I was surfing the internet to look for an interesting show to go to and came across MoMA’s Performance Exhibition Series which features nine different performance pieces by a collection of artists. The show, which has been going on for almost a year now, is about to come to an end with its last piece called Stop, Repair, Prepare: Variations on Ode to Joy for a Prepared Piano done by the artists Jennifer Allora and Guillermo Calzadilla.
In this piece, a pianist plays the famous Fourth Movement of Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony more commonly referred to as Ode to Joy. However, there is a huge hole in the center of the grand piano, which the artists intentionally carved. As a result, two octaves of the piano do not work. The pianist also leans over the keyboard and plays it while bending backwards and upside so that the player, the instrument and therefore the famous melody is transformed.
I think this is a unique idea because it takes a very widely known song and alters it. This is what art does over and over again. It takes a conventional idea and warps it and that is why most art is controversial. We are able to bring up countless debates about what is or isn’t art in this way.
This looks like one of those things that sounds more interesting than it is. A lot of John Cage’s music can be like that….