The selected letters of John Cage 9780819575913, 0819575917, 9780819575920, 0819575925

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The SelecTed leTTerS of

JOHN CAGE

publication of this book is funded by the Beatrice Fox Auerbach Foundation Fund at the Hartford Foundation for Public Giving

The SelecTed leTTerS of

JOHN CAGE Edited by Laura Kuhn Wesleyan University Press | Middletown, Connecticut

Wesleyan University Press Middletown CT 06459 www.wesleyan.edu/wespress © 2016 John Cage Trust All rights reserved Manufactured in the United States of America Designed by Eric M. Brooks Typeset in Albertina by Passumpsic Publishing publication of this book is funded by the Beatrice Fox Auerbach Foundation Fund at the Hartford Foundation for Public Giving Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Names: Cage, John. | Kuhn, Laura Diane. Title: The selected letters of John Cage / edited by Laura Kuhn. Description: Middletown, Connecticut: Wesleyan University Press, [2016] | Includes bibliographical references and index. Identifiers: lccn 2015041918 | isbn 9780819575913 (cloth: alk. paper) | isbn 9780819575920 (ebook) Subjects: lcsh: Cage, John —Correspondence. | Composers —Correspondence. Classification: lcc ml410.c24 a4 2016 | ddc 780.92 —dc23 LC record available at http://lccn.loc.gov/2015041918 5 4 3 2 1 Cover photo: James Klosty. The Fondation Maeght in Saint-Paul-de-Vence (1970).

for r alPh

contents Preface | xi Part one

1930–1949 | 1 Part tWo

1 9 5 0 – 1 9 6 1 | 125 Part three

1 9 6 2 – 1 9 7 1 | 255 Part foUr

1 9 7 2 – 1 9 8 2 | 409 Part five

1 9 8 3 – 1 9 9 2 | 519 aPPendix Cage’s Correspondents, with Sources of His Letters | 593 illUstr ation credits | 599 index | 601

Preface The first day I formally met John Cage at his 18th Street loft, in the spring of 1987, he met me at the elevator. I would later learn that he did this with all of his visitors, welcoming them into the home he had shared with Merce Cunningham for nearly a decade. He was amiable but preoccupied, and I soon learned why. It was window-washing day at the loft, and the scores of plants that lined the windowsills of the apartment had to be removed to the floor. Meanwhile, the entire apartment smelled of granola, which was baking merrily in the oven. Cage and I proceeded to move the plants —blooming cultivars, cacti and succulents, evergreens of many kinds —while getting acquainted. Cage learned that I was near the end of a New York City residency in between two graduate degrees at Ucla, and I learned that Cage was dangerously behind on his Europeras 1 & 2, a commission from the Frankfurt Opera. Cage had taken on a “Wagnerian” role, assuming full charge of every aspect of the work —music, of course, for both orchestra and singers, but also casting, lighting, costumes, stage actions and design, even the program booklet. He and Andrew Culver, his programmer/assistant, were in the thick of designing the lighting program. Invited by Cage to participate, I snagged an area yet untouched, the costumes, and, at Cage’s suggestion, also agreed to help wherever extra hands and eyes were needed. In the weeks that followed, I created a database of dress drawn from documents held at the Fashion Institute of Technology. This, in time, would be subjected to chance operations for Germany’s final selections. We spent a week photographing encyclopedia images, me, Andy, and Cage, the tips of my fingers captured for all of posterity in the edges of many of the original shots. From the start, Cage and I were perfect for each other. Cage didn’t like telling others what to do and I didn’t like to be told. But he was also deeply committed to seeing that his work became my own. I was free as I could be to populate the database, which was inspired by Cage’s only mandate: that the stage look something like what one might see on any corner of multicultural Manhattan. In the weeks before my return to Los Angeles, we worked together nearly every day, from the moment Merce left for his dance studio, usually by 10 a.m., until Cage would knock off, right around 5 p.m., for a game or two of chess, often with the artist Bill Anastasi. Wine was never poured before “à six heures,” but always soon after and always red. Conversation during this closing time was as it had xi

been throughout the day: almost always about composition and work, rarely about current events. When Cage telephoned me in California later that year to suggest I return to New York for further work together, I said yes. The last five years of Cage’s life were intense. In 1987, in addition to the Frankfurt premiere of his Europeras 1 & 2, Cage oversaw a lavish production of his Roaratorio: An Irish Circus on Finnegans Wake at London’s Royal Albert Hall with the Merce Cunningham Dance Company. He began work with Henning Lohner on his film, One11 (1992), and oversaw the premiere installation of his Henry David Thoreau–inspired Essay at Documenta 8 in Kassel. He also attended a grand Musicircus in honor of his seventy-fifth birthday at the Los Angeles Festival John Cage Celebration, involving hundreds of performers. In 1988 his formal engagement with watercolors began at the Mountain Lake Workshop in Virginia with Ray Kass, where he produced the first of two beautiful bodies of work, New River Watercolors. He traveled to Moscow to teach and to attend the Third International Music Festival, bunking with the Russian-born American lexicographer Nicolas Slonimsky as they traveled around the country. Cage recalled upon his return how much he had enjoyed the irregular movements of the trains. Cage mostly spent the academic year 1988–1989 as the Charles Eliot Norton Professor of Poetry at Harvard University, producing six full-length mesostic poems, published by Harvard University Press as I–VI, which he delivered throughout the year. In time, some of the materials used in this composition would also yield his “Bolivia Mix”: eighty-nine loosely bound transcripts of contemporary newspaper articles —chance-determined collages —which he distributed as a Christmas gift to friends. “Why Bolivia?” I asked. “Because,” he replied, gazing at the rocks and plants placed about, “it is where I hope to retire, since no one there has any interest in modern music.” In August 1989 Cage attended the Telluride Composer-to-Composer Festival, which reconnected him with many friends, followed by travel to California, where he presented a new collaborative work at the Bay Area Radio Drama conference at the Skywalker Ranch in Nicasio. He then was in Japan to accept the prestigious Kyoto Prize, where he appeared in traditional Japanese dress to present his “Autobiographical Statement” as part of his acceptance speech. The check, amounting to 45 million yen (roughly $380,000), was endorsed to Merce to cover the endless shortfall of the Cunningham Dance Foundation. Cage also served as a resident composer with Pierre Boulez and Olivier Messiaen, both old friends, at the 11th Huddersfield Contemporary Music Festival in the UK. The following year, 1990, found him in Darmstadt, where he received xii  |  Preface

the Schönberg Medal, in Berlin, for the Akademie der Künste’s “John Cage in Östberlin,” and in Glasgow, for the 8th Musica Nova, where he served as composer-in-residence with James MacMillan, Nigel Osborne, and Wolfgang Rihm. In 1991, Cage received the Frederick R. Weisman Art Award for Lifetime Achievement —$10,000 and a beautiful cast sculpture by Roy Lichtenstein — at a candlelit ceremony in the gardens of the Los Angeles County Museum of Art. I will never forget walking up the steps to the entrance that night. Cage, in need of a haircut, dressed in traditional blue jeans, and carrying his pajamas and toothbrush in a D’Agostino’s grocery bag for an overnight stay in Beverly Hills, was momentarily turned away by the guard. “A private affair,” he muttered, blocking our way. I was horrified, but Cage was suddenly cheerful, suggesting we quickly go somewhere and have a drink before the guard changed his mind. The year 1991 also saw Cage attending “James Joyce/John Cage,” at the Zurich Junifestwochen, as well as the “Cagefest” at the National Academy of Sciences in Washington, DC. In January 1992, he presented his “Overpopulation and Art” at an interdisciplinary conference at Stanford University, Here Comes Everybody: The Music, Poetry, and Art of John Cage. At the close of Cage’s reading he was admonished by someone in the audience for not tackling the “larger” problems of our global life. Another asked whether he would consider a nomination for president. He left the stage to resounding applause. That same month, an annual residency at Crown Point Press in San Francisco spent making visual art works resulted in two new series: Without Horizon and HV2. He was in San Francisco again in May, this time for the Herbst Theatre’s anticipatory John Cage 80th Birthday Celebration. We embarked together on what would be his final tour shortly after, fulfilling obligations throughout much of May and June in Halle, Bratislava, Florence, and Perugia. Before traveling home, we would stop for several days in Villiers-sous-Grez outside of Paris, where Cage enjoyed quiet time (and a lot of chess) with his dear friend, Teeny Duchamp. Upon his return to New York, Cage attended a series of weekend concerts of his music at MoMA’s Abby Aldrich Rockefeller Sculpture Garden, arranged by his colleague, the conductor Paul Zukofsky. He also worked hard, though without much enthusiasm, to complete all that was being asked of him in preparation for the John Cage Anarchic Harmony Festival ’92, slated for Frankfurt. In the midst of it all, he said that his schedule read “like fantasy” or, at the very least, “like someone else’s.” The plan was to spend an extended period of time in Germany in celebration of his eightieth birthday, with concerts and events taking place not only in Frankfurt, but in Cologne, Wiesbaden, and Groningen. Preface  |  xiii

Cage was dreading the time away from home, and, as we later learned, his scheduled appearances were not to be.

John Cage was born in the second decade of the twentieth century and died in its last, living through one of the most dramatic and rapidly changing centuries in world history. He had spent his early childhood in the milieu of the First World War, and entered adulthood on the eve of the Great Depression. The dissolution of his marriage to Xenia Kashevaroff, which lasted a decade, was nearly contemporaneous with the onset of World War II. He lived out his middle years at the height of the Cold War, which grew hot in Korea and Vietnam. Shocking assassinations of three American leaders occurred in the 1960s — John F. Kennedy (1963), Martin Luther King (1968), and Robert Kennedy (1968) —and on July 21, 1969, Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin walked on the moon. The 1970s were years of both sorrow and hope in America: the birth of the ePa, Earth Day, and Pbs, but also the horrific Kent and Jackson State University shootings. With the ratification of the 26th Amendment in 1971, eighteen-yearolds gained the right to vote, and with the landmark decision reached in Roe v. Wade in 1973, women the right to abort. In 1972, President Richard Nixon was in China and then reelected; in 1974, facing impeachment for his role in the Watergate scandal (which Cage archly called “America’s theater”), he resigned. And Cage’s last decade was nearly synchronous with escalating unrest in the Middle East, which led to the Iran-Iraq War (1980–1988) and the Gulf War (1990–1991), also known as Operation Desert Shield. By the time of his death in 1992, at just shy of eighty, Cage had lived under fifteen presidents, ranging from William Howard Taft to George H. W. Bush. He had also lived to see momentous progress made on behalf of the human condition with the civil rights movement, women’s liberation, the antiwar movement, and the counterculture revolution. Very few of these tumultuous events are to be found in Cage’s letters. Lest we conclude that his was a politically unconscious life, however, they are amply reflected in his eight-part, sixteen-year-long project titled Diary: How to Improve the World (You’ll Only Make Matters Worse), published for the first time in 2015 in its entirety by Siglio Press. Cage’s Diary is a mosaic of ideas, statements, words, and stories, all speaking to world improvement and all drawn from three of his earlier Wesleyan University Press publications: A Year from Monday: New Lectures and Writings (1967), M: Writings ’67–’72 (1973), and X: Writings ’79–’82 (1983). Cage recorded all eight parts June 22–24, 1991, at Powerplay Recording Studios xiv  |  Preface

in Maur, Switzerland, leaving an unfinished part nine behind. This recording would be released in a cd box set by Wergo in 1992. At first glance, Cage’s letters appear to contrast sharply with his Diary, but the two are more complementary than different. Taken together they form something akin to autobiography. This because in both Cage reveals two overriding concerns, albeit cast in different forms and with their emphases reversed: in his Diary, Cage is a world citizen, his focus on world improvement, while in his letters, Cage is a composer, his focus on music’s role in improving the world. We see language in both regards over and over again in his communications with others: in his constant drive to originality and invention, his unwavering attention to people and place, his avoidance of political engagement, and his belief in the efficacious use of technology, this last fueled by the ideas and work of Marshall McLuhan and R.  Buckminster Fuller. He appears almost tireless in his mission. What he often referred to as his innately sunny disposition is almost always evident, as he presents the world as a place of possibility, humor, and hope. Cage’s abrupt death on August 12, 1992, changed the lives of many. I found myself in the position of knowing the most about many aspects of his life —his recent work, to be sure, but also where his money was stashed, what the cat was fed, where extra keys could be found, and Cunningham’s daily routine. I became, by default, the caretaker of all things John Cage. After a year of making biweekly commutes across the country, however, living out of a suitcase from week to week, I began to flag. I suggested to Merce over dinner one night that we create a structure —an entity of some sort, an organization, an institute —something that would better support our efforts in stewarding his partner’s life’s work. He was supportive, and with a call to Allan Sperling, a friend and lawyer long in service on the Cunningham Dance Foundation board, this was quickly done. So began the John Cage Trust, which in 1993 took up residence in the restored postal archives building at 666 Greenwich Street in New York City’s West Village. Its founding board of directors consisted of me, Cunningham, Anne d’Harnoncourt, director of the Philadelphia Museum of Art, and David Vaughan, long-time archivist of the Cunningham Dance Foundation. We began with $10,000 and copyright to Cage’s intellectual property, our initial archives comprised of all that Cage himself had amassed. A permanent collection of his visual art works was created from pieces hanging on the walls of what was now Cunningham’s loft and others that Cage had consigned to Margarete Roeder, his long-time friend and gallerist. His music manuscripts, numbering some Preface  |  xv

twenty-eight thousand pages, was organized by a team of international Cage scholars —James Pritchett and me from the United States, Martin Erdmann from Germany, Paul van Emmerik from the Netherlands, and András Wilheim from Hungary. After being catalogued and reproduced in triplicate, the John Cage Music Manuscript Collection was placed in perpetuity at the New York Public Library for the Performing Arts. In 2002, with the loss of rent stabilization in our West Village building and with alternative affordable real estate in short supply in Manhattan, the John Cage Trust became nomadic. In 2007, it joined the ranks of Bard College in Annandale-on-Hudson, New York, under the wing of its honored president, Leon Botstein. This has been its home since. The John Cage Trust has evolved over its twenty-plus years of existence, peripatetic but in one way constant: that it always be responsive to the world at its door, guided at every step not so much by what Cage had done but, rather, by what Cage is doing now.

From the onset of work on the present collection, I knew my efforts would be of use. Inquiries are frequent at the John Cage Trust about whether Cage wrote to a particular individual or addressed a particular topic or composition in his correspondence. Work began with the research that had been conducted into the John Cage Correspondence Collection at Northwestern University by Kenneth Silverman, author of Begin Again: A Biography of John Cage (Knopf, 2010). Our initial criteria for inclusion held fast as we sought other collections: that the letters collectively reflect Cage’s wide and egalitarian reach; that they reveal Cage’s preoccupation with particularly complex compositions and ideas; that the various periods of Cage’s life be covered; and that the whole reflect the incredible range of Cage’s activities over some six decades. There was no shortage of letters to choose from, and possibilities came from all points on the globe. This was particularly true in Cage’s later years, when he received a remarkable number of unsolicited letters from perfect strangers: inquiries about his music, accounts of dreams about him, requests for his opinion on artistic endeavors, challenges to his philosophy, and requests for autographs, endorsements, and recommendations. It is our good fortune that Cage felt duty bound to reply to them all. What I didn’t foresee is the kind of story Cage’s letters would tell: a quiet, steady saga of near epic proportion about the singular life of a twentiethcentury experimental American composer. Cage’s earliest letters to family, xvi  |  Preface

friends, and teachers reflect an earnest search for identity, direction, and place. He early on waffled in his choice of profession, by turns aspiring to become a minister, a writer, an artist, a poet, a composer. Settling on modern music composition, Cage set a steady if meandering course to the “head of the company,” the celebrated Austrian composer Arnold Schoenberg, who had settled in Los Angeles. His confidence was buoyed by his studies, and then by his teaching, performing, and composing activities at the Cornish School in Seattle. By his late thirties, Cage is writing with ease and fluency to his intellectual peers: Pierre Boulez and David Tudor, especially, on technical matters of composition and performance, and Peter Yates, on matters of aesthetics, music history, and style. While the selected letters reveal in the main Cage’s concerns as a composer, they do so in the context of a remarkable breadth of subject matter —composition and performance, to be sure, but also mycology, travel, philosophy, chess, food, religion, and art. And while they inform us about the remarkable range of Cage’s activities, they also reveal something of his inner life. This in spite of the fact that with the exception of Cage’s letters to Merce Cunningham throughout the early 1940s, chronicling a rather rocky start to their personal relationship, few letters to his most intimate colleagues exist: Jasper Johns and Robert Rauschenberg, for example, largely are absent. Likewise, Cage is mostly mute on the subjects of desire and love, with but three notable exceptions: his letters to Pauline Schindler (with Xenia, one of the two objects of his ardor in the 1930s), his aforementioned letters to Cunningham (overlapping with the last years of his marriage to Xenia, in the 1940s), and his letters to David Tudor (who captured his attention and heart in the 1950s). His relationship with Schindler clearly was consummated, his relationship with Tudor likely not. His relationship with Cunningham, both personal and professional, would endure for some fifty years. The introductions to the five parts of this collection were originally written jointly with Silverman, although they’ve since gone through countless revisions. Taken as a whole, they do not suggest a biography; rather, placed singly at the start of what are roughly decades of Cage’s life, they serve as guides to the letters that follow, identifying correspondents and providing context for and editorial comment upon matters discussed. If one gleans a biographical arc, it appears without a single, overriding descriptor: Cage is by turns enthusiastic, intelligent, consistent, and caring, as well as unwavering, repetitious, and dogmatic. A single creative idea might occupy him for years, through many Preface  |  xvii

compositions. One thing that does become clear is that John Cage began life as John Cage and finished life as John Cage. In the end, with his midlife adoption of Zen philosophy and his adaptation of the I Ching to chance operations, his feet, as Daisetz Teitaro Suzuki might have put it, were a little bit off the ground. Reproducing the letters as Cage wrote them, I have opted to regularize his paragraphing, which in reality varies from letter to letter, and is often inconsistent within a single letter. I have not distinguished between letters that are written by hand or typewritten, or between those composed on simple bond paper or on “Note-O-Grams,” those quirky carriers of communication in carbon copy triplicate that Cage favored in the last decades of his life. More often than not, a late date, brevity, and the absence of an opening salutation imply the latter. I have corrected evident typos and erratic punctuation, but preserved his sometimes eccentric spelling and grammar, such as his habitual use of “therefor” and “correspondance,” and his frequent use of the word “which,” when, at least for the American reader, he really means “that.” Erratic capitalizations have been removed. I have noted his occasional misspellings of correspondents’ names, and when I have been unable to determine a correspondent’s identity, I have simply provided detail drawn from the letter that prompted Cage’s response. Date and place of each letter is provided when known, an approximate date suggested when not. Titles of works have been made complete and italicized for easy recognition, and Cage’s largely unremarkable closings to letters have been omitted. An appendix to the volume identifies the various sources of the selected letters, both public and private. The Selected Letters of John Cage is made possible through the diligence and generosity of many, and gratitude is in order. We thank first John Cage, who religiously cared for and finally placed his extensive accumulated correspondence at the Northwestern University Library, from 1969 under the care and guidance of Don Roberts and, later, Deborah Campana, who became the point person for researchers around the world. Northwestern’s present staff—D. J. Hoek at the helm, with able assistance from Gregory MacAyeal and Alan Akers —supported the present editor’s frequent and sustained visits; they also conducted long-distance research and fact checking on her behalf, often at the drop of a hat. Thanks is also extended to Kenneth Silverman, whose initial research provided a strong start to our work, and to the innumerable individuals who have guarded their correspondence with Cage like gold. Lastly, we thank Suzanna Tamminen, editor-in-chief at Wesleyan University Press, John Cage’s principal publisher. It was she in 2012, Cage’s centennial year, xviii  |  Preface

who shepherded the Press’s worldwide celebration of fifty years of engagement with his literary works. She also brought us the estimable Bronwyn Becker, a project editor from the University Press of New England, who tackled an almost impossible job. Much, much applause to all! Laura Kuhn New York, 2015

Preface  |  xix

Part one

1930-1949

I

n the sUmmer of 1930, the adventuresome seventeen-year-old John Cage dropped out of his first year at Pomona College in California and began an eighteen-month trip abroad. Much of the time he traveled with Harvardeducated Don Sample, ten years his senior. From Algeria and elsewhere he wrote home with great enthusiasm to his parents: his father, John Milton Cage Sr., a professional inventor, and his mother, Lucretia Harvey Cage, better known as “Crete,” a journalist with the Los Angeles Times. His letters are brimming with excitement and wonder at the people and places he encountered. Paris awakened him to modern music, and while in Spain he did some composing. Cage’s pursuit of a musical career began in earnest after his return to California late in 1931. Hoping to study with world-renowned Austrian composer Arnold Schoenberg, who had settled in Los Angeles after fleeing Nazi Berlin, Cage began taking composition lessons with the pianist Richard Buhlig, who was much praised for his Bach interpretations and who also played contemporary works. Buhlig advised Cage to find a path to Schoenberg through one of his former students, Henry Cowell, with whom Cage then briefly studied. Cowell suggested that Cage get in touch with Adolph Weiss, the first American musician to have studied with Schoenberg. Weiss, then living in New York, agreed to take Cage on as a student, and in April 1934, Cage, with Don Sample, arrived in Manhattan. Cage took a lesson from Weiss every day and attended Cowell’s weekly class in ethnomusicology at the New School for Social Research. In early 1935, his education well under way, Cage returned to California and began attending Schoenberg’s classes both at the master’s home and at Usc and Ucla, studying musical analysis and probably also composition. For a while he also took horn lessons from a local symphonist, Wendell Hoss, but, engrossed in his work with Schoenberg, soon gave up the instrument. Cage was broke more often than not, but also willing to do whatever work came his way. He took on various odd jobs —dishwasher, recreation director for children in schools and hospitals, and, with much enjoyment, scientific researcher for his father. He also went door to door in his neighborhood, selling subscriptions, 3

mostly to housewives, to a lecture series on modern music and art he created ad hoc. Cage’s youthful relationship with Sample was sexual, but in the midst of his musical studies, he found himself in love with two women, and at the same time: Pauline Schindler, forty-one years old to his twenty-two and separated from her well-known architect-husband, Rudolph Schindler; and Xenia (Andreyevna) Kashevaroff, a far-from-orthodox daughter of the archpriest of the Eastern Orthodox Russian-Greek Church of Alaska. Schindler’s career as a writer, editor, and lecturer on architecture and the visual arts was advanced. She was considered an agent for modernism, as photographer Edward Weston once described her, “the ideal go-between for the artist and the public.” Kashevaroff, a former art student at Reed College who in time would leave her mark as a sculptor of abstract mobiles, bookbinder, and conservator, was reportedly small and feisty, possessing what Cage called a “barb wit.” Weston, Xenia’s erstwhile lover, described her as “most delightfully unmoral, pagan.” Indeed, Weston’s 1931 photographs of Xenia, some involving full frontal nudity, capture something of her wanton spirit. Cage declared his meeting with Xenia love at first sight, and the two were married in Yuma, Arizona, on June 7, 1935. Few of Cage’s letters survive between 1936 and 1938. It is known, however, that a new stage in his career began in the fall of 1938, when he joined the faculty at the adventurous Cornish School in Seattle. Within a rich academic environment that trained students in the interdependence of the arts, Cage gave courses in experimental music and modern dance composition, and served as an accompanist for modern dance classes. Having developed an intense interest in percussion music —regarding it as the perfect ground to explore the vast universe of sound —he collected and constructed percussion instruments and organized a percussion ensemble. On Dec. 9, 1938, in Seattle, he produced what may be the first concert devoted entirely to percussion music in America. Soon after, he took his musicians to perform at schools around the Northwest, touring as the Cage Percussion Players, sometimes with Bonnie Bird and her Cornish School dancers. Cage’s letters resume in 1939, and for three summers he taught in the Dance Department of Mills College in Oakland, California. He also entered into what would be enduring relationships with others in his chosen field. The first summer, 1939, he offered a class in percussion jointly with a fellow student of Henry Cowell’s, Lou Harrison. Brought together by Cowell, Harrison and Cage partnered to compose Double Music (1941), working separately without consultation and then putting their parts together. It was also at Mills College that Cage first 4  |  1 9 3 0 – 1 9 4 9

met the composer and music critic Virgil Thomson, with whom he entered into an equally long if more troubled relationship. Cage’s music began to be noticed; his 1940 concert at Mills College, with seventeen percussionists, yielded enthusiastic notices in the San Francisco Chronicle and Time magazine. His reach was also widening, and he gained an important champion in Peter Yates, a music critic and writer for the magazine Arts & Architecture. Yates, with his wife, Frances, held concerts featuring avant-garde compositions on the roof of their Los Angeles home, aptly publicized as Evenings on the Roof. Yates explained and supported Cage’s radically new ideas in many published articles, and the two forged a close, important friendship. Cage’s various musical pursuits came together in his desire to establish a Center for Experimental Music. He worked hard to gather funds and to persuade a variety of institutions to sponsor it, but his overtures were either turned down or ignored. Among those to whom he proposed the center was the émigré painter/photographer László Moholy-Nagy. Formerly an influential teacher at the Bauhaus in Germany, Moholy-Nagy had established a sort of American Bauhaus in Chicago, the School of Design. Accepting an invitation to teach there, the Cages moved to Chicago in the fall of 1941. In addition to delivering his course Sound Experiments at the School of Design, Cage taught and performed elsewhere in and around Chicago, a city not much to his liking. He and Xenia befriended Rue Shaw, president of the distinguished Arts Club of Chicago, where Cage would give an explosive percussion concert in early 1942 involving tin cans, a siren, and shattered bottles that received national attention. Late in 1941, Cage was commissioned by Columbia Workshop of Wbbm and Columbia Broadcasting System to compose a radio play with sound effects on a text by the poet Kenneth Patchen, also resident in Chicago. Poet and composer together created The City Wears a Slouch Hat, which was given its one and only live broadcast over the cbs network on May 31, 1942, a Sunday afternoon. The public response from across the nation was a lively jumble of boos and hurrahs. Emboldened by the experience, Cage and Xenia moved to New York City in the summer of 1942. They lodged for a few weeks at Peggy Guggenheim’s “Hale House,” then in Montclair, New Jersey, with Cage’s parents, who themselves had moved east. He gave his first New York concert at the Museum of Modern Art in association with the League of Composers that was covered extensively in the press, including a pictorial spread in Life (March 15, 1943). And although Cage’s letter dated January 11, 1945, requesting exemption via a III-A classification from the draft hasn’t survived, we know that he avoided military service on the basis of Xenia’s (slightly exaggerated) poor health, as was reported to the 1 9 3 0 – 1 9 4 9  |  5

Selective Service System (Local Board No. 219, Los Angeles, California) by one Ernest W. Kulka, M.D. Gradually, Cage was turning away from composing percussion music to writing exclusively for the piano, both prepared and unprepared. Cage had long-standing interest in experimental instruments, as his many references to such composers and inventors as Luigi Russolo, Léon Theremin, and Edgard Varèse attest. His own prepared piano would bring him national attention. Inspired by Cowell’s earlier unorthodox experiments, Cage had devised his new instrument while at the Cornish School, bringing forth unusual timbres from the piano by inserting various objects (rubber washers, screws, bolts, weather stripping) between its strings. Chief among his compositions for the instrument would be his Sonatas and Interludes (1946–1948); the pianist Maro Ajemian, a devotee of contemporary music, would give the first partial performance of the work on April 16, 1946, at New York’s Town Hall, which was enthusiastically reviewed in the New York Times, the Herald Tribune, and elsewhere. As Cage worked to complete the piece, which was ultimately dedicated to Ajemian, his friend Lou Harrison, who had also moved East, suffered a nervous breakdown. To help defray the cost of Harrison’s treatment in a New York sanatorium, Cage sought and secured assistance from a composer whose music Harrison advocated passionately, Charles Ives. Cage’s letters from the early 1940s tell us much about the onset of his relationship with Merce Cunningham. The two had met in 1938 at the Cornish School, where Cunningham, then nineteen years old to Cage’s twenty-six, was enrolled as a theater student but taking a class in modern dance which Cage sometimes served as accompanist. The two reconnected while the Cages were in Chicago, but their friendship didn’t blossom until both were resident in New York where Cunningham had earlier moved to join the Martha Graham Dance Company. Cunningham began making dances to music by Cage, and, ever more intrigued by each other’s ideas and work, the two soon became lovers. Cage’s letters reveal a stormy start to the relationship, he being by turns ecstatic and bereft. In either case, his work was clearly enlivened by the close proximity of a genuine and promising colleague. Unable to tolerate her husband’s diversion, Xenia left Cage in 1944; despite attempts to reconcile, they divorced in 1946. Artistically, Cage’s union with Cunningham was an immediate success. Their first recital together, in April 1944, included six prepared piano pieces by Cage with solo dances by Cunningham. The reviews were glowing. Among other acclaimed early collaborations was their May 1947 performance of The Seasons at Broadway’s Ziegfeld Theater, with scenery and costumes by Isamu Noguchi. 6  |  1 9 3 0 – 1 9 4 9

Throughout these years Cage undertook much else. He considered composing a dance score for Edgar Allan Poe’s “The Bells,” an idea proposed in 1945 by the dancer/choreographer Ruth Page and her husband, Thomas Hart Fisher. In the fall of 1946, Cage met in New York the visiting Indian musician Gita Sarabhai. The two became good friends and met several times a week over five months, exchanging ideas about Indian music and philosophy and the teachings of Arnold Schoenberg that would resonate in Cage’s life and work for decades. Cage also wrote and published articles about contemporary music, including his own, and in the winter of 1947 founded a short-lived art and literary magazine, Possibilities, with the artist Robert Motherwell. In the summer of 1948, Cage and Cunningham were in residence at Black Mountain College, near Asheville, North Carolina. The director of the small, experimental school was Josef Albers, a German-born artist who had taught in the Bauhaus but fled Nazi Germany and joined the Black Mountain faculty. While Cage’s letters provide little detail, it is known that during his two visits with Cunningham, in 1948 and again in 1952, Cage played his complete Sonatas and Interludes for the first time in public and offered courses, including Structure of Music and Music for Dance. He also produced a festival devoted to the works of Erik Satie, which included an original staging of Satie’s Dada comedy The Ruse of Medusa, starring R. Buckminster Fuller as the Baron Medusa, Elaine de Kooning as his daughter Frisette, and Cunningham as Jonas, a costly mechanical monkey. Cage was enamored with Satie, and revealed his ever-widening knowledge about the French composer when writing about his works to both Yates (in 1948) and Cecil Smith (in 1950), a writer for Musical America. Cage’s correspondence becomes unusually rich after March 23, 1949, when he and Cunningham sailed for Europe. His many letters to friends and family record a lively social, intellectual, and artistic life abroad. Cage visited Giacometti and Brancusi, played for one of Olivier Messiaen’s classes, and at least twice visited Alice B. Toklas. He delighted in knowing Maggie Nogueira, a generous Brazilian woman who provided dinner and theater invitations in Amsterdam as well as the use of her chauffeured car. Nogueira was closely connected to another of Cage’s confidantes of the period, Peggy Glanville-Hicks, an Australian composer and music critic who had acquired American citizenship and lived in New York. Many of Cage’s friends visited him in Paris, including the composer Merton Brown and the painter Jack Heliker. Gita Sarabhai also arrived, now married and known as Gita Mayer, as did Maro Ajemian (to perform Cage’s Sonatas and Interludes), with her mother in tow; Cage recounts in a letter to his parents 1 9 3 0 – 1 9 4 9  |  7

dated August 27, 1949, having to assist the Ajemians with all manner of logistics, which was not always appreciated. Amid seemingly constant socializing —including a visit to the home of one of the Baronesses Rothschild —Cage managed to conduct an exhaustive search for compositions by Satie, acquiring published scores and unpublished facsimiles for his own collection and that of Virgil Thomson. Ever stylish, he also managed to have new suits made while in Italy, which, he told his parents, were sorely needed. While Cage was forging friendships with cutting-edge composers throughout Europe, the center of his musical and social life in Paris was a former student of Messiaen’s, twenty-four-year old Pierre Boulez. Cage considered Boulez’s music the best he heard in Europe, and the two became fast friends. Boulez introduced Cage around Paris and arranged for him to give numerous private concerts. Cage in turn took Boulez, with Cunningham, on a visit to Toklas and introduced him to Aaron Copland, a former student of the legendary French pedagogue Nadia Boulanger, who was then in Paris. Toward the end of his travels in late 1949, and despite what he called his “wild, marvelous life” abroad, Cage began longing to return to America. He had experienced and come to disdain Europe’s commitment to the past, and his financial problems had become chronic. While in Paris he learned that he had been awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship, but he postponed using it until he returned home. He also missed the loft he had recently decorated and rented during his absence to someone who, he was told, mistreated it. Set in lower Manhattan, the large, new place had a view of the Statue of Liberty.

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To the Cage Family [Undated, ca. 1930] | Biskra, Algeria dear denver cages and the other oUtlying cages: You found it slightly queer to be writing to me in Paris, but you might have thought it still more unusual to be writing a letter to Biskra, Algeria. My letters from America now go through the most fascinating operations in post offices in three or four countries. They finally find me in some town in Northern Africa with all sorts of different color stamps on them, and I have to pay a penny or so of added postage to be given the privilege of receiving them. Sometimes I just sit down and marvel, amazed, at the envelopes so exotically decorated. They often have stamps on them as beautiful and strange as the one that I shall put on this letter. I wish that you could be in my place and receive letters that had been forwarded from France to Italy and different islands in the Mediterranean and different countries in Northern Africa. I have been traveling with a chap I found in Capri.1 He comes from Pittsburgh and from Harvard College and a number of other places. He writes poetry which he refuses to have printed. And he likes to visit Europe and Africa in the same manner that I do. That is: We avoid with care the carefully swept tourist roads and we crawl into the natural, average places of the countries. I am interested especially in the people of the cities, all the people. Don is interested most in the country, the hills, lakes, etc. He feels at home at present on a sand dune, riding a camel. I am perfectly happy in a cafe watching the Arabs play dominoes and drink coffee. Or in a post office watching the Arabs send letters or receive money or find witnesses who will identify them if they don’t know how to sign their own names. Vesuvious I saw from a distance. I found Etna far more beautiful, covered with clouds and snow, and not with funiculares sliding up and down it. The best part of Naples was its fish market, which was positively thrilling. The fish were kept brilliant and striking by having water dashed on them every now and then, as though they were clothes which were being dampened before being ironed. And there were all manner of fishes. There were even baby octopuses, which people would come and inspect and approve and buy. I didn’t buy any fish. All of Naples is dirty and happy. People working sing. People sleeping in the sun in December. Across to Capri. It takes an hour and a half on the boat that goes twice a day. Over on Capri there are 1. Don Sample, American poet and artist, with whom Cage cohabitated for a time in Los Angeles after his sojourn in Europe.

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flowers and bells and paths in the sunlight and walks down to the sand and little boats that you go paddling in, but if you go in these little “sandalinos” you have to wear only short bathing pants, because the “sandolino” is liable to turn over and land you completely in the bay of Naples, or, at any rate, by the mere act of paddling, water will get into the boat. You can go for an hour or two, however, before you sink. It was very kind of you to send me the money, and kinder of you to write the letters to me. I am always more than happy to hear from you. Please pardon my using my typewriter. But I have such trouble getting it through customs and such things that I feel the necessity to make use of it. I have wanted to send gifts from Europe at Christmas time, but the difficulties of taxes, etc. are apparently great. You will have to wait. My English as you see is getting horrid; I hope it remains slightly understandable. French is used more than English in Africa and I’m getting into bad habits of language. [handwritten note in left margin] Please write to Poste Restante Seville Spain and say “Hold” on the envelope.

To Adolph Weiss2 [Spring 1933?] | Carmel, California Dear Mr. Weiss, The enclosed compositions (Sonata for One Voice; Sonata for Two Voices; Composition for Three Voices) I beg you to consider merely as work which I have finished in the last half-year. I have, in writing them, erected arbitrary rules which have been strictly observed; so that, in defending them, I would be able to analyse all of the relationships which, in writing, I set up. Richard Buhlig,3 in Los Angeles, is very much interested in my work, and advised me to get in touch with Henry Cowell.4 When, recently, I saw Mr. Cow2. Adolph Weiss (1891–1971), American composer and bassoonist, the first American musician to study with Arnold Schoenberg. He became Cage’s first composition teacher. 3. American pianist Richard (Moritz) Buhlig (1880–1952) gave the first American performance of Schoenberg’s op. 11. He championed such European modernists as Ferruccio Busoni and Béla Bartók, and such American composers as Ruth Crawford and Henry Cowell. 4. Henry Cowell (1897–1965), experimental American composer, music theorist, pianist, and publisher, one of Cage’s closest colleagues. The rhythmic and harmonic concepts in his New Musical Resources (1930) exerted profound influence on experimental composers. He was married to the American ethnographer Sidney (Robertson) Cowell (1903–1995).

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ell, I told him of my intention to study with Dr. Schoenberg5 and asked him what method to pursue in order to accomplish that intention, by means of a scholarship. Mr. Cowell was rather vague, but definitely stated that you prepare students for Dr. Schoenberg, and advised me to send my compositions to you. I am writing, then, to ask if you will teach me. And, are there any possibilities of obtaining a scholarship, for I have no money? I am not ignorant that I will have to work hard; I add this because of the stories I have heard of the disappointments of “modernists” who have wanted to study with Schoenberg, hoping to find in him someone who would “sympathize.” Of course, I am very anxious to receive a reply from you, as soon as it would be convenient for you to send me one. References: Richard Buhlig 102 S. Carondolet Los Angeles, California Henry Cowell Menlo Park, California P.S. I am twenty-one years old, and have worked for the last three years without a teacher. J.C. Box 1111, Carmel, Calif

To Henry Cowell October 26, 1933 | 803 Griffith Park Blvd. Los Angeles Dear Mr. Cowell, I am writing in order to let you know that I have moved from the Santa Monica address which I gave you in connection with the Sonata for B-flat Clarinet Alone which I sent you for publication in New Music at Mr. Buhlig’s request. I am, of course, very interested in receiving your criticism. 5. Arnold Schoenberg (1874–1951), Austrian composer, music theorist, and teacher, leader of the Second Viennese School, who numbered among his European students Alban Berg and Anton Webern, and among his American students Lou Harrison and John Cage. Schoenberg developed the twelve-tone technique, which became a widely influential compositional method making use of an ordered series of all twelve notes of the chromatic scale. His name is strongly associated with dodecaphony. Among his writings is Style and Idea: Selected Writings of Arnold Schoenberg (1957). See Cage’s letter to Adolph Weiss dated [May 1935] for an account of their first meeting, page 20.

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I am, at present, in extremely straight circumstances. I feel that you must be interested in the economic problems of the composer. If you know of any solution that would give me leisure to study and write, I would be very grateful if you would let me know of it. I am writing now a Sonata for Two Voices and have finished the first movement. In it I treat each sound as absolutely individual; two different A’s, for example, are absolutely different. It is a way of writing which I have approached with difficulty and yet inevitably. The last movement of the Clarinet Sonata which I sent you is obviously not written from this, my present point of departure. There I have, in writing a crab-canon, exchanged at will one A for another, desiring a change in flow-character. I have no piano now. But that doesn’t bother me much. What I want is time.

To Pauline Schindler6 11 December 1934 | Location not indicated Dearest Pauline:7 I am terribly excited at the prospect of seeing you soon again and I want you to know I am extremely worried that you won’t or will get the flavor of N.Y. via me. I am in a rush of vortex!!! and you must pardon if this arrives to be only a note. Will travel by Santa Fe where Cowell + I are invited for Xmas Holiday. I forget the names of the people. How soon will I see you. You are probably in Ojai + I will (probably) have to stay in L.A. for a dutiful period which I will enjoy however. I will meet Schoenberg (whom you have already) by taking him presents from Mrs. Weiss who is not coming. How is Mark.8 Give him my best + Pat.9 6. (Sophie) Pauline (Gibling) Schindler (1893–1977), American writer, editor, and lecturer who specialized in architecture and the visual arts. During her marriage to the Austrian-born American architect Rudolph Schindler (1887–1953), she hosted salons at their Kings Road House in Los Angeles, which were attended by Southern California’s artistically minded, leftist intelligentsia. She was at the helm of two central California publications —The Carmelite (Carmel) and Dune Forum (Oceano Dunes) —and frequently reviewed local cultural events. Cage’s article “Counterpoint” first appeared in Dune Forum 1, no. 2 (Feb. 15, 1934). Schindler is the dedicatee of Cage’s Composition for Three Voices (1934), a chromatic work that maintains extreme distances between the repetitions of individual tones of the twenty-five tone ranges of the instruments. 7. A total of twenty-eight letters between Cage and Schindler survive, all written while Schindler was based in Ojai and separated from her husband. See Maureen Mary, ed., “Letters: The Brief Love of John Cage for Pauline Schindler, 1934–35,” ex tempore 8, no. 1 (Summer 1996). 8. Mark Schindler, Pauline’s twelve-year-old son. 9. Pat O’Hara, Pauline’s lover, a reporter for the Los Angeles Daily News.

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And Buhlig! I can’t wait. And everybody. There are two more important people in L.A. whom I think you don’t know. Joseph Achron, Jew + Wm. Grant Still,10 negro (composers). These distinctions are important now. Everything is important. Equalities. Distinctions wiping them out + emphasizing them.

To Adolph Weiss [Winter, 1934?] | Location not indicated Dear Mr. Weiss: Please write to me and let me know what your plans are. This is an S.O.S. I count almost entirely on working with you. I am to be married soon. In May, as far as I know. Xenia is now in Alaska.11 We will want to live near you and Mrs. Weiss. Please let me know where you will be. Otherwise I will feel that you have cast me aside, which I can’t believe. I think I am progressing with the horn. My tongue, though, is very sluggish. And people begin to object to my practicing. And now I reach a point where my respect and affection for you and Mrs. Weiss pass bounds, and I am afraid of seeming not sincere, but believe in my deep respect and friendship.

To Herr Jawlinski12 [ca. 1935] | 1207 Miramar, Los Angeles Herr Jawlinski Ich kann nicht Deutsch schreiben oder sprechen, aber ich bin sehr freudig, weil ich habe eines Ihnen Bilder gekauft. Jetzt ist es in mir. Ich schreibe Musik. Sie sind mein Lehrer. 10. Joseph Achron (1886–1943) and William Grant Still (1895–1978), American composers active in Los Angeles in the 1930s who championed the use of ethnic elements in composition. 11. Xenia (Andreyevna) Kashevaroff (1913–1995), daughter of the archpriest of the Eastern Orthodox Russian-Greek Church of Alaska, a former art student at Reed College. 12. Properly, Alexej Georgewitsch von Jawlensky (1864–1941), Russian expressionist painter, a key member of the New Munich Artist’s Association, The Blue Rider, and, later, The Blue Four, championed by Galka Scheyer (see note 28). The letter reads:

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Ich will mehr schreiben aber ich kann nicht geben auf Deutsch alles was ich will. Es war #116

To Mrs. Adolph Weiss January 3, 1935 | 1207 Miramar, Los Angeles My dear Mrs. Weiss: I wish that you were here enjoying the very beautiful weather that we are having. The hills are all intensely green, and from my window I awake to look at snow-capped mountains. The air is very gentle and the sunlight is brilliant and warm. I hope that you are not angry with me for telling you about these things, because I don’t mean to be boasting of them; I only wish that you were enjoying them. It has taken me a few days to get back into the swing of working, but I’m there now and enjoying writing exercises and working on my song. Mother says that I may buy a flute, but I am going to wait until Mr. Weiss arrives; he may have something to say about what kind, etc. Mr. Buhlig is giving several concerts which I’m going to hear. A modern one with Copland, Scriabin, Busoni, Schoenberg, Chavez and Bartok; then a Bach program (two toccatas and the Goldberg Variations); three Beethoven Sonatas, 106, 110, 111, I think; and the last will be the Art of the Fugue. He is much better, and says, in fact, that he hasn’t felt better in at least ten years. Don is staying with relatives in San Fernando, California. Henry left a few days ago for Menlo Park. We had an excellent trip across country. I was sorry that Don changed his mind about Santa Fe. I am wishing with all my heart that this letter finds you well and not too burdened with the illness in Mr. Weiss’ family. And that the coming year will be an excellent one for you and Mr. Weiss. I cannot write in German or speak German, but I am very happy because I bought one of your paintings. Now I have it. I write music. You are my teacher. I would like to write more, but I cannot express all the things I want to say in German. It was number 116.

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Did you know that Bertha Knisely,13 the music critic who mentioned the Santa Barbara idea to Mr. Weiss, has given up her position and eloped with a painter to Spain? Mother’s being on the newspaper makes it possible for her to get tickets for anything she wants to go to,14 so that I will be able to attend any concerts there are that I want to. I am going to go to the Philharmonic whether I like the programs or not, because I think it is very necessary to hear as much music as I can. I am also enjoying the records Henry gave me. We have a phonograph, not a very good one, but it goes around. I find Mr. Weiss’s songs more and more beautiful.15 I know that you are probably very busy, but I should like to hear from you. I have not tried to get in touch with the Schoenbergs but shall wait, as you asked me to, until Mr. Weiss arrives, unless, he is, by accident, at one of the concerts in Buhlig’s home.

To Pauline Schindler January 11, 1935 | Los Angeles Dearest Pauline: Your letter came —your parenthesis —and I love it because I shall steer clear of all directions except a bee-line for you. Life has been hectic and the sky beautifully cloud-filled, sunlight and then beautiful shower-baths. Palm-trees and acacias in bloom and all sorts of things I took for granted for too long. I feel bristling with spontaneity: I love you. At last I heard some of the Kunst der Fuge. What can I say but that listening receives one into a new broad heaven, awakening and including, I feel where you have been. Nothing I have ever heard is at all similar. Oh, for a blindness to all else! 13. Bertha McCord Knisely, music critic for the Los Angeles weekly Saturday Night and a supporter of the composer Harry Partch (see note 339). 14. Lucretia Cage (née Harvey; 1885–1968), whose first piece for the Los Angeles Times, under the byline Crete Cage, appeared on October 2, 1934. When her husband’s job for the U.S. Army necessitated a move to New Jersey, she resigned, her last piece appearing on February 14, 1939. 15. Likely three of Weiss’s 7 Songs (to texts by Emily Dickinson): 2. Cemetery, 3. The Railway Train, and 5. Mysteries, performed by Mary Bell, soprano, and the New World String Quartet. They were released on the New Music Quarterly Recordings label, an adjunct operation to Cowell’s New Music Quarterly publication, in 1934.

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Buhlig is giving three recitals in his home Sundays: Jan. 20, 27 and Feb. 3. Beethoven, Bach, Modern (respectively). Subscriptions $2.50 or single admission $1.00. 8:30 p.m. He wanted me to tell you so that if people in Ojai coming down were interested they would know about it through you if you knew and told them. That keeps me from taking Weiss to Santa B. but I am coming to see you next week. The car has become a problem and I lose all spontaneity about asking for it, because it has to do with mother who needs it in her work. I have been phoning people right and left and finally we have the returns of the concerts definitely up to $137.50. The idea was Calista’s in order to pay Buhlig’s railway fare.16 We won’t stop till we get to $240. It is exciting and I enjoy it because it is for Buhlig. It is, of course, conclusively shown that I know nothing about modulation, but so much the better, because then I can go on working till I do. I hope very much that my work is not so bad that Weiss will give me up as a bad job. I met Schoenberg and he is simplicity and genuineness itself. There was analysis of the Dance Suite hanging up on the wall like a mural. Did I tell you that I met another teacher-to-be of mine tonight: Wendell Hoss,17 a friend of Weiss, who will teach me to play the French horn. I think it will be better than the flute. And I will stop smoking and join an orchestra. I feel all the friction you have in reading this letter. What is an orchestra, you ask, or a French horn, or harmony, or collecting money for tickets? Nothing at all but a series of essential farces. Do they touch you? I think not.

To Pauline Schindler January 18, 1935 | Location not indicated Dearest, There was a little open space the other day: I was walking and thinking of you in Ojai, an open space of country, and suddenly I knew what wildness was. I hissed and grunted and felt myself expanding with a big heart ’til for a moment I was out of my mind and only tremendously alive. I did not know you were wild and intoxicating. And now I have only very 16. Calista Rogers, a favorite singer among such Southern California composers as William Grant Still and Harry Partch. 17. Wendell Hoss (1892–1980), founder of the Los Angeles Horn Club and the International Horn Society, best known for his excellent transcription of the Bach Cello Suites.

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present memories. Life has been short, has only begun. And I can see in the corner your eyes, never turned away. And your hair is some kind of a promise, I don’t know of what, perhaps that it will reach your shoulders and that I may bury myself in it. Perhaps I am satisfied that you, whom I know are a fragment, you are entirely another’s. And yet, these days you are always with me. It is late and I am tired and I love you and want to be with you. I am sure there is something unexplainably and mysteriously sacred about the Valley, something including evil.

To Henry Cowell [ca. 1935] | Location not indicated Dear Henry, Your card and you are too good to me. I cannot describe how much I feel towards you of warmth and love. I can feel myself losing all definition in sentimentality. I have since writing to you before heard from Adolph and am in touch with him. I will be with him again as soon as he is settled. I have a job now in scientific research which gives me $25.00 a week and takes my afternoons.18 It is very interesting work. I enjoy it. I have my horn lessons to pay for and a horn to buy. I will also have a little money to begin operations and I shall begin more immediately the work for the Society.19 I am anxious to see Schönberg and get what cooperation he will give. Pro Musica is giving his III Quartett (Abas Quartett).20 Oh, Henry, my intentions are the best. I use all the time, there never is enough. I accomplish very little. 18. Cage refers to intermittent work for his inventor father, John Milton Cage Sr. (1886–1964), whose projects over the years ranged from submarines and internal combustion engines to radio (a crystal set that could be plugged into an ordinary electric light system) and an “Invisible Ray Vision System” (for seeing in the dark). 19. Cowell’s New Music Society advocated the work of contemporary composers across the Americas. Beginning in 1927, Cowell began publishing scores by young composers in his New Music Quarterly. 20. Cage refers to Pro Musica, a concert series that presented Schoenberg’s String Quartet No. 3, op. 30, performed by the Abas Quartet.

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I will send you exercises soon and also will send you my subscription to the music and records. I want to be married soon. I don’t know why I tell you but it’s very important to me.

To Pauline Schindler February 22, 1935 | Los Angeles Dearest Pauline: stravinski! . . . The evening was pure joy —and I think that this music is natural. There are no “ideas” in it. It is, you know it, pagan, physical. It is seeing life close and loving it so. There are no whirring magical mystifications. It is all clear and precisely a dance. It is not “frozen architecture.” I heard one person say afterward: “Henceforth I shall not take music seriously but shall enjoy it twice as much.” I was furious and turned to him and said, Take it twice as seriously and enjoy it four times as much! Throughout the “Eight Pieces” the audience had an ostinato of ecstatic laughter. And irrepressible applause, which was not in the least unacceptable. I spoke with Kurt Reher afterwards, a fine cellist in the orchestra. He brought me back to the “Germans.” He said, It’s nothing but The Firebird. That is real. The Firebird, yes, and I had forgotten that it existed. It is the beautiful born from the evil. It is as though one decided to have wings and fly, and nothing else had power but that. Infernal demands are nothing to deter. This is now music which we have and which is accepted, which does not provoke anger, hysteria or any vulgar objection. And it is a static music which is itself and which does not prophecy or go forward in an adventure. It is not a speculation. It is the worship of the Golden Calf. Moses and God are far away. And we say yes to cutting them off! I love you. Oh that I were with you.

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To Adolph Weiss [March 30, 1935?] | Location not indicated Dear Mr. Weiss: You are probably now not touring any longer. Do you have definite plans for the future? I want very much to fit into them, if I may. It seems to me like a maelstrom, here in Los Angeles. I am kept very busy, so that there is no rest. I have work for you to see. And I am anxious to go forward. The horn I love. I enjoy studying with Mr. Hoss very much. I fear that I am very slow but I am sure that he is teaching me excellently. It is the flexibility of the instrument that pleases me most. Schoenberg is giving a class in analysis, the fee for which is quite small; and since I have a job now in scientific research for a company my father has started, I am able to attend this class. We are analyzing the 4th Symphony of Brahms, the Art of the Fugue, some of the Well-Tempered Clavichord, and the III String Quartet of Schoenberg. Although I am not really prepared for this class, I manage to keep my ears open and absorb what I can. There are about 40 people in the class, mostly teachers of music. A great deal of Schoenberg’s music has recently been played: the Verklaerte Nacht, the III String Quartet (several times) and songs from the Book of the Hanging Gardens, also op. II. A large reception was given him by the Mailamm Society,21 a Jewish organization, last night. And it was a very sincere ovation. He gave a racial talk. He is beginning to be very much loved. His conducting, however, was mercilessly criticized. People found his tempos dull and uninteresting. I would be able to send you some money now, since I have a job. I don’t know how long I will have it. But whatever I have is yours. Henry has asked me to arrange a concert for him here of Japanese Shakuhachi playing by a friend of his, K. Tamada;22 I am doing this. I feel isolated and cut-off, not having heard from you. I want very much to be with you again. 21. Formed in 1931 by a group of Jewish musicians and scholars in New York City and formally known as the America-Palestine Music Association of Musical Sciences. The organization became known as Mailamm, the Hebrew version (in an acronym) of its English title. 22. Kitaro Nyokyo Tamada reportedly ran a roadside fruit stand in Cowell’s Los Angeles neighborhood. Discovering that Tamada played the shakuhachi, Cowell took up the instrument and composed The Universal Flute, which he dedicated to his new friend. Cowell organized concerts by local Japanese-American performers, many of whom would be interned during the war years. Cage organized a concert for Tamada at Cowell’s home on April 13, 1935.

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Please give my best regards to Mrs. Weiss. How is everyone? And believe me always, Your devoted pupil

To Adolph Weiss [May 1935] | Location not indicated My dear Mr. Weiss: Perhaps you are wondering why I have not answered your letter. I have certainly wanted to. But, following the suggestion you gave in your letter immediately before, I did my best to get “closer” to Schoenberg. He had, in between your two letters, asked me to come and see him. After making an appointment with him, I decided, since you considered it best, to ask him point blank if I might in my way continue my studies with him. He asked me many questions, —about my work with you and before studying with you. My answers showed him how very little I know, —particularly with regard to the literature of string quartets, symphonies, etc. He finally decided, however, to accept me in a class in counterpoint which had already started, suggesting that, with the aid of a George Tremblay,23 who is studying composition with him, I might “make up” what I had missed. He felt that what I already know of harmony, through you, would be sufficient for the time being. His last words on this first occasion were: Now you must think of nothing but music: and must work from six to eight hours a day. The result is that I work all the time. I am proud to say that I am already doing work which surpasses that of the two other pupils. This is merely because I examine the possibilities as completely as I can. It is amazing what can be done with a single cantus firmus. When I write harmony exercises again, they will, I hope, be much better than before. We have had, so far, four lessons with Schoenberg: 3-part counterpoint, first species, second species (a) with one moving voice and (b) with two moving voices, and third species (syncopation —which, by the way, is fourth species in most textbooks) with one voice only in syncopes. And with Tremblay I have completed the five species of 2-part writing, and am now working on mixed species. 23. George Tremblay (1911–1982), Canadian-born American composer ardently devoted to Arnold Schoenberg and the twelve-tone method of composition.

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Xenia is staying until the end of this month (May) in Alaska; it is her father’s wish. He is quite elderly and does not expect to see her again.24 Mother tells me that the secret of her vitality is in not drinking and not smoking. The funny thing is that she does drink. I am the one who has decided not to drink. I decided that I am “drunk” all of the time, and that to add to it is not intelligent. Of course, since making this decision I drank a glass of beer, because I was thirsty, a second glass of beer, because I was eating some corned beef and cabbage and knew that beer would be just the thing. Another time I drank some blackberry wine because it tastes so good. But Mother’s vitality is certainly amazing. For example: after spending a strenuous week in Del Monte, California (where a club convention recently took place), she returned home and worked the next night until five in the morning, slept three hours until eight, went to the office and stayed until six, and after all of that was looking as fresh and “raring to go” as a pampered racehorse. Perhaps she wouldn’t appreciate the analogy. I was very much interested in your remarks about the violin sonata which you had just completed. I should like very much to see it. I would also like to have a copy of your piano sonata. How much would that cost? Couldn’t a copy be printed from that black and white one you have? If so, I would get someone here to work on it, with your permission. Also, could the songs be obtained in a similar manner? Please let me know about these things. We have, for instance, Calista Rogers who sings, very well, modern songs. She sings several songs from Schoenberg’s Book of the Hanging Gardens. We have an excellent string quartet, the Abas String Quartett; and they would certainly be willing to work on either the songs or a quartet. I know them all. They are the ones who performed Schoenberg’s 3rd S[tring]Q[uartet]. Schoenberg’s Suite in Old Style was played by the orchestra under Klemperer last week. It is very beautiful and does not sound “old” at all, —which, of course, it isn’t. We are having now such beautiful weather that my inclination is to do nothing at all. If I were not so busy, I should just go outdoors and live like an animal. I shall be moving as soon as Xenia comes and we shall live where there is sunlight. At present I use electricity during the day just as though I were in New York.

24. The Reverend Andrew Petrovich Kashevaroff (1863–1940), longtime pastor of the St. Nicholas Russian Orthodox Church in Juneau. He was married to Martha Bolshanin of Sitka, with whom he had six children. From 1920 he also served as curator of the Alaska State Library and Museum and wrote many articles on Alaska’s history and ethnology.

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Which reminds me that Schoenberg’s plans, at present, are, as far as I know, indefinite. Perhaps New York next fall. Then I should have the great pleasure of seeing you soon again. Perhaps Xenia + I would come to Chatauqua. I hope she plays bridge. We could all play bridge together. My father’s work is coming excellently. Both he and Mother often speak of you. I shall write soon again because this is an incomplete letter and doesn’t have any “rumination” in it. P.S. Very best regards to Mrs. Weiss. I get very lonely not seeing you both.

To Pauline Schindler May 24, 1935 | Los Angeles Pauline, dearest, I love you always; it was in many ways puzzling to me that although you were in Los Angeles, we didn’t see each other. I have not before now had the time, literally, to write; so that you may infer that you were right, if you stayed away because of some feeling that I was “too occupied.” Buhlig said you said something of the sort. I had dinner with him the evening following your dinner; and it seemed strangely unnatural that we shouldn’t have been together. Possibly I have not told you that Schoenberg teaches me counterpoint now. And I am very happy because my work seems to please him. Today he turned to the two other pupils and said: You see, I don’t even have to look at it (my exercises), I know they’re right. He is a teacher of great kindness and understanding and it is a rich comfort that he gives. His recent Suite in Old Style was played Saturday and is a marvel. There is nothing old about it. Although it begins with an Overture (Prelude and Fugue) the whole “idea” is basically a new concept of Fugue. There are, i.e., no two relationships of subject and answer identical. His feeling for the variation of idea did not allow of the opposite nor of another “old” idea —that of vagueness. So that the episodes (which are usually built of the latter) are here the development of the prelude. It is fascinating because the prelude is largo and is forever interrupting the fugue allegro. The work is convincing in every way and proves in a manner understandable to the most sluggish of ears the profundity of the prelude. 22  |  1 9 3 0 – 1 9 4 9

And now, —Xenia. All I know is that she will be here early in June; that there was a formal announcement (her sister’s idea) in order that “showers” might follow; and that I am, according to mother, as unprepared as though I were living on the streets (Xenia knows this and says she will accept even starvation with me “gracefully”). I had a letter from Mr. Poland in which I was offered a position without pay which, unfortunately, I could not accept. I saw the family doctor today, and he tells me spontaneously that he is amazed at my health which he has never known to be better. He means mentally. No frustrations, etc. He says, if it contines, I will get even fatter. I ran into a lady who has a daughter in much the same condition as Mark. And she claims that although the injections are necessary that they alone will not do the thing, that diet is of supreme importance. She has taken the whole matter very scientifically. Vitamins. Would you like to get in touch with her? Yeast. A vegetable juicer.

To Adolph Weiss [early summer, 1935] | Location not indicated Dear Mr. Weiss: Your letter just arrived; it was very good of you to write. Somehow I am very sad that you are staying in New York. It is rarely that fine things come out of immense cities. Rather, it seems to me, reality is sucked in there and becomes unreal, meaningless. In our association, although it was a short time, I came to feel very close to you. It is difficult to imagine a future for me which does not concern you. With Schoenberg I have remained apart. Although in each one of the class sessions I have “gleaned” something extremely valuable, I have felt disturbed fundamentally by the mediocrity induced by the class members. Including myself, for it seems to me that I am dull at present. Last week Schoenberg asked me after the class if I would come to see him. Perhaps this would lead to working with him privately. But I hesitate to think so. My direction is towards you. You have been so good to me that I cannot forget. You have probably received another letter I wrote to you recently. I hereby state again that I will soon be married. This will mean a great deal. 1 9 3 0 – 1 9 4 9  |  23

Mr. Hoss is always the same, excellent. I just phoned him and he returns, or rather sends you best regards and good wishes from himself and Mrs. Hoss. John Cave,25 a horn player, was visiting him. He is very much amused because of the near-identity of our names. He says that he is very enthusiastic over my progress with the instrument. I have taken the beginnings slowly and I hope thoroughly. Now I must begin to “leap” forward. Henry was down recently and said that he had written to you but had had no response. I have not seen Dorothy and Grant. My friends who know them too, also do not see them. People seem to like Grant and his former wife, who is now dead, but nobody likes Dorothy. They criticize her inability to work with the dance; and, furthermore, criticize her as being a snob. This added to the distance to Redondo has deterred me from visiting them. Although when I met them with you I felt that Dorothy was fine. Generally I trust to first impressions. My parents love you very much. My father has hopes of becoming wealthy and instituting every sort of thing for you that you would want. You would have only to whisper a wish and it would be amplified materially. Have I made clear my position? I want to be with you working. You write to me that I should stick to Schoenberg. (I do not, by the way, consider myself a Schoenberg pupil; that designation is so cheap now that I am not interested in it; it is being bandied about by all those whose ears are vacant passageways for his words.) Synchronously, Schoenberg begins to show an interest in me. Whereas I feel that my study with you is unfinished. It obviously is. It is only the consciousness of a personal relationship which I am expressing. I do feel that I must stay here until I am something of a horn player. That will be sooner, perhaps, than I had imagined. Within the year, Mr. Hoss says, I might be able to play in the Pasadena Orchestra. I was building up a good discipline in New York, which in this climate has fallen somewhat to pieces. I accomplish a great deal, I think; but not as much as I could accomplish if I concentrated more. So far today I have accomplished my practising of the horn, about 2 hours; my scientific research work about 4 hours; and one undeveloped musical idea. I am often guilty of not thinking through to the end. I wish you would impart to me the secret of thinking completely; mother will then return a recipe for “tremendous vitality.” A year’s longing, and this has taken time, has resulted in a favorable answer 25. Cave played for the Los Angeles Opera, Los Angeles Philharmonic, and, later, the short-lived Los Angeles Neophonic Orchestra.

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from Xenia. She is a marvelous creature. Her world is almost without limitation: for she includes, from her mother (an Eskimo), an animal, pre-historic, primitiveness; and from her father (a Russian priest), the rich and organic mysticism and instinctiveness of Russians; and of herself she has found our own American insistence upon being contemporary and intensely speculative of the future. You will excuse my taking the liberty of writing such a long letter. It will not be luck or hope when I see you again; it will be necessity. And I am looking forward to it!

To Mr. and Mrs. Adolph Weiss [early August 1935] | 1207 Miramar, Los Angeles My dear Mr. and Mrs. Weiss: It was very fine, receiving your card from Chatauqua,26 because I know that you are enjoying the country and the escape from the city. With regard, however, to the program announced on the card: —I had, the day before, been at the Hollywood Bowl and sat through a very uninteresting performance of the Tschaikowsky Sixth Symphony in order to hear Beethoven’s Violin Concerto, Heifetz playing superbly. And these continual complaints that we, if I may include myself among musicians, are making, I was forced to make again. After hearing the Tschaikowsky once, which I believe everyone who has entered a symphony hall has, I see no necessity for hearing it again, since, by virtue of sequence upon sequence and repetition upon repetition, one is forced hearing it once to hear it scores of times. And when it is unenthusiastically given, one can only be, in counting up the number of sequences and multiplying that by the number of times he has been forced to hear the whole thing, arriving at a huge number. And the programs here at the Bowl are generally bad: I shall be startled if there is something I want to hear very much. In place of the Tschaikowsky, which was played, the Sibelius Fifth Symphony had been announced. I have not heard it, and should have enjoyed hearing it. But it was not played. I received your card too late to listen to the radio; but I should have turned it off after the Beethoven. Am I doing something wrong? I find, however, that sometimes my whole 26. Properly, Chautauqua, an idyllic town in western New York, roughly eighty miles from Buffalo; home to the historic Chautauqua Institution.

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attitude changes, and anything that has been written as music brings from me love and respect that a human being was able to have that idea and to express it in music. The attitude of joyful acceptance of everything, drawing no lines, never thinking of comparisons, so that everything has its own stature. The least has a beauty, just as has the most. And then I can forget criticism and listen singly, which is the happiest way of listening. To show you what a muddle I am conscious of getting into: —This “happiest of listening” that I have just mentioned cannot, perhaps, compare with the happiness of critical listening. Not the aesthetic criticism, but the listening to relationships, etc. (no matter what they are, for they necessarily exist in everything, no matter how apparently chaotic), and then making a judgement as to how valuable such relationships are. I have many things to tell you, and must tell them. My father will soon be in Pittsburgh. He will stay at the William Penn Hotel. It seems a very short distance from there to Chautauqua. He would be very glad to see you and Mrs. Weiss. I hope that if you remain at Chautauqua that all of you will get in touch. I think Dad should have some sort of a vacation and visiting you at Chautauqua would be excellent. He is making some arrangements with Westinghouse with regard to his new inventions. I have been doing extensive research work for his new company; and that is what has given me the financial possibility of being married (which latter, by the way, is marvelous27 ). I will give Dad your address, before he leaves, which he is doing in an airplane this week. I have given you his. I certainly hope he sees you. My study with Schoenberg is progressing steadily. We have reached fourpart counterpoint, second species. He is very good to us, and takes great pains teaching us. His English has become very good. He is even able to be witty with the use of words, which represents a certain level of mastery. He is moving, I believe, into another house. And I understand that he has been engaged by the University here for the entire year. They promise to present many of his works. What with the work I have been doing in counterpoint, and the research work in science, I have been very busy. Too busy to do justice to the horn and Mr. Hoss. This was the case before I was married, so that I feel being married has not accomplished what was already true. So that, as you will be sorry to hear, I am not studying the horn any longer. I learned a great deal about the instrument, for which I am grateful; and I have become a friend of Mr. Hoss,

27. John Cage and Xenia Kashevaroff were married before the Hon. Henry C. Kelly, duly recorded by J. G. Livington, clerk of the Superior Court of the State of Arizona in and for Yuma County, on June 7, 1935. Witnesses were Anna C. Molloy and Fama E. Townsend.

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who is excellent. But doing things, I should like to do them well; and I had not the time. I had to make a choice: and the choice was obvious: to continue with Schoenberg and to support myself financially with the research work, which is not only money-making but fascinating, and often presents the same employment of mind that is presented in the study of music. Xenia is an angel. We have been married now almost two months. It is always very beautiful. I look forward to her knowing you. For she will love you as I do and you will love her. Schoenberg mentioned the other day the necessity of constantly reviewing the work you have done. So that I think I shall begin teaching Xenia counterpoint, in that way making a review and also bringing us very close together. I am going to write to you again shortly, ordering, if I may, one of your compositions. I have not decided which. Which would you want me to have? I can afford it, I think, now. Mme. Scheyer28 often speaks of you; I have loaned to her my copy of the recording of your songs. August third we have a meeting of young composers, modern, of Los Angeles. I don’t know exactly what will happen. Wm. Grant Still will be there, and some other negro composers. They have asked me to play something, but I refused, for I am a student too much now. This is what is bothering me most now: Xenia and I may be sent to Pittsburgh to continue this research work. This will be the case if the arrangements with Westinghouse are successful. I will then be separated from Schoenberg. I do not know what to do. Fortunately it would not be for long. If it did occur, however, there would be the possibility of seeing you and Mrs. Weiss. I think of you very often, —and write so little because and only because I am never knowing where to find time enough to do even my “work.” Never am I able to just go to sleep and think not at all about waking up. I always have to make some artificial arrangement about getting up. But I am exceedingly happy.

28. Galka Scheyer (b. Emelie Esther Scheyer, 1889–1945), German-American painter, art dealer, and art collector who promoted the work of The Blue Four —Lyonel Feininger, Alexei Jawlensky, Wassily Kandinsky, and Paul Klee —which kindled Cage’s early enthusiasm in these artists. She and Pauline Schindler co-created art exhibitions and lecture series for various art venues along the West Coast.

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To Virgil Thomson29 March 15, 1939 | The Cornish School, Seattle Dear Mr. Thomson, Henry Cowell just gave me your address. I remember in New York hearing some “Songs of Solomon” 30 for voice and percussion you had written. This letter is to ask whether you have any scores for percussion alone, and, if not, whether you would be interested in writing something for a percussion concert which we will give May 19th here in Seattle.31 We gave such a concert last December (it was very well-received), including works of Ray Green, Gerald Strang, William Russell and myself. For this next concert Johanna Beyer has written 3 movements for percussion.32 Henry Cowell has written a new work, Lou Harrison has completed his 5th Simfony.33 We would like very much to present some work of yours. Rehearsals begin April 10th. We have 5 good players, and three not so good (they could play easy parts). We have 7 gongs, 3 cymbals, 4 tom-toms, two timpani without pedals, many wood blocks, and can improvise instruments from junk yards or construct things, given specifications of sorts, etc. Please let me know about this as soon as convenient for you.

29. Virgil Thomson (1896–1989), American composer and music critic. He was best known for the operas Four Saints in Three Acts (1934) and The Mother of Us All (1947), with libretti by Gertrude Stein, and for his film scores for The Plow That Broke the Plains (1936) and Louisiana Story (1948), the latter winning the Pulitzer Prize. He wrote for the New York Herald-Tribune (1940–1954) and was an early champion of Cage. Although their friendship did not survive Cage’s book-length study of Thomson’s life and music, written at Thomson’s request, Cage acknowledged his debt to Thomson to the end of his life. 30. Properly, Thomson’s Five Phrases from the Song of Solomon for soprano and percussion (1926), scored for soprano and percussion. 31. Cage was on faculty at the Cornish School in Seattle, Washington, from September 1938 through the summer of 1939, employed as both composer and accompanist for the class Creative Composition and Percussion Instruments and for classes in modern dance taught by Bonnie Bird (1914–1995). Other faculty members included Margaret Jansen and Doris Denison, both of whom played in his percussion ensemble. 32. Johanna Beyer (1888–1944), German-American composer and pianist well represented in Cage’s early percussion programs. 33. Lou (Silver) Harrison (1917–2003), American composer known for incorporating elements of non-Western music and exploring just intonation and microtones. He was a student of Cowell, Schoenberg, and, later, K. P. H. Notoprojo (aka K. R. T. Wasitodiningrat and Pak Cokro). Several of Harrison’s early works were written for percussion, including his Fifth Simfony (1939).

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To Henry Cowell [ca. July 1939] | Location not indicated Dear Henry: Thanks for the card telling about playing the records at the N[ew] S[chool].34 I’m anxious to know whether you have the two little records of the First Construction with Roldan’s Ritmica on one side. I sent them with two scores to the Guggenheim and never received any word from them about receiving them. I deduced from one of your letters that you had this record of the Construction; but I can’t tell for sure. I’d appreciate your letting me know about this, because I wanted to be certain that the scores and records reached Moe.35 Thank you for playing the record at the ns. I imagine from Johanna’s card that you played the three pieces for woodblocks and drums and bamboo sticks. I’m glad she liked them. I’m enjoying my work on the Recreation Project.36 The first few days weren’t so good because I didn’t have very much to do. But now I’m getting very busy organizing groups of children writing articles for recreation publications, giving demonstrations making instruments, etc. Made a Chinese woodblock of which I’m very proud and intend to make some Teponatzles (spelling?)37 out of bakelite. This was Lou’s suggestion which I think is excellent. Will also make marimbula, and claves as soon as they have lathe. I work with Italian children at Telegraph Hill. Children in the S.F. Hospital. Negro children out on Divisadero and Chinese children in a Catholic Mission. The Negroes are astounding, and all I do is give them instruments and they play the most amazing rhythms, complex and marvelous. I never can believe my ears. And they leave the instruments and begin dancing just spontaneously. The only teaching I did was to suggest first a 4-measure phrase and then an 8-measure phrase within which they improvised. They were able to play cross rhythms and accents off the beat, 34. The New School for Social Research in New York, founded in 1919, where Cowell early on taught a course titled Music of the World’s Peoples. 35. H(enry) A(llan) Moe (1894–1975), American administrator and humanist; in turn the first secretary, then administrator, and finally president of the John Simon Guggenheim Foundation (1925–1963); also the first director of the National Endowment for the Humanities. 36. Cage had applied for a composer position with the Federal Music Project, sponsored by the Works Progress Administration, but instead was given a job as a recreation counselor. He worked variously in this capacity, but usually with an emphasis on music. 37. Properly, teponaztli, a slit drum used in Central Mexico, traditionally made out of hollow hardwood logs.

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grupettos across the bar, etc., and still stop cleanly at the end of either phrase length. They played on everything they could see in the room and asked me to bring new instruments next time. The Mills class is going well now.38 The Chinese children in the Catholic Mission don’t seem very imaginative, but they follow directions well. I’m hoping to get things around to the point of their having ideas of their own. The work they did before with percussion was a rhythm band that was directed by Sister —— who played the piano and the children just played bang bang over and over again. I was surprised to find something so unholy. Please let me know, if you do know, whether my score + records reached the Gugg[enheim].

To Mr. and Mrs. John H. Ballinger September 14, 1939 | Cornish School, Seattle Dear Mr. and Mrs. Ballinger: During the past year I presented, in Seattle (at the Cornish School), two concerts of modern American percussion music. The group of players which I direct is the only group of the kind in the country. The concerts here were of such importance musically that, while I was teaching at Berkeley this summer, I was invited to give a concert at Mills College, which I did. Since the establishing of this work, the number of composers writing percussion music has doubled; the scores are sent directly to me for performance with my group. A few weeks ago I received a letter (from Miss Cornish) to the effect that many of the instruments which I had used last year would not be available this coming year. These instruments were Chinese gongs, cymbals, tomtoms and woodblocks belonging to Lora Deja (the German dancer who was formerly on the Cornish faculty). She has requested that the instruments be sent to New York. In order to have the proper materials I have, heretofore, borrowed, constructed and invented instruments to supplement Miss Deja’s collection. It is 38. Mills College in Oakland, California, where Cage worked as an accompanist, performed, and presented some of his work for the first time, including Second Construction (July 18, 1940), Dance Music for Elfrid Ide (July 27, 1941), and Fads and Fancies in the Academy (July 27, 1941). Cage’s ill-fated efforts to establish a Center for Experimental Music at Mills College are legendary.

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not, however, possible to replace her instruments in any other way than buying them. So that, although I have invariably in the past acquired instruments at my own expense, it now becomes necessary, in continuing this work, to ask for sponsorship. I can refer you to Charles Paige Wood and George McKay of the University’s Music School, to Dr. Richard Fuller of the Art Museum, who has kindly assisted me, as has Mrs. Thomas Stimson, and to Mr. Alfred Frankenstein, music critic of the San Francisco Chronicle. Among the composers who would be immediately indebted to you for performances are Jose Ardevol, Johanna Beyer, Franziska Boas, Henry Cowell, Ray Green, Lou Harrison, Amadeo Roldan, William Russell, Gerald Strang, Edgar Varese, and myself. Since this work is new and experimental I may take the liberty of describing it as an exploration of sound and rhythm. It will, I believe, be thought of in the future as a transition from the restricted music of the past to the unlimited electronic music of the future. In replacing the instruments taken by Miss Deja, the initial expense would be $150.00, toward which Dr. Fuller and Mrs. Stimson have each contributed $25.00. In order to avoid any further interruption of this work, it has been agreed upon by the Cornish School that these instruments when acquired shall belong to me, as I am the only one in the country active in this field. For this reason, if you see fit to sponsor this work, please make checks payable to me, care of the Cornish School, Roy at Harvard North, as I am on the School’s faculty. In these uncertain days I feel it is exceedingly important to make music wherever it is yet possible. We shall, this coming year, present as many concerts as possible, and shall also take the group on tour to the University of Idaho, Reed College in Portland, and other cultural centers.

To Charles Ives39 [1939] | The Cornish School, Seattle I am enclosing some programs of percussion music which we have given. Do you have any scores which use mostly percussion? Or would you be interested 39. Charles (Edward) Ives (1874–1954), American modernist composer, one of the first to achieve international renown for his extreme originality. He was among the first to experiment with such techniques as polytonality, polyrhythms, tone clusters, aleatoricism, and microtonality.

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in writing a score for percussion? I have at present 11 players; our next program will include works by Roldan, Cowell, Harrison, Russell (his Fugue) and Beyer. Also Couper. It would be very fine indeed if could we perform some of your work here.

To Archie N. Jones November 20, 1939 | Location not indicated Dear Mr. Jones: I have your letter of last spring telling of your interest in presenting one of our percussion concerts in Moscow.40 I am at present planning a tour to take place in January. We are to be in Walla Walla, Whitman College, Thursday, January 11th, and in Portland, Reed College, Saturday, January 13th. Because of the fact that I am arranging to take the group on one tour, it is possible to offer a reduced fee of $75.00 for each concert. If the University could arrange to have the concert anytime Friday the 12th between the hours of 11:00 a.m. and 5:00 p.m., it would be possible for us to offer the same reduced fee. This summer I gave a very successful concert at Mills College, under the auspices of the Bennington School of the Dance. The program we are offering now would be similar to the one given there. It would use 4 players and about 70 instruments. The players, with the exception of my wife, are all members of the Cornish Faculty. We would present a varied program of works by Gerald Strang, William Russell, Henry Cowell, Franziska Boas, J.  M. Beyer, Mildred Couper, Lou Harrison and myself. I look forward to your reply, and hope that it will be possible for the University to schedule our group.

40. This concert took place on January 8, 1940, at the University of Idaho in Moscow, where the Cage Percussion Players (John Cage, Xenia Cage, Doris Denison, and Margarete Jansen) performed works by Cage (Quartet, 1935), Johanna Beyer, Ray Green, Lou Harrison, and William Russell. The same program was given at the University of Montana in Missoula (Jan. 9, 1940) and Whitman College (Jan. 11, 1940). On February 14, 1940, the ensemble presented a program at Reed College that included the premiere of Cage’s Second Construction.

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To Peter Yates41 January 13, 1940 | 228 17th Avenue, San Francisco Dear Peter: You are very good not to be angry about this article business; I appreciate it very much. I also appreciate it that your interest in the work is still alive. I have been doing some research now and then to make the article as authoritative as I can, exact in details, etc. But every time I write it or rather start to write it I know that I’m not a writer. In other words, I’m having great trouble trying to put what I want to say into words. How soon must you have it? Naturally I’ll get it out as fast as I can, but when is the deadline? Maybe I am disconcerted by all the trouble I’m seeing trying to get established with an income. Looks now as though I may get a job in recreation work making an application of the percussion work to that field. Gebrauchsmusik. Pretty near to what you want me to write. True? If so, that is if I get the job, there will be a flood of easy percussion music written for things that exist in the everyday world all around us.

To Peter Yates Thursday [1940] | Location not indicated Dear Peter: Just to let you know that I am busy on some music for you. So far it has the title Living Room Music.42 Requires 4 players who play on whatever is around and who speak in some movements. Speaking sections would be better if 8 people double up on parts. I have finished first 2 movements and there are to be 3 more. I have taken the liberty of inviting Lou Harrison to write some music of this 41. Peter Yates (1909–1976), long-time associate editor of Arts and Architecture (1940–1967) and founder (with his wife, Frances Mullen) of the concert series Evenings on the Roof, which took place on the roof of the Yates’s Rudolf Schindler–designed home in Los Angeles and which gave contemporary composers the opportunity to hear their works performed. Yates had long associations with many important European and American composers of his time. 42. Living Room Music (1940), dedicated to “Xenia,” for percussion and speech quartet, in three movements, the first and third to be played on such everyday household items as magazines, a tabletop, books, window frames, etc. The text of the popular second movement, “The World Is Round,” is by Gertrude Stein. Cage’s Living Room Music makes obvious reference to Erik Satie’s Musique d’ameublement, or “Furniture Music,” the term coined by Satie in 1917.

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type too.43 Also Henry Cowell. I am testing the pieces out with my group here and will therefore be able to give rather detailed advice about performance.

To Henry Cowell August 8, 1940 | 228 17th Avenue, San Francisco Dear Henry: Thanx for the card. I am sorry that I didn’t let you know about using the quotation for the program. I had used it on a program in Seattle also. It comes from one of your letters to me, and I am glad that you seem to agree with it. It is very quotable and straight-forward. I am glad to hear that Grainger would like to send some scores for percussion.44 The address above would be the correct one. And now for the story about the “center of experimental music.” The first thing I spoke about to Dr. Cassidy, early this summer, was to present the idea as you had suggested it to me. Then began the trouble with the strike, getting players, rehearsals, etc. In the midst of this I presented the idea to Marian Van Tuyl.45 Both were interested. But busy. I had also before the summer session spoken to Russell and to Lou about it.46 Russell is very worried about his future, and said that he would like to be in the “center,” but because of the necessity to get a job would apply everywhere for jobs, which he is doing. Lou said that he wanted to leave Mills, since he does not get on well with Marian Van Tuyl, and 43. Cage and Harrison composed Double Music (1941), a percussion quartet for which Cage wrote parts 1 and 3 and Harrison wrote parts 2 and 4, each working independently. Instruments used include bells, brakedrums, sistra, gongs, tam-tams, and thundersheet. 44. Percy Grainger (1882–1961), Australian composer, pianist, and folksong collector. Grainger was one of Cowell’s most outspoken defenders during Cowell’s incarceration on a morals conviction, providing him a job upon his release from San Quentin prison in June 1940. 45. Marian Van Tuyl (1907–1987), American dance educator and performer who founded the dance department at Mills College in Oakland, California (1938–1970). She edited and published Impulse: Annual of Contemporary Dance (1951–1970). Her best-known collaboration with Cage is Fads and Fancies in the Academy (1940), originally subtitled A Gentle Satire on Progressive Education; less known is her contribution to a short experimental film, Horror Dream (1947), directed by Hy Hirsh and Sidney Peterson, which used a score by Cage drawn from his Imaginary Landscape series. 46. William Russell (1905–1992), American composer, among the first to integrate African, Caribbean, and Asian instruments as well as found objects and jazz elements into his compositions. Russell’s career as a composer was short, his list of works for percussion equally so: eight compositions in all, nearly all between 1932 and 1940.

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since he wanted very much to work with Lester Horton.47 However, when I told Lou that I had brought the matter up with Dr. Cassidy, he said that he might stay on at Mills, providing they raised his salary. I made it clear throughout that I was not asking for Lou’s position, that should he remain at Mills as his presence would strengthen the work of the “center” rather make it troublesome. This was the state of affairs when work descended on everybody and made other things remote. In the course of the percussion rehearsals and dance rehearsals, I found it somewhat difficult to work with Lou and with Russell for different reasons: nothing that caused great troubles, but a general lack of efficiency which arises from a democratic set-up. Russell is not a very good player which makes rehearsals with him difficult. I also feel that his present preoccupation with hot jazz disconnected from his own composition has not been good for him as a composer. I know that these personal difficulties will seem silly to you, but in dealing with a group of people, the compatibility of the entire group is very important in order to get things accomplished quickly and easily. For this reason I believe that in establishing a “center” there should be one director rather than three, that there should be as many “centers” as there are directors. The actual concert was made more difficult and yet more interesting to rehearse through the experiments in moving lights and varieties of levels which Gordon Webber of the School of Design made.48 The concert was well-received, and the publicity we received welcome and I think good. I was particularly glad to have been able to present the Ardevol Suite. In the performance the first two movements were played excellently. Unfortunately the third, the Fugue, went completely wrong. I was very sorry, but one cannot change that. The rest of the concert was played well, and three encores were given. Then came the composing for the dance concerts and the rehearsals. Finally, when I had a chance to breathe I brought the matter of the “center” up again with Dr. Cassidy. She arranged an interview with Marian (who is very anxious that I should stay at Mills) and with Dr. Reinhardt49 and the dean 47. Lester Horton (1906–1953), American dancer, choreographer, and teacher. He formed the Horton Dance Group (1934–1944) and, with Bella Lewitzky, the Dance Theater of Los Angeles (1946–1950). His best known works are his “choreodramas,” including Salome, which occupied him for nearly twenty years (1934–1953). 48. Gordon Webber (1909–1965), Canadian abstract artist, a student of László Moholy-Nagy at the New Bauhaus (later School of Design) in Chicago. In 1940 at Mills College in Oakland, California, Cage gave a percussion program in which dancers were replaced by moving lights created by Webber, who was also in residence. 49. Aurelia Henry Reinhardt (1877–1948), American educator, from 1916 to 1943 president of Mills College.

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of the faculty, Dr. Rusk. At that meeting I presented an outline of the project, which I am enclosing, a list of the achievements in the field so far plus scores and a portfolio of letters. Dr. Reinhardt was very interested in the project and particularly in the development of electronic music. She has written letters to rca, Bell, and General Electric. And suggested letters to Guggenheim and Carnegie Corp. which I wrote. She arranged a second meeting with Luther Marchand in order to get his ok to the project, which he gave. So this is how it stands now. Mills wants the “center” of experimental music but cannot pay for it. They say, for instance, that even though they gave only board and room to six people, that that has to be paid for by someone. Dr. Reinhardt has given me a letter stating their interest in the work to be done, their desire to have it at Mills, and their lack of funds. We are hoping that one of the companies above or corporations or some individuals will support the project. Have you any suggestions? If support for the project is obtained, would it be possible for me to use the Rhythmicon50 which you mentioned is at Stanford? I would continue to arrange percussion concerts with the gradual introduction of whatever is practical and possible in the field of electronic music. I would like to have a laboratory donated by one of the big companies mentioned above. I would need the cooperation of a scientist. In the neighborhood of Mills there is an experimentally minded radio technician, who helped in the last concert with the amplification of the marimbula. Moholy-Nagy also wants the project in Chicago in connection with the School of Design,51 also has no funds. Xenia is busy translating Russolo’s Art of Noise, published by the Italian Futurists in Italy in 1916. Their instruments were apparently mechanical, rotating bodies, having sliding ranges of about two octaves. I am at present making a library research of what has been accomplished in the field of electronic music. I would deeply appreciate any suggestions that you may have about any aspect of this work. 50. Rhythmicon (aka Polyrhythmophone), the first electronic drum (“rhythm”) machine, created by the Russian inventor Léon Theremin (b.  Lev Sergeyevich Termen; 1896–1993), on commission from Henry Cowell. The instrument could produce up to sixteen different simultaneous rhythms —a periodic base rhythm on a selected fundamental pitch and fifteen progressively more rapid rhythms —each associated with one of the ascending notes of the fundamental pitch’s overtone series. 51. László Moholy-Nagy (1895–1968), Hungarian painter and photographer who advocated integrating technology and the arts. Director of the New Bauhaus in Chicago (1937–1938), he maintained his position when its name was changed in 1939 to the School of Design, where Cage taught in 1941–1942.

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I am glad that, as you say, things are opening up. Please write to me soon, and let me know what your ideas are.

To Henry Cowell August 16, 1940 | Location not indicated Dear Henry: Thanks for your letter and all the fine suggestions. Things are going ahead. I am to have an interview with an executive engineer of the research dept. of General Electric. My father has invented a new instrument which may be capable of marvels. An engineer in the Federal Radio Co. here was so interested that he has gone ahead on its construction at his own expense so that he can tell his grandchildren about it. The Federal Radio is a subsidiary of the Conn Instruments, and this engineer believes that the Conn Instr. Co. might be interested in supporting the project at Mills. I cannot wait to hear the instrument. The first one will be simple, but should be capable of varying the wave-form, frequency, amplitude and to do some very interesting things with durations from my father’s description of it. I shall write to Lucille Rosen right away.52 I hope that she will loan us the theremin instruments. Varese is very interested and hopes the project goes through.53 He would like to be at Mills say two months out of each year, which I shall attempt to make a part of the plans. I shall send you scores for consideration for N.M. as soon as I return to S.F. where they are. I shall see Bender at that time too. Reply from Carnegie Corp. not promising. Keppel says that they are faced with a decreased budget. Guggenheim sent me ordinary blanks for fellowship application which doesn’t seem to me to apply in this situation where several people will be involved. 52. Lucille (“Lucie”) Bigelow Rosen (1891–1968), one of Léon Theremin’s U.S. supporters who became an adept thereminist and gave performances throughout the United States and Europe. She named an instrument Theremin constructed for her the September Theremin because it was in September (1938) that he was mysteriously whisked back to Russia and interred in a Siberian labor camp. The September Theremin was the most advanced instrument Theremin had built to date and is today on display at Caramoor’s Rosen House, alongside a Moog Music Etherwave Theremin. 53. Edgard (or Edgar) Varèse (1883–1965), French-born composer known as the father of electronic music for his use of new instruments and electronic resources. He emphasized timbre and rhythm over melody and harmony and invented the term “organized sound,” by which he meant that timbres and rhythms could be grouped together, subliminating into a wholly new definition of music.

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I have also written to Rockefeller Foundation, Whitney Found[ation]. Am making as many contacts with individuals as I can. Conversations with Varese were very exciting. As soon as the thing becomes settled, shall write possibilities of instruments to you. One of the most important things will be to have music to play on these new instruments. Concerts will also present percussion music. Am enclosing list of percussion instruments.* I am going to try to get G.E. to donate amplifiers, microphones, loudspeakers, etc. in abundance. I am certain that this project will take place, because the idea is so good and so necessary. john cage jUly 8, 1940 list of PercUssion instrUments 1 snare drum 8 bass drums 5 Chinese tom toms (black) 5 Chinese tom toms (small painted) 1 Japanese Noh drum 8 wood blocks 6 dragons’ mouths 1 tortoise shell 1 pr. bones 1 pr. bongos 1 quijadas 1 guiro 1 marimbula 4 pr. claves 4 pr. maracas 1 Indo-Chinese rattle 1 Indian rattle 1 sistrum 1 tambourine 2 pr. finger cymbals 38  |  1 9 3 0 – 1 9 4 9

8 pr. snare sticks 5 misc. snare sticks 1 bass drum beater 2 pr. tymp. sticks (good) 1 pr. tymp. sticks (bamboo) 3 odd tymp. sticks 8 pr. hard felt beaters 3 wire brushes 1 pr. cymbal beaters 3 pr. metal beaters 3 gong beaters 3 Chinese cloth beaters 1 odd hard felt beater (bamboo) 1 reg. triangle beater 3 metal sticks 1 leather beater 1 pr. hard rubber beaters (black) 1 " " " " (gray-green) 2 " " " " (red) 2 odd " " " 1 tam tam beater 7 misc. wooden beaters 3 leather beaters (temple gongs)

1 pr. crash cymbals 1 Zildjian cymbal (Turkish) 4 Chinese cymbals 1 pr. jazz cymbals 5 gongs 1 tam tam 1 Chinese painted gong 3 Temple gongs with stands 5 Japanese cup gongs with stands 4 rice bowls 1 wind bell 1 string of oxen bells (13 bells) 1 set orchestral bells 8 cowbells (Sargent) 4 cowbells (old) 1 dinner bell 5 Mexican clay bells 1 trolling bell 1 small turkey bell 1 small Chinese bell (bronze) 4 slide whistles 3 penny whistles 3 peedle pipes 1 conch shell 1 Polish whistle Resin + cloth 3 metal ash trays

3 small beaters (cup gongs) 9 chopsticks (not marked) 1 saw blade 1 hand saw 3 metal cylinders 2 forks 1 slap stick 1 bass drum foot pedal 1 metronome 1 snare stand (2 pieces) 1 jazz cymbal holder 3 standards 1 keyboard-length board (felt) 6 curtains °°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°° 4 triangles 3 brake drums 8 strap irons 1 metal pipe 3 metal discs 10 thunder sheets 1 wash tub 1 lion’s roar 1 xylophone misc. bottles + toy instr.

1 egg beater

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To Elizabeth Sprague Coolidge54 September 6, 1940 | 228 17th Avenue, San Francisco Dear Mrs. Coolidge: I am writing to you against the expressed wish of Dr. Reinhardt of Mills College. She believes that it would be untactful for me to approach you with regard to my desire to establish a center of experimental music, because she has already mentioned my desire to you, and has been unable to awaken your interest in it. However, I believe so deeply in the importance of the work which I hope to do, that I am making every attempt towards its realization; therefore, I trust you will understand my reason for writing to you. The proposed center of experimental music would be principally concerned with the composition and performance of percussion, electrical and synthetic music. The history of this music includes the work of Luigi Russolo,55 Edgar Varese, and the many composers, including myself, whose works have been presented on the nine programs of percussion music which I have already given. Luigi Russolo, as you probably know, developed approximately twenty “noise-tuners”; these instruments were of a mechanical nature. He came to the conclusion that his work would be best continued with electrical instruments, which, through lack of funds, he was unable to obtain. According to Varese, Russolo is at present in Italy, poor and discouraged. Edgar Varese has told me that he himself has tried, during the past twenty years, to obtain cooperation in the development of electrical music to no avail. In order to make my percussion concerts possible, I assembled some 150 instruments of great variety and unusual character. I collected about thirty scores from such composers as Amadeo Roldan, Jose Ardevol, Lou Harrison, J. M. Beyer, William Russell, and Henry Cowell. The majority of these scores have been copied for inclusion in the Edwin Fleischer Collection of Orchestral Music in Philadelphia. I have become convinced that only through the use of electrical means, or like means, may important advances in the exploration of sound be 54. Elizabeth Sprague Coolidge (1864–1953), American pianist and music patron, especially devoted to chamber works. Among her lasting achievements was the Berkshire Music Festival in Pittsfield, Massachusetts, out of which grew the Berkshire Symphonic Festival at Tanglewood. 55. Luigi Russolo (1883–1947), Italian Futurist painter and composer, author of the manifesto The Art of Noises (1913). His “noise concerts” in 1913 and after World War I established him as one of the first “noise” music experimenters and a theorist of electronic music. Arguing that the Industrial Revolution had given men a greater capacity to appreciate more complex sounds, he developed a taxonomy of “noise-sounds” and designed noise-generating devices he called Intonarumori.

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made. I therefor proposed to Dr. Reinhardt the establishing of a center of experimental music at Mills College. I also proposed this center to L. Moholy-Nagy of the School of Design in Chicago. Both realize the worth of this project, but in each case it is necessary to find outside support. In obtaining the sympathy of Mills College and of the School of Design, I have met with more cooperation than has been accorded any like endeavors in the past. The establishing of this project would constitute a two-fold stimulus: first, to inventors and acousticians; second, to composers and musicians. The former could contribute instruments for which there is no commercial demand today. The latter would be presented with an ever-unfolding field of sound. Ultimately the entire field of sound would be available for musical purposes. And the instruments which bring about this availability will have a commercial value in that they will make possible not only the performance of any music of the past but also any music of the future. The beginnings would be modest. I would have the use of my large collection of percussion instruments, Henry Cowell’s “Rhythmicon,” a collection of instruments invented by Leon Theremin, a thunderscreen developed by Harold Burris-Meyer of the Stevens Institute of Technology,56 instruments which my father has recently designed for the variation of the overtone structure of a tone, and any others which might be available. Composers throughout the country would be notified of the possibilities of this new orchestra and invited to present scores for performance. Performances would be given immediately. I am fortunate in having a nucleus of four players, all of whom are devoted to these new possibilities in music. This letter is already long and inadequate. I hope that it will serve to interest you in the work which I hope to do.

56. Harold Burris-Meyer (1902–1984), American researcher who advocated for the dramatic possibilities of pyschoacoustics in the theater. In addition to his work at the Stevens Institute and Bell Laboratories, he served as a tactical and strategic planner for unconventional warfare during World War II, investigating the use of sound as a weapon. With colleagues at the Muzak Corporation and the Magnetic Resources Corporation, he also created the first stereophonic recording.

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To George Antheil 57 September 17, 1940 | 228 17th Avenue, San Francisco Dear Mr. Antheil: Following the percussion concert at Mills College last July, I had the pleasure of meeting Mrs. Antheil. I shall be in Los Angeles during October and should like to see you then. I would appreciate your writing to me and letting me know how to get in touch with you. In the meantime I am doing everything I can to establish a “center of experimental music.” The purpose of this center will be to do research, composition and performance in the field of sounds and rhythms not used in the symphony orchestra; the ultimate purpose will be the use of electrical instruments which will make available the entire desirable field of sound. Recently my father, who is an inventor, designed an instrument which should give rich possibilities in the variation of the overtone structure of a tone. This instrument will be constructed soon. I also have recordings of two of the percussion concerts; I think you would enjoy hearing them. Both Mills College and the School of Design in Chicago hope that I can find support for the center so that it may be established either at Mills or in Chicago. If you have any suggestions that might lead to its support, I would appreciate your letting me know about them.

