John Cage - Seven - Quartets I-VIII (2007)

Tracklist:
[01] 20:00 Seven (1988) for flute, clarinet, percussion, piano, violin, viola, and violoncello

Quartets I–VIII (1976)for 24 instruments
[02] 09:38 Quartet I
[03] 11:45 Quartet II
[04] 02:14 Quartet III
[05] 04:17 Quartet IV
[06] 01:48 Quartet V
[07] 00:48 Quartet VI
[08] 05:26 Quartet VII
[09] 04:04 Quartet VIII

Orchester Jakobsplatz München
Daniel Grossmann, conductor

“I want also to make a circus of music that one might have heard in 1776 in this country. But I'm already running into the conservative feelings of the society with respect to such an intention. Because music, of all the arts, has been the one which has tried to focus the attention of people on a particular thing. And so much of that music in 1776 was what we call 'sacred.' It was church music. And the people think that I'm being sacrilegious to want to have two or three at once. And so they refuse to cooperate. This is the trouble with our country, that the feelings which brought our country into existence no longer invigorate it, except in a few individuals. And those individuals can't act against the strong institutions.”
(John Cage in conversation with Walter Zimmermann)
John Cage's Quartets I-VIII is one of the most unusual and sophisticated orchestral works I know. It was written for the bicentennial of the United States of America. Cage used eight old American chorales, which he then reformed into an entirely new work with the help of the Chinese oracular work I Ching.
The basic idea is to have just four instruments of the orchestra playing together at any time. As a result new groups are constantly forming into variously composed quartets. Cage used the I Ching to determine which notes are played by a given instrument. The piece seems very simple from looking at the score. But in fact the fragmentary character of the instrumentation makes it a great challenge to perform.
Every musician has to count precisely so as not to miss his or her entry. But the most difficult requirement is fitting the few notes to be played into the overall structure such that meaningful phrases ultimately result. Only by carefully listening to and following the music can players cause the piece to resound.
“I only keep that amount of organization that is useful for survival. That means that I assign organization to the place that it should have. Men generally act otherwise. They organize everything endlessly! And in particular useless things - music, for example … Thus they forego organizing what should, on the other hand, be organized: the utilities.”
(John Cage, in Daniel Charles, For the Birds [Boston: Marion Boyars, 1981], p. 47)
Seven is a piece of an entirely different character: Cage establishes a framework for an improvisation by seven musicians. The piece lasts exactly twenty minutes and is performed with the help of a stopwatch. Each of the twenty measures has a precisely stated time frame for starting and stopping.
The musician can decide when to begin playing the measure and when to stop. Surprisingly, however, the specifications are just free enough that the character of the piece cannot be altered. It is by no means arbitrary music; each performance is, however, unique. The objective of making every performance unique was one of John Cage's central principles. Only thus, he felt, was his music truly alive.
Daniel Grossmann



download:
part 1
part 2
part 3

cover+book:
cover