John Cage's Lonely Grant Application

There were many, many dinner parties at Merce Cunningham's loft over the years, but one in particular comes to mind with regard to the subject of the present blog.

I was preparing food at the long wooden block just inside the kitchen, greeting guests as they came in the front door. Merce was seated on one of the barstools just across from me, and Jasper Johns, one of the first guests to arrive, lingered as he came in to chat. I was in a particularly disgruntled mood, sharing my thoughts with the composer Mikel Rouse, another early guest, about the difficulties of being an artist in today's society. It was a mundane conversation, one of many, this time on the heels, if memory serves, of the dissolution of the N.E.A.'s program of awarding grants to individual artists. "It's virtually impossible to be an artist today" we jointly bemoaned to anyone who'd listen. Jasper snorted a bit, rolled his eyes, and turned to Merce with an aside. "Yes," he said. "It was so easy when we were starting out!"

I was humbled, to say the least, since it is of course true that any artist worth his or her salt finds life difficult for any number of reasons, be it 50 years ago or today. So, apropros this little anecdote, I thought it might interest people to take a look at John Cage's only grant application, submitted sometime around 1940, when he was not yet 30 years old, to the Guggenheim Foundation.  He was requesting support for a Center of Experimental Music at Mills College with the stated purpose of undertaking "research in the field of sounds and rhythms formerly considered not music."

I'm not sure if this will make you feel better or worse, but his application was denied.

Laura Kuhn

3 Good Reads

All manner of books come to my notice here at the John Cage Trust, and some want far wider attention than they might otherwise receive from normal channels of publisher distribution and advertising.  Hence, here are three mini-reviews of my summer reading thus far!

The biggest surprise is Jannika Bock's Concord in Massachusetts, Discord in the World: The Writings of Henry Thoreau and John Cage, a dissertation completed at the University of Hamburg (2008) and published as Volume 6 in the "American Cultures Series" by Peter Lang.  Barring the obstacles to pure reading pleasure inherent in any academic writing -- text that argues incessantly with itself, the repetitive reiteration of what's been said and what will be said -- this is an extremely useful book, fairly comprehensive of an extremely important topic.  I say fairly because Bock's coverage is limited to Cage's published writings, without benefit of the lesser-known manuscripts housed here at the John Cage Trust.  Nonetheless, I found this book extremely illuminating, but maybe less for what is said about John Cage than for what is said about Henry David Thoreau.  The author is German born, and her work is further testament, if any is needed, to the value of outside eyes that look pointedly in.  We know that Thoreau was important to Cage, evidenced by the many works by Cage that rely in one way or another upon the work of Thoreau, but after reading this book I'm tempted to go further and say that Cage may in fact have been Thoreau's embodiment in music.

Another remarkable book that I've watched long in the making is Renee Levine Packer's The Life of Sounds: Evenings for New Music in Buffalo (2010), now available from Oxford University Press.  This is a compelling account of the lively new music scene that began at the State University of Buffalo in the 1960s that culminated with the appointment of Morton Feldman as director in the 1970s (following in the formidable wake of Lukas Foss and Lejaren Hiller). The text is authoritative and insightful (Levine Packer was a key official with the Center of the Creative and Performing Arts), and also beautifully written. Cage figures nicely here, of course, alongside the veritable who's who that was Buffalo at the time: George Crumb, Terry Riley, Cornelius Cardew, Maryanne Amacher, Frederic Rzewski, David Tudor, Julius Eastman, Jim Tenney, Iannis Xenakis, and many, many others.  The book provides valuable accounts of the Center's influential concert series, "Evenings for New Music," and the extensive appendix materials include a useful timeline, interviews, a roster of the Creative Associates (and graduate fellows) from 1964 to 1980, and a selected discography of recordings by members of the Center.  Brava, Renee!

