John Cage & Lejaren Hiller, "HPSCHD"

-- LINER NOTES --

SIDE ONE (21:00)
JOHN CAGE & LEJAREN HILLER
HPSCHD (1967-1969)
for harpsichords & computer-generated sound tapes
(publ. Henrnar Press Inc.)

ANTOINETTE VISCHER
Neupert Bach-model
harpsichord
(Solo 11)

NEELY BRUCE
Hubbard double harpsichord
with 17% Eltro time compression
(Solo VI)

DAVID TUDOR
Baldwin solid-body
electronic harpsichord
(Solo I)

Messrs. Cage and Hiller gratefully acknowledge the special assistance of Laetitia Snow, who wtote some of the
original computer programming for HPSCHD; James Cuomo, who helped prepare the original sound tapes with
ILLIAC II; Jaap Spek, who supervised the technical processing of the tape collage; and George Ritscher, who
engineered the final recording.

This recording of HPSCHD was made possible through use of facilities of the Experimental Music Studio and the
Department of Coniputer Science of the University of Illinois, Urbana.

The computer-output sheet included in this album is one of 10,000 different numbered solutions of the program
KNOBS. It enables the listener who follows its instructions to become a performer of this recording of HPSCHD.
Preparation of this material was made possible through the Computing Center of the State University of New York
at Buffalo.
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The esthetic is what we think in the presence of the object. The artist's means are not esthetic but his thinking on them is; his esthetic thought prevails over the means to make a work of art. The rules of fugue or sonata form prophesy no esthetic consequence, except by the thought and doing of the artist. The sound object HPSCHD-"harpsichord" reduced to the computer's 6-letter-word limit becomes HPSCHD-may be the most elaborately defined sound composite so far achieved by deliberate formal composition. All "chance" factors occur within limits closely or widely permitted by the makers. Each part includes ideas from both composers; together they shaped it. Their thought, the object, and our thinking responses, in whatever relationship we hear it, decide our reaction to this work as a work of art.

HPSCHD consists of 51 electronic' sound tapes and 7 solo compositions for harpsichord. Writing in the avantgarde music magazine Source, Cage explains that the piece can exist as "a performance of one of seven live harpsichords and one to fifty-one tapes." The present record is a composition including 3 "live" solos across a composite of the 51 tapes. The source work, Introduction to the Composition of Waltzes by Means of Dice, is attributed to Mozart (K. Anh. C 30.01). For each measure of a 32-measure "empty" form (four 8-measure sections) the composer provides 11 alternative "composed" measures, the choice made by throw of dice. Measure 8 is always the same. With each section repeated the final form is 64 measures (AABBAABB), lasting one minute. This Dice Game repeated 20 times is Solo 11. Using now a computer-derived numerical system borrowed from the digital principle of I-ching (an ancient Chinese oracular or wisdom book), assemble another 64 measures of the same pattern, until another 20 successive assemblages fill 20 minutes. Solos Ill-VI each start with one realization of the Dice Game, progressively replacing the original choice of measures by: Solo 111, passages from Mozart piano sonatas, treble and bass together as written; Solo IV, the same, trebre and bass dissociated; Solos V & VI, associated and dissociated bass and treble measures from keyboard works by Beethoven, Chopin, Schumann, Gottschalk, Busoni, Schoenberg, Cage, and Hiller. Solo I is computer-written in 12-tone equal temperament on the same formulae which are used for the 51 sound tapes. Solo VII is anything of Mozart's chosen by the soloist, played as he wishes.

The 51 sound tapes contain music in equal-tempered scales of, successively, 5 to 56 tones in the octave, each tone deviating over a field of 129 (the half-interval up or down divided by 64 or the equal-tempered tone). Each tape is composed according to a series of programs: e.g., from simple repetitive tones and silences across a field to non-repetitive tones and complexly varied spaces. The patterns are overlaid and continually change, the more redundant being more clearly differentiated, the effect rather like individual trees merging into a forest. Other computer-formalized programs, for note sequence, time (in units), successive events, melodic "goals" (without cadence) and types (diatonic, chromatic, chordal arpeggiation), volume, and dynamics, are similarly intermixed. For the listener to this record a third program, KNOBS, enables him to alter the composite by increasing, decreasing, or eliminating some parts of the whole. On the record, Solo I1 (Dice Game) is in the left channel only, Solo VI in the right channel only, Solo 1 in both channels. "It's the first instance that I know of," Hiller comments, "where the home listener's hi-fi set is integral to the composition."

