Seasons Greetings from the John Cage Trust

Home begins outside.

- John Cage

All Over But the Shouting ("Music for Merce," Walker Art Center, 2017)

Quinta, Ikue Mori, Peter Selway, Christian Wolff, David Behrman, John King,
Joan La Barbara, Zeena Parkins, Fast Forward, George Lewis

The marvelous interdisciplinary exhibition Merce Cunningham: Common Time (Walker Art Center, Minneapolis, 2/8 - 7/30, 2017/Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago, 2/11 - 4/30, 2017) has come to an end.  This landmark show, the visionary work of Fionn Meade and Philip Bither (with Joan Rothfuss and Mary Coyne), focused on Cunningham's dynamic artistic collaborations with a great many people, including John Cage,Trisha Brown, Jasper Johns, Robert Morris, David Tudor, Nam June Paik, Robert Rauschenberg, Frank Stella, and countless others.

One of the high points was "Music for Merce: A Two-Night Celebration," a pair of concerts curated by longtime Cunningham musician, John King.  These were heard first at the Walker (McGuire Theater, 2/23 and 2/24), then repeated at Chicago's MCA (2/25 and 2/26), each evening consisting of a separate set of solo, duo, and ensemble works, each concluding with a collectively made realtime composition, billed simply as "Event."  Compositions were by the performers themselves, interspersed with works by David Tudor (Untitled, 1975/1994), John Cage (Fontana Mix with Aria with Indeterminacy, 1958), and Earle Brown (December 1952 and November 1952, both 1952).

It would have been enough to see this incredible roster of performers on the same stage together at the same time.  Each has a tremendous following, and each causes hearts to beat a little faster and pulses to race.  But the truth is that the music that was made that night was beyond good, and will stay in my memory for a very long time.  Perhaps especially David Behrman's Long Throw (2017- ), which was sublime.

Here's a little video clip of one of the ensemble performances, courtesy of the Walker Art Center, just to give you an idea of what you (may have) missed:



Laura Kuhn

John Cage on Gluttony, Saints, Table Manners, Fasting, and Wild Edibles

JOHN CAGE, address to the GENTLEMEN OF THE WESLEYAN GLEE CLUB (1960):

Though I am honored to have been asked to speak to you, I am speechless with amazement. That a group of seemingly still-growing young men should have resolved to eat dinner only once a year fills me with awe. I like to think that matters spiritual and physical are so closely united that they cannot be split apart. But your example gives me pause.

Since we at the Center for Advanced Studies not only eat dinner 365 times a year, but indulge also in breakfast and lunch each day, we are so to say 1094 times as dependent on food as you are. This great difference in food consumption makes me suspect that you pick up a little food here and there in the course of a year, when no one is looking, -- or should I say when you yourselves are not singing? I have therefor telephoned Extension 235, spoken to Mrs. Jessie M. Dougherty and found out that this is indeed your only meal this year, that you have no Annual Luncheon, no Annual Breakfast, just this one Annual Dinner. That you dignify it by calling it a Banquet is understandable. And that you have eaten in quantity, unstintingly, is also understandable.

I have unlimited admiration for your Director, Richard K. Winslow. I asked him the other evening whether it was indeed true that food held little attraction for him. He paused and then said: it was, that is, food doesn’t.

Whether your discipline of not eating comes from him to you (indicating his extraordinary powers of direction) or whether your continence has reach from you to him (indicating the infectious quality of your devotion) is a question that defies my powers of thought.

Nevertheless, in keeping with the Wesleyan ideal of the Teacher-Scholar, and not wishing to teach you my bad gluttonish habits, I place before you what I can find in a spirit of scholarship off the top of my head in the way of historical instance that bears a small relationship to your wondrous accomplishment (though these instances may not be said to be commensurate).

I have heard tell of the Incas of Peru who chewed coca leaves in order to avoid eating and yet continue their life of toil carrying stones from hither to yon. It is not known whether or not they sang while working, and whether, if they did sing, they did so in a spirit of glee. I am certain though that, unlike the Incas, you are not addicted to dope or manual labor.

And were there not saints who sat on poles for months without eating? What were their names?

