Uncaged

Classical pianist and Chico State music professor John Milbauer spoke affirmatively of the somewhat industrial-looking 1078 Gallery space as the right setting for his performance of late legendary experimental music composer John Cage’s avant-garde compositions. In between dinner courses, while Milbauer plays, there will be only two lights on in the room—one from above, shining on the strings beneath the open lid of the piano, and one at Milbauer’s back to illuminate his music.

“I’ve always wanted to do Cage in a good setting,” Milbauer said, referring to the fact that many venues pose aesthetic problems for an effective performance of Cage’s work, such as inappropriate lighting or problems of disruptive foot traffic.

Milbauer, who came to Chico to teach in 2001 and whose playing has been described by one critic as “technically impeccable,” has been practicing Cage’s “Sonatas and Interludes for Prepared Piano” since summer, playing on a regular, unprepared piano.

About two weeks prior to the performance, Milbauer prepared the piano, a process of placing such ordinary items as nuts, bolts, screws and pencil erasers on or between the strings or on the hammers and dampers of the piano. Cage specifies size and type of each item—for example, a three-quarter-inch bolt or an American Rubber Co. eraser with a specific stock number—and very precisely where it should be attached inside the piano. The sound ends up evoking the joyous percussive sound of Indonesian gamelan music, albeit muted.

Milbauer first became acquainted with Cage (1912-1992) when he was a student at Harvard University. Milbauer recalled that the Zen-inspired Cage gave a series of lectures at Harvard during which Cage “took the text of the lecture and scrambled the words in random order.”

“Some people said it was the most moving experience of their life, but I was baffled. I was really a Bach-Beethoven kind of guy at the time,” the 36-year-old Milbauer explained.

Milbauer next crossed paths with Cage—rather, with Cage’s music—not long after the Harvard experience. Milbauer dropped out of Harvard after three semesters ("I’m a very rare bird,” the strikingly handsome, well-spoken Milbauer pointed out with a slight chuckle. “There are a lot of musicians on that list.").

Milbauer next found himself at Eastman School of Music in Rochester, N.Y., after acknowledging the fact that he—who began his love affair with the piano at age 7—would “rather be playing Brahms” than studying economics at Harvard. One of Milbauer’s music teachers at Eastman included Cage’s “Suite for Toy Piano” (written in 1948) in a program she presented to students, which included Bach, Schubert and Debussy, and Milbauer fell in love with the piece.

“Cage’s ‘40s works—they’re really charming. They’re lovely. They’re subtle, intimate. They draw people in,” Milbauer reflected. “Cage managed to be revolutionary … yet his music had a beautiful surface sound, a beautiful timbre … .”

Cage’s “Sonatas and Interludes for Prepared Piano"—an oddly-exotic, beautiful, Hindu-influenced piece—was also written during the 1940s.

“Most of the altered notes are located from the middle to the top [high notes] of the piano. It does no permanent damage to the piano, but will probably knock it out of tune,” Milbauer said of the instrument that Chico State’s Music Department is allowing him to use for the project.

“It’s a fun piece … a milestone of the 20th century,” Milbauer said. “This is [Cage’s] most significant work by a long-shot. … It’s a project I’ve wanted to do for a long time.”