Christian Wolff- For Piano (1952)

One of two shortish pieces by Christian Wolff for Solo piano. Wolff's music uses primarily aleatoric compositional techniques, as in the specific dynamises of the piece are left up to the performer, similar to the sort of things Bussotti might do. His music is also characteristically sparse, so I always sort of think of him as a Post-Darmstadt Toru Takemitsu. Anyway, enjoy.

Category:

Music

Tags:

• Wolff
• Piano
• Aleatoric

[smalagodi]

While listening to this just now, with 'perfect' timing within the silent space, my computer sounded the Microsoft default 2-note sound for email. If I hadn't seen the small flag, I might not have noticed.

So what happened was:

1. Two distinct pieces of music, one by Wolff, one by Microsoft occured on the same machine, perceived as one by me, or

2. A new musical event of sounds organized by Wolff and Microsoft was autonomously created by my computer, or

3. Both, or

4. So what?

[minirausch]

nice piece, lovely performance, but the description's misleadingly eurocentric -- he may sound like post-darmstadt takemitsu but he's neither post-darmstadt nor much to do with the messiaen-inspired harmonic world of takemitsu (who IS in fact post-darmstadt in a way)... the silences, if anything, come from cage.

and bussotti's nice and all but feldman, cage, brown, and wolff (in approximately that order) got to indeterminacy first.

[beyondabrokenworld]

@smalagodi hadnt you noticed, you would have beleived it a part of the peice, the only reason you question whether or not if its one musical composition or two is because we are always told that music belongs to someone. it isnt my poker face, it is lady gagas, but i dont know how she will ever feel because i am not her, so i disagree. its my poker face. the emotions, the eq, the hype are all mine, so why not the music as well? if noise made you feel, it was music.

[lovesGenet]

This is what I want . the Finnissy is perfection but this is like time and pitch just stretched out . I want more of this Takemitsu wants to much music . I want just here & there a small Webern bit happening . I love this . * minutes . No melody , no time ,a sense of space and the sense of an instrument just speaking. Why do we always have to have this big focus ,some grand and dense work like Boulez with so much happening. this is  a type of gentle perfection in itself ...

[scriabinwasmydad]

This is also Rzewski's recording ... back then he premiered many contemporary works, and this recording dates back some time.

[cleomagoolando]

Is this John Tilbury's recording? I recall reading about Wolff's earlier piano works but this is the first time I've heard one. It's an interesting-sounding work but a bit on the cold side. The only other piano thing I've heard by Wolff is a work called 'Accompaniments' which Frederick Rzewski performed on a CRI record a while back. I've not seen the score for that (or this for that matter) but it is vastly different, involving spoken word parts and drums alongside the piano. Thanks for posting.