Etudes Australes
[1] When Cage found out that Grete Sultan was working on his Music of Changes, a piece which involved hitting the piano with beaters and hands, he offered to write some new music for her, because to him "it didn't seem [right] that an aging lady should hit the piano"[2] (Sultan turned 68 in 1974).
The second idea was to use star charts as source material, as Cage had already done with the orchestral Atlas Eclipticalis in 1961 and with Song Books in 1970.
In the end Cage would have a string of notes and ask the I Ching which of them are to remain single tones and which are to become parts of aggregates.
It would permit institutions or organizations, groups of people, to join together in a world which was not nationally divided.
The premiere of all 32 Etudes Australes did not take place until April 1982 during the Wittener Tage für neue Kammermusik in Witten/Germany, when the 75-year-old Grete Sultan performed the complete cycle to international acclaim.
[citation needed] Cage had received letters from virtuoso pianists from all over the world expressing interest in the etudes; examples include Marianne Schroeder[10] and Roger Woodward.
[11] For violinist Paul Zukofsky Etudes Australes signalled Cage's return to conventional notation, and he commissioned the composer to write a similar cycle for the violin.
A critic for The New York Times made a similar observation, suggesting that if Etudes Australes were to last beyond Cage's life, they would do so because of the stars themselves.
[13] Negative reviews included, for example, one by David Burge, pianist and piano professor at the Eastman School of Music.
The Washington Post staff writer Tim Page, writing 6 years after Cage's death, dismissed the work as "an interesting idea, but a lousy piece, as it would have had to be",[15] whereas a review of Steffen Schleiermacher's 2001 recording of the cycle in The Guardian is more neutral[16] and Jed Distler's review of the same record at Classics Today is very well-disposed towards the piece.
Each etude includes several keys that are to be depressed prior to playing, and held down using a rubber wedge.
For the complete discography with reissues and partial recordings listed, see the link to the John Cage database below.
