John Cage's Concert for Piano and Orchestra

John Cage's <em>Concert for Piano and Orchestra</em> is one of the seminal works of the second half of the twentieth century and the centerpiece of the middle period of Cage's output. It is a culmination of Cage's work up to that point incorporating notation techniques he had spent the past decade developing - techniques which remain radical to this day. But despite Cage's vitality to the musical development of the twentieth century and the <em>Concert</em>'s centrality to his career the work is still rarely performed and even more rarely examined in detail. <p/>In this volume Martin Iddon and Philip Thomas provide a rich and critical examination of this enormously significant piece tracing its many contexts and influences - particularly Schoenberg jazz and Cage's own compositional practice - through a wide and previously untapped range of archival sources. Iddon and Thomas explain the <em>Concert</em> through a reading of its many histories especially in performance - from the legendary performer disobedience and audience disorder of its 1958 New York premiere to a no less disastrous European premiere later the same year. They also highlight the importance of the piano soloist who premiered the piece David Tudor and its use alongside choreographer Merce Cunningham's <em>Antic Meet</em>. A careful examination of an apparently bewildering piece the book explores the critical response to the <em>Concert</em>'s performances re-interrogates the mythology surrounding it and finally turns to the music itself in all its component parts to see what it truly asks of performers and listeners.<br>