Let me say at the outset that, although I’ve heard recordings of Cage’s Variations over the years, I have never owned any and am anything but an expert in the interpretations thereof. So I’m approaching this recording in a fairly “innocent” fashion, though as a general fan of most things Cageian. That said, this disc left me pretty bored.
The three Variations were created between 1958 and 1963, scored for any number of players using any instrumentation. The performers are required to construct some abstract drawings based on Cage’s instructions and chance operations, then to interpret them as they see fit. Here, the Motion Ensemble, a group working out of New Brunswick, attacks each of the three Variations in a different manner. On the first Variation, they employ fairly traditional means, a septet consisting of trumpet, violin, percussion, clarinet, double bass, horn and prepared piano. The problem, here as elsewhere, is that the musicians sound as though they’re entirely coming out of an arid, academic background. All the sounds evoked are very polite and extremely stale; Cage the anti-academic might well be appalled. It's almost as though they chose to perform the work as it might have been done by a forward-looking ensemble in 1958, a bizarre choice (to me) to not incorporate knowledge from the last 40+ years, all the more treating it like a museum piece.
For Variation II, the instrumentation shifts to a more typically playful Cageian assortment of prepared and amplified violin and bass and percussion. They also choose to interpolate extracts from Cage’s ‘Lecture on Nothing’, spoken by Helen Pridmore, and this proves to be a regrettable mistake. While the instrumental portion is somewhat more interesting than on the earlier piece, largely and perhaps simply due to the more varied textural range, the vocal portion is horribly affected and arch. Portions are recited in a fake-laughing mode that sounds utterly phony and extremely grating in an effete sense, spoken through water, whispered, muffled etc. in arbitrary rotation. I suppose I should allow for the possibility that this was an intended effect, a meta-commentary on the intrusion of academe into the would be free and open world created by Cage. But I wouldn’t bet on it. Even so, considered purely as sound (as difficult as it is to “ignore” the more up-front vocalizing) the performance doesn’t strike one as significantly more rewarding than what you’d expect from a given well-meaning but inexperienced chamber ensemble with little working knowledge of post-1970 music outside the academy.
The final Variation is the most successful, again probably due to the choice of sound generators, here all electronics. On this track, the three performers largely succeed in opening up the sound space and losing themselves in it. The noises generated have a natural seeming cadence and are quite able to sink into the background and happily percolate there rather than call attention to themselves. Still, this would seem to me to be the least one could ask of a Cage performance, a starting point. That the Motion Ensemble manages to achieve this is all well and good but, given the wealth of fine Cage interpretations out there, it makes it hard to recommend the recording on the whole. It’s one of those occasions when you get the impression that better results may have been realized with a group of well-intentioned amateurs.
Yes, I found this album pretty disappointing. Cage conceived the "Lecture on Nothing" as a composition in its own right, setting the text out on the page in a manner as to facilitate its reading in time (as opposed to rhythmically). Not only is the text incomplete in this version (I believe she starts at section 6), but the reader also inserts coughs and forced laughter (in the manner of Cage's later voice pieces). It's another classic example of people thinking that anything goes with Cage and we can do what the fuck we want, and it doesn't even sound as good as the Sonic Youth thing three years ago. That said, the "Variations" pieces are something of a free for all (witness the hilarious original Everest recordings, which sound more like Christian Marclay), and are usually combined with more "composed" Cage pieces in performance ("Winter Music" being a good example). I have no doubt that the performers here are committed enough to Cage's work to attract the attention of Mode's Brian Brandt, whose complete Cage edition is exemplary, but I'll stick to my old Wergo version of "Variations III" (San Francisco Conservatory Ensemble, WERGO 60057 LP).
Posted by: dan warburton at December 26, 2003 11:33 PM.................................................. © 2003 - 2006 bagatellen ..................................................