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John Cage Edition - Vol. 23: The Works For Violin 4

A John Cage Dictionary by Stephen Drury

ASCENDING - the tendency of pitch to rise in Two6 appears in the Material of the pian o
part derived f rom the Duchamp Train technique, but not in the sustained double-stops of the
violin part, which are also derived f rom the Duchamp Train. The tendency of pitch to rise in
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Two6 appears in the improvisatory-like Microtonal passages in the violin part (which f ollow
each other on successively higher strings) but not in the improvisatory-sounding Extended
Lullaby (Imitations of Satie) in the piano part.
CHANCE - used by Cage to f ree composition f rom the expression of his own taste. Cage
developed a number of techniques which used chance operations to replace the
composer's Choices as a means of determining the continuity and detail of a piece, thus
f undamentally redef ining the role of the composer. He came to express it thus: "I decided
that rather than making choices, I would ask questions." This approach f rees sounds to
express their own nature rather than the desire or will of the composer. The Duchamp Train
used in Two6 is one way of putting chance operations to use in the selection of pitches;
simpler f orms of chance were used to make selections f rom the Gamut of natural
harmonics used in Onel0 . The Mesostic technique behind Eight Whiskus and the Imitations
f ound in the Material of Two6 use chance to transf orm pre-existing material. Chance can be
incorporated into the compositional process, lef t to the Performer's discretion, or even
incorporated into the Material itself . There is a certain amount of indeterminacy built into
any sustained note on the violin; the harmonics which make up Onel0 are especially
susceptible to unpre-dictable f luctuations of tone. Silence, in a Cage work, is always
populated by the chance occurrence of unintended sounds.
CHOICE - in conventional composition (such as Cage's early Nocturne), the compos-er's
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task is primarily one of making choices - choosing the right pitch, the right harmony, the
right rhythm. In Six Melodies , Cage was still making choices, although af ter the initial deci-
sions of rhythmic Structure and pitch Gamut were made, the composer's options were con-
siderably more restricted. In later works, the act of composition becomes one of creating
macro-structures which accept Material deter-mined largely by Chance (through techniques
such as Imitation or the Duchamp Train) or by choices made by the Performer , as in the late
Number pieces.
DUCHAMP TRAIN - f rom the Erratum Musical (1913) of Marcel Duchamp, in which names of
notes are written onto balls poured into a f unnel. The f unnel empties out into the f re ight
cars of a moving toy ra ilroad tra in, where each car represents one measure of time. For
the composition of Two6 , Cage adapted this process to his own ends: computerized
Chance operations mimic the action of the f unnel and t ra in, and rather than measures of
time, the tra in cars are taken as encompassing a range of pitches (seven chromatically
adjacent notes in the violin, eleven in the piano). From each car Cage's chance operations
select a given num-ber of pitches (one each f or the violin and f rom zero to f ive f or the
piano). The result in each case is a total Gamut of pitches which is given on separate
unbound pages in the score. From these pitch col le c t i o ns the Pe r fo r m e r s m a k e
sele c t i o ns which are then used to express the se v e ral Time Brackets -- by the violin as
sus-tained do u b le - stops, by the piano as slowly Ascending f igures. In Duchamp's
original instructions, the artist specif ies that the result-ing music be perf ormed on an
instrument "where the virtuoso intermediary has been suppressed." Cage's playing
instructions f or Two6 ref lect this by requiring the pianist to play "pppp as sof tly as possible,
giving no sense of periodicity (depress key silently until you f eel the escapement clearing;
knowing where that is, play the piano on the edge of audibility)", and the violinist to play
"pppp as sof tly as pos-sible (nearly inaudible) using f rom the gamut of pitches given any
two, using harmonics or not, but sustained with imperceptible bowing."
GAMUT - the total f ixed collection of single notes, intervals, chords and aggregates which
constitute the Material of a composition. Selection f rom the elements of the gamut to
create melodies, harmonies, or passagework can be made by the composer or the
Performer . Six Melodies is a "re-cycling" of f ragments lef t over f rom the composer's String
Quartet in Four Parts, which employs a f airly extensive gamut (distributed here between the
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piano and violin). In Two6 , Cage of f ers a stack of eight pitches to the violinist, inviting the
player to select and sustain any two to occupy any of several Time Brackets, and of f ers
long Ascending sequences of pitches f or the pianist to excerpt. The smaller, Modal gamut
of Eight Whiskus insures the music's f olk song-like character. The gamut f or Onel0
consists of all possible natural harmonics on the violin, giving the piece both a modal and a
Microtonal f lavor.
IMITATION - Cage developed several dif -f erent techniques f or deriving new Material f rom
old. When dealing with the written word, Cage would use Mesostics to f ragment and re-
combine phrases f rom earlier writing (his or others') into new texts. In the Extended Lullaby ,
which is used as part of the material f or Two6 , Cage retains the rhythm of Satie's piano
piece Vexations but applies Chance operations to the pitches to create a new melody. When
arranging the Eight Whiskus f or violin at Malcolm Goldstein's request, the c o m p o ser
added in dic a t i o ns f orthe pla c e m e n t , speed, and pressure of the bow to each note in
imitation (but not literal correspondence) of the syllables of the original vocal line.

