8'66" Piano Solo - Digital Sheet Music

SKU: A0.944867

Highly influenced by John Cage, 8'66" features compositional practices explored by Cage.

"Song of the Talpa People" calls for the pianist to play the movement while attempting to prevent any of the piano hammers to "fall" (hit the strings, causing sound); however, due to the tempo marking, human error, and other factors, it is a certainty that the hammers will fall - we simply do not know when, where, and how many of these "falls" will happen on any given performance. Cage was a pioneer of indeterminant music, a single piece of music that can sound wildly different each time it is heard.

In "Funeral March for a Deaf Man" the written music was lined up directly to a section of Cage's Lecture on Nothing so that whenever a syllable from the speech would be spoken the pianist plays the note(s) that correspond at the same time.

The finale, "In Futurm," allows for the pianist to perform the piece as originally written.

The titles for the three movements are taken from compositions of "silent music" that predate Cage's 4'33"

1. Funeral March for the Obsequies of a Dead Man (1897) by Alphonse Allais (1854-1905).

2. In Gaston Leroux's 1903 novel La Double Vie de Theophraste Longuet, silent concerts are given by the Talpa people.

3. In futurum (1919) by Edwin Schul