Child of Tree (1975) by John Cage is a composed improvisation for a soloist using plant materials. The hand-written score explains the structure of the piece and the limitations of what materials can be used, and he requests the use of a coin oracle, introducing aleatoric practices into the performance. While his score is detailed and structured, watching a version of it appears highly improvisatory and offers an opportunity for the performer to create an original performance, and depending on the context of the performance, can be a stepping stone to providing audiences with a more physical connection to nature.
Analysis and Performance Method
Below you can see the score itself describing the method of splitting the 8-minute piece into sections by means of the I Ching coin oracle, which Cage uses to introduce aleatoric elements into the performance. Therefore, the result of this preparation is vast in opportunity for creativity in performance. He requests the instruments to be split between the now-created sections of the piece which again come from the I Ching coin oracle.
Instrumentation and Process
Consulting the oracle can be done by flipping three coins at once. With heads equalling 3 and tails equalling 2, the result is then translated into one of the four possibilities of lines: light, dark, light transitioning to dark, and dark transitioning to light. You repeat this process six times until you have built your hexagram. You can then search in I Ching for which hexagram you have been given. There are a few resources online that help you perform this without needing the chart, as the most important aspect of this is knowing which numbered hexagram you received, from 1-64.1 Through this, Cage assigns the instruments and the length of the sections of the piece.
He requests 10 instruments, one being a pod rattle, and one of the instruments "shall be a cactus, or part of one, live or dry, of a genus having a solid body and spines which are relatively free of other spines, so that when one spine is plucked by means of a needle or toothpick, a single pitched sound can be heard. " Beyond this, his only request is to not use synthetic materials or animal materials. This is an important qualification because, besides the length of the piece, this is a distinct requirement not pertaining to the actual performance of the piece. It also defines this piece as strictly a plant material improvisation, not necessarily a percussion improvisation. In the final line of the score, Cage says "the performer shall take as much care as possible during a performance not to make any other sounds than he makes with his instruments" (Cage 1975, 8). Clearly, Cage intends for the audience to be transported to an aural destination intrinsically and exclusively linked to nature, not to animals or humans, or civilization.
In order to understand what effect this may have on a performance, I conducted a survey of individuals to see if hearing these sounds would affect the kinds of environments people imagined when prompted, without knowing the sounds were completely plant materials. Below is the prompt used.
Out of a total of 18 completed responses, a number of them demonstrated some transition in awareness, or that the sounds impacted how the person felt in the moment. One example, in particular, says "it reminded me of camping and hearing rain where it falls gently", as well as " being a child in a forest in [New Hampshire]" (PIA Pilot, 01/11, 2022).
It may be important to recognize how responses to music of this kind can be from a more emotional perspective. As this research does not attempt to form music into activism directly, like some examples I have given previously, approaching the process of programming and music-making from a point of pathos with the audience may be more effective in allowing them to feel more connected to a natural environment. From the survey results, it was clear the piece triggered ideas of a forest or being outdoors. According to Brosch and Steg from the One Earth Journal, "Emotions have a great but currently underexploited potential to contribute to a sustainable behavior change" (Brosch and Steg 1700). Their research points to a possible avenue for promoting sustainable action by appealing to emotional responses, and by translating values and concern into action. As a result, having audiences react to a piece that may transport them to a location outdoors may be a first step in getting community action put together, if only as a way to appreciate and enjoy the natural world.
Personnel
In this case, perhaps the most important aspect of the piece is that the instruments are made of plant materials and not synthetic or animal materials, as this limits the variety of items we can use. Furthermore, because it is not expressed that the piece can only be a solo performer, we could explore the opportunity to invite others to join in our music-making. For application in promoting environmental awareness, this opportunity is important, as it allows the audience to participate as well. This tactile connection with the audience to the act of making sounds with plant materials means there is a physical connection between the two, and for some members of the audience, could be a more effective experience than exclusively listening.
However, now the structure of the piece becomes much more difficult to achieve in relation to the pre-determined sections and instruments. Depending on the performer, it may be an important part of the piece that must be retained. For me, while I do think it is essential to have 10 different instruments, and have the piece range around eight minutes maximum, I do not feel that the structure of the piece itself is integral to the transmission of why this piece is programmed.
Instrumentation
It appears more so that the development of the aleatoric structure is so the improvisation has more clarity than jumping between different sounds constantly. For my purposes, I determined that because of my interest in the expression of the sounds and their significance to the natural world, the predetermination of the work would be an alterable variable. Then, focus can be placed more on the production of sounds rather than how the piece should be structured. Since there is no notated performance part, the improvisation can be freer and allows the piece to be performable with multiple musicians or audience members.
