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ThePracticality of Chaos

ThePracticality of ChaosThe Musical History of John Milton Cage

© 2012 Timothy D. Walsh.All rights reserved. Except as permitted under U.S. Copyright Act of 1976, no part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, or stored in a database or retrieval system, without the prior writtenpermission of the publisher.

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Printed in the United States of America

Book Design by (Timothy D. Walsh)Editor or photographer names etc.

First Edition: February 201210 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

Table of Contents

Apprenticeship Period

First Chance Works

Happenings Theater

Return to Composition

Number Pieces and other Late Works

Modern Dance, Prepared Piano, and the Transition to Chance

About 1–2

3–4

5–8

9–12

13–14

15–18

19–20

About

1

ohn Milton Cage (born September 5, 1912, Los Angeles, California, U.S.—died August 12, 1992, New York, New York) American avant-garde composer whose inventive compo-

sitions and unorthodox ideas profoundly influenced mid-20th-century music.

The son of an inventor, Cage briefly attended Pomona College and then traveled in Europe for a time. Returning to the United States in 1931, he studied music with Richard Buhlig, Arnold Schoenberg, Adolph Weiss, and Henry Cowell. While teaching in Seattle (1936–38), he began organizing percussion ensembles to perform his compositions, and he began experimenting with works for dance in collaboration with his longtime friend, the choreo- grapher and dancer Merce Cunningham.

Cage’s early compositions were written in the 12-tone method of his teacher Schoenberg, but by 1939 he had begun to experiment with increasingly unorthodox instruments such as the “prepared piano” (a piano modified by objects placed between its strings in order to produce percussive and other-worldly sound effects). Cage also experimented with tape recorders, record players, and radios in his effort to step outside the bounds of conventional Western music and its concepts of meaningful sound. The concert he gave with his percussion ensemble at the Museum of Modern Art in New York City in 1943 marked the first step in his emergence as a leader of the American musical avant-garde.

In the following years, Cage turned to Zen Bud-dhism and other Eastern philosophies and concluded that all the activities that make up music must be seen as part of a single natural process. He came to regard all kinds of sounds as potentially musical, and he encouraged audiences to take note of all

sonic phenomena, rather than only those elements selected by a composer. To this end he cultivated the principle of indeterminism in his music. He used a number of devices to esure randomness and thus eliminate any element of personal taste on the part of the performer: unspecified instruments and numbers of performers, freedom of duration of sounds and entire pieces, inexact notation, and sequences of events determined by random means such as by consultation with the Chinese Yijing (I Ching). In his later works he extended these freedoms over other media, so that a performance of HPSCHD (completed 1969) might include a light show, slide projections, and costumed performers, as well as the 7 harpsichord soloists and 51 tape machines for which it was scored.

Among Cage’s best-known works are 433 (Four Minutes and Thirty-three Seconds, 1952), a piece in which the performer or performers remain utterly silent onstage for that amount of time (although the amount of time is left to the determination of the performer); Imaginary Landscape No. 4 (1951), for 12 randomly tuned radios, 24 performers, and conductor; the Sonatas and Interludes (1946–48) for prepared piano; Fontana Mix (1958), a piece based on a series of programmed transparent cards that, when superimposed, give a graph for the random selection of electronic sounds; Cheap Imitation (1969), an “impression” of the music of Erik Satie; and Roaratorio (1979), an electronic composition utilizing thousands of words found in James Joyce’s novel Finnegans Wake.

Cage published several books, including Silence (1961) and M: Writings ‘67–’72 (1973). His influ-ence extended to such established composers as Earle Brown, Lejaren Hiller, Morton Feldman, and Christian Wolff.

