Classical Music

Classical Music

Book edited by Cat Hope and Lindsay Vickery, including CD recording of the 8 John Cage 'Variations' (1958-76), recorded by the Australian ensemble Decibel. Book & CD. First edition. 251 pages. Printed in Germany. Authors featured are Leta E. Miller, David P. Miller, Vincent Bonin, Paul van Emmerik, Thomas DeLio, James Pritchett, Cat Hope, Lindsay Vickery, Stuart James and an introduction by Warren Burt. Variations I [bass clarinet, bass flute, and cello] Variations II [alto saxophone, flute, viola, piano, and cello] Variations III [drum set and a.m. radio] Variations IV [cello, flute, viola, bass clarinet, and environmental sounds] Variations V [reel to reel tapes and oscillators] Variations VI [electric bass guitar and analog effects, electric cello, and digital effects] Variations VII [mobile phones, tablet computers, and laptops] Variations VIII [no input feedback bass clarinet] The eight 'Variations' compositions by John Cage reflect the most productive years of his compositional life - from Variation I in 1958 to Variation VIII in 1976. They show the evolution of some of the earliest aleatoric, multimedia and spatial approaches to contemporary live music performance. This book brings together new and existing perspectives, experiences and backgrounds to these remarkable works, explored by leading International Cage scholars and practitioners. The writings are complemented with a CD recording of Decibel's Complete John Cage Variations Project, an hour long performance program featuring the Variations I - VIII. The works are performed using annotated digital scores created within the ensemble, automating many of the manual processes that resulting in new, accurate versions that align with Cage's artistic aims. Traditional acoustic instruments and period electronics are featured alongside photocells, Arduino boards, online messaging services and calls, noise bass guitar, shortwave radio and custom DIY circuitry. Rare composer notes and missing parts were sourced from the John Cage Trust, New York Public Library and Langlois Foundation. Published in conjunction with Cage's publisher Peters Edition, the scores developed for the project are available via the Apple store. Decibel is a new music ensemble and artistic research team that focuses on the integration of acoustic and electronic instruments in chamber music performance, founded in Western Australia in 2009. They are world-leading interpreters of graphic notations and pioneer digital score formats for composition and performance. This includes the ongoing development of their successful Decibel ScorePlayer App for iPad, enabling coordinated performance of graphic notations for musicians and composers internationally. They have released 7 albums and tour internationally regularly. Cat Hope is an artist scholar whose research interests include animated notation, gender and music, Australian music, digital archiving, as well as music composition and performance as artistic research. She has been awarded Civitella Ranieri, Churchill and Hamburg Institute for Advanced Study Fellowships, and is co-author of 'Digital Arts - An Introduction to New Media (Bloomsbury, 2014) and co-editor of 'Contemporary Musical Virtuosities' (Routledge, 2024). She is a Professor at Monash University in Melbourne, Australia. Lindsay Vickery is a composer/performer whose music includes works for acoustic and electronic instruments in interactive-electronic, improvised or fully notated settings, ranging from solo pieces to opera and has been commissioned by numerous groups for concert, dance and theatre. He writes and presents on a range of topics, most recently on the emergence of the "screenscore", nonlinear music and the realization of Cage's music. He is head of composition and music technology at the WA Academy of Performing Arts at Edith Cowan University, Perth, Australia.

The pioneering work and unconventional ideas of John Cage deeply affected Western music during the second half of the 20th century. This second of two volumes completes Katrin Zenz's review of his complete works for flute. The earlier chromatic pieces include an incredible variety of extended techniques and a perplexing rhythmic complexity. The elements of chance and experimentation in the later compositions result in music that is constantly undergoing seismic shifts in form and expression. The elegance and purpose of Cage's music rests in a tenderness and devoutness that he stated should "sober and quiet the mind, thus rendering it susceptible to divine influences."

Spanning a fifty year period, from the Three Pieces for Flute Duet of 1935 to his homage to the Kyoto Zen garden Ryoanji from 1984, this first volume of John Cage's complete works for flute with Katrin Zenz provides a way to access Cage's music and hear his development throughout the decades of his impressively long career. From his 12 tone influenced early years that yielded works of astonishing beauty to the latter years that included electronics, song sprech and unorthodox scoring, Complete Works for Flute provides insight to this master's various musical directions as the 20th century unfolded. Includes the world premiere recording of Music for Two, which Cage dictated was written for any combination of the 17 different instrumental 'parts without scores' provided by the composer.

John Cage was one of the twentieth century’s most radical thinkers who redefined his own contribution to musical history in the light of his ceaseless exploration. + One aspect of this was the technique of ‘indeterminacy’, exemplified by Winter Music, a major work on the grandest of scales that can be freely interpreted as to time but which remains coloristic and resonant. + Two2 is one of Cage’s ‘Number Pieces’, and one of his most forward-looking works, a composition that considers the structure of listening itself and one that continues to influence a new generation of composers. + This is the final disc in the series (volume 1 is on 8.559726, volume 2 on 8.559727).

John Cage's remarkable magnum opus A Book of Music for two prepared pianos is brought together here with his complete works for toy piano. Intricately structured according to Cage's ideas about Mozart, A Book of Music is an eloquent and virtuoso mosaic of driving and sometimes frenetic rhythms, the exotic sounds of the 'prepared' piano strings transporting the listener into worlds of the strangest imagining. The Suite for Toy Piano is a modest miracle of precise expression and the first ever serious concert music written for this instrument, while Music for Amplified Toy Pianos is composed using chance elements, generating a spacious field of sound filled with surprise.

John Cage’s practicality transformed the piano into a full percussion orchestra and a workbench for sonic experiment. Three Dances is one of his most ambitious prepared piano works. Music for Two includes bowed piano techniques to create shifting tapestries of subtle expression, making for some of the most exquisite and moving chamber music of the late 20th century. The second of a three volume series; Volume 1 can be found on Naxos 8.559726.

Classical Music

Classical Music

Nicholas Isherwood made his début as Lucifer in Stockhausen’s Donnerstag aus Licht at Covent Garden, and has since collaborated closely with composers such as Crumb, Henze, Kurtág and Xenakis. His initial exposure to the music of John Cage left him less than convinced, but after corresponding with Cage he acquired a taste for it – something which soon developed into what he now calls ‘a love affair’. On ARIA, Isherwood presents most of Cage’s music for solo voice that is not included in the composer’s Song Books, and most pieces are here recorded for the first time by a male singer.

John Cage (1912-1992) holds his own special place amidst this stylistic pluralism. Although Cage did not specifically write a trio for horn, violin, and piano, his work Music For (1984) can be easily fleshed out in this instrumental lineup. Music For is a bundle of 17 parts that can be randomly associated with one another. Each possible combination represents an entirely valid version of the piece – ranging from a solo performance to piano duet, string quartet, or ensemble with voice. The version for horn trio is called Music For Three.

Violinist Rolf Schulte presents a program of great American violin works composed between 1947 and 2000. He is joined in two of them by pianist Ursula Oppens.

A disc for harp not mainly addressed to harpists, but to all contemporaty music lovers. A disc for harp with compositions not by harpist-composers, but from composers in the canon. A spectacular Concerto for Harp and Orchestra (Brussels Philharmonic) composed in 2022 by the American composer Geoffrey Gordon is the core of the recording. The Concerto is preceded and followed by solo harp music by two living composers (Toshio Hosokawa and James MacMillan) and by the famous In a Landscape by John Cage. Two world premiere recordings.

Repertoire for solo guitar has gained in depth and quality in recent decades, with acoustic and electronic techniques enjoying an ever more imaginative coexistence. Arturo Tallini's recital explores contrasting approaches for his instrument, beginning with the ostinato textures of Reich's Electric Counterpoint, an acknowledged classic in this field. Tallini's transcriptions of early piano works by Cage create a mood of reverie, while Carter's Changes forms a mercurial dialogue. James Dashow's iPiece fuses acoustic and electronic elements to stunning effect, while Arthur Kampela's Percussion Studies have proved pivotal in exploring new sounds for the guitar.