How About a Work Needing 639 Years to Perform?

[Ralph]

From The New York Times:

May 5, 2006
An Organ Recital for the Very, Very Patient
By DANIEL J. WAKIN

HALBERSTADT, Germany, May 4 — If you miss Friday's musical happening at St. Burchardi Church in this eastern German town, no worries. There is always 2008. And the next year. And the one after that.

In fact, you have about six more centuries to hear developments in the work being performed, a version of a composition by John Cage called "As Slow as Possible." A group of musicians and town boosters has given the title a ridiculously extreme interpretation, by stretching the performance to 639 years.

Like the imperceptible movement of a glacier, a chord change was planned for Friday. Two pipes were to be removed from the rudimentary organ (which is being built as the piece goes on, with pipes added and subtracted as needed), eliminating a pair of E's. Cage devotees, musicians and the curious have trickled in to Halberstadt, a town about two and a half hours southwest of Berlin by train known as the birthplace of canned hot dogs and home to a collection of 18,000 stuffed birds.

"In these times, acceleration spoils everything," said Heinz-Klaus Metzger, a prominent musicologist whose chance comments at an organ conference nine years ago sparked the project. "To begin a performance with the perspective of more than a half-millennium — it's just a kind of negation of the lifestyle of today."

The only limitations on the length of the performance are the durability of the organ and the will of future generations.

For anyone keeping records, the performance is probably already the world's longest, even though it has barely begun. The organ's bellows began their whoosh on Sept. 5, 2001, on what would have been Cage's 89th birthday. But nothing was heard because the musical arrangement begins with a rest — of 20 months. It was only on Feb. 5, 2003, that the first chord, two G sharps and a B in between, was struck. Notes are sounding or ceasing once or twice a year — sometimes at even longer intervals — always on the fifth day of the month, to honor Cage, who died in 1992.

There are eight movements, and Cage specified that at least one be repeated. Each movement lasts roughly 71 years, just four years shy of the life expectancy of the average German male. There is no need to wait for the end of a movement for late seating: St. Burchardi is open six days a week, and the notes have been sounding continuously.

A whine can be faintly hard outside the front door of the church, a 1,000-year-old building that was once part of a Cistercian monastery and served as a pigsty when Halberstadt was a neglected industrial town in East Germany.

A cool blast of air comes through the open door, and the sound grows louder. After one spends some time within the bare stone walls, the urge to hum in unison proves irresistible. An electric bellows — about the size of three double beds in a row — sits in the left transept. Underground piping brings air to the organ in the right transept, which at this point is a wooden frame with six pipes. Small weights hold down wooden tabs: the keys. A plexiglass case muffles the sound. Neighbors complained that they could not sleep after the first notes sounded.

The place attracts people seeking a peaceful moment or communion with Cage's spirit. One student from the Juilliard School asked to spend a night in the church, said Georg Bandarau, the town's marketing director and manager of the Cage project. A Canadian writer who is going blind and making journeys to experience his other senses arrived Thursday.

The project's spirit is firmly in keeping with the proclivities of Cage, whose works pushed the boundaries of music and sought to meld life and art. One of his cardinal principles was to give the performer wide leeway. His most famous work may be "4' 33" " — in which the performer or performers sit silently for 4 minutes 33 seconds. Some consider him as much a philosopher as a musician.

Indeed, the Cage organ project is part serious musical endeavor, part intellectual exercise and part tourist attraction, the sort of thing that happens when the local worthies of a European town join with ambitious artists. And it has come to mean different things to different people.

For Christof Hallegger, it is a statement more about time than about music, and a reminder of mortality. "It's man-made, and it's longer than your own life," said Mr. Hallegger, the town's leading architect and a board member of the foundation behind the project.

Mr. Bandarau sees the performance as a tourist draw. "This town can profit from this project," he said.

Hans-Ola Ericsson, a Swedish organ professor who helped arrange the score, called it a symbol of possibility to a depressed region. "It brought hope, to very many people, of a future," he said.

But its signifcance is lost on some. Rainer Neugebauer, another member of the foundation, said it was hard to convince some local people of the project's value. "It doesn't sound like Beethoven," he said.

