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Part 2
The notion of circus permeates also the mega-collaboration HPSCHD that Lejaren Hiller and John Cage did during Cage's appointment at UIUC. The work HSPCHD, completed in 1969, is written for "20-minute solos for one to 7 amplified harpsichords and tapes for one to 52 amplified monaural machines to be used in whole or in part in any combination with or without interruptions, etc., to make an indeterminate concert of any agreed-upon length having 2 to 59 channels with loud-speakers around the audience." The 7 harpsichord parts are called "solos" probably to emphasize that the piece can be done for any number of instruments and tapes and in any combination. The 14 parts of the Concert for Piano and Orchestra are also called "Solos", like "Solo for Piano," "Solo for Violin," etc. and the Concert for Piano and Orchestra allows the same aleatoric combination, grouped under a generic title. Each of the 52 computerized-tapes is based on a specific scale, that is on a macro or micro-division of the octave in equal temperament, from 5 to 56 divisions, which makes for 52 tapes.
The genesis of the piece goes back to 1962, when Antoinette Vischer, a Swiss harpsichordist and art collector, wrote to John Cage to commission from him a harpsichord piece. Until her death in 1973, Vischer had commissioned harpsichord pieces from a great variety of composers, among them György Ligeti, Carla Bley, Luciano Berio, Duke Ellington and Mauricio Kagel. Disliking the harpsichord as an instrument, John Cage first replied that he didn't have time at the moment. He later promised to do something during the spring of 1967. At the beginning, he had the idea of doing a "Book" for solo harpsichord, a sort of collection of short pieces like his series Music for Piano (1952-56). Then, probably after knowing he would be working with the Experimental Music Studio at the University of Illinois, he incorporated the idea of using the computer, writing to Antoinette Vischer: "I have a very curious piece in mind."
He wanted to use Mozart's music as a basis for his new piece. The computer would permit him to analyze statistically the melodic structure of Mozart's music. In return, Cage would use the statistics to generate a piece that would not have been Mozart's, but rooted in Mozart. When he mentioned his project to Hiller, Hiller probably told him that melodic structure analysis would be very difficult to realize. Robert Baker, a former student of UIUC and collaborator with Hiller for Computer Cantata (1963), had previously done a similar kind of statistical analysis, but only related to harmonic aspects, not melodic ones. The reason why Cage was so interested in the melodic process of Mozart's work was because it had, for him, a simultaneous variety that suited his conceptions of abundance and multiplicity. For him, you could always find in Mozart's melodic realization a mixture of diatonic, chromatic or arpeggio-like motions, in contrast to Bach's music, where all the parts would do one kind of motion at a time. In addition, Cage was interested in a huge project that would have been impossible to realize without the computer facilities. Cage mentions furthermore, in a letter to Lejaren Hiller:
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What I hope to discover while at Urbana is how to get the computer to make my work more difficult, take more time to accomplish.
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In taking shape, the "curious piece" was going to be for one harpsichord and several tapes. Because the programmer Hiller had scheduled to assist John Cage was finally not available, Hiller started to help him, and ended up collaborating very closely on the project. After five months of exchange, Cage decided Hiller should be recognized as the co-composer; Hiller accepted the offer, even though he was really busy at the time with his own work, An Avalanche for Pitchman, Prima Donna, Player Piano, Percussionist and Prerecorded Playback (1968) and Algorithms 1 (1968). Because they met extensively during the elaboration of the piece, it's very difficult to decipher who made which suggestions or took which decisions. But clearly, Hiller was the one who knew about computers and programming and therefore could make "realistic" proposals (or counter-proposals). According to several of his recollections, he suggested the use of the Musikalisches WŸrfespiel attributed to W. A. Mozart and commonly known as the "Musical Dicegame" (K. 294d), which consists of instructions to compose waltzes by throwing two dice. A colleague of Hiller, D. A. Caplin, had previously programmed the Musical Dicegame, back in 1955, which was a very early attempt at computer composition. Caplin described his experiments in a letter to Hiller in 1960. Hiller's choice might have been oriented toward improving previous experiments. The first task Hiller had to do was to make a basic sub-routine named ICHING, to simulate the I Ching method and to be called from the general program MUSICOMP, a program Hiller had used in previous compositions.
