In this flipbook, users can press play to hear the entire recording of the Town Hall premiere. On the lower half of the screen is the sheet from the first realization that David Tudor would have had on the piano’s music tray. On the top half of the screen, users will find a reconstruction of the graph(s) that Tudor realized. Perhaps surprisingly, Tudor’s performance sequence for the premiere has a certain classical sense of balance. He alternates between dramatic performances of individual graphs and stoic silences; only in a few places are multiple graphs superimposed. John Cage may have complained about the “foolish” behavior of some of the musicians—but, in 1958, a specialist performer in experimental music was an uncommon occurrence. All three brass players Cage hired (trombonist Frank Rehak; tuba player Don Butterfield, the improviser of Stravinsky’s Rite of Spring around 3′25″; and trumpeter Melvyn Broiles, who plays a jazz riff around 6′40″ were schooled in jazz; in fact, Butterfield and Rehak were essentially jazz musicians. (Broiles did limited jazz and session work but had considerable experience as a classical trumpeter.) Also note the sounds of the audience: raucous and wild, Town Hall was reportedly filled with insiders, friends, and onlookers that night, even at the late hour of 11 p.m., when the Concert was finally performed. They cheer a number of Tudor’s auxillary sounds and more unusual feats (16′20″, 16′40″, 17′12″, 22′10″, 23′15″): the tape playback, the noises made on the strings of the inside of the piano, and the slinky that featured a contact microphone. Were these signs of disrespect? Or could they be understood as part of Cage’s spectacle? If the subsequent performances with Merce Cunningham’s Antic Meet (1958) are a meaningful comparison, the laughter may have been, in some ways, part of the act. Cunningham’s choreography for Antic Meet was a vaudevillian audience favorite.
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.