And, I'm happy to say that I was privileged last week to read the galley proofs of Kenneth Silverman's long-awaited and now forthcoming Begin Again: A Biography of John Cage, soon to be published by Knopf.  Silverman is a well seasoned biographer, whose previous works have focused on the likes of Samuel Morse, Houdini (Ehrich Weiss), Edgar A. Poe, and Cotton Mather.  He's clearly inclined toward the experimental and iconoclastic, and he situates Cage squarely within a camp that includes Gertrude Stein, Charles Ives, Henry David Thoreau, Ralph Waldo Emerson, and, perhaps especially, Walt Whitman.  I expect this book to greatly diminish at least a bit of my work here at the John Cage Trust, in that it answers many a biographical question.  (Not to sound immodest, but even I learned a lot from its innumerable anecdotes!)  It's extremely well researched evidenced by the meticulous substantiations that comprise its "Documentation" section.  Add to this is a lively little CD of a dozen or so excerpts of works by Cage previously released on Mode Records, provided courtesy of Brian Brandt, and featuring such stellar performers as Philipp Vandre, Martine Joste, Ensemble Modern, Irvine Arditti, Stephen Drury, and even Cage himself.  Excellent work, Ken, and may this first exemplary biography of John Cage set the bar for many more to come!

And just a little heads-up that the John Cage Book of Days 2011 is now available!  My favorite Cage quote of this new edition?

"We can't know when, but being cheerful helps."

Laura Kuhn

3 Noteworthy Things

Sometimes the workload here at the John Cage Trust is such that important things sort of flit by, almost unnoticed. Once they finally attraction proper attention, however, they simply won't leave my head until I manage to pass them along to others. Such is the case with three distinct items from the past week or so, which I'm sharing here, below, in no particular order of import.

First, in case anyone's missed it: Kyle Gann's latest book, No Such Thing As Silence: John Cage's 4'33", is now available from Yale University Press. This book is really, really marvelous, and should be quickly devoured by any and all Cage enthusiasts, novice and seasoned alike. (I particularly loved the materials on Cage and Muzak, which I found both charming and enlightening.) Kyle is a colleague here at Bard College, but we've been friends for years, dating back to the days when he was the heralded music critic for The Village Voice. Gann's latest effort is really impressive, as much for what it is as for what it isn't: this is a reasoned, concise, playful, and soundly comprehensive book about John Cage's 4'33", without critical obfuscation -- no side bars, no witty anecdotal meanderings, no cheeky offhand remarks. Just a very good read about a very important work.

Second, virtually everyone knows John Cage's Water Walk, as performed by the master himself on the 1960 American TV quiz show "I've Got a Secret." While it hasn't garnered as much press as, say, Halberstadt's 639-year unfolding of Cage's ASLSP, or the kerfuffle that ensued over Mike Batt's alleged appropriation of Cage's 4'33" for The Planets' first CD, "Classical Graffiti," it is definitely the work by Cage, at present and to date, with the greatest World Wide Web presence.

But what may have gone virtually unnoticed is a very nice article by the Toronto-based artist Laura Paolini on the subject of this performance within the context of what was arguably something of the best of prime-time American television in the early 1960s, entitled "John Cage's Secret". This is a really nice piece that digs a little deeper into Cage's forays into contemporary (dare I say pop) culture than most. It appeared in an interesting if little-known magazine emanating out of Montreal called Les Fleurs du Mal (specifically, Vol. 3, No., in an issue entitled "Secret"), which serves as a creative forum for emerging and professional artists. It's published only occasionally, with all of its content open to the public, so keep an eye out for the next edition.

Third, and last, and a bit of a surprise, is the lovely Reverend Colin Bossen, Minister of the Unitarian Universalist Society of Cleveland, who recently gave a church worship service entitled "The Buddha Should be as Useful as a Can: Meditations on the Spirituality of John Cage" (Sunday, May 16, 2010, 11am-12noon). Not only did Reverend Bossen incorporate into his service readings from Cage's Anarchy and Lecture on Nothing, but Karin Tooley, church musician (and, interestingly, extensively engaged as a pianist for dancers), interpolated performances of Cage's Two Pieces for Piano, Ophelia, In A Landscape, and 4'33" as well. Reverend Bossen's sermon was so thoughtful, and his context for reflection so unusual by standard Cage measures, I can't resist sharing this with you, here, in transcript. Rumor has it that there'll be an mp3 audio version of this sermon available soon, accessed through the Unitarian Universalist Society of Cleveland's website, so do check back.

Laura Kuhn

Lecture on the Weather: John Cage in Buffalo

Last February, Emy Martin, who works here at the John Cage Trust at Bard College, attended The Burchfield Penney Art Center at Buffalo State College's closing weekend of Lecture on the Weather: John Cage in Buffalo, a marathon 23-day theatrical event organized by its Associate Director, Don Metz.

