John Cage
Imaginary Landscape no. 1

John Cage composed "Imaginary landscape no. 1" in 1939: a quartet for two variable speed turntables, a muted piano and a cymbal. It is the first of the five "imaginary landscapes" that the American artist, one of the most important and innovative musicians of the 20th century, wrote in just under 15 years, towards the end of the first half of the last century. Being among the first compositions of a mixed nature, electric and acoustic, in which the electro component, at the time of execution, was "pre-recorded", makes the piece one of the most important turning points in contemporary music and, probably, in the second Art in general. Minimalist and avant-garde, "Imaginary landscape no. 1" is the culmination of the first part of his career, up until then predominantly linked to a wide use of percussion, even unconventional, by the artist but already foreshadowing the turn that, a few years later, Cage embarked on towards Alea, the "chance" and "automatic" music, influenced by the embrace of Asian, Hindu, Buddhist, and Zen philosophies.

The eyes are closed, but from the outside, vibrations of light occur at irregular rhythms. Inside me, the blood seems not to flow: only disordered magnetic impulses prevent it from freezing and keep me in a state of alert death. Suspended between an obsessive dance of fingers on keys and flickering phosphenes, in a darkness more imagined than real, my very essence finds itself running on an extremely thin electric wire. Thought, or what remains of it, is soon captured in an immaterial vortex: the very substance of which the universe is made percusses in me and forces me to gravitate around a dense core of silence. I will have no peace until I manage to outline a wave-like and mutable landscape, I will have no rest until this cold sound winter is appeased. As I now slip away, what I was is split into molecules, increasingly smaller, moving towards the very Being in a mathematical religious rite. Infinite, infinite, infinite.