From Columbia MS 7051:

JOHN CAGE: VARIATIONS II (BMI-26:20). David Tudor, Piano

"I believe that the use of noise to make music will continue and increase until we reach a music produced through the aid of electrical instruments that will make available for musical purposes any and all sounds that can be heard."

This statement was made by John Cage as long ago as 1937. Yet, with a few "pre-historic" exceptions, it was not until the development of magnetic recording tape around 1950 that the fulfillment of this prophecy began to be truly realized. The establishment of tape studios in Paris, Cologne, Milan, New York and elsewhere enabled composers to create finished works directly on tape, utilizing both electronically generated signals and live sounds recorded through microphones. In both cases, the sounds could be further processed by electronic modification or tape manipulations. Henri Pousseur's Trois visages de Liege elegantly illustrates the refinement which can be achieved with such "classic" studio practice.

With the aid of such new musical resources, composers have pursued two increasingly divergent interests, the first leading toward invention and discovery of "any and all sounds that can be heard," the second toward precise control over musical materials beyond the limits of the human performer. To facilitate such control, particularly over rhythmic problems, sophisticated programming devices, such as the RCA Music Synthesizers, the Moog Synthesizers and high-speed digital computers have been employed. Enabling the composer to specify precise values of frequency, amplitude, duration and succession of all sound events, such devices produce a completed tape composition requiring little or no editing. Milton Babbitt's Ensembles for Synthesizer is an eminent example of works in this genre.

To composers whose demands had already exceeded the capabilities of most instrumentalists, the elimination of the performer was most welcome, assuring a perfect "performance" every time. To others, more interested in questions of process and change, chance and indeterminacy, plus the actions and interactions of human performers, the medium of fixed tape music seemed increasingly "deadly." Thus, in the late 1950's, a number of musicians began experimenting with "live" electronic performances. Foremost among these were John Cage (whose live electronic works actually extend back to Imaginary Landscape No. 1, of 1939) and David Tudor.

John Cage was born in Los Angeles in 1912 and studied with Henry Cowell, Arnold Schoenberg and D. T. Suzuki. In addition to his activities as composer and performer. Cage has written and lectured extensively. The impact of Cage's work on composers and artists throughout the world is inestimable. The noted author and critic Peter Yates calls him "the most influential composer, worldwide, of his generation." Through his interest in Oriental thought (particularly Zen) and his employment of such ideas in his work, Cage has been a significant catalyst in the drawing together of East and West. This is increasingly apparent.

For more than thirty years it has been Cage's consistent concern to expand our consciousness and enhance our appreciation of the sounds-intended or accidental-that are always around us. To these ends he has composed works for conventional and unconventional instruments alike, believing all sounds to be acceptable musical materials. In 1952, Cage "opened (he doors of music to the sounds which happen to be in the environment" with his 4' 33", "a piece in three movements, during all of which no sounds are intentionally produced."

Cage's interest in sound and his wish to allow sounds to "be themselves" has led his work away from "ideas of order to ideas of no order." Thus, moving from the method of "considered improvisation" in Sonatas and Interludes (1948), Cage has increasingly applied chance operations to the determination of frequency, amplitude, timbre and duration in his music. In recent years, he has sought to create situations or processes which maximize the possibility of the unexpected by composing works "indeterminate with respect to performance. ... I try to keep my curiosity and awareness with regard to what's happening open, and I try to arrange my composing means so that I won't have any knowledge of what might happen. And that, by the way, is what you might call the technical difference between indeterminacy and chance operations. In the case of chance operations, one knows more or less the elements of the universe with which one is dealing, whereas, in indeterminacy, I like to think . . . that I'm outside the circle of a known universe and dealing with things I literally don't know anything about."

Variations II (1961) is a composition indeterminate of its performance, for any number of players, any sound-producing means. The score consists of six transparent plastic sheets having single straight lines, five having points. These sheets are to be superimposed, and perpendiculars then dropped from each point to each line. Measurements of these lengths are then used to determine values for each of the six "parameters": frequency, amplitude, timbre, duration, point of occurrence and structure of event.

In preparing the composition for performance, David Tudor's realization of the score evolved from his initial decision concerning the instrumentation. Having previously used amplification in several performances of Cage piano pieces, Tudor decided to make a version of Variations II for amplified piano, in which the total configuration would be regarded as the instrument. Therefore, any sound generated in the system (such as audio feedback) would be accepted and utilized in the performance. In working out the score, it became evident that the nature of the instrument was not compatible with specifying discrete values for each parameter. Therefore, after experimenting with a continuous scale of complexity, Tudor discarded the intervening values in favor of a concept of two basic states or conditions, simple or complex. For instance, if a timbre was specified as simple, it might be one with few harmonics; if an amplitude was complex, it might be changing in a rapid, aperiodic manner. The interpretation of each parameter with respect to the two states is limited only by its interactions with the other parameters and by the performer's imagination. The nature of each event is determined by the state of each of the parameters; the duration of each event is as long as it is required for the performer to carry out his task of interpreting all six. Thus, a composition which entails a process for its completion is given a performance which is itself a process.

Since the late 1950's, in such works as Cartridge Music, "for amplified small sounds," Cage and Tudor have explored the nature of electronic amplification and its magnifying effect on sounds and on our perceptions of them. In this performance of Variations II, each of the four channels uses a contact microphone attached to the piano and a phono cartridge to play on the strings. In addition, contact mikes and cartridges are attached to a wide variety of materials (plastics, toothpicks, pipe cleaners) which are stroked, scraped and struck on the strings. The variety and complexity of sounds which David Tudor draws forth from the piano with this odd array of everyday objects is astounding.

