JOHN CAGE: The Works for Percussion 1 Cage’s Credo: The Discovery of Percussion Group Cincinnati New Imaginary Landscapes of Sound by Paul Cox ENGLISH 1. CREDO IN US (1942) 12:58 “It’s not a physical landscape. It’s a term discovery of new sounds. Cage found an ideal for percussion quartet (including piano and radio or phonograph. FIRST VERSION reserved for the new technologies. It’s a land- incubator for his interest in percussion and With Dimitri Shostakovich: Symphony No.5, New York Philharmonic/Leonard Bernstein scape in the future. It’s as though you used electronics at the Cornish School in Seattle, Published by DSCH-Publishers. Columbia ML 5445 (LP) technology to take you off the ground and go where he worked as composer and accompa- 2. IMAGINARY LANDSCAPE No. 5 (1952) 3:09 like Alice through the looking glass.” nist for the dance program. With access to a for any 42 recordings, score to be realized as a magnetic tape — John Cage large collection of percussion instruments and FIRST VERSION, using period jazz records. Realization by Michael Barnhart a radio studio, Cage created his first “Imagi- 3. IMAGINARY LANDSCAPE No. 4, “March No. 2” (1942) 4:26 John Cage came of age during the pioneer- nary Landscape,” a title he reserved for works for 12 radios. FIRST VERSION ing era of electronic technology in the 1920s. using electronic technology. CCM Percussion Ensemble, James Culley, conductor With new inventions improving the fidelity of The Cornish radio studio served as de facto 4. IMAGINARY LANDSCAPE No. 1 (1939) 6:52 phonographs and radios, a vast array of new music laboratory where Cage created and for 2 variable-speed turntables, frequency recordings, muted piano and cymbal, voices, sounds and music entered the American broadcast the Imaginary Landscape No. 1, DEUTSCH to be performed as a recording or broadcast. With Joey Van Hassel home. As a boy, Cage witnessed the inner work- considered one of the first electro-acoustic 5. IMAGINARY LANDSCAPE No. 2, “March No. 1” (1942) 6:49 ings of this new technology through his father, works composed in America. Cage’s score for percussion quintet the noted inventor, John Cage, Sr., who built a calls for muted piano, a large Chinese cymbal 6. IMAGINARY LANDSCAPE No. 3 (1942) 4:06 radio that ran on alternating current and plug- and two variable-speed turntables playing for percussion sextet. With Matthew Hawkins, Mark Katsaounis, Jacent Mraz ged into the family’s living room lamp. Cage Victor frequency records, one of sliding tones credits his father for inspiring his experimental and the other of single pitch tones. 7. IMAGINARY LANDSCAPE No. 4, “March No. 2” (1951) 4:29 SECOND VERSION approach to composition; an approach charac- Imaginary Landscape No. 1 was composed CCM Percussion Ensemble, James Culley, conductor terized by an obsessive quest for new sounds for a dance by Bonnie Bird and debuted on and for expanding the boundaries of what was Cornish’s “Hilarious Dance Concert” in March 8. IMAGINARY LANDSCAPE No. 5 (1952) 3:07 acceptable in music. The works included in this 1939. What is striking about the first perfor- SECOND VERSION, using recordings of Cage’s music. Realization by Michael Barnhart recording, Credo in Us (1942) and the five Im- mance is that the music was performed in the 9. CREDO IN US (1942) 15:00 aginary Landscapes, capture a crucial period in Cornish radio studio, then broadcast to the FRANÇAIS SECOND VERSION Cage’s development as he established the found- theatre next door, where it was used to accom- With 78-rpm recordings of Ludwig van Beethoven: Symphony No.3, Amsterdam Concertgebouw Orchestra/Willem Mengelberg, Capitol EFL-2502. Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky: Symphony No.4, ation of electro-acoustic music in America. pany a rather curious dance about dismember- Minneapolis Symphony Orchestra/Dimitri Mitropoulos, Columbia M-468. Richard Wagner: Cage declares his interest in new electronic ment. The nineteen-year-old Merce Cunning- Lohengrin, Prelude to Act III, Chicago Symphony Orchestra/Frederick Stock, RCA Victor 7386-B. sounds in his 1940 manifesto, “The Future of ham was part of the troupe of dancers that Franz von Suppe: Light Cavalry Overture, BBC Symphony Orchestra/Adrian Boult, Music: Credo,” wherein he calls for the cre- moved among and hid behind large, mobile RCA Victor 11837-A ation of musical laboratories to promote the black shapes set against a black backdrop to, in part, create the illusion of floating body parts. tact microphone. For the coil, Cage suggested World War came along, I talked to myself, what made by Merce Cunningham and Jean Erdman Bird explained: “I discovered I could do things to the Group using an amplified Slinky ® (yes, do I think of the Second World War? Well, I (both members of the Martha Graham Dance like create a body that covered