Williams Mix +, MaerzMusik 2012

Over het evenement

MaerzMusik is the annual Festival of Contemporary Music organised by the Berliner Festspiele. Established artists and young newcomers from all over the world come to Berlin each March to present a full programme with many world premieres and new productions, many of which are commissioned by MaerzMusik.

MaerzMusik is a direct reaction to new relations between sound and society today. The festival for contemporary music transcends the borders between tradition and innovation. With its broad range of orchestral and chamber music, innovative musical theatre, experimental works and media art it provides a fascinating and rich panorama of contemporary music.

In addition to Cinq etudes de bruit (1948) by Pierre Schaeffer and Karlheinz Stockhausen’s Studie II (1954), John Cage’s Williams Mix (1952/53) is considered to be one of the key works in early tape music. It was Cage’s first composition for tape and, at the same time, the one that pushed the medium to its boundaries.
While early electro‐acoustic tape pieces usually resulted in the studio during the work process, Cage created a score beforehand. He established all necessary musical parameters with the help of chance operations. He needed more than half a year in order to realise the 4’15 minute eight channel piece. It consists of cut pieces of audiotape that are meticulously put together. To date, John Cage has remained the only artist to put together a tape piece based on a score. A new interpretation as well as the first digital realisation of the score by Eckehard Güther can be experienced at MaerzMusik for the first time. This new interpretation stretches Williams Mix to 32 minutes, with 600 different sounds being used that were produced by Werner Dafeldecker and Valerio Tricoli.
In addition, Christian Wolff restages the performance The Possibility of a New Work for Electric Guitar by Morton Feldman, and the work is reconstructed by the guitarist Seth Josel. A further highlight of the evening at Berghain is the staging of Imaginary Landscape No. 5, an audiotape work by John Cage for which 42 phonographic recordings were used. Cage primarily used jazz LPs in this 1952 version.