Listen to This (37 page)
Authors: Alex Ross
Cage might easily have found a calling as a purveyor of delicate exoticism. Instead, he radicalized himself further. On a trip to Paris in 1949,
Cage encountered Pierre Boulez, whose handsomely brutal music made him feel quaint. In 1951, writing the closing movement of his Concerto for Prepared Piano, he finally let nature run its course, flipping coins and consulting the
I Ching
to determine which elements in his charts should come next.
Music of Changes,
a forty-three-minute piece for solo piano, was written entirely in this manner, the labor-intensive process consuming most of a year. As randomness took over, so did noise.
Imaginary Landscape
No. 4 employs twelve radios, whose tuning, volume, and tone are governed by chance operations.
Imaginary Landscape No.
5 does much the same with forty-two phonograph records.
Williams Mix
is a collage of thousands of prerecorded tape fragments.
Water Music
asks a pianist not only to play his instrument but also to turn a radio on and off, shuffle cards, blow a duck whistle into a bowl of water, pour water from one receptacle into another, and slam the keyboard lid shut.
Black Mountain Piece
, which is considered the first true sixties-style “happening,” involved piano playing, poetry recitation, record players, movie projectors, dancing, and, possibly, a barking dog. All this occurred in the eighteen or so months leading up to 4’33”, the still point in the sonic storm.
Cage encountered Pierre Boulez, whose handsomely brutal music made him feel quaint. In 1951, writing the closing movement of his Concerto for Prepared Piano, he finally let nature run its course, flipping coins and consulting the
I Ching
to determine which elements in his charts should come next.
Music of Changes,
a forty-three-minute piece for solo piano, was written entirely in this manner, the labor-intensive process consuming most of a year. As randomness took over, so did noise.
Imaginary Landscape
No. 4 employs twelve radios, whose tuning, volume, and tone are governed by chance operations.
Imaginary Landscape No.
5 does much the same with forty-two phonograph records.
Williams Mix
is a collage of thousands of prerecorded tape fragments.
Water Music
asks a pianist not only to play his instrument but also to turn a radio on and off, shuffle cards, blow a duck whistle into a bowl of water, pour water from one receptacle into another, and slam the keyboard lid shut.
Black Mountain Piece
, which is considered the first true sixties-style “happening,” involved piano playing, poetry recitation, record players, movie projectors, dancing, and, possibly, a barking dog. All this occurred in the eighteen or so months leading up to 4’33”, the still point in the sonic storm.
Did Cage love noise? Or did he merely make peace with it? Like many creative spirits, he was sensitive to intrusions of sound; years later, when he was living in the West Village, next door to John Lennon and Yoko Ono, he asked Lennon to stop using wall-mounted speakers. But he trained himself to find noise interesting rather than distracting. Once, in a radio discussion with Cage, Feldman complained about being subjected to the buzzing of radios at the beach. Never one to miss a good setup, Cage responded that in such a situation he’d say, “Well, they’re just playing my piece.” He also disliked Muzak, and in 1948 spoke of trying to sell a silent work to the Muzak company. Gann points out that in May 1952, three months before 4’33”, the Supreme Court took up a Muzak-related case, ruling against complainants who hoped to have piped-in music banned from public transport. There was no escaping the prosperous racket of postwar America. In a way,
4’33”
is a tombstone for silence. Kenneth Silverman, in his 2010 biography
Begin Again
, rightly emphasizes Cage’s later obsession with Thoreau, who said, “Silence is the universal refuge.”
4’33”
is a tombstone for silence. Kenneth Silverman, in his 2010 biography
Begin Again
, rightly emphasizes Cage’s later obsession with Thoreau, who said, “Silence is the universal refuge.”
Zen attitudes notwithstanding, Cage had a conservative, controlling side. It is a mistake to think of him as the guru of Anything Goes. He sometimes lost patience with performers who took his chance and conceptual
pieces as invitations to do whatever they pleased. Even his most earnest devotees sometimes disappointed him. Carolyn Brown recounts how puzzled she was when, after she had laboriously followed Cage’s instructions for one work, he reprimanded her for executing it “improperly.” If the idea is to free oneself from conscious will, Brown wondered, how can the composer issue decrees of right and wrong?
pieces as invitations to do whatever they pleased. Even his most earnest devotees sometimes disappointed him. Carolyn Brown recounts how puzzled she was when, after she had laboriously followed Cage’s instructions for one work, he reprimanded her for executing it “improperly.” If the idea is to free oneself from conscious will, Brown wondered, how can the composer issue decrees of right and wrong?
