Music, Vols. 1-10 - Steffen Schleiermacher (2004) {18CD Set MDG 613 1731-2 rec 1997-2002}
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© 1997-2002, 2004 Musikproduktion Dabringhaus Und Grimm | MDG 613 1731-2
Classical / Contemporary Classical / Piano

Steffen Schleiermacher's monumental traversal of the complete piano music of John Cage will be essential for the collection of any fan of the composer's, unless he or she has already purchased the previously released ten volumes (a total of 18 discs) that are boxed together here and reissued in recognition of the composer's 100th anniversary in 2012. The 20-hour compilation is a testimony to Cage's hugely prolific output, and certainly constitutes one of the most significant collections of keyboard music of the 20th century. There could hardly be a more sympathetic and skillful interpreter of Cage's oeuvre than German pianist/composer Steffen Schleiermacher.

Although John Cage occasionally worked in large, sophisticated studios - for example, when he composed Fontana Mix in 1958 - his approach to electronic and tape music was often uncomplicated, makeshift, and pragmatic, employing simple tabletop devices: tape machines, phonograph cartridges, contact microphones, record players, portable radios, etc.
He developed a soundworld that was utterly new, radical and demanding. It heralded the age of the loudspeaker, mass communication and Marshall McLuhan's 'global village.' The hiss, crackle and hum of electronic circuits,
and the disembodied sounds, snatched by radio from the ether, spoke of the 20th century.

During the last few years of his life, John Cage wrote many pieces in the same general vein as Five3. They are often referred to as "the number pieces." This references the titles of the pieces, which are all simply the number of the performers. Superscripts are added as necessary to distinguish the individual pieces (this is the third quintet, for example).
These works are also called "the time-bracket pieces," a reference to the notation of the pieces.

Morton Feldman’s “For John Cage” is the second of seven large-scale works dedicated to artists, a series which includes Frank O’Hara, Bunita Marcus, Christian Wolff, Stefan Wolpe, Philip Guston, and Samuel Beckett. Feldman met John Cage in 1950, at a time when Feldman’s composition studies with Stefan Wolpe had reached a kind of dead end. Cage gave him encouragement, enthusiasm and permission to be himself. They remained friends until Feldman’s death in 1987. In its austere texture, “For John Cage” gives equal weight to the violin and piano parts. The fact that the two instruments often play similar material makes the contrast between the sustained sounds of the violin and the decaying sounds of the piano especially clear.

A fresh approach to one of contemporary composition’s most iconoclastic and inventive figures, issued on the occasion of John Cage’s 100th birthday. Early Cage is the subject here, strikingly original songs and piano pieces from the 1930s and 1940s. Songs in which Cage sets words by writers whose vision was as independent as his own – James Joyce, Gertrude Stein, E. E. Cummings. As Paul Griffiths writes, “The music exists in singing that has a raw, living edge, and it exists in piano tone that can be utterly simple and utterly remarkable. There is also a third presence that of the producer, bringing forward the extraordinary resonances that come from Lubimov’s piano, with preparation or without.”

The 35th volume in Mode's Complete John Cage Edition is also the second release in Ulrich Krieger's series of interpretations for solo saxophone and saxophones with other instruments. Ensemble pieces of comparatively large dimensions were gathered on A Cage of Saxophones: Vol. 1, so this follow-up disc presents pieces for smaller combinations and solos, though with no less originality or charm.