John Cage, "In a Landscape"

While many pianists from around the world, without lifting a finger, would sit at the piano to give their audience the novel work 4'33'', its author, John Cage, was making an effort to compose a musical piece whose score was going to show in its short pages a cluster of half notes, crotchets, quavers and semiquavers, in the traditional way.

It was 1948 and quite a few years had passed since Cage had taken lessons with Arnold Schoenberg, after which the latter told to the former that he should have a feeling for harmony. Cage answered; "Yes. I have no feeling for harmony". Schoenberg then said: "You will always encounter an obstacle, and that it would be as though you came to a wall through which you could not pass." I said: "In that case, I will devote my life to beating my head against that wall.'

In a Landscape

John Cage (1912 - 1992)

So, when some years after he was asked to write the musical accompaniment for the choreographic work "Dream", for the dancer Louise Leopold, the composer recalled the words of maestro Schoenberg and, against all odds, there was no need to beat his head against the wall to give birth to the piece In a Landscape, an unmistakable composition of musical modernism, which incidentally brings to mind the memory of Erik Satie and which was complete to the taste of Louise, the dancer.

The piece, around eight minutes long, was composed for piano or harp.
The rendition, here, is by Israeli pianist Shira Legmann, during a live concert in Boston.