One4, Four [all versions], Twenty-Nine

John Cage (Composer), Christina Fong (Performer), Karen Krummel (Performer), Glenn Freeman (Performer), Michael Crawford (Performer) | Format: Audio CD

Product Details

• Performer: Christina Fong, Karen Krummel, Glenn Freeman, Michael Crawford
• Composer: John Cage
• Audio CD (January 3, 2002)
• Number of Discs: 1
• Label: OgreOgress productions
• ASIN: B0006PIPXS
• In-Print Editions: MP3 Download
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (1 customer review)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #578,617 in Music (See Top 100 in Music)

Editorial Reviews

Review

... an exercise, into the nothingness of ... nothing, which, of course, is nothing but the allness of the all.

... these musicians ... actually play nothing but silence, but to hear the silence you have to hear it indirectly, so to say, through sound. What you hear is a shadow of silence itself, a sound shadow. These sounds are simply the shadows of the silence in the music; a disturbance on the periphery of perception, a way of affecting silence to sound by observing it - because you can't observe it without affecting it, bending it into a vibration that sounds; the sounds of silence.

... a sounding shadow of silence is as close as you get if you want to hear the meaning of silence in a musical piece.

The real nothingness of silence is a non-something that has to disappear in the mind of the listener himself, and I think these anti-silence tries at silence serve the purpose of tuning the listener to the greater silence behind the shadows of silence ... the percussion serves as a director of attention to the theory of the point, the absolute singularity that really focuses nothing into a super-nothing! The string instruments rather draw attention to the other aspect of nothing; i.e. time, i.e. the now and the forever - absolutely the same thing ... and the super-nothing of point and the endless now of forever come together in the expression 'all places are here - all times are now' ...

... the Number Pieces give space and opportunity for a kind of meditation that shoots off to nowhere, into the middle of nothing and always! Ignore gravity of thought! Let these approximations of silence sound and light up cerebral skies in shooting photon ejaculations! The sky is an erogenous zone! Time is a slow orgasm! The sounds of silence are the hypothetical rustling of possible worlds! The roar of nothing is the memory of something that isn't yet.

The line and the dot of these Number Pieces are the Yin and Yang of I and Thou, of Us and It; the generous allowance of a misconception of duality in this Mono-All, this meeting place for noses and necks in curved space ...

One4 is delivered in Glenn Freeman's percussive language and a lot of space. The ringing sometimes mimic some early La Monte Young and Harry Bertoia atmospheres inside infinite, Louvre-like steelworks; Bethlehem Steel stretching in all directions, walls thinning into soap bubble transparency; those metallic clouds and those long pauses in passage of the clouds, those thoughtful cardiac arrests that propel beings from existence to existence, the Earth burning under their bodily vehicles.

Four comes here in all versions ... one alternate 30-minute version, two 20-minute versions and also two at 10 minutes. These are layered stretches of patience, standing waves of photographed motion, fire around ice - still days in Icelandic opposites ... old blood gushing out of the tales ...

This music is not un-beautiful, but I don't think the aim is beauty. I think beauty is just a by-product in the process of catching the shades of silence - and sometimes it is impossible to avoid beauty, even though you know it is distracting and may lead you to half a year's consumption of anti-depressants ...

John Cage's music is a good question, and sometimes I sense that there is an answer in there too, that not even Cage was aware of, a dormant answer that will formulate itself according to the state of hearing of recipient beings in an unforeseeable future ... I feel, sometimes, that I'm close to something in the relentless shade of the silence on Twenty-Nine, but the notion is elusive like the fragrance of dreams when you wake - and I let this body rest in the caress of planetary-provided gravity, at this moment immersed in colored shades of silence from John Cage's Number Pieces --Ingvar Loco Nordin, Sonoloco Record Reviews

Product Description

Fifth and final in a complete series of the Number Pieces (final works) for strings and/or percussion, this 66-minute CD features the world premiere recordings of John Cage's One4 and Twenty-Nine and is first to encompass all versions of Four.

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Single overlapping lines and thick foggy clouds of sound, January 14, 2005

By 

Sparky P. "jsparkyp" (composer, all around nice guy, yada yada yada) - See all my reviews

This review is from: One4, Four [all versions], Twenty-Nine (Audio CD)

This is the latest in OgreOgress' ongoing series of releases dedicated to John Cage's late period "Number Pieces". The first is for a single percussionist, the other two for string ensembles (Twenty-nine also includes percussion), and all employ Cage's `time-bracket notation'.

The earliest of the three is "Four", scored for standard string quartet. To achieve an "equality" of parts Cage designed it so that any player could play any part (to achieve this, Cage only used a limited range of tones, those that could be played by all instruments). All sounds are held out with a minimum of attack and very low dynamics and there aren't any pizzicato notes at all. The piece is divided into three five-minute sections, where then the players were instructed to switch parts and start back at the top. But he also made a provision that the piece could also last ten or twenty minutes, in addition to the full thirty minute performance, by means of omitting a section or two (a ten minute version would consist solely of section B and its repeat; twenty minute, A and C and their repeats). The producers of this disc have gone a step further: they split up each section with separate index points, two versions of each, to allow the home listener to design their own performances.

One4 is for a single percussionist playing a host of instruments. As with "Three2", "Six" and "Four4", percussion sounds are created mostly by means of prolonged rolls and shaking. Here percussionist Glenn Freeman plays a standard drum set while using a host of sticks and mallets.

"Twenty-nine" is scored for two timpanists, two percussionists, one pianist (bowed, with rosined string around the desired string, rather than played in its accustomed fashion), ten violists, eight `cellists and six contrabassists (all, of course, having their own part). Cage designed this so that it could be played alone, or combined with up to two other pieces, Twenty-six (all violins) and Twenty-eight (wind section). OgreOgress has also produced "Twenty-six", so you at home, if you already have this disc, can create a performance of "Twenty-nine" with "Twenty-six" in the comfort of your own room (using two machines; start with "29" first, then add "26" within three minutes later). With each string player having their own part that is different from the next, the result in each case is a continuously thick cloud of sound (there are no gaps of silence in either case). It is also interesting that each performance, despite the plethora of parts, was performed by only four people (Freeman; Christina Fong, violin and viola; Karen Krummel, `cello; and Michael Crawford, contrabass) through the wonders of overdubbing.

Again, this is late Cage, and when listening, you simply let things happen, accepting what is going on rather than trying to make some sense or form any sort of relationship of one part to another. On the other hand, when listening to the thick fog of "Twenty-nine", things start to come briefly into relief, then submerging into the mix, like a hidden object jutting out from underneath a large sheet of blank paper.