# john Cage's Etudes Australes.



## Mandryka (Feb 22, 2013)

A thread to post any ideas and experiences about everyone's favourite set of piano etudes by John Cage, The Etudes Australes. Contributions from performers who have worked with Cage's spacial notation are particularly welcome.

I've never played them, but I have listened to several recordings, from Griet Sultan (who created the music, and who really does make them sound like "a duet for two hands") to the spare and nuanced Sabine Liebner (who, I believe, spent 10 years working in her vision of the music), to the rhythmic and melodic (I would say romanticised) Claudio Chrismani.

Sabine Liebner made these comments on her performance



> The unexpected happens, because there is nothing to expect in these etudes. There is no logical sequence of events - everything is a representation of the stars. What happens here is what Cage always wanted: that the contradiction between art and life be dissolved. Art and life should not hinder each other, but form a unity, and this succeeds perfectly in the 'Etudes Australes', because what happens is always unanticipated


One question which interests me is why he wrote so many, and why he organised them into books, and gave them an order. And whether the boundaries between one etude and another, or between one book and another, matters.


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## Weston (Jul 11, 2008)

How did he transcribe star positions to a musical staff, I wonder. And what determines duration and dynamics?


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## ArtMusic (Jan 5, 2013)

I think Cage enjoyed the sounds from these pieces and it may have let his creativity run with his idiom best.


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## Mandryka (Feb 22, 2013)

Weston said:


> How did he transcribe star positions to a musical staff, I wonder. And what determines duration and dynamics?


Relative duration is specified in the spacial notation - if the notes are close to each other they are played faster. There are some very long duration notes, you have to stick a wedge in the piano to produce them. Sabine Liebner worked on the principle that the total duration of each piece is about the same, producing a very flat rendition. Others vary the length of each etude, making for more variety (some would argue too much.)

Dynamics is not specified in the score. Neither is phrasing (that's how I got interested in them, because I was exploring 17th century unmeasured music.)

I've never explored how he composed them, I know it involved a star map and the I-Ching, but beyond that I know nothing. Similar principles were used for the Freeman Etudes (violin), for Atlas Eclipticalis and for the Etudes Boreales (cello and piano duos.)

I think the idea is that the experience of listening to them is the sonic analogue of watching a night sky full of stars. That may help people come to terms with the music, especially the more one-dimensional performances like Liebner's. Having said that, I'm not sure that he intended them to be listened to (rather than performed.) Maybe someone will clarify this.


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## millionrainbows (Jun 23, 2012)

Mandryka said:


> ...I'm not sure that he intended them to be listened to (rather than performed.) Maybe someone will clarify this.


This is an inversion of "eye" vs. "ear" music. In "eye" music, the written score determines the sound, and is a transcription of an idea which does not yet exist as sound until the performer makes it into sound. Thus, the composer has a certain detached omniscience as the "purveyor of the gospel."

In "ear" music, the performer is the composer, and vice-versa. The music exists as sound only. Thus, in the case of this piece by Cage, the performers are as important as he is. His role as 'controlling' composer is minimized, even eroded, by the fact that the notation is based on star maps. Thus, the performances are all-important. They may vary widely. It's all about the act of subjective music-making, not a composer. That's pretty selfless, if you ask me.


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## Myriadi (Mar 6, 2016)

The Wikipedia article on the etudes, at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Etudes_Australes, answers almost all of the questions asked here concerning technique, intent, and so forth.

I haven't heard Liebner's version, and it has been years since I've listened to Schleiermacher and Crismani, but I seem to recall that they both played with mistakes here and there (I had the score in front of me when listening), particularly Crismani, whose performance seemed to me irreverent and disparaging of Cage's intentions.


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## Mandryka (Feb 22, 2013)

Myriadi said:


> The Wikipedia article on the etudes, at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Etudes_Australes, answers almost all of the questions asked here concerning technique, intent, and so forth.
> 
> I haven't heard Liebner's version, and it has been years since I've listened to Schleiermacher and Crismani, but I seem to recall that they both played with mistakes here and there (I had the score in front of me when listening), particularly Crismani, whose performance seemed to me irreverent and disparaging of Cage's intentions.


I've heard this said before about Crismani. Someone once said to me that he thought that Crismani was too violent -- but I don't hear that he's any less violent than Liebner.


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## Mandryka (Feb 22, 2013)

millionrainbows said:


> This is an inversion of "eye" vs. "ear" music. In "eye" music, the written score determines the sound, and is a transcription of an idea which does not yet exist as sound until the performer makes it into sound. Thus, the composer has a certain detached omniscience as the "purveyor of the gospel."
> 
> In "ear" music, the performer is the composer, and vice-versa. The music exists as sound only. Thus, in the case of this piece by Cage, the performers are as important as he is. His role as 'controlling' composer is minimized, even eroded, by the fact that the notation is based on star maps. Thus, the performances are all-important. They may vary widely. It's all about the act of subjective music-making, not a composer. That's pretty selfless, if you ask me.


The thought is that it may be music for playing rather than listening to. That's to say the process of making sense of the score may have been, for Cage, a sort of of spiritual exercise for the pianist.


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