John Cage - Sonatas and Interludes for Prepared Piano (POLL)

Another recommended starting point = String Quartet in Four Parts

My personal favorite = Music of Changes

I've gotta say that I'd kind of expected this to be a poll about which recording of the Sonatas & Interludes folks liked best rather than which section of the work people liked most.

I haven't had any interest in the subjects of other polls here, so I don't know how they work for pop music, but it seems to me that picking a single section of a long work is more analogous to choosing a favorite verse of a song rather than choosing a favorite song from an album.

But since the work IS one of the few "avant garde" pieces to have enough recordings that distinctions between recorded performances actually mean something, discussing those differences seems like it'd be useful.

I'm not sure which I'd pick if I could only pick one, but besides the original recording by Maro Ajemian (which, by virtue of it's primacy and use of the original kind of piano that Cage first set the measurements for the preparations, probably makes it the least indeterminate performance available), I think the varied interpretations by Louis Goldstein (sort of "Romantic") & Darryl Rosenberg (sort of "Classical") are worth noting. At one point I sat down and listened to a lot of recordings for a radio project, but other than the above, I don't have a lot of immediate memories of distinctions I drew at the time.

All that said, if I had to pick a sonata, I'd probably pick #12.

it seems to me that picking a single section of a long work is more analogous to choosing a favorite verse of a song rather than choosing a favorite song from an album.

You're right but these do feel kind of like self-contained miniature pieces of their own to me, in addition to being parts of a larger work. Besides, there have been at least two polls where people had to pick their favourite line from a song.

I haven't really listened to them in isolation much, so I only know that Sonata I is Sonata I and don't have any sense of which ones the other ones are.

Also Sonata I typically floors me enough that the rest is pure gravy -- though I suspect if I started with a different one it would do the same.

"I've gotta say that I'd kind of expected this to be a poll about which recording of the Sonatas & Interludes folks liked best rather than which section of the work people liked most."

You can always make a recordings poll you know ;-)

I like this idea very much tho' - up till now I only have this tape I made from the Tilbury recording that my library happens to have (on LP, no less!) so if i ever put it on I just let the noises do their work so this poll gets me to listen to this in a different way. And the more I think about it its a really good idea to do it with compositions...put an mp3, separate it onto 'sections' and let the people decide.

As far as the sonatas I've only gotten a cpl of mp3s so far, and I'm running out of time.

Automatic thread bump. This poll is closing tomorrow.

Automatic thread bump. This poll's results are now in.

wow @ geir

i am no longer ever surprised at geir

except when he started that depeche mode poll

Weirdly proto-IDM.

does the fact that i want to hear someone program quiet ambient beats behind a few of the sonatas make me a classless herb?