The Seasons ( Ballet in one Act )

John Cage: The Seasons, Ballet in one Act (piano version) (1947)

The Seasons, Ballet in one Act (1947). Versione originale per pianoforte del Balletto scritto nel 1947 per Merce Cunningham. La versione orchestrale fu poi approntata lo stesso anno insieme a Lou Harrison e Virgil Thomson.

Prelude I
Winter
Prelude II
Spring
Prelude III
Summer
Prelude IV
Fall
Finale (Prelude I).

Margaret Leng Tan, pianoforte.

Cover image: painting by Cy Twombly.

The Seasons consists of nine movements: Prelude I – Winter – Prelude II – Spring – Prelude III – Summer – Prelude IV – Fall – Finale (Prelude I).
It is a sweet and lyric composition, very much unlike Cage’s other works. Like in Sonatas and Interludes and String Quartet in Four Parts it is indicative of Cage’s interest in Indian aesthetics. In The Seasons Cage uses the Indian signification as inspiration: Winter as quiescense, Spring as creation, Summer as preservation and Fall as destruction. It is one of the compositions where Cage tried to « imitate nature in her manner of operation », which is, according to the composer, one of the ideas from Indian philosophy.
The work’s overall rhythmic strusture is 2-2-1-3-2-4-1-3-1. This structure also expresses the relative lengths of each of the nine movements.
Cage first composed the piano version. The orchestration was made with the help of Lou Harrison and Virgil Thomson. (fonte web).