Cage Edition 2 – Atlas Eclipticalis With Winter Music

John Cage
Atlas Eclipticalis with Winter Music
Mode 3/6

Originally released as a 4LP set back in the early days of Mode Records, the first two discs of this 3CD set document the two live performances of Cage’s 1961 orchestral work Atlas Eclipticalis played simultaneously with 1957’s Winter Music (in a version for three pianos) recorded at Seattle’s Cornish Institute on December 11th 1983. Disc three presents what the label rather grandly describes as an “all-star” recording of all 86 instrumental parts of Atlas Eclipticalis, (the first of its kind) recorded under the composer’s supervision at the John Cage At Wesleyan festival in 1988 – the “stars” include the Arditti Quartet, Alvin Lucier and Christian Wolff – and an version of Winter Music directed by Stephen Drury, overdubbing four pianists five times to get the required 20-piano result. As ever, the CDs are accompanied by an erudite and comprehensive set of liner notes, including, amongst other things, facsimiles of Cage’s handwritten performing instructions and essays on the works by the composer, Matthew Kocmieroski, Don Gillespie and Stephen Drury.

While not questioning for a moment Gillespie and Drury’s assertion that Atlas was the major Cage work of the 60s (like Concert for Piano and Orchestra was for the 50s and Sonatas and Interludes for the 40s), the Seattle performances are still a tough listen. One wonders whether it is really necessary to sit down and concentrate furiously all the way through, or let the mind wander (“if the mind wanders, let it”, as the composer once famously wrote). But even if you choose to spin this while you busy yourself with other more mundane activities such as picking mushrooms or consulting the I Ching, the occasional fortissimo percussion crashes will soon shake you out of Ambient mode. The fuller textures on the 1988 86-part version are more engrossing, though for my money the late orchestral number pieces 103 and 108 are more satisfying. The 20-piano version of Winter Music is much more fun, its multitracked jagged clusters and pointy staccatos getting almost funky. Cage completists who missed out on the earlier LP box set (me!) can rejoice; it’s a thrill to see this sitting on my shelves, even if I wonder how many times I’ll return to it in the years to come.

– Dan Warburton, www.paristransatlantic.com, April 2007

CAGE: Atlas Eclipticalis with Winter Music

The New Performance Group / John Cage; Hartt Contemporary Players, Arditti Quartet, The Wesleyan Symphony Orchestra / Melvin Strauss; The Callithumpian Consort (Alanna Battat, Johanna Kovitz, Guy Livingston, Mina Yang pf) / Stephen Drury MODE3/6 (3h 20′ • ADD/DDD)

Recorded live at the Cornish Theater, Seattle, on December 11, 1983; Crowell Hall, Wesleyan University, Middletown, CT, on February 26, 1988. From Mode originals.

The scandals are history: now we can appreciate Cage reaching for the stars

Originally Mode’s second release, issued on four LPs in 1986, the 1983 performances of Atlas eclipticalis and Winter Music played simultaneously have always felt like a seminal point of reference forJohn Cage fans. Atlas eclipticalis (1961) uses chance procedures “but in relation to the traced position of the stars,” Cage writes, the resulting orchestral polyphony being equivalent to a constellation of stars. Winter Music (1957) was designed for multiple pianos and notates a spectrum between single stabbing notes and tone clusters. Cage instructs players that chords, even when too notey for 10 fingers, must be played whole and that tones beyond reach are to be sounded via harmonics. The resonant mix of struck notes ricocheting against sustained harmonics is a beautiful thing, and hearing the two works piggybacking demonstrates how unerringly accurate randomness can be.

Historically, performances of Atlas eclipticalis have been prone to insurrection and mutiny. Leonard Bernstein’s performances in 1963 created one of the biggest scandals in the New York Philharmonic’s history. Some 40 years on, however, the beauty of this music seems unmistakable. Cage indicates that its character is best realised when care is taken to produce acute contrasts of loud and soft/short and long, but there’s magic beyond this state of black and white. Going to such extremes also guarantees a robust middle ground of supplementary colliding textures and coincidences of note pattern.

There were two performances on one day: the first prodigiously fluid, with winning inevitability about the music’s direction from its first note; the second with many more awkward corners and moments where the musicians work hard to define purpose and momentum. But both are an honest response to how Cage’s demands are set up. The fact the ensemble embraces musicians with dual interest in improvisation and composition helps, giving the ensemble a potent “lived-in” feel.

Adding stimulating context to the original release are separate performances of Atlas Eclipticalis and Winter Music, and the sonorous subterranean echoes of Winter Music are brilliantly captured by Stephen Drury’s ensemble. Christmas just came early.

– Philip Clark, Gramophone, September 2007