Three Ends of the Cinematic Spectrum

I have three three remarkable films to share with you, each (quite differently) related to John Cage:

First, because it's the newest, is Scorcese's latest*: Shutter Island, a genre thrilled based on the 2003 novel by Dennis Lehane with an extraordinary performance by Leonard DiCaprio. While I loved every inch of this film, I especially loved its soundtrack, compiled by Robbie Robertson, former lead guitarist of The Band, which weaves together music by Ligeti, Marshall, Penderecki, Scelsi, Feldman, Richter, Eno, Schnittke, Harrison, Adams, Hodgkinson, Mahler, Erickson, and Cage. Actually, two of Cage's works are heard -- Root of an Unfocus (Boris Berman, on Naxos) and Music for Marcel Duchamp (Philip Vandre, on Mode) -- and in just the right spots (no spoilers here)!

©Klaus Baritsch

What's also included in Robertson's soundtrack that's received less than its critical due is Nam June Paik's Hommage a John Cage (1959-60), subtitled "Music for Tape Recorder and Piano." This was Paik's first staged action outside the boundaries of conventional music, significantly in the same venue Cage first presented his Music Walk the year before (Dusseldorf's Gallerie 22). Click here for a nice encapsulation, courtesy of Medien/Kunst/Netz, and here for a cool audio/visual clip, courtesy of the ubiquitous youtube.com.

*Scorcese's working with 3-D technology for his next film, The Invention of Hugo Cabret, based on the best-selling children's book by Brian Selznick recounting the story of a 12 year-old boy who lives in a Paris train station in the 1930s.

©Ralph Benko

Second, because it's the most exquisite, is as fast/slow as possible, conceived and directed by the German filmmaker and airplane pilot Paul Depprich. "What is time? What is velocity?" So begins Depprich's ponderous concept statement about his 8 hour and 23 minute HD recording of a transatlantic flight from Berlin to New York. Depprich is exploring the discrepancies that exist between objective and subjective time and speed, having been deeply inspired by Cage's As Slow As Possible, currently and for the next 600+ years being glacially sounded in Halberstadt, Germany.

This is definitely one of those times when words can't describe experience, or, put in the reverse, when art reveals itself anew. What isn't so evident in Depprich's words is just how beautiful those discrepancies can be felt when vividly captured on HD video and experienced from a living room couch. As he points out, those phases of the flight that seem the fastest -- take-off and landing -- are actually the slowest, whereas when we're up in the air and seem timelessly afloat, we're moving at maximum speed.

You're seeing only the demo DVD here, lasting a mere 32'39". With luck, I'll be enticing the folks at the Anthology Film Archives here in New York to do a screening of Depprich's extraordinary whole in their upcoming season.

Third and last, because it's an archival find, is Dove vai in vacanza? (Where Do You Go on Vacation?), a 1978 Italian gem comprising three independent episodes: I'll be all for you, directed by Mauro Bolognini, Buana, directed by Luciano Salce, and Intelligent Holidays, directed by Alberto Sordi. It's the last that I'm bringing to your attention, since Cage's 4'33" makes an extremely serious appearance here in what is otherwise a very funny scene.

The plot is simple: Remo (played by Sordi), a greengrocer, and his wife, Augusta (played by Anna Longhi), have been sent on a big city holiday by their snooty if well-meaning children, who, being close to graduation, wish their parents to experience something of their superior, learned ways before flying the coop. Remo and Augusta are treated to a number of mystifying cultural experiences on this holiday, including a meal of miniaturized food, a concert of unfathomable music, and a gallery exhibition that would do well today in Soho if painted sheep were still allowed.

While I'd recommend that you see this entire film, it's virtually impossible to come by. So, let me share at least the concert attended that includes the performance of Cage's 4'33" (which lasts a timid 2'14"). And do forgive the audio quality of this clip, which was lifted from a very aged VHS tape. The soundtrack, by the way, is by none other than Ennio Morricone, released as an LP in 1979 by RCA Italian (BL 31435).

