Writings through John Cage's Music, Poetry, and Art / Edition 2

by David W. Bernstein, Christopher Hatch

Overview

This volume looks at the creative work of the great avant-gardist John Cage from an exciting interdisciplinary perspective, exploring his activities as a composer, performer, thinker, and artist.

The essays in this collection grew out of a pivotal gathering during which a spectrum of participants including composers, music scholars, and visual artists, literary critics, poets, and filmmakers convened to examine Cage's extraordinary artistic legacy. Beginning with David Bernstein's introductory essay on the reception of Cage's music, the volume addresses topics ranging from Cage's reluctance to discuss his homosexuality, to his work as a performer and musician, and his forward-looking, provocative experimentation with electronic and other media. Several of the essays draw upon previously unseen sketches and other source materials. Also included are transcripts of lively panel discussions among some of Cage's former colleagues. Taken together, this collection is a much-needed contribution to the study of one of the most significant American artists of the twentieth century.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780226044088
Publisher:	University of Chicago Press
Publication date:	02/01/2000
Series:	Phoenix Fiction Ser.
Edition description:	1
Pages:	304
Product dimensions:	6.00(w) x 9.00(h) x 0.70(d)

About the Author

David Berstein is an associate professor of music and dean of Fine Arts at Mills College. Before his retirement in 1992.

Christopher Hatch taught music for almost 40 years at Columbia University.


David Berstein is an associate professor of music and dean of Fine Arts at Mills College. Before his retirement in 1992.

Christopher Hatch taught music for almost 40 years at Columbia University.

Read an Excerpt

Writings Through John Cage's Music, Poetry, and Art

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By Christopher Hatch

University of Chicago Press

Copyright © 2001 Christopher Hatch
All right reserved.
ISBN: 0226044084

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David W. Bernstein

ONE - "In Order to Thicken the Plot": Toward a Critical Reception of Cage's Music

In an essay entitled "History of Experimental Music in the United States," John Cage paraphrases a question put to Sri Ramakrishna: "Why if everything is possible, do we concern ourselves with history (in other words with a sense of what is necessary to be done at a particular time)?" And Cage answers, "In order to thicken the plot." The essay, written at the request of Wolfgang Steinecke, director of the Internationale Ferienkurse fur Neue Musik at Darmstadt, was published in the 1959 issue of the Darmstadter Beitrage. Cage's concern was to provide an international audience with a historical context for his work. He traces the radical developments in his style during the 1950s to the first half of the twentieth century and the American Experimentalist tradition. The essay outlines the attributes of experimental music, emphasizing the use of chance, indeterminacy, collage, and noise. It describes a new approach to musical form in which composers no longer felt the need to "stick sounds together to make a continuity," thus letting "sounds be themselves." Cage also points to the historical inevitability of the changes inhis musical style:

All those interpenetrations which seem at first glance to be hellish--history, for instance, if we are speaking of experimental music--are to be espoused. One does not make just any experiment but does what must be done. By this I mean one does not seek by his actions to arrive at money but does what must be done; by this I mean one does not seek by his actions to arrive at fame (success) but does what must be done; one does not seek by his actions to provide pleasure to the senses (beauty) but does what must be done; one does not seek by his actions to arrive at the establishing of a school (truth) but does what must be done.

The urgency and determinism conveyed by this passage seem out of place; it makes a modernist claim of historical progression--similar pronouncements by Cage's teacher Arnold Schoenberg come immediately to mind--within an essay promoting what today we would define as postmodernist aesthetic elements. Cage's linking of these ideas leads us to questions concerning his position within the history of twentieth-century art and ideas, and particularly his role in the development of modernist and postmodernist aesthetics.

While attempting to disentangle the many meanings of the term "postmodernism" and to clarify its relationship to modernism, critic Charles Jencks has explained that "Post-Modernism means the continuation of Modernism and its transcendence, a double activity that acknowledges our complex relationship to the preceding paradigm and world view." Jencks objects to the polarizing polemics pitting modernism against postmodernism, often expressed in lists of mutually exclusive elements of each worldview, such as "purpose vs. play," "design vs. chance," or "hierarchy vs. anarchy." Rejecting such reductionism, he argues that the emergence of postmodernism in the second half of the twentieth century does not entail a reversal, an abandonment of modernism. Postmodernism is "a hybridization, a complexification of modern elements with other ones"--which Jencks terms "double-coding."

