John Cage: Music For Piano And Percussion

Cage: Sixteen Dances Credo in Us First Construction in Metal (1939) for seven percussionists Trio Double Music Third Construction Fads and Fancies in the Academy

Giancarlo Simonacci (piano) Ars Ludi Although John Cage was trained in the European tradition, he was quick to forge his own unique style, rejecting the Western concept of music as a dramatic development from A to B and instead viewing it as a state of mind, changing but not heading towards a goal. The development of this approach is particularly apparent in his works for percussion – the focus of this CD – where the instrumental family’s hitherto traditional role of simply supporting the phrasing and architecture is rejected, its primal energy instead harnessed and showcased as a source for new sounds. ‘I do not deal in purposes; I deal in sounds,’ wrote Cage of Sixteen Dances, the first piece on the album. It’s an apt description for pretty much his entire musical oeuvre. “Massively recorded, Cage’s works present modernism as a kind of amusing fetish, not exactly music, but something falling into that category by default. His dramatisation of silence brought celebrity, and his typical medium is that which leads from noise into music (or back again): percussion.” Sunday Times, 24th August 2014

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