Sri Ramakrishna, an adjudicated 19^th century incarnation of God, did indeed stand on one foot for several months in a state of Samadhi, that is to say, spiritual ecstasy. However, one of his disciples from day to day inserted food in his mouth. The mere mention of his name in the present context is out of place. However, he had a great interest in singing and when he was asked by one of his devotees who was a musician whether or not he, the devotee, should give up music and devote himself to the spiritual life, Sri Ramakrishna replied: By no means. Remain a musician. Music is a means of rapid transportation to life everlasting.

This subject of transportation reminds me of another saint, a Tibetan one, Mila Repa, who did not do what you do (that is, eat only one meal a year), but who, remarkably, ate only thistles. This had the effect of his transporting himself through the air in the form of a thistle. He was also able to appear in several different places at the same time. Perhaps your not eating will or has already given you the power of appearing nowhere. (I owe this supposition to N.O. Brown who had the kindness to listen to the first draft of this speech.)

Before leaving the subject of Mila Repa, let me say that he wrote songs, but I forget whether or not he sang them himself. He died as a matter of fact from eating. On three occasions he was offered poisoned food by one of the wives of another saint who was so jealous of Mila Repa’s spiritual position in Tibet that he desired his death. He promised this wife that if she succeeded in getting Mila Repa to eat the poisoned food, that he would make her No.1 among his concubines. Mind you, Mila Repa, through having eaten for years nothing but thistles, was clairvoyant. He knew perfectly well that the food was poisoned. But he also knew clairvoyantly that the lady really wanted him to eat it. Therefor, taking pity on her, the third time she offered it to him, he took it, ate it, but he himself appointed the hour of his death.

My colleague in the Center, Marsden Bates, tells me that there are two volumes of documentation on a forced fasting that took place during the Second World War in a camp of Conscientious Objectors. It appears that the dreams of these men lost all suggestions of the erotic life and became completely devoted to such things as meat and potatoes. I cannot refrain from wondering what the nature of your dreams are, you of the Wesleyan Glee Club. Perhaps after singing all day, you pass a peaceful night undisturbed by dreams, secure in your knowledge of the inevitability of this annual supper for which you have spent an entire year singing.

Fully aware that as a Scholar I cut a poor figure, I have asked Reginald Arragon who spoke last fall at the Convocation in Honor of Scholarship to give me some story that would be appropriate for you to hear after your single dinner of this academic year. He communicated the following delicious text: 

“Picture to yourselves four scholars and scientists, an anthropologist of Russian ancestry, the host, a sociologist, the guest of honor, a psychologist, and a historian, all faculty colleagues, sitting down to a rich Russian midnight repast in honor of the approaching departure of the sociologist from the faculty and community, a separation to be begun by his withdrawal to a theosophical retreat on Orkas Island. For he was a Dutchman who was not only infected by theosophy but seriously so. Unhappily he was even then fasting to give him the spiritual state necessary for profiting from the retreat. The fast permitted him only water, even in the face of this spread of meats, cheeses and cakes, anchovies and caviar, though he confided to us that his wife, who was not present, could have taken orange juice. Such laxity had to be granted to the woman, who is the weaker vessel.

 “The psychologist, a gross, hearty, elephant of a man, not to be outdone in physical endurance or spiritual self-denial by a sociologist, then recalled that he had fasted once, though he had no intention of fasting now. Indeed, he remembered even that the fast was last summer, that it was to cut down his weight, that it went on for weeks, that he did not need even water, but got stronger every day. He was in a forest of the state of Washington and like Paul Bunyan he cut down trees daily. The sociologist’s interest and admiration increased minute by minute as the psychologist added detail after detail to the account of this triumphant fast. ‘But then,’ asked the theosophist, ‘why did you stop?’  Because it was near the 4^th of July and the end of the strawberry season, and he succumbed to temptation with the thought that in two days the luscious, red, fresh fruit would be gone irretrievably for a year. So it was in the days before frozen foods, and so the great experiment was abandoned. 

