For this piece, you should use neither conventionally tuned instruments nor any that are made from animal materials or metal. It is used to determine the arrangement of "Child of Tree" and its variations, the number of instruments that are played in a particular part, the choice of instruments (the pod is always reserved for the last part, the others may occur in groups, but only once each) and the length of the rests. in Guernavaca).Įach player decides on the course of his score of Branches by means of the I Ching. John Cage says in the instructions to the piece "Child of Tree" (1975): Find 10 "instruments", one of which is a pod (rattle) from a poinciana tree. " Branches (1976) starts with a performance of "Child of Tree" and is then followed by a random number of variations on "Child of Tree" each of it lasting 8 minutes, all of which are separated from each other by periods of silence, lasting 1-8 minutes. This improvisation is the performance." "-John Cage.Org Cage instructs: "Using a stopwatch, the soloist improvises clarifying the time structure by means of the instruments. One of the instruments should be a pod (rattle) from a Poinciana tree, which grow in Mexico. All instruments should be made of plant matter, or be themselves plant materials (e.g. The score consists solely of performance instructions as to how to select 10 instruments via I Ching chance operations. This inspired Cage to use cacti as musical instruments in pieces like Child of Tree and Branches. While on tour in Arizona with the Merce Cunningham Dance Company in 1975, one of the dancers, Charles Moulton, brought a dried cactus to Cage, placed it near his ear, and plucked its spines. " Child of Tree: This work was originally used as music for the choreographed piece by Merce Cunningham entitled Solo (aka Animal Solo/Dance), with stage design by Sonja Sekula. Branches is essentially a series of variations of Cage's Child of Tree, strung together on a string of silence, which precedes it in performance."-John Cage.Org Cacti are played by plucking needles with toothpicks, amplifying their sounds via cartridge-like attachments, originally constructed by John D. Other instruments are to be selected by the performers, using I-Ching chance operations. The instruments to be used are amplified pods, cacti, and other plant materials, such as pod rattles from a Poinciana tree, which Cage specifically mentions in the score. Have a better biography or biography source? Please Contact Us so that we can update this biography.īranches: "The score for this work consists solely of performance instructions. In a 1957 lecture, Experimental Music, he described music as "a purposeless play" which is "an affirmation of life - not an attempt to bring order out of chaos nor to suggest improvements in creation, but simply a way of waking up to the very life we're living"."-Wikipedia ( ) The I Ching, an ancient Chinese classic text on changing events, became Cage's standard composition tool for the rest of his life. Through his studies of Indian philosophy and Zen Buddhism in the late 1940s, Cage came to the idea of aleatoric or chance-controlled music, which he started composing in 1951. His teachers included Henry Cowell (1933) and Arnold Schoenberg (1933-35), both known for their radical innovations in music, but Cage's major influences lay in various East and South Asian cultures. The best known of these is Sonatas and Interludes (1946-48). Cage was also a pioneer of the prepared piano (a piano with its sound altered by objects placed between or on its strings or hammers), for which he wrote numerous dance-related works and a few concert pieces. The work's challenge to assumed definitions about musicianship and musical experience made it a popular and controversial topic both in musicology and the broader aesthetics of art and performance. The content of the composition is not "four minutes and 33 seconds of silence," as is often assumed, but rather the sounds of the environment heard by the audience during performance. He was also instrumental in the development of modern dance, mostly through his association with choreographer Merce Cunningham, who was also Cage's romantic partner for most of their lives.Ĭage is perhaps best known for his 1952 composition 4′33″, which is performed in the absence of deliberate sound musicians who present the work do nothing aside from being present for the duration specified by the title. Critics have lauded him as one of the most influential American composers of the 20th century. A pioneer of indeterminacy in music, electroacoustic music, and non-standard use of musical instruments, Cage was one of the leading figures of the post-war avant-garde. (SeptemAugust 12, 1992) was an American composer, music theorist, writer, philosopher, and artist.
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