John Cage – 4’33” (1952)
For my own performance of this work, I was at home and opened the windows of my flat. The work started with only the sound from inside the flat of the fan on the convector heater and the dull burr of the freezer. From the outside the wind was blowing and I heard the soft rustle of trees and a small gust that made the Venetian blinds shake. Next there was the faint sound of an aircraft engine some way off before the first car went down the road. This car was pulling an empty trailer which rattled as the car sped past. A taxi then went by, thus creating a different automobile sound.
It didn’t really feel like I was creating music, but I felt I was creating something. It was perhaps more like the feel of an art installation. It was however, a very interesting exercise, and demonstrated the effect of external factors on sound.
John Cage – Imaginary Landscapes No 5
This work is made up of fragments of jazz performances is one continuous chain. The performances are varied and many are from the early days of the swing era and vary from fragments of solos on various instruments and fragments from vocal performances as well as piano. The fragments obviously do fit the standard definition of music but not as a piece as a whole. It is just a series of recorded fragments put together seemingly randomly.
John Cage – Sonatas and interludes for prepared piano – sonata II
This work consists of notes played in an unorganized manner. Again appears quite random. I would however say this can be considered music, although not under the strictest dictionary definition of what constitutes music.
John Cage – First Construction in Metal
This piece for various types of metallic percussion again seems to be a collective of unorganised notes. This work does have some formal structure in terms of rhythm.
Alban Berg – Violin Concerto (1935)
I chose Berg’s violin concerto as an example of serialism, following reading an interview in Gramophone Magazine with violinist, Isabelle Faust, who has recently recorded the work. This work though is very different from the works I listened to by John Cage. The work is tonal, though with some dissonance and definitely would fit the dictionary description of what constitutes music. This is a fine work by Berg and following a very violent end to the second movement allegro the work ends with a quite beautiful adagio section of the same movement.
Chance & Serial Music
There is a distinct difference between the music of chance, which creates a kind of random feel compared to the complexities of serial music, where although in theory a distinct set of twelve notes can be played in order, inversion, retrograde etc, so in effect can also have a random affect, but in reality they are arranged in a formal way that makes sense of the music. There is of course plenty of atonal music connected with serialism, but the Berg work I chose is not one of these, but a tonal and at times very elegant and beautiful work.
I think an understanding of formal requirements of a system of music gives a much greater understanding of how a piece of music works and is fundamentally important to correctly interpret the emotional meaning of the work. In the Berg violin concerto dynamics and orchestration have a big impact on the emotion of certain parts. The use of the serial use of tones is important when juxtaposed with these other elements along with rhythm and tempo of the music.
A lot of the emotion in music is generated from the tempo, dynamics and the passion expressed by the performers for the music. This can be detected without knowledge of the technicalities of how a work is formally created, but to get a greater understanding of the complexities you do need the knowledge of how the technical aspects weld the music together. Chance music does not quite have this same effect as it feels random, but emotion is expressed in indeterminacy by rhythm and how the space created is filled.
There are some similarities between indeterminacy and serialism in the way notes are not played within a diatonic system as they are in traditional forms of classical music. Note values in these systems are equal, whereas in a diatonic or key system the tonic has a kind of supremacy over the other notes.
My personal response to the works I have listened to in this exercise are that I enjoyed the Berg violin concerto far more that the works of John Cage but some of Cage’s work I would listen to again and I’m sure there is serial music that I would be less enthusiastic about than the Berg violin concerto.