 “Not however was that of the socio-theosophist as he sat in front of the Russian meal and watched the anthropologist, the psychologist, and the historian eat into the night.  He made only one minor concession, of no apparent importance, but one that should be a warning to all fasters to make no concessions (unless it be strawberries), to stay by water, and not venture even to watercress, and certainly not to do so in response to the host’s appeal to friendship and love. Would the guest of honor go without touching any of the repast prepared by the host’s wife especially for the guest? Would he not respond at least with a gesture of gratitude and affection? Would he not toy with a plate of watercress arranged by the hand of the absent hostess (for it was a stag party)? Surely there was no nourishment here, nothing to break the fast! Affection broke the spell, and the taste of a leaf led to that of another and to another, until in the midst of midnight conversation the whole plate (meant originally for all of us) was consumed by one guest of honor, who had eaten nothing for a week and was not really breaking his fast. But let it be a warning!  If you know the virtues of watercress, you need not be told what they do to an empty stomach; and, if you do not know, I advise you not to try it. At any rate, the morning found the sociological theosophist so ill and weak that he had to postpone two days his departure for the retreat. Even then he must barely have re-established his spiritual control of his rebellious physical man.”

 Mr. Arragon’s reference to orange juice reminds me of my mother who once went on an orange juice diet in order to effect a cure of a tumorous condition. When I informed her over the telephone that I had been appointed a Fellow in the Center for Advanced Studies, she said: Why are they always connecting you with the Dance? And then she added, What University did you say you’re going to be in? I said: Wesleyan; and she said, being a good Methodist, Do they know you’re a Zen Buddhist?

Well, in Zen, they say: In summer, perspire. Shiver in winter. I might say in the same spirit: When hungry, eat. However, since being here at Wesleyan I have apparently eaten and drunk excessively. I am now suffering from a gouty arthritic condition.

Consider me, please, irrelevant to your abstinent ways. It is abundantly evident that in an academic situation I am a bad influence. However, following the admonition, Give the Devil his due, I ask you to listen to two of my stories concerning food (they are part of my lecture, Indeterminacy: new aspect ofform in instrumental and electronic music): one is about the death of the Buddha and the other is about the time I myself nearly died.

Dorothy Norman invited me to dinner in New York. There was a lady there from Philadelphia who was an authority on Buddhist art. When she found out I was interested in mushrooms, she said, “Have you an explanation of the symbolism involved in the death of the Buddha by his eating a mushroom?” I explained that I’d never been interested in symbolism; that I preferred just taking things as themselves, not as standing for other things. But then a few days later while rambling in the woods I got to thinking.  I recalled the Indian concept of the relation of life and the seasons. Spring is Creation. Summer is Preservation. Fall is Destruction. Winter is Quiescence. Mushrooms grow most vigorously in the fall, the period of destruction, and the function of many of them is to bring about the final decay of rotting material. In fact, as I read somewhere, the world would be an impassible heap of old rubbish were it not for mushrooms and their capacity to get rid of it. So I wrote to the lady in Philadelphia. I said, “The function of mushrooms is to rid the world of old rubbish. The Buddha died a natural death.”

I will conclude this talk with my second story, for I do not wish to impose too much food for thought on us who have just now filled ourselves, perhaps excessively, though understandably, with actual food.

When I first moved to the country, David Tudor, M.C. Richards, the Weinribs, and I all lived in the same small farmhouse. In order to get some privacy I started taking walks in the woods. It was August. I began collecting the mushrooms, which were growing more or less everywhere. Then I bought some books and tried to find out which mushroom was which. Realizing I needed to get to know someone who knew something about mushrooms, I called the 4H Club in New City. I spoke to a secretary. She said they’d call me back. They never did.

