Sketching and Imitating: Cage, Satie, Thoreau, and the Song Books Jeff Perry ([email protected]) Society for Music Theory • Columbus, OH • November 10, 2019 Some examples from my talk aren’t reproduced here, since they include images that belong to the John Cage Trust or NYPL Special Collections. Example 1. Socrate is an incredibly beautiful work. There is no expression in the music or in the words, and the result is that it is overpoweringly expressive. The melody is simply an atmosphere which floats. The accompaniment is a continuous juxtaposition of square simplicities. But the combination is of such grace! --JC to Merce Cunningham, 1944 (Kuhn 2016, 66) With clarity of rhythmic structure, grace forms a duality. Together they have a relation like that of body and soul. Clarity is cold, mathematical, inhuman, but basic and earthy. Grace is warm, incalculable, human, opposed to clarity, and like the air. Grace is… the play with and against the clarity of the rhythmic structure. The two are always present together in the best works of the time arts, endlessly, and life-givingly, opposed to each other. --JC, 1944 (Silence, 91-92) Example 2. I am getting more and more involved with thoughts about society—the situation is so depraved. Have been reading Thoreau —Civil Disobedience. Getting his Journals, the new 2-vol. set. I want somehow to examine the situation, the social one, as we did the musical one, to change it or change “my” part of it so that I can “listen” to my “life” without self-consciousness, i.e., moral embarrassment. --JC to Morton Feldman, 1967. Reading Thoreau’s Journals, I discover all the ideas I’ve ever had that are worth their salt. --Cage and Charles, For the Birds, 1981. [Example 3:] Dedication and title page to Song Books] [Example 4:] Cage, pages from Solo for Voice 3] [Example 5]: Score page to Solo for Voice 8] Perry, Sketching and Imitating: Cage, Satie, Thoreau, and the Song Books Example 6. Bottom (at b): Satie, Socrate, I, mm. 154 ff. Top (at a): Corresponding passage, Cage, Cheap Imitation. Circled notes are, coincidentally, the same in Cage’s imitation and in Satie’s original. Example 7. “Cheap Imitation” solos in Song Books, showing provenance and usage of texts. Key: S = Song; SE = Song with Electronics; (R) = Relevant; (I) = Irrelevant Solo Music Text Text granularity 18 (Cheap Imitation Satie, Socrate, III, via Cage, V. Cousin, from Satie, Socrate, III, Syllable-level No. 1: III) Cheap Imitation, III subject to chance operations (Song Books Vol. 1, p. 65)—SE(R) 25 (Cheap Imitation Satie, Ludions No. 3, “La Fargue, “La grenouille américaine,” Syllable-level No. 2) grenouille américaine” syllable mix (SB Vol. 1, p. 89)— SE(R) 27 (Cheap Imitation Satie, “Kyrie” from Messe des Thoreau, Journal After August 6. Phrase-level No. 5) pauvres Walden Pond. 1845 (SB Vol. 1, p. 92)— S(R) 30 (Cheap Imitation Satie, Socrate, II, via Cage, “Text is a collage from Thoreau’s Phrase-level No. 1: II) Cheap Imitation, II Journal.” Also appears in M as “Song.” (SB Vol. 1, p. 98)— S(R) 34 (Cheap Imitation Satie, 12 Chorals Nos. 6, 7, 1, 8 Thoreau, from Essay on Civil Straight text, no No. 6) Disobedience chance (SB Vol 1, p. 111)— procedures S(R) 39 (Cheap Imitation Schubert, “Die Hoffnung,” D. Schiller, “Die Hoffnung” (Gedichte, Ch. Straight text, a No. 3) 295 74) few omitted (SB Vol. 1, p. 129)— syllables SE(I) 47 (Cheap Imitation Mozart, “Queen of the Night” Syllable mix drawn from the ten Syllable-level No. 4) Aria from Die Zauberflöte, K. “thunderclaps” of Joyce, Finnegan’s (SB Vol. 1, p. 163)— 620 Wake. SE(I) 85 (Rubbing No. 1) Satie, 12 Chorals Syllable mixes from Thoreau’s Journal Syllable-level (SB Vol. 2, p. 75)— S(R) [Example 8:] Pages from Thoreau, Journals, Dover Publications (1962). Perry, Sketching and Imitating: Cage, Satie, Thoreau, and the Song Books [Example 9:] Cage’s sketchbooks for the Song Books (1970). [Example 10:] Solo for Voice 27 (Cheap Imitation No. 5). [Example 11:] Score note describing how Cheap Imitation was composed (1969); excerpt from sketch for Solo 27 for Voice (1970). [Example 12:] Scales from Solo 27, first line. Example 13. (a) Opening of Solo 27 compared to Satie, “Kyrie” from Messe des pauvres (b) The same. Brackets indicate reapplications of “Step 3” from Cheap Imitation instructions. [Example 14:] Sketches for Solo for Voice 27 [Example 15:] Cage, Song Books, Vol. III. Excerpt from Table 6:1. [Example 16:] Cage, text to Solo 27, first two lines, showing provenance in Thoreau’s Journal. Examples 17-19: Left: Text to Solo 27. Right: Source material from Thoreau’s Journal. Perry, Sketching and