Prepared Piano?

[hollyking]

To be honest I don't know much about John Cage (Wikipedia) other than he composed 4'33". Today I was listening to the Naxos Classical Music Spotlight podcast and the subject was John Cage and his Sonatas and Interludes for Prepared Piano (Naxos 8.559042). So now I know quite a bit more about Mr. Cage and his compositions. I found the sonatas and interludes highlighted in the podcast interesting but I don't know if I would call them good music.

The sounds made by the prepared piano are very unusual. At first I would have said that there were musicians playing a piano and other percussion instruments. In fact it's one musician playing a piano. The piano has had nuts, bolts and other items attached to the strings which change the sound quite a bit. This led to some very interesting sounds during the performance.

I thought that some passages were very musical while others were just jumbles of random noise. A few times it sounded like the pianist was just banging on the keyboard. I won't say it wasn't music but I have to say it's not the kind of music that I normally enjoy. This piece was different because I spent most of the time thinking about the notes and how the music progressed. I think I'll have to get the CD and listen to the whole thing.

Thankfully Naxos has excellent recordings at great prices. I don't think I've ever seen one that was more than $10. That means I can collect and enjoy a lot more classical music because I'm more willing to experiment. That reminds me I need to find a music store with a good classical selection. Something like Classical Millennium but here in Seattle.

Comments

[poetry-lady.livejournal.com]

Silver Platters in Overlake is decent for classical...

[hollyking.livejournal.com]

Thanks for the tip. Silver Platters had a good selection and I found the staff very friendly and helpful. Yay!

[poetry-lady.livejournal.com]

Whoo! They're not a chain, per se; they have a couple outlets. But my ex-bf, who is a music NUT, loved the place, and another ex-bf was into classical and I think that's where he did most of his shopping, so I figured I couldn't go wrong. :)

[torainfor.livejournal.com]

Didn't old West bar pianos have tacks on the hammers? That's kinda similar, yeah?

[hollyking.livejournal.com]

I don't know if they did. I wonder how that sounded.

[torainfor.livejournal.com]

Tacky!

Buh-dum-bum!

[hollyking.livejournal.com]

That's 2 points off your Karma score.