With German reunification, the government poured money into Halberstadt's renovation, but the East's economic problems continue to dog the town. Unemployment runs at more than 20 percent.

Cage wrote the piece for piano as "As Slow as Possible," or "ASLSP," in 1985, then adapted it for organ two years later, when it became known as "Organ2/ASLSP." The idea for the latest version was born in 1997, at an organ conference in the Black Forest town of Trossingen.

At a panel before a performance of "ASLSP," Mr. Metzger posed a question: since, in theory, an organ note can sound indefinitely, as long as a key is pressed, what is the limit for a piece like "ASLSP"? Days? Weeks? Years? Cage had not specified a length. "I mentioned that almost as a joke," he said.

Organists took up the discussion. "It means as long as an organ lives," Mr. Ericsson shouted, according to others present. Some suggested 1,000 years, but that idea was quashed.

"We have not had a good experience with 'a thousand years' in Germany," said the composer Jakob Ullman, referring to Hitler's Reich.

The other question was where to perform the piece. Mr. Ullman had an idea. As a boy, he would visit churches with his father, and he remembered clambering over the ruins of St. Burchardi. He knew Johann-Peter Hinz, a prominent sculptor in Halberstadt, and took the idea to him. Mr. Hinz, who suffered a stroke and fell into a coma shortly after the first chord sounded, agreed to push for it. A core group of organizers was formed, and the town let them use the church.

But the question remained: How long should the piece be? The first organ performance was 29 minutes. A recent recording lasts 71 minutes.

The group hit on a serendipitous fact: Michael Praetorius, a composer of the late 16th and early 17th centuries, had written that an organ with the first modern keyboard arrangement had been built in Halberstadt's cathedral in 1361. Subtract that number from the millennial year 2000, and the result is 639. Voilà. Problem solved.

The project has not been without disagreements. Some supporters wanted to build the organ all at once. Others wanted to pursue major contributors. Individuals can now sponsor one year of the piece for 1,000 euros and receive a plaque; nearly 100,000 euros ($127,000) have been raised, including other donations. A local businessman on the board was ousted for trying to take over the project, Mr. Hallegger said.

Others objected to what they saw as commercialization, and even to the establishment of the John Cage Academy, a center for the study of contemporary music, next door. "Only John Cage's piece is the thing that should be realized," said Mr. Ullman, who dropped out of the project early on. "I did a lot of work to think about what this performance could mean. Nobody read my papers."

All agree that nothing should interfere with the music. Solar power cells and a backup generator are on hand in case the electricity is interrupted. So far, the notes have flowed unimpeded.

"It's very important," Mr. Bandarau said. "It's what John Cage wrote."

[Agnes Selby]

Dear Ralph,

John Cage lamented that his mother "never enjoyed a good time".
This performance would ensure that she would stick to her principles.

Regards,
Agnes.

[Lance]

It's hard to believe that anyone would go to such an extent. Obviously it is a ploy to, perhaps, be listed in Guinness's Book of World Records. Who would bother with such a thing?

[Ralph]

It's hard to believe that anyone would go to such an extent. Obviously it is a ploy to, perhaps, be listed in Guinness's Book of World Records. Who would bother with such a thing?

*****

Mozart?

[val]

Slower than Klemperer?

[Agnes Selby]

It's hard to believe that anyone would go to such an extent. Obviously it is a ploy to, perhaps, be listed in Guinness's Book of World Records. Who would bother with such a thing?

*****

Mozart?

-----------

Why Mozart?

----------------

[Teresa B]

I'm just glad I don't live next door to the church.

Teresa

[Lance]

Slower than Klemperer?

Much slower, I'm sure!

And Mozart? I think he'd be appalled at such "music." THIS is the legacy of the twentieth century?

[jbuck919]

I'd just like everyone to know that the prime factoring of 639 is:

3 X 3 X 71

I think that explains everything.

[Ralph]

It's hard to believe that anyone would go to such an extent. Obviously it is a ploy to, perhaps, be listed in Guinness's Book of World Records. Who would bother with such a thing?

*****

Mozart?

-----------

Why Mozart?

----------------

*****

Why not Mozart?

[Ralph]

I'd just like everyone to know that the prime factoring of 639 is:

3 X 3 X 71

I think that explains everything.