The title of this event refers, of course, to Cage's Lecture on the Weather, a multimedia stage work composed in collaboration with Maryanne Amacher and Luis Frangella on commission from the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation in 1975 in observance of America's bicentennial. Based on texts of Henry David Thoreau, it's a work that brings together various elements -- speech, music, film, lighting, and a weather soundscape -- to form a softly political piece as relevant today as the year it was written. It was the work chosen for inclusion at the commemoratve 2007 concerts celebrating the placement of the John Cage Trust at Bard College, hosting an all-star cast: John Ashbery, Ralph Benko, Leon Botstein, Sage Cowles, Merce Cunningham, Jasper Johns, John Kelly, Garry Kvistad, Joan Retallack, Mikel Rouse, John Ralston Saul, Richard Teitelbaum, and a select number of extremely talented students from Bard's Conservatory of Music and Music Program. The work was performed twice, separated by a brief intermission, with a subtle change of cast. While we wait for an angel to sprinkle upon us the funds needed for a commercial release (and thanks in the meantime to Chris Andersen at Nevessa Production in Saugerties for painstakingly beautiful recordings -- stereo *and* Dolby surround!), click here for a slideshow of images from the Bard College performances captured by Donald Dietz, accompanied by Cage's reading of his introductory "Preface" to the work, as heard in the premiere CBC performance.

But, returning to Lecture on the Weather: John Cage in Buffalo, Cage was in Buffalo nearly 20 times between 1960 and 1991, participating in concerts and residencies involving the Center for the Creative and Performing Arts, June in Buffalo, Evenings for New Music at the Albright-Knox Art Gallery, the S.E.M. Ensemble, and the North American New Music Festival. As Martin notes, what made this festival so unique was that Buffalo itself was included as a guest artist, since this event showcased talent from Western New York, many of whom were inspired by the work of John Cage (see participants list below). Don Metz tells how the event came to be:

"The catalyst for this exhibition was a chance conversation with Jan and Diane Williams while walking through the east gallery at the Burchfield Penney. Jan had just participated in two distinct performances of Lecture on the Weather presented by the John Cage Trust: one at Bard College's Fisher Performing Arts Center and the other, co-sponsored by the Electronic Music Foundation, at the Chelsea Art Museum in New York City. Jan and Diane thought that the East Gallery would be an ideal performance venue for the work -- the 28' ceiling height for the film projections by Luis Frangella and the 5 1/2" reverberation for sound by Maryanne Amacher would work well here, we thought, if we could open up the gallery for a weekend sometime in-between exhibitions. As chance would have it, a change in our exhibition schedule provided an opportunity for a 23-day exhibition. After numerous conversations, it was decidedLecture on the Weathercould be performed four times during the exhibition's run, and we would project Frangella's film and Amacher's sounds that accompany the performance at non-performance times. After the customary research into copyright issues, the exhibition was set.

It became evident that we would need a computer to send the images and sounds throughout the gallery utilizing some kind of random playback system. I asked Brian Milbrand if he would be interested in assisting with this and he said yes. He told me that he and Kyle Price had recently created a piece for toy piano, interactive multimedia, and female voice in honor of John Cage. I asked him if he would be interested in performing it during the run of the exhibition. Brian spoke to Kyle and they readily agreed.

I began contemplating other performances and thought about Sixty Two Mesostics re: Merce Cunningham. A pattern was evolving, and as I began talking to other Cage fans about the project, I would ask them if they would like to be involved. The enthusiasm was sensational, and as artists were added to perform both Cage's music and their own, I began imagining the exhibition as a 23-day theatrical performance. As works were selected, they were added to the random playback system to be presented at various intervals during gallery hours. At times, these recordings would overlap with live performances. As in a Cage "musicircus," the audience was situated in the center of the Gallery and free to move around while experiencing sounds from other galleries as they bleed into various spaces.

In selecting artists and their proposed works, there was no real thought as to what would fit 'best.' I simply mentioned the project to people that I ran into who I knew were interested in Cage. If they asked to be involved, I simply said, Yes!"

