condition (record/cover): VG+ (2 hairline marks on side B with 2 clicks at the beginning, 1 hairline mark on side C, occasional pops throughout) / VG- (spine partly split and pen marks on front cover).

Embossed gatefold sleeve with stickers.

Sonatas And Interludes (1946-48), John Cage's most sustained and formally complete achievement in the prepared piano medium, receives here its earliest commercial documentation - the Dial Records pressing, performed by Maro Ajemian, who gave the work its Carnegie Hall premiere in 1949. Sixteen sonatas and four interludes, the instrument transformed by screws, bolts, rubber and wood inserted between the strings into something that has almost nothing to do with the Western piano tradition: a percussive, resonant, unpitched world unto itself. Cage's conceptual framework draws on the Indian aesthetic of the eight permanent emotions - the rasas - and their convergence toward a ninth, Tranquility. The Dial pressing is the document of this music closest to its moment of composition. Despite some faults (please see conditions above), a solid copy of this piece of history.