Tag: cage
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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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Hearing Webern and Feldman next to each other is a real ear-opener. The other day I decided to explore this a little further. I listened to the Webern Symphony again, then to two Feldman pieces from the time of that famous concert walk-out: Projection 1 for cello (1950) and Structures for string quartet (1951).
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I’m playing Federico Mompou’s Musica callada (“Silent music”) these days. The music is beautiful and strange. I was attracted to this music by its title, which immediately put me in mind of Cage’s string quartet.
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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.