*****

It certainly does. Thanks.

[IcedNote]

What a sorry excuse for a piece of music.

-G

[Agnes Selby]

It's hard to believe that anyone would go to such an extent. Obviously it is a ploy to, perhaps, be listed in Guinness's Book of World Records. Who would bother with such a thing?

*****

Mozart?

-----------

Why Mozart?

----------------

*****

Why not Mozart?

-----------

Why not Mozart?

Because: He had to compose, he had to teach, he had to attend
Masonic meetings and he had to perform. All in a day's work.
He had to make love to his wife, how else could he have fathered
6 children in a matter of 8 and a bit years?

There was also some gambling on the side. No, I don't think
Mozart would have had time to listen through eternity. Besides,
John Cage was beyond Mozart's understanding.
roll:

Regards,
Agnes.

[Werner]

Beyond mine, too.

[Agnes Selby]

Beyond mine, too.

Same here.
-----------------------------------------

[Mark Antony Owen]

Much like 4'33", this is Cage again reminding us how easy it is to be suckered by the Emperor's New Clothes ...

[jbuck919]

Much like 4'33", this is Cage again reminding us how easy it is to be suckered by the Emperor's New Clothes ...

4'33"" is the most misunderstood piece in the world. It actually has a manuscript, you know, but it is locked in the Royal Observatory at Greenwich. It was Cage's intent that the piece only ever be performed within four minutes, 33 seconds latitude of the prime meridian. I'm looking forward to a rare live performance in London as I hop my way back to the States in June.

[Mark Antony Owen]

Much like 4'33", this is Cage again reminding us how easy it is to be suckered by the Emperor's New Clothes ...

4'33"" is the most misunderstood piece in the world. It actually has a manuscript, you know, but it is locked in the Royal Observatory at Greenwich. It was Cage's intent that the piece only ever be performed within four minutes, 33 seconds latitude of the prime meridian. I'm looking forward to a rare live performance in London as I hop my way back to the States in June.

As a piece of conceptual art, I can understand it. But music?

[PJME]

Even if we despise Cage and his oeuvre, we cannot escape that he was and is an important figure of the 20th century. He cannot and should not be approached as a"traditional composer". However, for those who are interested in Historyand willing to read and inform themselves on Music and the perception of Art in general, he offers a challenging confrontation. Strange as it may seem, "Music"does not only consist of suave melodies and glorious harmonies.

Here's a fragment from a longer article on Cage in the 1950s.

http://honors.umd.edu/HONR269J/projects/dacey.html

During the summer of 1952, Cage collaborated with many of the faculty members to put on what was considered to be the first "happening." The basic idea behind a "happening" is that there is no center of attention for the performance. During the Black Mountain Piece, as it has come to be known, Cage was on a ladder at the side of the room reading various texts; Rauschenberg's white paintings hung from the rafters; Nick Cernovich projected movies onto a side wall; David Tudor played the piano and radio; and Merce Cunningham danced around the room. The audience, seated in the center of the room while various artists performed around them, could pay attention to whatever they found interesting around them. The idea was that, like in life, many things were happening that did not necessarily have any relation to each other. The audience is then challenged to accept and appreciate the different events that are just "happening" around them. This one piece alone sets the tone for Cage's work in the 1950s.

Not long after the "happenings" at Black Mountain College, Cage wrote a composition for a contemporary music festival held in Woodstock, New York that would shatter the traditional notion of western art music. The piece was 4'33", a piece composed completely as silence, written for any instrument or combination of instruments that lasts four minutes and thirty three seconds. The idea came from two sources, The "White Paintings" of Robert Rauschenberg, and the experience in the anechoic chamber in 1951. After Rauschenberg made his "White Paintings", Cage decided to apply the same principles to his music -- by composing the equivalent of a "White piece." Cage felt he needed to compose the piece, "Oh yes, I must: otherwise I'm lagging, otherwise music is lagging" (Kostelanetz 71). Cage's experience at Harvard in 1951 convinced him that there was justification for a "silent" piece, mainly because it really wouldn't be silent. Cage wrote 4'33" by painstakingly taking the time to compose each separate "note" of the piece by chance operation -- however he decided that every "note" would be silent. What Cage ended up with was a piece divided into three movements of varying length totaling four minutes and thirty three seconds. This deliberate act of composing added legitimacy to a piece that he, "knew would be taken as a joke and a renunciation of work" (Kostelanetz 69). Cage says he "probably worked longer on my 'silent' piece than I worked on any other. I worked four years" (Kostelanetz 71).

