5 responses so far ↓

• 1 Win // Oct 16, 2014 at 8:45 pm

  Doug, dou you have a recording of these pieces anywhere? I’ve been trying to hear them in my head and not doing terribly well. It would be nice to hear them realized in real sound.

• 2 Win // Oct 16, 2014 at 9:34 pm

  Also, have you ever written a piece in honor of the pencil? I can think of few other people who have used so many of them to such good effect.

• 3 Doug // Oct 16, 2014 at 10:25 pm

  No, I don’t have a recording. I had forgotten all about these pieces until I found a set of penciled parts. I don’t even know what happened to the full score.

  The only thing I’ve written about the pencil is a couplet: First comes pencil, then comes sentence,/ Then come decades of repentance.

• 4 Win // Oct 16, 2014 at 11:35 pm

  Well it’s neat to see them.

  On the subject of old musical manuscripts, this past weekend I had the pleasure of handling John Cage’s original manuscript of Fontana Mix (1958). Five pages of instructions and not a stave or musical note among them. He wrote it in ink on note paper provided by RAI, the Italian broadcasting company. The instructions result in “music” and also, in the hands of a careful craftsman, in an array of dots on a page and curving lines connecting them. He had a clear steady hand, which was pleasing to see in this age when the art of hand-writing is almost extinct.

• 5 Doug // Oct 17, 2014 at 10:16 am

  I was smitten early with the penmanship of Satie and Cage, and spent many formative hours gazing at Cage’e anthology “Notations,” which collects a variety of musical manuscripts. Cage’s graphics on “Music of Changes” and “Concert for Piano and Orchestra” are particularly lovely. I still copy my music in pen and ink.