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Work Title Child of Tree |
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Date Composed in 1975. Premiered in Detroit, Michigan, March 8, 1975. |
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Ensemble Type Solo |
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Work Length 8 minutes |
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Instrumentation For solo percussion using amplified plant materials. |
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Comments 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. 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. This inspired Cage to use cacti as musical instruments in pieces like Child of Tree and Branches. The score consists solely of performance instructions as to how to select 10 instruments via I Ching chance operations. All instruments should be made of plant matter, or be themselves plant materials (e.g. leaves from trees, branches etc.). One of the instruments should be a pod (rattle) from a Poinciana tree, which grow in Mexico. Cage instructs: "Using a stopwatch, the soloist improvises clarifying the time structure by means of the instruments. This improvisation is the performance.” |
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Publication Peters Edition EP 66685 |
