September 5, 2001 saw the beginning of what will be, on its completion, the longest concert ever given. On that day, the birthday of John Cage, a performance of the latter’s Organ2/ASLSP (1987) was begun in the church of St. Burchardi in Halberstadt, Germany. The concert will last 639 years.
Categories: Art & Aesthetics, Music
Tagged: Composition 1960 #7, John Cage, Organ2/ASLSP, Vexations
Composed in 1956, Radio Music is Cage’s second work for radio, the first being Imaginary Landscape No. 4 from 1951. Guy de Bièvre has made some interesting comments about contemporary performances of Radio Music, which are problematized by the changes, technological and otherwise, that the medium has undergone since the time the piece was created, claiming that it is not possible to give a historically accurate performance of the work, in other words to make Radio Music sound as it did at the time it was composed.
Categories: Art & Aesthetics, Music, Radio
Tagged: electronic music, indeterminacy, John Cage, radio art, sound collage
“When I wrote the Imaginary Landscape for twelve radios,” Cage explained, “it was not for the purpose of shock or as a joke but rather to increase the unpredictability already inherent in the situation through the tossing of coins. Chance, to be precise, is a leap, provides a leap out of reach of one’s own grasp of oneself.”
Categories: Art & Aesthetics, Music, Radio
Tagged: electronic music, indeterminacy, John Cage, radio art, sound collage