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Work Title
Imaginary Landscape No. 5
Date
Composed in 1952. Premiered in New York, January 18, 1952.
Ensemble Type
Variable
Work Length
4 minutes
Instrumentation
For any forty-two recordings; score to be realized as a magnetic tape.
Comments
The piece is a collage of fragments from long-playing records recorded on tape. In Cage's realization, he mostly used jazz recordings, partly because the dance had a character that suggested popular music, and partly as a way of overcoming his own aversion to jazz. The realization was made with David Tudor, with technical assistance from Bebe and Louis Barron. The score is a block-graph, wherein each square equals 3” of tape. In total, there are 8 tracks, made from the 42 selected recordings. Duration and amplitude are notated, but there is no indication of what recordings (or what kind of recordings) should be used. The compositional method was use of the I Ching, creating a chart work with a five to five structure.
Publication
Peters Edition EP 6719
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