Robert Ashley

The exhibition at gelbe MUSIK shows the highly complex graphical score of the piano piece Maneuvers for Small Hands (1961) by the American composer Robert Ashley, one of the pioneers of New Music who will be showcased at this year’s MaerzMusik. Written under the influence of the style of John Cage and Erik Satie, this early piece by Ashley is one of the interesting conceptual works to emerge from the 1960s. The graphical score consists of 110 “events” for a pianist. Like Cage’s Concerto for Piano and Orchestra (1958), it contains various different playing instructions and descriptions of actions. The concrete musical gesture is left to the pianist’s interpretation, as is the duration of the piece. The audience, too, dictates part of what occurs during the piece. The unique score also includes descriptions of objects that must be produced to serve as props for individual actions within the performance. Located somewhere between experimental music and Fluxus, Maneuvers for Small Hands is an extremely interesting and original testimony to the vibrant and multifaceted musical world of the early 1960s.