| Category: | Musical composition |
| Dated: | New York, April 1992 |
| Instrumentation: | violin and piano |
| Duration: | 20' |
| Premiere and performer(s): | December 5, 1992 at the Semaines Musicales Internationales d’Orléans (‘John Cage Meets Erik Satie’) in the Musée des Beaux-Arts in Orléans, France. Performed by Ami Flammer, violin and Martine Joste, piano |
| Dedicated to: | for Ami Flammer and Martine Joste |
| Choreography: | --- |
| Published: | Edition Peters 67498 © 1992 by Henmar Press |
| Manuscript: | score (holograph in ink and typescript - 11 lvs. Folder 889) in New York Public Library |
| Two6 contains long-held tones. The time-brackets are empty and have to be filled by the performers.
The pianist can perform parts of the Extended Lullaby (a set of 12 chance determined variations of the cantus firmus and the
counterpoint of "Vexations" by Erik Satie) and/or play fragments of sequences of ascending pitches. These sequences "were related in the
composer's mind to the "musical train" of Duchamp, a rather colorful metaphor to assert octave nonequivalence. Duchamp
represented each octave of the piano range as a seperate train, with the notes in each "train" a "car"." (Rob Haskins: "An
Anarchic Society of Sounds: The Number Pieces of John Cage"). The violinist can choose between silence, microtonal passages,
or "dyads to be chosen from any of eight pitches selected by chance operations and arranged as a single sonority" (Rob Haskins).
Sources: Rob Haskins: "An Anarchic Society of Sounds: The Number Pieces of John Cage"; New York Public Library online catalog; Edition Peters online catalog; Paul van Emmerik's A John Cage Compendium |