Each solo and each tape lasts slightly over 20 minutes, the length of this recorded performance. In "live" performance any part can commence at any time, and the length is determined by previous agreement. HPSCHD and the Second Quartet of Ben Johnston embody two extremes of esthetic experience. The multiple routines and subroutines of HPSCHD, although resulting from personal choices by the two collaborators, are In effect as impersonal as statistics or the Golden Section. The decisions concerning the intonational and melodic relationships of the Quartet are as personal as a fine handwriting-in many cultures as highly esteemed as any work of art. Neither work is "classic" or "romantic." Each is as free of the conventional indices for analysis as of the customary signals for emotion-the esthetic equivalent of an experiment in pure research.

Except the harpsichord solos, the sound medium of each work is composed in an intonation (system or scale of pitches) differing from the 12-note equal temperament of the piano. The macrotonal scales (5 to 11 pitches in the octave) and the microtonal scales (13 to 56 pitches in the octave) of HPSCHD are microtonally varied systems of equal division of the octave, without close relationship to the tones and intervals of the overtone series. They are disparate points of sound lacking acoustical coordination and rich overtone sonority. -- Peter Yates

Karlheinz Stockhausen, "Klavierstück I"

-- Liner Notes --

1. Klavierstück I [2'56"]

Aloys Kontarsky, Piano
(Recordings: KGH, Winterthur, Switzerland, July 1 & 2, November 15-17, 1965)

KARLHEINZ STOCKHAUSEN:
KLAVIERSTUCKE I-XI - MIKROPHONIE I & II
The following texts by the composer accompanied the original long-play recording. As they, like the recordings themselves, are interesting documents of their time, they are being reissued in unabridged form with this new edition.

Despite -- or rather because of -- the importance of tonal color compositions in my electronic music, in the orchestral and vocal works, I have from time to time concentrated on "Klavierstücke" [piano pieces]; on composing for one instrument, for ten fingers, with meticulous nuances of instrumental tone and structure. They are my "Zeichnungen" (drawings). I wrote the third and second Klavierstücke in 1952 in Paris for my wife Doris, who studied piano with me at the Hochschule für Musik in Cologne. I then added the first and fourth Klavierstücke. In these four pieces, a transition can be seen from "selective" or "point" music to "group composition".

The second cycle, begun in late 1953 in Cologne, is characterized by an expansion of the tone composition by means of the piano; I found six new "touch forms" that changed the way the piano tone was built up, just as before in Elektronische Studien I had composed tones using a series of "envelopes". I defined new symbols for these touch forms. Above all, I was greatly aided by the discovery of harmonics with "subharmonic" resonances: these made possible the simultaneous combination - on one tone - of short, staccato notes with soft, undamped "echo" tones. In addition, I no longer composed single notes and chords, but sounds with characteristic inner structures. The so-called "small notes" - what were earlier known as "grace-notes" - were used in great number, composed in groups of varying density around "nuclei": Klavierstücke V-X were all characterized by preceding, simultaneous and succeeding tone groups arranged around their nuclei. Klavierstück X consists almost entirely of greater or lesser density around few tonal nuclei.

I have written several texts about the Klavierstücke for radio programs, and they have all been published in "TEXTE" (two volumes, DuMont Schauberg, Cologne) which includes an extensive analysis of the first Klavierstücke. As early as 1954, I worked out a plan for a cycle of twenty-one Klavierstücke divided into six subcycles as follows: I-IV / V-X / XI / XII-XVI / XVII-XIX / XX-XXI, of which I-XI have been completed to date. Klavierstücke I-IV are dedicated to the Belgian pianist Marcelle Mercenier, Klavierstücke V-VIII to the American pianist David Tudor, Klavierstücke IX and X to Aloys Kontarsky, and Klavierstücke XI to Doris Stockhausen, née Andreae.