Even a piece as open-ended as
4’33”
is, ultimately, an assertion of will. Lydia Goehr, in her book
The Imaginary Museum of Musical Works
, notes that Cage is still playing by traditional rules: “It is because of his specifications that people gather together, usually in a concert hall, to listen to the sounds of the hall for the allotted time period.” If 4’33” is supposed to explode the idea of a fixed repertory of formally constrained works, it has failed, by virtue of having become a modernist classic. You could argue that this was Cage’s plan all along—his circuitous path to greatness. Richard Taruskin, in a cold-eyed 1993 essay reprinted in his collection
The Danger of Music
, proposes that Cage, no less than Schoenberg, participated in the Germanic cult of musical genius. Indeed, Taruskin writes, Cage brought the aesthetic of Western art “to its purest, scariest peak.” Perhaps Cage’s entire career was a colossal annexation of unclaimed territory. If, as he said, there is nothing that is not music, there is nothing that is not Cage.
4’33”
is, ultimately, an assertion of will. Lydia Goehr, in her book
The Imaginary Museum of Musical Works
, notes that Cage is still playing by traditional rules: “It is because of his specifications that people gather together, usually in a concert hall, to listen to the sounds of the hall for the allotted time period.” If 4’33” is supposed to explode the idea of a fixed repertory of formally constrained works, it has failed, by virtue of having become a modernist classic. You could argue that this was Cage’s plan all along—his circuitous path to greatness. Richard Taruskin, in a cold-eyed 1993 essay reprinted in his collection
The Danger of Music
, proposes that Cage, no less than Schoenberg, participated in the Germanic cult of musical genius. Indeed, Taruskin writes, Cage brought the aesthetic of Western art “to its purest, scariest peak.” Perhaps Cage’s entire career was a colossal annexation of unclaimed territory. If, as he said, there is nothing that is not music, there is nothing that is not Cage.
Though Cage no doubt had one eye fixed on posterity, he delighted less in the spread of his influence than in the fracturing of the tidy musical order in which he came of age. Gann makes a persuasive case that
4’33”
effectively split open the musical scene of the mid-twentieth century. He writes, “Listening to or merely thinking about
4’33”
led composers to listen to phenomena that would have formerly been considered nonmusical”—sustained tones, repeating patterns, other murmurs of the mechanical world. Cage cleared the way for minimalism, even if he showed little sympathy for that movement when it came along. He also spurred the emergence of ambient music, sound art, and other forms of relating sound to particular spaces. (If you stand on the north end of the pedestrian island in Times Square between Forty-fifth and Forty-sixth Streets, you hear one such piece—Max Neuhaus’s
Times Square,
a processing of resonances emanating from the subway tunnels below.) John Adams, in his memoir,
Hallelujah Junction,
describes how a reading of Cage’s 1961 book
Silence
encouraged him to drop out of East Coast
academia, pack his belongings into a VW Bug, and drive to California. The easiest way to pay tribute to Cage is to imagine how much duller the world would have been without him.
4’33”
effectively split open the musical scene of the mid-twentieth century. He writes, “Listening to or merely thinking about
4’33”
led composers to listen to phenomena that would have formerly been considered nonmusical”—sustained tones, repeating patterns, other murmurs of the mechanical world. Cage cleared the way for minimalism, even if he showed little sympathy for that movement when it came along. He also spurred the emergence of ambient music, sound art, and other forms of relating sound to particular spaces. (If you stand on the north end of the pedestrian island in Times Square between Forty-fifth and Forty-sixth Streets, you hear one such piece—Max Neuhaus’s
Times Square,
a processing of resonances emanating from the subway tunnels below.) John Adams, in his memoir,
Hallelujah Junction,
describes how a reading of Cage’s 1961 book
Silence
encouraged him to drop out of East Coast
academia, pack his belongings into a VW Bug, and drive to California. The easiest way to pay tribute to Cage is to imagine how much duller the world would have been without him.
