Prom 47 (17.8.12): Cage Centenary Celebration

[JohnSkelton]

Characters from the soft-porn S&M bestseller Fifty Shades of Grey. I think the intended witticism might be that only Sado-Masochists could enjoy such a programme?

I'm beginning to feel like that judge who asked who The Beetles were - references to contemporary popular cultural phenomena fly straight over my head these days .

[prokkyshosty]

indeed!

(before I run away again, I should add that I plan to be front and center in the Arena for this one. I may or may not be reading certain books on my Kindle during intermission...)

[Bryn]

indeed!

(before I run away again, I should add that I plan to be front and center in the Arena for this one. I may or may not be reading certain books on my Kindle during intermission...)

Ah, but are you going music walk-about with an mp3 player before the main event?

[ferneyhoughgeliebte]

(before I run away again, I should add that I plan to be front and center in the Arena for this one. I may or may not be reading certain books on my Kindle during intermission...)

I'd like to go, but I'm strapped for cash.

[heliocentric]

references to contemporary popular cultural phenomena fly straight over my head these days .

With a title like Fifty Shades of Grey I'd expect it to be connected to Rawsthorne or Moeran or something, rather than Cage.

[JohnSkelton]

With a title like Fifty Shades of Grey I'd expect it to be connected to Rawsthorne or Moeran or something, rather than Cage.

Further research suggests it's about sex so underrated English composers seems unlikely.

[prokkyshosty]

Ah, but are you going music walk-about with an mp3 player before the main event?

Well, I'll probably be whistling a tune as I walk into the Imperial College bar. Does that count?

[amac4165]

Well, I'll probably be whistling a tune as I walk into the Imperial College bar. Does that count?

only if you are buying the drinks !

[amac4165]

Characters from the soft-porn S&M bestseller Fifty Shades of Grey.

I believe the correct technical term is "mummy-porn"

btw did anyone else get the email about very limited standing in the arena - and they are using the choir for promenading ?

[ferneyhoughgeliebte]

I believe the correct technical term is "mummy-porn"

Really?! "Oedipus Wrecked"?

(I'd pursue this idea further, but I'm a bit tied up at the moment.)

[Bryn]

I believe the correct technical term is "mummy-porn"

btw did anyone else get the email about very limited standing in the arena - and they are using the choir for promenading ?

I got no such email, but thanks for the alert. I had planned to start queuing early anyway, but may now make it even earlier. I also need to sort out what they intend to do re. those in the Day Queue who will be going to the Prom Plus Intro and/or Music Walk.

[OldTechie]

I started listening with the view of "I don't really like this sort of stuff." Having listened to the end, I now just wish I had been there to hear it properly.

[Lateralthinking1]

I walked into a lot of concert halls in the early 1970s. They had all only recently been built. The music of Cage was always being played there. Often there was hardly a musician in sight. When the pieces were being performed, I was aware that I was gatecrashing a rehearsal. Some were standing up and sitting down while others were drifting around. Vivid though these memories are to me, they never happened. They are an approximation of one or two moments when something like that did occur. Those left an impression. It was intriguing and unfathomable. It was also one version of the future. Looking back, that never arrived.

Still, I was surprised that this concert should feel so much like a new history. It was not just that the soundscapes happened to take me back to every aspect of my infant school classroom. The story of how Cage broke every rule in the book is now quite old and the missed opportunities are regrettable. The event was timely, marking Cage's centenary, and the SSO was terrific. It appears to be on a mission to undertake whatever is virtually impossible. Radio may well create the best pictures. For this one, it was necessary to be in the hall. Alternatively, the television could have made itself useful, not that one expects that now.

At least Andrew McGregor was at the helm. I am in no doubt that he is one of the BBC's finest presenters. Consequently this was a very informative broadcast. Whether having greater knowledge about Cage is in the spirit of Cage I don't know. While the musicians rarely improvised, they were working to the barest of instructions. Anyhow, those of us who merely listen were given layered star charts, rubber bolts in pianos and the nostalgia of cassette recorders. There were singing cactii, transistor radios, and weird notions based on the I-Ching. The mind does strange things. At one point, I swear I heard Olympians in a gym playing basketball around caged animals. Later, there was a pail pump thing going on as a City gent rattled the Financial Times.

In the first half of the programme, 101 musicians performed 'CageL 1O1' and an unknown number of C90s in Hitachis delivered 'Improvisation III". Each held the attention. In the second half, 'But what about the noise of crumpling paper' and 'Branches' were among the highlights. I enjoyed them immensely. Presumably the latter was particularly moving live as the plants with inner microphones were played all round the audience. It must have been a sound and a sight. Some of the other parts of the concert seemed overly long but then we were not seeing the dramatic use of light. Nor crucially did we have the benefit of hearing the music being played to fill the spaces. It would be great to hear from someone who was there how effectively that was achieved.

