Customer Reviews

In a Landscape

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4 star:		(3)
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2 star:		(1)
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...For a new listener this album is perfect. It's beautiful, and accessible and just all around pleasing to listen to. The piece "In A Landscape" is the first piece I play for anyone who says they don't like John Cage. They're usually sold within the first 30 seconds of the piece. The ambience and simplicity of this piece is so striking, but Cage's take on harmony (which is especially challenging in a piece that's so focused on melody) keeps the piece from sounding new age.
Anyone just starting out with John Cage, start here. If this strikes you well, check out "Music For Changes" and then the Sonatas and Interludes for prepared piano. Beyond that I highly encourage anyone to do some research, read some of Cage's writings, especially a collection of essays and lectures titled "Silence." As his life progresses, his music becomes more minimal and disjointed, and his words really strike down exactly what it is he's trying to accomplish with his music, and that really helps the listener.
For listeners that are already very familiar with Cage's work, this still isn't a waste. These recordings are a great collection of some nice Cage pieces that don't get as much attention, and is still a really pleasing album to listen to.

Don't be intimidated by what you may have heard about John Cage; his music can be much more accessible than that of many other 20th-century composers, and perhaps even some earlier ones (I'll take Cage over Wagner any day). Drury plays Cage's early piano music, some of it written as dance accompaniment, with knowledge and respect. The title piece, which opens the album, sounds superficially like new-age music, but isn't the least bit boring--it's as boring as a beautiful woman, or a view from a mountain. More idiosyncratic and humorous (Cage *always* had a great sense of humor) are the "Music for Toy Piano," which shows Cage's ability to see more possibilities than the rest of us, and the short "Prelude to Meditation," which says an enormous amount with a few light touches on the keys. There's even an organ piece, which provides a nice variation. Please forget what you may have heard about Cage and buy this CD!

A good collection for those unfamiliar with the wonderful, witty work of John Cage. These early piano pieces from the 1940s could almost be 1990s New Age music; but I don't mean that perjoratively; In fact, Cage wanted the music to create a state of meditation in the listener. As he said, his objective was to "quiet the mind and make it more receptive to divine influence." A divine collection...

In my opinion this is a very good c.d.. I like all of the pieces on this c.d. but my favorites are "in a landscape" and "dream". They are otherworldly in a way such as you stop hearing the music and feel the energy and essence of the proveyed piece. if anyone out there is wondering whether to buy it or not do yourself a favor and do.

For those interested in getting into John Cage for the first time, this is a great place to start. Getting into Cage can prove intimidating at first, but this great collection of prepared piano pieces will open the door to him. The music features some of Cage's solo piano music, performed by Stephen Drury. It closes with the track, "Dream", which is one of the better pieces in my own opinion. "In a Landscape", as a whole, accurately depicts his style, not only including his avant-garde approaches, but also the soft, gentle resonance that can be heard in many of his pieces for piano.

The album consists of John Cage pieces from 1938-1948 & one from 1983, all played by Stephen Drury. It is quite accessible. A great place to begin an appreciation of Cage.

In my opinion, John Cage's In A Landscape is THE most beautiful peice for piano of absolute all time. Never has there been a classical peice for this instrument that truely got to me personally than this. And never will there ever be. In A Landscape goes beyond 'music' and is an entity in itself that speaks on many levels. It's so simple and yet is so powerful. This is a must for any music lover or/and a person who would like to get to know the many works of John Cage.

The bigger sin would be to have been born before Bach and bitch about the dearth of music celebrating things other than mankind's moribundity. We listeners - and listeners of greater rotundity, too - must wade backward through some rather insensible attempts to make music of the kind that might be called classical. Very generally our near contemporaries have either soaked us all heavy with a riptide of sentimentality or made of mockery of sound so effectively that we have all soaked them with our unceasing flows of laughter.

Before Picasso was making a bloody mess of things he was making something approximating art; and in between those conical eyes and angular breasts I can nearly find the remnants of that once sane man. John Cage had me in stitches for a time when I had the patience and credulity to stop long enough to listen. He reminded me that the piano was a percussive instrument - one to be hardly banged upon in the chorus of creation and muse.

Between then and the very moment I received `In a Landscape' John Cage was merely a mark of reference denoting that point at which I stopped taking his work and my life too seriously. But `In a Landscape' - or as I spooneristically name it, "In a Cage" - is something unlike the curious Cage and something more than the mere "bleats beyond the reckoning table."

Though I have no faith in my own estimation of what is good or deserving of praise, I do know what I hate; AND THIS I DO NOT HATE. `Landscape' is - I think - a collection of sparse and haunting melodies that seems to fit well with me when reading Joseph Campbell's "Hero" or Richard Feynman's "6 Easy Pieces." `In a Landscape' is to my ear almost great. I think this is so because I tend to lean in when I listen, and this "leaning in" is a gesture I've never offered John Cage or his music when stuck between him and his variations.

There is a common assumption, particularly among the musical literati, that if a piece is novel, obscure, extremely simple, unchromatic or simply weird, it must, by definition, be quality material. Sheer novelty trumps quality. I am reminded of having to hunker down at the Symphony as the conductor launches into an extended "explanation" on why this next piece may not have a melody, discernable beat, nor employ "ordinary" instruments, yet is still a fine piece of art. (Chances are the majority of comments will be along the lines of, "What in the world was that thing with bongo drums & basketballs?"

I am the first to admit the artistry, perhaps musicality of Cage even when he takes himself AND his music too seriously. At least we did not have to "listen" to 4'33". One reviewer was correct - this is perhaps the most accessible offering of the entire ouevre. It is...interesting in a childish sort of way, sort of like someone who learns that hitting notes on a keyboard results in sounds or better, is playing just to hear the sounds that can be produced. DREAM perfectly expresses the mood of this CD (which is wonderful as party backgroup music) with its enigmatic, almost shy explorations. The tracks are united by an almost wordless fear of being closely examined. A few contain a nice rhythmic drive, others remind one of that godawful New Age stuff heard on public radio occasionally. The CD is compelling only if one takes their music with a huge dollop of tenuousness.