in Buffalo, NY, 1987

26 May / June 2012 Jimmy Heath outside the Dorie Miller apartments, 2005

JOHN CAGE AND THE ENSEMBLE The ’s output both embraces and deconstructs the very notion of chamber music togetherness. His centenary offers us an opportunity for an overview. J OH N AT

s it heresy to canonize the compositions of John Cage, or to hope that they Cmight someday attain the AG status of E standard repertoire? Maybe so, if one Iadheres strictly to the composer’s artistic philosophy. Cage wanted to free music—and ultimately all the arts—from routine, pre- dictability, and hierarchy. This aesthetic was shared by his life partner, the choreographer Merce Cunningham, who died in 2009 and whose dance company (for whom Cage served as music director for nearly half a century) was disbanded soon thereafter, according to Cunningham’s wishes. Yet the music of John Cage (1912-1992) deserves to be admired and enjoyed by today’s performers and audiences, especially Iby Frank OO J. Oteri 27 “Cage composed tons of works Of course, viewing Cage’s entire output as chamber music is a bit whimsical—and impractical. Since I hope to for unconventional, one-of-a-kind encourage performances by today’s ensembles, let’s combinations, ranging from an abide by Chamber Music America’s definition of its realm—i.e., music for 2 to 10 players, scored one to a array of non-Western instruments part, and generally not requiring a conductor. Even when Cage’s oeuvre is pared down to fit within these to rocks and even cacti.” boundaries, we are left with 279 works to consider. (I derived this sum from the work list on the johncage.info website maintained by André Chaudron—arguably the most complete Cage resource. This number eliminates compositions that are incomplete, lost, unreconstructable, because few have produced a compositional or otherwise unavailable.) It’s a mind-boggling grand output as varied: there’s music that’s lusciously tonal, total that outstrips the chamber music output of the bracingly atonal, unfathomably microtonal, minimal, three B’s combined. maximal, and everything in between. First of all, Cage’s music is the cornerstone of the Arguably, Cage does not need to be absorbed into repertoire for small percussion ensembles (4 to 6 players). standard rep, or officially elevated into a composer One of the most visible of these on the scene today, So¯ pantheon. Homage to his work is implicit in any perfor- Percussion, marked the composer’s centenary with an mance involving chance, electricity, appropriation, all-Cage concert at Carnegie’s Zankel Hall on March 26. cross-cultural pollination, unconventional notation, or Among the works featured was the remarkable 1939 in which the sound of an instrument has been altered. tin-can, gamelan-sounding sextet First in While central to the composer’s legacy, these elements Metal; the pranksterish 1942 (Cage’s very perhaps unjustly overshadow another fact about his first score for Merce Cunningham, in which one of the oeuvre: in conception, if not in performance, it can be players operates a radio and a turntable); and Inlets considered almost entirely chamber music. (1977), which requires the musicians to make sounds In an anthology published in honor of Cage’s 70th with conch shells filled with water. And starting on April birthday in 1982, Robert Ashley, one of myriad composers 11, the Percussion Group of Southern Illinois University, Cage influenced, perfectly articulated the Cage chamber Carbondale, trumped So¯ by initiating a series of free music attitude: concerts on campus in which they are performing Cage’s complete music for percussion. It seems to me that John Cage’s music is essentially As might be imagined, Cage composed tons of chamber music in the way it’s supposed to be. works for unconventional, one-of-a-kind, “instrumental” I’ confirmed in that opinion especially when I combinations, ranging from an array of non-Western hear one of his big pieces. […] I have never seen instruments to rocks and even cacti. As musicologist one of the big pieces, no matter how big, turn Rob Haskins astutely points out in his liner notes for the into a state occasion. You can only appreciate it OgreOgress recording of Two3, Two4, and Inlets, Cage as a person. For instance, you never yawn, as at was particularly attracted to writing in such a way that state occasions. interpreters could not completely control the resultant Cage composed many works for solo instruments, but sound, thus ensuring that every performance would be he liked to encourage performance of two or more of them somewhat different from the others. In one of the more at the same time—creating, not so accidentally, chamber memorable New York City concerts last season, the music. And if this is chamber music by the process of chamber ensemble Ne()tworks performed selections addition, his often-flexible approach to orchestral works from the composer’s gargantuan . (Parts of yields chamber music by subtraction—as when small that concert were subsequently posted on YouTube.) subsets of the orchestra forces are granted license to One of the most open-ended scores in the collection, perform incomplete segments of his larger works. No. 36 (published in 1970), simply tells the performer to

