James� school celebrated tonight its progress in making sixth form education more general and less specialised via a special graduation evening. It was inspiring because so many of them have done so well � especially in the creative-expressive area � we applauded the fifth best mark for A level photography in the whole country, for example. Afterwards I went for a drink with Philip Spencer - the father of one of James� fellow pupils - who has played keyboards in various ensembles that I have put together. He currently works in Amsterdam � we compared notes on seriously falling out with our employers and the new powers available under the Data Protection Act to people in these circumstances.

On the issue of creative expressive homework - I think this might be a sample � maybe the author is called Alex Mcmaster. I was looking for material about these Sch pieces as I have just bought the music (although I have had an illegal photocopy for some while). Various developments of the piece have happened and this has made it a particular favourite. Lamont Young has also been keen on the piece:

�Arnold Schoenberg's "Musical Idea" is a complex and nebulous term that attempts to describe the generative core of a piece of music. As Grundgestalt, or "basic shape," the musical idea is the principle germ of a work: it is motivic, but only in the sense of a fundamental motive. It develops throughout a musical work, as a "technical idea," but also has a more complex, ontological function" it drives the work, representing simultaneously stability and instability. Schoenberg writes that the musical idea is "unrest," which creates imbalance. Unrest creates a desire for rest: this drive towards reestablishing balance is the other face of the idea. Rather than simply a technical idea, the musical idea becomes both the locus for logic and coherence, and, as Schoenberg writes, for "richness, diversity, and feeling." Furthermore, while the musical idea must be conceived of materially and presented logically, Schoenberg indicates that the musical idea also has a psychological and metaphysical nature.

Schoenberg's musical idea has a double nature spanning coherence, and comprehensibility. On the one hand, it is the "plan" of the musical work, the material from which the work is created and built upon. On the other hand, it is a semantic unit which derives its meaning from both its musical context, and from its interaction with the projected listener, whose ability to comprehend the idea and its development in part determines its epistemological significance. A proper analysis is based on the piece�s coherence.

Coherence depends upon repetition of the familiar, and a disregarding of the dissimilar. However, features and connections identified as either important or unimportant do not always retain their respective status; rather, they can change, and have different functions at different levels. Furthermore, coherent development of the musical idea is in no way standardizable: the significance of the parts in common can change during the composition.

Schoenberg's Op. 19 no 2 appears, from the outset, to be based upon a major third built on g. This interval is repeated througout the piece in the left hand, in short, fragmented bursts. The musical idea must in some way function as "unrest," driving the piece towards some sort of conclusion, towards rest. While the short melodies that appear erratically over the third appear to "tonicize" g, the prevalence of e-flat, or d#, rather than emphasizing the fifth of g, points to the ambiguous third of a c minor chord. The clear statement of G7 in the second measure suggests an orientation towards the tonal area of c major/minor. The interval of an augmented fifth is also significant in the piece, occuring throughout the work and forming the basis of the final chord which represents theworking out of the musical idea: it is part G7 chord, and part C minor 7. The idea is then something like a G major chord, functioning as a dominant, with a melodic d#, suggesting the presence of C minor. This idea represents unrest, and toncizes C minor. The recurring third built on g is not the tonal centre of the piece, but rather V in a 9 measure V-I progression.

I am pretty sure I disagree with this analysis � as far as the major third is converned � but it is close to what I think is going on in the Satie piece which I have in Cubase downstairs. That really is about dominant-tonic closure with a lot of polytonality floating round. It looks as if I have been digging around for the MI behind Bryter Later � and in doing this I have fallen back on Satie�s extension of what counts as a MI.

By chance I happen to have been sent a review of one of LmY�s most important piano pieces � which in complete contrast to the small piano piece is very long indeed. The review is from the Village and Voice and is by Kyle Gann.

�La Monte Young's The Well-Tuned Piano is available again, and about damn time. Not on compact disc, though�the Gramavision recording of a 1981 performance that was released in 1987 has been out of print for years. But Young, or rather the MELA Foundation, has now put out a DVD of the last performance he gave in the 1987 New York run of the work (which is actually his most recent). On one continuous DVD we get to hear�and watch�Young play the longest version of the improvisatory work that he's ever done, clocking in at six hours and 25 minutes. In the first half-hour you think, I can't watch this guy plink a few piano notes for six hours. Two hours later, you're mesmerized. You've been buttonholed by the Ancient Mariner of tuning, and you ain't going to make it to that wedding, buddy.

For those who've somehow missed out on the most important piano work of the late 20th century�which wouldn't be difficult, given how hard it is to locate�The Well-Tuned Piano is a mammoth, continuous work for a piano tuned to a very peculiar tuning, with some adjacent steps as close together as 27 cents (a cent being one 1/100th of a half-step) and others as far apart as 204. I say the work is improvisatory, but it is based around a series of some 50-odd themes, cadences, and chords in four or five major harmonic areas. This means that although any two performances will be very different, you hear the same themes coming back from one performance to another like old friends. And if you're lucky enough to have the CD and the DVD, the comparison is tremendously revealing.

