John Cage / John Tilbury
Sonatas and Interludes for Prepared Piano
London Records/King Record (Japan) 1975
SLA 6025 (LP) Original pressing. Promotional copy. White label.
sleeve : VG+(SOC, wearon corner, dirts.)
media : EX+/EX+(some slightly noise.)
Needless to say, this is a 1975 release featuring English pianist John Tilbury performing Sonatas and Interludes for Prepared Piano, composed by John Cage, one of the most important avant-garde composers of the 20th century, between 1946 and 1948. The work is said to have been Cage’s attempt to give musical expression to the “nine permanent emotions,” an Indian aesthetic tradition he encountered through the writings of Ananda K. Coomaraswamy, the Ceylon-born metaphysician and philosopher of Indian art. According to Cage’s exact instructions, there were three categories of materials to be inserted between the piano strings, while the specific choice of which ones to use was left to the performer; on this recording, items such as pins, bolts, pieces of glass, and erasers appear to have been employed. Spanning 29 minutes and 35 seconds on side A and 32 minutes and 45 seconds on side B, it is a major work in which Cage’s aesthetic of “introducing disorder into an ordered situation and suggesting order in the midst of chaos” is vividly on display. This is the promotional copy of the original Japanese pressing.