When Gann talks about
4’33”
in classes—he teaches composition and music theory at Bard College—a student invariably asks him, “You mean he got
paid
for that?” Kids, Cage was not in it for the money. The Maverick concert was a benefit; Cage earned nothing from the premiere of
4’33”
and little from anything else he was writing at the time. He had no publisher until the 1960s. After losing his loft on Monroe Street—the Vla-deck Houses stand there now—he moved north of the city, to Stony Point, where several artists had formed a rural collective. From the mid-fifties until the late sixties, he lived in a two-room cabin measuring ten by twenty feet, paying $24.15 a month in rent. He wasn’t far above the poverty level, and one year he received aid from the Musicians Emergency Fund. For years afterward, he counted every penny. I recently visited the collection of the John Cage Trust, at Bard, and had a look at his appointment books. Almost every page had a list like this one:
4’33”
in classes—he teaches composition and music theory at Bard College—a student invariably asks him, “You mean he got
paid
for that?” Kids, Cage was not in it for the money. The Maverick concert was a benefit; Cage earned nothing from the premiere of
4’33”
and little from anything else he was writing at the time. He had no publisher until the 1960s. After losing his loft on Monroe Street—the Vla-deck Houses stand there now—he moved north of the city, to Stony Point, where several artists had formed a rural collective. From the mid-fifties until the late sixties, he lived in a two-room cabin measuring ten by twenty feet, paying $24.15 a month in rent. He wasn’t far above the poverty level, and one year he received aid from the Musicians Emergency Fund. For years afterward, he counted every penny. I recently visited the collection of the John Cage Trust, at Bard, and had a look at his appointment books. Almost every page had a list like this one:
.63 stamps
1.29 turp.
.25 comb
1.17 fish
3.40 shampoo
2.36 groc
5.10 beer
6.00 Lucky
1.29 turp.
.25 comb
1.17 fish
3.40 shampoo
2.36 groc
5.10 beer
6.00 Lucky
“I wanted to make poverty elegant,” he once said.
By the end of the fifties, however, Cage’s financial situation had improved, though not because of his music. After moving to Stony Point, he began collecting mushrooms during walks in the woods. Within a few years, he had mastered the mushroom literature and co-founded the New York Mycological Society. He supplied mushrooms to various elite restaurants, including the Four Seasons. In 1959, while working at the R.A.I. Studio of Musical Phonology, a pioneering electronic-music studio, in
Milan, he was invited on a game show called
Lascia o Raddoppia?
—a
Twenty One
—style program in which contestants were asked questions on a subject of their choice. Each week, Cage answered, with deadly accuracy, increasingly obscure questions about mushrooms. On his final appearance, he was asked to list “the twenty-four kinds of white-spore mushrooms listed in Atkinson.” Cage named them all, in alphabetical order, and won eight thousand dollars. He used part of the money to purchase a VW bus for the Cunningham company. The following year, he appeared on the popular American game show
I’ve Got a Secret:
as he had done on
Lascia o Raddoppia?,
he performed
Water Walk,
a piece that employed, among other things, a rubber duck, a bathtub, and an electric mixer. Cage charmed the audience from the outset; when the host, Carry Moore, said that some viewers might laugh at him, the composer replied, in his sweet, reedy voice, “I consider laughter preferable to tears.” (YouTube has the clip.) Radios were included in the score, but they could not be turned on, supposedly because of a union dispute. Instead, Cage hit them and knocked them on the floor.
Milan, he was invited on a game show called
Lascia o Raddoppia?
—a
Twenty One
—style program in which contestants were asked questions on a subject of their choice. Each week, Cage answered, with deadly accuracy, increasingly obscure questions about mushrooms. On his final appearance, he was asked to list “the twenty-four kinds of white-spore mushrooms listed in Atkinson.” Cage named them all, in alphabetical order, and won eight thousand dollars. He used part of the money to purchase a VW bus for the Cunningham company. The following year, he appeared on the popular American game show
I’ve Got a Secret:
as he had done on
Lascia o Raddoppia?,
he performed
Water Walk,
a piece that employed, among other things, a rubber duck, a bathtub, and an electric mixer. Cage charmed the audience from the outset; when the host, Carry Moore, said that some viewers might laugh at him, the composer replied, in his sweet, reedy voice, “I consider laughter preferable to tears.” (YouTube has the clip.) Radios were included in the score, but they could not be turned on, supposedly because of a union dispute. Instead, Cage hit them and knocked them on the floor.
