Suite for Toy Piano

The allure of nature for radical 20th-century American composer John Cage (1912-92) was certainly more philosophical than religious. Cage helped promote Dadaist anti-art tendencies in the stuffy realm of classical art music in the post-WWII era. His works pushed the boundaries of what could be called music. He was one of the few composers to take interest in the toy piano as a genuine musical instrument, primarily because he enjoyed the unemotional, brittle sound of the metallic resonating bars inside the toy piano. His Suite for Toy Piano (1947) includes five short movements laid out in an arc format. The opening and closing movements use just five notes of the instrument’s already limited range. Cage wrote it while helping to produce a festival in honor of French iconoclast Erik Satie. The simple gestures of Satie guide this Suite, which also reveals Cage’s interest in Eastern philosophy, musical repetition and minimalism. It brings together Japanese koto with the glib effect of making serious music on a toy.

(c) Jason Stell