2

J

The piece was created in 1933 (the first and last movements composed on September 3 and 5, respectively) while Cage was studying music with Richard Buhlig (Nicholls 2002, 63). Buhlig convinced Cage to send the Sonata, as well as some other pieces, to Henry Cowell for publication in New Music; thus it became Cage’s earliest published piece. Cowell later suggested that the Sonata be performed at a New Music Soci-ety of California workshop in San Francisco. When Cage arrived, it turned out the clarinetist couldn’t play the piece, and Cage had to play it himself, on piano (Nich-olls 1990, 176). Cage also tried to get a Los Angeles Philharmonic Orchestra clarinetist to play the sonata, but the clarinetist refused

on aesthetic grounds (Kostelanetz 2003, 103). Later in life, Cage made some revisions and the sonata was finally published by Edition Peters, Cage’s principal publisher, in 1963. Although he disliked some of his early works, he considered the Sonata, according to a late interview, “very interesting” (Duckworth 1999, 8).

The Sonata is scored for a solo clarinet in B-flat. There are nodynamics, articulation or phrasing indications (Nicholls 1990, 176). Overall, the style is, in the words of Cage scholar James Pritchett, “chromatic, rhythmically complex, and unmetrical.” (Pritchett 1993, 7)

Sonata for Clarinet

Greek Ode, for voice and piano

1932

1935Quartet, for any four

percussion instruments

Composition for 3 Voices for three unspecified instruments

1933

1934

Apprenticeship Period (1932–36)3

and unmetrical.” (Pritchett 1993, 7)

“Pieces of music can be taken as models for human behavior, showing the practicality of anarchy.”

4

Imaginary Landscape No. 1 is a composition by John Cage. Written in 1939 at the Cornish College of the Arts in Seattle, Washington, the work is the first in Cage’s series

Imaginary Landscape No. 1

of five Imaginary Landscape pieces. Scored for four performers who play a muted piano and cymbal as well as two variable-speed phonographs with amplifiers, Imaginary Landscape No. 1 is impor-tant for being one of the first examples of electroacous-tic music.The work premiered on March 24, 1939 at Cornish College by John Cage, Xenia Cage, Doris Den-nison, and Margaret Jansen.

Metamorphosis, for piano1938

Bacchanale, for prepared piano

19401939

The Wonderful Widow of Eighteen Springs

1942

Prelude for Meditation for prepared piano

1944

Three Dances for two prepared pianos

1945

Modern Dance, Prepared Piano, and the Transition to Chance (1937–51)5

Three Dances for two prepared pianos

What is the nature of an experimental action? It is simply an action the outcome of which is not foreseen. It is therefore very useful if one has decided that sounds are to come into their own, rather than being exploited to express sentiments or ideas of order. Among these actions the outcomes of which are not foreseen, actions resulting from chance operation are useful. However, more essential than composing by means of chance operations, it seems to me now is composing in such a way that what one does is indeterminate of its performance. In such a case one can just work directly, for nothing one does gives rise to anything that I preconceived.

This necessitates, of course, a rather great change in habits of notation. I take a sheet of paper and place points on it. Next I make parallel lines on a transparency, say five parallel lines. I establish five categories of sound for the five lines, but I do not say which line is which category. The transpar-ency may be placed on the sheet with points in any position and readings of the points may be taken with regard to all the characteristics one wishes to distinguish. Another transparency may be used for further measure-ments, even altering the succession of sounds in time. In this situation no chance operations are necessary (for instance, no tossing of coins) for nothing is foreseen, though everything may be later minutely measured or simply taken as a vague suggestion.

“In the nature of the use of chance operations are the belief that all answers answer all questions”

6

Composed in 1947 for a segment of Hans Richter's surrealist film Dreams That Money Can Buy. The film contains several segments designed by different artists, and Cage's music was composed for a segment designed by Marcel Duchamp. The segment—a dream one of the characters is hav-ing—is titled "Discs" and consists mostly of Duchamp's rotoreliefs. These are designs painted on flat cardboard circles, which are to be spun on a phonographic turntable. The work was later choreographed by Merce Cunningham. The global structure is 11x11 (eleven sections of eleven bars each), the rhythmic proportion is 2, 1, 1, 3, 1, 2, 1. Similarly to Tossed As It Is Untroubled and The Unavailable Memory of, the work mostly builds on a single melodic line, which uses notes muted by weather strippings. This piece is one of the first to explore the idea of silence systematically: empty bars are juxtaposed with melodic passages throughout the piece.

