[silence] re Chess music...

Thu Nov 1 06:37:42 EDT 2007

Dear all,

Chess Piece (1943) is a composition, written on an 8 by 8 black and  
white piece of cardboard, resembling a chess-board. Cage made it for  
a show of works related to Marcel Duchamp's interest in chess, at the  
Julien Levy Gallery in New York City.
http://www.johncage.info/workscage/chesspieces.html

MLT [Margaret Leng Tan]: Chess Pieces is a clever visual pun; it is a  
piece of art that can be played on, and played. It is far less  
cryptic than you suggest because the music is actually through  
composed. The clefs are there, but in the reproduction, they are at  
the very edge of the frame and are only partly visible at times.  
There are 22 systems of music, each 12 bars long and self- contained.  
So what you have are 22 little "chess pieces," and I found a way of  
linking them into an organic whole.

Interview: Margaret Leng Tan - By Uncle Dave Lewis
http://wm06.allmusic.com/cg/amg.dll?p=amg&token=&sql=61::64UC

"Chess Pieces represents a confluence of Cage’s three primary  
lifelong interests: music, visual arts, and chess. Embedded in the 64  
squares is a finely wrought score. Cage has managed to surprise us  
again with this visual pun: Chess Pieces is a piece of art that can  
be both played on and played. A clip from the Mode DVD, The Complete  
John Cage Edition, Volume 34: The Piano Works 7, revealed Larry List  
(guest curator of the Noguchi Museum who had tracked down Chess  
Pieces in 2003) describing how he approached Ms. Tan to determine if  
the notation in the painting indeed amounted to a complete and  
potentially playable composition." - John Cage: Rediscovered Pieces -  
John Redford, Biola University
http://www.musiclibraryassoc.org/pdf/newsletter/news148.pdf

moderecords.com
http://www.moderecords.com/catalog/158cage.html

artnet Magazine - WE ARE DUCHAMPIANS - by Ben Davis
http://www.artnet.com/magazineus/reviews/davis/ 
davis11-1-05_detail.asp?picnum=2

Edition Peters' website - Chess Pieces, by John Cage - "Lost" work re- 
discovered after 60 years!
http://www.edition-peters.com/article.php?inno=IN00039&section=

time4time: John Cage - Chesspiece (excerpt)
http://time4time.blogspot.com/2007/02/john-cage-chesspiece-excerpt.html

The John Cageblog: Chess Pieces
http://cageblog.blogspot.com/2006/05/chess-pieces.html

John Greschak - Connections between Music and Chess
http://www.greschak.com/muschess.htm

Sheet Music Plus - Chess Pieces - Deciphered and transcribed by  
eminent pianist Margaret Leng Tan from the 1944 painting
http://www.sheetmusicplus.com/store/smp_inside.html? 
item=16575338&cart=340288603613669844&page=03

Review/Art; Aspects of John Cage, for the Eye - New York Times
http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html? 
res=950DEFD81639F935A35756C0A962958260&sec=&spon=&pagewanted=all

Somewhere between Dream and Reality:<br>Shigeko Kubota’s Reunion with  
Duchamp and Cage
http://www.toutfait.com/duchamp.jsp?postid=1457&keyword=

Reconstruction 6.1 (Winter 2006) - Cold War Games and Postwar Art /  
Claudia Mesch
http://reconstruction.eserver.org/061/mesch.shtml

At Land 1944 - Dir: Maya Deren. Cast: John Cage, Maya Deren,  
Alexander Hammid. B&W
Deren's second experimental film, At Land (1944), reinforces her  
interest in the juxtaposition of anachronistic spaces and introduces  
a critique of social rituals. This film begins by reversing the  
natural rhythm with images of waves breaking and descending back into  
the sea. Starring again, Deren is seen climbing up a dead tree trunk  
on the beach, magically emerging onto a table where a formal dinner  
party is in progress. This 'civilized' world ignores Deren as she  
crawls along their dinner table. By depicting herself as invisible to  
the diners, Deren highlights the myopia of the guests. The dinner  
sequence in At Land ends with an enchanted chess game. A pawn falls  
from the table and descends back into the dead wood on the beach, it  
falls over rocks, into the water and is washed away over the  
waterfalls. Chasing the pawn, Deren is restored to her original  
landscape. - Wendy Haslem (http://www.sensesofcinema.com/contents/ 
directors/02/deren.html
http://ubu.artmob.ca/video/Deren-Maya_At-Land.avi

hope that helps,
best,
Ralph Lichtensteiger
http://www.lichtensteiger.de/
http://time4time.blogspot.com/
http://del.icio.us/lichtconlon
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