{"id":4723,"date":"2012-03-13T13:15:30","date_gmt":"2012-03-13T13:15:30","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.pianostreet.com\/blog\/?p=4723"},"modified":"2019-03-28T13:27:31","modified_gmt":"2019-03-28T13:27:31","slug":"john-cage-suite-for-toy-piano","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.pianostreet.com\/blog\/video-picks\/john-cage-suite-for-toy-piano-4723\/","title":{"rendered":"John Cage: Suite for Toy Piano"},"content":{"rendered":"

\u201cTranquility through austerity\u201d had become Cage\u2019s watchword by the time he composed the Suite for Toy Piano<\/em> in 1948. His new musical heroes were the master miniaturists Webern and Satie<\/a> and in his polemical addresses to the students he championed their sense of scale against the \u201cdeadening\u201d monumentality of Beethoven<\/a>.<\/p>\n

\"john-cage-playing\"Cage: \u201cAs soon as I began to study oriental philosophy, I introduced it into my music. People then were always pretending that a composer had to have something to say. So what I was saying was nothing more than what I had understood about, first of all, the philosophy of India\u201d<\/em>
\n(Interview with Daniel Charles in \u201cFor The Birds\u201d).<\/p>\n

The toy piano is a very limited instrument; it has not much more than an octave of diatonic notes. Cage starts by restricting this instrument even more, using only five notes in the middle of the instrument. The next three notes expand the note palette until all keys on the toy instrument can be used, and then the final movement reverts back to five notes. The music has an intimate and charming, if somewhat deliberately bland quality.<\/p>\n