Music for Marcel Duchamp

1947

Modern Dance, Prepared Piano, and the Transition to Chance (1937–51)

1950Six Melodies, for violin and keyboard instrument

1948Sonatas and Interludes, for prepared piano

1951Haiku for piano

7

Haiku for piano

8

First Chance Works (1951–59)

Imaginary Landscape No. 4 (March No. 2), for 12 radios, 24 performers and a conductor (April 1951)

Music of Changes, for piano Water Music for pianist using various objects

4’33” 4’33”(pronounced "Four minutes, thirty-three seconds") is a three move- ment composition. It was composed in 1952 for any instrument (or combination of instruments), and the score instructs the performer not to play the instrument during the entire duration of the piece throughout the three movements (which, for the first performance, were divided into thirty seconds for the first, two minutes and twenty-three seconds for the second, and the third being one minute and forty seconds). The piece purports to consist of the sounds of the environment that the listeners hear while it is performed, although it is commonly perceived as "four minutes thirty-three seconds of silence".

4’33” is Cage's most famous and most controversial composition, and by far the most well known of the numerous musical works that consist mainly of silence.

4’33” is an example of automaticism. Since the Romantic Era composers have been striving to produce music that could be separated from any social connections, transcending the boundaries of time and space. In automaticism, composers wish to completely remove both the composers and the artist from the process of creation. This is motivated by the belief that creation without social pressure is impossible, there is no way for us to truly express ourselves without infusing the art with the social standards that we have been subjected to since birth. Therefore, the only way to achieve truth is to remove the artist from the process of creation. Cage achieves that by employing chance (e.g. use of the I Ching, or tossing coins) to make compositional decisions. In 4’33”, neither artist nor composer has any impact on the piece, Cage has no way of controlling what ambient sounds will be heard by the audience.

1951 1952

9

“I have nothing to say and I am saying it and that is poetry.”

10

Music for Piano 21–36, 37–52, for piano solo or in an ensemble

Music for Piano 20, for piano1953

Variations is a series of works by American avant-garde composer John Cage. Some of the pieces in the series are seminal examples of inde-terminate music, others are happenings: performance pieces executed accord-ing to the score.

The first piece in the series is dedicated to David Tudor and was a belated birthday present. The score consists of six transparent squares: one with 27 points of four different sizes, five with five lines each. The squares are to be combined in any way, with points representing sounds, and lines used as axes of various characteristics of these sounds: lowest frequency, simplest overtone structure, etc. Said characteristics are obtained by dropping perpendiculars from points and measuring these perpendiculars. The piece is to be performed by any number of performers on any kind and number of instruments.

Variations I

1958

Winter Music, for piano 1957

1955

11First Chance Works (1951–59)

12

We know now that sounds and noises are not just frequencies (pitches): that is why so much of European musical studies and even so much of modern music is not longer urgently necessary. It is pleasant if youhappen to hear Beethoven or Chopin or whatever, but it isn't urgent to do so any more.

So that much of Ives (Charles Ives) is no longer experimental or necessary for us (though people are so used to knowing that he was the first to do such and such). He did do things in space and in collage, and he did say, Do this or this (whichever you choose), and so indeterminacy which is so essential now did enter into his music. But his meters and rhythms are no longer any more important for us than curiosities of the past like the patterns one finds in Stravinsky. Counting is no longer necessary for magnetic tape music (where so many inches or centimeters equal so many seconds): magnetic tape music makes it clear that we are in time itself, not in measures of two, three, or four or any other number. And so instead of counting we use watches if we want to know where in time we are, or rather where in time a sound is to be. All this can be summed up by say-ing each aspect of sound (frequency, amplitude, timbre, duration) is to be seen as a continuum, not as a series of discrete steps favored by conven-tions (Occidental or Oriental). (Clearly all the Americana aspects of Ives are in the way of sound coming into its own, since sounds by their nature are no more American than they are Egyptian.)

