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Silence: Lectures and Writings SILENCE I I I Lectures and writings by JOHN CAGE WESLEYAN UNIVERSITY PRESS , ;'~ i I I WESLEYAN UNIVERSITY PRESS Published by University Press of New England Hanover, NH 03755 Copyright © 1939, 1944, 1949, 1952, 1955, 1957, 1958, 1959, 1961 by John Cage Ali rights reserved First printing, 1961. Wesleyan Paperback, 1973. Printed in the U rUted States of America 15 Paperback ISBN {}-8195-602~ Library of Congress Catalog Card Number 61-14238 Many of these lectures and articles were delivered or published elsewhere from 1939 to 1958. The headnute preceding each one makes grateful acknowledgment of its precise source. To Whom It May Concern Other Wesleyan University Pre•• books by Jobn Cage A Year from Monday: New Le<tUT'f!$ and Writings M: Writings '67-'72 Empty Words: Writings '73-'78 X: Writings '79-'82 MUSICAGE: CAGE MUSES an Words· Art· Music ',l I-VI " About the Author His teacher, Arnold Schoenberg, said John Cage was "not a composer but an inventor of genius." Composer, author, and philosopher, John Cage was born in Los Angeles in 1912 and by the age of 37 had been recognized by the American Academy of Arts and Letters for having extended the boundaries of music. He was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 1978, and in 1982, the French government awarded Cage its highest honor for distinguished contribution to cultural life, Commandeur de l'Ordre des Arts et des Lettres. Cage composed hundreds of musical works in his career, including the well­ known "4'33"" and his pieces for prepared piano: many of his compositions depend on chance procedures for their structure and perfonnance. Cage was also an author, and his book Saenee was described by John Rock~ well in the New York Times as "the most influential conduit of Oriental thought and religiOUS ideas into the artistic vanguard-not just in music but in dance, art and poetry as well: John Cage's books published by Wesleyan are, Silence (1961), A Year from Mandey (1967), M (1973), Empty Words (1979), which Cage also regarded as a performance piece, X (1983), MUSICAGE (1996), and I-VI (1997). John Cage died in 1992 at the age of 79. " ',',',fq' , I I I I Foreword / ix I Manifesto / xii The Future of Music: Credo / 3 Experimental Music / 7 Experimental Music: Doctrine / 13 Composition"" Process / 18 I. Changes / 18 CONTENTS II. Indetermloocy / 35 III. Communication / 41 Composttion / 57 To Describe the Process of Composition Used In Music of Changes and Imaginary Landscape No.4 f 57 To Describe the Process of Composition Used in Music for Piano 21-52 / 60 ,) Forerunner. of Modem Music / 62 History of Experimental Music in the United States f 67 Erik Satie f 76 Edgard Varese / 83 Four Statements on the Dance / 86 Goal: New Music, New Dance f 87 Grace and Clarity /_89 In This Day .•• / 94 II Pages, lllll Words on Music and Dance / 96 On Robert Rauschenberg, Artist, and His Work / 98 Lecture on Nothing / 109 Lecture on Something f 128 45' for a Speaker / 146 Where Are We Going? and What Are We Doing? / 194 Indeterminacy f 260 Music Laoer' Field Componion / 274 , • " :,' FOREWORD For over twenty years I have been writing articles and giving lectures. Many of them have been unusual in form-this is especially true of the lec­ tures-because I have employed in them means of composing analogous to my composing means in the Seld of music. My intention has been, often, to say what I had to say in a way that would exemplify it; that would, con­ ceivably, pennit the listener to experience what I had to say rather than just hear about it. 'Ibis means that, being as I am engaged in a variety of activities, I attempt to introduce into each one of them aspects convention­ ally limited to one or more of the others. So it was that I gave about 1949 my Lecture on Nothing at the Artists' Club on Eighth Street in New York City (the artists' club started by Robert Motberwell, which predated the popular one associated with Philip Pavia, Bill de Kooning, et al.). 'Ibis Lecture on Nothing was written in the same rhythmic structure I employed at the time in my musical compositions (Sonatas and Interludes, Three Dances, etc.). One of the structural divi­ sions was the repetition, some fourteen times, of a single page in which occurred the refrain, "If anyone is sleepy let him go to sleep." Jeanne Reynal, I remember, stood up part way through, screamed, and then said, -~ while I continued speaking, "John, I dearly love you, but I can't bear another minute." She then walked out. Later, during the question period, I gave one of six previously prepared answers regardless of the question asked. 