To Henry Cowell October 3, 1940 | 1207 Miramar Street, Los Angeles Dear Henry: I am back in Los Angeles now, making further attempts to get the center established. My address will be the one above now. In San Francisco I saw Diego Rivera,58 who heard the records of the percussion and was very enthusiastic. He is seeing people and has referred me to [Charlie] Chaplin and to Edsel Ford and 57. George Antheil (1900–1959), American avant-garde composer active from the 1930s composing music for film and television in a more tonal style than his beginnings might have suggested. He wrote the autobiography Bad Boy of Music (New York: Doubleday, 1945). 58. Diego Rivera (1886–1957), prominent Mexican painter, husband of Frida Kahlo (1907–1954). A retrospective exhibition of his works was held at the Museum of Modern Art in New York in 1931.

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Stokowski.59 He believes that a letter from Stokowski to Ford and a letter from me mentioning Rivera’s interest would do the trick. I saw Bender who was very kind but very involved in refugees. Mrs. Henry Swift is a well-to-do artist in the Bauhaus way and should be a member of the N.M.S. She doesn’t like old music. I also saw an executive engineer of the General Electric who was interested but on account of an agreement made between Bell, ge and rca, rca is the only one who could be active in the field of music. Their letter to me states that they do not believe the development I want to make is practical. Frankenstein says for me to keep on trying to get the work established even though this is a bad time. He is very enthusiastic too. Ashley Pettis was no help. Mrs. Charles Felton (who should also be a member of NMS) ## 3311 Pacific, S[an] F[ranscisco], was very interested but said that I could get no help from San Francisco women because they are too conservative; she is a friend of Varese and tried successfully to raise 150 dollars for a performance of Offrandes, but only because there were other numbers on the program which everybody knew. Mrs. Henry Swift’s address is 148 Tunnel Road, Berkeley. Down here I have many new people to see. I had a letter from Carl E. Seashore at the University of Iowa, which is very good.60 It practically invites me to come to Iowa, but is a little vague about whether or not they would support the work. I am replying to that letter today and hope very much that it works out because they have a good laboratory and sound engineers and the atmosphere is definitely one of research. Arthur Cohn wrote and wants more scores for the Fleischer Collection in Philadelphia,61 because a supplement of their catalogue is coming out and they want to include more works for percussion. Unfortunately, the only scores which I have prepared for sending to them are among those that I sent to you. Therefor I am writing to him to let him know that you have them; he will write to you if he wants them and I will leave the matter in your hands. When sending, if you do, scores to him, they are to be sent collect at his expense and insured. The particular ones that he now already has are the following: harrison

5th Simfony Canticle

59. Leopold (Anthony) Stokowski (1882–1977), British orchestral conductor, well known for his long association with the Philadelphia Orchestra. 60. Carl Emil Seashore (1866–1949), American psychologist whose interests included audiology and measuring motivation and scholastic aptitude. A version of the Seashore Tests of Musical Ability (1919) was long used in American schools, and his Psychology of Music (1938) long served as an essential college text. 61. The Edwin A. Fleischer Collection of Orchestral Music, the world’s largest lending library of orchestral performance material, housed within the Free Library of Philadelphia.

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rUssell cage

Studies in Cuban Rhythms Second Construction

Thank you for taking care of this for me; by the way, do you think any of the scores may be published in New Music? I have never had a reply from Lucie Rosen; I wrote to her a long time ago. Do you know anything further about her —where she is? I have also not heard from the Columbia Broadcasting which you mentioned I might hear from. How are you getting along? I saw Lou. He has a fine new studio in SF and is writing continuously. Have you seen Varese? I hope something fine happens for him in New York.

To Bland L. Stradley 62 December 14, 1940 | 228 17th Avenue, San Francisco Dear Dr. Stradley: I am writing to propose the establishing of a center of experimental music at Ohio State University. As a composer and member of the faculties of the Cornish School of Music in Seattle and of the summer session, Mills College, 1940, I have for some time been active in the field of experimental music. I have presented nine concerts of percussion music, using over 150 percussion instruments which I have collected. The last concert, given at Mills College, was reviewed in the weekly news magazine Time, July 29, 1940. Before I began the presentation of complete percussion concerts, there had been sporadic performances of Edgar Varese’s Ionization and of William Russell’s Fugue for eight percussion instruments and the latter’s Three Dance Movements. However, at the time (December 1938) that I gave my first percussion concert, I advised many composers throughout the country of the presence at the Cornish School in Seattle of players, instruments and interest in this new musical field. The response was very encouraging, and the number of scores for percussion has grown from about three in 1934 to about fifty in 1940. I have at present thirty scores from which to choose for performances. This number is increasing continually. The majority of the scores have been copied for inclusion in the Edwin Fleischer Collection of Orchestral Music in Philadelphia. 62. Bland L. Stradley, dean of the College of Arts and Sciences at Ohio State University.

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I now propose to establish a center of experimental music, the purpose of which would be to continue the work with percussion instruments and to do further research, composition and performance in those fields of sound and rhythm not yet explored. The ultimate goal of such a project would be the use of electrical, mechanical, film and like means for the production of any desired frequency in any desired duration, aplitude and overtone structure. I would regularly advise composers throughout the country of the new materials available and invite them to contribute scores for performance. American music will be enlivened and enriched by such exploration and use of new musical materials. These can best be brought about through the cooperation of scientists with a real appreciation of music, and composers with an understanding and appreciation of sience. That is the combination I am endeavoring to bring about. In the event that this work might be established at Ohio State University, I shall be glad to provide you with many references, my qualifications, and details concerning my plans for work.

To Peter Yates December 14, 1940 | 228 17th Avenue, San Francisco Dear Peter: [ following paragraph crossed out] I appreciate your interest in my work and the trouble you have taken to write the enclosed article. For many reasons, however, I am certain the publishing of this article would not serve either your or my best interests. People are accustomed to saying that anything printed about anything is “good publicity”; such a point of view doesn’t interest me. I am anxious that the article you publish be accurate as to facts and present some true and sensible critical evaluation of the work in percussion and its objectives. I have not really delayed answering your note; I have instead written several letters to you, each of which attempted to point out the errors in your article. I have decided, instead, that it would be better for you to write a new article entirely; and that I could best help you by giving a brief statement about facts and objectives. Luigi Russolo between 1913 and 1925 gave concerts, constructed 23 “noisetuners,” published The Art of Noise. (See Slonimsky’s Music Since 1900 for the 1 9 3 0 – 1 9 4 9  |  45

first chapter in his book.63) Varese introduced Russolo at the latter’s concert in Paris in the ’20’s. Varese criticized his work as being too concerned with the imitation of natural and city sounds. Russolo was a painter, not a composer. His three compositions were called “Spirals of Noise.” **Dining on the Hotel Terrace; Awakening of a City; Assembling of Automobiles and Aeroplanes. Gradually more and more importance is given to the percussion section in so-called modern symphonic works, e.g., works by Stravinsky and others, finally resulting in such works as Milhaud’s Oresteia64 with one entire section for choric speech and percussion, and his opera, Cristophe Colomb, which contains many sections for speech and percussion. Not until 1931 did the logical outcome of this activity take place: Varese’s Ionization, for percussion alone, which differs in intent from Russolo’s work, being in no way an imitation of natural or city sounds, but being instead an expressive organization of sound as opposed to tone. With this work Varese announced the new disagreement: between sound and tone. Musical disagreement had previously been between consonance and dissonance. Neither Varese’s work nor Russolo’s work had been concerned with a revival of primitive instruments. Russolo was a definite result of an interest in the machine. He desired to carry his work forward with the aid of electrical means. This required financial support which he was unable to obtain. An interest in the possibilities the machine offers was shown by other composers such as George Antheil who wrote for many player-pianos [margin note added: “direct stamping on the perforated rolls”], and by Ernst Toch,65 who wrote for speech to be recorded nine times as fast as spoken. [Nikolai] Lopatnikoff, a pupil of Toch, also made experiments with music for records. [margin note added: “Also Hindemith.”] My Imaginary Landscape written for percussion and records of constant and variable frequency lies in this class of music dependent on the machine for performance. 63. Nicolas Slonimsky (1894–1995), Russian-born American composer, conductor, musician, and lexicographer whose widely read Music Since 1900 provided a daily chronicle over six editions (1937–2001) of important musical events around the world. He was a great champion of contemporary composers, most notably Ives and Varèse. 64. Darius Milhaud (1892–1974), prolific French composer and teacher, a member of Les Six. His works were influenced by jazz and made use of polytonality. 65. Ernst Toch (1887–1964), Austrian composer of classical works and film scores. Toch’s “Gesprochene Musik” was an idiom of his own invention for spoken chorus, and his most performed work in this vein was Geographical Fugue (Fuge aus der Geographie, 1930). According to Dorothy Lamb Crawford, it was in large part Cage’s enthusiasm for this work that led to Toch’s 1961 composition of a companion piece, Valse (see A Windfall of Musicians [Yale University Press, 2009]).

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Some composers, interested in folk and primitive and oriental music, also used percussion instruments. These were Bartok, Chavez and perhaps others. [Henry] Eichheim. Maybe Cowell. This getting back to the earth business is quite different from either Varese’s work or Russolo’s work. [margin note added: “And is not so much ‘getting back to the earth’ as it is ‘getting into the books’ —musicology.”] As Russolo had already suggested, there were many possibilities offered by the use of electricity. Inventors had been inventing electrical musical instruments: Theremin, Trautwein. Hindemith wrote music for the Trautonium,66 which could as well have been played on regular symphonic instruments. Thereminists, although theoretically interested in new music for the Theremin, showed a preference for displaying their virtuosity and presented programs made up from classic music ending with the modern French school. [margin note added: “They are quite pleased with the mysterious, sensational way of playing the instrument (Look, Mama, no hands!), and thus have little time [illegible] what they’re playing.”] However, composers and critics soon saw that the new electrical instruments had one thing in common with the percussion and mechanical work and that was a common interest in exploring the field of sound and rhythm, bringing into availability new musical materials. An example of this realization is Stokowski’s article in the journal of the Acoustical Society.67 The goal began to be clear: an instrument which would make the entire field of sound available for musical purposes: any desirable frequency, amplitude, overtone structure and duration. It can be seen that radio and film work to produce sound effects is a commercial exploitation of the field that interested Russolo. Only difference is that radio and film companies use the materials representatively, and Russolo wanted to organize them for “Futurist Noise.” Mills in his book, A Fugue in Cycles and Bels,68 suggests that through the acquisition of a library of templates, i.e., film library, the most practical exploration of sound may be made. Douglas Schearer, MGM 66. A monophonic electronic instrument invented c.1929 by Friedrich Trautwein (1888–1956) in Berlin. Sound is produced not on a keyboard but by depressing a wire over a metal plate, with volume controlled by finger pressure. The most famous use of the instrument is heard in Oskar Sala’s score for Alfred Hitchcock’s film, The Birds (1963). 67. Leopold Stokowski, “New Horizons in Music,” in The Journal of the Acoustical Society of America 4, no. 1a (1932): 11–19. In his talk at the Bell Telephone Laboratories before the Acoustic Society of America annual meeting on May 2, 1932, Stokowski proposed a novel use for the phonograph in his “synthetic opera”: having the singers’ voices recorded and heard offstage, replacing the performers onstage with “venuses who really look the part.” 68. John Mills, A Fugue in Cycles and Bels (New York: D. Van Nostrand Company, 1935).

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Sound Engineer, agrees. I believe that film will make noise available for musical purposes. Russolo’s work is perhaps the only example of what you call in your article “a revolutionary reaction on the part of Art against itself.” He had, however, a more positive side too. That was his awareness of the importance of the machine and of electricity. Do I make it clear that none of these workers were concerned with either prettiness or ugliness? Neither were they concerned with the Science of Harmony. Some of them were concerned with deeper meaning. Varese surely was. There’s a lot of deeper meaning in just plain experimentation. None of them considered the raw materials they used as music; they did consider what they made out of the materials music, however. Lots of people, hearing this music, liked it, even considered some of it pretty. See articles in Modern Music,69 or letters I’ve received. None of the workers “proudly declared it had no meaning at  all.” Compositions reheard gather meaning like stones gather moss. None of the workers moved out into the sunshine or got out on limbs. All of them worked hard, against almost overwhelming odds, worked honestly. I don’t know of any examples of dishonest work in this field. I was unaware of the background I have outlined when I began my work in this field. I did not know about any of the above accomplishments except those of Varese in his Ionization. I had studied harmony with Weiss without liking it or feeling any natural inclination to use it. I had written a lot of dissonant linear music. I then studied counterpoint, form and analysis with Schoenberg. I saw the New Music publication of Percussion Music, heard Schoenberg call it nonsense, doubted whether it was nonsense. I saw some abstract films made by Oscar Fischinger,70 talked with him, and began the writing of my first Quartet for Percussion. I organized the composition on a rhythmic basis, indicating no instruments. Friends helped me perform it on kitchen utensils, pieces of wood, tire rims, brake drums, etc. I was unaware at the time that I was doing what 69. Modern Music (1924–1946), the first music review magazine for the League of Composers. Its original name, The League of Composers’ Review, was changed in 1925. With wide coverage and esteemed contributors from both sides of the Atlantic, the magazine significantly shaped pre–World War II American music. 70. Properly, Oskar Wilhelm Fischinger (1900–1967), German-American filmmaker and painter, notable for his abstract musical animations. Cage worked briefly with Fischinger in the summer of 1937 and was impressed with Fischinger’s idea that a spirit dwells inside every object. Their working relationship was ill-fated, however. While working on Fischinger’s short film Optical Poem, Cage, noticing that Fischinger had nodded off and that the ash from his lit cigar had ignited some paper and rags on the floor, inadvertently splashed water on Fischinger’s camera. See Cage’s mesostic titled “forgive me,” to Elfriede Fischinger and dated May 8, 1980.

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many negro street musicians in New Orleans had done. I was sharing points of view of Schoenberg and hot jazz combined. I gave private performances of the results and everyone encouraged going ahead. People said, Wonderful, etc. I rationalized the whole thing with reference to the overtone series, that is, I said our ears are in one of the high octaves where we are able to compose + hear music without reference to a fundamental tone underlying the entire composition. We are no longer pedestrian, but can fly piloted by other means of control than the old harmonic ones. I defined music for myself as Organized Sound. And I still define it that way. In order to make a living I worked with dancers, made accompaniments for their choreography. I also made experiments, both in Los Angeles and Seattle later in the amplification of small sounds, found that delicate differences of amplitude were brought about through the use of electrical amplification, and that marvelous experiences in the field of new timbres existed all about us: cellophane crumpled in front of a microphone and unlimited other possibilities. I found in Seattle, and have ever since, that dancers want to avoid any oriental references that they think percussion brings with it. Most of them are afraid of rhythmic complexities, or even unusual simple rhythmic combinations. It was therefor necessary to leave the field of dance accompaniment for the presentation of serious work in the field of experimental music. I presented on December 9, 1938, a concert of percussion music in Seattle, the first complete concert of this kind in America. It presented my own compositions and some of those printed in the New Music Edition. It was received with great enthusiasm and lots of people asked for another concert and many volunteered to play. I wrote to composers, told them about our having instruments, players, interest, invited the contribution of scores. In this way the literature of percussion music grew from three or four compositions in 1934 to about 50 at the present time. It became clear to me that although all of the compositions I received were different that they had one thing in common: the desire to explore sound and rhythm, and to organize the results of the exploration. One composer sent compositions which were superficial; I returned them unhesitatingly. For the others and for myself, notation was never the problem you make it in your article. We were definitely able to notate what we wanted played. I changed in my own work to a very clear indication of instruments, for now I had instruments and wrote for particular ones. Russell’s work was never hot jazz, because hot jazz is improvised and Russell’s work was composed. His ideas were always musical and exciting. I continued giving concerts and the interest continued to grow. I gave a concert at Mills in the summer of 1939 under the auspices of 1 9 3 0 – 1 9 4 9  |  49

the Bennington School.71 For this reason, in their first letter to me, Mills College asked for a second percussion concert. In no sense did they “let me show what I could do.” They knew what I could do and liked it. I found myself last summer in an excellent environment with the Bauhaus people. New materials, cooperation with technological advances. I had meanwhile become aware of the background of my work and had made two compositions using mechanical possibilities, and was interested to establish a center of experimental music which would continue the work done with percussion instruments and add the use of mechanical and electrical means for further exploration of the field of sound and rhythm. Function: research, composition, performance. Mills College did not put me off when I suggested this center to them. Dr. Reinhardt on the contrary gave me assurance of the College’s readiness to cooperate with me providing I found the necessary support. This is usual in the case of new departments in a college. Moholy-Nagy begged me to come to Chicago. Funds also necessary. In looking for support, I made many new contacts, learned a lot. For one thing became acquainted with new technological advances, including the possibilities of film. Began to think of synthetic music, that is, music made through the use of film and film editing, enabling a composer to compose directly without the use of any musical instruments. This field is only one of the fields which interests me, and could be used in combination with other mechanical and electrical means. I would prefer to omit the sob-stuff from the article. It has no place. If you want to make people cry, talk about Russolo who is poor and discouraged in Italy. Varese is pretty sad too. The trouble with the big companies is not that they are making things hard for me, but that in many instances they exploit new materials for commercial purposes. Solovox.72 But after all they want to play too, and this is a free country. Burton Perry is a sound engineer who didn’t put me off. He just doesn’t have funds either. Please try a new article. Perhaps this letter should go on to something else, but it’s getting awfully Xmassy around here and I can’t concentrate any longer. 71. Properly, Bennington College, a liberal arts college founded in Bennington, Vermont, in 1932. Its School of Dance summer program was instituted in 1934 by Martha Hill, who brought in stellar teachers including Martha Graham, Doris Humphrey, Hanya Holm, and Charles Weidman. On August 1, 1942, Merce Cunningham and Jean Erdman would give a joint program of their own works there, which they repeated at the Humphrey-Weidman Studio Theatre in New York City later that year, adding Totem Ancestor (1942), another solo for Cunningham, with music by Cage. 72. Solovox, a monophonic keyboard attachment instrument intended to accompany the piano with organ-type lead voices, manufactured by the Hammond Organ Company.

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P.S. This letter gives you an historical background and emphasizes the only point all percussion composers have in common: desire to organize results of an exploration of sound and rhythm made through the use of percussion, mechanical, electrical, and film means. That’s the only thing they have in common. Their aesthetic points of view differ.

To Edgard Varèse January 3, 1941 | 228 17th Avenue, San Francisco Dear Mr. Varese, I’ve read your article, “Organized Sound for the Sound Film,” 73 which was published in the Commonweal. I think it’s the best and most exciting article about music that I’ve ever read. I hope that your work is established in some laboratory. It certainly should be. The general lack of audacity, desire to explore, on the part of heads of companies having laboratories is increasingly ununderstandable. I have not yet had any actual success in my attempts to establish a center of experimental music. Several institutions are interested but don’t seem to have any funds. They complain too of having no background for something so new, which is silly, because they are surrounded by this background. I spoke with John Steinbeck about your working with him.74 It seems that there was some misunderstanding between you. He was asked to plan some radio program, and had the idea of your making a sound-background for a reading of the Bill of Rights. However, I doubt very much whether he has a real appreciation of music of contemporary spirit. At any rate, I gave him your present address. I am to write “music” for an educational film, 16 m.m., concerning the modern dance. I would like to do it directly with film, without instruments; so far, the expense of such work seems to be prohibitive. I hope I can find some way to avoid excessive expense and really do it. I hope that you have a good new year and my regards to Mrs. Varese.

73. See Edgard Varèse, “Organized Sound for the Sound Film,” Commonweal 33, no. 8 (Dec. 13, 1940). 74. John (Ernst) Steinbeck Jr. (1902–1968), American writer, who likely first met Cage in 1938 through Ed Ricketts (1897–1948), a marine biologist who hosted a casual salon at his laboratory on Cannery Row in Monterey, California.

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To Doris Dennison and Margaret [Jansen]75 September 8 [1941] | 323 E. Cermak Road, Chicago76 Dear Doris and Margaret: We have been very busy “nesting” and still have a good deal to do: painting, making furniture, etc. Gretchen and Alex are helping us remodel a large room which is in their building. We rent it for $5.00 a month, but when we finish it will be one of the most beautiful places in the world. The walls and ceiling are covered with burlap. Bamboo mats around the bed on the wall. Bamboo blinds. Furniture is painted white except for top surfaces and panels which are natural wood varnished. Woodwork off white and floor blue. All the furniture is modern and everything is easy to clean because as we were warned Chicago is filthy. Open windows produce soot. Whole piles of dust form without your knowing how. We have about 3 more days of work before we are finished cleaning and building and painting. I have a job! At the University of Chicago as Kay Manning’s composer-accompanist. She is from the Humphrey-W. Group.77 Also, of course, the Bauhaus work which will be as exciting as I can make it. In the next day or so I will see someone at Bell and Howell, the sound on film place (which has its headquarters and lab in Chicago) and try to wrangle equipment for experimental purposes from them. If I succeed, it will make this move really important. In the course of time, I will get or try to get other jobs and then offer you the ones you want if you will come here too. Although the place is really a real Hell. The weather is exciting in that it gets unbearably hot and muggy and then does what you want it to do and knows it must do: lightning, thunder, and downpour of rain. Even Xenia is excited and happy when there is proof that electricity and rain are coming. 75. Properly, Doris Denison and Margaret Jansen, two of the three “literate amateur musicians” (with Xenia Cage) who played in Cage’s percussion ensemble at the Cornish School, where both taught. Little is known about Jansen, other than that she was a pianist; Denison was a percussionist in Cage’s ensemble who became closely affiliated with the dance department at Mills College. 76. The Cages moved to Chicago in September 1941 on an invitation from Moholy-Nagy for Cage to teach in his School of Design. While there, Cage taught also at the University of Chicago, accompanying dance classes led by Kay Manning, and gave important performances at both the University of Chicago and at the Arts Club of Chicago. 77. The Humphrey-Weidman Group originated in 1928 when Doris Humphrey (1895–1958) and Charles Weidman (1901–1975) broke away from the Denishawn School and moved to New York City. They pioneered modern dance in the United States, founding a dance school and company to teach and perform their technique.

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I have a beautiful desk to write music on. I like the record very much, but I thought that Lou [Harrison]’s remarks were pussyfooting around the bush. His work is no more in sonata form than I am. The important thing is that percussion must be heard with excitement and not as though it were the same old stuff. We were very depressed at first, because Chicago is the Ugly City. But we are making our corner of it so beautiful and I will be able to do good work here, that now we feel more normal. Gretchen and Alex are the best of friends.78 Alex paints and just won (since we’ve been here) a $300.00 purchase prize from the S.F. Museum of Art. His painting which won the prize is probably on exhibit now. Please go and see it and tell us what you think. It’s called “Composition” and Alex is called Corazzo. Gretchen makes sculpture and mobile-like things, only they don’t move like Xenia’s do. They’re all in one piece. The School of Design begins on the 23rd. And the University not until the 7th of October. So I have nothing to do now but look around, nest, organize a group, look for help from Bell + Howell, etc. Will probably write Fourth Construction.

To Doris Dennison October 26, 1941 | 323 East Cermak Road, Chicago Dear Doris: You write such good letters. We enjoy them very much. We even learn about our Winnetka friends from you. I think, though, we’ll be seeing more of Brab79 because I’m starting in November to do some experimental work in radio music at Northwestern University. They will build equipment, actually broadcast programs, etc. However, there’s no money in it so far. There’s a possibility of a research fellowship later on. I’ll work there Tuesday and Friday evenings, Friday afternoon and Saturday morning. Naturally I’ll need a group of players, 78. Gretchen (née Schoeninger) and Alexander Corazzo, Chicago-based artists whose “constructions and mobiles” were noted at the time. Gretchen, a childhood friend of Xenia’s, played in Cage’s percussion ensemble, which premiered Cage’s Ad Lib (1943), In the Name of the Holocaust (1942), and Shimmera (1942), all early piano pieces, at the Arts Club of Chicago on February 14, 1943. 79. Brabazon Lindsey, one of the players in the premiere radio broadcast performance of Cage’s The City Wears a Slouch Hat (see note 91).

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and fortunately Winnetka is near Evanston. If the fellowship comes through I’m going to offer you the other jobs I have now. Which are not so bad. The U. of Chicago job is like rolling off a log. Kay Manning is very pleasant and totally uninterested in choreography so that technique is all I play for. She is a good (technique) teacher. As for the Hull House job,80 I’d rather not mention it, but it’s only 3 hrs. on Thursday evening —and another job I found is ghastly (also accompanying). I’m said to be the best dance musician in Chicago and everyone feels so fortunate, etc. But I shall be very glad to be doing something in radio and really experimenting. I have talked about it so long, and now I’ll really have equipment, etc., to do some of it. You will be sorry to hear that I have not even unpacked the instruments yet at the Bauhaus. The class there is stimulating but I’ve started them making their own instruments. I have to wait about concerts until I know about the Arts Club here.81 The concert for them has to be the first one in Chicago. After they decide one way or another I can go ahead and get engagements. Until I have actual concerts in view I don’t want to start rehearsals. However, the radio group will be starting soon and that’s the same as a concert group. Merce said he’d come here and play if we did something in the spring.82 Joyce is married (did we tell you?).83 Gordon is taking my class at the Bauhaus (I have 4 other students) all of them free. So that the only money I’m making is through accompanying. Fortunately our expenses are low. We have a marvelous oil stove that keeps our room unbearably hot. No trouble with coal + dirt. All our books are covered with cellophane to keep out the Chicago soot. Just read a new book —Kenneth Patchen’s Journal of Albion Moonlight.84 I wrote to him today and asked him to work with me on a radio program that Polly Ann Schwartz’s mother says she 80. Hull House, co-founded in 1889 by Jane Addams and Ellen Gates Starr, offering classes to working-class people, many European immigrants, in literature, history, art, music, and domestic activities. 81. The Arts Club of Chicago, founded in 1916 “to encourage higher standards of art, maintain galleries for that purpose, and to promote the mutual acquaintance of art lovers and art workers.” 82. Fully, Mercier (“Merce”) Philip Cunningham (1919–2009), American dancer and choreographer who by the end of his life would be at the forefront of modern dance. He and Cage had first met in 1938 at the Cornish School, Cage later traveling to Chicago with Xenia and Cunningham traveling to New York to dance with Martha Graham. The two would reconnect in Chicago and in New York, soon thereafter launching a collaborative relationship, both professional and personal. 83. Joyce Wike, anthropology student at the University of Washington who took dance classes at the Cornish School, befriended Cunningham, and performed in Cage’s percussion ensemble (1938, 1939). It has been posited that her study of Pacific Northwest Native ceremonial practices inspired Cunningham’s interest in Native American ceremonies, especially “spirit dancing,” a solo form. 84. Kenneth Patchen (1911–1972), largely self-taught American writer whose self-published antiwar novel The Journey of Albion Moonlight (1941) created controversy.

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can put across over cbs.85 Bunny’s trying to get started again in bookbinding and I think she really will.86 All of her mobiles except one busted coming here. She’s also going to work in that direction. Tell Marian that I start to write to her lots of times but never get finished, that I love her and will try to get you an engagement at the Arts Club. I’m going to write a score for Ruth Hatfield this winter.87 A Mexican ballet. Martha88 wrote thru Merce that she wanted me to work with her in New York, that she would provide for me and that I was fearless and completely imaginative (all of which gladdens my heart). But now I have a new love: radio. And I wish you were here to help me make platonic love to it. We’re going to have turntables equipped with buttons, etc., so that you don’t raise the needle: you just push the button and wind goes on and off. I haven’t written any music. I started notes for the Fourth Construction89 which will be composed for the next concert. Please send Liz the music I wrote for her: that Jazz Study90 (it’s at Mills). Also, please price large Chinese cymbals. Also how is the record business going? [illegible] is fine. Love to you et Margaret et Herb and Millers. Tell Glotzie to read Patchen’s book.

85. CBS Broadcasting Inc., a major commercial broadcasting network with roots in radio. 86. Bunny was Cage’s nickname for Xenia; although seen less frequently, also Xenia’s nickname for her husband. 87. Ruth Hatfield (b. 1914), Minneapolis-born modern dancer, choreographer, and dance educator; an original member of the San Francisco Dance League. 88. Martha Graham (1894–1991), American modern dancer and choreographer. With the formation of the Martha Graham Dance Company in 1926, she would employ stellar dancers over six decades, including Cunningham, who had moved to New York from Seattle specifically to dance for her. He remained until 1945. 89. This work would premiere under this title in San Francisco on May 7, 1942, but would soon be reworked and retitled Imaginary Landscape No. 2 (March No 1). It’s scored for percussion ensemble comprising tin cans, conch shell, ratchet, bass drum, buzzers, water gong, metal wastebaket, and lion’s roar, which are combined with an amplified coil of wire attached to a phonographic tone arm. 90. Cage’s Jazz Study (c.1941) for solo piano, long thought to be of doubtful authorship, in part because of the absence of original manuscripts. However, an envelope found after Cage’s death had written upon it “Doris Denison sent to JC 6/29/89. She says it is JC. He has no memory of it.” The use of jazz elements is somewhat uncharacteristic for Cage but not unprecedented; see other works from the period with jazz inflections such as Ad Lib (1943), Credo in US (1942), and Four Dances (1942–1943).

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To Doris Dennison [1942?] | Location not indicated Dear Doris: We need you so badly. Brabazon says you’re planning to come to Chicago. Please do + just get a stop-over so we all go to N.Y. late this Spring. You’ll have to play in the cbs workshop work.91 Patchen’s working on script now. He has a poem in current Harper’s Bazaar. P.S. Did you notice Mrs. Harrison Williams chit chat in the same issue*? Yrs [name illegible, not John Cage] P.S. Bunny doesn’t like me to like him. Wait until he’s the best-dressed man of 1986. *I haven’t seen it yet.

To Doris Dennison [March] 18, 1942 | 323 E. Cermak Road, Chicago Dear Doris: In a great hurry. Just heard from Brab that you + others heard a broadcast saying that Arts Club concert was a failure,92 + that audience walked out. Nothing is farther from the truth. What I need at this point is to know what station 91. Cage’s The City Wears a Slouch Hat, subtitled Incidental Music for the Radio Play by Kenneth Patchen, composed on commission from the CBS Radio Workshop in Chicago and given its one and only broadcast on May 31, 1942, directed by Les Mitchell. Initially, Cage composed the work entirely for electronic sound effects, but a week before the broadcast, he was told that what he wanted to do was not possible in the allotted time. Cage recomposed the work for percussion ensemble and live sound effects just four days before the scheduled broadcast. The original manuscript is likely lost. 92. This concert took place on March 1, 1942, with Cage conducting an ensemble comprising Xenia Cage, Dorothy Fisher, Ruth Hatfield, Brabazon Lindsey, Stuart Lloyd, Rachel Machatton, Katherine Manning, Claire Oppenheim, and Marjorie Parkin in a program that included First Construction (In Metal) (1939) and the premiere of Imaginary Landscape No. 3 (1942), along with works by Lou Harrison and William Russell. A second, more explosive concert would take place at the Arts Club on February 14, 1943, with Merce Cunningham and Jean Erdman in first performances of Ad Lib (1943), In the Name of the Holocaust (1942), and Shimmera (1943); also performed by Cage and musicians (Xenia Cage, Gretchen Schoeninger, and Stuart Lloyd) were Credo in US (1942), Totem Ancestor (1942), and Forever and Sunsmell (1942).

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or stations made the broadcast in order that we can track it down + find out how it originated. Mrs. Schwartz will then act if it is a cbs station or a friend of hers if it’s nbc. Please do everything you can to find out what station it was and reply as fast as possible. Always missing, needing you.

To Merce Cunningham [Undated, postmarked March 21, 1942] | 323 East Cermak Road, Chicago Dear Merce: This is very tardy in comparison with telegrams, menus, etc. It is because we were completely sad that the reviews were impossible to send.93 Bulliet hated it. Smith stayed only for the first dance, didn’t like it. And nobody liked it who got into print. It wasn’t the truth, but we couldn’t send reviews. If you still want them, let us know again, and we will blindfold ourselves. Martha’s new dance seemed very good to me, although it was obviously ballet form, war-horse form; but I enjoyed it. One thing, the space of that stage is magnificent. And you were marvelous, and it was good to see the group moving around. Nobody liked Eric.94 I was overjoyed that the audience was so spontaneous every time you left the stage. And I was amazed that the reviews didn’t headline your work. But they didn’t. Nobody recognizes Nijinsky when they see him. About Arts Club: Rue Shaw says that you have to have concerts someplace else before she can give one at the Club. She is crazy about your work and felt rotten saying that, but that’s what the conclusion was. Please don’t be discouraged. I told her that you felt the same way about New York, that you wanted to do someplace else first. Bennington should be that possibility. Plus perhaps (I don’t know anything about it) Yale Theatre, someplace in colleges: Cornell, Harvard. Rue also said: I wish when Merce starts with Jean that their music is not piano music because everybody no longer likes typical dance concert 93. Martha Graham and Dance Company had performed at Chicago’s Civic Opera House on March 14, 1942, in a program that included the premiere of Land Be Bright, with music by Arthur Kreutz and sets and costumes by Charlotte Trowbridge. Featured dancers were Cunningham as the Yankee Orator, Erick Hawkins as the Indian Chingachgook, and Graham as Betsy Ross. 94. Properly, Erick Hawkins (1909–1994), American choreographer and dancer. With Cunningham, he became one of the first male dancers to join the Martha Graham Dance Company (1939). He and Graham were married from 1948 to 1954.

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music. One more piano is only doubling the error. It was better when Louis95 had snare, wind and percussion and dance deal. What do you think? Giving it later in NY. Of course my fear is that people are anxious to say that our music is not enough by itself and must have dance, but I would not feel that way with you and Jean.96 At any rate work hard and we’ll see you in June. If the radio thing goes through here, I’ll let you know when and if possible maybe you’ll play in it.

To Mrs. Rue Shaw 97 [Undated, ca. October 1, 1942] | 550 Hudson St., New York 98 Dear Rue: Your letter came today and today was first day of seeming to get to beginning to be settled: phone will be put in tomorrow: linoleum down in kitchen: gas + lights are on: stuff came through finally from Chicago: instruments are in studio (Fr[anziska] Boas) ready for rehearsal. Tomorrow I work in the morning at Sarah Lawrence: in the afternoon at Boas School and at 5 a dancer comes to give particulars about a new composition she wants and it looks like a beginning to be making. Pretty soon will be able to ask people to dinner, rehearse, give concerts, etc. And we are making a guest room for you Gretchen Alex Pat and Chicago. We will call it the Chicago room. Thank you for going to trouble about Kenneth [Patchen]. Fortunately, he has a new $100.00 which saves the present situation and where it came from is apparently more. It never occurred to me that Miriam could work since she had a job as a waitress, but I don’t think she could do that or anything else anymore. 95. Louis Horst (1884–1964), American choreographer, composer, and pianist. He was musical director for the Denishawn company (1916–1925) before serving as musical director and dance composition teacher for Graham’s school and dance company (1926–1948). 96. Jean Erdman (b. 1916), American dancer, choreographer, and teacher. A principal in Martha Graham’s Dance Company, she was often partnered with Cunningham. Erdman formed the Jean Erdman Dance Group in 1944, and for six years presented annual concerts in New York City. Among important works were Daughters of the Lonesome Isle (1945) and Ophelia (1946), both with commissioned scores by Cage. She was married to the American mythologist and writer Joseph Campbell (1844–1987). 97. Rue Winterbotham Shaw, president of the Arts Club of Chicago from 1940 to 1979. She is best remembered for scheduling the March 1, 1942, performance by John Cage (see note 92) as one of the first events of her presidency, for persuading Ludwig Mies van der Rohe to design the club’s interior (gratis), and for commissioning sculptor Alexander Calder to create his standing mobile Red Petals for the Club. 98. Cage’s first letter from his and Xenia’s 550 Hudson St. apartment in New York.

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Anyway they’re getting along now. We miss you and now that you mention it, I miss Henrietta whom we haven’t seen because we haven’t seen anybody (living in New Jersey), but tomorrow night we sleep in our new apartment and you will love it. At first we didn’t know whether the fireplace would really work but it will. We haven’t opened the boxes yet: I am anxious to see what painting —Alex is in it. Just think: Our new address is really ours. 550 Hudson (2nd floor entire). Now it is very late + I have to get up at 6. Please have a good Arts C[lub] year + when are you coming to stay with us? Merce + Jean are dancing in about 3 wks. Kenneth’s new book Teeth of the Lion is being published now (printed now).

To Mrs. Rue Shaw [Undated, sometime after February 14, 1943] | Location not indicated I think your letter was very good and is accomplishing what I am sure you wanted it to: a self-evaluation, etc., on, principally, Merce’s part. I did not agree with many of the things you said, but please know that I didn’t “scoff.” The difference between a good and bad performance on Jean’s part is not very great. The opposite is true of Merce. I am sure that the reaction would have been very different had he turned in a good performance. He has, God knows where he got it, a serious inferiority complex. He is able to dance stunningly for Graham, but tends to be self-conscious in his own dances. (His father being in Chicago may not have helped.) All this amounts to agreeing with your statement about growing up. Fortunately he is looking forward to his next performances (the Museum and somewhere in Detroit) because he says he knows what the trouble was in Chicago. I hope he does and that he will solve it. I know from working so long with them that their dances have direction, are well composed both from a formal and emotional point of view. I do think that they are of such a nature that they require very magical theatrical accoutrements (magic of lights, good space, curtain, etc.). I am sorry that the concert was not good, particularly because I had looked forward to it for so long. It did them a service and maybe somebody in the audience liked something. Let’s hope so. 1 9 3 0 – 1 9 4 9  |  59

To Merce Cunningham [Undated, postmarked June 28, 1943] | [New York] Dear Merce: Saturday night nearly went crazy, because, not solving my problems until they occur, I very suddenly realized you were gone. Fly away with you but was in a zoo. Sunday, interested? Woke up in time to see you, worried whether you had taxi fund, etc. but was helpless; went through hottest day of y[ea]r in and out of bath tub. A parade went under the window (a real one) with something like 5 percussion bands, one of them made of black people played beautifully; it must have been a chinoiserie about your having gone away. I don’t know when it was that I found out how to let this month go by without continual sentimental pain. It’s very simple now, because I’m looking forward to seeing you again rather than backward to having seen you recently. That’s a happy way to be. Another thing: I’m going to look at studios for you, not that I’m doing something you probably want to do yourself, but it will be good to give you a list, descriptions, etc., and then you’ll know that such and such exists. I’ve gathered that you want to be uptown. By Friday or so you should get new article to translate,99 which is long and will be very remunerative. I say I’m unsentimental but I’m sitting at one of our tables and looking in a mirror where you often were. We had a card this morning from the Patchens who are at Mr. Pleasant for the summer (!). Please try writing to the Academy of M. care of the Library.100 I don’t know: this gravity elastic feeling to let go and fall together with you is one thing, but it is better to live exactly where you are with as many permanent emotions in you as you can muster. Talking to myself. Your spirit is with me. Did you send it or do I just have it? 99. Cage likely refers to ongoing work for his father, which occasionally included the translation of complex scientific materials, including medical articles by Spanish physicians. Curiously, Cunningham was not commonly known to be fluent in Spanish. 100. This is likely reference to the Academy of Music movie theater that opened in 1927 and that took the name of an (eponymous) opera house that had been situated across the street at E. 14th St. and Irving Place in New York City before being demolished in 1926. As Cage was married at the time of this letter, it is likely that he and Cunningham were initially clandestine in their correspondence.

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To Merce Cunningham [Undated, postmarked June 29, 1943] | No location indicated Rain finally came + it’s beautifully cool. Wonder how long it will last. It was marvelous because it started suddenly and then was alternately terrific and gentle. I think of you all the time and therefor have little to say that would not embarrass you, for instance my first feeling about the rain was that it was like you. Yesterday, with no success, I looked for a studio for you, found one that was useless for $125.00. Otherwise the day was spent packing instruments, and studying the corporate structure of non-profit organizations, so that the Natl. Inst. for BiochemResearch would get under way legally. God knows why they didn’t employ a lawyer. This morning rode elegant us-bus to Academy. Thought about enigma and his little friend.101 Someday maybe instead of writing I’ll send you a present. I hope you’re having a beautiful time. Love you.

101. Cage’s playful reference to his (“his little friend”) and Cunningham’s (“enigma”) penises, seen with some frequency throughout their letters of the 1940s.

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To Merce Cunningham [Undated, postmarked July 2, 1943] | 550 Hudson St., New York Prince, Very exciting to get your spirit letter no questions asked (we have a post office). I am this day sending long forty to 50 dollar article which I hope won’t be travail to translate. At least you will get to know 3 more of your South American brothers. When they (Benn[ington] Folk) get too intellectual, “answer them only with” art.102 Horror news: W. Lathrop103 has been subsidized by private individ. to go look at S.W. Indians and then when return to N.Y. occurs will be subsid. to nauseate us via theatre. Saw him in proper place: subway. The weather here now is magical. Cool and sunny, it’s like San Francisco. I get terribly lonesome for you. Had a note from Renata who is in Colorado looking at mts [mountains]; she wants to see more of us and play percussion. Sent my score to be published actually never thought that would occur. Made added note in it to arouse creative spirit in this land: “Determine size and position of mutes by experiment.” Read an article about “Sordino” in a musical dict., which came to conclusion that a plain penny put between violin strings is better than fancy mute. Every now + then the past smiles at me.104 Today I have to trace graphs about the male hormone. I stop doing that every now and then + read your letter over again. Please don’t let intellectual art discussions intimidate you. They are only talking about art or loving it or God knows what, but you are it. You’re a visitation and any one who has a chance to be near you is damned fortunate. 102. Cunningham was in residence with the Martha Graham and Dance Company at Bennington College throughout much of 1943. 103. Welland Lathrop (1905–1981), American dancer and choreographer, from 1930 to 1934 resident at the Cornish School in Seattle. In 1946 he established the Welland Lathrop School and Dance Company, then formed, with Ann Halprin, the Halprin-Lathrop Dance Studio Theater (1948–1955). 104. The reference here is to Cage’s “prepared piano,” heard first in his Bacchanale “dance accompaniment” to a work by Syvilla Fort, a faculty member at the Cornish School, first performed in Seattle on April 28, 1940. Per Fort’s request for a work with an African “inflection,” Cage intended to write for percussion ensemble. However, because the performance space was small and Cage had only a traditional grand piano with which to work, he began experimenting with objects placed inside the piano —among and between its strings —in an effort to alter its sounds. The prepared piano became a signal instrument for Cage. In 1949, after the New York premiere of his (complete) masterpiece for the instrument, Sonatas and Interludes (1946–1948), Cage received citations from both the Guggenheim Foundation and the National Academy of Arts and Letters.

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It’s like the stories of people talking about God or Christ + he is Incognito among them. I nearly left this earth a few minutes ago —ecstasy —word from you. Pretty soon I’ll write music for you.

To Merce Cunningham [Undated, postmarked July 20, 1943] | 550 Hudson St., New York Letter came this morning: going to sea and sun will be marvelous, but please be lonesome enough to come back in not too distant time; I couldn’t help thinking how magic it would be to meet you some place on cliff or sand, but problems of communication and my own allergy to summer-nature mock romanticism. No new word from Indian. Martha’s dance sounds like maybe beauty. I hope it remains in intimacy; if it is tortured there, I can worship; but if it gets to “heights of frustration greatness,” would have difficulty. I’ve found out that my muse’s name is Euterpe.105 This does not incline me farther in direction of the art. I hope I’m right in thinking you rec’d. 2nd money order for long article. No mention in letter. I have new translation and will check for it next Friday or Saturday. If you want money mailed to sea-shore place, let me know. ($13.25) 105. Cage’s dissatisfaction with Euterpe (in Greek mythology the muse of music) was remedied by his later adoption in her place of Calliope (the muse presiding over eloquence and epic poetry, the “superior” muse, with Ovid speaking of her as the “chief of all muses”). Cunningham’s muse was, of course, Terpsichore, her name deriving from the Greek words “delight” and “dance.”

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Rudy Reviel has arranged a meeting for me with man who runs Blue Angel.106 La Touche107 is back from Congo and persuaded B.A. that I should be attraction there. At first thought it would be all right, but since have changed my mind: I am so completely on fringe of acceptability that such an action would remove what of doubt remains in bourgeois heads. Cannot discuss this with Euterpe since we do not get on together; would prefer to discuss it with you. I love you and often think of fancy reasons why: spirit is very close to me and mine, I sent it, close to you. Have Buenos tiempos y coloratura benefices y comprobar natura. Translation was much better this time and easier to get into shape. There is one more to be done, but no time to get Photostats, etc., before you leave (besides you’re probably sick of Spanish medical language). My whole desire is to run up and down the sea coast looking for you. Love

106. The Blue Angel, among New York City’s early supper clubs, officially opened at 152 E. 55th St. on April 14, 1943, the brainchild of Paris-born Herbert Jacoby. Its name was suggested by Marlene Dietrich’s eponymous first hit movie (1930). 107. John La Touche (1914–1956), American lyricist.

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To Merce Cunningham [Undated, 1944]108 [This note, contained in a very small envelope, without postmark, is fragile and has been cut up into small pieces, some of which, folded, have over time broken in two. The fragments, comprising everything extant, have been pieced together.] i am in a world you make with recherches: and the leaf is suspended by a pin near the little wooden saint. these things mean very much to me; but i think it is not to my credit that they do. i am beginning to think that the reason i “give so much” is that i am so poor in spirit, hoping through leaning on every little gesture, thought, word, and mood of other to get my empty spaces filled. so my giving is really demanding. where shall i go and what shall i do: read a book? how to benefit by what can be said by oneself! not being spontaneous and relaxed about natural things, i get ideas about people connected with art, fashion little pedestals, love them and bring the public in. a rather disgusting scene. i love you always. xenia went all alone. beauty. i am in a muddled state. calliope calls. soul-searching; i did it once before, about 12 years ago. i’m not very good at it. louis and satie at breakfast, what did that mean?

108. While undated, this letter may be synchronous with Xenia’s decision to leave her husband, moving in late February 1944 out of the Hudson St. apartment they shared and back, briefly, to Peggy Guggenheim’s mansion on Beekman Place. From all accounts, Xenia was permissive about sex; Cage was, after all, involved with Don Sample at the time of their engagement. But something about her husband’s year-long affair with Cunningham was for her irreconcilable.

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To Merce Cunningham [Undated, postmarked July 3, 1944] | No location indicated your letters i just plain love: they bring you so close that at any moment i expect the door will open and you will see me camouflaged in enigmatic home, built on shoes you made. i went away for week-end; but you will be disappointed to know it was to Buchanan’s in New Jersey plus Virgil [Thomson]. However, it was quite pleasant, and everything was taken easily. There were not many bugs; it was cool; there were two yelling children, but on the whole well-behaved, and Virgil was in kind style. Drinks, swimming, damn good food; but best of all was the music and talks about music. Virgil had brought out one of the rare copies of Satie’s Socrate, and we must have played and sung it six times.109 I know now many things wrong with Four Walls110 musically, basic of all being that i made too much expressiveness via melody-means. Some time i [will] make better music for you. Socrate is an incredibly beautiful work. There is no expression in the music or in the words, and the result is that it is overpoweringly expressive. The melody is simply an atmosphere which floats. The accompaniment is a continuous juxtaposition of square simplicities. But the combination is of such grace! Three pieces: the first is after a banquet, and Socrates is merely introduced by a little speech which rather completely avoids any profundity. The second piece is in the country, and Socrates and his companion talk about the history of the spot and how delightful the air and grass is, and there is a slight suggestion that following the conversation they lie down together on the grass. The third piece is a report of the death of Socrates, little things he said, little things the jailer 109. Cage’s devotion to the work of Erik Satie expressed itself variously throughout his life. In 1944, he would undertake his first composition based on Satie’s Socrate (1919–1920) with an arrangement for solo piano of the work’s first movement, to which Cunningham contributed a choreographic aspect titled Idyllic Song. The work was presented as part of their first out-of-town performance in Richmond, Virginia, on November 18, 1944. As the manuscripts related to this work pertain only to a 1947 arrangement of the first movement scored for two pianos, Cage must have returned to it three years later. Cage and Cunningham together would revisit the work in a 1969 collaboration, Cage’s Cheap Imitation and Cunningham’s Second Hand (see notes 627 and 811), both works completing the second and third movements. 110. Cage’s Four Walls (1944) for solo piano and voice, originally used as music for the eponymous dance play by Cunningham and first performed in Steamboat Springs, Colorado, on August 22, 1944. Ultimately, only scene 7 of Cage’s score includes a text by Cunningham, “Sweet love my throat is gurgling.” The dance is programmatic, its theme one of a dysfunctional family. Cage’s psychologically intense music is entirely diatonic, the structure a setting of contrasts.

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said, how it was when he drank the poison and only at the very end is it finally said that he was “the most just, etc. great of men.” Sometimes I played it while Virgil tortured the air with song; mostly, however, he preferred to both play and sing, while I turned pages. We also went thru Four Saints, Filling Station, a piano sonata, a good deal of Mozart; and one evening The Perilous Night.111 Virgil went into ecstasy which will not get into print. I am genius, and everything i write is fine he says and he says related to great things, etc. I cannot remember it all. Who cares? Country was beautiful, and lying on the grass so that i could sometimes see the net a tree is against the sky or turning make a space for eyes between two trees and watch bird-movements across and in it. Beautiful daisies and a jungle of tiger lilies. Multitudinous lakes and canoes. I could tell how distinctly happy you would be in country wherever; and i really need not be with you for me or for you, because there was facility in inventing your presence and knowing that just then you were merely not visible or not audible.

To Merce Cunningham [Undated, postmarked July 12, 1944] | 12 E. 17th St., New York au prince delicieux. your last letter is so beautiful i cannot answer it, only read it and lie on it. music going beautifully, peace and fluently; i will hear it again tomorrow, but this time with fizdale because he senses phrase which gearhart does not know. saw king’s row112 which is very fine. went to amagansett and ny coktail group. swam in ocean and now have night-itchy sunburn. bicycled all over small hills. i have two movements finished: seven to go; i think i have not written so 111. Cage’s The Perilous Night (1943–1944) for solo prepared piano, in six untitled movements. This work was written during a period in Cage’s life that was tinged with sadness and confusion as a result of his early involvement with Cunningham and his growing estrangement from his wife. The title derives from a collection of Irish folktales; the music recounts the dangers of erotic love. It is one of Cage’s early pieces not used in conjunction with a choreographic work by Cunningham. 112. The 1942 film Kings Row, starring Ann Sheridan, Robert Cummings, and Ronald Reagan, directed by Sam Wood.

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well before. heard berg’s violin concerto reading score as record played at lou’s. it is very beautiful except when it gets chewingummy re intervals (da da da de; da da da do). Did you meet the Cages in Denver? bell sounds will enter now with crossing of the hands; utter grace is the goal. the heat is not too bad and besides I live in the nude; do beauty work (another secret: inexpressivity) i am often in deep pain; i am afraid i am not human being i talk to you all day long but when i start to write i cannot

To Merce Cunningham [Undated, postmarked July 20, 1944] | 12 E. 17th St., New York Monsieur: my muse fluidity continued and 4 movements are finished; last night i was able to hear 3rd and 4th movements; i had thought to copy 3rd movement yesterday, but I woke up so early that I was here by seven and it was a beautiful day so i wrote the 4th movement which got finished around two o’clock; and then i had both pieces to copy so as to be able to hear them, did that, had dinner, beginning to get jittery that they wouldn’t “sound,” bought some brandy and went to hear them.113 And thank God and Calliope, they are marvelous. All four hold together like one big movement and it is beautiful. The part i wrote to you about: the faster part: is fantastic. It is like a scherzo in paradise. Instead of writing hymn for wild church, I went back to original tempo and really continued second movement in more passionate vein. please hear it. i have been lucky and i am grateful. i had the most curious experiences writing the 4th piece which came so quickly: everything simply happened: phrases wrote themselves, ignored, seemingly, my “phrase structure” and then turned out to be on “phrase structure” side after all, making everything clear but passionate. i drank too much brandy after i found out the music was right, and i don’t feel very good today, although i will probably start next part. So far, piece is a little over 13 minutes. That is approximately length of Perilous Night: except this music holds together and is played without a break, but really it never is 113. Cage’s A Book of Music (1944) for two prepared pianos would be given its first performance at the New School for Social Research in New York by Robert Fizdale and Arthur Gold (see note 126) on January 21, 1945. This was likely Cage’s first commission from professional performers.

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boring because it is always having new things happening. Have a new idea now upon which deliberation and dreaming must center: to make next part prestissimo (out of my range of execution) so that speed will enter for the spirit. i have never really written any fast, really fast, music, and i think i will do it: these unresonant sounds will take to it like water because they do not muddy each other. I am leaning towards the side of giving plain title like “Sonata for two pianos.” That would involve me in tempo titles for movements: andante, etc., of which i would not be too pleased. . . . haven’t heard from you for long week, except via spirit, which is what sustains me. will probably send little gift soon. the nights are no longer perilous, having moved into area of being terrifying. as darkness comes, i lose mind with loneliness and must work or go to movie to bring about utter fatigue which protects . . . i hope you love it there and have some beauty one to love . . . and i hope Four Walls is going well and that you are spirit-full . . . what need to wish? . . . you are strong . . . love you

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To Merce Cunningham [Undated, postmarked July 22, 1944] | 12 E. 17th St., New York [This letter is intentionally cut in various places, and it is also typewritten on the page both horizontally and vertically, as indicated below.] [horizontal] today is beautiful and i am dreaming of you and enigma and how we are together today: your words in my ears making [me] limp and taut by turns with delight. oh, i am sure we could use each other today. i like to believe that you are writing my music now: god knows i’m not doing it, because it simply seems to happen. the prestissimo is incredible the way you are and is perhaps a description and song about you. banalities: blue check arrived and dv et Helmsley got theirs; i am afflicted with bills of all description, but do not seem to be able to be sensible about money. passed by clyde’s yesterday with their socks; they look beautiful. had, for a change, a pleasant time with Schuyler;114 he informs me that Oliver115 who 114. Schuyler (Garrison) Chapin (1923–2009), American impresario and producer, later vicepresident of Lincoln Center (1963), co-founder of its Film Society (1969), and general manager of the Metropolitan Opera (1972). 115. Oliver Smith (1918–1994), American set designer.

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called the other day and wanted to know whether you could hold a tune and what kind of voice you had, with Robbins,116 has you in mind for the lead of their dance-musical; it doesn’t mean you have to sing like galli-curci,117 but like American sailor[s] sing (and see stripes au meme temps?) there is apparently a part in the book where you would go through a tunnel of love and everyone thinks you would do it very well: so do i, please go through mine, taking your time, if you will. also schuyler had evening with virgil and v.t. now says i am ultra-genius, having seen some of 2 piano work, and that i am on a par with picasso, schoenberg, stravinsky, satie, matisse, cezanne, van gogh etc. ad nauseum: schuyler now thinks virgil had good reasons for not reviewing other concerts, will blare next one to skies, that his review of it is really already written, that he has been making careful decisions about what to say etc. i don’t like being great. it’s not good for my relation with calliope, who by the way, is not female, and looks exactly like you. pardon the intrusion: but when in september will you be back? i would like to measure my breath in relation to the air between us. [vertical] in one letter i said absurd things about inexpressivity; obviously wrong, but what i meant was that high expressivity often comes about through no attempt to make it or to express anything. had dinner one night with denby;118 i think he’s a sad little man who’s frightened of something. read his poetry which has some good qualities, but is by no means off this earth. i keep reading marvelous myths in joe’s book, but joe, too, is not really fine fine writer. of course, this is first draft i have and he will probably improve it. would you like me to send copy of finnegan book which is out now or would you rather save that for home-reading?119 need you deliciously. gas bill came but is nothing; do not worry about it. prestissimo will be complex at first, then simple then complex and then faster yet to end entire piece which should be finished in two weeks, because 116. Jerome Robbins (1918–1998), American theater producer, director, and choreographer who also worked in film and television, celebrated in his lifetime with five Tony and two Academy Awards. 117. Amelita Galli-Curci (1882–1963), Italian coloratura soprano whose early twentieth-century gramophone records garnered widespread popularity. 118. Edwin (Orr) Denby (1903–1983), American dance critic, considered by both Cage and Cunningham to be the finest of his time. His partner was the Swiss-born American photographer Rudy Burckhardt (1914–1999). 119. Joseph Campbell and Henry Morton Robinson, A Skeleton Key to Finnegans Wake: Unlocking James Joyce’s Masterwork (New York: Harcourt Brace, 1944).

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have more things to write; i am so happy with this music that i shall be sad when it is all written. each sound has gotten to be friendly and something i know and have pleasure with; they are so well trained, too. send me some little twig or a hair from near enigma or a piece of grass you touched and sunbathed with, mon prince.

To Merce Cunningham [Undated, postmarked Aug. 17, 1944] | 12 E. 17th St., New York Monsieur: Curious problem I have with words (I was not born an Irishman as you): tonight I wd. love to write an essay about music —it seems to me I know some things tonight —but good God! For hours with pencil in hand + only one stupid sentence. Who tied my tongue + stopped the spirit for words? Maybe I can tell you what vision I have: rhythm is like the air or water or the ether that the planets move in, —it is in fact like space, and the whole problem in writing notes or making movements, etc., is to not destroy it. It has not the slightest thing to do with anything that is put into it: an accent or a metre or what else; it only begs to be free to be. Does that mean anything? The other thing I have idea about is tones (pitches): they least kill the spirit when they arrange themselves for the most part in scales or scale-like structures. So used they evoke + are magic. If jumps in the scale are used, one must soon reestablish scale or magic is gone, + petty sentiment rules. Proofs by way of example from graved-past. Debussy, Schoenberg, Bach, Mozart, Palestrina, Hindus. I will have to talk about this because I can’t sitting alone see all the angles. I am resting from composing by doing copying (of which have great deal to do); still have 7 minutes to write. I bought a beautiful copy of Kenyon Review (Summer issue) which has many articles about G. M. Hopkins120 in it and a beautiful article about economics + Adams’ Law of Civilization + Decay.121 120. Gerard Manley Hopkins (1844–1889), English poet and Jesuit priest. This special edition of the Kenyon Review (1944), celebrating the poet’s centenary, comprised proceedings of a symposium on his poetry. Interestingly, it includes a piece by the Canadian media theorist Marshall McLuhan (“The Analogical Mirrors”), who was unknown to Cage in 1944 but of great importance to him some twenty years later. See note 583. 121. Cage may be referring to Donald J. Pierce’s review of the book (by Brook Adams and Charles

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Great lightning + thunder + rain tried to remove horror-heat but failed. When are we going to be together? The Nameless One

To Mrs. Rue Shaw [Undated, ca. Feb. 22, 1945] | Location not indicated I am sending Virgil’s review.122 The concert is very beautiful and I hope that it can be done at the Arts Club. Five Steinway grands (Style M or L) are required, and I think it would be exciting to have them down the center of the room, —with the audience seated as at prize fights. Phone me or write if you need more documentation. It is a kind of concert which is very exciting and although we had a small audience here, Virgil says it had to be that way because large numbers are not present at really new things. Let me know as soon as you can if there’s any chance and what money details would be like. Will be in New Yorker Talk of the Town this week.123

A. Beard) titled “The Law of Civilization and Decay: An Essay on History,” Political Science Quarterly 58, no. 3 (1943): 437–438. 122. Virgil Thomson’s “Expressive Percussion (John Cage) (1945),” published in the New York Herald Tribune, is an effusive, unrevealing review of a concert of Cage’s works at the New School on February 21, 1945. The program included A Book of Music (1944), premiered by Arthur Gold and Robert Fizdale. 123. See Mary Webb and Berton Roueche, “Prepared Pianist,” New Yorker, Feb. 24, 1945, 17, a review of the concert referenced above that mentions “five prepared pianos,” which jibes with Cage’s report (although he doesn’t specify that the pianos be prepared). No mention is made of specific works on the program, and it is possible that Cage himself performed.

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To Ruth Page124 May 26, 1945 | 12 E. 17th St., New York After talking with Noguchi,125 I decided that, if you still desire it, I will compose the music you requested. In this connection please send me what ideas you have at present in connection with it; it is a pity that I did not see you when you were here. I will be particularly interested in the large time divisions you plan, if any. My present intention is to compose for two pianos transformed with mutes; this will provide a larger and more flexible medium than percussion. My fee would be on the basis of $30.00 per performance minute; and the requirement for its payment would be: one-half of the total amount on signing of a contract and the other half after completion of the score and before its first performance. The payment of this fee would entitle you to sole performance rights for the period of a year from the time of the completion of the score, not including broadcasts or recordings or use in connection with films. For each performance following the first one, I would require a fee of $25.00. I understand from Noguchi that the ballet will be approximately 15 minutes long; my fee has been estimated with this length in mind. I would recommend that Arthur Gold and Robert Fitzdale,126 duo-pianists familiar with my music, be engaged for the first performance. These are my conditions. I would also like a contract to include the fact that the music may not be altered or changed in any way except by me. If these conditions are acceptable to you, I shall be glad to receive a contract which expresses them, and a letter which presents your thoughts with regard to the work.

124. Ruth Page (1899–1991), American ballerina and company director, one of the first ballet choreographers to employ American subject matter. She requested Cage compose the music for a ballet based on “The Bells” by Edgar Allan Poe, but when terms could not be agreed upon, Darius Milhaud wrote the score. 125. Isamu Noguchi (1904–1988), Japanese American artist, best known for his sculpture and public works. He designed several stage sets for Martha Graham productions, for Page’s The Bells (assisted by Yuji Ito), and for the Cage/Cunningham collaborative work The Seasons, which would premiere in New York on May 18, 1947. 126. Arthur Gold (1917–1990) and, properly, Robert Fizdale (1920–1995), American duo pianists, known cheerfully as “The Boys” in New York’s artistic community, who commissioned important works for two pianos in the middle of the twentieth century.

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To Thomas Hart Fisher127 June 24, 1945 | 12 East 17th St., New York Dear Mr. Fisher: Thank you for your letter, and Miss Page for hers; this in reply to both. I do not receive the freedom you offer me to experiment with much enthusiasm. The use of electrical keyboard instruments, either those which might be found or some which might be invented and constructed, seems to me impractical: impractical both from your point of view and from my own. You would be faced with transportation and pit problems which would be nearly insurmountable: I would be faced with new instrumental problems which would not allow me the benefit of the technique I have developed with those instruments with which I am familiar. This same problem faces me in composition for a regular symphony orchestra; and, although I wrote in the letter before this that I would be willing to write for orchestra, I am by no means enthusiastic about doing it. It is impossible to experiment with an orchestra since one generally hears his work for the first time at a nearly final rehearsal. The addition of many percussion or other novel instruments to a symphony orchestra will merely make it impractical for you. I have a further objection: serious and aesthetically basic. I do not like the idea of writing “percussion” music for a ballet based on a subject related to percussion per se. The music then becomes literally percussion music, and is empty of what suggestiveness or expressiveness it might otherwise have. Here, of course, we could come to agreement through following the moods of the poem, but not publicizing the derivation of the ballet and music from Poe or from bells. It seems to me that there are two ways of working: one which is intellectual and, in America, necessarily seemingly amateurish and only semi-professional (in this way one does one’s best work regardless of money, practicality or popularity); the other way of working which is geared to meet the demands of mass-American-distribution systems (in this way of working one meets with a multiplicity of obstacles to the free imagination which can only be solved through a multiplicity of compromises). I am in a curious position. I realize that your offer to give me this commission is an honor and an opportunity, but I doubt whether it will be to our mutual advantage. Your offer is based on your liking of my prepared piano music, 127. Thomas Hart Fisher, Chicago-based attorney and Ruth Page’s business manager and husband.

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and yet my writing such music for you will merely create problems for you. And unless I so write, I will have to make compromises which I am not willing to make. (If I wrote for symphony orchestra, it would not be for the purpose of imitating my compositions for percussion or prepared piano.) If this letter has not discouraged you, I suggest that conversations will help us far more than further letters. I am very busy with several other commissions, and I would therefor appreciate it if Miss Page can arrange to again come to New York. It is possible that we might come to some agreement and produce something interesting and worth the trouble.

To Merce Cunningham [Undated, postmarked March 19, 1946] | 326 Monroe St., New York128 Dearest I am at a peculiar kind of stand-still. Inspiration ceased. I have discarded one of the Sonatas129 and thrown away many sketches. I have three good ones finished. Of these Maro has chosen two to play and I will write, God willing, two more that please. Laussat130 and I are at odds but still comforts to one another. She does nature things in the house which doesn’t help matters between us. I think she does it because I do it and it’s the first time that she’s been privy to the little room. I think my standstill is due to having been impressed pretty deeply 128. Learning that his Hudson St. apartment was to be converted, Cage moved to 326 Monroe St., on the lower end of Manhattan. This was a tenement neighborhood, and he dubbed his new sixthfloor walk-up loft “Bozza’s Mansion,” after the name of his landlord. He knocked out parts of the wall to put in large picture windows that faced the East River. The result was a light, airy, uncluttered space, with many plants but minimal furniture, so superb that it attracted notice in House and Garden, Harper’s Bazaar, and Vogue. The year 1946 brought yet another change: on October 25, Xenia sought and won a divorce from Cage, appearing alone as the plaintiff in a district court in Idaho. Cage had agreed to her complaint in advance by formal stipulation and was ordered to pay $100 per month in alimony. 129. Reference here is to Cage’s masterwork for solo prepared piano, Sonatas and Interludes (1946– 1948), seventy minutes in length, the first work in which he expresses the permanent emotions of Indian tradition and his first composition using Hindu philosophy as a basis. The piano preparations are elaborate: forty-five notes, mainly screws and bolts, but also fifteen pieces of rubber, four pieces of plastic, six nuts, and one eraser. Maro Ajemian (see note 151), to whom the work is dedicated, would give its first partial performance at New York’s Town Hall on April 14, 1946; the first complete performance was likely given by Cage himself at Black Mountain College in North Carolina on April 6, 1948. 130. Laussat, the Cage/Cunningham household cat.

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by Alan’s concert,131 Lou’s new book on Ruggles132 and dissonant polyphony, and a long conversation I had with Virgil re expressivity. I do not know exactly where I stand. So I am still and waiting. I will copy the sonatas I have and wait a while. I love you forever. I hope my telegram kept bad previous letter from having bad effect. Your suit is not being sent till tomorrow because the weather was bad and they could not let me have it safely until tomorrow (Monday). I will send key ring and chain then too. When they get around to making the shoes, should they be in colors or simply plain to be dyed? They may not have the colors in suede they said, and you might have trouble matching what colors they do have. What do you advise? I didn’t see Genevieve Jones; she was never in when I called; you should perhaps write to her: 5851 Forbes St. Pittsburgh 17 Pennsylvania. I love you. My class went beautifully and they want it to go on forever they said; I had about eight in it. And they are composing two-minute dances. They gasped at end of class and said nothing like it had ever happened to them before. It is very hard for me, not being with you. I miss you deeply. [handwritten on left bottom] Love I love you. Mailing suit now. Books arrived.

To Charles Ives May 13, 1947 | Location not indicated Dear Mr. Ives: Lou Harrison, our mutual friend, has been very ill lately, and at the advice of his doctor and analyst, Richard M. Brickner, 1000 Park Avenue, New York City, is at present receiving custodial care at Stony Lodge, Ossining-on-the-Hudson, New York. His illness is diagnosed as a curable case of schizophrenia. He must remain at Stony Lodge until he is granted admittance to the Psychoanalytic Clinic at 722 W. 168, N.Y.C. When he is in the latter hospital, there will be no charge for his treatment, which, I understand, will be excellent. While he is at Stony Lodge, however, the charges amount to about ten dollars a day. Being one of his closest friends, I have taken the responsibility of arranging 131. Alan Hovhaness (b. Alan Vaness Chakmakjian; 1911–2000), Armenian-born American composer who numbered some sixty-seven symphonies among his nearly five hundred works. 132. See Lou Harrison, About Carl Ruggles (Yonkers, NY: Oscar Baradinsky, 1946).

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for the payment of bills connected with this illness; I, myself, am not able to help, since I just manage to pay my own bills. I am, therefor, approaching his friends whom I have reason to believe might be both willing and able to be of assistance in this matter. The first bill from Stony Lodge covers a period of nine days ending May 15 and amounts to $96.42. Lou may need to stay there two or three weeks, dependent as I mentioned on his gaining admittance to the other hospital. Would you be willing to assume all or any part of this expense? I am certain that Lou will want to repay as soon as he is well and working those who help him at this time. He does not know that I am asking for this assistance. Any details which you want to know can be given by me, or by Dr. Brickner, whose address I have given, or by Dr. Berger at Stony Lodge. The day I took Lou to Stony Lodge, he asked me to write to you concerning the work which you had given him to do in connection with your compositions. Naturally, he is unable to do it at present. If there is urgency about this, I will be glad to take care of either the return of mss. to you or their transmission to someone else. Otherwise, he might continue that work when he is well. I look forward to a reply at your convenience.133

To Mrs. Charles Ives134 [ca. late 1947] | Location not indicated Dear Mrs. Ives: Through Mrs. Cowell, I hear that extended work on Mr. Ives’ compositions is to be done. It is my feeling that Lou will be able to do this and that he might even devote week-ends to it immediately. He is recovering quickly and is in full possession of his mental faculties (he remains somewhat unstable emotionally, but that too will be improved). At any rate, he will be in need of work; and I can think of no other work which would be as congenial to him. Please let me know 133. Upon receipt of this letter, Ives sent $250 to Harrison to cover the cost of treatment. This sum was provided to Harrison for editing and conducting the first performance of Ives’s Third Symphony (1908–1910; New York, April 5, 1946) and was, not insignificantly, one-half of the amount Ives received upon being awarded the Pulitzer Prize for this work in 1947. Harrison would be hospitalized for nine months. 134. Harmony Twitchell Ives (1876–1979), wife of Charles Ives from 1908 until his death in 1954. She was the daughter of the Reverend Joseph Twitchell, whose church services were served by her husband as organist.

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what your needs are, the work to be done, etc. And I will discuss it with Lou. Or, you might even write directly to him at the Psychiatric Institute + Hospital 722 W. 168th St. NYC 32

To Anni and Joseph Albers135 [Sometime after April 8, 1948] | Location not indicated Dear Anni + Albers: You were so friendly and Black Mountain was so good to be at, and the last minute gestures and gifts brought us to a kind of ecstasy (the heads among the eggs were discovered near the summit of the Smokies where the mists made everything gently awe-inspiring, —you were as generous as they). We visited a Trappist Monastary at Gethsemani in Kentucky (there is also one nearer you in Georgia), and we heard the monks singing Gregorian Chants; we may stay there a few days on the way back. Every experience in going through the country and stopping with friends or as with you making new friends is revelatory. Of course, there is also ugliness and meanness too (a disgusting dinner + waitress in Indiana); but for the most part this trip seems tending always toward what is beautiful and meaningful, and I can only say that we feel we were profoundly lucky to spend some days with you. Merce is doing his technique now in the middle of [Gretchen and Alex] Corazzo’s kitchen. Last night we read out loud one of your pamphlets, Anni, and all of us were moved by the clarity and truth of your thoughts. Being in New York without leaving it for so long had made me believe that only within each one of us singly can what we require come about, but now at Black Mountain and again with the Trappists I see that people can work still together. We have only “to imitate nature in her manner of operation.” 135. Josef Albers (1888–1976), German-born American artist and educator whose work formed the basis of some of the most influential art-education programs of the twentieth century, and his wife, Anni Albers (b. Annelise Fleischmann; 1899–1994), German-American textile artist and printmaker. With the closure of the Bauhaus under Nazi pressure in 1933, the two immigrated to North Carolina, where Albers became head of the new Black Mountain College, initiating summer seminars that were free of the rigors of regular academic sessions. Cage and Cunningham visited first in spring 1948 and returned together and separately until 1953, at which time Cunningham’s Dance Company was formed there.

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We love the gifts you gave us, but especially loved being with you. Tomorrow morning we go on to Wisconsin. [Merce Cunningham’s part] I did my exercising on the Corazzo kitchen floor, but kept thinking about the Black Mountain dining-hall. I wonder why? The Trappists were interesting, but Black Mountain was better, because we were able, not just to observe, but to share, if even a little intangibly.

To Katherine Sophie Dreier136 and Joseph Albers June 17, 1948 | New York City Night Letter for Dreiers and Albers From New York City greetings to all. have made several attemPts to obtain scholarshiP fUnd for merce’s stUdents bUt to no avail. 137 becaUse of their inner tranqUility and sUmmer Plans (sara had already gotten sUitable clothes and flashlight) Please send final Word by friday Whether one, tWo, or three of them can be taken care of. they are Penniless. all of Us are exhaUsted here and have ProfoUnd need of black moUntain. can liPPolds come too? 138 they have tested their hearse for sleePing PUrPoses and find it Works. sara Practically insists on coming in the manner of a stoWaWay if necessary. Please consider me thoUghtfUl in all of this for i have not mentioned all the many others Who Want to come too. 136. Katherine Sophie Dreier (1877–1952), American artist, social reformer/suffragette, and arts patron. In January 1920, she, Marcel Duchamp, and Man Ray founded the Société Anonyme in Dreier’s apartment; she became its driving force. In 1941, she and Duchamp presented the Société Anonyme’s art collection to Yale University. 137. Cunningham’s students in 1947 included Dorothy Berea, Shirley Broughton, Gisela Caccialanza, Mili Churchill, Tanaquil LeClerq, Fred Danieli, Dorothy Dushock, Eleanor Goff, Sara Hamhill (the “stowaway”), Gerard Leavitt, Judith Martin, Job Sanders, and Beatrice Tompkins. 138. Richard (1915–2002) and Louise Lippold, close friends. Richard was an American sculptor, best known for his geometric constructions using wire as a medium. The Sun (1953–56), made from gold wire on commission from the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, would be the subject of an unfinished collaborative film undertaken by Cage and Lippold in 1956. The fourteenth and fifteenth movements of Cage’s Sonatas and Interludes (1946–1948) are subtitled “Gemini —After the Work of Richard Lippold.”

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To Peter Yates September 9, 1948 | Location not indicated Dear Peter: Was awfully busy this summer teaching but finally got through the mss., which I found very interesting, and liked very much although you’re probably more interested in “constructive criticism.” So: Your information about Satie,139 whom I know a good deal about (having spent the summer going through his life + works at Black Mtn. College), is not accurate: e.g., the Messe des Pauvres is an early work (circa 1898), and you give the impression of its being a late work. You leave out mention of most of his important works and in no sense give him the importance due him, which is, I believe, to have consistently structured his music on lengths of time rather than harmonic relations. I’m sure he was aware of doing this but I doubt whether he knew its real importance, which is real: liberation from the Beethoven yoke, far more real than that granted by S[choenberg] with the 12-tone row. Your inaccuracies about Satie make me skeptical about the rest of the factual information. Is it accurate? How on earth can you call him a dilettante? With Webern he is, from my point of view, the 20th century. However, I really enjoyed the mss. + don’t mean to give another impression. It looks like we’re coming on another tour in January + February this time. Maybe you can arrange something? It would be fun to live in the same town + talk the book in detail.

To Peter Yates [Undated, ca. mid 1948] | Location not indicated Dear Peter: The breathlessness is here in New York and it is very easy to fall into it. 139. More fully, Éric Alfred Leslie Satie (1866–1925), turn-of-the-century French composer, pianist, and writer. Between 1944 and 1992, the year of his death, Cage would compose no fewer than sixteen works inspired by or making use of Satie. See Laura Kuhn, exhibition catalog for Cage’s Satie: Composition for Museum, Musée d’art contemporain de Lyon, September 28–December 30, 2012.

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Lou has returned here and I spent a long time with him yesterday. He seems to me in very good condition. He is not married. But he has, at least it seemed to me, an inner security and general peaceful well-being about him which was very comforting. The breathlessness mentioned above he felt as he came near Chicago, and so he looks forward to a teaching job in San Francisco which he hopes to get for next summer. This year he will teach composition at the Greenwich School Music House.140 For the first time in about a year and a half we talked about music in the way we used to. I do not know whether I am being rabid about Satie or not. However I give him first place with Webern and I fight for them both. So that when you ask for a list of his major works, I am baffled and would find it much easier to list his inconsequential works, for they are so few in number. He himself did not like Genevieve de Brabant and the Jack in the Box: he dropped them behind a piano and told people who asked for them that he had lost them on a bus. They are not very good works. Also I don’t find the 5 Grimaces very interesting. However, one of them is a brilliant piece: the fourth one, and very important from my own point of view because it is written in the same rhythmic structure that I have employed in all my work since 1938. The Messe des Pauvres is certainly an early work, since around 1900 Satie said, I will no longer compose on my knees (my information all comes from a biography, Erik Satie, by [Pierre-Daniel] Templier, which people who knew Satie accept as authoritative). It is technically and commentarily part and parcel of the other early works: I know the Sarabandes, Gymnopedies, Gnossiennes, Fils de Etoiles, Porte Heroique du Ciel, 4 Preludes, Danses Gothiques, and a few others. The maturity of the commentary here is because it is in agreement with the perennial philosophy which Satie devoted himself to in his early life, through the Rosicrucians, and through the establishing of his own church. What seems to me as being in even greater maturity is the commentary later in the Third Nocturne (circa 1920) (after Socrate), “avec serenite,” the word serenity never having been used by him before or elsewhere. After the first period, religious and mystical, there are the cafe chantant works; then the Trois Morceaux, which combines aspects of the mystical with aspects of the charming and the vulgar. Then the study of counterpoint for the second time (he had gone through the Conservatory earlier) in the Schola Cantorum and the resultant works: En Habit de Cheval, Apercues desagreeables, which, it seems to me, see and then renounce neo-classicism. Following this 140. A settlement house founded Thanksgiving Day 1902 for New York’s increasing immigrant population, Greenwich House offered programs in social services, arts, and education.

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comes the period of commonly-called “satirical pieces”; they are not properly so-thought-of: they are parallel to the work of Paul Klee,141 and conserve their fantasy and magic waiting patiently to glow any time anyone lets them. Of these: Embryons, Croquis, 3 Valses, Descriptions, Avant-dernieres pensees, Sports et Divertissements, Enfantines, Trois preludes, etc., etc. I particularly am devoted to the Enfantines and the Sports, although when I say that, I feel unfaithful to the others. The Enfantines surpass all other children’s pieces of this century, easily and surely. Then comes Parade, before came the violin piece, some songs, beauties: Trois melodies, Trois poemes, Quatre melodies, Ludions, then the Socrate, the Nocturnes, Mercure and finally Relache with its incredible Entr’acte. I have missed many but Templier is not at hand nor the music nor the time; for instance I miss the play, Le Piege de Meduse, and its music. As I see music there are four departments of it inviting thought and action: structure (which is the division into parts of a composition); form (which is morphology-content); method (which is note to note or instant to instant procedure); and material (which is actual sound and silence). Schoenberg’s contribution is in the minor area of method. Satie’s is in the major area of structure. So is Webern’s; his pre-12-tone works are structured according to phraseology instead of harmony, as are Satie’s, as are mine. Schoenberg still thinks as Beethoven but new-fangles it through new method. Stravinsky is seductive, via sound, and confesses intellectual poverty by exploiting music of the past. The pre-eminence of Webern is confessed by the 12-tone composers of contemporary Europe. Webern and Satie are distinctly the composers of the century who V out instead of V’ing in: I mean they open the doors, they do not focus in to deadness. Shall I go on? Let me know. I look all the time for the Variations of Webern. I can’t find them. I have given my copy away so that a pianist will play it. Form is the area of music that anybody goes into freely: the 19th-century error was to imitate Beetoven’s form-feeling, which in terms of the neurosis is what Schoenberg mostly does. Satie and Webern are free and original in their form, besides being so in their structure. The method of Satie, which is frequently banal, is what disguises his riches and prevents serious people from taking him seriously. They, however, have misplaced their seriousness. However, I realize that it is probably silly to send you these ideas because they relate to a body of ideas that I find useful, and your ideas relate to what you 141. Paul Klee (1879–1940), German-Swiss painter whose work embodied elements of expressionism, cubism, surrealism, and orientalism. His work inspired many composers, including Cage.

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find useful; however, one often makes the questionable act of thinking that his ideas and actions are generally applicable. For many reasons, I would prefer to offer again this year the Sonatas and Interludes, and without other music on the program. In the first place I find “programs” no longer useful, because they stand in the way of the proper use of music which is to quiet and concentrate the mind, and not to giddify it with entertainment, no matter how intellectual. In relation to the shakuhachi music, which is so marvelous, there must be no other music. It is against proper being, unnatural. The same is true of these pieces of mine, and I say it in no spirit of self-praise, but simply in simple thought about what music is and does. I am not interested in success but simply in music. I am fairly certain however that there are a number of people in Los Angeles who have not heard the Sonatas, but heard of them, who would like to hear them. I intend to resist recording these pieces and yet I want to offer them to be heard and used. Having heard them once is a very good beginning for hearing them again. I myself have heard them countless times, and I find them more and more useful, rather than less and less so. My other reasons are less important but to do with practicality. I have no new music, having spent the whole summer with Satie and teaching. The two piano works which I have demand extreme virtuosity and long work with the mutes in the piano which would not be possible. It would also require for the single concert 5 pianos, and no end of nervous arrangements, since I am necessarily in Los Angeles only a short time. Also the 3 Dances are recorded and can be heard that way. So, without wanting to be annoying, exactly the contrary, I would like again to play just the Sonatas and Interludes and to offer it clearly distinctly from other musical experience. My most affectionate greetings to both of you. Feb. 21st, a Monday, would be good for me. Is it good for you or Lester?

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To Jack Heliker and Merton Brown142 [November 1948] | Location not indicated Dear Jack and Merton: This is thanksgiving day and it is very cool but not cold yet; we have not yet had any snow; now and then it has been Indian summer. We miss you very much, and there is no one to take your place. Once we went to visit Easton Pribble,143 but he never calls either one of us; I suspect that socially he is a bit lethargic. Lou is well but still goes to the Dr. whom he is now trying to educate in return. We hope that Jack has taught the monkeys how to speak English and move with American gestures. We are still making tour arrangements, and we will arrive the first of April in Holland (Rotterdam). I met a very nice music critic who works in Paris, Frederick Goldbeck,144 who edited Contrepoint, and I loaned him Merton’s scores. He leaves here on the 9th of December, and should Merton go back to Paris he should look him up. (He is anti-neoclassical, considers it as we do, an international plague. He is also not 12-tone in admiration. He likes Debussy, Varese, early Schoenberg, early Webern, Ruggles, now you and me.) Are you painting yet, Jack? Maybe we are going to do The Seasons145 in January, and I will have to do the rehearsal piano and the light cues. I am starting to write a piece for piano and orchestra, but I am still only timid in relation to it. Somedays too ecstatic others too timid. Reading Eckhart and have discovered that his tempo is very fast;146 if you read him as though you were a winchell it works magnificently, like fire. Merce has lots of new dances which he will do on tour. He is more and more unbelievable to watch move. Jack’s letter seemed 142. Merton Brown (1913–2001), American composer, and John (“Jack”) Heliker (1909–2000), American painter. Heliker was on faculty at Columbia University; Brown, a student of Wallingford Riegger and Carl Ruggles, developed a system of composition known as “dissonant counterpoint.” 143. Easton Pribble (1917–2003), American painter and art instructor, long associated with the Munson-Williams-Proctor Arts Institute in Utica, New York. 144. Frederick Goldbeck, French writer and music critic, who once described Cage as the “Giraudouxian of our time.” 145. The Seasons (1947), ballet in one act for orchestra, originally used as music for the eponymous choreographic work by Cunningham, with stage decor by Isamu Noguchi, first performed in New York, May 18, 1947. This is a sweet, lyrical composition, like the Sonatas and Interludes (1946–1948) and String Quartet in Four Parts (1949–1950) indicative of Cage’s interest in Indian aesthetics. The orchestral version, the orchestration of which was assisted by Lou Harrison and Virgil Thomson, was preceded the same year by a version for solo piano. 146. Eckhart von Hochheim (c.1260–c.1327), commonly known as Meister Eckhart, German theologian, philosopher, and mystic.

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sad to us; but I never really think of him as a traveler, but only painting in the corner of the room (I’ve thought that before going to Europe you should have tried painting in the kitchen just to see how moving a little bit felt). Now Merce wants to write a little bit. [Merce Cunningham’s portion] the only trouble about john playing for the seasons rehearsals is that he cant play the score as well as you can, Merton, and it is harder to rehearse with him. i don’t know what the dancers will do. on our tour in the united states we have to run from chicago through sleet and snow to eugene oregon in four days. thats so we can make more money faster to get to europe quicker. it is so sad not to be able to go to cornelia street once in a while now, so we will hurry to italy and the via de cornelia. heres a brochure telling how wonderful we are. arthur gold and robert fizdale concert was terrible, slick and slack (nabokoff) chataqua (thomson) facile and mozart sounding like a contemporary work, and not a very good one (cage and cunningham) and a party for the artists afterwards that had a bunch of broadway comedians present to instill life (into the gathering). ruggles is at the chelsea hotel for the winter and he and virgil had tea, and they are great friends, and ruggles confided that virgil is a great man, and everybodys happy. henry cowell looks like a leprechaun in a wheelchair ready to burst forth at any point. john said, as he was taking a shower, that eckhart says that the soul is the gatherer together for the other disparate forces. we had a nice time this afternoon. did you? we miss you so much. lou seems much better, and so bright about so many things again.

To John Cage Sr. and Lucretia Cage [Sometime prior to March 24] 1949 | Location not indicated Thank you for all the food and money and love and the tree; I give nothing in return for all I have is yours. For some reason which I cannot figure out, I have been unable to tell you that I have been planning to follow the tour here in America with one in Europe. Maybe I hoped that the plans would fall through. I really don’t want to go. On the other hand, Virgil T[homson] and others advise it strongly. I will make enough money on the tour here to pay my way there. And so far there are a few engagements: one with the Brussels Radio, the French Nat’l Radio; Bob and Arthur would play my two piano pieces in Paris. This afternoon when 86  |  1 9 3 0 – 1 9 4 9

Peggy  Bate147 called it was to say that a Scandinavian tour can be arranged. Through Albers at Black Mtn. I have a connection in Switzerland, etc. Moreover, Gita Sarabhai148 will be in Paris at the same time. I am deeply embarrassed that I am writing this news rather than telling you; I would probably have to be psycho-analyzed to find out why I haven’t been able to tell you. Being away for a fairly long time, I will arrange to sublet the apartment, which I hate to leave. So that for the time that all this will last, this touring, you will be relieved of the burden that I continually think of myself as being. The French critic I met here is the most important one over there; he thinks my work the best he has found here. That ensures good reception of my work in Europe. I would rather stay here + compose, but on the other hand, I have a responsibility having made this music to let other people hear it. I don’t think of it as career-business, but only as a kind of duty. Once I am on the trip, I will probably love it. But I hate to leave.

To Mr. Kenneth Klein149 January 18, 1949 | 326 Monroe St., New York Dear Mr. Klein: Regarding our recent business connection, I am writing to say that although I have only gratitude and appreciation for the services of yourself and those 147. Peggy Bate (1912–1990), better known as Peggy Glanville-Hicks, Australian composer who served from 1949 to 1958 as a critic for the New York Herald Tribune, overlapping for a time with Thomson. In an article for Vogue (Nov. 15, 1950), she would include Cage in her list of “Musical Explorers: Six Americans Who Are Changing the Musical Vocabulary” (others were Hovhaness, McPhee, Bowles, Harrison, and Varèse). 148. Geeta (or Gita) Sarabhai, important Indian musician, one of the first female pakhavaj players in the world, and a member of the Ahmedabad Sarabhai textile family. She and Cage first met in 1946 when she traveled to the United States for study, concerned about the influence of Western music on the traditional music of her country. Cage taught her counterpoint, while she informed him on the subjects of Indian music and philosophy. It was from Sarabhai that Cage learned that in Indian thought the purpose of music is “to sober and quiet the mind, thus making it susceptible to divine influences,” an idea he noted often. While Cage would in time befriend many in the Sarabhai family, he remained especially close to Gita and her sister, Gira. 149. Kenneth Klein, booking agent for Carnegie Hall from 1948 to 1955. Cage refers here to concerts that took place on January 12 and 13, 1949, of his recently completed Sonatas and Interludes for prepared piano (1946–1948), performed by Maro Ajemian. The piano preparations were apparently

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in your office, I feel obliged, for the reasons listed below, to lodge this formal complaint. 1. Because of the incident familiar to you of my work of the last three years in connection with the Sonatas and Interludes is possibly lost, unless by luck and hard work I am fortunate enough to regain the exact preparation which I had carefully saved, and successfully, until the incident known to both of us. The audience on the second evening heard only an approximation of the sound intended. 2. The box office is supposed to open at 7:30 p.m. but each evening did not open until nearly eight o’clock. 3. Several of my friends told me that although they wished to pay for their admission to the concert they could not find anyone to whom to give their money either at the box office or upstairs. They obtained admission to the concert without challenge and later offered to pay me; how many others, not friends, entered freely, I have no way of knowing. 4. On the second night several people were informed at the box office that the house was sold out and that tickets were unobtainable except in the balcony (my mother was one of these), even though the orchestra was at least half empty. 5. Arrangements were made to have the lighting done between 12:00 noon and 2:00 p.m. As you know this arrangement was not maintained. 6. The tuner from the Steinway Company either did not tune the piano at all or [tuned it] badly, since before preparing the piano I found several notes in the upper register to be actually double tones. 7. What with the conversation of the ushers directly behind the door of the hall, and the passing by of many people in the corridors (no sign given them that silence should be preserved), plus the sound of singing nearby, to say nothing of the orchestra quite audible from next door, it is virtually impossible to hear music properly in the recital hall, even though its acoustics are “excellent.” This letter is in no sense a demand for reparations, although if, from an objective point of view, you would feel it just to make them, I would in no sense refuse them.

removed or tampered with after the first concert, so that the preparations for the second concert had to be hastily replaced and thus were inadequate. Cage’s complaint in item 7 is particularly interesting, given his later insistence on accommodating the sounds of the environment in the concert experience. It may be that experiences like this one at Carnegie Hall led him to change his mind.

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To John Cage Sr. and Lucretia Cage April, 1949 | Amsterdam, the Netherlands Dearest Mother and Dad: Your letter sent to Maggie Nogueira was so marvelous;150 it told absolutely everything and (she insists I call her so) brought the letter to the boat so that I read it even before getting off the boat. It was so marvelous (the only adjective I know now) to meet her; she is vitality itself. She arrived at 9 a.m. but it’s being April Fool’s the boat was very late (6–8 hours late because of fog which kept us sitting in the Channel), she made friends with an English lady on the verge of a nervous breakdown. Maggie is very beautiful + her accent and intonation reminds me of Peggy. We drove from the boat under a tunnel (river) (!) very much like the Hudson Tunnel, through Rotterdam, The Hague and finally Amsterdam. One city runs into another as in New Jersey. But of course Holland is beautifully flat and there are windmills and canals and some tulips already blooming. Because of the canals you often see boats sitting out in the fields; in Los Angeles they would be turned into Ship Ahoy restaurants because they are near the main highways. Almost nothing of the effects of war is visible since the Dutch are so neat and industrious: the utterly bombed-out parts appear now as parks and each city has large areas of building resembling our housing developments. Many people use bicycles and there are many flower-shops. Maggie took us to her house and we drank Holland gin. Then her chauffeur took us to a hotel and she went to the opera. After the opera she had a supperparty at her house and we were there until 2:30. This morning I am up late and hoping that these 8 months or 7 will not be as packed with activity as these 2 days. Maggie has made all kinds of appointments, parties, etc., for us for the next days and wants us to spend August here with her in a house on one of the old canals. The whole experience is extra-ordinary and on the overwhelming side. We telephoned Peggy + and that was a pleasure and also a sadness that she was not here. And how often I wish you both were here too! You would love it so much. The boat had its smoothest crossing in ten years. I was not at all ill. We met 150. Properly, Margareda Guedos de Nogueira, a wealthy Brazilian woman employed in the diplomatic service of the Brazilian Department of Foreign Affairs. She was close to Peggy Glanville-Hicks’s troubled English-born composer/husband, Stanley Bate (1911–1959); in April 1950, upon the heels of his divorce from Peggy, he and Nogueira would be married in Rio de Janeiro. Maggie and Peggy remained close friends long after Stanley’s suicide in 1959.

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charming people: one who will arrange concerts in the U.S. zone in Germany. She is the wife of a man in counter-intelligence. I have to hurry to lunch with Maggie. Will write soon again.

To John Cage Sr. and Lucretia Cage April, 1949 | Amsterdam Have just written a letter to Maro151 explaining about music and court arrangements and you can get that information from her. Everything has happened one thing after another. I have made connections here with the Society for Contemporary Music,152 and they will present a concert with Maro playing the Sonatas. I have met many composers and seen so much that is beautiful and to remember. Tomorrow we go to Brussels. I telegraphed to find out if they still expect me to play but there was no answer, so I do not know. The man who made the arrangements is very ill, so it may be that with a new Director I may not play. We will see. I have also telegraphed ahead for reservations in Palermo, Sicily, and the address from April 20–30 is Villa Lincoln. Via Archirofi 10 Palermo, Sicily Italia Peggy’s friend Maggie Nogueira has been marvelous to us, letting us use her car (with chauffeur), inviting us to lunch and dinner + tonight to a theater. She is a lovely + energetic person. There is so much to eat in Holland and it is all so good: everything is rich and full of butter. The cost of living is about like New York The flowers —all kinds —not just tulips just about take your breath away. One of the most amazing things in Amsterdam is the red-light district which is the oldest part. The women at night sit in their rooms with the curtains pulled aside, just as though they were on a stage. They mostly spend the time sewing or knitting until someone stops. Then the curtains are drawn and for those on 151. Maro Ajemian (1921–1978), American pianist who specialized in contemporary music. Cage dedicated his Sonatas and Interludes to her, a work she would record for the first time in 1950. 152. Properly, the International Society for Contemporary Music (ISCM), founded in Salzburg in 1922, an important network of members from about fifty countries devoted to the promotion and presentation of contemporary music.

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the outside the Act is over whereas actually it is only then beginning. All of this in a setting of canals + beautiful old churches. Amsterdam, I hear, is famous as the “city of women in shop windows.” The water in the canals is so poisonous that if you should fall in you would later get very ill if not die. They were always pushing Germans in during the war. More soon.

To John Cage Sr. and Lucretia Cage April 15, 1949 | Paris Dearest Mother and Dad: I have not quite recovered from the surprise of getting the Guggenheim.153 But I begin to. I sent you the telegram and then finally came to my wits and wrote a letter to Mr. Moe, the Secretary General, asking him to postpone the period of my tenure until my return to New York. I hope he agrees to do that. I am also sending him this afternoon a doctor’s certificate as to my health. And I corrected the biographical statement. If there is more for me to do, either you or he will let me know. I cannot believe that it happened and that I am not dreaming. How marvelous to be relieved of the financial problem! Sunday we leave for Palermo, and until then have been loaned an apartment in a chic hotel near the Champs Elysees by a friend, Muriel Errera-Finck, whom I don’t think you met. She is charming and has gone to Mt. St. Michel for Easter and thought it just as well that we stay in the apt. She and her husband have taken very good care of us taking us to dinner, lunches, etc. We had a very good and cheap room on the Ile de St. Louis which is my favorite part of Paris, right behind Notre Dame, about 75 cents a day for 2, but here we are with a bad typewriter, a real bathroom elegance et al. Muriel is also trying to swing a concert in the home of the Comtesse de Polignac,154 which is the top of musical life in 153. Cage received two unexpected honors in 1949: a prestigious National Institute of Arts and Letters award of $1,000 for “an originality of workmanship that has extended the expressive range of music,” and a grant from the Guggenheim Foundation, in part on the strength of a letter of recommendation from Virgil Thomson, praising Cage as “the most original composer in America, if not in the world.” 154. Likely the home of Winnaretta Singer, Princesse Edmond de Polignac (1865–1943), American patron whose music salons continued after her death under the aegis of the Singer-Polignac Foundation, which she had established with private funds in 1928. Singer was an amateur musician who commissioned many works by important French composers of her time, including Erik Satie (Socrate).

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Paris, if not in Europe. I haven’t done anything about music in Paris yet, because I was so surprised about the Guggenheim which happened the first day here. In Brussels I met many composers and had a marvelous time; there may be a concert in October at the Palais des Beaux Arts there. I am going to have to have a suit made in Italy because my brown one and blue one wore out completely and all I have is the linen one and Dad’s Xmas one. Paris is out of this world beautiful and the weather superb. Last night to the Jean-Louis Barrault Theatre and again tonight to see Hamlet. It is quite different from before not in itself (Paris), but in me. I love it. Merce works everyday in a studio near the Place Clichy and is trying to arrange a dance program for May there. The city is so beautiful and it is so easy to be alive here, almost too easy; you have to protect yourself I am sure by working, but right now in transit cannot work. It is difficult to imagine how America got to be so unEuropean; there is so much general understanding here about how things should be to be beautiful and make life a joy. Forgive this letter and its incoherence and lack of news. I simply don’t know yet which way to turn.

