The Chord Catalogue

Tom Johnson (Performer)

Product Details

• Performer: Tom Johnson
• Audio CD (November 1, 1999)
• SPARS Code: DDD
• Number of Discs: 1
• Label: Experimental Intermed
• ASIN: B00003ZAKH
• In-Print Editions: MP3 Download
• Average Customer Review: 2.0 out of 5 stars See all reviews (1 customer review)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #413,799 in Music (See Bestsellers in Music)

Editorial Reviews

Kyle Gann, The Village Voice
....Extreme and, one would think, extremely simple. A lesser man would have arranged those 8178 chords in some symphonically meaningful, or else quasi-random order, but Johnson proceeded methodically up the chromatic scale from two notes at a time, three, four, so on to 13....By the time we reached 10-note chords, the information overload was such that differences were hardly perceptible, a situation reminiscent of serial music. Far from being heavy-handed minimalism, "The Chord Catalogue" was a pointed lesson in music history and the relativity of perception.

Kenneth Goldsmith, New York Press
....Johnson's got a brand-new CD of piano pieces, "The Chord Catalogue" (XI), that is a demonstration of how one octave can be divided into 8178 chords. To call it microtonal would be an understatement: While splitting chords into quarter or eighth notes is not that unusual, Johnson's accomplishment is mind-boggling. And it sounds great. It's basically Johnson just bashing out thousands of these variations on a solo piano. Remember when Thelonious Monk hit those "wrong" notes in piece like "Little Rootie Tootie?" That's just the jumping-off point for Johnson. Far from tedious, the work is one of the richest pieces I've heard, yet it employs the sparest means. Call it textbook minimalism, but something's changed: 30 years later, Johnson's new disc still proves that there's plenty of life remaining in practicesand careersthat, not too long ago, were left for dead.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

2.0 out of 5 stars hard core minimal, January 31, 2006

By	Dionisis Boukouvalas (Zakynthos, Greece) - See all my reviews

"I like to think of "The Chord Catalogue" as a sort of natural phenomenon-something which has always been present in the ordinary musical scale, and which I simply observed, rather than invented. It is not so much a composition as simply a list".
With this statement of Johnson of 1985 start, indeed most appropriately, the liner notes of the CD. This one CD work presents "all the 8178 chords possible in one octave" (no microtonal tricks here, just the pure equally tempered piano octave). Each chord is played only once (as we expected in a catalogue).

Having a pure mathematical mind, Johnson arranges his material in a rational way, starting from the 78 two-note chords, progressing with the 286 three-note chords, etc, ascending, until the peak of 6 and 7 note chords (both 1716). After that we start descending again, until we reach the thirteen 12 note chords and the one 13 note chord. These are played as a chord succession (no time to lose resting on individual chords), each sequence on a separate CD track.

The work is pretty minimal, all of the material reduced to the space of an octave, played on a regular rhythm, in a rational arrangement. But there is another important aspect of the minimal character of the piece: Taking the 1716 seven note chords, only one if consonant, the one structured with six successive tones. All others are clusters. The chords with more notes are also clusters. Many of the lesser note chords are clusters as well. So when we come to talk about "all the 8178 chords possible in one octave", there is not really so much variety as we initially suspect.

The rational arrangement of the chords though gives a sense of progress to the piece. The final powerful cluster is a fitting way to end such a tour de force. And most of all, it's a tour de force for Johnson who plays the piece of the CD.

This is minimal at its most hardcore. If you are new to Johnson's music this is not the place to start. I highly recommend his work "Music for 88", which is much more accessible and interesting, being at the same time equally original. There you can even find the piece "Pascal's triangle" which is the little brother of "The chord catalogue", exploring chords consisting only of tones and semitones.