the whole the toy also known as the “original walking think it’s lousy. So I wrote a piece, Imaginary Company at the time), which was premiered stage… . You would see a head, Merce’s head, spring toy”); they create sounds ranging from Landscape No. 3, which is perfectly hideous.” on a program of works by young choreogra- ENGLISH way up, and then sliding down the side while rumbling thunder to explosions by striking or To depict this dark mood, Cage uses a bat- phers at the Bennington School of Dance in two sets of legs walked down the stage. It was stroking it with different materials, like a finger- tery of extra large tin cans and muted gongs August 1942. Subsequently performed in New fascinating. And I would have the rectangle nail or cloth. Other instruments include gradu- combined with an expanded electronic sound York City and Chicago, Credo marked the start interrupt the two, and they’d skitter away. Or ated tin cans, conch shell, ratchet, bass drum, palette using an oscillator, variable speed of Cage and Cunningham’s life-long collabora- you’d see only hands moving in space.” buzzer, water gong, metal wastebasket and a turntables (again playing frequency record- tion. As a dance-drama, a genre popularized Cage’s electro-acoustic score served as an lion’s roar. ings), a buzzer, amplified coil and amplified by Graham during the 1930s that combined ideal backdrop for Bird’s experiment in move- The designation “March” is ironic, perhaps marímbula (a Caribbean instrument with metal narration with dance, Credo departed from ment. By broadcasting his mix of electronic a reflection of Cage’s ambivalent feelings about tongues that are plucked, attached to a reso- Graham’s tidy narratives based on myths and and acoustic sounds, Cage created his own World War II. After a loud cacophonous intro- nant box). The work opens with a massive per- patriotic themes. Inspired instead by James disembodied soundscape — an ideal accom- duction, Cage teasingly introduces a quiet cussion and electronic noise texture followed Joyce, Dada, surrealism, and popular radio paniment for the macabre (yet humorous) march rhythm played on a tin can. This dra- by an eerie descending drone (using a record- dramas, their work explored the nuances and theme of the dance. matic contrast in dynamics, particularly the ing of an electric generator’s whine) sounding shadowy recesses of everyday life. DEUTSCH There are two versions of the Imaginary use of quiet sounds, are key elements of like an airplane about to crash. Cage returns The drama’s setting is “Westward Ho!” Landscape No. 2. The first, composed in 1940 Cage’s wartime works, as he describes in his to the electro-percussion texture in the final and takes place over “three generations.” It is for another dance (about trees) by Bird, was “Lecture on Nothing:” “Half intellectually and section, which concludes with an explosive a satire on the sterile conventions of American later withdrawn. The second, a quintet written half sentimentally, when the war came along, sound created striking the amplified coil. The middle-class life told through the perspective in 1942 for Lou Harrison’s percussion ensem- I decided to use only quiet sounds. There overall effect is, as Cage intended, one of of a feuding married couple, the doubly ble in San Francisco, was later re-titled Imagi- seemed to be no truth, no good, in anything impending destruction. named “Wife/Ghoul’s Rage” and “Husband/ nary Landscape No. 2,“March”. Since many big in society. But quiet sounds were like lone- The association of sound with ideas and Shadow.” Erdman recalled that the names of Cage’s percussion works were written for a liness, or love or friendship.” Conversely, loud feelings is central to Cage’s “intentionally ex- served as a point of departure for the dance combination of amateur and experienced per- sounds for Cage signified destruction and the pressive” wartime works. He describes this and signified the characters’ public and psy- cussionists, the parts vary widely in difficulty. actions of large institutions, like governments heightened expressiveness in a catalog of his chological personas. This duality is also pre- On this recording, the Group performs all five and corporations. music that includes descriptions of the lyrical sent in the title, which Cage described in an parts with ease, in part by using specially cre- In contrast to the irony of the second prepared-piano works, like In the Name of the interview as a double entendre meaning both FRANÇAIS ated instruments (see DVD). Landscape, the Imaginary Landscape No. 3, Holocaust (1942) and The Perilous Night (1943- (“Credo”) I believe in the U.S. (United States) Composed in Chicago in April 1942, the written shortly before the second in February 44), as well as ensemble works like Credo in and I believe in us (you and me).