Cage Music of Changes

Record and Artist Details

Composer or Director: John Cage

Label: Wergo

Media Format: CD or Download

Media Runtime: 46

Mastering:

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Catalogue Number: WER60099-50

Tracks:

Composition Artist Credit
Music of Changes John Cage, Composer
Herbert Henck, Piano
John Cage, Composer

Composer or Director: John Cage

Label: Wergo

Media Format: Vinyl

Media Runtime: 0

Mastering:

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Catalogue Number: WER60099

Tracks:

Composition Artist Credit
Music of Changes John Cage, Composer
Herbert Henck, Piano
John Cage, Composer
Music of Changes is regarded as a breakthrough piece in its use of chance operations based on the I Ching but it is by no means so radical in its anti-determinism as the notorious 4'33'' which appeared in the following year. However its musical surface was arrived at (see Cage's Silence; Marion Boyars: 1979, pages 57–9) it has very much the same kind of Darmstadt sound as European avant-gardists such as Goeyvaerts, Boulez and Stockhausen at precisely the same time, with a preponderance of extreme dynamics and registers. From the second book on there are occasional post-Cowell touches such as slamming the piano lid shut (I think Cage means the fall—to slam the actual lid would be a dramatic event indeed).
The technical difficulties of these pieces are not of the order of Boulez's or Stockhausen's, but they still take some sorting out, not least because of Cage's spidery orthography; and although faster tempos than Herbert Henck's are difficult to conceive, he is still a good 15 per cent slower than the scores specify (how Cage reconciles such manic activity with a quietist philosophy I have no idea). Apart from ducking an isolated instruction to scrape the string lengthwise, Henck is a dedicated and dexterous exponent, and he adds a perceptive short essay (as well as a rather embarrassingly truistic prose-poem).
The recording, from Radio Bremen in 1982, has a fairly quiet background; the instrument is somewhat metallic in quality, but never unacceptably so.'

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