For the actual performance of the piece, Cage enlisted the help of pianist and fellow composer David Tudor. There were no directions on the original handwritten score, so Tudor had to find a way to signal the beginning of the piece and the divisions between movements and the end of the piece. He decided to close the lid of the piano to start the performance of the piece and to lift the lid of the piano after each movement. Being the first performance of this work, Tudor's actions became the "traditional" or accepted manner to perform the piece, although Cage always stressed that it could be performed by any number of players on any instruments.

The reaction for the crowd was of utter disgust and contempt as the piece progressed. Cage relates how the crowd reacted:

People began whispering to one another, and some people began to walk out. They didn't laugh -- they were irritated when they realized nothing was going to happen, and they haven't forgotten it 30 years later: they're still angry. (Kostelanetz 70)

The irony is that the piece was being performed at a festival celebrating modern music. Cage believed the audience "missed the point" of the piece because, "What they thought was silence, because they didn't know how to listen, was full of accidental sounds" (Kostelanetz 70). He remembers the sounds of the first performance: that during the first movement, one could hear the wind outside; during the second, the raindrops falling on the roof; and during the third, the sound of people talking and walking out of the concert. The effect of 4'33" on music can still be felt fifty years later. The piece has undergone several interpretations since the premier performance, not all of which Cage approved of. One performance had elaborate costumes and props and was carefully choreographed and staged, while in another, the students intentionally made noises to accent the silence of the piece. Both these interpretations clearly violate the philosophy behind Cage's motivation for writing the piece. Nevertheless, 4'33" is still performed today and remains Cage's signature composition.

The rest of the fifties, and the rest of Cage's works composed until his death, stand upon the legs of Cage's philosophy developed during these few crucial years. Cage composed a "sequel" to 4'33" in 1962 called 0'00". The piece is different in that it calls to be performed by anyone in anyway for any duration. The only stipulation is the use of amplification for the performance that takes any sound that is produced during the performance and makes it audible. His point in composing 0'00" was to show how even the simplest actions can produce sound, or in the piece's case, music.

The reaction to Cage's pieces was mostly of indifference and rejection. Due to Cage's radical approach to music, many people were not very appreciative of his compositions. Even in progressive New York City, concert goers "seemed to miss the point of his music; if they were not openly hostile, they treated the whole thing as some sort of joke" (Pritchett 34). The audience in Woodstock for the performance of 4'33" felt that Cage was trying to "pull the wool over their eyes" and therefore reacted with contempt. Classical musicians were perhaps the most harsh and critical of Cage's works. Cage wished to premier a work, Atlas Eclipticalis, with the New York Philharmonic under the direction of Leonard Bernstein. For the performance, Cage

gathered all that equipment, electronic equipment, to electrify the whole orchestra and to produce a situation that has never been heard before. Eighty-six instruments amplified and transformed and filtered to the public. An absolutely amazing situation. What did the musicians do? Tear their microphones off the things and stamp on them in fury! (Kostelanetz 73)

Cage mostly ignored criticism he received believing that most people didn't understand why he composed the music he composed. In fact, he saw society as "one of the greatest impediments an artist can possibly have" to creating good art. After receiving a review for a concert he gave in Seattle that stated the performance was "ridiculous," Cage's responded that he had no interest in the review because he "knew perfectly well it wasn't." He was always suspect of composition if he found that most everyone liked what he was doing, because he feared that if that was the case, then he must've changed something about the piece to appeal society. He felt it important to "live as I did before society became involved in what I am doing" (Kostelanetz 23).

The 1950s became the defining decade for John Cage when his ideas and philosophy combined with his music. Along with colleagues Robert Rauschenberg, Merce Cunningham, Jasper Johns, Morton Feldman, David Tudor, and many others, Cage expanded the concept of music, and on a larger scale, art. Cage's works and writings illuminate the idea that, "Art's obscured the difference between art and life. Now let life obscure the difference between life and art." (Patterson 79) The events of the 1950s were critical in defining John Cage's art for the remainder of his life.