The following spring, after reading about the edibility of skunk cabbage in Medsger’s book on wild plants, I gathered a mess of what I took to be skunk cabbage, gave some to my mother and father (who were visiting) to take home, cooked the rest in three waters with a pinch of soda as Medsger advises, and served it to six people, one of whom, I remember, was from the Museum of Modern Art. I ate more than the others did in an attempt to convey my enthusiasm over edible wild plants. After coffee, poker was proposed. I began winning heavily. M.C. Richards left the table. After a while she came back and whispered in my ear, “Do you feel all right?” I said, “No. I don’t. My throat is burning and I can hardly breathe.” I told the others to divide my winnings, that I was folding. I went outside and retched. Vomiting with diarrhea continued for about two hours. Before I lost my will, I told M.C. Richards to call Mother and Dad and tell them not to eat the skunk cabbage. I asked her how the others were. She said, “They’re not as bad off as you are.” Later, when friends lifted me off the ground to put a blanket under me, I just said, “Leave me alone.” Someone called Dr. Zukor. He prescribed milk and salt. I couldn’t take it. He said, “Get him here immediately.” They did. He pumped my stomach and gave adrenalin to keep my heart beating. Among other things, he said, “Fifteen minutes more and he would have been dead.”

I was removed to the Spring Valley hospital. There during the night I was kept supplied with adrenalin and I was thoroughly cleaned out. In the morning I felt like a million dollars. I rang the bell for the nurse to tell her I was ready to go. No one came. I read a notice on the wall that said that unless one left by noon he would be charged for an extra day. When I saw one of the nurses passing by I yelled something to the effect that she should get me out since I had no money for a second day. Shortly the room was filled with doctors and nurses and in no time at all I was hustled out.

I called up the 4H Club and told them what had happened. I emphasized my determination to go on with wild mushrooms. They said, “Call Mrs. Clark on South Mountain Drive.” She said, “I can’t help you. Call Mr. So-and-So.” I called him. He said, “I can’t help you, but call So-and-So who works in the A&P in Suffern. He knows someone in Ramsey who knows the mushrooms.” Eventually, I got the name and telephone number of Guy G. Nearing. When I called him, he said, “Come over any time you like. I’m almost always here, and I’ll name your mushrooms for you.”

I wrote a letter to Medsger telling him skunk cabbage was poisonous. He never replied. Some time later I read about the need to distinguish between skunk cabbage and the poisonous hellebore. They grow at the same time in the same places. Hellebore has pleated leaves. Skunk cabbage does not.

FINALLY, let me say that I have the same high opinion of your singing that I have of your eating. Therefor I wish all of you (or all of us, for I should like to be included) long, happy lives, during the course of which you may recover from any ill effects of this evening’s banquet and my after-dinner remarks.

LAURA KUHN

John Cage's Percussion Collection (July 8, 1940)

Cage's Inventory of Percussion Instruments (July 8, 1940)

Early on known as a percussion composer, John Cage spent time in the period September 1938-Summer 1939 building a percussion instrument collection at the Cornish School in Seattle, Washington. Cage was employed at the Cornish School as composer and accompanist for the class Creative Composition and Percussion Instruments and to accompany the classes in modern dance taught by Bonnie Bird. 

It was at the Cornish School that Cage first met Merce Cunningham, a young man seven years his junior who hailed from Centralia, Washington, a rural part of the state, some 80 miles south.  Cunningham had entered the theater program with aspirations of becoming an actor, but quickly took to dance and thus was often in Cage's presence in Bird's modern dance classes. (Cunningham later recalled that Cage was excitedly referred to in whispers by the Cornish students as the "handsome new teacher in the red sweater"). Other faculty members in residence at Cornish were Margaret Jansen and Doris Dennison, both of whom played in Cage's ensemble, known as the Cage Percussion Players. Cunningham occasionally played with them, and Xenia, Cage’s young wife, also a transplant from Los Angeles, was a regular member. Cage referred to them all as his “literate amateur musicians.”

Merce Cunningham, Bonnie Bird, Syvilla Fort, and Dorothy Hermann,
performing "Three Inventories of Casey Jones" at the Cornish School, 1938,
choreography by Bird, music by Ray Green.

Cage's instrument collection was hard come by, and many an appeal was written to potential funders to help it grow. Cage often wrote (see The Selected Letters of John Cage, 2016) that in addition to the instruments he'd amassed, he also had access to Henry Cowell's Rhythmicon, as well as instruments invented by Léon Theremin. He had acquired a thunder screen designed by Harold ("Dr. Snodgrass") Burris-Meyer of the Stevens Institute of Technology, and he had access to instruments then being developed by his father, John Milton Cage, Sr., a well-known (and slightly eccentric) inventor, including one that would demonstrate "the variation of the overtone structure of a tone."

