John Cage - Music for Marcel Duchamp (1947)

Prepared Piano: Boris Berman
This work was originally written for the Duchamp portion of Hans Richter's film entitled Dreams That Money Can Buy. The composition evokes timbres and harmonies of Asian music, as well as the music of Erik Satie, it is static, meditative, and timeless. The music uses few tones, muted by weather stripping (seven pieces), a piece of rubber, and one bolt. The soft materials avoid fluctuations in resonance.
One new idea in this work is evident in Cage’s use of silence, heard especially in the last part, where 7 x 2 bars of music are followed by 2 bars of silence.