Jencks's "double-coding" seems especially useful for understanding Cage's position within a broad historical context. There seems to be a consensus among literary critics that Cage played a vital role in "post-9 modernizing" music. Similarly, in a recent article, musicologist Charles Hamm maintains that Cage's work from the 1950s on was postmodern. These discussions have contributed to our understanding of Cage's aesthetics and musical style. However, if we draw a dichotomy between modernism and postmodernism with respect to Cage, we may overlook his ties with a modernist project devoted to political and social change through art. Moreover, if we underestimate his dependence on techniques associated with twentieth-century musical modernism, we may miss a valuable opportunity to clarify some of the problematic features of his musical style. The historical, stylistic, and cultural context for Cage's work makes up an extremely "thick" plot consisting of a subtle interplay between modernism and postmodernism. Indeed, as this essay will demonstrate, it is useful to consider aspects of both worldviews in order to find a path through the complex maze of interpenetrations that constitute the historical context for Cage's aesthetics and creative output.

II

Cage's relation to what Jurgen Habermas refers to as the "project of modernity" lies in his connection with the history of the most radical manifestation of modernism, the twentieth-century avant-garde. In placing Cage within this historical context, we must recognize that, while scholars have examined avant-garde aesthetics from a variety of disciplinary perspectives, historians of twentieth-century music have not addressed the topic adequately. Moreover, for the most part, musical historiography lacks a precise definition of the "avant-garde," even though the term is often applied to musical repertories from several different historical periods.

In its well-known military usage, an avant-garde constitutes the leading edge of an invading force. Similarly, in aesthetics and cultural history the avant-garde functions as a vanguard, paving the way for developments in artistic language. But the meaning of the term is far more complex, for it embodies sociopolitical as well as artistic issues. The notion of an avant-garde was first applied to the arts in the early nineteenth century by the father of utopian socialism, Henri Comte de Saint-Simon. He envisioned a society led by artists and scientists--an avant-garde that would spearhead a radical transformation of society: "What a most beautiful destiny for the arts, that of exercising over a society a positive power, a truly priestly function, and of marching forcefully in the van of all intellectual faculties, in the epoch of their greatest development! This is the duty of the artists, this is their mission."

The association of the avant-garde with sociopolitical radicalism continued in Europe throughout the nineteenth century. However, despite its long-standing historical association with political radicalism, in musical scholarship today, avant-gardism is often equated with artistic activities that have little or nothing in common with social change. Radical innovation and experimentation have in many cases become the sole criteria for the avant-garde. For example, the Ars Nova, the New German school, and the post-World War II generation of composers including Boulez and Stockhausen have all been characterized as avantgarde movements.

The history of the twentieth-century avant-garde began with the iconoclastic radical art movements known as futurism and dadaism. Both futurism and dadaism emerged from the economic, political, moral, and social upheaval surrounding the First World War. But while dadaism was a loose international affiliation of artists, writers, and poets revolted by the butchery of World War I, futurism represented a more insular movement, whose proponents were fervently nationalistic, misogynist, and pro-war. These sentiments were proclaimed by Filippo Tommaso Marinetti, who established futurism with a manifesto published in Italy in 1909: "We will glorify war--the world's only hygiene--militarism, patriotism, the destructive gesture of freedom-bringers, beautiful ideas worth dying for, and scorn for women."

