''Music for Piano'' is a series of 85 indeterminate musical compositions for

piano The piano is a stringed keyboard instrument in which the strings are struck by wooden hammers that are coated with a softer material (modern hammers are covered with dense wool felt; some early pianos used leather). It is played using a keybo ...

by American

avant-garde The avant-garde (; In 'advance guard' or ' vanguard', literally 'fore-guard') is a person or work that is experimental, radical, or unorthodox with respect to art, culture, or society.John Picchione, The New Avant-garde in Italy: Theoretical ...

composer John Cage. All of these works were composed by making paper imperfections into sounds using various kinds of chance operations.

General information

The use of paper imperfections was suggested by fast techniques in

painting Painting is the practice of applying paint, pigment, color or other medium to a solid surface (called the "matrix" or "support"). The medium is commonly applied to the base with a brush, but other implements, such as knives, sponges, and ai ...

. Cage recounts that using the ''I Ching'' was always a very slow process. In 1952 a dancer (probably Jo Anne Melcher, the dedicatee of ''Music for Piano 1'') made a request for a piece of music which was needed urgently, and Cage had to find a way to speed up the process:

Certainly I intended to continue working ..by consulting the ''I Ching'' as usual. But I also wanted to have a very rapid manner of writing a piece of music. Painters, for example, work slowly with oil and rapidly with water colors ..I looked at my paper, and I found my "water colors": suddenly I saw that the music, all the music, was already there.

A description of the process of composing these pieces can be found in Cage's book '' Silence: Lectures and Writings''. Cage composed the work by creating a "master page" in which two staves (one "system") have enough space above and below to allow each staff to be either treble or bass clef, so that all the notes on the piano can be included. He then used transparent paper and marked the imperfections in the paper according to various chance operations, then inscribing the staves of the master sheet on the page, making the imperfections into whole notes, adding ledger lines (where needed), accidentals, clefs, and other indications (such as M for "muted" and P for "pizzicato") selected using the I Ching. The ''Music for Piano'' series comprises the following works: * ''Music for Piano 1'' (1952) :Dedicated to dancer Jo Anne Melcher, who commissioned the work for her choreography "Paths and Events". The score (six pages) only specifies pitches (using

whole note A whole note (American) or semibreve (British) in musical notation is a single note equivalent to or lasting as long as two half notes or four quarter notes. Description The whole note or semibreve has a note head in the shape of a hollow o ...

s), leaving the durations to the performer. Cage composed the piece one staff at a time. First, he set up a time interval within which to work. Then he would mark as many paper imperfections as he could find during that time.Pritchett, 94. The piece is played at a prescribed tempo (each system = 7 seconds). In all subsequent pieces the tempo is freely determined by the performer. * ''Music for Piano 2'' (1953) :Composed for dancer Louise Lippold, as were '' In a Landscape'' (1948) and ''

A Flower ''A Flower'' is a song for voice and closed piano by John Cage. It was composed in 1950, for a choreography by Louise Lippold, wife of sculptor Richard Lippold. There is no text; the singer vocalises a small number of phonemes such as "uh", "wa ...

'' (1950). The pitches are again derived from paper imperfections, but this time a predefined rhythmic controls the density of notes. Chance operations (with the '' I Ching'') are used to determine methods of sound production (on the keyboard, muting tring muted with fingers or hand and played on the keyboardor plucked.) Tempo and dynamics are left to the performer. The score is four pages long. * ''Music for Piano 3'' (1953) :Dedicated to

Morton Feldman Morton Feldman (January 12, 1926 – September 3, 1987) was an American composer. A major figure in 20th-century classical music, Feldman was a pioneer of indeterminate music, a development associated with the experimental New York School ...

. Starting with this piece, all subsequent entries in the series are exactly one page long, and the number of notes and/or sounds is determined by the ''I Ching'' chance operations. In this and subsequent pieces dynamics and durations are free. * ''Music for Piano 4–19'' (for any number of pianos) (1953) :Composed for

Merce Cunningham Mercier Philip "Merce" Cunningham (April 16, 1919 – July 26, 2009) was an American dancer and choreographer who was at the forefront of American modern dance for more than 50 years. He frequently collaborated with artists of other discipl ...