28 May / June 2012 Cage, age 41, at home in Stony Point, New York

29 TO

eat and drink a total of three things. In the Ne(x)tworks concert, John Cage was famously uninterested in recordings of his own music composer Kenji Bunch obliged by consuming a burger and (or anyone else’s). Yet the two decades after his death have seen more fries and (as far as I could tell) the greater part of a bottle of than a hundred commercial releases dedicated exclusively to his works. bourbon. Also performed was Song No. 57, which instructs the Here are nine all-Cage releases that are must-listens. (The number 9 performer to sing a commonly known tune but to replace all of was generated randomly out of 100 via http://www.random.org.)­ the lyrics with the name of a celebrity; Kenji Bunch, again, sang —F. J. O. “The Star Spangled Banner” using only the name “Christina Aguilera,” while the rest of the ensemble performed other Cage John Cage: The Complete Gold and Fizdale. Josef Christof “songs” concurrently. An even wilder Cage conception is Musicircus String Quartets, Volume 2 proves a fitting partner for (1967), an anarchic happening in which an assortment of Arditti Quartet (Mode 27) Schleiermacher in these exciting chamber music groups are instructed to play whatever they With nearly 50 discs devoted to interpretations. want, simultaneously. Cage’s music thus far and more Such pieces are what gained John Cage worldwide attention to come later this year, Mode John Cage: Music for and no small amount of notoriety; but he also made generous Records has done more than Percussion Complete Edition, contributions to the literature for standard ensembles. There’s any other label to preserve the No.1: 1935–1941 a formidable output for violin and piano, string quartet, voice composer’s legacy on recordings. Amadinda Percussion Group and piano, and piano duo; a handful of pieces for other piano- This early item from the Mode (Hungaroton HCD 31844) plus-one configurations; and one work for a Pierrot-plus-percussion catalog, the fifth in an edition As impressive as Schleiermacher’s sextet with an additional viola. Early in his career, Cage even recorded under Cage’s supervi- complete piano recordings is composed a wind quintet, and near the end of his life he wrote sion, offers compelling accounts this collection of Cage’s entire pieces for saxophone quintet and recorder consort, as well as of the String Quartet in Four Parts percussion oeuvre on six CDs a work of indeterminate instrumentation that is perfectly and the late work Four (1989), by the Hungarian percussion suited to performance by brass quintet. written for the Arditti Quartet. group Amadinda. The first Perhaps foreshadowing what he would later write, Cage’s volume gathers many of Cage’s earliest surviving music—written in 1931, when he was just John Cage: Complete Piano now-classic percussion works, 19 years old—is a series of unfinished, untitled sketches for Music, Volume 5 (Two Pianos) including First Construction in unspecified instrumentation. (Never published, they are held Josef Christof and Metal and in a private collection in Paris.) His first two published works, Steffen Schleiermacher No. 1 (1939), the latter arguably both from 1933, are a Sonata for Two Voices (again with (Dabringhaus und Grimm DG the earliest American composi- instrumentation unspecified) and Three Songs for Voice and Scene MDG 613 0789) tion to feature electronically Piano, setting texts by Gertrude Stein. Soon afterward, he The German pianist/composer generated sound. Also in this composed a series of flute duets; a cycle of five quirky songs for Steffen Schleiermacher’s traversal volume is the delightful Double contralto and piano to texts by E. E. Cummings; a now frustratingly of Cage’s complete piano music, Music from 1941, co-composed lost string quartet; and the unassumingly titled Music for Wind filling some 18 compact discs, with another great American Instruments (1938), an extremely unusual three-movement is one of the most significant maverick, Lou Harrison. quintet in which the five instruments play together only in the undertakings in the cause of finale. In some of his earliest works, Cage explored an atonal Cage. While most of the set is John Cage: Three2, Twenty- compositional language, distinct from the work of his then- devoted to solo music, Volume Three, Six, Twenty-Six teacher and involving non-repeating 5 collects the music for two (OgreOgress Productions 1999) sequences of 25 pitches across registers. But he would soon pianos, including Music for Two In recent years, Michigan-based abandon precisely defined pitch altogether and devote himself (the two piano parts of Music for percussionist Glenn Freeman’s almost exclusively to composing for percussion, including the ______), Two2 (1989), and a label, OgreOgress Productions, —the latter his trademark “percussion ensemble rare example of Cage virtuosic has devoted many of its releases triggered by a single performer.” piano writing, albeit for prepared to first recordings of some of The wondrous array of timbres that Cage’s new palette pianos, in his A Book of Music Cage’s most challenging introduced reconciled him to repetition and led him to explore (1944), originally composed for scores—many of the late music and cultures beyond the West. He internalized these the celebrated American duo in particular.