There's a potential prize in store for those of you who've made it to the end of this lengthy blog: something hot off the press from the John Cage Trust to the first 10 people who correctly identify the other works on the program.

Laura Kuhn

4'33" Lives On!

©Lisa Macbride (2015)

The web can be a lonely place for content providers. Mostly you spend way too much time on whatever you'd like to share, then carefully upload it and send it out into the world. Silence. Without fanfare or further ado, you're on to the next task.

Not so with our 4'33"App, which garners a lot of feedback. This comes mostly in the form of audio uploads to its global map, but also in occasional communications. For example, we recently received a beautiful email from a Cage enthusiast in Germany, one Dr. Peter Hallberg, a retired painter, philosopher, and teacher. For Dr. Hallberg, the 4'33" App provides not only music but a means of rapid transport to other times and places:

When I hear for example "Davis Summer Morning July 7, 2013"

 

or "Davis Thunderstorm Sept. 2, 2013,"

 

I can also hear the atmosphere of a special moment, in a special place at a special time in the past, now timeless, of a real person living far away from me in America. Later I add other thunderstorms, one at my home, near Kassel, and another at the seaside of Rügen.*

*Dr. Hallberg's uploads to the 4'33" App, captured to date throughout Germany as well as in Sicily and Cuba, may be found under his pseudonym, PiTTo.

The 4'33" App gives me a chance to travel -- without moving, without wasting time, no change of places, traveling by mind, leaving the body behind, concentrated on my hearing sense, not being distracted by the power of pictures, by night or by day.

There are some Russian students on their way by train between Saint Petersburg and Moscow. I am with them.

 

 An old English Professor of History, Sir John Huxtable Elliott, lets me share moments of his private life in Spain and North Africa. I follow the Austrian composer Karlheinz Essel to Salzburg and Madeira, and, surprisingly, some days later, I meet him on the Isle of Rügen, where I physically was just days before.

I  join a young woman in her home in the middle of Russia (Tomsk), and then follow Charles Amirkhanian to San Francisco, where I've been twice, meeting him a moment later in Costa Rica, then at his stopover in Germany (Nürnberg), and finally in Sicily, where I later traveled and added recordings of my own. 

Now back home again in the middle of Deutschland, this App allows me to travel back again and again. And at the same time, I always know that other people can live together with me in every 4'33" recording, wherever I am or will be.

This year I visited a small, fantastic Island, belonging to Cuba, called Cayo Coco. 



With the 4'33" App I am able to return there, whenever I want. When I will have left this globe, my friends, family, and others will be able to relive some special moments with me.

Isn't it phantastic?

Phil Stone, with Larry Larson one of two developers of the 4'33" App, was touched:

It is very gratifying to read of Dr. Hallberg's enjoyment of the 4'33" App. I didn't anticipate the "aural travelogue" aspect when we first came up with the "World of 4'33"" idea, but it has become one of my favorite things. People have been taking photos of special places they visit since the camera was invented, but I think it is a relatively new idea to capture a sonic "portrait." The simple power of Cage's piece is that it calms the mind and focuses it on the sonic environment, putting a three-movement frame around the sound of a given time and place. Our 4'33" App has taken the "place" part of that equation and mapped it onto a browsable world, allowing "traveling by mind," as Dr. Hallberg so eloquently puts it, in a way that seems much more powerful than merely viewing pictures of some faraway land.

And Gene Caprioglio, Head of Rights and Licensing at C.F. Peters (as well as guitarist with the New York dance band Mixed Meta5), was also moved to respond:

I always thought of the 4'33" App as a sonic travelogue or sonic snapshot. Dr. Hallberg gets that completely. I was recently re-reading David Byrne's fantastic book, How Music Works (McSweeney's, 2012), and came upon the section where he discusses the struggle between ears and eyes for human perceptual dominance. He thinks the eyes have won. Dr. Hallberg's reference to "not being distracted by the power of pictures" brought that to mind. We have lost a lot by our dependence on the visual at the expense of the aural. I think Cage knew it back in 1952.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

In celebration of the holidays this year, our gift to you is a weekly tweet of our favorite uploads to the 4'33" App.  Follow us on Twitter: @johncagetrust

Laura Kuhn

4'33" in Johannesburg

John Cage (Guido Harari)

Ah, had John Cage lived to see this!
















