Contemporary Music Review

Vol. 26, Nos. 3/4, June/August 2007, pp. 367 – 369

Remarks re: Four Systems

Eberhard Blum

This text describes the realisation of the score and the principles of a recording the author
made of the work in Studio 3 of Sender Freies Berlin in 1994.

Keywords: Earle Brown; Flute; Form; Four Systems; Open; Technique

In the summer of 1962, I attended the Internationale Ferienkurse für Neue Musik in
Darmstadt for the first time, in order to take part in a course given by the Italian
flutist Severino Gazzelloni on interpretation. In one of the concerts performed during
this time, Bruno Maderna conducted a performance of Earle Brown’s work Available
Forms I. Using hand signals, which he and the musicians had agreed upon, Maderna
did a remarkable job of constructing a most extraordinary music out of the many
possibilities offered by the composer.
Brown himself spoke about his compositional methods and about what had
influenced him and his musical ideas. His works December 1952 and Four Systems
became the objects of fierce controversy. There were those who criticised what they
saw as the excessive freedom (which, as so often, was confused with lack of discipline)
which he allowed the performers, and those who accused him of wanting to betray
‘music’. Bruno Maderna and Earle Brown were not to be dismayed, however, and
they continued to work out ever new, ever brilliant performances. I can recall being
unable to understand why this work was so thoroughly rejected by many European
composers, observing with great interest their initial confusion and doubt—and,
some time later, how Brown’s influence began to show in their latest works.
Earle Brown has recounted in an interview how Four Systems came to be: on the
afternoon of 20 January 1954, John Cage and he were backstage at the Brooklyn
Academy of Music, while the Merce Cunningham Dance Company was rehearsing
for a performance. From Cunningham, they had earlier learned that there was to be a
birthday party for the pianist David Tudor that evening. As neither Cage nor Brown
had a present for him, they sat down and each composed a piece for him. Earle
Brown entitled his graphic score Four Systems and dedicated it to David Tudor, who
soon performed it for the first time.

ISSN 0749-4467 (print)/ISSN 1477-2256 (online) ª 2007 Taylor & Francis

DOI: 10.1080/07494460701414306
368 E. Blum
The score consists of a single page, upon which are four systems, each marked off
by two thin horizontal lines. At different intervals within these systems run broader
horizontal strokes of various lengths and widths, creating a rigorously constructed
visual whole. As a musical score, it can be realised by any number and type of sound-
producing means. One may begin a realisation at any given point in the score and
proceed to any other point therein, interpreting the variations in size and position as
musical parameters (frequency, duration, volume, colour/timbre). Brown calls his
work a ‘mobile musical piece’ in reference to Alexander Calder’s kinetic sculptures, or
mobiles. In Europe, in the late 1950s, the terms ‘musique informelle’ and ‘Aleatorik’
were invented as designations for related works.
As a musician, it is up to me to translate this visual object (the score) into an
audible one (music). In view of the austerity and clarity of the score, I decided to
answer all questions regarding musical parameters by means of various systems of
measurement and then to realise the processes so delineated. In an attempt to
demonstrate the mobile character of the score and the potential acoustic simultaneity
of different occurrences, I came up with the idea of acoustically superimposing parts
of the score, as those of a kinetic sculpture become superimposed visually through
motion. If the four systems of the score are labelled 1 2 3 4, then one would be dealing
with the following form (see also Figure 1 for System 1):

In the recording studio, the individual parts of the score were first recorded
successively. The recording engineer Wolfgang Hoff then determined a distribution
of these parts within an imagined soundspace, superimposing them as they were

Figure 1 System 1 of the score of Four Systems as notated by Eberhard Blum and used to
make his 1994 recording. Courtesy of Eberhard Blum.
 Contemporary Music Review 369
electronically mixed according to a plan which we had developed together. What one
hears is but one of the numberless possible acoustic manifestations of this kinetic
score.
Freed from the constraints of having to lend form to a dramatic development, I can
devote myself in Four Systems entirely to the processes of sound production.
Instrumental sound in all of its aspects becomes the major musical event and
durations, registers, volumes, and the physical act of creating sound the objects of my
musical interest. Each separate moment in the course of the work is unique unto
itself, demanding and receiving full attention.

Translated by Ann Holyoke Lehmann

Postscript
All of the decisions taken for the studio recording of Four Systems were discussed and
agreed upon with Earle Brown, who was present during the sessions. In August 1994,
he then wrote the following notes to accompany the CD production:

After writing three very precisely notated and controlled ‘twelve-tone serial’ works
in 1951 and 1952, I began a series of what I called ‘experiments in notation and
performance process’ in the fall of 1952. Having played jazz and enjoyed and
admired the spontaneity and collaborative nature of that kind of music making—
the opposite of strict ‘serial’ thinking—I wanted to find a more flexible,
transformable and direct relationship in the process of concept, composing,
performing, and listening in new ‘classical’ music. The series of pieces which
developed from that quest—seven or eight single-page scores—from October 1952
to March 1953 are published as Folio (1952 – 1953) and Four Systems (1954). The
latter was written as a birthday present for David Tudor in January of 1954 and
included when Folio was published.
This is an ‘open-form’ ‘graphic score’ for any number of any kind of
instruments. The score consists of four areas in which sound events are graphically
depicted as to relative high and low, long and short, loud and soft, and in various
rhythmic groupings. These ‘graphic’ conditions must be approached and
performed with considerable responsibility, but there is also a very significant
dimension of the actual sound of the work which is based on decisions made by the
performers themselves, collectively and individually. Each result will be different
and very much a composition by the musicians involved based upon the graphic
implications of Four Systems.
It has pleased me very much that many musicians have responded to these
‘experiments’ over the years and to my very idealistic desire to bring about
collaborative-creative music making. I hasten to add that there are many of my
scores which are not ‘graphic’ scores but fully composed although frequently
having ‘open form’ potentials. The creative input and the extraordinary
instrumental virtuosity of my friend Eberhard Blum is something I could only
dream about forty years ago. I thank him profoundly.