"The manuscript is clearly marked "second movement" but no first movement seems to have survived.
The Dutch musicologist Paul van Emmerik, says that the first movement was an improvisation with a microphone, amplifier
and loudspeaker set up on a table and approached with different sound-producing objects such as a watch, mechanical toys, etc.
If so (and the information, if accurate, must have come from Cage himself), the two movements were vastly different in character
as the second movement clearly shows the influence of Schoenberg and the 12-tone method. (...) Only the open fifths that
punctuate the piece sound very untypical for Cage." (From Eric Salzman's liner notes for the Albany CD "John Cage...In Memoriam").
|