To John Cage Sr. and Lucretia Cage 1949 [ca. April 26] | Palermo Dearest Mother + Dad: The Festival155 proves so far to be not too worthwhile. There have been 8 works so far and only one, the Pierrot Lunaire of Schoenberg (which is scarcely contemporary music), has been surpassingly beautiful. There are many fine people here and I was interested last night to meet a Mr. Gradowitz from Israel who is very devoted to my music. I have been several times with Panufnik,156 a Polish composer whose work I admire; and so it goes. The town itself is as I wrote: dusty, filthy, noisy and full of beggars and people who try to get as much 155. Virgil Thomson had arranged for Cage to cover music festivals while in Europe as a correspondent for the International Herald Tribune, thus Cage and Cunningham were in Palermo to attend the ISCM Festival, April 22–30, 1949. This was Cage’s first real experience of contemporary musical life while abroad. 156. Andrzej Panufnik (1914–1991), Polish composer. As a conductor he re-established the Warsaw Philharmonic after the end of World War II. He would defect to the United Kingdom in 1954, serving for a time as chief conductor of the City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra.

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out of you as they can. The food is mediocre and one is semi-ill all of the time, + flat on his back the rest of the time. A rather unpleasant picture. As soon as you leave Palermo and go in the country everything improves and is quite beautiful. The hills are drier even than around L.A., rocky + covered with beautiful tiny dwarfed flowers: iris, poppies, etc. And every view of the Mediterranean is a joy: it is a deep blue but a bright turquoise color near the shores. And if you walk out on a stone pier where there are fishermen cleaning fish + people carrying nets or mending ropes, you can see right to the bottom —the water is so clear and transparent. In the pension there is (as everywhere) a shortage of water, and that makes bathing, etc., almost a major problem. It seems to take about 4 days for an airmail letter to reach me. From the 3rd to the 7th of May I will go to Milan where you could write c/o American Express (I don’t know their address), but you could find it out by asking the office in N.Y. There will be a festival of 12-tone music and I will review that too.

To Peggy Glanville-Hicks April 27, 1949 | Paris Dearest Peggy: Your letter to Palermo came as a bird from heaven (how grateful I am!); I had sunk so low for the music here is devoid of the spirit and there is little of anything to provide recuperation, for everything is wrong. We went to visit a beautiful church and a movie was being made in it. iscm luncheons in Benedictine cloisters! But now with your letter all seems changed and this is only a state preceding beauty. How easily one can forget (!) especially when plumbing is non-existent and food in some mysterious way poisonous. I have had several talks with Panufnik, and find him very sensitive and charming. I looked at his scores and explained mine to him (he said he would not sleep that night). So far in the festival: a magnificent performance of Pierrot Lunaire by Marya Freund (74 yrs. old)157 and a beautiful piano piece by Wladriner [?] Woronoff 157. Marya Freund (1876–1966), Polish (naturalized French) soprano, a champion of contemporary music. In addition to works by Schoenberg, whose Pierrot Lunaire she premiered in 1922, she performed works by Claude Debussy, Gustav Mahler, and Stravinsky.

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(a 12-tone white Russian living in Belgium).158 He is exciting because he studies poetry and has derived a rhythmic structure (in this piece) from the sonnet. Unfortunately, few heard the piece in the spirit I did. The news about the Guggenheim is alarming and I am miserable that I am the only one of the friends to get it. I can’t believe that Alan didn’t get it. He is, fortunately, born an Armenian, however. Your wildest intuitions about this festival could not equal what actually takes place. Programs are printed but take place other ways and other times. Midnight surprise concerts when everyone is overcome with fatigue. It is a kind of devilish magic stunt: music pulled out of a hat before or after one can Luigi Dallapiccola. Instead of India why not stay in N.Y.? Maggie should get herself posted in N.Y. I leave here to go to Milan for the “First Congress for Dodecaphonic Music.” 159 I rather think it will be interesting. Out of these ashes? Why doesn’t someone start understanding Satie? Merton Brown has written a beautiful new piano piece. [Rudolf] Escher, of course, and maybe Victor Legley,160 a Belgian again. I long so soon to be home again. The audiences here are getting smaller: people leaving because there is quite clearly nothing nourishing. Mr. Clark is a kind of idiot-king and his wife is a scarecrow. The Pit was ghastly. I find Mr. Gradowitz from Israel very fine, —we agreed that the iscm should dissolve if it can only do this. He wants the next year’s festivities to take place in Tel-Aviv, —which would be conveniently near Egypt and India. But it looks like the U.S.A. is out again next year, for “our differences” cannot be settled unless delegates arrive to settle them. Europe is not a place now for societies. I remember with delight our meeting at Henry Cowell’s. But why not keep the money for Alan and you and Lou? These are all supported one way or another by their governments.

158. Wladimir Woronoff (1903–1980), Russian-born Belgian composer. From 1946 to 1948 he concentrated on twelve-tone technique, which likely piqued Cage’s interest; otherwise his compositions were mostly modal. 159. The First Congress for Dodecaphonic Music, organized by Richard Malipiero in Milan in May 1949, was also attended by, among others, Bruno Maderna, Camillo Togni, René Leibowitz, and Hans Erich Apostel. 160. Properly, Vic Legley (1915–1994), French-born Belgian violist and composer.

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To John Cage Sr. and Lucretia Cage May 17, 1949 | Paris Dearest Mother and Dad: Just finished writing the article for Musical America which turned out to be difficult for me to write,161 so that I have not done any other writing until it was finished, and so you must forgive me for not sending a letter sooner. I am still rushed because being back in Paris and beginning to meet lots of people takes very much time and is exhausting. I got all your letters at the Express office yesterday and it took many pleasant hours to read them and thank you for all V[irgil] T[homson]’s articles and all the news. The weather here is cold and damp, but Paris is so beautiful it’s practically like being home again. I have little regard for Italy and travelling there was so unpleasant. I missed The Last Supper in Milan because the 12-tone Congress took all my time. My two new suits are beautiful, but unpressed right now because I had to stuff them into suitcases the moment I got them. Have met a marvelous old Baron through Maggie Nogueira here in Paris who knew Satie, Virgil and knows everybody, and he is a magnificent person, poor as Job’s turkey but full of a marvelous quietness and wit.162 Sonya163 is here now and I had a telegram from Gita who is coming. Bob and Arthur are playing one of my Dances on the 24th of June at the Salle Gaveau, and lots of people are trying to wrangle private premieres of both my music and Merce’s dancing, a kind of social war to see who sees us first; it will probably result in no one doing anything. I had a nice letter from the Guggenheim people saying everything was fine and they would give me the Fellowship when I come back or whenever I want it, but that it should be when I can settle down and work for a clear year. The Herald-Tribune sent me a letter so that I can get free tickets to anything in Europe, and I received a copy of the Tiger’s Eye and was pleased to see the article looking printed.164 I am going to try to get it 161. Musical America, the oldest magazine in the United States reporting on classical music, founded in 1898 by John Christian Freund. Cage’s “Contemporary Music Festivals Are Held in Italy” appeared in its June 1949 issue, reprinted in John Cage: Writer, ed. Richard Kostelanetz (New York: Limelight Editions, 1993). 162. Jean Mollet (1877–1964), French writer and pataphysician, dubbed “Baron” by Apollinaire, with whom he founded, in early 1903, the periodical Aesop’s Feast. 163. Properly, Sonia (or Sonja) Sekula (1918–1963), Swiss-born American artist closely linked with the abstract expressionist movement whose works were shown at the Betty Parsons Gallery. She was a resident in the Monroe St. apartment where Cage lived. 164. John Cage, “Raison d’être de la musique modern,” Contrepoints, une revue de musique, no.  6 (Paris: Richard Masse Éditeurs, 1949): 55–61.

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translated and published here too. There are lots of friends here; Matta is here and having a show.165 Muriel Errera and her husband, Maggie Dunham, Edwin Denby and his brother and his wife; it’s practically NYC. Sonya is living in a marvelously beautiful place near the Palais Royal but may move into our hotel which is cheap and on the Ile de St. Louis, where we stayed before. We go to the same restaurant every day and have our napkins saved there in a box on the wall; the Baron goes there too. The sun is just coming out now and last night the Seine was beautiful with a slight drizzle coming down so that you didn’t need a rain-coat. Notre Dame, everything is marvelous. I’m very happy and so glad to be away from Italy which is so money-conscious and full of ruins. In Paris everything is used, but in Rome you just look at it. I played in the [American] Academy and they had a very fancy party for everybody, a buffet dinner before the concert and then the Lord sent a hail-storm for a dramatic prelude and afterwards everything was quiet, and I think many liked the music, but one Italian lady laughed all the way through. The next day there was another concert by Andor Foldes166 at the Academy, and many people had heard about my music during the day and wished they had been invited. I met the American Ambassador, and he was wearing a suit just like one I had ordered. Maggie Nogueira is going to come down from Amsterdam for the concert in June. This isn’t a very good letter, but I have to go to lunch now and will write much more often now because I don’t have to write any more articles for magazines. Did the Tribune articles appear?

To John Cage Sr. and Lucretia Cage May 20, 1949 | Paris Dearest Mother and Dad: Just got your new letter with the picture of the cats in it. They must be charming, and I suppose you will know how to keep them from being too troublesome later on. Good luck! And thank you for sending the Herald-T[ribune]. article because by comparing it with what I wrote I am able to learn a great deal about reviewing. They only cut out four words and part of one sentence; they were the places I became sentimental. I praised the Schoenberg work very highly after 165. Roberto (Sebastián Antonio) Matta (Echaurren) (1911–2002), one of Chile’s best-known painters and a seminal figure in twentieth-century abstract expressionist and surrealist art. 166. Andor Foldes (originally Földes) (1913–1992), Hungarian pianist.

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the comma which is the end of the article. I’ve heard about Olin Downes’ criticism of the Sonatas but rather enjoy his disliking them so intensely.167 Yesterday Merce and I gave a party for Edwin Denby’s brother and wife, the Baron Mollet whom I described in the last letter, David Dana, who is Maggie Nogueira’s son, Matta, Sonya and another girl whose name I don’t know. The whole party cost about $1, downstairs in the bar, and everybody had anything they wanted to order. Wine and liquor are very cheap here. Champagne costs about $1 a bottle, but I haven’t had any yet. After the party a French composer, Maurice Roche,168 came along and we had dinner with Matta and Sonya and then went to see two surrealist plays that were marvelously acted in a little theater near St. Germain des Pres. Afterwards we walked through the Palais Royal with Sonya to her hotel. This morning I went around to agents and theaters with my letter from the Tribune saying I wanted tickets free for the Press, and they gave them to me; I can go free to anything. It’s quite a marvelous feeling. Tonight for instance I hear the Poulenc-Fournier169 concert and a first performance of Poulenc’s new cello sonata. Also in the course of the day I found two pieces of Satie that I didn’t have, and you can imagine what a pleasure that was. Merce visited the Dance Archives here. We found two museums, one of Asiatic art and the other of early movies, but there wasn’t time to enjoy them. Tonight I think I’ll wear my new suit. Today when I was sitting in a cafe I began to think about new music and had some ideas. It will be such a pleasure to get to work when I do. The boat we have reservations on, but no places, is not going to sail in November so we may have the whole thing switched from the Holland-America Line to the French Line and sail on either the De Grasse or the Ile de France in October. Also I had my hair cut today and tomorrow will take a bath around the corner. The bath house is only open Thursday through Sunday. Merce has been working in the hotel room, but tomorrow he has a studio in Montmartre and will work there every morning. Another day: The Poulenc concert was quite marvelous until they played his new cello sonata which is terribly sentimental. The audience was up in the clouds with Bach, Debussy and Stravinsky and then fell flat at the end of the concert. Afterward a bunch of us went to a cafe and Edwin Denby’s brother bought a bottle of champagne which was delicious. Tell Maro it costs about 167. (Edwin) Olin Downes (1886–1955), American music critic for the Boston Post (1906–1924) and the New York Times (1924–1955). His disparaging opinions of some of the finest composers of his time (not only Cage, but also Edward Elgar, Anton Webern, and Alban Berg) later weakened his credibility. 168. Maurice Roche (1924–1997), French novelist, composer, and musicologist. 169. Francis (Jean Marcel) Poulenc (1899–1963), French composer, member of Les Six; and Pierre Fournier (1906–1986), French cellist.

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$400 to give a concert in Paris at the Salle Gaveau. What shall we do? That price includes everything, publicity, etc. It is the most beautiful hall. I’m hoping that someone will get interested and finance it for the Sonatas at least. Yesterday I sent a lot of pneumatiques (city-telegrams) to people I had introductions to, and this morning Messiaen,170 the composer, telephoned and I’m to hear him play in his church Sunday. That ought to be pretty marvelous. The weather is cold and damp here but I don’t seem to mind too much because Paris is so glorious. Today we have lunch with two friends of Lou, Mike Kazaras and his wife, and tonight a party at Lionel Abel’s, and tomorrow one at Helion’s.171 There gets to be the same kind of merry-go-round as in NY. And, moreover, the same people. It strongly suggests going back to N.Y. and getting to work. My new music ideas are proving more and more interesting to me, but they are so new in conception to me that I still can’t quite grasp them, and I begin to want to know whether they will work or not. I need a piano and need to work; on the other hand I’m fairly certain I can’t manage it until I get back to the river. I think it would be better to let Merce pay me back for the heater business, because the other way seems so complicated; and then I’ll pay you. The simplest is for you to take it out of the money I left and then he just pays me. We’re very anxious to find a house which would be a cheaper way to live and work. Eating in restaurants is very expensive. This isn’t a very good letter, but it must suggest the loose-end sort of feeling I have right now, not being tourist for the moment and just beginning to meet the Frenchmen. Yesterday I took a bath, but they don’t have towels since the war, and it makes things rather complicated.

To John Cage Sr. and Lucretia Cage May 27, 1949 | Paris Dearest Mother and Dad: Another nice letter from you today and my article on the 12-tone business.172 They didn’t change a word! Would you watch for the article in Musical America: 170. Olivier Messiaen (1908–1992), French composer, organist, and ornithologist. 171. Jean Hélion (1904–1987), French painter of modernist art whose midcareer rejection of abstraction resulted in some five decades of figurative work. Hélion’s third wife was Pegeen Vail Guggenheim, daughter of Peggy Guggenheim (see note 175). 172. By “the 12-tone business,” Cage refers to his coverage in May 1949 of the First Congress for Dodecaphonic Music.

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should be in their June issue. Hope you’re not having too much trouble with the apartment problem. I also had a fine letter from Lou, who is taking the job at Reed College I found for him this summer. And I just answered a letter from Virgil who wrote that my articles were “lovely.” All this makes me feel very efficient because it is hard to find time to write, since there are so many appointments that I really don’t have time to even look at Paris. The only church I’ve gone to “visit” is Notre Dame but it is next door. Everything gets increasingly musical, and very interesting. I’ve met a marvelous composer: Pierre Boulez,173 and we talk a great deal. This afternoon we go in the country and hear my records which he hasn’t heard yet. His music is the best I’ve found in Europe and is a pure joy. I introduced him yesterday to Copland174 and Bob and Arthur. I just go from one place to another and am gradually getting into the musical circles I wanted to; it takes time but is worth it. The modern music life here is much more under-ground than it is in NY. Everything takes place in homes, because the concert-public won’t listen to it yet. Next week-end Merce and I will give a program for invited people in Helion’s studio. Helion is a painter who married a daughter of Peggy Guggenheim.175 Maggie Nogueira comes down from Amsterdam next week-end too. Last night we had dinner with Muriel and Guy Finck, and talked about the difference between America and Europe. There is actually not much to tell, because everything is so very much like being in New York, the big difference being that I have no place to work. Apartments are impossible to find here; there just aren’t any. People telephone all the time, leave messages, etc., same as in NY. Invitations, etc. I get terribly tired because besides running around all the time, I have always to speak French and that is exhausting because I can’t always find the words to fit my thoughts. The more I think about the apartment on the river, the more I am delighted that I had the sense to make a place which was perfect for my needs. I look forward to being home again. We definitely sail now on the Ile de France, I think Oct. 22. By the way, if you could send some towels it would be marvelous; there aren’t any that remind one of towels. I get to take a shower again today because the bath-house 173. Pierre Boulez (1925–2016), French composer, conductor, and pianist, a philosophical leader of postwar music in France. His lively exchange of letters with Cage between May 1949 and August 1954 were originally published as Pierre Boulez/John Cage: Correspondance et documents, ed. Jean-Jacques Nattiez (Winterthur, Switzerland: Amadeus Verlag, 1990). 174. Aaron Copland (1900–1990), American composer, teacher, writer, and conductor, influential in forging a distinctly American style of composition. 175. Marguerite “Peggy” Guggenheim (1898–1979), American art collector, bohemian, and socialite who created an extraordinary art collection in Europe and the United States between 1938 and 1946.

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is open (Friday). Yesterday the shops and everything were closed because it was the Feast of the Ascension. People have been going to see Merce working and plans are starting for performances. Also dancers want to study with him. Matta just called and is arranging special performances with Schiapparelli176 of our music and dance. And today already looks so crowded with activity. My music in the country, then a Mozart recording by [Roger] Desormiere, and then dinner with Matta and some experimental theatre afterwards. That’s everyday happening! If I look very aged when I get back home you’ll understand why.

To Peggy Glanville-Hicks [May] 30, 1949 | Paris Dear Peggy: Good news: Pierre Boulez! His music is marvelous, a spirit like fire-works, every event a discovery. It is only secondarily 12-tone. Primarily it is all a matter of rhythmic “cellules.” That very contemporary musical term simply means a musical object defined only according to the durations. Rational and irrational evidences are postulated of it and then there begins a technique of variation that is very imposing. The twelve tones are then applied so as to not be chromatic or “serial” but to keep alive the individuality of each sound. Marvelous clarity and liberty of sound. 24 yrs. old. Taking Copland to meet him this afternoon! Imaginez ca! Boulez will have to be our foreign correspondent. I also want us to publish his music in the New Music Edition. Will shortly send a copy of his 2nd Piano Sonata to Frank W.177 Merton has written a beautiful new piece, with descriptions of new things in his world. He’ll arrive in Paris shortly. Paris is magnificent, and the musical life is superb, all underground or over the radio. Normal concert life is far less interesting than ours, but the underground is more passionate. Didn’t see Negri:178 he was off in the Lake District somewhere. 176. Properly, Elsa Schiaparelli (1890–1973), Italian fashion designer prominent between the two World Wars. Her creations, some made in collaboration with contemporary artists including Salvador Dalí and Jean Cocteau, were influenced by her involvement in the Dada/surrealist art movements. 177. Frank Wigglesworth (see note 515). 178. Likely Mario Negri (1916–1987), Italian sculptor and writer.

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Boulez is mobile alert and precise; his thought is micro where mine is macro; studied with Messiaen and Honegger and sans contacte Webern. I envy your being in Nevada, my favourite state. I hope you love it and get to see the country around Winemucca.179 Maybe you’ll get up north to see Lou in Portland. If you do, please give him my love and also Bonnie Bird180 and Lloyd and Virginia Reynolds (faculty Reed College). Virginia makes marvelous homemade bread. And weaves. And Lloyd is one of the Kings. In San Francisco, please see the painter Varda, down near Telegraph Hill. And get him to make French-fried potatoes. And in Los Angeles, Richard Buhlig, 104 S. Carondelet; Peter Yates, 1635 Michetorena (pianist and music-lover). How good it will be to see you again. Sailing on Ile de France Oct. 22. Geeta Sarabhai is coming here from India. Maggie from Amsterdam. (She wants us to come live in Amsterdam in August, but Merce is beginning to have pupils, etc.). And everybody is arranging to see his dancing and hear the music of the prepared piano. Boulez arranges everything (I was afraid he wouldn’t like my music but he is crazy about it.) We were wrong if we ever thought life was NYC only; we live [on] air now and of course it is everywhere. Nevertheless I am anxious to be home because I made it to be able to work in it and all the friends are there, but now there are getting to be so many here! Nothing but joy wherever you look! [Vladimir] Woronow too in Belgium. I can get along without Dallapiccola providing we keep Puccini and Debussy, and without Messiaen too, except it was a great pleasure to hear him play the organ last Sunday and I hope again tomorrow. He goes to Tanglewood this summer, and besides helped give us Boulez. Boulez makes his living playing the Ondes Martenot,181 but doesn’t like them. Desormiere wants me to find out what piece of Ives he should play; would you ask Lou? I told him Portals of Ruggles and Integrals or Hyperprism of Varese. 179. Properly, Lake Winnemucca, a dry lake bed in northwestern Nevada on the dividing line between Washoe and Pershing counties, home to several petroglyphs dated between 14,800 and 10,500 years ago. 180. Bonnie Bird (1915–1995), American teacher and dancer, a Martha Graham protogé and Cage’s colleague at the Cornish School, where she served as head of the dance department from 1937. Among her students were Cunningham and Remy Charlip (1929–2012), who would become one of the founding members of the Merce Cunninghan Dance Company. 181. The Ondes Martenot, also known as the Ondium Martenot, Martenot, and Ondes Musicales, an early electronic musical instrument invented in 1928 by the French cellist and inventor Maurice Martenot (1898–1980). Similar in design to the theremin, its sonic capabilities were later expanded by the addition of timbral controls and switchable loudspeakers.

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Send any suggestions. He is marvelously ready to do it. I hope they play Webern while I’m here. I have the awful feeling that I’m not answering your letter properly. Pause while I read it again. I’ll tell you all about Paul as soon as I know.182 Bob and Arthur are pretty sure he will arrive for the concert. Virgil wrote but didn’t say anything about the Tiger’s Eye.183 He said my Tribune articles were “lovely.” You can get all my ideas about the 12-tone congress and the festival from them. I can’t stand Leibowitz.184 Nobody I’ve met can. Nobody likes Nigg185 either. I wrote a longer article for M. America. I don’t share the enthusiasm for Rome and Italy. Utterly at home here. You can write to Hotel de Bourgogne, 31 Rue St. Louis en l’Ile, Paris IV. If I move it will only be a few doors, because I love this island. Also it turns out to be the quarter all the new French artists choose to live in. Boulez is 5 minutes away. A poet he admires on one of the Quais of the Island, etc. [Pierre] Souvtschinsky186 and Boulez are arranging a private playing of the Sonatas for the 17th of June. B. and A. play on the 24th. Merce probably dances in Helion’s studio on the 10th. And, oh, I’ve gathered many rare Satie items: Ogives, La Belle Excentrique, the orchestration of Le Piege de Meduse, Genevieve de Brabant, Croquis et Agaceries, Uspud. Also on the track of the score for Socrate which is right now in England. Boulez can’t understand interest in Satie. If I had any criticism of his thought, which I don’t, it would be that he is too wrapped up in method (what I call method), —controls. Minute controls. But they result in such beautiful music chez lui. I have to talk French a great deal and struggle like a fish out of water. I’m gradually getting a new musical idea: it isn’t very clear yet, but it has to do with the two and three dimensional extension of the sq[uare] r[oo]t idea.187 182. Paul (Frederic) Bowles (1910–1999), American expatriate composer, author, and translator who achieved both critical and popular acclaim for his novels, beginning with his first, The Sheltering Sky (1949). His wife was the writer Jane Bowles (1917–1973). 183. John Cage, “Forerunners of Modern Music,” The Tiger’s Eye (March 1949), reprinted in Silence: Lectures and Writings (Middletown, CT: Wesleyan University Press, 1961). 184. René Leibowitz (1913–1972), Polish-born French composer, conductor, music theorist, and teacher. 185. Serge Nigg (1924–2008), French composer. His Variations for piano and ten instruments (1946) is reputedly the first dodecaphonic work composed by a French composer. 186. Pyotr Petrovich Suvshinsky (1892–1985), later known as Pierre Souvtchinsky, Ukrainian patron and writer on music. Emigrating from Russia in 1922, he settled in Paris, where he would co-found with Boulez and Jean-Louis Barrault the Domaine musical concert series, active from 1954 to 1973. 187. Cage’s “square-root” principle, also sometimes referred to as his “micro-macrocosmic” principle, regulated the structures of his compositions of the period, wherein the large parts of a work had the same proportion as the phrases of a single unit. For Cage, this kind of structure, often

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So that one could paint or sculpt instead of limn. Time as usual plus amplitude and, or, frequency. Miss you.

To John Cage Sr. and Lucretia Cage June 1, 1949 | Paris Dearest Mother and Dad: Things are progressing very well with the giving of concerts. Pierre Boulez, the composer I admire most here, introduces me to everyone, painters poets, critics, musicians, and arranges the private concerts which I am about to give. I play on the 7th at the Conservatoire in the Salle Gounod for the class of Messiaen, whose improvising I hear each Sunday morning at the Trinite. On the 10th Merce and I give a joint program in Helion’s study near the Jardins de Luxembourg. That will be an invited audience. On the 17th I play in the home of Mme. Tezenas,188 and that will again be an invited audience. Boulez is crazy about my music, and I about his. That is very pleasant. In fact everything is unbelievably delightful. Then on the 24th Bob and Arthur have their concert in the Salle Gaveau, and play one of my Dances. Merton Brown and Jack Heliker are here now from Italy, and this morning Merton and I go to Frederick Goldbeck’s to show him Merton’s new music. Goldbeck is an important critic whom I met in New York through Virgil. Last night we visited Alice B. Toklas189 and saw again all the paintings of Gertrude Stein and heard conversation about all the famous people she has known. I filled out the necessary blanks for sailing in October on the Ile de France. Yesterday I got a very pleasant letter from Musical America saying they were delighted with my article because of its “vitality and rhythmic, could be expressed with sounds, including noises, or it could be expressed as stillness and movement in dance. It guided his earliest collaborations with Cunningham, who experimented with the same technique. 188. Suzanne Tézenas, French literary socialite close to Boulez, whom she assisted to found the Domaine musical concert series in Paris. Her unpublished “Lettre de John Cage à Suzanne Tézenas, New York, 4 fevrier 1955” is held in the Bibliothèque nationale de France. On October 17, 1949, Cage would perform his Sonatas and Interludes at the Tézenas salon, with an introductory lecture by Boulez. 189. Alice B(abette) Toklas (1877–1967), American-born member of the Parisian avant-garde in the early twentieth century, early on companion to the American experimental writer Gertrude Stein (1874–1946). Cage set three of Stein’s poems to music in his youthful Three Songs (1932–1933): “Twenty years after,” “If it was to be,” and “At East and ingredients.”

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validity” and that took a load off my mind because I was afraid they wouldn’t like it. It is a very funny article. The days here are magnificent right now: no rain, and beautiful white billowy clouds over the buildings. Maggie Nogueira arrives from Amsterdam tomorrow and also tomorrow I play my large records for Boulez and some other composers at the radio station. Soon I will make arrangements for a radio broadcast, but everything is better here if one doesn’t hurry too much. Matta is arranging some performance in the home of Schiaparelli too. So you can imagine how busy everything is. The days pass by quickly and with little chance for tourist activity. Now and then when I have a moment I drop into a church or look into a courtyard and am delighted. But just being in Paris is enough. I am anxious to get to the Bibliotheque Nationale and see their Satie collection to see whether I really have gotten everything, because my collection is now so nearly complete that I am greedy to have it be really complete. I meet every now and then someone who knew Satie, and get many interesting stories about him. He was such a marvelous and strange person. I must have told you about visiting the house he lived in in Arcueil. I suggested to Musical America that I write another article about Pierre Boulez the way Peggy wrote one about me. There really isn’t much more to tell and now I have to hurry to Goldbeck’s.

To John Cage Sr. and Lucretia Cage [June 22, 1949] | Paris Dear Mother and Dad: Finally I have a piano to work on, and it’s a Steinway. It was rented by a girl I know in N.Y. and she will work in the morning, and I in the afternoons, and we will share the rent. I start this afternoon. Makes everything much better. This Friday Bob and Arthur play. This evening I go to meet Boris de Schloezer and Marina Scriabine.190 With Boulez. Also arranged yesterday to do some pieces on a program in July. I rather hope that I might get a job to write for a movie, but that’s just in my mind. It’s because life is so expensive here. I think I’ll write for strings and prepared piano. Maybe a harp too, because the street the piano 190. Boris de Schlözer (1881–1969), Russian-born French writer, musicologist, and translator, heralded for his early biography of Stravinsky (1929), and his niece, Marina Scriabin (1911–1998), Russian-born French musicologist and composer and daughter of the renowned Russian composer, Alexander Scriabin (1871–1915).

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is on is called rue de la Harpe. I’m enclosing a slip about registered mail that John Goodwin sent me.191 Can you do anything about it? A new music magazine here is interested in my article that was published in Tiger’s Eye. Maybe will translate. I also have in mind slightly to make a trip to Switzerland following the Aix en Provence festival; I’ll do it if the radios there engage me to play. I’d love to see the collections of Paul Klee’s work there. There isn’t much more to say. My life is just plain music talk and hearing music and now writing music, collecting the Satie works, etc. And then eating most of the time in the little restaurant on the rue Mabillon, and walking home along the Quais. It is very, very beautiful here and the weather is delightfully cool.

To John Cage Sr. and Lucretia Cage June 27, 1949 | Paris Dearest Mother and Dad: Well, Bob and Arthur’s concert is over with; they didn’t play very well: they’ve gone down hill since their first two concerts in NY. They don’t play together, they always play loudly, and on top of that they don’t seem to believe what they play. The whole concert was rather dreary. I think they had to give away all the tickets to get an audience besides. One critic came up to me afterwards and said he wanted to thank me for my music, that I was the only one he was thanking. The whole thing is rather strange because I’ve gotten to like Arthur much more than I ever did before. I think it’s sad, because they were very fine musicians. There have been lots of parties, and here everybody drinks champagne. It flows like water and is quite marvelous. Sometimes there are martinis, but mostly champagne, and people serve beautiful pastries and canapes and breast of chicken and ham and salads and consomme, all at just a party, not a dinner. I visited one of the Baronesses of Rothschild in an amazing house on the Avenue Foch, full of works of art. Even the chairs were museum pieces. And on the walls Goya, Memling and Hals. And such a display of food for a tea as one can scarcely imagine. Then the same day B and A’s concert and a party afterwards in a beautifully faded home on the Rue des Saints Peres. Also full of paintings and food. The same evening at midnight, but I didn’t go to it. Merce did some choreography for a ball that was held in Mme. Pompadour’s home, now owned 191. Goodwin was subletting Cage’s Monroe St. apartment during his trip to Europe.

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by an Englishman, where the Duke and Duchess of Windsor were present. And next week I go with Mme. Tezenas to a private performance of Satie’s Socrate. In tails, and dinner with Mme. Tezenas before at 8:30. Fantastic life. There have been a number of stories and will be more, including one now. I have a piano to work on but my mind isn’t clear enough yet. To get anywhere. Last night a bunch of us went to the Circque Medrane, a beautiful single-ring circus in Montmartre. The most marvelous show, you would have loved it: ponies and horses and acrobats and dancers and clowns. And in the afternoon yesterday visited the oriental museum and saw magnificent Chinese bronzes from 14 centuries before Christ which are the most beautiful works of art I have ever seen. And then a tea at Frederick Goldbeck’s with musicians, etc. And all next week is planned already. How to breathe becomes the main problem. The same evening the Socrate is being done it turns out there will be a performance of Schoenberg’s Pierrot Lunaire. The weather continues delightful, with no rain and cool. One of the main problems is taking a bath which has to be done Thurs, Fri, Sat, or Sun, but those are precisely the busiest days otherwise. Sonya’s still in Switzerland, loving it. And now I’m beginning to get on the track of some unpublished Satie mss. Tomorrow I go again to the Conservatoire to see some of his notes, etc. Hope everything goes well for you, you don’t write so much and I wonder how you are.

To Peggy Glanville-Hicks June 28, 1949 | Paris Dear Peggy: Letters today from you, VT, and Cecil Smith, all charming. Virgil’s remark about you demands repetition: Expecting Peggy back today, all thoroughly divorced and just as good as new. And about me: Your trip and adventures are like Little Rollo in the Magic Forest. Isn’t he marvelous? Tonight I go to a party for Paul [Bowles] and so shall have an excellent opportunity to give him the clipping you sent this morning. His piece was played and received well. Bob and Arthur characteristically didn’t invite him to share the applause, and so he (uncharacteristically?) jumped over a red velvet barrier and bowed from the stage (producing a few boos by by-product). We had dinner together one night, and he is charming; but I didn’t like the music and neither did most whom I talked to, but the “public” loved it. Unless Paul changes musically radically, I am no longer 106  |  1 9 3 0 – 1 9 4 9

interested. Souvtschinsky, e.g., said to me after the concert, thank you, and you are the only one I am thanking. Explanation: Bob and Arthur have gone down hill extraordinarily. They don’t play together anymore, have no range of dynamics, and don’t seem to mean what they play. So that you can’t tell the differen[ce] between Rieti192 and Mozart. And my piece which isn’t supposed to was full of unprepared notes, simple mistakes, generously applied. Curiously, Arthur is more and more a human being, delightful to be with; I like him personally more and more. I read today a beautiful remark by Satie in one of his notebooks at the Conservatoire: Les saints sont des modeles non surpasses. Un homme comme St. Joseph est de beaucoup superieur a Napoleon ler, a Copenic et autres genies. [“A man like St. Joseph is far superior to a Napoleon I, a Copenicus, and other geniuses.”] I’ve found lots of Satie that is nearly unknown; songs mostly, and some of the very early piano pieces published by his father. Maybe I sound terrible, but I’m against the Antheil idea. I’m convinced he is of no importance, and I don’t see why we should revive something that apparently was never of any value. How he hoodwinked so many I don’t know, but Virgil and Maurice193 say it was because you have to know him and how he lives and what he really means, because in his music it never comes through. I’m leading a wild marvelous life practically completely musical, meeting, talking, drinking champagne, eating dinner, concerts, etc. Tomorrow Hugues Cuenod194 sings the Socrate in somebody’s home, and I have to go all dressed up. The same evening Paris hears the Pierrot Lunaire, some for the first time. It turns out Leibowitz is mostly not liked here even by the twelve-toners. And really hated by the others. I’d rather like to come home sooner than November; I’d like to come home in September. And I wish someone could persuade Maro not to come over; I can’t see that it would do anything for her except lower her bank account considerably. Life is expensive and so are concerts, and the public is not prepared for modern music of our kind. Even Bob and Arthur who had planned the whole thing with strategy had to paper their house thoroughly to get an audience. And nobody liked the music. Please tell her, as I did in my letter, to rest and work and be tranquilly American. If she writes and says she will not come, I’ll come back even in August. 192. Vittorio Rieti (1898–1994), Jewish-Italian composer who settled in the United States in 1940. Ostensibly the two composers had little in common, but in 2006 two of their works —Cage’s Chess Pieces and Rieti’s Pasticchio (Chess Serenade), both from 1944—would come together in a Mode Records CD/DVD (The Complete John Cage Edition, vol. 34, The Piano Works 7), a first recording for both pieces. 193. Maurice Grosser (1903–1986), American landscape painter and life partner of Virgil Thomson. He devised the scenario for two of Thomson’s operas: Four Saints in Three Acts (1934) and The Mother of Us All (1947). 194. Hugues-Adhémar Cuénod (1902–2010), Swiss singer.

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To Virgil Thomson [June 29,] 1949 | Paris Dear Virgil: Thank you for the Satie list; I have bought many works for you including a Mercure. I haven’t run across a Piege de Meduse in piano form for you, but I do have the score for instruments for you. And now the Satie works unfold again, since I made a visit to the Society for Authors, Composers, etc.195 and looked at the book in which his works were listed. It contained mention of about 15 that I have never heard of: Intermedes (Ouverture, Musique de Nuit, Chaconne et gigue) which was played over the radio here in 1944; Legende Californienne; Pain benie de la Gaite; Petit Recueil des Fetes; Allons y Chochotte; Diner des Peintres Francais; Illusion; Imperial Oxford; Stand-Wall; Transatlantique, and some others. In the morning I made a copy of a nine-measure piece called Le Prissonier Mausade which I found at the Conservatoire in mss. It seems to be near Socrate and the Nocturnes in technique and feeling. Tomorrow I meet Sauguet,196 and perhaps will see him tonight because Cuenod is going to sing the Socrate in somebody’s home, and Mme. Tezenas is going to take me. Also tonight Leibowitz is giving a concert including the Pierrot Lunaire; so this evening will occupy one way or another everybody. Three important works of Satie still remain utterly hidden: Le Medecin Malgre Lui (the dialogues you often mentioned); La Musique d’Ameublement (which several say never existed, but yesterday at the Conservatoire I saw a notebook for it with all the measures marked out and the instrumentation but no notes); and Paul et Virginie (which is supposed to be in [Jean] Cocteau’s hands; I have written to Cocteau but so far he has not answered). Naturally very pleased that you are writing a piano sonata and that my portrait is in it.197 I tried several days to compose and couldn’t. When I’m not actually trying I think I have lots of ideas, but when I begin to work, they disappear. 195. More fully, the American Society of Composers, Authors and Publishers (ASCAP), one of two performing rights organizations in the United States (along with Broadcast Music, Inc., or BMI) that license performances of music by its member composers. 196. Henri Sauguet (1901–1989), French composer and music critic who shared Cage’s enthusiasm for the music of Erik Satie. 197. Thomson composed more than 150 musical “portraits,” which were in the main charming tonal ditties on names of his closest friends. The greater majority are for piano, a few for instrumental combinations. For a complete listing and analysis, see Anthony Tommasini’s Virgil Thomson’s Musical Portraits (Hillsdale, NY: Pendragon Press, 1986).

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In your letter you say ‘“Send your Aix reports”; should I write several? I am going to try to get a photograph of the Socrate score; but at present it is in England for performances there. It is quite shocking to realize that there is only one copy in the world and that it might accidentally be destroyed. I shall certainly use that as an argument with Eschig198 to try and get it. I may write an article about Boulez for Cecil Smith; he liked my Festivals article. I would like to come home sooner: in September. I am anxious to be working.

To John Cage Sr. and Lucretia Cage July 8, 1949 | Paris Today I shall go to see whether I can get a boat to return sooner than Oct. 22. I hope to come back now in late August or early September. The other day there were marvelous fireworks at Versailles in the Bassin de Neptune. I have never seen such a breathtakingly beautiful display. Maybe when I get back I will be able to describe it. There were even waterfalls of fire while fountains were playing with colored lights thrown on them! And the afternoon before the fireworks spent walking through the gardens (and the fountains were working). Yesterday had lunch with Henri Michaux,199 one of the important (admired) poets here. He loves the Orient too + music and made the most constructive criticisms of my work I have yet received. We may collaborate together on the opera I have always wanted to write: The Life of Mila Repa, the Tibetan Yogi. I will have lunch with him again next week. Monday we give a performance in the Vieux Columbier on a program arranged by the French Radio. This morning I went to hear oriental music again in the Museé Guinet. I found out this afternoon that all the boats are full up in September, and unless there is a cancellation I will have to stay until Oct. 22. Today I got my ticket to go south. I leave here on the 19th in the evening for Toulon. Muriel will pick me up there + take me to 198. Editions Eschig (later Durand-Salabert-Eschig), Satie’s publisher (see note 811). 199. Henri Michaux (1899–1984), Belgian-born French poet, writer, and painter. The collaborative opera project Cage proposes came to naught.

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Les Bois Saint Joseph Carqueiranne Var. (address from 20th to 24th) Then on the 24th we drive to Aix-en-Provence (you can reach me there Poste Restante) where I stay until the first of August. After that I may go to Switzerland if I can get one of the radios to invite me to play. Michaux gave me one of his books that has just been translated into English, A Barbarian in Asia (New Directions). You would enjoy reading it I think. I keep wondering where Geeta is. A cable from her long ago + then no word at all. Most everybody is leaving in August (leaving Paris). A lovely letter today from Maro. She insists on coming over here even though I tried to persuade her not to. Was interviewed again yesterday and also heard that the French iscm has voted to have some of my music on their programs next year.

To Peggy Glanville-Hicks [ca. July 12, 1949] | Paris Dearest Peggy, Your letter [arrived] and it is good to hear that you are back, apartment in shape and that you are going to write music. The summer in N.Y. is marvelous for writing music. And the loneliness is not the least ingredient. I met a poet —Georges Huguet —who’s off to be narco-analyzed; he has no loneliness and no longer any ability to use loneliness. Paul is back in Tangiers; Bob and Arthur are in Italy. For some reason I have not yet understood, I seem to be staying here until October; no boats, and my apartment is not mine until then. Next week I go to Aix-en-Provence and will write an article about the festival there. I shall eat figs and try to avoid garlic. I am going to try to visit Avignon, Tarascon, Les Baux + St. Remy (an Alice Toklas itinerary). Geeta Sarabhai has been married + is coming to Switzerland and then Paris in August. Maggie wants me to come to Amsterdam with the Baron Mollet in August. I do not find enough time to be simple and quiet, and so I really don’t know anything about what I am doing. Now and then a terrible fatigue settles down and then of course I wait. When I try to figure out an equilibrium which takes New York —Paris as starting point, I don’t get very far. My greatest difficulty recently is with Henri Michaux whose Barbarian in Asia is a New Directions book. 110  |  1 9 3 0 – 1 9 4 9

He says my ideas and feelings are Chinese rather than Hindu; all that mystifies me, because our nowness is where we begin and the air. I haven’t written music for so long. If only I knew how I would sit down and do it. For the Lemonade: suggestion: Satie’s Genevieve de Brabant. You can get it in the Public Library. I am sad because I got to know Pierre Boulez, the composer whose music I most admire, as well as I could, —but you cannot say we are friends. I speak French all the time but it is still a barrier. To not understand slang is to separate yourself. When I speak all is tension + no relaxation. Merce had a great success at the Vieux Columbier a few days ago. He did 3 dances on a program sponsored by the Radio. The audience was marvelous and provided an ovation. We were very pleased. It was a hot night, too, + the people had whistled and booed others off the stage. I hear that the French iscm has decided they want some of my music on their programs next year. In other words, both for Merce and for me, many things here are suggested and happen; but none of it strikes me with an enthusiastic response. Our life in New York is incomparably more open and healthy. I feel like a swimmer who must swim under water longer than he thinks he can. Even the necessity of finding more Satie has disappeared in me. Maybe a clarification will come. But certainly not until I get home. I am jealous of your N.Y. loneliness; write beautiful music.

To John Cage Sr. and Lucretia Cage July 13, 1949 | Paris Dearest Mother + Dad: This evening we give another performance, in the Vieux Columbier, and all day there were rehearsals. Tanaquil LeClercq (who was Merce’s partner in The Seasons) is dancing with him again and Betty Nichols too.200 Everybody was very happy at the rehearsal and I think it will go well tonight. Today is the first really hot day. Everybody looks for shade. The hotel is cool 200. Likely a performance of Cunningham’s Effusions Avant L’Heure (1949) paired with Cage’s A Valentine Out of Season for prepared piano (1949), premiered at Jean Hélion’s studio on June 9, 1945. LeClerq and Nichols were at the time members of Balanchine’s Ballet Society Company.

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and so is the theater, fortunately. More and more Americans arrive all the time so that one is continually thinking about America + I for one wish to be back. I think of all simple things like your garden, or the view from my apt. I miss your letters so much; they never come anymore. I’m having some beautiful shoes made, because I rarely see any I really like and one day I saw these in a shop (a model), and I decided to get them. They are light colored: a kind of greyish-yellow. This morning a letter from you and it was good to hear, but I am sorry about the weather. The performance in the Vieux Columbier was a marvelous success; the audience was thrilling. I have never played nor Merce danced for such an audience. They had booed + whistled others off the stage and it was a hot, crowded theater. When we came along they were like one person quiet and concentrated and when we finished a wild ovation. It was a very exciting experience. All our friends were very happy. And everyone says we must now give a large public concert in October. But there is the money problem. Today I go to have lunch with Michaux again, the poet. I have been reading his books + unfortunately am not as enthusiastic about them as I had hoped to be. Geeta arrives soon —married. I may go to Switzerland to see her after Aix. The Aix people asked me to give a lecture, but I refused because of my language difficulty. Merce stays here; he is teaching all the time + has many pupils. I also may go to Amsterdam later in August.

To John Cage Sr. and Lucretia Cage July 23, 1949 | Carquinanne, France Dearest Mother + Dad: In the midst of 5 days at Carquinanne near Toulon. It is very quiet and the view is beautiful: very much like California, there are even eucalyptus trees! And all the flowers I connect with Marge and Walter’s garden.201 Muriel and Guy who 201. Margaret (“Marge”) Harvey (and husband George), one of Cage’s four maternal aunts; the others were Sadie, Josie, and Phoebe, the last his first music teacher. Aunt Marge was a contralto whose voice Cage greatly admired, but she reputedly abandoned any idea of singing professionally upon marriage. Neither Sadie nor Josie is mentioned in the present collection, but Sadie appears several times in Cage’s “Diary: How to Improve the World (You’ll Only Make Matters Worse) Continued 1973,” in X: Writings ’79–’82 (Middletown, CT: Wesleyan University Press, 1983).

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have taken this house are very wealthy but eat practically nothing so that, what with swimming and fresh air, we are very hungry (I brought Tanaquil LeClercq and Betty Nichols with me). Also conversation is difficult because there are no common interests. We swim and dine silently and then there are naps, and I am working on another article (about Boulez’s music). And I just finished reading a book in French. Actually it is quiet and that is good. Tomorrow night there will be a village fête and we will go, and then the next day Muriel and Guy will drive me up to Aix-en-Provence. By that time I will be starving. I had hoped that there would be a bathtub with hot water (which I haven’t seen since before Palermo); there is a bath, but no hot water. I spend the time avoiding the sun, mosquitoes, etc. And there is the same incessant insect sound that was around Bl. Mtn. College. More and more I am convinced that I will stay put when once I get back. Although now, by leaving Paris, I find I have made many friends there. Hope the weather is not too hot.

To John Cage Sr. and Lucretia Cage August 8, 1949 | Paris Dearest Mother and Dad: Tomorrow the apartment begins —53 rue de la Harpe but I think the best address would be care of American Express or 31 rue St. Louis en l’Ile as before, —because after a month I will come back here unless a boat turns up sooner. I will begin to work. I expect there may be difficulties at first —the transition from not working to working; but if I manage to get started on something which I can continue in New York I will be more than satisfied. Geeta should arrive this week; I am anxious to see her. Otherwise Paris is relatively quiet and I should be able to work. The weather is not hot at present only heavy, —and threatening storms. I am enclosing a few things for the scrap-book. One that George Avakian sent me from America.202 Sunday I visited the large zoo here 202. George Avakian (b.1919), American record producer known particularly for his work with Columbia Records. He produced the first live long-playing record —Benny Goodman’s 1938 Carnegie Hall concert. Avakian’s wife was the violinist Anahid Ajemian, sister of the pianist Maro Ajemian, who gave many fine performances of Cage’s piano works. Avakian would be the producer of “The 25-Year Retrospective Concert of the Music of John Cage at Town Hall” in New York on May 15, 1958, which he recorded and released the following year. This mammoth undertaking was funded, in part, by Emile de Antonio, Jasper Johns, and Robert Rauschenberg as Impresarios Inc.

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which is very beautiful. They use moats instead of fences and that makes the animals seem less closed-in. The monkeys have a marvelous cliff-dwelling + they are very funny + attract large crowds. It will be fine to be a composer again or at least get up in the morning in the same place where a piano is. Also I have found a store where there is peanutbutter. Coffee, salad-oil + sugar + rice are rationed. Otherwise everything is available. What I miss most is Dad’s cold remedy.203 I worry about the bad article I wrote about Aix. Maybe they will decide not to print it. I took the whole thing so seriously + after all it was just a pleasant summer festival.

To John Cage Sr. and Lucretia Cage August 16, 1949 | Paris Dearest Mother + Dad: Now it is quite hot and I hope that means that you are having cooler weather. My article about Aix appeared here + I send it to you for the scrap book. A Dutch composer I met in Aix is here now and may arrange a concert in Holland for me; I also ran into André Souris204 from Brussels who may arrange a public concert in Belgium. I am composing a little but not well. At least I have enough the feeling of what composing is so that I look forward to next year and imagine that music will come. Hope. Maro arrives late this month + Geeta not until Sept. 15. It is hot + I am not very sensible. Tonight Maggie Dunham (friend of Virgil’s) comes to dinner. I am cooking an Arabian dish called cous-cous. And tomato salad with olives + celery in it + radishes. Beautiful wine which is dated but only 200 francs a bottle (which is about 60¢). And then ice cream which they put up in boxes without dry ice + it stays for 3 hours. I’m hoping to get a coffee grinder to bring back to America. Gatti,205 the Italian poet (friend of Boulez), gave me some coffee but it needs to be ground. 203. Cage refers here to one of his father’s many patents, his “Mist-A-Cold,” relating “generally to aspiratory devices and more particularly to an improved inhaler, suitable for oral or nasal inhalation” (patent no. 2,579,362), application made October 31, 1946, approved December 18, 1951. 204. André Souris (1899–1970), Belgian composer, conductor, musicologist, and writer, strongly associated with the surrealist art movement. 205. Armand Gatti (b. 1924), French playwright, poet, journalist, and filmmaker. He provided the poetry set by Boulez in his Oubli signal lapidé for twelve voices a cappella, first performed in 1952.

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To Maro Ajemian [Postmarked August 20, 1949] | 31 rue St. Louis en l’Ile, Paris IVe Dearest Maro: Your lovely letter arrived and was a pleasure. I have many times thought of writing, especially around the concert time; I had visions even of sending flowers or some touch of Europe, but I didn’t, because everything gets involved here as it does everywhere else, except Nevada, and then it seemed to me that I remembered writing to you earlier and getting no response, but that is a rather unnecessary reason. I’ll see about the Salle Gaveau dates very soon and let you know. It is without doubt the best place to play. Very soon I’ll know about the sound of the prepared piano there because Bob and Arthur are playing their concert on the 24th there (June); I rather think it will work very well there. It is such a beautiful hall; it reminds one of music. I haven’t met Louise Dyer yet. As you can see I’m methodically answering your letter: next point: The program you mention is good: Riegger, Webern, Hovhaness, Leibowitz, and Bartok, except for the Leibowitz. He is even less liked here than in New York. I don’t see why you don’t do the Ives Sonata with Anahid. Another good idea would be to get me to write a piece for violin and prepared piano to give you as an arrival present. My contract with the Contemporary Music people in Amsterdam was about the Sonatas, but I haven’t heard from them again and I don’t know about it anymore. I may spend August in Amsterdam. Otherwise I shall stay in Paris. There are no special commitments yet in October, but they may develop. I am playing the Sonatas in a home the day after tomorrow for a bunch of composers. Everybody is quite delighted with the prepared piano. I played for Messiaen’s class; and they’ve heard the records I brought along, and Merce danced in a painter’s studio before an audience that stood UP and was delighted afterward. 20 people stayed and wandered out to dinner together, it looks like a banquet, and then to a bar and stayed till midnight. The concert was at 5. My favorite composer here is Boulez; in Holland, Escher; in Belgium, Woronoff and Legley. I have no particular desire for a public event, although if we figured out something special, it would be fun. In many ways, I should prefer to still be 1 9 3 0 – 1 9 4 9  |  115

in America composing, and not to have come at all, and many times I have thought to write and warn you not to come. If you think of it as an investment in the future, I would perhaps [say] yes: although I should prefer going to the west of the USA. It is expensive, difficult to get into the life of, and rather alert to its own values rather than to the ones we know. Life has been so difficult for them, and is now getting better, that I doubt whether they like to be interrupted by outsiders. Edwin calls it the French National Honor. But Merce says Paris is pretty. However, I suppose you’re determined to come over. And how much I should like to be home again right now! Merce says this is a depressing letter; I don’t mean it that way. It seems to me that we all have a very fine musical life going along in New York, and I want to get back in it. Another day: I feel no differently so am going to send this rather than nothing. I played yesterday and it was a “great success.” But the real success lies in staying home and getting some work done quietly. How easily aimless everything becomes when one leaves “home.” [handwritten] I am definitely all for staying in America. There is nothing to be gained here really. The whole thing is frightfully diverting + expensive in time money energy etc. Forgive black emotion.

To John Cage Sr. and Lucretia Cage August 20, 1949 | Paris Dearest Mother and David: You will be happy to know as I am that I’ve finished the first movement of the String Quartet.206 It is a little over 3½ minutes; the second movement will be a little over 4½; the third 10 minutes; + the last only about 1½. Without actually using silence, I should like to praise it. This piece is like the opening of another door: the possibilities implied are unlimited and without the rhythmic structure I found by working with percussion and the newness, freshness of sound I found in the prepared piano it would be impossible. Now it seems easy, and I am grateful that it happened that I could write here —even if the whole work doesn’t get finished by the time I have to leave the apartment + piano. I still have it started which was, as I wrote 206. Cage is beginning work on his String Quartet in Four Parts, which would be completed in 1950 (see note 232).

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to you, what I hoped for. That has acted too to start a clarification of my ideas out of which may come another article about the difference between Europe + America + the parallel needs to destroy and construct. Our ignorance which we protect is so that we can invent. Dad understands that, I am sure. This pen-point is no good. If they don’t publish the article on Aix, would you call Mr. Francis Perkins at the Tribune, explain that the article was published Aug. 13 in the Paris edition and that I would like to have a check in payment. And what should I do about it?

To John Cage Sr. and Lucretia Cage August 27, 1949 | Paris Dearest Mother and Dad: The $100 arrived and thank you for sending it. Maro arrives today, —I was able to reserve rooms for her and her mother in a very beautiful hotel in the gardens of the Palais Royal. I shall try to meet her boat-train this afternoon. I have run into problems with my new piece. I have not yet found the way for it to be a String Quartet. It is as though I had decided to write a Str Q. + then without realizing it had written something else that I don’t know about. Since writing above much has happened. Maro + her mother arrived + at first were very disappointed with my choice of hotel which Mrs. Ajemian said was like a furnished room. Actually it is like a poem but I suppose it is difficult for some to sleep in poems. I have spent the last 2 days helping them in every conceivable way: trunks, the concert, changing money on the black market (Mrs. Ajemian is very “Cagey”) (having brought in a lot of dollars which she didn’t declare), and the funny thing is they let me pay for everything, taxis, etc. —which as you know I can’t afford to do. I am simply going to stop seeing them as much, much as I am fond of them. Today, Mrs. A. finally realized how beautiful the hotel is + decided to stay there. And my music solved itself —is a quartet + I am happy about it + then your letter saying my Aix article was good + apparently it was because Minna Lederman207 wrote saying it was my best article so far too. All that is a pleasure. 207. Minna Lederman (later Daniel; 1896–1995), American music writer and long-time editor of Modern Music, which exerted considerable influence over the direction of pre–World War II American music. She later contributed to Saturday Review, The American Mercury, and The Nation; also edited

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I just got the $100. It is apparently very slow arriving (probably not by air). I did get the Aix letters. Underlinings to answer your capitals. It is marvelous to see Maro here + it is only Mrs. Ajemian who is so unreasonable + money mad. I don’t see why she’s decided to take advantage of me. Tomorrow morning I will finish the instrumentation of the first movement + then in the evening there are fireworks again on the Seine to celebrate the Liberation. I am very happy but after 12 hours of trunks when I wanted to be composing I couldn’t help expressing my feelings.

To Peggy Glanville-Hicks August 30, 1949 | Paris Dearest Peggy: I am so happy now. Maro is here and we often talk of you, and I have finished the first mvt. of a string quartet and the second mvt. is started and the 3rd and 4th envisaged in shape and feeling. Two ideas I found in Max Jacob208 and Guillaume Apollinaire209 served + serve to point the directions. “C’est par le silence que l’exterieur descendre en vous . . . Rien de bon ne sort que ou silence. Qui fera l’éloge ou silence?” and for the second mvt: “Ils vous entrâver ont tout vivants et éveillés dans le monde nocturne et fermé des songes.” 210 Thank God for the month of August which each year is so good. Max Ernst211 is here but I haven’t seen him yet. Merton Brown leaves next Tuesday for N.Y. + then to Stravinsky in the Theater (New York: Pellegrini and Cudahy, 1949). Her husband was the American artist Mell Daniel (1899–1975). 208. Max Jacob (1876–1944), French poet, painter, writer, and critic, an important link between the symbolists and the surrealists (having befriended them all). 209. Guillaume Apollinaire (1880–1918), French author and art critic, one of the foremost poets of the early twentieth century and credited with coining the term surrealism and with writing the first surrealist work, the play Les mamelles de Tirésias (The Breasts of Tiresias, 1917). 210. The actual quotations are “C’est dans le silence que se fait l’introspection; c’est par le silence que l’extérieur descendra en vous.” (“Silence is where introspection happens; silence is where the outside will go down into you. Who will speak in praise of silence?”, Jacob, from Conseils à un jeune poête: Suivis de Conseils à un étudient [1972]); and “Ils vous enterreront tout vivants et éveillés dans le monde nocturne et fermé des songes” (“They will bury you alive and wide awake in the nocturnal and closed world of dreams.”), Apollinaire, from L’esprit nouveau et les Poètes [1917]). 211. Max Ernst (1891–1976), German artist and poet, a pioneer in both the Dada and surrealist movements. His third wife, from 1942 to 1946, was Peggy Guggenheim; his fourth, from 1946–1976, the American artist and writer Dorothea Tanning (1910–2012).

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Vermont to recuperate from Europe. I am just as full of desire to be there as soon as possible —still no boats. I have a piano for only one more week + I am afraid it will be awful to wake up + not be able to continue working on the Quartet. But then people will be coming back + I can continue Satie-search + pay my respects to more composers. So far have ignored [Georges] Auric, Nigg and not seen enough of Sauguet, whom I like. And then of course more Boulez + maybe concerts in Belgium.

To Peggy Glanville-Hicks [Shortly after August 30, 1949] | Paris Dearest Peggy, I miss your letters and hope one is about to arrive. Maro is langorously here (very devoted to N[otre-] D[ame] which she has not yet entered). I have finished 1st mvt. of Quartet and am pleased with it. Boulez has finished a Quartet (worked a year and ½ on it) which is going to nourish everybody for some time to come. I will one way or another bring it back with me. Billy [Masselos] must play his 2nd Sonata (and his 1st). Such marvelous music. I think it pushes to the frontier as far as our capacity to respond goes. Of course that capacity moves even as we sleep. In the face of his music I am somewhat in danger of Colin McPheeitis212 (giving in to exterior truth); my own ideas fortunately still take the form of straws to which I cling. How glorious it is, music, rising up any where any time strong as though new-born. In five days or so I will be again without piano + full sail in a sea of distractions. Andre Souris may arrange a concert in Brussels + I may play for radio here, etc. Maro leaves to take the London temperature sometime this week. Merce is mysteriously ill. Jack + Merton are déjàpartis. I f[oun]d a book all about music in the light of St. Augustine + dedicated to Arthur Lowrié (good friend of Varèse).

212. Colin McPhee (1900–1964), Canadian composer and musicologist known for his ethnomusicological studies of Bali. Among his compositions is Tabuh Tabuhan: Toccata for Orchestra (1936).

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To Peggy Glanville-Hicks [Undated, postmarked September 6, 1949] | Paris I find another reason why psychoanalysis is bad especially in America. Our problem there is construction (the need here is destruction, —nothing is vital here unless it destroys + psychoanalysis was discovered here as a way to destroy —further split apart). I have more to say is this direction, but it has begun to clear up in my thinking —the America-Europe problem (I am happier too). When we have difficulty understanding Europe it is because they need precisely the opposite of what we need. And I believe we are right because we are affirmative, whereas only negation works here. They keep expecting something from ashes, where we have only to plant to produce growth. I have two rules for overcoming neuroses. If with other people, be with them, rather than alone; if alone, be single and pointed + luminescent + not back of or in front of where you are. So many Americans are neurotic, but I understood the problem the other day when I met a very charming but neurotic Dutch girl. She had to be alone when with others, + I am sure when alone she couldn’t find the center. I am writing a String Quartet. If I don’t get back now it is all right; I feel strong again. I saw Nadia213 but only for an instant. Please stay with us and don’t go away to India. Geeta arrives 15th of Sept. here. Saw Jolivet214 twice.

To John Cage Sr. and Lucretia Cage September 19, 1949 | Paris Dearest Mother and Dad: Gita gave me some beautiful material but it turns out not for a suit but for some shirts. Yesterday we went to see some new paintings by Miro.215 The day before we visited Auric the composer and he suggested another way to find some of Satie’s music that I have not yet found. Through Gita’s sister Geera, I 213. Likely (Juliette) Nadia Boulanger (1887–1979), French composer, conductor, and teacher who taught many leading composers of the twentieth century, including Thomson, Copland, Elliott Carter, and David Diamond. 214. André Jolivet (1905–1974), French composer, known for his devotion to French culture and musical ideas, with particular interest in acoustics and atonality. 215. Joan Miró (i Ferrà) (1893–1983), Catalan painter and sculptor.

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met Max Bill, a Swiss painter + friend of Albers to whom I had written about concerts in Switzerland, but then lost interest in. The result now is that I may play in Zurich on the 15th of October shortly before sailing on the 22nd. Tomorrow I call the French radio about playing here. I have also begun picking up presents here and there. The more I think of the difficulties and expense of your fixing up the apartment before I get back the less it pleases me. It would be so easy for me to get to work on it when I get back. Did I tell you the Calder movie people telephoned me from N.Y. in the middle of the night recently?216 And then sent a friend of theirs to see me here to make sure I’d write some music for them? I don’t know whether the Guggenheim Foundation will permit it. However, we’ll see.

To Herbert Matter217 [Undated, postmarked September 27, 1949] | Paris Dear Herbert: Thank you for your very kind letter. My plans rather indicate sailing on the 22nd of October and arriving just before the first of November (Ile de France). A number of things make that seem right. I may play for the radio here, in Switzerland and in Brussels. Articles are being published in translation which I want to proof-read. I still have details in my work on Satie and young French composers to see people about, etc. If you can arrange to let me write the music when I return I imagine I can get the Guggenheim people to agree. Explain that after all the world continues. When there is now Autumn there is Winter and then Spring comes. And 10 yrs. later things appear to have been less exigent. I am glad to hear the film is in good shape and I am sure it wd. be a fantastic pleasure to work on it. 216. Alexander Calder (1898–1976), American sculptor known as the originator of the mobile; also created “stabiles,” or stationary sculptures, and wire figures, most notably for a vast miniature circus. Cage would produce music for a documentary film by Herbert Matter titled Music for “Works of Calder” (1949–1950) (see following note), which won an award for best musical score at the Woodstock Art Film Festival later the same year. 217. Herbert Matter (1907–1984), Swiss-born American photographer and graphic designer best known for his pioneering use of photomontage in commercial art. At the time of this letter he was at work on the film Works of Calder, for which Cage was to compose the score. Matter’s wife, Mercedes (née Carles; 1913–2001) was a founder of the New York Studio School.

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To John Cage Sr. and Lucretia Cage October 5, 1949 | Paris Dearest Mother + Dad: An astonishing offer today to control all the sound + music of a large Marshall Plan218 exhibition here (in the Grand Palais) in March. I would be able to collaborate with technicians to my heart’s content + be paid somewhere between $600 and $1000 for roughly 3 months’ work. I have not accepted it yet. It would mean staying here at least through March + possibly on thru the Spring. Also many other things which I forget in view of this large one such as articles in England, here, + Switzerland and also a painter wants to collaborate with me on a “project” he has in mind. And a poet on an opera. Etc. Etc. The Marshall Plan idea however interests me very much because I would have such problems as 5 movies shown at once in a single room (audience in middle) for which I suggested “space music,” sounds coming from different directions to make a single whole. Now that I think of it not at all different from what happens in a cathedral. But then the other problem —to make music for separate exhibitions that are on a path be individual + yet connected (like a melody) is marvelous. All my Fr[ench] friends want me to stay + do it. But as I say I have not decided. If I stayed I wd. have to arrange with the Guggenheim to begin sending me money until this gets started and I would have to be examined to see if I’m a Communist (takes 2 wks). I’d have to have an apt. + piano —everything that I have in N.Y. Your letter just arrived saying apartment is freshly painted and I am drawn to come back as planned. What I don’t know is this: is the Marshall idea an only opportunity or is it one of many that will start coming to me? I wd. be able to do the kind of work I wanted to do in 1940 when I wrote letters + saw film people in Los Angeles. Please reply quickly (I have to give them a quick decision).

218. From 1948 to 1954, the Economic Cooperation Administration (ECA) and its successor, the Mutual Security Agency (MSA), administered the programs of the European Recovery Program (the Marshall Plan), to help rebuild European economies after World War II.

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To John Cage Sr. and Lucretia Cage October 8, 1949 | Paris A quick note to let you know I refused the Marshall Plan idea. And will arrive as scheduled (Ile de France) unless the Meredith people find me a cancellation on boat or plane in which case I would cable to you. Am out of money again + anxiously looking for money you sent. However your letters suggest you are in trouble financially (I hope not badly). Merce paid the heater business through money his father has been sending him regularly. I am sorry to hear the apartment was badly handled by Goodwin (everybody but oneself so handles a place). However, theoretically the apt. is easily put back in shape + I am in no hurry. After all I lived 4 months in it with brick dust, etc. I shall just slowly get it back in shape. These last days in Paris are full of activity and most marvelous. Maro’s concert tomorrow. Today a rehearsal of a Kafka play + this afternoon I visit the Comtess of Polignac (Satie mss.) Yesterday visited Brancusi,219 who knew Satie + had dinner with Rollo Myers (Satie book220) (which I am reviewing) + Goldbeck (who’s translating my Tiger’s Eye article). (Will also be translated into Polish.)

219. Constantin Brăncuşi (1876–1957), Romanian sculptor who made his career in France, commonly referred to as the patriarch of modern sculpture. 220. Rollo H. Myers, Erik Satie (1948). Cage did not like this book, his favorites being Pierre-Daniel Templier, Erik Satie, trans. Elena and David French (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1969) and virtually anything written or compiled by Ornella Volta, director of the Archives de la Fondation Erik Satie in Paris.

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part two

1950-1961

B

y the time john cage returned from Europe, he had learned enough French to correspond bilingually with Pierre Boulez. The nearly forty-five letters the two exchanged between May 1949 and August 1954 document one of the richest intellectual relationships in twentieth-century music history. Cage made clear his enormous enthusiasm for Boulez’s compositions and reported his efforts to get them performed in America. He also championed bringing the French composer to New York. Boulez replied in detailed, thoughtful letters with musical examples, some of essay length. While Cage sometimes complained to Boulez about the poverty of American intellectual life, he also touted the young American composers working in New York who, with him, would form the New York School. They included Brooklyn-born Morton Feldman, whose scores in graphic notation excited him; his promising young pupil Christian Wolff, whose émigré parents, Kurt and Helen, published Pantheon Books; and Earle Brown, a grocer’s son who had studied mathematics and engineering who originated vivid new musical forms. Indirectly through Boulez, Cage also formed one of the great relationships of his life. When Boulez sent him a copy of his extremely difficult Second Sonata (1947–1948), Cage showed it to Feldman, who told him it could be played only by a certain young pianist, David Tudor. The two met, and Cage marveled at Tudor’s stupendous technical skill. When Tudor undertook to master the Boulez piece and then gave its American premiere at Carnegie Recital Hall on December 17, 1950, Cage turned pages for him and felt, as he told Boulez, exalted. Although Cage fell deeply in love with Tudor, he tried not to interfere when Tudor took up romantically with the poet and potter Mary Caroline Richards, better known as “M.C.,” an equally close friend from Black Mountain College. Cage’s letters from the decade contain particularly rich descriptions of his ideas and works. Indeed, titles of his compositions appear and reappear throughout, often illuminating dramatically evolving practices. The boldest 127

and most far-reaching of these practices involved the development of his infamous chance operations, which resulted from his adaptation to composition of the I Ching, the ancient Chinese book of divination that Cage had received as a gift from Christian Wolff. As Cage explained to Boulez, he tossed coins to select hexagrams in the book, which he then allowed to determine every aspect of his compositions —tempo, duration, notes, etc. In this way, he said, he could diminish the force of his own personality and compose a piece of music entirely by chance. He told Boulez in great detail about his painstaking work on a composition for solo piano, Music of Changes (1951), which takes not only its inspiration but its title from the I Ching (literally, the “Book of Changes”). The demanding Music of Changes, Cage’s first work composed wholly with chance operations, would be given its premiere performance at the Cherry Lane Theatre in New York’s Greenwich Village on New Year’s Day, 1952, by, inevitably, David Tudor. Cage’s radical artistic direction was affirmed by the classes he attended in the early 1950s at Columbia University given by Daisetz Teitaro Suzuki, a scholar of Zen Buddhism. Suzuki had left Japan in 1936, at the age of seventy, and given a series of lectures throughout the Western world that profoundly influenced an entire generation of artists. Cage discovered through Suzuki’s teachings that like Cage’s recent music, Zen emphasized detachment, or no-mind. Cage was emboldened, and he expanded his chance techniques as he turned to composing music directly on magnetic tape. The new medium offered possibilities of sound and rhythm outside the range of traditional musical instruments. In May 1952 he worked laboriously to produce Williams Mix, named for American architect Paul Williams, whom Cage had first met at Black Mountain College. A letter to Boulez describes the intricacies involved in producing this work for eight tracks of magnetic tape, whereby Cage and various colleagues measured, cut, and spliced together more than six hundred slivers of chance-determined sounds. Premiered the following March at the University of Illinois, Urbana, Williams Mix left Cage feeling he finally had worked with the entire field of sound. Cage twice interrupted his labors on Williams Mix to create two no less innovative pieces. In August of 1952, he and Cunningham were again in residence at Black Mountain College, now under the direction of the poet Charles Olson. Cage had become acquainted with Julian Beck and Judith Malina, two young actor/directors whose Living Theatre productions were staged at the Cherry Lane Theatre. Cage organized a few concerts there, and, being exposed to new ideas in contemporary theater, became impressed by the ideas of the avantgarde French playwright Antonin Artaud, especially as outlined in The Theater 128  |  1 9 5 0 – 1 9 6 1

and Its Double (1938). As Cage understood Artaud, all elements of the theater should be treated independently rather than subordinated to a narrative thread. At Black Mountain College, Cage produced a theater event wherein the actors played “themselves,” during chance-determined lengths of time in a makeshift performance space doing what they chose, without a script. By most accounts, Olson read poetry while perched on a ladder, Cunningham danced while being chased by a dog, and Robert Rauschenberg, the daring young Texas artist also in residence, played records on a phonograph. What Cage created came to be thought of as the first “happening,” or at least its progenitor. Cage’s Black Mountain “happening” moved him to undertake another audacious work. Above the heads of the Black Mountain audience had hung one of Rauschenberg’s all-white canvases, painted with ordinary house paint. This “blank” painting encouraged Cage to pursue a musical idea he’d had for nearly a decade. Using chance methods, he composed 4'33" (1952), a work in three movements wherein no sounds are to be intentionally produced by the performer. It was first performed by Tudor a few weeks after the Black Mountain “happening” at a benefit concert given at the Maverick Concert Hall in Woodstock, New York. Tudor used a stopwatch to time the three movements, whose beginnings, lore has it, he indicated by closing the keyboard lid of the piano, endings by opening it. Predictably, 4'33" brought Cage a lot of attention, much of it mocking. A letter from Helen Wolff, Christian Wolff’s mother, arrived just prior to the work’s New York City premiere, calling 4'33" an immature prank. Cage’s thoughtful reply explains that his silent “sermon” on listening is in fact full of sounds. Cage’s letters in the first half of the decade record that he twice changed addresses. Saddened to learn that his building in lower Manhattan would be torn down, he moved in for a while with Cunningham at 12 E. 17th Street. Then, in the summer of 1954, he left the city for the rural, 116-acre Gate Hill Cooperative being established by Paul and Vera Williams in Stony Point, New York. Hardly settled there, he accepted an invitation from Heinrich Ströbel, music director of Germany’s Southwest Radio, to appear at the Festival of Contemporary Music in Donaueschingen. He and Tudor played a new prepared-piano duet —Cage’s 31'57.9864" for a Pianist and 34'46.776" for a Pianist, both from 1954 and presented as 12'55.6078" for Two Prepared Pianos —and made a broadcast recording. Cage’s touring schedule from this point forward would increase dramatically, and he would be more often than not far away from his new Stony Point home. As ever, Cage’s letters reveal ongoing financial struggles. In 1955 his annual income was $1,529.00, not enough to live on. He tried to earn more, sometimes 1 9 5 0 – 1 9 6 1  |  129

reaching far afield from composition. For $400 a month he served as a graphic arts director (in effect, an “ad man”) with a New York textile firm founded by designer/collector Jack Lenor Larson. At Virgil Thomson’s request, he undertook with Kathleen O’Donnell Hoover to write a book-length account of Thomson’s life and work. And with David Tudor he tried to market a “Package Festival” that would consist of a concert of contemporary music, a lecture, and a dance by Cunningham’s company —three programs a day for three days. Cage also took up a faculty position at the New School for Social Research in New York City. Commuting from Stony Point, some forty-five miles north, he initially offered courses on the music of Virgil Thomson, the music of Erik Satie, and experimental composition. Although only obliquely mentioned in his letters, Cage profited from “The 25-Year Retrospective Concert of the Music of John Cage” held at New York’s Town Hall on May 15, 1958, made possible through the efforts of Jasper Johns, Robert Rauschenberg, and Emile de Antonio, who came together as Impresarios Inc. The program included the premiere of his groundbreaking Concert for Piano and Orchestra (1957–1958), whose piano part alone makes use of eightyfour different systems of notation. The piece represented a new phase in Cage’s musical thinking involving, significantly, indeterminacy. (A performance, as he later told German composer and musicologist Hans Heinz Stuckenschmidt, can involve any number of musicians on whatever instruments they choose, playing for any length of time.) The Town Hall concert showcased nearly a dozen works and was widely reviewed; it was also recorded by producer George Avakian and sold as a lavish three-LP box set that included an unprecedented number of texts, photographs, and manuscript pages. Cage’s adventurous music was thereby introduced to a new and larger audience. Late in 1958, Cage made an eventful six-month tour of Europe. He made stops in Copenhagen, Brussels, and Oxford, and he crisscrossed Germany, often performing with Tudor and Cunningham. His most eventful experiences took place in Milan, where he befriended the Italian composer Luciano Berio and his American-born wife, the brilliant mezzo-soprano Cathy Berberian. Berio gave Cage working space and technical assistance at the Studio di Fonologia, RAI’s facility for experimental audio research. Here, Cage created Fontana Mix (1958), named for his Italian landlady, an exciting indeterminate piece for magnetic tape that would serve as the means for composing several other works. Cage also secured a spot as a contestant on the popular television game show Lascia o Raddoppia (colloquially, “Double or Nothing”) in the quiz category of mushrooms. Living in Stony Point, Cage had discovered within himself a deep 130  |  1 9 5 0 – 1 9 6 1

love of nature; fascinated, he collected mushrooms, read about mushrooms, and became, as he told Peter Yates, an “amateur mycologist.” His answers to a series of increasingly difficult questions on Lascia o Raddoppia over the course of five weekly programs won him five million lire (about $8,000) and a modicum of popular fame in Italy. It also afforded him momentary respite from his usual state of penury. Returning to America in March 1959, he used part of his winnings to purchase a grand piano for his Stony Point home as well as a Volkswagen bus for use by the Merce Cunningham Dance Company when it toured. His mushroom studies invigorated, in the spring Cage augmented his offerings at the New School with a course in mushroom identification. Cage’s thinking was beginning to influence younger composers, some of whom wrote to him for advice and support. In October 1959 he received a letter and string trio score from a twenty-five-year-old experimental composer whose imagination impressed him: La Monte Young. Born in a small Idaho dairy farming community and settled in Los Angeles, Young greatly admired Cage and as a teaching assistant at UC Berkeley had initiated performances of his works. Cage found particularly interesting Young’s use of continuous, long-lasting sounds or static drones. He took part, as he told Young, in a Living Theatre performance of his admirer’s noisy, scraping Poem for Chairs, Tables, Benches, Etc. (1960), which he greatly enjoyed. Cage expresses increasingly clear ideas about twentieth-century compositional trends in his letters of the period to Peter Yates. In what are often summary discussions, he describes how his contemporaries —both elders and peers —were changing the landscape of American music. By 1960, he identifies what were for him the key aspects of experimental music, most of which were reflected in his own compositions of the time. Critical of the distribution system of experimental music in America, Cage wrote to John Edmunds, curator of the Americana Collection of the Music Division of the New York Public Library, about possible remedies. He had become anxious to publish his own music and collect in book form some of his many articles and lectures. In late 1959 he met Walter Hinrichsen, founder in 1948 of C.  F. Peters Corporation in New York. By an agreement signed in June 1960, Hinrichsen launched his role as Cage’s sole music publisher with an aesthetic blast. Like many others, he found Cage’s handwritten notation to be quite beautiful, so he began by publishing, probably early in 1961, a four-volume facsimile edition of Cage’s complex, chance-determined Music of Changes. At about the same time, Cage also realized his hope of having some of his published writings appear in book form. He had sent a stack of writings and a 1 9 5 0 – 1 9 6 1  |  131

possible table of contents to Richard Winslow, director of the music department at Wesleyan University, who subsequently “inspired” the university’s press to publish the volume. Cage’s 275-page collection appeared in October 1961. Titled Silence: Lectures and Writings, it recorded Cage’s evolving understanding of music since 1937 and was prominently and mostly enthusiastically reviewed. Cage also accepted an invitation to serve as a fellow at Wesleyan University’s Center for Advanced Studies, where his one-term appointment was extended to two so that he remained at the center from October 1960 to June 1961. Although he rekindled his hope to start his Center for Experimental Music, this time at Wesleyan, it was again not to be. Letters from the late 1950s show Cage beginning to assemble the electronic theater/music event Atlas Eclipticalis (1961), which he titled after a Czechoslovakian book of star maps he’d used in its composition. He discussed the nature of this piece in some detail in a letter to Yates dated August 17, 1961, noting its basis in his theory of indeterminate composition, his reliance upon celestial maps, his use of contact microphones to amplify the instruments, and his emphasis on short, soft sounds. He addressed some of the problems he’d encountered in producing the work in a letter to Lawrence Morton, director of the Monday Evening Concerts (the successor to Yates’s Evenings on the Roof) in Los Angeles, who had written to him about scheduling a performance. Even for Cage, Atlas Eclipticalis is unusually, even epically, adventurous. Often paired with his Winter Music (1957), a full performance calls for twenty pianists and eighty-six other instruments, all in effect playing as soloists. But Cage was beginning to understand the limitations of his players and presenters, and his works, now often scored for variable instrumentation, were becoming naturally open to negotiation. The Los Angeles performance went on with fourteen instrumentalists, in March 1962.

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To Pierre Boulez221 January 17 [1950] | Location not indicated My dear Pierre, Your letter has just arrived here at home. I cannot tell you how overjoyed I was to get it. Without news of you I am without news of music, and you know I love music with all my heart. You write English admirably. (Thanks) The trip to South America must be marvelous! Now it must be made even better by coming down to New York. I shall try to arrange concerts, lectures (I can talk to Copland about Tanglewood, etc.); and you can stay at home here and I can make use of an un-nailed piano(!).222 Everyone here is talking about you (pronouncing the Z) but no one has heard your music (exceptions: Copland, Thomson). The musical atmosphere is ready —everyone full of desire. We even really need the vitality which you could give. Because our musical life is not very lively at present. We have some Schoenberg (Serenade, conducted by Mitropoulos, etc.) and there are some “young ones” who are taking up the Stravinsky question again (Mavra, etc.). But the date is now 1950, I believe. There is Jolivet, but not for me (I heard the recording in Paris, and the work doesn’t interest me). Messiaen was here; —I love him for his ideas about rhythm. Almost everyone was against him because of his half-religious half-Hollywood spirit. I invited him here (big reception, dinner, and music), and he explained his Turangalila score to some composers. Since knowing you, our music sounds feeble to me. In truth, it is only you who interests me. I have heard Stefan Wolpe’s Sonata (violin and piano)223 and some of ben Weber’s works.224 That’s all; and both tend towards Berg rather than Webern. And what is amazing, we have two composers writing pentatonic music! Poor Merton Brown is beginning to see psychoanalysts. People 221. Letters from Cage to Boulez have been selected from The Boulez-Cage Correspondence, edited by Jean-Jacques Nattiez, trans. Robert Samuels (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1995) and reprinted here with permission of Cambridge University Press. The Paul Sacher Foundation is the repository of the complete collection; see Pierre Boulez/John Cage: Correspondance et documents, edited by Jean-Jacques Nattiez, revised edition by Robert Piencikowski (Mainz: Schott Musik International, 2002). 222. “Nails” is Cage’s shorthand for piano preparations of all kinds; see also “mutes.” 223. Stefan Wolpe (1902–1972), German-born American composer and teacher of Herbert Brün, Morton Feldman, David Tudor and others. Cage refers here to his Sonata for Piano and Violin (1949). From 1952 to 1956, he was director of music at Black Mountain College. 224. (William Jennings Bryan) “Ben” Weber (1916–1979), American composer, a “lyrical serialist.”

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talk about a Kirchner (Leon).225 One of these days I am going to hear the music of milton babbitt,226 who is the most Webernian. He has talked to me about rhythmic inversions. He takes a duration, and he inverts the fractions (corresponding to the octave and interval inversion). But he looks like a musicologist. William Masselos is going to play your Sonata (2nd piano) but he has asked for a year to work on it.227 He is very busy. Two quartets now want to play your quartet.228 I have said two years to work on it (to put some fear into them, which is good for the health). I have just finished recording my cinema music.229 I started that piece of work in a dream: I wanted to write without musical ideas (unrelated sounds) and record the results 4 times, changing the position of the nails each time. That way, I wanted to get subtle changes of frequency (mobility), timbre, duration (by writing notes too difficult to play exactly) and amplitude (electronically altered each time). But I found musical ideas all about me, and the result will be (I mean “would have been”) no more than simple or perhaps Japanese canons. I abandoned the dream and I wrote some music. Also the adventure was halted by machines which are too perfect nowadays. They are stupid. Even so I had fun in the 2nd part by recording noises synthetically (without performers). Chance comes in here to give us the unknown. Apparently the film will be seen in Paris (as soon as I know the date, I’ll let you know). Cunningham gave his dance concert on the 15th of January. It was a great success. I’m sending you the programme. I am going to have lunch with Nicole Henriot230 on the 18th. We will talk about you which will be a great pleasure to me. (Whilst you are in Brazil, get some cotton for your ears so that you are not Milhauded.231) Tomorrow I have to play the Sonatas and Interludes for Henry Cowell’s pupils. 225. Leon Kirchner (1919–2009), American composer and teacher who would teach at Mills College (1954–1961) and Harvard University (1965–1989). 226. Milton Babbitt (1916–2011), American composer and music theorist, noted for both serial and electronic compositions. 227. William Masselos (1920–1992), American pianist who championed contemporary music and frequently performed solo works by Cage. 228. Pierre Boulez, Livre pour quatuor (1948–1949). 229. Cage’s Music for “Works of Calder” (1949–50), the score for Herbert Matter’s short film on Alexander Calder (see notes 216 and 217). 230. Nicole Henriot (1925–2001), French pianist who specialized in German Romantic music and works by contemporary French composers. 231. Cage refers specifically to two works by Darius Milhaud, Saudades do Brasil (1920–1921) and Scaramouche (1937).

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The class is going to come to my place. I should rather remain alone and quiet working on the quartet which I began in Paris and which (I want to say, which I didn’t have the courage to show you).232 Virgil Thomson liked your article in Polyphonie, “Propositions,” a lot. He told me he is going to write an article on your ideas about rhythm.” 233 Now something about the Construction in Metal.234 The rhythmic structure is 4, 3, 2, 3, 4. (16 x 16). You can see that the first number (4) equals the number of figures that follow it. This first number is divided 1, 1, 1, 1, and first I present the ideas that are developed in the 3, then those in the 2, etc. Regarding the method: there are 16 rhythmic motives divided 4, 4, 4, 4, conceived as circular series 4

1 1 3

2

4

1 2 3

2

When you are on 1, you can go 1 2 3 4 1 or retrograde. You can repeat (e.g., 1122344322 etc.). But you cannot 2⇒4 or 1⇒3. When you are on 2, you can not only use the same idea but you can go back to 1 using the “doorways” 1 or 4. (Very simple games.) Equally there are 16 instruments for each player. (Fixation with the figure 16.) But (funnily enough) there are only 6 players! I don’t know why (perhaps I only had 6 players at the time). And the relationships between the instruments (in the method) are similar to those between rhythms (circleseries), according to which the work is written in 4∕4 (four measures, 3 measures, 2 measures, 3 measures, 4 measures, the whole lot 16 times). The score isn’t here at home but I shall now try to give you the names of the instruments. (in English) 1st performer 2nd "

3rd

"

Thundersheet, orchestral bells Piano (The pianist has an assistant who uses metal cylinders on the strings; the pianist plays trills; the assistant turns them into glissandi.) 12 graduated Sleigh or oxen bells, suspended sleigh bells, thundersheet.

232. Cage’s String Quartet in Four Parts (1949–1950), first performed at Black Mountain College on August 12, 1950, in four movements: “Quietly flowing along,” “Slowly rocking,” “Nearly stationary,” and “Quodlibet,” with an unwavering rhythmic structure. 233. Virgil Thomson, “Atonality Today,” published in in two parts, New York Herald Examiner, January 29 and February 5, 1950; reprinted in A Virgil Thomson Reader (Boston, MA: Houghton Mifflin, 1981). 234. Cage’s First Construction (In Metal), first performed in Seattle on December 9, 1939. The work is scored for percussion sextet, Cage’s first to make use of fixed rhythmic structures.

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4th

"

5th

"

6th

"

4 Brake drums (from the wheels of automobiles) 8 cowbells 3 Japanese Temple gongs, Thundersheet Thundersheet, 4 Turkish cymbals 8 anvils or pipe lengths 4 Chinese cymbals Thundersheet, 4 muted gongs 1 suspended " water gong Tam Tam

The number 16 occurs in some cases in considering changing the method of striking (difference of sonority). You know that with exposition and development (without recapitulation) and with the form (climax, apotheosis (?)), etc., this Construction is 19th century. Your ideas for the lectures are very good. I have nothing to add. Suzuki’s works on Zen Buddhism are about to be published.235 I seem a bit empty. I have come from the film work and the Cunningham concert and I have to play the Sonatas tomorrow morning, and I am still not properly started as far as the Quartet goes. And I am tired. English part: [Armand] Gatti’s letter was marvelous and by now there must be a new Gatti. Give my love to them all and say I am writing to him tomorrow. I think of you all almost every day and I miss you deeply. Tell Saby236 that I am very fond of his drawing that he gave me. The great trouble with our life here is the absence of an intellectual life. No one has an idea. And should one by accident get one, no one would have the time to consider it. That must account for the pentatonic music. I know you will enjoy travelling to South America; it must be very beautiful. I have never been there. Please keep me well-informed about your plans so that should the Tanglewood idea go through, you could always be reached. I forgot to mention that the New Music Edition is publishing one of Woronow’s pieces (the Sonnet to Dallapiccola). I must write and tell him so. 235. Daisetz Teitaro Suzuki (1870–1966), Japanese author of books on Buddhism, Zen, and Shin that were instrumental in spreading interest on these subjects throughout the West. Cage attended several of Suzuki’s classes at Columbia University in the early 1950s, and Suzuki’s teachings resonated in Cage’s thought and works throughout his life. 236. Bernard Saby (1925–1975), French painter and member of Boulez’s circle who created cover illustrations for the Domaine musical concert programs.

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I am starting a society called “Capitalists Inc.” (so that we will not be accused of being Communists); everyone who joins has to show that he has destroyed not less than 100 disks of music or one sound recording device; also everyone who joins automatically becomes President. We will have connections with 2 other organizations, that for the implementation of nonsense (anyone wanting to do something absurd will be financed to do it) and that Against Progress. If the American influence gets too strong in France I am sure you will want to join.

To Cecil Smith237 November 22, 1950 | 326 Monroe St., New York City Dear Cecil Smith: Over and over again in Satie-criticism, the complaint is filed that humor was used as a mask behind which to hide an inability to write music. (Equally outrageously, one might imagine that St. Francis sermonized to birds because of an inability to convey ideas to other animate beings.) Your last issue of Musical America contains an example: “Erik Satie” by Abraham Skulsky. It seems not to have occurred to Mr. Skulsky, nor to Mr. Rollo Myers in his recent book, Erik Satie, that Satie may not have been forced but may, on the contrary, have been free to laugh. When one takes oneself, one’s gains and losses, one’s popularity and disfavor, seriously, it is quite impossible to laugh (except forcedly, or at someone). Satie, however, was disinterested, and was thus able to laugh or weep as he chose. He knew in his loneliness and in his courage where his center was: in himself and in his nature of loving music. There is no great difference between hearing “Consider the lilies of the field, how they toil not, neither do they spin” and a piece by Erik Satie. Forced, nervous laughter takes place when someone is trying to impress somebody for purposes of getting somewhere. Satie, free of such interest, entitled his first pieces commissioned by a publisher Three Flabby Preludes for a Dog. 237. Cecil Smith (1906–1956), American critic and author. This is the first of two letters Cage wrote to Musical America, published December 1950 and April 1951, both in response to an article about Satie by Abraham Skulsky. Cage’s devotion to Satie was longstanding; in 1948 he had delivered a controversial talk at Black Mountain College titled “Defense of Satie” (published in the John Cage Anthology, ed. Richard Kostelanetz [New York: Praeger, 1970]), in which he soundly denounced Beethoven —a slightly impolitic move, as Beethoven’s string works were a featured part of the summer curriculum that year.

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It being fairly clear who is referred to by the word dog, giving that title was evidently a social act militant in nature, not nonsensical as Mr. Skulsky would have it. Mr. Skulsky records that all of Satie’s music is humorous excepting the Gymnopedies, the Sarabandes, and Socrate. This is simply not true. Think, for instance, of the Nocturnes, the Quatre Melodies, the Danses Gothiques, the other posthumous works, and of Sylvie (which, contrary to Mr. Myers’ information, has not disappeared, and contrary to Mr. Skulsky’s judgment re the Gymnopedies is the first work of the composer to bear the stamp of his originality). In fact, if one tries to think of a funny piece by Satie it’s really tough: Les Courses, perhaps the Embryons Desseches, and, certainly, La Belle Excentrique. When Satie used words (cf. T. S. Eliot’s: “I gotta use words when I talk to you”), his expression was often humorous, always brilliantly imaginative. When he wrote music, he was unexceptionally the art’s most serious servant: he performed his tasks simply and unpretentiously. He wrote more often than not short pieces, as did Scarlatti and [François] Couperin and, as will, let’s hope, etc. (cf. Paul Klee, who said something about wanting to ignore Europe and about needing to make things small like seeds). (It appears we have reached the second complaint filed by critics against Satie: he wrote no big works with the exception of Socrate.) The length of a work, however, is no measure of its quality or beauty, most of post-Renaissance art-propaganda to the contrary. If we glance momentarily at R. H. Blythe’s book on haiku (the Japanese poetic structure: 5, 7, 5 syllables), we read (pg. 272): “Haiku thus make the greatest demand upon our internal poverty. Shakespeare (cf. Beethoven) pours out his universal soul, and we are abased before his omniscience and overflowing power. Haiku require of us that our soul should find its own infinity within the limits of some finite thing.” My mind runs now to Satie’s Vexations,238 a short piece to be played 840 times in a row. A performance of this piece would be a measure, accurate as a mirror, of one’s “poverty of spirit” without which, incidentally, one loses the kingdom of heaven. More and more it seems to be that relegating Satie to the position of having been very influential but in his own work finally unimportant is refusing to accept the challenge he so bravely gave us. 238. Cage had apparently discovered Satie’s Vexations the previous year in the private collection of Henri Sauguet —“discovered,” since it makes no appearance in either of the two Satie biographies that had appeared to date (Templier [1932] and Myers [1948]). Cage quickly saw to its publication in Contrepoints, no. 6 (1949) and would organize the work’s United States premiere in 1963.

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To Pierre Boulez December 18, 1950 | [New York City] My dear Pierre Yesterday evening, we heard your Sonata; David Tudor239 played it (magnificently, too) instead of Masselos. Tudor is going to make a recording for you, and, if you like, we could press for a public recording. (Many thanks for the disc of Soleil des Eaux;240 Heugel241 and you both sent me a copy. I have given one of them to Tudor. David Tudor is twenty-five, like you, and he is a friend of Morton Feldman.242) Before Masselos had begun work on the Sonata, Feldman told me that Tudor had already devoted three months of study to the work (this was in spring/summer). From that it was obvious to choose Tudor (my French is too bad; forgive me if I continue in English). Tudor had spontaneously devoted himself to the labor of understanding and playing the Sonata; I loaned him the original which you had given me with the sketches.243 He studied French in order to read your articles in Contrepoint and Polyphonie (by the way, they never send me these, —although I subscribed), and he has made a collection and study of Artaud.244 He is an extraordinary person, and at the concert (as I was 239. David (Eugene) Tudor (1926–1996), American pianist and composer. Tudor gave many premiere performances of Cage’s works, including Music of Changes (New York, Jan. 1, 1952) and 4'33" (Woodstock, New York, Aug. 29, 1952). Tudor maintained Boulez’s work in his American repertory, giving subsequent performances at the University of Colorado (July 5, 1951), Black Mountain College (Aug. 19, 1951), the Living Theatre in New York (Jan. 1, 1952), and the University of Illinois (March 22, 1953). 240. Pierre Boulez, Le soleil des eaux for soprano, chorus, and orchestra, begun in 1948 and reworked variously until its definitive version in 1965. The Paris performance was heralded by Frédéric Goldberg in The Musical Quarterly 36, no. 4 (Oct. 1950): 598. It is part of Boulez’s Char Trilogy, which also includes Le Marteau sans maître and Le Visage Nuptial. 241. Philippe Heugel, with his brother François, the fourth generation of the Heugel publishing family. Heugel Editions was founded in 1839 by Jacques-Léopold Heugel. 242. Morton Feldman (1926–1987), American composer associated with the New York School along with Cage, Wolff, Tudor, and Earle Brown (see note 298). Cage and Feldman’s meeting is generally dated January 26, 1950, when both men had gone to hear a New York Philharmonic performance of Webern’s Symphony No. 20 (1928). Both men exited the hall before the start of Rachmaninoff’s Symphonic Dances (1940), with which Webern’s work had been programmatically paired, and met in the lobby. 243. The autograph and sketches of Boulez’s Second Sonata are found with Boulez’s letter to Cage in the archives of Northwestern University. These reveal that the third movement, titled “VariationsRondeau,” was finished in May 1946, originally dedicated to Mme. Vaurabourg-Honegger. 244. Tudor had keen interest in the work of Antonin Artaud (1896–1948), French playwright and theater director, and especially in The Theater and Its Double (1938), which M.C. Richards translated into English (New York: Grove Press, 1958). Artaud influenced Cage’s ideas about theater in relation to other art forms, apparent particularly in his works of the mid-1960s.

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turning pages for him) I had feelings of an exaltation equal to that you had introduced me to at 4 rue Beautreillis. Naturally the audience was divided (for the various reasons audiences are), but I can tell you with joy that you have here a strong and devoted following. Your music gives to those who love it an arousing and breathtaking enlightenment. I am still always trembling afterwards. After the concert Tudor, Feldman and I with 20 others celebrated and then finally at 4 a.m. the three of us were alone walking through the streets still talking of you and music. The evening before Tudor had played in my apartment and there were many who came to hear, including Varèse, Maro Ajemian, Mrs. E. E. Cummings,245 etc., etc., etc. I enclose some critical notices (which are not studies), programme, etc. Now we want to prepare a performance of the String Quartet, when can the score + parts be available? We have a real hunger. [in the margin, attached by an arrow to the foregoing phrase] I would love to arrange a second invitation here for you on the occasion of the Quartet (performance). As you see, I know nothing about the war.246 It was a great joy to hear many times all 4 mvts. of the Sonata (a pleasure you had not given me); the entire work is marvelous but the 4th mvt. among them is transcendent. If you could take the time to write to Tudor (perhaps after he sends you a recording) he would be very happy I know. His address is 69 E. 4th St., N.Y.C. Feldman’s music is extremely beautiful now. It changes with each piece; I find him my closest friend now among the composers here. My music too is changing. I am writing now an entire evening of music for Merce to be done January 17 (flute, trumpet, 4 percussion players, piano, not prepared, violin and cello).247 I still have one mvt. of the Concerto for Prepared Piano and Orchestra to complete; it may be performed in March in Hartford, Connecticut. My string quartet will also be done in March both in Hartford and here in New York. For the Concerto and the ballet I use charts giving in the form of a checkerboard pre-orchestrated combinations of sound; it is evident 245. Likely Marion Morehouse, common-law wife of the American poet E. E. Cummings (1894– 1962). Both Cage and Boulez set Cummings’s poetry to music: Cage with his Five Songs for Contralto (“little four paws,” “little Christmas tree,” “in Just-,” “hist whist,” and “Another comes [Tumbling hair]”) (1938) for voice and piano, and Boulez with his Cummings ist der Dichter for choir and chamber orchestra (1968–70). 246. Cage is referencing the Korean War, which Boulez had asked about in an earlier letter. At this historic juncture, China had entered the war in support of North Korea. 247. Cage’s Sixteen Dances (1950), scored for chamber ensemble, heard first as music for the choreographic work by Cunningham, Sixteen Dances for Soloist and Company of Three, in a version for piano, Cage performing, at Bennett Junior College in Millbrook, New York, on January 17, 1951. This work is likely Cunningham’s first to make use of chance operations.