Laura Kuhn

4'33" The App!

available here

Mondays with Merce (Episode 015)

Mondays with Merce (Episode 015) - The Prepared Mind: John Cage and David Tudor

These programs -- the glorious work of Nancy Dalva and the Cunningham Dance Foundation -- are always a joy, but this one particularly so for its inclusion of new archival film and photography of John Cage and David Tudor. Recent interviews with Christian Wolff and Gordon Mumma provide a beautiful, authoritative backbone, and highlights include a rare clip of Cage performing his infamous 4'33" in Harvard Square (1983) as well as new footage of Cunningham's RainForest (1968, with Tudor's eponymous score), filmed by Mondays with Merce at Moscow's Mossovet Theater in June 2011 under the auspices of the U.S. Department of State and the Chekhov Festival.

Laura Kuhn

John Cage & Electronic Publishing

"We can't be satisfied with distribution now because it won't be very good. For instance, my book (Silence), published in the United States, is very difficult to get outside the United States, and that won't be solved, because all of the publishing problems of books, and objects, and things in quantity are still those of the previous culture. Yet with the number of people who work now -- the number of composers, the number of authors, and so on -- has vastly increased over the 19th century; but the number of publishers has not increased. The result is that you have traffic problems, so you have the kind of problems that all large cities encounter with automobile traffic. And I hear, where I go now, that in the future we may expect that private traffic in large cities will be forbidden. It may then equally be forbidden to produce a book that would require people to distribute it, but it will not be forbidden, certainly, to send information by electronic media throughout the world." (John Cage, 1965)

John Cage is ever presaging, but, to date, electronic publications of his writings are scant. Kindle (my e-reader of choice) offers only three: Ken Silverman's Begin Again: An Autobiography of John Cage (Knopf, 2010), Kyle Gann's No Such Thing as Silence: John Cage's 4'33" (Yale University Press, 2010), and Richard Kostelanetz's Conversing With Cage (Limelight Editions, 1988).* Apple's iBooks (and wouldn't Cage's mesostics positively shine on an iPad) offers nothing at all.

As the three Cage e-books go, it's not a bad line-up: a detailed biography, a comprehensive look at Cage's most infamous (and arguably most guiding) composition, and a compilation of conversational engagements (this last, happily, with an index). But, things are going to change. Wesleyan University Press, Cage's stalwart principal publisher for now 50 years, is hard at work with renderings of their entire Cage catalog into electronic form. But, here as elsewhere in the workaday world, Cage poses challenges: Cage's texts are anything but e-reader friendly, so publication (launch) dates are still uncertain. And while I'm at it, let me reveal (a bit ahead of the game) that Wesleyan University Press is busily preparing a 50th anniversary hardcover edition of Cage's maverick Silence (1961), with a beautiful foreword by none other than Kyle Gann.

*The Kindle Store also offers Kostelanetz's Preambles to the New (2009), comprised entirely of prefaces created for previous books. Collectively they span more than four decades (1963-2010), and are grouped

together chronologically under headings that suggest the direction each takes: "Criticism", "Literature", "Artists & Composers", "Politics", etc. There's a new "preamble" by Kostelanetz, and a new introduction, entitled "Master Kosti," contributed by John Rocco. This work is nothing short of masterful recycling, and an elevation of the foreword to dizzying heights. Richard Kostelanetz is an accomplished writer, and prolific to boot; Cage's personal library houses some 14 of his tomes, while the John Cage Trust's print archive includes nearly two dozen. My personal favorites, in addition to the Cage-infused works, are Esthetics Contemporary (Prometheus Books, 1978), Text-Sound-Texts (William Morrow & Co., 1980), and The Theatre of Mixed Means (Dial Press, 1968), all long out of print. A few of his writings are also available for online reading at questia.com, a division of Gale, Cengage Learning.

