John Cage
Imaginary Landscapes

The Imaginary Landscapes of John Cage are five short pieces composed between 1939 and 1952.

Unusual music, designed for out of the ordinary ensembles: no. 1 is written for two turntables, recorded frequencies, muted piano, and percussion.

Be careful: to be listened to on record or as a radio broadcast: no. 1 should not be performed live.

A little more conventional are the ensembles of Landscapes no. 2 and 3: percussion quintet and percussion sextet, respectively. No. 2 is dedicated to Lou Harrison.

Imagine the unheard: as in Landscape no. 4 for twelve radios and twenty-four performers who broadcast shards and fragments of what is transmitted during the performance itself, in a kind of live radio collage.

There's no denying it: for Landscape no. 5 you need 42 records, but CDs will do as well, in short, forty-two recordings of whatever you like.

So, have you gathered the records? Now put them in an imaginary blender, make a good number of fragments, and record them on tape: that's Landscape no. 5.

Reviewing this CD, I must point out that for no. 5, in this edition by the record label Hat Hut Records, 42 recordings of Anthony Braxton (jazz) were used.

Yes!


The lesson we learn every time we encounter this Californian gentleman is that music serves to make discoveries.

Truth be told, no one before Cage made music with turntables, contact microphones, or flipping the coins of the I Ching to decide how to organize sounds.

The only downside is that after him, who was very rigorous in his intellectual path, platoons of amateurs felt free to throw it into the gutter and call the result "music." But freedom comes from rigor (said Pierre Boulez).

I must add that this CD also contains a sixth track that doesn't belong to the Imaginary Landscapes series but nonetheless employs a percussion ensemble: "But What About the Noise Of Crumpling Paper"... etc. (from 1985; full title: 43 words).

Instrumentation of the above track: 3 to 10 percussionists who play their parts with a couple of instruments of their choice. Noises of water and crumpled paper. The piece is a collection of isolated sound events, separated by pauses.

With the caveat that each performer plays their part twice. At the time they prefer. On stage, but also among the audience. Or around them.

Anarchy? No, freedom. But it's the kind of freedom that arises from rigor (remember?) as demonstrated by the "performance instructions" attached to the score.

For those who don't know John Cage, or confuse him with John Cale (formerly in the Theatre of Eternal Music with La Monte Young and then with the Velvet Underground), this CD can be an excellent introduction.

And don't forget to let yourself go to the imagination, when you encounter Cage.

Yes!