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A– &HPSCHD (1967-1969) For Harpsichords & Computer-Generated Sound Tapes Engineer – Harpsichord Baldwin Solid-body Electronic, Soloist Solo I – Harpsichord Hubbard Double With 17% Eltro Time Compression, Soloist Solo IV – Harpsichord Neupert Bach-model, Soloist Solo II – Programmed By Original Computer Programming – Tape Preparation Of Original Sound Tapes –. Technician Technical Processing Of The Tape Collage –21:00–String Quartet No. 2 (1964) Composed By – Engineer – Ensemble – Performer The Composers Quartet, Cello – Performer The Composers Quartet, Viola –. Performer The Composers Quartet, Violin 1st – Performer The Composers Quartet, Violin 2nd –(14:57)B1–Light And Quick: With Grace And Humor2:44B2–Intimate, Spacious5:21B3–Extremely Minute And Intense; Not Fast — Quick, Mercurial — Very Fast, With Suppressed Excitement — Quick — Extremely Minute6:40. HPSCHD (1967-1969) for harpsichords & computer generated sound tapes (publ. Henmar Press Inc.).String Quartet No.
String Quartet in Four Parts is a string quartet by John Cage, composed in 1950. It is one of the. The String Quartet in Four Parts is based partly on the Indian view of the. Many of Cage's indeterminate works, such as the Variations series, Fontana Mix, as well as the string parts for Concert For Piano And Orchestra.
2 (1964).The jacket states 'The computer-output sheet included in this album is one of 10,000 different numbered solutions of the program KNOBS. It enables the listener who follows its instructions to become a performer of this recording of HPSCHD. Preparation of this material was made possible through the Computing Center of the State University of New York at Buffalo.' However, the printouts are sequentially numbered and go to numbers higher than 10,000.The recording of side A was made possible through use of the facilities of the Experimental Music Studio and the Department of Computer Science of the University of Illinois, Urbana.Side B is a Dolby-system recording.First pressing: no bottom rim text on the labels, no 'W' logo on the release.
Of all the compositions of John Cage, this has to be the most intense or insane piece in his catalog of goodies. Co-made and written with Lejaren Hiller, this is Cage's first adventure in the computer world that existed in 1969. First of all the title, HPSCHD (1967-1969) is the word harpsichord reduced to the computer's six-word limit at the time.
It consists of 51 electronic sound tapes and seven solo compositions for harpsichord, all played at once. If you have the means, you can hear the album on the left channel or the right channel, or in this case both. This is not only the weirdest stereo/hi-fi adventure but one that is a challenging listening experience. The irony is that the music is written for an old keyboard concept, but done in the most advanced manner in 1969. What I get here is clearly what sounds like four or five harpsichords with various sheets of electric sounds, that at times sound like a generator or bits and pieces of melody, but very faint. It's a noisy, full volume lease breaker of a record. I think with respect to Cage's works, HPSCHD is the most extreme in its attack, noise, concept, and in general, Nonesuch was a brave label of its time.
The total opposite of Cage's famous 4:33. Silence and noise. It's 21 minutes of a relentless attack, yet, listening to it the time goes quickly.
I love it.Flip to the second side, and we have Ben Johnson's 'String Quartet No. 2'(1962) and performed by The Composer's Quartet. It's a work that reminds me of Schoenberg. It's a moody work and emotional compared to Cage and Hiller's concept of making music. It's work that is dissonant in tone, yet the sound is very sculptural to me. I hear, but I can see it as well. It's interesting to note that Johnson was a friend of Harry Partch, and helped him build his instruments.
And he also studied with Cage as well as Darius Milhaud. Johnson was (or still is) working on the foundation or perhaps storm, where the contemporary composition and practices took place.
'String Quartet 2' is demanding but pays off well, especially in its ending which is very serene and quiet. Unlike the other side! - Tosh Berman.
In addition to intimacy, the string quartet is a medium capable of remarkable levels of austerity. It’s no surprise, then, that John Cage turned to the quartet as the vehicle for a work in which, “without actually using silence, I should like to praise it” (as Cage wrote to his parents, prior to starting the piece). A few years earlier, in 1947, Cage had composed his first orchestral work, The Seasons, using a technique that he described as a ‘gamut’. This involved the pre-composition of a collection of materials—chords, gestures, solitary sonic moments—that had no relation to each other. These would then become the entire repertoire for the compositional act, Cage choosing from this collection of materials as the mood took him. The gamut technique was an important step towards the aleatoric methods Cage would explore in the next stage of his output, and it’s heard with perhaps the greatest clarity in the work he wrote next, the String Quartet in Four Parts, composed in 1950.
Here, Cage created a library of chords, and then a melodic line; to harmonise this melody, Cage called upon whichever chords supported the melody’s current pitch (the same chords always fixed to the same pitches). In addition to use of the gamut, the work also draws on the seasons for inspiration, being in four movements each of which is dedicated to one season. The reference to silence in the above quotation is arguably as much about motion as the actual presence or otherwise of sound itself. Indeed, the titles of the first three movements indicate a gradual tendency towards motionlessness: ‘Quietly Flowing Along’ (summer), ‘Slowly Rocking’ (autumn), ‘Nearly Stationary’ (winter). But another kind of silence evoked in the work is that of self-expression. By drastically restricting the composer’s palette to a small pool of disjunct fragments, the gamut technique to no little extent confounds most conventions of what might otherwise pass for “expression”. This is mirrored in an instruction to the players that they not only avoid vibrato but use minimal weight on the bow, resulting in a cool, detached, rather other-worldly sound, often sounding poised to evaporate.Yet the music is very far indeed from expressionless; on the contrary, the unrelenting flat demeanour of the quartet demonstrates surprising emotional capacity.
The first movement is tantalisingly allusive, initially giving the impression (as in ) that something very familiar is hovering at the fringes of perception. But that sense lasts barely a few seconds, brushed aside in the movement’s central occupation, the four players wanting to move together at an icy distance from the listener. As if by magic the music keeps falling into cadential moments, briefly conjuring the spectre of a viol consort. But it’s the musical equivalent of a trick of the light, and it becomes an increasingly distant memory through the second movement, on the one hand growing more tranquil yet shot through with unexpectedly harsh accented chords that scar the milder texture beneath. The lengthy third movement presents a music that by now seemingly wants to hibernate. The chord progressions have slowed almost to a stop, and even calling them “progressions” is false, as they idly rotate around a common central point.
However, the way Cage renders the gamut here gradually makes the quartet seem more deliberate, more active, as though something is being attempted even while the players—to switch metaphors—are practically turning to stone (or should that be ice?). The presence of pizzicato notes—the first appearance of a non-bowed, percussive element—to some extent breaks the spell, and the movement ultimately becomes intensely focused almost entirely on harmony and the juxtaposition of its chordal elements, sounding like an experiment in progress. Perhaps due to the subtle changes wrought here, the short, vernal fourth movement, labelled ‘‘, is faster and more obviously melodious, drawing heavily on the allusions only touched upon at the start. It builds on the apparent introduction of conscious purpose in the preceding movement, at the last becoming boisterous and forceful.Soon after writing the String Quartet in Four Parts, Cage embraced chance techniques wholeheartedly, which makes the work’s rather mesmeric wandering around the thresholds of active intent all the more fascinating. Welcome to 5:4!Listening, researching, writing and maintaining 5:4 requires time, energy and money. A typical article takes anywhere from a couple of hours to a full day or more.
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