30 May / June 2012 This first Cage issue from 1999 Finnegans Wake for voice and six), plus chamber music popular music. But in this admittedly defies many of the closed piano. (A wide range of renderings of a handful parts bizarre collection, primarily conventions of chamber music sounds are made by striking from Cage’s Concert for Piano culled from Song Books, jazz performance. The two percus- various parts of the piano and Orchestra (1958) and Atlas vocalist Katharine (a.k.a. sion works, Three2 and Six, are surface.) A bonus: Four Walls for Eclipticalis (1961), a work that Katchie) Cartwright is backed performed by Freeman alone, voice and piano—a 1944 dance nearly caused a riot among the by a stellar jazz quartet— multi-tracking. The two remaining drama, rediscovered after Cage’s members of the New York featuring Richard Oppenheim works, Twenty-Six, for 26 violins, death—in which in which the Philharmonic when Leonard on saxophone, James Weidman and Twenty-Three, for string two musicians never perform Bernstein programmed it. on piano, Cameron Brown on orchestra, are not actually cham- simultaneously. bass, and Bill Goodwin on ber pieces; but they are recorded John Cage: Two4, Two6, drums—for performances that here by smallish ensembles. The Barton Workshop Five2, Five5, Seven, Seven2 will forever change the way you (Twenty-Six is multi-tracked by Plays John Cage Ives Ensemble hear this music. Since the Song violinist Christina Fong. On (Etcetera KTC 3002) (hatART 2-6192) Books are very open-ended, Twenty-Three, Fong recorded all Another three-CD set, featuring Another Dutch ensemble these interpretations are totally the violin and viola parts and is performances by the Netherlands- tackles six of Cage’s late legitimate. Too bad Cage isn’t joined for the cello parts by Karen based Barton Workshop, under Number Pieces in remarkably around the hear them! Krummel.) The results, however, the direction of American expa- clear recordings from a label are extraordinary, and are the triate composer/trombonist known for experimental and John Cage: outcome of a DIY aesthetic that James Fulkerson, offers a broad free-jazz releases. Of particular Solo for Voice 58 — is at the heart of chamber music range of Cage’s chamber music note is the performance of 18 Microtonal Ragas practice. repertoire. The collection spans Seven, a work for Pierrot plus Amelia Cuni the 1933 Sonata for Two Voices, percussion configuration and (Other Minds OM 1010) John Cage: Complete works here viola. It’s also fascinating to A Song Books collection that for piano & voice / Complete performed on bass clarinet and compare the performances completely redefines Cage works for piano & violin flute, to Seven2 (1990) for diverse herein of Two6 and Seven2 with performance practice: dhrupad (Brilliant Classics 8850) bass instruments. There are also performances on the other discs singer Amelia Cuni takes the This three-CD set on the budget fabulous accounts of Hymnkus, listed above. Solo for Voice 58, which is label Brilliant Classics offers Music for ___ (in this case for based on Indian classical music stellar performances, by violinist Cartwright/Oppenheim: traditions, and returns it to its David Simonacci and pianist La Faute de la Musique — source. The result is a world Giancarlo Simonacci, of Nocturne Songs of John Cage music album like no other. and , as well as the (Harriton Carved Wax HCW 031) Number Pieces Two4 and Two6. John Cage notoriously disdained Vocalist Lorna Windsor jazz, rock, and most forms of joins Giancarlo for all of In a CBS-TV studio, 1967 Cage’s songs, includ- ing The wonderful widow of eighteen springs, a fasci- nating 1942 setting of a passage from