MATERIAL - In Two6 the players share the material of Silence, which may be used to f ill any
of the given Time Brackets. In addition, each player is given material unique to his or her
instrument. Some of this is derived f rom the Duchamp Train (the piano's slowly Ascending
passages, the violin's sustained double stops). Inverting this relationship, the violin's
Microtonal phrases ascend gradually f rom string to string over the course of the piece,
while the correspondingly melodic material f or the piano -- Imitations of Satie -- remains in a
f ixed register. In Onel0 and Six Melodies the homogeneous material is derived f rom a single
Gamut f or each piece. The even simpler gamut of pitches f or Eight Whiskus is varied
through changes of bow speed and pressure. In the more f reely-written Nocturne, Cage
f requently uses the same material f or both violin and piano, unif ying the sound of the two
instruments.
MESOSTIC - a technique used by Cage f or writing texts. A new text is developed around
the letters of a "key" text (a person's name, the subject of the text, or an opening phrase,
such as, in the original vocal version of Eight Whiskus, "whistlin is did"), the letters of which
are placed down a middle row and preceded and f ollowed by either newly written text or (as
in the Whiskus) f ragments of the original source text which contain the key letter. The
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syllables containing the key letter in Eight Whiskus are always set as an A natural. (In the
violin version, the whole melodic line has been transposed so that the key is expressed by
an F natural.) The other notes of the little melodies develop a limited Gamut of Modally
related pitches.
MICROTONAL - the violin's microtonal slides which appear in Nocturne are early examples
of Cage's interest in the pitches lying outside of the twelve-tone scale. In Two6 , the
Material f or the violinist includes passages written in a scale which divides the octave into
eighty-f our pitches, to be played on suc-cessively Ascending strings. OnelO, by using
nothing but natural overtones of the violin's open strings, deviates f rom the equal-tempered
scale.
MODAL - the restricted Gamut of Eight Whiskus , composed originally f or voice and using a
Mesostic technique to center the line around a single pitch, recalls a type of scale used in
f olk music which, while harmonically simple, avoids expressive chromaticism and the
directional pull of tonality, both f oreign to Cage's mature vocabulary. Many of Cage's ear-
lier compositions (such as Six Melodies ) also have a somewhat modal f eel due to the
caref ul selection of pitches to be used in the gamut. The modal f lavor of Onel0 comes f rom
the exclusive use of natural harmonics of the vio-lin's f our strings, tuned traditionally in
f if ths. The even earlier Nocturne, however, still lives in the harmonically more complex world
of impressionistic chromaticism.
NUMBER - many of Cage's late pieces are of ten ref erred to as the "number" pieces, stem-
ming f rom their Titles (Two6 is the sixth of the number pieces to employ two players). "Do
you need some numbers? I have lots of num-bers," Cage once asked this writer. "John
Cage loved numbers," says Mark Swed in Cage and Counting --The Number Pieces . The
use of numbers was a crucial element in Cage's Chance-based compositional techniques,
dividing the ranges of the violin and the piano into equal segments, determining the size of
Time Brackets, and distributing equally the likelihood that any given element f rom a pre-
determined Gamut would occur.
PERFORMER - the role of the perf ormer became ever more consequential over Cage's
career. While the early pieces call f or the per-f ormer to f ulf ill the traditional role of expres-
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sive interpreter, in many of the later works he or she must exercise substantial Choices
which af f ect the music Structurally , determining f or example the placement and duration of
notes (or entire passages) within the given Time Brackets.
SILENCE - the unwilled sounds of the environment, unmasked by composer's intention or
perf ormer's activity, are at the heart of each of Cage's compositions since even bef ore the
f amous "silent" composition 4'33" of 1952. U sed expressively in Nocturne and rhythmically
(if sparingly) in Six Melodies , silence becomes the ever-present backdrop to the isolated
pitches of Onel0 and phrases of Eight Whiskus , and is incorporated into the Material of
Two6 f rom which the Performer f ills the Time Brackets.
STRUCTURE - the division of the whole into parts. The structure of Cage's early Nocturne
is intuitive and improvisatory, guided by the compose r's moment-to-moment Choices. Soon
af terwards Cage was to begin using a technique of rhythmic structure which allowed him to
place Material selected f rom a Gamut of sounds into a pre-f ormulated f ramework in which
the proportions of the small parts which together make up each large part are ref lected in
the proportions of the large parts which make up the whole. The Eight Whiskus each
consist of several short phrases which pivot around a single pitch expressing the Mesostic
key of the original vocal version. In the late Number pieces, the structural parts are varied
and f lexible in length due to the use of Time Brackets.
TIME BRACKETS - f lexible time brackets surround each event in most of Cage's Number
pieces, giving a range of possible beginning times, ending times, and (theref ore) durations.
In OnelO, time brackets surround single pitches taken f rom the Gamut of all possible
natural harmonics on the violin's open strings. In Two6 empty time brackets are used by the
players to situate entire blocks of material, including Silence f or both players, Microtonal
passages f or the violin (which Ascend over the course of the piece), Imitations of Erik
Satie's Vexations f or the piano, and Gamuts of pitches derived f rom the Duchamp Train
(Ascending in the case of the piano, but expressed statically as a sustained double stop in
the violin). Which material appears in which time bracket is determined by the Choice of the
Performer .
TITLE - many of Cage's titles are self -explanatory (such as Nocturne), or involve Numbers.
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Others elide two words, such as Mureau (music/Thoreau) and Whiskus (whistlin/haiku --
linking the f irst word of the source text [f rom which the Mesostic is derived] with the haiku-
like series of short poems which resulted). The Six Melodies are indeed melodies, six single
lines split between the two instruments (although some single notes in those lines are made
up of two or more pitches).
--Stephen Drury, March 2001