“Nor is harmony or counterpoint or counting in meters of two, three, or four or any other number.”

Happenings, Theater (1959–68)

Music for Piano is a series of 85 indeterminate musical composi-tions for piano. All of these works were composed by making paper imperfections into sounds using various kinds of chance operations.

The use of paper imperfections was suggested by fast techniques in painting. Cage recounts that us-ing the I Ching was always a very slow process. In 1952 a dancer (probably Jo Anne Melcher, the dedicatee of Music for Piano 1) made a request for a piece of mu-sic which was needed urgently, and Cage had to find a way to speed up the process:

Certainly I intended to continue working [...] by consulting the I Ching as usual. But I also wanted

to have a very rapid manner of writing a piece of music. Painters, for example, work slowly with oil and rapidly with water colors [...] I looked at my paper, and I found my "water colors": suddenly I saw that the music, all the music, was already there.Dedicated to Mori-yasu Harumi and composed in Osaka. This last piece in the series is different from the others: it is to be performed on its own, and live electronics are to be used. Glissan-di are used and feedback instruc-tions are given in the score.

Music for Piano 85

1962

Cartridge Music, for amplified sounds1960

Rozart Mix, tape loops1965

Variations VIII, no music or recordings

Assemblage, for electronics

1967

1968

13

Assemblage, for electronics

“Get yourself out of whatever cage you find yourself in.” yourself

14

1970

Return to Composition (1969–86)

1969 HPSCHD (pronounced “harpsichord”) 1974

Etudes Australes, for piano

1978 Etudes Boreales, for cello and/or piano (1978)

Song Books (Solos for Voice 3–92) is a collection of short works by John Cage, composed and compiled by the composer in 1970. It contains pieces of four kinds: songs, songs with electronics, directions for a theatrical performance, and directions for a theatrical performance with electronics. Any may be performed by one or more singers.

It was published in 1970 as three volumes: volume one contained Solos for Voice 3–58, volume two contained Solos for Voice 59–92, and the third volume, titled “Instructions”, contains various tables and other materials necessary for performance of some of the pieces. The work explores a very wide variety of notation systems. Some Solos are given in standard notation, others employ a special brand of notation with circles of different sizes and lines instead of notes, still others are systems of dots and lines, etc. Some are not notated at all: the text is given using different fonts and font sizes for different words, or sometimes changing in mid-sentence. Certain Solos consist only of instructions to the performer, ie. what he or she should do and how, although these instructions may be rather free (for instance, “Perform a disciplined action” may be an instruction, and according to Cage it does not mean “Do whatever you want”, but rather a request to dis-cipline oneself and/or free oneself of one’s likes and dislikes[1]).

Most of the texts are from Henry David Thoreau’s journals (and Volume 3 contains a photograph of Thoreau as material for one of the Solos); other authors whose texts Cage used in the work include Norman O. Brown, Marcel Duchamp, Buckminster Fuller and Marshall McLuhan. For Solo for Voice 91 Cage wrote his own text.

Song Books

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“There is no noise, only sound. I haven't heard any sounds that I consider some-thing I don't want to hear again, with the exception of sounds that frighten us or make us aware of pain. I don't like meaningful sound. If sound is meaning-less, I'm all for it.”

Return to Composition (1978–86)

1982An Alphabet, radio play

1986 Wishing Well, for four speakers

1986 Rocks, for various electronic devices

1985

Organ²/ASLSP (As SLow aS Possible) is a musical piece composed by John Cage and is the subject of one of the longest-lasting musical performances yet undertaken. It was originally written in 1987 for organ and is adapted from the earlier work ASLSP 1985; a typical performance of the piano piece lasts for about 20 to 70 minutes. In 1985, Cage opted to omit the detail of “exactly how slow the piece should be played”.