Hiller was familiar with using random procedures in programming, since his application of the Monte Carlo method in the famous String Quartet No. 4, The ILLIAC Suite in 1957. However, in the book which explains the genesis of this piece, done in collaboration with Leonard Isaacson, Experimental Music: Composition with an Electronic Computer (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1959), the authors state: "Obviously, the use of the I-Ching today is an absurdly inefficient and pointless way to produce random numbers or, even more so, random-number sequences upon which subsequent restrictions are placed." (p. 53)
This statement is quite contradictory to Hiller's later efforts, in using and describing the potentiality of the I Ching, when he started working with Cage. According to William Brooks, this might be explained by the fact that Hiller didn't know much about the I Ching when he wrote the book with Isaacson, and also that Cage could have succeeded in persuading Hiller of the value of the I Ching, Cage being a very charming and convincing person.
The tapes were presenting many inflections of different parameters: timbre, duration, and pitch. In addition, the succession of notes was established according to three kinds of steps -- as found by John Cage in Mozart's music -- that is diatonic (with no successive semi-tones), chromatic and chordal. Hiller described extensively the programming to obtain these results, especially in the "Technical Report No. 4" Hiller did at SUNY-Buffalo in 1972.
The tapes were presenting many inflections of different parameters: timbre, duration, and pitch. In addition, the succession of notes was established according to three kinds of steps -- as found by John Cage in Mozart's music -- that is diatonic (with no successive semi-tones), chromatic and chordal. Hiller described extensively the programming to obtain these results, especially in the Technical Report No. 4 Hiller did at SUNY-Buffalo in 1972.
The idea of manipulating the parameters of the sound surely came from Cage, because it was a way for him to exemplify abundance, multiplicity, variety. The tapes were basically made of sawtooth waves, which is characteristic of plucked sounds -- it was meant to produce similar sounds as the harpsichord. However, the articulation of notes of a harpsichord is without variation; once plucked, the sounds simply decay, in two steps, a fast decay and then a slower one. Hiller wanted to recreate that on the tapes, but finally ended by playing with attacks and decays, switching from sawtooth waves to sine or square waves to give the sound a timbral inflection, similar to the micro-intervallic shape the scales were ordered.
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The first solo is the chromatic one for electronic keyboard, a transcription of the computer output for the 12 divisions of the octave that was done for the tapes. The notation is proportional where 5 inches equal precisely one second and one page equals 20 seconds. This is probably the most difficult of the solos and very precisely notated. As early as February 1968, David Tudor was meant to play the Solo I; maybe because, as the composer Udo Kasemets pointed out to me, Tudor didn't like Mozart's music and would have never accepted to play it. This part, being like the tapes, has a lot of fast amplitude variations, sometimes changing after sounding a single note. David Tudor ordered a special device to control these amplitude changes from Hugh Le Caine, working at the National Research Council of Canada (Ottawa). His assistant, Rene Farley, made a "pressure-sensitive amplitude control" which was attached to the electronic Baldwin keyboard Tudor was using for his part.
It should be noted that each tape and each solo was to last 20 minutes, in order to fit with the requirements of LP recording's specifications at the time. This was because very early in the project, probably in the late Fall of 1967, Kenneth Gaburo, composer and faculty member, had invited people from Nonesuch Records to visit the University of Illinois. According to Ben Johnston, they were seeking appropriate new music to record. Ben Johnston's microtonal String Quartet No. 2 was first selected, then HPSCHD, not yet completed, was also chosen. The recording was actually released before the premiere of HPSCHD, an extremely unusual procedure at the time.
The Solos II to VI, first composed in the genesis of the piece, are all based on the Musical Dicegame. But, while Solo II is made of 20 different versions or "passes" of the pure Dicegame, Solos III to VI have only their first pass taken exclusively from the Musical Dicegame, the other passes introducing other measures of other piano works.