As Emy recounted, the feeling in the air over the course of the weekend was both incredibly organized and incredibly relaxed. So that there was enough discipline to listen, but also enough space to simply let your mind wander. As she put it, "Structurally everything was at ease, and those of us in the audience, like the performers themselves, had an unmistakeable calm about them". Which was no small feat, given the density of the programming. Click here for a PDF of the complete schedule of performances, and here for the final weekend's rendezblue "Chance Operations" program booklet.

with works by: John Cage, Michael Basinki, John Bacon, Brian Milbrand, Andrew Deutsch, Kyle Price, J.T. Rinker, Tom Kostusiak, Jeff Proctor, John Toth, Bill Sack, David Lampe, Peter Ramos, Michael Colquhoun, Elliot Caplan, David Felder, Bohuslav Martinu, Jacob Druckman, Erik Satie, and Ron Ehmke. with performances by: A Musical Feast, Bugallo/Williams Duo, Bufffluxus, Buffalo State College Percussion Ensemble, Michael Basinki, John Bacon, Brian Milbrand, Andrew Deutsch, Kyle Price, J.T. Rinker, Tom Kostusiak, David Lampe, Ed Cardoni, Tony Conrad, Peter Ramos, Brad Fuster, Don Metz, Bill Sack, Ron Emke, Jeff Proctor, Michael Miskuly, Diane Williams, Jan Williams, Pam Swarts, Alan Kryszak, Michael Colquhoun, Daniel Darnley, Peter Evans, Jacob Frasier, Xiaohang Li, Mathew Tate, Cris Fritton, Jeannie Hoag, Mike Mahoney, Holly Meldard, and Steve Zultanski.

Embedded Photos ©Emily Martin.

Laura Kuhn

Something About Cage's Time

I alluded late last year, on the heels of our John Cage Symposium at Bard College, to an interesting talk given at one of the sessions by Bard's resident biologist and (more than) amateur watchsmith, Dwane Decker, entitled "Replicable Chance: Time as Structure in Aleatory Composition" (11/1/09, 10 a.m., Olin Hall).

The audience was modest, as was the case for virtually all of the Symposium sessions, but the response in this case was particularly enthusiastic. Of course, any lecture on the subject of "Cage and Time" piques the interest of any Cage enthusiast, and even the laziest among us showed up for Decker's early morning talk. But no one could have anticipated Decker's unique vantage point, which was to explore Cage's use of (and interest in) time through an in-depth look at his personal timepieces.

Decker's presentation has stayed with me for months -- perhaps as much for its intimacy as its originality -- and I'm very happy to say that he's agreed to let us link to a transcript of his complete presentation here. Well, not quite complete. What's *not* included here is his really elucidating closing demonstration: a screening of Cage's performance of Water Walk (courtesy of the ubiquitous 1960 episode of "I've Got a Secret"), while at the same time manipulating, as Cage may well have done, the two synchronized second hands of Cage's own A.R. and J.E. Meylan stopwatch, which we were able to witness via microscope projections to screen. The audience was, to say the least, enthralled.

In addition to Cage's watches -- both his A.R. and J.E. Meylan Swiss stopwatch and his workaday Accutron Spaceview from America's own Bulova Watch Company, both of which are covered in great detail in Decker's talk -- the John Cage Trust is home to two other well-known Cage timepieces:

The doubled-faced, dual-action clock he used whenever engaged in competitive chess matches at home, and

his doubles-as-a-doorstop, metal-encased Kodak Timer, reportedly used in several performances of his Concerto for Piano and Orchestra.

The Kodak Timer, of course, has been memorialized in Jack Mitchell's well known and quite marvelous photograph of John Cage, Merce Cunningham, and "clock" (c.1968).


But while I'm on the subject of the John Cage at Bard College Symposium, let me share a slide show of some 90-odd images taken across the three days by the amazing photographer Donald Dietz.

The presenters, performers, and all-around essential participants, many of whom you'll recognize, were Katherine Adamov, James Bagwell, Bob Bielecki, David Bloom, Jo Brand, Frank Corliss, Dwane Decker, Kyle Gann, Kayo Iwama, Michael Ives, Rebeccah Johnson, Erica Kiesewetter, Laura Kuhn, Peter Laki, Tom Mark, Emy Martin, Julie Martin, Robert Martin, Blair McMillen, Rufus Muller, NEXUS (Bob Becker, Bill Cahn, Russell Hartenberger, Garry Kvistad), John Pruitt, Joan Retallack, Marina Rosenfeld, Sandra Skurvida, Jenni Sorkin, Richard Teitelbaum, and Jason Treuting. And, of course, the many, many incredible students from the Bard College Conservatory, Music Program, Graduate Vocal Arts Program, and Center for Curatorial Studies. And thank you to Brian Nozny for his beautiful arrangement of Cage's Chess Pieces, reprised here, and Leon Botstein for the sumptuous opening day lunch.