'Ibis was a reflection of my engagement in Zen. FOREWORD/lx At Black Mountain College in 1952, I organized an event that involved This collection does not include all that I ~have written; it does reflect what the paintings of Bob Rauschenberg, the dancing of Merce Cunningham, have been, and continue to be, my major concerns. films, slides, phonograph records, radios, the poetries of Charles Olson and Critics frequently cry "Dada" after attending one of my concerts or M. C. Richards recited from the tops of ladders, and the pianism of David hearing one of my lectures. Others bemoan my interest in Zen. One of the Tudor, together with my lua/iard lecture, which ends: "A piece of string, liveliest lectures I ever heard was given by Nancy Wilson Ross at the a sunset, each acts." The audience was seated in the center of all this activ­ Cornish School in Seattle. It was called Zen Buddhism and Dada. It is pos­ ity. Later that sununer, vacationing in New England, I visited America's sible to make a connection between the two, but neither Dada nor Zen is first synagogue, to discover that the congregation was there seated pre­ a fixed tangible. They change; and in quite diHerent ways in diHerent cisely the way I had arranged the audience at Black Mountain. places and times, they invigorate action. What was Dada in the 1920's is As I look back, I realize that a concern with poetry was early with me. now, with the exception of the work of Marcel Duchamp, just art. What I At Pomona College, in response to questions about the Lake poets, I wrote do, I do not wish blamed on Zen, though without my engagement with in the manner of Gertrude Stein, irrelevantly and repetitiously. I got an A. Zen (attendance at lectures by Alan Watts and D. T. Suzuki. reading of The second time I did it I was failed. Since the Lecture on Nothing there the literature) I doubt whether I would have done what I have done. I am have been more than a dozen pieces that were unconventionally written, told that Alan Watts has questioned the relation between my work and including some that were done by means of chance operations and one that Zen. I mention this in order to free Zen of any responsibility for my actions. was largely a series of questions left unanswered. When M. C. Richards I shall continue making them, however. I often point out that Dada nowa­ asked me why I didn't one day give a conventional informative lecture, days has in it a space, an emptiness, that it formerly lacked. What now­ adding that that would be the most shocking thing I could do, I said, "I adays, America mid-twentieth century, is Zen? don't give these lectures to surprise people, but out of a need for poetry." As I see it, poetry is not prose simply because poetry is in one way or I am grateful to Richard K. Winslow, composer, whose musical ways another formalized. It is not poetry by reason of its content or ambiguity / are diHerent from mine, who seven years ago, as Professor of Music at but by reason of its allowing musical elements (time, sound") to be intro­ Wesleyan University, engaged David Tudor and me for a concert and duced into the world of words. Thus, traditionally, information no matter who, at the time as we were walking along, introduced me without W/ll'll­ how stuffy (e. g., the sutras and shastras of India) was transmitted in ing to his habit of suddenly quietly singing. Since then, he has twice invited poetry. It was easier to grasp that way. Karl Shapiro may have been think­ us back to Wesleyan, even though our programs were consistently percus­ ing along these lines when he wrote his Essay on Rime in poetry. sive, noisy, and silent, and the views which I expressed were consistently Committing these formalized lectures to print has presented certain antischolastic and anarchic. He helped obtain for me the Fellowship at the problems, and some of the solutions reached are compromises between Wesleyan Center for Advanced Studies which, in spite of the air-condition­ what would have been desirable and what was practicable. The lecture ing, I have enjoyed during the last academic year. And he inspired the Where Are We Going? and What Are We Doing? is an example. In this University Press to publish this book. The reader may argue the propri­ and other cases, a headnote explains the means to be used in the event of ety of this support, but he must admire, as I do, Winslow's courage and oral delivery. unselfishness. Not all these pieces, of course, are unusual in form.
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