Cage, John (1912 - 92)

[Mandryka]

[QUOTE=Bryn;848953]You have quite likely heard it but not listened to it.

You might like to try this for size:



How about this?

[LMcD]

John Cage: "I am for the birds, not for the cages in which people sometimes place them."

'John Cage is for the birds'? Even I wouldn't be THAT dismissive.

[Richard Barrett]

'John Cage is for the birds'? Even I wouldn't be THAT dismissive.

He said it, not me; and it's the title of the book of interviews from which the quote is taken.

[Bryn]

[QUOTE=Mandryka;848961]

You have quite likely heard it but not listened to it.

You might like to try this for size:



How about this?

I will check that out once L'Orfeo finishes. As it happens, I heard and recorded, for private use, David Tudor playing Variations II back in 1983 at the Almeida Festival. http://www.rosewhitemusic.com/cage/texts/Var2.html is well worth reading.

[gurnemanz]

I remembered enjoying Cage's Concerto for Prepared Piano and Chamber Orchestra a long time ago and dug out the programme - Gruppe Neue Musik Hanns Eisler 1975 in the splendid setting of the Great Hall of the Renaissance Old Town Hall, Leipzig. I'm grateful to this thread for being reminded. Other works performed were Schoenberg: Fantaisie for Violin and Piano, Gerhard Rosenfeld: Three Nokturnos for Oboe, Cello and Harpsichord (first performance), Friedrich Schenker: Kammerspiel 1 - settings of poems by Christian Morgenstern (also first performance). The soprano was Roswitha Trexler, an important advocate of new music. I got to know her personally. She spoke little English and when she sang Weill at the Proms later that year she asked me to be her interpreter and show her round London a bit.

It looks like an interesting evening but I haven't heard any of the works again since. I ought to follow up.

[Bryn]

I remembered enjoying Cage's Concerto for Prepared Piano and Chamber Orchestra a long time ago and dug out the programme - Gruppe Neue Musik Hanns Eisler 1975 in the splendid setting of the Great Hall of the Renaissance Old Town Hall, Leipzig. I'm grateful to this thread for being reminded. Other works performed were Schoenberg: Fantaisie for Violin and Piano, Gerhard Rosenfeld: Three Nokturnos for Oboe, Cello and Harpsichord (first performance), Friedrich Schenker: Kammerspiel 1 - settings of poems by Christian Morgenstern (also first performance). The soprano was Roswitha Trexler, an important advocate of new music. I got to know her personally. She spoke little English and when she sang Weill at the Proms later that year she asked me to be her interpreter and show her round London a bit.

It looks like an interesting evening but I haven't heard any of the works again since. I ought to follow up.

Funnily enough, Roswitha Trexler was due to perform a new song cycle by Frederic Rzewski at the same 1983 Almeida Festival at which David Tudor performed Cage's Variations II. Unfortunately, she was refused a visa on that occasions so Rzewski had to resort to a solo piano concert comprising Yuji Takahashi's Kwangju, May 1980 and his own The People United Will Never be Defeated variations, replete with improvised cadenza.

[LMcD]

You've gotta give credit to Al Jolson for his prescience in 'the Jazz Singer'.
I've just been told that KCNV is to broadcast Mr C's best-known work at 12.33 BST tomorrow.

[gurnemanz]

Funnily enough, Roswitha Trexler was due to perform a new song cycle by Frederic Rzewski at the same 1983 Almeida Festival at which David Tudor performed Cage's Variations II. Unfortunately, she was refused a visa on that occasions so Rzewski had to resort to a solo piano concert comprising Yuji Takahashi's Kwangju, May 1980 and his own The People United Will Never be Defeated variations, replete with improvised cadenza.

Thanks for that information. I kept loosely in touch with Roswitha and have a couple of signed LPs. She's still around aged 84 as indeed is her ex-husband Fritz Hennenberg, musicologist and new music guru who I first met when he gave a talk Brecht and his Music at York Univ.

[Bryn]

Thanks for that information. I kept loosely in touch with Roswitha and have a couple of signed LPs. She's still around aged 84 as indeed is her ex-husband Fritz Hennenberg, musicologist and new music guru who I first met when he gave a talk Brecht and his Music at York Univ.

Trexler and May are two of my favourite performers of Brecht settings by both Eisler and Weill. Trexler's recordings of Schoenberg's Das Buch der hängenden Gärten and Berg's Sieben Frühe Lieder are well worth seeking out.

[Serial_Apologist]

I managed to find this in the middle of Cage's Communication - Chapter 3 from Silence, the one which starts off with question upon question:

"In the course of a lecture last winter at Columbia, Suzuki said that there was difference between Oriental thinking and European thinking, that in European thinking things are seen as causing one another and having effects, wheres in Oriental thinking this seeing of cause and effect is not emphasised but instead one makes an identification with what is here and now. He then spoke of two qualities: unimpededness and interpenetration. Now this unimpededness is seeing that in all of space time each thing and each human being is at the center and furthermore that each one being at the center is the most honored one of all. Interpenetration means that each one of these most honored ones of all is moving out in all directions penetrating and being penetrated by every other one no matter what the time or what the space. So that when one says that there is no cause and effect, what is meant is that there are an incalculable infinity of causes and effects, that in fact each and every thing in all of time and space is related to each and every other thing in all of time and space. This being so there is no need to cautiously proceed in dualistic terms of success and failure or the beautiful and the ugly or good and evil but rather to walk on 'not wondering', to quote Meister Eckhart, 'Am I right or doing something wrong'. (PP 46-47).

