John Cage: 'In a Landscape' for piano

A companion piece to the Feldman I uploaded yesterday, and another kind of 'minimalism'.

John Cage (1912-92) is a fascinating and complex personality. His ultimate quest as a composer was to try to prioritise the listener's experience. This eventually lead him to compose music based on chance operations, so that the sounding result was unpredictable. It also lead to a paradox: if all sounds can potentially be 'music', the word music ceases to have any real significance. Before he began working with inderterminacy, however, he spent some years composing in a more orthodox manner. Much of this was for piano (and prepared piano: another of his innovations) and some was intended to accompany dance.

'In a Landscape' was composed for solo piano (or harp) in 1948 at the end of this early career phase and is in many respects uncharacteristic of his work. It is modal (a mixture of aeolian on D in the lower and dorian in the upper register) and relatively conventional in texture (melody and accompaniment for the most part). The form is 15 times 15 bars and there is a particular underlying rhythmic structure. (Cage uses this kind of mathematical ground plan in a number of important works composed in the late 1940s).

I know of no music which is so hypnotic and mysterious as this and in an inspired performance it can have an extraordinary effect, especially, I think, if the listener is new to the piece. The sense of being 'in' a landscape, almost merged with it, can be quite magical.