In my performance of the work, I decided to use plants I could find locally in garden stores and from the environment around me. I chose the plants based partly on what I was initially drawn to, then eliminated choices based on the sounds that they created. I looked for a variety of sound options, not wanting to limit myself to a particular spectrum of sounds, such as only broad-leaf plants, or only living plants even. So, I chose a very young collection of bamboo shoots and a canna flower plant as two distinct sounds. The bamboo plant is thin, grasslike, and easy to create a rustling sound by shaking the plant. The canna flower has broad, flat leaves, reminiscent of rolled-up manuscript paper.
In total, I gathered the following:
1. Canna plant (local garden store)
2. Bamboo plant (local garden store)
3. Leaves of English Oak trees (Haagse Bos)
4. Bark of English Oak trees (Haagse Bos)
5. Echinocactus (Spanish Farm)
6. Water (Amare)
7. 2 Conch shells (school-owned)
8. 2 wooden carved bowls (thrift store)
9. Branches of English Oak (Haagse Bos)
10. Stones found outside Amare (Amare)
While this piece perhaps works most effectively as a deep listening exercise or limiting the amount of visual stimulus, the opportunities for variety in performing follow work in a similar vein by David Monacchi, famous for creating his project Fragments of Extinction, which musically explores the Niche Hypothesis proposed by Bernie Krause. In this hypothesis, Krause stipulates that each creature in a given environment takes up a specific part of a frequency spectrum, and other creatures and sounds fill up other areas (Krause 1993, pg.3). More mobile animals tend to learn to fill the gaps that less mobile creatures already take up in the spectrum, and often tend to signify territory (Ibid, pg.4). These would change even just 20 meters from the last, but each is uniquely identifiable if unaltered even years after it is first noted. By utilizing this, researchers could take note of changes in populations of creatures or the general health of an ecosystem.
Monacchi, interested in the audio/visual combination of this idea, presents it in a more musical context through his in-depth field recordings and visualizations. Monacchi works to present the "aesthetic significance of typology/frequency/temporal sonic niches and their complex interactions within these untouched, therefore highly coordinated, natural systems" (Monacchi 2013, pg. 2). Through visual immersion of the sounds an audience hears, Monacchi can present an ecosystem's sonic fingerprint and also allow a performer to fill any spectrum that is available, thus creating a musical performance unique to that environment (Ibid). Pictured below is Monacchi's Sonosphere, part of his international project to raise awareness for the 'sixth mass extinction' we currently are in.
While this is one example of a performance, the next performance may change entirely in the composition of instruments. For example, replacing the canna and bamboo plants with implanted flora at a local garden could be an alteration depending on the venue. The essence of the work lies in the nature of performing with unconventional instruments - plants in this instance. In the case of a garden venue, one could imagine the performer surrounded by growing vegetables, herbs, and fruit, utilizing all that is existing around them to construct a performance of this work. In this way, the piece functions to resignify how we may perceive these plants, not just as suppliers of food, but also as sound environments that are significant. Schaffer mentions the importance of acoustic design in public spaces, and one of the four principles he states is "a knowledge of the rhythms and tempi of the natural soundscape" (Schaffer 1977, p. 238). By raising awareness of local areas and the sounds that the natural environment can create, we may promote a more balanced weighting of natural and non-natural sounds, a concept Schaffer also suggests art can benefit, by "[opening] new modes of perception" to people and designers, to help point out alternative lifestyles (ibid).
There are many possibilities for tailoring this piece to the performance venue: changing the instrumentation based on an environment you want to explore, such as a desert, a forest, or a beach, allows the performer to guide a listener through an environment, rather than a broad exploration of plant sounds. By doing this, a performer could direct attention to particular biomes even, allowing a program that directs audiences to particular sounds that may become less prevalent if climate change progresses. This could be made possible either in the environment one is hoping to sonically examine, or in a concert hall. Thus, the choice of venue offers many opportunities to demonstrate sonic possibilities and, ultimately, spark conversation on these places.
While far less technical, this kind of idea can be utilized in Child of Tree, by taking a particular environment and replicating the sounds one might hear there with the natural materials available. For example, using water running over rocks and sand, one can replicate the sound of a stream. Or, the sound of branches being broken could mimic many animals' steps or eating. Clearly, there are many opportunities to be creative without utilizing man-made materials or animal-based sound sources, one simply needs to explore an environment and discover what sounds make up that fingerprint. You can watch and listen to my rendition here.