References

Cage, John "An Autobiographical Statement" 1988 http://www.newalbion.com/artists/cagej/autobiog.html

Cage, John. For the Birds: John Cage in conversation with Daniel Charles. Salem, NH: Marion Boyars. 1976.

Cage, John. Silence: Lectures and Writings by John Cage. Hanover, NH: Wesleyan University Press. 1961.

Kostelanetz, Richard. Conversing with Cage. New York, NY: Routledge. 2004 (1987 orig.).

Patterson, David Wayne. Appraising the Catchwords, c. 1942-1959: John Cage's Asian-Derived Rhetoric and the Historical Reference of Black Mountain College. PhD thesis, Columbia University. 1996

Pritchett, James. The Music of John Cage. New York, NY: Cambridge University Press. 1993.

Solomon, Larry J. PhD. "The Sounds of Silence: John Cage and 4'33"". Pima College, 1998.

http://music.research.home.att.net/4min33se.htm

[miranda]

I love Cage's album Roaratorio, which features him reading selections from James Joyce's Finnegan's Wake against a backdrop of various sounds and Irish folk music. I also have an album of some of his piano music, which I do like. I think Cage was important historically, but most of what I've heard of his music I don't like that much.

639 years? Absurd, indeed. But I guess absurdity's the point, if there is one.

[IcedNote]

Will World War 3 count as Intermission?

-G

[Lance]

Agnes Selby said: "Why not Mozart? Because: He had to compose, he had to teach, he had to attend Masonic meetings and he had to perform. All in a day's work. He had to make love to his wife, how else could he have fathered 6 children in a matter of 8 and a bit years?

There was also some gambling on the side. No, I don't think
Mozart would have had time to listen through eternity. Besides,
John Cage was beyond Mozart's understanding.
roll:

Regards,
Agnes
___________________
_______________

Agnes: Beautiful. You crack me up. I needed a smile. But six children in eight years is not all that much time for producing that many children unless, of course, Mozart was working at it non-stop. Yes, I think he would have shuddered listening to Mr. Cage's "music."

[Agnes Selby]

Agnes Selby said: "Why not Mozart? Because: He had to compose, he had to teach, he had to attend Masonic meetings and he had to perform. All in a day's work. He had to make love to his wife, how else could he have fathered 6 children in a matter of 8 and a bit years?

There was also some gambling on the side. No, I don't think
Mozart would have had time to listen through eternity. Besides,
John Cage was beyond Mozart's understanding.
roll:

Regards,
Agnes
___________________
_______________

Agnes: Beautiful. You crack me up. I needed a smile. But six children in eight years is not all that much time for producing that many children unless, of course, Mozart was working at it non-stop. Yes, I think he would have shuddered listening to Mr. Cage's "music."

-----------

Dear Lance, It does seem a sort of a marathon run. The last child,
Franz Xaver Mozart was born in 1791 not long before his father's
death. Mozart married Constanze in August 1782. Its a wonder
that 6 children in so short a time did not kill her. Only two children
survived. Neither married so his musical genes died with them.

Just out of interest, the last surviving Mozart, a milliner from Augsburg
and the descendant of Mozart's cousin Basel to whom his notorious letters were addressed, died in a Nazi concentration camp.

She was visiting her psychiatrist at the Augsburg mental hospital at
a time when the Nazi's came to round up the patients. And so ended
the story of Mozart's family.

Regards,
Agnes.

[PJME]

I know, it is not easy, but you may try to read this;..
Introduction to The music of John Cage
James Pritchett

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Copyright 1993 by James Pritchett. All rights reserved.


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John Cage was a composer; this is the premise from which everything in this book follows. On the face of it, this would not appear to be a statement of much moment. Cage consistently referred to himself as a composer. He studied composition with Henry Cowell, Adolph Weiss, and Arnold Schoenberg. He spoke often of having devoted his life to music. He wrote hundreds of compositions that are published by a prominent music publishing house, which have been recorded, and which are performed regularly worldwide. He received commissions from major orchestras, chamber ensembles, soloists, and at least one opera company. He is mentioned in every up-to-date history of music. The only monograph devoted to him was in a series of "studies of composers." Of course John Cage was a composer: everything in his life points to this inescapable fact.

