Sublime - or ridiculous? The art of noise

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John Cage (1912-1992)

John Cage is not an easy composer, for performer or listener. His pieces do not contain anything like a tune you can hum, or tonality, and are generally not performed on what would normally be described as musical instruments. A Californian, he began composing in the 1930s, using a strict atonal system that he had devised. He branched out by using electronic devices like variable-speed turntables, and invented a "prepared piano" by placing objects between the strings of a grand piano to create what sounded like a percussion orchestra controlled by a single player. His most famous works include o'o', in which he chopped and blended vegetables before drinking the juice, and 4'33', in which a motionless performer stands silently on stage for 4 minutes, 33 seconds. If you think that sounds easy, trying getting the guests to perform it next time you host a child's party. So it will be a rare event when a piece Cage wrote 40 years ago is performed on 29 February at the Baltic Centre in Gateshead. What Geordies make of it remains to be seen.

Variations VII (1966)

To achieve the effect he was after, Cage had 10 telephone lines installed in a large armoury, with lines open in various locations in New York including a restaurant, an aviary, a power station, a lost-dog kennel, a newspaper press room, and a dance studio. Cage had six contact microphones on the performing platform and 12 contact microphones on household appliances such as a blender, a juicer, a toaster and a fan. He also had 20 radio bands, 2 television bands, and 2 Geiger counters. Oscillators and a pulse generator completed the sound sources. Thirty photocells and lights were mounted at ankle level around the performance area, which activated the sound sources as performers moved around. Cage invited the audience to move around freely and many stood near the performance area.

What the composer said:

"It is a piece of music, indeterminate in form and detail... using as sounds only those sound sources which are in the air at the moment of performance... They produce a situation different than anyone could have imagined."

What others said:

"It could sound awful. It could sound amazing." Honor Harger, festival director, Baltic Centre

Karlheinz Stockhausen (1928-2007)

The German composer used tape recorders and maths to create music different from anything before. His 1953 Electronic Study was the first piece composed solely from sine-wave sounds.

Helicopter String Quartet (1992/3)

Yes, that does mean helicopters. The "orchestra" is two violinists, a viola player, a violoncellist, four sound technicians, and four helicopter pilots flying within a radius of about six kms above the audience. That's high enough for the direct sound of rotor blades to be drowned out by the music, which is conveyed through loud speakers, as the string instruments make sounds that blend with the noise of the helicopters. You can watch a performance by Australian air force Blackhawk helicopters on YouTube.

What the composer said:

"I had a dream: I heard and saw the four string players in four helicopters flying and playing. At the same time, people on the ground seated in an audio-visual hall, others standing outdoors on a large plaza... When I woke, I strongly felt that something had been communicated to me which I never would have thought of."

What others said:

"No, but I once trod in some" Sir Thomas Beecham, asked if he had conducted Stockhausen.

Charles Ives (1874-1854)

The son of a US Army bandmaster, Ives began composing in his teens and gave up within a decade, after a heart attack. He devoted most of his long life to trying to persuade someone, anyone, to perform his work.

Fourth Symphony (1965)

This tries to answer: "What is the meaning of existence?" In the first part, harpists are suspended above the stage, playing Nearer My God to Thee. In the fourth, percussionists, below stage, play the ticking of a universal clock. Ives finished it in 1911. It was first performed in New York in 1965.

What the composer said:

"What has sound got to do with music?! The instrument! Here is the perennial difficulty... Is it the composer's fault that man only has 10 fingers?... That music must be heard is not essential what it sounds like may not be what it is."

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What others said:

"His music has often baffled listeners, musicians, and critics alike... so familiar and so peculiar, complex and nave, rude and gentle." Jan Swafford (biographer).

Arnold Schoenberg (1874-1951)

He was an Austrian composer who gave up writing for big orchestras when he was young, switching instead to chamber music. His reaction to hostile criticism was to become more radical. After 1908, he abandoned tonality, and seemed to delight in his reputation as the world's most difficult composer. This alone would have made life dangerous under the Nazis. Since he was also a Jew, and proud of it, he had to get out of central Europe in a hurry.

Violin Concerto (1940)

Written in the US, this piece used Schoenberg's 12-tone technique. Everyone in the know predicted that it would be impossible to play, but at its premiere, in December 1940, the young Russian violinist Louis Krasner somehow produced a performance that delighted the composer.