Imitating: Cage, Satie, Thoreau, and the Song Books (1134) (7 syl.) LUS-TY GROWTH OF OAKS Well, now, to-night my flute awakes the echoes over this very water, but one AND PINES, generation of pines has fallen, and with their stumps I have cooked my supper, and a lusty growth of oaks and pines is rising all around its brim and preparing its wilder aspect for new infant eyes. (1393) (7 syl.) PHOE-BE CAME TO FIND The phoebe came into my house to find a place for its nest, flying through the ITS NEST windows. (11141) (7 syl.) RA-DI-ANT AS GEMS ON Chastity is perpetual acquaintance with the All. My diffuse and vaporous life becomes WEEDS as the frost leaves and spiculae radiant as gems on the weeds and stubble in a wintery morning. (12283) (6 syl.) TREES ARE LOS-ING These nests, I suppose, are made when the trees are losing their leaves, as those of THEIR LEAVES the squirrels are. (3551) (6 syl.) SPAR-KLES IN CLEAR COOL The main river is not yet open but in a very few places, but the North Branch, which AIR is so much more rapid, is open near Tarbell’s and Harrington’s, where I walked to- day, and, flowing with full tide bordered with ice on either side, sparkles in the clear, cool air,--a silvery sparkle as from a stream that would not soil the sky. (2742) (6 syl.) THE COW-SLIP IN BLOS- [Table of Contents to Journal:] SOM Of Men –– Protective Coloration –– Barbarelli’s Painting of a Warrior –– A Shanty in the Woods –– Tints of the Sky –– Growing Grass –– The Huckleberry-Bird –– The Spotted Tortoise –– The First Spring Flowers –– The Early Willows –– The Cowslip in Blossom –– Sprouting Acorns –– The Advance of the Season –– An April View –– Birds and Flowers. (5253) (7 syl.) MARCH, NO-VEM-BER FIF- [Title page of Journal:] TY THREE VOLUME V (March, 1853 – November, 1853) (912) (7 syl.) HOW COULD PA-TIENT PINE How could the patient pine have known HAVE KNOWN? The morning breeze would come, Or simple flowers anticipate The insect’s noonday hum, (9722) (7 syl.) BIRDS’ NESTS, TRACKS OF AN-I-MALS …looking for birds and birds’ nests and the tracks of animals; and, as often as it was written over, a new snow came and presented a new bank page. (564) (4 syl.) OUT-SIDE THE WALL, The highest condition of art is artlessness. Truth is always paradoxical. He will get to the goal first who stands stillest. There is one let better than any help, and this, –– Let-alone. By sufferance you may escape suffering. He who resists not at all will never surrender. When a dog runs at you, whistle for him. Say, Not so, and you will outcircle the philosophers. Stand outside the wall, and no harm can reach you. The danger is that you be walled in with it. (17392) (7 syl.) INDICATION OF WA-TER Some ten days later comes the high blueberry, or swamp blueberry, the commonest stout shrub of our swamps, of which I have been obliged to cut down not a few when running lines as a surveyor through the low woods. They are a pretty sure indication of water, and, when I see their dense curving tops ahead, I prepare to wade, or for a wet foot. Partial bibliography Perry, Sketching and Imitating: Cage, Satie, Thoreau, and the Song Books Bernstein, David. 2001. “Techniques of Appropriation in the Music of John Cage.” Contemporary Music Review, 20(4), 71-90. Brooks, William. 1982. “Choice and Chance in Cage’s Recent Music.” Gena and Brent 1982, 82-100. Cage, John. 1979. Empty Words: Writings ’73–’78. Wesleyan University Press. Cage, John and Charles, Daniel. 1981. For the birds: John Cage in conversation with Daniel Charles. Richard Gardner (trans.) M. Boyars. Callahan, Daniel M. 2018. “The Gay Divorce of Music and Dance: Choreomusicality and the Early Works of Cage-Cunningham.” Journal of the American Musicological Society 71:2, 439-525. Dorf, Samuel. 2007. "Étrange n’est-ce pas? The Princesse Edmond de Polignac, Erik Satie’s Socrate, and a Lesbian Aesthetic of Music?” French Literature Series 34: 87–99. Gena, Peter; Brent, Jonathan; Gillespie, Don C. 1982. A John Cage Reader in Celebration of his 70th Birthday. C.F. Peters. Kuhn, Laura (ed.). 2016. The Selected Letters of John Cage. Wesleyan University Press. Nakai, You. 2014. “How to Imitate Nature in Her Manner of Operation: Between What John Cage Did and What He Said He Did.” Perspectives of New Music 52:3 (Autumn 2014), 141-160 Patterson, David W. (ed.). 2002. John Cage: Music, Philosophy, and Intention, 1933-1950. Routledge. Pritchett, James. 1993. The Music of John Cage. Cambridge University Press. Pritchett, James. 2012. James Pritchett: Writings on Cage (& others). http://www.rosewhitemusic.com/cage/texts/SongBooks.html. Perry, Jeffrey.