mes PIECES piano solo by john cageJOHN CAGE erlRss FECES for Piano Chess Pieces is recorded by Margaret Leng Tan on Mode Records, The Works for Piano 7 (mode 158 CD/DVD), Vol. 34 in the Complete Cage Edition (www.moderecords.com) duration: ca, 8 minutes ce. PETERS CORPORATION NEW YORK LONDON FRANKFURT LEIPZIG4 Mus.pr. 2006. 3622 CHESS PIECES by JOHN CAGE By Margaret Leng Tan ‘The recently re-discovered Chess Piees by John Cage is a work unique to Cage’s oeuvre and to twentieth century music and art. In 1944, Cage created the painting, Chess Pies, specifically f 0 46 Imagery of Chess exhibition at the Julien Levy Gallery in New York, a groundbreaking event organized by Levy, Max Ernst and Marcel Duchamp during the winter of 1944-45, Besides Duchamp and Emnst, the artists included Alexander Calder, Robert Motherwell, Isamu Nog John and Xenia Cage, André Breton, Man Ray, Dorothea Tanning and other leading surrealists, ‘When the show closed, Chess Pieces was purchased by a private collector and it remains in that private collection to the present day. Deemed lost and largely overlooked by Cage scholars, the and-gouache-on-masonite painting went on public view in New York for the first time in over sixty years at The Noguchi Museum’s The Imagery of Chess Revisited exhibition (October 2005 - Ay 2006). Chess Pieces stands at the confluence of John Cage’s three primary life-long interests, music, arts and chess. Embedded like a musical fossil within the sixty-four squares of the 19 x 19 ind . chessboard that comprises Chess Pies, is a finely-wrought musical score in black and white ial Cage’s hand. No documentation exists of this music ever having been played by Cage or anyor else. Perhaps no one even suspected the music within Chess Pieces was a serious co alone one that could be performed! With this perfectly preserved memento John Cage has _ managed to surprise us yet again: an ingenious visual pun, Cl both played on and played. pad ibeLarry List (guest curator of The Noguchi Museum -down Chess Pies in 2003), The John Cage Trust and Cage’s publisher, CE. eterminc if the notation in the painting indeed amounted to a complete and potentially position. Having been hidden in plain sight for over half a century, the question, 4 sound like?”, was ietesistible. six weeks I deciphered and transcribed the score, cross-referencing it against an exceedingly h 1943 manuscript draft in The New York Public Library. Mode Records and I then recorded ‘The Noguchi Museum’s chess show so that for the very first time, the public could <¢ Chess Pieces as art and music simultaneously. sing as it may seem, Chess Pies is a through-composed score consisting of 22 systems of usic read conventionally from left to right. (This is consistent with the prepared piano works of is period.) Each system is a self-contained musical unit of 12 bars, a miniature “chess piece” so “to speak. The 22 systems translate into 22 modular segments, 22 little “chess pieces” of great inventive variety. Yet, remarkably, Chess Pieces succeeds as a cohesive, coherent composition. | There is no specific instrumentation given in either the draft manuscript or the painting, Given its ‘contrapuntal nature, the piece could just as easily be played by two instruments as by evo hands on "a keyboard. Neither tempo indication nor dynamics are provided. Chess Pies’ modal and diatonic ‘canvas is akin to Cage’s Four Walls for piano, also from 1944, Both employ a 2/2 time signature throughout their straightforward metrical course. However Chess Piece is abstract and dispassionate while Four Walls is emotionally fraught. " Cless Pies is possibly the only extant artwork by Cage from this early period and as such, it differs from Cage’s prints of the 70's and 80's where chance operations were involved in the creative process,‘There is more information on John Cage’s Chess Pieces in the documentary video, CAGE: Art] Chess, on mode 158 (DVD) and the book The Imagery of Chess Revisited, co-published by George Brazller, Inc, and The Noguchi Museum. ©2006 Margaret Leng Tan Reprinted from the notes to mode 158 CD/DVD Courtesy of Mode Records Cover: Chess Pees (detail) (1944) by John Cage black and white ink and gouache on masonite, 19 x 19 inches Private Collection, Chicago, Iinois Photo credit: Brian Franczyk Cover Design by Stuart Cameron Vance ‘Special thanks to Larry List, Laura Kuhn and The John Cage Trust, Mode RecordsJohn Cage (1944) Cope © 2005 CF. Pars Compotion ion Peters 68110 Intron Copyright Seed. ll Rights Reserved, “ale Rac vbaEarPor 110(Eaton Por 8110afar ar to] Por 610