[silence] The percussion Number Pieces of John Cage

[Alexandre Popoff]

Hi,

As part of an ongoing project about Cage's percussion music in his 
Number Pieces (especially Six, Three2 and One4), I recently came across 
two different issues about which I would appreciate your help :

1/
As far as I understood, for the three above-mentionned scores, the 
number given in the time-brackets corresponds to a single beat or 
action on a specific instrument. However this gives few indication 
about the total number of instruments. Although Three2 is explicitly 
scored for three percussion instruments rather than three 
percussionists, I suspect that, given the score of Six, any number 
between 6 and 36 could be used for this Number Piece. Is this 
conclusion correct ?

2/
The instruction notes for One4 (scored for solo drummer) clearly states 
that the sounds should either be given some duration without any 
noticeable attacks (like a roll on a cymbal), or almost no duration 
(like a single stroke on a snare drum). The intermediate case, like a 
stick beating a cymbal once and the resonance being left free is 
explicitly forbidden.
However, when comparing the existing recordings of this score (namely 
the Hungaroton CD with Amadinda group, the Megadisc one with the barton 
workshop, the Ogreogress one with Glenn Freeman, and the Sound Aspects 
one by Fritz Hauser) there are many examples where this interdiction is 
not being respected. Could anyone please tell me more about 
interpretation details concerning this score ?

I thank you very much for your answers !

Alexandre Popoff