Child of Tree

The allure of nature for radical 20th-century American composer John Cage (1912-92) mounted to a kind of religion. Cage helped promote Dadaist anti-art tendencies in the stuffy realm of classical art music in the post-WWII era, and his works pushed the boundaries of what could be called music. He delved deeply into Eastern philosophy and was a recognized “father figure” of artists who gravitated to his iconoclastic genius. Above all, Cage forced a reconsideration of sounds all around us. He had no reservations about making audiences uncomfortable. He encouraged—even challenged—people to discover an openness, a receptiveness that was not common in concert settings.
Child of Tree is an aleatoric piece composed in 1975 while Cage was touring with the Cunningham Dance Company in Arizona. A dancer from the company sparked the creation of this work by bringing a dried cactus to the composer and plucking the spines near his ear. Two of the ten instruments (a pod from a tree and an amplified cactus) are required by the score. The other eight instruments are selected by the performer, but must be plants or plant matter. While Child of Tree is a composed improvisation, the performer uses I-Ching chance operations prior to each performance to determine the length of sections and instruments to be used. Each section of the piece is demarcated by the transition between instruments.

(c) Jason Stell