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that “moves” may be made on this “board” followed by corresponding or non-corresponding moves. In the Concerto there are 2 such charts (one for the orchestra + one for the piano) bringing about the possibility of “given” relationships. In the dance music the idea of a gradual metamorphosis of the chart into a new chart is employed. Two other ideas are in my mind now: that each square of the chart be taken as the (at that moment) visible member of a large family of sounds; and the other idea that 4 charts, each one referring to only one characteristic of sound, could be used instead of one. All this brings me closer to a “chance” or if you like to an un-aesthetic choice. I keep, of course, the means of rhythmic structure feeling that that is the “espace sonore” in which these sounds may exist and change. Composition becomes “throwing sound into silence,” and rhythm which in my Sonatas had been one of breathing becomes now one of a flow of sound and silence. I will send you soon some results. Thank you again for the recording of your orchestral work (which, seems to me, must be an earlier work248); the parts that interest me the most are those at the beginning and at the end. I admire the separation of voice and orchestra at the beginning. The entire continuity is marvelously poetic and changing and suggests an opera. But I have the feeling that this is an earlier work than those of yours I am attached to through having heard or seen more often. In other words you have walked on to use your metaphor of one foot in front of the other. Tell me, if what I say is wrong. Your Sonata is still in our ears, and gratitude will never cease. Those who had no courage to directly listen are troubled; you have increased the danger their apathy brings them to. But now I am no longer one of a few Americans who are devoted to you, but one of many. I would still love to publish one of Yvette G[rimaud]’s works. [in the left margin] How are friends! Gatti, Stephane and Souvtchinsky. The feminine principle. [above] Merry Xmas! Happy New Year! [in the right margin] How are you? I am unwell occasionally.

248. Again, reference to Boulez’s Le soleil des eaux.

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To David Tudor249 [Between January 21 and 27, 1951] | [New York] Dear David: Morty just left and you can see from this paper something of what we were doing this evening.250 It was a question of finding a way of writing the graph music on transparent paper so that it can be reproduced cheaply, and what you see here was a transitional stage, the final outcome is stunning and perfectly clear but only the utterly essential lines remain. Vertical lines (indicating the measures) are dotted (which makes the solid thick lines of the sounds clear). The horizontal lines are thin but only present when needed. The result is a space design very beautiful to look at and easy to read. You will see it later of course when you come back. Merce’s concert was sensational and very controversial.251 People either loved or hated it. I myself had a fine time. And all those directly concerned did too. Morty’s and Christian’s pieces were both hissed and bravoed. Some people left in the middle of the evening. I was delighted with all the music including my own. Now of course it is difficult for me to write about it because I have begun work on the Concerto again,252 and my feeling is displaced from the ballet. But the sounds were such that I have no fears (if I had them before) about the work I am doing. And Morty and Xian253 liked it too, so what is necessary more? I failed in making a recording (for lack of microphone and wire at last minute and rehearsal exigencies). Morty Seymour Barab254 and Maro helped me finish the copying. 249. For a more complete representation of the extant correspondence between Cage and Tudor, see Martin Iddon, John Cage and David Tudor: Correspondence on Interpretation and Performance (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2013). 250. The second page of this letter was written over the top of an incomplete example of Feldman’s “graph” notation. 251. Cage likely refers to the second performance of Cunningham’s Sixteen Dances for Soloist and Company of Three (1951), which took place at Hunter College, Playhouse, in New York on January 21, 1951, the dancers being, in addition to Cunningham in the solo role, Dorothy Berea, Mili Churchill, and Anneliese Widman. This was the first performance of Cage’s Sixteen Dances in its full chamber ensemble version; also on the program were Feldman’s Projection 2 for flute, trumpet, piano, violin, and cello (1951) and Wolff’s Trio for flute, trumpet, and cello (1951). 252. Cage’s Concerto for Prepared Piano and Orchestra (1951). 253. Christian Wolff (b. 1934), American experimental composer, Cage’s only formal student. The son of Helen and Kurt Wolff, founders of Pantheon Books, he presented the first English translation of Richard Wilhelm’s The I Ching (New York: Pantheon, 1950) to Cage as a gift at one of his lessons. “Xian” is Cage’s affectionate and abbreviated spelling for Christian. 254. Seymour Barab (1921–2014), American cellist, founding member of the Composer’s Quartet, in residence at Columbia University.

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And Maro worked very hard on the piano part which she said was difficult and which she never played acceptably until the performance + even then left out or muddled up whole sections. However it went as a whole fairly well and we managed to stay with the dancers. There was a party here afterward, and we all drank toasts to you and to Boulez. Virgil tells me that he’s not convinced about Morty, that he is too much the “anointed one” (oil dripping off his shoulders). However, I’m more or less generally broadcasting my faith in his work and to the point of fanaticism. I spent a troublesome hr. + ½ arguing with Arthur Berger255 re Morty and Xian’s music because Arthur has to review the concert next Sunday. And then another hr. with Minna Lederman, who began to take the music more seriously when I explained Suzuki’s identification of subject and object vs. the usual cause and effect thought. She even invited me to dinner to talk further. And then we will hear Varese’s Ionization up at Juilliard with Dallapiccola, Krenek and Stravinsky.256 As I go on with the Concerto, I think only of your playing it and hope your circumstances will permit that. I miss you very deeply, —and will be very happy when you come back. I am going to apply for a renewal of the Guggenheim; I phoned them and still have time. I wrote a funny article for Musical America which I am enclosing for your amusement.257 I envy the travelling through the country you are enjoying because I know what a pleasure it is to see how nature operates, —and then to imitate that “manner of operation” in one’s work and life. Magical clues by trees, and the flat continuous land. It is late and quiet here, and I trust you pardon my rambling on like this as though I had nothing to say. Life continues to be incredibly beautiful, each moment, and now I hear your voice over the phone and see the shape of your hands. How marvelous of you to have given me fire! Every time it works infallibly. It is like knowing a secret. My pleasure in returning to the Concerto is the pleasure of not being responsible to another imagination. And so I work directly and am silly enough to 255. Arthur Berger (1912–2003), American composer and critic, sometimes dubbed a “New Mannerist.” In 1962, he would co-found, with Benjamin Boretz, the American periodical Perspectives of New Music. 256. Luigi Dallapiccola (1904–1975), Ernst Krenek (1900–1991), and Igor Stravinsky (1882–1971), three prominent composers whose music was well represented in the contemporary concert repertory. 257. Cage refers here to his “Satie Controversy,” Musical America 70 (Dec. 15, 1950).

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think the quality of work “better.” I am at least in a more direct (because private) situation. Berger thought the ending piece of the ballet would have made a “lovely accompaniment for a melodic tune.” Shows you what we’re up against. Virgil however says, “I think you’ve got something there!” Isaac258 came to rehearsals and performance and was very interested. Hirsch told Morty and me he’s one of us. My mother said the concert made her think of how Marie Antoinette must have felt after the French Revolution! It is curious how anxious people are to tell what they thought. Lou said he thought my music was “lovely”; since he said this before the concert, I was somewhat disturbed, so I tossed some coins and got the hexagram “The Power of the Great” the Creative and the Arousing, and the advice not to be stubborn, proud or belligerent.259 We had some difficulty with Morty’s piece in rehearsal because the parts were not correct which didn’t disturb him but did me. Xian’s finally proofed them, and the performance was beautiful. I was surprised that Morty had made mistakes because in copying my music he made none at all. I am going quietly into the Concerto, trying to pretend that I had not left it, so as not to be noticed. What shall I do about my age perplexing you? Shall I grow a beard? And how fat are you now? Miss you, David, very much. I do not tell you about loving you because you said you were afraid it would kill you. I do love you but it will always be so that you need not be afraid.

To David Tudor [ca. early June 1951] | 326 Monroe St., New York City Dear David: To tell you the news and that I miss you. Am often making the lowest form of prayer (petitionary) that you are having a fine time. Mostly the news regards the music I’m writing, but that is so detailed that 258. Isaac Nemiroff (1912–1977), composer and founder of the music department at the State University of New York at Stony Point. He was David Tudor’s brother-in-law, married to Tudor’s sister, Joy (Tudor) Nemiroff (b. 1923), a long-time student of metaphysics. 259. Hexagram 34, “Power of the Great” (or “Great Power”). This is one of very few references by Cage to his use of the I Ching, which he adapted for use in original compositional systems.

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only it will tell you about it. I now have a kind of schedule whereby I toss 80 to a 100 hexagrams before going to bed, so that my day’s work is laid out for me when I arise. It is interesting to note that the coins seem to know that they are involved in producing a long movement, for after 3 pages (most of which you saw) of tempo changes the next 3 settle to one tempo, accelerate to another which holds through the next 3, ritard then to another which again holds! And all slow tempi (80, 88, 72 (hommage (no doubt) to M[orton] F[eldman]), so that the coins are aware, clearly, that this is not only a long piece but a 2nd mvt. However, there are frequent changes of the mobility-immobility relation (which never took place in the part you have). I have also begun removing the armored scales from the plants, an activity that wonderfully resembles composition (note by note). And I wrote 2 more haiku for Maro,260 who commissioned them (pays for 1 month rent on the piano). Anahid + I played the v[iolin] + p[iano]. pieces at a party and practically no one liked them; even that music estranges my former friends —what will they feel next year?261 Christian wrote the pieces for you which you probably already have. Morty and I heard them here one afternoon and Morty said they were “absolutely.” When Xian began to play I made a move to close the window so that we wouldn’t hear the traffic, but Xian said “no, leave it open; that’s the point.” His new ideas are amazing and involve the mosaic ideas in your pieces but with asymetrical superpositions made clear by the special timbre situations for each mosaic (ensembles, necessarily). I saw Alan Watts twice, and you and Jean + Joe262 will probably see him in Boulder when he passes through. He says we are not writing music but doing ear-cleaning. I said whatever you call it makes little difference. My classes at Columbia are almost over.263 People were all writing and performing after one “lesson.” A music supervisor from Minnesota who visited incognito was “amazed” at results. I also gave a lecture on how to become uncultured. One day, concerned over my livelihood problem, I reflected that I was indeed 260. Haikus for piano (1950–51). 261. Uncertain if Cage means here his Six Melodies for Violin and Piano (1950) or his Nocturne for Violin and Piano (1947), or both. In any case, his remark likely speaks to the distinctions emerging between his old and his new works, pre- and post-chance operations. 262. Jean Erdman and Joseph Campbell. See note 96. 263. The first of two references made by Cage in the present collection to “his classes” at Teachers College, Columbia, and his lecture “How to Become Uncultured” (letter dated May 22, 1956, to Paul Henry Lang also refers to this class being “annual”).

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working, but not being paid for it. So I composed a letter which I have sent off to 4 people (so far) offering shares in the Music of Changes264 at $15.00 a share. It looks like Louise Crane (whose family makes the paper money is printed on, will invest (although I made it clear in the letter that it is a very poor investment)).265 The cost of the shares is estimated at 30 wks. work at $50 a wk. ($1500). (100 shares). I am keeping 20 for my own personal use. Perhaps you cd. get Jean + Joe to invest. I understand Schoenberg called off his Colorado visit. I wd. like to ask you many questions, but I am afraid I wd. get no answer. I’d love to know whether your concerts are already given or about to be given and how your work is going. Whether you played or will play the Changes, + how you feel about them. And whether you miss me and whether you will pass through NY on your way to Black Mtn. I’ve not heard from Boulez yet; Morty + I get along very well (he’s not yet finished the Intersection —he got involved in a new “Marginal Intersection”: that is, sounds heard between 2 limits: inaudible high + inaudible low! —which are notated but will not be heard). Also he finished Jean’s music which you probably already have.266 Sybil Shearer gave a concert,267 very well attended, but for me quite uninteresting. She makes everything point to the same point + so eradicates the natural penetrative power of her movements, etc. However, she moves magnificently, and Morty is writing an uninvited piece for her which he’ll send her, —somewhat like the Cummings Songs268 —but for piano. One evening walking along the river, I found a pier, between here and the Manhattan Bridge which sits out on the river; it’s very pleasant and the colors on the buildings and wharves are marvelous. And the folk-dancing began last night. And the weather is cool. So all in all a good summer, except that not being with you is very sad, especially because of writing this music for you which I am always wanting to show you and because I am anxious to hear it and know what your adventures with it are. My love to you and wishes that you are enjoying (as you say) yourself.

264. Cage’s first reference to his Music of Changes (1951). See note 284. 265. Louise Crane (1913–1997), American philanthropist, friend of leading American literary figures such as Tennessee Williams and Marianne Moore. 266. Likely a reference to Feldman’s Nature Pieces for solo piano (1951), first performed in 1952 at Hunter College as accompaniment to Erdman’s choreographic work Changing Woman. 267. Sybil Shearer (1912–2005), modern dancer who attended Bennington College’s summer workshops. 268. Cage likely refers to Feldman’s 4 Songs to e. e. cummings (1951) for soprano, cello, and piano.

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To Norman McLaren269 [Undated, likely early March 1951] | 326 Monroe St., New York City Dear Norman: On either the 8th or 10th of May the New Music Society will give a concert of chamber music involving all kinds of music,270 and we would be very happy at that time to present some of your work (if, as I have heard, you have done anything microtonal, that would be especially welcome: in other words, we are looking for what is most adventurous in what is happening in music). The concert will be given at McMillan Hall, Columbia Univ. and will be free to the public. Please let us know what we would have to get in the way of equipment to make your part of the program (circa 5 minutes) practical. Thanks by the way for the pleasure you gave Barab.

To Pierre Boulez May 22, 1951 | [New York] Dear Pierre: Your second letter arrived and I hasten to reply, for it has been, naturally, on my mind to write to you for many months. The long letter you sent with the details about your work was magnificent, but I think that it is at least partly due to it that I have not written sooner, for I was concerned to write a letter worthy to be read by you, and I didn’t feel able. All this year (in particular) my way of working has been changing,271 and together with that changing I was involved in many practical commitments (performances, etc.), and when your first letter came, it caught me in the midst of activity and at a point where my 269. Norman McLaren (1914–1987), Scottish-born Canadian animator and film director. Cage and Feldman were particularly interested in McLaren’s experiments with “graphical sound,” or soundon-film technology. It is likely that McLaren and Cage met in January 1949 at a League of Composers event in New York. 270. The concert took place May 10, 1951, with Cage conducting the first performance of his Imaginary Landscape No. 4 (March No. 2); also on the program were McLaren’s “tests” on 35mm film, lasting two or three minutes and constituting what McLaren called “little compositions in themselves.” McLaren noted in an internal memo to Don Mulholland at the National Film Board that one of these tests was composed in a third-tone scale. 271. Cage alludes here to his increasing use of chance operations in composition, a practice that would soon contribute to a rift between the two composers.

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way of working was still unformed (and needing to be formed). This seems now to have happened; at least I am writing a long piano work (unprepared) which will carry me through October or November,272 and I doubt whether anything radically new will enter my technique until I finish this particular piece, so that I feel free now to tell you what I have been doing, and what it was that led to this new work. In Paris I began the String Quartet, and interrupted the writing of it to do the Calder film which you heard. The Quartet uses a gamut of sounds, some single and some aggregates, but all of them immobile, that is, staying always not only in the same register where they originally appear but on the same strings and bowed or produced in the same manner on the same instruments. There are no superpositions, the entire work being a single line. Even the tempo never changes. The continuity (what I call method) is uncontrolled and spontaneous in all except the 3rd movement, where it is strictly canonic, even though there is only one “voice.” Such ideas as the following occur: direct duration limitation with retrograde or inverse use of the gamut or vice versa. This gives some interesting results since the gamut to begin with is asymmetrical. The sound of the work is special due to the agregates and to using no vibrato. It has been performed twice and is being recorded by Columbia,273 and next Friday will be done again on a program with your 2nd Sonata and some music of Feldman. You ask for details about the Calder music,274 particularly the section of noises. What I did was very simple: to record on tape noises actually produced in Calder’s studio in the course of his work. The sounds which have the regular accelerandos are produced by large flat rectangles of metal bringing themselves to balance on narrow metallic supports. With about “two hours” of tape I satisfied myself and then proceeded to choose those noises I wished and cut and scotch-tape them together. No synchronizing was attempted and what the final result is is rather due to a chance that was admired. Unfortunately I did this at the last minute (after the music for prep[ared] p[iano] had been recorded); had I done it at the beginning, I rather imagine I would have made the entire film in this way (using also sounds recorded from nature). 272. Cage’s Music of Changes (1951). 273. CBS Records Columbia, which released an LP in 1953 containing Cage’s String Quartet in Four Parts (1949–1950) and Walter Piston’s Sonatina for Violin and Harpsichord (1945). Performers were the New Music String Quartet, Alexander Schneider, violin, and Ralph Kirkpatrick, harpsichord. 274. Cage’s Music for “Works of Calder,” like his Williams Mix (1952) soon to come, is an early work involving composition on tape. As Cage recounts here, the Calder work was assembled by choice, while Williams Mix would be assembled by chance.

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After finishing the String Quartet I wrote Six Melodies for Vn. + Pn275 which are simply a postscript to the Quartet and use the same gamut of sounds (but, naturally, with different timbres). Then I began to write the Concerto for Prep. Pn. and Chamber Orchestra (25 players). A new idea entered which is this: to arrange the aggregates not in a gamut (linearly) but rather in a chart formation. In this case the size of the chart was 14 by 16. That is to say: 14 different sounds produced by any number of instruments (sometimes only one) (and often including percussion integrally) constitute the top row of the chart and favor (quantitatively speaking) the flute. The second row in the chart favors the oboe + so on. Four rows favor the percussion divided: metal, wood, friction, + miscellaneous (characterized by mechanical means, e.g., the radio). The last four favor the strings. Each sound is minutely described in the chart: e.g., a particular tone, sul pont276 on the 2nd string of the first vn. with a particular flute tone and, for example, a wood block. I then made moves on this chart of a “thematic nature” but, as you may easily see, with an “athematic” result. The entire first movement uses only 2 moves, e.g., down 2, over 3, up 4, etc. This move can be varied from a given spot on the chart by going in any of the directions. The orchestra (in the first mvt.) was thus rigorously treated, while the piano remained free, having no chart, only its preparation, which, by the way, is the most complicated I have ever effected and has as a special characteristic a bridge which is elevated from the sounding board of the piano to the strings and so positioned as to produce very small microtones. In the 2nd movement the piano has a chart provided for it having the same number of elements as that for the orchestra (which latter remains the same). This movement is nothing but an actually drawn series of circles (diminishing in size) on these charts, sometimes using the sounds of the orchestra, sometimes using the sounds of the piano. (In all of this work the rhythmic structure, with which you are familiar in my work, remains as the basis of activity.) In the 3rd and last part of the Concerto (the entire work is in one tempo) the two charts metamorphose into a single chart upon which moves are made. This metamorphosis is brought about by use of a method identical with that used by the Chinese in the I Ching, their ancient book of oracles.277 Three coins are 275. Cage’s Six Melodies for Violin and Piano (1950), a simple composition comprising melodic lines without accompaniment. 276. More fully, sul ponticello, a direction for a string player to keep the bow near the bridge of the instrument to bring out the high harmonics. 277. Cage’s first extended reference to the I Ching, or “Book of Changes,” an ancient divination text, the oldest of the Chinese classics. Cage would toss coins to determine hexagrams in the book, which he would then use to determine every aspect of his composition (tempo, duration, tones, etc.). It would become his primary means of “chance operations,” diminishing the force of his own

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tossed: if 3 heads appear it is a 6 () (female moving towards male); if 2 heads + a tail, it is a 7 (–) (male, not moving); if two tails + a head, it is an 8 (– –) (female, not moving); if 3 tails (), it is a 9 (male moving towards the female). I then established that the piano was male, the orch. female and proceeding by tossing coins found what sounds (7s + 8s) remained from the charts of the 2nd mvt. and which ones (6s + 9s) had to be freshly invented (a 6 became a piano sound taking the place of an orch. sound + a 9 vice versa), or an actual aggregate in time came about, that is to say a series of sounds, some orchestral, some piano, taken as a single element in the chart. This is an extension of the aggregate idea and was suggested by the manner in which Chinese characters are indexed, that is, according to the number of brush-strokes required to write them, so that a character with 8 brush strokes is, of course, not 8 characters but only a single one. By making moves on the charts I freed myself from what I had thought to be freedom, and which actually was only the accretion of habits and tastes. But in the Concerto the moves brought about the new freedom only in so far as concerned the sounds. For the rhythmic structure was expressed by means of ieti-control (3 sounds in 2 measures, 5 in 4, etc.) and the idea underlying this is distant from the idea underlying the moves. Another characteristic of the Concerto which disturbed me was the fact that although movement is suggested in the metamorphosis-idea underlying it, each part is like a still-picture rather than like a movie. And another point I must mention is that the orchestra moves almost always in half-notes. This work was not finished until last February because I interrupted it to write Sixteen Dances for Merce Cunningham. I used the chart ideas but for a combination of pn., vn., flute, cello, trumpet + about 100 percussion instruments played by 4 players. The chart now became 8 x 8 (having 64 elements) disposed fl., tpt., perc., perc., pn., pn., vn., cello. The size of this chart is precisely that of the chart associated with the I-Ching, but rather than using it in the I-Ching manner, I continued to make moves on it as on a magic-square. When it was necessary to write a piece with specific expressivity, e.g., a “blues” (because of Merce’s intention), I simply eliminated all those sounds that didn’t apply to a scale suggesting blues (having chromatic tetrachords). After each pair of the dances, 8 elements disappear + 8 new ones take their place, so that the sounds at the end of the evening are entirely different than those at the beginning. At each point, however, the situation presented is a static one. personality in composing a piece. He first applied the method in his Concerto for Prepared Piano and Chamber Orchestra (1951), but it served as his sole means of composing his Music of Changes (1951).

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At this point my primary concern became: how to become mobile in my thought rather than immobile always. And then I saw one day that there was no incompatibility between mobility + immobility and life contains both. This is at the basis of the manner of using the I-Ching for the obtaining of oracles. That is, having tossed the coins, one tosses five times more, obtaining a hexagram, e.g., 6, 9, 8, 7, 7, 7 becomes

which on recourse to the chart, gives the number 6 moving towards the number 25. If a hexagram appears which is without 6s or 9s only one number is obtained. I then devised the following ways of working. Having established a rhythmic structure, I provide myself with the following charts: 1 for tempi (64 elements; 32 active, 32 inactive) 1 for superpositions (in the case of the present piano piece from 1 to 8) 8 for durations (64 elements) 8 for aggregates (32 sounds, 32 silences) 8 for amplitudes (16, the other 16 keep preceding loudness) Of these last three classes of charts, 4 are immobile + 4 are mobile (immobile = remains + is capable of repetition, mobile = disappears once it has been used, bringing a new sound to its position in the chart). This relation of mobileimmobile changes whenever a mobile number (odd) is tossed at the beginning of an intermediate rhythmic structure point. With regard to durations I had become conscious (through having settled so consistently in the Concerto on half-notes) that every note is a half-note but travelling as it were at a different speed. To bring about greater distinctions of speed I have changed the notation so that I now use, for instance:

as a simple duration and measure it out on the space of the mss. with a ruler. For the present piano work I also control the sound-aggregate charts in the following way: 4 in any direction (vertical or horizontal) give all 12 tones + in the case of mobility, 4 in time bring all 12 tones (repetitions allowed + no series present). 1 9 5 0 – 1 9 6 1  |  151

I interrupted the writing of this piece to write my Imaginary Landscape No. 4 for 12 radios using exactly the same ideas.278 Every element is the result of tossing coins, producing hexagrams which give numbers in the I-Ching chart: 6 tosses for a sound, 6 for its duration, 6 for its amplitude. The toss for tempo gives also the number of charts to be superimposed in that particular division of the rhythmic structure. The rhythmic structure is now magnificent because it allows for different tempi: accelerandos, ritards etc. The radio-piece is not only tossing of coins but accepts as its sounds those that happen to be in the air at the moment of performance. The chart for sounds in this case aggregate tunings: e.g.,

I have some recordings of this and will send you one; you will also shortly receive your recording by Tudor. He has been very busy and on tour and then finally ill in a hospital + so has not yet sent you a record. He was moved by your letter to him but he has a curious inability to write letters; if you ever receive one from him it will be something of a miracle. I miss you terribly and should love to come to Paris; but I have no money to do so and am only living from day to day. How I hope that we will soon see each other again! Tudor speaks of coming to Paris next Spring. You would enjoy each other profoundly, I am sure. One day your father wrote to me from Ohio, + I have always regretted that we failed to meet. You can see from my present activity how interested I was when you wrote of the Coup de Des of Mallarmé.279 And I have been reading a great deal of Artaud. (This because of you and through Tudor, who read Artaud because of you.) I hope I have made a little clear to you what I am doing. I have the feeling of just beginning to compose for the first time. I will soon send you a copy of the first part of the piano piece. The essential underlying idea is that each thing is 278. Cage’s Imaginary Landscape No. 4 (March No. 2) for twelve radios (twenty-four players and conductor) (1951). Cage provides an elaborate description of his composing means for this work in “To Describe the Process of Composition Used in Music of Changes and Imaginary Landscape No. 4,” in Silence (Middletown, CT: Wesleyan University Press, 1961), 57–60. 279. Boulez wrote to Cage several times referencing “the Mallarmé,” referring to his Un coup de dés, a work for choir and orchestra based on Mallarmé’s poem of the same name. It was ultimately an aborted project.

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itself, that its relations with other things spring up naturally rather than being imposed by any abstraction on an “artist’s” part. (see Artaud on an objective synthesis) This is all written in a great hurry, + forgive me; I have to leave to give a concert of music in the Colgate University, up north. Will write again soon. P.S. I asked Varèse (many months ago) about the Ionization,280 as you asked me to do. He says that there is only one set of parts and that he has to keep it here. However, one could get the score easily from New Music Edition, 250 W. 57th St., N.Y.C. Maro + Anahid Ajemian will be in Europe next fall and winter playing recitals and Krenek’s Double Concerto he wrote for them (with orchestra).281 Perhaps Désormière282 wd. like to do it. (Although I don’t personally like the piece). I have not been very well and am still not; there are so many things wrong that I wdn’t know where to ask the Doctor to begin. P. S. 2 Merce and I went on another concert tour last month to San Francisco, Denver, Seattle, etc. I always take your music with me (spreading the gospel). Please don’t forget to send me the Quartet as soon as it is available. My devotion to your work does not diminish but rather grows. David says his playing of your Sonate is improving and that it will be better than ever. He is a magnificent pianist. We all wish either that you were here in New York or we were all with you in Paris. It would be a marvelous life.

280. Varèse’s Ionisation (1929–1931), for thirteen percussionists, the first concert-hall composition for percussion ensemble alone. It premiered at New York’s Steinway Hall on March 6, 1933, and was extremely influential, especially to composers such as Cage who were interested in both percussion and noise. 281. Double Concerto for Violin, Piano, and Small Orchestra, op. 124 (1950) by the Austrian-born American composer Ernst Krenek (1900–1991), written for Maro and Anahid Ajemian and first performed in Donaueschingen on June 10, 1951. 282. Roger Désormière (1898–1963), French conductor who championed modern music. With Hermann Scherchen (1891–1966) and Hans Rosbaud (1895–1962), he is generally considered as one of Boulez’s chief models as a conductor.

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To Irving Lowens283 June 1951 | 326 Monroe Street, New York I find myself in the process of writing a composition for piano called Music of Changes284 which will be played next season in New York by David Tudor. There will be four parts. Of these the first part is completed, and is being presented by Mr. Tudor this summer both at the University of Colorado and at Black Mountain College. The music uses a method of composition (the same I employed in my recent Imaginary Landscape No. 4 for 12 radios) which is derived from the I-Ching (Book of Changes) and amounts to an objective synthesis within an arbitrary rhythmic structure of the following elements: superpositions, tempi, sounds, durations and dynamics. The nature of the composition allows me to say that 30 weeks of work are involved. Not having any money or present means of livelihood, I have conceived the idea of forming an association, each associate giving money which would entitle him to a share or shares in whatever income the music will eventually produce (what, in this society, may be considered a very poor investment). However, on the basis of $50 a week (which is roughly the income I received from the Guggenheim Foundation a year ago), I estimate the value of this composition at $1500. I will keep 1 ∕ 5 of the shares, leaving 80 of them available to others. Each share will be valued at $15. On buying a share, the purchaser may stipulate whether he wishes his action to be a matter of public information or anonymous. Should someone take 5 shares ($75.), he would in the future receive 5% of any profits accruing to me from the publishing, performing or recording of this composition. At present the composition of uncommissioned music is primarily a leisure activity. If the above plan finds sufficient support, it will be an answer to the question: How can a composer of serious music make a living by pursuing his profession in this society at this time?

283. Irving Lowens (1916–1983), American musicologist and critic whose main interest was American tunebooks. President of the Music Library Association, he founded the Music Critics Association (later Music Critics Association of North America) and the American Sonneck Society (later the Society for American Music). 284. Music of Changes (1951) for solo piano, in four volumes, its title derived from the I Ching, which Cage used extensively in its composition. This was Cage’s first composition composed entirely with chance operations.

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To Norman McLaren July 1951 | 326 Monroe St., New York Dear Norman: I find as I go along in my work that everything points more and more to a music made directly on a recording means. Besides the work you are doing, Pierre Boulez and Pierre Schaeffer285 are now establishing a project in Paris for synthetic music sponsored by the French Radio. I am therefor anxious to commence such work here, but realize that an intimate familiarity with your work and the French work would be of great value. I have written to the Council of Learned Societies here asking them to support a period of travel and study. Another idea that suggests itself to me is actual employment of me by the Film Board as a composer (I have written music for part of Dreams That Money Can Buy286 and for Works of Calder). During such employment I could make the study that interests me. It was very good of you to send the material for the New Music Concert. It was greatly enjoyed.

To Lou Harrison August 10, 1951 | [New York?] Dear Lou: Thank you for the lovely post card. (I am happy too (but —herons). I finished the 2nd pt. of the Music of Changes + will now copy it which is a long task + damned painstaking on account of the measurements in space. Am now also trying to establish a project for synthetic music + a less ambitious one to get the windows washed + a plague of armored scales removed from my plants. 285. Pierre Schaeffer (1910–1995), French composer and acoustician notable for his work in musique concrète, a form of electroacoustic music consisting in part of acousmatic sound (without visible source) and generally making use of sounds created by musical instruments or the voice, as well as recorded sounds or sounds produced by synthesizers. See Pierre Schaeffer, À la Recherche d’une Musique (1952), which summarized his working methods to date. It would be published as In Search of a Concrete Music by the University of California Press (2012). 286. Music for Marcel Duchamp (1947), a five-minute solo work for prepared piano, originally written for the Duchamp portion of Hans Richter’s film Dreams That Money Can Buy. The composition evokes timbres and harmonies of Asian music, as well as the music of Satie. Few tones are used, the preparations restricted to seven pieces of weather stripping, a single piece of rubber, and one bolt.

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Have also been playing a good deal of poker on 14th Street with a gang of science-fiction writers.287 How long are you staying?

To Christian Wolff [1951] | 326 Monroe St., New York Dear Xian: Your statement perfect. The Composer’s Forum288 concert for you will go through and with Morty I am pretty sure. It might be well for the record if you wd. write a simple note saying that you understand I had made the arrangements but that you would like to have such a concert. Address it to Peggy Glanville-Hicks, 6 E. 10th St., N.Y. Don’t bother to mention Harvard since the concerts are all on wk. ends, or do bother to mention as you choose. [in margin of page 1, running across the right side and top] If you have time please look up Ellsworth Kelly,289 a painter at 31 rue St. Louis en l’Ile, give him my best regards and tell him I love his work. Also if you do that you may as well give my love to M. + Mme. Dangles, the proprietors of the Hotel Bourgogne which is 31 rue St. L. The Forum is entirely reorganized + now has a budget of $500 for each concert, pays union fees to performers! Which means since Morty wants an orchestra that you could have most anything done. Wd. love to hear an orchestral wk. by you. Finished 2nd pt. of Music of Changes. Please see if you can find Artaud’s Le Théâtre et son Double.

287. Cage refers to games hosted at the home of H. L. (Horace Leonard) Gold (1914–1996), first editor of Galaxy Science Fiction, a leading sci-fi magazine of the time whose contributors included Jack Vance, Harlan Ellison, and Robert Silverberg. Cage was a regular attendee at the weekly games. 288. The Composer’s Forum was founded in 1947 as an independent organization by Jane Hohfeld and others and centered in Northern California. Following their third season in 1949/1950, the organization became affiliated with the International Society for Contemporary Music (ISCM). Its concert seasons ran from 1947 to 1966, with two retrospective concerts in October 1983. 289. Ellsworth Kelly (b. 1923), American painter, sculptor, and printmaker, early on associated with the minimalist school.

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To David Tudor [ca. late August–early September 1951] | [New York?] Dear David, Peter Yates is on Micheltorena St. (look in the phone book); I never can remember the number, perhaps 1635. His wife Francis is a pianist and I hope you enjoy meeting them; give them my love (which in large quantity you carry around with you, I hope not too much a burden); and ask them whether you could meet Buhlig (who is old and ill but was the first to play Opus 11 and my first teacher and a magnificent lion-like person), 104 South Carondelet, and George Tremblay (at one time an amazing musician (may still be) composer pianist and improviser extraordinaire) (whose address I don’t have) and Ingolf Dahl290 (who might be able to engage you for playing or teaching at U.S.C., and who is a composer). You might enjoy Adolph Weiss, composer + 1st American to study with Schoenberg. If you see him (he was also my teacher), give him and Mitzi (his wife who cooks very well and is pleasant to talk to) my love too. (Used to be on N. Bronson). Give a concert at Yates home or perhaps in Lester Horton’s theatre on Melrose. Morty isn’t home right now but I am sure Yates can give you Antheil’s address and many more of the people he will know who will be a pleasure. Am a close friend of Pauline Schindler, 815 N. Kings Rd. If you see her my love to her. (Not a musician but a beautiful person.) All that is L.A.; going towards S.F. (Pauline might be in the Ojai Valley) see if possible Henry Miller291 (difficult to find) in the Big Sur high in the mountains over the sea. And Alan Watts in Palo Alto or San Francisco where he teaches at the place for Asiatic Studies. Doris Dennison who plays for the dancers at Mills College is one of my best friends (phone book S.F. 1206 (?) Pacific). She used to play in the percussion works and is lovely. She will know whom you should meet in S.F. among musicians (and can help towards a concert at Mills + other places). See if possible the painter Gordon Onslow Ford292 (Doris, much love to 290. Ingolf Dahl (1912–1970), German-born American composer, pianist, conductor, and teacher. 291. Henry Miller (1891–1980), American painter and writer known for his innovative cross-genre style, numbering among his controversial publications Tropic of Cancer (1934) and Tropic of Capricorn (1939), both of which were banned in the United States until 1961. Cage likely met Miller in the 1930s at the salon hosted by biologist Ed Ricketts in Monterey, California (see note 74). 292. Gordon Onslow Ford (1912–2003), British-born painter, a member of the 1930s surrealist group surrounding André Breton.

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her, will give you address + take you there.) My love to him and his wife. And Varda293 (but I don’t know where he is, maybe on a boat in the bay). And if you go farther north: Lloyd Reynolds294 (Portland, Ore.); Morris Graves and Mark Toby295 (Seattle, Wash.); and the whole town of Home on the Puget Sound across from Tacoma + a bit to the south. If you’re with M.C., my love to her. Christian is back before ye. Boulez gave him the ms. of the First Piano Sonata with a witty inscription something like: To Xian Wolff looking forward to meeting him soon again and in admiration of his so precocious talent from one who is nearly an old man. P.B. Also gave him a stack of ms. papers which is always the most demonstrative gift one can give a composer. Xian brought more fascinating information; his program with Morty (Composer’s Forum) is definite. Also his pieces to be published shortly. Boulez admired his Four Pieces you play + is having them done over Paris Radio. Boulez + Heughel miserable because you don’t record 2eme.296 Will pay all expenses. Boulez commissioned by bbc to do 2 piano piece (new one, for October, which he will play with Grimaud) (shld. be with you.) Also most astonishing news an American trip for Boulez is in the offing either this next season or the following according to J. L. Barrault’s plans.297 Carol + Earle Brown were here for 2 days + I’m glad you met them;298 you gave them much delight. Poor Morty’s life is all mixed up + I’m afraid his present music too. At least I find I cannot “accept” his present work which is an Intersection over an Arty Shaw record.299 I feel we are somewhat estranged over this work which I find 293. Jean Varda (1893–1971), Greek artist, known for his collage work; taught at Black Mountain College in 1946. He and Onslow Ford co-owned the boat Vallejo, which was used as a studio space. 294. Lloyd Reynolds (1902–1978), American calligrapher and teacher, from 1929 to 1969 a professor at Reed College in Portland, Oregon. 295. Morris Graves (1910–2001) and Mark Tobey (1890–1976), American painters who, with Guy Anderson, Kenneth Callahan, and William Cumming, founded the Northwest School. Cage had met both men while at the Cornish School and championed their works throughout his life. 296. Cage means Philippe Heugel, publisher of Boulez’s Second Piano Sonata, which Tudor would perform in a New Year’s concert. 297. Jean-Louis Barrault (1910–1994), French actor, director, and mime. From 1947 to 1956, Boulez was musical director for the Compagnie Renaud-Barrault, founded by Barrault and Madeline Renaud. 298. Cage’s first reference to Carolyn Brown (b. 1927), soon to become Cunningham’s leading dancer, and her husband, Earle Brown (1926–2002), an American composer soon to be a member of the New York School who developed innovative formal and graphic notational systems, seen in December 1952 (1952), and such open form works as Available Forms I & II (1961; 1962). 299. Arthur Jacob Arshawasky (1910–2004), known familiarly by his stage name, Artie Shaw,

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not “valable.” It is psychological; however, he’s breaking up with Val Lombard who inspired it, and now he’s again at sea, poor fellow, searching for something someone, etc. I always thought we were close friends but in the last few days I realize something else; I too am at sea right now with regard to Morty. He looks always for an easy way out. Of course they’re all around us and all “valable”; maybe you can put me straight about all this. I only feel helpless and silent for the words that reach him come from that ignoramus Danny Sterne.300 Then too, Morty’s analyst has been away. An ugly paragraph (the above). The second part of the Music of Changes awaits your life-giving attention; it is taking well over a month to copy. When you come back you will be so very welcome (me a fish out of water until then). Henry Cowell’s article on X., Morty + yrs. truly in Oct. issue of Quarterly.301

To David Tudor and M.C. Richards302 [ca. late September 1951] | Location not indicated Dear David (and M.C.), I am glad to hear you are in the land of the happy night. Enjoy yourselves. My own feelings towards you were always those of wishing to flow in where it looked like water was absent (mixed with an inherited missionary attitude, itself not practicing what it preached). At any rate I feel very free that you are loving. David asks where he can read about clinging. If it is clinging to, anthologies of love poetry; if about no longer clinging, the Sutras, Eckhart, etc. American clarinetist, composer, and bandleader. The most popular of his recordings was the 1938 version of Cole Porter’s “Begin the Beguine.” 300. Properly, Daniel Stern (1928–2007), American cellist and composer, author, studio executive, and college professor, in turn. It is uncertain how Feldman and Stern were associated, or why Cage was moved to make this derisive comment. Stern does not appear to have been published at the time. The only coincidence of the two men’s lives can be found in Stern’s having attended a writing course at the New School in New York, where Cage taught. 301. Henry Cowell, “Current Chronicle,” The Musical Quarterly 38, no. 1 (Jan. 1952): 123–136, which assays the recent music of Cage, Feldman, Wolff, and Boulez. 302. M(ary) C(aroline) Richards (1916–1999), American poet, potter, and writer, best known for her book Centering in Pottery, Poetry, and the Person (Middletown, CT: Wesleyan University Press, 1964). In 1945 she joined the faculty at Black Mountain College, where she later met Cage, Cunningham, and Tudor. As this letter suggests, in 1951 she and Tudor formed a significant partnership.

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D’accord re Watts.303 He is however a magnificent cook. When it comes to art he reminds me of the Boston Cooking School book’s remark on the subject of very old woody beets.304 Your gleanings from Debussy and Artaud gave much pleasure. Delighted that you like my poetry. I shall of course go into the vocal choral operatic theatrical spectacular world (and far). Your plans about touring and M.C.’s coming to N.Y. sound very good. The Paris trip (if it has Boulez as an objective) may not be necessary, since Jouvet’s death makes Barrault (+ Boulez) next in line.305 (Incidentally a new letter from B[oulez] with charts, etc. + an indication of departure from le numéro douze, not however from l’idée serial. However he points out that [counterpoint], melody, architecture, harmony, etc., no longer exist, c’est plutôt un evenement globale. (a new 2’ [two-minute] pn. work I ask him to photostat for us) Haven’t seen Kiesler.306 Know nothing consequently re Juilliard. Have been asked to organize concerts at the Cherry Lane Theatre (which natch shall do; want David to play a concert (or 2 or 3)); also wish to put on the Satie Vexations (12 hrs. + 10 minutes); Morty + Xian, etc. Theatre will be free. But we will have to plan when David will be in town. Looks like a rare event from your schedule. Now well into 3rd pt. of Music of Changes —a new piece (I changed nothing but it did). Is Strang as dull as ever.307 A pity I didn’t tell you to see Tamada; hope you did however. Morty + I are fine; he works however very little + says a vacation is now necessary to keep him out of bat’s house either to the North or to the South. Girl he loved skipped off to Mexico to marry another. He back again with Sarah who weighs a full 70 lbs! I am by the way neither a soul nor lonely. I disagree with Debussy re Bach + especially with (an idea of the truth!!!).308 303. Alan (Wilson) Watts (1915–1973), British-born American philosopher and writer, best known for his interpretive work on Eastern philosophy. It is likely that Cage read Watts’s The Way of Zen (1957). 304. As Martin Iddon has nicely sleuthed, this passage refers to Fannie Merritt Garmer’s The Boston Cooking-School Cook Book (1896) and specifically to the passage that reads “Old beets will never be tender, no matter how long they may be cooked.” 305. Louis Jouvet (1887–1951), French actor and director, a close collaborator with Jean Giraudoux. 306. Frederick Kiesler (1890–1965), from 1933 to 1957 scenic director for the Juilliard School of Music in New York. 307. Gerald Strang (1908–1983), Canadian-born American composer, a fellow student with Cage and also Schoenberg’s teaching assistant at the University of California, Los Angeles (1936–1938). He later composed in a style heavily influenced by Schoenberg’s twelve-tone technique. 308. It is generally known that Debussy was worshipful about Bach and that Cage much preferred

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Looking forward very much to seeing you; am naturally anxious to hear you play and want very much to know whether my new work meets with your pleasure. [in the left margin] Hoping you play Morty’s Intersection by now. Must be glorious.

To Earle Brown November 5, 1951 | 326 Monroe Street, New York Dear Earle Thank you for your letter. Am incapable of making a list of Mexican instruments, —but one of my favorites is their tePonaxtli, which is a small hollowed-out log with an H cut in the top which makes two tongues, two pitches of a marvelous quality. They also have another instrument, a kind of hand-worked wooden ratchet (not round however, —just a notched wooden affair); don’t know latter’s name. You might get a conch shell (blown), the clay bells are not much force. Whistles are fine. Otherwise advise touristic approach. Drums of course. Glad to hear we are about to receive your new work. Full of anticipation. Music of Changes is in 4th pt. Should be finished by Xmas. Morty is off next Saturday to spend a week in Ottawa investigating Norman McLaren’s work. Will send you an article I’ve gotten together on music once it’s published. (Statements by Boulez, Morty, Xian + yrs. truly)

To David Tudor [Mid-November 1951] | [New York] Dear David: The way you can get the Aeolian Harp (I finally just this moment reached Henry) is write to Colin McPhee, Shady, New York, and tell him that you are Mozart. Debussy has been variously quoted as having said something to the effect that Bach was a benevolent god to which all musicians should offer a prayer, to defend themselves against mediority.

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doing so at Henry’s suggestion, that there is a copy on one of the shelves in the attic which you would like to borrow.309 I would do this for you except with shifting dates + places I thought it best for you to do it. Was irritated to have to stop Music of Changes to do this piece for Marsicano,310 but it turns out a beauty which will be another available music item “Pastorale” (6 minutes); 7 notes are prepared, the innards are used extensively, the whole thing tossed; Marsicano pleased. Another 3 days or so + it is finished; then back to Changes. Morty returned with notes re McLaren which give history and technical details of s[oun]d track techniques. So are adding that to the Transformations article. The Quarterly (H. just told me refused our statements not his article, however, on the ground that they are unintelligible (Boulez, me, Xian, Morty), so he + I are happy that they are appearing in Transformations.) The Satie Vexations cannot be done in the Cherry Lane (due to contracts); so after discussions with Morty we would like the two remaining concerts (Jan. 1, New Year’s Day + Feb. 13) to be your concerts, all profits to go to you. Is that O.K.? Please answer so that I can arrange publicity giving programs. If you are agreeable we wd. like the New Year’s concert to be the 4 of us (B. F. X. + yrs. truly).311 The Vexations will take place later in 9th Street art gallery, circumstances where the 24 hrs. will not be a crucifix.312 I was flabbergasted by your playing and your awareness. You are (and then no qualifications necessary). What is your attitude towards Earle’s piece?

309. Cowell’s Aeolian Harp (c.1923), scored for string piano, which calls for a novel technique wherein the pianist variously activates the strings of the piano directly, with the hands. 310. Merle Marsicano (1903–1983), a relatively unknown Philadelphia-born dancer-choreographer for whom Cage composed the first of his Two Pastorales (1951–1952). Marsicano first performed Cunningham’s choreography at the Kaufmann Concert Hall, Young Women’s and Young Men’s Hebrew Association, New York, on December 9, 1951, with Tudor at the piano. 311. Tudor’s program for the New Year’s Day concert at the Cherry Lane Theatre consisted of Boulez’s Second Piano Sonata, Wolff’s For Prepared Piano, and premiere performances of Feldman’s Intersection 2 (1951) and Cage’s Music of Changes. 312. Satie’s Vexations was not performed as Cage envisioned until September 9–10, 1963, at the Pocket Theatre in New York, a marathon undertaking involving a relay team of pianists and lasting some eighteen hours and forty minutes. (See Cage’s reflections on the event in his letter to J. Bernlef, Dec. 4, 1965.)

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To Pierre Boulez Summer 1952 | [New York] Dear Pierre: Forgive me for not having written sooner; by rights I should offer you countless apologies but then that would just take your time. I have been busy. Your last long letter was marvelous and gave much pleasure. I am very anxious to hear your etude for a single sound and also the more recent one for seven.313 Can’t you get the radio to send copies over here? I am hoping to arrange a concert next season either wholly or in part electronic; if wholly, we would have to draw heavily on “musique concrète,” because our work proceeds quite slowly. So far we have 3 movements of a work by Christian Wolff,314 an inconsequential work of mine for 43 phonograph records (Imaginary Landscape No 5315), and 17 seconds of a more interesting piece to which I have not yet given a title.316 After the Music of Changes (which I trust you have received;) I wrote Two Pastorales for prepared piano.317 The pianist also blows whistles. And in another piece which changes its title according to where it is performed (e.g., 66 W. 12th), bowls of water, whistles and a radio are used in addition to the piano.318 Both pieces are composed in the same way as the Changes but have fewer super313. Cage refers here to the first of two “musique concrète” (see note 285) etudes composed by Boulez, the first a study on a single sound (Étude sur un son) and the second a study on a seven-sound chord (1951–1952). Étude sur un son was included in Boulez’s program at Columbia University’s McMillan Theatre (later Miller Theatre) on December 22, 1952. Both etudes were later used as musical accompaniment, separated by dance sequences, by Cunningham for his Fragments (1953), first performed at the Theater de Lys (later Lucille Lortel Theater) in New York on December 29, 1953. 314. Christian Wolff, For Magnetic Tape (1952). 315. Cage’s Imaginary Landscape No. 5 (1952), for any forty-two long-playing recordings, the score to be realized on magnetic tape. In Cage’s realization, he mostly used jazz recordings, largely because the dance for which the work was created —Jean Erdman’s Portait of a Lady —was inflected with jazz rhythms. The realization was made with Tudor, with technical assistance from Louis and Bebe Barron (see note 319). 316. Cage’s first reference to Williams Mix (1953), an extraordinary composition for eight tracks of ¼-inch magnetic tape that required splicing together more than six hundred recorded sounds to create a work of less than five minutes’ duration. Its sounds fall into six categories: A (city), B (country), C (electronic), D (manually produced), E (wind produced), and F (“small,” requiring amplification). Cage had much assistance, not only from Tudor and the Barrons, but also from Earle Brown, Ben Johnston, and others. The work would be first heard in Urbana, Illinois (March 22, 1953). 317. Cage’s Two Pastorales (1951–1952) for prepared piano, first performed in New York on February 10, 1952. 318. Cage’s Water Music (1952), a theatrical piece for solo pianist using radio, whistles, water containers, and a deck of cards, with the score mounted as a large poster, visible to the audience. The title of the work should change to reflect the location and date of the performance.

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positions and so the density is slight. The 66 W. 12 piece is notated according to actual time and the performer uses a stop watch to determine his entrances. The phonograph piece was done in 18 hrs. because it was needed for a dance program. And since it is on tape it brought about my present connection with Louis and Bebe Barron,319 who are sound engineers. David Tudor helped make this first piece and so enjoyed the work that he said he would prefer to do such work to teaching, as far as making a living was concerned. So shortly after that I raised $5,000 (given by Paul Williams320) which we divide 4 ways and then each month tax each member of the project to pay for the materials. We use the machines owned by the Barrons and at present have no funds for additions. The $5,000 will carry us through Nov. 15 and assures us of 2 full days per wk in the studio. We have 2 tape recorders. Louis Barron has an arrangement for variable speed but it is rather makeshift. The sound is in the middle of the tape and the tape travels at 15 or 7½ inches per second. (I envy you your 77 cm.) For the piece we are now making I use the same method again as in the Music of Changes, but there are a few modifications: the sounds are classified in six groups which are overlapping: A = city sounds; B = country sounds; C = electronic sounds; D = music, especially manually produced “musical” sounds; E = vocally produced sounds and vocal music; F = small sounds which require amplification to be useful. These capital letters which refer to source are followed by three letters, c or v, meaning, roughly controlled or variable. The first refers to frequency, the second to overtone structure, the third to amplitude. A line drawn underneath the capital letter indicates a duration control, rhythmic pattern easily achieved by making a “loop”, —an endless tape. Avvv might then be a straight recording of traffic whereas Dvvv could be jazz or Beethoven. Avcv will be traffic (e.g.) having suffered a control of its overtone structure, through filters or reverberation. This is a very free way of permitting action, and I allow the engineers making the sounds total freedom. I simply give a list of the sounds needed, e.g., Evcv Fvvv (double source). If a source is ccc by nature, then v means a control. I do 319. Louis (1920–1989) and Bebe (1925–2008) Barron, American pioneers in the field of electronic music. It was in their recording studio that Cage first began work on Williams Mix (1952–1953) and Music for Magnetic Tape, with Feldman, Brown, and Tudor. The Barrons created the first entirely electronic film score for MGM’s Forbidden Planet (1956), in which they are credited not as composers but as “creators of electronic tonalities.” 320. Paul Williams (1925–1993), American architect who, with his wife, Vera (1927–2015), American illustrator and writer, initially financed the Gate Hill Cooperative, Inc., in Stony Point, New York, where they lived from 1953 to 1970 (see note 350). Cage’s Williams Mix bears his name. Williams taught at Black Mountain College, where many of the original Gate Hill Cooperative members first met.

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not specify how a sound shall be interpreted (in this regard) but leave it to the engineers. The charts for the composition involve these sounds, durations, attacks and decays, superpositions, and “n,” a fraction which is a factor in the structure and in 32 out of 64 durations. (This corresponds to flexibility of tempo.) The attacks and decays are specific cuts of the tape plus or minus from a duration point. They are also “cross-grain” use of the tape (which affects the overtone structure as well). I have organized single and double cuts (to a central pt.) and then use a “t” to indicate more complicated cuts or curves which are invented at the moment of cutting. The entire score is made like a dress-maker’s pattern —to size. A single-page = 1⅓ seconds. 8 individual tapes are made and then super-imposed if one wishes a single tape or disc in the end, but naturally more tapes are preferable with many loudspeakers. The composition however uses 16 charts and so the durations are segmented (as in the Changes) to make possible otherwise impossible situations. It often happens that, with plus and minus operations, a sound “ends” before it “begins” or even that the sound that “follows” it happens first. In general superpositions 1 to 8 increase density and those from 9 to 16 increase fragmentation. I have not dealt in this piece with the possibility of running the tape backwards except in the case of the “cross-grain” cuts, e.g.:

The number of sounds used is large. I begin with 1024 cards to make the 16 charts. A totally variable sound will have a frequency of 32 out of 1024 whereas Cccc (e.g.) will have a frequency of 2. The cards are dealt after being carefully shuffled (in one of the classical Tarot ways) into the charts. Each chart has a fund of cards available to it as the “mobility” principle (from the Changes) operates. These are refreshed as necessary. This whole thing is cumbersome in the extreme, and I now realize that as I go on I must involve computation rather than the cards with their character of uniqueness. I discovered this from the attacks and decays, where, because there are 2 factors infinite unpredictability comes about through their interaction. However, we are working, but the work is very slow. I go this week to North Carolina to teach for 3 weeks, and I think I shall simply put the students to work composing and cutting the tape.321 The piece as planned is 20 minutes, but 4 minutes alone (the first “movement”) will be 192 pages! And by the time that is finished I will surely have new ideas. 321. This seems to have been Cage’s plan, but his students at the summer session at Black Mountain College apparently balked at the task.

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As you see I have increased rather than decreased the element of chance in this work. Another thing characterizing it is the fact of many people working on it in all of its aspects. So that it is not “my” work. David Tudor has been composing superpositions 7–11. A student from Illinois worked, etc. I am anxious to have a copy of Schaeffer’s book on Musique Concrète.322 Would you ask him to send me one? I am also anxious to know your plans; it is very exciting to be looking forward to seeing you again soon and here. Naturally I can hardly wait. News of your work always pleases me and more and more one hears of it here (in the newspapers, etc.) Merce choreographed part of the Symphonie pour un Homme Seul (a terrible piece) for a festival at Brandeis University.323 There I met again Bernard Blin324 whom you probably know (was connected with Schaeffer). This last Spring I organized concerts and also gave lectures and that kept me busy too. I lectured at the University of Illinois, and they were so interested that I might conceivably go there to continue the work with magnetic tape. All my interest is now in this field, and I doubt whether I will be writing any more “concert” music. On the other hand the public here is just beginning to be aware of the “prepared piano,” so that I shall hear a performance in October of my Concerto for Prepared Piano and Orchestra, paid for by the Musicians’ Union! David Broekman,325 the conductor, would also like to play a work by you. Can a score be sent? We are hoping to hear your Polyphonie.326 David is going to play your First Sonata on programs this Summer and in the Fall.327 322. Cage refers here to Schaeffer’s 1952 publication, À la Recherche d’une Musique (see note 285). 323. Symphonie pour un homme seul (1949–1950), an important early example of musique concrète. Composed collaboratively by Schaeffer and French percussionist-composer Pierre Henry (1949–1950), it is in twenty-two movements (later twelve, in a 1966 revised version by Henry), and comprises sounds produced using turntables and mixers. Cunningham made use of two movements from the work (“Apostrophe” and “Eroica”) in his Excerpts from Symphonie pour un homme seul (1952), first performed at the Festival of the Creative Arts at Brandeis University on June 13, 1952. 324. Bernard Blin, probably the French actor who narrated the experimental film Venom and Eternity (1951), directed by Isidore Isou (as Jean Isidore Isou) and featuring Jean-Louis Barrault and Jean Cocteau. 325. David Broekman (1899–1958), Netherlands-born American composer, songwriter, and conductor, active in Hollywood in the 1930s, mostly with Universal Film Studio. He published an amusing autobiography, The Shoestring Symphony (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1948). 326. Pierre Boulez, Polyphonie X (1950–1951), a complex, wholly serial work for eighteen instruments divided into seven groups, in three movements. 327. Boulez composed a total of three piano sonatas, the first in 1946, the second in 1948, and the third in 1955–1957, although this last was revised up to at least 1963. It was the devilishly difficult

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Please keep us informed about when you will be here so that we can arrange a concert while you are here. Lectures, etc. I have the sad news that the building in which I live will be torn down in a year; but you will be here before that happens. It is a delight and now, as I write, many birds are outside on the fire-escape where I put food for them. They will put up a new 20-story building to house more people. New York is beginning to look like a prison. Whenever you want an article for a magazine on electronic music, let me know; and if anything is written besides Schaeffer’s book, I am anxious to see it. I am full of admiration for the way in which you are working and especially for the way in which you have generalized the concept of the series, and in your etude for a single sound made the correspondance between frequency and duration. I am fascinated by the correspondances between rows of different numbers. I am afraid this is a very sketchy letter and scarcely worth sending to you. However, you must realize that I spend a great deal of time tossing coins and the emptiness of head that that induces begins to penetrate the rest of my time as well. The best, I keep thinking, is that we shall meet again soon. Please greet all the friends for me. I miss you all.

[No addressee] [ca. late 1952] | Location not indicated Many delights: Brown University has written and gotten replied to; appears from Ray that Richard328 had already been invited by them to speak on sculpture in some planned festival, so we have aroused their interest; Richard himself by the way forgot to tell you that the Metropolitan has accepted his proposal re sun for $10,000 (bucks). Have been writing to Havener and Bean and have sent out circa 200 circulars representing David’s Xmas greeting list, my Mabee list and all but 17 of the Library Art list which practically put me to sleep. Have been enjoying teaching Merce’s pupils how to stop thinking and Second Piano Sonata, however, lasting some thirty minutes, in four movements, that garnered his international reputation. The work was first performed in the United States by Tudor at Carnegie Recital Hall (Dec. 17, 1950). 328. Richard Lippold. See note 138.

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feeling, and also the Lankavatara book, which is magnificent, can be said to be enlightening.329 Finished 2nd String piece which turns out full of curves, altogether different from the first one. Also copied 4'33" in another way and for MC and DT.330 Remains to be copied: new String piece (which by the way Broadus called up and said no time please send to Colorado), Radio piece, and Water Music. Carroll in particular has done very well in the composition class and Earle wrote music for her, Trio for 5 dancers: music and dance beautiful: you’ll probably get delectified by when she gets there. Also a number of movies to the point of losing interest in them, viz. Small Town Girl, Remains to Be Seen, Murder Without Crime, Double Confession, Trouble Along the Way, and The System. And lost some money in one of those marvelous saint-inspired street festivals. Not to mention Scrabble. Morty apparently going through throes of new creative action: speaks of need to discover himself; I suggested first one day, then two, then three, etc. To have tea this afternoon with Bob and Si at Orientalia plus Mme. Eta H.-S. Also went to see Monroe Wheeler331 at the Museyroom about magnetic tape and concerts; he wants letter re tape but is not very interested in the Museum’s getting involved with music again since they have just managed to get that Junior Committee out. He says he will look around for a Foundation or Angel for tape. Bob Rauschenberg332 has gotten a contract to do windows for Bonwits for August and so financial problem removed for him temporarily.333 Think that’s all the news.

329. The Lankāvatāra Sūtra, a sutra of Mahāyāna Buddhism. 330. Cage may have created three different versions of 4'33" (1952). The first, reputedly comprising all traditionally notated rests, appears to be lost; the second, written in proportional notation, was acquired from its dedicatee, Irwin Kremen, by the Museum of Modern Art in New York in 2012; the third, the “tacet” version in which each of the work’s three movements is indicated with a roman numeral and the word “tacet,” is held in the John Cage Music Manuscript Collection at the New York Public Library for the Performing Arts. Tudor premiered the work at the Maverick Concert Hall in Woodstock, New York, on August 29, 1952, and later created his own performance score, which is held in the David Tudor Archives at the Getty Research Institute in Los Angeles, California. 331. Monroe Wheeler (1899–1988), American editor and publisher, long involved in the publication and exhibitions programs of the Museum of Modern Art in New York. 332. Cage’s first reference to Robert Rauschenberg (b. Milton Eugene Rauschenberg; 1925–2008), American painter and graphic artist who, with Cage, Cunningham, and Jasper Johns, forged a new direction for American art in the middle of the twentieth century. For a beautiful chronicle of the time, see Calvin Tomkins, Off the Wall: A Portrait of Robert Rauschenberg (New York: Penguin 1980). 333. Bonwit Teller & Co., an upscale department store in New York City founded by Paul Bonwit in 1895, located at Sixth Avenue and 18th St., the intersection where Cage and Cunningham would live, at 101 W. 18th St., beginning in the late 1970s until their respective deaths.

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To David Tudor [After July 2, 1953] | Location not indicated Dear nocturnal telephonist334 have just tended to package details re s.l. and the barefoot boy: had only one other touch from a gal in burlington, vt., who wanted to know when and where and what was the tuition. have made a list of your requests and will grad. check them off; telephoned morty who is now speaking of the need for discipline. Went on Meth-E rampage lecturing Norman S. who seems to know no discipline. warned him re voices and visions, which he promptly said he was beginning to hear and have. All brought on by his declaring he will give series of concerts at Cummington and wanted music and bongos, both of which I refused and that produced Why and that in turn rampage. He has gone, and many others to Cummington, and they want me to come up there to give whatever, but the idea causes only revulsion and no iota of desire. Sari335 came back from Yaddo336 en route Cummington and displayed her new work which is the best I’ve seen from her. Presented me a beauty what Norman referred to aptly as contemporary ming. was depressed hier; had finished manuscript of 6 string pieces and taken them to aca. they should arrive there soon sent to Seymour. also sent to erle in colo. no word from Pierre; will send a telegraphic note today something like: magnifying glass hungry. am about to write songs cannot yet tell details but seems clear will do it, because it follows string business naturally and I may give radio program wnyc first sunday in august and thought of singing. (mama shocked) pleasant dinner and evening chez earle and carroll. Had seen merce’s rehearsal with new satie dances, stunning, though not by chance. saw my first 3d; not impressed.337 Sounds especially bad. why don’t they get wind of what can be done. went to hideous opera of antheil,338 cherry lane, kowtowed to by all composers incl. varese, shake hands and get a contract with 334. The sheer oddity of this letter, in both form and content, almost defies comment. Little can be explained beyond the scant footnotes provided. 335. Sari Dienes (b. Sari Chylinska; 1898–1992), Hungarian-born abstract artist, who lived for a time in the community of the Gate Hill Cooperative in Stony Point. 336. Yaddo, an artists’ community located on a four-hundred-acre estate in Saratoga Springs, New York, financed by Spencer Trask and his wife, writer Katrina Trask. 337. Perhaps Bwana Devil (1952), directed and produced by Arch Oboler and considered the first American feature-length 3D color film. It carried the tagline “The Miracle of the Age!! A LION in your lap! A LOVER in your arms!” 338. Likely Volpone (1949–52), Antheil’s third opera, to a libretto by Alfred Perry on the play by Ben Jonson. It was first performed in New York in 1953 at the Cherry Lane Theatre.

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hollywood. left visibly after first act to repair to nearest movie. yesterday got car fixed for merces trip which he looks forward to as vacation from daily work; find for first time internal surprise that i’ll not be going too. aware must study vowels and consonants at library today. dentist again friday. gloomy but not as gloomy as communication may suggest.

To Peter Yates August 4, 1953 | 326 Monroe St., New York Dear Peter: Hello! and how are you? I read your recent article about Partch339 and experimental music and decided to write to you to make clear our differences which no matter how many years pass we seem to go on having. Impermanent or transitory as the prepared piano may be, the reason does not have to do with pitch or frequency, because it moves in a path the sole concern of which is Not frequency. It becomes gradually clear to us dull-witted musicians that sound has other determinants than frequency: timbre, duration, amplitude and (as magnetic tape makes evident) attack and decay, call it morphology, how a sound begins, continues, and dies away. And the path we are on is not a path, not linear, but a space extending in all directions. Because it is no longer a question of moving along stepping stones, 12 or 43 or what have you, but one can move (or just appear) to any point in this total space. By changing just one of the 5 determinants, the position of a sound in total space changes. And needless to say each sound is unique, and is not informed about European history and theory. It seems to me that Webern was instrumental in all this, for one can see in his canons in Op. 21 awareness of the duration, timbre and amplitude and actual rather than theoretical frequency. The difficulty of course lies in his having to have canons. But that is because men are so cautious and slow. Varese’s importance for me lies in his having seen the importance of timbre, and in his having indicated the possibility of direct action. Messiaen sees that sound has all these characteristics but he goes on acting modally, gives amplitudes, for example, the number 12. Partch’s work (which I have heard via recording) is flimsy because 339. Harry Partch (1901–1974), American composer and instrument creator who worked extensively with microtones and wrote much of his music for custom-made instruments capable of playing his own forty-three-tone scale. His book Genesis of a Music (1947) was long a standard text on microtonal music theory.

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his niceties of pitch are heard in combination with sheer vulgarities of timbre, duration, amplitude, etc. By vulgarities, I mean easy way out, giving no care to. Boulez following Webern makes charts for all the characteristics of sound, the charts, unfortunately, being determined by a row, the series. This harmonizes everything in such a way as to embarass the space mentioned above and place the importance on the object in it. Keeping one’s mind on the emptiness, on the space, one can see that anything can be in it, is, as a matter of fact, in it. That it is only our thinking and caution that keeps us holding things up, that would, if we took our hands away, take care of themselves perfectly. Many stories to illustrate this but will not. My Music of Changes also has charts, but there is no series. I am working now to work without charts without any support in total space. [handwritten in the left margin, with an arrow indicating reference to what he has just written] Magnetic tape useful for this: looking for support for work with tape. Know anybody or place who might help? [return to main body of letter] You are familiar with my former ideas about structure, method, material, form? I see now my many slow transitions, one of which is tempo like streams (varying and not varying), that as long as one distinguishes as I formerly did problems remain; if one stops thinking, all those things distinguished spring back suddenly into one thing: sound in space. Needing no excuse. Sending you another brochure with this; why don’t you get someone to bring us to California?

To Charles E. Buckley340 September 15, 1953 | 326 Monroe St., New York City Dear Mr. Buckley: Thank you very much for your last letter and the interest you express in having a concert of music, November 1st. As you may know I am at present associated with David Tudor through our mutual project, Package Festival. A brochure was sent to the Atheneum late last spring, I believe. However, I am enclosing another. The Package Festival has an interesting plan with regard to fees: that each event has its own price, but that as soon as one buys more than one event, a discount begins to operate, so that should one take all nine events, 340. Charles E. Buckley (1919–2011), curator and museum administrator, at the time general curator of the Wadsworth Atheneum in Hartford, Connecticut, the oldest public art museum in the  United States. He organized exhibitions there by such artists as Alexander Calder and Josef Albers.

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a total discount of 40% is made on the established prices. The recital of contemporary music for piano which David Tudor performs is priced at $300. You state in your letter that the museum is severely handicapped as far as funds for other purposes than the purchasing of works of art. My own position with regard to this or similar situations is, frankly, if someone desires something he cannot pay for, either he goes without it or arranges to have someone else pay for it. Among artists, musicians are, economically speaking, in a weak position, for the simple reason that what they have to offer is not tangible. If, for instance, I arrange a concert of music here in New York, I will be lucky to simply come out even. The concert is literally “given.” This is particularly true of my work and the work of musicians associated with me because, contrary to the seeming spirit of this letter, we are devoted to music and not to making money from it. There is, however, as I am certain you will sympathetically understand, a limit. That limit I personally reached last season, and I am determined to follow my present procedure which is to establish prices for services rendered. This seems only natural in view of the bills from other members of society that lie unpaid on my desk. I will not apologize for my attitude. On the other hand it is my own; therefor I give you David Tudor’s address, and if you wish to pursue the matter of a contributed concert with him, you are free to do so. His address is 69 E. 4th St., New York City. His telephone: Spring 7-0865. Thank you for your very excellent handling of the tapestry of Anni Albers. And please do not consider this letter in any sense personal.

To Dr. Heinrich Strobel 341 [Late 1953] | 12 E. 17th St., New York Dear Dr. Strobel: Thank you for your letter of December 1st in which you invite my participation in next year’s Festival of Contemporary Music at Donaueschingen on Oct. 16th or 17th. If I come to Europe next October, I should like to bring David Tudor, pianist (who plays, among other works, Boulez’s 2eme Sonate, my Music of Changes). I 341. Heinrich Ströbel (1898–1970), German musicologist and critic, after World War II director of the newly formed Southwest Radio in Baden-Baden. He served as president of the International Society for Contemporary Music (ISCM) from 1956 to 1969.

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would also like to present a performance of recent music for magnetic tape by Earle Brown, Morton Feldman, Christian Wolff and myself; also I would like to have other works for instruments by these composers heard, and, finally some music for the prepared piano. Since most of this work involves special performance problems that would be virtually impossible to solve without the presence of David Tudor and myself, at least, I think that our travelling so far would warrant its being presented, even though the Music of Changes, alone, lasts the 45 minutes you mention in your letter. I would estimate that we would need (in order to present some of all our various activities) at least: 1.  A program of music for magnetic tape together with a performance of the Music of Changes (approx. 1½ hours with intermission); 2.  A program of piano music together with new music for 2 prepared pianos played by Tudor and myself (first performance) and, possibly, if Pierre Boulez is willing, including Boulez’s Structures for 2 Pianos played by Boulez and Tudor and music by Earle Brown, Morton Feldman and Christian Wolff; and 3. The inclusion on orchestral programs of works by Brown, Feldman, Wolff and myself (possibly my work for 12 radios). If the performance of all this music seems to you to place too much emphasis on these composers within the Festival limitations, we would certainly be willing to have some of the events be informally announced, that is to say, outside the regular programs, but, nevertheless, available to those especially interested. I have no particular idea as to the charges you ask me to draw up, but should like to hear from you what the funds of the Festival will allow you to offer. Let me say that I have for long admired the policy of the Donaueschingen Festival, and that I have only regretted not being able, because of geography, to attend.

To Morton Feldman March 15, 1954 | 12 E. 17th St., New York Dear Morty Under separate cover, I am sending you a copy of your completed work for magnetic tape.342 Please sign the enclosed release and return it to me. 342. Intersection (1953), realized in eight channels with assistance from Cage, Brown, and Tudor.

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It has been a great source of sorrow to me to lose your friendship. I trust and hope that all goes well with you.343 Please let me know your wishes with regard to loudspeakers: (whether all 8 should be heard from all 8 or whether single tracks from single speakers.)

To Dr. Wolfgang Steinecke344 March 30, 1954 | Location not indicated Dear Dr. Steinecke: Mr. Everett Helm was kind enough to give me your address, and since, with David Tudor, I have been invited by Dr. Heinrich Strobel to perform a new work of mine for two prepared pianos in Donaueschingen next October 17, I am writing to ask you whether something can be arranged also at Darmstadt. One consideration is essential, due to Dr. Strobel’s wishes; that is, that no engagement take place before the one at Donaueschingen. Mr. Tudor and I are not primarily a two-piano team. I am essentially a composer, whereas Mr. Tudor is an extraordinary virtuoso. His repertoire includes work by Pierre Boulez, Christian Wolff, Earle Brown, Morton Feldman and myself, besides more familiar composers. He is devoted to advancing contemporary music. My hopes and intentions with regard to this coming trip are not only conFeldman’s only work for magnetic tape, it was long considered lost but was ultimately found in the archives of the John Cage Trust at Bard College. 343. Cage and Feldman’s estrangement ostensibly had to do with Cage’s welcoming Brown into the triad of composers previously comprising the New York School (Cage, Wolff, and Feldman), to which Feldman was opposed. There was continued strife, with Brown excising Wolff from the pack in letters and interviews and Feldman similarly excising Brown. Cage mounted a joint concert of Brown’s and Feldman’s works at New York’s Town Hall (Oct. 11, 1963) that ameliorated tension for a time, although Brown continued to emphasize his primacy to the New York School; in a 1967 letter to Peter Yates, for example, he accuses Yates of giving Cage too much credit for the idea of indeterminacy, and in a 1970 New York Times interview he referred to himself, Cage, and Feldman as the “bad boys of the American scene” in the 1950s, leaving Wolff out. See Michael Whitiker, “Morton Feldman: Conversation Without Cage,” Morton Feldman Says: Selected Interviews and Lectures, 1964–1987 (New York: Hyphen, 2006) and Stephen Chase and Philip Thomas, Changing the System: The Music of Christian Wolff (Burlington, VT: Ashgate, 2010). 344. Wolfgang Steinecke (1910–1961), German music critic and director of the Darmstadt International Summer Courses for New Music (Internationale Ferienkurse für Neue Musik) from 1948 to 1961.

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cerned with the performing of new American music, but I am also anxious to become acquainted with new works by European composers. Besides piano works we also have available works for magnetic tape, and works involving several players, such as my Concerto for Prepared Piano and Chamber Orchestra, or my Imaginary Landscape No. 4 for 12 radios. Hoping that something may be arranged at Darmstadt, and that I will soon hear from you in this connection, I am, Very sincerely yours, John Cage

To Charles Olson345 [ca. 1954] | Location not indicated Dear Charles: Your letter has produced pleasure right and left, front and back, up and down. Delighted you’re delighted. And served to wake up with a start how immediately warm I feel towards you first time we met and now again coming back from the mailbox and many times between. We are not booked solid but hope that a state of affairs will develop that brings us near B[lack] M[ountain] C[ollege] so that the festival would be there in return for food and drink and roof. There will be 10 of us: culture on wheels. Other possibility is the Institute that Merce would be connected with: we could come for that. Details; —you can discuss them with Merce and MC and David this summer. I will miss not being with you and them this summer. Truly and my love to you and all the others there. [ from Merce Cunningham] Dear Chahls: Are yew theah? Your letter touches us all very much. John was thrilled and called everybody up and read it over the phone and then gave it to me to put in the folder as our first letter along with the list of our debts so far —hoho. Do you think anything will come of it all? Will others respond as you have done? Oh I hope so . . . The Artaud is finished, rejected by Grove Press and A. A. Wyn P[ublishers] so far, telephonically rejected 345. Charles Olson (1910–1970), American modernist poet, a primary figure of the Language school. He met Cage and the American poet Robert Creeley (1926–2005) while a visiting professor at Black Mountain College and entered into a lengthy correspondence with the latter that was later published in ten volumes by Black Sparrow Press from 1980 to 1990.

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by Pantheon and New Directions, and undaunted.346 The First Manifesto is at Accent, and I’m waiting. The whole book’s rewritten from what you saw of it. Could probably stand more, but I can’t for the moment. I would send you a copy of the whole ms. if you would Promise to read it, and return it to me eventually . . . I have a pain in my heart for my homeland and all of you who are in it. I can hardly wait to smell the smells again and feel things underfoot. Can I really? Can I really? . . . It would be so wonderful to hear from you about your doings. And where can one come by the new origin of you?

To Helen Wolff 347 [Undated, c. April 11, 1954] | 12 E. 17 St., New York Dear Helen: (I typewrite because the pen is so bad.) The piece348 is not actually silent (there will never be silence until death comes which never comes); it is full of sound, but sounds which I did not think of beforehand, which I hear for the first time the same time others hear. What we hear is determined by our own emptiness, our own receptivity; we receive to the extent we are empty to do so. If one is full or in the course of its performance becomes full of an idea, for example, that this piece is a trick for shock and bewilderment, then it is just that. However, nothing is single or uni-dimensional. This is an action among the ten thousand: it moves in all directions and will be received in unpredictable ways. These will vary from shock and bewilderment to quietness of mind and enlightenment. If one imagines that I have intended any one of these responses, he will have to imagine that I have intended all of them. Something like faith must take over in order that we live affirmatively in the totality we do live in. 346. M.C. Richards’s translation of Antonin Artaud’s The Theater and Its Double would be published four years later by Grove Press (1958). 347. Helen Wolff (1906–1988), American editor and publisher, co-founder with her husband, Kurt Wolff (1887–1963), of Pantheon Books in 1942, known for such important early English-language editions as the “Bollingen Series,” which included Richard Wilhelm’s The I Ching or Book of Changes (Series 19). Christian Wolff was their son. This letter is a response to a critical letter Helen Wolff wrote to Cage on April 9, 1954, after seeing the program in advance of the first New York City performance of 4'33" that took place on April 14 at the Carl Fischer Concert Hall at 165 W. 57th St., performed by David Tudor. The lengths of the three movements in this performance were 30", 2'23", and 1'40". 348. 4'33", first performed by David Tudor on August 29, 1952, at the Maverick Concert Hall in Woodstock, New York.

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With or without my intention, my art is cheapened and made expensive. That is not my concern. A death to myself takes place in composing and in the event of the movement of this composition in the world, a second death to it as mine must take place. Otherwise I shall be in “fear and trembling,” in a perilous situation of my own imagination. You know my constant interest in “oriental thought,” and you may think this has been misused to bring about a musical action which you cannot accept. As I see it, useful art has been illustrative or significant of belief, didactic. But what is that art which is not didactic, nor symbolic, but to be experienced following having been taught? Clearly, life itself of which we have only to become aware. I am therefor not concerned with art as separate from such awareness (nor is the I Ching: Hex. 22, Grace). Another friend of mind was disturbed about 4'33" and said with some heat that I apparently thought him stupid and incapable of hearing the sounds of everyday life which he informed me he could and with pleasure. I asked him why, if in private he could hear, he was disturbed to foresee doing so in public. To this he had to say, “You have a point.” However, I do not wish to win an argument, nor will I. I also consulted the I-Ching after receiving your letter and got Exhaustion (47).349 4'33" is also a matter of consultation. Each person present will receive his own hexagram. I send this not to defend myself but out of love for you and a sense of responsibility to you and to Mr. Wolff (through my relation to Christian) from which I am not free. It is for that reason, being aware of your concern, that I repeat my practical offer: to warn your friends of the experience in store for them. You have only to give me a list of names and addresses. P. S. Incidentally, it was not I but David who decided upon the program. I do not say this to “shift the responsibility.” But that you may be informed of how things actually take place. I composed the piece nearly two years ago. It was performed by David with mixed reactions at Woodstock, N.Y. The piece exists in the repertoire and he chose to program it at the present time. I myself am detached. I am busy with other things, a new composition, concert details of management, this letter, and this springtime.

349. Cage consulted the I Ching, receiving Hexagram 47, “Exhaustion” (also known as “Oppression”) because Helen Wolff did, writing to Cage that when she consulted the I Ching over her worry about this piece, she got Hexagram 4, “Youthful Folly” (also known as “Inexperience”).

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[handwritten at the bottom of the second page of this letter] I hope your illness disappears quickly. Reading this letter I find it ministerial. That was my original intention in life: to become a Methodist minister. I move so easily into a sermon.

To Wolfgang Steinecke August 8, 1954 | Stony Point, New York 350 Dear Dr. Steinecke: Sometime ago I wrote to you to tell you that I am coming to Europe with David Tudor, pianist, and that I hoped you might arrange something in Darmstadt while we are in Germany. Our first appearance is at Donaueschingen, October 17. Then Zurich (radio) October 18; Köln (the opening of the series “Musik der Zeit”) the 19th; Paris (a recital at the Ecole Normale de Musique) the 22nd; Brussels (radio) the 26th; Hilversum (radio) a date as yet unestablished; London (a recital sponsored by the Institute for Contemporary Arts) the 29th; we sail for New York Nov. 10 from Le Havre. I hope that you will be able to arrange a recital in Darmstadt. Mr. Tudor is an extraordinary pianist and his repertoire is of the most advanced American music as well as that he plays the sonatas of Pierre Boulez and other contemporary European works.

350. This is Cage’s first letter sent from Stony Point, New York, an intentional community that, in 1955, would form the nonprofit Gate Hill Cooperative, Inc., initially funded by Paul and Vera Williams. The original members, in addition to the Williams, were Cage, Paul and Ethel Hultberg, Daniel Dewees, David and Karen Weinrib (aka Karen Karnes), Tudor, and M.C. Richards. After the first decade, Richards wrote an assessment of the collective, reporting twelve households, twenty adult members, and twenty-one (“going on 22”) children, all making use of eleven residencies, four shops, one stable, one swimming hole, and one summer house. Cage was the first secretary and was active throughout the 1950s; by the mid-1960s, his schedule prohibited his living on “the land.” He formally terminated his membership on May 1, 1972.

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To Robert Schnitzer 351 February 12, 1955 | Stony Point, New York Dear Mr. Schnitzer: This letter is a request for an appeal of the decision of the Dance Advisory Panel regarding Merce Cunningham and his Company. Since Mr. Cunningham’s work is controversial in character, an appeal seems appropriate. I propose: either that I be given the opportunity to plead the case individually to each member of the Panel, or to the Panel as a whole; or 1) to provide you with a petition reversing the Panel’s decision having that number and character of signatures you specify, and 2) to obtain that number of engagements abroad which you would specify, it being understood that if these two steps are fulfilled anta would agree to subsidize the proposed tour. I consider the project urgent for several reasons which I discuss below. Due to enthusiasm for Mr. Cunningham’s work on the part of Mr. Edwin Denby, I was told last fall in London that dance audiences there have two earnest desires: to see the Japanese Noh, and to see Merce Cunningham. Oriental friends, visiting the United States, who were devoted to the dance and informed themselves thoroughly about aspects of it, have been so enthusiastic about Mr. Cunningham’s work as to say that they had found nothing else in the dance in America of any real importance. This is perhaps understandable when it is realized that the structural aspects of Mr. Cunningham’s choreography, which seem to some “esoteric” here, are taken for granted and appear natural from an Oriental point of view. In effect, the point of view that finds Cunningham’s work “specialized” is that point of view which has not taken the Orient into consideration. Or has it taken into consideration the most advanced tendencies in contemporary western art activities. It is in reference to these that Merce Cunningham’s work stands. And, moreover, these actions are in relation to a whole world rather than a divided one. More conventional dance groups 351. Robert Schnitzer, general manager for the International Exchange Program of the American National Theater and Academy (ANTA), an organization that, with its reorganization after World War II, was dedicated to sponsoring U.S. artists and programs touring abroad. Cage’s appeal was successful.

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serve on the international scene only to maintain the old boundaries and the old misunderstandings. Those who would sign the petition suggested above would be people of this country and those to be visited who are active creatively in the world of art. Permit me to underline that it is these people the United States should approach in sending artists abroad rather than the large general audience, if, that is, an effective move towards international sympathy and good-will is contemplated. Evidence furnished me in the course of the European tour made by David Tudor and myself last fall has confirmed this belief which I hold. The non-“special” aspects of American dance are well-known abroad both through Hollywood and through recent tours. In continuing this type of export anta will be acting luxuriously. It is precisely in the case of an activity such as the one I propose that anta would be acting in a necessary way. I am impelled to take this unorthodox action of requesting an appeal because of the ephemeral nature of the dance. It depends so very much on the physical, and therefor passing, powers of the performer. Mr. Cunningham is now at the peak of his abilities, which are extraordinary. All the work he has done in this country has been done without the assistance of the critics of your panel. This has not made the obtaining of engagements in this country easy. And, whereas, in the past, engagements have been forthcoming from Universities and Colleges, these are virtually no longer obtainable due to the current low ebb of the concert business and the resulting invasion of the academic audience by the managerial monopolies. It would appear, therefor, that the international field is the one which is open at present to our activities, and, furthermore, foreign audiences are anxious to see and hear what we have to offer. Mr. Cunningham is, in short, a national resource that is in danger of being wasted. The encouragement given him this year by the award of a Guggenheim Fellowship should definitely be followed by the opportunity to perform widely. This anta can and should provide. I beg you therefor most earnestly to share my view that the decision of the Dance Advisory Panel is not final, and to move with me towards its appeal. I will be glad to take whatever steps you indicate towards a review of my application for assistance.

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To Virgil Thomson February 24, 1955 | Stony Point, New York Dear Virgil: My livelihood situation being what it is, I am spending my time trying to straighten it out. At the moment, I am trying to get some jobs in connection with animated films. Also, as I told you, I have gotten ahead of myself as regards the study of your works. I have a first draft for the Hymn Tune Symphony, and Four Saints is still notes and thoughts.352 When they gel I will be able to finish that section of the book. And then will get in touch with you about further work with the scores. I hear that Lou lives in the country now in California at Aptos.353 I think the address is simply rfd.

To Lou Harrison May 20, 1955 | Stony Point, New York Dearest Lou: Ann Halprin354 was here and told me what a pleasure it was for her to meet you, and how, because of the beautiful-writing of your letters, she would not for one moment consider sending you one typewritten, —I hereby supply the deficit. Virgil has revived his request that I write an account of his work, and I have continued what I wrote some years ago, but I am proceeding slowly with this, partly because I have been giving much time to correspondance to bring about a world tour for Merce and his Company, together with David and myself, ten in all. Re latter, I have no idea whether I shall be successful, for it is extremely 352. Thomson’s first orchestral work, Symphony on a Hymn Tune (1926–1928), and his first opera, Four Saints in Three Acts (1927–1928), to a libretto by Gertrude Stein. 353. Indeed, Lou Harrison moved in 1953 to then-rural Aptos, California, an unincorporated part of Santa Cruz county. It was rural in 1953 and remained what any New Yorker might consider “country” well into the twenty-first century: the 2010 census records indicate a population of 6,220. 354. Anna Halprin (b. 1920), American choreographer and pioneer in the expressive arts healing movement who successfully built a postmodern dance community. On July 13, 1957, Cunningham would deliver a lecture-demonstration on Halprin’s “deck,” a congregation space for contemporary dance and dancers.

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difficult to get enough engagements to pay the expenses of ten people. One should certainly have an agent (which I have become) for this purpose, but the big ones have no interest in what we are doing, and the little ones have, they say, not large-enough offices to make such a tour profitable, not for us, but for them. Therefor I have let this work fall into my lap, and, if, at the moment, you think of me as musician, it must be in terms of birds and wind in the trees, which, when I hear, I think of you. Very often I think of you as I go through the woods, “stalking” as one of my manuals has it; we seem both at the same moment to have moved to the country, if I may discount B[lack] M[ountain] C[ollege]. I have discovered such a full hunger for nature within me that now nothing is as important as rocks and plants are. On the whole I am more attracted to flora than to fauna. I find the occupation of attempting an identification of a toadstool, for instance, one of the most difficult and absorbing tasks I have ever taken on. One of the most joyous exhibitions I have ever seen is the one currently at the M[useum] of M[odern] A[rt] of Indian arts and crafts, and in connection with it several performances were given, principally by Shanta Rao and Southern Indian musicians, and by Ali Akbar Khan and Chatur Lal, Northern Indian musicians.355 These performances were the best I have had the luck to be at of Indian dance and music. Although the musical improvisations in this case lasted only about an hour, I have heard that Ali A. Khan improvised once for 24 hrs! The musicians had small brass hammers, beautiful bottles (of water?) and supplies of powders which from time to time (the music being carried on by the others playing) they used to bring the instruments back to their original tuning. And the element of contest that Henry always spoke of in Indian music was obvious to me for the first time: its effect was one of good, urgent fun. Currently I am also building a rock wall that will be one of the walls of my house. If my tour plans materialize, we shall be in California during much of November, and I hope we will get together then. So far I have an invitation from Ucla for a three-day verbal shindig, and arrangements with Santa Barbara and SF Dance Leagues. However, Ann Halprin tells me that the League’s arrangements for Jean E[rdman] were not very successful and warns me that Mervin Leeds is not too efficient in these matters. Have you any thoughts in this regard? And do you know names and addresses of people I might contact in the Monterey-Carmel area or in your own more immediate neighborhood? 355. Cage refers to the MoMA exhibition Textiles and Ornamental Arts of India, which opened on April 13, 1955. Indian musicians Ali Akbar Khan, Chantur Lal, and others gave a performance on April 19, the troupe’s first U.S. visit, introduced by Yehudi Menuhin.

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To Jonathan Williams356 June 30, 1955 | Stony Point, New York Dear Jonathan Williams: Thank you for your letter of June 24. I cannot honestly say that your plans interest me, for, though you mention interest in “experimental pocket-books” devoted to largely “neglected” artists, your plans are in various ways repetitions of actions already made in the not-too-distant past. E.g., Ruggles, Ives, Satie. The Ruggles pamphlet has long been available and is currently being reprinted in The Score in London. A large comprehensive book by the Cowells has just appeared on Ives. Several books on Satie exist, and his writings are available. The only thing I can think of with regard to Satie that would be useful would be publishing M.C. Richards’ translation of his play, Le Piege de Meduse,357 which is too little known, probably with the music which has only appeared in limited edition. It would mean, however, quite a lot of corresponding to get permissions, for many companies are involved in the publishing of Satie. The jazz projects are probably of interest to some, though it seems to me Russell has written some books.358 What strikes me in this connection is the need to write about Russell himself. He was, before he became too devoted to jazz, an extraordinary composer. Few people know this (see above, largely neglected) and it would be really interesting to issue his music and words about it.359 356. Jonathan Williams (1929–2008), American poet, photographer, and graphic artist, founder of the Jargon Society and publisher of Jargon Press, Highlands, North Carolina. He was closely associated with the Black Mountain poets. 357. Satie’s Le piège de la Méduse (1913), a play in one act with text and incidental music by the composer. The first printed edition of the play appeared in 1921 and contained cubist woodcut engravings by Georges Braque. The piano version of the music was published in 1929, shortly after Satie’s death; the orchestral score was not published for another forty years. Cage staged the work as “The Ruse of Medusa” at Black Mountain College on August 14, 1948, as part of his infamous “Satie summer”; music was performed by Cage, the work was directed by Helen Livingston and Arthur Penn, and the cast included R. Buckminster Fuller, Elaine de Kooning, Cunningham, and others. 358. A leading authority on early New Orleans jazz, William Russell (see note 46) made many recordings for his American Music Records and wrote many articles, some of which appeared in The Jazz Record Book (n.p.: Smith and Durrell, 1942). In 1958 he co-founded and became curator of the Hogan Jazz Archive at Tulane University. 359. Russell’s cause would be taken up years later by Don Gillespie, American music historian and longtime employee of C. F. Peters/Henmar Press, in time Cage’s music publisher. See “Interview with William Russell by Don Gillespie and Donel Young,” Percussive Arts Society Research Proceedings 1 (June 1991).

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I have not found Monk interesting. The way to issue Wolpe words is on a record so you can hear the noises he makes which are really interesting. Forgive me if I throw cold water. Experimentation in music is no longer Ives, Ruggles, Varese; right now it is Stockhausen,360 Boulez, Wolff, Brown, Feldman and Yours Truly

To Christian Wolff March 28, 1956 | Stony Point, New York Dear Christian, This may not turn into a very long letter, because as usual am very busy and scheming. I have just finished the first draft of my book on Virgil Thomson’s work. I don’t know whether you knew about it, but I set to and wrote 244 pages plus a definitive list of his works plus timings, instrumentation, etc. that goes on for 27 pages. Will do same with articles. And now I am in the midst of planning concerts for the late Spring here (six Mondays: 4 in May and two in June); Music and Dance, and a little more spreading out than previously: less manifestoish; e.g., Juilliard Qt. wd. play, say, all Morty’s qts. plus the 5 pieces of Webern and a Stravinsky early deal. What would you like especially to have played by you? The new trio you mention? Please inform. Also is there anything of Maxwell? And any other ideas you have. Big problem in connection with all this is raising the money, for it will be another Union deal, but I won’t have to do the Union books and arrangements. It will cost circa $12,000! So the following subscription plan: 6 pairs of seats (2 for each evening) at $10 per seat, equals $120. If you know of people here whom I cd. contact with this proposition please return names (and if poss. addresses by return mail); or if you think of some better way, proceed, and I hope it all comes about. Merce is in Mexico at present teaching for the government (Bellas Artes).361 360. Karlheinz Stockhausen (1928–2007), German composer, known for his work in electronic music, aleatory, serial composition, and musical spatialization. In time, he and Boulez would be known as the foremost European composers of the late twentieth century. 361. More fully, the Teatro de Bellas Artes. According to Carolyn Brown, this was an invitation from Mexico’s Art Ministry, and one Cunningham was loathe to accept. Money was tight, however, so he spent five weeks in Mexico teaching.

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I am now in my new house; and it is a pleasure.362 Not all yet in order but a freedom to the spirit. And we have snow still! Must “cut” V.T. book down to 150 pages.

To Virgil Thomson May 5, 1956 | Stony Point, New York Dear Virgil, My telephone is not yet installed; when it is, you will have the number. In the meantime, you can reach me best by calling Merce (al5-7240), or by making a person-to-person call to me at Haverstraw 9-4522. [handwritten note at the top, with an arrow to this position] Personal Phone Haverstraw 9-3561 Your friend of the bulbs was interested in my friend of the rhododendrons. I don’t remember your friend’s name; but I promised to let him know about mine. Would you tell him that his name is Guy G. Nearing,363 and that he can be reached in Ramsey, New Jersey? Whenever you or Maurice or Roger would enjoy a visit to my neck of the woods, you would be most welcome. Here are a few ways to get there: the most enjoyable: Cross the George Washington Bridge, taking the Palisades Interstate Parkway north to 9W. Continue North to Haverstraw. Turn left on 202 going west to 45 and reenter there the Palisades Pkway. Go north on this to Letchworth Village-Willow Grove Road Exist (the first one you will come to). Turn left on Willow Grove Rd., reaching, after ¼ mile, the Blue Note Tavern on your left. At this point the road forks: take the right-hand fork. Pass by a Mushroom Co. on your left. The very next property on your left is ours. You will see a Pottery sign, and the mailbox on the right has many names 362. Since his move to Stony Point in the summer of 1954, Cage had been living in the attic of a communal house with David and Karen Weinrib, Tudor, and M.C. Richards. In time, each would have his or her own quarters, Cage’s being half of a small house built at the end of a private road (the other half inhabited by Paul and Vera Williams). Cage’s apartment was a single room, kitchenette, and bath, with two outside walls made entirely of glass. It was during this period that Cage developed his keen interest in mushrooms, which grew in great abundance on “the land.” 363. Guy Nearing (1890–1986), American writer and horticulturist, a prominent hybridizer of rhododendrons. Nearing guided Cage in his mushroom study and together they revitalized the New York Mycological Society in 1962. See letter “To the New York Mycological Society” dated December 11, 1964.

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including mine. Cross the bridge and follow the private road up the hill. That is where I live. the sPeediest: Go through the Lincoln tunnel, taking route 3 to route 17, following this to Suffern. Turn right on 202, continuing to 45 and proceeding as detailed above. the PUblic Ways: Take Ferry at 42nd St. and train to West Haverstraw, and telephone or take taxi to “Pottery” on Willow Grove Rd. Take Mohawk Bus from Port of Authority to West Haverstraw, and as above. Take Short Line Bus to Suffern; this is the fastest way. But using it, do not take a taxi, but just telephone. (Or telephoning ahead of the trip would allow me to meet your bus or train.)

To Nene364 May 10, 1956 | Stony Point, New York Dear Nene, Thanks very much for your letter of the fourth of May. I have just spoken with Merce and with Bob, each shortly, because just now we are all busy. Merce has just contracted to dance with his company at the Pillow,365 July 11–14, and for this appearance must make a new work (Nocturnes with music by Satie and set by Bob Rauschenberg). Right now he is preparing for Notre Dame on the 18th, and doesn’t see how he would have time for The Seasons. He also thinks that the props, etc., are not all still existant. Myself, I think it is a very good idea, and suggest that you ask Lincoln366 about it; if the material is available, even if it didn’t happen this summer, it could some other time. I think it is an excellent choreography. 364. James Graham-Lújan (also known as Jaime or Nene), Mexican-born, Scottish-American playwright and translator of plays by Federico García Lorca. He worked closely with Lew Christensen at the San Francisco Ballet; provided the libretto to Christensen’s ballet Con Amore (March 10, 1953) and others. The Cunningham work alluded to in this letter did not materialize. 365. Jacob’s Pillow Dance, the oldest organization for dance in the United States, located in Becket, Massachusetts. Early performances took place in the Ted Shawn Theatre, designed by Joseph Franz in 1942 and named for the organization’s founder. 366. Lincoln Kirstein (1907–1996), American writer, impresario, and art connoisseur. In 1946, with George Balanchine, he founded the Ballet Society, renamed the New York City Ballet in 1948, which he served as general director until 1989. Kirstein is the dedicatee of the Cage/Cunningham collaboration The Seasons (1947), which was commissioned by Kirstein and the Ballet Society (see note 145).