Christian Wolff, "Burdocks"

-- Liner Notes --

Burdocks, written in the summers of 1970 and 1971, first played August, 1971, by the performers on this record, at Royalton, Vermont, is an orchestral piece in ten parts, each different in some distinct way. These include specific notations on staves; notations indicating only durations, often depending on other sounds a player hears; and various verbal directions both explicit and suggestive.

Various numbers of performers (no upward limit) can play, using any means of making sounds. Any number of the ten parts can be played simultaneously or overlapped. The performance on this recording consists of versions of parts II ('chords'), V ('wheels'), VI ('melody and accompaniment'), VIII ('100 bits') and IX ('quicksand'), played in succession. Instruments used include violin (Nash), viola, melodion, whistles (Behrman), horn, harmonica (Mumma), piano, percussion (Rzewski), bandoneon, organ (Tudor), bass gultar, flute (Wolff).

The piece offers a various, somewhat unruly, if not sticky, quantity of material, whose character is, however, still intended to allow clear articulations and transparency, both a festive, busy feeling and a more quiet one.

On the present recording the unruly aspect is partially reflected by the absence of a pure studio sound. Incidental noises--players' movements, shifting of instruments, preparations for playing--are not avoided but allowed to mix with the various noises which are part of the performed music.

This recording is dedicated to its engineers, David Behrman and Gordon Murnma.

All selections are B. M. I. and published by C. F. Peters, New York & Frankfurt.

The recordings were made August, 1971 at Dartmouth College, Hanover, New Hampshire.

David Behrman is a composer, performer of new music and member of the Sonic Arts Union, a group of composer-performers of live electronic music who have toured extensively in the past several years in the U. S. and Europe. [He has produced recordings for Columbia records and the "Music of our Time" series on Odyssey records, and has been technical director and artistic advisor for the Intermedia Institute in New York.]

Gordon Mumma is a composer and performing musician with the Merce Cunningham Dance company and the Sonic Arts Union. He has designed electronic music equipment for EXPO 70 in Osaka and was one of the directors of the ONCE festival. [He performs widely with John Cage and David Tudor.]

John Nash has performed in new music concerts in the U. S. and England and has been a member of the Scratcfi Orrhestra of London.

Frederic Rzewski has performed and recorded extensively throughout Europe. He has given first performances of piano works of Bussotti, Kagel, Pousseur, Lucier and Stockhausen. Active also as a composer, he is a founder of M. E. V. Musica Elettronica Viva) and has worked particularly in group improvisation.

David Tudor has been devoted to performing contemporary music, both instrumental and electronic, since 1948. He has played countless new works, many written espeqlly for him, in concerts throughout the world. More recently y has turned particularly to the performance and making of "live" electronic music, including in his work Bandoneon! and in his contributions at EXPO 70 both audio and visual material.

Christian Wolff (born 1934, Nice, France, living in the U. S. since 1941) began composing in 1949, met John Cage, David Tudor and Morton Feldmann in 1950-1, and by association with them his musical activity took form and was given free scope. He has composed for piano(s), various chamber groups, magnetic tape, unspecified numbers of players and sound sources, and, with Burdocks, orchestra. [He has been especially interested in allowing performers flexibility and ranges of freedom at the actual time of a piece's playing, and has in this connection devised various new notations.] He has written on new music in Die Reihe, Collage, VH 101, and Audience. Together with the performers on this record, as well as Cornelius Cardew, John Tilbury, Kurt Schwertsik and Alvin Lucier, he has performed in and organized concerts of new music. Between 1963 and 1970 he taught Classics at Harvard. Currently he is teaching Classics and Music at Dartmouth College in New Hampshire. -- Christian Wolff

Christian Wolff, "For 1, 2 or 3 People"

David Tudor (organ)

John Cage/David Tudor, "Indeterminacy"

I II III IV