Category: John Cage
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Just about all of the substantive pieces of music writing that I’ve produced in the last thirty years or so are available here. Most of these are about John Cage and/or Morton Feldman. I’ve curated a list of what I think are my “essential” texts and also provide an index to the pages and blog…
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All composers endure bad performances of their music. It’s always demoralizing and undermines self-confidence. Some solace can be taken in the knowledge that this experience is universal: it happens to all composers, the famous and the obscure, and at all points in their careers. This point was driven home to me recently when I discovered…
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Both Morton Feldman and John Cage at various times remembered fondly the long talks they had together during the 1950s, soon after they met. What did they talk about? One topic may have been a spiritual one: seeking something beyond their own sense of self in their work, something larger.
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“John Cage was a composer: this is the premise from which everything in this book follows.” Twenty years ago I opened my book on the music of John Cage with this strong statement. There were field marks by which I identified Cage as a composer, and I learned them by studying “the other subject” of…
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The bilingual (Portuguese/English) arts magazine Cine Qua Non has just published their John Cage tribute issue. It includes my essay on John Cage and silence.
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1. Silent prayer [I intend] to compose a piece of uninterrupted silence and sell it to Muzak Co. It will be 3 or 4½ minutes long—those being the standard lengths of “canned” music—and its title will be Silent Prayer. It will open with a single idea which I will attempt to make as seductive as…
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I’ve said that I’m more a storyteller than a musicologist. I was reminded of this while reading Kay Larson’s new book “Where the heart beats”. Our tellings of the story of Cage’s spiritual journey aren’t that far apart.
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I was contacted recently about a project to assemble a version of Cage’s ‘A dip in the lake’ in Potenza, Italy. They asked me if I would write a short text for the program book, and naturally I agreed.
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[This text was written for a booklet accompanying a performance in Potenza, Italy of John Cage’s A dip in the lake. The piece was done as a recording, based on field recordings made at 427 locations in and around Potenza.] “At the very least, it was an excuse for us to wander around the area we…
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The John Cage Trust has released an app for iOS and Android devices. It’s a demonstration of Cage’s prepared piano and ties into the recent recording of the Sonatas and interludes released by the Trust. I found it to be the perfect audiovisual aid for a recent class on the Cage string quartet.