As Cage’s celebrity grew, his works became more anarchic and festive. For
Theatre Piece,
in 1960, Carolyn Brown put a tuba on her head, Cunningham slapped the strings of a piano with a dead fish, and David Tudor made tea. (This is when Brown was reprimanded for playing her part “improperly.”) His lectures became performances, even a kind of surrealist standup comedy. In the midst of Cunningham’s dance piece
How to Pass, Kick, Fall, and Run,
Cage sat at a table equipped with a microphone, a bottle of wine, and an ashtray, placidly reading aloud items such as this:
Theatre Piece,
in 1960, Carolyn Brown put a tuba on her head, Cunningham slapped the strings of a piano with a dead fish, and David Tudor made tea. (This is when Brown was reprimanded for playing her part “improperly.”) His lectures became performances, even a kind of surrealist standup comedy. In the midst of Cunningham’s dance piece
How to Pass, Kick, Fall, and Run,
Cage sat at a table equipped with a microphone, a bottle of wine, and an ashtray, placidly reading aloud items such as this:
[A] monk was walking along when he came to a lady who was sitting by the path weeping. “What’s the matter?” he said. She said, sobbing, “I have lost my only child.” He hit her over the head and said, “There, that’ll give you something to cry about.”
Later in the decade, Cage incited mass musical mayhem in huge venues such as the 69th Regiment Armory in New York and the Assembly Hall at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. At the Armory, for a piece titled
Variations VII,
Cage and his collaborators manipulated two long table-fuls of devices and dialed up sonic feeds from locations around the city, including the kitchen of Lüchow’s Restaurant, the
Times
printing presses,
the aviary at the zoo, a dog pound, a Con Ed power plant, a Sanitation Department depot, and Terry Riley’s turtle tank. In Urbana-Champaign, six or seven thousand people materialized to hear
HPSCHD,
a five-hour multimedia onslaught involving harpsichords playing fragments of Mozart and other composers, fifty-one computer-generated tapes tuned to fifty-one different scales, and a mirror ball.
Variations VII,
Cage and his collaborators manipulated two long table-fuls of devices and dialed up sonic feeds from locations around the city, including the kitchen of Lüchow’s Restaurant, the
Times
printing presses,
the aviary at the zoo, a dog pound, a Con Ed power plant, a Sanitation Department depot, and Terry Riley’s turtle tank. In Urbana-Champaign, six or seven thousand people materialized to hear
HPSCHD,
a five-hour multimedia onslaught involving harpsichords playing fragments of Mozart and other composers, fifty-one computer-generated tapes tuned to fifty-one different scales, and a mirror ball.
The carnival element persisted to the end. His five
Europeras
(1985—91) mash together centuries of operatic repertory. (“For two hundred years the Europeans have been sending us their operas,” Cage explained. “Now I’m sending them back.”) But in the music of Cage’s last two decades you sense a paring down of elements and, often, a heightened expressivity, notwithstanding the composer’s rejection of personal expression. The musicologist James Pritchett points out that even Cage’s chanciest works have a personal stamp, because he took such care in selecting their components. The execution varies, yet the performances end up sounding more like one another than like any other piece by Cage or any other music in existence.
Europeras
(1985—91) mash together centuries of operatic repertory. (“For two hundred years the Europeans have been sending us their operas,” Cage explained. “Now I’m sending them back.”) But in the music of Cage’s last two decades you sense a paring down of elements and, often, a heightened expressivity, notwithstanding the composer’s rejection of personal expression. The musicologist James Pritchett points out that even Cage’s chanciest works have a personal stamp, because he took such care in selecting their components. The execution varies, yet the performances end up sounding more like one another than like any other piece by Cage or any other music in existence.
A case in point is
Ryoanji
(1983—85), which takes its name from the famous Zen temple and rock garden in Kyoto. Five solo instruments play a series of slow-moving, ever-sliding musical lines, their shapes derived from tracings of stones. A solo percussionist or ensemble supplies an irregular, halting pulse. The composer is not in full control of what the musicians play, yet he is the principal author of the spare, spacious, meditative music that emerges. Consider also the 1979 electronic composition
Roaratorio,
Cage’s response to
Finnegans Wake.