What the composer said:

"I am delighted to add another unplayable work to the repertoire. I want the concerto to be difficult, and I want the little finger to become longer. I can wait... One day, milkmen will whistle my tunes like Puccini."

What others said:

"It is a measure of the immensity of the man's achievement that, 50 years after his death, he can still empty any hall on earth. Arnold Schoenberg is box office poison." Norman Lebrecht

Richard Wagner (1813-1883)

Arrogant, anti-Semitic, and much admired by the Nazis, Richard Wagner was also a highly innovative composer whose operas have delighted audiences around the world though not in Israel, where they have never been staged.

Tristan and Isolde (1865)

Wagner wrote what he intended to be a straightforward love story, but, as he wrote it, it became more musically complex, as if he were anticipating the atonality of 20th century music. He struggled to have the opera produced from 1861 and 1864, and gave up after more than 70 rehearsals. It was said to be unplayable, until Wagner found a new patron, King Ludwig of Bavaria, and it finally made its premier in Munich.

What the composer said:

"As I have never in life felt the real bliss of love, I must erect a monument to the most beautiful of all my dreams, in which, from beginning to end, that love shall be thoroughly satiated. I have in my head Tristan and Isolde, the simplest, but most full-blooded musical conception."

What others said:

"We are at a loss to imagine how they contrived to get their respective parts into their heads, and our wonder is that their physical resources endured the strain of reproducing them." An anonymous critic at the opera's London premier in 1882.

Conlon Nancarrow (1912-1997)

Nancarrow, an American-born Communist and veteran of the Spanish Civil War, emigrated to Mexico during the McCarthy era and became a Mexican citizen. Unable to find musicians skilled enough to play his complex compositions, he bought a "player piano" a rare instrument which plays by itself when fed with pre-programmed music on paper rolls. Most of the rest of his working life was spent punching holes.

Player Piano Studies (1950-)

Nancarrow wrote about 50 "studies", few of which are more than five or six minutes long but even a study that short could take a year to write and hole-punch. At first, he seemed to be striving for something that was a cross between Stravinsky and jazz, but gradually the pieces became more complex. His Study 37, for example, employs 12 tempos for 12 voices. They are not meant to be performed by human hands but one or two pianists who tried found the crossovers required were physically impossible.

What the composer said:

"As long as I have been writing music, I have been dreaming of getting rid of the performers."

What others said:

"Human musicians, when faced with Nancarrow's almost unassailable mountains of notes, concentrate so hard they lose the sheer pizzazz of many of his studies." Rex Lawson, concert pianolist.

Aaron Copland (1900-1990)

He has been called the "Dean of Gay American Composers", as his work influenced numerous other composers who also happened to be gay, including Benjamin Britten and Leonard Bernstein. It is not all atonal and obscure some of his most familiar music was written for Hollywood, and he is arguably America's most popular modern composer.

Passacaglia (1922)

This piece was written while Copland was studying music in Paris. It was published by a Parisian firm, Maurice Senart, with an Art Nouveau cover bearing Copland's name in highly florid script, leaving an apt clue as to what the music was like. It is said that it might have been quite a popular piece, except for the first triple-forte climax, which is practically impossible to play on a piano. One solution, apparently, is to play it on an organ, which can be done.

What the composer said:

"I am told it is not an easy piece to play."

What others said:

"The piece is a veritable textbook of contrapuntal devices not only retrograde but canon, invertible counterpoint, augmentation, diminution, and basso ostinato, all subtly and expertly handled." Howard Pollack, Aaron Copland's biographer.

Sergei Rachmaninov (1873-1943)

One of the West's favourite 20th century composers, Rachmaninov is less honoured in his native Russia. He wrote most of his best work there, but emigrated after the Bolshevik revolution and did not return.

Piano Concerto No.3 in D minor

Those who have watched Scott Hicks's film Shine will remember how its young hero, having been repeatedly warned of the pitfalls of trying to master "Rach 3" does in fact perform it on stage and then has a complete mental breakdown. It is a piece so fiendishly difficult that Józef Hofmann, the pianist to whom the work is dedicated, never attempted it. At the premier, in New York in 1909, Rachmaninov played it himself.

What the composer said:

"It simply wrote itself!... If I had any plan in composing this theme, I was thinking only of sound. I wanted to 'sing' the melody on the piano as a singer would sing."

What others said:

Gary Graffam, one of America's greatest pianists, commented that he wished he had learnt the concerto as a student "when I was still too young to know fear".