Laura Kuhn

Cage Against the Machine

http://www.facebook.com/cageagainstthemachine

But let's start at the beginning.

The X Factor is a TV talent show franchise originating in the UK (2004) as a replacement for Pop Idol. It is a singing competition that pits contestants -- aspiring pop singers drawn from public auditions -- against each other. The programs are produced by British music executive, TV producer, and entrepreneur Simon Cowell and his company Syco TV, a subsidiary of his TV production and music publishing house Syco. The "X Factor" of the title refers to that certain, indefinable "something" that makes for star quality. The prize is public adulation and, usually, a recording contact.

A predictable fact in the UK, at least until quite recently, is that whoever wins The X Factor will assuredly release their winning song on a debut single that will go straight to No. 1 on the UK charts in time for Christmas. So when Joe McElderry won The X Factor in 2009 with the December 12 release of his terribly earnest ballad, "The Climb," he was confident he'd be celebrating the holidays in very celebrated style.

Ah, but it was not to be so. The 18-year old from South Shields was ousted by the California rock band Rage Against the Machine, and specifically for their re-release of the 1992 song, "Killing In The Name" (with the endearing iconic refrain, "Fuck you! I won't do what you tell me"). The upset was the result of a rather lofty Facebook campaign spearheaded by one Jon Morter, a 35-year old rock fan, part-time DJ, and logistics expert from Essex.

Morter had made a similar attempt in 2008 when he campaigned for Rick Astley's "Never Gonna Give You Up" against The X Factor starlet of that year, Alexandra Burke, and her song, "Hallelujah." He was not successful.

Unfazed, Morter decided to try again in 2009 with a campaign on behalf of Rage Against the Machine. But this time around he got a little help: On December 15, the comedian Peter Serafinowicz urged his 268,000+ Twitter followers to join in, and by the time Paul McCartney and former X Factor winner Steve Brookstein pledged their support, McElderry was already doomed.

Rage Against the Machine won the battle for Christmas top spot on the basis of +/- 500,000 downloads (a mere +/- 50,000 more than the runner-up). A pleasurable twist to the story was that Rage Against the Machine had gone in pledging that, should they win, 100% of the profits from their download would be given over to charities: specifically to the housing and homelessness organization Shelter, and Youth Music, the UK's largest children's music charity. True to their word, on June 6, 2010, Rage Against the Machine gave a concert in London's Finsbury Park to celebrate their success. During the set, which was attended by some 40,000 fans, the band presented the charities with a check for nearly $300,000.

Two months later, on August 12, 2010, a short piece by one Alun Palmer appeared in the Daily Mirror with the following headline: "Silence Isn't Golden for Simon Cowell and X Factor in Christmas No. Battle," wherein it was reported that a host of musicians would be gathering together to record experimental composer John Cage's classic work 4'33" as a viable contender against whomever (and whatever) Simon Cowell would ultimately throw into the 2010 ring.

"Cage Against the Machine" was started by the London-based artist Dave Hilliard in the summer of 2010 as a grassroots Facebook campaign to get Cage's 4'33" to No. 1 on the UK charts this Christmas. For him it may have simply been an amusement, or a petty war lodged against the tyranny of Simon Cowell, but, to date, it's garnered some 73,000 fans, infused over the past several months by the attention of Eddy Temple-Morris (Xfm presenter and CMU columnist), Joe Hutchinson (Ou Est Le Swimming Pool), and Mark Jones (Wall of Sound). Should 4'33" take the No. 1 spot, proceeds will again go to charities, this time five:

1. The British Tinnitus Association (BTA)

2. Campaign Against Living Miserably (CALM)

3. Nordoff Robbins Music Therapy

4. Youth Music

5. Sound and Music

Interesting stuff, no?

