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Work Title Music for Marcel Duchamp |
Date Composed in 1947. |
Ensemble Type Solo |
Work Length 5 minutes |
Instrumentation For solo prepared piano. |
Comments This work was originally written for the Duchamp portion of Hans Richter's film entitled Dreams That Money Can Buy. The composition evokes timbres and harmonies of Asian music, as well as the music of Erik Satie, i.e. it is static, meditative, and timeless. The music uses few tones, muted by weather stripping (seven pieces), a piece of rubber, and one bolt. The soft materials avoid fluctuations in resonance. This was important for Cage because the music had to be recorded, and in the first recordings Cage commented on "how poor the piano [...] sounded". The rhythmic structure is 11 x 11 (extended): 2-1-1-3-1-2-1. One new idea in this work is evident in Cage’s use of silence, heard especially in the last part, where 7 x 2 bars of music are followed by 2 bars of silence. These repetitions create tension and constitute a new dimension in Cage's music, stepping away as they do from his usual rhythmic propulsions. This work is available in the C.F. Peters compilation "Prepared Piano Music 1940 - 47, Volume 2" (catalog number noted). |
Publication Peters Edition EP 67886b |