Cage: Concerto for Prepared Piano and Orchestra

i won't pretend to understand most of this piece, but i would like to talk a bit about the setup and things that are involved in performing it, since we did so just the other week here at school.

this piece is three movements (without break) in 21 minutes, and involves a highly prepared piano along with a bunch of fairly nonconventional percussion. since i wasn't involved in the piano preparation, i'm just going to list the objects that are needed here and move on to a discussion of the other performance setups.

objects needed for the piano: 8 screws, 40 bolts (including headless, black, stove and furniture bolts, bolts in thin rubber casing, 1 bolt with weather stripping etc.), 4 short strips of rubber (or 8 wedges carved from soft rubber erasers), 4 rubber bolts, 1 US penny, 1 strip of felt, 11 strips of soft plastic (wire insulation), and a plastic bridge.

this list is courtesy of Tzenka Dianova, from "John Cage's Prepared Piano: the Nuts and Bolts"

the most problematic item above is the plastic bridge, which is not well described (or even really described at all. the idea is that the bridge rests on the sounding board and produces microtones. the suggestion in this book is a plastic ruler which was trimmed to fit under the indicated strings.

the piece is described as a kind of a middle ground between written out music and cage's "chance" music. he uses a technique called "gamut" which is where he creates and (geometrically) moves across rectangular charts of notes, chords and sonoroties to derive his music. in the first movement, the orchestra music uses one of these charts while the piano is improvisatory and like "free composition,"; in the second, a different chart is created for the piano part, and in the third, both piano and orchestra use the same chart. 

below is a recording from youtube.

the piece calls for a number of very unconventional percussion implements, among them a metal slinky suspended from a height and flicked with a fingernail. you can hear this at about 8:08. obviously because of the nature of the instrument it has to be amplified.

another electronic aspect is the boom box/radio which is supposed to be "set to a local station" and played at certain points in the score (usually for no more than one or two seconds). this introduces another element of chance and can result in some spectacularly awkward moments in the performance. (i think 3:29 is one of these, as is 8:46.)

the piece is scored also for an electric "buzzer" which should be audible at just after 8:00, although i can't seem to discern it in this recording (it should be pretty much corresponding with the thunder sheet sound). i think for this we just used a buzzer button amplified.

other unusual implements include a metal garbage can (2:17), various types of maracas and shakers, thunder sheet, and a "water gong," which is a gong that is struck and then lowered/raised into a tub of water, which bends and alters the pitch. there are also a number of points at which one of the percussion people has to go in and scrub some sort of metal apparatus along the piano strings as the piano player plays (orchestral - there is another pianist who plays both a prepared piano as well as a celest, in addition to the concerto soloist)  (5:43 is one example of this sound, as is about 6:03); we also amplified this. piano strings can take a lot of abuse, as long as the soundboard isn't messed with too much.

the piece is so spare that we decided to perform it with most of the lights dimmed and stand lights for all the performers. it gave it a sort of eerie and surreal feel. this piece is quite difficult to get into - the only thing i catch on to really is the d minor chord that opens the piece :P

but it's good to keep an open mind. enjoy!

if you would like to see a nice video of this piece being performed, there is a video of the IC chamber orchestra performing it here. i think both the buzzer and the slinky are much more successful in this performance, you can hear both in close proximity from about 22:53 to 23:00. in particular our slinky sounded less like metal rattling and much more like a toy gun :)