# Hypothetical Works



## MoonlightSonata (Mar 29, 2014)

As I suspect lots of people will have noticed, conversation on the _Stupid Thread Ideas_ thread has turned to hypothetical John Cage works/performances.
In order to see more of these (and stupid thread ideas) I have started this.
I will start:
Stravinsky's _4 hours 33 minutes_, ballet.
In mediaeval Russia, a mute girl is chosen to dance herself quietly to death while people in funny costumes glare unspeakingly at her. After 4 hours of fruitless dancing, she gives up and goes for a nice quiet sleep. At this point, a large orchestra comes onstage. The conductor starts to conduct but the musicians have fallen into a gentle doze. The conductor tiptoes offstage, not wanting to wake anyone up, and the people in the funny costumes decide to play a lullaby for the musicians. Unfortunately, they are unable to think of anything to play, so they sit in silence for half an hour waiting for people to wake up.
One by one, all the musicians but a cellist wake up, and the ballet ends quietly while everyone sits down with a book and a cup of tea, allowing the cellist her rest.


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## Weston (Jul 11, 2008)

I'd probably pay to see that.^ 

Okay, the "highlights" version maybe.

Then there could be Beethoven's Massive Coda in D minor, "The Finale Overture."


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## SixFootScowl (Oct 17, 2011)

How about an opera about the record setting pole sitter focusing on his days on the pole and the goings on down below? According to Wikipedia "H. David Werder sat on a pole for 439 days, 11 hours, and 6 minutes from November 1982 to 21 January 1984 to protest against the price of gasoline."


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## MoonlightSonata (Mar 29, 2014)

Florestan said:


> How about an opera about the record setting pole sitter focusing on his days on the pole and the goings on down below? According to Wikipedia "H. David Werder sat on a pole for 439 days, 11 hours, and 6 minutes from November 1982 to 21 January 1984 to protest against the price of gasoline."


Ah, yes, Wagner's great masterpiece _Der Pol_ (_The Pole_).


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## SONNET CLV (May 31, 2014)

MoonlightSonata said:


> As I suspect lots of people will have noticed, conversation on the _Stupid Thread Ideas_ thread has turned to hypothetical John Cage works/performances.
> In order to see more of these (and stupid thread ideas) I have started this.
> I will start:
> Stravinsky's _4 hours 33 minutes_, ballet.
> ...


I have some experience designing stage sets, and I'd love to design the set for this ballet. I see the entire piece being performed behind a giant gray opaque screen that shields the action from the audience.

Hey ... I modestly accept that that's a brilliant concept. But I'm a pro in this field, so I suspect such a design was inevitable.


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## SONNET CLV (May 31, 2014)

By the way ... I'd have loved to have heard Antal Dorati and the Minneapolis Symphony Orchestra and University Of Minnesota Brass Band perform the 4'33" complete with cannons and bells. 

I wonder what ol' Deems Taylor would have to say about that!

In any case, I'm sure it would have made a great demonstration disc from the Mercury label.


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## Guest (Oct 1, 2014)

Although I have very little compositional ability, I intend to write some stuff eventually. Some of it, probably pretty derivative. Other things? Well, I've got some unique theories on paper (very few of which have translated to a single note, just yet), but I probably shouldn't share them just yet. 

Hint: I watched a Boulez lecture once, probably 6 months ago. It was the one on Sur Incises. I can't remember if he actually said anything to this effect, but I came away feeling that any personal composition on my part was a bit meaningless without a strong dose of originality. Later that night, I thought about such originality and realized I'd have to play to my strengths. Now, my aptitudes are for audio, memory, spatial, mathematics, etc... but I have far more formal education thus far in mathematics and engineering than in music. So I'm going for a similar angle as Messiaen suggested to Xenakis as far as any eventual attempts at "serious composition" go. I have some sketches of various graphs and whatnot and parametric relationships that relate them to music.


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## Guest (Oct 1, 2014)

Another concept that I have wondered about, but probably will never look into too deeply, is a notion of "music of the elements" - specifically, I have wondered to myself and to a couple of others, if there is any way to produce music by means of fire? I wonder about fire simply because we already have the rest (glass harmonica, bowls of water, hydrophone, etc - wind machine, winds/brass, etc - various percussion from standard instruments to stones)


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## SixFootScowl (Oct 17, 2011)

We could record a busy public location, picking up the cacaphony of voices and footsteps, coughs and sneezes, etc. Then run the whole through through a filter or something to convert it to instruments. Maybe even run it backwards. Or upside down--invert all the notes so high notes become low and vice versa.


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## Guest (Oct 1, 2014)

Florestan said:


> We could record a busy public location, picking up the cacaphony of voices and footsteps, coughs and sneezes, etc. Then run the whole through through a filter or something to convert it to instruments. Maybe even run it backwards. Or upside down--invert all the notes so high notes become low and vice versa.


Interesting. I believe I've said before that I once paid attention to my windshield wipers and could've sworn they were wiping bird poo to the frequency of an A.