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Is there a rehearsal period for choreography late in August in San Francisco? Merce plans to be in S.F. and in Idyllwild,367 and it would be very convenient for him to go back to S.F. to choreograph the new work. He, of course, is more interested in making a new work than in reviving an old one. Normally, as to money, it would be proper for each of us to have something like $500; but, we feel as you do that the work is more important than anything else. That is to say, we are anxious to do it. In this, Bob R. concurs. Nevertheless, our expenses should be paid, travelling and staying, and there should be something left over when we finish the work so that we are not stranded. Actually, I wouldn’t have to go West, since I could send the material; in Bob’s case, I think it better if he were around. Why don’t you find out what kind of a budget for the ballet could be obtained, and then we would work within it?

To Paul Henry Lang368 May 22, 1956 | Location not indicated Dear Paul Henry Lang: Following the report of your recent newspaper reading and its suite of opinions, friends telephoned me, two reading over the wire your last Sunday article, “Music by Hardware.” You err in ascribing to me a work for ten radios (the Imaginary Landscape No. 4 is for 12; Radio Music,369 to be performed May 30th at the Carl Fischer Concert Hall, is for eight); you will permit me, following the convention “even-Steven,” a few mistakes regarding your remarks. Error is an excellent thing: mine, which shall be unintentional, may induce you to an “adventure in ideas”; yours will probably bring about a new composition by me for the number of radios you mention. Will you consider such a work of mine, not yet composed, a “stunt?” You 367. Idyllwild, a town nestled in the San Jacinto Mountains in Southern California, touted as “one of the 100 best art towns in America.” 368. Paul Henry Lang (1901–1991), Hungarian-American musicologist and music critic. From 1954 to 1964 he wrote for the New York Herald Tribune (succeeding Thomson), and from 1945 to 1973 edited The Musical Quarterly, America’s oldest academic journal, founded in 1915. This lengthy letter from Cage was neither answered nor published. It first appeared in Richard Kostelanetz, ed., John Cage (New York: Praeger, 1970). 369. Cage’s Radio Music (1956), for one to eight players each on one radio, first performed at the Carl Fischer Concert Hall in New York on May 30, 1956. The score indicates fifty-six different frequencies between 55 and 156 kHz, notated entirely with numbers. The work is programmed by the player(s), with or without intervening silences.

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may be, with this word, pointing out the quality of virtuosity, which I admire, and have for the past twenty-three years always admired, for it adds skill to devotion, indicating the passage of time in faithfulness to the latter. But my supposition is probably incorrect, for you declare my works, even those that seem patently conventional to me (e.g., my works, 1938–50, for the prepared piano), “preposterous as art.” Clearly, we must not be seeing eye to eye. For example, you are pleased that the machine has made possible the hitherto unequaled “dissemination” of culture we nowadays everywhere observe. It is precisely this function of the machine that, filling me with concern, makes it necessary for me, annually at Teachers College, Columbia University, to give a lecture on “How to Become Uncultured.” The question is serious, for people must decide whether their homes are going to be those of curators or the homes of artists, hangers-on-to-what-has-happened, or makers-of-what-isand-is-becoming. I gather that you find me concerned with shocking the man in the street. However, my work is almost characterized by being insufficiently exciting. I do not know whether you attended the first and only performance of the Imaginary Landscape for twelve radios. You will remember, if you did, that McMillan was jammed. Everyone stayed, though the hour became late, for my work was programmed at the end, circa 11:30. I had advised against this, for I knew the piece was quiet and tranquil, by no means a rousing finale.370 The majority of the audience expected an uproarious joke, which “never came off.” A fellow composer, in fact, apologized for me in print, theorizing that the lateness of the hour had brought about an excessive thinness of texture. But I have never gratuitously done anything for shock, though what I have found necessary to do I have carried out, occasionally and only after struggles of conscience, even if it involved actions apparently outside the “boundaries of art.” For “art” and “music,” when anthropocentric (involved in self-expression), seem trivial and lacking in urgency to me. We live in a world where there are things as well as people. Trees, stones, water, everything is expressive. I see this situation in which I impermanently live as a complex interpenetration of centers moving out in all directions without impasse. This is in accord with contemporary awarenesses of the operations of nature. I attempt to let sounds be themselves in a space of time. There are those, and you are no doubt one 370. Indeed, the programming of Cage’s Imaginary Landscape No. 4 (March No. 2) as the last piece on the program at its McMillan Theater premiere on May 10, 1951, was a questionable choice, as many radio stations were off the air at that hour.

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of them, who find this attempt on my part pointless. I do not object to being engaged in a purposeless activity. Like Debussy on a spring day I would prefer walking in the country’s fields and woods to going to a concert. Nevertheless, I do go to town now and then, and I do pass through Times Square, with which for many years I was unable to make my peace. With the help, however, of some American paintings, Bob Rauschenberg’s particularly, I can pass through Times Square without disgust. And, similarly, having written radio music has enabled me to accept, not only the sounds I there encounter, but the television, radio, and Muzak ones, which nearly constantly and everywhere offer themselves. Formerly, for me, they were a source of irritation. Now, they are just as lively as ever, but I have changed. I am more and more realizing, that is to say, that I have ears and can hear. My work is intended as a demonstration of this; you might call it an affirmation of life. Life goes on very well without me, and that will explain to you my silent piece, 4'33", which you may also have found unacceptable. Machines are here to stay, or for the time being. They can tend toward our stupefaction or our enlivenment. To me, the choice seems obvious and, once taken, cries out for action.

To Morton Feldman [ca. May 30, 1956] | Location not indicated Dear Morty, Enclosed is a kind of report on the financial aspects of the concert. Actually we did very well. I intend to pay off the loss as I can and I hope with your help. The concert as an event apart from financial aspects was one which gave me more real pleasure than many others I have worked on. And it was a marvelous audience. financial record of concert at carl fischer hall may 30, 1956 exPenses: (Paid) Stamps Letter Tickets Piano and Hall Rental Program

$52.91 31.00 11.83 130.00 12.00 1 9 5 0 – 1 9 6 1  |  189

Incidentals 10.00 Watches 56.50 Box Office and Extra Hour 35.50 Carl Fischer String Quartet 400.00 N.Y.C. tax 37.56 Federal Tax 72.93 Maro Ajemian 100.00 Grete Sultan 100.00 David Tudor (as of June 5) 48.32 plus 7.50 credit John Cage (as of June 5) $6.00 plus 73.02 credit (Unpaid) David Tudor John Cage Paul and Vera Williams advance 234.96

43.98 20.98 170.00

(Money Orders on hand)

20.00

total loss . . .

214.96

36.02 79.02 1205.27

Attached is a balanced record of the ticket sale conducted by me. Following the concert, combining the money I had collected with that of Feldman and the Box Office, I received in cash and checks altogether $805.82, using it to pay the bills outstanding as above. Tax was paid according to stubs turned in counting for the Press 22 tickets at $10.01, thus: Fed. 44.37 28.56 72.93

NYC 22.44 15.12 37.56

Income from such sale of tickets Advance from Williams

1066.73 170.00 1236.73

51 tickets at $10.01 168 tickets at $2.00

Though this does not balance with the expenses paid as listed above, it is impossible to clear up the records more. 190  |  1 9 5 0 – 1 9 6 1

To Lou Harrison June 16, 1956 | Stony Point, New York Dearest Lou, Your telegram arrived just as we were finishing preparations for the concert, and I was deeply touched by your thoughts and your having sent them. And yesterday evening I was walking down 6th Ave., and it all came back to me how I used to be walking just there on my way to see you. I miss you. The concert was quite marvelous: it had many kinds of music, and a lively responsive audience, and it lasted for three hours  (!) From nine to midnight. My piece for 4 pianos was last on the program,371 30 minutes, and I must admit that I was a bit timid about starting to play it at 11:30, but during the preceding intermission, a lady said to me: the concert is beautiful, and I am so looking forward to your piece, and I thought if there’s energy in the listening we may as well not diminish the playing side. V[irgil] T[homson] called me the next morning and began by saying, I went to a concert last night; it lasted 3 hrs., and I enjoyed every minute of it! And then in detail he went over every piece, and I was again aware of what an amazing critical mind he is. He liked most of all the Boulez (Structure Ia for 2 pns) (David and Maro), Christian Wolff’s piece (a new one for prep. pn. and the first piece by Xian to be heard by VT), which VT said was high and noble, etc., and he liked some of Morty’s work, not all, saying he didn’t know whether he had been tickled or goosed, but that the effect was delicious, that when he didn’t like it, it was because the rhythmic interest was too low. And he liked my new radio piece which he said offered comic relief and sounded like a music studio (this one was loud and thick), and then he said he liked my 4 pn. deal most of all because it established a new musical climate. I 371. This consisted of aspects of Cage’s Music for Piano 4–19, Music for Piano 21–36/37–52, Music for Piano 53–68, and Music for Piano 69–84, performed by Cage, Ajemian, Grete Sultan (see note 423), and Tudor. Between 1952 and 1962, Cage would write a series of works with this title: Music for Piano  1 (1952), Music for Piano  2 (1953), Music for Piano  3 (1953), Music for Piano 4–19 (1953), Music for Piano 20 (1953), Music for Piano 21–36 (1955); Music for Piano 37–52 (1955), Music for Piano 53–68 (1956), Music for Piano 69–84 (1956), and Music for Piano 85 (1962), which, unlike the others, makes use of electronics with feedback and glissando. Materials from Music for Piano 1 through Music for Piano 20 were used variously for Cunningham’s Minutiae (1954), with stage decor and costumes by Rauschenberg and Remy Charlip, first performed at the Brooklyn Academy of New York on December 8, 1954. Later, Cage composed Electronic Music for Piano (1965), a score written on letterhead stationary from a hotel in Stockholm; rather cryptic, it contains only written instructions for the use of parts from Music for Piano 4–84, with the use of electronic equipment (microphones, amplifiers, and oscilloscope) and a constellation from an astronomical chart.

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think you wd. like it too. It is most peaceful, and even the late hr. and long program, you could feel how induced to contemplativeness the audience became. He did not like the Stockhausen which he said was like Richard Strauss and he said you can have it. At any rate the concert gave me the feeling of being one of the best I’ve ever been in on, and the critics in the papers were all violently opposed, which is good too. Jay H. wrote almost readably;372 and then a few days later a party at VT’s and Jay there and embarassed to see me, and finally at end of party I went up and said I enjoyed article I thought as much as he must have in writing it, and VT told me later that Jay had been frightened and had told V that he didn’t know how to act with me there, and V said nonsense composers don’t take criticism seriously. V showed me a work you had sent him, and it is beautiful. Merce and Morris Gold373 were there and we kept reading it for a long time. I would like to hear it as you would want to have it played. The Lord knows musicians have become a mercenary lot, and I doubt whether uninspired by you they will ever deal in intonation of exactitude. E of i I mean. Do arrive and promulgate! Book virtually finished! And VT delighted! Have only references to certify, etc. I said what I had to say, examined absolutely every work, and tried to make the book able to be read and to give space to VT so that one could walk around him and get the various views. It also includes a factual history of music politics in America since 1920! I made the preface and postscript very personal, and in between I made it relatively impersonal: 4 chapters: Early w[or]ks; from Susie Asado to 4 S[ain]ts; portraits, wks. for strings alone, film, ballets, and works for radio, and on to the Mother of Us All, the Mid-Century. Circa 170 pages in all. I managed to get quite a lot of intimate details about VT in; I was anxious to since Mrs. Hoover,374 did you ever meet her? doesn’t seem to know who Virgil is and yet she wrote the life! Now coming to end of page. When are you coming East? [handwritten note in left margin] You’re in book too. Re ex[cer]pt. re portrait of + re how I love your music.

372. Jay H. Harrison, then music critic and editor for the New York Herald Tribune. 373. Morris Gold (1920–2001), American business and arts patron, a primary supporter of the Erick Hawkins Dance Foundation and the New York Festival of Song. 374. Kathleen Hoover, co-author, with Cage, of Virgil Thomson: His Life and Music (New York: Thomas Yoseloff, 1959). Cage had difficulty with Hoover, and he and Thomson didn’t see eye to eye on much either; in the end, Hoover wrote the biography, and Cage wrote the music analysis.

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To Charles Olson January 10, 1957 | Stony Point, New York Dear Charles, It was a pleasure to hear from you. Morphology for me (it is not generally used, but a few do share my use) designates the life-line of a sound: how it begins, goes on and dies away. It also refers not only to this aspect of a natural sound but also to those which are made by collage of magnetic tape. How anything leaves and returns to silence. It is with collage that noticing it is practical. Otherwise it is the character of all the other aspects (frequency, amplitude, duration, timbre) combined* which for working purposes are separated. *a sound just as it is

To Morton and Cynthia Feldman [ca. 1957] | Location not indicated Dear Morty + Cynthia, Thank you for the letter and the marvelous news about your Columbia record.375 It may be due to our bad politics that the society finally wakes up to its art. I would like to play in the recording, but I doubt whether you should wait for me because I will stay until the first performance of the new tape piece I am making (Hamburg in January —was to be the 9th —now more likely in later part of January). Am having a lot of work but all interesting —Amazing machines —excellent engineer + my splicing = Fontana Mix.376 I am making piece so that it can go with Concert for Piano and Orchestra or alone or with parts from Concert —also is different each time played due to operators of machines who stop, start, change speed and amplitude following an indeterminate part. Almost all the lectures I’ve ever given are being published (Germany mostly 375. Likely referring to Columbia/CBS Odyssey’s 1957 release of Feldman’s Piece for Four Pianos (1957), performed by Tudor, Feldman, Edwin Hymovitz, and Russell Sherman. 376. Fontana Mix (1958), Cage’s indeterminate score consisting of ten sheets of paper with curved lines and twelve transparencies, to be superimposed and then interpreted as to tones, durations, and amplitudes. Originally titled “Performance Mix,” it was later renamed in honor of Cage’s Italian landlady, Signora Fontana. It premiered (with Aria) in Rome on January 5, 1959. Cage composed other works using materials from the Fontana Mix score, including Water Walk, Sounds of Venice, and Aria.

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but also Italy). No publisher however for music yet. But it is clear things are changing and that is good. Give my love to all the friends (esp. Mercedes and Philip and Lulla) and my congratulations to David Oppenheim.377

To Jack Lenor Larsen378 January 8, 1958 | Stony Point, New York Dear Jack: Thank you for your letters of Dec. 30 and Jan. 2. I gather that in employing me you wished to complete a “circle of” work (having “integrity,” etc.) of which a certain few jobs have been a “crescent.” Now that the period of our agreement has expired, you suggest that I would be failing as a “gentleman and fellow artist,” lacking in “good spirit,” if I did not proceed with the work taking as payment only “experience and successful lasting relationship.” Several other points are made in your letters which seem to fall either into a cursory vocational psychoanalysis of me (I work too hard, should be more efficient, get too involved, etc.) or an indication of displeasure with works done, —ads which now appear to you “unsavory” —the Xmas greeting which you now request me to justify. Incidentally, you ask for one to be forwarded to you. This is impossible. 2000 were ordered and sent out. There are no more, nor the materials to make more. As far as payment to me for work done goes, you mention two agreements, one “raised to 2500 dollars” and the other “outside contract Xmas project.” Let me answer the above in reverse order. By interpreting 2500 dollars as $400/month, the company saved itself, and deprived me of, $100. And, in order to complete the Xmas project (greetings, gift wraps), I had to employ others, so that in the end I made virtually no profit. Not that I am not complaining, since it was part of our agreement that I would take the consequences of my plan for the Xmas greeting. 377. David (Jerome) Oppenheim (1922–2007), American clarinetist and producer who directed the Masterworks division of Columbia Records from 1950 to 1959. He is the dedicatee of Feldman’s Two Pieces for Clarinet and String Quartet (1961). 378. Jack Lenor Larsen (b. 1927), American textile designer, author, and collector. In 1952, he founded Jack Lenor Larsen, Inc., and in 1956–1957 employed Cage as a graphic arts consultant; Cage styled the printing and arranged the placement of the company’s advertising in such magazines as Interiors and Interior Design, as well as Christmas cards, announcements, and letterheads. As this letter suggests, while the two would remain friends, their working relationship did not end satisfactorily.

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I consider your present dissatisfaction with works done irrelevant, for they were all accepted by you and generally worked upon in collaboration with you. Let me add in parenthesis that I am not ashamed of any of the work done, nor do I see any need to justify any of it. Furthermore, I am told by many that the work I have done is brilliant, the best in the field, etc. Neither blame nor praise impresses me since I know that I simply did what I could in good faith. My methods of work are intimately my own. I see no value in being an “idea man” and not having a finger in production. For at the present time in this society, nothing is done as one intends unless he does it himself, or stands closely by its being done. The stationary presents an excellent example: the idea is “superb,” but the realization is unfortunate. At any rate, you now know something of how I work and you can either engage me or not as you choose to do further work. That I worked “too hard” is evident to both of us. From October 1 on, I can exceed your 120 hrs. a week with my 126 hrs. I was unable to return to Stony Point until Dec. 20. And this was not all Xmas work, but ads, misc. items commissioned by you, 4 hrs. a wk. for teaching and around 6 hrs. of dance rehearsals/wk. I have enjoyed the work as I say in my letter to you of Dec. 20, and would welcome continuation. In fact, I am still working on the Feb. Interiors ad which has met many obstacles in its production. 13 days of the present month will have been devoted to the company’s interests without recompense to me. Furthermore, the ad (Naugahyde format) represents a program and has a copy which I do not profoundly endorse. My sense of liveliness is other than the “continuity” you insist upon. However, to repeat, I would willingly continue working for the company, but I literally cannot afford to do so, since no payment is forthcoming. I would need money to stay alive, move about, and nourish myself. Finally, that the contract has expired and work remains to be done is simply an accurate statement of fact. I did all I could and it was insufficient, though I provided the expected assistance in planning future work (the Naugahyde ad can, as you have pointed out, germinate a multiplicity of results). This fact that I did all I could and it was insufficient must be seen squarely. No court of law would judge me guilty for I have many witnesses of my constant activity in the company’s interests. And, in money terms, one single job, the Sweets Catalogue, could have cost the company as much or more than was involved in the 6 months’ agreement. If you have no more money to spend, you must see that you cannot afford what you would like to have in the way of services. In this connection you should know that the company has contracted for 12 ads in Interiors, 6 in Interior Design, that unless these contracts are fulfilled the costs of 1 9 5 0 – 1 9 6 1  |  195

previous ads go up considerably (I.D. is in fact alarmed over the program as it so far relates to them having expressed to me their thought that the Company’s relation to them has a history of promises made only to be broken). Furthermore, I should, if I were still employed, be making the ad to meet the Feb. deadline. You apparently have no conception of the time that goes into the production of one of these ads. I suggest therefor that the Naugauhyde ad be repeated in the March Interiors (Feb. 5 deadline) so that the ad program may remain in effect, and economically so. You may be imagining that I have been overpaid and that I have saved money during the past 6 months, and you therefor speak of my “retentative bent.” Such is not the case. My parents were dependants and still are. My necessity at the moment is to find remunerative employment.

To Virgil Thomson November 1, 1958 | Copenhagen Dear Virgil, Luciano Berio379 has arranged for me to make a tape piece at the studios of the radio in Milan. So I will be staying there for an indefinite period beginning the 8th of November. If there are things to do about the book, I can be reached c/o Berio, Via Moscati 7, Milano. I have been very busy and many lectures are being published in Germany. 3 with a record. And a new magazine —Darmstadter Beiträge zur neuen Musik is devoting its 1st issue to my work.380 This is the result of an agreement between Nono,381 Schott + Steinecke, and an attempt on Nono’s part to induce Schott to publish my music. They are already publishing that of Earle Brown but hesitate 379. Luciano Berio (1925–2003), Italian composer, noted for his experimental work and early electronic music. At Berio’s invitation, Cage worked at the Studio di Fonologia, an electronic music facility Berio co-founded with Bruno Maderna in 1955. Berio was married to the American soprano Cathy Berberian (see note 384). 380. Darmstädter Beiträge zur Neuen Musik documented the proceedings of the Darmstadt Summer Courses for New Music and was early on edited by Wolfgang Steinecke. For its premiere issue, Cage contributed “History of Experimental Music in the United States” (1958). 381. Luigi Nono (1924–1990), Italian avant-garde composer whose works frequently addressed social issues. His Variazioni canoniche sulla serie dell’op. 41 di A. Schoenberg was presented at the 1950 Darmstadt summer program, establishing his place, with Boulez and Stockhausen, as a pre-eminent force in new music. Nono was married to Nuria Schoenberg (b. 1932), daughter of Arnold Schoenberg.

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with mine. The critics are almost unanimous in disapproval but one, HeinzKlaus Metzger,382 is active against them.

To David Tudor and M.C. Richards [Between November and December 1958] | Location not indicated Dear David + M.C., Things change constantly. Now it looks as though new piece to be done first in Brussels with Maderna conducting,383 Cathy Berio singing,384 + orchestra. Same or different few days later in Hamburg. If David is free to do so + other engagements forthcoming wd. you, David, want to come back to play? Or if I get a book (asked Lois to send385) I may win much money on quiz, then wd. you be free to come if all expenses paid, etc.? I wd. write to Severino386 who you remember sd. something about engagements in Jan. Let me know immediately. Also if Schott387 doesn’t want to take me on, Zerboni388 here in Milan will + publish lots. I think ms. should be sent. Or I can do it later when I return. At any rate music will get published! Many interruptions in studio but none serious. Splice constantly to everybody’s amazement. Bruno wants to hear all 382. Heinz-Klaus Metzger (1932–2009), German music critic and theorist, one of the first to write extensively about both Cage and Stockhausen; his first article on Cage, “John Cage o della liberazione,” was published in Incontri Musicali (Aug. 1959). In 1969, with the German composer Rainer Riehn (1941–2015), he would establish the Ensemble Musica Negativa, which performed radical compositions of the time. 383. Bruno Maderna (1920–1973), Italian conductor and composer. Set on a course toward the dodecaphonic method by Hermann Scherchen, he was invited to conduct at the 1951 Darmstadt Summer Course in New Music. He became involved with the Internationales Kranischsteiner Kammer-Ensemble, through which he met Boulez, Messiaen, Stockhausen, and Cage. 384. Cathy Berberian (1925–1983), American soprano and composer, for a time wife of Luciano Berio. A fine interpreter of contemporary music, she gave the first performance of Cage’s Aria (with Fontana Mix, 1958) in Rome, January 5, 1959. 385. Lois Long (1918–2005), American artist and textile designer, a founding member of the New York Mycological Society. Cage probably requested a specialized book on mushrooms from her to help him prepare for his competition on the Italian quiz show Lascia o raddoppia (“Double or Nothing”; see note 390). 386. Severino Gazzelloni (1919–1992), Italian flutist and teacher. Berio, Boulez, Maderna, and Stravinsky all wrote pieces for him. 387. Schott Music, one of the oldest German publishers and one of the largest in Europe, founded by Bernhard Schott in Mainz in 1770. 388. Edizioni Suvini Zerboni, founded in 1907 as an offshoot of the eponymous theater company that brought operettas to Italy. Their catalog included contemporary composers such as Stravinsky, Hindemith, Berio, Dallapiccola, and Maderna.

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the splices carefully + engineer saves loops which I tell him he shld. send to Eisenhower. (He fought against E. in Sicily, was imprisoned in Africa + then fought with Americans against H.) Am glad I will see K.S. again in K. Also T. etc + M.M. in B.389 So silly that one can be so active in Europe. How will be changed America? One of these days will visit Luigi [Nono] in Venice (want to save a few days for that). Write immediately re tour.

To David Tudor and M.C. Richards [Between November and December 1958] | Location not indicated Dear David + M.C., I will shortly need biographical statement + list of works. Cd. you forward. Let’s hope it gets here: Post Office strike yesterday. Lifted now but was a warning. Piece proceeds I have 6'30" composed (although time changes in performance) + 1'15" spliced. Interruptions occur due to Luciano’s radio obligations + sometimes a machine goes on the blink. Will lecture here in Italian + concertize but most surprising is that I will probably be on a quiz show (mushrooms!) + come home rich!390 Of course that is a vague possibility but it looks p o s s i b l e. I’m not supposed to let anybody know about it because there’s been a lot of gossip about how the quiz is run irregularly. I go in + out —however —of a door marked vietato entrare. Huxley391 was here + lectured. Hidalgo + Marchetti here.392 H. writing piece for you + strings all in harmonics. I think must 389. Karlheinz Stockhausen (“K.”) and Otto Tomek (“T.”), Austrian radio producer in Köln (“K.”); Marcelle Mercenier (“M.M.”) (1920–1996), Belgian pianist and teacher, a fervent advocate of contemporary music and a key member of the group Séminaire des Arts, in Brussels (“B.”). Mercenier gave the first Belgian performance of the final version of Boulez’s Third Piano Sonata. 390. Lascia o Raddoppia (“Double or Nothing”), a popular Italian quiz show on which Cage made five appearances as a contestant beginning January 29, 1959, and thereafter weekly on Thursday nights through February 26. Cage was triumphant, and the prize money, 5 million lire (roughly $8,000), went toward the purchase of a piano for Cage’s Stony Point home as well as a Volkswagen bus for the fledgling Merce Cunningham Dance Company. Cage performed his own music on three of the shows: a demonstration of the prepared piano sounds of Amores (Jan. 29), Water Walk (Feb. 5), and Sounds of Venice (Feb. 12), the last two premiere performances. 391. Aldous Huxley (1894–1963), English writer and a pre-eminent intellectual. Cage is known to have read Huxley’s The Perennial Philosophy (1945) during his time with Gita Sarabhai. 392. Juan Hidalgo (b. 1927) and Walter Marchetti (1931–2015), Spanish composers devoted to the performance of experimental music.

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be done. Also Luciano piece for voice + recorded voice. Please send address of Arlene (give her my love + to you two too).

To John Cage Sr. and Lucretia Cage [Undated, ca. February 6, 1959] | Venice, Italy Spent the last 4 days in Venice with Peggy. She remembers you with much love. Has 6 beautiful dogs and we were photographed together for the newspaper. I collected sounds for next Thursday’s music: Sounds of Venice.393 Also visited Nono, very fine composer, who is married to Schoenberg’s daughter, Nuria, whom I saw in L.A. when she was still carried around in arms. Now she is herself about to have a baby. Will be home sometime soon —early in March acc[ording] to whether I sail or fly. Will probably fly because the seas are bad in March, they say. Although I’d enjoy the rest of a boat-trip. See you soon.

To Luigi and Nuria Nono March 25, 1959 | Stony Point, New York Dear Luigi and Nuria, Things have been somewhat complicated since I have gotten back here and so this letter comes only now. With regard to your working at the Columbia Studio, the next step is for you to write to them: the Columbia-Princeton Electronic Music Studio, Columbia University, 116th and Broadway, New York.394 The four people who act as a committee in charge of it are Vladimir Ussachevsky, Otto Luening, Milton Babbitt and Roger Sessions. I spoke with Ussachevsky and Babbitt separately. Babbitt said you would certainly be accepted. So do write soon and let me know the result. As you probably already know, David will be at Darmstadt again this year. I will not come unless the Cunningham Dance Company comes. Offhand I 393. Sounds of Venice (1959), for stage properties and tape, a score for solo television performance. Cage would first perform it on Italy’s RAI on his third appearance on Lascia o Raddoppio (Feb. 12, 1959). 394. Founded in 1958 by American composers Otto Luening (1900–1996) and Vladimir Ussachevsky (1911–1990) as the Columbia-Princeton Electronic Music Center (later Computer Music Center, or CMC), the oldest center for electronic and computer music research in the United States.

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imagine there will be obstacles in the path of arranging enough engagements for the dancers to pay the costs connected with such a trip. However, if Darmstadt is a possibility for the dance, please let me know that soon. One of my present projects is to get a studio started myself. It will be connected with the New School,395 but may be housed in the country at Stony Point. This is not yet definite and I won’t know any details for a month or so, but in the event it does get established, you would always be welcome there. Once a Studio is open to you here, I will go to Virgil Thomson who is familiar with all the Foundations and find some fund to pay your expenses of living and travel. I fear that there were other things for me to write to you about but I forget what they are. I found myself quite exhausted when I returned to America. I still have the cough I found in Milan in January. After staying here a few days I went on to Illinois and saw Cunningham’s two new works which were presented in the Arts Festival there. Now he returns to New York and in a few weeks we go on a tour to Washington, Chicago and points in New Jersey with the Company. I often think of you and remember the pleasures of being with you. Venice, as they say, is a dream. And the evening in the restaurant with the singing a very special moment.

To Cathy, Luciano, and Christina Berio396 March 25, 1959 | Stony Point, New York Dear Cathy, Luciano and Christina, Finally —I sit down to write to you. I was exhausted when I got back, white as a sheet. Then off to the chiropractor who put me in better shape. Complications getting my bags because I had to send them air freight —the excess baggage would have cost more than sending me —so that I went to Illinois to see the dancing before I was able to deliver the things you sent to your mother 395. Cage was active at the New School for Social Research between 1950 and 1960, early on as a performer and guest speaker, from 1956 as a faculty member giving the following classes: Composition (later Experimental Composition), Virgil Thomson: The Evolution of a Composer, Erik Satie: The Evolution of a Composer, Advanced Composition, and Mushroom Identification, the last comprising five fields trips in the vicinity of New York City. See Joseph Jacobs, “Crashing New York à la John Cage,” in Off Limits: Rutgers University and the Avant-Garde, 1957–1963, ed. Joan Marter (New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 1999), 65–99. 396. Properly, Cristina Berio (b. 1953), daughter of Luciano and Cathy.

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and father. But after I got back from Illinois I did go to the restaurant with the suitcase, etc, and they were so friendly and the food was delicious . . . They are very lonesome for Christina and I told them of the many things you are both doing, singing, the opera and all the concerts and composing, and the problems of the radio. Please write and let me know how Paris was, and how the opera is coming along and the concert in Milan. There may be a performance of the Fontana Mix here April 26 —without voice —at a place called the Village Gate.397 This would be in the tradition of the concerts in nightclubs and was the place where the Varese Brussels piece was first played here.398 In fact the Varese will be repeated on this program if it comes about. A young composer named David Johnson is arranging it. David Tudor would also play. He, by the way, is very happy and so is M.C., and there are no changes to be expected in the way of where he lives. It is all quite miraculous. Also, David has agreed to come to Europe again this year. I will not come unless Merce and the dancers also come . . . It is looking possible to get a studio for electronic music started here. It would be connected with the New School so that funds given to it would be tax-deductable. A company called Sherman Fairchild Associates399 —they make very fine machines —is interested. I won’t know much in detail about it for a month or so. In the meantime there are rehearsals and performances on tour with Merce, David and the Company. We go to Washington, Chicago and points in New Jersey. In a vW bus which I will shortly purchase. It will still be possible, Cathy, for me to speak to that man in Oxford, Ohio, so do send me the details if it is still desirable. Now, I mean these days, it is as though I were in a dream: nothing has happened to make these events urgently real, and all that happened in Italy seems now also unreal, since I am no longer there. It is not that I wander about aimlessly, but I am certainly not in one piece: I sent books, mss. and papers in packages from Venice to avoid weight for the airplanes, and none of these have yet arrived. My house is all upset and I just each day put a few things in order. Most of my manuscripts are in bad shape, because pages 397. A popular nightclub at the corner of Thompson and Bleeker Streets in Greenwich Village, opened by Art D’Lugoff in 1958, that would showcase performers such as Bill Evans, Billie Holiday, and Duke Ellington. 398. Poème électronique, an electronic work composed by Varèse for the Philips Pavilion at the 1958 Brussels World’s Fair. Le Corbusier was commissioned to design the pavilion as a showcase of the engineering process, and it was he who came up with the title “Poème électronique,” saying he wanted to create a “poem in a bottle.” Varèse composed the piece with the idea of creating a liberated union of sounds and noises not usually considered “musical.” 399. Possibly a group of men —Julius Blank, Victor Grinich, et al. —who had left Shockley Semiconductor in 1957 due to a conflict with its founder to form Fairchild Semiconductor.

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that were sold last spring have to be copied in order to again be complete. It is all very curious . . . Just now, Spring is beginning and the weather too is dreamlike with no one convinced that it is real. Days so clear, no humidity, neither warm nor cold, incredibly beautiful.

To Cathy, Luciano, and Christina Berio April 30, 1959 | Stony Point, New York Dear Cathy and Luciano and Christina, I don’t know whether I told you before, but ever since I got back that bronchitis remained, and yet we had concerts and touring and so I’ve been ill continuously. But through chiropracty —David’s Aunt Hazel400 —and now well. Also winter kept coming and going, and even today it is cold and chilly. Though there are spring blossoms and trees in flower, etc. And I’ve found coprinus micaceous and polyporus squamosus and eaten ferns, dock, watercress, dandelions and many other greens. This week is the first free from having to rush in and out of the city. I did get a marvelous vW bus which took the dance company to Washington, Chicago and New Jersey. And Merce is paying back half of the cost, so that I think it was a very good thing to get. The shoes you mention that I left at Mme. Fontana’s can be disposed of in any way. The gadget must be a metronome? If so it belongs to David Tudor who is coming to Darmstadt and then you could give it to him. News: we had a performance of the Fontana Mix at the Village Gate here.401 There is a young fellow named David Johnson who organized the concert which included Varese’s Poeme electronique, and two pieces you wouldn’t have liked, a computer one by Guttman and another non-computer by Maxfield. Piano or piano and cello pieces by Earle B., Feldman and myself. A marvelous audience and I gave a speech and they very kindly welcomed me back from Europe with long sustained applause before I even did anything. At least I think it must have been a welcome, it was a very friendly gesture. The Mix was liked very much, and then when poor Varese’s piece was to be played, the 400. Hazel Witman Cramer (1894–1960), one of many chiropractors in the Witman line of the Tudor clan. 401. A Sunday Afternoon of Contemporary Music at the Village Gate, April 26, 1959, with a program consisting of Cage’s Winter Music and Fontana Mix (first U.S. performance), Feldman’s Last Pieces, Brown’s Music for Cello and Piano, Newman Guttman’s Computer Music, Richard Maxfield’s Electronic Score for Stacked Deck (first performance), and Varèse’s Poème électronique. Cage attended, reportedly with Varèse, and gave an introductory talk.

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machines went on the blink. 45 minutes later they managed to play half of the piece, the rest having been mysteriously erased! Actually I am just now getting home. I am still unpacked. My health was so poor that I always had to just lie down and rest in order to have the strength to do the next thing. The ulterior reason for this letter is that Grove Press here is interested in publishing a book of my lectures and articles, and I would like to include the one which is being published in Incontri M.402 Could you send the original or a proof or something to me as soon as possible? Grazie. How did the program go in Milan and thank you very much for sending the program. Suprised to learn that I work “fatalistically”! Heard from Sylvano403 and Metzger. They seem very happy about Milan and activity, etc.

To Peter Yates May 19, 1959 | Stony Point, New York Dear Peter, It was very good to hear from you. I had not heard of the paralysis of your son. It is marvelous that he is making the progress you write of. How old is he? Last night I was with the Cowells and [Kitaro Nyokyo] Tamada. Tamada played for us, and I found that his music is as beautiful to my ears as it ever was. We spoke of you. Other people also often mention you and your articles. I myself do very little reading, saving my middle-aged eyes for working on manuscripts. I no longer can read the telephone book, but stubbornly I get no glasses. So I haven’t read the articles. However, one of my friends has the faculties of a librarian, and one day when I visit him I shall look at them. I’m sorry I didn’t see you here in New York, but as you probably found out I was busy in Europe from August to March, invited to Italy for four months where I made the Fontana Mix, Water Walk,404 Sounds of Venice, and Aria for Voice which 402. Incontri Musicali (“Musical Encounters”), a concert series and musical journal organized by Berio and Maderna. The essay referred to here is Cage’s “Lecture on Nothing,” which first appeared in the August 1959 issue. 403. Sylvano Bussotti (b. 1931), Italian composer whose works often employ complex graphic notation. 404. Water Walk (1959), one of Cage’s most theatrical works, its instrumentation including a bathtub, toy fish, pressure cooker, blender (full of ice), rubber duck, grand piano, five radios, and recorded sounds. Cage performed the work for the first time on Italy’s RAI on February 5, 1959, during his second appearance on Lascia o Raddoppio.

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latter can go with the Fontana Mix. I don’t know what piece you refer to when you speak of my Sonata for Piano and One Player. If you want a piece for the Monday Evening Concert,405 let me know how much time is available and what instruments. I wrote the past two years a Concert for Piano and Orchestra, any parts of which can be used in superimposition, and it can last any length of time. The parts I’ve so far composed include violins, 4 I believe, violas (2), cello, bass, flute changing with fl. in G and piccolo, clarinet in B flat, bassoon changing with tenor sax, trumpets (5) in B-flat, C, D, E-flat, and F —all one part, tubas —also a part for voice, preferably contralto; however, it is shorter than the rest and so not as flexible for programming, flexible I mean as to time-length. The piano part is extremely complex and would require David Tudor. The work as a whole has been performed here, in New London, with Merce Cunningham’s choreography, and in Cologne. A recording —part of the Town Hall recording which should be issued sometime this year —will be available.406 The recordings of the Sonatas and Interludes are out of print and I myself don’t own one. I also don’t keep tapes. And the tape music itself is not suitable for broadcast since it needs several loudspeakers to be properly heard. However, the Town Hall recording will include a number of pieces selected from 25 years of my work; Six Short Inventions (1933) for seven instruments; Construction in Metal for perc., Imaginary Landscape for recordings and perc., She is Asleep for voice and prep. pn. and 4 perc. players, the first ½ of the Sonatas and Interludes, the Williams Mix for tape, Music for Carillon, and the Concert for Piano and Orch. I shall have a copy of the record sent to you when it is out. Actually it should be out pretty soon. It includes two articles of mine, one from ’39 the other from ’57, and pages from scores with analytical remarks. Also many of my lectures are being printed now in Europe, one in Die Reihe, another in the Darmstadter Beitrage, another in Contexts 405. Monday Evening Concerts, founded in 1939 by Peter and Frances Yates as Evenings on the Roof, which became one of the longest running series in the world devoted to contemporary music. From 1952 to 1971 its director was Lawrence Morton. 406. The 25-Year Retrospective Concert of the Music of John Cage at Town Hall in New York took place on May 15, 1958, financed by Johns, Rauschenberg, and Emile de Antonio, who came together as Impresarios Inc. It was the largest and most significant performance event of his work to date. The program consisted of his Six Short Inventions (1933), First Construction (In Metal) (1939), Imaginary Landscape No. 1 (1939), The Wonderful Widow of Eighteen Springs (1942), She is Asleep (1943), Music for Carillon No. 1 (1954), Williams Mix (1952), Concert for Piano and Orchestra (1957–1958), and Sonatas and Interludes (1946–48). A lavish three-LP set complete with an eighteen-page booklet and a dozen inserts of music manuscript was released by producer George Avakian. Impresarios Inc. presented one more program before disbanding: Merce Cunningham and Dance Company at the Phoenix Theatre in Manhattan’s Lower East Side on January 16, 1960, in a program that included Cunningham’s Summerspace (1958), Rune (1959), Changeling (1957), and Antic Meet (1958). The program was covered by both Time and Newsweek.

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(Cologne), another in Incontri Musicali, 3 as a book with a recording in Cologne and another in Venice. There’s also a possibility of a book of these being done here. At present Grove has the mss., but Edmunds said that he’d be willing too to try to get them published. Actually, Peter, it is difficult for me in this letter to express my ideas which you would then pour on inflammatory readers. I’m at a point where I need to be quiet and empty, and I’ve written so much that I simply say over again what I said before and that no longer is necessary for me. I’ve become an amateur mycologist, and I prefer to walk in the woods. Suffice it to say: I no longer write scores, but only parts which can be performed in any combination. These parts are also very indeterminate of their performance, so that, in practice, each player makes his own part. For a year now there are also no conventional musical notations in the material I provide, simply points on transparent sheets, lines on others, free superimpositions of these, and suggestions as to their interpretation. I have in mind to bring this way of working into theater. The conductor also has a part which is simply to represent a watch by his gestures changing the length of clock-time. Naturally each performance is unique, though no part is improvised. Each person simply does what he has to do and which interpenetrates with all the other parts but not in a way which anyone has planned or must control. Adorno,407 whom you may have known when he was in L.A., has, I understand, changed his views about modern music due to hearing this music —Concert for Pn. and Orch. He says that now Boulez and Stockhausen are as easy for him as butter, and that this piece makes a radical change since Schoenberg. Another critic also has become a champion for me in Europe. His name, Heinz Klaus Metzger. The issue of Incontri that will have my “Lecture on Nothing” in it has his on my work called “Della Liberazione.” So enough of tooting my horn. If there is anything I can do for you, I will; but please be specific. I will send the records when they come out and also information when I have it about the printed articles, etc. My friendliest greetings to all of you, and I hope in the not too distant future we can be together. I am of the opinion that you are clearly the One in America who writes about music.

407. Theodor W. Adorno (1903–1969), German philosopher and a leading member of the Frankfurt School. He was a classically trained pianist and, as a musicologist, was interested in the work of the composers of the Second Viennese School.

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To La Monte Young408 October 5, 1959 | Stony Point, New York Dear Mr. Young: Thank you for sending your String Trio. I enjoyed looking at it, though I have not taken the time to make an analysis thoroughly. On the whole, there seems to be too predictable (or one might say, harmonious) an interval situation. Too many minor seconds, ninths, etc. However, that you have written simple fourths or fifths alone is, to me, a refreshment. Naturally, I like the silences between events. I think that your music, as far as time itself goes, suggests that there is something wrong with conventional notation. That a whole page should be taken up with one sound, and all those numbered bars, seems unreasonable, together with the entrances, which are sometimes minutely complicated (triplets, quintuplets) and the difficult changes of tempo. Music for magnetic tape is made, perforce, on tape, the length of which is equal to time. It seems to me, and I so act, that space on a page is perceivable as time, so that where a note is, is equal to what it is. I say all this not out of a desire to criticize, but because, sincerely, I find your work interesting. Please send more when you have, as you say, something more representative of what you are now thinking. Do you want it back or may I keep it?

To David Tudor October 15, 1959 | Stony Point, New York Dear David, Thank you for your letter which has been enjoyed by many. We are very happy that you are so busy. I have written to Dr. Cerha409 and tried to answer clearly the various questions. I will go as I told him to see Arline,410 who has 408. La Monte (Thornton) Young (b. 1935), American composer, musician, and visual artist, among the first minimalist composers, his works notable for their use of drones. Young’s music for Cunningham’s Winterbranch consisted of two sounds: “the sounds of ashtrays scraped against a mirror, and the other, that of pieces of wood rubbed against a Chinese gong.” With stage decor and costumes by Rauschenberg, the work was first performed on March 20, 1964, at the Wadsworth Atheneum in Hartford, Connecticut. 409. Friedrich Cerha (b. 1926), Viennese composer, who, in 1958, together with Kurt Schwertsik, created the ensemble “die reihe,” which performed much contemporary music in Austria. 410. Likely the contralto Arline Carmen, who performed Cage’s She is Asleep and The Wonderful

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the only copy of the song. Christian’s address is the same as before except for an exchange of a C for a D or vice versa. The season is planning me rather than I the season. Stella Adler wants an evening.411 Also Schwartz wants either an all-Cage deal or sharing it with Brant.412 I prefer the latter course. On Jan. 11, you and I are advertised to do the indeterminacy lecture413 (record is already out). This last at Living Theater.414 I have arranged no tour, but this could be spurred on. However, Antioch wants us to come but hasn’t set a date. Merce expects you for Dec. 10 —Millbrook, Bennett Junior College —;415 he placed it as late as he could. We perform tomorrow in Rutgers —Suite. There are also engagements in Middlewest in February. The dancing situation is desparate and needs the sort of activity you are encountering. Can you stir up interest there? Particularly Merce and Carol would like to go. I imagine any time, but they say next fall. I am now not so certain that I will go to India, because I heard indirectly that it would be a political walk, and I don’t wish to be involved in politics good or bad.416 If Cathy’s coming in May —though if I go to India wouldn’t be here then —perhaps the Schwartz deal could be arranged for then. Your arrangement of Xian’s piece seems fine. There is no cue sheet for trombone. Do let the flute play in cues. Ask Kagel to have a copy made for Europe Widow of Eighteen Springs at the 25-Year Retrospective Concert of the Music of John Cage at New York’s Town Hall (May 15, 1958) and in the debut of Cage’s Theatre Piece at the Circle on the Square Theater in New York (March 7, 1960). 411. Stella Adler (1901–1992), the only American actor to study with Constantin Stanislavski. She founded the Stella Adler Studio of Acting in New York (1949). 412. Henry (Dreyfuss) Brant (1913–2008), Canadian-born American composer, known for his works involving spatialized sound sources. 413. Indeterminacy: New Aspect of Form in Instrumental and Electronic Music (Smithsonian Folkways Recording, FT 3704, 1959). Each of the stories comprising this piece is read in precisely one minute, regardless of its length, so that very long stories are read very quickly, and very short stories are read very slowly to fill the time. Tudor’s “accompaniment” consisted of two compositions by Cage: the piano part of Concert for Piano and Orchestra and Fontana Mix. 414. The Living Theatre, an American theater company founded by Judith Malina (1926–2015) and Julian Beck (1925–1985) in 1947, the oldest experimental theater group in the United States. The referenced performance took place on January 25, 1960. 415. This performance at Bennett College’s Harkaway Theatre by Merce Cunningham and Dance Company, with music by Tudor and Cage, featured portions of Cage’s Music for Piano series to Cunningham’s Suite for Five; Cage’s Concert for Piano and Orchestra with Fontana Mix (presented as Solo for Piano with Fontana Mix) to Cunningham’s Antic Meet; portions of Pierre Schaeffer’s Symphonie pour un homme seul to Cunningham’s Collage I; Earle Brown’s 4 Systems to Cunningham’s Galaxy; and Christian Wolff’s Suite to Cunningham’s Changeling. 416. Cage had been invited earlier in the year to India to walk from Darjeeling to Sikkim with Gira Sarabhai. He did not in the end make the trek; it was, he said much later in life, one of his few regrets.

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and let us have the copy back because of Xian’s pencil notations (which don’t yet appear on the transparencies).417 Earle is anxious to know about the performance and reception of his piece in Darmstadt.418 I have made the discovery of the hog-peanut. Also found Hydnum CaputMedusae.419 Give my love to everyone. I don’t know what to say about coming to Europe. I have no new music. Also I am so concerned about the dancers. Is there no way to organize that for Europe? Did any think to say to N[ono] that music cdn’t. grow better than like mushrooms?

To Richard Winslow420 December 1, 1959 | Stony Point, New York Dear Dick: First, thank you very much for sending me the Brown book.421 Am reading it avidly —about to enter sublimation. Will send you with this money order for book. Second, sending many articles and lectures. Some are in rather poor shape for reading, especially the second Darmstadt one (in this case incomplete pages are accompanied by others which complete them requiring a certain ingenuity on reader’s part).422 I am sending all this material so that you can see what there is 417. Mauricio Kagel (1931–2008), German-Argentine composer, notable for the critical theatricality in much of his work. He taught at the Darmstadt Summer Courses in New Music (1960–1966; 1972–1976). 418. Tudor, Gazzelloni, and the German percussionist Christoph Caskel (b. 1932) gave the premiere performance of Brown’s Hodograph  I (1959) in Darmstadt on September 1, 1959. Tudor and Caskel performed often together, and Tudor was godfather to Caskel’s son, David Cornelius, named for (David) Tudor and (Cornelius) Cardew. 419. Hog-peanut, properly Amiphicarpaea bracteata, a vine in the legume family, native to woodland, thickets, and moist slopes in the eastern United States; and Hydnum caput-medusae, a fringy edible fungus commonly found on tree trunks, especially beech, in the eastern United States. 420. Richard K. Winslow (b. 1918), American scholar and composer, influential in establishing the World Music Program at Wesleyan University Press as well as its Center for Advanced Studies, where Cage would be in residence in 1960–1961 and again in 1969. 421. Norman O(liver) Brown (1913–2002), American classicist, author of the critically acclaimed Life Against Death: The Psychoanalytical Meaning of History (Middletown, CT: Wesleyan University Press, 1959). He was affectionately known as “Nobby.” 422. Cage wrote and delivered three lectures while in Darmstadt in 1958, under the title Composition

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and whether out of some or all of it a book could arise. I have the idea that there could be a system of notes (footnotes or at the back of book notes) which would be newly written and which would present other aspects of the musical situation that you or I or others would wish included. There is one fairly useful text which is not with those being sent: “Lecture on Something.” This is being published in It Is, next issue. Also the stories lecture will be 180 stories (now around 146). Inventory: The Future of Music: Credo (this is printed in the new album of records of Town Hall concert coming out next week) Forerunners of Modern Music Experimental Music 4 Musicians at Work (my section on Music of Changes) On the History of Exp[erimental] Music in the USA (published in Darmstadter Beitrage current issue in German) Lecture on Nothing (printed with certain errors) 1000 Words (published in Journal des Beaux Arts, Brussels) (in French) Unbestimmtheit (30 stories). Note Hans Helms spacing on page of stories in the German text. I find this too imitative of Cummings or Apollinaire. Wd. prefer portfolio of unnumbered pages. Here and elsewhere opportunities for interesting typography are present. 39'16.95" for a Speaker (or London Lecture: in graph notebook; this is to be published in Cologne in Contexts; this notebook also has pg. 79 marked Bruxelles, a text in French which has been much translated and used but never published). To Describe the Process, etc. Music Lovers’ Field Companion (published in US Lines Review) 2 Pages, 122 Words Exp[erimental] Music (mtna) (this is printed in the new album) A Few Ideas about Music and Films Manifesto 1952 (there is also another manifesto on the painting of Bob Rauschenberg) (not sent herewith) Edgard Varese (published in Swedish in Swedish Radio Mag.) Erik Satie (published in Art News Annual last year, I mean 2 yrs. ago) 3 Darmstadt lectures (Changes, Indeterminacy, Communication). These are all being published by Ernst Brucher in Cologne with recording of as Process: “1. Changes,” “2. Indeterminacy,” and “3. Communication.” All three would be published in Silence (Middletown, CT: Wesleyan University Press, 1961).

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the first one. The length of this first one was that of the Music of Changes. During the gaps in the lecture the corresponding parts of the Music of Changes were performed. The title for all 3 lectures together is Composition as Process. Indeterminacy: New Aspect of Form in Instrumental and Electronic Music. This is recorded on Folkways (90 stories) printed in Die Reihe (30 stories shortly to be given at Living Theater) (180 stories). If it comes to the point where there is interest in all this, but see-sawing, then let me know and I will make a trip and try to see or saw as the case may be. If a preface is desired, written by someone else, I would vote for Peter Yates. Editing would be quite a problem since there are so many errors of spelling, grammar, hyphenation, and so many possibilities for typography and illustration. Kansas, Arizona, manuscripts and mushrooms. Minna Lederman (who was Modern Music editor) has said she would be willing to help in editing. Again thank you very much for sending the Life Against Death book. It is a courageous book and encouraging.

To Peter Yates December 28, 1959 | Stony Point, New York Dear Peter, Thank you very much for your letter and card and for enjoying the records. I would have answered sooner but I’ve been helping Merce Cunningham and Grete Sultan423 move, also painting and scrubbing the new homes and studios. So that I was not at home. I liked your article about Virgil and the book very much. Were we together we might have discussed a few points, but your article was definitely interesting and generous. I had not seen Virgil for some time, and was prompted by the article to call him up, which I did. Now it’s his turn. I also liked very much your prefatory article for the Library bibliography. The view of American music stemming from Ives is strong and healthy. I had the good fortune to be present at the Ives concert in Connecticut; was it November. At 423. Grete Sultan (b. Johanna Margarete Sultan; 1906–2005), German-American pianist; like Cage, early on a student of Richard Buhlig, with whose help she emigrated in 1941, settling in New York. It was through Sultan that Cage first met Christian Wolff, who was one of her students. She is the dedicatee of Cage’s Music for Piano 53–68 (1956).

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any rate, apple cider and doughnuts were served. An amateur orchestra played magnificently putting all the accomplished artists to shame. I like Ives best (that evening) when everything goes vague and muddy. The artists did their level best to keep it melody with accompaniment done in clear colors. Then it’s just referential and to an America which is actually not America now but only New England then. Unfortunately Mrs. Ives was not present, but the insurance partner was and told some stories that were good to hear.424 You write in your letter of the confining of your interest to Lou, Partch, and myself. But there are many more. Particularly (from my point of view) Morton Feldman (Columbia Records has issued a fine recording of about 3 pieces superbly played and recorded), Earle Brown, whose works are now being published in Germany and England by Schott, Christian Wolff who is the most advanced of all I believe, Richard Maxfield425 who makes an electronic music with far more various timbres than any of the Europeans, Conlon Nancarrow426 whose player piano music I’ve never had a chance to hear, Gunther Schuller427 who seems to be exploring sliding tones in a way reminiscent of Ruth Crawford, but with a richer “musicality,” Henry Brant who from a different direction than mine comes to an awareness of the need for separating musicians in space, and then the Europeans who imbibe American actions: Cornelius Cardew (England),428 Sylvano Bussotti (Italy); even Nam June Paik (a Korean living in Cologne).429 In the next issue of it is I have a short and a long article on Morton 424. The partner was Julian Myrick (1880–1969), with whom, in 1907, Ives formed the independent insurance company Ives and Co. (later Ives and Myrick). 425. Richard (Vance) Maxfield (1927–1969), composer of instrumental, electro-acoustic, and electronic music. He would serve as Cage’s assistant in the premiere performance of Atlas Eclipticalis (Montreal, August 3, 1961). 426. Conlon Nancarrow (1912–1997), American composer who wrote almost exclusively for player piano. He spent much of his life in Mexico, becoming a Mexican citizen in 1955. Cunningham early on made two works utilizing Nancarrow’s scores: Crises (1960) and Cross Currents (1964). 427. Gunther Schuller (1925–2015), American composer, conductor, and jazz musician who coined the term “Third Stream” to denote music that combines classical and jazz techniques; and Ruth Crawford Seeger (1901–1953), composer and American folk music specialist, wife of noted American musicologist Charles Seeger (1886–1979); their children included the folk musician Pete. Cage was primarily interested in Crawford’s 1930–1933 works, which embodied dissonant counterpoint and serial techniques. 428. Cornelius Cardew (1936–1981), English experimental composer and founder with Howard Skempton and Michael Parsons of the Scratch Orchestra. Much of his mature work was politically motivated. He died on December 13, 1981 (some say murdered), the victim of a hit-and-run car accident near his London home in Leyton. 429. Nam June Paik (1932–2006), Korean-American video artist whom Cage met in Cologne. Among Paik’s later works is A Tribute to John Cage (1973), a pastiche of Cage’s performances and anecdotes, interviews, and examples of Paik’s participatory television and music works that parallel Cage’s

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Feldman. Will have it sent to you. The long one is 8 or 9 years or 10 years old, a lecture I gave at the clUb on Feldman’s music. The short one is recent in response to the current recording. Wolff is in the army now in Germany. An article by him on Webern appeared in Die Reihe. Another on form will appear in a forthcoming issue of Die Reihe. His parents are German. He was born in France, brought up here. His father, Kurt Wolff, started Pantheon Press. Christian studied with me and taught me a great deal and still does. He was about to get his doctorate in Classics at Harvard when they packed him off. The first month in the army in Texas he wrote an orchestral piece which Merce Cunningham choreographed and which was programmed later in Vienna in a concert of new music.430 Along with two versions of my Concert for Piano and Orchestra, a short one with voice, and a longer one without voice. You may naturally play the stories in any fashion you choose. You may even skip about if you wish. I am now writing 90 more and will give the lecture 3 hours long on the 25th here at the Living Theatre, with David playing from the Concert for Piano and Orchestra and the Fontana Mix. Now for guidelines as you request on postcard. There are 5 Imag. L.431 First is on Town Hall record. Second, I hope has been lost. It was like the first as far as instrumentation goes but fancy rather than stark. The third is for percussion orchestra and a great deal of machinery, was done at Museum of Modern Art in 1943. The 4th is for 12 radios and is also entitled March No. 2. The 5th is on tape and is fragments of 43 jazz records spliced together. Your question about the Williams Mix for radios suggests that you had not when asking it discovered that there are explanatory remarks on the newsprint sheets having the facsimile mss. in the Town Hall album. I think if you read these most questions will be answered. However, if you still have any, let me know. The Williams Mix and the Fontana Mix are both for tape: the Williams for 8 machines —that’s why I’ve never sent it to Vortex in SF —and the Fontana for 4. The Fontana is an “indeterminate tape”; that is, each time it is performed it is performed, changed —ideally with respect to all the parameters: freq. [frestrategies; included is rare footage of Cage performing 4'33" in Harvard Square. Paik was married to the Japanese artist Shigeko Kubota (1937–2015), who would publish Marcel Duchamp and John Cage (1968), documenting the electrified chess game Reunion (see note 737), played by Cage and Duchamp in Toronto. 430. Presumably Cunningham’s Suite by Chance (1951), his first engagement with Wolff’s music, previewed at New York’s Dancers’ Studio on December 31, 1951. 431. Cage’s five works bearing the title Imaginary Landscape (No. 1, No. 2, etc.), composed between 1939 and 1952, are among Cage’s most intriguing compositions, scored variously for tape recordings, radios, variable-speed turntables, and percussion.

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quency], amp. [amplitude], ov. st. [overtone structure], and dur. [duration]. Actually by measurement 17 minutes long, I was able recently to perform it as 26 minutes 15 seconds. And David on the 25th will spread it out to 3 hours. I say ideally because not all the necessary machines are available yet, though simple in construction and utterly practical. Hans Heinsheimer432 of Schirmers published an article in the Art News Annual called “Space Music in a Space Age.” Subtitle something about the general use now of chance operations. These latter are by him ascribed to Stockhausen and Boulez, though I have letters from Pierre renouncing friendship with me since I was employing chance operations. Also Karlheinz wd. agree he got them from the contact with me and Tudor. This is a silly argument. Nevertheless since HH was clearly thinking of me in his article as crack-pot, I went to him with a stack of music saying, since you are interested in space, here is some and if my music were published you would not have been able to misrepresent the scene. They still have done nothing on the grounds that this is Schirmers and how cd. I possibly be there talking to them. In all this I tend to rouse myself with  anger, but I assure you that what makes me angry is not that my work is  unpublished, unperformed, etc., but that these facts are part and parcel of the general lack of an intellectual life in the field of American music. So that I told David Hall in an interview a few days ago: until I or someone very much like me is given power, i.e., funds for concerts, publication of both music and articles, a magazine, everybody else has one we need one, American music will be dead as a door-nail. Example: Stockhausen’s Drei Gruppen announced by Bernstein433 now cancelled. If we can’t have Stockhausen, Boulez, etc., we can’t appear in the whole musical world. I would like to see here an organization comparable to Darmstadt or Donaueschingen which would exchange with Europe, bring them here and go there: a vitality, not the current complacency which goes under Berger’s term consolidation.

432. Hans Heinsheimer (1900–1993), Austrian-American music author and publisher who managed the works of contemporary composers such as Leonard Bernstein, Gian Carlo Menotti, and Samuel Barber. The referenced article is Hans W. Heinsheimer, “Space Music and Music for the Space Age,” Art News Annual, No. 2 (1960). 433. Leonard Bernstein (1918–1990) had planned in 1960 to conduct the New York Philharmonic in a performance of Stockhausen’s Gruppen für drei Orchester (1955-1957), each of its three orchestras requiring its own conductor, but the program was cancelled, ostensibly because of space limitations of Carnegie Hall; the work would finally be performed by the New York Philharmonic under Alan Gilbert at the Park Avenue Armory in 2012.

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To John Edmunds434 December 31, 1959 | Stony Point, New York Dear Mr. Edmunds: You may remember that I approached Schirmers with the project of publishing my music. Mr. Heinsheimer, after 6 weeks or so, came to the conclusion that he did not want to have anything to do with it. This has prompted me to give the question of music publication some thought, the result of which is this letter. I assume that what is wanted is not just the publication of my music but a solution of the problem of making experimental music available to those who are interested no matter who wrote it. This is necessary for the encouragement of the musical life (one might say in America, but I mean everywhere). The following paths are the ones I have thought of: 1. A composer’s cooperative. This was suggested by Heinz Klaus Metzger and Franco Evangelisti.435 Since their suggestion, Evangelisti’s music is being published by Universal (Vienna) so that their suggestion is no longer forthcoming. It could be established here and I know a young man who might organize it. 2. Publication outside this country. Universal is willing to handle my music. I could also, I believe, get it published elaborately with records by Ernst Brucher in Cologne. 3. Publication by a University in this country. I am thinking of the University of Illinois or Wesleyan or Dartmouth University. These three are interested in the music more than others. 4. The free publication (or distribution) of music by the Public Libraries of this country. 1) does not particularly interest me because it merely extends the business of individual profit and loss to group profit and loss. I object to 2) on the grounds that I am an American. 3) provides prestige, etc., but it is of no help to composers who are not as experienced and famous as I happen to be; it would suffer from weight of the academy. 434. John Edmunds (1913–1986), American composer and librarian, from 1957 to 1961 curator of the Americana Collection (later American Music Collection) of the Music Division of the New York Public Library for the Performing Arts. See Amy C. Beal, “‘Experimentalists and Independents Are Favored’: John Edmunds in Conversation with Peter Yates and John Cage, 1959–61,” Notes 64, no. 4 (June 2008). 435. Franco Evangelisti (1926–1980), Italian composer.

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I am definitely interested in 4). If it could be made to work it would provide a useful means for the advance of musical life that would continue. I am willing, that is, to give free of charge my music to the Public Libraries. I would give up the question of profit from it, only collecting (if I remain a member of ascaP436) royalties from its performance. Much of this music is on transparencies, so that it could be reproduced. The rest could be photostatted, or I could gradually put it on transparencies. It should be made known, if this comes about, that the music is available through the libraries. That could be, it seems to me, by loan without charge of copies in the library collection or by payment of copying charges, just as it is now possible for me to purchase photostats of certain things at the library. These privileges, naturally, should be available to foreigners. Furthermore, this means of publication should be made known as available to any composer, regardless of his fame or quality. (Just as the libraries contain all the novels, good, bad, and indifferent.) The question of available space may arise. However, not too many people will follow this path since it means the renunciation of profit. That about covers my thoughts on the subject. I do hope it interests you. Conversation would surely elaborate the means. I, personally, feel very strongly the obligation to get my own music out of my hands. Even Mr. Heinsheimer said he felt a certain obligation to publish it. But he said it would only produce a headache for Schirmers. Satie said somewhere that Beethoven was the first to give his music to a publisher. It would be a pleasure to establish another means appropriate to another time.

436. By decree of its president, Stanley Adams, in a formal letter dated March 25, 1955, Cage was elected to limited membership in ASCAP, effective March 22, 1955; he would be elected to full membership on November 25, 1959. Cage would in time garner significant royalties for his compositions, but in the early years, very little income accrued.

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To La Monte Young January 5, 1960 | Stony Point, New York Hope you can get in touch with dancer Ann Halprin Dear Mr. Young: Thank you very much for Vision.437 David Tudor and I would like to perform it here, but as your second letter says Visions, therefore Tudor is contemplating two concerts here, one with pianists, one percussion, and one singer, the other with two pianists, one percussion plus ? (one other not yet decided). This choice relates to recent European pieces which he wishes to play here, and to possible audience income and pay musicians would like something from you. Also sending separately Music Walk.438 This says it’s for one piano and radios; however, could be arranged for other said production. Better to keep it one piano and radios. Each person makes his own part, using the material as directed. The previous performances we’ve given one minute to each page, ten minutes, then, in all. Each player then carries his part and a stopwatch around with him as he fulfills his duties. Only points that fall within the lined rectangle are events. They are described, then, as to category and one aspect of sound (any), i.e., ___________________________________________ If line is piano keyboard and aspect is frequency, then above middle followed by low or [?] line is piano keyboard is amplitude (loud/soft), then mf followed by ppp. Space equals time (measured or judged). If questions, ask. One rehearsal of Music Walk is advisable, since moving about, collisions are possible.

437. Young’s Vision (1959) is scored for twelve instrumentalists playing unconventional sounds within the space of thirteen minutes, as determined by chance operations; there does not appear to be a second composition entitled Visions. 438. Cage’s Music Walk (1958), for one or more pianists using radio and/or recordings, first performed on October 14, 1958, in Dusseldorf. It was used as music for Cunningham’s Music Walk with Dancers (1960), with stage decor and costumes by Rauschenberg.

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To Guillermo Espinosa439 January 6, 1960 | Stony Point, New York Dear Mr. Espinosa: Thank you very much for your letter of December 29th. It would interest me very much to give a chamber orchestral program of advanced (post-dodecaphonic) American music at the Pan American Union. The program I propose includes Ixion (Morton Feldman), Music for Merce Cunningham (Christian Wolff), Pentathis (Earle Brown), and my own Concert for Piano and Orchestra. This program requires the following instruments: fl., ob., cl. sometimes playing b. cl., bn. doubling tenor sax, tpt., hn., tbn., tuba, harp, pn., vn., vla., cello, bass; 14 players in all. I would conduct and would require in addition to 2 or 3 rehearsals the opportunity to visit each instrumentalist individually before the general rehearsals. David Tudor would be the solo pianist. Variations of the above include the following: 1) the addition of two more violins, 1 more viola, bringing the total number of players to 17; 2) the addition of another soloist, Arline Carmen (contralto); she would sing in the Concert for Piano, Voice and Orchestra (a variant of my composition given above); 3) the presentation of three of the four works as choreographed by Merce Cunningham (the works by Feldman, Wolff and myself) (this would require a stage suitable for dancing, and lighting at least 30 by 20 feet and preferably 40 by 25 ft. in dimension) (if this program is the one of your choice, then I will put you in touch with the personal manager of Merce Cunningham and Dance Company). The minimum fee for soloist(s) would be $300. Enclosed you will find in German a program recently given in Vienna. The program notes include information about Wolff, Brown, Feldman, Tudor and myself. Hoping that the above is of interest to you, I look forward to your reply. P.S. Kindly return to me the enclosed program following your use of it.

439. Guillermo Espinosa (1905–1990), Latin American scholar and promoter of Latin American music, at the time chief of the Music Division, Pan American Union, Washington, D.C.

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To Peter Yates March 21, 1960 | Stony Point, New York Dear Peter, Thank you very much for writing about the albums and your views of what I am doing in the society. I was able to read it all without any embarrassment, and I thank you for having written in such a way that I could do that. Another thing I am grateful to you for: having led me to Wittgenstein.440 Now there’s another you mention who is unfamiliar to me: John Jay Chapman.441 Shall start looking around. It’s curious. I had not been reading much, now a great deal. I am struggling to write the Elements of Music deal. So far getting nowhere. That is generally the beginning of the way. I like so much that preface of Wittgenstein in the Phil[osophical] Investigations, especially where he speaks about criss-crossing a landscape or is it you who speak of landscape, at any rate you do in the current article make that way of writing seem more reasonable. I am sorry I gave you the impression that I disown the influence of [Gertrude] Stein, that must have been due to the remark in the postscript to book on VT. But what I was objecting to there was VT’s report of what she had said to him she was doing. In my own feeling she has always been present and alive. I never managed to meet her, though I made an early attempt. Many actual “useful means” in my new Theatre Piece 442 are actually mentioned in Wittgenstein, e.g., the non-rigid rulers. I am continually amazed, with him now, and then again with others continually, that not only ideas as people seem agreed but actual ways of doing things are “in the air.” My most recent piece pleases me. David performed it at Wesleyan University in Connecticut (where, by the way, have I told you yet a book of my collected articles and lectures will be published —I have no contract however, so that it is just a piece of private information to you not to be publicly stated). It is for amplified toy pianos called Music for Amplified Toy Pianos.443 Can use any number 440. Ludwig (Josef Johann) Wittgenstein (1889–1951), Austrian-British philosopher who worked primarily in the fields of logic, philosophy of mathematics, and philosophy of mind and language. 441. Likely John Jay Chapman (1862–1933), American lawyer and essayist. 442. Cage’s Theatre Piece (1960), comprising parts for one to eight performers (dancers, singers, musicians, etc.), to be used in whole or in part, in any combination, originally used as music for Cunningham’s eponymous work, premiered in New York, March 7, 1960. Not to be confused with the so-called “theatre piece” or “Theatre Piece No. 1” of 1952, also known as the first (Black Mountain) “Happening” or “Black Mountain Event.” 443. Cage’s Music for Amplified Toy Pianos (1960) for any number of toy pianos, first performed in Middletown, Connecticut, on February 25, 1960. A composition indeterminate of its performance,

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(on this occasion 5 were used, each amplified with a contact microphone and going thru operable amplifiers to widely spaced loudspeakers around the audience). The sound is majestic not only from the keys but from the wooden structures, the rods plucked and brushed and the instruments dragged across wood, squeaking legs, etc. This majesty is concomittant with the hilarity induced by the means. Humor not only here but in many things nowadays, most recently the Hommage to New York by Jean Tinguely, a self-destroying machine which for thirty minutes at the Mus. of Mod. Art burned, smoked, sent fragments of itself out into space, etc. This season at least tragedy is not omnipresent. A project I have in mind now is for Wesleyan Univ. Again as I formerly wanted: a center for exp[erimental] music, ways to make it, with place for performance so that a kind of Darmstadt could exist here but also travel to other universities plus a magazine about modern music should this come about would you like to be involved? At the present moment I am told that if I get Douglas Moore444 and H. A. Moe to say yes, it will proceed as a matter of course. I have some interesting pupils at the New School: Toshi Ichiyanagi in particular.445 He will perform with David Tudor in a forthcoming series of 3 concerts at the Living Theatre. Have many more things to tell you it seems to me. But must move on.

To Christian Wolff April 18, 1960 | Stony Point, New York Dear Christian: It was a great pleasure to hear from you. Merce was here, it was his birthday, and David, M.C., and Robert Duncan,446 poet from S.F. I’m glad the business with materials consisting of seven sheets of transparent plastic (two with points, two with circles, two with points within circles, and one with a graph and straight line) that are superimposed by the performer to create a single reading. In performance, the toy pianos are amplified via contact microphones, and loudspeakers are distributed around the performance space. 444. Douglas (Stuart) Moore (1893–1969), American composer and educator, best known for his operas The Devil and Daniel Webster (1938) and The Ballad of Baby Doe (1956). He was president of the National Institute and American Academy of Arts and Letters from 1953 to 1956. 445. Toshi Ichiyanagi (b. 1933), Japanese avant-garde composer, husband from 1956 to 1963 to Yoko Ono. He was one of Cage’s composition students at the New School in the 1950s. 446. Robert Duncan (1919–1988), American poet often identified with the poets of the New American Poetry school.

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of being in the army has periods of liveliness for you. David will by now have answered your letter to Frank Amey447 —I mean he’s writing to Amey. I don’t at the moment see or feel the need for my coming to Europe. But David is arriving there late in May or early June according to some auffuhrung geplant [loosely, a projected performance] of Karlheinz. I rather think he’ll stay through the summer even though Merce is going to Connecticut again and being in the festival there. We will make a program there that can be done without David. The other thing that’s developed is an invitation to Merce and Carolyn for the Berlin Festwoche. Susan Pimsleur448 is now Merce’s agent and she writes regarding that. It is not known now whether Merce would go at all or with Carolyn or with the whole Company. If he goes to Berlin one way or another it could be arranged to go to Venice also naturally. And that is what David has written about to Amey. Also offering my new Theatre Piece. We’ve had almost a superfluity of activity this last season. Still continues. David and I now going on tours in NY state as far as Buffalo. David just finished 3 programs at Living Theatre. The Japanese pianist and composer Toshi Ichiyanagi played with him in the third. We also did a piece by La Monte Young: Poem for Chairs, Tables, Benches, Etc.449 (and other sound Sources) which turned out beautifully. I have high hopes for Ichiyanagi who comes to my classes; he seems to be a composer. So many of the other orientals are musicologists. I also am happy about Nam June Paik. Have you met him in Cologne? Your music remains my favorite music. Have this season heard it often. At Wesleyan the “for piano with preparations” and “for pianist,” these again in New York, and I heard David and Toshi twice do the Duo II for pianists. Also conducted the Music for Merce. All were magnificent. People had said at Darmstadt that the Duo was boring. I can’t imagine what they meant. As far as I’m concerned it could go on forever. I want now very much, perhaps I always say this, to sit quietly doing more or less nothing so that I can make a response to your music, and also to the Theatre Piece. There has been a fantastic amt. of publicity, in relation to the two albums out, and this makes it very simple to get engagements in this country. I think 447. Frank Amey, expatriate American composer who lived with his family near Peggy Guggenheim in Venice. Associated with Venice’s Musica d’oggi, he organized an exhibition of Cage’s musical scores at the Accademia di Belle Arti (Sept. 11–25, 1960) as part of the Festival of Contemporary American Music. 448. Susan Pimsleur was director of Musical Artists, a concert-management agency based in New York. She served for a time as Cunningham’s agent. 449. Young’s Poem for Chairs, Tables, Benches, Etc. (1960), an iconic twenty-minute work consisting of instructions for arranging the furniture in a room.

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now of an American tour just in terms of making a living. More and more I doubt going to India. Am proposing a Center for exptl. music at Wesleyan, replete with festivals and the possibility of bringing Darmstadt to America and moving it around the U.S., incl[uding] architecture for theatre, tape studios, etc., plus magazine. They just might do it. I spoke to N.O. Brown there about you. Have you read his book yet: Life Against Death? He feels a kinship with you since you are classicists, and besides, M.C. may have dinner with him tomorrow at Wesleyan and with Robert Duncan. This season more than another, Dada was evident. It’s no longer called neodada. The 2nd one is called proto-dada. Also wrote Music for Amplified Toy Pianos. Involves 5 of them and 5 amplifiers with 5 loudspeakers spaced about. The sound is marvelous, but seems to baffle most listeners. I find it hilarious and magnificent. Am also going to do incidental music to a play at the Living Theatre by Jackson Mac Low.450 It will be tapes of the rehearsals superimposed on the performance. The Lord seems to have planned it that way because independently Beck decided to film the [illegible], the movies being the set. Should be rather complex experience. Can’t think of anything else that’s going on in the social circle. Spring is arriving and last night visited mother and dad, and we walked outside and spotted first mushrooms of the season, coprinus micaceus. Did the magazine in Cologne contact you for a photo? Heard some of Nancarrow’s music. He’s been living in Mexico for decades making rolls for player pianos. They are all metrical patterns and ostinati451 so that the effect is jazz, boogie woogie and blues, but the complexity suggests Tobey, and the mechanical quality is quite welcome in this situation. It’s also something like a jazzy J. M. Hauer.452 There may be 8 different changing metrical patterns going on all at once through the piano range. He seems too to have changed the timbre of the piano, not with preparations, because the pitch is 450. Jackson Mac Low (1922–2004), American composer, playwright, and a forerunner among the Language poets, known for his work with chance operations. The collaboration referenced here resulted in Cage’s Music for “The Marrying Maiden” (1960), a magnetic tape piece composed for Mac Low’s The Marrying Maiden, a Play of Changes, first performed in a Living Theatre production in June 1960. 451. Plural of ostinato, a motif or phrase that persistently repeats. 452. Josef Matthias Hauer (1883–1959), Austrian composer and music theorist who may have anticipated Schoenberg’s twelve-tone method by one or two years. Cunningham used Hauer’s Labyrinthischer Tanz (1955) for his own Labyrinthian Dances (1957).

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conventional, but I think he must have removed extra strings. It sounds somewhat harpsichordish and without resonance. Particularly the bass sounds like a narrow pizzicato if that means anything to you. May have to write a “definitive” history 1931 to 1960 of American exptl. music. Wd. keep me busy. Library Assoc. David just called and we have to get ready to go to tour. He says to send his love and best wishes. Please greet everyone for us as you see them.

To Peter Yates May 27, 1960 | Stony Point, New York Dear Peter: The delay in answering is result of having been on tour (Mich. and Ohio) and then getting back to a deadline for incidental music for The Marrying Maiden, a play that opens shortly at the Living Theatre. That is now on tape. In the mail, also letters from Irving Lowens. I will write to him and imagine send with this a copy of what I say which is that I am delighted that you and I can collaborate on the entire scene of exptl. music in USA. 1900 to 1960.453 How we will do this, I leave to you. My involvement with chance operations and indeterminacy has made me ideally receptive. However, I do not want to get seriously started on this job unless we are assured of substantial remuneration. For the reason that if we do do it, I would devote myself to whatever jobs were necessary in your opinion, i.e., analysis, etc. The only reason I considered doing this work in the first place was related to Satie’s remark: If I don’t smoke, somebody else will in my place. I mean perhaps Schuller, Gunther, or M[ilton] Babbitt or who knows? My present commitments are teaching here during the summer and then very probably to Europe for late August, through part of Oct., then towards L.A. for November. Luciano and Cathy coming out for the weekend. Saw them for lunch the other day. We are kind of family friends, because every day together in Milan for four months while I made the Fontana Mix. When Luciano heard the first three minutes, he said that it was all wrong, and that he’d be glad to help me straighten it out. Those were not his exact words but the general gist so for God’s sake don’t quote him! At any rate I was reduced to silent blind fury, and 453. While Cage and Yates spent some time strategizing on their joint contribution, this proposed volume by Irving Lowens does not appear to have materialized.

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felt like taking my sounds and going home. But it was Marino Zuccheri,454 the engineer with whom I worked and played boccheti who said pay no attention, what you’re doing is what you do, not what Luciano does. He was very encouraging and so by just going on working it got done. But then came the day Bruno Maderna heard it (at the time of about 10 minutes). He said everything sounded the same, smoky and unclear, and no changes of timbre or frequency or amplitude. Apparently they don’t listen. How is that possible? I know they have ideas, but why are ideas like cement getting in the way of ear-drum? Have half a notion to put the Fontana Mix (17 minutes) on L.A. program without voice or piano. Am sure you didn’t get to hear it under Luciano’s manipulation of machines. If, that is, what happened happened as in Rome. Muted so Cathy would come through. That’s my only objection to her and other fine singers: the need for supremacy. To counteract this am going to write a vocal work for 12 soloists, each one supremely self-centered. It will sound like an insane asylum, as imagined by Hollywood. At the end, when I’d done the 17 minutes of Fontana Mix, I insisted upon a private performance at the radio under excellent conditions. Luciano then said praise of it. Other European remarks about it have to do with anti-music, antiart, etc. Even from close friends. So they listen through art instead of through their ears. David Tudor’s the only one who quickly hears who’s near me. He said when he heard it, Delicious! And since food means so much to him —he’s a fine Indian cook —I understood. Am glad to hear the word Lansing from you with respect to speakers.455 I  more and more resist performances of tape music on acct. of all the poor speakers in existence. If it has to be canned —let’s not have the cans made out of tin.

454. Marino Zuccheri, sound engineer of Milan’s RAI Electronic Music Studio (Studio di Fonologia) who assisted many composers, including Cage (Fontana Mix, 1958) and Berio (Visage, 1961), to realize early masterpieces of electronic music. He was reputedly a man of great humor (some say a trickster), and Cage was extremely fond of him. 455. Altec Lansing, an audio electronics company manufacturer of professional multimedia audio products. From the 1940s the Altec Lansing Duplex 600 series coaxial loudspeaker was frequently used for making studio monitors.

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To Peter Yates June 6, 1960 | Stony Point, New York Dear Peter: What composers is not yet fixed in my mind. I think research could be valuable and to begin it suggest your talking with Lou and my talking with Henry Cowell. Other than those you mention, I think of William Russell, Ruth Crawford, Johanna Beyer, Alan Hovhaness, Colin McPhee, Earle Brown, Christian Wolff, Louis and Bebe Barron, Whitney Bros.,456 possibly Gunther Schuller, La Monte Young and his group, the Happenings group here: Allan Kaprow, George Brecht, Al Hansen, also Lucille Dlugoshevsky,457 Richard Maxfield, Computer Music. My thoughts go in this way: to set up (shifting as they do through the decades) the boundaries of convention with respect to different aspects of use to composers, to take as exptl. actions outside those boundaries. E.g., history is useful. Those who are conventional now accept Schoenberg-Stravinsky and speak of consolidating the acquisitions of these two. Whom did conventional composers follow 1900–1930? Wagner? Brahms? Debussy? One of the tests for exptl. 1930–1960 is: how free from Schoenberg-Stravinsky. Sound as material is useful, and divides into its aspects: Frequency Amplitude Timbre Noise

Duration

What is outside the conventions of it? Intonation, microtones, the field. Here comes Varese " " " percussion music white noise concrete. In other words outside the convention of musical tone. Thus Luening and Ussa. appear less exptl. than others they use new means to stay where everybody wants them to. Outside conventions: complexity of grupettos alteration of notation. Nancarrow here surely

456. John (1917–1995) and James (1921–1982) Whitney, brothers, early masters of abstract cinema. John Whitney struggled in later years with Cage’s chance-based compositions, which did not correlate with the audio-visual resonances he was exploring in his own films. 457. Properly, Lucia Dlugoszewski (1931–2000), Polish-born American composer and inventor. Among her percussive inventions (predominantly pianos, drums, rattles, and gourds) was a kind of prepared piano in which hammers and keys were replaced with bows and plectra. She was a longtime partner of Erick Hawkins.

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Space Method

Structure

Brant comes in here and I want to too. Outside 12-tone —neo classic sequences, repetition and variation of motive, counterpoint. Perhaps moving to absence of variation and athematic continuity and collage and silence other ways of making parts than tonal ones disintegration of the cadence. Eventually giving up the making of an object and coming to process without beginning and end.

To David Tudor June 22 [1960] | Stony Point, New York Dear David: Merce is already in Colorado, so I am inventing his attitudes towards the questions you ask. (I also called Carolyn and have her view.) It is: that the dances were made to be seen from one vantage point, and that the platform should be at one end. The size 35 x 25 is good. Lights then would come from the rear I should imagine. Where will the instruments be placed? On the platform? If so, it might be good to have it at least 30 ft. deep. Means for exits and entrances should be considered. Places for costumes to be changed. Re Theatre Piece. I would be interested in a whole evening, but if that makes programming other pieces difficult (having time for everything that is desired), then it can be 30 min. If it is the whole evening, my thought is to let the performers make 3 readings of their parts, in the same way we have made 3 readings of the Variations.458 One would be free, e.g., to be absent wholly or in part from a given act —all of them 30 minutes long. As to the performers see below. (Am waiting to speak to Cathy.) I won’t do anything about Fontana Mix until I hear from you about the 4-track machine. 458. Cage’s first reference to a series of works, Variations I–Variations VIII (1958–1967), all indeterminate with respect to their performance. Scores comprise instructions of varying complexity, and each work may be performed substantially differently from one performance to the next. Source materials for all are provided largely by the players. Variations  I, referenced here, consists of parts to be prepared from the score for any number of players using any sound-producing means. It was first performed in Greensboro, North Carolina, on March 15, 1958. See Cage’s letter to Marian J. Kerr dated February 18, 1964, for a summary of the first four Variations works. Also see David P. Miller, “Indeterminacy and Performance Practice in Cage’s Variations,” American Music (Spring 2009): 60–86.

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As to the dance program, I assume it will be the Berlin one. Earle is writing a new piece for Carolyn’s new solo. I believe it uses a tape machine. I called him about this, and he was indefinite as often: he has begun work and has thought of using a machine but could do without, etc. But if he does without it’s a different piece.459 Incidentally he has given Capitol notice and is giving up his job.460 I have reached Cathy. She will not arrive in Milan until the 3rd of September and would not be available for concerts until the 5th. (You cd. arrange a Cage Birthday!) The Venice fees are arranged no doubt according to amount of work done. This brings up the finances of the entire tour with Merce and Carolyn, and the question of whether you return soon to go back again in August. The contract for Berlin is not yet signed, and when it is, 20% goes to Susan. She, by the way, has insisted that all the correspondence go through her, and that is why I have not answered letters myself. I will now write to Brucher to explain that situation. Your returning to work now would add circa $500 to the expenses, and I see no necessary reason for this being added to Merce’s obligations. If you make this trip, my feeling is that you should pay for it. Should Merce be able to pay it, he would be able to bring Nick or Rick for the lighting which wd. be of such help.461 That possibility has not yet been taken seriously because of lack of funds. Also, the Connecticut programs have been arranged in such a way that they can be done without you, because of your early uncertainty as to whether you wd. return. If you do come back, the piano parts (Suite, Septet, and Rune) could be played by you and Dunn462 instead of you and myself, since I have already set Dunn to work on the music. I would limit my work to conducting Rune. That would give us all fees. If, versus the general tenor of my remarks, you feel that you want to come back and that Merce should pay for it, then I think any fees that are given should be more equal and cooperative. 459. Cage refers here to Cunningham’s Hands Birds, an energetic solo for Carolyn Brown that was ultimately danced to pieces from Earle Brown’s Folio (1952). Hands Birds was originally titled “Diana the Huntress,” from a poem by M.C. Richards. 460. In addition to composing, Brown was an editor and recording engineer for Capitol Records (1955–1960) and a producer for Time Records (1960–1966), overseeing the release of discs with music by Berio, Boulez, Cage, Feldman, Kagel, Maderna, Wolff, et al. 461. Nicholas Cernovich and Richard Nelson, lighting designers. A student at Black Mountain College from 1948, Cernovich was the projectionist in Cage’s Black Mountain “happening” in August 1952 and worked with the Cunningham Dance Company for several years after its formation in 1953. In addition to Cunningham, Nelson worked with choreographers such as Martha Graham and Paul Taylor. 462. Robert (Ellis) Dunn (1928–1996), American musician, choreographer, and teacher. He would work with Cage to organize the first definitive catalog of the composer’s work, John Cage (New York: Henmar Press, 1962).

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I cd. bring pianos, microphones and cartridges.463 Will look into shipping possibility. Carolyn has made reservations for Icelandic flight on 23 August. I hope this letter reaches you soon enough for an immediate reply, because we have 5 reservations for the maximum possibility (you, me, Merce, Carolyn, Nick or Rick) and $100 for each must be given by the 30th of this month. I rather think Merce and I would stay with Peggy, if she does not have other guests then. Otherwise wd. be delighted to stay with Amey. There is also rumor that Iliana Castelli464 is taking a house on the Lido and will have room (also for Bob and Jap possibly). The dates in Berlin, if the contract is signed, are Sept. 28, 29, and 30. Possibly also Oct. 1. I have written that we wd. arrive by the 26 for technical arrangements, rehearsals, etc. About fall plans: the answers to my few letters sent out have been negative. We have so far only L.A. for $200 and Potsdam, NY, for $300. Furthermore, I’ve just been invited to be a fellow at the Center for advanced studies at Wesleyan for three months from Sept. 15 to Dec. 15th. I will therefor cancel these and you are then free to do the Stockhausen November engagements. As for Spring and your question about Apr.–May ’61, I know that Susan has gotten and is getting more engagements for Merce and at good fees. She was assured that we were available for Feb., March and April. She now has 8 engagements Feb. 10, 14, 18, 22; March 8, 11; Apr. 12, 14, and is naturally getting more. If you are going to be in Europe for April and May, let me know so that we can substitute Dunn and arrange the programs accordingly. I am trying to arrange the Wesleyan Fellowship for a beginning around the 15th of Oct. or the 1st of November. Am also having rather promising conversations with Hendrickson465 of 463. Cage refers to the cartridges of phonographic pick-ups with apertures into which a needle is usually inserted. These are used in his Cartridge Music (1960), first performed in Bremen on September 15, 1960, wherein the performer is instructed to insert small objects (pipe cleaners, matches, feathers, wires, etc.) into the cartridges; sounds are then amplified and controlled by the performer. This work was later used as music for Cunningham’s Changing Steps (1973), Exercise Piece II (1978), and Exercise Piece III (1980). 464. Properly, Ileana Sonnabend (née Schapira; 1914–2007), Romanian-born American dealer of twentieth-century art, married for a time to art dealer Leo Castelli (1907–1999) and from 1959 to Polish-born Michelangelo scholar Michael Sonnabend. The Sonnabend Gallery opened in Paris in 1962, representing American artists, especially those working in Pop Art. Cage mispells her name variously: Iliana, Ilyiana, etc. “Bob and Jap” are Robert Rauschenberg and Jasper Johns, Jap being Cage’s affectionate nickname for Johns. 465. Cage means Walter Hinrichsen (1907–1969), founder of C. F. Peters Corporation in New York in 1948, soon to be Cage’s life-long music publisher.

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Peters Edition. They contemplate publishing the Concert for Piano and Orchestra. plus another piece. I will propose something with transparencies. I think I’ve answered questions a)–i). Await those j–z.

To David Tudor June 23 [1960] | Stony Point, New York Dear David, Just received your letter of the 21st. My position with regard to writing letters about the dance engagement possibilities is difficult, because as I wrote in last letter, Susan Pimsleur has insisted that they all go through her. I will write to Bengt Hambraeus466 to explain this, and the same with Hager,467 who has written telling me of the reconstruction of the Opera and the problem of the Museum of Modern Art there (which has no stage) where a platform would have to be constructed. The conversations with the Peters Edition continue promisingly. If they decide, however, to do nothing, I will bring something for Mary Bauermeister.468 Otherwise not, since I hope to give Peters an exclusive position. Their plan is to begin with the Concert for Piano and Orchestra plus parts, another piece, and information about the pieces that are available on transparencies, and as orders for these latter give indication, add to the publishing. Several reports have come through from San Francisco re recent performances of La Monte Young. I enclose a letter from Ann Halprin. Did you ever meet her? She is a good person. I also heard of the version of the “Opera” with girls. La Monte has written that he will send recent pieces. I don’t remember a letter from Maryvonne Kendergi.469 I remember writing to her but not receiving a reply. Due to your first letter in which you said you 466. Bengt Hambraeus (1928–2000), Swedish organist, composer, and musicologist, from 1957 to 1972 an advocate for contemporary Swedish composers in the music department of the Swedish Radio. 467. Likely Leopold Hager (b. 1935), Austrian conductor best known for his interpretations of works emanating from composers comprising the (First) Viennese School. He was assistant conductor at the Stadttheater Mainz (1957–1962). 468. Mary (Hilde Ruth) Bauermeister (b. 1934), German artist who in 1960 launched a series of gatherings in her small, slant-roof atelier in Cologne devoted to artists active in the emerging Fluxus movement. 469. Maryvonne Kendergi (1915–2011), Canadian commentator on new music. She likely first met Cage in Europe during her tour of major music festivals in 1958.

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were being pressed for November dates in Europe, I have cancelled the two engagements here (Potsdam and Los Angeles) and am making no attempts to get engagements; in your second letter, however, you mention all these Canadian possibilities for the fall. If, as is almost certain, Wesleyan accepts the dates I proposed for the Fellowship (Oct. 15 to Feb. 1), I won’t be available. You could, of course, fulfill the engagements yourself. I have written to Brucher and told him that the letters have to go through Susan Pimsleur, Musical Artists, 119 West 57th St., NY 19. My plans for next summer are to be in Michigan with Dr. Smith470 from June 25 for 8 weeks (that goes to mid-August). I would be very interested in going to South America but I want to spend the 8 weeks in Michigan definitely. If their program is June thru Oct. perhaps something could be worked out, unless you are planning to be at Darmstadt (Aug.–Sept.) About the Cartridge Music (unwritten so far). I will bring cartridges with me, but the number we will use will depend on the loudspeakers and amplifiers available. These must be of good or excellent quality. The composition will be written in such a way that the number of cartridges is not set, and so that the length of the piece is not set. Give it the program length that seems suitable to the program. There will also be any number of players. I will bring 1 or 2 dozen cartridges. Is the Duet for Cymbal a piece I am to write?471 I have vague recollections of some inspiration. As I think about it now, it also needs a very good loudspeaker, contact mike, and amplifier. Let me know whether they are available. I had only 5 registered pupils in my composition class. And for once I had the courage to cancel the whole thing. It was difficult because two or three of the students were extremely sweet (milk behind ears) and one showed signs of working with energy. His name is Joseph Jones,472 so I sent him to study with Earle Brown. Furthermore they have in common the Schillinger experience.473 But he had not only energy but humility. A dear. 470. Alexander H. Smith (1904–1986), American mycologist, president of the Mycological Society of America, and editor of the scientific journal Mycologia (1945–1950). From 1959 to 1972, he served as director of the University of Michigan Herbarium. He would later collaborate with Cage and Lois Long on Mushroom Book (1972), a limited-edition art portfolio (see note 781). 471. Cage’s Duet for Cymbal (1964), derived from his earlier Cartridge Music (1960), originally used as music for Cunningham’s Paired (1964), with stage decor and costumes by Rauschenberg, first performed in Hartford, Connecticut, on March 19, 1964. 472. Joseph (“Joe”) Jones (1934–1993), American composer who was active in Fluxus events in New York. 473. Joseph (Moiseyevich) Schillinger (1895–1943), Russian composer and music theorist who

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What I have left is a fellow who’s cracked I think and who is going to manage he says to get out here for private lessons. As far as he is concerned everybody is old-fashioned, and he plans a work for large orch., 8 perc. 4 pianos and Bernstein, to be finished this summer! Once he lost his voice for two years. Perhaps I need a private guard. His name is William Gale. Gale and Jones are both 20 yrs. old. Dear David, our needs are now very separate: I must quietly work, and Wesleyan will be marvelous for that. You need, I understand, all this activity of performance. Should it be that you are not going to be in Europe for November and want to have the engagements revived that I have cancelled, let me know and I will do what I can for you. La Monte has also sent names to write to. Those that Ann sent are useless since they don’t have first names. Let me know whether you have been able to use the contact mike and cartridge you took with you in Europe with the amplifiers there. Wd. also appreciate for composition purposes some information about the range of amplitude in your experience (those little drawings you make after testing the amplifiers). Am sending copy of this to Venice just in case it arrives too late in Köln. Copy includes Ann’s letter.

To Robert Moran474 July 7, 1960 | Stony Point, New York Dear Mr. Moran: Thank you very much for your letter of the third of July. I had some difficult myself wondering what BK was. Then I realized you must have gotten it from the article about David Tudor that appeared in Harpers Magazine. Is that true? In 1957–58, I composed a Concert for Piano and Orchestra which has no score but only parts, including one for the conductor. These parts can be played as solos or in any combinations. Furthermore any parts of the parts may be originated the Schillinger System of Musical Composition that used mathematical expressions to describe processes of composition useful to art, architecture, design, and music. His students included, in addition to Brown, George Gershwin, Oscar Levant, and Cowell. 474. Robert Moran (b. 1937), American composer, at the time a student at Mills College in Oakland, California. He became best known for his operas and ballets, which include The Juniper Tree (1985), composed with Philip Glass, to a libretto by Arthur Yorinks.

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played. BK is part of the Solo for Piano. This contained many different composing means of which BK is the 27th. The different means were labelled alphabetically A to Z and then BA to BZ, etc. A more detailed statement about the work as a whole may be read in the notes to the Town Hall Album, an announement of which I enclose. The Solo for Piano may be obtained by writing to Henmar Press Inc., 373 Park Ave. So., New York 16, N.Y. All of my work is now with that company with the exception of Amores (for prepared piano and percussion) New Music Edition (now with Presser Co. in Philaelphia); Winter Music (for 1 to 20 pianos), which is to be printed in a forthcoming issue of the English magazine New Departures; and the Fontana Mix (tape), Suvini Zerboni Co., Milan. You may see the Winter Music by getting in touch with the dancer Ann Halprin, who is in the San Francisco area. Let me thank you very much for your interest in the music. And accept my best wishes for your program.

To Walter Hinrichsen July 12, 1960 | Stony Point, New York Dear Mr. Hinrichsen: There are two questions in particular that I was going to ask on the 21st when we meet, but as I prepare my manuscripts for you, it seemed to me worthwhile to put these questions in a letter. They concern the Fontana Mix and the Winter Music, which are excluded at present from our contract. I would be pleased if these two works could be included in our contract. When I went to Milan, Italy as a guest of the Studio di Fonologia of the Italian Radio, the composer, Luciano Berio (now at Tanglewood, Lenox, Mass.) arranged with his then-publisher, Suvini-Zerboni, to pay me 30,000 Lire for rights to the Fontana Mix. I have never delivered the manuscript or a copy of it to Zerboni, since I was constantly using it for compositional purposes (Water Walk, Aria for Mezzo-Soprano, Sounds of Venice, Theatre Piece, and wbai). I have recently learned from Mrs. Cathy Berio that Zerboni has indicated that they would return the rights to the Fontana Mix to me on receipt of 30,000 Lire. I would myself be willing to pay this. My question is this: shall I attempt to bring this situation about, or could you as my publisher do it? I only ask you to take care of the correspondance, not the payment of monies. 1 9 5 0 – 1 9 6 1  |  231

Winter Music is in the hands of Michael Horovitz, editor of New Departures, 15 Manor Rd., South Hinksey, near Oxford, England. He has met with financial difficulties which are making it impossible to immediately publish the second issue of his magazine which would include the Winter Music. Perhaps this could be done with your copyright notice following an agreement between you and Mr. Horovitz. I have not put this question in the form of a question. But you may see in the situation an action to be taken that would be to our mutual advantage. These two works are important in the body of my recent work. Looking forward to our meeting on the 21st of this month.

