Von John Cage’s „Williams Mix“, das ich neben Stockhausens „Gesang der Jünglinge“ für das wichtiges Elektronische Musikstück überhaupt halte, gibt es auch eine Partitur – nach der sich also das Stück auch „nachspielen“ lässt. Tom Erbe hat’s getan.
John Cage composed Williams Mix in 1952 for 8 channels of magnetic tape. It was one of the first pieces for tape – an ambitious project with over 3,000 tape shapes drawn onto a 192-page score and resulting in only 4 minutes and 15 seconds of music. The original version took a group of Cage’s friends nearly one year to complete.
I started work on Williams Mix in January 2012 by carefully measuring and noting all of the events on the score – and in the process, discovered the hierarchy, internal rules and structure of the piece. I then devised a patch in the PD language to play Williams Mix and perform the scored transformations noted by arrows, underlines and dashes. Whenever the score is open to multiple choices, my performance software either gives me control, or uses a chance process to determine the outcome. Because of this, every performance is different. A group of my friends contributed the 500 – 600 sounds required to perform the piece. Other than the original, this is the first time anyone has realized Williams Mix from the score.
The sounds for my performances were generously provided by the following musicians, artists and friends:
Cooper Baker – Bobby Bray – Clay Chaplin – Kent Clelland – Greg Davis – Greg Dixon – Tom Djil – Sam Dunscombe – Tom Erbe – Jeff Kaiser – Scot Gresham Lancaster – J Lesser – Elainie Lilllios – Carl Stone – Stephan Mathieu – Rick Nance – Maggi Payne – Meg Schedel – Michael Trigilio – Doug Van Nort
(via Renewable Music)
