This graph is directly redolent of the notational techniques used in Morton Feldman’s graph compositions, almost to the point of appearing as a quotation. John Cage makes the debt to Feldman explicit when he begins his instructions with “Graph Music” and identifies the time unit. Here, though, a complicated wrinkle presents itself, one that, we hope, the animation makes clear. Numbers of notes can be played in any portion of the given box, and, as Cage states, the clefs are largely “mobile” (with the bottom regions as necessarily in the treble region). David Tudor elects to play the whole graph at the top of the piano and writes a charmingly self-contained music box of steady quarter and eighth-note attacks with a few triplet figures inserted. The sketches for graph AY show clear parallelisms to Tudor’s 1953 realization of Feldman’s Intersection 3.
Solo for Piano by John Cage © 1960 by Henmar Press Inc. Permission by C.F. Peters Corporation. All rights reserved. With permission of WERGO, Copyright © 1993. WERGO, a division of Schott Music & Media GmbH. Animated score developed by Michael Gallope and produced by Greg Albers.