In spite of the political and national differences between the two movements, the aesthetic assumptions underlying dadaism and futurism were remarkably similar. Both endorsed a total reformulation of contemporary aesthetic values accompanied by radical political and social change. The futurists adamantly rejected the past, particularly its artistic institutions. In his 1909 manifesto, for example, Marinetti even exhorted his followers to "destroy the museums, libraries, and academies of every kind." Although they were usually not as belligerent, dadaist writings often echo this disdain for the past and for institutionalized art. Thus, Tristan Tzara, a Rumanian artist and writer who played a major role in the Zurich dada movement, wrote: "The beginnings of dada were not the beginnings of an art, but of disgust. Disgust with the magnificence of philosophers who for three thousand years have explained everything to us (what for?), disgust with the pretensions of these artists-God's-representatives on earth, [and] disgust with the lieutenants of a mercantile art made to order according to a few infantile laws." In its most radical form, the early-twentieth-century avant-garde's rejection of institutionalized art was only part of an all-encompassing nihilism that looked forward to the downfall of social as well as artistic institutions. Walter Serner, an Austrian anarchist who was a member of the dadaist circle in Zurich, called for the complete destruction of present-day society. In a work entitled Letze Lockerung (1918), he explained that active dissolution of the status quo was itself a form of serious art. Art, or "anti-art" as it is often termed, was a means by which to destroy a corrupt and hopeless society.

The anti-art polemics produced by these movements also arose from a common understanding that art and life praxis are inseparable--a fundamental tenet of avant-garde aesthetics. This view was expressed in a variety of ways. The futurists celebrated the urban environment, with its chaos, noise, machines, and speed. Futurist painters attempted to capture what they termed the dynamism and simultaneity of modern life. Futurist musicians such as Antonio and Luigi Russolo invented noise-making machines (called intonarumori) so that they could use citylike sounds in their music. Dadaist artists pioneered collage and photomontage, techniques that sought to represent the real world during a time of chaos and revolution. Their poetry often employed almost random combinations of words and, in some cases, used only abstract sounds devoid of meaning in a new poetic style called "Verse without Words" or "Sound Poetry." This new form of verse was practiced by Hugo Ball, who with his wife, Emmy Hennings, opened the Cabaret Voltaire--a nightclub, founded in 1916, that served as a center for dadaist activities in Zurich.

Their fascination with chaos, irrationality, and simultaneity led both futurists and dadaists to the development of multimedia performance art. In a manifesto dated 1913, Marinetti described the "Variety Theater"--an early example of performance art in which jugglers, ballerinas, gymnasts, poets, and musicians all participated simultaneously. The purpose of such a wild spectacle was to engage and even infuriate the audience, as Marinetti's ideas for possible scenarios for his "Variety Theater" make clear:

One must completely destroy all logic in Variety Theater performances.. . . Systematically prostitute all of classic art on the stage, performing for example all the Greek, French, and Italian tragedies, condensed and comically mixed up, in a single evening--put life into the works of Beethoven, Wagner, Bach, Bellini, Chopin by inserting Neapolitan songs . . . play a Beethoven symphony backward . . . boil all of Shakespeare down to a single act . . . have actors recite Hernani tied in sacks up to their necks--soap the floorboards to cause amusing tumbles at the most tragic moments.

Marinetti's collaborative performances, which he called "Futurist Evenings," were staged all around Italy. Similar events were in vogue within dadaist circles.

Chaos and irrationality inspired dadaist experiments with chance. Hans Richter explains that the Alsatian painter and dadaist Jean Arp once, when dissatisfied with one of his paintings, tore it in pieces and threw it on the floor. To his amazement Arp noticed that the new configuration of scraps was more successful than the original. Chance had succeeded where the artist's original intent had not. Tristan Tzara also used chance methods in his poetry. He cut up newspapers into little pieces containing no more than a few words, then either selected pieces randomly from a hat or threw them onto a table. The new combination of words was then pasted together. These experiments anticipate Cage's first compositions using chance methods by more than thirty years. Again, the motivation behind this sort of activity was to bring art closer to the randomness that was seen to characterize real life.

