From the Artistic Director John Cage was a great American In his composer and deserves centenary to be celebrated for his year, we have enormous contributions considered to the music of the 20th Cage as a century and beyond. Buddhist, That’s obvious, right? After all, thousands of a painter, concerts all over the world will have been devoted poet, and to celebrating this year’s Cage Centennial this philosopher. year. (He was born on September 5, 1912.) Yet in This weekend, those thousands of events we have seen relatively we focus on little attention played to John Cage, Composer. John Cage, We have seen multiple essays and a new book composer. describing Cage’s relationship to Zen Buddhism. We have seen exhibitions of his paintings, his poetry, his correspondence. We have focused on Cage’s personal relationship with Merce Cunningham and his aesthetic rapport with Rauschenberg and Duchamp. We have fêted his well-known interest in Thoreau, in Joyce and Satie. We have saluted the cross- cultural, and even countercultural impulses behind his devotion to chance procedures and the I Ching. A well-known composer, and good friend of mine, claims that Cage was a revolutionary theorist, “but not really a composer” – a view shared by Cage’s most famous teacher, Arnold Schoenberg, who while bemoaning Cage’s utter lack of sensitivity to harmony nevertheless proclaimed him to be, “an inventor of great genius.” Judging from the welcome outpouring of affection and attention this year’s centennial celebrations have presented, Cage is apparently “all of the above.” But is he a real composer? Our answer is, resoundingly, YES! He was a great composer, and furthermore, his music can stand alone as great music with SAN FRANCISCO CONTEMPORARY MUSIC PLAYERS 1 2012-13 SEASON or without the attractive aspects of his personal philosophy and So in his percussion music Cage could specify an artistic taste. action (“hit the gong now”) but not necessarily the The “Cage The celebration of John Cage by the San Francisco sound it would produce. Controlling what music Theorem” - Contemporary Music Players may be small by comparison to might act like rather than what it might sound keɪdʒ some – see the ten-day festival in Washington last month or like can be bewildering to listeners. Someone ˈθiːərəm - week-long celebration in Cologne in May, among many others. who taps his foot through Third Construction when strict But by restricting ourselves to a presentation of his works, we can might well wonder if the same composer was directives ask a single important question: Does the music of John Cage still also responsible for the metrically directionless engage us as “contemporary music,” that is to say music that exerts Freeman Etudes. Or perhaps a naturalist devotee in musical significant leverage on the welter of today’s aesthetic and cultural of music for amplified cactus (believe me, there construction concerns, or is his oeuvre now to be filed on the increasingly dusty are such people) will find herself completely at sea prescribe shelves of music history of the very recent past? in the mechanical world of the prepared piano. unpredict- With tonight’s concert, our hope is that Cage as the twenty- But there is a single coherent mind at work in ability in something composer of the late 1930’s and early ’40’s might speak all of this music. Consistency is a product of what sound and across the decades to today’s young composers. Is the sense of I think of as the “Cage theorem,” a behavioral style. delight and exploration, so present in the Cage works, a part of model whereby strictly emplaced limitations • their music as well? Are the musical processes and professional in the realm of musical construction allow for 4’33” is not a travails much different now? Will they understand each other, the rich unpredictability in sound and style. Nearly musical joke, young New York transplant by way of California six decades ago every Cage piece operates on this principal. The but rather and the young New Yorkers and Californians of today? Again, theorem dictates that the more securely anchored the ultimate I think the answer will be a resounding, yes, but let’s find out the formal dimension, the greater the amount of focus on together. chance-based freedom is possible. process over We start with the percussion pieces because they are indeed Take First Construction (In Metal) for product. points of departure, both to Cage’s notoriety as a composer but example: here we find a rigidly repeating cycle of also to contemporary percussionists as the foundational works of a 16-measure phrases, each subdivided regularly repertory. Here we see not just the opening of cultural floodgates into a strict rhythmic template. The sounds that whereby a Burmese gong is played next to a Mexican teponaxtl, fill this template, however, are a volcanic admixture of clangorous next to