Composition for 3 Voices



Category: Musical composition
Dated: Ojai, California. Completed January 15, 1934
Instrumentation: Three unspecified instruments
Duration: 4'
Premiere and performer(s):
Dedicated to: Pauline Schindler
Choreography: ---
Published: Edition Peters 6704 © 1960 by Henmar Press
Manuscript: Score (holograph, signed, in ink - 5 p.) in New York Public Library


Composed in Ojai, northwest of Los Angeles.
The ranges of the three instruments are specified as: I: d' - d"'; II: a - a"; III: d - d".
The title-page of the manuscript score contains 24 measures of an unidentified work labeled "soprano-adagio.". Page 5 contains 7 measures of an unidentified work for brass and two 12-tone rows used in its composition.
The Composition for 3 Voices is a chromatic composition dealing with the problem of keeping repetitions of individual tones of the twenty-five tone ranges of all three instruments as far apart as possible.

Sources: Paul van Emmerik: Thema's en Variaties; Paul van Emmerik's A John Cage Compendium; New York Public Library online catalog; David Revill: The Roaring Silence; Richard Kostelanetz: John Cage: Writer - Previously uncollected pieces