John Cage's Concert for Piano and Orchestra

Martin Iddon and Philip Thomas

Studies in Musical Genesis, Structure, and Interpretation

Examines one of Cage's most significant pieces within a wide range of contexts
Develops new models for the analysis of Cage's music
Demystifies an apparently complex and bewildering score

John Cage's Concert for Piano and Orchestra

Martin Iddon and Philip Thomas

Studies in Musical Genesis, Structure, and Interpretation

Description

John Cage's Concert for Piano and Orchestra is one of the seminal works of the second half of the twentieth century, and the centerpiece of the middle period of Cage's output. It is a culmination of Cage's work up to that point, incorporating notation techniques he had spent the past decade developing - techniques which remain radical to this day. But despite Cage's vitality to the musical development of the twentieth century, and the Concert's centrality to his career, the work is still rarely performed and even more rarely examined in detail.

In this volume, Martin Iddon and Philip Thomas provide a rich and critical examination of this enormously significant piece, tracing its many contexts and influences - particularly Schoenberg, jazz, and Cage's own compositional practice - through a wide and previously untapped range of archival sources. Iddon and Thomas explain the Concert through a reading of its many histories, especially in performance - from the legendary performer disobedience and audience disorder of its 1958 New York premiere to a no less disastrous European premiere later the same year. They also highlight the importance of the piano soloist who premiered the piece, David Tudor, and its use alongside choreographer Merce Cunningham's Antic Meet. A careful examination of an apparently bewildering piece, the book explores the critical response to the Concert's performances, re-interrogates the mythology surrounding it, and finally turns to the music itself, in all its component parts, to see what it truly asks of performers and listeners.

John Cage's Concert for Piano and Orchestra

Martin Iddon and Philip Thomas

Studies in Musical Genesis, Structure, and Interpretation

List of figures
List of tables
List of abbreviations
Acknowledgements
Introduction
Chapter 1: Situating the Concert for Piano and Orchestra
Chapter 2: Sketching the Concert for Piano and Orchestra
Chapter 3: Presenting the Concert for Piano and Orchestra
Chapter 4: Performing the Concert for Piano and Orchestra
Chapter 5: Interpreting the Concert for Piano and Orchestra
Chapter 6: Interpreting the Solo for Piano
Chapter 7: Understanding the Concert for Piano and Orchestra
Bibliography
Index

John Cage's Concert for Piano and Orchestra

Martin Iddon and Philip Thomas

Studies in Musical Genesis, Structure, and Interpretation

Author Information

Martin Iddon, Professor of Music and Aesthetics, University of Leeds, and Philip Thomas, Professor in Performance, University of Huddersfield

Martin Iddon is Professor of Music and Aesthetics at the University of Leeds. His musicological research largely focuses on post-war music in Germany and the United States. He is the author of New Music at Darmstadt and John Cage and David Tudor: Correspondence on Interpretation and Performance. Philip Thomas is Professor of Performance at the University of Huddersfield. He specializes in performing experimental notated and improvised music, and is the co-editor of Changing the System: The Music of Christian Wolff.

John Cage's Concert for Piano and Orchestra

Martin Iddon and Philip Thomas

Studies in Musical Genesis, Structure, and Interpretation

Reviews and Awards

"Iddon and Thomas have produced a well-documented, comprehensive volume about the origin, aleatoric compositional processes, indeterminate performance realizations, and critical reception of John Cage's Concert for Piano and Orchestra (1957-58), one of the most important and controversial compositions of the post-WW II era. Highly recommended. Upper-division undergraduates through faculty; professionals." - W. E. Grim, CHOICE

"This extraordinary book gives John Cage's monumental Concert for Piano and Orchestra the "full treatment." Iddon and Thomas examine Cage's revolutionary indeterminate score from multiple perspectives in a virtuoso synthesis of criticism, performance practice, music analysis, sketch studies, and reception history. That a single work has inspired such a massive, multidimensional study vividly demonstrates that the incendiary music of a notorious agent provocateur has now entered the musical mainstream." - David W. Bernstein, Mills College, Oakland,CA

"A monumental achievement — in considering Cage's watershed Concert with respect to historical context, sketch study and compositional realization, and performance as well as interpretation, Martin Iddon and Philip Thomas have produced a milestone in Cage scholarship." - Rob Haskins, Professor and Chair, Department of Music, University of New Hampshire