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Cages Sonatas and Interludes for Prepared Piano:
Per!Ormance, Hearing and Analysis
JEFFREY PERRY

HOW TO LISTEN TO CAGE compositional unity. We assemble the character of this unity
from cues and clues provided en route by the composer-by
noting repetitions, balances, imbalances, and trajectories of

T
here seem to be at least two different ways to listen to
the music of John Cage. The first way is well known
and sanctioned by remarks made by Cage himself,
who proposes a musical experience made up of discrete,
paratactically organized moments or events unified mainly
by the attention of the listener. In the course of his musical
life Cage pioneered the exploration and elaboration of this
type of listening, which leads logically to the work he called
his "white painting," the blank musical canvas 4'3311 (1952),
on which the listener is invited to project any and all sounds
that occur during the indicat ed span of t ime. Music we are
intend ed to receive in this way invites us to construct an infi-
nitely plastic set of continuities, different for each listener at
each performance. Analysis that is faithful t o this kind of lis -
tening might best be "limited to reconstructing, insofar as
possible, the compositional process chosen for a piece," as
Rob Haskins has suggested .1
There is, however, another way to list en to Cage, namely
by attempting to place the musical events he set s in motion
in the context of a temporally d eterminate, order-dependent
2 H askins, however, notes that even in very late chance works such as
An earlier version of this essay was read at the joint m eeting of the
New E ngla nd Confere nce of Music Theorists and the Music Theory
Society of N ew York State at Yale University on April 27, 2003.
H askins 2003, 66 .
growth. We can hear Cage, in other words, in much the
same way that we might listen to a work by any other com-
poser from his, or an earlier, century. If this is true, more in-
terpretive methods of analysis become essential. In this essay
I will take it as axiomatic that this second mode of listening
to Cage is not only possible, but indeed essential, particularly
with respect to the works that predate his adoption of chance
procedures in 1950-51.2
The dualism proposed by these two modes of listening to
Cage is, of course, imprecise, their relationship more com-
plex than my simple binary opposition might suggest. This
dualism rests, however, on a considerable body of sch olarship
on musical unity, continuity, and the challenges that music
like Cage's pose to these notions. Jonathan Kramer has
t ermed some of C age's music antiteleological, stat ing t hat it
"presents static, endless Nows." H e furth er notes, however,
that composers of moment-form music, and presumably
Cage also, "have n ot given up continuity entirely; that would
Two2 for two pianos (1989) Cage employs compositional devices that
invite li steners to pay attention to continuities built into the listening
experien ce by the composer himself, albeit as only a single ingredie nt in
the listening process. H askins 2003, 73- 78.

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