The Australian National Academy of Music (ANAM) continues to draw a large and most enthusiastic audience to its thought-provoking and stimulating performances of rarely heard works by pioneering composers of the 20th century. Not often do we hear a full program of the very beautiful works by John Cage (1912 – 1992) an ultramodern thinker of his time who attracted wide attention with his music for his “prepared piano”. Not only were the new concert grand pianos developed in the 20th century offering a breadth and depth of colour and tonal expression for performers, composers were developing a new vocabulary with unique experimentation, John Cage being one of the most influential.
When Timothy Young introduced the program, he quoted Cage: “There is no such thing as an empty space or an empty time … try as we may to make a silence, we cannot”. And it is his famous 4’33” (where the pianist does not play the instrument) that people associate with this avant-garde composer. Controversial, experimental in form, it is an intense listening experience.
Tonight though, we came to hear his music and inventiveness with the Prepared Piano. By inserting diverse objects (gently) between the strings, the grand piano was transformed into a percussion ensemble, with soft muffling and altered tones that hinted at the percussive sounds of the gongs and drums of the Balinese gamelan. Audience members were delighted to examine ANAM’s meticulously prepared piano for Cage’s 20 short Sonatas and Interludes (1946-8) with a terrific full-page insert to the always detailed and informative program notes. These included a catalogue of the exact measurements and required alterations for 45 notes, for example, E flat – required Rubber, Furniture Bolt and Nut with precise distance (6 and 7/8 inches from damper).
Timothy Young (ANAM faculty, Head of Piano) bookended the program of Sonatas 1-XV1 and Interludes 1-1V, programmed consecutively with smooth staging. As each pianist completed their set, each shifted quietly to the front of stage to become the narrator, adding Cage’s quotations from his speeches, writings and interviews, with a thoughtful and connecting link. With audience focus now on the spoken dialogue, each consecutive pianist quietly took his new place on the piano stool with timely staging and music flow.
In exploring the world of percussion, Cage freed himself from melodic and harmonic norms, and how mesmerised we were with the colour and structure of each piece, the expressiveness of pure and magical percussive tones, gentle bell-like rhythmic clusters and sensitive lyricism. Cage successfully designed freely spaced sound and silences, rippling patterns and a balance of crisp sparks, plucked timbres, and the buoyancy of high sounds with unpredictable shifts to the quiet prayerfulness of low resonant bells in an oriental temple. Interlude 1 showed more playfulness and repeated single note patterns grouped with the accented dance beats of traditional Indian tabla. Louder accented bells in Sonata V showed a fluid organisation of percussive rhythmic ostinatos, a fine design that contrasted with freely meditative and spiritual exploration. Individual melodic tones contrasted with rippling patterns, so natural to Cage’s process of composition he described as choosing “shells as one walks along a beach”.
Most transparent and sonic, taking us to outer space was Sonata XIII, where resonant bell tones rose and fell in slow calm lines, long held notes bringing stillness and dreaminess. Sonata XIV brought gently flowing illusions of African marimba patterns, also allowing a melody on “real” piano notes to shine through.
Quite unexpectedly, a light shower of rain came down, making a percussive sound on the roof of the Rosina Auditorium, adding a timely shimmering pattern of its own to bridge the “silence” between these short pieces. The final Sonata XVI brought more diverse geometry, with irregular clusters and random single notes, with highly spaced metallic and fractured themes gently ringing.
The audience was mesmerised, intrigued and lost in the beauty of John Cage’s vision. We thank ANAM pianists – Tim Young, Reuben Johnson, Francis Atkins, Po Goh, Ronan Apcar, Timothy O’Malley and Matthew Garvie for their dedication to performing these works. Modern electronics may have superseded Cage’s first aural adventure, but this was “the real deal”.
(N.B. The prepared piano did not suffer in any way with the specified instructional requirements of added screws, rubbers, plastics, long bolts, nuts and erasers to 45 pairs of strings.)
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Julie McErlain reviewed “Sonatas and Interludes – John Cage”, performed by Tim Young and ANAM Pianists at the Rosina Auditorium, Abbotsford Convent on May 17, 2021.