To David Tudor July 27 [1960] | Location not indicated Dear David, A quick note since I have to go into town. Now finished are Cartridge Music (which is also Duet for Cymbal, Piano Duet, Trio, etc.) and Solo for Voice 2. The Solo for Voice can go with the Fontana Mix, the Concert for Piano and Orch. (any parts) and also with the Cartridge Music. It can make the situation of a congestion of soloists with the cartridges. I am taking this material to Henmar Press today (373 Park Ave. South), and will have two copies of each sent on to you as soon as reproduced. Our plan there is to begin with the Music of Changes. It will be done in 4 volumes —the old green deal of Edition Peters. My question is: if they are willing, are you willing to have your editing —the timings included, with, of course proper mention and check? Also please let me know if you will record it and if so suggest a time. Earle is becoming an A and R [artists and repertoire] man, and is beginning with a record of old percussion music conducted by me.475 I have to make a 40-minute L.P. next week. Certainly wish you were here. Morty is doing a Hollywood film.476 475. The referenced recording was released by Time Records in 1961 and included Cage’s Amores (1936; rev. 1943), Harrison’s Canticle No.  I (1939), and the Cage-Harrison collaborative work Double Music (1941); also works by Roldán, Russell, and Cowell. 476. Jack Garfein’s Something Wild (1961), a dark, independent drama involving rape and attempted suicide. Feldman’s score, reputedly quite delicate, was felt to be inadequate by the director and was replaced with one by Copland.

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On the 12th I do a program at Tanglewood with strings, flute and clarinet, and give a talk. Is this Tanglewood? Then what am I doing here? Please write to me and tell me what the programs are in Venice so that I can get whatever I have to do together. E.g., what about the Theatre Piece? M.C. is back and is marvelous. Dashes about to the 3-fold farm to hear about the mind, the senses, and the universe with Russians in it.477 It is now clear to almost everybody that we are a lower-class nation. Where are you? The wife of the publisher was at Mills years ago when I gave percussion concerts there, and she has been telling him all along you should have heard, you should print it, etc. Please send a word.

To David Tudor August 1, 1960 | Stony Point, New York Dear David, Thanks for letter July 26. Postscript is amazing re Welin. I had accepted 3rd of Oct., and then Munich (Everding coming through for Oct. 2 and 3) made me send cable to Welin saying please make it the 10th; that was sent Saturday. Your letter, Monday, says he says 10th! Very good. Saw a letter MC is forwarding to you from Tomek.478 Apparently doesn’t want Cartridge Music or is afraid or something. At any rate some problem expressed in German. Now just back from Tanglewood to hear Luciano’s new piece, Circles for voice, 2 perc. and harp. Done beautifully by Cathy and Boston Symphony people. cathy Will be available in sePtember. It is terribly hot today and I am feeling extremely strange: can’t sleep! Didn’t sleep last night and now thought I’d take a nap, and can’t! Cathy is anxious to appear in Theatre Piece. Is also interested in my new song 477. Cage refers to M.C. Richards’s involvement, with Tudor, in the Rudolf Steiner Threefold Educational Center in Chestnut Ridge, New York, founded in 1961 by Paul Scharff and his wife, Ann. 478. Otto Tomek (1928–2013), Austrian music journalist and radio producer. After working for Universal Edition in Vienna, he took over direction of new music at the Westdeutscher Rundfunk in Cologne, then became program director for the Donaueschingen New Music Days.

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which is called Solo for Voice 2479 and which has been sent to you with Cartridge Music. When I got back rec’d. letter from Welin saying 3rd fine; so there is definitely confusion. I do hope we get Munich for 2 and 3 Oct. and Stockholm for 10. Will keep you informed. Meanwhile Pimsleur is sending you publicity junk via Venice. My present feeling is to keep our tickets Icelandic which are bought sealed and delivered and fly to Venice on Aug. 23 and sit there rather than here. Wd. you be there? Would then be able pleasantly to prepare the various shindigs, since now there is change of dates. Pimsleur says London idea re her is good, that is get TV and do the live thing for 60 pounds or what not. Am also, naturally, willing to coop with Bauermeister. Have written her. She sent me map of locales. Pimsleur has some deal going on with a German agent and thinks there will be many engagements for the three of you: You, Merce, and Carolyn. Because I must return Oct. 13. If you see the toy pianos (which I sent ages ago), will you let me know how they are? The Fontana Mix is being tossed around. Luciano won’t have it on the Tanglewood program (pardon me, dear J., he says, but I don’t like it except with Cathy); meanwhile Peter Yates’ new article is about how potent the Fontana Mix is and how shilly shally Berio-Maderna tapes are, not shilly shally but Strauss, he says, Domestica. A lady came up to me at Tanglewod and said, Who are you? I said I was a friend of Luciano’s. He said to her, Don’t you know him, he’s J.C., the composer. She said, Why didn’t you say you were a composer. I said, How could I, since many don’t think it’s music. Perhaps I should have said Decomposer. Luciano almost flipped. It took quite a lot of trouble to explain decomposition to him, and he was a little tipsy. I met Mme. Koussevitsky.480 She is delightful and told me a lot of Russian names for the mushrooms which I collected for her. And Cathy. Cathy’s performance was magnificent. I’m so glad she’ll be with us in Venice. Should be a memorable series of concerts. 479. Solo for Voice 2 (1960), first performed at Tanglewood in Lennox, Massachusetts, by Marguerite Willauer on August 12, 1960. The material of this work was later used for the composition of Solo for Voice 45 in Cage’s Song Books (1970). 480. Olga Koussevitzky (née Naumova; 1901–1978), widow of the Russian conductor, composer, and double-bassist Serge Koussevitzky (1874–1951), whom she succeeded as president of the Koussevitsky Music Foundation.

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Hope I’ve answered your questions. I’ll be at Tanglewood, Lenox, Mass., from Aug. 6–12.481 Then at New London where you cd. write c/o Merce (Connecticut College). I was surprised to find that Bob Dunn can’t play the Satie very beautifully. After so many yrs. with you, I had thought that if 2 people sat down to the piano, grand or uprightly, that it wd. all s[oun]d deelicious. But tis not the case. I have to explain, can you beleeve it, that you don’t play emphatically on the first beet of the measure? Christina was in Tanglewood, the little Berio girl. I am so en famille with the Berios. It was marvelous. But musically we are out of sight. Except Cathy who is inspired woman. What presence! I can’t figure Copland. He introduced me to Fromm who kept saying nicht.482 Please ask Priaulx483 to lend me the Haikus; I’ve got to copy them. I haven’t written many good pieces and I don’t like to lose those. I remember perfectly giving them to you for this trip. You can’t possibly have given them to her last yr. Wd. they be anywhere here? Will get you 500 for Changes. Dear David, I miss you very much. Hope you will be in Venice late August. Let me know; why is it all so marvelously confusing, the dates I mean?

To Walter Hinrichsen August 27, 1960 | Location not indicated Dear Walter: On the way to Venice, I stopped in Milan and was able to see Prof. Ruzicksca of the Edizioni Suvini Zerboni. He explained to me that I had never signed a contract with him regarding the Fontana Mix, and that I never gave him masters or tapes. He gave the composer, Luciano Berio, L30,000 as an advance to me 481. Cage’s Tanglewood Berkshire Music Festival program took place on the afternoon of August 12, 1960, presented under the auspices of the Fromm Musical Foundation. After an introduction by Copland, Cage conducted parts from his Concert for Piano and Orchestra with the first performance of his Solo for Voice 2; also performed Indeterminacy: New Aspect of Form in Instrumental and Electronic Music with Winter Music, Paul Jacobs substituting for Tudor. 482. Paul Fromm (1906–1987), German-born American performing arts patron who in 1952 established the Fromm Music Foundation. 483. Priaulx Rainier (1903–1986), South African–born English composer, professor of composition at the Royal Academy of Music (1943–1961).

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for the composition. This has now been returned to them, and the Edizioni renounces their original intention to include the Fontana Mix in their catalogue. As you will understand, there was no need to complete the legal statement you gave me since no copyright took place originally. Before leaving New York, I spoke with Luciano Berio regarding the rights to the Fontana Mix. He said my first action should be to return the money to Prof. Ruzicksca as I have done, that that would clear the manuscript for publication. With regard to the tapes themselves (which I delivered to you before leaving), there is another problem. They were made in the Studio di Fonologia of the Italian Radio in Milano by me with technical assistance and machines provided by the Radio. I was a guest in the Studio, not under contract, and I was not paid any money for this work which took 4 months. I was given working space, equipment, and the help of Marino Zuccheri, sound engineer. Mr. Berio says that the tapes themselves therefor belong to the Radio and that when they are used for performance that the Radio expects a royalty. I never was told about this, nor have I signed anything about it. I shall, as Mr. Berio suggested, get in touch with Maestro Mantelli of the Radio to clarify this matter. At the moment, therefore, the manuscript itself belongs entirely to us. I have delivered it to you, but I don’t remember whether I supplied a title page and page of directions. I know that I did not inscribe the copyright notice. The tapes, however, should not be supplied by you to anyone until the Radio question has been answered. This does not apply to the Williams Mix, which belongs to us entirely, manuscript and tapes.

To Cathy and Luciano Berio September 12, 1960 | Venice, Italy Dear Cathy and Luciano, We’re having a marvelous time. Merce and Carolyn dance every morning in the Accademia: now they begin to rehearse in La Fenice the program there is on the 24th + the floor slants so they have to learn to climb up-hill. Carolyn and David stay with the Amey’s, Merce and I are here + David and I leave today for Bremen stopping for a day in Köln. I wd. prefer not to do the Theatre Piece there since I believe it should be done in a formal situation at least the 1st European auffuhrung should be formal don’t you agree? Frank, as you no doubt know, 236  |  1 9 5 0 – 1 9 6 1

has announced you as a performer but hasn’t said in what; you will be absolutely nec. in his piece. No no GG is inco,,unicado, vole dire incommunicado, there was a composer lady here from Chile named Alexander who went to the restaurant in the Giudecca, NNGG was there and they got into argument about yrs. truly, and NG was at pt. of throwing chairs at her, finally sd. fascist! and (nazi, he séid, I mean), and she said, didn’t you know I’m a Jewess? NG went pale. Had previously been pale with anger. Peggy heard you sing somewhere and thinks as we all do that you’re magnificent, truly. I went to Suvini Zerboni on a terribly hot day and gave them 30,000 lire; and got a letter from them; Peters is tickled to death and doesn’t seem to be worried about anything. Peggy invites you both to a party she’s giving here after the dance program in La Fenice. We leave the following day for Berlin. Then Munich, Köln, Stockholm, Brussels, Paris, and then Merce and Carolyn and David stay on and I fly back on 13th of Oct. Please give my friendliest greetings to all, but especially to Marino, also to Mushroom Dottore Technica.

To Walter Hinrichsen New Year’s Eve 1960 | Middletown, Connecticut Dear Walter: Thank you for all the cards. Was your brother here? I enclose an article from Sweden. Also I want to thank you for being so kind to the request from San Antonio Texas (Krumm). However, there is no need to give me a royalty on that music. Here is a little question. Will it be possible in connection with royalties from the Music of Changes to give me an accounting separately for that work (the 4 volumes)? I do not wish to make any bookkeeping trouble for Peters; but my reason for this is the following: at the time I composed the Music of Changes, I was poverty-stricken and yet so intent on writing the music that I made no attempt to get a job, needing, as I did, all the time I could get. I therefor wrote letters to a number of people, offering them shares in this particular piece, and promising to share with them in any profit that would eventually come from it. The other day I mentioned to one of these friends the fact that the composition is about to be published. I rather expected her to say: Forget about my share 1 9 5 0 – 1 9 6 1  |  237

in it. But she didn’t. There are, by the way, no legal entanglements here. But a promise which I would like to keep if it does not cause Peters too much trouble. The next time I come to New York will be Saturday the 7th of January. Staying probably through part of Tuesday the 10th.

To Lawrence Morton484 January 4, 1961 | Stony Point, New York Dear Mr. Morton: Thank you for your letter of the 30th. I have discussed all the problems you bring up in it with David Tudor. He accepts the financial situation, but is not willing to perform the Kagel work for the reason that some two months of ensemble rehearsal with the percussionist would be required. He has not yet been able to find anyone in this country with whom to prepare it properly. Since from your point of view (and ours) rehearsals are going to be difficult to schedule, we propose a program the first half of which is music by Christian Wolff, the second half of which is Atlas Eclipticalis.485 This will give the musicians only two rather than more kinds of notation to learn in a short time. The program will be, then: for 6 or 7 players Christian Wolff 1959 (Flute, Trumpet, Trombone, Piano, Violin, Viola, Bass) Duet II for Horn and Piano for pianist

Christian Wolff " "

1961 1959

Intermission Atlas Eclipiticalis with Winter Music (Electronic Version)

John Cage

(61–62)

484. Lawrence Morton (1904–1987), American composer, organist, and concert organizer, director of the Evenings on the Roof (later Monday Evening Concerts [1952–1971]); also director of the Ojai Music Festival and curator of music at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art. 485. Atlas Eclipticalis (1961–1962), commissioned by the Montreal Festival Society and composed using the Atlas Eclipticalis 1950.0, an atlas of the stars published in 1958 by the Czech astronomer Antonín BeČvář (1901–1965), superimposing musical staves over its star charts. It is frequently performed with Cage’s Winter Music (1957). It was used as music for Cunningham’s Aeon (1963), with stage decor and costumes by Rauschenberg, and later for Cunningham’s first “Events” performance, “Museum Event #1” (Vienna, 1964).

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I will conduct the first and last pieces. David Tudor will play in all of them. He will need two sessions on the Duet with the horn player (who must be excellent). All we need to do about Atlas is arrange that I see the percussion players to explain the notation, ditto for harp, ditto for the other instruments (at which time I can explain to these latter the Wolff notation problems). Then I need a rehearsal devoted to the Wolff piece alone, and another devoted to Atlas at first followed by a second for the Wolff—this last is a single rehearsal session for the two pieces. I think that will do it. Please let me know how far you can go towards maximum electrification of the orchestra for Atlas. David Tudor will use two contact microphones on the piano and must have control of the amplifier to which these are connected (or amplifiers). As many of the remaining 12 players as possible should also have contact microphones. This possibility is determined by the amplifiers available —the number necessary being reduced if mixers are available. These amplified sounds should go to as many different loudspeakers differently situated as you are able to gather together. When you let me know the number of instruments that can be amplified (not counting the piano), I will prepare a part for the assistant to the conductor whose business it is to control the amplitude. The dates above are not necessary but you can use them if you wish. If, in order to have an assistant to the conductor, you are obliged because of the budget to reduce the number of players, eliminate from Atlas the cello part, since this instrument among the strings is not used in the Wolff piece. You should order all the music through Peters —they are now exclusive publishers also for Wolff. But advise them that I wish to choose the parts of Atlas to be used and that I will bring them the Wolff materials. Their arrangement (between Peters and Wolff) has just been made. Some of his materials will come to me from him, and the rest I have. One section of the 6 or 7 Players has yet to be copied, which I will do. So you will not receive this material not immediately but rather as soon as possible, probably early in February. I am sorry my remarks above about electrical equipment are so vague. This is due partly to my not being an electronics expert, and partly to my wishing to go as far as your resources will permit towards the total electrification of the ensemble. I am glad that you “intruded” into the business of the theatrical production. I have very serious doubts about whether it will take place, largely because the people in the art world have no knowledge of the obstacles to be encountered in the performing arts. Furthermore neither Merce Cunningham, David Tudor or myself is in charge of the arrangements, and yet we know where the others don’t the nature of the obstacles. 1 9 5 0 – 1 9 6 1  |  239

As for rehearsals, we will need the Lord to help us. Our performance schedule with the Cunningham Company is not yet finalized. When it is, I will write you the details of our commitments. I hope this letter is useful to you at present. I will be on tour Jan. 8–13, so any letters received in that period will not be answered immediately. P.S. If with electronic equipment you can exceed the number 12 given above (even though the cello may not be used), do exceed it, say, to 14 or 16. This would enable me to put contacts on each of the tympani, for instance. There is a strong possibility that the dancers will fly West early in February and that David Tudor and I will drive West. This would give us the chance to have the preliminary meetings with the musicians a month in advance of the concert. That would be excellent. If you want program notes, address of Wolff is claverly 18, Cambridge 38, Mass.

To Christian Wolff April 6, 1961 | Middletown, Connecticut Dear Christian, Your good letter came and cheers in reply. We all look forward to seeing you in the fall. I am counting on you (please forgive this serious statement) to bring music to life here. (Music with silence in it.) The sum effect of all the programs this year is no love of silence as you say anxious for the spectacular. A fellow (good: Frederick Lieberman486) came from Eastman School where they now have all my music and sd. in rehearsal of Radio Piece no one was happy with the silence + cd. they change it so they’d get rock n roll. There you have it in a shell. You shld. do some mushrooming this summer. Wish I were there in Munich with you. What a beautiful place and woods. Please greet all friends + relatives for me. My plans are vague. Talk of DT + me going to Japan for 2 wks! Also Ravinia Festival (Chicago Symphony). Also want to (rather actually will) write orchestra piece to go with Winter Music for Merce Dance at New London August (middle). 486. Fredric Lieberman, American ethnomusicologist and composer, in 1964 he would be Cage’s assistant at the Festival of Music and Art of This Century in Hawaii.

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David shld. go to Europe in May. My Theatre Piece in Illinois middle April. Tour with Merce New Eng. before. Then 2 programs here at Wesleyan. Programs also at M. of Mod. Art (34' etc. for 2 pianists487 (David + Toshi) + string player (Kenji Kobayashi488); then Cartridge Music + Variations II489 (which pleases me: it is like the other with 5 points all same size on 5 different sheets + 6 lines all on different sheets. Lines + points inartistically right in center of sheet

Gives maximum flexibility by never having 2 of anything on same sheet. Are parents happy (HB)? My book coming out here (Wesleyan) Oct. ’61. To be called Silence: Lectures and Writings. Have arthritis very painful + interrupts sleeping, difficult to do simple things, etc. Taking honey-vinegar, vitamins, sea water, perhaps kelp too.

To Philip Krumm490 April 7, 1961 | Middletown, Connecticut Dear Philip Krumm, Thank you for your letter. Glad to hear of all the Texan activity. More or less agree with you re La Monte Young. Though without him this year and his sense of doing things and getting them done, very little wd. have taken place in NY. Richard Maxfield made a very good new piece which Tudor performed at New School. Concert for Piano. Thank you for performing my music. Would you let Walter Hinrichsen 487. A variant realization for two pianos of Cage’s 34'46.776" for a Pianist (1954). See note 612. 488. Kenji Kobayashi, Japanese violinist who studied at the Juilliard School in New York from 1952. In his first concert, on April 24, 1961, he included Ichiyanagi’s Stanzas for Kenji Kobayashi for violin and piano (1961), in a duo with the composer. 489. Variations II (1961) for variable ensemble using any sound-producing means, parts to be prepared from the score. It was first performed in New York on March 24, 1961. 490. Philip Krumm (b. 1941), American composer, a pioneer in early modal repetitive music.

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know the exact program so that mention of it can get in catalogue which is going to be very detailed in this regard. Glad to hear you can send something to David Tudor. Do so. He will be interested and active about it. He goes in May early to Europe. Altogether now I think everything is changing vigorously. There was an interesting program last week of Toshi Ichiyanagi and Toshiro Mayuzumi.491 Toshi’s work is very good. A pity he didn’t send you anything. Please keep in touch with me. I will be here until June or so. Then always Stony Point is permanent address. My book of Lectures and Writings will be called Silence and will be published in Oct. by the University Press here. Also the Music of Changes is just out (Peters, 4 volumes). Christian Wolff comes out of the army in 3 weeks. He will stay in Munich for the summer at the University there. Then will be at Harvard to get his doctorate in Classics in September. If I had to vote, I’d vote for him.

To [no first name given] Miss Epstein April 23, 1961 | Middletown, Connecticut Dear Miss Epstein: Thank you for your letter and for your interest in the music. I am glad to hear of your activities and wish you well. The piece For Paul Taylor and Anita Dencks,492 was written while I was writing the Solo for Piano of the Concert for Piano and Orchestra. Notational ideas came about which led me to the use of transparent plastics in Variations I. In this latter piece there are points and lines. The points are sounds and the lines are aspects of sound. By dropping perpendiculars from the points to the lines and then measuring the perpendiculars according to any rule one obtains the position of the sound in sound-space. The performer then must use ingenuity and imagination with respect to the sound-producing means at his disposal. That is, in order to bring about a “realisation” of the piece. This is essentially the idea of the Paul Taylor piece. However, the length of the piece is fixed (3 minutes). The 4 sounds of the piece are initiated at the time indicated by their position horizontally on the page. 491. Toshiro Mayuzumi (1929–1997), Japanese composer and performer. 492. Cage’s For Paul Taylor and Anita Dencks (1957), a graphically notated work for solo piano, three minutes in duration, first performed in New York on October 20, 1957.

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Auxiliary sounds are any sounds produced by means other than those provided by a piano (e.g., percussion instruments, wind produced sounds, mechanical or electrical sounds, etc.). Interior piano construction (sounds) are produced by percussion or friction on the construction bars, sounding board etc. inside a piano. (Exterior would be slamming the lid or hitting or rubbing at some point outside the piano, but not, as with auxiliary sounds, away from it.) If the durations are long, the pedal is held down. If this is inconvenient by means of the foot, a piece of wood can be used to keep the pedal down. If the amplitude is great, a contact microphone with amplifier and loudspeaker can be used on the sounding board. As far as amplitude goes, the extremes of soft and loud are given and the position of the note in the space between these extremes takes the place of the conventional notations, pp–ff. For frequency, timbre and duration, use the method of dropping perpendiculars to the line given from the point being determined. Measure the perpendicular according to any rule. Here timbre provides the greatest difficulty, requiring the most imagination. It may be considered as extending from least overtone structure (a sine wave) to most overtone structure (white noise), from simplicity to complexity. Please do not hesitate to ask questions about this or other pieces. It will help me to know where I have been unnecessarily obscure. I highly recommend any contact you can make with the pianist, David Tudor. His address is Stony Point, New York. Shortly, however, he tours in Europe, so that a letter addressed to him now would not be answered, I should say, until sometime this summer.

To E. E. Cummings June 18, 1961 | Middletown, Connecticut Dear Mr. Cummings: Thank you very much for permitting, following the corrections made, the publication of my Five Songs for Contralto. There are two other songs, as you know, which present more serious problems.493 493. Cage’s Experiences No. 2 for solo voice (1948), setting a sonnet from Tulips and Chimneys (1923), and Forever and Sunsmell for voice and percussion duo (1942), to a poem adapted from 50 Poems (1940), the latter composed for Jean Erdman.

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Since liberties were taken with your work (the omission of lines, etc.), would you accept as a solution the reprinting of the poems as they should read on a page directly before the music begins, and a note to the effect that on the program of any public performance the poem must again be printed? My situation is this: these two other songs were both written as accompaniments for dances. In each case the dancer supplied me with lines selected from your poetry. I was employed with respect to the requirements of the dance. I do not wish, in the case of either of these songs, to rewrite them. Not because I admire them and want to keep them the way they are, but because they are written in ways which no longer interest me. However, they are part of the body of my work and for that reason may be of interest to someone. And since Peters is publishing all of my work, it is desirable, one way or another, to be able to present them. I will certainly be able to make minor corrections. But I would not be able to set the lines which were originally omitted. I do hope the suggestion I make of printing the poems intact at the head of the music will meet with your approval.

To Walter Hinrichsen July 4, 1961 | Middletown, Connecticut Dear Walter: Thank you very much for the new catalogues. I very much appreciate all that you are doing for the promotion of the music. For this reason, I write to tell you of what may seem bad news: on examining the copy of the Fontana Mix purchased by the Wesleyan University, I find that it does not include the transparent graph which is part of the materials. This makes the composition unusable. This omission could be the fault of Mapleson.494 Since he, like anybody else in the world, is capable of mistakes, I think it would be wise if an examination of work done by him was always made with the directions for duplication which I have provided in front of the person making the examination. Another step that could be taken is to request that Mapleson actually read the directions for duplication. And himself check his work. A month or so ago I received a letter from David Tudor who has since re494. Mapleson was an independent copying and printing service for limited-run material, used by C. F. Peters before their internal print department was established. Mapleson and his staff would make copies using an Ozalid process, essentially a photogram, using chemically treated paper.

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turned from Europe. In it he said that several people who had ordered copies of my works had found them not cleanly reproduced, so that in some places they were not readable. The composition cited was for toy piano. I do not know whether it was the Suite for Toy Piano495 or the Music for Amplified Toy Pianos. I did not bring this matter to your attention because I have done what I could to facilitate the proper reproduction of my work that is provided transparencies and directions for their duplication. I felt that if things were not well done that that was in a sense the way the world goes. However, it will be to our double advantages if they are done well. I still think that Mapleson is the best place in New York for our purposes. Perhaps it has been too hot lately. I will be in town on Saturday the 8th of July: then I will go to New London, Conn. (c/o Merce Cunningham, Connecticut College).

To Cathy and Luciano Berio August, 1961 | Stony Point, New York Dear Cathy and Luciano, Actually I’m not in Stony Point, but in Edisto Beach (South Carolina) —Vacation —I am writing more parts for my Atlas Eclipticalis and each part is dedicated to different people. The 7th viola part is for you. I thought up this cluster of dedications because there is no score + writing to friends to tell them that I’ve made the dedication gives me a chance to stop composing, besides the opportunity of being friendly. (I have the feeling I failed to answer your last letter.) We were (quite a number of New Yorkers) (plus Kagel + a quartet from Studio of Essai) up in Montreal for a festival which was organized by Pierre Mercure496 + involved 4 dance companies (including Merce’s). Altogether it was a lively occasion + I hope it happens each year. And that you will be there. (I’m sure you were invited this year but too busy?) Next year if it happens again you 495. Cage’s Suite for Toy Piano (1948), first performed at Black Mountain College on August 20, 1948, originally used as music for Cunningham’s A Diversion (1948). In five short movements, it uses only nine “white” notes with a range from E below middle C to the F above middle C. It would be orchestrated by Lou Harrison in 1963. 496. Pierre Mercure (1927–1966), Canadian composer, television producer, and bassoonist, the driving force behind the International Week of Today’s Music, a festival that took place in Montreal in August 1961. Mercure commissioned Cage’s Atlas Eclipticalis, which was given its first performance on August 3, 1961.

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could come from California. (The tapes from Italy couldn’t be played because they were too wide for the machine, —a great pity since so much of the tape music was uninteresting, e.g., Babbitt.) I hope to just stay quietly composing in Stony Point until December when Merce’s touring begins. We will give two performances in February in Berkeley —so we will see you there. —Part of a West Coast dance tour. Then possibly in the Spring to Japan. My book (Silence) comes out in October. I’m still doing proof-reading on it but they have reached the stage of page-proofs + that is near the end. Universal wldn’t give me an assignment of copyright on the stories, so I didn’t use any of those that had appeared in Die Reihe,497 but did get in a few over 90 others! Now perhaps I have the disease in my head of two new books. And possibly a third. I’ve developed a slight case of gout (in the wrists) which makes it possible for me to drop things I pick up with no difficulty whatsoever. How are you? Tell Christina the mushrooms are marvelous this year.

To Peter Yates August 17, 1961 | Location not indicated Dear Peter, Thank you for everything + for card. I can’t remember what I was supposed to write to you (explain what?). Have been busy. Book nearly finished also this year 3 new pieces: Variations II, Music for Carillon No. 4,498 + for orchestra (eventually 86 players), Atlas Eclipticalis. The last two are transcribed from star maps which I f[ound] in Observatory at Wesleyan. Atlas (if I do say so) goes farther (by far) than Concert for Piano and Orch. Instruments are electrified by contact microphones + an asst. to conductor controls amplitude independently of his knowledge of what’s going on. Pianist plays Winter Music in electronic version. Was first performed in Montreal on Aug. 3 here again today. Can go in any com497. Die Reihe, German-language music journal published between 1955 and 1962 (eight volumes). Thirty stories from Cage’s Indeterminacy first appeared in Die Reihe No. 5, thematically subtitled “Reports —Analyses” (1961). 498. Cage’s Music for Carillon No. 4 (1961), in the first three-octave version, written in whole notes on the treble clef. The composition calls for feedback, which may be prerecorded or live, in the latter case using microphones as well as percussive sounds of wood being struck (taped or mechanically produced).

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bination of parts. I have so far written 20 or thereabouts. Can last any length of time (virtually —actually up to 80 or 90 minutes, but performances so far have been 20 or 48 minutes (48 with dance)). Will continue composition of this until next Xmas, I think. Dance Co. comes on tour next Spring I believe to West Coast. Hope you will be in situ. [handwritten horizontally across left margin first page] pitches microtonal on staff with non-equidistant lines giving = space to each chromatic step. Staff (conventional) is diatonic.

[No addressee] September 9, 1961 | Stony Point, New York to Whom it may concern: This is a letter recommending that Merce Cunningham, choreographer, dancer, teacher and author, be appointed a fellow in the Center for the Advanced Studies at the University of Illinois. In the field of the modern dance and, particularly, its avant-garde, Cunningham is without equal. The importance of his work is not limited to his own career. Each new work by him, opening up new areas for fruitful creative activity on the part of others, carries with it the profound and permanent nature of the dance. So that his work is not a revolution, but rather a constant revelation. The vigor of his dance and his aesthetic arises from his not closing the dance off from other human activities —the other arts, the sciences, etc. Thus the changes he brings to the dance are not small and ornamental, but profound and necessary, letting it exemplify to us what it is to be alive in the twentieth century. I may be thought to be biased in his favor, for Merce Cunningham and I have worked together unceasingly since 1943. However, this history itself, I trust, be be taken as a recommendation, as, likewise, the devotion to him on the part of his distinguished company, and the repeated recognition of the excellence of his work on the part of the Guggenheim Foundation, not to mention the many other honors, commissions and invitations he has received.

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To Peter Yates September 11, 1961 | Stony Point, New York Dear Peter, Now to give a more proper answer to your letter: I had not heard about John Edmunds leaving the library. I am sorry. I have no idea what he’s doing or what gives with the American Recordings Project.499 C. F. Peters has my quadruple lecture: “Where Are We Going? and What Are We Doing? ” 500 on tape, 7½ ips. 4 tapes, 45 minutes approx. each, and to be heard all together. You can stop and start the tapes too so that the whole thing falls into a longer period of time than 45'. I believe they ask $200 for the four tapes which accounts for the fact, as far as I know, that no one has purchased a set. Perhaps you can get some school or radio out your way to get one. The text will also appear in Silence. I consider this lecture the winter answer to the questions, and I intend to write the other seasonal answers. Also last winter I wrote “On Robert Rauschenberg, Artist, and His Work.” 501 This appears in Metro (Milan) and will be in the book. I think of it too as representing the Winter artist, and I intend to write the other seasons in terms of artists and their work: Tudor, Johns and Cunningham. (Spring, Summer and Fall, in that order). Other project: a composed book (including typography) where language becomes music. Or theatre, if sitting still going through a book is theatre. Also am not satisfied with other people’s translations of Satie’s writings. Would like to undertake the complete Satie. And a mushroom book in collaboration with Lois Long,502 who makes magnificent watercolors of the plants. This would not be a field book but an expression of nature, the woods, etc. 499. The Music Library Association’s American Recordings Project (“History of American Music on Records”), which planned to organize a series of recordings (one hundred LPs at the time) of major American composers from the first colonists through 1960. Edmunds sat on the advisory committee. 500. A musical composition/lecture, Cage’s “Where Are We Going? And What Are We Doing?” (1960–1961), to be performed simultaneous with four single-track tape recordings of the work, which may be used in whole or in part, in any combination. Cage gave its first performance (lasting 60 minutes) on January 9, 1961, at the Pratt Institute of Technology in Brooklyn, New York. 501. Cage’s “On Rauschenberg, Artist, and His Work,” Metro 2 (May, 1961): 50. 502. The collaboration between Cage and Long would not come about until 1972, when Mushroom Book was published as a limited-edition portfolio comprising lithographs and texts by Cage, Long, and Alexander H. Smith. See note 781.

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Earle Brown’s series (Time Records) brings out this fall a record of Cathy Berio, includes a version of the Fontana Mix with Aria. I can’t give you a bringing up to date, because I am not looking in a mirror. If you have an “image” written down, send it and then I’ll answer. What Atlas Eclipticalis does (to an audience) is to let them hear all the things they thought they didn’t want in the way of amplification and electronics: feedback, distortion, etc. rattling loud-speakers, low fidelity, etc. Some of my best friends hate it. M.C. Richards said she never heard so many objections. I am certain, however, that this piece will eventually evoke gratitude since it embraces 20th-century horror, transforming it. Otherwise, I think it is the Concert for Piano and Orchestra without the jazz sounds. There are no sliding tones, and the ranges of the instruments are all before strain sets in. Everything is simple, but microtonal. There are 20 constellations, each having its own orchestral family, from solo to nearly tutti (86 parts) expressed in semi-Korean fashion, i.e., not together, but almost. All this simplicity is made complex by means of contact microphones. I am going to write to the Schulmerich Carillon Co. and find out if there is a 3-octave electronic carillon in the LA area. If so, and we do give a program for you, it should be given where the carillon is. Then you could have the first perf. of Music for Carillon No. 4 written last spring using besides the bell sounds, samantran (wood thuds deep, low) plus electronic feed-back. That is, three historical periods in superimposition. Other pieces of last spring: Variations II. Each element of the notation (each line, each point) is on its own transparent material. These are superimposed in any way. As indeterminate as I have yet managed. Works beautifully. An hour and ½ program was given in the American Embassy,503 Paris, by David Tudor with Robert Rauschenberg, Jasper Johns, Jean Tinguely,504 and Niki de Saint Phalle. Rauschenberg by the way, not even knowing about Houston, has the idea to go to Houston with that group plus others (myself, the Cunningham Co., etc.) and give a non-stop week of performances night and day. I wonder if it will happen. Enough for the time?

503. This performance took place at the American Embassy Theatre on June 20, 1961. 504. Jean Tinguely (1925–1991), Swiss painter and sculptor, best known for his Dada-inspired kinetic art, including his Homage to New York (1960), a self-destroying sculpture; and Niki de Saint Phalle (1930–2002), French sculptor, painter, and filmmaker.

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To Peter Yates September 22, 1961 | Stony Point, New York Dear Peter: Rec’d. yrs. 9-19-61. Just called Merce who is busy rearranging his studio and so can’t go to see Susan Pimsleur (business mgr.) but will. In meantime we will lock up week Feb. 26 through March 5 for LA. On 23 and 24 Feb. we’re in Berkeley, and before that Sacramento and hope for something in SF. Actually this whole business is going to be very complicated, because I heard a few days ago from Bob Rauschenberg (painter) that he is wrangling for a festival in LA when we’re there involving Bob (?) Snyder505 (who knows you) (son-in-law of Bucky Fuller?) plus Jean Tinguely and Niki de Saint Phalle (Paris —self-destroying machines and paintings that get painted in front of audience by hand and by missiles —) plus Rauschenberg and Jasper Johns and David, yrs. truly and Cunningham Company. Color film to be made plus several exhibitions in different parts of LA. I tried to call him to clarify this slightly but he has a bad habit of putting his phone off the hook. This festival idea arises from one he arranged in Paris late last spring in American Embassy and which was immediately hushed up, but was very beautiful. Also I just received from William Kraft506 suggestion of Ucla concert. Now we have Ucla for dance program on Feb. 26. Why not Monday Evening for March 5? Rauschenberg already has people raising money for orchestra to play Atlas E. Perhaps Monday Eve. should be program by David Tudor at fee of $225 to him. That wd. certainly simplify the Monday Eve. budget problem. The St. Sophia Carillon piece should be part of the festival, played, say, every morning at 11 a.m. Atlas Eclipticalis can be part of festival wherever it is going to be. Rauschenberg spoke of special architecture with transparent floors in Fuller style with things going on all at once and interpenetrating lights. Atlas presented then with Aeon (Merce’s choreography to it).507 505. Robert Snyder (1916–2004), American documentarian, married to Allegra Fuller-Snyder, daughter of R. Buckminster Fuller (see note 598). Snyder produced and directed well-regarded documentaries, his subjects including (in addition to his father-in-law) Henry Miller, Anaïs Nin, and Pablo Casals. His The Titan: The Story of Michelangelo won an Academy Award in 1950. 506. William Kraft (b. 1923), American composer, conductor, and percussionist, long associated with the Los Angeles Philharmonic. 507. Cunningham’s Aeon (1961), first performed at the Montréal Festival on August 4, 1961, with Cage’s Atlas Eclipticalis and Winter Music (electronic version). Cage described the dance as “epic” in character, with sequences that could follow one another, overlap or change in their sequence, or simply be omitted. The dancers, whose number was flexible, wore basic costumes by Rauschenberg to which other garments could be added. For stage decor, Rauschenberg created a number of “events,”

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Atlas is electronic and instrumental, i.e., contact microphones are placed on as many of the instruments as practical. Practicality determined by equipment: loudspeakers, amplifiers, mixers. When Bob asked how many instruments I said 12, but it can be any number plus piano. We’ve done it with 17, 20 and 3 so far. It can last any time length from 0 to 80 minutes. I wouldn’t need a fee from Monday Eve. if you take the Tudor idea above. Should it turn out the other way, and Monday Eve. does Atlas, then, say, $100 each to David and myself (I wd. conduct) and cost of instruments and electronic equipment. What you need for the electronic equipment is a good engineer with access to a lot of loudspeakers and amplifiers and mixers. I’d rather like to give my lecture “Where Are We Going? and What Are We Doing?” somewhere in this week. 4 simultaneous lectures, one of which is live, others recorded. It will be in Silence, the book, but the performance of it is unlike reading it. Tried just now again to reach Bob R. No answer. His idea of festival is something going on continuously for twelve hours or three days plus other events (exhibitions etc. around the town). All to be subject of color film by (?) Snyder. Sorry this is so nonsensical.

To Lawrence Morton October 27, 1961 | Stony Point, New York Dear Mr. Morton: Thank you for your letter of the 24th. I am sorry that my suggestions about a Tudor program were misunderstood. And I retract them if that is your wish. I made them following a discussion with Robert Rauschenberg —the “big exhibition” is his idea —Rauschenberg wants to use the orchestra in it and was of the opinion that a concert occasion following a “theatrical” occasion would have the effect of anticlimax. In view of this, not wishing to put you in such a situation, I attempted to make everything clear, and suggested the piano recital as a program that would have a different character entirely. However, it is entirely possible that the “big exhibition” will not take place. Ilyana Castelli Sonnabend was in touch with Mr. Blum recently —before her such as small explosions that occur at the rise of the curtain and a machine that crossed a rope above the stage.

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departure for Italy —and said that she had not an impression of things going ahead vigorously. Since she was to make a special trip to L.A. at this very time, but instead is off to Italy, I have my doubts. I myself am making no special arrangements in this connection, but merely accepting those which are made by others. I do, however, wish to keep you informed, and will. You may for the Monday Evening Concert —which, please believe me, I do not wish to not take place, nor do I want it to be programmed in a way which does not please you —have any of my music you want. Furthermore, I hereby agree, to pay, myself, what musician expenses are incurred above your budget, but not above that for 12 musicians —in addition to the services of David Tudor. On the other hand, I will be grateful if through efforts on your part, this action of mine is made unnecessary. I understand from Peter Yates that $100 has already been guaranteed for this kind of expense. When Mr. Tudor returns from his current European engagements, I will with him determine the amount of his fee for this concert. What would you think, since we will have the musicians, of doing my Concert for Piano and Orchestra, Variations II, and Atlas Eclipticalis? The dates, respectively, are 1958, 1961, 1961. Or, if you prefer, something from 1954 could be used if you have a string-player who is willing to work (hard) on my music for a stringplayer (title changes according to time-length). Or just the two orchestral works could be presented. However, I think it would be welcome in the Los Angeles area to have the opportunity of experiencing Tudor himself without many other musicians playing at the same time. (Variations II can be done with any number of musicians also, but so far no one has played it except Mr. Tudor.) Please let me know your reaction to this letter. Please, also, keep our financial arrangements sotto voce. I will be conducting and should have a fee, and instead will possibly be underwriting a part of the expenses. If any one questions you about this, say that I was born in the Good Samaritan Hospital, and have a soft place in my heart for Los Angeles.

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To Peter Yates November 20, 1961 | Stony Point, New York Dear Peter, Haven’t heard from Sister Magdalene Mary508 but wd. like to. Rec’d. Gloria issue which is magnificent and sent “generous donation” for which have rec’d. thanks.509 Am telling everyone I see abt. Immaculate Heart. Met Father Ong510 up at Wesleyan a wk. ago who of course knows them well. But N. O. Brown hadn’t heard of them. Am writing to Gerald Strang. Have written two letters in favor of Edmunds. Don’t quite understand the situation. What is it? Why are you embattled? Glad you find silence a pleasure. Touring begins now. Just finished a wk. in New Eng. which takes me away from my composition which needs a lot more time. Started in June and must finish by Xmas, God willing: otherwise no opportunity to get at something else. We go to Michigan first wk. of Dec. and then New Eng. again in Jan. and then to the West (looking forward very much to seeing you). Herbert Brun speaks English just like you and I do.511

508. Likely Mother Mary Magdelen Oranu, the second foundation member of the Congregation of the Sisters of the Immaculate Heart of Mary, Mother of Christ. In residence at Immaculate Heart College in Los Angeles, she mentored Sister Corita Kent (1918–1986), nun, artist, and teacher, known for her unorthodox teaching methods and her Pop Art visual works, which exhibited a unique use of color, form, and calligraphy. Cage wrote his “10 Rules for Teachers and Students” for Kent, who posted them on her office door. 509. The “Gloria Issue” (1961) was a collage-like compendium of works by fine art students at Immaculate Heart College, covering the period 1959–1961 and produced as an informal public relations tool. 510. Walter Jackson Ong (1912–2003), American Jesuit priest, historian, and philosopher. His graduate mentor at Saint Louis University, where he long taught, was Marshall McLuhan (see note 583). 511. Herbert Brün (1918–2000), German composer of electronic and computer music who taught from 1962 at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.

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part three

1962-1971

B

y 1962, at the age of fifty, John Cage’s health had begun to deteriorate. He told correspondents about his arthritis, his gout, his back pains, his numerous trips to the dentist, even a severe case of poison ivy. But of even greater concern was the condition of his aging parents. His father died suddenly in January 1964, presumably of a heart ailment, at age seventy-seven. Cage consulted a lawyer, Herbert Sturdy, about problems in looking after his father’s papers and patents. A year later, Cage’s mother suffered a stroke. She required hospitalization, then was placed in a nursing home, helpless, the steep expense associated with her care adding to her son’s financial problems. However troubled, Cage worked as hard as ever, and the decade is rife with new compositions, many involving complex technologies. Over nine years (beginning in 1958), he composed eight indeterminate Variations pieces, including Variations VII (1966), created for Billy Klüver’s Experiments in Art and Technology “9 Evenings” presentations at the Park Avenue Armory in New York. He described the first few of these dense sound collages in letters to Johannes Petschull, manager of the Frankfurt branch of C. F. Peters, and to Marian J. Kerr, director of the Festival of Music and Art of This Century at the University of Hawaii. His letter dated March 31, 1965, to the New York music critic Edward Downes speaks about his Variations V (1965), a Cage/Cunningham work involving interactive onstage technology that necessitated collaborations with Korean artist Nam June Paik, American computer music pioneer Max Mathews, and Robert Moog, inventor of the first practical synthesizer. Cage even wrote for information about available sensing/triggering apparatus to Dr. T. A. Benham, who had created sensing devices to aid the blind. Cage’s letters also provide details about hpschd, a painstaking two-year collaboration with the scientist/composer Lejaren (“Jerry”) Hiller. Undertaken while Cage was in academic residence at the University of Illinois’s Center for Advanced Study (1967–1969), hpschd would be scored for one to seven amplified harpsichords synchronized by computer with tapes distributed across one 257

to fifty-one monaural machines. Although its first performance was scheduled to coincide with the university’s hundredth anniversary in 1968, the complexity of the work postponed its premiere to May 16, 1969. hpschd exemplifies Cage’s experimental work in this period, which garnered several much-needed grants from ascaP, the Koussevitzky Music Foundation, and the Thorne Music Fund. Another work of the period, Cage’s Musicircus, was a grand, collaborative public event that had its first performance in the Livestock Pavilion at the University of Illinois on November 17, 1967. This consisted of the simultaneous (and nonhierarchical) presentation of many of Cage’s compositions, involving hundreds of performers, and lasting for nearly five hours. Cage’s Musicircus was a “family friendly” endeavor, one where audience members were free to come and go, and to walk about and talk throughout the performance. Cage was pleased with the result, which by all accounts was a lively, noisy, and wildly successful social, as well as musical, event. An endeavor of great historical importance to contemporary music occurred September 9–10, 1963, with Cage’s presentation at the Cherry Lane Theatre of Erik Satie’s Vexations (1893), a one-page composition to be played consecutively 840 times. Cage directed and played in this first performance, eliciting the assistance of an ad hoc tag-team of ten pianists that included, along with Tudor and Wolff, James Tenney, David Del Tredici, and John Cale. He wrote about the experience to the Dutch writer J. Bernlef, explaining that Satie’s piece was played over and over, nonstop, for more than eighteen hours, with everyone performing “gloriously.” He would reprise this event during his residency at the University of California, Davis in the fall of 1969, where he conceived a one-day musical exposition, “Mewantemooseicday,” which revolved broadly around the music of Satie. Also on the day’s fare was the first performance of Cage’s participatory 33⅓ (1969), scored for LPs, turntables, and audience, as well as the first complete performance of his two-piano arrangement of Satie’s Socrate, performed in the nearby Putah Creek Lodge. UC Davis may also be where Cage conceived his Sound Anonymously Received (1969), the instrumentation for its first performance reportedly being a Cracker Jack box. Meanwhile, Cage’s interest in mushrooms continued. With mycologist Guy Nearing and illustrator Lois Long, he revived the long-defunct New York Mycological Society. As he informed Frank Wigglesworth, from 1965 chairman of the music department at the New School for Social Research, many students in Cage’s class in mushroom identification at the New School were among the society’s founding members. His lengthy letter/report to the society dated December 11, 1964, describes the founding of the group (sometime in 1962) and the 258  |  1 9 6 2 – 1 9 7 1

dissatisfactions that had grown up within it. Cage did not confine his mycological pursuits to the society, however. He actively hunted mushrooms around his Stony Point home and occasionally when touring, such as while conducting a two-week music workshop in 1965 at Emma Lake, Saskatchewan. And in 1971, he invited fellow mycologist Alexander H. Smith to collaborate with him and Long on an extraordinary graphic portfolio, Mushroom Book, which would come to fruition in 1972 at the Hollander Workshop in New York. Cage’s intellectual life entered a new phase as he came to know three men whose ideas would have profound effect on his own: R.  Buckminster Fuller, Marshall McLuhan, and Norman O. Brown. All three were public intellectuals, and Cage would engage variously with them on topics of mutual social and political concern: ecology, education, technology, and the growing need for better distribution of resources. Other social thinkers of interest to him during this time included Thorstein Veblen, Jacques Ellul, and, to the consternation of his colleagues, Mao Tse-tung. More and more, Cage’s concerns were for “world improvement,” which would spark the start of his eight-part Diary: How to Improve the World (You Will Only Make Matters Worse), the first installment of which appeared in 1965. As he put it in his Indeterminacy, another work of the time comprising stories read by Cage with Tudor performing other of Cage’s scores, “my problems have become social rather than musical.” Cage’s Indeterminacy captured the imagination of many, including the Brazilian pianist Jocy de Oliveira, to whom Cage provides a few of his stories for translation into Portuguese. The decade was also full of travel for Cage, who seems to have been on the road more often than not. In October 1962, at the invitation of Toshi Ichiyanagi, Cage and Tudor made a six-week tour of Japan, giving a total of seven concerts in Tokyo, Osaka, Kyoto, and Sapporo. Cage’s interest in Zen Buddhism was stronger than ever, and he was particularly happy to have the opportunity to visit Daisetz Teitaro Suzuki at Shōkozan Tōkei-ji, a Buddhist temple near Yokohama. Cage and Tudor performed often with Ichiyanagi and Yoko Ono (who were married at the time), to whom he dedicated his 0'00" (4'33" No. 2), which premiered in Tokyo on October 24, 1962. Cage shared his experiences while in Japan in particularly glowing terms with Walter and Evelyn Hinrichsen in a letter dated October 10, 1962. Although only one of Cage’s letters to Cunningham in this decade is included in the present collection, their continued partnership is richly recorded. Cage was founding music director of the Merce Cunningham Dance Company, and as such was again on the road for its monumental six-month world tour in 1964. 1 9 6 2 – 1 9 7 1  |  259

He described their extraordinary adventures in letters to the archaeologist/socialite Iris Love and to Norman O. Brown; after the fact, he reflected upon his experiences in a letter to Carolyn Brown, a brilliant Cunningham dancer. Cage’s letter to Brown touches on mishaps and discontents that developed late in the tour, which included a dance injury to fellow Cunningham dancer Viola Farber and the departure of Robert Rauschenberg, with whom both Cage and Cunningham had apparently butted heads. Cage also earnestly speaks to Brown’s complaints that Cunningham, who seemed unhappy and withdrawn, no longer cared to carefully rehearse. Cage nonetheless struggled tirelessly to raise money for Cunningham’s company. His efforts included the organization of the Foundation for Contemporary Performance Arts with his colleague, artist Jasper Johns, whose literal renderings of flags and other flat, familiar objects Cage loved and passionately defended. The fcPa administered grants to artists and sold paintings and sculptures donated by artists to finance concerts of performing artists, including Cunningham. Fuller, McLuhan, and Brown were asked to deliver fund-raising lectures under the purview of the fcPa, which were given at New York’s ymha. And Cage continued to seek financial assistance from ongoing supporters, including California arts patron and photographer Betty Freeman and art collector/benefactor Mary Sisler, to whom he dedicated his Variations V (1965). To benefit the fcPa, Cage solicited twentieth-century music manuscripts from composers the world over that might form a saleable collection. Countless appeals were made, and, in the end, the Notations collection was substantial and far-reaching, reflecting a remarkably diverse array of practices in contemporary notation. Even the Beatles were represented, made possible by Yoko Ono, who, after many appeals from Cage, finally provided manuscripts from both John Lennon and Paul McCartney. But Cage was unsuccessful in obtaining a manuscript from Gertrude Schoenberg, Arnold Schoenberg’s widow, which for him was a source of great regret. Together with Fluxus artist Alison Knowles, Cage gathered reproductions of the donated manuscripts into a book, Notations (New York: Something Else Press, 1969), with royalties to be paid to the fcPa. In the end the collection was not sold, in whole or in part, but placed on deposit at Northwestern University. Cage’s continuing efforts on behalf of Cunningham’s company don’t appear to have given him much pleasure, and by 1967 he admitted in a letter to the young musician Trevor Winkfield that he was “sick of fund-raising.” And his mother’s failing health during this time caused him constant concern. He did find enjoyment, however, driving around in an old Jaguar, loaned to him by 260  |  1 9 6 2 – 1 9 7 1

Jasper Johns, and in his blossoming friendship with both Marcel and Alexina (“Teeny”) Duchamp. It was through Duchamp that Cage developed his avid interest in chess that led to a performance in Toronto of his Reunion (1968), which memorialized a game of chess between Cage and Duchamp (with Teeny on the sidelines) on an electrified chessboard designed by Lowell Cross. With music triggered by the chess moves of the players, the score for Reunion was an unforeseeable collage combining Cage’s 0'00" (4'33" No. 2) (1962) with compositions by Cross, Tudor, David Behrman, and Gordon Mumma, all musicians affiliated with the Merce Cunningham Dance Company. In October of 1968, Cage suffered two personal losses: the death of Duchamp and the death of his mother. Cage didn’t dwell on his mother’s passing, which he felt was a relief to them both, but he mourned greatly the loss of Duchamp. Soon after the artist’s death, Cage created a visual art work in his honor: Not Wanting to Say Anything About Marcel (1969), comprising eight sets of Plexigrams and two lithographs (A + B). The following year he wrote 36 Acrostics Re & Not Re Duchamp (1970), one of the first examples of his mesostic poems. Cage references both in his many affectionate letters to Teeny Duchamp. Cage’s relationships with others were not always congenial. Letters from the period show Cage apologizing (Adolph Weiss), working through difficult interactions (Richard Higgins), correcting his colleagues (Gordon Mumma), expressing displeasure (Bernard C. Solomon), and, with alarming frequency, simply saying no (Arthur Lipsett, Earle Brown, Roger Reynolds, Ira D. Sahlman, Sheila Kasabova). A particularly complex example is seen in his relationship with Minna Lederman (also Daniel), Cage’s most prolific correspondent. The New York dance critic Edwin Denby once described Lederman as “all love and fury,” and she unleashed both on her young friend (who was sixteen years her junior). Lederman was the founding editor of the important journal Modern Music (1924–1946), which filled a cultural gap by providing serious coverage of contemporary American music. She and Cage shared many interests, among them the work of Conlon Nancarrow, an expatriate composer of music for player pianos who had moved to Mexico City. Cage’s letters to Lederman are affectionate, lengthy, and thoughtful; hers to him equally so. Yet his letter to her dated December 4, 1970, reveals something of the tempestuous nature of their relationship, which seemed on the brink of ruin at least once a year. Communications with still others are less fraught. Cage wrote cheerfully to Monique Fong Wust (later Monique Fong), whose French translations of both Joan Miró and Octavio Paz Cage greatly admired. She would go on to effect much-appreciated translations of both Cage’s Silence and Diary. And note, too, 1 9 6 2 – 1 9 7 1  |  261

Cage’s letters to the colorful Venezuelan playwright Isaac Chocrón, to whom Cage writes quite fondly while on holiday with the Duchamps in Cadaqués, Spain. Cage is at his most playful in his 1967 Christmas letter to Lejaren Hiller (addressed to “Jerry and Liz and family”), titled hoW to cUt someone in half and then PUt him back together again. More and more, Cage’s life was encumbered by commitments, the inevitable result of his growing reputation and professional stature. In addition to fulfilling four academic residencies in the 1960s (Wesleyan University, University of Illinois, University of California, Davis, and University of Cincinnati CollegeConservatory of Music), he made innumerable concert tours throughout the United States and abroad. In 1968 he was elected a member of the National Institute of Arts and Letters of the American Academy. His ever-widening reach is also reflected in the extraordinary number of letters he received from individuals around the world who were newly engaged with his work, including the German art critic (Arthus) C. Caspari, the American musician and radio producer Francis Leach, and Edward L. Kamarck, editor of the journal Arts in Society. While such letters would become burdensome in time, Cage almost always replied, if out of a kind of Zen-inflected sense of moral obligation.

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To Frances and Peter Yates May 14, 1962 | Stony Point, New York Dear Frances and Peter, One of the most pleasant memories I have of this past year is, of course, the days in Los Angeles when we were together though encumbered with commitments. And I am grateful to have seen John before his death. The fullness of his life in the face of such great difficulty is unforgettable. I have not written sooner, though my thoughts have been with you often: our touring came to a conclusion a month ago; then I was ill for awhile; then wrote an article for Gyorgy Kepes,512 who is editing a series of small books on aesthetic questions. Now I am doing things that “piled up” and which are in the way of doing any thing lively. The tour turned out to be very useful to David who has come to an understanding of electronics which will result I believe in some radical changes. When we know more in detail, I will tell you what they are. We made contact with more vigorous nuns in Milwaukee at Alverno College. Through them both southern Wisconsin and northern Illinois are being enlivened. Give my love to those at Immaculate Heart. We were, David and I, to go to Japan this month, but it has been postponed to September, and I am not certain of that either. I am now in the unfamiliar position of having to make quite a lot of money each month in order to take care of Mother and Dad and the alimony for Xenia.513 The best solution, I think, would be a permanent connection with Wesleyan University; and this is not utterly out of the question. They are establishing a number of Institutes around the College, and one for Musical Studies would seem reasonable. I am hoping that David and I would be there, and free to leave for concerts and lectures. They have very good work going on now in Oriental Music with Bob Brown who was at Ucla and in India. Also they hope to publish Lou’s book on Korean Music,514 a chapter of which you showed me. One of their students is just now 512. Gyōrgy Kepes (1906–2001), Hungarian-born painter, designer, and art theorist. Associated with the New Bauhaus in Chicago, he founded the Center for Advanced Visual Studies at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). His request referenced here resulted in Cage’s “Rhythm, Etc.” (see note 611). 513. From the time of their divorce in 1946, Cage paid Xenia an annual alimony payment, which Cunningham continued to pay on Cage’s behalf until Xenia’s death in 1995. 514. Lou Harrison had embarked on a collaborative writing project on the subject of Korean music with Lee Hye-Ku (b. 1909), a Korean scholar. Their work together exists only in transcripts (fifty-three folio-sized pages in Harrison’s calligraphic hand).

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graduating probably with high distinction having done his thesis on experimental and indeterminate music. His name is Myron McClellan, and he is very gifted. Unfortunately my best friend at Wesleyan, N.  O. Brown, has decided to leave to teach at the University of Rochester. You may know his book: Life Against Death. I think I mentioned it to you. Thank you for sending the tape which I have not heard because I have no machine. And thank you for your constant friendship.

To Frank Wigglesworth515 May 31, 1962 | Stony Point, New York My first connection with the New School was in the early thirties when I came from California to study with Henry Cowell. The unconventional work he gave me to do —in modern harmony and rhythm —was unobtainable elsewhere. Furthermore he presented regular and informed concerts that brought about a parade of modern composers, their music and ideas, that was more to my liking than anything offered by the League of Composers or the International Society for Contemporary Music.516 Later, in the forties, I am living in NYC. When someone wished to study with me, I taught privately. Now + then Henry Cowell asked me to substitute for him at the New School when he had some conflicting engagement. In the fifties, I moved to the country, making matters difficult for those living in the city who wished to work w/me. Since my musical thought was changing and at the same time exciting greater interest than it had on the part of others, I felt the responsibility to teach which I understood simply as a responsibility to make myself available. It never entered my mind to teach in any other place 515. Frank Wigglesworth (1918–1996), American composer and teacher, at the time associated with Columbia University. In 1965 he would become chairman of the music department at the New School for Social Research in New York. He had been slated to co-teach Cage’s course in advanced composition there in 1958/1959, but the course was cancelled. 516. Two important organizations devoted to contemporary music. The League of Composers, founded in 1923, is America’s oldest organization devoted to contemporary music. In 1954, it became the U.S. chapter of the International Society of Contemporary Music (ISCM) and has since been known as the League of Composers/ISCM. The International Society for Contemporary Music (ISCM) is a network of members from about fifty countries devoted to the promotion and presentation of contemporary music. Founded in Salzburg in 1922, it presents an annual World Music Days Festival and Congress, hosted by one of ISCM’s members.

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in NYC than the New School. Nor is it likely that any other school would have accepted me, since my work + ideas are controversial. Money was never a question. When I studied with Henry Cowell, it was as a “scholarship” student. I helped him as a secretary of sorts. When I myself was teaching, it was at my own expense: what I received from the School was less than what it cost me to get there. The classes in Composition of Experimental Music were small: from three to a maximum of twelve students. There were some who returned year after year. Others appeared for a single session and disappeared. I began each series of classes by meeting the students, attempting to find out what they had done in the field of music, and letting them know what I myself was doing at the time. The catalogue had promised a survey of contemporary music, but this was given only incidentally and in reference to the work of students themselves or to my own work. For, after the first two classes, generally, the sessions were given over to the performance + discussion of student works. There was often not enough time to play everything that had been prepared + we would have to leave the room in order that the next class could come in. Many did excellent work. Toshi Ichiyanagi and Jackson Mac Low have perhaps since been the most successful. Ichiyanagi’s work is now dominant in the Japanese musical avant-garde. Mac L’s The Marrying Maiden had a long run at Living Theatre. Richard Higgins, Al Hansen, George Brecht + Allan Kaprow along with others who did not attend the classes established a theatrical form now well-known as a “Happening” which does not depend on plot convention for its taking place. The composing means involve chance operations + composition which is indeterminate of its performance. Occasionally I asked other composers to take the class in my place. They were Morton Feldman, Earle Brown and Richard Maxfield. Richard Maxfield later joined the faculty of the New School to teach Orchestration + Electronic Music. During the years I worked at the New School, I was helped by the absence of academic rigor there. There were no standards that I had to measure up to. No one criticized or suggested the alteration of my methods. I was as free as a teacher could be. I was thus able, when opportunity offered, to learn something myself from the students. With Guy G. Nearing and Lois Long, I shared my interest in mushrooms with students at the New School by offering a class in Mushroom Identification. This class was always very attractive to city-dwellers who wanted an escape from cement. There were for each session thirty to forty students. We 1 9 6 2 – 1 9 7 1  |  265

have now organized the New York Mycological Society and many of the former students are members. We have winter meetings with lectures by authorities in the field at the Bronx Botanical Gardens, + we have study meetings at the New York Academy of Sciences. Summer and Fall we roam the hills of Rockland + Westchester Counties. If this isn’t what you want, tell me questions.

To Karlheinz Stockhausen June 7, 1962 | Stony Point, New York Dear Karlheinz, You asked about the other 85.517 Here are the 86: (with annotations) violin Guy Nearing, my teacher in mycology Remy Charlip, formerly a dancer with the Cunningham Company Nam June Paik, Korean composer Walter Hinrichsen and Evelyn, my publisher and his wife Henri Pousseur and Thea, Belgian composer and his wife Robert Wood and Marilyn, husband and dancers in Cunningham company Lois Long, co-founder with me and others of NY Mycological Society Richard K. Winslow and Betty, director of Music at Wesleyan Univ. & wife Paula Madawick, daughter of Lois Long Robert Rauschenberg, artist (see article in Silence) Kurt Michaelis, employee C. F. Peters Corporation, NYC Norman Rudich and Linda, blind member of Wesleyan Faculty and his wife Arthur Josephson and Mary Caroline, Painter and Poet-Potter Nicola Cernovich, formerly stage manager for Cunningham Company Louis Silverstein, technical assistant for first American performance Lawrence Halprin and Ann, architect in San Francisco and choreographer-wife Chaloner Spencer and Helen, music faculty Wesleyan University Pegeen Rumsey, daughter of Peggy Guggenheim 517. Cage refers here to the eighty-six dedicatees of his Atlas Eclipticalis (1961–1962), a work for up to eighty-six instruments that may be combined in any way in performance. As indicated, Cage assigns each dedicatee an instrument.

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Sigmund Neumann, director of Center for Advanced Studies, Wesleyan University Raymond Grimaila, designer of typography for Silence George Avakian and Anahid, publisher of my 25-year Town Hall album and violinist Robert Dunn and Judith, composer and wife who is in Cunningham Company viola Edgar Anderson and Dorothy, economic botanist and wife Viola Farber, dancer in Cunningham Company Christian Wolff, American composer Karlheinz Stockhausen and Doris, German composer and wife Connie Wilson and Louella Bacon, two ladies living in Middletown, Conn., one of whom shares my current affliction: arthritis Bruce Markgraf and Rosemary, faculty member, Wesleyan U., and wife Luciano Berio and Cathy, Italian composer and mezzo wife Morton Feldman and Cynthia, New York composer and wife Jasper Johns, artist ’cello Dr. David R. Telson and Paula, doctor who treated my arthritis and wife Hans Austen and Sulamith, brother-in-law of Sigmund Neumann and wife William Jefferys, who found the star maps for me, the ones I used Pierre Mercure, Montreal composer who commissioned Atlas Eclipticalis James Sykes and Clay, pianist and his wife, faculty member, Dartmouth Univ. Ross Gortner and Priscilla, faculty member Wesleyan Univ. and wife Louis Mink and Pat, teacher of Philosophy, Wesleyan, and wife Joe Peoples and Ruth, teacher of Geology, Wesleyan, and wife Shareen Blair, dancer in Cunningham Company contrabass Leonard Meyer and Lee, musicologist and wife Steve Paxton, dancer in Cunningham company Oyvind Fahlstrom and Barbro, Swedish artist and wife flUte Ralph Pendleton, director of Theatre, Wesleyan University Carl Viggiani and Jane, faculty member, Wesleyan Univ., and wife 1 9 6 2 – 1 9 7 1  |  267

David Gordon and Valda Setterfield, dancer and wife who danced with Cunningham oboe Mell Daniel and Minna, husband and former editor of Modern Music Mary Bauermeister, artist Istvan Anhalt and Beata, Montreal composer and wife clarinet Ralph Ferrara, co-founder with me and others of NY Mycological Society C. H. Waddington, embryologist Robert H. Knapp and Johnsia, faculty member, Wesleyan, and wife with whom I sometimes played duplicate bridge bassoon Mauricio Kagel and Ursula, Argentinian composer and wife Willard Lockwood and Louise, editor of Wesleyan Univ. Press and wife Richard Maxfield, American composer, assistant at first American perf[ormance] trUmPet Richard Lippold and Louise, sculptor and dancer-wife David McAllester and Susan, teacher of Anthropology, Wesleyan, and wife Toshi Ichiyanagi, Japanese composer french horn Gira Sarabhai, Indian architect, who invited me to take a 2 months walk in the foothills of the Himalayas Jose Gomez-Ibanez and Lidia, faculty member, Wesleyan U. and wife Emile de Antonio, producer of Town Hall concert, now film-maker Esther Dam, Danish co-founder with me and others of NY Mycological Society Benedicte Pesle, Parisian dealer in books trombone Ihab Hassan, faculty member, Wesleyan Univ. My Father and Mother Peggy Guggenheim, author and art-collector, Venice tUba Nathan Shapira and Irene, faculty member, Wesleyan, and wife 268  |  1 9 6 2 – 1 9 7 1

Walter Van Tilburg Clark and Barbara, American author and wife J. R. T. Bueno and Emily, editor of Silence and wife timPani David Tudor, American pianist Merce Cunningham, American choreographer and dancer Earle Brown and Carolyn, American composer and dancer-wife PercUssion Norman O. Brown and Beth, author of Life Against Death and wife Samuel Green and Bunnie, head of Art Dept., Wesleyan Univ., and wife Martha Gerhart, formerly secretary to Walter Hinrichsen Marian Vaine, Secretary, Music Dept., Wesleyan University Ben Johnston and Betty, American composer and wife who paints Paul Weiss, Philosopher, Yale University Johanna Alida Ribbelink, receptionist, C. F. Peters Corporation Clara Mayer, formerly dean at New School, New York Marston Bates and Nancy, biologist and wife who is descendant of Alexander Graham Bell (telephone company) harP Tania Senff, Secretary, Center for Advanced Studies, Wesleyan Univ. Grace Bacon, librarian, Wesleyan Univ. Reginald Arragon and Gertrude, scholar, Reed College, and wife condUctor President and Mrs. Victor Butterfield, philosopher and president, Wesleyan At noon I go to the dentist. I haven’t decided yet how to dress: formally or informally. I will brush my teeth. I have a television set! But the signal is weak, so that everything appears as though in a snowstorm. I bought a booster and it helps. That is, some stations I couldn’t get at all can now be gotten. We still go to the movies, however. Saw Viridiana518 (magnificent). I am going to write some new music this summer. What are you doing now?

518. A 1961 film by Luis Buñuel, loosely based on Halma (1895), an early novel by Benito Pérez Galdós. It won the Palme d’Or at the 1961 Cannes Film Festival.

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To Josip Stojanovic519 July 19, 1962 | Stony Point, New York Dear Mr. Stojanovic: Thank you very much for your letter of the 12th of July. It was a pleasure to hear that Mr. Tudor and I will be with you in Zagreb next May. The travel expenses per person (New York–Zagreb) is $343.10. It is understood that this amount will be added to the fee of $200 for each of us. Please, in this connection, divide the 50,000 dinars, giving half to each of us. The lecture which I will give on an afternoon occasion will be illustrated by David Tudor who will play: For Pianist (1959) Variations II (1961)

Christian Wolf John Cage

This will necessitate some electronic equipment, but that will be detailed to you in a future letter, along with the title of the lecture. I would like to give you the lecture, “Where Are We Going? And What Are We Doing?,” but it is not specifically on the subject of modern American music, though generally so from a philosophical point of view. If, for the lecture, you have specific desires, do let me know, and I will act accordingly. The concert program will be: Atlantis Morton Feldman For 6 or 7 Players (1959) Christian Wolff Intermission Atlas Eclipticalis with John Cage Winter Music (Electronic Version) (1961–1962) Would it be possible to employ in part a different group of musicians (10–12) in the Feldman piece than in Atlas? I will need the answer to this question before I can give you the exact list of instruments. Atlantis uses primarily wind instruments, whereas I should like on this occasion, for Atlas, to use mainly strings and percussion. I would need only one rehearsal for each piece (circa 2½ hours), 519. Josip Stojanović (b. 1937), Croatian cellist, director of the 1963 Muzički Biennale Zagreb, an international biannual festival of contemporary music organized by the Croatian Composers’ Society, founded by the Croatian composer Milko Kelemen (b. 1924) in 1961. See Dubravka Djuric and Miško Šuvaković, editors, Impossible Histories: Historical Avant-gardes, Neo-avant-gardes, and Post-avant-gardes in Yugoslavia, 1918–1991 (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2006).

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and would rehearse the Wolff at both reharsals. I would like the opportunity (rather I would need the opportunity) to meet the musicians beforehand individually in order to explain the novelties of notation. The instruments required in the Wolff besides David Tudor are Flute, Double Bass, Trombone, Trumpet, Violin, Viola. In the case of Atlas I need the services of an assistant (to the conductor) whose work it is to operate the amplifiers. He should be a musician primarily, not a technician. People who have done this before are the composers Toshi Ichiyanagi, Richard Maxfield, Gerald Strang, Christian Wolff, Henri Pousseur.520 I do not know who will be in Zagreb at this time. Perhaps you will suggest someone. Perhaps Milko Kelemen. In any case, my greetings to you and to Mr. Kelemen. And Mr. Tudor (whose address is the same as mine —we live in the same cooperative community) and I look forward with pleasure to our visit to Zagreb.521

To Selma Jeanne Cohen522 September 8, 1962 | Stony Point, New York Dear Selma Jeanne Cohen, Here is a text for you.523 I haven’t counted but I think it’s in the neighborhood of 1500 words. You will have it copyrighted in my name as you agreed in your letter of August 10. If you send me proofs before Sept. 25, I will get them back to you quickly. My address between that date and November 1 is: c/o Sogetsu Art Center, 3–7 Onotemachi, Akasaka, Minato-ku, Tokyo. Then Stony Point again. I am enclosing a photograph of Merce Cunningham which I would like used (full-page) as illustration of my text. I do not know your practice regarding contributors, that is, whether or not 520. Henri Pousseur (1929–2009), Belgian composer, a member of the Darmstadt School. His electronic composition Scambi (Exchanges), which can be assembled in various ways before listening, was realized at the Studio di Fonologia in Milan in 1957. 521. The Muzički Biennale Zagreb (Music Biennale Zagreb) took place May 8–16, 1963. Cage delivered his lecture on May 10, 1963, on a shared program with Witold Lutosławski’s Trois poèmes de Henri Michaux. Cage also likely participated in the Composer and Technical Means Seminar of the International Music Centre Vienna, which took place under the auspices of UNESCO. 522. Selma Jeanne Cohen (1920–2005), American dance historian, teacher, and founding editor of Dance Perspectives, a strong advocate for dance scholarship. 523. John Cage, “Where Do We Go from Here?” Dance Perspectives 16, Composer/Choreographer (1963), subsequently included in A Year from Monday (Middletown, CT: Wesleyan University Press, 1967).

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you give information about their recent activities, etc. Therefor, I give you the following, not knowing what part, if any, of it you will use. Music available exclusively through C. F. Peters Corp. (sole selling agents for Henmar Press Inc); invited 1962 to Japan for concert tour with David Tudor by Sogetsu Art Center, Tokyo. Musical Director, Merce Cunningham and Dance Company which is making arrangements for a Broadway engagement in the coming season. Author: Silence: Selected Writings and Lectures (Wesleyan University Press, 1961). I look forward to your reply (particularly about when I will see the proofs).

Remarks before a Visit to Japan524 September 14, 1962 | Stony Point, New York The month of October 1962 will be very interesting for David Tudor and for me. Neither one of us has ever been in the Orient before. It will be especially interesting for me because the first time I hear the music he plays is when he presents it in public. When I returned to New York from Paris in 1949, I brought with me the manuscript of the Deuxième Sonate by Pierre Boulez. This work by reason of its complexity was generally considered unplayable. I made arrangements with the League of Composers in New York City for its first performance by the pianist William Masselos. One evening at Carnegie Hall I heard the Symphony, op. 21 by Webern. After the performance, not wishing to hear what followed, I left the hall. A large young man, having done likewise, greeted me and introduced himself. He was Morton Feldman. In the days that followed, we examined one another’s music, and Feldman, seeing the Boulez manuscript, said: This should be played by David Tudor. When printed copies of the Boulez were brought to me from Paris, I gave one to Tudor. A summer passed. Feldman told me that Tudor knew the music backward and forward, had analyzed it, could play it, and was busy with a 524. Originally published in the Sogetsu Art Center’s program booklet commemorating Cage and Tudor’s concert tour of Japan, Sogetsu Contemporary Series 17. For a first-hand account of Cage and Tudor’s experiences in Japan, see letter to Walter and Evelyn Hinrichsen dated October 10, 1962, and note 527.

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French dictionary reading the poetry Boulez was reading: Char, Mallarmé, and Artaud. I telephoned William Masselos and told him what had happened. He said he would be relieved and grateful if Tudor would play the piece in his place. When David Tudor asked to use my piano for practice, I expected to become familiar with the sonata. However, all I heard were fragments in juxtaposition, not only of Boulez but of other French composers, not of the twentieth but of the nineteenth century. I was quite unprepared when he asked me to act as page-turner at the first performance. To help me he nodded at appropriate moments. Even with this help I made a mistake (turning two pages instead of one) which he corrected. Though I felt speechless that evening, after the concert, I managed to ask Tudor where he came from, with whom he had studied, etc. I learned very little. He had been a professional organist in Philadelphia at the age of thirteen. During the year or so that followed, Feldman, Tudor, Christian Wolff and I were often together. Our conversations began generally in the evening at my apartment by the East River and ended in the early hours of the morning outside some cafeteria on the Lower East Side. During one of them, Feldman left the room, returning somewhat later with the first piece of graph music. He had written numbers instead of notes. Each number appeared in a unit of the graph corresponding to one of three ranges: high, middle, or low. So limited, the performer was free to choose which notes were to be played within a given length of time. Some days later, Christian Wolff brought me the I-Ching, just then published by his father. Looking at the hexagrams, I saw their resemblance to the charts I was using at the time in my composition. I began writing the Music of Changes, each detail of which resulted from the tossing of coins. “One day when the windows were open, Christian Wolff played one of his piece at the piano. Sounds of traffic, boat horns, were heard not only during the silences in the music, but, being louder, were more easily heard than the piano sounds themselves. Afterward, asked to play the piece again with the windows closed, Christian Wolff said he’d be glad to, but that it wasn’t really necessary, since the sounds of the environment were in no sense an interruption of those of the music.”* Thus the changes that have taken place during the last ten years in the field of music were initiated. The atmosphere was one of discovery and joy. In 1954 David Tudor and I made a concert tour of Europe, appearing first in Donaueschingen where we presented tape music by Feldman, Wolff, Earle 1 9 6 2 – 1 9 7 1  |  273

Brown and myself. My 34'46.776" for Two Pianists, a work for prepared pianos, was also played. During our private rehearsals in a room just large enough for the two pianos we realized the need in this music for space between instruments. There must be an interpenetration of sounds, each coming from its own center, not a fusion of them as is desirable in classical European music. In the rehearsal before a small audience which was required by the authorities, we placed the pianos as far part as possible. At the end of this rehearsal only one person in the audience offered his congratulations. He was Hidekazu Yoshida,525 who later traveled with us to Cologne and Paris and who answered my questions regarding haiku poetry. David Tudor has since made many tours in Europe. And he has gone to South America. Wherever he goes he takes with him new music from the United States, returning with new music from abroad. Any of this music may be called avant-garde. But if one describes it more accurately, it is simply music in the repertoire of David Tudor. Some years ago his programs were of music by Boulez, Karlheinz Stockhausen and the Americans I have mentioned together with the music of Stefan Wolpe. Later, he gave performances of music by Henri Pousseur, Cornelius Cardew, Bengt Hambraeus, La Monte Young, George Brecht, Franco Evangelisti, and Bo Nilsson. These days we are apt to hear music by Sylvano Bussotti, Mauricio Kagel, Michael von Biel, Juan Hidalgo, Hans Otte, Walter Marchetti, Toshi Ichiyanagi, and others whose names are as yet unknown to me. Formerly, going to sleep, I used to hear the sounds of David Tudor playing the piano. They were audible up the hill coming from where he lives down by the stream. Nowadays I hear nothing from his studio. True, much that he plays now is written “indeterminately,” and he is obliged to spend many hours making his own scores. These are his own translations of the material given him by composers into a notation he has invented. Also, more and more, particularly with the performance of electronic works, it is useless to practice at home. The characteristics of each electronic system are so unique that one knows little about them until an actual encounter occurs. These changes are such that musicians themselves have become listeners. (Some years ago I sent via nhk a New Year’s Greeting to music-lovers in Japan in which I was able to say: Happy New Ears!).526 I was wrong then in saying 525. Hidekazu Yoshida (1913–2012), Japanese music and literary critic. 526. NHK, or Nippon Hōsō Kyōkai, Japan’s public broadcasting service, in this case radio, its channel based in Tokyo. Cage’s message, which lasted a minute, ended with “Happy New Ears!” It appears in John Cage, A Year from Monday (Middletown, CT: Wesleyan University Press, 1967).

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above that I will be more interested than David Tudor in our visit to Japan, for he, too, will be listening to the music he performs. And it does not stop there. The devotion he gives his musical work, writing, performing and listening, he gives to everything else he does, whether he is cooking a dish of Indian food or walking down a city street. Walking with him, I am continually surprised by how much he observes, for he seems not so concerned with what is going to happen as with whatever is happening where he is. *A story included in my lecture “Indeterminacy: New Aspect of Form in Instrumental and Electronic Music.”

To Walter and Evelyn Hinrichsen October 10, 1962 | Tokyo, Japan Dear Walter + Evelyn, It would be impossible to imagine the thoughtfulness, kindness, etc., that our friends here are showing us increased.527 They are unbelievably imaginative in finding ways to make our visit enchanting. On the first day a visit to my teacher Daisetz Suzuki in Kamakura, on the second a Geisha Banquet given by Sofu Teshigahara,528 who is the great Master of Flower Arrangement. Countless interviews and symposiums and beautiful luncheons with mushrooms never forgotten. A mountain near Kyoto has been rented for my mushroom hunting! I will live in Kyoto in a Zen monastery + the stone garden I’ve always talked abt. + only seen on postcards will be outside my bedroom! And we are to see Kabuki at the Imperial Palace! And a 7th concert in Hokkaido. (4 here and 1 each in Osaka + Kyoto.) Will send the program which is a magazine abt. David + myself.529 On the 5th we did an hour’s program on TV for nhk performing Music for Piano (David Tudor) (2), 24' for 2 Speakers, 2 Pianists + String Player (Yoko 527. In fall 1962, at the invitation of Ichiyanagi, Cage and Tudor made a six-week concert tour of Japan, visiting Tokyo, Osaka, Kyoto, and Sapporo. As Cage recounts here, they performed a total of seven concerts, often with Ichiyanagi, Yoko Ono, and other Japanese musicians, in a variety of venues including NHK television, Tokyo’s newly-opened Bunka Kaikan hall, and Sapporo’s Citizens’ Kaikan hall. In 2012, many of their performances were released by Omega Point and EM Records, including those given at the Sogetsu Art Center in Tokyo and at Mido-Kaikan in Osaka. 528. Sofu Teshigahara (1900–1979), in 1927 founder of the Sogetsu Ikebana School of Ikebana flower arranging; when the Sogetsu Art Center was founded in 1958, Sofu’s son, the Japanese avantgarde film director Hiroshi Teshigahara (1927–2001) served as its director. 529. Cage’s contribution to the Sogetsu Art Center program (“Sogetsu Contemporary Series 17”) is included in the present collection (see September 14, 1962, “Remarks before a Visit to Japan”).

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Ono + myself speaking, D. G. + Toshi Ichiyanagi (pianos), Kenji Kobayashi (violin) and Cartridge Music (8') (D. T. + myself). Then recorded Winter Music for nhk radio (4 pianos: Toshi I., D. T., Yuji Takahashi) (18'). The nhk is also recording our concerts here. Thank you for sending the Music Walk which we performed yesterday. But the transparencies weren’t included! I had to make new ones here at the last minute. Concerts in Honolulu, Seattle and first one here went beautifully. Second one this evening. Am about to leave for rehearsal. Do you think you could be interested in becoming the publisher for Toshi Ichiyanagi? He is my favorite Japanese composer. And we are always playing his music.

To Walter Hinrichsen [ca. late October 1962] | Tokyo Dear Walter: I hope you are well. I look forward to seeing you early in December. It has been a fantastic tour! We have given 70 performances! I don’t know whether you have already made an account of my royalties, but if you have not, please have it ready by the time I return. My mother had a serious fall + was in the hospital and I will need to pay many bills. I do not want extra money, just to collect what is due. Mrs. Stanley Freeman530 has arranged a concert tour in January for David Tudor and me. I hope that you have already sent documents and photos to the following Mr. Ben Patterson Mgr. Arts and Lectures U. of Calif., San Diego P.O. 109 La Jolla, Calif. 92038 One of the problems I want to solve with you is the distribution of music behind the iron curtain.531 The people in Czechoslovakia + Poland are starved for it, particularly Czechoslovakia. Friendliest greetings to you you! Mrs. Hinrichsen and all at Peters! 530. Familiarly, Betty Freeman (b. Wishnick; 1921–2009), American philanthropist and photographer. In addition to Cage, she supported such composers as Harrison, Young, Boulez, and Thomson and in turn inspired many works, including Cage’s Freeman Etudes (1977–1980/1989–1990). 531. This was certainly true in 1962, and Cage would undoubtedly have been delighted to see The

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To Will [No last name given] November 20, 1962 | Stony Point, New York Dear Will, I’m back in the Occident. I thought Tokyo was very busy, but it looks now as though NYC is busier. The enclosed turned up in Peters mail and so am sending it on to you. By now you have heard, or shortly should hear, from a publisher in Japan. The man who seems to be in charge of Shuzo Takaguchi.532 He says he is willing to do the whole thing, but it seems it gets longer in Japanese and they are frightened of some of the typographical problems the book offers. They will probably ask to do selections from it. I said I wd. not discuss that matter, but that you would. I think we were “a success.” —Because they’re asking us back with Cunningham and Company next fall and this time sponsored not only by the Sogetsu Art Center but also by the newspaper Yomiuri.533 I hope to see you soon. I have many pictures: they gave me two albums of photos taken by a photographer who snapped everything from the time I got off the plane with David until 6 weeks later when I got on one coming home. David left earlier and went on to India. I also put the matter of Nobby’s book in the hands of Takiguchi. He will probably want to see the Japanese translation. But he is hoping to find a publisher. What I think is this: he is advisor to a publisher. However, I won’t swear to anything. The conversations were all most “mysterious.” I hear there was a good review of Silence in the Village Voice, but haven’t seen it yet.534 My schedule this season is very crowded. There will be a week or two on Broadway with the dancers (late March and early April). Sometime in March —I think —there will be the complete Atlas Eclipticalis with Winter Music (86 musicians plus pianists) in the Guggeneheim Museum. It will also be performed Freedom of Sound: John Cage Behind the Iron Curtain, ed. Katalin Szekeley, published on the occasion of the eponymous exhibition at the Ludwig Museum, Museum of Contemporary Art in Budapest (Nov. 23, 2012–Feb. 17, 2013). 532. Shuzo Takiguchi (1903–1979), Japanese writer and surrealist artist. Presumably the publisher Cage refers to is Misuzu Shobo, who brought out the complete works of Takaguchi (in Japanese). 533. Properly, Yomiuri Shimbun, published in Tokyo, Osaka, Fukuoka, and other major Japanese cities. 534. See Jill Johnston, “There Is No Silence Now,” Village Voice, November 8, 1962.

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complete in Stockholm early in June. In Jan. I go for a few days to Berlin and possibly also to Chile. In late April to Europe for extended tour. Other times touring here, particularly to Tulane University, New Orleans, in April. If you want to circulate information in the places I go to this year, let me know, and I’ll send you names, addresses, etc.

To Josef Anton Riedl 535 January 2, 1963 | Stony Point, New York Dear Mr. Riedl: Thank you for your letter of Dec. 16. For the magazine I can offer an unpublished article on Commitment.536 It consists of independent short texts and independent time-lengths and a set of directions. It can be printed in a variety of ways. Another thing I can propose is translations from the Japanese of interviews with me during my recent trip there. They could be obtained from Toshi Ichiyanagi, 3–7 Onotemachi, Akasaka, Minato-ku, Tokyo. Let me know your pleasure in this regard. At the moment I cannot write anything especially for you, because I have already accepted too many obligations. Another possibility is the interview with Roger Reynolds537 that appears in my catalog issued by [C. F.] Peters. That is being translated, I understand, by Hans Helms. As for our program in Munich,538 let it be the following: For 5 or 10 players Christian Wolff Sapporo Toshi Ichiyanagi Atlas Eclipticalis with Winter Music (Electronic Version) 535. Josef Anton Riedl (b. 1927 or 1929), German composer and producer, at the time director of the Siemens Studio for Electronic Music, where he initiated the Neue Musik München concert series in 1960. 536. More fully, “Lecture on Commitment,” originally written for the Beta Symposium at Wesleyan University in February 1961. The “score” comprises fifty-six cards, twenty-eight with short texts and twenty-eight with numbers (reflecting seconds). Following Cage’s directions, what results is a twenty-minute talk that can never be exactly the same. The piece was published in A Year from Monday (Middletown CT: Wesleyan University Press, 1967). 537. Roger Reynolds (b. 1934), American composer, long associated with the University of California, San Diego. See “Interview with Roger Reynolds,” in John Cage (New York: Henmar Press, Inc., 1962). 538. Given May 20, 1963, under the auspices of Riedl’s Neue Musik München, devoted to the promotion of music neglected by other Munich venues. Cage and Tudor performed with many German musicians (Wolfgang Schröder, Richard Popp, Wolfgang Freindl, et al.).

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All of these pieces take any length of time, but will be played in the order given above, probably for 20 minutes each. I will not make comments verbally; you may provide program notes. For Atlas, you can take what is in the Peters catalog. For Wolff, you may address him: Assistant Instructor, Harvard University, Cambridge, Mass. And for Ichiyanagi, address him at the address given above. We will need the following equipment: a grand piano having 3 pedals; a bicycle; 2 amplification and independent loud-speaker systems having 8 high impedance inputs each; an organ or harmonium. And the assistance of the following musicians: any five instruments, at least 2 of which play in the low range, plus a timpanist (4 pedal timpani covering the range F to G). We may also use some standing microphones, particularly if you provide brass instruments. Let the choice of musicians depend on their interest in new music and seriousness of attitude towards experimentation. I will need to meet them in advance of a rehearsal and then to have two 2½ hour rehearsals before the actual performance. The amplifiers must have two tone controls (bass and treble). One of them will be under the control of David Tudor, the other under the control of someone who assists me, a composer preferably. I will conduct Sapporo and Atlas, and supervise the rehearsals of the Wolff piece, which is done without conductor.

To H. H. Stuckenschmidt539 January 2, 1963 | Stony Point, New York Dear Prof. Stuckenschmidt: In a few days I will send photographs of David Tudor and myself. Our plan for the broadcast is the following: 1) a performance throughout the broadcast time by David Tudor of two of my compositions simultaneous —i.e., superimposed —Variations III 540 and a new realization by Tudor of Fontana Mix: 539. Hans Heinz Stuckenschmidt (1901–1988), German composer, critic, and musicologist. After World War II he served as director of new music at RIAS radio station in Berlin and, in 1947, became music critic of the Neuen Zeitung and Der Tagesspiegel. He invited Cage and Tudor to give a program at Berlin’s Technische Universität in a series called Music in the Age of Technical Science, which took place on January 21, 1963. It was broadcast widely throughout Germany. 540. Variations III (1962–1963), for variable ensemble performing any actions. As in Variations  I and II, Variations III uses transparencies, forty-two in all, each containing a circle. The performer drops the transparency on a blank sheet of paper and then chooses a small, interconnected group of

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2) a performance throughout the broadcast time —i.e., superimposed on the above Tudor performance —of Variations III. Variations III will on this occasion take the form of speech and speech preparation together with any necessary translations or comments, and, furthermore, with any questions from the audience, both the audience in the hall and the audience viewing the broadcast. It is my hope that you will act as translator and commentator, and that you will receive questions from the audience that may be given in either written or spoken form or both, and that you will receive by telephone questions from the broadcast audience, and that you will translate these and present them to me either in written or spoken English. I will give answers in English, either written or spoken, according to the circumstances, and you will give translations in German. This will be the first performance anywhere of Variations III. I hope to prepare a short text very soon which will not be longer than one page. Or perhaps ½ page. With the German translation this should be distributed to the audience, informing them for instance that they are free to ask questions at any time. This information should also be given to the broadcast audience, either verbally or by televising the printed page. I will also have available for television broadcast the scores of the three compositions being simultaneously performed. For this broadcast we need the following equipment: 2 grand pianos (3 pedals each); typewriter; 3 tape machines (7½ ips) with their own speakers; and for David Tudor: 2 amplifiers with at least 3 high impedance inputs each. 2 standing microphones, one of which should have an on and off switch connected with the microphone. One or both of these has to go into one of above amplifiers. If one microphone is low impedance it must have its own amplifier. and for you: Means for amplifying your voice, telephone means for receiving questions from the broadcast audience, and people who collect questions from the audience in the hall in written form, for they will not be able to make themselves heard. and for me: circles from the mass. From this group, the performer builds a performing score. This is an extremely open score, as there are no instructions as to how (or even whether) to produce sounds.

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1. amplifier with mixer with 8 high impedance inputs on a table with sufficient space to write and to typewrite. 2. amplifier with Lavalier microphone preferably with on-off switch plus 3 additional high impedance inputs. This set-up should be associated with a speaker’s pulpit. 3. normal table microphone associated with a low table and chair, the amplifier having three additional high impedance inputs. All amplifiers must have 2 tone controls (bass and treble) and they must be under the control of the performers. The entire production of sound and speech should issue from as many independent loud-speaker systems as possible in relation to the five amplifiers (at least 2 and preferably more loud-speaker systems). We have also the following questions: 1. Will we receive our air tickets from you or should we arrange to purchase them ourselves? If you send them to us please arrange a stop on our way back to America in Frankfurt. I wish to make the acquaintance of Dr. Petschull541 of Peters-Frankfurt. 2. How shall we dress? In tails or in dark suits? David Tudor and I are looking forward with pleasure to seeing you soon in Berlin, and we send you friendliest greetings and best wishes for the New Year, to you and to Mrs. Stuckenschmidt.

To Peter Yates January 16, 1963 | Stony Point, New York Dear Peter, Thanks for the letter. I don’t know whether this will reach you before I leave around 7 in the evening for Berlin. On the 18th. I’m worried stiff about it, because the plan I sent them has been refused and I have nothing else I want to do. The Germans are difficult. Someday I’ll tell you all my stories about them. In effect they ask you to perform, then they tell you how to perform and what, and if you don’t do as they say, they insist. Ugh. Glad you enjoyed talk with Bob Dunn. I always do too. Generalization from 4 instances. back from Europa on Thurs. or Fri. the 24–25. 541. Johannes Petschull (1902–2001), partner to Max and Walter Hinrichsen in the formation of the West German (Frankfurt) branch of the C. F. Peters Corporation.

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To Lou Harrison March 2, 1963 | Stony Point, New York Dear Lou, It was a great pleasure to receive and enjoy your letter and thank you for the Trio, and let us both thank the Lord for Walter H[inrichsen]! And I was glad to get your version of the story. I’m sure you can forgive it’s having taken a different substance in my head. My view is that both stories are “correct”: one is the way you remember it’s happening to you and the other is something that “stuck in my mind” and finally got itself on paper. In one of his lectures Suzuki made it clear that the stories of Zen about the line of Patriarchs and their connection with the Buddha were true (i.e., stories), even though they might have little or nothing to do with what happened. About the orchestration of the Suite for Toy Piano, I will, of course, be delighted with whatever you do. I could not have used pitches higher or lower than those I did because of the instrument I was writing for. But with the orchestra you have access to all the octaves. Why not use them? Perhaps you could draw the line at the “black” notes. I am sorry to hear about “discouragements” and particularly about “one more broken rib as well.” Is there any way I can be of help? Is your work on Korean music accomplished? I look forward to reading the book. This year I am little at home and at the moment though here I am disconsolate since circumstances do not permit me to live my “own” life, that is compose or at least put ink to paper and walk in the woods. I am obliged to run about like a chicken with its head severed reading out loud old lectures, and from time to time I conduct or sit at a piano which I can scarcely any longer play due to arthritis. And the classical pains: in the back. Furthermore, I must use glasses now to write which make me blind as a bat when I take them off. I make elaborate tours living with a suitcase which I can hardly pick up and returning home with not enough money to pay my bills. I still say yes whenever any one asks me to do something, providing I’m free —not already engaged by another —but Oh! how soon I will say no. Society infuriates me. Their level best they did to make it impossible for us to do what we did, and now that they see we did it, they use other means to keep us from our proper work. It would be a pleasure to be with you over a time sufficiently long to waste some of the hours together. Maybe that will be possible this coming summer. 282  |  1 9 6 2 – 1 9 7 1

I will be at Ucla in July with Merce and the Dancers. Let me know what your plans are. Of course, if you come this way, you are always at home here.

To Gertrud Meyer-Denkmann542 March 18, 1963 | Stony Point, New York Dear Gertrud Meyer-Denkmann, Thank you very much for your letter of the 15th. We are very glad that you are able to make a concert in Oldenberg. We are performing on the 20th in Munich, and on the 29th in Stockholm, and naturally we need to be in Stockholm at least by the evening of the 27th.543 Please arrange the date for Oldenburg so that we will be able to fulfill our committments. We have no particular preferences as to instruments. However, for Christian Wolff’s piece, if there are 4 instruments, let 2 or 3 of them be instruments that play in the low range (contrabass, bass clarinet, etc.), and if 9 instruments, let four of them be such low-playing instruments. Sapporo is also played by the instrumentalists, but they may play with orchestral instruments or with folk instruments or mixed. And it would be good to have something like an organ or harmonium. Atlas Eclipticalis with Winter Music (Electronic Version) will not be done with tape, but with your musicians. I have parts for all the instruments. So simply let me know how many and which parts to bring. Our intention is to amplify all the instruments in Atlas by means of contact microphones which we bring. You will need to provide amplifiers and loud-speakers and technical assistance to make the set-up. All of our inputs are high-impedance. There will have to be that number corresponding to the number of instruments. And independently David must have his own amplification system which he controls and which gives him 4–8 inputs. I will also need an assistant who controls the amplifiers for the instrumental ensemble. Perhaps you would do that, or perhaps Hans Otte.544 542. Gertrud Meyer-Denkman (b. 1918), German composer, educator, musicologist, and writer, an early advocate of Cage in Europe. 543. Cage was at the time communicating with Knut Wiggen (b. 1927), from 1959 to 1969 chairman of the Fylkingen Society in Stockholm, about giving two concerts, with Tudor, in the coming year. 544. Hans (Gunther Franz) Otte (1926–2007), German composer, pianist, and artist. He was music director for Radio Bremen (1959–1984) and a champion of experimental American composers and musicians, including Cage and Tudor.

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Any number of musicians can play Sapporo and Atlas, but either 4 or 9 are needed for Christian’s piece. We are willing to have Hamburg cooperate, but if they only give 500dm. —They may only record one of the three pieces. David is also writing to Dr. Tomek. We will bring as many new pieces with us as we can. But there is the problem of air travel and our weight. And we have to carry many microphones with us. Please let me know if you have any problems or questions. I will answer them as soon as possible, although now I am doing a good deal of touring.

