Tim Ovens plays John Cage · Sonata IV for Prepared Piano

[HaniiPuppy]

I really love the prepared piano because of the vastly different and unusual music that can sound good on it. It's a shame I can't find an audio unit or soundfont for prepared piano so I can play it on my keyboard :(

[gridy999]

c´mon.. have you heard Ravel orchertral works? any stravinsky? prokofiev? ginastera? this is only an experiment, a musical tendence.. but musical weight.. maybe some people who thinks like Cage make him that big.. and.. let me guess.. all americans.. like warhol, they give them that trascendence. but.. look out something like this.. I talk for every thing I´ve seen from Cage.. obviusly, I haven´t it all.. but... he´s famous for this type of things...

[Marsuvees1298]

Cage is either insane, or a genius. Maybe both.

[berndschumannsvideos]

These kind of pieces by John Cage convince me that he was a serious, genious composer. Maybe I am not ready yet for his other stuff.

[patek86]

I think that all John Cage's sonatas for piano are a murder for this beautiful instrument!!!! it's a nonsense putting nails, screws between piano's chords!!! John Cage is not a musician!!!!!! He's a piano's murderer!!!!

[Hyardacil]

@patek86 Indeed. How dare he take a different approach to creating and organizing sounds (read: composing). What a criminal!

[HenriFaust]

@patek86 You search for underlying order or meaning in the piece. You speak as though the piano was alive. The sound is *just* sound! The piano is *just* a piano! They merely *are*. Why does modification matter one whit? Why should one reify the act into murder?

[gridy999]

I know I sound a little radical... this is a very simple minimalist piece of music and doesn´t sounds bad at all. I just can´t stand John Cage as a serious composer. maybe a philosopher.. with music ideas.. it´s amusing for the common people maybe.. but not for a musician who likes color and ideas development... and I don´t think the "altered" strings produce that much interesting colors or sounds... I think LUIGI NONO does something better... using that same concept of searching sounds....

[AndycKV]

@gridy999

That is possibly the most condescending thing I have ever heard. The 'common people'....you are the kind of person who drives people away from modern music, with your 'high-brow' sneering.

[gridy999]

sucess? maybe in USA sorry but that´s true you can´t find CAGE in any serious program of music If you trained so hard and your piano is a great instrument, what is the point on doing this? wanna break it? maybe you can find different types of acoustic sounds.. you can find them in a factory as well... do you really think is THAT MUCH creative or a work of a master? you really think that? I think this is an IDEA for doing music but finally, doesn´t have that much weight in music history

[Marsuvees1298]

@gridy999 Not much weight in music history? I spend almost four weeks on cage and the various experimentalists in my college music history class. Sounds like quite a bit of weight to me :/

[EdiEllerymissing]

@Marsuvees1298 Absolutely. He changes so many things in music. A great revolutionary, great composer!

[Elmore3141]

Every time I listen to this piece, I can't help picturing a group of young squirrels playing on the roof of a house that is being carried off to Jupiter by a UFO.

[thebigventure]

what the HELL is that dude wearing?! haha

[MrAlfred1995]

Please, everyone, lets just stop arguing briefly and think.The point of this music is not to blast out loud and rave to,nor is it for chin stroking musicians to admire his use of unconvetional cadences,or interesting harmonies. John Cage said that he liked sound, and he liked it for its own sake,not becuase of emotions or images conured up by them.This is simply an attempt to sound different in a world where 90% of all music sounds the sameand whether you like it or not, he suceeds in doing that

[EdiEllerymissing]

@MrAlfred1995 Well said!

[gridy999]

amusing... interest analog sounds.... but.... not a great composition at all... very simple... not the work of a master... I mean, the keyboard player of a brit rock band could be writing music like this... I`m not saying it doesn´t sounds good... but, please, don´t put this guy beside BARTOK, or STRAVINSKY, or LUTOSLAWSKI or MESSIAEN, or COPLAND, or nobody... c´mon...

[doommonkeh]

@gridy999 Mastery of music is far too ambiguous to be labeling people's music and their fans appreciation of that music as misguided. "Mastery" of any fine art could simply mean the ability to create exactly what you had in mind. In which case, John Cage would be just fine being regarded as such, no less because he had the specific thoughts to put objects in such an exact way upon another instrument as to create the desired sounds. Either way, I suppose, to each is own.

[RokniMeSMacolom]

@gridy999 Yeah, Cage is far less boring than those composers!

[PutItAway101]

Let's be honest, this is bollocks.

[neurot892]

@savagesnephew Liquid Tension Experiment is nothing close to experimental music lad. Cage is the sole reason experimental music still exists. He left a legacy that Liquid Tension Experiment will never even succeed to read.

[thedrumbum1990]

@neurot892 LTE are a completely different animal.. i think theyre stunning. absolutely love their music, bt it cant be approached in the same way as this. Different type of expermental, different type of everything. Thats just the way it is.

[lundijuno106]

first, thank you so much about this video. I love these sonatas and finally I can see how a piano can be prepared. Only a question: doesn't it ruin the strings?

thanks again

[SamWatts89]

does each piece have an individual preparation?

[tempodimarcia]

@SamWatts89 No, all of the pieces are performed with the same preparations (there's a table of all the materials and their positions in the piano before the actual written music in the score).

[savagesnephew]

after watching this i think i'll go stick screws in my guitar, hammer some nails into the bridge, stick a bunch of other crap in it, then i'll play some random notes that having nothing to do with anything that make are just jumbled up random notes (crap) then i'll sell it and call it new a revolutionary.... humans like new stuff

[YouNeverMind00]

@savagesnephew eat shits

[STNKbone]

@savagesnephew you're a real dick.

[DarkZekeX]

@savagesnephew or instead of random notes you could carefully compose melodies and harmonies with specifically chosen notes like Mr. Cage has done with these pieces. And most people are fairly apprehensive to very new and avant garde ideas, so you probably wouldn't sell much, even if your pieces were beautiful like Cage's, which is unfortunate.

[savagesnephew]

@DarkZekeX hahah carefully compose melodies??? are you crazy??? he would toss a coin a randomly chose notes that made no musical sense!!!!! i could do that right now. i could hit random notes on my piano and call it music but it would just be noise.

[DarkZekeX]

@savagesnephew Yeah.... you sound like a kid. Don't think I'll be able to get through to you

[paulparanoid]

@savagesnephew - he did that for some pieces, yes. not everything.

[sumausa]

@savagesnephew I don't know how you can hear this and think the same effect can be had by randomly pressing keys

[DarkZekeX]

I wish I owned an acoustic piano so I could learn to play these works

I suppose I could get the manuscript and just learn which keys to press and dynamics and such, but it won't sound right on my digital piano :(

[nuclearRabbit123]

how do the people who dont like it even find these videos!?!

[NoFNclue]

i like the big slab of Bacon on low strings

[mikeleigh123]

It's so remarkably methodical and precise. I hate it when people say it's no good

[NewSovietUnion]

Favourite of the sonatas for prepared piano I have seen.

[zagreos94]

Ma sonate préférée de john Cage.Parfaitement interprétée.

[sodomit777]

It fascinates..

[KristianSharpeMusic]

I find the galvanised plating on his screws to somewhat interfere with the timbre of the piece.... there's an undesirable harmonic overtone produced by the difference in pitch of the screw threading too... hmmmm, I guess it could never be the same unless he uses precisely the same materials and preparations to define his partials... ;p

[KristianSharpeMusic]

ps.... five stars from me ;o)