Laura Kuhn

The John Cage Prepared Piano Project

One of the very real pleasures of running the John Cage Trust is learning early on about interesting, under-the-radar projects going on around the world involving John Cage's work. This one was brought to my attention late last year by its producer, Ju-Ping Song.

Ms. Song is a pianist at the Pennsylvania Academy of Music in Lancaster. In August 2008 she was charged with creating a new music department, and to "...come up with a first project that would bring new sounds to [students'] ears without alienating them. The works to be performed needed to be interesting enough without being too stylistically or technically difficult. And the end result -- the performance -- had to make a statement, not be just another student recital.

"The Academy is responsible for more than 300 pre-college level students, and as her first project, Ms. Song prepared 16 children aged 6 to 18, along with two adults, for a tag-team performance of Cage's Sonatas & Interludes for Prepared Piano.



This was reportedly the children's first exposure to Cage's music. They learned first about preparing a piano, Ms. Song recounts, along the way being exposed to a kind of music that does not necessarily have a classical tonal center or regular meters. While skeptical at first, the participants were soon won over, and ended up revealing themselves to be children with "open minds and dedicated hearts".

The John Cage Prepared Piano Project was testing ground for a New Sounds Concert Series at Penn Academy, its mission "to create and nurture a need for contemporary art music in our daily lives." With its success came the formation of two new ensembles, both with flexible instrumentation, and a three-concert series planned for this coming spring. The second, performed by NakedEye Ensemble (faculty-based), slated for March 26, will include works by David Lang, Kengo Tokusashi, Luciano Berio, Louis Andriessen, and Kim Helweg. On April 18, the third concert will feature Barefoot Ensemble (student-based) in its first-ever concert of works by Charles Ives, Frederic Rzewski, Peter Hatch, Steve Reich, and John Pamintuan, this last a New Sounds commission for children's choir and ensemble.

But the first concert of the Series, scheduled for February 26, will be given by none other than Ju-Ping Song herself, Founder-Director of the Series, performing works by Cage, Stephen Montague, George Crumb, Peter Hatch, and Rzewski. In addition to her work at the Penn Academy, Ms. Song is a founding member of FLAMEnsemble, an eclectic and flexible group that organizes and performs in a yearly contemporary music festival in Florence. This year FLAMEnsemble's "Musica Esposta" at the Museo Nazionale del Bargello plans to include a non-stop "John Cage Day" on June 24, which, at last count, will feature nearly 50 works!

In addition to its regular concert series, future projects at the Academy include a biannual "Composer Portrait Series", commencing Spring 2010 with a live performance of Philip Glass's music to accompany a rare screening of Godfrey Reggio's complete "Qatsi Trilogy": Koyaanisqatsi, Powaqqatsi, and Nagoyqatsi. In the Spring of 2012, we'll feast upon an ambitious three-day John Cage Centennial Festival, featuring not only Cage's music, but also writings, artworks, and films.

Laura Kuhn

John Cage Arrangements

While arrangements are not uncommon in musical practice -- the reworking of a composition written for one instrument or a set of instruments for another -- in John Cage's case they are quite unusual. There are really only two works in his lengthy catalog that fit neatly into this category: his Cheap Imitation (1969) for piano, deriving from a 1918 dramatic composition by the French composer Erik Satie entitled Socrate, originally conceived for voice and orchestra, and his Hymns and Variations (1979) for 12 amplified voices, based solely upon two early American hymn tunes by William Billings, Old North and Heath.

While both works are remarkable purely as arrangements, they're also noteworthy for their sheer melodiousness, not an adjective commonly applied to Cage's works of their time. And Cheap Imitation is also unusual for its history, spanning as it does some 30 peregrinating years, which is all beautifully recounted in James Pritchett's liner notes for the Mode Records 1998 CD, "Cage: The Works for Piano 3", capturing the magnificent keyboard artistry of Stephen Drury.

But here's a bit of archival footage of Cage himself playing the work in 1975 in a classroom setting at Broward Community College in Dade County, Florida, shared courtesy of Gustavo Matamoros, Director of Miami's Interdisciplinary Sound Arts Workshop.



