Thursday
17 April, 8pm
(BBC broadcast 26 April)
John
Cage's Cartridge Music
The word 'Cartridge' refers to the cartridge of old phonographic pick-ups,
where one can put needle into the apertures. In 'Cartridge Music' one inserts
all kinds of small objects into the cartridges, such as pipe-cleaners, matches,
feathers, wires etc. Furniture is used as well, with contact microphones connected
to them. By physically handling all these objects, they invented a spontaneous,
indeterminate, form of musique concrète.
Notwithstanding Cage's graphic instructions to focus the performers on their task, the procedures produce mostly minuscule percussive sounds that resemble incidental activity more than music-making.
It is an aesthetic of softness and coolness, of open spaces and sounds framed in silence, of noises and irregular rhythms that somehow end up seeming the most natural things in the world.
www.keepmusicrecorded.com