I can still remember the large green kale leaf which took up the entire plate. John Cage, an
excellent cook, caref ully ladled the f ood he had prepared f or dinner onto the kale, and
handed the plates to each of us. He had arranged this dinner so Irvine Arditti and Stephen
Drury could meet.
Cage and I had been discussing the best perf ormers to record his violin and piano works.
He was greatly impressed by the Arditti Quartet's perf ormances of his string quartets at the
Cage at Wesleyan Festival in Middletown, Connecticut in 1987. He had already decided that
they should record the quartets, and that Arditti should record the violin works. Cage's
f avorite contemporary interpreter of his piano pieces was Stephen Drury. When the
opportu-nity presented itself that both Arditti and Drury were in New York City at the same
time, Cage extended the dinner invitation to both so they could meet and, hopef ully, partner
up.
It was a special evening, in which Arditti also treated us to an impromptu perf ormance of
some of Cage's Freeman Etudes. With no music stand to be f ound, Cage of f ered to hold
the score in his hands while Arditti played. I managed to snap some photos of this event,
and they grace the covers of the two Freeman Etudes discs on Mode.
Unf ortunately, it took some 10 years f or the actual recordings to take place, a result of the
busy schedules of the musicians. Two4 has been issued on mode 88, while the remaining
violin and piano pieces are f ound here. Irvine and Steve exhibit a very special understanding
of Cage's sensibility, which is evident in these recordings. As a tribute to Cage and these
great artists, I decided to issue this as Mode's 100th release, a milestone f or the label and
f or Cage's music.
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--Brian Brandt, March 2001

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