But The X Factor may not be Cage's only contender, or, from another point of view, Cage may not be a contender at all. Since the power of an energetic grassroots Facebook campaign is obviously some measure, we might want to keep an eye on The Trashmen's "Surfin' Bird," that ubiquitous little ditty recorded in 1964 by the Minnesota-based surf rock band known as The Trashmen, which reached #4 on the Billboard Hot 100. The Facebook campaign on behalf of The Trashmen's "Surfin' Bird" has attracted, to date, an astonishing 600,000+ fans.

"Surfin' Bird" is actually a combination of two contemporary R & B hits by The Rivingtons: "Papa-Oom-Mow-Mow" and "The Bird's the Word." The earliest pressings of the single credit The Trashmen as composers, but with the threat of a lawsuit by The Rivington's legal counsel, the credit was changed to reflect the song's true origins.

Such shady beginnings matter very little, of course, and the song went on to be covered by an astonishing array of musicians over the years, including (but not limited to) The Deviants, The Ramones, The Cramps, The Boppers, Silverchair, Equipe, Sodom, The Hep Stars, The Iguanas, The Studio Sound Ensemble, Sha Na Na, The Psycho Surfers, The Queers, The Wipe Outs, and even Pee-Wee Herman. It's also sustained itself in the culture via television and film, with repeated references in Family Guy -- "I Dream of Jesus," "Big Man on Hippocampus" (launching the song to #8 on the iTunes Top 10 Rock Songs chart and #50 on the UK Singles Chart in 2009), "April in Quahog," and "Welcome Back, Carter" -- and in a single episode of the beloved Spongebob Squarepants -- "I Love Dancing." It's at work in Stanley Kubrick's Full Metal Jacket as well as in John Waters' Pink Flamingo, and it's a soundtrack option in the popular video game Battlefield Vietnam.

But back to John Cage.

Last Monday the recording of 4'33" finally happened, with a Who's Who-worthy line-up of largely Indie artists packed into Studio One of London's legendary Dean Street Studios in London.

The latest tally (drawn from conflicting reports) includes Adam F., Aeroplane, Alexander Wolfe, Alice Russell, Anne Pigalle, Barry Ashworth, Billy Bragg, Big Pink, Bishi, Bo Ningen, Chas Smash, Coldcut, Crystal Fighters, Dan Le Sac, Does It Offend You Yeah?, Dub Pistols, Enter Shikari, Fenech Soler, Fyfe Dangerfield, Gallows, Guillemots, Heaven 17, Imogen Heap, Infadels, Japanese Popsters, Jarra York, John Foxx, John McLure, Kilford the Music Painter, Kooks, Loose Cannons, Man Like Me, Rix Mc, Monarchy, Mr. Hudson, Napolean IIIrd, Olly Wride Orbital, Ou Est Le Swimming Pool, Penguin Prison, Scroobius Pip, South Central, Suggs, Teeth!!!, Tom Alison, Tom Milsom, Unkle, Venus in Furs, Whitey...

The producers were Paul Epworth (Friendly Fires/Florence & The Machine), Clive Langer (Madness's producer), and Charlie Rapino (That That, Kylie Minogue). The event was also apparently filmed for a documentary and promo release by music film legend Dick Curruthers (Oasis, Manics, Rolling Stones).

****

The press has been relentless. Check out this, or this, or this, or this, or this, or this, or this (which, curiously, also finally reveals what really happened between Cage & Batt...), and then search anew tomorrow morning over coffee. As different as Cage's 4'33" is from whatever song emerges as victorious from The X Factor this weekend, it can't possibly be any more different than The Trashmen's "Surfin' Bird." Come what may (and be careful what you wish for), it's been pretty amazing to watch so many imaginations captured by Cage's work. What a world.

Laura Kuhn

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.