Political and social activism, the rejection of tradition and institutionalized art, chaos, chance and irrationality, simultaneity, and the merging of art and life were the aesthetic principles endorsed by avant-garde movements in the early twentieth century. Dadaism, futurism, and the artistic movements that grew out of them--collectively known as the "historical avant-garde"--did not survive beyond the fourth decade of the twentieth century. The onslaught of World War I helped bring on the dissolution of futurism, although aspects of its ideology took root in Russia. The futurists' interest in the industrial world, for instance, was echoed by the Russian constructivists, who believed in a utilitarian art committed to the establishment of a classless society. Thus, initially, avant-garde art flourished in postrevolutionary Russia, but the relatively tolerant artistic climate that reached its apogee during the 1920s would decline under an increasingly totalitarian political regime. During the years after World War I, dadaism spread from Zurich to Berlin, Hanover, Cologne, New York, and Paris. It was in Paris that the movement began to break apart as a result of internecine rivalries and, above all, the impossibility of unifying a movement that embraced chaos and disorder. Although many of the artists and writers who helped create dadaism still remained productive, by 1924, after a series of confrontations, polemics, and public disputes, dadaism was finished. Surrealism emerged out of the ashes of dada, but by the beginning of the Second World War, this movement had also run out of steam, owing to its inability to align itself with the Communist party and the fact that few people could concern themselves with "discussions of sex, character, and potential behavior of a scrap of velvet at a time when fascists were burning books and killing people."

The collapse of the historical avant-garde did not prevent the dissemination of its aesthetic principles and artistic techniques. Cage played a crucial role in this development. Although his early percussion works gave noise a musical vitality that went far beyond the dadaist and futurist experiments, this new direction in his musical style was influenced, in part, by the historical avant-garde. Even more important was his interest in breaking down the barriers between art and life, a position with unmistakable parallels to the historical avant-garde. This aesthetic conviction drew Cage to many of the techniques used by the dadaist movement, such as simultaneity and chance methods. It resulted in the now famous "happening" at Black Mountain College in 1952 and the composition of 433 during the same year. The latter work, a piece for piano without sound, challenged the distinction between art and life. In so doing, 433 was perhaps Cage's most important contribution to the midcentury revival of avant-garde aesthetics. Cage's fascination with the sort of layered simultaneities employed in his Black Mountain piece extended throughout his career, from his early experiments with electronic media such as Williams Mix, to the enormous superimposition of electronic and other musical media in HPSCHD, to later works such as Roaratorio and the Europeras, which, although not intended in the same antagonistic spirit, resemble Marinetti's plans for his "Variety Theater."







Continues...

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Table of Contents

In Place of a Preface a Preface
Thinking I Think I Think
Ballad of Blue Green Plate
Fiddle of the Rat Faced Men
Total Valor
But Pharaoh Did Not Listen to Moses
Two Places at Once
Captain Cappuccino and His Merry Con Leches
From Talk Alone You Don’t Get a Poem
Immanuel Can’t but Sammy Can
In Between
Polynesian Days
Nickey, Turn Off the Lights (2)
The Age of Correggio and the Carracci
Poem
Like This
The Impunity of Garden Flowers
Johnny Cake Hollow
The Manufacture of Negative Experience
The Knees Have It
The Human Abstract
Poem Composed for Jackson Mac Low
Doggy Bag
The Throat
Anaffirmation
Little Orphan Anagram
Common Stock
The Smell of Cheap Cigars
Max Weber’s Favorite Tylenol for Teething
American Boy with Bat
Cover Up Me for I Cannot Myself Cover
Echo Off (Use Other Entrance)
Lily’s Dream
Continuity of Affiliation / Disabling Capacity
Memories
The Emotional Truth
Circumstraint
Your Ad Here
Empty Biscuits
If .Gif Were a Place
Ruminative Ablution
Today’s Not Opposite Day
Peanut Butter and Jellyfish
Mr. Matisse in San Diego
Egg Under My Feet
Low Regrets
It’s Always Fair Measure
Breastworks
Besotted Desquamation
O! Li Po!
Contagious Proximity
Windows 95
Pinot Blanco
My God Has an Attitude Problem
The Holler
The Inevitable Flow of Material Things Through the Pores of the Years
Hoods and Scatters
These Horses Do Not Move Up and Down
The Stepmother’s Hunger
"This Us Is Only . . ."
Ms. Otis Regrets
The Boy Soprano
No More Cartwheels Off the Dock
Frequently Unasked Questions
Inturpitude
Why We Ask You Not to Touch
Make It Snappy & That’s Final
Sprung Monuments
This Poem Intentionally Left Blank
Log Rhythms

Notes and Acknowledgments