31 PLAYER 1

PLAYER 2 other ways of perceiving the world and tion of Socrate for a lengthier dance by Cunningham, for the rest of his life would transform but Satie’s publisher managed to block this re-imagined them to his own artistic ends. In 1944, he version because the work was not yet in the public domain. transcribed the opening section of Erik Cage’s ingenious solution was to create a new work to Satie’s Socrate, for piano duo, to accom- fit Cunningham’s already-completed choreography; it PLAYER 3 pany a dance by Merce Cunningham. was precisely as long as the Satie, and had the identical His immersion in Satie’s direct, almost metrical structure—but Cage changed every note to one effortless melodies, with their spare of his own. That score, , led to a series of tonal harmonies and their quality of similarly constructed compositions for a variety of PLAYER 4 seeming to come out of nowhere and to ensembles. Later that year Cage enlisted computer- be headed in no particular direction, composition pioneer to collaborate with inevitably inspired Cage to construct works him on HPSCHD, a work in which various fragments of along similar lines. Among these are melodies attributed to Mozart are played on seven

PLAYER 5 treasures of his chamber music output: harpsichords, while a mainframe computer distorts the gorgeous Nocturne (1947) and Six them into a variety of incompatible tunings that are Melodies (1950), both scored for violin played back during the live performance. Cage contin- and piano, and one of his “masterpieces” ued to explore processes of re- and de-composition An excerpt from the first page of (if I dare use such a word to describe throughout the 1970s, with early American hymns and Five, for five unspecified instruments. music by a composer who attempted to a variety of other works. The “time brackets” to the left of neutralize the concept)—the String Quartet In the mid-1980s, sustained tones and repeated each staff indicate when the music in Four Parts (also 1950). Hearing this material appear in Cage’s work with greater and greater must begin; those on the right, when it must end. Within those limits, the music now, one can only imagine how regularity, almost suggesting a bona fide tonality, albeit music’s placement and duration listeners would have reacted to its without linear narrative or predictability. Important are free. “There should be no radical simplicity sixty years ago. during this period is Music for ____, a 30-minute com- attempt to coordinate the parts.” But Cage soon abandoned fixed com- position from 1984 with a total of 17 distinct parts, no positional decisions altogether, first by score, and playable by any possible number of instruments using chance procedures to determine notated scores (hence the open-ended title; if six people are perform- and thereafter by presenting performers with scores ing the work, it is called Music for Six). Hymnkus (1986), that could not be realized the same way twice. These another 30-minute scoreless work for a sextet of alto included such works as Imaginary Landscape No. 4, flute, clarinet, bassoon, trombone and two pianos, has which has precise for turning dials on radios, been described by composer and new-music authority and the more widely known 4’33” (1952), in which a Kyle Gann as Cage’s response to minimalism; all instru- performer (a solo pianist at the work’s premiere) is ments play the same eight pitches within an extremely instructed to play nothing for three short movements narrow range of a perfect fifth. totaling four minutes and thirty-three seconds. (Cage’s The music Cage composed in the last six years of his point, of course, was that the music inheres in the ambi- life appears to have been a response to something else ent sounds that arise within the silence, wherever the entirely—the quiet, ecstatically static, and decidedly work is presented.) Ultimately, Cage went on to create nontonal music of , a composer whom works with abstruse scores whose elucidations always Cage had influenced nearly forty years earlier and with yield a different result, as well as many works, such as whom he maintained an association throughout his Musicircus, for which there is no score per se. In the even life. The first of these pieces, Two (1987), for flute and stranger VII (1966), a handful of players piano, is a ten-minute work in one movement. Again attempt to convey an entire world of sound by using there is no score, just the two independent parts that are amplified open phone lines to ten locations, which in written for the most part in standard musical notation. the original performance included The New York Times The flute part consists of a series of quietly sustained press room and the aviary at the Bronx Zoo. single tones, and the piano part is a series of block In 1968, Cage attempted to complete his transcrip- chords for each hand that do not necessarily line up