Given the paucity of arrangements in his own catalog, one might wonder what Cage would think of the two works that make use of his works that were featured at last month's John Cage at Bard College Symposium. Of all of the pieces included in the two evening programs (this is a pdf file) at the Fisher Center for the Performing Arts on Oct. 30 and 31, these little-known arrangements were clear audience favorites.

The first, Eric Salzman's Five Dances (1996-97), is an arrangement for string quartet of five works by Cage originally composed for prepared piano: Our Spring Will Come (1943), Dream (1948), Totem Ancestor (1943), In a Landscape (1948), and A Room (1943). While long available from C.F. Peters as EP 67725, the work is rarely performed. Here's the third movement from the feisty performance by four of Bard College's finest Conservatory musicians -- Fanghue He, Yue Sun, Leah Gastler, and Laura Hendrickson.



The second, Brian Nozny's Chess Pieces (2008), is an arrangement for percussion quintet of Cage's work by the same name that began life not as a piece of music, but as a painting, one created for the 1944 exhibition "The Imagery of Chess," organized by Max Ernst and Marcel Duchamp at the Julien Levy Gallery in NYC. As an art work, Chess Pieces is somewhat unremarkable: a 19" x 19" square painting in ink and gouache on Masonite, its 64 squares filled with music notation in Cage's hand in alternating black and white ink, its 22 systems reading sensibly from left to right. Despite its obvious relation to a musical score, albeit sans instrumentation, tempi, or dynamic indications, no documentation exists of its ever having been "played".

In 2005, Chess Pieces went on public display for the first time in more than 60 years in an exhibition entitled "The Imagery of Chess Revisited", the brainchild of its curator, Larry List, at the Noguchi Museum in Long Island City, New York. Musing upon its "playability," the pianist Margaret Leng Tan was engaged by the John Cage Trust and C.F. Peters to try her hand at a transcription. Once completed, she promptly recorded it, first to be heard via headphones at the exhibition, and later for release by Mode Records as "Cage: The Works for Piano 7" (2006).

The performance heard here is by Nexus -- Bob Becker, Bill Cahn, Russell Hartenberger, and Garry Kvistad -- with special guest artist Jason Treuting (on loan from So Percussion), who kindly substituted for Robin Engelman.



I don't know about you, but I find nothing quite as sexy as a bunch of middle-aged men romping about on a stage making glorious noises...

And, for added fun, given that this concert took place on Halloween, the performers donned blue jeans for the occasion, a la John Cage, and at their final curtain call, took their bows wearing silly John Cage masks.

Cage in the Kitchen

Anyone familiar with John Cage knows that late in life he became an avid macrobiotic cook. Some mourned the loss of his coq au vin and his creme brulee, reputed specialties from a decade before, but anyone lucky enough to experience just one of his impromptu macrobiotic lunches -- sans butter or flesh -- didn't complain for long!

The John Cage Trust takes the opportunities wherever they arise to spread his culinary gospel, so click here for a few words from Cage himself about the diet as well as a healthy sampling of his favorite recipes.

In 1997, at the 35th annual Belfast Festival at Queens, we were invited into the Festival House kitchen to prepare a macrobiotic feast for some 80 invited guests after a glorious performance of Ocean by the Merce Cunningham Dance Company. On the menu were Cage's hummus, red beans and hijiki-spotted rice, an arame-shitake stirfry, and, of course, the celebrated "John Cage Cookies."

This was also the occasion of the first installation of Cage's Roaratorio: An Irish Circus on Finnegans Wake, carefully (re)constructed from original recordings by Klaus Schoening and John David Fulleman. The work was reprised this past month in a beautiful new version by Bob Bielecki (with an able assist from Tom Mark) in the Chapel of the Holy Innocents at the John Cage at Bard College Symposium.

More recently, February 20-23, 2009, in one of its semi-annual contributions to the Merce Cunningham Dance Company's residencies at Dia:Beacon, the John Cage Trust transformed its little cafe into a macrobiotic eatery.

Dia:Beacon's staff was encouraged to contribute recipes of their own, and their Maple Pecan Cookies actually replaced Cage's for months afterwards as the Cunningham household favorite.

And this month, Barcelona's Bar Seco -- purveyor of "ethically-friendly, Italian-Spanish vegetarian dishes and tapas" -- is including a number of Cage-inspired edibles on its menu to celebrate "The Anarchy of Silence," a significant exhibition devoted to Cage's life and work at the nearby Museu d'Art Contemporani (MACBA), curated by Julia Robinson. For more on this, see Alex Ross's excellent blog, "Cage in Barcelona".