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## Richannes Wrahms (Jan 6, 2014)

Suite for prepared piano, prepared by taking out the strings, hammers, keys, pedals, etc.


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## Badinerie (May 3, 2008)

Sonata for Blackboard and Chalk.

1. _Molto allegretto_. Performer writes the names of current members of the arts council of england 13 times ending with the word Suckers! underlined slowly and with style.

2. Adagio. (The fable of the greasy chalk that wont write properly and breaks when the performer gets too rough.Sad!)

3._ Presto Al dente_. A tale of two pieces. (The two halfs of the chalk from the Adagio dragged screechingly and annoyingly across the board for exactly 7.5 minutes)

4.Finale. _Sostenuto Fortissimo_. (Death of the chalk and the Blackboards resignation to impotent lonleyness.)
The performer pounds the chalk into dust with the eraser until the Blackboard and them self are obscured from view and is able to make a quick getaway.


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## hpowders (Dec 23, 2013)

^^^As a HS science teacher for 29 years, I am available on commission to write the above.


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## Badinerie (May 3, 2008)

Your over qualified! Its a Student Piece...


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## GGluek (Dec 11, 2011)

other apocryphal works:

" . . .a pre-Broadway tryout of “The Strange World of Mr. Mum” has floundered through two weeks of rewrites and died 
stillborn; at the Contemporary Art Institute a landmark show of conceptual art features, among 
others, Nathan Wimbril’s whimsical cedar shingle construction “Marcel Duchamp Descending a 
Staircase,” and Woyczek Hlaviny’s more cerebral installation—an instrument case welded 
shut—titled “Schroedinger’s Clarinet.” At the Conservatory, the workshop production of a 
student opera, La Fille de le Grand Magasin, is the novelty sensation of the season. Predicated 
on the demonstrable fact that American audiences don’t understand their own language being 
sung, let alone a foreign one, it is composed—and expressionistically staged—to suggest high 
drama. Matters of great passion—infidelity, vendetta, mental instability, perhaps even incest and 
murder—are wrung out of a more pedestrian libretto in which a man returns some ill-fitting 
underwear, a woman inquires the way to the housewares department, a colleague sets up a 
luncheon date, a security guard escorts the morning’s receipts away to the office. An uninformed 
opera-goer will read the events onstage as he will, and the music, written to a parallel shadow 
libretto, supports the interpretation. . . ." 

from Xylophone Fragments, by Mark Woodward


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## hpowders (Dec 23, 2013)

Badinerie said:


> Your over qualified! Its a Student Piece...


Okay. Thanks for telling me. I was just about to sharpen my chalk.


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## SONNET CLV (May 31, 2014)

arcaneholocaust said:


> Although I have very little compositional ability, I intend to write some stuff eventually. *Some of it, probably pretty derivative. *Other things? Well, I've got some unique theories on paper (very few of which have translated to a single note, just yet), but I probably shouldn't share them just yet.


Actually, practically _all _music is "derivative". Composers simply recycle the same 12 notes. Only by adding in imaginative percussive sounds can one truly achieve originality. But then, adding in original percussive sounds isn't really original, either! So ... as long as you keep your "unique theories" just that, and not add any notes to them, you're doing about the best one can do at being original.


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## Badinerie (May 3, 2008)

Your welcome. but hasn't sharpened chalk been outlawed by the Geneva Convention? I had enough pitched at me in the Sixties and Seventies! Happy days..............


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## SONNET CLV (May 31, 2014)

arcaneholocaust said:


> Another concept that I have wondered about, but probably will never look into too deeply, is a notion of "music of the elements" - specifically, I have wondered to myself and to a couple of others,* if there is any way to produce music by means of fire? *I wonder about fire simply because we already have the rest (glass harmonica, bowls of water, hydrophone, etc - wind machine, winds/brass, etc - various percussion from standard instruments to stones)


What does it sound like to torch the scores of all nine Beethoven symphonies? Record the project and maybe one of the "new music" labels will give you a contract. Give the piece an imaginative title, like "Nine Burning" or "Ludwig in the Flames". I'm sure there will be a few interesting crackles and pops in there!

For a longer composition, you could set fire to the Mahler symphonies ... or maybe the Bach cantatas. Titles? "Flaming Gustav" and "Bach in Heat"?


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## SONNET CLV (May 31, 2014)

Richannes Wrahms said:


> Suite for prepared piano, prepared by taking out the strings, hammers, keys, pedals, etc.


I'll bet this would sound just jolly with a little help from a sledge hammer.


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## Haydn man (Jan 25, 2014)

Come on guys lets get serious here
How about '2001 a Space Symphony' played of course in outer space by a full orchestra and choir.
With the added bonus of total silence and nobody knows if they play a bum note or the choir is off key. That Cage chap just didn't think big enough


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## MoonlightSonata (Mar 29, 2014)

Sonata for Cheese and Heater
1: Rhapsody - the cheese is slightly heated and melts a bit.
2: Allegro deciso - the heat is taken off and the cheese solidifies.
3: Rondo - the cheese is heated, then unheated, then heated, then unheated again, then completely melted and eaten.


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