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NOTE: HPSCHD by John Cage has been deleted at the request of the copyright holder.

AGP118 is a complete transcription of two LPs released on the Nonesuch label in 1970 (H-71224 and H-71231).

The first includes HPSCHD for harpsichords & computer generated sound tapes by John Cage and Lejaren Hiller, and String Quartet No. 2 by Ben Johnston. Both works are available in other recordings, but two different AGP partisans specifically requested these original recordings of the works, which I've been assured differ materially from the recordings currently available on CD. Johnston's string quartet is one of his microtonal works, more of which can be found in AGP9.

The second features The Nude Paper Sermon: Tropes for Actor, Renaissance Consort, Chorus, and Electronics, by Eric Salzman. I remember listening to this latter work repeatedly in my youth, but I hadn't heard it in years before transcribing it for this installment. It is noteworthy among other things for being one of the earliest art works to be described as "post-modern" (in the LP liner notes). While the use of that term in 1970 pre-dates the eventual meaning of the term, the description is apt in that the texts recited by the actor are not offered in earnest but merely as examples of the ongoing cultural chatter of the time.

Both LPs are in excellent condition, with only very occasional light tracking distortion in some of the louder vocal passages in track 3. The installment includes a PDF file with scans of the liner notes of the two LPs. I've also scanned an insert with HPSCHD on old-style computer printout paper with 1 of 10,000 sets of computer-generated instructions for producing one's own version of HPSCHD by adjusting volume, treble, and bass controls in each stereo channel every five seconds. That is, the liner notes say there were 10,000 such sets, but mine is numbered 12024.

NOTE: This week's installment is one minute too long for an 80-minute CD. If you are burning to CD, I recommend leaving out the Johnston string quartet and including it with AGP120.

To download AGP118 files, right-click on each of the following links and select SAVE LINK AS.

01 - Cage/Hiller, HPSCHD [21:04]

02 - Johnston, String Quartet No. 2 [14:59]

03 - Salzman, The Nude Paper Sermon, side A [21:31]

04 - Salzman, The Nude Paper Sermon, side B [23:21]

Liner notes from LPs

AGP118 description

FLAC fingerprints