HPSCHD
John Cage & Lejaren Hiller creating HPSCHD
Abright-Knox Art Gallery, Buffalo, New York
Ontario College of Art and Design, Toronto
The first HPSCHD took place on May 16, 1969, at the University of Illinois. Antoinette Vischer, a Suisse harpsichord player, had commissioned John Cage to write a piece for her and Cage had responded. He did later confess, “I must admit that I never liked the instrument. It sounded to me like a sewing machine …”
HPSCHD, in my view, should always be extravagant, exuberant, and wild. Unlike a sewing machine. I understand it and hear it as a joyful melee of continually sustained intensity, of computer-generated trumpets sounding an ongoing charge by a cavalry of amplified harpsichords through a landscape filled with thousands of flashing and swirling overlaid projections of color, form, and space imagery on the ceilings and walls and, as on occasion, on special screens placed throughout the space.
At its most complete, there are seven harpsichords (six with written scores, the seventh for a performer, often David Tudor, to decide, and a pile of tapes with rhythms and calculated tunings. There was no clear timing and the normal performance was about four hours.
HPSCHD
The first HPSCHD performance was followed by several others. Neely Bruce played a single harpsichord at Atlantic Christian College, Wilson, North Carolina, on November 6, 1969. Roger Hannay organized one at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill with Neely Bruce, Thomas Warburton, and Don Gillespie on March 21, 1970. Josef Anton Riedl organized one at the Woche der avantgardistischen Musik Berlin on July 18, 1972, with David Tudor, Frederic Rzewski, Cornelius Cardew, and Richard Bernas, and John Cage in attendance; and Riedl organized a second one on June 8, 1979, with David Tudor, Giancarlo Cardini, Lorenzo Ferrero, Gérard Frémy, Stephen Montague, Frederic Rzewski, and Dieter Schnebel. I was in touch with a performance at the Hochschule für Künste, Bremen, Germany, on November 15, 2012. There was an outdoor performance, by coincidence, at the Art Museum in Cleveland on the same evening, May 3, 2013, that we presented a HPSCHD in New York. There were a few more that I knew about, among them in London directed by the BBC, in Germany directed by Martin Supper, in University of Illinois by William Brooks, and in Texas directed by Larry Austin.
I directed six of the HPSCHDs. I was a guest, so to speak, at another one of them. And I was in charge of the recorded music for another one of them.
March 29, 1971, the Art Gallery at State University of New York at Albany. John Cage and Lejaren Hiller were there. David Tudor, Findlay Cockrell, Dennis Helmrich, Neely Bruce performed.
May 3, 1975, Brooklyn Academy of Music. John Cage was there. Lukas Foss was the host. Phill Niblock and Warren Burt worked with me. David Tudor, Dennis Helmrich, Frederic Rzewski, Joseph Kubera, Cheryl Seltzer, and Philip Corner performed.
March 22 & 23, 1980, Albright-Knox Art Gallery, Buffalo, New York. David Tudor, Neely Bruce, Aki Takahashi, Yvar Mikhashoff, and David Fuller performed. Lejaren Hiller was there.
April 3 and 4 , 1994, at Westergasfabriek, sponsored by De Ijsbreker, Amsterdam, Holland. Guus Janssen, Annelie de Man, Thora Johansen, Krist Nyquist, Jacques Ogg, Vivienne Spiteri, and Jukka Tiensuu were performers.
May 8, 2004, Chelsea Art Museum, in New York. Robert Conant, Anthony de Mare, and Joseph Kubera were performers.
May 16, 2007, Saratoga Arts Center. Anthony de Mare, Joseph Kubera, harpsichord performers.
June 11, 2008, Cage Fest, Ontario College of Art and Design, Toronto. William Blakeney directed. I was in charge of the sound. David Eisenman was in charge of visuals. Donald Gillies and I talked. The musicians included Eve Egoyan, Marc Couroux, Casey Sokol, Tania Gill, Gregory Oh, Gayle Young, George Boski, Robert Wheeler (Pere Ubu), Bob Doidge, Amy King.
May 3 and May 4, 2013, Eyebeam, co-sponsor Issue Project Room, New York. I was in charge of the recorded sounds. The visuals, completely new, organized by Bradley Eros, were performed by New York artists. The music performers were Neely Bruce, Joseph Kubera, and Karl Larsen on May 3; and Neely Bruce, Joseph Kubera, and Emily Manzo on May 4.
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Chelsea Art Museum, New York
Eyebeam, New York
February 29 and March 1, 2020, 1 – 4 pm. HPSCHD @ 50, a celebration of 50 years since the original production took place.
Produced by NON:op Open Opera Works, directed by Christophe Preissing in the Preston Bradley Hall, Chicago Cultural Center, preceded by a day-long symposium on February 28 at Northwestern University at which I spoke along with William Brooks, Sara Haefeli, Neely Bruce, David Eisenman, Martha H.Stiehl, Deniz Ertan, and Anne Warde, a major event took place. The images in the performance on February 9 and March 1 were organized by Theo Economides and Ilse Miller. The audio was by Stephan Moore. The performers were Francis Yun, Billie Howard, Amy Wurtz, Shi-An Costello, Martha H. Stoehl, Svetlana Belsky, and Alvin Waddles.
Two days later, a second event took place in Urbana, at the University of Illinois, with performances by Francis Yun, Shi-an Costello, Marth Stiele, and Ann Warde.