Mozart's Musical Dicegame has 176 numbered measures in total, and these measures are grouped in two tables of 88 measures each. The instructions suggest to make a binary form, AAB, repeated as many times as needed, with 8 measures in each part, which gives a total of 24 measures or multiples of this number, part "A" being measures from Table I, and part "B" measures from Table II. However, Hiller always claimed that the Dicegame contained 64 measures, "a neat coincidence" with the numbers of hexagrams of the I Ching. As a German fellow remarked to me, with the instructions of the Dicegame, you will never arrive at the number 64; 48 maybe, or 72, but not 64! Thus, Hiller "arranged" a little bit the coincidence! The form in each "pass" of the solos, is therefore AABBAABB, that is 8 measures 8 times, but where there are no exact repetitions of measures in the successive A's or B's, contrary to the Dicegame instructions. The 8 measures of part A are basically moving from the Tonic chord to the Dominant, while part B starts from the Dominant of the Dominant and resolves on the Tonic.
A very minimal, wonderful performance took place after the premiere, here at Smith Music Hall, during the Phoenix73 Festival (March 21), a sort of music revival (March 2-25) of the late Festival of Contemporary Arts. The organizer and harpsichordist of this performance was William Brooks. He played the least altered of the parts, Solo II (i.e. the Musical Dicegame) with only two tapes.
In Solos III to VI, the first pass is always made of the pure Dicegame measures, with 8 times 8 measures in the same schema AABBAABB, but this Dicegame is gradually replaced, or erased by other works, all from the piano repertoire, which is paradoxical for a harpsichord work. At times, it produces some inconsistencies such as to depress keys silently in Solos V & VI. It's interesting to note that a few mathematical operations are at work in the piece: subtraction, regarding the Dicegame measures in Solos III to VI; addition, regarding the incorporation of piano piece excerpts in the same solos; and multiplication, as for the different layers put together. For each of the Solos III to VI, seven excerpts were selected as replacements, paralleling the amount of harpsichords (7) in the work, but only as a coincidence.
In the case of Solos III and IV, the replacement measures are taken from Mozart's Sonatas, 7 parts of them, chosen by John Cage with chance procedures: in Solo III, when a measure of the Dicegame is to be replaced, both hands are replaced with the same excerpt. In Solo IV, by contrast, one hand could be replaced, but not the other one, or the other one could be replaced by another excerpt of another piece. That's why it is said that Solo IV is treated "hands separately". The replacement is gradual through Pass 2 to 20, where at the end the Dicegame is almost non-existent.
A similar treatment is done for Solos V and VI, but the replacement pieces, instead of being from Mozart, are from Beethoven (Appassionata Sonata, 1st mvt), Chopin (Prelude in D Minor, op. 28 no. 24), Schumann ("Reconnaissance", from Carnaval), Gottschalk (Banjo), Busoni (Sonatina No. 2), Schoenberg (Op. 11, No. 1), and Cage (Winter Music) & Hiller ("Finale" of Sonata No. 5) themselves. These historic pieces were initially selected in order to cover the time-span between Mozart and Cage/Hiller, by periods of approximately 25 years of composition dates. However, due to copyright problems, the Ives' Three-Page Sonata, for example, had to be eliminated from Solos V & VI after the parts were copied, and was replaced by Busoni's Second Sonatina.
The computer was programmed to select which of the 64 measures for each pass would be replaced. For Solos IV and VI, where hands are treated separately, the sub-routine was run twice to list two sets of numbers. The replacements were numbered from 2 to 8, number 1 corresponding to the Dicegame measures. The program would also select which excerpt had to serve as a replacement. One can observe, though, that the first excerpts are first used, gradually replaced by the other excerpts, but not completely.
The excerpts were not used as they were: they were all transcribed by John Cage in the same time-meter as the Dicegame, that is 3/4 time, where a dotted half-note (i.e. one measure) would equal 64 at the metronome, thus just a little faster than a second. Each pass was to last one minute only, the 20 passes adding to 20 minutes, the agreed-upon time for the shortest performance length of HPSCHD.