A verbal component, which the composer recorded in a vaguely Irish brogue, consists of words and phrases drawn from Joyce’s novel and arranged in mesostics. Around him swirls a collage of voices, noises, and musical fragments, based on sounds and places mentioned in the novel. Chance comes into play, but Cage has carefully followed the structure of the text. In the final section, the composer-reciter breaks into song, his folkish chant encircled by impressions of Anna Livia Plurabelle’s plaintive final monologue—cries of seagulls, rumbling waters, an intimation of “peace and silence.” It is an uncanny evocation of Joyce’s world.
Ryoanji
(1983—85), which takes its name from the famous Zen temple and rock garden in Kyoto. Five solo instruments play a series of slow-moving, ever-sliding musical lines, their shapes derived from tracings of stones. A solo percussionist or ensemble supplies an irregular, halting pulse. The composer is not in full control of what the musicians play, yet he is the principal author of the spare, spacious, meditative music that emerges. Consider also the 1979 electronic composition
Roaratorio,
Cage’s response to
Finnegans Wake.
A verbal component, which the composer recorded in a vaguely Irish brogue, consists of words and phrases drawn from Joyce’s novel and arranged in mesostics. Around him swirls a collage of voices, noises, and musical fragments, based on sounds and places mentioned in the novel. Chance comes into play, but Cage has carefully followed the structure of the text. In the final section, the composer-reciter breaks into song, his folkish chant encircled by impressions of Anna Livia Plurabelle’s plaintive final monologue—cries of seagulls, rumbling waters, an intimation of “peace and silence.” It is an uncanny evocation of Joyce’s world.
In his last years, Cage returned to his point of departure—the pointillistic sensibility of the early percussion and prepared-piano works. He released a series of scores that have come to be called “number pieces,” their
titles taken from the number of performers required
(Four, Seventy-four,
and so on). Within a given time bracket, players render notated material at their own pace—usually a single note or a short phrase. The result is music of overlapping drones and airy silences. “After all these years, I’m finally writing beautiful music,” Cage drily commented.
titles taken from the number of performers required
(Four, Seventy-four,
and so on). Within a given time bracket, players render notated material at their own pace—usually a single note or a short phrase. The result is music of overlapping drones and airy silences. “After all these years, I’m finally writing beautiful music,” Cage drily commented.
Beautiful but dark. As he grew older, the cheerful existentialist had crises of doubt, intimations of apocalypse. Darkest of all was the installation
Lecture on the Weather,
which he created for the Bicentennial. Twelve vocalists recite or sing quotations from Thoreau against a backdrop of flashing images and the sounds of wind, rain, and thunder. The proportions of the three sections are about the same as in
4’33”,
but nature makes a crueler sound than it did on that August night in 1952. Attached to the piece is a politically tinged preface that echoes, perhaps consciously, Cage’s teenage oration “Other People Think.” It ends thus:
Lecture on the Weather,
which he created for the Bicentennial. Twelve vocalists recite or sing quotations from Thoreau against a backdrop of flashing images and the sounds of wind, rain, and thunder. The proportions of the three sections are about the same as in
4’33”,
but nature makes a crueler sound than it did on that August night in 1952. Attached to the piece is a politically tinged preface that echoes, perhaps consciously, Cage’s teenage oration “Other People Think.” It ends thus:
We would do well to give up the notion that we alone can keep the world in line, that only we can solve its problems … Our political structures no longer fit the circumstances of our lives. Outside the bankrupt cities we live in Megalopolis which has no geographical limits. Wilderness is global park. I dedicate this work to the U.S.A. that it may become just another part of the world, no more, no less.
The last room of MACBA’s Anarchy of Silence exhibition was taken up with a 2007 realization of
Lecture on the Weather,
with John Ashbery, Jasper Johns, and Merce Cunningham among the reciters. I sat for a long time in the gallery, listening to the grim swirl of sound and observing the reactions of visitors. Some poked their heads into the room, shrugged, and moved on. Others seemed transfixed. One young couple sat for a while in the opposite corner, their hands clenched together, their heads bent toward the floor. They looked like the last people on earth.
Lecture on the Weather,
with John Ashbery, Jasper Johns, and Merce Cunningham among the reciters. I sat for a long time in the gallery, listening to the grim swirl of sound and observing the reactions of visitors. Some poked their heads into the room, shrugged, and moved on. Others seemed transfixed. One young couple sat for a while in the opposite corner, their hands clenched together, their heads bent toward the floor. They looked like the last people on earth.
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