This is David Tudor’s copy of John Cage’s Solo for Piano, copied out in Cage’s trademark penmanship, which features capital letters with exaggerated serifs. Marveling at the score can be an overwhelming experience; the notation asks us to puzzle over an exceedingly complicated set of rules and procedures. Following the title page, Cage’s score includes two introductory pages of lettered directions that serve as a key for deciphering the lettered graphs that follow. Each graph, paired with its corresponding instructions, thus functions as its own self-contained mini score. Globally, there is a playful sense of inventiveness and creativity to the visual language of Cage’s graphs. In fact, spurred by the encouragement of Jasper Johns and Robert Rauschenberg, the score for Concert for Piano and Orchestra was exhibited at a midtown gallery in New York just prior to the Town Hall premiere, and it was thus Cage’s first score to be publicly appreciated as visual art. Though many of the Concert’s graphs are quite indeterminate, leaving many of the compositional process up to the performer, Tudor’s performances turned out a certain consistent impression; reviewers attested that the Solo for Piano sounded “mixed-up,” and that it evoked “anarchy,” a sense of psychosis, or even a “jungle.”
Solo for Piano by John Cage © 1960 by Henmar Press Inc. Permission by C.F. Peters Corporation. All rights reserved.
