49 Waltzes for the Gated City

49 Waltzes for the Gated City, Roberta Friedman
Music by John Cage

Clacking skateboards, hush of ancient gardens, footsteps, machines, birdsongs, something breaking, young girls laughing, language....

This movie is Roberta Friedman's response to John Cage's score for "49 Waltzes."

In 195_ experimental music avatar John Cage threw the I ching on a map of New York City. He said the sounds happening at that moment in the Iching determined quadrant will be the music of the waltz."
In 2007 filmmaker Roberta Friedman transposed Cage's score: She used a computer program to generate the ICHING on a map of the old city of Beijing to determine 147 distinct locations to document.

"Music is ...purposeless play...an affirmation of life -- not an attempt to bring order out of chaos nor to suggest improvements in creation, but simply a way of waking up to the very life we're living". John Cage, 1957, Lecture




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Click play to watch and listen to the "music" of Beijing.

Category:

Music

Tags:

• john
• Cage
• Beijing
• Experimental
• music
• roberta
• Friedman