Yeah, we told you this was going to be "epic."
And throughout all 10 hours (five on Friday evening, five more on Saturday afternoon), the tweets pretty much confirmed what we knew already about Nick Hallett's Darmstadt Essential Repertoire series.
Before that even, writing for The New York Times on the premiere of HPSCHD, venerable Cage scholar Richard Kostelanetz hit the proverbial nail on the critical head.
Seeing as how Classicalite ran into Kostelanetz at Eyebeam in Chelsea on Friday night, we figured it apropos to reprint the closing argument from his 1969 review.
Recollected in Thirty Years of Critical Engagements with John Cage (Archae Editions, 1997), which we picked up at the gig, Kostelanetz writes:
"HPSCHD is a Universe Symphony in the distinctly American tradition dating back to Charles Ives, who spent the last 40 years of his life on a similarly all-inclusive but unfinished work. As Ives imagined his Universe Symphony, groups of musicians would be distributed around the countryside--up the hills and in the valleys--and they would sound a joyful disorder similar to the last movement of his Fourth Symphony (1910-16). However, thanks to technological progress, Cage and Hiller can use facilities Ives never had--tape recorders, amplifiers, loudspeakers, motion-picture and slide projectors--to distribute their chaotic art all over an enormous space; and in the increased quantity was a particular kind of quality never before experienced in either art or life. In the future, let HPSCHD turn on even larger spaces, like Madison Square Garden, the Houston Astrodome, or even the Buckminster Fuller dome [hyperlink, ours] that someday ought to be constructed over midtown Manhattan. Wish you were, or could be, there."
Check back here tomorrow, when we'll post a newer exegesis from The Times' Steven Smith--as well as more than six minutes of exclusive audio footage gathered from Friday night's performance.
And do stop by Classicalite first thing Wednesday morn.
We'll have video of John Cage & Lejaren Hiller's HPSCHD @ Eyebeam to share then...
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