Sonatas and Interludes for Prepared Piano

Sonatas and Interludes for Prepared Piano, a cycle of 20 short pieces for prepared piano (a piano modified by inserting nuts and bolts and other objects between the piano strings in order to produce percussive and otherworldly sound effects) by American composer John Cage. Created in 1946–48 after the composer had been introduced to Indian visual and performing arts, the cycle was intended to represent the so-called permanent emotions—the heroic, the erotic, the wondrous, the comic, sorrow, fear, anger, and the odious—at the heart of Indian aesthetic theory and their movement toward tranquility.

As a complete collection, Sonatas and Interludes for Prepared Piano consists of four sets of four sonatas, each set separated from the next by one or two interludes. The cycle requires nearly four dozen “preparations” of the piano strings, which yield a range of gentle buzzing, clanging, clunking, thumping, rattling, and ringing timbres while retaining the melodic quality of the instrument. Most of the sonatas are in binary form (aabb), while the interludes either are through-composed (having no repeated passages) or follow a four-part aabbccdd structure. Related melodic and rhythmic motifs provide coherence across the cycle.