I'm trying to think of a better word than Dialectical for conveying anything's relationship with everything else, in which one treats one factor in relation to another, because languageing can only sequence one thing at a time before going on to all others pertaining. Some think Non-Dual goes far enough. Polyalectical? I did think Polyvalent, or Multivalent, but dictionary definitions there seem only to apply to medical stuff.

[Mandryka]

I managed to find this in the middle of Cage's Communication - Chapter 3 from Silence, the one which starts off with question upon question:

"In the course of a lecture last winter at Columbia, Suzuki said that there was difference between Oriental thinking and European thinking, that in European thinking things are seen as causing one another and having effects, wheres in Oriental thinking this seeing of cause and effect is not emphasised but instead one makes an identification with what is here and now. He then spoke of two qualities: unimpededness and interpenetration. Now this unimpededness is seeing that in all of space time each thing and each human being is at the center and furthermore that each one being at the center is the most honored one of all. Interpenetration means that each one of these most honored ones of all is moving out in all directions penetrating and being penetrated by every other one no matter what the time or what the space. So that when one says that there is no cause and effect, what is meant is that there are an incalculable infinity of causes and effects, that in fact each and every thing in all of time and space is related to each and every other thing in all of time and space. This being so there is no need to cautiously proceed in dualistic terms of success and failure or the beautiful and the ugly or good and evil but rather to walk on 'not wondering', to quote Meister Eckhart, 'Am I right or doing something wrong'. (PP 46-47).

I'm trying to think of a better word than Dialectical for conveying anything's relationship with everything else, in which one treats one factor in relation to another, because languageing can only sequence one thing at a time before going on to all others pertaining. Some think Non-Dual goes far enough. Polyalectical? I did think Polyvalent, or Multivalent, but dictionary definitions there seem only to apply to medical stuff.

Holistic.

[Serial_Apologist]

Holistic.

Yes - thanks Mandryka - that might be the word I'm looking for.

[antongould]

Perhaps I have been wrong to base my view of Cage on the basis of one work which I have never heard!
I’ll give it a listen when I have the time. There are a few recordings on Spotify!

Heard In A Landscape the other morning …… should I be worried that I enjoyed it ……. ??????

[Bryn]

Heard In A Landscape the other morning …… should I be worried that I enjoyed it ……. ??????

No equine scaring involved, there.

[NatBalance]

Sorry but I've got to say my piece about John Cage's most famous .... well ... you see this is one of the problems with 4'33". What exactly is it? It is called a piece of music but is it?

The way I see it John Cage's 4'33" is a good idea VERY BADLY done, and I think it gets the flack it deserves. It is quite rightly ridiculed and a so-called performance of it is possibly one of the stupidest things I have ever seen. Yes I know what you're thinking, this guy does not understand 4'33". Well yes I don't .... BUT ..... I reckon I understand what he was trying to do, so before you push me aside as a luddite who is wrapped up in just popular music and I don't understand experimental music, let me explain, and also give my opinion on how I think he could have made his point much better.

I do love experimental and avande garde music and art, but 4'33" has got me stumped. His mother apparently considered he had gone “too far” with this .… well again .... with this what? I think his mother was dead right, he did go too far. Sometimes exaggeration to make a point works, but if you exaggerate too far you end up loosing your point and the result can sometimes be laughable, and this is a case in point, which is why most people do laugh at it.

So what is 4’33”? Is it a piece of music? Well, we can all hear music in the natural or artificial world but can you say any one part of it is an actual piece of music? John Cage is basically instructing the listener to listen to the ‘music’ around them, therefore it is an instruction to listen, not a piece of music itself. The fact that he is instructing us when to listen and when to stop listening does not mean he has created a piece of music. It is equivalent to going to a restaurant which has, say live background piano music. Everyone is busy talking away while the pianist is playing but at some point someone says “Listen!”, and they all listen for a while untill instructed to stop. Has the person who instructed them to listen and stop listening created a piece of music?

The language can be bent sometimes, especially in art and poetry, but I can't see how it can be bent that far. Let us consider some things:-

Did John Cage compose the ‘music’ you hear in 4’33”? Answer - no.

Does the so-called performer perform the music in 4’33”? Answer - no.

Therefore what is it? Well, it is clearly an instruction and ONLY an instruction, it is more akin to meditation i.e. not a piece of music.

That said, I think I do understand and agree with the point he was trying to make, he just had a rubbish way of making it, he went too far. I think he was also making a point about the importance of silence in music. Is that right? If so, you have to have some music for the silence to be IN.

OK, I've criticized, now my solution. I think Cage would have made his point much better if he had done it this way:-

Instruct the ‘performer’ to actually perform and use whatever instrument they have before them to occasionally - repeat occasionally - play a note or notes. This note or notes should be considered notes that fit and blend in with the background sounds. The performer should be listening intently and know their instrument to the extent that they are able to make sounds that blend in or fit in in some way so that the audience are not quite sure where they came from if not looking at the performer. THEN the performer would earn their title, they would also compose (improvise), and you then actually have a piece of music rather than an instruction to listen or meditate.

So where would John Cage fit into this picture if he had done it this way? What would be his role? Composer? Well, he doesn't compose the music, the performer does, but the performer actually only adds something to existing music, they are a bit like a soloist in a concerto (or the accompanyist). Cage is the composer of the structure of the music.

He realised that everything could be considered music, and there was no such thing as absolute silence. I think he wanted to bring meditation into the concert hall. Well, that is exactly what he did .... the trouble is, he did nothing more. It was still just meditation. He did not convert it into a musical performance, into a piece of music. He did nothing more than a meditation instructor might do with their pupils i.e. define when to start and stop meditating on the music around and in them.

Anyway, that's my view, and I am unanimous in that :)