SCORES
Nine pieces for the 88 keys of the piano, first performed on French radio in 1988, and mostly having to do with the number 88. Pascal's Triangle, The Multiplication Table and Eratosthenes' Sieve are a few of the titles. An 80 page book with sewn binding and instructions in French and German, as well as in English.
A collection of 12 stories for clarinet solo and narrator, preferably performed late in the evening.
That means "200 Years" in English, and the work is a 30-minute opera for soprano, baritone, and an ensemble of cellos, which was written for the French bicentennial and was premiered at the Festival d'Avignon in 1989. A limited edition of 200 numbered copies.
Premiered in New York by Jon Deak in 1975, this 7-minute piece is now standard fare for talking string bass soloists.
49 miniatures for piano four-hands. Graphic music in symmetrical shapes.
Prose instructions for short piano pieces to be played in private. A 1976 edition of the 218 Press.
A collection of 21 systematic melodies playable on all melodic instruments.
BOOKS & RECORDINGS
A now out of print collection of Tom Johnson's Village Voice reviews, which chronicled the evolution of American minimal music. Published by Apollohuis, Paul Panhuysen's publishing house in Eindhoven, Holland. 543 pages. A definite collector's item! Limited stock.
An earlier and smaller version of the Symmetries for piano four-hands published in 1990. The 1981 version includes only the compositional drawings, without the specific instructions as to how to play them.
Kientzy
plays JohnsonIt is a great pleasure for Pogus to present this recording of Daniel Kientzy playing the works of Tom Johnson.
Organ And SilenceA music concerned for, as the author writes in the disc notes,
"… the importance of silence in music…". This work is conceived not
"for organ" but, really, for "organ and silence", as the
silence is a fundamental part of it, and it’s not possible to give it up. It’s
an attempt, as the author explain " to permit as much silence as possible,
without allowing the music to actually stop".
Tom Johnson is one of the masters of minimalism, but he combines this with rigorous
logic. His work, free from false glitters, defines, better that any other one,
the sense of a research the goes beyond the strict genre definitions, and become
poetic application of original ideas.
Recorded in Nerinx, in Kentucky, spring 2001 - Wesley Roberts, organ.
Rational
Melodies
Music
for 88 Simplicity and clarity have always been among Tom Johnson's chief concerns
as a composer. That concern led him to research number theory, particularly
by Pascal, Fermat, and Euclid, and these sources suggested musical structures
somewhat more complicated than those that he had used before. Music for 88 is
the result of these researches. It contains nine sections (six of which are
on this recording), each of which is a musical demonstration of a mathematical
phenomenon.
One of the key works of the composer, which he has often played on his suspended bells.
12" LP record OUT OF STOCK
Born in Colorado, Johnson received his B.A. and M.M. degrees from Yale and also studied with Morton Feldman. He is perhaps best known for The Four Note Opera, which was premiered in New York City in 1972 and which has since been produced over 50 times in English, French, German, Italian, Polish, Hungarian and Catalan. He has always considered himself a minimalist with his composing focused on logical progressions and highly predictable structures. In the 1970s, Johnson's weekly columns in the Village Voice covered the emergence and development of minimal music in New York City. Though traveling frequently, his residence since 1983 has been in Paris. "The world is easier to understand," he says, "when viewed from about halfway between Moscow and Washington." He recently completed the two largest works he has ever produced, the Bonhoeffer Oratorio, with texts of the theologian Dietrich Bonhoeffer, and Una Opera Italiana, an Italian opera.
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