And yet, I must begin this book by defending the obvious. For, even though his credentials are clearly those of a composer, Cage has, as often as not, been treated as something else. It has been stated on various occasions by various authorities that Cage was more a philosopher than a composer, that his ideas were more interesting than his music. Cage, says one history of twentieth-century music, "is not to be considered as a creator in the ordinary sense."(1) Another critic wonders whether Cage, after deciding that "he was not going to be one of the world's great composers," refashioned himself into "one of the leading philosophers and wits in twentieth-century music."(2) The degree to which this has become the standard way of dealing with Cage is revealed in a story told by Kyle Gann: a writer for the New York Times was told by his editors that he could not refer to Cage as "the most important and influential composer of our time," but rather had to identify him as a "music-philosopher."(3)

For the Times editors, as for so many others, the problem with treating Cage as a composer is clearly a problem with his work after 1951. His compositions for percussion and prepared piano written in the 1940s have never been difficult for critics--his Sonatas and interludes of 1948 has even been called a masterwork. In 1951, however, Cage began to use chance operations in the course of his composition, and it is here that things go awry. His adoption of chance techniques is almost always seen as a rejection: a jettisoning of everything traditionally musical. External forces of irrationality (such as Zen Buddhism) are invoked as the cause of this break. Under such influences, it is believed, Cage decided to substitute the throw of dice for his own tastes, so that he could ultimately remove any trace of his personality from the composed work. By 1952, Cage had written 4' 33'', the silent piece; thus, in the words of one writer, "the authority of the composer [had been] extinguished."(4)

The crux of the problem, then, has been a failure to find some way of dealing with Cage-the-composer, his musical compositions, and his chance operations all at the same time. When faced with music composed using chance, critics have drawn a blank. How can one understand a randomly-made composition? What can one say about such a thing? To criticize it would be to criticize a random act; how does one judge the toss of a coin? The way out of this dilemma has traditionally been to ignore the music and dwell upon "the ideas behind it." For if Cage has left his music to chance, if he has thus extinguished his authority as a composer, then all that remains an idea--the idea of inviting randomness into his work. The pieces are thus about this idea of chance and are not concerned with anything even remotely musical. These are "conceptual" works in which, as one author writes, "the philosophical underpinnings are clearly more significant than any mere sound."(5) Cage's importance lies in his having originated these ideas, but the results are not music and are not to be evaluated as music. "Here the issues are all philosophical," says a noted composer of Cage's work, "because composing itself has been entirely devalued."(6) Thus Cage has become "a philosopher, not a composer."

The treatment of Cage as a philosopher has had some unfortunate consequences. Foremost among these has been the tendency to see all of his work after 1951--work which presumably shares the same idea about randomness--as an undifferentiated mass of "chance music." The reduction of Cage's music to this one-dimensional approach is made simpler by the nature of chance itself. Critics frequently assume that the compositions are formless and without distinguishing characteristics since they believe them to be, in effect, barely more than random noise. If everything in them is determined by chance, then there can be no stylistic difference between one work and another any more than there can be a difference between one list of random numbers and another. "Instead of a music of definable identity," says one writer, "we have conceptions whose essence is a lack of identity."(7) This failure to see any differences among Cage's chance works has led to their being treated in a superficial fashion; histories of his work tend to pass rapidly over the works composed after 1951, with a few brief descriptions and generalizations. Cage's critics have seemed to take the attitude that if Cage didn't care which sounds became part of his so-called compositions, then why should we bother to listen carefully?

It is this attitude and this approach that I reject in the strongest possible way. In the first place, the claim that Cage's chance pieces do not have distinct identities is complete nonsense. To state that one can not tell the difference between Music of changes, Music for piano, Winter music, Cheap imitation, and One--all chance-composed works for piano--is an act of either profound ignorance or willful misrepresentation. But beyond such an obvious error, the traditional view of Cage fails to answer the question: Why did he do it? If all that Cage was left with after 1951 was the idea of chance, then why did he continue to compose? Cage stated on many occasions that he did not like to repeat himself, that he preferred to make a fresh discovery with each new piece. How do we reconcile this with the textbook image of Cage-the-philosopher, pondering the same tired question for forty years? The portrayal of Cage as only a philosopher fails because it cannot serve as the foundation for a believable account of his work. It demeans the composer by presenting a flat, cartoonish version of his life, totally devoid of depth and insight.

