Variations II, for any number of players & any sound producing means (1961)
Eberhard Blum, flute
Jan Williams, percussion
Steffen Schleiermacher, piano, celesta
The great recorded version that exists of this piece was made by David Tudor, the pianist who rose to fame as an interpreter of the music of the New York School composers, particularly Cage and Feldman. That version, in which Tudor applied contact microphones to the guts of his piano and played upon it in many ways, none of which involved striking keys, has come to dominate its destiny so totally that Variations II is rarely discussed outside of the context of electronic music.
Willingly or not, he seems to have sealed the fate of Variations II, which is now grouped with Cage's Cartridge Music (1960), which used sound cartridges from phonographs to pick up sound from various objects. Cage's aim with such pieces was to make the final move into a purely indeterminate music. Electronics in the early '60s naturally provided a ready means, for it was an area of music that hadn't yet become standardized.
The score of Variations II is actually composed of 11 transparencies, six with straight lines, five having points. The performer is instructed to superimpose these, then draw perpendicular lines from each point to each line. The drawn lines are then measured and the figures are used to determine values for frequency, amplitude, timbre, duration, point of occurrence, and structure of event. It is as if the performer is being directed to compose a new piece along set parameters each time.
Tudor used all sorts objects, such as toothpicks, pipe cleaners, and various plastics, to play on the insides of the piano. The results are horrifying: feedback, scraping strings, weird overtones, hums, bangs, and other nondescript, aggressive noises bleating at you for over 26 minutes. Only rarely do certain kinds of scraping on the strings remind you that you're hearing a piano at all. Silences are few, although the dynamic and timbral ranges are extreme, keeping Tudor's realization from ever being monotonous. In fact, the noise often rises to a strangely urgent pitch, that can induce feelings of near panic.
Quite clearly, in Tudor's hands Variations II wound up being an extension of the idea of the prepared piano, which puts the instrument through various treatments to unleash new sounds. He takes the adventure of preparing a piano more deeply into the heart of the instrument, where he performs triple bypass surgery as if with blunt shop tools. If pianos had nightmares, the soundtrack would be just like this. [allmusic.com]
