Special offer. Cage Edition Volume 40 - Waltzes for the Five Boroughs
In 1977 Cage devised this do-it-yourself environmental piece based on 147 New York street locations selected by using chance operations.
The conception was realised complete only in 1994/95...
Special offer. Cage Edition Volume 40 - Waltzes for the Five Boroughs
Purchase product
In 1977 Cage devised this do-it-yourself environmental piece based on 147 New York street locations selected by using chance operations.
The conception was realised complete only in 1994/95...
About
John Cage's artwork, 49 Waltzes for the Five Boroughs, appeared in the October 6, 1977 Rolling Stone magazine: a gala issue celebrating their move to New York. He constructed his 'waltzes' through chance operations as a series of 49 multi-colored triangles superimposed on the Hagstrom map of New York City. Later, he published a score for "performer(s) or listener(s) or record maker(s)" with the exact street locations depicted by each point of the triangle. Cage was an inveterate New Yorker and after his death in 1992, Don Gillespie, a long time colleague, decided to celebrate his memory by videotaping each of the 147 locations indicated in the score. An impartial rotating camera was used to capture every location, the durations of each determined by the I-Ching.The result is a joyful, Cagean celebration of the sounds and the, sometimes unexpected, sights of New York City: and a time capsule travelogue of how it appeared in the years 1994-95.
ADDITIONAL FEATURES:
the names of the actual locations you are viewing can be shown on the screen using your remote control's SUBTITLE button.
By using your remote control's alternate camera ANGLE button, you can toggle between the film, a detail map of the location you are viewing, or a full view of the map indicating the 3-point triangulation of the current Waltz.
16-page booklet with essay by Don Gillespie and a complete list of each Waltz location.
Bonus AUDIO realisation of "Waltz #9", recorded by Gillespie in March 1979.
Contents and tracklist
- A complete video realisation by Don Gillespie, Roberta Friedman and Gene Caprioglio
Awards and reviews
2010
In 1977 Cage devised this do-it-yourself environmental piece based on 147 New York street locations selected by using chance operations.
The conception was realised complete only in 1994/95 when Don Gillespie and colleagues decided to visit all these places and video whatever they saw and heard. So the 49 Waltzes (three sections each = 147 places) are simply film with no other soundtrack apart from what is heard at the time. It's a celebration of ordinary life in urban and residential streets. Refreshingly there's no background music, no asinine commentator, and the visual aspect dominates so that it's more film than music. Cage enjoyed the sound of what happens – so here it is for just over two hours.
In each shot the camera swings out and back from a fixed position; and apart from endless ordinary streets there's a subway station, the Bronx Zoological Gardens, Cunningham Park in Queens, and JFK. The random processes often focus on Staten Island and the whole series ends picturesquely with the sound of gulls and waves at Weir Creek Park in the Bronx. Birds are the soloists elsewhere too. As people go about their business there's surprisingly little conventional music, apart from operetta on tap in a record store and the occasional car radio. The team has realised exactly what Cage intended in the most conscientious way; excellent documentation in three languages.