Cage-as-philosopher is thus an image that will not bear close scrutiny; we thus must seek a new image, a new role for Cage. It is in this respect that I am, in this book, returning to the obvious: that Cage was a composer. It is not difficult, in fact, to picture Cage in this role: consider, for example, the story of his composition of Apartment house 1776, as told in an interview with David Cope.(8) The work was a commission to commemorate the bicentennial of the American Revolution; Cage thus wanted "to do something with early American music that would let it keep its flavor at the same time that it would lose what was so obnoxious to me: its harmonic tonality." Cage decided to take 44 pieces of four-part choral music by William Billings and other early American composers and then to alter them--turn them into new music. In his first version of the pieces, Cage simply subtracted notes from the originals. For each measure, he used chance to answer the question of how many of the four voices would remain. The results of this process did not suit him: "When I got to a piano and tried them out, they were miserable. No good at all. Not worth the paper they were written on. It was because the question was superficial." Cage then changed his method by adding silence as a possible answer to his question (in the first version, at least one voice always remained). The results were still "not good." Finally he changed the question itself. He counted the number of notes in a given voice of the piece, and then used chance to select from these. Supposing there were fourteen notes in a line, chance operations might select notes one, seven, eleven, and fourteen. In such a case, Cage would take the first note from the original and extend it until the seventh note (removing all the intervening notes); all the notes from the seventh to the eleventh would be removed, leaving a silence. Then the eleventh note would be extended to the fourteenth, followed by another silence. Each of the four lines thus became a series of extended single tones and silences. This was the version that Cage settled upon:

The cadences and everything disappeared; but the flavor remained. You can recognize it as eighteenth century music; but it's suddenly brilliant in a new way. It is because each sound vibrates from itself, not from a theory. . . . The cadences which were the function of the theory, to make syntax and all, all of that is gone, so that you get the most marvelous overlappings.

This is a description of a composer at work. In composing these 44 pieces for Apartment house 1776, Cage had a goal that was clearly defined. His first attempts at making the piece in accordance with his goals were failures. Cage evaluated these intermediate results, making refinements and modifications to his way of working. Through this process, he eventually produced a finished product that he judged beautiful, "brilliant," "marvelous." This is Cage, the composer, exercising his craft. The rejection of the first two versions of the pieces was not based on any random factor at all--it was not a matter of one set of random numbers being more "beautiful" than another. Instead, the focus of Cage's work was on the framework within which chance operated--the questions that he asked. "The principle underlying the results of those chance operations is the questions," Cage told Cope. "The things which should be criticized, if one wants to criticize, are the questions that are asked."

From his description of his experience in composing Apartment house 1776, Cage makes it clear that some questions are better than others, produce better music. Why did he reject those first methods of composition? Cage tells us that the first two sets of questions were rejected because the individual tones of the original Billings pieces were still locked up by the vertical structure of the tonal harmony--the harmonic structure was antithetical to his musical goals. In the ultimate arrangement, the tones of the four individual voices are extended beyond their original durations, so that they thus break the bonds of the harmony. Each tone is also surrounded on both sides by a silence. Together, these two factors--the breaking up of harmonies and the floating of individual sounds in silences--create the effect of each tone being exactly itself, separate from all the others: "each sound vibrates from itself."

This effect brings to mind the idea of "sounds being themselves," a common theme in Cage's work. What is made crystal clear in the story of his composition of Apartment house 1776 is that this idea is musical and not merely philosophical. That Cage chose one set of questions over another was purely a matter of taste and style. The frameworks for Cage's chance systems were crafted with an ear towards what sorts of results they would produce, so that the questions he asked form the basis of his own distinctive musical style. If either of the first two chance systems that Cage derived for this work had been used, the resulting 44 pieces would still be valid chance compositions--they would still adhere to Cage's supposed "philosophy." But it is only the third and final set of questions that could produce music that was Cage's, that had his style. John Cage evaluated his compositional questions on a strictly musical basis, and so should we.

