We’ve reached a magnum opus in this Dabringhaus & Grimm John Cage Piano Edition, the huge Etudes Australes! We’re also drawing close to the end of the edition, with just one more release to go.

A famous, earlier recording of Etudes Australes makes it hard for anyone making a new recording. I’m of course referring to Grete Sultan’s recording at the Vanguard Studios in New York, made in part in 1978 and in part in 1982. She has stood as a role-model for Etudes Australes interpretations since then, and rightly so, since John Cage wrote it explicitly for her after having known her for over thirty years.

However, it is with great pleasure we receive this new, fresh recording by Steffen Schleiermacher; not only because of the superior recording quality – it is recorded in December of 2001, released 2002 – but also because of Schleiermacher’s interpretational insights and brilliant technique, as well as his artistic, philosophical understanding of the universe of Cage. From just studying the information on the CD box I see that tempo is very different between Sultan’s and Schleiermacher’s recordings. Sultan finishes the recording in about 170 minutes, while Schleiermacher allows for about 204 minutes; a 34 minute difference!

John Cage gives this startling explanation as to the emergence of this truly grand work:

So it was out of courtesy that Etudes Australes came into existence!

Cage also commented on this work this way:

Indeed this is difficult music to play, like other etudes by Cage, such as Etudes Boreales on Volume 6 of this edition, or like the violin pieces Freeman Etudes, recorded in their entirety by Irvine Arditti on Mode Records and by János Négyesy on Newport Classic.
If, however, people would be so transformed by these performances that they would change the world, things would look much different than they do, because surely all of these interpreters; Sultan, Schleiermacher, Arditti and Négyesy… have done the impossible time and time again! All the aforementioned recordings are incredible!

All these works were composed during the 1970s, which is when, as Schleiermacher points out in his comprehensive booklet text, Cage returns to downright composing of detailed compositions. I think it is interesting to note here that Stockhausen took a similar route after his intuitive pieces, crowned by Aus den sieben Tagen in 1968, with its short, poetic performance instructions and nothing more, in the very same 1970s period that we’re addressing in connection with Cage’s different etudes.

Grete Sultan said in an interview in her old age:

It is necessary to explain how Cage set about composing these etudes. First of all, he acquired star charts, which he spread out in front of him. As the word Australes indicates, he used star maps of the Southern Hemisphere. Australes means south, as Boreales means north, thus the name Australia for that continent, and in Sweden we talk about King Bore, meaning a northern King Winter.
On top of his star charts, Cage applied transparent paper, on which he made markings according to the replies he got from addressing I Ching – the 64-choice Chinese chance manual - with certain questions pertaining to density, signature, chord frequency and more.
The music gets denser as the composition progresses, with fewer lone tones and more chords. Richard Kostelanetz explains this in his essay on Etudes Australes in the Wergo edition:

When testing the playability of his results with Grete Sultan, the two agreed on 546 five-tone chords, 520 four-tone chords, 81 three-tone chords and 28 two-tone chords as being within reach for Sultan, as explained by Schleiermacher in the booklet. Of course, this pertains to Sultan’s physiognomy. Maybe the row of chords could have been extended for someone with, say, longer fingers!

One of Cage’s instructions states that the composition is written for two independent hands! One hand is expressively not to assist the other. Schleiermacher calls this a duet for two hands, while he also notes that this may lead to certain instances where one hand works madly to achieve its task, while the other one rests idly!

A fine and delicate property of the Etudes Australes is the utilization of sympathetically vibrating resonant strings, which are not actually hammered at all, but just freed of the dampers to be able to resound.
The instructions mean that some tones in the bass range – up to seven of them registered by Cage at the beginning of each etude – are to be played mutely and then held with the middle pedal or on the keys with special devices. The only task for these free tones, free strings, is to maintain a resonant space for the played tones to resound in. This, Schleiermacher observes, means that there is no true silence anywhere in Etudes Australes, as some strings are always vibrating, if only in a resonant way, as sympathetic drones.

Now it’s time to return to the observation that Sultan’s and Schleiermacher’s tempi vary a lot, with Sultan’s 170 minutes and Schleiermacher’s 204, roughly. It appears that Cage indeed did not prescribe any certain tempo per se. He just said that the tempo should be uniform, and that is it.
The way the score is set up, Cage assigns two clefs for each hand; one treble, one bass. Since the hands are not to help each other, but only play what is assigned to them individually, this may lead to some strange movements that the interpreter has to make in order to reach the keys in question at the appropriate time.
The score merely prescribes proportional distances.
The player has to set his playing velocity – and thus the duration – for each etude before starting to play, to be able to maintain a uniform tempo throughout.

Steffen Schleiermacher writes in his essay that it could be quite tempting to play the more thinned-out etudes faster and the more dense one slower, but he says that he decided to play some of the thinner one at a slower tempo and some of the more complex ones at a fast speed. Schleiermacher felt that this method perhaps more clearly could convey the very different densities to the listener.

The duration of individual tones are not set by Cage; just the pitches. In Schleiermacher’s booklet essay he also notes that Cage distinguishes between closed and open note heads. Open ones are to be held until right before the consecutive note in the same hand, while closed ones are to be played just briefly.

There is nothing stated about dynamics. This is a free field for the player. Schleiermacher has made the fine and probably very accurate decision to refer his dynamic attitude to the starry night sky, where anyone can observe the differences between a few bright stars and the overall intensity of most of the celestial stellar objects. It is very sensitive and intelligent to think in this way, adding considerably to the value of this recording.

Steffen Schleiermacher has also given a lot of thought to the resonance. Since these appear according to the way the performer decides to emphasize or de-emphasize certain elements of his playing, one has to come to a conclusion as how to do this, if one wants a tonal background all the time by way of the resonating, un-damped strings that are not actually played, or if one decides on something else.

There is a touching sequence in Schleiermacher’s booklet text, wherein he describes a visit with Grete Sultan that he did in 2001, when she has just turned 95! She told him at that time that she hadn’t heard anyone else than herself playing Etudes Australes! She had some few complaints, and gave some suggestions, but on the whole she was open, even at this age, to new ways of interpretation, differing from her own practice.
Schleiermacher has dedicated this recording to Grete Sultan.

One striking think about John Cage’s music is definitely that he never grew old in the sense that he tired and say back to enjoy the work he’d done, letting it rest. He always kept on developing himself and his art, taking it further into the unknown and uncharted. In this sense he is the soul brother of Karlheinz Stockhausen, who never stops surprising either.
Cage has said: “I like to think that I’m outside the circle of a known universe, and dealing with things that I don’t know anything about.” Stockhausen could say the exact same thing, and he has said similar things on many occasions.
The next Cage quote could as well have been said by Stockhausen, and the content of the sentences has been widely broadcasted by the great man from Kuerten many times:

These are great words from a great man, an the similarity to Stockhausen’s way of expressing the same conviction is almost ghostly – but in fact only revealing the diamond-like hardness and brilliance of this creative thought, this creative… passion!

A startling but obvious character of Cage’s music, and especially the indeterminate pieces, the ones reached by, for example, I Ching chance operations, is described by Cage thus:

This, I believe, is a very important property of Cage’s oeuvre, and of chance operations in art as a whole.

Kostelanetz suggests in his essay that we turn the volume up to really hear the intricate web of shimmering overtones that flow and combine like the Northern Lights throughout Etudes Australes. I agree; it’s a sonic adventure, incredibly beautiful.