And, to close, here's a really recent "find" -- an important (and sweetly vigorous) missive written (slyly) by Cage for his partner Merce. This was discovered nestled inside a very dusty file folder, tucked safely behind a small wooden desk in the bedroom of their shared Manhattan loft.

If this isn't love, I don't know what is.

Laura Kuhn

About the John Cage Trust

It's remarkable to me that after 16 years in existence, I continue to receive inquiries as to what the John Cage Trust actually is and does.

The John Cage Trust is a not-for-profit organization founded shortly after Cage's death to support and nurture his legacy. It functions in two interrelated ways -- as an administrative entity and as a physical archive, which, for a time was situated in New York City, in the historic "archive building" on Greenwich St., then was somewhat nomadic after losing its lease in 2001 (shortly after 9/11), and then, in 2007, went into residency at Bard College.

While the work involved in managing Cage's life and works consumes nearly half of my time, our physical archives are of greater interest to most. Our holdings are various, and include extensive print libraries (our own and Cage's personal, including cookbooks, collectively some 1,800+ items), photographs (some 1,000+), media collections, both audio and video (commercial and archival), text manuscripts (relating to Cage's writings), and a permanent art collection comprising some 80 works by Cage that are lent to museums and galleries around the world. We also maintain a copy of the John Cage Music Manuscript Collection, which, in its original, is housed at the New York Public Library for the Performing Arts. There's also a lot of what we loosely call "ephemera" -- childhood Christmas ornaments, appointment books, sets of piano preparations, old passports, etc. -- that is still, in a sense, being discovered.

And as we discover things, they become available. An image of Cage's transistor radio, for example, was recently used as stage decors for a performance of Cage's Radio Music and Variations IV, produced by Robert Worby as part of London's "Late at Tate Britain" program.

And both Cage's wristwatch and stopwatch were used this past weekend within the John Cage at Bard College Symposium, wherein Dwane Decker, resident biologist and watchsmith, delivered a fascinating talk entitled "Replicable Chance: Time as Structure in Aleatory Composition".

And we work closely and variously with our sibling repositories and business concerns, including the New York Public Library for the Performing Arts, which houses the John Cage Music Manuscript Collection, Northwestern University, the repository of Cage's Correspondence Collection, Wesleyan University, home to a goodly amount of Cage's original text manuscripts, and C.F. Peters/Peters Edition, whose staffs in New York, London, and Frankfurt work tirelessly to see that Cage's compositions stay in the light of day.

And, speaking of Peters, they're close to releasing a new publication: the first in a series of performable text editions, John Cage's Indeterminacy: New Aspect of Form in Instrumental and Electronic Music, beautifully edited by Eddie Kohler.

To celebrate, Marina Rosenfeld and I performed this work this past weekend at the John Cage at Bard College Symposium, with Marina performing a beautiful remix of what are now-historic LPs of Cage's music.

Visitors from around the world visit the John Cage Trust for the purpose of conducting research (or just to partake of amiable, like-minded conversation). But those geographically remote may be happy to know that much of our holdings will soon be available as integrated, fully searchable databases at johncage.org. Thanks here to our glorious websters Larry Larson, Didier Garcia, and Jack Freudenheim, and also to Andre Chaudron, whose incredible efforts with his own John Cage website, served early on (and continues to serve) as a tremendous resource to our own. In the near future, both sites will merge, remaining for a time accessible via both addresses. In the interim, do visit johncage.org and help us to populate the John Cage Folksonomy, which is now up and running.

The John Cage Trust continually augments its holdings, sometimes quite by chance. We've become a repository for all manner of surprising things people have collected or discovered over the years, like the sizable amount of (very moldy) correspondence found under the floorboards of Cage's Stony Point home in the Gate Hill Co-Op, which includes letters from Peggy Guggenheim, George Brecht, Buckminster Fuller, and others. Or this wonderful recording of Cage playing his own Totem Ancestor at Ohio State University in a program he gave with Merce Cunningham in 1947.



Thanks to Karl Braun for this, who lovingly cared for this recording for over 60 years. Braun conducted an interview with both Cage and Cunningham in the setting as well, but, alas, that portion of the recording didn't really survive.