some Chinese tom-toms, next to a set of Oxen Bells (what metallic percussion. According to this formula, Cage did not claim are Oxen Bells, anyway?) By engaging the multiplicity of percussion to know what sounds his ensemble of percussionists would make, sounds Cage took an important first step along his path towards just when and for how long they would make them. indeterminacy. In subsequent years, increasingly rigorous formal mechanisms Think of all the possibilities implied in the simple indication of led to increasingly free sonic results until at the very midpoint of “medium gong.” This could be a gong from one of many cultures his life we have 4’33”, his famous piece in which a performer(s) and it could be played with a large variety of sticks. In short a does not play at all, leaving to complete chance the sounds that “medium gong” could mean a huge spectrum of sonic possibilities. will fill the four minutes and thirty-three seconds of musical time. 2 SAN FRANCISCO CONTEMPORARY MUSIC PLAYERS SAN FRANCISCO CONTEMPORARY MUSIC PLAYERS 3 2012-13 SEASON 2012-13 SEASON A long debunked mythology claimed that this was a piece of San Francisco Contemporary Music Players whimsy, a musical joke. In fact it is the ultimate focus on process Steven Schick, Artistic Director over product. It is a crystalline structure, filled with nothing. Indeed to paraphrase Cage himself, he had nothing to say and he was saying it. Construction So is this music, much of which is more than fifty years old, Thursday, October 25, 2012 • 8:00 pm still contemporary? I can only say for myself that the Cagean Yerba Buena Center for the Arts Forum universe still feels like home. It still feels like today. Like Cage, I believe that sound constrained by form and informed by occasion bears meaning even if those sounds are ultimately unpredictable. I MISSY MAZZOLI believe that composers, performers, and listeners enjoin an equally Still Life with Avalanche (2008) shared listening space in which each has responsibility and no Approximate duration: 10 minutes one has a free ride. I concur with Satie’s phrase, often quoted by Cage: “L’artiste n’a pas le droit de disposer inutilement du temps JOHN CAGE de son auditeur.*” I smile when I read Cage’s statement: “I can’t First Construction (In Metal) (1939) Approximate duration: 10 minutes understand why people are frightened of new ideas; I’m frightened of the old ones.” Second Construction (1940) With these sentiments in mind, we continue at Sunday’s Approximate duration: 7 minutes Musicircus with a kaleidoscopic array of his later music. On Sunday LEI LIANG we will hear Postcard from Heaven in a version for more than a Aural Hypothesis (2010) dozen harps. We’ll hear A House Full of Music for the members of Approximate duration: 11 minutes the San Francisco Girls’ Chorus singing their favorite songs, and West Coast premiere the Music for series for professional musicians playing their favorite sounds. We’ll offer recorded birdsong, water gongs, readings from his influential book, Silence, and a massed orchestra of radios. You Intermission can take a “musical walk” by picking up a map and taking a Dip in the Lake, or just sit still and hear what you’ll hear in 4’33”. We’ll SAMUEL CARL ADAMS visit his landmark works: the virtuosic Etudes Boreales for cello Piano Trio (2011) and percussionist playing the inside of a piano, and the ground- Approximate duration: 15 minutes breaking Concert for Piano. We’ll also have special guests, dancers West Coast premiere brought to us by Anna Halprin, a long-time Cage collaborator. JOHN CAGE In short you’ll hear the music of an American master: John Third Construction (1941) Cage, composer. Happy birthday, Mr. Cage. Approximate duration: 12 minutes – Steven Schick * The artist has no right to waste the listener’s time. 4 SAN FRANCISCO CONTEMPORARY MUSIC PLAYERS 2012-13 SEASON The Performers Thank You Steven Schick, conductor/percussion The San Francisco Contemporary Music Players wish to thank Tod Brody, flute Isabel Yrigoyen and the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts for their Bill Kalinkos, clarinet extraordinary openness and collaborative spirit. We also thank Keisuke Nakagoshi, piano Kathy Budas, Maureen Dixon, Michael LoPresti, and everyone on William Winant, percussion the YBCA marketing and PR teams, Jose Maria Francos, Kathy Daniel Kennedy, percussion Rose, Roko Kawai, and everyone else who played a part in this Christopher Froh, percussion weekend’s collaboration. Loren Mach, percussion (Mazzoli, Liang, First Construction) Megan Shieh, percussion (First Construction) We thank the musicians and student percussionists from UC Davis, Roy Malan, violin Mills College, and Sacramento State University, our exquisite harp Stephen Harrison, cello ensemble, and the other guest artists, including the lovely young voices of the San Francisco Girls Chorus.