32 May / June 2012 Cage with Morton Feldman (left): Cage influenced Feldman early in the latter’s career, and his own late work shows the influence of Feldman. with each other. For both flute and piano, Cage specifies, thing akin to a sho¯ concerto— “The music Cage instead of precise timings, a range of possible times or with One8, a work for solo (measured to the second) in which each notated sound cello resulting in a concerto composed in is to begin and end. that is, at least nominally, Cage continued to compose similarly designed works more conventional. Curiously, the last six years for a broad range of instruments, almost to the complete as yet 108 has not been of his life appears exclusion of all other compositional approaches, up recorded on its own, and the until the end of his own life on August 12, 1992, just only complete recording of to have been a weeks shy of his 80th birthday. This final collection, One9 played independently is some fifty compositions, has come to be known as the an accordion transcription. response to the Number Pieces, since each is titled with two numbers: Luckily, OgreOgress Productions quiet, ecstatically the first denoting the number of musicians involved has issued a complete Two3 and the second, a superscript, functioning like the once- for sho¯ and conches on an static, and decidedly standard numbering of piano sonatas or string quartets, audio DVD. e.g., Four5 (1991) for saxophone quartet is the fifth The Number Pieces are struc- nontonal music of “number piece” Cage composed for four instruments. turally homogenous overall, Morton Feldman.” Thirteen of the Number Pieces are solo compositions, but the pieces sound very dif- and 13 are for large ensembles, although none in the ferent. With its quietly flowing latter group is meant to be conducted. The largest, 108 sustained notes that almost (1991), as per its title, requires some 108 musicians. The hint at triads at times, Five (1988) for five unspecified remaining 24 works can be said to represent Cage’s players (at its premiere it was Cage at the piano with the final flowering of chamber music, in the sense that each Kronos Quartet) sounds heavenly. (See an excerpt from is approached as chamber music. This group of can be Five, opposite page.) On the other hand, Seven2 (1990), a further broken down into solo, chamber, and orchestral nearly hour-long work scored exclusively for low-range categories, although the task is fraught with problems. instruments—bass flute, bass clarinet, bass trombone, For example, Two3, a massive duo in ten sections lasting cello, contrabass, and two percussionists on unspecified nearly two hours for sho¯ (a Japanese mouth organ) and instruments—is positively eerie. Its predecessor, Seven five conch shells, is predominantly a sho¯ solo with very (1988)—a 20-minute work for flute, clarinet, violin, viola, occasional conch intrusions. The solo part is actually cello, piano, and percussion—would fit comfortably on identical to Cage’s composition One9 for solo sho¯. To add most new-music programs today; whereas the more to the taxonomic confusion, the aforementioned unruly Eight (1991), an hour-long work for wind quintet orchestral work 108 can be played simultaneously with plus trumpet, tenor trombone, and tuba has an unset- three of the ten sections from One9—resulting in some- tling sonic ambiance. (The players are instructed not to