And in going through Merce Cunningham's effects recently, closing up the Manhattan loft he and Cage shared for some thirty years, we found this very sweet collage made by Xenia Cage for her long ex-husband, dated 25 June 1969.

This could go on and on, but for the moment, I'll stop. Check back later this week for a recap of our John Cage at Bard College Symposium, wherein I'll thank the many participants who made our first foray into our still-new academic environment a modest but resounding success.

Silence is Golden

Few events have generated as much press around John Cage as the tussle that arose between Peters Edition, Cage's music publisher, and the British composer and songwriter Mike Batt, in the wake of the now infamous track on the first CD, Classical Graffiti, by Batt's 8-piece crossover band, The Planets, which went straight to #1 on the UK classical music chart on the day of its release (February 2002), where it remained for 3 months.

As Wikipedia tells it, "Batt was sued for copyright infringement over the track entitled A One Minute Silence, which...was credited to 'Batt/Cage'. The publishers of Cage's music alleged that the credit invoked Cage's silent piece, 4'33", and that the Trust was entitled to receive royalties. An out of court settlement was reached, with Batt paying a six-figure sum to the John Cage Trust."

Years later, I was contacted by Lewis Hyde, masterful author of The Gift: Imagination and the Erotic Life of Property (Random House, 1983), who contemplated addressing this altercation in a forthcoming book, Common as Air: Revolution, Art & Ownership (Farrar, Straus & Giroux, fall 2011), using as his basis an essay by Colorado humorist Randy Cassingham, author of True Stella Awards: Honoring Real Cases of Greedy Opportunists, Frivolous Lawsuits, and the Law Run Amok (Penguin, 2002), entitled "Silence is Golden -- for Some".

Intrigued, I sent Mr. Hyde on to the beloved general manager of Peters Edition, Nicholas Riddle, in London. Click here for excerpts from their ongoing dialogue.

And, for added fun, while we're on the subject, here's a little video of Cage's 4'33", performed in Palm Desert, California, by none other than Bill Marx, son of Harpo Marx and a marvelous pianist. This clip is drawn from one of the many documentaries made by the California filmmaker, Joel Hochberg.

Merce Cunningham

For this first of what will be many John Cage Trust blogs, I’d like to thank Merce Cunningham (1919-2009). Not for his beautiful work, which has delighted us for decades the world over, or for his curious, open disposition. Not even for the example he set and shared of how to continue one’s work, in the face adversity, and for standing up for those close to him, always, in life’s most difficult times.

The front door to the loft shared by John and Merce

©Mikel Rouse, 2009

No, I really want to take this space to simply thank Merce for his generosity in making himself, and his home, a welcome place for those of us left behind with John Cage’s death in 1992. I can’t count the number of gatherings that have taken place over the past 17 years at Merce’s loft. Those rather grand events – annual Thanksgiving dinners, birthday celebrations, and glorious Christmases -- but maybe just as much the more intimate ones, with just Merce and me, or Merce and me and Mikel, or Margarete or Jasper or Trevor or Ralph or Victoria or Charlie or Joe or Andy or David or Larry or Bill or Jeannie or Robert or Pepper or Joan. That list goes on and on and on.

He opened his home to endless business dinners, when he understood that his presence and loft would serve our ends, and sometimes he’d just humor us, letting us do something slightly offbeat, even at the end of a long workday. Like when he allowed us to invite the loveable gang known as So Percussion over to “play” the loft, using many of Cage’s most unusual percussion instruments still scattered about. We recorded that one (thank you, Paul Labarbera), so can share a bit of it with you here.

Merce and I were not particularly close at the time of John Cage’s death, but we quickly became something like affectionate soldiers in arms. He continued his work with my help, and I mine with his. In the shaky aftermath of Cage’s death, we together formed the John Cage Trust, and he, as president of its board of trustees, tirelessly served his life-long partner to his own dying day.

Merce Cunningham

©Mark Seliger, 2009

No one can replace Merce. But through his example, we continue, and happily so.

Please visit johncage.org, which launches today with some modest wares: the complete schedule of events for the upcoming “John Cage at Bard College Symposium” (Oct. 30 – Nov. 1, 2009), and the playful “John Cage Folksonomy”, a starter list of some 6,000 names of John Cage’s friends & acquaintances, to which you’re invited to contribute.

Laura Kuhn