Cage, John

Works For Percussion, Vol. 5 (1936-1991)

Label: Hungaroton Classic Country: Hungary

"The fifth volume of Cage percussion works performed by the Amadinda Percussion Group. "A decade and a half after John Cage's death, his oeuvre still has much to offer in the way of surprise. Cage had always said he was a poor historian when it came to his own works - and we are only now beginning to understand what exactly he meant by that. When in 1962 he finally found a publisher and set out to draw up a catalog of his works, he created a selection without including every piece in the inventory, but had apparently forgotten about certain pieces whose manuscripts were, for one reason or another, no longer in his possession.

He never looked the lost works up in his earlier lists of works and never tried to find them either. Yet the odds of them turning up then were probably higher than today when, more often than not, it is a matter of chance that for example bequests, from dancer or musician contemporaries of Cage, which end up public libraries, are sifted through properly.

In the near past, several works by Cage came to light this way; most recently two pieces from the library of Mills College (Oakland, CA) one of whose title even had not been known to scholars. 'Dance Music (for Elfrid Ide)' was composed in 1940 for a dance production completing the studies of Elfride Ide (it received its premiere, and probably its only performance, on May 20, 1940 at Mills College)."-Hungaraton