as part of the musical program for the exhibition "USArts"
June 20, 1993 at
2 p.m.
Jeffrey
Bossin,
Carillonneur,
Berlin
Program
Music by John Cage and Erik Satie
Music for Carillon no. 1 (1952) John Cage
Gnossienne no. 1* Erik Satie
Music for Carillon no. 2 (1954) John Cage
Aus "Sports & Divertissements"
La Balançoire* Erik Satie
Music for Carillon no. 3 (1954) John Cage
Premiere Gymnopedie* Erik Satie
Music for Carillon no. 4** (1961) John Cage
Aus "Sonneries de la Rose + Croix"
Air de l'Ordre* Erik Satie
Music for Carillon no. 5 (1967) John Cage
*Arranged for carillon by Jeffery Bossin
**Electronics: Folkmar
Hein,
Electronic
Studio of the
Technical University of Berlin
Organized by CarillonConcertsBerlin in
cooperation with Podewil
GmbH
and the
Electronic Studio of the
Technical
University of Berlin and with the support of the Haus der
Kulturen der Welt
With the help of the Electronic Studio of the Technical University of Berlin it was possible to perform all five of John Cage's pieces entitled Music for Carillon for the first time in Berlin. However, Cage composed the first four of these not for a carillon with a traditional baton-and-pedal console but for an instrument with an electric piano keyboard. In the USA such instruments are usually called carillons for lack of a better term, and Cage dedicated his second and third carillon pieces not to a carillonneur but to the pianist David Tudor. Such electric instruments often even have no bells but instead produce tones via small electronically amplified metal bars, and Cage wrote his fourth piece especially for such an electronic instrument. Only the range of a traditional Dutch carillon of four octaves without the first two semitones c-sharp and d-sharp and the directions stipulating that the piece was for each of 47 bells point to the fact that Cage composed the fifth piece for a carillon with bells and a traditional baton-and-pedal keyboard. However, it is still possible to perform the first four of his pieces on a traditional carillon as well.
The three-octave version of Music for Carillon no. 4 which Cage wrote in 1961 consists like its predecessors of single notes and groups of notes arranged in clusters (in 1966 Cage also wrote a two-octave version). Because the sound of a carillon isn't dampened but dies out on its own Cage notated all the tones as whole notes. Music for Carillon no. 4 uses live electronics: a microphone and loudspeaker are used to either amplify the sound of the bells or create a feedback. This is accompanied by a dull electronically generated wooden sounding thump which is heard at irregular intervals (When the piece is played on an instrument with an electric piano keyboard the musician can generate the thumping sounds by using an electronically amplified pedal attached to the piano keyboard. If the piece is played on a carillon, the thumping noises have to be produced electronically as the carillonneur needs his feet to play the pedals of the carillon console). The work is the opposite of Mandolinis Vox veterrima: it is based on chance rather than on compositional technique. While Cage composed the Music for Carillon no. 3 as the retrograde inversion of the Music for Carillon no. 2 in 1954, he relinquished every traditional means of composing when he wrote the Music for Carillon no. 4 seven years later. The piece has no meter and only the graphic distance between the notes determines the point in time when they are to be played. Rhythms and melodic figures are products of chance. The arbitrary arrangements of tones are derived from Cage's mystical veneration of nature. Instead of basing the notes of the piece on chords or scales he created the score by laying a transparent piece of note paper on top of an atlas of the heavens and writing a note every place where a star could be seen. This predetermined abstract arrangement of the notes led to a musically completely arbitrary result similiar to that achieved by using serial technique however without the characteristic continuity of serially generated textures. Cage's piece has no connections to musical traditions, tonal systems or formal structures. The endproduct resembles a senseless row of abitrarily chosen combinations of letters.