These transcriptions are thus rhythmically sometimes very simple, but more often extremely complex. The transcriptions were limited to 64 measures, i.e. once transcribed, to correspond to the number of measures for each pass. Thus, if, say, the first replacement (no. 2 in the treble or bass columns) was given at measure 32 of pass 2, that would mean that the 32nd measure of Beethoven's Appassionata, in the case of Solos V or VI, would be transcribed on the final score. If no replacements were given (in this case no. 1 would appear in the treble or bass columns), then the corresponding Dicegame measure would be used (3rd column).
It took a long time to copy all the scores. Cage hired four copyist, students of UIUC, but most of them did a very poor job, obliging Cage himself to do most of the scores again. Instead of taking one year to complete (in fact, the original plan was to spend half a year on the project), HPSCHD took two years, necessitating a second year-term appointment for Cage from the Graduate College and the Center for Advanced Study. The analog tapes were ready only by mid-September of 1968, so it took about a year for Cage and Hiller to hear a single sound of the piece!
The result of Solos III to VI is an amplification (one could say a "grotesque" one) of the principle of the Musical Dicegame: chance operations, instead of dice tosses, selecting the continuity of thoroughly written scores. This principle is very Cagean, reminding us of his compositional process in Music of Changes and similar pieces (like the Two Pastorales), i.e. setting some basic structural rules that would give the opportunity of creating unpredictable results. However, the same aspects can be found in Hiller's antecedents as well: the ILLIAC Suite is a compendium of writing techniques, from Renaissance counterpoint to serialism, and Hiller's eclecticism is very prominent in many works, as in An Avalanche ....
Again, it is very difficult to decipher both composer's contribution, especially because some of Cage's theories might as well have come after the fact, integrating some convictions with new observations.
The seventh, and last, Solo is free, consisting of a verbal score which ask the performer to play any Mozart of his choice, either as if he was practicing the music or as if he was playing in a recital situation. For the recording, by Nonesuch in 1969, the harpsichord parts were Solo I (the 12-division of the octave, or chromatic, transcribed from the computerized-tape), Solo II (the Musical Dicegame) and Solo VI (with the historic replacements of the Dicegame, hands separate). Fifty-one of the 52 tapes are part of this recording, the chromatic one omitted.
One of the main programs for HPSCHD that was intended for the listener of the LP-recording, was called the "Program KNOBS for the listener". Each copy of the commercial LP had a different output sheet from the computer that would suggest a variation of control for the volume, treble and bass knobs by the listener, at a rate change of every 5 seconds. Hiller did this program after he left the University of Illinois in August 1968.
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The premier was a huge multimedia production, with 208 tapes (4 copies of each of the 52), 52 tape-players (13 stations with 4 of them), 59 amplifiers and loudspeakers, 6,400 slides (5,000 from NASA), 64 slide projectors, 40 films (including Méliès' Trip to the Moon), 8 motion-picture projectors, 11 100x40 foot rectangular silk-screens, and a 340-foot in circumference circular screen made by Calvin Sumsion, who also made smocks with fluorescent astrological designs that would show only with the black light. It was a vast collaboration and involved a large number of participants. The performance lasted about five hours, starting before people entered the Assembly Hall and ending after everybody had left. It was attended by about 8,000 people, some of them staying for the whole event.
[Photos]
It was during this period of time, 1952-1969, that Cage developed many of his theories concerning music, art and technology. And it was here, at the University of Illinois, that he created and realized his theories in specific concert forms, such as Williams Mix, Musicircus, and HPSCHD, which received their premiere here. HPSCHD, a truly collaborative work with Lejaren Hiller, exemplified his claim of non-ownership, one of his preoccupations at that time. Working on processes in order to provide abundance, flexibility, multiplicity and disorder, he brought provocative thoughts and behaviors to this campus that would find ramifications in the larger art world, opening new paths in advance of the avant garde.
[Part 1]
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