33 lmost as ambitious as Juilliard’s weeklong Cage Festival at the end of January, were A the performances of the complete Song Books in a marathon concert by the Vir2Ual Cage Project at CalArts on February 5. Meanwhile, the Tampa Museum of Art has been hosting an “audience perfor- mance” of 33 1/3 (1969), inviting audience members to bring in their own records to be played simultane- ously on multiple turntables; this happening began on January 28 and will last until May 6. tune up with one another before the performance, exacerbating the natural clash of sonorities in such a combination.) Several So¯ Percussion celebrated Cage at Carnegie in Number Pieces, such as the intense Five3 for trombone and string March, and the Percussion Group of Southern Illinois quartet, utilize a scale with 84 tones to the octave (resulting in University, Carbondale, performed the complete six pitches between each semitone). Such fine gradations are music for percussion on campus in April. playable only on fretless string instruments or the slide trombone. Other high-profile performances and festivals this In his final duo, the remarkable Two6, for violin and piano, the year were in San Francisco (sfSound, from January piano’s fixed 12-tone, equal-tempered scale clashes with the violin’s extended 84-pitch gamut, and the individual parts consist onward); in St. Paul (by Zeitgeist, April 12–15); and in of chains of melodies rather than sustained tones. Paris, where expatriate American pianist Guy Livingston After Two6, Cage completed only one more work, the mysterious will assemble several groups, including the enticingly Thirteen, a piece slightly too large to be considered chamber named Nothing Doing band for two days of Cage’s music and definitely too music (June 28–29). small to be orchestral music. As of this writing, the international calendar The John Cage centenary is generating fewer perfor- maintained by johncage.org lists only three performances mances than one might on Cage’s actual 100th birthday, September 5: all-Cage expect for a composer of celebrations spanning uptown and downtown in New his importance. Still, the York City (at Symphony Space and The Stone); and an year got off to an impressive all-Cage program at the National Gallery of Art in start. In January, Focus!— Washington, D.C., featuring an array of performers, The Juilliard School’s annual festival of contemporary including the gallery’s resident new-music ensemble. music—was devoted to Cage On September 15, however, Da Camera of Houston Postcard from Heaven, at Juilliard (albeit mostly to his less this past January (TX) will present a performance of Musicircus (related overtly iconoclastic works). to Da Camera’s CMA-funded residency with the Among the highlights were Meehan/Perkins Duo) and pianist Sarah Rothenberg performances of Music for Wind Instruments; Third Construction performing Cage’s 4’33” in conjunction with the (for percussion ensemble); Six Melodies, for violin and piano; and the String Quartet in Four Parts. Such an official embrace of exhibition Silence. Cage by a leading American conservatory may help pave the Stanford University will host three days of Cage way for a Cage entry into classical music’s canon.The canon concerts and symposia, October 10–12. needs John Cage’s music, if for no other reason than to shake There’s still ample time to make additional perfor- things up a bit. Two centuries ago, shook mances happen later this year.—F. J. O. up music by completely reinventing every music genre; nowa- days his revolutionary musical ideas are taken for granted. In an In February, Ne[x]tworks performed

era like ours, when nothing seems new or surprising, Cage’s PERFORMANCES CENTENNIAL from the Cage Songbook: (l to r) Shelley open-ended music is one of very few things that withstands Burgon, Ariana Kim, Joan La Barbara; homogenization and commodification. Yves Dharamraj

ASCAP Award-winning composer and music journalist Frank J. Oteri is the Composer Advocate for New Music USA (a new organization formed from the merger of the American Music Center and Meet The Composer) and senior editor of its web magazine, NewMusicBox (www.newmusicbox.org).

All of John Cage’s music is published by Henmar Press/ C.F. Peters.

34 May / June 2012