The music for voice was more simple. 'Four2', based on the letters in Oregon, requires tones to be held for very long durations. It feels shamanic in the way it vibrates the system. Joan La Barbara sang 'Experiences II' which is based on a poem by e e cummings. It was performed with wonderful pitch and clarity, the only small reservation being that she is a singer who runs every 'r' into a vowel. There was also time for other composers. Christian Marclay's 'Luggage 2012' is an extraordinary piece played on instrument cases. Arguably, it received the greatest applause of the night. David Behrman, Takehisa Kosugi, Keith Rowe and Christian Wolff, all of whom knew Cage and many of whom played with him, performed an electronic improvisation. Birds flapped maniacally, hair dryers wailed through motorcycle wheels and all manner of things were ripped asunder. It was quite a night.

I definitely heard reservations in the voice of AM about the latter and one of his guests fell silent. Until then the latter had been effusive as well as being informed. Certainly it wasn't in the spirit of Cage's controlling freedom. In fact, it was a radioactive creature running wild. Initially, it seemed dated. Was there a 'Silver Machine' at the outset? I fear that there might have been but fortunately from Hawkwind it quickly took flight. Oddly, given its remit, it seemed to have been even better rehearsed than the supposedly less impromptu work. That is not to overly criticise. They took Cage back to the blackboard and brought this decade into the RAH. While imagination might be getting the better of me, it could just be a further boost to keeping Cage's spirit alive.

[Bryn]

I joined the Arena Day Queue at around 2pm and was surprised to find myself 6th in line. Soon after my arrival a very helpful steward turned up to issue place saver tickets to us early birds. One of those ahead of me raised the issue of limited space in the Arena and enquired about the layout. The steward was not sure so went off to find out. Within a few minutes she returned with a sketch she had made of the position of the 4 pianos and the two restricted access platforms in the Arena. An hour or so later the first 50 in the queue were sold tickets (in order to speed things up come opening time. I was able to attend both the Proms Plus talk (for which none of the three speakers seemed as well prepared as they might), and the Music Walk before resuming my place in the queue. Re.the Proms Plus talk, there were a few howlers from both Martin Handley and Ivan Hewitt, but nothing too serious. MH started by asking Alvin Curran questions about Cage's early musical history, an area about which AC is not, and never claimed to be, particularly well informed. As a result there were more than a few ers and ums as AC did his best to respond to the questions put to him. It would have been much better o have Robert Worby in the chair, or in place of IH. Worby definitely knows his stuff re. Cage.

A most enjoyable concert, and a great opportunity to catch up with old friends and acquaintances. By the way, I am advised that there will be a forthcoming Music Matters on Cage, with contributions from Howard Skempton, among others.

[heliocentric]

Hearing the concert on the radio I thought it was very successful, with a couple of exceptions. In distinction to LT1 I thought the non-Cage parts of the programme were unnecessary and uninteresting. The improvisation struck me as arbitrary and uninspired, and I couldn't understand why it included Christian Wolff, who isn't an interesting improviser at the piano, rather than John Tilbury, who is (and of course who was also in the room!). You can hear better free improvisation than this every week in pub venues up and down the country. And Christian Marclay has a tendency to take "Cageian" ideas and make something cheap and shallow out of them... something that struck me most forcibly about the more aleatoric of the Cage pieces (Atlas Eclipticalis/Winter Music/Cartridge Music, which are often performed together, something that the talkers didn't make at all clear, and the Crumpled Paper percussion piece) was how "magical" Cage's ability was, when being so unspecific about the sounds performers might use, to set up a situation wherein the sounds that actually happen have such poise and beauty. As he himself said, ask the right questions and you'll get the right answers. Marclay didn't seem particularly concerned with such issues and for me his contribution was just the sum of its parts, something you could get as much out of by having it described to you as actually hearing it. Another highlight for me was the Concerto for prepared piano, a highly sensitive (slower than is usual?) performance, with Tilbury and Volkov really the perfect pairing.

So, I would recommend this concert highly on iPlayer for those who didn't hear it last night, but, if you can, edit out the talking - with all the stage rearrangement going on it began sometimes to sound a bit like the kind of time-filling for the sake of it you get in the coverage of "royal occasions", not that the announcers were ill-informed or annoying in themselves, they just broke up the experience too much for my taste.