FLUR 2001 > 2024



Lost Daylight

Terry Jennings, John Cage, John Tilbury, Sebastian Lexer

Another Timbre

Regular price €14,00

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"John Cage’s ‘Electronic Music for Piano’ is a peculiar composition, the more so as the published score is little more than a list of hand-written notes including reference to the essential source, his earlier composition ‘Music for Piano 4-84’ (1953-56). It seems that the score contains notes he collected for a performance by cage himself and David Tudor in Stockholm, September 2nd 1964, for two pianos and electronics, the paper carrying the letterhead of the Hotel Malmen in Stockholm. Approaching a realisation one is left only with hints as to what they used - “feedback, changing sounds (microphones, amplifiers, loudspeakers)” - and most crucially, a reference to the use of transcriptions on transparencies from an astronomical atlas. Both techniques had been part of Cage’s and Tudor’s realisations in various pieces, including Tudor’s remarkable realisation of Variations II (1961) from 1967. John Tilbury and I had developed a version of Electronic Music for Piano in 2002, utilising a computer-based system (which over the years became the piano+) in which parameters of effects and routings were directed by the proximity of a random movement through a digitised star map. His approach felt inappropriate for this recording in which the spirit of Tudor’s approach to piano and electronics is as much a governing factor as the score itself. We wanted to go beyond a realisation that comprised of simply adding electronic effects to the piano. In this recording John Tilbury’s playing is captured by a series of stationary and movable microphones and pick-ups. Transformations were initiated and directed by a score devised from lines printed on transparencies and star maps. This organic, ‘performed’ version was then subjected to further similar randomised processes and editing to derive the order and time placement of segments, the mixing between tracks, and panning. This enabled us to distance ourselves as much as possible from any aesthetic decision-making." (Sleeve notes by Sebastian Lexer)