To Dr. Johannes Petschull April 24, 1963 | Stony Point, New York Dear Dr. Petschull: Thank you very much for your letter of April 4. Thank you also for the handling successfully of the matter in connection with Merce Cunningham and Dance Company. I feel very deeply that we must continue to work on the matter of the Sender Freies Berlin attitude towards the length of the performances of my three works, Fontana Mix, Variations II and Variations III. I am writing to Prof. Stuckenschmidt asking him to help in this matter also. In the first place, it should be clear that the composer of a work knows far more exactly what has taken place with respect to the length of a performance of a work by him than anyone else would know. He takes, that is, responsibility for the sounds during that stated space of time. In the second place, I have for many years established the fact that silences are the basis of my work, that they form not only an integral part of the performance, but that the sounds that do occur in a given composition are in a profound sense “silent,” that is, they are sounds accepted by me rather than imposed by me. Silences are corresponding to unpainted surfaces on a work of art. These have been for many years accepted in the world of visual art and are purchased when the painting is purchased. In the third place, all of the events which the Sender Freies Berlin cites as not relevant to my work are part of it in the sense of the paragraph preceding this one. That is, all of the questions and answers and the translations by the Interpreter are part and parcel of Variations III. If one examines the directions 284  |  1 9 6 2 – 1 9 7 1

given in the score, he will see the truth of my words. Also all the work I did at the typewriter is part of Variations III. I performed Variations III as a speaker, author and person being interviewed. And this is in accord with my composition which is copyrighted. While I performed Variations III, David Tudor performed at the same time Fontana Mix and Variations II. He performed as a pianist using contact microphones and cartridges on the two instruments. Silences on his part were integral to the two compositions. Again an examination of the scores will show that what I say is in accord with fact. It is important that this matter be brought to a true conclusion because it will be a precedent not only to future performances of my own works but to performances of works by other composers which include silences and accept ambient sounds. Should a judge of this matter wish, he might read my book Silence in order to inform himself concerning my convictions. The performance of the three works began the moment we went to the stage and it did not stop until the conclusion of the program. There is no question of an abridgement of these compositions, for all of them may be played for any length of time. Instead of sending Prof. Stuckenschmidt another letter, I will send him this one, so that you both have the same information. P.S. In connection with paragraph 6 above, let me cite the great work on glass by Marcel Duchamp.545 It is impossible to see this work apart from its environment. That is, one looks through it.

To M.C. Richards May 24, [1963?] | Oldenburg, Germany Dearest M!C! Wie geht’s? I hope all’s well. I wish I were home. We are having, though, a lovely time in Oldenburg. We are staying in the home of Gertrude MeyerDenkmann. She and her husband have a love of nature, so that the house is in a non-tended garden. The plants simply grow wildly. There is a pond. It is 545. Cage refers to Duchamp’s The Bride Stripped Bare by Her Bachelors, Even, often called “The Large Glass” (1915–1923).

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full of tadpoles so that the water looks black. Dandelions are blooming, and grape-hyacinths, rhododendrons, and there is a great variety of trees. A cat with two kittens, and a nervous poodle. David sleeps in a cabin in the woods. I stay in the house. I sleep a great deal even during the day. Here, fortunately, we are not playing with other musicians, but just by ourselves. So I don’t have to go through the business of rehearsals and indoctrination (which was so difficult and time-consuming in Vienna, Zagreb and Munich). There is a rumor rampant that in order to give a concert I must kill a cat. It came about this way: Frederic Rjewski546 who lives now in Rome gave a program and the critic said the next day in print that he might have killed a cat —there were such sounds. This was relayed to the rest of the European press. The German Cultural Office then sent a general letter to all the cities here that Rjewski should not be permitted to play in Deutschland. Friends in Munich who had arranged a concert for him studied the matter and did some research and then informed the Office that no cats had suffered in Rome. However the story sticks in people’s minds, and they now connect it with avant-gardism, and so people actually expect us to kill a cat during a program! Even on the other side of the Iron Curtain. Well, the Devil is on the Earth. Nicht wahr? We have now two more engagements after Stockholm: in Copenhagen and in Essen, and they ask would we be willing to do more. I think though I will come home as soon as possible after Essen, which is the 7th of June, and let David accept or not the other engagements. I do so very much want to be at home a little before leaving for California. Yesterday there was sunshine. And we had a bright day in Munich. But otherwise Germany is very grey —and green, beautifully green. This evening Gertrude has invited her pupils and a philosopher to come and chat with us. And then tomorrow we must work to produce the concert here tomorrow evening. Then early the next morning to Stockholm.

546. Properly, Frederic (Anthony) Rzewski (b. 1938), American composer and virtuoso pianist, co-founder with Alvin Curran and Richard Teitelbaum of Musica Elettronica Viva, which promoted music as collective, collaborative process. Many of his scores reveal a deep political conscience and feature improvisational aspects.

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To Charlotte Moorman547 June 11, 1964 | Stony Point, New York Dear Charlotte Moorman, Thank you very much for your letter of the 3rd. I just returned from Europe having given two more concerts there than I had originally planned. The Brazil plans seem very interesting and I’d be glad to write a piece for you. The festival should pay $1000 as a commission to me to do this plus the travel and living expenses while in Rio (air travel to and from Rio–New York). If this happens, that is, if I hear from Mr. Alcazar in contractual terms, then we just get together so that I can fit my work to your work. There would be no score, but only parts, and the work when finished could take any length of time and and use any instruments. We would of course plan which ones for the premiere situation. I leave for California on July 1. You can reach me here before that at the above address or at ha9-8161 (code 914). During July: c/o Alma Hawkins, Dance Dept., U. of Calif., Los Angeles 24, California. Back around Aug. 12. Looking forward to hearing from you or from Mr. Alcazar.

To Arthur Lipsett548 October 12, 1963 | Stony Point, New York Dear Arthur Lipsett, Thank you for your letter. I am glad to hear that your film continues. My circumstances now are that I leave on tour next Friday (the 18th) and will be back here around the end of November. Naturally, I look forward to seeing your work, and I will be glad to work on 547. (Madeline) Charlotte Moorman (Garside) (1933–1991), American cellist and performance artist, a close collaborator with Nam June Paik who also interpreted works by leading composers of the day, including Cage, Stockhausen, and Varèse. She founded the New York Avant-Garde Festival in 1963. 548. Arthur Lipsett (1936–1986), Canadian avant-garde director of short collage films. Despite Lipsett’s passion for sound —his own audio/visual seven-minute film Very Nice, Very Nice garnering an Academy Award nomination for Best Short Subject, Live Action Subject in 1962 —Cage gleaned a philosophical mismatch between the two relative to intentionality. The proposed collaboration did not move forward.

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the music for it providing we can collaborate without too greatly compromising one another. Specifically I mean this: For the past ten to fifteen years I have been concerned with not controlling a continuity of sounds, and certainly not controlling the togetherness of sounds and images, sound and stories, or sounds and movements of dancers. I am insistent upon letting things go together. Your letter makes me fear that you do not take this attitude, but rather want to shape something to correspond with your ideas and feelings. I would certainly not make “a rough sound-track” “which could later be trimmed down, etc.” All this is why I asked you what led you to think of my making the music for you. When you anwered that you had heard the stories with music,549 I thought you understood that in that case I had simply let the togetherness happen. If the visuals express something, there is no earthly need for the sounds to have the same expression. I believe that everything is totally expressive, and that when we force things into our ideas of expression, we simply reduce the natural grandeur, robbing it of its potential total expression. For instance Shiva who not only destroys but who creates also and whose “white state of mind” (winter) includes preservation (summer). I realize making a film is a time-consuming and totally involving activity, and that you must be getting concerned and possessive. I do not want to step on your toes or to spoil your work. But I will refuse to write music purposefully and as reinforcement of something that ought not to need reinforcement.

To Leonard Bernstein October 17, 1963 | Stony Point, New York Dear Lenny: Two points. First, I am very grateful to you for having decided to present my work and that of [Morton] Feldman and [Earle] Brown before your audiences. We all admire your courage in doing this at the present time, for actual hostility toward our work is still felt by many people. 549. Lipsett likely heard the Smithsonian Folkways recording and misunderstood the compositional means underlying Cage’s Indeterminacy: New Aspect of Form in Instrumental and Electronic Music, which pairs Cage’s strictly-timed readings of one-minute stories with Tudor’s musical accompaniment derived from Cage’s scores.

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Second, I ask you to reconsider your plan to conduct the orchestra in an improvisation. Improvisation is not related to what the three of us are doing in our works. It gives free play to the exercise of taste and memory, and it is exactly this that we, in differing ways, are not doing in our music. Since, as far as I know, you are not dedicated in your own work to improvisation, I can only imagine that your plan is a comment on our work. Our music is still little understood and your audiences, for the most part, will be hearing it for the first time. It would seem best if they could do so without being prejudiced. I admired Aaron [Copland] when he presented my work at Tanglewood, letting the audience know beforehand that, though he didn’t share my views, he felt the music, since it was seriously written and had found a following among composers, performers and audiences around the world, had a right to be heard attentively. I feel the opposite way about Smallens,550 who, I am told, after conducting a first performance of [Anton] Webern for the League here in New York, turned toward the audience and joined them in derisive laughter. Surely there must be some less provocative way to conclude the program, one which will leave no doubt as to your courage in giving to your audiences the music which you have chosen to present.

To Donald Malcolm551 December 9, 1963 | Stony Point, New York Dear Mr. Malcolm: For many years now I and other members of The New York Mycological Society have read and reread your review of Alexander Smith’s book552 with great delight. I am writing now to invite you to speak to us on the evening of February 4, 1964. We offer an honorarium of $50. The meeting will be at 7:30 p.m., but many are tardy. We do not have any other officers than those given above and there is no parliamentary law or discussion of business. We would simply come together to listen to you. If February 24 is not convenient, would March 30 or April 27 be good? 550. Alexander Smallens (1889–1972), Russian-born American conductor and music director. 551. Donald Malcolm, staff writer for the New Yorker from 1957, a gifted book reviewer. His wife was the writer Janet Malcolm. 552. For Malcolm’s review of Alexander H. Smith’s The Mushroom Hunter’s Field Guide (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1958), see the New Yorker, June 28, 1958, 78.

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If your answer is, as I hope, affirmative, please let me have a title for your talk. We will be printing an announcement of the 1964 program early in January. I should add something about our membership. In ’62 we were some twenty people, this year forty. We are all amateurs. Our leader on field trips is Guy G. Nearing, breeder of rhododendrons and lichenologist. We have four winter meetings, field trips three Sundays in May and every Sunday from July through November, sometimes with alternative week-ends in Vermont or other places distant from New York. Early in December we have a banquet. The Society grew out of the interest in the classes in Mushroom Identification which were given at the New School 1959–1961 by Mr. Nearing, Lois Long (the textile designer), and myself.553 The meeting will be at The New York Academy of Sciences, 2 East 63rd St.

To Herbert Sturdy January 6, 1964 | Stony Point, New York Dear Mr. Herbert: Dad’s affairs are in a confused state. A George White, 453 Mt. Prospect Ave., Newark 4, N.J., often saw Dad and was working with respect to Mist-A-Cold554 in connection with Dr. Edward Turi md, and on 4 projects with someone at cbs in New York. (Proj. TV; Fog-Vision; Color; Space Travel). He claims to have been associated with Mr. H. W. Webber (2310 Ashmead Pl., N.W., Washington D.C.). But I have spoken with Mr. Webber and he has no knowledge of Mr. White! Mr.  Webber was making connections for Dad with nasa and with the Air Force concerning space travel and Fog-vision. He now has your address as does Mr. White. I do not like Mr. White. However, he gave Dad small sums of money for the Mist-A-Cold production, and now states that Dr. Turi would purchase the formula “for several thousand dollars.” My wishes with respect to Dad’s work go as follows. I would like to have someone with an open scientific mind go over his papers and discover whether his ideas could lead to useful research, particularly with regard to space travel without boosters. I have connections with Bell Telephone Laboratories at Murray Hill, N.J. (Mr. Max Matthews; Mr. William Kluver) and I am a friend of R. Buckminster Fuller, University of Southern Illinois, Carbondale. I would 553. See letter to the New York Mycological Society dated December 11, 1964. 554. See note 203.

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like to procede without a view to financial benefits, simply with an interest in research and Dad’s theories. I think that his work encountered two principal obstacles: bureaucracy with its forms and procedures which his mind could not satisfy, and his own desire to make money and not simply “give” his ideas away. I think that is all right now. If you have appointed another lawyer, please send this letter or a copy on to him. With friendliest greetings to you and Mrs. Sturdy, What a typewriter!

To Lowell Cross555 February 10, 1964 | Stony Point, New York Dear Mr. Cross: Thank you for your letter. This is just a note to confirm that May 3 is acceptable as a date by Mr. Tudor and myself.556 I am sorry that I can’t arrive much in advance of that date. I will try to get there late on the first day of May (coming from Hawaii; Mr. Tudor from someplace else). I will discuss the program today with Mr. Tudor and let you know details shortly. For the Modern Dance Ensemble I suggest any of the available recordings: particularly those in my Town Hall Album or those in the Time Records Series, the latest of which is Cartridge Music. If they want something shorter, I’d sugest either the Aria with Fontana Mix (also Time Records) or the Music for Carillon No. 1, which is in the Town Hall Album. Address of Time Records: 2 W. 45th NYC 36. I take it you have Silence (Wesleyan Univ. Press) and my Catalogue (Peters: 373 Park Ave. South). Suggested other reading matter: The Gutenberg Galaxy by Herbert Marshall McLuhan, Univ. of Toronto Press, and Buckminister Fuller’s book, Ideas and Integrities. I don’t have the Audio review you wrote. Do you have a copy?

555. Lowell Cross (b. 1938), American composer, engineer, and instrument builder. He is best known in Cage circles for his construction of the 16-input/8-output electronic chessboard used by Cage and Marcel and Teeny Duchamp in Reunion (1968). See note 737. 556. Cage, Tudor, and Ichiyanagi would perform at the Texas Technological College (where Cross was a student) on May 4, 1964, as part of the 13th Symposium of Contemporary Music, performing Cage’s Variations II with Variations III and Ichiyanagi’s Music for Piano No. 4 (electronic version).

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To Marian J. Kerr557 February 18, 1964 | Stony Point, New York Dear Miss Kerr: I sent a letter yesterday and then received your letter today. I note with some alarm that it took five days to arrive! How spoiled we are for former tempi. You have my reasons for wishing to change the works of mine presented. Variations II, III, and IV 558 are all graphic and indeterminate. Assuming that you will accept this suggestion, let me give you the following information (you can get further information from the scores themselves). These are three different compositions which may be played alone or together, by any number of players using any sound-producing means. Variations  II was written in 1961 while I was a fellow in the Center for Advanced Studies, Wesleyan University, Middletown, Connecticut. The first performance was by David Tudor, using an amplified piano, at the New School, New York, March 24, 1961. He has performed it often since then, and actually will be performing it in San Francisco slightly before our performance in Honolulu. The composition consists of transparent materials, each with a single notation, a line or a point. These are superimposed in any way, readings taken by the one (each one independently) who is to perform, and these readings provide a program of musical action. Variations III was written in 1963 and was first performed by me (together with a performance of Variations II by David Tudor) at the Kongresshalle in Berlin as part of the series Music in the Age of Technical Science sponsored by the Technische Universität Berlin. I performed not as a musician but as a composer-author-speaker. The material of Variations III, also on transparent materials, does not specify activities nor does it involve the performer in measurements. (The performance in Berlin was in January 1963.) Variations IV was written in July 1963 and was first performed at Ucla that 557. Marian J. Kerr, festival chairman, eighth annual Festival of Music and Art of This Century, Department of Music, University of Hawaii; John Cage and Toru Takemitsu, visiting composers, with Kiyoshi Saito and Antonio Frasconi, visiting artists. Concerts were given daily April 19–26, 1964. 558. Cage’s Variations IV (1963), for any number of players performing any sounds or combinations of sounds produced by any means, originally used as music for Cunningham’s Field Dances, with stage decor and costumes (in its original version) by Rauschenberg. It was first performed as accompaniment to the Cunningham work at UCLA on July 16, 1963; as a concert work, it premiered at the Los Angeles Feigen-Palmer Gallery on January 12, 1965, a benefit for the Foundation for Contemporary Performance Arts.

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month together with the choreography, Field Dances, by Merce Cunningham. The materials, also on transparencies, refer not to time nor to sounds, but simply to the places where sounds are produced, the majority being outside the auditorium. The three compositions have never before been performed together. Thus this will be a first performance. As I indicated in yesterday’s letter, I would prefer to do just the percussion parts of Atlas Eclipticalis. I enclose the Philharmonic Notes which would need to be changed somewhat (since we are not doing the Winter Music). You may also use the note for this work in the Catalog. I am interested to know how the dancers feel about doing my Theatre Piece. You can get a note to this and first performance information in the Catalog. In this case they will not need a recording. There is some for Sixteen Dances, and the piano preparation for the Sonatas and Interludes takes from three to six hours. We will have scores for exhibition. Both Lois Long and Jasper Johns559 are coming with me, and I look forward to much pleasure. I think you will enjoy them very much. If you find out from the Art Dept. about Henry Geldzahler,560 let me know so that I can encourage him to come too. There was a good review of the Philharmonic performance in Newsweek. Otherwise the critics were not pleased. But I am very used to this. Had I worried about them I would have stopped my activities approximately thirty years ago! By good review, you understand I mean “favorable.” I realize that my suggestions for changes in programs give you only relatively recent works. It seems to me this impression could be modified by recordings of older works made available to students or to the public through radio broadcasts. I leave Friday on tour. I can be reached in Minneapolis care of Mr. Richard 559. Jasper Johns (b. 1930), American artist and printmaker, who, with Cage, Cunningham, and Rauschenberg, the artistic quartet of the 1950s, changed the landscape of American art after World War II. From 1967 to 1980, Johns would serve as the artistic advisor to the Merce Cunningham Dance Company, numbering among their collaborations Walkaround Time (1968; music by David Behrman), Second Hand (1970; music by Cage), and Un jour ou deux (1973; music by Cage). In 1963, he and Cage formed the Foundation for Contemporary Performance Arts (see note 565). 560. Henry Geldzahler (1935–1994), Belgian-born American curator of contemporary art, art historian, and critic, well known for his work at the Metropolitan Museum of Art and as New York City Commissioner of Cultural Affairs (1977–1982). He established friendships with many contemporary artists, including Willem de Kooning, Johns, Frank Stella, and Warhol.

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Borgin, Tyrone Guthrie Theatre, 725 Vineland, Minneapolis, Minnesota (Feb. 24, 25). After that write again to Stony Point. From the 7th through the 14th of March I will again be on tour, and again from the 17th through the 25th (c/o Mr. Sam Wagstafff, Hartford, Conn., Wadsworth Athenaeum).

To Michael O. Zahn561 April 7, 1964 | Stony Point, New York Dear Mr. Zahn: Thank you for your letter. I think that the only published statement I have about Ives is the one on pages 70–71 in Silence. And this statement is probably not of service to you. Now that you have pointed it out (this omission in my writing), I intend to write something about Ives. If I do, soon, I will send it to you. We become, I believe, aware of the past by what we do. What we do throws a light on the past. Thus, in the ’30’s and ’40’s when I was concerned with rhythmic structure, I was not interested in Ives. But more recently because of my indeterminate and unstructured works, I am interested in Ives. This interest does not lead me to the analysis or study of his work. I simply mean that were some of his music to be performed in my neighborhood I would grasp the opportunity to hear it. Offhand I think that Ives’ relevance increases as time goes on. (On pg. 71 I object to the American aspects of his work, but in view of “pop art” they are pertinent.) And now that we have a music that doesn’t depend on European-musical history, Ives seems like the beginning of it. I heard (just recently in San Francisco) a recording of a piece by the young composer Ramon Sender562 called Desert Ambulance. It was for tape and accordion solo. The end of it was very thick in a middle register —the sound of many strings and accordion clusters —: like a cable of sound. It made me think of the 561. An April 1964 letter from Zahn, of Milwaukee, Wisconsin, prompted this reply, which reflects Cage’s rethinking of Charles Ives’s contribution to American experimental music. Cage’s letter is reproduced in facsimile in John Cage, “Two Statements on Ives,” A Year from Monday (Middletown, CT: Wesleyan University Press, 1967). 562. More fully, Ramon Sender Barayón (b. 1934), American composer, visual artist, and writer, who, with Morton Subotnick, co-founded in 1962 the San Francisco Tape Music Center. Desert Ambulance (1964), one of his best-known works, was an audio-visual collaboration with projections by Tony Martin.

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complexity of Ives and the way one perceives something in it. Does it emerge? Or do we enter in? I rather think it emerges in his case. And that nowadays we would tend toward doing it ourselves (we are the listeners), that is, we would enter it. The difference is this: everybody hears the same thing if it emerges. Everybody hears what he alone hears if he enters in. Better than I, James Tenney563 could answer your questions. He has been finding works of Ives and bringing them to performance. I believe you can write to him care of Music School, Yale University, New Haven Connecticut. I don’t so much admire the way Ives treated his music socially (separating it from his insurance business): it made his life too safe economically and it is in living dangerously economically that one shows “bravery” socially. But his “contribution to American music” was in every sense: “not only spiritual, but also concretely musical.” Nowadays everything I hear by Ives delights me. However, the opportunity to hear his work is rare. I might not enjoy it so much if it were less rare. during April c/o Music Dept. Univ. of Hawaii, Honolulu, Hawaii

To Iris Love564 September 1, 1964 | Stockholm Dear Miss Love: The world tour of Merce Cunningham Dance Company (six months, June through November 1964, ten dancers, two musicians, two administrators) is now half completed. Fifteen performances in France, Venice, Vienna, Germany and Dartington Hall, Devonshire were followed by twenty-three in London. During the next three months the Company will appear in Sweden, Finland, Czechoslovakia, Poland, Germany, Belgium, India, Thailand and Japan. The tour has been made possible (1) by grants from the Foundation for Contemporary Performance Arts,565 the Hampton Center of Contemporary 563. James Tenney (1934–2006), American composer and music theorist, devoted to the works of Charles Ives, giving the first performance of his in re, con moto et al for piano quintet (1915–1916). 564. Iris Love (b. 1933), American archaeologist, philanthropist, and socialite. 565. The Foundation for Contemporary Performance Arts (later Foundation for Contemporary Arts), established in 1963 by Cage and Johns to assist performing artists. In 1992, a biannual John Cage Award would be established, with recipients to date being David Tudor (1992), Takehisa Kosugi (1994), Christian Wolff (1996), Earle Brown (1998), Gordon Mumma (2000), Robert Ashley (2002), David

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Arts, Inc., the jdr 3rd Fund, the generosity of private patrons, and (2) by the acceptance of a sixty-dollar reduction in each week’s salary by each member of the Company. If this salary reduction ($60 x 28 weeks x 14 Company members equals $23,520) is not compensated retroactively by the tour’s end, agma (American Guild of Musical Artists) will take action against the Company and its members. It is true that agma’s salary standards were established in relation to generous government subsidy; however, we have received no financial aid from our State Department. Nevertheless, we do not wish to bring about because of this tour hardships for those who took part in it. While in Europe, we have received further engagements (in Czechoslovakia, Poland and Thailand) which have altered our original itinerary. Air France, in making the change of itinerary, added $3,500 to the cost of our transportation. This new cost of travel is not balanced by our additional performance fees, for some of these fees are in currencies which have no value outside the countries in which they are received. Originally we were to have a vacation in August with our reduced salaries cut to half. But our performances in London were so well received that following the week at Sadler’s Wells Theatre we moved to the Phoenix Theatre for two and a half weeks accepting a percentage of the box office receipts, meanwhile maintaining the June–July Company salaries. This resulted in a loss of $1000, though the run in every other sense was, as the enclosed material makes evident, a great success. For these reasons, we need further subsidy ($28,020). Checks made out to the Foundation for Contemporary Performance Arts should be mailed to Mr. Rubin Gorewitz, cPa,566 18 Elmsford Road, New City, New York. Donations to this Foundation are now tax-exempt. Mr. Gorewitz is the accountant for Merce Cunningham and Dance Company and can answer any questions you may have.

Behrman (2004), Charles Atlas (2006), Paul Kaiser (2008), William Anastasi (2010), Pauline Oliveros (2012), Phil Niblock (2014), and Joan La Barbara (2016). See Eric Banks, ed., Artists for Artists: Fifty Years of the Foundation for Contemporary Arts (New York: FCA, 2013). 566. Rubin L. Gorewitz (1925–2003), New York tax accountant, activist, and lobbyist who championed artists’ economic rights; in the early 1950s he helped Martha Graham obtain tax-exempt status for her dance company. He was also Cage’s accountant, replaced at his retirement by Bennet Grutman; Grutman and Gorewitz together served as co-executors of Cage’s estate upon his death in 1992.

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To The New York Mycological Society December 11, 1964 | Stony Point, New York Shortly after returning from my recent six-months tour, I had several conversations and read some correspondance which made it clear that there is a certain unrest in the New York Mycological Society. The following is an attempt to improve the situation. As you will note below, members may simply ignore this letter, reply to it in writing, or call for a meeting in which the various matters mentioned below and others, if wished, could be discussed. If this way of dealing with problems is found to function, it can be taken as a precedent and followed in the future by any member when he feels that some problem has arisen that requires attention. By way of preface, it may be remarked that the Society has no constitution or parliamentary law, and no officers other than the secretary and the treasurer. There are, however, five founding members567 who established the Society, set the dues and fees and who have arranged the lecture and walk schedules and done the various things necessary to get information out and membership in. What was wanted was a fairly unorganized anarchic situation, without responsibility being placed heavily on anyone’s shoulders. This desire arose from two circumstances: a visit I made with Guy Nearing to a New Jersey Garden Society where, during an extended parliamentary meeting, members took the opportunity to haggle with one another and to produce several hours of mutual misery and (for someone like myself who was not concerned) boredom. The second circumstance was the fact that the Society was formed following several years of Mushroom Identification classes which were taught at the New School by Guy G. Nearing, myself, and Lois Long. In this class situation, enrolled students quite rightly depended on the teachers and leaders. This brought about an adolescent rather than adult social situation and the responsibility —in view of possible poisonings not only from mushrooms but from wasps and snakes too and accidents from falling rocks, crumbling cliffs, etc. —was greater than the leaders cared to continue having. Therefore the classes were stopped and the society was established. The dues were set rather high in order to ensure a serious membership and to give the society funds with which to operate: to engage lecturers, rent necessary rooms, and to celebrate the conclusion of each year’s hunting with a banquet. All of this was determined undemocratically 567. Guy G. Nearing, John Cage, Ralph Ferrera, Lois Long, and Esther Dam.

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by the founding members. Though the intention was and is to bring about a free, so-to-speak, unruled or anarchic group, this intention was had by a few people: the founding members. One might complain that politically speaking the New York Mycological Society has been and to a lesser extent still is an oligarchy. But there is no need for this state of affairs to continue. Let it be remembered, however, that the Society will surely continue and prosper only if the members do not get involved in the various activities that make people miserable: disagreements about this and that. Difficulties between people should be avoided. All that is necessary is an annual program of lectures and walks and a banquet. Hopefully we will all more or less reap the benefits which include more experience and knowledge of mushrooms, pleasant hours and days in the woods and fields away from concrete and metropolitan air, and the society of people who spend their working hours in a great variety of ways. (I get, for instance, to be with people who aren’t composers of experimental music, and this is refreshing.) As Mr. Nearing says, the Society works and there is much reason to keep it working. Now there is some dissatisfaction among some of the members. On top of this during the past months there were scarcely any mushrooms. In view of all this, please think about the matters listed below and let me have your remarks. Space is also provided for your bringing up matters not listed. 1. In the case of a drought such as we have suffered this year, should the walks be cancelled? It has always been Guy Nearing’s view that when the fungi were not in evidence that a study of the lichen could be pursued; however, this year, to Mr. Nearing’s amazement, even the lichen were dying. 2. We now require of members $2.00 for banquet reservation, over and above their annual dues. The banquet costs the Society $10.00 per person, and we are obliged to let the chef know precisely how many people are coming. The founding members settled on this formula of a special fee. Are you for it? If not, how would you solve the problem of knowing how many are to be provided for? 3. At the time that we found Joe Hyde,568 our chef, we considered various restaurants in New York City. None offered so much for $10.00 not to speak of the excellent quality of food and drink. Furthermore we were delighted with the situation: a home in the country. Please indicate whether you are happy 568. Joe Hyde (1927–2007), legendary chef who settled in the family home in Sneden’s Landing in Rockland County, New York, where he mostly gave classes and catered dinner parties. He would author Love, Time and Butter: The Broiling, Roasting, Baking, Deep-fat Frying, Sauteing, Braising, and Boiling Cook Book (New York: R. W. Baron, 1971).

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with the present banquet arrangements or whether you wish to change them. If the latter, what are your suggestions? 4. We have had several lecture series. Some have been by professional mycologists, another by amateurs. It is now my view that whether we understand what they say or not that we should limit our lectures to ones given by professional mycologists in the hope that we will learn something even if we don’t particularly enjoy it. What do you think? There aren’t many professional mycologists available in this area. We might each year have different talks from the same ones: Dr. Rogerson, Dr. Bigelow, Stanley Smith,569 Dr. Alexander Smith, etc. 5. There has been some lack of understanding about what a founding member is. They are dues-paying members with the exception of Guy G. Nearing and myself: we have been made honorary members, but I was not so originally. Ralph Ferrara, Lois Long, Esther Dam and I made Mr. Nearing —who had taught and led us so much —an honorary member. Subsequently Prof. R. M. MacIver and I were made honorary members not having to pay dues. Would you prefer not to have honorary members, or would you like each year to elect one (instead of their being chosen by the founding members)? 6. Individual membership in the Mycological Society of America now costs $2.00 rather than $1.00 (contrary information in the recent Mycophile notwithstanding). Shall we continue individual membership? Or shall we just have group membership at $8.00 for the society? If the latter, you would not receive mailings from the Mycological Society of America. At present we take out that membership for you. 7. Ralph Ferrara proposed that full-time high school or college science students be allowed free admission to our lectures and attendance on our walks when they are brought as guests. Are you for this or against this? (It may be remarked that some of the privileges we have at the New York Academy of Sciences are given because we are promoting interest and knowledge in mycology.) Or do you have some thought, for instance, about a student fee, which could be, say, ¼ of the usual $2. 8. Do you think we should continue to emphasize long distance week-end trips along with alternative local trips? Do you have suggestions for places to go? Both far-away and near? 9. Do you think the offices of secretary and treasurer should be permanent, 569. More fully, Clark T. Rogerson, Howard E. Bigelow, and Stanley J. Smith, all noted mycologists. (Technically, Smith was a bryologist.)

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that is, held until the officer resigns, or do you think there should be a vote for officers and, if so, how often? 10. Leonard Steiner after conversation with Lois Long has been in correspondance with Harry Knighton regarding an eastern meeting place for the 1965 People-to-People Sub-Committee on Fungi Convention.570 This is not officially the responsibility of our Society, but publicity has suggested that it is. Do you want the Society to be officially involved? Should there be a committee and, if so, who should be on it? My own feeling is that it should not be official, but that it would be good if Leonard Steiner succeeds in working something out with Knighton. 11. Are there any other matters that you think should be discussed by membership? 12. Should all of this be handled through the mails? Or should there be a special meeting? (It would have to be in December before the plans for next year’s activities are mailed out in January.) And if so, when and where? The where would be either in one of our homes or at the New York Academy of Sciences. The when could be Tuesday, December 22. Please ignore the above or reply to John Cage, Stony Point, New York 10980, hopefully as soon as possible so that if a meeting must take place arrangements may be made. If the majority do not require a meeting, I will let you know through the mails the result of this questionnaire. Let me take this opportunity too to say that I have missed being on the walks this year —even though there was a drought —and that I look forward to those of 1965 when, the Lord willing, there will be rain and circumstances propitious for fungi.

To Norman O. Brown and Beth Brown December 11, 1964 | Stony Point, New York Dear Nobby and Beth, What a marvelous letter! What excellent spirits! There must be something wrong. Do hope it isn’t too serious. 570. Initiated by Harry S. Knighton (1915–1999), an electrician, steel mill worker, and field naturalist in Portsmouth, Ohio, who wanted to bring mycology to the masses. See David W. Rose, “Notes from Underground: A Plurality of One —John Cage and the People-to-People Committee on Fungi,” FUNGI 1, no. 4 (Winter 2008): 25–35.

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Naturally I’m delighted about the book coming along so well and that Beth is winning at poker. I did too the other evening: $1.20 after three hours’ play. I would love to go to Mexico too, and with you. Wonder if that could happen. While in India571 (Praise be that country!), I met a superb couple, unmarried but in love, the ambassador from Mexico to India and his lovely Corsican coexistant. Octavio Paz,572 some say Mexico’s leading poet. I asked whether being a diplomat didn’t take too much time from his poetry. He said that Mexico and India have no economic relations, only political ones and that these latter are excellent. He has therefore nothing to do. Once I met those two, I did not want to let any hours pass not being with them except of course the nocturnal ones. We had lunch and dinner everyday in New Delhi and much agreeable conversation as you and I have when together, and he knew places in old Delhi to walk, and wanted to have his embassy there, but his servants wouldn’t permit it. India is not to be believed. Other countries seem partial, that is, in order to have them the way they are, they have had to operate surgically to remove something that still exists in India. Complete with animals, disease, the danger of being alive, children maimed at birth to excite pity so that begging will be facilitated, an atmosphere filled with the odor of dung and urine and made visible each evening after sunset since everyone’s cooking dinner and using cakes made from cow-dung instead of wood or charcoal, and color —in clothes, in flowers, in architecture, in the pavement which is a beautiful red from the spit of betel and pan chewers. I stop: it is my first attempt to write about it (India), and I find I’m getting too successful. It would be better to write what I’ve been saying: that it all passeth description. Everything that people told me about India before my visit there set up a confusion. Only one thing that Morris Graves573 said seems true: Imagine in India that you’re asleep and dreaming; then everything will be fine. The initial shock was forgotten after two or three days, and then what had seemed unreasonable seemed reasonable. The economic situation is incredible and somehow superb. The wealth when there is some is glorious. And some of this glory settles on those who have nothing, nowhere to go indoors, nothing to eat, God knows how they get those rags to wear. At any rate they walk as 571. From June 3 to November 25, 1964, Cage traveled with the Merce Cunningham Dance Company and others, including Rauschenberg, on a world tour that included performances in Europe, the U.K., and Asia (India, Japan, and Thailand, where they gave a Royal Command Performance). Cage was quite taken with India, where they performed in Ahmedabad, hosted by the Sarabhais, on October 21–22 and in Delhi, October 25–26, to critical acclaim. 572. More fully, Octavio Paz (Losano) (1914–1998), Mexican writer, poet, and diplomat, best known for his body of surrealist, existential works. 573. See note 295.

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though they had been born in a royal family. The situation they find themselves in is accepted. Another clue to this mystery: in the thick of city traffic (red lights and green lights introduced from the West), cars stop to let the cows pass, but the white cows do not. Therefore everyone waits until the law-breaking cow has crossed the intersection. The cows have permanent smiles on their faces and they’re often wearing flowers around their necks. This happens to taxis too, and the stage in Bombay where we performed was prepared in advance by a priest with incense and bits of food and prayers. It wasn’t just for us: it was a festival connected with the making of money. Anything or place that involved a transaction of money had that day to be blessed and decorated with flowers. All this leads up to my present circumstance which is that the Sarabhais have offered me a two-year scholarship in India, and naturally I can’t wait to enjoy it. But while I was away my mother fell and broke her shoulder in four places, but being indomitable all is healed. I thought while I was away that I should take her with me to India to spend those years. But she is eighty years, and when I returned I realized that it would be difficult there for her and furthermore that living with her is more than I can manage and keep my mind for work. And now it is clear I must be near her and taking care of her needs and that these may easily change. And the mail from here to India is slow, no matter how aerial. Since Ambassador Paz said Mexico is something like India, I am inclined to go there and see for myself. I’ve never been. When do you go precisely? Of course India has the advantage, religion-wise. I rather think I’ll be really shocked by the effects of Christianity la-bas [“over there”]. See you in February, I mean January. It’s just possible I could stay for a few days after the concert on the 16th. There’s more to tell about other things than India + changes in mind.

To Carolyn Brown Dec. 17, 1964 | Stony Point, New York Dear Carolyn, Thank you for sending the letter (it is magnificent!) and I already knew and was thinking about it because Merce read it to me over the ’phone. I’m trying now to answer it but not all of it is for me to answer. However . . . Your having the time to rest and ponder is quite different from Merce’s and 302  |  1 9 6 2 – 1 9 7 1

my situation.574 The moment I arrived I fell into my mother’s problems (2 days) (nearly did me in) and then late the second night was advised by Lew575 that the bank account was $1800 overdrawn and that I’d have to cover it by the next afternoon at 3. By that time it was $2200 overdrawn. But I managed with the money that was supposed to be for a car to settle matters. The Williams [Paul and Vera] are still of no heart to help. I still have the problem (and it is not clear what the precise nature of the problem is since refunds are coming in from insurance, air companies, etc.) of raising money in order to pay the final payroll taxes. Add these problems (mother, money raising) to the fact that I had to write an article abt. modern Japanese music (finished, thank the Lord!), try to resurrect the mushroom society from what Lois thought was ruins (succeeded, thank the Lord no. 2!), write two new lectures promised for California (not started yet) and deal with Merce’s problems to help him. I forget what day he arrived, but the electricity in the studio had been somehow cut off. It took a whole day —both of us nearly frozen stiff—to get it fixed. People on the floor below, thinking the bldg. unoccupied, had simply cut our wires. Con-Ed was still supplying juice. Merce’s knee is still not up to par. And the studio is in bad shape. And propositions from Rubin [Gorewitz], David  V.,576 Lew L[loyd], Susan P[imsleur] are made to Merce for establishing school, giving programs, etc. And many propositions for the summer to be dealt with, and from Foss577 in Buffalo for New York performance(s), and all the time not knowing whether there is or isn’t a company. The ceiling nothing but peeling paint, the floor covered with soot, no hot water, the dismal stairway. It’s difficult. Jap [Jasper Johns] is very concerned particularly about Merce and you and Viola, and he told me he woke you up one day by telephone. He also spoke with Viola apparently just about the trip and she seems to have had marvelous time. Merce 574. Carolyn Brown, like virtually everyone in Cunningham’s Company, experienced many problems on the world tour that, apparently unable to speak to Cunningham directly, she recounted to Cage. Cage speaks to each of her complaints in this letter. 575. Lew Lloyd (b. 1938), from 1962 to 1974 owner/operator of the Pocket Theater in New York where Cage presented the first performance of Satie’s Vexations in 1963. He served on the board of the Foundation for Contemporary Performance Arts (1963–1965) and was manager of the Merce Cunningham Dance Company for its tours abroad. 576. David Vaughan (b. 1924), English-born American dance historian and critic. He met Cunningham at the School of American Ballet in 1950 in New York and thereafter became the administrator of Cunningham’s first dance studio; later was archivist for the Cunningham Dance Foundation (1976–2012). He would be a founding board member of the John Cage Trust. 577. Lukas Foss (1922–2009), American composer, pianist, and conductor, between 1961 and 1987 a frequent music director of the Ojai Music Festival in California. From 1963 to 1970 he was music director of the Buffalo Philharmonic Orchestra.

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too talked with Viola, meeting her on the street and she telephoned him, and then Jill and Viola and Jap and Merce had dinner together at your house. As far as I can gather Merce thinks that Viola would, under certain circumstances, dance again. [note inserted here to the left of the letter: “Nothing Viola578 has said confirms this. The situation actually is that Merce hopes she would dance with him again.”] He hopes that you will. He needs more support and love than I can give. He feels that he is to blame for everything falling to pieces and so doesn’t seem to feel that he has the right to put it all together again. I don’t think this is true, but that it’s a problem involving all the people involved. I asked him how he would feel if you and Viola walked in the studio door. He said he would be very happy. I have tried to discover whether Merce is devoted to the repertoire. He says that he is primarily interested now in doing new work, that he doesn’t want to cling to the repertoire, that it is part of his experience, that under certain circumstances he would want to perform some of those works. He does not feel as you do the necessity of doing the repertoire in New York City. He feels that the obstacles to that —which we twice encountered —make the effort not worth the results. He sees that to perform he will need a company with some new members and he thinks of classes starting as a way to find the people. Then with the idea of classes come the elaborate plans of Rubin —a school that continues when the company goes on tour. This is reasonable, of course, and leads to Foundation assistance, etc. But then you look at the studio and wonder how to put it in shape. Today Merce called to say he’s sick, perhaps psychosomatically. I’ll drive in and see. Susan’s plans for the spring are to be sure absurd. I am convinced there should be another manager. I’m proposing this to Judith Blinken579 who may take the problem on. She’ll let me know in a day or so. Certain engagements, however, have been made. And they include the Hunter [College] one which you’re shocked about. It is not advertised as a regular performance but as a lecture-demonstration. More important [are] Buffalo and Toronto the first days of March. Apparently there’s Saratoga on the 10th of Feb. before Hunter. and North Carolina —Durham —between Toronto and Rhode Island. Lew L. and 578. Viola Farber (1931–1998), German-born American choreographer and dancer, a founding member of the Merce Cunningham Dance Company, which she left in 1965. In 1968 she formed the Viola Farber Dance Company. 579. Judith Blinken (later Pisar, b. 1938) served first as a kind of agent to John Cage; in 1964, she became the first administrator of the Cunningham Dance Foundation. She joined its board of directors in 1968.

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David V. are going to try to fill these tours in and make a reasonable financial arrangement such as we had around the world. I think they’ll try to get it up to Union standards. The idea of Blinken would not begin until the following season ’65–’66. Now I’m rereading your letter and giving my views: I don’t think Isn’t it wasteful? is a proper question because we’ve done it, and now there are other things to do, and I think there are interesting things and lively things, and they don’t necessarily build in relation to one another but can spring up as it were irrationally. Something you (I don’t mean you but me too) never imagined possible. Resting for two months is fine, followed by rehearsing for two months, followed by New York performances. But I have engagements almost constantly between now and July, and I will not be able to raise the $50 to $75 thousand necessary. And I don’t think Merce feels that dependent on either his repertoire or N.Y.C. It is clear that though Merce rehearsed the company on tour in the only way he could, that he didn’t communicate the necessary dedication. I think that he shouldn’t be required for that kind of maintainance operation. I suspect that David Vaughan might be able to do it. It’s not that Merce doesn’t have the proper regard for his work, but that his strength and interest goes in other directions, to his own performance and hopefully to new works. I’m in absolute agreement with you about trying to keep the flavor of each dance as it was originally. If they are to be kept, someone should be found who has an interest and gift for rehearsing the dancers, including Merce, in them. I think you’re right about Merce’s not needing to be concerned with the avant. And that the quality resident in his works past and to be made is different and requires a strength that the present “avant-garde” doesn’t require. I don’t think it is right on the record of our past six months to say that Merce fails to train his dancers to meet the technical demands. He did as much on tour as he thought the dancers could bear and as much as he himself could bear. And given other circumstances, studio circumstances, he will resume the proper training giving. In all my conversations with Merce about the problem posed by the Judson dancers, I hear him repeating his insistence on vigor, and I feel sure he will not renounce his devotion to this, though it may take other forms. I mean other exercises. He feels, however, that the training he has given you and less so on tour was what enabled all of you to get through this tour without more serious difficulties and disasters than took place. 1 9 6 2 – 1 9 7 1  |  305

I think your suggestions about Story580 and the improvement of the choreography are interesting and very worthwhile. But that is Merce’s department. I have nothing to say about Merce’s withholding help, interest and love. I see that he sometimes gives this impression. He astonishes me every now and then with what he says or does, and then I think that that withdrawal came from real interest and love. I admit, however, that there are difficult periods that leave one feeling lost. About performing in New York and Hunter I’ve already commented. Carolyn, I thank you for your letter. This is not a proper answer but you have my present confused thoughts to tell you thank you for having written and that I hope we will be together soon again. The theatre luggage finally got through the customs. That took 15 days! Merce is having someone come in an clean up the studio and hall. The doors are open, and if not, knock and they’ll be opened quickly. I think we’re living in a glorious moment, and the kinds of things we thought were brilliant and necessary may not be the only ones. My feeling actually is, What next? And I’m very interested to see how Merce or the circumstances around him will answer that question with regard to the Company.

To J. Robert Post Jr.581 December 22, 1964 | Stony Point, New York Dear Mr. Post, Thank you for your letter of December 10, 1964. If it is the considered opinion of the stockholders to dissolve the Corporation, and since prior letters from Mr. Sturdy indicated that the Corporation was worthless, I was wondering whether it would be possible for me to purchase all the stock from all shareholders for a total price of one dollar? This would permit the other stockholders to in effect dissolve their individual holdings and allow me in my father’s memory to retain his corporation as a living symbol. 580. Story (1963), a work by Cunningham that premiered at the University of California, Los Angeles on July 23, 1963, with music by Ichiyanagi and stage decor and costumes by Rauschenberg. The structure of its eighteen sections is indeterminate. A basic order, determined by chance, would be posted in the wings of the theater, but this could be altered by a dancer giving a movement cue to another dancer while on stage. 581. J. Robert Post Jr. of Gibson, Dunn, and Crutcher, a Los Angeles–based law firm handling the dissolution of Sturdy-Cage Projects, Inc.

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I expect to be in California the first week in January 1965. As a stockholder, please advise me of who the other stockholders are and their respective number of shares. I would also like to know who the directors were that attended the December 9th Board of Director’s meeting. Thank you.

To Wilfred Mellers582 January 26, 1965 | Stony Point, New York Dear Wilfred: Please forgive my not having been in touch with you: the world tour took me  to December First, then one thing after another until a recent California tour just completed. Now your letter of January 18th arrives. I had while in London two copies of your book on American music, and would have liked, as the publisher requested, to write a few words in comment. But didn’t. I did not want to put something down in words unless my feelings could match yours in generosity. I think my problem centers around this view: that your book makes a measurement of American music by European standards rather than introducing readers to the spirit of America, its thought and music, which is different from that of Europe (and its Renaissance). On the other hand, no European has been as devoted as you have been to the study and enjoyment of our literature and music. In an earlier letter to you which I threw away, I suggested that the books of Marshall McLuhan might interest you. Perhaps you know them: The Gutenberg Galaxy (University of Toronto Press) and Understanding Media (McGraw-Hill here, some other press in England).583 I agree with McLuhan that we live during a period of great change, out of the Renaissance —and the relevance of Renaissance measurements — into a period produced not by print but by electronics. 582. Wilfred (Howard) Mellers (1914–2008), English musicologist and composer, from 1964 head of the music department at the University of York. Cage’s comments address Mellers’s Music in a New Found Land: Themes and Development in the History of American Music (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1964). 583. (Herbert) Marshall McLuhan (1911–1980), Canadian philosopher of communication theory whose work anticipated the World Wide Web by some by some thirty years. His essential writings of this period were The Gutenberg Galaxy (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1962) and Understanding Media: The Extensions of Man (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1964). Cage responded deeply to McLuhan’s ideas about the transformation of mankind and the ensuing globalization of the world through modern technologies (electronic media).

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Considered in relation to Beethoven, Ives must suffer. But when you think of him as one who responded to the change of culture in process before others did, he does not suffer: the only thing one might complain about would be the signs of clinging to Beethoven. I don’t know my plans beyond this next August. And so I can’t at the moment say yes to your invitations.584 I am making an effort to perform and travel less, so that I may write and compose, which have been increasingly difficult to do during the past three years of nearly constant touring. Earle Brown spends a great deal of time in Europe. I don’t have his address, but you could write to Carolyn Brown, c/o Merce Cunningham, 61 West 14th Street, New York 11. Christian Wolff teaches at Harvard Univesity, Cambridge 38, Mass. La Monte Young can be reached c/o Pocket Theater, 100 Third Avenue, New York. Morton Feldman’s address is 337 Lexington Ave., NYC 16. There is a great deal of activity here now through the efforts of Gunther Schuller and Lukas Foss. Foss is at the State University of New York in Buffalo. I have as you know very little interest in recordings. The series that Earle Brown did for Time Records, 2 West 45th Street, NYC, seemed very good. Unfortunately it does not seem to continue. There is some possibility that my Variations IV will be issued by a California company that made a tape during our recent tour —they recorded the entire three hour performance. And are considering issuing three discs with an auxiliary disc having a talk by me. I think the best suggestion I can offer is that you get in touch with David Tudor, Stony Point, New York. He is not here now, but will be after the first of February. He will surely be in Europe. I will show him your letter to me, and you can make arrangements. Then, if my plans change, I would during the next season be in Europe with Tudor. To go on for a moment about your book: I talked with Henry Cowell who feels as I do about it. But then I talked with Minna Daniel (who is Minna Lederman, formerly editor of Modern Music) whose view is larger than mine, including Europe and America. She could, I believe, write something very interesting in review of your work. Her address is Tomkins Cove, Rockland County, New York. (Mrs. Mell Daniel.) My friendliest greetings to you and Mrs. Mellers.

584. Mellers had proposed Cage’s participation in a series of BBC programs that would begin in October 1965, preferably with Tudor; he also proposed Cage’s participation, in spring 1966, in an extended weekend festival of experimental music at the University of York.

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To Mary Sisler585 February 15, 1965 | Stony Point, New York Dear Mary, The reason I am pestering you about the financial state of the Cunningham Dance Foundation is because I know you are devoted to what we are doing and told me in Brussels not to hesitate to ask when money was needed. The situation is also personal for me because now I have all the bills to pay in connection with my mother’s hospitalization and the nursing home. What happened is this: the costs of the Cunningham world tour exceeded the bank account by $6,000. When we returned at the first of December, I had to cover a bank overdraft of $2,200. This I loaned to the Cunningham Foundation and in relation to my personal expenses need to have it back. My covering the overdraft permitted the dancers to receive their final checks. Just before the end of January, Jap loaned the Cunningham Foundation $4,000, which was used to pay the final taxes. Whether or not we needed to do this, we did it. And that needs to be repaid to Jap. He is not obliging us to do it quickly, so that this matter is not urgent. But the other one is, I am sorry to say, on my account. If you can help us now, I would be very grateful. But then I’m already very grateful to you. The performances at the New York State Theater are March 4 in the evening, March 6 in the afternoon, March 7 afternoon and evening (2:15 and 8:15 p.m.).

585. Mary Sisler, American art collector and philanthropist. According to Carolyn Brown, she was a benefactor to the Cunningham Dance Foundation through her purchase of certain Richard Lippold wire sculptures that hung in Cage’s Monroe Street apartment in New York. The $10,000 Cage garnered for the sale of one of these sculptures was donated to Cunningham’s Foundation. She established the Mary Sisler Foundation in 1963, which numbered among its beneficiaries Cage and Cunningham. She is the dedicatee of Cage’s Variations V (1965).

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To William B. George586 February 15, 1965 | Stony Point, New York Dear Mr. George: My best wishes to you for your project. I will try below to give you what help I can: “reminiscences.” Following Cowell’s suggestion that I should study with Schoenberg that to do this I should study with Adolph Weiss, I wrote from Carmel, Calif., where I had a job as dish-washer in the Blue Bird Tea Room, to Weiss in New York, sending examples of my work. His reply was tardy. In fact, not hearing from him, I decided to present myself to him, but just before I set out from Carmel (hitch-hiking to N.Y.), I went to the P.O. and there was his letter saying that he would be glad to work with me at $1 an hr. So when I arrived in New York I did not go immediately to see him but instead looked for work. Found a job delivering ads for a drug store and ultimately a job at the Brooklyn YWCA washing walls. Since that was to last several months, I presented myself to Weiss and the daily lessons began. They took place early in the evening and were followed by bridge —Mitzi (Mrs. Weiss), Adolph, Henry Cowell and myself or Wallingford Riegger587 taking the place of Mitzi —. I then slept (in a room at Patchin Place) until 4 a.m., getting up to write the exercises (harmony) for that evening before catching the last possible subway for Brooklyn to get there on time, etc. Weiss communicated his devotion to Schoenberg. But I was almost immediately aware that Schoenberg didn’t respond to Weiss’s satisfaction. Weiss was also dissatisfied with the public use of his music which certainly was not sufficient. I became very conscious of his compositions lying neatly on a shelf unused. (I determined then never to consider a composition completed until it was performed; otherwise I would be in danger of having the feeling Weiss  had.) He permitted me to compose music —a thing Schoenberg later never permitted. I wrote with his help a twelve-tone allemande for clarinet solo unaccompanied. In this connection he taught me his way of making inversions of a row: equating the first line with the fifth, the first space with the fourth, B with 586. William B. George, graduate student at the University of Iowa engaged in writing a dissertation on American composer Adolph Weiss. 587. Wallingford Riegger (1885–1961), prolific American composer, among the first to make use of the twelve-tone technique.

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B-flat, etc. He also told me about using poetry (Whitman, I believe) to obtain the patterns of his rhythm. And he impressed upon me the importance of reserving tones for beginnings and endings of lines so that these points would have freshness. Also the business of having one high point and one low point for a line, and not repeating these reaches. He was concerned to improve my lot, and to this end offered to give me the job of copying his manuscripts, making parts, etc., in ink. So that I wouldn’t have to wash walls. I remember staying up all night trying to write in ink sufficiently beautifully to please him. Toward dawn I was a nervous wreck, in tears. I couldn’t do it. But he taught me this way that music notation is in ink and is beautiful: calligraphy. He also taught me that one devotes oneself to music. And uses all his time for it. So when the wall-washing stopped, I didn’t look for another job but arranged with my family to send me $20 a month and I decided to live on this. $9 went for a room on East 11th street, two rooms, no bath (a general shower and wash room outside). My clothes on nails on the wall; a camp cot. One meal a day, and since there was no electricity —I never had it turned on —I went to the movies: 10¢ for two features each evening. Weiss came to visit once, but when I opened the door he grew pale, didn’t come in, but asked me to come later that afternoon to see him. He then said that I shouldn’t write music in that room, but should rather walk the streets, sit in parks. (He was concerned with the lyrical and with inspiration.) For a month, I believe, the Weisses were out of New York, and gave me the use of their 8th Street apartment. A beautiful place and of course with piano. And his library of music. I played and played, mostly old music from the Netherlands. When they came back I got a job on Macdougal St. cleaning rooms in exchange for one in a hotel-like place that had a piano. And Cowell gave me a scholarship at the New School. And I had work to do each day for both teachers. And then after some time both Weiss and Cowell were leaving New York: Weiss for a tour with the Monte Carlo Ballet (?) playing bassoon, and Cowell to drive across the country to California. I felt prepared to present myself to Schoenberg, who was in California, and so I got a ride with Cowell. I married Xenia Andreyevna Kashevaroff and began studying counterpoint with Schoenberg and analysis in his home and at Usc, later at Ucla. When Weiss came to live in Los Angeles, Xenia and I, my mother and father were often together with Mitzi and Adolph: dinner and bridge games. Was it then or earlier that I became so conscious of the trills in Adolph’s music? His constant 1 9 6 2 – 1 9 7 1  |  311

use of these made me resolve to look for such “signatures” in my work and to eliminate them. Since Schoenberg would not look at my compositions, I always showed them to Adolph. He was most critical, and when, later, I sent them to him by mail, he returned them with long letters and his verbal notations (in pencil) on my manuscripts. He was not pleased by my tendency towards silence. Our relation became more and more friendly and less and less musical. He encouraged me to study French horn because he said I looked like a horn player. But I had no gift for the instrument, nor it for the neighborhood I lived in. As time went on, it took me to Seattle, San Francisco, Chicago, New York, and away from the twelve-tones to percussion and my prepared piano, and my musical connection with Weiss more or less evaporated. Each time he came to New York we got in a little bridge. But I don’t think he took my work seriously until the retrospective concert of my work at Town Hall in 1958. Then he told me how pleased he was with it, and tried to interest me in his own ideas, as I gathered, of notation changes and rhythm. But I was too involved in my own work —timewise and ideawise —to give him much attention. And so I became one of those who gave him insufficient regard. His bitterness towards society has been impossible for me to accept. Once he objected that I hid the fact that I had studied with him, but his sister, who was present, immediately noted that in all the biographical statements I have issued I have always included mention of him. Of recent years, this sense of injustice seems to have diminished, on my part. I am glad and wish him well. I feel, however, that his music and ideas belong more to the Renaissance than they do to the electronic —non-Gutenberg world —we now live in. The elegance and beauty of his work, elegant and beautiful down to the last detail, I do not doubt. But this control of everything —down to the last detail —is what, profoundly speaking, has made him miserable. I could go on in this vein, but it would be (like this letter) more and more about me and less and less about Adolph. I regret that.

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To Lou Harrison March 25, 1965 | Stony Point, New York Dear, dear Lou, What a magnificent surprise! So much pleasure in one package. Hard to believe. Thank you, thank you, thank you. I shall read the Heart Sutra countless times (I see it coming). But that is not the one I saw in your room, or is it? The Wesak Sonata588 is glorious. My ears are open to it. And the Buddha! My dear mother had a stroke shortly after our return together from California. A stroke on the right side which doesn’t kill but which is very difficult to recover from. It affected her speech, which happily is returning, not with the same musicality but changed —nevertheless, all in all, understandable. I cannot tell you how sad it was at the beginning in the hospital to see her trying unsuccessfully to speak. I now have the full family responsibility. And, though one wants to do the best, one doesn’t get advice. (Another thing they didn’t teach us in school.) I concentrated on the problem and finally came up with “a new dimension in convalescence,” the Northfield Manor Nursing Home, replete with hairdresser, bingo game, movies, dining room, TV, each room a different color, etc., in motel vein, i.e., the modern Christian Church. Unfortunately mother is furious that this happened to her. She does not recognize in her present misery the Lord’s will.589 She just is there, poor woman, day after day, trying to fix the blame. She has a marvelous room-mate who has a glorious sense of humor, the product, I surmise, of her arthritis. A joyprovoking disease if ever there was one. Cancer, heart troubles are not laughing matters, but pain in the joints just sets one smiling. Mother can’t read, I just found out. I hope she will improve to the point where she can. I don’t understand the trouble but apparently it has to do with focus and not being able to keep one, so that she slips without meaning to from one line to another. And things go blurry. 588. The Wesak Sonata (1964), Harrison’s composition for sixteen-string Cheng, a kind of Chinese psaltery. 589. While Cage was raised a Methodist and had early aspirations to be a minister, this reference is likely a jab at his maternal grandmother, Minnie. Crete’s parents lived with the Cages in Los Angeles, and Cage once described Minnie as a self-righteous woman who found everyone else in the family a sinner. That said, Cage’s pacifist leanings may have come from Minnie’s oft-repeated Christian commitment to “turn the other cheek.”

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I’ve also f[ound] a Rehabilitation Institute which would be less motelly and more community-centery with aspects of creativity. I told mother this and she didn’t seem attracted to it. Her principle concern always was other people and conversation, etc., leading towards writing. I’m riding around in a Jaguar!590 It’s grand. First time I’ve really enjoyed transportation since Dad made me a scooter out of a fruit box and put a battery flash-light in it so that I could ride at night on the sidewalks of LA. Saw Peter Yates just now in Illinois at the festival there. Also heard a lot of music by Lejaren Hiller.591 It’s actually funny. He gets ideas the rest of us would discard, realizes they aren’t serious, carries them out anyway, and enjoys it and so do others. E.g., Good night ladies;592 take all the notes that aren’t that and play them together! He writes either with the computer, for it, or out of relation to it altogether. One of his percussion pieces written by the computer is really beautiful. I’m still doing nothing but running around the country lecturing and playing with or without David and with or without Merce. I have to make a fantastic amount of money now each month in order to pay all the bills, but I think I have now enough work to get through to September. Summer was always the hardest time to live through economically. Aunt Lucile wrote to say that if He calls me into His Presence before He calls mother, that the Colorado relatives will take care of her. But then I begin to think I should do something about my health so that He won’t do that! Well, you see my state of mind: idiotic as ever. My love to you always! (I’m sure the mushrooms will grow for you just wait patiently and in the meantime get to know someone who knows the mushrooms)

590. A loan from Jasper Johns, which gave Cage much pleasure. 591. Lejaren (“Jerry”) Hiller (1924–1994), American composer who, in 1957, collaborated with Leonard Isaacson on the first computer music composition, Illiac Suite. He founded the Experimental Music Studio at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, where he and Cage would engage in the creation of Cage’s mammoth HPSCHD (1967–1969), scored for one to seven amplified harpsichords and tapes for one to fifty-one monaural machines. 592. Properly “Goodnight Ladies,” a folk song first published in 1867, attributed to Edwin Pearce Christy.

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To Edward Downes593 March 31, 1965 | Stony Point, New York Dear Mr. Downes: Thank you for your letter of March 29. The question of the Variations to be performed July 23rd is rather unusual and rather than writing a note myself, I will tell you as directly as I can what the situation is, hoping that you will then write something yourself. Lukas Foss invited Merce Cunningham, the dancer and choreographer, and me to provide a new work for the French-American Festival. Though this work is not yet made, he asked for a title. He did not wish to simply say “New Work.” Mr. Cunningham left the matter of providing a title to me. My circumstances during the last three years, involving me inordinately in lecture and concert engagements, have given me little time to compose. Furthermore my musical ideas have continued to move away from object (a composition having a well-defined relationship of parts) into process (non-structured activities, indeterminate in character), and in the field of theatre, that is, an activity where eyes as well as ears are required for its experience. In addition, I have wished to renounce measurements, whether of pitches or their durations or the length of time between them. This movement on the part of my ideas is reflected in my Variations, Variations II, Variations III and Variations IV. The first two of these (1958 and 1961) involve measurements to be made by performers from the superimposing of transparent materials provided by me. These measurements fix (or suggest) the point in total sound-space-time of a sound to be produced since they deal with its various parameters. The following note (from my catalog) describes Variations II: “parts to be prepared from the score; any number of players, any sound-producing means. This is a composition indeterminate of its performance. The material supplied is similar to that of Variations I, but in this case no two lines or points are on the same transparent plastic.” In Variations III, the principal of single notations on single transparent sheets is kept, but instead of there being lines and points (and measurements to be made), there are only circles (and no measurements to be made). The fact that we are continually active and that all of this activity is productive of music —no distinction between art and life being asserted —is what this work invites one to realize. Variations 593. Edward Downes (1911–2001), American musicologist and teacher. He wrote the original program notes for Cage’s Variations V, the first performance of which took place on July 23, 1965, at New York’s Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts.

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IV still keeps notation and transparent plastics, but they concern space —that of the place where the performance is given —and say nothing whatsoever about the sounds to be produced. In recent performances by David Tudor and myself, Variations IV is itself varied. That is, it has become an improvisation using a large library of taped material, together with short-wave radios, electronic circuits, cartridges, and alarm devices (horns, etc.). Improvisation here means something different from what the dictionary suggests. The dictionary suggests rhymes (objects), where we are involved in a non-structured process. I trust then that the work we will do on the 23rd of July is Variations V. We shall, I hope, take advantage of available electronic technics, audio and visual. We will collaborate with Nam June Paik, the Korean composer who is living here at present but who for many years lived in Cologne. Paik has done a great deal of work with the variation of television images by means of circuitry and the submission of the images to ambient influences (traffic outside, magnets, etc.). We will also, I hope, have the collaboration of Max Matthews594 of Bell Telephone Laboratories, Murray Hill, New Jersey (who made possible the electronic installation for my Atlas Eclipticalis with Winter Music last year at the Philharmonic). We will try to make a work in which the active principles interpenetrate at the performance level, sounds affecting images, images affecting sounds, etc., so that the distinction between dance and music may be somewhat less clear than usual. I understand that the other works on the program will consume the time of the orchestra rehearsals and that it is wished that I will not use the members of the orchestra in this work. It is possible therefore that it will be performed by David Tudor, Nam June Paik, myself, and the Merce Cunningham Dance Company. I may, in addition, request the participation of some percussion players. We will certainly make use of the mixer made at Bell Labs which we used a year ago and which makes possible the amplification of 96 sound sources through the use of contact microphones and which makes possible also the movement of this sound from one another of the speakers positioned around the auditorium. This will be, of course, a first performance. 594. Properly, Max (Vernon) Mathews (1926–2011), American pioneer in the field of computer music who fathered generations of digital music tools. His MUSIC, produced in 1957 at Bell Labs, was the first widely used program for sound generation. In 1964 he built a fifty-channel mixer for the New York Philharmonic performance of Cage’s Atlas Eclipticalis with Winter Music, co-conducted by Cage and James Tenney. In the early 1970s he would work with Cage on one of his first random-number generators that simulated the casting of the I Ching.

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P.S. If you can please have this letter duplicated and a copy sent to me. I didn’t happen to have any carbon paper around, but I see that the letter contains information that might in the future be difficult to recall.

To Allan Kaprow595 May 25, 1965 | Stony Point, New York Dear Allan, Thank you for your letter.596 Charlotte’s we know a problem. What to do? (I gave no assurance that I would raise money.) I act unantagonistically in order for her to have her own life. Should she do the Theatre Piece, and you agreed to be in it; you could certainly be put in charge of space, but if you prepared your part following my directions (have you seen them?), you’d have no assurance of something predetermined by you turning up. My piece starts out from not in mind. Thank you for sending your scenario. Do you need it back? Charlotte told me some other people offered her money for the use of her festival name. She was quite upset. I told her to take the money and change her festival name to The Original . . . . . . . I swore after working with her the first year not to do it again. My conscience has not been tried since that time, for a) around the woild and b) will be in northern Saskatchewan in Aug. this yr. Hope to see you soon and send you best wishes too.

595. Allan Kaprow (1927–2006), American artist and a pioneer in establishing the fundamental concepts of performance art. He was one of Cage’s students at the New School for Social Research in the 1950s. 596. Kaprow had written to Cage on May 21, 1965, seeking financial assistance for his participation in a performance of Cage’s Theatre Piece at Judson Hall, a project being organized by Nam June Paik. Upon being informed that Charlotte Moorman would be in charge of “general management,” he objected because his prior experience with her the previous year in such a role had been, as he put it, “disastrous.”

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To Dr. T. A. Benham597 May 28, 1965 | Stony Point, New York Dear Dr. Benham: Thank you for your reply of May 26. I am not blind. My reason for approaching the Lighthouse for the Blind was that I thought equipment might be in existence which is used by the blind, but would serve our purposes. What we want is a theatrical performance involving musicians and dancers, electronics and film —I had hoped for closed television, but it proves too expensive —with as much interpenetration of the audible and the visible as we can muster. On a previous occasion a mixer having 96 inputs was made for us. We have this mixer with transistorized pre-amplifiers connected to it. We used it in connection with the orchestra and contact mikes on the various instruments. What I imagine now is a plurality of devices which will produce sounds as a result of the dancers movements in space. In this connection we are interested in the device having as large a “field” as possible to which it responds. (I saw a Theremin-like instrument that responded only to movements within one foot of it.) It would be interesting too to have these devices movable and/or automotive, going, for instance around as lighthouse beams do. I imagine these signals going to the mixer, then to amplifiers and then to loud-speakers around the auditorium. The musicians would operate the mixer and any filters; the mix permits the placing of a sound in any of five channels. If there are oscillators, we prefer square or saw-tooth ones. In general we are interested in noise and what, orchestrally speaking, is called percussion. However, in this field we want variety and many possibilities, rather than just a few. It would be possible for us (David Tudor and me) to make a visit to Haverford around the middle of June.

597. Thomas A. Benham (1914–2006), American assistive-technology innovator and professor of physics at Haverford College in Pennsylvania. Blind from the age of two, he spent most of his life making technology available to the visually impaired. Cage’s request concerned available technology for use in his Variations V.

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To Buckminster Fuller598 June 12, 1965 | Stony Point, New York Dear Bucky: Another request —one which I hope you will want and be able to say yes to. We have had for some years now a foundation called Foundation for Contemporary Performance Arts, Inc. Its funds (which are very low now) came from the sale of paintings and sculptures given by artists. They were used for concerts of music, programs of dance, e.g., the concert at Town Hall of works by Feldman and Brown, the world tour of Merce and his company of last year. I am one of the directors along with Elaine De Kooning, Jasper Johns, Lewis Lloyd and David Hayes. For next year (’65–’66) we plan five money-raising events. One will be a series of lectures in April 1966. Naturally we want this to be a distinguished series and so are asking you to give one of them. My favorite people who talk now are you, N. O. Brown and Marshall McLuhan. The series would take place either at Town Hall in New York or at Hunter College. I’ve not yet started on those arrangements. So the request is: Would you donate a lecture for the Foundation? It would be tax-exempt ($1,000.00). I hope you’ll agree and specify a date, preferably in April, but if necessary in March or May. Besides looking for ways to raise money, want to further the people and things we believe in, and that’s why I’m writing to you.

To Marshall McLuhan June 12, 1965 | Stony Point, New York Dear Marshall McLuhan: Needless to say, I regretted not being able to meet you in Brooklyn in May. But I look forward to whenever we do meet. I’ll be here during the summer 598. R. Buckminster “Bucky” Fuller (1895–1983), American architect, systems theorist, and inventor, widely known for his geodesic domes of the 1950s. Cage was devoted to Fuller’s ideas about renewable resources and widening the distribution of global resources, being especially taken with Fuller’s Ideas and Integrities: A Spontaneous Autobiographical Disclosure (New York: George Braziller, 1963); later with Synergetics: Explorations in the Geometry of Thinking (with E. J. Applewhite; New York: Macmillan, 1975) and Critical Path (New York: St. Martin’s, 1981).

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except for the period Aug. 16–Sept. 5: I’ll conduct a workshop in music composition at Emma Lake in Saskatchewan during that period and then a mushroom hunt on the Maine Coast for the N.Y. Mycological Society. On March 18, 1966 Merce Cunningham and Dance Company will give a performance in Toronto. I’ll be there with them along with David Tudor. What makes me write to you is this: some years ago, with Elaine De Kooning and Jasper Johns and others including me, the Foundation for Contemporary Performance Arts, Inc., was established. It is now tax-exempt. The original funds were gotten through the sale of works of art given by painters and sculptors. We have made grants, paid for concerts of music and programs of dance, etc. Now our funds are very low. We have a fund-raising campaign for the season ’65–’66 which has five events, one of them a lecture series in April 1966. Hopefully the speakers will be you, Buckminster Fuller and N. O. Brown. We are asking each of you to donate a lecture. We would be able to give you a letter in relation to tax-exemption of whatever fee you establish. If you’ll do this, please specify a date. Though I’ve not yet made arrangements, we have thought of giving the series either at Town Hall in New York or at Hunter College. April would be best, but if necessary dates could be taken in March or May. Things are getting quite lively at Antioch College. They’re reorganizing the Freshman year on an “indeterminacy” basis. When I was there recently, I found to my surprise that they didn’t have your books and so I sent them. Dr. Keith McGary, prof. of philosophy there (Yellow Springs, Ohio), should have that mimeo “Understanding Media.” My copy’s out on loan.

To Norman O. Brown June 12, 1965 | Stony Point, New York Dear Nobby, Since seeing you, (and Beth) Mexico? much has happened. I continued like chicken with cut head flying around the country talking and making noises. My dear mother had a stroke —the worst kind, the right side kind —and is now helpless, but constantly helped by nurses, etc., and is quite out of her mind though like Finnegans Wake there are bright-flashing moments of lucidity. And Jasper Johns gave me his Jaguar which had been immobile for two years. It is a glorious car and I enjoy it. Also I made a new piece of music —Rozart 320  |  1 9 6 2 – 1 9 7 1

Mix599 —which I think you’d enjoy hearing. Most of all however a new musician, Max Neuhaus,600 plays a version of my Fontana Mix now which is superbly physical. You hear it through your whole body. And as for me, my knees start shaking. Others put fingers to ears and make their ways out. Not all, but many. Now I have a bad case of poison ivy. And the doctor said I should have a complete examination because I’m so old. Enough news. What I want you to say yes to is this. You remember our Foundation for Contemporary Performance Arts? It’s now completely tax-exempt, but we have little money. So we’re fund-raising, and have five projects for next year, one of which is a lecture series. We want each lecturer to donate a lecture, and he can take his fee off his income tax. Besides making money we want to have beautiful lectures and that means, as far as we’re concerned (and it’s not just the Editorial “we” but Jasper Johns and the other directors too) you, Buckminster Fuller and Marshall McLuhan. The preferred period of time is April ’66, but you could specify a date in that month or in March or May. Please say yes and specify a date. The lectures would be given either in Town Hall or at Hunter College in NYC. From Aug. 16–28 I’ll be in northern Saskatchewan (!) (and they’ll arrange a trip for me to the far-North!) conducting a composer’s workshop. When’ll we get together next?

599. Rozart Mix (1965), for magnetic tape, its “score” consisting only of correspondence between Cage and Alvin Lucier concerning preparations for a concert at Brandeis University. Ultimately, it would comprise at least four open-reel tape machines with at least eighty-eight tape loops (of varying lengths, up to forty-five feet). A performance of the work starts when the audience enters and ends either when the loops are broken beyond repair or when the last member of the audience departs. 600. Max Neuhaus (1939–2009), American percussionist and creator of site-specific sound sculptures. As a performer, he championed the works of Cage, Stockhausen, and Boulez. He was an early proponent of electronic music, being particularly interested in the use of acoustic feedback as a means for generating sound. His CD of Cage’s Fontana Mix, released as Fontana Mix —Feed (2002), includes six realizations performed in venues in the United States and Europe between 1964 and 1968.

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Mr. Robert Moog601 June 28, 1965 | Stony Point, New York Dear Bob, Good news! The Mary Sisler Foundation is going to support the whole project.602 But there will be union overtime charges, amplifier and loud-speaker charges, etc. so please economize where possible without jeopardizing quality. When you have a bill beyond the thousand which I gave you, please send me a copy and one to Mr. William Weissel, New York Philharmonic, 65th and Broadway, New York, N.Y. 10023. The payment could come to you from the Philharmonic. They are being very generous about the time we can be in the hall. It will be available to us from 1:00 p.m. on Sunday the 18th around the clock to the next morning. And from 11:00 p.m. on the 21st (Wednesday) around the clock to 6:00 p.m. on the 22nd. We’ll also have the stage from 7:00 p.m. until 8:00 p.m. on the 23rd and, of course, during the intermission (15–20 min.). We don’t need to use all that time, but it is available to us. Since it is off-hours it will be expensive. How expensive, I don’t yet know. There will be a screen available so that a good deal can be set-up behind it and then left for the performances. But that final set-up can only begin at 7:00 p.m., because previous days involve performances of Berlioz using the whole stage and platforms in quantity. Tomorrow, David and I are visiting a Mr. Leon Harmon at Bell re photo-electric devices. Max Matthews, who was very pleased to hear that you were working on this project, referred us to Harmon. Friendliest greetings to you, Shirley and the children,

601. Robert Arthur “Bob” Moog (1934–2005), American electronic music pioneer, founder of Moog Music and best known as the inventor of the Moog synthesizer. 602. The complex realization of Cage’s Variations V, which would be first performed on July 23, 1965, during the New York Philharmonic French-American Festival at the Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts.

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To Billy Kluver603 June 31, 1965 | Stony Point, New York Dear Billy, Here’s a statement for you. If it doesn’t serve your purpose, let me know, and I’ll try again. Art and Science are inextricably connected. Changing views of the manner in which nature operates bring about corresponding changes in art. And changes in technology make other things possible to do than were done before. These scientific ideas are very superficially understood by artists and artists are only slightly aware of technology. Nevertheless, many artists now feel that due to these changes anything is possible, or that if it isn’t it soon will be. If I imagine myself then as composer in a situation where anything can be done, I imagine making a music little different from the concerts of ambient sounds we nowadays hear wherever we are when we listen. I imagine this music as technically like my daily experience: wireless. I imagine all distinctions between art and life removed. Art would then have to do with the opening of ourselves to the world in which we live. Best wishes to you for your book. I look forward to it.

Mr. Robert Moog July 15, 1965 | Stony Point, New York 10980 Dear Bob, Thank you for sending the invoices. About the excess costs (above $2000), I must take —due to circumstances detailed below —a pessimistic view. And 603. Billy Klüver (b. Johan Wilhelm Klüver; 1927–2004), from 1958 to 1968 a research scientist at Bell Telephone Laboratories in Murray Hill, New Jersey. In 1966, he brought together ten New York artists and thirty engineers and scientists to collaborate on 9 Evenings: Theatre & Engineering, a series of concerts held at New York’s 69th Regiment Armory. Cage’s Variations VII, for any number of musicians using photo-electric cells and electronic equipment and sound inputs gathered or produced at the time of the performance, premiered on October 15/16, 1966. Following the “9 Evenings” concerts, Klüver, artists Rauschenberg and Robert Whitman, and engineer Fred Waldhauer founded the nonprofit organization Experiments in Art and Technology. Klüver was co-editor, with Barbara Rose and his wife, Julie Martin (b. 1938), of Pavilion (1972), which documented the design and construction of the Pepsi Pavilion for Expo ’70 in Osaka, Japan.

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in this connection I should recall that you said the whole thing would exceed $1000, but fall below $2000, and, furthermore, agreed to provide photo-electric devices (8) and 2 solenoic tape recorders and are not providing —at least —the tape recorders. What you are providing, as I understand, is the rental of 4 of your especially designed machines, and the sale of twelve antennaes, the twelve electronic percussion instruments, and the control means. As of this morning, $2000 was withdrawn from our support, and at the same time our expenses went up. So that at the moment I am $1000 short on a budget in which I have counted $2000 for your work. The union labor alone is costing $1500. I simply cannot assure you of more than the $2000, and had indeed hoped it would be less, as you had indicated it might. I am sorry about this, and suggest that in future performances of this new work, we might again rent your special machines which we will not own, and that this income might improve matters from your point of view. Mr. Thomas Dugan, who is providing the amplifiers and speakers, has asked me to make certain that the diagrams for our mixer and pre-amplifiers (the transistorized ones) be on hand at 1:00 p.m. on Sunday. Please make sure to bring them with you. They were sent to you by David Tudor.

To Jasper Johns September 9, 1965 | Stony Point, New York Dear Jap, Hope your work is going more toward your being pleased with it. Enclosed is interesting memoir you sent. Table and chairs so useful don’t see how I got along minus them. Car now being re-valved, etc. On the whole ran beautifully, and will, I trust, again. You didn’t write about the California upset. What happened? In relation to that, think that a Canadian show could be worked up with help of Del Junco and the various painters I met in Emma Lake Workshop.604 Did you know the 604. Emma Lake Artist’s Workshops, affiliated with the University of Saskatchewan, Kenderdine Campus. Summer art classes were originally taught on Emma Lake in 1936; the more famous Emma Lake Artists’ Workshops were initiated in 1955. Cage was a workshop leader in 1965, and he imposed a daily ritual of writing —one hundred words per day for the fifteen days he was in residence. It was in this context that he produced “Diary: Emma Lake Music Workshop 1965,” which appeared first in Canadian Art (Jan. 1966) and later in A Year from Monday (Middletown, CT: Wesleyan University Press, 1967).

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Alloways were there? He was very pleasant, and though you may not agree, I f[ound] him, “informed, intelligent and sympathetic.” He did an excellent job of conversing with a painter there, Ted Godwin,605 in a public situation. So excellent, that I suggested he institute that sort of thing at the Guggenheim. It could revive the interest in intellect, something NYC could use. I’m going along at rather high speed —in or out of the Jaguar. Finished a Diary re Emma Lake, and tomorrow make statement re [Charles] Ives for Canadian Broadcasting system. Then an article on the Series for Europe, 12 tones and all that jazz. Then a new deal for performance in Ann Arbor with David on the 19th of Sept.(!) Am being commissioned by the Koussevitzky F[oundation] to do an orchestral piece!606 Having dinner with Copland on Friday! Missed breakfast this morning! McLuhan wrote to say that after reading Silence, wished we had collaborated on a book he’s doing with a “painter friend” on the arts! Merce and I had beautiful vacation across Canada and on to Maine sea coast. How are you getting along with Betsy?607 May be able to get down in October. (?)

To Norman Lloyd 608 September 29, 1965 | Stony Point, New York Dear Norman: Thank you very much for expediting the assistance which the Foundation gave the Philharmonic Society for the July 23 performance of Variations  V. It seemed to me in June and July that the role of the composer had changed from someone who works with ink and paper to someone who telephones for technical assistance and subsidy! I now have two other projects for which I require assistance. One is a performance this winter, possibly at the Guggenheim Museum, of an electronic work that will require some tape recording, though the work will include electronic instruments and their live performance. The other is a performance, to take 605. Ted Godwin (1933–2013), Canadian artist well known for his large tartan paintings. 606. See note 627. 607. May be a doubly oblique reference here to Betsy Ross, widely credited with making the first American flag, and thus through her to Jasper Johns’s work, then ongoing, on his “flags.” 608. Norman Lloyd, brought into the Rockefeller Foundation in 1964 to head its new Arts Division. Lloyd’s program supporting composers included grants for African American artists.

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place a year from this fall, that will be part of a second retrospective concert of my work. I plan to realize, wholly or in part, my 27'10.554" for a Percussionist on tape and to present it with the other time-length pieces I have composed (for two prepared pianos and for string-player) and a new one yet to be written for singer. I would like to make both tapes using the facilities of the Studio for Electronic Music at the University of Toronto. This studio does not follow the lines of the others throughout the world. It is designed to invite the hands of performing musicians. Dr. Arnold Walter, Director of the Faculty of Music at the University of Toronto, has agreed that the studio would be made available to me and David Tudor for two periods (several weeks each) this academic year. I apply therefore for two grants of a thousand dollars each for David Tudor and myself to do this work. Should these projects not be of interest to the Foundation, could you suggest other Foundation to whom I might apply?

To Marshall McLuhan September 30, 1965 | Stony Point, New York Dear Marshall, You were friendly beyond my expectations. It was an extraordinary experience for me to meet you. I had looked forward to it for years, and I trust that you will realize that I was somewhat out of my mind —unable, actually, to do anything but be present. Answering your questions was impossible, since I was just listening to your words. I trust that my Toronto projects will materialize and that we will get to converse under less special —for me —circumstances. You will recall my asking you to lecture for our Foundation for Contemporary Performance Arts. Seems to me you said that a date in May would be convenient for you. (This is part of a series of lectures —Fuller, N. O. Brown, Peter Yates, Marcel Duchamp and Harold Rosenberg609 —for the benefit of the Foundation; our original capital, now spent, came from the sale of paintings given by artists.) Would May 7, 1966, a Saturday evening at 8:30 be good for you? Your lecture would conclude the series. The place is the ymha on Lexington Avenue in the nineties. We would take care of your expenses, travel, hotel 609. Harold Rosenberg (1906–1978), American educator and art critic, credited with coining the term “action painting” in 1952, which became closely associated with abstract expressionism.

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etc. The auditorium at the Y holds around 850, and we shall have it filled. I am confident.

To Jack Tworkov610 October 4, 1965 | Stony Point, New York Dear Jack: Thank you for your letter. I will, of course, be delighted to come to Yale to lecture for you and your students. Just let me know which of the December dates is most convenient for you. I had forgotten that you had suggested this, and I believe I verbally agreed. It has become necessary for me to refuse engagements simply on a financial basis —in order to have time to do my work and to meet my expenses. I am, I assure you, happy to make an exception in this case. I will in effect be making a gift of $200 to the University school. If this could be acknowledged, the whole affair would be “legal,” that is equal to the fees I require of other institutions, and it would help me with my taxes. If such an acknowledgement could be made, I would be pleased. My concern about money, let me say, is combined with the opinion that both economics and politics as we now experience them are on their way out. I do hope I will live long enough to see a world society devoid of both of them.

To Betty Freeman October 15, 1965 | Stony Point, New York Dear Betty, This is awfully late notice, but it turns out that I will have some free time, probably best spent in the West. I wondered whether you might inquire whether schools, colleges, or other places want lectures. The dates I’d be available are Nov. 12 and 13, 17–21. On the 10th I’ll be in Salt Lake with the Dance Company and on the 23rd in Chicago, again with the

610. Jack Tworkov (1900–1982), Polish-born American abstract expressionist painter. With Arshile Gorky, Mark Rothko, Willem de Kooning, and Jackson Pollock, he was one of the founders of the New York School.

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dance company. I have an engagement alone on the 15th at Washington State University in Pullman, Washington. My fee for a lecture is $500. I can offer either “Rhythm, Etc.” 611 or 45' for a Speaker 612 (requires a Pa system with mike and amplifier on stage under my control) or “Where Are We Going? and What Are We Doing?” (requires three tape machines [7½ ips] and Pa system for my voice). In all cases with discussion afterwards. If someone wants music too I can offer the lecture preceded by Music for Marcel Duchamp (prepared piano) and followed by Cartridge Music (requires 4 tape machines with 4 loudspeakers and amplifier on stage under my control into which I can get with a mixer I bring [transistorized]). Many adventures since last I saw you. One which your husband would appreciate: I got lost in the woods overnight in Saskatchewan, 40 miles north of Prince Albert. Apparently I could have walked for 250 miles without encountering path, road or habitation. Fifty people searched plus helicopter, dogs, etc. Found by two art students who had a canoe on Lake Emma.613 or in painting situations lecture as in LA: Rauschenberg, Duchamp, Johns.

611. Cage’s “Rhythm, Etc.” (1961–1962), written for and included in György Kepes, Module, Proportion, Symmetry, Rhythm, Vision and Value Series (New York: George Braziller, 1966); it also appeared in Cage’s A Year from Monday (Middletown, CT: Wesleyan University Press, 1967). Kepes’s series analyzed problems of form in architecture, and this issue addressed the theoretical implications of The Modulor (1954) by Le Corbusier. 612. Cage’s 45' for a Speaker (1954), premiered simultaneously with 34'46.776" for a Pianist (1954) by Cage and Tudor at the Composer’s Concourse in London (Oct. 1954). Both works come from Cage’s “The Ten Thousand Things,” so-named by musicologist James Pritchett (see note 1089) to denote a series of self-contained pieces composed between 1953 and 1956 that may also be joined with any other. When joined, the title of the work assumes the conjoined time of the works in performance — for example, 39'43.567" for Speaker and Pianist, a nonexistent work in Cage’s catalog per se. Other works in the series include 31'57.9864" for a Pianist (1954), 26'1.1499" for a String Player (1955), and 27'10.554" for a Percussionist (1956). The number 10,000 represents the infinite in Eastern philosophy. 613. Cage’s “Diary: Emma Lake Music Workshop 1965” recounts many of his adventures in nature, including the mishap referred to here. Apparently the Royal Canadian Mounted Police were involved in his rescue.

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To Charles Hamm614 October 28, 1965 | Stony Point, New York Dear Charles, There will be a show and sale of 20th-century music mss. at the Stable Gallery April 1966 for the benefit of the Foundation for Contemp. Performance Arts, Inc. Gifts to the Foundation are tax-exempt.615 Would you give us a page from your hand? And wd. you act as my deputy in Urbana and obtain gifts from Ben Johnston, Lejaren Hiller, Salvatore Martirano and any others you think should be included (I’ve written separately to Herbert Brün)?616 Where someone’s willing to attach value to gift, please encourage him to do so. Grazi.

To Mrs. Gertrud Schoenberg617 October 30, 1965 | Stony Point, New York My dear Mrs. Schoenberg, Some years ago we established the Foundation for Contemporary Performance Arts, Inc. Our initial capital came from the sale of paintings given to us by artists. Various projects which we supported —the Town Hall concert of the music of Earle Brown and Morton Feldman; the world tour of the Merce Cunningham Dance Company, grants to Feldman and Brown, to the dancer Merle Marsicano, the puppeteer Peter Schumann, percussionist Max Neuhaus, the Judson Dance Theatre and the Paper Bag Players —have sorely depleted 614. Charles Hamm (1925–2011), American composer and music educator. He was among the first music historians to seriously study and write about American popular music. 615. Cage’s first reference to his solicitation of twentieth-century music manuscripts from composers around the world, a collection he envisioned could be exhibited and eventually sold to benefit the Foundation for Contemporary Performance Arts. The Notations collection, with manuscripts spanning 1884–1968, resulted in a publication, Notations, by Something Else Press in 1969. The Stable Gallery exhibition does not appear to have taken place. Albrecht (“Albi”) Gabriel Rosenthal (1914–2004), music scholar and bookseller who provided valuations on some of the manuscripts, was engaged to sell the collection, but he was not successful. Cage would eventually place the collection at Northwestern University, an act that would be formalized by the FCPA in 1999. 616. Ben Johnston, American composer Salvatore Martirano (1927–1995), Lejaren Hiller, and Herbert Brün, all on faculty in the 1960s at the University of Illinois when Cage was in residence. 617. Gertrud Schoenberg (1898–1967), second wife of the Austrian composer Arnold Schoenberg. In the end, Cage was not successful in obtaining a manuscript for his collection.

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our funds. We have now reorganized the Foundation’s policy so that we will spend only a fraction of our capital plus the interest and thus be able to insure continuance of our activities and usefulness over an extended number of years. We now have several money-raising projects which will also be brilliant cultural occasions. They will all take place during this season. 1) A show in two galleries simultaneously of drawings given by artists. This will be opening Dec. 14 at the Castelli and Tibor DeNagy Galleries in N.Y.C. So far, and we’re only half-way, over one hundred artists have given drawings. 2) A show of lithographs and fine printings, also given by artists, in February. I don’t know the gallery that will present this. Jasper Johns is working on it. 3) A series of lectures contributed by the speakers that will reflect the changes in thought and experience characteristic of the present time. The speakers are N. O. Brown, Peter Yates, Buckminster Fuller, Barnett Newman,618 Harold Rosenberg and Marshall McLuhan. This series begins March 31st and concludes May 7 and takes place at the ym and yWha on Lexington Avenue in the nineties here in New York. 4) An exhibition and sale of 20th-century music manuscripts at the Stable Gallery, NYC, in April 1966. For this show of music manuscripts, I need to have a page from Schoenberg’s hand. The entire event would be unthinkable without his being represented. The question is this, then: Will you give the Foundation such a page? (Gifts are tax-exempt.) And would you, if so, indicate the price we would adhere to? If, for any reason, you choose not to do this, please loan a page to us so that Schoenberg may be represented. Forgive me, but have you also any suggestions I may follow so that I could have Webern and Berg also represented? I am so anxious about this that I take the liberty to make further suggestions: we, of course, in the case of gifts to us, need the original, not photo-copies. Should such a gift be made to us, a photo-copy could remain with you so as not to deprive the body of existing manuscripts of all their necessary pages. Please let me know in what way you will cooperate. I wish I were with you to discuss this matter. Furthermore, as it gets colder here, I wish, for my own comfort, I were there in Southern California and could visit you often.

618. Barnett Newman (1905–1970), American artist, a major figure in the abstract expressionist movement and a foremost color field painter.

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To Jocy de Oliveira619 November 2, 1965 | No location indicated Dear Jocy de Carvalho, Thank you for doing the Winter Music (and twice!). And glad you enjoyed it. According to Satie you now have no passport (since you give the words with his music); but that’s good for the US since you’ll make our music life more lively. Looking forward to seeing you in February.

To Sydney and Henry Cowell November 4, 1965 | Stony Point, New York Dear Sydney and Henry: My love to you. I wish I could come up to see you, but it is difficult. I don’t really visit mother sufficiently. And I am obliged to travel a good deal to keep ends meeting. But one of these days —apparently one without fungi, now that the leaves are covering them up. Thank you very much for the page of music for the Foundation. Do you have any suggestions about my acquiring a page of Ives? Is it utterly impossible as everyone says it is? Or is there a possibility? And how do I address Ruggles? And to whom do I write for Riegger? And Rudhyar? Roy Harris?620 Do you have a price you can suggest for the Cowell autograph? I do hope Henry improves steadily. Mother is getting along better. She is cheerful when I see her and no longer resents living in the nursing home. It is a very good one, advertised as a new dimension in convalescence! It looks like a motel, which I am sure what most people want heaven to look like. They have all the equipment and nurses in constant attendance, so that whatever happens can be dealt with. 619. Jocy de Oliveira (b. 1936), Brazilian pianist and composer, the dedicatee of Cage’s Ryoanji for double bass and orchestra (1983); also seen as Jocy de Carvalho. 620. Three important American composers of the day: Wallingford Riegger; Dane Rudhyar (b. Daniel Chennevière; 1895–1985), French-born American author, modernist composer, and pioneer of modern transpersonal astrology; and Roy Harris (1898–1979), American composer who based many of his works on American subjects.

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Writing all these letters to get manuscripts gives me a great sense of brotherhood with the musical fraternity. I had thought that I was separate somehow, and now I feel so close. And the friendly letters that come back give me great joy. Truly. Even Milton Babbitt! Next week I must go to Salt Lake, then Pullman, Wash., then Eureka,621 then Chicago. Back around the first of December.

To M. Jacques Dupin622 December 3, 1965 | Stony Point, New York Dear Mr. Dupin: Your letter gave me much pleasure. The friendliness of Miro is heartwarming. Please convey my thanks to him and say that I look forward keenly to the great pleasure soon of meeting him. Tell him, too, that I recently visited Morton Neuman in Chicago, the collector whose dining room is made so pleasurable by the many paintings of Miro —and drawings —which are on the walls. Our Cunningham Dance Co. was there for a supper and we were all very happy. I only regretted not being there with Miro too. Miro’s gift of a painting makes our plans to come to Europe next summer and fall absolutely feasible.623 About Miro’s proposal to include with his etchings a text and manuscript of mine: I am most enthusiastic and say Yes! In the meantime send me more details, and then I will make proposals. I would like to know the exact space, receive the set of etchings, etc. 621. This might indicate a visit to Morris Graves, who lived from 1965 on 380 acres of redwood forest land in Loleta, California, near Eureka. 622. Jacques Dupin (1927–2012), French poet, art critic, and director of publications at Galerie Maeght in Paris, which represented Joan Miró. Miró had completed three series of etchings titled “Three Days of an Engraver” and expressed the hope, through Dupin, that Cage would write a text that could precede them in a small portfolio. What resulted was Cage’s “Miró in the Third Person: 8 Statements” (1967), which incorporated words and quotations from Miró’s book, Je travaille comme un jardinier (1963). As Cage described the portfolio, it would include “gravures by Miró, my Variations VI in all of its stages, a text by me written after our meeting (which took place early in August 1966 at Saint-Paul-de-Vence), and further gravures by Miró after he’d seen my manuscripts.” Cage’s text appears in A Year from Monday (Middletown, CT: Wesleyan University Press, 1967), 85–88. 623. Miró not only complied with Cage’s request for the donation of a painting, which would enable a Merce Cunningham Dance Company tour to Europe that year, but also proposed performances in Spain for which he would design the poster.

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On my last visit to Europe, it seems to me, I saw a booklet in handwriting. Beautifully done. Was it by Miro? Has he made such a book? At any rate, would you like my text in handwriting? We’ll see. My publisher will be cooperative.

To J. Bernlef 624 December 4, 1965 | Stony Point, New York Dear Mr. Bernlef: This is what we did with Vexations:625 We had a rehearsal with twelve pianists which served to show each that the piece was difficult to play (to read) (to play too); and to establish the tempo. As I recall we settled on 20" for each part of the piece, bringing one complete playing to 1' 20" (theme, counterpoint, theme, second counterpoint). We also practiced how one pianist would take the place of another (we settled on the succeeding pianist approaching from the left, and we used a piano bench so that this was facilitated). The tempo was slow because of Satie’s direction: very slow. Then, because he makes the remark of preparing yourself in advance by interior immobility, we required the succeeding pianist’s sitting on the stage in preparation for the period of the first pianist’s performance (we settled on 20' [fifteen complete playings]). After 20' of playing, the pianist leaves the piano and takes a chair to the right and becomes a registrar, counting the playings of the next pianist. Therefore every twenty minutes there was a ritualistic movement on the stage. For, after having been the registrar, the performer leaves the stage, another pianist coming to it at the same time for his period of preparation, etc., etc. This is made very beautiful if there are two doors or means of approaching the stage, one for entrance, one for exit. Hope you get the picture. The whole performance was 18' 40" and concluded with a final playing of the theme.

624. Actually, Hendrik Jan Marsman (1937–2012), known by his pen name, J.  Bernlef, a Dutch writer and translator. 625. Cage is recounting his production of Satie’s Vexations at the Pocket Theatre in New York (Sept. 9–10, 1963).

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To Miss Margaret Grant626 December 4, 1965 | Stony Point, New York Dear Miss Grant: Thank you for your letter of November 15 informing me of the commission to write a concerto for string sextet and orchestra for the Serge Koussevitsky Music Foundation. I accept the commission and am deeply honored by it. I will make the manuscript in the way you have required and ith the inscription which you have given. The title will be Atlas Borealis.627 It will have three parts (not sequentially): string sextet, full orchestra, and voice (with a text from James Joyce’s Finnegans Wake). These parts will be playable all at the same time, or two at the same time or one alone. Furthermore, it will be within the scope of my composition to omit instrumental parts from the sextet and from the orchestra. It will therefore be a useful work suitable for many circumstances. I shall certainly be in touch with Dr. Spivacke628 concerning a performance at the Library of Congress. My Japanese composer friends are hoping to present it in the course of a festival in Tokyo early in May 1966. I shall make the manuscript on transparent sheets. Is it within the scope of the Foundation’s practices to make an advance to me before the completion of my work? I would be grateful for this since it would enable me to concentrate on my work.

626. Margaret Grant, Reference Department, Music Division, Library of Congress. 627. The Koussevitzky Foundation commission was not fulfilled by the work envisioned but by Cheap Imitation (1972), scored for variable large ensemble. Using his original piano version (1969) as a starting point, Cage composed this larger work (using I Ching chance operations) to answer a series of questions posed in the course of its composition. The work was not to be conducted, which challenged the original players —the premiere on May 13, 1972, in The Hague, was poor and subsequently declared a public rehearsal by the composer. No performance appears to have taken place at the Library of Congress. 628. Harold Spivacke (1904–1977), from 1937 to 1972 head of the Library of Congress Music Division.

