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Playing the piano with almost anything but your fingers

John Phillips

John Phillips

pfm Member
I vividly remember the BBC radio 3 broadcasts in early 2004 from the "John Cage and Friends" weekend at the Barbican. The highlight for me was not to discover the number of movements in 4'33'' but it was Henry Cowell's 1928 piano concerto played by Philip Mead. I had heard the concerto on CD beforehand and have heard another performance since, but Philip Mead's effort has not IMHO been bettered.

I just re-discovered this performance on BBC iPlayer. If you want to experience something from a composer who strongly influenced Cage, to see and hear his "tone clusters" from a piano played with the palm of the hand, the forearm etc, then the BBC iPlayer account at https://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/p013s7yd/john-cage-live-at-the-barbican is worth a view. The piano concerto is about 16 minutes long starting around 44:30 minutes in.
 
Stefan Prins's Etude Interieure is for piano. Inside of a piano that is. The piano is basically used as a resonator, marbles used to attack the strings inside, keys are not used at all - hence interieure.

In Part A of Alvin Lucier's Nothing is Real, for piano, amplified teapot, tape recorder and miniature sound system. the pianist plays some familiar tunes, which are recorded. In Part B the recording is played back through a teapot, and the pianist opens and closes the lid so the sound escapes like steam. It is gorgeous.
 
In Megan Grace Beugger's Liason, a pulley system is built into the piano and wire runs under several piano strings, up through the pulleys and attaches to the performer's limbs. It's really compelling stuff because of the interplay between the movement and the sound.

 
In James Whittle’s This Piece Gets More Magical Every time someone writes ill of it, the pianist starts by tearing up the score, rolling each page into a ball and throwing it into the piano. These are then retrieved, uncrumpled and kind of played.


 
John Phillips said:
I vividly remember the BBC radio 3 broadcasts in early 2004 from the "John Cage and Friends" weekend at the Barbican. The highlight for me was not to discover the number of movements in 4'33'' but it was Henry Cowell's 1928 piano concerto played by Philip Mead. I had heard the concerto on CD beforehand and have heard another performance since, but Philip Mead's effort has not IMHO been bettered.

I just re-discovered this performance on BBC iPlayer. If you want to experience something from a composer who strongly influenced Cage, to see and hear his "tone clusters" from a piano played with the palm of the hand, the forearm etc, then the BBC iPlayer account at https://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/p013s7yd/john-cage-live-at-the-barbican is worth a view. The piano concerto is about 16 minutes long starting around 44:30 minutes in.
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Nice one, digging this up from the BBC archives. I vaguely remember that Cage & Friends weekend at the Barbican from nearly twenty years ago, looking at the fairly uninspired programme, and deciding it wasn't worth the long trip down to London and staying overnight to hear some Ives and Copland. However, as you rightly say, Cowell's Piano Concerto, and Philip Mead's performance are amazing. I've never seen the piece performed live, and now really regret missing it back then. Funnily, I must have heard or watched the programme before because, while I don't have any vivid recollections of the performances unlike you, I remember the interview with Bonnie Greer making it sound like she used to hang out with Cage in the 1970s-80s and wondering if she was making it up, although it was probably true. It's just that back then, Cage's audience was, and still is, white, but maybe she got drawn into the Cage-Cunningham circle through her connection with the gay community in NYC (and the tragedy of AIDS as it ripped through the NYC dance world and took its deadly toll).
 
Tryant said:
Nice one, digging this up from the BBC archives. I vaguely remember that Cage & Friends weekend at the Barbican from nearly twenty years ago, looking at the fairly uninspired programme, and deciding it wasn't worth the long trip down to London and staying overnight to hear some Ives and Copland. However, as you rightly say, Cowell's Piano Concerto, and Philip Mead's performance are amazing. I've never seen the piece performed live, and now really regret missing it back then. Funnily, I must have heard or watched the programme before because, while I don't have any vivid recollections of the performances unlike you, I remember the interview with Bonnie Greer making it sound like she used to hang out with Cage in the 1970s-80s and wondering if she was making it up, although it was probably true. It's just that back then, Cage's audience was, and still is, white, but maybe she got drawn into the Cage-Cunningham circle through her connection with the gay community in NYC (and the tragedy of AIDS as it ripped through the NYC dance world and took its deadly toll).
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Yes I find it's quite surprising how long ago it was when I formed that memory and how vivid it still is. That's the power of good music, I think. And yes - the other parts of that programme were not inspiring.

I found the interview with Philip Mead on the video very informative about his preparation. There's also, I now find, a Record Review podcast on Henry Cowell from Andrew McGregor in which he also mentions and illustrates "reaching inside the piano" techniques (Cowell's "The Banshee" - EDIT: as per @adamdea's post).

I think Henry Cowell, and half a generation earlier, Charles Ives, made fascinating progress in good modern music. Leading to other favourites of mine like György Ligeti. I like to listen to challenging music to see if I "get it". Ives was easy and I find Cowell and Ligeti have for a long time no longer been challenging. Oddly enough there are some more "mainstream" composers where I still haven't really got it - Bruckner for example - but I continue to make progress.
 
John Phillips said:
Yes I find it's quite surprising how long ago it was when I formed that memory and how vivid it still is. That's the power of good music, I think. And yes - the other parts of that programme were not inspiring.

I found the interview with Philip Mead on the video very informative about his preparation. There's also, I now find, a Record Review podcast on Henry Cowell from Andrew McGregor in which he also mentions and illustrates "reaching inside the piano" techniques (Cowell's "The Banshee" - EDIT: as per @adamdea's post).

I think Henry Cowell, and half a generation earlier, Charles Ives, made fascinating progress in good modern music. Leading to other favourites of mine like György Ligeti. I like to listen to challenging music to see if I "get it". Ives was easy and I find Cowell and Ligeti have for a long time no longer been challenging. Oddly enough there are some more "mainstream" composers where I still haven't really got it - Bruckner for example - but I continue to make progress.
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I'm actually a big fan of Ives (and Copland), but the connections with Cage are tenuous. I suppose the programmers came up with the corny Americana theme to ensure there would be enough bums on the seats to fill the Barbican. They would have struggled with recreations of very dated happenings, Satie, and gamelan.

You probably know that Jeremy Denk performed the Cowell piece at the Proms a few years ago. He once published an interesting article in the New Yorker magazine about the process of recording Ives' Concord that you might like if you haven't seen it before:

https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2012/02/06/flight-of-the-concord

A year after Cage's death there was an amusing rock/pop/experimental tribute in NYC to the Master by the likes of Joey Ramone, David Byrne, Jello Biafra (!) and some others more obvious like John Zorn and Lou Reed:

https://ubu.com/sound/cage_uncaged.html

There are a few great pieces. Between the noise are snippets of Cage's musings, much of which sounds pretty silly today (apologies to overly sensitive Cage fans). Bless him, he gave the world the charming Sonatas and Interludes, which will live on for eternity.:)
 
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