Sun Aug 12, 2012
John Cage was born on September 5, 1912. To celebrate the 100th anniversary of his birth, Tom Plsek and I (with guests) will present three of his works, centered on the trombone: the Solo for Sliding Trombone from the Concert for Piano and Orchestra (1957), Ryoanji for trombone and percussion (1985?), and Two5 for trombone and piano (1991). Event page and info: http://www.mobius.org/events/happy-100th-john-cage.
This performance is the latest in a series of Cage-related events presented by the Mobius Artists Group, beginning in 1993 with an overnight performance of Empty Words, and recently continued with multiple versions of Music for Amplified Toy Piano, organized by Jane Wang as part of the Art of the UnGrand series (http://www.mobius.org/events/toy-piano-mini-fest-mobius). Tom inspired and organized our version of Empty Words, following Cage’s death in August 1992, setting in motion the events which led to our presentation of Fontana Mix with Four6 in the mid-1990s, the entire series of eight Variations, presented between 1996 and 2011 (http://www.mobius.org/events/cage-variations-viii-skowhegan), and a program we titled Cage for Trombone, also in the 1990s. Our birthday concert includes works from Cage for Trombone: while Tom and I have performed Ryoanji since that time, we’ve always wanted to get back to Two5, and this is our chance. So I’ll say a little something about that to start with.
Two5, one of Cage’s late works, belong to the series of some forty compositions referred to as either “number pieces” or “time-bracket pieces.” They’re called “number pieces” because their titles refer to the number of performers involved (from one to 108). The superscript numerals simply designate the “position” in this group of compositions with that number of performers: in this case, the fifth piece titled Two. The phrase “time brackets” refers to Cage’s notation for how sound events occur in time. Typically, a single tone, group of notes, or other sound event will be noted on a fragment of musical staff, with spans of time in minutes and seconds within which the performer may choose to begin, and choose to end, the event. The order of events is generally fixed, but timing is flexible.
This description of Cage’s notation doesn’t convey the richness and variety found in the “number pieces” taken as a whole. Two5 is a quiet work lasting exactly forty minutes. Within each of the time brackets, the trombone performs single notes or very narrow glissandi. Cage provides a microtonal notation, with any of six pitches available between half-steps of the conventional Western scale. The piano is somewhat more active, with sequences of single notes and intervals for each time bracket. This doesn’t mean the piano dominates, though – Cage requests that the piano “should sound absent minded, without regularity or presence.”
The challenge with the piano part, of course, is that as a performer I have to be the opposite of absent minded. Two5 is the kind of work easily described as “meditative.” For me, preparing the performance has been like putting a meditation practice in action. Each tone and interval is a separate event, not leading to or following from any other. Each is therefore a fresh start: no downbeats, no cadences. Each touch requires the same quality of individual attention as every other touch. This is also true, I believe, for performance in general (beyond performance of music), but here the challenge is relentless. What I hope is that my quality of attention will infuse the performance sufficiently that the audience may experience the alert but relaxed attention that meditation practice aims for.
Later on we'll have notes from Tom, and some comments on the other pieces - so stay tuned.
