Cage : Sonates et Interludes. Anissegos.

Piano International (Jul, 2014)
His Sonatas and Interludes for prepared piano may have been the work that freed John Cage from his ‘desire to possess sounds (to be able to repeat them)’, teaching him instead to enjoy them ‘as they come, as they happen’. Though he drew up detailed instructions for preparing the piano, initially intending that each performance replicate the specific array of timbral distortions he had created, he soon realised this was impossible in practice, since no two pianos – or pianists – would sound exactly alike. Decisions about the work’s timbral palette had, ultimately, to be left to the discretion of individual performers, and Cage’s acceptance of this marked a major step …