Bei John Cage (1912-1992) denkt man neben der Avantgarderolle, die der Komponist innerhalb der Neuen Musik zeitlebens innehatte, vor allem an seine wohl populärste Innovation, das prepared piano.
Die im vorliegenden Band gesammelten frühen Werke für Klavier solo (1935-48) sind durch die Transparenz der Sätze und die konventionelle Notation in besonderer Weise geeignet, sich den Arbeiten Cages zu nähern.
Die Ausgabe enthält auch einige autographe Notenseiten, die die aphoristische Anlage der Kompositionen verdeutlichen.
Das präparierte Klavier - im 4. Stück A Room mit eindeutigen Hinweisen erklärt - wird als Option angeboten, nicht jedoch von Cage ausdrücklich gefordert.
Der Band Piano Works mit leicht ausführbaren Stücken ermöglicht einen Einstieg in die Klangwelt Cages und wird zugleich ein Wegweiser in die Musik des 20. Jahrhunderts und deren Interpretationspraxis.
Inhalt:
Quest
Two Pieces 1935 und 1946
Metamorphosis
A Room
Opheila
Two Pieces 1946
In a Landscape
Dream
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
Preface
Writings about John Cage and pianos usually favor his landmark invention of the prepared piano-that radical alteration of the instrument with nuts, bolts, and screws placed in and around its strings that forever changed its persona and potential - and his magnum opus composed especially for it, the Sonatas and Interludes, completed in 1948. The present volume, however, comprised of pieces predating this monumental work, expands our understanding to include just how sensitive Cage actually was to the piano as it bad been banded down. Taken together, these early pieces suggest a wide variety of answers to the question Cage must have posed when writing them: How might this instrument, so emblematic of music of the 19th century, be of interest to us now, here, well into the 2Oth?
Those answers are, of course, best gleaned by mastering the works themselves, but the barest glance at each deceptively simple page suggests some of the challenges in store: the elegant linearity of Quest (c. 1935), the refreshing (Piece 1) and relentless (Piece II) rhythms of Two Pieces for Piano (1935), the sustained energy of Metamorphosis (1938), the quiet, yet turgid construction of A Room (1943), the epic-in-miniature proportions of Ophelia (1946), the quixotic dynamics of Two Pieces for Piano (1946), the seductive melodic peregrinations of In a Landscape (1948), and the unusually expressive, nearly narrative rubato of Dream (1948).
Any one of these pieces is a meditation upon the piano, and upon the delightful complications inherent in even the simplest of themes. Taken together, they form a landscape of Cage's mind as applied to composing for this most imposing of instruments, with all of the contours and shadows, secret passages, and vistas that we have come to associate with his work in any medium.
Laura Kuhn, Fxecutive Director
John Cage Trust
