John Cage and Beyond----The Avant-Garde in the Second Half of the 20th Century

Back in 1966 or '67, I was invited by the influential avant-garde musician John Tilbury to join a group of young musicians at my local school of music for weekly sessions discussing avant-garde music and, eventually,  performing works by avant-garde composers, including a piece by Cornelius Cardew called Autumn '60. I backed out after the first session. I'm not sure what it was I wanted in those days but it wasn't this...

Curiously, I'm now drawn to examining some of the stuff I rejected at the time. Cornelius Cardew is a fascinating figure (see his wikipage and the Guardian article linked below). This is part of The Great Learning, a massive work lasting nearly five hours in a recent recording on Bolt Records (see below). The Scratch Orchestra, which performs it here, was instigated for that very purpose:  

   

This article is specifically about what is being performed in the video: http://www.newmusicnewcollege.org/cardew.html

For more general information on Cardew's life and controversial death see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cornelius_Cardew

See also https://www.theguardian.com/music/tomserviceblog/2012/dec/17/cornelius-cardew-music-guide and
http://www.boltrecords.pl/4,extras/39,cornelius-cardew-the-great-learning,en.html

The American composer Morton Feldman (1926--1987) claimed that unlike John Cage and others his only debt to the Orient was Chinese food! He visited the Netherlands once (sometime in the mid 1980s) at the time this work, Crippled Symmetry, was given its first performances on mainland Europe. In a talk he gave on Dutch radio he came across as a warm-hearted man with a great sense of humour. Sadly, he died a few years later.



https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Morton_Feldman

I bought this same recording of John Cage's Variations IV (1963) back in the mid '60s and annoyed the shit out of my parents with it, nice fellow that I was...

Interestingly, "[t]he popular phonograph record of the premiere (issued by Everest Records) of this work is generally misunderstood as a sound collage of classical music, sound-effects, and ambient noises, etc. While this is what the work sounds like the concept behind the work has nothing to do with the recordings and sounds that were employed in the performance as such. What the work actually embodies is the positioning of sound sources within a given interior space. In that regard the recording completely misrepresents the basis of the work."

Oh well.



https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Variations_(Cage)

This piece by Nicholas Collins is illustrative of the strange areas music has been moving in since Cage opened the door. Tobabo Fonio (Amsterdam, 1991) is a study in "trombone-propelled electronics".



https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nicolas_Collins