's choreography titled ''Solo Suite in Space and Time''. Starting with these sixteen pieces, all subsequent entries in the series may be performed together, either in sequence or simultaneously, by any number of pianists. Overlapping of and silences between pieces are allowed. * ''Music for Piano 20'', for piano (1953) :Composed for the same Cunningham choreography as in ''Music for Piano 4-19''. * ''Music for Piano 21–36'', ''Music for Piano 37-52'' (for piano solo or in an ensemble) (1955) :Composed for the same Cunningham choreography as in ''Music for Piano 4-19'' and ''Music for Piano 20''. This time methods of sound production include noises produced by playing on the body of the piano in various places. In the versions recorded by Steffen Schleiermacher (see below) he employs a "superball" which he rubs on exterior parts of the piano, creating various groaning or moaning sounds. The two groups of sixteen pieces are different in that the limits for chance operations using the ''I Ching'' are 1–127 for the first group and 1-32 for the second group, numbers corresponding to relative difficulty of performance. Cage described the compositional process in full in a 1957 article, which was later reprinted in his first book, ''

Silence Silence is the absence of ambient audible sound, the emission of sounds of such low intensity that they do not draw attention to themselves, or the state of having ceased to produce sounds; this latter sense can be extended to apply to the c ...

''. * ''Music for Piano 53–68'' (for piano solo or in an ensemble) (1956) :Dedicated to

Grete Sultan Grete Sultan (born Johanna Margarete Sultan) (June 21, 1906June 26, 2005) was a German-American pianist. Born in Berlin into a musical Jewish family, she studied piano from an early age with American pianist Richard Buhlig, and later with Leonid ...

. * ''Music for Piano 69–84'' (for piano solo or in an ensemble) (1956) :Both collections were composed for the same Cunningham choreography, ''Solo Suite in Space and Time''. ''Music for Piano 53–68'' is dedicated to, and was first performed by,

. * ''Music for Piano 85'' (for piano and electronics) (1962) :Dedicated to Moriyasu Harumi and composed in

Osaka is a designated city in the Kansai region of Honshu in Japan. It is the capital of and most populous city in Osaka Prefecture, and the third most populous city in Japan, following Special wards of Tokyo and Yokohama. With a population of ...

.See , information taken from the score in New York Public Library. This last piece in the series is different from the others: it is to be performed on its own, and live electronics are to be used.

Glissandi In music, a glissando (; plural: ''glissandi'', abbreviated ''gliss.'') is a glide from one pitch to another (). It is an Italianized musical term derived from the French ''glisser'', "to glide". In some contexts, it is distinguished from the co ...

are used and feedback instructions are given in the score. The complete set of pieces, including several versions for multiple pianos, was recorded by pianist Steffen Schleiermacher for

Musikproduktion Dabringhaus Und Grimm MD&G or Musikproduktion Dabringhaus und Grimm (founded 1978) is a German classical record label based in Detmold run by recording engineers and producers Werner Dabringhaus and Reimund Grimm. MDG is notable for its premiere recordings of works by Ge ...

and released in a 2-CD set in 1998. The set includes "Electronic Music For Piano" in a version for two pianos. Another complete set of the pieces was issued in 2012 by

Brilliant Classics Brilliant Classics is a classical music label based in the Dutch town of Leeuwarden. It is renowned for releasing super-budget-priced editions on CD of the complete works of J.S. Bach, Mozart, Beethoven and many other composers. The label also ...

, performed by Giancarlo Simonacci. This set does not include versions for multiple pianos, or the "Electronic Music For Piano".

Editions

References

* Pritchett, James. 1993. ''The Music of John Cage''. Cambridge University Press. * Revill, David. 1993. ''The Roaring Silence: John Cage – a Life''. Arcade Publishing. ,

Notes

{{John Cage Compositions by John Cage Cycles (music) Compositions for solo piano