Works scored for percussion instruments alone were scarce at the time, and Cage appealed to a variety of composers to write scores for him. The list of composers Cage reached out to, as well as the composers whose works appeared on his programs, is eclectic: Virgil Thomson, Charles Ives, George Antheil, José Ardevol, Gerald Strang, Johanna Beyer, Edgar Varèse, Franziska Boas, Mildred Couper, Henry Cowell, Lou Harrison, William Russell, Ray Green, and Amadeo Roldan, among others. Some of these names are well known to us today, while others exist only on the fringe of memory.

The Cage Percussion Players

The Cage Percussion Players became well known at the Cornish School and around Seattle, but the ensemble widened its reach by touring a bit throughout the Northwest, presenting concerts at venues that included the University of Idaho in Moscow (Jan. 8, 1940), the University of Montana in Missoula (Jan. 9, 1940), and Whitman College in Walla Walla (Jan. 11, 1940.  The program in each of these venues consisted of works by Cage (Quartet, 1935), Johanna Beyer, Ray Green, Lou Harrison, and William Russell.  The Cage Percussion Players ended its tour at Reed College in Portland, Oregon (Feb. 14, 1940), where added to the program was the premiere performance of Cage's Second Construction.*


*Third Construction (1941) endures as one of Cage's most popular works, to both players and audiences. I'm reminded of the time I had the great pleasure of performing at an enormously successful Musicircus at the Embassy Theatre in Los Angeles on Sept. 12, 1987, an event produced by Larry Stein, a longtime member of the Repercussion Unit. This was part of the larger John Cage Festival taking place in Los Angeles (Sept. 5–12, 1987) celebrating the composer's 75th birthday. The many weeklong events included “An Evening of Words About, For, and By John Cage,” wherein Cage read his little-known (and still prescient) text “Other People Think” (1927), an essay he'd presented at the Hollywood Bowl 60 years before. I was one of eight performers in Cage's Radio Music, while Cage had been charged with reading "Part IV" from his Empty Words.  We found ourselves on a simultaneous break and we sat together quietly watching the proceedings. All of a sudden virtually everyone began to move hurriedly from one side of the theater to the other, and I quickly looked at my program: Nexus was scheduled to perform Cage's Third Construction in just moments and in exactly the position people were heading.  I commented that this must be one popular work!  Cage simply sighed and then laughed, his eyes twinkling. "Oh, yes," he said. "It's my Bolero."

Laura Kuhn

A Celebratory 216 Hours of John Cage Across Ace Hotels!

John Cage's 105th birthday was celebrated this year with "Untouchable Numbers," a 24-hour listening event taking place in the lobbies and other public spaces of Ace Hotels in Chicago, London, Los Angeles, Pittsburgh, New Orleans, New York, Palm Springs, Portland, and Seattle. The playlist was a randomized sampling of works drawn from CDs from the John Cage Edition on the Mode Records label, created by none other than Mode's founder, Brian Brandt: 75 works performed by five dozen or so individual musicians and ensembles, including John Cage himself!

Ben Sisto, mastermind of the project, prefaced the announcement of the event from his position at the New York Ace Hotel as follows:

In 1952 a composer called John Cage told us there was music in silence, and the world hasn't been the same since. Today, the gradual wearing away of stone by water, the echoes of gravitational waves, and the caloric metamorphosis of food into energy may all be understood as musical works, a privilege for which we are indebted to Cage.

So, beginning at 12 am on Sept. 5, 2017, lasting until the stroke of midnight, the sounds and silences of our favorite "sonic philosopher" were heard non-stop at Ace Hotels, comprising voices and strings and orchestras and pianos and organs and rain sticks and radios and bass guitars and snare drums and flutes and gramophones and bottles and zoomoozophones and percussion and recordings and oboes and bass trombones and handclaps and...

