Creation: 03 June 2021, KunstFestSpiele Herrenhausen, Hanover (Germany)
Co-production: Les Percussions de Strasbourg / Festival Musica / KunstFestSpiele Herrenhausen
Musicians: 10 percussionists
Duration: 15′
But What About the Noise…… is the sound portrait that John Cage dedicated to Hans Arp on the occasion of the centenary of his birth. The American regarded the co-founder of the Dada movement as a model, particularly for his relationship with nature and his cosmogonic conception of art. The result is this conceptual, typed score, presented to the Percussions de Strasbourg in 1986, in which musical language is reduced to five typographical signs. A minimal work, made of environmental rustles.
We chose this singular piece as an introduction to Ryoji Ikeda’s 100 Cymbals, and asked the Japanese artist to rewrite it.
Ryoji Ikeda had already demonstrated his filiation with John Cage with a plastic version of the famous 4’33”, in the form of a painting made from 16mm film. For this new take on the father of musical experimentation, Ryoji Ikeda has chosen to replace the elements initially used, such as wood, water, glass and metal, with instruments from Japanese culture. Similar to two rectangular pieces of wood that are slammed or rubbed together, hyōshigis are traditionally used during certain ritual or daily ceremonies in Japan. Here, with no effects or microphones, sound unfolds only in the form of impulses or friction, in a precise gesture of acoustic purity. The simplicity and reduction of materials, combined with subtle variations, reveal the compositional structure of the piece. The stripped-down sonorities of white noise and delicate wood friction highlight the special place given to silence in John Cage’s work, as well as to the natural environment and the various rhythms of water, which the artist mentioned in his score: “Arp was stimulated by water (the sea, lakes, running water like rivers) and forests”. Lasting 15 minutes, Ikeda’s rereading of Cage’s piece now appears as a discreet but no less powerful pointillist corollary to the ocean of sound of 100 Cymbals.