Freed from the conventional restraints of system, style or the control of the rational faculty, this music participates (in Cage's words) in "disorganization and a state of mind which in Zen is called no-mindedness." The listener, similarly liberated, is offered an experience that is hallucinatory, spaced out and very beautiful.

From Nonesuch H-71237:

Bertram Turetzky is one of today's unique concert artists: he has directed his musical career toward expanding the repertoire for and the resources of his instrument, the contrabass. His concern with twentieth-century American music for the contrabass has in ten years more than doubled its existing chamber literature. His work over the same period in the expansion of timbral resources has been reflected not only in many of these new compositions (over a hundred have been written especially for him) but also in several published articles (Source, The Composer, Sound Post magazines). His appearances as virtuoso concert performer feature works from the new repertoire, as do his three previous solo recordings. Born in Norwich, Connecticut, in 1933, Mr. Turetzky did academic work at the New York University graduate school and at Hartt College of Music. He cites bassist David Walter, oboist Josef Marx, and lutenist Joseph Iadone as those men who most contributed to his musical development; he is presently a member of the music faculty of the University of California at San Diego.

The recent spate of recordings of the music of John Cage seems to have largely ignored his instrumental compositions. One of the major contemporary string works, 26'1.1499" for a String Player, written in 1955, is one of these; it is to be hoped that this premiere recording of the work will bring it the attention it deserves from string players. Cage's notes on the work (from the admirable catalogue of his works published by C. F. Peters) are important:

26'1.1499" for a String Player is graphed like 59'1/2" for a String Player... but in actual time, the amount of space equaling a second being given at the top of the pages. The compositional means were complex involving both chance operations and observations of the imperfections in the paper upon which the piece was written.... The rhythmic structure is 3, 7, 2, 5, 11. This piece may be segmented at structural points indicated by dotted lines and the segments superimposed in any way to make duets, trios, quartets, etc. The graphing procedure is described in the composer's notes to 59 1/2" for a String Player:

"Tone productions on the four strings are separately graphed, individual spaces being provided for each string, the range of each of which is determined by the player. Noises on the box, vibrato, and bowing pressure are also graphed. Only indications for direction and place of bowing and changes from hair to wood employ conventional symbols. The piece may be played on any four- stringed instrument."

Cage's notation, therefore, is developed in a manner analogous to the tablature used for stringed instruments such as the lute in the Renaissance, with a separate horizontal line for each string and symbolic instructions as to what to do presented along these lines. Similarly, the tempo-marking, with the pulse indicated by the equally-spaced marks along the score, can be considered graphically analogous to the tactus used by Renaissance performers against which, and into which, the music was placed. Mr. Turetzky's "tactus" for recording the piece was a "click track" recorded from a metronome to assure fidelity to the temporal development of the notation. His performance is from a brilliant realization made by the young Los Angeles composer Harold Budd, which, following one of Cage's suggestions for the piece, superimposes different portions of the score to form a multi-tracked version.

From Finnadar SR 9017:

DONALD KNAACK, Percussionist. Recorded, remixed and mastered at Atlantic Recording Studios, New York, N.Y. Recording & remix engineer: Bobby Warner. Mastering engineer: George Piros. PRODUCED BY JLHAN MIMAROGLU. (r) (c) 1977 Finnadar Records Printed in U.S.A. Donald Knaack has performed with the Louisville Orchestra, Manhattan Percussion Ensemble and the Center of the Creative and Performing Arts, State University of New York at Buffalo. His performances include concerts in the U.S. and Europe, premieres of percussion solos by Charles Camilleri, Luis DePablo and Yannis Xenakis. Mr. Knaack is a recipient of a 1976 CAPS Award.

27'10.554" for a Percussionist (1956), by John Cage.

The title of the work is derived from its duration: 27'10.554" The performer utilizes four categories of percussion instruments: metals, woods, skins and an "all others" category (which may be electronic devices, mechanical arrangements, radios, whistles, etc.). The timbres and numbers of instruments in each category are to be determined by the performer.

The overall structure presents a constant flow between the sounds of the instruments and the sounds of the silences in the music. Silence is defined by Cage:

"..for in this new music nothing takes place but sounds: those that are notated and those that are not. Those that are not notated appear in the written music as silences, opening the doors of the music to the sounds that happen to be in the environment.... There is no such thing as an empty space or an empty time. There is always something to see, something to hear..."

Within this hypnotic flow the sounds become points in space which aurally reflect their origin. The composition means were complex involving both chance operations and observation of imperfections in the paper upon which the piece was written. The rhythmic structure is 3,7,2,5,11.

For my realization I have chosen to use percussive timbres in the form of new instruments, found objects and alterations of standard percussion instruments. The "all others" category was realized as a tape recording. The tape consists of a performance of the "all others" part on a Moog Percussion Trigger which triggered a percussive envelope of low-pass filtered white noise into a Moog Synthesizer. The tape recording is played simultaneously with the performance of the percussion instruments.

Notes by DONALD KNAACK

Donald Knaack wishes to acknowledge: Harald Bode, John Cage, Walter Gajewski, Robert Moog.