A 1997 conference of musicians and philosophers discussed the implications of Cage’s instruction to play the piece “as slow as possible”, given that an organ imposes virtually no time limits. A project emerged to perform the piece so that it would take a total of 639 years to play. A pipe organ that has been properly maintained has no finite life-span. The length was decided due to the first documented permanent organ installation, in the cathedral of Halberstadt in 1361, 639 years before the proposed start date in the year 2000. Therefore the piece was to be performed in the St. Burchardi church in Halberstadt, Germany, beginning in the year 2000 and lasting 639 years.

ASLSPASLSP

17

Rocks, for various electronic devices

Henry Cowell was for many years the open sesame for new music in America. Mos selflessly he published the New Music Edition and encouraged the young to discover new directions. From him, as from an efficient information booth, you could always get not only the address and telephone number of anyone working in a lively way in music, but you could also get an unbiased introduction from him as to what that anyone was doing. He was not attached (as Varese also was not attached)

to what seemed to so many to be he important question: Whether to follow Schoenberg or Stravinsky. He’s early works for piano, long before Varese’s Ionization (which, by the way, was published by Cowell), by their tone clusters and use of the piano strings, pointed towards noise and a continuum of timbre. Other works of his are indeterminate in ways analogous to those currently in use by Boulez and Stockhausen. For example: Cowell’s Mosaic Quartet, where the performers, in any way they

choose, produce a continuity from composed blocks provided by him. Or his Elastic Musics, the time lengths of which can be short or long through the use or omission of measures provided by him. These actions by Cowell Mae very close to current experi-mental compositions which have parts but no scores, and which are therefore not objects but processes providing experience not burdened by psychological intentions on the part of the composer.

18

Number Pieces and other Late Works (1987–92)

Similar in structure to a symphony, the work is in four movements (A, B, C, D) with silence occurring at the start, between each movement, and at the end. The percussion instruments are “distinguished from one another but not named” and should be “very resonant.” The piece may also be performed as a cello concerto with One8 (109a), as a shō concerto with any three movements of One9 (109b), and as a double concerto for shō and five conch shells with any three movements of Two3 (110).The first performance of One8 and 108 (109a) was performed by the Radio Symphony Orchestra Stuttgart, Nov. 30, 1991 with Michael Bach, cello soloist with curved bow.

1988 101, for Orchestra

1991

1992Sixty-Eight, for orchestra

1992One12, for solo lecturer

1990One , for piano5

108, for Orchestra

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One12, for solo lecturer

“The first question I ask myself when something doesn’t seem to be beautiful is why do I think it’s not beautiful. And very shortly you discover that there is no reason.”

20

ColophonJohn Cage is arguably one of the most influential American composers of the 20th century. From the very beginning of his career, it was obvious that he saw the world in a different light. His refusal to be confined by anything or anyone rewarded him with great recognition for his music. When he first started however this was not the case. It took some time before people became aware of what Cage was trying to accomplish. He wasn’t attempting to make beautiful or poetic music for that had been done before; rather he wanted to draw attention to the brilliance that is life itself. This is what people were attracted to, this idea that an instru-ment isn’t the only object that can make music. Cage’s experimental nature really cracked open the confines of what music had to be. Today, Cage’s work influences a wide variety of different genres and musicians. All of which stand on the very building block that is experimentation. John Cage was truly a pioneer of his time.

All information taken from several different websites: www.nytimes.com, www.biography.com, www.rosewhitemusic.com, www.wikipedia.org, www.nyc.org, www.goodreads.com. The other copy text is taken from Silence: Lectures and Writings by John Cage. This booklet was designed using Adobe Creative Suite 5. It is typeset in Minion Pro and Akzidenz–Grotesque. Thanks to Jan Kubasiewicz and my classmates in Typography 3.

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