John Cage - The Complete String Quartets Vol. 2
About a month back when the 4'33" debates swept the forum, I decided to run through John Cage's catalog since I knew of several works, but he composed from his 20s until his death at 79 years old so it's funking massive is what I'm trying to say. I stumbled on this one and immediately fell in love with it. It has two string quartets: "String Quartet In Four Parts" and "Four." "String Quartet In Four Parts" is divided into--you guessed it--four parts to replicate the seasons and "Four" is split up into two separate tracks. Musically, these are very slow and meditative with dissonant passages that are fantastic imo. With that slow nature, most of these pieces clock in at over 10 minutes long, and even up to 45 (Nearly Stationary, if you were wondering), but they don't get boring, at least for me. From what I've read on these pieces, John Cage wrote them as a way to celebrate silence and he does this very effectively. "String Quartet In Four Parts" was one of Cage's few pieces that wasn't entirely written from indeterminacy, and I think that this shows as well with the melodies sounding a little more thought out than some of his works (that's not to say his indeterminate works don't have some great melodies either). As for Four, it's similarly written as a devotion to silence but it uses aleotericism more. Here's a little background that I'm too stupid and lazy to put into my own words:
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There are three five-minute sections: A, B, and C. All parts contain 10 time brackets, 9 flexible and one fixed. The structure of the piece varies depending on how long the desired duration is. For a 10-minute performance, section B is played once, then the performers exchange their parts according to the instructions in the score, and then section B is played again. For a 20-minute performance, only sections A and C are played, without pause, but again with the performers exchanging parts between sections. Finally, a complete 30-minute performance requires the sections played in the ABC order twice. Time brackets contain only single tones at low dynamics (p to ppp).
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Fans of modern classical or experimental music, give this a listen and promptly bow and kiss the feet of our lord and saviour John Cage.