Sat 2.6. 16.00 GROSSER GARTEN

AN EVENT WITH UP TO 100 MUSICIANS FROM HANOVER

No individual has provoked more radical changes in the art of the 20th century than John Cage who would have been celebrating his 100th birthday this year. In Musicircus, Cage was experimenting with the minimal degree of what can today be regarded as composition: he did not notate a single note on paper, but merely formulated a single underlying concept: a random number of musicians are invited to come together and play music they have selected themselves – all simultaneously and in the same location.
The simplicity of this idea still stands in inverse proportion to its effect, even forty years after the work’s conception. There is no cacophony. Musicircus creates a tonal world reminiscent of a circus permeated by interrelationships and astounding reciprocal effects. The resulting serendipitous musical conflicts can at times assume a comical character, but the simultaneously performing musicians are unified in a general harmonic structure which epitomises Cage’s extended definition of musical beauty.

Free entry for garden visitors

Stephan Meier Curator

Production: KunstFestSpiele Herrenhausen