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Double Music (1941)
| composers |
John Cage (1912-1992)
Lou Harrison (1917-2003) |
| performers |
Pacific Rims Percussion Quartet:
Gunnar Folsom, percussion
Paul Hansen, percussion
Matthew Kocmieroski, percussion
Rob Tucker, percussion |
| publisher |
C. F. Peters (ASCAP, BMI)http://www.edition-peters.com
|
| recording |
Live concert performance at Drums Along the Pacific festival, Cornish College of the Arts, Seattle, Washington, March 27, 2009 |
| duration |
05:42 |
Matthew Kocmieroski:
"Double Music for percussion quartet was collaboratively written by John Cage (parts for players one and three) and Lou Harrison (parts for players two and four) in 1941 ... The collaboration was suggested by Cage for the conclusion of their May 1941 concert in San Francisco, California. Harrison suggested using all metal instruments, which he was becoming more and more drawn to. They agreed on the length and a few other parameters but worked independently ... Knowing each other's music quite well, they were able to put the parts together without having to change a note. The parts are more or less arranged as soprano, alto, tenor, and bass, a practice which Harrison continued to use in other percussion works.
"The instrumentation of this festive piece is representative of the work of the period. It uses 'found' instruments, brake drums and thunder sheets, and other easily obtainable (at that time) and exotic instruments, including cowbells, water buffalo bells, sleigh bells, sistrums, gongs, and tam-tams ... Double Music also includes a water gong -- a small gong raised and lowered into a tub of water while played, bending its tone. John Cage had discovered the water gong while providing music for the University of California, Los Angeles swimming team. When the swimmers could not hear the music, Cage accommodated by bringing the music to the water, and thus the water gong was born."
John Cage (1912-1992), whose career spanned over 50 years, is arguably the most influential American composer of the 20th century. His influence extended well beyond the musical community into the worlds of dance, theater, visual art, and philosophy.
Born in Los Angeles, California, Cage attended Pomona College for two years, and in 1931 began compositional studies with pianist Richard Buhlig. He travelled to New York City to study with Henry Cowell at the New School for Social Research and later with Adolph Weiss. Cage then began work with Arnold Schoenberg, whom he followed to the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) in 1934. Schoenberg was an important influence on Cage, whose early pieces attempt to extend his teacher's twelve-tone systems.
In 1938 Cage moved to Seattle, Washington to work as a dance composer and accompanist at the Cornish School of the Arts. There he met choreographer and dancer Merce Cunningham, who would become a lifelong artistic colloborator. Cage's early innovations grew out of his work with dance: he focused on the use of time as the primary source of musical structure, created percussion works such as First Construction (in Metal) (1939) using all kinds of objects from tin cans and brake drums to Asian instruments, and worked with electronic devices including variable-speed turntables and frequency recordings as in Imaginary Landscape No. 1 (1939). The lack of percussion space for a particular dance performance led Cage to experiment with 'preparing' a piano, placing objects on the strings to create a variety of sounds and percussive effects.
Cage's percussion ensemble toured throughout the West Coast and collaborated with composer Lou Harrison's group in San Francisco. In 1941 Cage moved to Chicago, Illinois to teach at the Chicago School of Design; the following year he continued east to New York City, where his work with prepared piano and increasing interest in Indian music and philosophy resulted in the breakthrough Sonatas and Interludes (1946-1948) for prepared piano. For this work he received awards from the Guggenheim Foundation and National Academy of Arts and Letters.
After a year travelling in Europe, Cage returned to New York in 1949 and met composer Morton Feldman, with whom he shared an intense exchange of ideas and music for many years. Cage, Feldman, Earle Brown, and Christian Wolff later became known as the New York School of composers. During this creative period, silence began to play a significant role in Cage's music, an outgrowth of his growing interest in Zen Buddhism and Japanese culture. "Lecture on Nothing" (1950) was the first of many literary expressions of his developing musical philosophy, which Cage later described in an autobiographical statement:
"In the late forties I found out by experiment ... that silence is not acoustic. It is a change of mind, a turning around. I devoted my music to it. My work became an exploration of non-intention. To carry it out faithfully I have developed a complicated composing means using I Ching chance operations, making my responsibility that of asking questions instead of making choices."
Inspired by Feldman and the I Ching, an ancient Chinese coin-tossing oracle, Cage began to incorporate these 'chance operations' in his work, making room for "whatever sound comes along" (Cage). Notable compositions from this period include Music of Changes (1951) and the now-infamous silent work 4'33" (1952). Cage's use of chance grew to include what he called 'indeterminacy,' or ambiguous systems of notation which are realized differently with each performance. It is found in works such as the Concert for Piano and Orchestra (1957-1958) and Variations II (1961).
By the early 1960's Cage had achieved an international reputation, in part due to the publishing of his seminal Silence: Lectures and Writings (1961). As a result his commissions, performances, and speaking engagements increased considerably. Among his significant later compositions are the multimedia orchestral work Renga (1975-1976), the radio play Roaratorio: an Irish circus on Finnegans wake (1979), and the five Europeras (1987-1991). Cage also became more active in other media including poetry, painting, printmaking, and film. The final phase of his musical output began with the composition Two (1987), in which fragments of music are strung together through overlapping periods of time, later referred to as 'number' or 'time bracket' pieces. Cage composed 43 such works in the last five years of his life.
Lou Harrison (1917-2003) is known for an eclectic body of work which features diverse systems of intonation, traditional Asian instruments, and a combination of Eastern and Western musical styles.
Born and raised in Portland, Oregon, Harrison initially studied in San Francisco in 1935 with Henry Cowell, who introduced him to the music of Charles Ives as well as Native American and early Californian culture. As a dance accompanist for Mills College in Oakland, Harrison met John Cage, with whom he arranged percussion concerts in 1941; a year later he studied with Arnold Schoenberg at the University of California, Los Angeles. Harrison lived in New York City from 1943 to 1951, where he wrote for a number of periodicals and conducted the premiere of Ives' Third Symphony (1904-1911), for which Ives received the Pulitzer Prize (but gave the prize money to Harrison and composer John Becker).
Towards the end of his stay in New York, Harrison began to work with just intonation, inspired by the publication of Harry Partch's Genesis of a Music in 1949. He held residencies at Reed College in Portland, Oregon and taught at Black Mountain College in North Carolina (1951-1952) before permanently settling in Aptos, California. In the 1960's Harrison received grants allowing him to travel to Korea and Taiwan, where he studied Korean court music with Lee Hye-Ku and Chinese classical music with Liang Tsai-Ping.
At various points in his career, Harrison made a living as a florist, record clerk, poet, dancer, critic, music copyist, calligraphist, painter, playwright, teacher, and instrument builder. He held academic positions at the University of Hawaii, San Jose State University, Stanford University, and other schools until finally joining the faculty of Mills College in 1980. With partner William Colvig he built many non-Western and folk instruments, including two gamelans in just intonation which remain in use at San Jose State University and Mills College. Harrison's music has been recorded on many labels including Albany, Bridge, CRI, Crystal, Koch International Classics, Mode, Music & Arts, New Albion, New World, and Phoenix.
related websites
http://www.johncage.info
http://www2.hmc.edu/~alves/harrisonbio.html
Formed in 1996 in Seattle, Washington, the Pacific Rims Percussion Quartet performs music from the 1930's to the present, including works by John Cage, Steve Reich, Amadeo Roldán, Toru Takemitsu, and Iannis Xenakis. The quartet's members individually perform with the Pacific Northwest Ballet, Seattle Opera, Seattle Symphony, 5th Avenue Theatre, and on numerous major movie and video game soundtracks. In addition to producing their own concerts, they have appeared with the Seattle Chamber Players, Seattle Creative Orchestra, and Sonora; on series such as the Cornish Music Series, Methow Valley Chamber Music Festival, and Seattle Chamber Music Society; and at venues including the Seattle Asian Art Museum and St. James Cathedral, where they helped celebrate Olivier Messiaen's centenary in 2008. Educational performances include Cornish College of the Arts, Music Works Northwest, Seattle Public Schools, and Seattle Symphony Tiny Tots series.
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