| Music for Marcel Duchamp was composed by John Cage in 1947 for a segment of Hans Richter's surrealist film "Dreams That Money Can Buy." The film contains several segments designed by different artists, and Cage's music was composed for a segment designed by Marcel Duchamp. The segment, a dream one of the characters is having, is titled "Discs" and consists mostly of Duchamp's rotoreliefs. These are designs painted on flat cardboard circles, which are to be spun on a phonographic turntable. The work was later choreographed by Merce Cunningham. The global structure is 11x11 (eleven sections of eleven bars each), the rhythmic proportion is 2, 1, 1, 3, 1, 2, 1. Similarly to "Tossed As It Is Untroubled" and "The Unavailable Memory of," the work mostly builds on a single melodic line, which uses notes muted by weather strippings. This piece is one of the first to explore the idea of silence systematically: empty bars are juxtaposed with melodic passages throughout the piece. |
| Music for Marcel Duchamp |
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