The press coverage was generous and fun:

BlackBook
Limelight
LA Downtowner
Artsjournal
Pelican Bomb
Off Beat Magazine
The Violin Channel
Instant Encore
Slipped Disc*

*This last contained Sisto's favorite quote: "No, it's not the Hilton or the Marriott."

The image at the top, by the way, was created by plotting all of the Ace Hotel locations onto a world map.

Laura Kuhn

Untouchable Numbers

Ace Hotel and the John Cage Trust 
present 
Untouchable Numbers

A listening party curated by Mode Records.

Tuesday, Sept. 5, 2017

(New York, NY)  Ace Hotel joins forces with the John Cage Trust and Mode Records to celebrate the 105th birthday of the renowned composer, philosopher, and artist John Cage. Starting at 12am on Tuesday, September 5, we'll broadcast Cage's compositions for a twenty-four hour period in Ace Hotel lobbies and public spaces worldwide. From Seattle to Pittsburgh, New Orleans to Los Angeles, and Chicago to London — we invite guests to immerse themselves in a day-long sonic experience.
 

About Ace Hotel 
Ace Hotel reimagines urban hotels for people who make cities interesting. We crave experience more than hospitality clichés. We are curious about the history and geography of the buildings we inhabit and let these guide us to someplace fresh and familiar. Ace is the low card and the high card. 

And Ace Hotel in New York also has two pretty wonderful restaurants: The Breslin and The John Dory Oyster Bar!

Laura Kuhn

Alana Pagnutti's "Reception: The Radio-Works of Robert Rauschenberg and John Cage" (Smith+Brown, 2016)

Alana Pagnutti, Reception: The Radio-Works of Robert Rauschenberg and John Cage
(Smith+Brown, 2016 © Christine Jones)

Pagnutti's work is the first comprehensive look at how Robert Rauschenberg and John Cage embraced and employed radio in some of their most sophisticated and experimental works between 1942 and 1991. These include Rauschenberg's artworks Broadcast (1959) and Oracle (1962-1965) and Cage's compositions Imaginary Landscape No. 4 (1951), Water Walk (1959), and Variations VII (1966). Pagnutti considers how both men were influenced by Marshall McLuhan, and how both used radio to foster and provoke new qualities of experience and to elicit the participation of their audiences. Edited by Victoria Miguel, designed by Christine Jones, and with a beautiful foreword by Angus Carlyle, co-director of Creative Research into Sound Arts Practice (CRiSAP) at the London College of Communication (UAL). Illustrated, 73 pp.

The official book launch took place at Cafe OTO in London on July 10, 2017, 7-9 pm, with two performances by Arthur Bruce of Cage's Water Walk.  Fun to note that Bruce made use in his arsenal of instruments two of Cage's originals, on loan from the archives of the John Cage Trust: Cage's gong and one of his small, yarn-covered mallets.

Here's a little video excerpt of Bruce's performance (captured by filmmaker George South), where he uses both.

We offered the slightly dented pot lid that Cage used on occasion when touring (see below), but it was declined in favor of an actual cymbal, as called for in the score.

The wonderful photographer Fabio Lugaro was in attendance, and has kindly shared a few of his images below.

Laura Kuhn

Notes from Underground, David Rose on John Cage

In my many years with the John Cage Trust, I've seen a lot of very fine writing about John Cage. This essay, Notes from Underground, Cage : Two (Diary and Letters), is David Rose's latest, and it's absolutely beautiful. Ostensibly, it's a review of both The Selected Letters of John Cage (Wesleyan University Press, 2016) and the first ever edition of all eight parts of Cage's Diary: How to Improve the World (You'll Only Make Matters Worse) (Siglio Press, 2015). But, it's far, far more. David is an avid mycologist, and he brings his passion for and insights into the art, science, and pure contemplation of mushrooms to this essay, so much so that I found myself reading it again and again. He also is spot on with regard to Cage's views on world improvement.  I think John Cage would have been heartened to see that someone out there really understood his devotion.

This piece appears here in advance of publication courtesy of Fungi, and its publisher and editor-in-chief, Britt Bunyard.  Look for Volume 10:1, Spring 2017, coming out soon.

Laura Kuhn