First of all, Young spends far more time on the "Opening Chord" (every entity in the WTP has a name) than he did in 1981. More than a half-hour passes on just those four pitches, and you're not going to hear the beginnings of a change until 41.37 by the counter (as opposed to 9:38 on the CD). By 1987 Young had developed some new themes that aren't on the earlier recording. The most striking of these comes in the final 13 minutes of the performance "The Theme of Orpheus and Eurydice": It descends in parallel intervals, sometimes even in dissonant sevenths, through tiny, sliding pitch increments, letting the notes overlap for some deliciously complex sonorities. There are also some themes missing, though. In 1981 the harmonic area called "The Romantic Chord" was brand-new, and Young played around with it for an hour; on the DVD we get less than half an hour of it.

The DVD's main advantage over the CD is, of course, that it's continuous: no changing discs. In general I think I'd rather listen without the distraction of watching Young in his silk robe, but it is a fascinating historical document. There is something hypnotic about his flat-fingered keyboard drumming, his occasional elegant hand rebound from a good riff, the casual way he'll remove his hands from the piano altogether and just listen to a chord ring. Sometimes the camera creeps upward to focus on Marian Zazeela's magenta light installation, an interesting example of ambient television. European art spaces have been running the DVD as a huge-screen installation.

Still, I feel a little about the DVD the way I do about watching Wagner operas on video�my imagination could have done more with the disembodied sound than the camera could possibly capture. The dynamic range is wider on the DVD and the beginning quieter, without the immediate presence that makes the CD's first notes so arresting. The greatest pleasure is being familiar with the earlier performance and hearing the piece's proportions change so drastically, with some themes developed to far greater length and others merely alluded to. No true La Monte Young fan will accept either the CD or DVD as a substitute for the other, though some may balk at the stiff $147 price tag for the latter, justified perhaps by the hefty amount of music and video. After all, The Well-Tuned Piano is a continent of a piano piece, and if you can't get your hands on the CD (which was selling on eBay for upward of $200 last time I looked), this is the only way you're going to thoroughly explore it.

So much one might say about the relationship between these two pieces � besides the contrast in length. Is LmY keen on the piece because he was taught it by Leonard Stein? Did he know it already � there is a story about him bumping into one of his future collaborators when he hears him practicising Webern�s Op 27 Piano Variations.

Famously, Sch taught John Cage and concluded that he was less a composer and more a brilliant inventor. When I went to Washington DC, I picked up Cage�s Sixteen Dances and was fascinated by the account of how they had been assembled using and eight by eight grid of events. Then some years later I went on to study some of the prepared piano pieces that he did in the years leading up to that composition. I think Cage probably absorbed Sch�s doctrine of the MI � but decided he was not going to be constrained by that kind of rationale for assembling or constructing pieces. He was especially provoked to push out the boundaries by hanging out with Rauschenberg at the Black Mountain College � and also by getting given a copy of the I Ching in payment for a composition lesson, I think by Christian Wolf. He was also a great fan of Satie�s Vexations which is a highly repetitive long piece.

Lmy studies Cage at Darmstadt alongside Stockhausen and when he gets back to NYC he begins to produce pieces which follow Cage�s conception of a radical dissolution of the governing criteria for construction. Here�s Composition 1960 # 4:

�Announce to the audience that the lights will be turned off for the duration of the composition. (It may be of any length) and tell them when the composition will begin and end.

Turn off all the lights for the announced duration.

When all the lights have been turned back on, the announcer may tell the audience that their activities have been the composition, although this is not all necessary.�

Composition number seven in this series is an open fifth which is to be held �for a very long time�. Composition number 10 is �Draw a straight line and follow it�. Lmy keeps writing this piece � there is evidence he wrote in 30 times in the same year. In 1961 in X for Henry Flint repetition rather than long duration appears in the compositional structure. In 1964 The Well Tuned Piano appears but undergoes the kind of development that Kyle Gann describes in his review. No surprise that I think its OK to subject the Little Piano Piece to a similar process � I have done cut and paste on it with and without the added guitar solo.

Yesteday I managed to get some time in on a piece uses the first half of �Well To The Woods No More� from Plundafonix � it already had some beats on it � I put on a derivation of Robin�s vocal line for Fifths � plus some Telecaster � through a Virtual Tweed amp. Its like Duane Eddy playing the Gamelan scale. That was really good fun.

I have found a site which supplies a Midi file of Earle Brown�s Twenty Five Pieces. This piece is the natural outgrowth of where he got to with Folio which ends with March 1953. I got some flute realisations of Folio pieces at the Tower Records at the Lincoln Centre in NYC in February. In 25 Brown specifies pitch and dynamics but leaves duration open to the performer � also you can play the music backwards or forwards. This could keep me going for a while.