To understand the music of John Cage, then, one not only needs to know something of the mechanics of his work, but one also needs an image of John Cage the composer--his sensibility, his musical style. As with any composer, this style changed over the years, and not just in 1951, either (in this book, I suggest 1957, 1962, and 1969 as major years of change in Cage's career, but there are others, and mine are not meant to imply a hard division of his work into periods). But constant throughout, from the earliest works to the last, was Cage's joy in composing: his exercising of his musical imagination, whether through the expressive "considered improvisation" of works such as the Sonatas and interludes, or through the design of elaborate chance-driven systems as in Music of changes, or through the simpler methods of his last works, the "number" pieces. In listening to these compositions, we are witness to the work of a man with a unique and very beautiful sense of musical style.

This book aims to present a coherent picture of this John Cage, the composing Cage. I have asked myself these questions: who was John Cage? What was his identity as a composer? Who was the man for whom this work was necessary? I do not present this as a biography, nor as a study of his compositions in themselves. Instead, the focus of this book is on John Cage's life as a composer, with what it was that he did and why he did it. In this way, one may say that I have written about something in between Cage and his works: the act of composing rather than the composer or the compositions.

This study is by no means comprehensive. Some of the compositions I mention only briefly, and others I do not mention at all. Similarly, there are some ideas and trends in Cage's work that I do not pursue at any great length. This is in part due to necessity--Cage wrote an enormous amount of music and his work touches on an astonishing range of other subjects. However, this book is also very much my own personal view of Cage's work, shaped by my own attempt to put the pieces of his life together into a coherent picture. In each chapter, I have tried to bring the various disparate materials together into some believable portrait of a composer's life, dispensing with everything but those ideas, techniques, experiences, compositions, and writings that I feel contribute to a satisfying and enlightening account of how and why Cage did what he did.

Cage once indicated that he wished critics would be "introducers": people who could take music and, by writing about it, turn it "into something you can deal with." This has been the model I have tried to follow in this book. By keeping uppermost in my mind the image of Cage composing, I have tried to write about his music in such a way that, in some sense, it will remain unexplained, but which will still make it into something that can be dealt with by each listener in his own way. In the end, there is no substitute for the direct experience of Cage's music itself: this book should be seen as opening a door into that work rather than presenting the final word on it. If you feel it necessary to listen to one or more of the pieces I discuss in the course of this study, then I will consider myself a success. Certainly nothing pleased Cage more than for others to enter along with him into his musical world.

Notes
(1) Eric Salzman, Twentieth-Century Music: An Introduction, 3rd ed. (Englewood Cliffs: Prentice Hall, 1988), p. 160.

(2) Donal Henahan, "The Riddle of John Cage", The New York Times, 23 August 1981, p. D-17.

(3) Kyle Gann, "Philosopher No More", The Village Voice, 25 August 1992, p. 77.

(4) Paul Griffiths, Cage, Oxford Studies of Composers No. 18 (London: Oxford University Press, 1981), p. 28.

(5) John Rockwell, All-American Music: Composition in the Late Twentieth Century (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1983), p. 52.

(6) Charles Wuorinen, "The Outlook for Young Composers", Perspectives of New Music 1/2 (Spring 1963), p. 60.

(7) Salzman, Twentieth-Century Music, p. 163.

(8) Cope's interview with Cage appeared in The Composer, Volume 10/11, pp. 6-22. The description of Apartment house 1776 occurs on p. 8.

James Pritchett home

[Ralph]

It's hard to believe that anyone would go to such an extent. Obviously it is a ploy to, perhaps, be listed in Guinness's Book of World Records. Who would bother with such a thing?

*****

Mozart?

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Why Mozart?

----------------

*****

Why not Mozart?

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Why not Mozart?

Because: He had to compose, he had to teach, he had to attend
Masonic meetings and he had to perform. All in a day's work.
He had to make love to his wife, how else could he have fathered
6 children in a matter of 8 and a bit years?

There was also some gambling on the side. No, I don't think
Mozart would have had time to listen through eternity. Besides,
John Cage was beyond Mozart's understanding.
roll:

Regards,
Agnes.

*****

John Cage is beyond MY understanding.