Friday, September 7, 2012

Assemble your own Cage

Two nights ago I took my own advice from an earlier blog post. Lying awake at about 4 a.m., I began paying close attention to the sounds outside my bedroom window, and I turned them into a Cagean composition I call the "Stridulation Serenade."

The music — and I'll call it that — consisted of three layers: a chirruping pulse of crickets (which reminded me somewhat of Steve Reich), the underlying pedal point of an air-conditioner from another apartment, and occasional early-morning traffic noises, generally either the whoosh of tires or the revving of a motorcycle engine.

The piece lasted twenty-five minutes and was followed by an audio-visual event I titled “Dream Sequence.”

Thinking of Cage, I'm reminded of what Elliott Carter once said about aleatory music: "Play anything you want, just put my name in the program."

No comments: