David W. Bernstein

Cage and high modernism

During a lively correspondence with John Cage that took place around 1950, Pierre Boulez recognized parallels between his own development of integral serialism and the systematic procedures Cage used in the Music of Changes (1951). Boulez noted that Cage “has been working on setting up structural relations between different components of sound, and for this he uses tables which organize each component into parallel but autonomous distributions. The tendency of these experiments by John Cage is too close to my own for me to fail to mention them” (Boulez 1952a, p. 135). At that time, with the composition of Livre pour quatuor (1949), Polyphonie X for eighteen instruments (1951), and Structures for two pianos (1951–52), Boulez was intensely pushing the limits of the serial system. He saw similarities between the development of total serialism and Cages focus on the “individuality of sound,” particularly because the latter took into account all the attributes of sound: pitch, amplitude, timbre, and duration. Cage had reached a crucial point in the evolution of his musical style and aesthetics, the beginning of a life-long preoccupation with chance and indeterminacy. Yet, despite the fact that, on the surface, the determinism of total serialism seems diametrically opposed to Cages aesthetic agenda, Boulez and Cage had much in common. The relationship among the two composers is symptomatic of a larger historical issue, namely, Cages place within the development of musical modernism after the Second World War. We shall return to this broader context after examining the evolution of Cages musical style during the late 1940s and 1950s.

Techniques of appropriation in music of John Cage

Artists in the second half of the twentieth century, explained John Cage in 1965, have a unique opportunity to “think of past literature as material rather than art.” It is not surprising that Cage would welcome “borrowings” from the past, since he consistently advocated using the “entire field of sound.” Moreover, it is noteworthy that, in the 1960s, creative artists from a variety of disciplines began to work under similar aesthetic assumptions. During the same period, for example, Robert Rauschenberg created a series of paintings incorporating a vast array of contemporary images with photographic reproductions of classic works. Today such appropriations are a recurrent feature of much late twentieth-century art, music, film, and literature. Appropriation and its allied techniques of quotation, parody, and pastiche have also been a focus of postmodernist cultural theory. This paper places Cages musical appropriations within this larger artistic and intellectual context. Through a study of Cheap Imitation (1969), the Songbooks (1970), Apartment House 1776 (1976), and his Europeras (1987–1991), it shows how appropriation played a crucial role in the development of Cages musical style. Finally it suggests that the appropriation of music from the past allowed Cage to return to writing “expressive” music, a practice he had abandoned since the early 1950s.

John Cage's Cartridge Music (1960): ‘A Galaxy Reconfigured’

Cartridge Music (1960) initiated crucial developments in John Cages compositional processes and aesthetics. By allowing performers to use different sound sources and texts, it anticipated Cages more open indeterminate works. By creating a theatrical situation in which performers produce live electronic music, manipulating dials on amplifiers and inserting and removing objects in and out of phonograph cartridges, it looked forward to subsequent works focusing upon actions as well as sounds. Examining the performance practice Cage and his colleagues developed for this work also draws attention to his changing views regarding improvisation. Finally, with Cartridge Music, Cage adapted his music to his evolving perceptions of broader cultural practices. The amplification of sounds that would otherwise be inaudible, constituted a musical metaphor for Cages rapidly developing ‘McLuhanesque’ world view in which electronic circuitry creates an extension of the human nervous system to the outside world.

Cage (Re)Considered

This double-issue of Contemporary Music Review owes its existence to David Nicholls who suggested that we both edit collections of essays celebrating the Cage Centennial. The essays in the Nicholls issue, co-edited with Benjamin Piekut, focus on historiographical and aesthetic matters and elegantly realize its goal ‘to open new vistas on Cage’s work, and to challenge some of the orthodoxies that still shape the general view of his achievements’. Now appearing several years later, the present issue, originally planned as a companion to the Nicholls–Piekut collection, is now more of a sequel. Inspired by the challenges put forth by Nicholls and Piekut, its primary focus is on analyzing Cage’s music. The field of Cage research has grown substantially during the past two decades, a trend that culminated in 2012 with symposia around the world celebrating the Cage Centennial. But while increasing numbers of scholars critically appraise Cage’s ideas, discover new details about his life, and revise and problematize the reception of his work, there is less research devoted to his music. This situation is largely the result of the misconception, first addressed in 1993 by James Pritchett’s path-breaking monograph, The Music of John Cage, yet still prevalent in scholarly circles today, that Cage’s primary contribution to twentieth-century music was through his work as a musical thinker and as an avant-garde provocateur, but not as a composer. The nine essays in this issue cover works from virtually every decade of Cage’s compositional career. Their close analytical readings of Cage’s music reveal his intricate ties to the past, the influence of visual art on his stylistic development, and the impact of rapidly changing cultural practices on his aesthetics. Perhaps most significantly, essays in this collection investigate connections between Cage’s compositional processes and the way we hear his music, how ‘composing and listening’ engage in an ‘infinite play of interpenetration with themselves and with us’. I would like to thank the contributors for their patience during the extended time period required for the completion of our project. It was a pleasure to work with Contemporary Music Review, 2014 Vol. 33, Nos. 5–6, 449–450, http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/07494467.2014.998412

‘Listening to the Sounds of the People’: Frederic Rzewski and Musica Elettronica Viva (1966–1972)

During the early 1960s, composer and pianist Frederic Rzewski began to seek alternatives to the esoteric formalist music prevalent in the ‘Darmstadt era’. In 1966, along with his colleagues in Musica Elettronica Viva, he explored a form of free improvisation using live electronic music. Caught up in the whirlwind of radical politics shooting across Europe, MEV experimented with audience participation, brought its music into the streets, and performed in occupied universities and factories. Rzewskis early experiences with MEV would ultimately lead him to a lifelong commitment to musical activism, as a member of an avant-garde no longer appropriated by the very institutions it had traditionally opposed.