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To Marshall McLuhan December 19, 1965 | Stony Point, New York Dear Marshall: Plans on my part to come to Toronto to work in the electronic studio there have had to be postponed. It looks as though I may be able to do it next year when I may have a position at the University in Buffalo. I have accepted a commission from the Koussevitzky Foundation to write a work for voice, string sextet and orchestra.629 I would like to take you up on the suggestion of using excerpts from Joyce that your son has made regarding thunder. Could he send me a copy or page and line references so that I can make a final decision? I also want, if I made such a decision, to proceed with the question of copyright so that I won’t later be disappointed. I am hoping, nay trusting, that you will speak for us on May 7 at the ymha in New York. Yesterday I saw for the first time the copy of Explorations 630 in which the larger part is by you, with interesting typography, magnificent ideas and the stunning frontispiece: ear nose, eye. Is it utterly unattainable? I am just now completing a new article which makes many references to you and to Buckminster Fuller. When it is published I will send you a copy. It’s for a small magazine called Joglars 631 printed from typescript in Providence Rhode Island. So I’m using an ibm Selectric typewriter and have twelve type faces! I am pleased with the look of it and think you will enjoy it. I hope so.

629. In McLuhan’s letter to Cage dated August 30, 1965, he suggested that Cage compose a work based on the ten thunder claps of James Joyce’s Finnegans Wake. He also reported collaborating with Canadian artist Harley Parker on a book that would be published in 1968 as Through the Vanishing Point: Space in Poetry and Painting (Harper Collins). In his letter, McLuhan tells Cage that what he calls “space” corresponds to what Cage calls “silence.” 630. Explorations: Studies in Culture and Communication, a journal produced by McLuhan with Edmund “Ted” Carpenter, published from 1953 to 1959. 631. Cage refers here to his Diary: How to Improve the World (You Will Only Make Matters Worse) 1965, the first installment of which appeared in Clark Coolidge’s magazine Joglars 1, no. 3 (1966), reprinted in Aspen (Roaring Fork Press, 1967); the second installment would appear in Paris Review, no. 40 (Winter–Spring, 1967); and the third as an independent Great Bear Pamphlet (Something Else Press, 1967). All three would be included in A Year from Monday (Middletown, CT: Wesleyan University Press, 1967). By the time of his death, Cage had completed eight installments, leaving one, the ninth, incomplete. Each is a mosaic of ruminations —statements, ideas, words, and stories —constituting an original diary form, largely chance determined.

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To Peter Yates January 1, 1966 | Stony Point, New York Dear Peter: Happy New Year! which I think you’ll have. I’ve just finished reading thru the second half of your book. Much of what I thought was missing (Boulez, etc.) from first half is found here. The book is so encompassing that one wonders why it isn’t all-encompassing. A few notes I made while reading. Pp. 271, 283: should be Ruth not Dorothy Crawford.632 Pg. 275: Hindemith was here but his influence was stultifying. I would exclude him from roster of “great” teachers. S. America, mention Kagel at this point (Argentina) and the computer work of Conrado Silva (Uruguay). Pg. 288: Ichiyanagi (studied with Wolpe, later with me). Pg. 289: Haba is a Czech composer. In this connection, shouldn’t book include some reference to Soviet music, Yugoslavia, Poland (Poland certainly)? Pg. 290–291: My rhythmic structure was not Indian-derived but substituted for harmonic structure (tonality in a music which included non-tonal sound). I found corroboration of my rhythmic structure in Satie and Indian music, even in Webern. Pg.  299: F.  C. Dillon (Fannie Charles) and one lesson with Lazare-Levy (Paris Conservatoire) who introduced me to Bach. Contemporaneous with this intro. to Bach was my hearing a program by John Kirkpatrick and meeting him in Paris (Stravinsky, Scriabin, etc.). Pg. 299: I invited Buhlig to illustrate a lecture I was to give on Schoenberg. Adolph Weiss worked with me for many months —prepared me for study with Schoenberg. I worked with S. for two years in counterpoint, analysis, etc. While studying with Weiss in NYC I took Cowell’s classes at New School acting also as a kind of secretary for him and so not having to pay for lessons. P.  299: I denied the structural value of the tone row insisting “it’s a method, etc.” I have recently praised Ives. Must admit though it’s taken me a long time. But I now have made some three statements re him, one for a Wisconsin thesis, second for the Canadian Radio System, 3rd suggesting that rock ’n roll musicians listen to 4th Symphony and so find ways to proceed. Interview on jazz in Village Voice. 632. Cage is probably in error in his correction here. Yates is likely referring to Dorothy Lamb Crawford, a historian in Southern California at the time, not Ruth Crawford Seeger, the modernist American composer. Dorothy Lamb Crawford would author Evenings On and Off the Roof (Oakland: University of California Press, 1995), chronicling the Evenings on the Roof and subsequent Monday Evening Concerts in Los Angeles.

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I object to sentence “But where Duchamp stopped, having amused himself, Cage went on.” Duchamp’s stopping is a popular fiction. He’s continued all along and the record proves it. It’s just that few people thought he was doing important work. He recently signed my Czechoslovakian membership card in the cssr Mushroom Society. I gave it to our Fndtn. for Contemp. Perf. Arts, and it was sold for five hundred dollars, as was his new version of the L.H.O.O.Q. (Rasée).633 I was greatly influenced by Chavez’s book Towards a New Music (Electric?) and Cowell’s New Musical Resources. Pg. 300: only did library research work for Dad. Pg. 326: noticing imperfections in paper, not following patterns! Pg. 327: Christian’s father was Kurt Wolff, founder of Pantheon Press. I think you’ve certainly paid me an extraordinary amt. of attention. And as usual yr. work is often instructive and helpful, I mean in relation to what I’m not yet doing. Very concerned now with society. I wouldn’t use yr. word politics, but I think in conversation we’d agree that that’s my present concern, religion, politics. The statement begins with “Diary: How to Improve the World (You’ll only Make Matters Worse) 1965.” It’s now continuing same title but of course 1966. Have you seen the current Tulane Drama Review? 634 Re influence on theatre. Now I go to Wesleyan for a week’s stay. Back here on 11th. Have begun collecting 20th-century mss. Beautiful. Hope to get Museum not Stable Gallery to show them and University to buy whole collection again to benefit our Foundation. Whom shall I send your typescript to? Please send me Partch’s address. And [Gerald] Strang and [George] Tremblay —any addresses for mss. will be helpful or ask them for me. Must be originals + gifts to F. for C. P. Arts + others. What I want for Xmas: a secretary.

633. L.H.O.O.Q. rasée (“shaved”) (1965) is Duchamp’s playing-card reproduction of his earlier L.H.O.O.Q., conceived in 1919 as a readymade —a cheap postcard reproduction of Leonardo da Vinci’s Mona Lisa onto which Duchamp drew a moustache and beard. In L.H.O.O.Q. rasée the facial hair is removed. From an edition of approximately one hundred, prepared for a dinner given on January 13, 1965, on the occasion of the preview of “Not Seen and/or Less Seen of/by Marcel Duchamp/Rrose Sélavy: The Mary Sisler Collection, Cordier & Ekstrom,” New York (January 14–February 13, 1965). The name of the work is a pun; when pronounced in French, it sounds like “She is hot in the arse.” 634. Tulane Drama Review 10, no. 2 (Winter 1965), edited by Richard Schechner and Michael Kirby, which includes their “Interview with John Cage,” 50–72.

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To Daniel Wolf January 12, 1966 | Stony Point, New York dear sir: michael zWerin635 Writes Well. i enjoyed reading his article (a lethal measUrement, the village voice, janUary 6, 1966, Page 13) Which rePorts oUr meeting and conversation. since i Was hUngry, his offer of bircher mUesli Was Welcome. bUt he didn’t mention that after oUr talk he offered me a drink Which i declined. he also omits a sPecific sUggestion i made With regard to liveliness in the field of rock ’n roll: to do What ives does in his foUrth symPhony: have three groUPs Playing simUltaneoUsly in three different temPi. When this is done, i hoPe i’m aroUnd to hear it. i sUggest (and there’s no reason to stoP With three) a comPlex starting and stoPPing Process both dUring and at the beginning and end of the Performance, like ives, that is, rather than inflUenced, say, by meister eckhart’s notion that the soUl is so simPle it attends to only one thing at a time. noWadays everything haPPens at once and oUr soUls are conveniently electronic (omniattentive).

To Alice Denney636 March 12, 1966 | Stony Point, New York Dear Alice, Got your letter and spoke to David and looking forward to April 27th. Cherry blossoms? 635. Michael Zwerin (1930–2010), American jazz musician and writer, active with various ensembles in New York. He served as jazz critic of New York’s Village Voice (1964–69), as well as its European editor (1969–71), and was the Paris-based jazz critic for the International Herald Tribune. 636. Alice Denney, founding director of the Washington, D.C., E.A.T. Local Group (1967–1969), for which she produced a symposium on art and technology in 1968. She also organized the NOW Festival in Washington, D.C., which took place April 27–29, 1966, under the aegis of her own nonprofit organization. Included in the three-day festival would be a performance of Cage’s Variations VI (April 27, 1966), scored for variable ensemble performing on a plurality of sound systems using photo-electric dells and electronic sound sources including electronic circuitry, microphones, radio, tape, and a television set.

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Our minimum fee must be $500.00; preferably $750. And please make arrangements to cover travel expenses and staying in Washington. (We could stay as before with friends as you arranged.) The panel discussion isn’t a panel discussion. It’s a lecture series, and each lecturer has contibuted his services to benefit the Foundation for Contemporary Performance Arts! So it isn’t something that could travel. I’m separately sending you the announcement of it. I’ll get David to let you know about our electronic requirements: machines, amplifiers, loud-speakers. Or I’ll find out and send you the information. I’m playing chess each week as a student with Marcel D[uchamp]. It’s magnificent!

To Bernard C. Solomon637 March 12, 1966 | Stony Point, New York Dear Mr. Solomon: Thank you for sending the recordings of Variations IV. I have not yet played them, but, I regret to say, I was distinctly displeased with what I read on the labels of the records themselves: the division of the work into movements (which is unfaithful to the work which is not involved with beginnings and endings, let alone movements) and the giving title (!) to the false movements which are entirely out of the spirit of work. I object. What you ought to do is this: have new labels made telling that these 5 sections are excerpts which, if you wish, you may number, giving as you do the time period from which they come. You ought also to make a public statement that these titles were not of my invention. If you do make new labels, accept, please, this further suggestion: variations iv John Cage: Composition (indeterminate) David Tudor: Sound system Cage and Tudor: Performance 637. Bernard C. Solomon, president of Everest Records, producer of the first commercial recording of Cage’s Variations IV (“John Cage with David Tudor Presents Variations IV,” LP BR 6132 [mono] and SDBR 3132 [stereo], from a live performance at the Feigen-Palmer Gallery in Los Angeles, January 12, 1965).

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I will expect a reply at your earliest convenience. You assured me, you will remember, that I would not suffer from your hands the treatment I have received from other companies.

To Aaron Copland 638 March 14, 1966 | Stony Point, New York Dear Aaron, Minna [Lederman] may have told you about Merce’s present circumstances. The Company returned from a four-weeks national tour with a deficit of six thousand dollars, only to find that the studio in which they’ve worked for five years is no longer available. They had no lease. The building is being renovated. We have found a more desirable place and are now signing a lease for five years. The rent, of course, is higher. A history of the Company together with future plans and an accounting of monies —expenses, income from teaching and performances, probably deficit —has been prepared, and will be taken to the various Foundations. I also am proposing to television systems that Merce’s Company be established “in residence,” his classes, collaborations with artists and musicians, his rehearsals and performances being available to the system for broadcast. From our accounting, it appears that the annual deficit of the Company is something above thirty thousand, and besides the current six-thousand-dollar deficit, we have another equal deficit remaining from the 1964 World Tour. I have arranged a loan for the costs of remodeling the new studio. And I am active raising money to cover the current deficit; in this connection have you any suggestions? Could the Institute help? Minna must also have told you that Mr. Philip Miller and his associates at the Library and Museum of Performing Arts have accepted the twentieth-century music manuscript collection I am making. I think that is very good. The Something Else Press will publish a book illustrating all the entries. I now have contributions from nearly sixty composers, many of them very extensive. I look forward to receiving a manuscript or manuscript page from you. 638. Copland was a strong advocate for composers, hence this appeal. He helped found the American Composers Alliance, was a prominent member of the American Society of Composers, Authors, and Publishers (ASCAP), and also served as director or board member of the American Music Center, the Koussevitzky Foundation, the League of Composers, and other organizations.

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To Alan Sapp639 April 5, 1966 | Stony Point, New York Dear Alan Sapp, Mrs. Judith Blinken has told me that you may invite me to Buffalo next season, a lectureship. Let me say immediately that I would be delighted to do this. My circumstances are such that I have virtually no time to work. I long for the opportunity to sit, relatively still, writing and composing. My expenses now —due to a serious stroke that my mother had a year and a half ago —are in my terms astronomical. At present, I must run from one engagement to another as though I were a chicken with its head cut off. I have recently sent a quantity of texts not included in Silence to my publishers. I have probably to write more to add to these. Also I have accepted the Koussevitsky commission to write a concert for string sextet and orchestra to which I will add a vocal or choral work, using the Ten Thunderclaps from Joyce’s Finnegans Wake. Both of these projects are interesting, and I have others too, but at present I am home only long enough to deal with my correspondence. Please let me know whether this invitation is among your plans. Do, too, give my greetings to Mrs. Sapp, whom I so much enjoyed meeting when I was in Buffalo for the festival last year.640

To Eric McLuhan641 April 8, 1966 | Stony Point, New York Dear Eric: Thank you very much for sending letter, typescripts. I am studying this material with great interest. When do you need it back? 639. Alan Sapp (1922–1999), American composer, head of the Music Department at the University of Buffalo (later State University of New York at Buffalo). He was a strong advocate for contemporary music and art and with Lukas Foss built the Center of the Creative and Performing Arts. 640. Festival of the Arts Today at the University of Buffalo (February 27–March 13, 1965), where Cage conducted the Buffalo Philharmonic Orchestra and Tudor in a performance of his Concert for Piano and Orchestra; Cage also appeared with Merce Cunningham and Dance Company in performances of Cartridge Music (as Duet for Cymbal) to Cunningham’s Paired, and Variations IV to Cunningham’s Field Dances/Collage III/Cross Currents. 641. Eric McLuhan (b. 1941), son of Marshall McLuhan, who would later co-author several books

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Our lecture series at the ymha is going very well. But best of all: all seats are gone for your father’s lecture on the 7th of May and standing room is being sold! Please tell him that we have some complimentary seats and ask him to let me know the names of those he would like to invite. There will be a party afterwards, probably in the home of Jasper Johns. Lowell Cross, a composer and musicologist at the Electronic Studio at the U. of Toronto, is arranging a concert around the 14th of May in which I’ll participate. I hope you’ll be around then and that we can talk. Actually, if it’s OK with you, I’ll bring your ms. back by hand then.

To John L. Kennedy642 April 24, 1966 | Stony Point, New York Dear Mr. Kennedy: Thank you for your letter of the 19th suggesting a performance on your program involving David Tudor and myself, lasting eight to twelve minutes. After discussing this with David Tudor, we came up with the following proposal (since the program would include talk with your host, painter William Ronald643): that we involve a sound system designed by David Tudor with my voice as sound source. What I would say would sometimes be understandable, other times not —moving off into sound divorced from ordinary verbal meaning, i.e., music. We would need, say, 4 to 6 separate channels (amplifiers with loud-speakers capable of taking the power given by the amplifiers) and the assistance of an electronics technician. We would bring other equipment for modulating and transforming the voice. Visually, there would be two areas of interest: the dials and components with his father. With Francesco Guardiani and Bernard Hibbits, he would serve as co-editor of the journal McLuhan Studies. 642. John L. Kennedy, producer of the Umbrella, a concert series in Toronto, Ontario. The referenced performance took place in the Sculpture Court of the Art Gallery of Toronto (a “Special Avant-Garde Concert”) on Friday, May 13, 1966, 8:30 p.m. with Cage’s Variations VI performed by Cage, Tudor, Cross, and Anthony Gnazzo (b. 1936), an American composer who designed and built electronic music studios and assisted Cage variously with electronic components throughout the 1960s. 643. William Ronald (b. William Ronald Smith; 1926–1998), Canadian painter and founder of the Canadian abstract art group Painters Eleven in 1954.

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operated by Tudor, the microphones related to my voice: throat, lip, chest, and then three table mikes we would request your providing. Let me know your reaction to this proposal. And when, if you accept it, you would like to do it, before or after May 14, but near that date. Copy to Lowell Cross

To Peter Yates May 8, 1966 | Stony Point, New York The lecture series ended last night with McLuhan’s lecture which I was enthusiastic abt., but other friends not (Jap, Bob). Perhaps this answers yr. [question] “How do you break out of an ‘in-group?’” That is: loneliness sets in. I am sorry to hear you don’t like my article on Jap which, for me, stands up. I spent some 5–6 months on it and enjoyed the changes it brought to my feeling and thinking. Maybe you won’t like any of the other texts I’ve been making. Now about to do one on the audience. Now that we have another disagreement, please write soon again to let me know your thoughts. I spent a pleasant 4 hours or so with an art historian Irving Sandler,644 who teaches at NYU. He, like many others, was very grateful for your lecture which you gave us. Merce’s also was beautiful (Jap’s favorite since it “was rather” than “was about”). [Harold] Rosenberg was full of sarcasm about Fuller, McL[uhan], the arts (pop, op) + the [illegible] (package). Prompted me to No, No, No. Let me know if you recd. tax-exemption letter and check. Our Jill Jakes645 has been on a vacation.

644. Irving Sandler (b. 1925), American art critic, art historian, and educator. He documented many conversations among artists that took place in the Cedar Tavern (or Cedar Street Tavern) in New York, situated at 82 University Place, a popular restaurant and bar for such abstract expressionist artists as Jackson Pollock, Willem de Kooning, and Mark Rothko. See also Morton Feldman, Give My Regards to Eighth Street (Cambridge, MA: Exact Change, 2004). 645. Jill Jakes, the first board secretary to the Foundation for Contemporary Performance Arts as well as member of the board until 1971.

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To Peter Yates May 23, 1966 | Stony Point, New York Dear Peter, Thanks for your letter, but it doesn’t meet my mind and this is really to tell you so. For one thing your clearing up, reorganizing and reorienting, more shelf room, etc. Imagine me here still in chaos. Reason you haven’t yet rec’d letter (glad to hear you got check) is that Jill Jakes is having new stationary made and hasn’t yet rec’d it. Seeing her today and trying to get Foundation back on feet. (Gov’t. trying to upset it.) You speak of finding sanity in my retreat. Misuse of words. Must be in us. Not exteriorly to be found. You speak of vacuum re Jap. His work. You say he’s going in wrong direction. He goes, as I’ve pointed out, in many. More than any other painter, he has changed our minds. I doubt whether my writing abt. him is ornamental. I spent 5–6 months (not writing the text) on that project of writing abt. him. I believe that should you find something in that article which you find ornamental, I could tell you what its meaning was. I mean in terms of belief, changed mind, etc. I feel nothing but gratitude for his work and for him. That you left your mind open, and the painting didn’t get in, perhaps means that you expected them to do the job for you, instead of your picking yourself up by your bootstraps. You will say, Why bother? In order to change your mind. Slickness is the last word I’d apply to his greys.646 (End of 8th paragraph.) The art is not to blame for salons. The problem is grander (cf. Bucky [Buckminster Fuller]) and goes through the society producing the kind of confusion that exists now between you and me. Economics, politics. But something else is happening. There is no vacuum. There is rather life and death concurrent. And the possibility of Utopia. Jap’s vision is one of the ones that’s making it practical. Not just something to give up the way they did in the nineteenth century. And this is the relevance of McLuhan that you refuse to see. In fact, we are able to use anything that comes to hand in order to improve the world. Send me something you think has no value, I challenge you. 646. From 1955, gray was a predominant color in Johns’s paintings, sculptures, prints, and drawings. Five decades of this practice would be the subject of Jasper Johns: Gray, an exhibition seen at the Art Institute of Chicago (November 3, 2007–January 6, 2008) and New York’s Metropolitan Museum of Art (February 5–March 4, 2008).

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At least you can know that your critical spirit has a spirit opposite to it which lives at this address. My extra-musical projects! And where then does music stop? I find as my activities proliferate, that I’m more centered than when they didn’t. I remember when I did nothing but write music, that when some of it was performed, I blushed (A Book of Music for 2 pianos). Now at a performance, exhausted (from preparations), the music reinvigorates me during its performance. And that music doesn’t stop while I’m playing chess or hunting mushrooms or raising money for La Monte Young or other performing artists, etc. I could tell you too what was “back” of each “extra” musical action, and you’d see it was music. I see increased size of paintings as comparable to increased lengths of time. Our space-time sense has changed. Our minds have changed. I think you should examine this question more deeply. Your thoughts revert constantly to art as object, to concepts, etc. We are dealing with perception and the fact it’s changing. Re: center of interest (Jap vs. Guston647 ). Realize that whether you get it yet or not: Jap is alive in a fuller way, and Guston just isn’t. Guston is clinging to Renaissance vision and doing it without meaning it communityly. He’s just selfish and his ideas are getting quite thin. Essential, I’ve stated many times, re American art vs. European art. Non-focused multiplicity vs. center of interest. Since you’re able to understand Jap’s consideration and thought for you (as a host), start from there and get to his work later. He is, I assure you, as a painter, honest, honestly honest. He is unable to make a stroke on a canvas without meaning it. In the pull of that vaccum? What pull are you speaking of? Thought there was nothing in it. There is of course life. Nobby too is magnificent. Just saw him again in Rochester. We visited Letchworth Park and found pezizae. He too insists upon Utopia. And he is beating another track to it. For which I’m endlessly grateful. Merce talked, some sequitur, some non-s., now and then turning on a tape machine that continued his talk. While he danced. The whole thing was unmeasured so that frequently there was nothing verbal to hear or kinesthetic to see. The stage was open, curtains drawn away, ladders, bricks, etc. Bucky was magnificent, talked until 12:15. Then Jap and I spent next day with 647. Philip Guston (b. Philip Goldstein; 1913–1980), American painter and printmaker in the New York School. He turned away from abstract expressionism in the late 1960s toward neo-expressionism.

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him. He frequently expressed how his mind had been changed by Jap’s work, opened, etc. He was grateful. I think the grandeur of our activity now (in contrast with Blackmur’s thoughts648) is directly related to the miserableness of our economic-political life. Why do you want McLuhan to do something with his insights? Why don’t you do something with them? We have won no battle. I just spoke on a panel before community leaders from art councils all over the country. Opposite me was a Harvard prof. talking of tradition. What he said was applauded. People shouted nonsense when I made my point. Partch? Lou, too, writing to say the new work is good. But then I’m from Los Angeles. If he’s found a way to complexity away from ostinati and all his other habits, I’d be delighted. I’ll listen again when the chance comes. But only because you and Lou have mentioned it. Not because of anything that Partch has done before.

To Allen Hurlburt649 June 4, 1966 | Stony Point, New York Dear Mr. Hurlburt: Thank you for your letter of the second of June. The travel question remains open. I have received no word about travel. I am considering driving, for I may wish to visit in Cincinnati on the way out, and do some rapid mushroomhunting while in Colorado. I suppose that if I do drive I would receive a check for an amount equal to air-travel. I am currently writing three texts entitled “Diary: How to Improve the World (You Will Only Make Matters Worse).” The three texts add different years to the title. I have finished 1965 and I am part way through 1966. 1965 is published in Joglars no. 3, a small magazine. I don’t have a copy to send you but have ordered some, and if they arrive soon will forward one to you. 648. Richard (Palmer) Blackmur (1904–1965), American literary critic and poet, long affiliated with Princeton University and unpopular in Cage’s circle. 649. Allen Hurlburt (1910–1983), American graphic designer, from 1953 to 1971 art director for Look magazine. In 1966 he was coordinator of the International Design Conference in Aspen, Colorado, which Cage would attend, speaking on the morning of June 22 and participating in a seminar on June 23.

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I would like to present the text I am working on now (1966). But I am not sure that it will be completed in time. However, you could announce the title without the date. I, too, look forward to seeing you in Aspen. The program looks very interesting.

To Effie B. Carlson650 July 18, 1966 | Stony Point, New York Dear Mrs. Carlson: My early work was not serial but was chromatic. This chromaticism (nonrepetition of tones until they had all been used) led Cowell to suggest my studying with Weiss, Schoenberg. While studying with Weiss, I wrote under his direction an allemande which I imagine was fairly conventional. I no longer have it. When I showed it one day to Schoenberg, he said, “That’s none of your business.” As I recall, my early percussion pieces, Trio, Quartet, employed static groups of notes (note values really) which were arranged in circular series (end connects with beginning), and the method was to go around this circle in either direction, never jumping across the center. This method was then used in the Metamorphosis but introduced pitches too. It is also present in the Music for Wind Instruments, and was probably best used in the First Construction (In Metal), where it was combined with my new-found structural means —micro-macrocosmic rhythmic structure, elsewhere described. There were other uses too, but in unpublished dance accompaniments such as America Was Promises, and Fads of the Academy.651 This latter was an attempt to make twelve-tone music diatonic. In a long unfinished work which exists now only fragmentarily (She is Asleep, etc.) and in the first of the two percussion pieces in Amores, another idea was 650. Effie B. Carlson, a master’s student in Oak Ridge, Tennessee, whose work focused upon serial technique in contemporary piano music. 651. Cage’s America Was Promises for voice and piano, four-hands, and Fads and Fancies in the Academy for piano and four percussionists, both from 1940. The manuscript for the first work is likely lost; the programmatic design of the second is unusual for Cage, as it parodies both children’s songs and popular music and includes satiric humor, some say resembling the music of William Russell. This composition was long unknown; Cage presented it to C. F. Peters for possible publication shortly before his death.

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used that relates to serialism: a row consisting of numbers was established. These were interpreted as being icti, not note values. This allowed a greater freedom of invention. Finally, my use of charts for the Concerto for Prepared Piano and Chamber Orchestra involved, as method, a “series” of identical moves (as in the magic square). This is all, serially speaking, that occurs to me at the present moment. However, I have recently written an article in response to a questionnaire sent out by Andre Boucourechliev,652 33 rue St. Didier, Paris 16, which deals with serial music.653 I forget now the title exactly but it was “seriously.”

To Knut Wiggen654 Aug. 29, 1966 | Stony Point, N.Y. (actually Pontpoint) Dear Knut, Your letter arrived and I am glad that you have found a way to present a festival.655 It will be very interesting. I am very sorry that I cannot come to be part of it. We have October engagements in the U.S. I think, if possible, the best procedure is to continue without further thought of the troubles that arose.656 652. André Boucourechliev (1925–1997), French composer of Bulgarian origin who attended the contemporary music sessions at Darmstadt. His works involved both choice and chance, for example, his Archipels (1967–1971). 653. Boucourechliev’s “findings” were published in Preuves (Paris, March 1966); Cage’s response, titled “Seriously Comma,” a short essay mainly on the subject of Marshall McLuhan, was reprinted in A Year from Monday (Middletown CT: Wesleyan University Press, 1967), 26–29. 654. See note 543. Stockholm’s Fylkingen Society became under Wiggen’s charge a venue and artists’ society for new and experimental work with emphasis on electroacoustic composition. 655. The Festival of Art and Technology: Visions of the Now (Stockholm, September 19–25, 1966). 656. Cage refers to an ordeal that took place throughout much of 1966 and into 1967. On November 17, 1965, Wiggen had met with Billy Klüver (see note 603) in New York to enlist his help organizing the art and technology festival being planned for Stockholm in September 1966. In response, Klüver and collaborator Rauschenberg invited nine artists (the “American group”) —Cage, Lucinda Childs, Alex Hay, Deborah Hay, Öyvind Fahlström, Steve Paxton, Yvonne Rainer, Tudor, and Robert Whitman —as well as some thirty engineers from Bell Labs, including McLuhan, Fuller, and John Robinson Pierce (1910–2002) to collaborate on artistic projects for the festival. Wiggen wanted Cage to participate as one of the theorists, but Cage chose to remain with the American artists and concentrate on developing his work, Variations VII. The divide between the Americans’ more practical approach to performances being planned and Wiggen’s emphasis on theoretical investigations caused the Americans to withdraw from the project and, later, present their collaborative works as 9 Evenings: Theatre & Engineering, held at New York’s 69th Regiment Armory (Oct. 13–23, 1966). The

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I heard about my book coming out in Swedish (another reason I regret not coming now). It is good that you have Lucier.657 Give him my friendliest greetings and Nam June too. Please don’t forget my ms. collection. If there are some you don’t yourself wish to ask please send me addresses.

To Marcel and Teeny Duchamp658 September 22, 1966 | Stony Point, New York Dear Teeny and Marcel, First thank you for an unforgettable time. It was glorious: I am still sunburnt. Had a very good day in Barcelona with Martha: bought a suit and two pair of shoes, saw the Gaudi chapel and park. Two different kinds of music. Now I have so much to do that this has to stop and become a note: to tell you that the performances go this way: Oct. 13: Paxton and the Hays; Oct. 14: Tudor and Rauschenberg; Oct. 15: Yvonne Rainer and me; Oct. 16: Lucinda Childs and me; Oct. 18: Bob Whitman and Tudor; Oct. 19: Whitman and Paxton; Oct. 21: Rainer and Fahlstrom; Oct. 22: Fahlstrom and Alex Hays; Oct. 23: Debbie Hays, Rauschenberg and Childs.659

Stockholm event took place the previous month without the Americans, September 19–25, 1966. The misunderstandings between the Americans and the Swedes continued and was finally aired in the Swedish press. See Cage’s letter to Folke Hähnel dated January 4, 1967. 657. Alvin Lucier (b. 1931), American composer of experimental music and sound installations involving acoustic phenomena and auditory perception. A member of the Sonic Arts Union with Robert Ashley, David Behrman, and Gordon Mumma, he would join the music faculty of Wesleyan University in 1970. 658. Marcel Duchamp (b. Henri-Robert-Marcel Duchamp; 1887–1968), French-American painter, sculptor, chess master, and artist, one of the three artists (with Picasso and Matisse) who defined the revolutionary spirit in twentieth-century art. Cage’s devotion was unwavering. In 1954 Duchamp married Alexina “Teeny” Duchamp (née Alexina Sattler; 1906–1995), whose first husband was the French art dealer Pierre Matisse (1900–1989); thus Teeny was also the daughter-in-law of Henri Matisse. After Marcel’s death in 1968, Teeny would settle in Villiers-sous-grez in France, where she assembled the beginnings of the Association Marcel Duchamp. She remained a close friend to many artists she had met during her husband’s lifetime, including Cage, Johns, Brâncuşi, and Cunningham. 659. Cage refers here to the programming in process of the 9 Evenings: Experiments in Art and Technology event slated to take place October 13–23, 1966, at the 69th Regiment Armory in New York. See note 656.

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To Adolph Weiss October 13, 1966 | Stony Point, New York Dear Adolph, Your note has deeply troubled and saddened me, and I reply in the hope that our friendship which is over thirty years old may continue. I am deeply indebted to you and have no ill-will toward you. I am surprised to hear of “disparaging remarks” that have done you much harm. If you let me know what to do in this regard, I will certainly make reparations.660 Mr. George, to whom I wrote in response to his request for reminiscences (I did this in 1965 so that there is no task ahead of me in this respect), told me by letter and conversation when I met him in the west that my remarks were much appreciated by him. When I gave my various texts to the editor at Wesleyan University, this letter was chosen for inclusion in the book. It expresses my indebtedness to you [illegible], in terms of friendship, communication of devotion, performance of music, melodic and twelve-tone techniques, writing in ink, generosity, and your willingness to look at my compositions which Schoenberg always refused to do, and finally your pleasure in my work as presented at Town Hall, and, only because of circumstances, my insufficient attention to your work. I will certainly try to correct this fault, and my invitation to you to give a manuscript for the collection is a small step, and this article another. I hope you will reconsider. If you do, I shall be very happy. Quoting from my 1949 lecture: What we require is silence, but what silence requires is that I go on talking. Forgive me please that I am alive and do the things I do. Let us be friends.

660. Weiss, embittered by a hearsay account of Cage’s having said that all he had learned from Weiss was how to drink Manhattans, denounced Cage’s remarks in his letter to William B. George (see letter February 15, 1965) as false, infantile, and megalomaniacal. He accused Cage of being a “false friend” and demanded that Cage never mention having studied with him again. Cage’s “Adolph Weiss: Reminiscences,” intended for inclusion in A Year from Monday (Middletown, CT: Wesleyan University Press, 1967), did not appear.

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To Jocy de Oliveira October 23, 1966 | Urbana, Illinois Dear Jocy, I thought I had a copy of the stories, but I don’t. So I’ll write them out here.661 Please translate at least a few into Portuguese + then tell me whether people in Lisbon will understand French or English (which they understand more, I mean). A composer friend of mind who spent some time in a mental rehabilitation center was encouraged to do a good deal of bridge playing. After one game, his partner was criticizing his play of an ace on a trick which had already been won. My friend stood up and said, “If you think I came to the loony bin to learn to play bridge, you’re crazy.” Once I was visiting my Aunt Marge. She was doing her laundry. She turned to me and said, “You know? I love this machine much more than I do your Uncle Walter.” One Sunday morning, Mother said to Dad, “Let’s go to church.” Dad said, “O.K.” When they drove up in front, Dad showed no sign of getting out of the car. Mother said, “Aren’t you coming in?” Dad said, “No, I’ll wait for you here.” One of Suzuki’s books ends with the poetic text of a Japanese monk describing his attainment of enlightenment. The final poems says, “Now that I’m enlightened, I’m just as miserable as ever.” I went to hear Krishnamurti speak. He was lecturing on how to hear a lecture. He said, “You must pay full attention to what is being said and you can’t do that if you take notes.” The lady on my right was taking notes. The man on her right nudged her and said, “Don’t you hear what he’s saying? You’re not supposed to take notes.” She then read what she had written and said, “That’s right. I have it written down right here in my notes.” On Christmas Day, Mother said, “I’ve listened to your record several times. After hearing all those stories about your childhood, I keep asking myself, Where was it that I failed?” Could you send what you translate to me c/o Théâtre des Champs Elysées 15 Avenue Montaigne Paris 8 661. Included here are six stories from Cage’s ongoing Indeterminacy: New Aspect of Form in Instrumental and Electronic Music.

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so that I receive it by Saturday, November 12? We then fly to Lisbon. I’m deeply grateful to you for whatever you send.

To Mrs. Gertrud Schoenberg December 8, 1966 | Stony Point, New York Still hoping against not hearing from you that you will give just something (a page, a sketch) from Schoenberg’s hand for the collection I’m making. It is very beautiful but, of course, is pointless without his work in it. Please imagine that I am with you spending every minute trying to persuade you to agree. Since I’m not, you are of course much better off. However, I do look forward to being with you I hope in the not too distant future. Deadline is now Christmas. I will not bother you again with this request.

To Norman O. Brown December 8, 1966 | Stony Point, New York Am here. Just. Must stay here for Xmas but will of course be thinking of you (all). I go to Middletown [Connecticut, location of Wesleyan University], 13–18. Think we should meet in New York, Dec. 27–29. I’m putting it in my book. I didn’t particularly go along with the Kapleau book,662 which I have. Would advise you against sitting cross-legged. In fact I can’t imagine it. I think of you racing thru the woods and then coming back playing chess and not being able to sleep. When I tell people (in London) my favorites are Bucky Fuller, M. McL[uhan] and you, and then look as though I were going to mention a fourth, they said 3’s enough —all we need!

662. Philip Kapleau (1912–2004), American teacher of Zen Buddhism. The referenced book was likely The Three Pillars of Zen (1965).

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To Merce Cunningham January 4, 1967 [dated 1966, but properly 1967] | Cincinnati, Ohio663 What a set of experiences! First, when I got to the car, discovered my suits had been stolen (good I saved the typewriter!). Then when I got to Cincinnati found my apt. had been given to someone else. That’s fixed now, but apt. has nothing in it: no towels, dishes, sheets, telephone, you name it. Very difficult. View is partial: of city and river, but bldg. in front half-obscuring it. Bought new suits and overcoat but don’t have them yet (alterations). Also there’s no desk to work on. It’s really difficult. Address is 380 Oregon (Apt. 300), Cincinnati, Ohio 45202. Enclosing Higgins deal re architecture.

To Folke Hähnel664 January 4, 1967 [incorrectly dated 1966] | Cincinnati, Ohio Dear Mr. Hähnel: Thank you for your letter. I am sorry that what I wrote was not useful.665 My position in this entire matter needs some clarification. I was never whole-heartedly in it, even from its Fylkingen beginnings. For the reason which I several times gave Knut Wiggen, that is, that the Cunningham Dance Company was not being involved. I felt that Cunningham’s work, particularly Variations V, was in the spirit of Art and Technology, and that the work of the others, Hays, Rauschenberg, Childs, Paxton was more in the spirit of Art and Games, or even Art and Agriculture (I refer to the chickens and cow at the Modern Museum in ’64).666 663. From January to May, 1967, Cage was composer-in-residence at the University of Cincinnati College —Conservatory of Music. 664. Folke Hähnel (1910–1995), editor and music critic for one of Sweden’s leading newspapers, Dagens Nyheter; from 1947 to 1969 he reviewed many of the performances given under the aegis of the Fylkingen Society. 665. The Fylkingen fracas continued (see note 656), and Cage’s response to Hähnel’s request for a public statement in support of the Swedes’ grievances was not found to be satisfactory. 666. Likely two ensemble works by Rauschenberg, Elgin Tie (1964) and Linoleum (1966), the first a “duet with a Swedish cow,” performed by Rauschenberg, in which a live cow is brought into the performance space; the second a work in which the performer (possibly Steve Paxton) eats fried chicken while live chickens walk on his back. Elgin Tie, first performed at Moderna Museet on September 13, 1964 as part of the series Five New York Evenings, was performed with music by Tudor, Fluorescent

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This lack of enthusiasm on my part was not helped by the fact that there had been a falling out between Rauschenberg and me toward the end of the six months ’64 world tour of Cunningham. My participation in the idea was the result of my being persuaded by David Tudor to be in it. He said that projects would become possible that would not otherwise be possible. My position then from the beginning was that of a somewhat unwilling guest. I did think that my relations with Rauschenberg might improve thereby, and, as a matter of fact, they have. I never had anything to do with the difficulties that developed between Fylkingen and Kluver. When Kluver discussed them with me, I reminded him that the Americans were guests of the Swedish, and that it was not proper for him to tell Fylkingen what to do. When the breach became established between Kluver and Fykingen, Fylkingen invited me to come to Stockholm as a lecturer. It is unfortunate that I was unable because of commitments to accept this invitation. When I acted as part of the New York Festival, it was because of the desire, on the one hand, to improve my relations with Rauschenberg, and, on the other, to not waste the efforts of the engineers which had long been in process. I refused at all times to have anything to do with publicity, fund-raising, or other directorial activities. This problem lingers on not only with you but here in America. The Kluver organization is very much in debt, something like $70,000. The very mention of Art and Technology makes people turn the other way. The fund-raising which I must do for the Cunningham Company is greatly jeopardized. I understand that Whitman and Fahlstrom have both separated themselves from the Kluver organization. Your letter states many grievances. If I showed it to Kluver, he would state his grievances. The situation is hopeless. As long as one keeps one’s mind on past actions. Do you know the story I sometimes tell? A woman who had lost her only child was sitting by the road weeping. A monk asked her why she was crying. Sound, quite possibly Tudor’s first composition, which called for the real-time manipulation of more than two hundred fluorescent lights controlled by some seventy-five switches. Linoleum may have been first performed on April 27, 1966, at the “Now” Festival in Washington, D.C., on a program that included the premiere of Cage’s Variations VI.

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She explained. He hit her over the head and said: There, that will give you something to cry about. I have asked my publishers (Wesleyan University Press) to send you a copy of my third text on world improvement. I will be happy if you publish it. If you are indeed angry with me, don’t feel in any way obliged.

To Leonard Bernstein January 9, 1967 | Cincinnati, Ohio Merce’s work continues to need support. A friend in France, Bernard Monnier,667 had this idea: to form a club of the Friends of Merce Cunningham, those joining agree to give each year at this time $100 to the Cunningham Dance Foundation (tax-exempt). He guarantees 30 members in France (where Merce recently won the prize for choreography at the Intl. Festival of Dance). I must find 70 elsewhere. Then wolf which approaches door of new studio Feb. and March 1 will not get in! Would you join? Hope so. If so, please send check to me here in Cincinnati (where I’m now composer-in-residence at the University) or to Stony Point.

To Adolph Weiss January 10, 1967 | Cincinnati, Ohio Dear Adolph, Enclosed is the article for my book as it stands.668 And a headnote. As you’ll see, I’ve subtracted a paragraph from my original letter to Mr. William George and then added a new one. 667. Bernard Monnier (b. 1928), French banker, at the time husband to Jacqueline (“Jackie”) Monnier (née Matisse; b. 1931), the first of three children of Alexina (“Teeny”) Duchamp and Pierre Matisse. Jackie would later become an artist, engaging in collaborations with Tudor and the American video artist Molly Davies. She would also be active with the Cunningham Dance Foundation, from 2004 to 2012 serving on its board of directors. 668. As this letter suggests, Cage meant for his response to the inquiry from William B. George on the subject of Adolph Weiss (see letter to William B. George, Feb. 15, 1965) to be included in his A Year from Monday (Middletown, CT: Wesleyan University Press, 1967), titled “Adolph Weiss: Reminiscences.” In response to Weiss’s earlier letter (see Cage letter, October 13, 1966), Cage revised his piece. In the end, it was not included.

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If the whole thing seems wrong to you, it doesn’t have to be used. But if you just have objections here and there, please indicate them; then we may arrive at a text which could be included the book. The plan of the book is this: A foreword; “Diary: How to Improve the World (You Will Only Make Matters Worse) 1965”; “Diary: Emma Lake Music Workshop” —this is an article on two weeks of teaching in northern Saskatchewan; “Seriously,” —an article on serial music; “Happy New Ears!” (articles on Japanese music); “Two Statements on Ives”; “Mosaic” —an article on Schoenberg; “Adolph Weiss: Reminiscences”; “Audience” (an article on changing attitudes toward hearing music); 2nd “Diary on World Improvement”; “26 Statements re Marcel Duchamp”; “Jasper Johns: Stories and Ideas”; “Joan Miro in the Third Person”; “8 Statements”: “Nam June Paik” (a young Korean composer who works with electronics); “Where Do We Go from Here? “ (an article on the dance); Juilliard Lecture (a lecture I gave there in 1952); “Lecture on Commitment”; “Rhythm, Etc.” (a general text on architecture and music); stories; “Talk I” (notes for an improvised talk); 3rd “Diary on World Improvement.” When I visited Mother recently, I told her I’d written 3 articles on how to improve the world. She said: John! How dare you! You should be ashamed; I’m surprised at you. Then I asked her whether she didn’t think, in view of world conditions, that things should be made better. She said: They certainly should; it only makes good sense. Mother’s getting along very well. She remains helpless, but her spirit has returned to its usual sunny character. She has adapted to the life and the people in the nursing home. This has been a great relief to me, because when she was unhappy there and wanted to go “home,” there was nothing I could do, for there was no home. Hope this finds you well.

To Karlheinz Stockhausen January 17, 1967 | Cincinnati, Ohio Oh! How beautiful! 669 Thank you. Grazie. They’re perfect. We’ll both have a beautiful new year. No, text of Die Reihe isn’t free. They ought to send me a permission to reprint 669. Cage had received Stockhausen’s contribution to the Notations collection, Notes from Tokyo (1967; working book, 7 pages, pencil, black, and color inks on paper).

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in my next book or they ought to assign copyright (latter preferable). I need a letter from U[niversal] E[ditions]. If you come anywhere near here, come here. We’ll have a lovely time.

To Richard Higgins670 January 17, 1967 | Cincinnati, Ohio At last! A Stockhausen. Very good, says yrs. truly. I’ve worked very hard to have a Varese. Please call Chou Wen-Chung671 see telephone book in village, and please as Miroglio’s request asks send Miroglio Wen Chung’s address. Miroglio = 6 rue Leclerc, Paris 16. Francisco Miroglio.672 I included letters and haven’t measured anything. Love to you both.

To Octavio and Marie-Joseph Paz February 1, 1967 | Cincinnati, Ohio The last pages of my book (A Year from Monday) are with the publishers. Are your circumstances such that we will indeed make our rendezvous? Je l’espère. Mine encroach, but I have our meeting in my engagement book for Monday, June 5. Will that be convenient for you? Merce and the dance company are performing outdoors at Philip Johnson’s673 home in Connecticut on June 3. Otherwise I would have said Mexico, June 1. Here I am overlooking the Ohio River waiting to hear from you. What a marvelous time we will have! 670. Richard (“Dick”) Higgins (1938–1998), American composer, poet, printer, and Fluxus artist, in 1963 founder of Something Else Press, which would publish intermedia texts and artworks by Fluxus artists. 671. Chou Wen-Chung (b. 1923), Chinese-American composer, student and lifelong friend of Edgar Varése, likely the first Chinese composer to introduce authentic oriental melo-rhythms into modern Western music. Chou Wen-chung used the I Ching to develop variable modes corresponding to its trigrams and hexagrams. 672. Likely Francis Miroglio (1924–2005), French composer who attended the summer courses in Darmstadt. The two may have met in Darmstadt or, later, through Calder or Miró, with whom Miroglio also worked. In 1965 Miroglio founded the contemporary music festival Nuits de la Fondation Maeght in Saint-Paul-de-Vence, where Cage and Cunningham appeared on August 1–7, 1966, in programs that included Cage’s Variations V. 673. Philip (Cortelyou) Johnson (1906–2005), American architect with whom Cage had a brief

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To Alison Higgins674 February 10, 1967 | Cincinnati, Ohio Will let yr. book live its own life until you suggest otherwise. Let’s adamantly refuse to have ms. collection suffer “selection.” There’s no such thing as choice ms. And not pinned up, and no tapes running. Concert yes to celebrate opening. (Satie Furniture I’d say.) + Kosugi!675 Let the audience fill in the gaps. I will write to Maxfield, Takehisa and Hendricks. See you March 2 or 4 or maybe before (Feb. 20–21 may be in NY).

To Philip Corner676 [February 1967] | Cincinnati, Ohio My dear Phil, Your very moving letter and days pass without my answering. Now news that Charlotte and Paik for other reasons [sic] in and out of jail.677 My thoughts sexual relationship in New York in the early 1930s. Johnson’s “Glass House,” built as his primary residency in 1949 in New Canaan, Connecticut, hosted a Merce Cunningham Dance Company program on June 3, 1967, that was covered enthusiastically by Vogue, Harper’s Bazaar, and Women’s Wear Daily. Billed as Event No. 5, it was an hour in length and accompanied by a score by Cage, performed by Cage, Ichiyanagi, Tudor, and Mumma, that was reputedly scored for automobile windshield wipers, doors, and engines, all amplified via contact microphones. As Carolyn Brown described it, “Sheer cacophony!” 674. Alison Knowles (b. 1933), American artist active in the Fluxus movement, married to Richard (“Dick”) Higgins, founder of Something Else Press. Together they worked with Cage to produce a catalog of the Notations collection, published in 1969. Alison Knowles also appears as Alison Higgins. 675. Takehisa Kosugi (b. 1938), Japanese composer and violinist, long associated with the Merce Cunningham Dance Company, in time succeeding Tudor as music director. A member of the Group Ongaku, in 1961 he and other members participated in a program organized by Ichiyanagi at the Sogetsu Art Center, the first-ever live electronic music concert in Japan; shortly thereafter, with Tudor, he was key to the rise of the use of live electronic music in programs given by the Cunningham Company. In 1994 he would receive the John Cage Award from the Foundation for Contemporary Arts. 676. Philip Corner (b. 1933), American composer, trombonist, and theorist. From 1967 to 1970, he taught at the New School in New York, assuming Cage’s course in experimental music after Richard Maxfield and Malcolm Goldstein. 677. On February 9, 1967, Charlotte Moorman achieved widespread notoriety for her performance of Paik’s Opera Sextronique at New York’s Filmmakers’ Cinematheque. Moorman was to perform movements on the cello in various states of nudity. During the first movement, she played Elegy by the French composer Jules Massenet in the dark while wearing a bikini adorned with blinking lights; for the second, International Lullaby by Max Mathews while wearing nothing but a black skirt.

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go in many directions, but why should they when long ago I made up my mind? I discovered early in the thirties, in New York City and in Carmel, California that radical social action had no use for my services, that to be of use I’d best stick to my guns, not theirs. Now, as you know, I see Fuller as guide —in these respects (war, politics, economics) —and he refuses to object to war until we solve problem leading up to it: making abundance and distributing it to all men. The thing is this will work; whereas the critical path (objection, protest, etc.) doesn’t. Point if you can to the modification (even) of government objectives by current critical action, not re negroes, but just re war. Object to social injustice re negroes, yes, for we’ve machines now and don’t need their muscles any more than we need our own. I believe there is work to be done —not time for critical diversions —and this work is urgent. I also believe that these protests simply accumulate virtue for those who engage in them. And virtue in whose eyes? This kind of “music” as you call it is in the Wolpe school and in that school it gets my vote, but I don’t vote in that school. You say in your letter: It happens in the mind (Mind?). This is what art has been and continues to do, and it was done not by protest but by composition and changing composition. Now we must change the global mind, and this can be done by changing society; furthermore, it is changing. Statistics can be given. An act such as yours in St. Pats678 was in my opinion not “positive,” for it had no way of knowing the minds of the people there, and they were there for reasons you have no way of knowing. Therefore, it was a critical action no less obstructive than that of the policemen. I sympathize with you, Jackson [Mac Low] and Malcolm [Goldstein] for I truly love you, but I refuse to be drawn into these uninventive, uncreative actions. All of you have work to do. If not music, poetry, then go to Fuller and ask him how you should spend your time usefully. These are not empty words. Do you not see that the problem is more serious than this war? That this one stopped, another would pop up? It is a disease which must be stopped fundamentally, not superficially. The problems are profound and require clear heads, and those heads will not be clear as long as they operate from the value-judgment level She was arrested mid-performance and charged with indecent exposure, though her penalty was later suspended; she thereafter was known nationwide as the “topless cellist.” For the court trial, Moorman and Paik restaged and filmed the first two movements of Opera Sextronique with the filmmaker Jud Yalkut, although the film was not screened in court. Following Moorman’s death, Paik made Topless Cellist (1995), a film about Moorman’s life and avant-garde performances. The Charlotte Moorman Archive is held at Northwestern University. 678. Cage refers to Corner’s participation in a protest against Cardinal Spellman’s public endorsement of U.S. involvement in the Vietnam War on January 22, 1967, during Mass at New York’s Saint Patrick’s Cathedral.

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(good-bad, true-false, etc.). As long as you remain swayed by your emotions (which are true, good, and have indeed moved me) you will feed your inability to do anything else than continue being so swayed. Or, if you insist on critical action, for heaven’s sake, employ mental attitudes formed by comedy rather than tragedy. This whole miserable unendurable power world is a game. If you’re not anything but a critic, then at least introduce humor into your attacks. Fuller’s address is Box 909, Carbondale, Illinois. If I can be of any help to you or the others anonymously, let me know.

To Philip Corner March 3, 1967 | Cincinnati, Ohio Dear Phil, Thank you for your letter. Your connecting your Hear Ye Hear Ye announcement with humor seems strange to me. If humor, then a neoclassical form of it. Study humor with Satie. This is more like nostalgia. There’s a dancer in NY with the same problem, Jimmy?,* who thinks referring to the past is a form of humor. My “condemning” tone comes from my Methodist upbringing. And has been revived in recent decades by the Huang-Po Doctrine (last page thereof —in English edition).679 Do write soon. Other day several of us got the notion that a visit on the part of a l[arge] no. of Russians and Americans to China wd. be a good thing. Americans to facilitate visit wd. give up citizenship becoming thru McL[uhan] Canadian citizens. Fulbright wd. choose which Americans to go, Chinese wd. say how many cd. visit. Bucky Fuller wd. announce visit to world. Billy K[luver]. wd. get Telstar, etc. I called Bucky; spoke to Anne Fuller; told her idea; said if Bucky thinks it’s good sense ask him to telephone me and we’ll go ahead. Bucky never called. My explanation: this was an unnecessary project on the bright side; yr. present interests are unnecessary projects on the dark side. Two stories for your perusal: Ramakrishna spent an afternoon explaining that everything is God. Afterward, one of his disciples entered the evening traffic in a euphoric state and barely escaped being crushed to death by an elephant. He ran back to his teacher 679. The Huang-Po Doctrine of University Mind (Buddhist Society, 1957). Properly, Huángbò Xīyùn, an influential Chinese master of Zen Buddhism during the Tang Dynasty.

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and asked, “Why do you say everything’s God when just now I was nearly killed by an elephant?” Ramakrishna said, “Tell me what happened.” When the disciple got to the point where he heard the voice of the elephant’s driver warning him several times to get out of the way, Ramakrishna interrupted: “The driver’s voice is also God.” I was arguing with Mother. I turned to Dad. He spoke. “Son John, your mother is always right, even when she’s wrong.” Your P.S. makes no clear sense to me. What are you saying? P.S. More to the point: What’s your Zip code number? *Waring680

To Cornelius Cardew March 8, 1967 | Cincinnati, Ohio Am very busy, but wd. be glad to write something for you if you think you really need it.681 If you decide I should, then I would be best able to do it if I have in front of me the “whole score”! Can’t give regards to David, since he’s in Calif. and doesn’t answer my letters. Heard you were fine in Urbana. Think of you and yr. work often and always you have my best wishes.

To Richard Higgins March 8, 1967 | Cincinnati, Ohio Gosh! What a lot of problems.682 Unfortunately, they’re worth solving. Back’s now relatively normal; concert has been given (and well). There was no 680. James Waring (1922–1975), American dancer, choreographer, writer, and teacher, an eccentric figure in the avant-garde dance world of New York in the late 1950s and early 1960s. He was one of the founders of the New York Poets Theatre. 681. Cardew wrote Cage asking him to write an introduction to a publication being considered by the American editor and publisher Ed Budowski (1932–1971) of Cardew’s Treatise (1964–1967), which comprises 193 pages of graphic notation that offer infinite possibilities for interpretation. Cardew provided Cage with the score, but after acknowledging his debt to Cage, he retracted his request. 682. The “problems” referenced here pertained to ongoing copyright issues surrounding the publication of composer’s manuscripts in Notations (New York: Something Else Press, 1969).

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leisure: just crawling around on floor. Suggest that on form sent to composers, publishers, estate, whatever, that place for them to refuse or permit use of letters written —the correspondence —be provided. Please consult the Foundation lawyer through Jill Jakes, 18 E. 8, JU 2-1470 or home 228-5216. Alison [Knowles] should call Judith Blinken and make contact with Sam Hunter at Jewish Museum (Hunters are close friends of mine, particularly Edys, his wife). I will contact London appraising man. [Gilbert] Chase should not reproduce any mss. But there should be remarks in yearbook. Thank you for letters to [C.  F.] Peters. Have asst. here so set; nice young lady looking for other job. have rec’d. beatles mss. and Webern ms!683 mUst corresPond With beatles before sending it on to yoU.

To Octavio Paz March 8, 1967 | Cincinnati, Ohio My worst fears confirmed! I am very unhappy that our project will not materialize to be together in Mexico in June. I have unfortunately little control over my engagements, and the only month I had left free was June. I called just now to see whether I was free in August, but I am not. So this was a dream I shall put with another lovely one: to walk for a month in the Himalayas with Gira (that was something that never took place nearly ten years ago!). Anyway, I love you both, am sorry to hear you’ll be in Spoleto, which, by the way, you ought to sabotage! I don’t know whether Merce has heard from the Bellas Artes.684 maybe We coUld meet With dUchamP in cadaqUes (Spain). he Will be there from jUly 1 —october 1 —approx. —When coUld yoU and marie be there?

683. The contribution representing Anton Webern was an untitled fragment (c. 1906, Bach transcription; one page, pencil on music paper); contributions from the Beatles included materials from Paul McCartney’s “The Word” (one page, watercolor and ink on paper) and “Eleanor Rigby” (one page, ink on ruled notebook paper), and John Lennon’s “I’m Only Sleeping” (one page, ink on manila envelope). 684. Cunningham had received a request for performances at the Teatro de Bellas Artes in Mexico. The result, in 1968, was a tour of both Mexico and South America by the Merce Cunningham Dance Company.

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To Yoko Ono March 10, 1967 | Cincinnati, Ohio It was very exciting to receive your letter and the Beatles mss. I have written to Paul McCartney, not to John Lennon (whom I have not met). I think my letter was clear, and I shall wait to see whether he will let me keep one or all or some of the mss. for the Foundation. There is a further complication which I told him about, that is, that a legal form Dick is sending out must be signed so as to protect the Press and the Foundation from suits for copyright infringement. At any rate I am deeply grateful to you for all you have done and send you love, best wishes and to Tony685 too.

To Yoko Ono March 10, 1967 | Cincinnati, Ohio Not interested in your bottoms project.686 Nor in Charlotte M[oorman]’s tops activities.687 This is not to [imply] anything more than that I’m not interested, just as I’m not interested in Stefan Wolpe’s Battle Piece,688 or any other projection of fixed ideas and feelings. And/or. Incl. La Monte Y[oung].

685. Tony Cox, American artist and filmmaker, Ono’s second husband and father of Ono’s daughter, Kyoko. 686. Reference is to Ono’s 1966 Fluxus film titled No. 4 but often referred to as simply “Bottoms” —a 5½-minute film consisting of a series of close-ups of human buttocks as subjects walk on a treadmill. 687. See note 677. In 1969 Moorman would also appear in TV Bra for Living Sculpture, another Paik/ Moorman collaboration in which small television receivers were attached to her breasts while she performed on the cello. 688. Wolpe’s Battle Piece (1932–1943; 1947) for piano, a cyclic antiwar set in seven movements which drew inspiration from Picasso’s Guernica.

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To Carlos Chavez689 March 13, 1967 | Cincinnati, Ohio Your manuscript arrived beautifully and is beautiful.690 Thank you very much. When the appraisal of the whole collection is made, I will send you a formal letter of tax-exemption for the gift. I wrote to Paz and discovered that he has accepted another engagement in June —in Spoleto, and he doesn’t plan to be in Mexico until August, but that month I’m already engaged. As a result, I may just stay at home in June, since I have little opportunity to be there, near Minna [Lederman] and Mell Daniel at Stony Point (New York). Next year I’ll have a residence post at the Univ. of Illinois. Soon you’ll receive a form to fill out for the publisher of this book on Notations to free him and the Foundation from copyright problems.

To Otto Luening March 18, 1967 | Cincinnati, Ohio Thank you for sending the Rorschach piece,691 which I recently saw in New York. I will certainly include it in both the book and the exhibitions of the collection unless you don’t for some reason want me to. I had, of course, wanted “your” work represented rather than your views of my work. However, you are in good company. Roberto Gerhard692 was also roused to similar satirical activity. 689. Carlos (Antonio de Padua) Chávez (y Ramírez) (1899–1978), Mexican composer, conductor, and founder of the Mexican Symphonic Orchestra. Cage’s interest in Chávez’s music dates back to his early interest in percussion; Chávez’s second symphony, Sinfonía india (1935–1936), uses native Yaqui percussion instruments. 690. Chávez contributed two manuscripts to the Notations project: Soli III (two, pages pencil on paper) and Toccata (printed Percussion II part). 691. Luening’s contribution to the Notations project was Rorschach Symphonic Sonata (four pages, pencil, ink, and red crayon on paper). The performance note reads “Every performer looks at score & plays what comes to mind . . . Can be for solo or symphony orchestra with chorus . . . can also be performed without performers, but it is extremely important that they identify themselves!!! Is it being performed without symphony orchestra, without string quartet, without solo piano? Without yours truly, Otto Luening. Dedicated to John Cage, that old necromancer.” 692. Roberto Gerhard (i Ottenwaelder) (1896–1970), Catalan composer and scholar whose contribution to the Notations project was a single page from his Concerto for Orchestra (1965; black and colored inks on music paper), on the reverse of which was written the semi-serious Claustrophilia (one page, black and colored inks on music paper), a divertimento for eight harps, four wireless receivers, and two monitors.

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To Mr. Larry Austin693 March 24, 1967 | Cincinnati, Ohio My mail is somewhat dislocated, but I’ve enjoyed very much seeing a copy of Source,694 which one of the students has here. I think you’ve done beautifully and everyone else is of the same opinion. Congratulations! I am, of course, pleased that you would like a piece of mine. David does have a piece from the fifties. I have, however, promised everything to Peters. However, Mr. Hinrichsen would surely agree to make some arrangement with you that would permit you to publish something. Address: 373 Park Avenue. South (C. F. Peters), New York, N.Y. 10016. Try to get the piece David has.

To Ben Johnston and Betty695 March 24, 1967 | Cincinnati, Ohio Thank you for the beautiful letter; sorry I’m obliged to answer so rushingly, but: I’m delighted to be at Illinois next year and will be glad to do the two things you mention: theatre event with Merce and Bob —if they agree —on Nov. 16 and panel with [William] Schuman and [Milton] Babbitt on 18th —if ! they ! agree !! AND IF there is no conflict with Cunningham events, rehearsals, etc. In general, my engagements must be cleared through Judith Blinken, 75 E. 55th St. NYC. I wish I could have gone to St. Louis for your Quintet for Groups, but I can’t leave here today or tomorrow. Morty was very fine here too and was full 693. Larry Austin (b. 1930), American composer best known for his electronic and computer music works and as co-founder of Source: Music of the Avant-Garde (see following note). He had great interest in Cage’s Williams Mix and later would use it as the basis of his own Williams [re]Mix[ed] (1997– 2000) for octophonic computer music system, released on his CD OCTO MIXES (EMF Media, 2002). 694. Source: Music of the Avant-Garde, also known as Source Magazine, an independent music and art magazine published between 1967 and 1973 by teachers and students of the University of California at Davis. Issues nos. 7 and 8 (combined and published as vol. 4, January and July, 1970) includes Cage’s “Plexigram IV” (from Not Wanting to Say Anything About Marcel) as well as coverage of Mewantemooseicday, an important event curated by Cage that took place on the University of California, Davis campus in 1969. See Source: Music of the Avant-Garde, 1966–1973 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2011), edited by Larry Austin, Douglas Kahn, and Nilendra Gurusinghe. 695. Ben Johnston (b. Benjamin Burwell Johnston Jr.; b. 1926), American composer important in the development of microtonal music. Cage and Johnston became close friends during Cage’s residency at the University of Illinois where Johnston was a member of the music faculty (1951–1986). Johnston was married to Betty Hall Johnston, co-recipient of this letter.

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of the pleasure of having been with you in Urbana. Where will I live? In the Student Union?

To Allan Kaprow April 9, 1967 | Cincinnati, Ohio Alison [Knowles] tells me of your gift to the Foundation collection of mss. that has been formed.696 Thank you very much. Merce gave me word of having been with you on a panel. My heart went out to you too over your great loss.697

To Jon Phetteplace698 May 1, 1967 | Cincinnati, Ohio Dear Jon Phetteplace, I have your various letters, and one from Mr. Walter Hinrichsen; also the one from Mr. Swarsenski to you. I am sending a copy of this letter to Mr. Hinrichsen so that he may know my correspondence with you and that he will acquaint others in the Peters Corporation of my views. My circumstances around 1960 were such that I could no longer afford either in terms of money or time to concern myself with the distribution of my musical works. I therefore looked for a publisher, and was very grateful to find Peters (Mr. Walter Hinrichsen) open to the project of making my work available to the public. Mr. Hinrichsen at the time was very concerned to have all of the work, and certain pieces which had been offered to other publishers were obtained 696. Kaprow’s contribution to the Notations project was four pages (colored inks on yellow ruled paper collaged onto cardboard) from his Self-Service (1966). 697. Cage refers to the tragic death of Nina Kaprow, two years old and the third child of Kaprow and his wife, Vaughan Rachel, who had been hit by a car in the suburban neighborhood of Glen Head, New York. The family moved to California soon after. 698. Jon Phetteplace (b. 1940), American musician and composer, a founding member of Musica Elettronica Viva. In a letter dated September 12, 1965, he informed Cage that for a concert of Cage’s works recently given in Rome, he had engaged “a friend” to make an Italian translation of Cage’s “Where Are We Going? And What Are We Doing?” (1960–1961). The program had been recorded and broadcast by R.A.I., with much success. Phetteplace expressed his desire to see further Italian translations of Cage’s performable text pieces, including 45' for a Speaker (1954). Hans Swarsenski, legal counsel for C. F. Peters, sent a lengthy certified letter to Phetteplace on April 4, 1967, asking him to cease and desist.

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from them in order that Peters would have everything. Thus, the Fontana Mix was obtained from Zerboni in Milan, and the publication and distribution of the tapes “Where Are We Going? And What Are We Doing?” were given by me to Peters. Wesleyan University Press, which has published this work in printed form, has left the copyright in my name. But the tapes and their publication I gave to Peters, thus being relieved of correspondence, etc., in connection with this work. I do not think that Peters wants in any way to discourage the performance of my music. What Peters does not want is that others should enter into its publication. In the case of such republication, translation, etc., they would surely expect to make special agreements. In connection with the publication by Something Else Press of the book Notations which will illustrate the work of some 275 composers who have given mss. to the collection I’ve been for two years forming to benefit the Foundation for Contemporary Performance Arts, I am now going through an extremely lengthy and tedious operation of getting legal permissions. As things now stand, it is necessary to take all these legal steps, if, that is, one doesn’t want one’s proper work threatened or made impossible. Years ago, for instance, I was careful to get legal permission from Salabert to perform the various works of Satie for the numerous Cunningham Dance Performances. Approached as friends, rather than as enemies, of people, of music, publishers generally will go out of their way to facilitate projects. Ignored, they become active legalistically. This is particularly true now, in view of the new media; magnetic tape, radio and TV broadasts. I do myself look forward to a society based on use rather than ownership. But that time has not yet fully arrived. For example, rather than owning a car, I lease one. But that has simply removed the fact of ownership to a company. Somewhat similarly, I have introduced in my work the principle of indeterminacy which opens a field of total involvement on the part of the performer. I have not, however, due to the circumstances mentioned above, meant by this action that I was unfaithful to my agreement with Peters. I am very grateful to you for all that you have done to further the life of my music, and I hope and believe that Peters will feel as you do. Certainly some amicable solution to the present difficulties can be found. This would best be done in person, and I note that you may be seeing Mr. Swarsenski in Rome. Now about your questions with regard to 59½ Seconds for a String Player.699 My 699. 59½ Seconds for a String Player (1953), for any four-stringed instrument, first performed in San Antonio on May 7, 1962. Its notation is spatial, with two centimeters equalling the metronome

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manuscripts are on transparent paper and though they are reproduced as best they can be now, they often include other marks than those I originally made as notations. This is particularly productive of difficulties in the case of graphic notation. And, at the moment, I don’t have a copy of the piece in front of me, so that I don’t know how to answer your question. At any rate, it certainly would not be three sounds on the same string at the same time. I would suggest your choosing one of them, if indeed you see three. Following the actual sound line may have been an attempt on my part to get around this difficulty of reproduction of graphic notation (imperfections, etc., in reproduction adding seemingly to the notations). My friendliest greetings and best wishes to you and the sincere desire that this difficulty between you and Peters to quickly resolved, [handwritten at bottom] Copy to Mr. Walter Hinrichsen

To Morton Feldman May 20, 1967 | Stony Point, New York Very sorry to hear about their not immediately taking on a book of yr. writings. Please think of it, as Bueno700 writes, as a postponement —awaiting further texts. I think, of course, that it should even be done now —and I wrote to Bueno saying that they cd. get around the number of words by increasing the size of type. I am getting more and more involved with thoughts about society —the situation is so depraved. Have been reading Thoreau —Civil Disobedience. Getting his Journals, the new 2-vol. set. I want somehow to examine the situation, the social one, as we did the musical one, to change it or change “my” part of it so that I can “listen” to my “life” without self-consciousness, i.e., moral embarrassment. [in the left margin] Have been reading Veblen too!701 indication given. This is one of the compositions emanating out of Cage’s grand project “The Ten Thousand Things” (1953–56). See note 612. 700. Jose de la Torre Bueno, a senior editor at Wesleyan University Press, who worked closely with Cage on the publication of A Year from Monday (Middletown CT: Wesleyan University Press, 1967). Bueno had seemingly considered a publication of Feldman’s writings. 701. Thorstein Veblen (b. Torsten Bunde Veblen; 1857–1929), American economist and sociologist, leader of the institutional economics movement. Publications of the period of interest to Cage included The Theory of the Leisure Class (New York: Mentor Books, 1961) and The Higher Learning in America (New York: Hill and Wang, 1965).

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To Trevor Winkfield June 7, 1967 | Stony Point, New York I am sick of fund-raising. I have to do so much of it for the Cunningham Dance Co. And ½ of my mail is requests from others for such activity. When I was younger I simply did the things that came to mind to be done —and found work to support me while I did it.

To Lowell Cross [Undated but likely June 7, 1967] | Stony Point, New York Dear Lowell: I am delighted that you are represented in the archive which I have built up for the benefit of the Foundation for Contemporary Performance Arts.702 It has shaped up beautifully and offers an excellent cross-section of what has been happening in the music world for the last quarter century, and various museums have also expressed an interest in showing the collection in toto. However, in connection with the archive, as you probably know, I am very anxious to issue a catalogue of it, both for its own sake and for use by museums in connections with their exhibitions. I would like to devote a full page to one of the pages of your above-mentioned work; but to do this the permission of the owner of the rights —you, the publisher, or whoever owns the copyright —is needed. Something Else Press, 160 Fifth Avenue, New York, N.Y. 10010, has agreed to publish the catalogue and to coordinate for the various museums. Depending how quickly the permissions come in, we hope to have the catalogue ready, under the title of Notations, in the next few months. Naturally a copy will be sent to each person included. In September the appraisal of the collection will be made. After that you will receive from the Foundation a letter of tax-exemption.703 I would appreciate very much your filling in the enclosed postcard, and 702. Cross’s contribution to the Notations project was 0.8 Century (1962; one page, ink on photostat of oscillograph). 703. Indeed, a valuation letter was forthcoming, dated November 3, 1967. Albi Rosenthal of Otto Haas, London, who had conducted appraisals of similar collections at Yale and Princeton Universities and the Library of Congress, valued Cross’s composition, like many others, at $25.

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sending it air mail to the Something Else Press. Under each illustration will be printed not only your name, the name of the work and the date but also your credit, “by permission of . . .” This will protect your interests. Furthermore, at the beginnng there will be a notice to the effect that anyone interested in performance of any piece must contact the owner of the rights, and that the works are included for purposes of illustration only. [handwritten at bottom] See you soon!

To Daniel Charles704 August 1967 | Stony Point, New York Dear M. Charles, I would like to cooperate with your plan for the early ’68 issue of Revue d’Esthétique. I am at present working on two texts: 1) the 4th part of the world improvement diaries —the 2nd appears in the current Paris Review; the other is a mosaic text on Notations which I am writing with Alison Knowles. Please let us try your putting questions to me and my answering in the manner of the reply to Boucoureikliev.705 Or: in my new book, A Year from Monday, handwriting with symbols is used to give the impression speech does. A tape exists of recent discussions. I might make a manuscript of this for you. (It is fairly elementary and didactic for I was talking to music students who had little experience.)

To Alan Solomon706 September 12, 1967 | Champaign, Illinois Jap suggested my getting in touch with you about the ms. collection which I’ve been 3 yrs. forming for the Foundation for Contemporary Performance 704. Daniel (Paul) Charles (1935–2008), French musician, musicologist, and philosopher. Between 1968 and 1998, he produced six issues of Revue d’Esthétique, including the special “John Cage” volumes, 13–15 (1989). The collaborative work taking shape in this letter is “Soixante Réponses à trente questions de Daniel Charles” (see Revue d’Esthétique, Musique Novelles 2, nos. 3–4, (1968): 9–21). His Pour les oiseaux, later co-authored with Cage and first published by Belfond (1976), would be published in English as For the Birds: John Cage in Conversation with Daniel Charles (London: Marion Boyers, 1981). 705. Properly, Boucourechliev. See notes 652 and 653. 706. Alan R. Solomon, art historian, museum director, and educator. After moving to New York

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Arts. 275 composers are represented and we have photo-positives of a page illustrating each one’s work. My thought has gradually developed to not sending the collection itself around, but carrousels with slides so that 4 walls cd. have changing ms. images. The 4 corners of a room have Satie’s Furniture Music (which is in collection) on tapes and a tape with verbal mosaic text by the composers. Jap said you’re arranging to distribute such materials for painting. Wd. you consider this material? You can see the collection itself at the home of Alison Knowles, 238 West 22nd St. Telephone 242-3292. Hope you’re interested.

To Patricia Coffin707 September 18, 1967 | Stony Point, New York My impression is that the Beatles’ place is not so much in the world of serious music as it is in the world of revolution. I think that serious musicians would do well to follow their example in this respect. That is, I think our proper business now —whether we’re “popular” or “serious” if we love mankind and the world he inhabits —is revolution. That’s what I have to say in response to your request. If you use it, please use all of it without changing it. If you have contact with McCartney or Lennon (sp.?), please let them know I still hope to hear from them regarding whether they’ll let me keep the mss. of theirs I have, and whether they’ll get permission for me to reproduce one page* in the book: Notations which I’m preparing for the Something Else Press. (They don’t answer my letters.) *say, of “The Yellow Submarine.”

City in the early 1960s, he undertook diverse curatorial and research projects related to contemporary American artists, including Johns and Rauschenberg. Cage may have thought that Solomon would be interested in an exhibition of scores from his Notations collection. 707. Patricia Coffin, long-time editor at Look whose article “Art Beat of the ’60s: The Beatles” appeared in the January 9, 1968 issue, complete with four original pop-art color pinups by Richard Avedon.

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To David Tudor September 20, 1967 | Champaign, Illinois Wish you were here. Looks like it may be interesting. Am taking a course with Jerry [Lejaren] Hiller, Mondays and Weds., getting a survey of computer music, etc. Spek708 will work with me on the thunderclap piece and is enthusiastic abt. it. In this connection, do we have the description of the mixer Mathews designed?709 And could you send me one of the pre-amps? This wd. help Spek in his designing of components to modulate the strings and vocal sounds. Also, if you have ideas abt. desirable changes in that mixer, now, I believe, is the chance to have them put in effect. Spek can enjoy making things, he said. Am also —believe it or not —working on the Mozart deal:710 bought a copy of Helmholtz711 today!

To Yoko Ono Pro712 September 23, 1967 | Stony Point, New York Good to hear from you. I doubt whether Karlheinz S[tockhausen] wd. be of any help to you, but you can certainly use my name by way of introduction. Hidalgo will have many good suggestions for you, I’m sure. We have worked long and consistently on all the problems connected with the book on Notations. Now much money has to be raised to subsidize it: $20,000! Tell Lennon and McCartney that I have the mss. you sent me from them, but I need to be assured that I can keep one of them, say, “The Yellow Submarine,” and that the proper person (copyright holder) should send me permission to print it in the book to be published by the Something Else Press. I now have 4 or 5 people trying to reach them. They never answered my letters. Toshi must now be in Europe. He is excellent, writing, performing, etc. And handsome son and beautiful wife. 708. Jaap (Jacob) Spek (1914–1998), Dutch composer, sound engineer, and philosopher. 709. Cage is referring to the mixer that Max Mathews designed for Variations V. 710. Cage is referring to early work on HPSCHD, which at this stage was making use of ideas drawn from the Musikalisches Würfelspiel, a musical dice game attributed to Mozart. 711. Hermann Helmholtz, On the Sensations of Tone (Mineola, NY: Dover, 1954). 712. Yoko Ono Productions, established in London for the management of Ono’s “Bottoms” project.

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To Alison Knowles September 25, 1967 | Champaign, Illinois Enclosed was sent to me from the Press for our book from Vostell. Guess what? A Fortran’s713 being prepared called iching! We’ll never have to toss another coin! Also, Hiller assures me that it yields something quite other than what is now called “random.” On Thursday after the machine’s worked for say 2 seconds, I’ll have God knows how many hexagrams —and they will have been translated into numbers! And the three tails changing to heads —you remember? —the machine will have done all that! Too!

To David Tudor October 17, 1967 | Champaign, Illinois Had a note from Charles Boone714 at Mills, so it’s settled for the 13th.715 Also here, they’re excited about the musical circus in the cow place.716 I thought that you and Gordon and Toshi and I cd. do as we did for the country shindig. If you have another idea, whistle. People will be all over the place making music all at once. I’ve suggested gathering it all together and enabling the public to manipulate mixers at some point. iching still doesn’t work in its new sub-routine role, but as Jerry says there are just a few bugs. Machine is working on new touches this very minute. Please let me know your whereabouts and plans; I have no clear idea what they are.

713. Derived from Formula Translating System, a general-purpose, imperative programming language especially suited to numeric computation. This was being used by Cage and Hiller in their work on Cage’s HPSCHD. 714. Charles Boone (b. 1939), American composer, active as a concert organizer in the San Francisco Bay Area with such groups as the Mills College Performing Group and Tape Music Center. 715. A performance of Cage’s Variations III (1962–1963) involving Cage, Tudor, Cross, Boone, and others, which would take place at Mills College in Oakland, California (May 13, 1968). 716. Cage is referring to his first Musicircus, scheduled to take place at the University of Illinois on November 17, 1967, the context being its three-day “University in Motion: Matrix for the Arts” festival and its venue being the university’s Livestock Pavilion. It would be preceded by an afternoon panel, “Theater and the University: Amusement or Art?” moderated by Dore Schary.

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To Harry Partch October 26, 1967 | Champaign, Illinois For Heaven’s sake, please don’t curse me!717 I’d never recover. I promise, of course, not to mention numbers again. But please let me know whether my excerpting and editing was acceptable to you, that is, whether we may use that statement. I haven’t the slightest intention of doing anything against your wishes. Please believe that you have my deepest gratitude for all that you have done, not just in these matters concerned with my requests, but for your work, all of it. The collection is by no means limited, calligraphically, aesthetically or in any other way. Your ms. in it is magnificent. Recently the collection was finally appraised, and shortly you will receive from the Foundation for Contemporary Performance Arts a formal letter giving tax-exemption. [handwritten, on the “reply” side of the Note-O-Gram, with an error indicating the University of Illinois return address] Ben Johnston I am often with. He is utterly devoted to you.

To Jon Phetteplace October 26, 1967 | Champaign, Illinois Richard Teitelbaum718 must have told you what pleasure I’m having reading Thoreau: every idea I’ve had is there. I needn’t have bothered thinking! It’s possible by reading him that I’ll get another “new” idea! It was very good to hear from you; I have all along been concerned that that copyright nonsense had lost me yr. friendship which I greatly value.719 The person to write to if you want permission to translate and publish translations of my work is Mr. Wil717. In his letter to Cage dated October 14, 1967, congratulating him on his Notations collection, Partch threatened to curse Cage if he mentioned the number 43 in reference to him: “[I]f you dare to mention that number 43 you are deliberately misrepresenting me. It is the one-half truth of the one-fourth factor. And I shall curse you.” Partch’s contribution to the project consisted of two discarded instrumental parts (verses 12 [“Spoils of War”] and 16 [“Castor and Pollux”]) from his And on the Seventh Day Petals Fell on Petaluma (1963–1966), both ink and red crayon on paper. 718. Richard Teitelbaum (b. 1939), American composer, keyboardist, and improviser, known for his performances involving live electronic music and synthesizers. He was a founding member of Musica Elettronica Viva. 719. See Cage’s letter to Phetteplace dated May 1, 1967. Cage wrote to Mr. Lockwood the same day, recommending him heartily and asking Lockwood to send him a copy of Empty Words.

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lard Lockwood, Director, Wesleyan University Press, 100 Riverview Center, Middletown, Conn. 06457. I’m asking him to send you a copy of my new book A Year from Monday.

To Yuji Takahashi720 November 12, 1967 | Champaign, Illinois Plan seems good. You can also amplify the timpani: if you have three of them, you need three cartridges; wires in them are taped to the heads of the timpani (short wires). Cartridges go to a mixer, etc. Call David Tudor (914) 947-1522 abt. the conducting machine. You cd. borrow it. You don’t need the conductor part in any case really. An element of indeterminacy (which I like) enters when the amplification and tone colors, controls, are independently performed: i.e., they should be in a state of flux. It is not necessary to use Cartridge Music for this; one cd. use some other means, or, indeed, one’s “head.” What computer are you speaking of?

To Carl Fernbach-Flarsheim721 November 24, 1967 | Champaign, Illinois Don’t blame you being bugged. However, mss. are not very valuable. You can get one of Satie’s for circa $30. Your gifts to the Foundation were among 70 (out of 275) to be valued at more than $100. (Congratulations!) Also my entire output of music, which is fairly large, and took me now 35 yrs. to produce, makes me circa $500/yr. Mr. Rosenthal works at this sort of thing every day and is a virtuoso. You should have seen him. Or ask Alison who did. He used neither ruler, machine or musical insts. But when he was finished, he was very tired. 720. Yuji Takahashi (b. 1938), Japanese composer and pianist, brother of the pianist Aki Takahashi (b. 1931), equally known for her interpretations of Cage’s works. Yuji had written to Cage for guidance in performing Atlas Eclipticalis with Winter Music, which he planned for the University of California, Los Angeles, on April 4, 1968. 721. Carl Fernbach-Flarsheim, New York–based artist, best known for his Boolean Image/Conceptual Typewriter (1970). His contribution to the Notations project included materials related to his undated Objects from Clouds, which included hinged wood, Plexiglas, and a wooden collage, along with bits of rope, paper receipts, and paper clips.

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To Daniel Charles November 27, 1967 | Champaign, Illinois Dear Mr. Charles, sixty ansWers to thirty-three qUestions by daniel charles is enclosed.722 Each answer is on a separate slip of paper. I suggest the following: using at least sixteen different sizes and sixteen different type-faces, let the printer make up my sixty texts and your thirty-three texts in (what we call) repro form. That is: a good copy which can then be used to prepare a page for photo-offset printing. Then prepare the pages in such a way that at least one question and at least one answer appear on a single page (using as many more, of course, of either or both as you wish). Let them be placed any way: even on angles, up-side down, vertically, etc. (so that the reader could move the pages around in order to read). Ask the printer to letter-space so that each text completes a rectangle. (A few but not many could be single lines.) Ask the printer whether he can deal with ink percentages, varying them. If he will, let me know how many variations he is willing to deal with (e.g., 10%, 20%, etc., to 100%), and I will send a directive. If he can proceed without directive and is willing to do so, let him. Likewise, if you wish a directive for the sizes and type-face variations, I will provide it. If you can get along without such a directive, do. You may number your questions if you wish (do not number my answers). But if the questions are numbered, don’t let that number series appear on the final page set-ups. That is, don’t start with 1, going to 2 etc. If you have any questions, simply let me know. I will be at the Edgebrook Dr. address after Dec. 10 until Dec. 23. Dec. 1–10 address c/o Cunningham Dance Foundation, 498 Third Ave., New York, N.Y. 10016. (Same address Dec. 23– Jan. 5) Returning to Champaign Jan. 6.

722. “Soixante Réponses à trente questions de Daniel Charles,” Revue d’Esthétique, Musique Novelles 2, nos. 3–4 (1968): 9–21. While Cage’s answers were written in response to Charles’s questions, their placement in the published text was determined by chance operations.

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To Udo Kasemets723 December 23, 1967 | Champaign, Illinois Glad you were able to make arrangements for March 5. I am pretty sure that David Tudor, Gordon Mumma,724 and David Behrman725 will collaborate. My situation is one of concentrating on the computer piece I’m doing, and hopefully it’ll be ready, at least in part, for Toronto. It uses as many tape machines as can be mustered (separate channels), up to 50. Also harpsichord. I’ll see Mumma and Behrman shortly in NY. Gordon will get in touch with you re technical matters. I don’t know what to say about finances. My fee is now out of reach, not to mention the others! Please discuss this matter with David; I’ll mention it to Gordon and the other David. Best you find out how much you can give us and then we deal with that.

To “Jerry and Liz and family” 726 Christmas 1967 | Location not indicated hoW to cUt someone in half and then PUt him back together again. 1. Place subject on flat surface (floor or table). 2. Cover with sheet. 3. Simulate cutting subject into two parts. 723. Udo Kasemets (1919–2014), Estonian-born Canadian composer, one of very few to adopt Cage’s chance methods. Earlier in 1967, he had organized a program at the Isaacs Gallery in Toronto under the auspices of Mixed Media Concerts, which included Cage’s Solo for Voice 2 with Fontana Mix as well as works by Mauricio Kagel and Pauline Oliveros. He later organized the premiere performance of Reunion on March 5, 1968, at the Ryerson Polytechnical Institute in Toronto. 724. Gordon Mumma (b. 1935), American composer well known for his work with electronics. He co-founded the Cooperative Studio for Electronic Music and the ONCE Festival, both in Ann Arbor, Michigan. From 1966 to 1974 he was a resident composer with the Merce Cunningham Dance Company and performed frequently alongside Cage and Tudor. In 2000 he would receive the John Cage Award from the Foundation for Contemporary Performance Arts. 725. David Behrman (b. 1937), American composer long associated with the Merce Cunningham Dance Company; with Ashley, Lucier, and Mumma, a co-founder of Sonic Arts Union in 1966. In 2004 he would receive the John Cage Award from the Foundation for Contemporary Arts. 726. Lejaren Hiller and family, at the time relocating to Buffalo, New York, where in 1968 Hiller officially joined the faculty of the University of Buffalo. He established there the first computer music facility and co-directed, with Lukas Foss, the celebrated Center of the Creative and Performing Arts.

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4. Lift one end of sheet back to other end revealing one half of subject. 5. Replace sheet. 6. Repeat Step 4 revealing other half of subject. Repeat Step 5. 7. Remove sheet showing subject to be undivided. hoW to make objects aPPear and disaPPear. 1. Cover yourself and objects with a sheet. 2. Place in front of you the object or objects you wish to make appear. 3. Bring sheet up, over and down behind object(s), so that they are visible. 4. Bring sheet up, over and down in front of object(s), so they are invisible. 5. Under cover, make any rearrangements (subtractions, substitutions, additions). 6. Repeat sequence 3–5 as many times as desired. 7. Come out from under. for Jerry and Liz and family (with background music)

To Richard G. Swift727 January 17, 1968 | Champaign, Illinois Thank you for your invitation to come to Davis in residence sometime in the year 1969–70.728 I would be delighted. And would choose, by personal preference, the Winter quarter (it is very cold here now —and the Winter is the period for fungi thereabouts I believe). But the time arrangements should be made through Mrs. Judith Blinken, address 75 E. 55, N.Y.C. 22, who takes care of such matters for me and for the Cunningham Dance Co. for whom I continue to perform. It may be difficult to get the period cleared of such commitments, since even this year is getting filled up. I hope something mutually satisfactory can be worked out.

727. Richard Swift (1927–2003), American composer and music theorist, at the time chairman of the Music Department at the University of California, Davis. 728. Cage would serve as artist-in-residence at the University of California, Davis, in the fall of 1969, where he numbered among his many activities a conducting course titled Music in Dialogue.

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To Virgil Thomson January 18, 1968 | Champaign, Illinois Thank you for the card with the Lippold church-piece on it. Best wishes to you too. I’m enjoying Urbana and may stay here another year. The piece I’m working on with computer is as —if not more —time-consuming as a long piece of music ever was. It’s a question of debugging. A tiny mistake —so tiny one would formerly have overlooked it —strikes a computer as a pea did the princess. Computer says: Fatal Error or Protect Violation. Last expression means: No trespassing. There are areas of the memory which belong to the computer itself and may not be invaded! Hope to see you soon. [handwritten along left side of letter] Will receive Thorne Music Fund Grant;729 you must have been instrumental in this. Thank you.

To Octavio Paz y Maria-Jose February 15, 1968 | Champaign, Illinois Took two translations!730 (I reply.) Love you both. It’s a poem. And your poem too is beautiful. I’ve made some suggestions. I realize that certain things are good in Spanish that are awkward in English, e.g., inversely or conversely. If you need more words than “or” suggest: On the other hand. I like the physicality of the hand. Seems we are going (the Cunningham Co.) to Mexico! July 18–25, then on 729. According to the June 26, 1969, issue of the Daily Illini, two composers on faculty at the University of Illinois received $10,000 fellowship grants from the Thorne Music Fund: John Cage and Kenneth Gaburo (1926–1993). 730. Referenced here is Paz’s poem, originally titled “Lectura de John Cage.” Upon receiving it, Cage asked Monique Fong Wust (see note 757) to translate it into English. At the same time, Paz asked a friend in Delhi, one G.  Aroul, to do the same. Having two translations in hand, and not wanting to hurt the feelings of either translator, Paz and Cage blended them together. Years later, Eliot Weinberger retranslated the poem as “Reading John Cage,” and it is this version that appears in the 1989 artist portfolio Reading John Cage by Octavio Paz and White on Blanco by John Cage, with Woodcuts and Monoprints by Ilse Schreiber-Noll. The portfolio consists of twenty-eight leaves, a mixture of single, double, and foldout sheets. Some of the pages were colored before letterpress. The whole is contained in a sepia linen traycase with inset woodcut portraits of Paz and Cage. For Fong Wust’s original translation, titled “On Reading John Cage,” see James Klosty, John Cage Was (Middletown, CT: Wesleyan University Press, 2014).

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to South America.731 Am now working with computer (!) at the Univ. of Illinois. Also reading Thoreau’s Journals (two million words). Have written new Diary and am working on next (5th one). Have almost no time. Is that the result of karma? I did what I cd. to cut my work loose. Why do people connect me with it?

To Tony Gnazzo February 16, 1968 | Champaign, Illinois On page 19 of the Peters catalog of my work is a note describing the piece732 briefly. It was reviewed by Lou Harrison in Modern Music March–April 1945, and by Virgil Thomson in the N.Y. Herald Tribune Jan. 22, 1945 (excerpts pgs. 54–55 in the catalog). The personal feelings mentioned in my note relate to pieces of the same years: Amores, The Perilous Night, She is Asleep. However, through Paul Bowles, I had met Fizdale and Gold, and the Book was written for them to play. It was their first NY appearance. I took each part as it was finished to them, frequently, after hearing them play it, doing some rewriting. Having given a program of percussion music at the Museum of Modern Art in ’43 (a program which rec’d. much notice), I was confident of being able to give a “successful” concert in NY. I therefore hired the hall of the New School, engaged Fizdale and Gold, acting, i.e., as my own impresario. But when the concert was given (a Sunday afternoon in the winter) there were only 50 people present to hear the music. Though I had no money, I raised what was necessary to pay the bills. Oliver Smith and John LaTouche733 in effect subsidized the concert. But when O. S. was writing out a check, he warned me that he would not do so on another occasion. The musical feelings mentioned in the feeling expression in the Peters catalog note are of course my own, but, at the time, I was, when the piano was not prepared, often playing the Mozart sonatas (the easy mvts.). In Harrison’s review, he says that I put the same mutes at the same points on the strings of 731. From late July through much of August, 1968, Cage would tour with the Merce Cunningham Dance Company under the auspices of Mexico’s Instituto Nacional de Bellas Artes, giving performances in Mexico City, Rio de Janeiro, Buenos Aires, and Caracas. 732. Cage’s A Book of Music (1944). See note 113. Gnazzo had been engaged by Elektra Records to write the liner notes for an upcoming recording. 733. Set designer Oliver Smith and lyricist John La Touche were likely known to Cage through their mutual friend, Paul Bowles. La Touche wrote the text for the film Works of Calder (1950), with music by Cage (Music for “Works of Calder”).

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each piano. This is a mistake. I put different mutes at the same points. You cd. check this with the music. My memory sometimes plays me tricks.

To C. Caspari734 February 29, 1968 | Champaign, Illinois For “anarchism” absence of constraints a) from without, as, for instance, in the use of utilities: telephone, water, etc. Present constraints are political and economic. The absence of constraints b) from within is an individual matter. Present such constraints are value judgments, habits, etc. Revolution: I think the old structure (political-economic) is dying. I think the new global way of living is beginning. I call this change revolution. I do not, as the Chinese do, wish to constrain people to give up their interest in the past. I think my activity in the arts is analogous to political activity. It gives an instance of how to change things radically. The past can enter into a “collage.” There are more and more people in the street. My activity is not necessary to the change of society. Though I think it is helpful. There are, I mean, many avenues. They are proliferating. Society will change due to countless events: technology, recovery from crises, education followed by unemployment, etc. I discuss these matters in my recent book A Year from Monday. Utopia is what we want. I think it will have its horrors as does the present situation. But they will be the result of individual acts rather than organized group actions. We will have that which is not war, as now, but murder, pure and simple. Utopia = general use and availability of utilities.

To Walter Hinrichsen March 3, 1968 | Buffalo, New York Dear Walter: There are a number of things I would like to discuss with you, but circumstances do not permit. I must travel and, when not traveling, work. So that I 734. Arthus C. Caspari (b. 1921), German writer and art critic.

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won’t be in New York except briefly around the 4th of April and then very busy (I have been made a member of the Institute of Arts and Letters735), and must give a private concert for the other members on that day. Also the final stages of the book on Notations is being reached, and I must look that over on that day or the 3rd, when we perform with the Cunningham Dance Company in Queensborough. 1. I hear from Kurt Michaelis736 that The Seasons is now prepared with parts for performance. I would like to pay for that. If you will have the bill sent to me in Illinois, a check will be forthcoming. 2. I have employed a copyist in Illinois who is working on the Solo for Piano from the Concert for Piano and Orchestra. When I return to Illinois, I will examine his work, and you should then shortly receive it. It would presumably then be ready for publication. 3. Yuji Takahashi is recording with Lukas Foss my Concerto for Prepared Piano and Chamber Orchestra here in Buffalo shortly. He would like to own the rental copy of the score which was sent him. Please let him do so and charge the cost of it to me. 4. On March 5 I am giving a performance in Toronto which will (has already) arouse much interest and activity. I call it Reunion.737 It is not a composition of mine, though it will include a new work of mine, 0'00" II,738 which when time permits I will prepare material for and send to you. While it is being performed, in the Toronto case with Marcel and Teeny Duchamp, works by David Tudor, David Behrman, Gordon Mumma, and Lowell Cross are also being performed. These are all superimposed and interrelated electronically so that the special nature of a single work is not distinguishable. Columbia Records will make a recording of this which they very likely will issue. I have referred them to you. Gordon Mumma has connections with bmi Canada; the others have no connections with publishers of music to my knowledge. 5. My new work for computer, hpschd, will be finished hopefully by June 15. As with Double Music (Cage-Harrison), this work is a collaboration with Le735. John Cage was elected a member of the National Institute of Arts and Letters on January 26, 1968. On May 3, 1978, he would be elected fellow of the American Academy. 736. Kurt Michaelis (1913–2005), music editor with C. F. Peters. 737. Reunion (1968), a concert of electronic music using sound systems activated by moves on an electrified chessboard constructed by Lowell Cross, March 5, 1968, at the Ryerson Polytechnical Institute in Toronto, under the auspices of the Sightsoundsystems Festival of Art and Technology. Chess players were Cage, Marcel Duchamp, and Teeny Duchamp; musicians were Behrman, Cross, Mumma, and Tudor. 738. Cage uses a shorthand here for his 0'00" (4'33" No. 2). See note 1006.

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jaren A. Hiller. Its physical character will be 50 tapes synthesized by computer + 7 solos written out for live performance on harpsichord (or keyboard when necessary). I would like to share all contracts regarding this piece 50-50 with Hiller. Nonesuch records through the Univ. of Illinois has already contracted to publish a recording. 3 of the solos will be played with 50 tapes. The soloists will be Antoinette Vischer (Swiss harpsichordist who commissioned the work),739 David Tudor, and probably Roger Shields or some other Illinois pianist. The seven solos are as follows: 1. Computer output transcribed. 2. The Dice Game (erroneously ascribed to Mozart) programmed by computer and transcribed. 3. The Dice Game played with regard to 7 additional pieces of Mozart (chosen by chance operations and regulated by same), keeping R and L hands together. 4. Same as 3, making R and L hands separate. 5. Same as 3 but with regard to Dice Game and 7 additional pieces, one each by Beethoven, Chopin, Schumann, Gottshalk, Ives, Schoenberg, and, with binary chance operation, Lejaren Hiller/John Cage. 6. Same as 5 but treated as in 4. 7. Free choice on part of harpsichordist to play any pieces of Mozart as though performing or as though practicing at home or combinations of these manners. 1–6 are being transcribed presently in Illinois by students whom I am employing. Changes of tempo bring about a complicated form of notation, since dotted half = 64 (Dice Game) is being taken as the norm: all other time relationships are being “translated” into this one. In the Nonesuch recording we would like to use 3 of the seven solos: (1) (David Tudor); (2) Antoinette Vischer; and (6) (Illinois pianist). My friendliest greetings to you and best wishes. Following the present tour, I return to Illinois where next year I will again be attached to the Center for Advanced Study and will do another new piece: Atlas Borealis with The Ten Thunderclaps (Joyce). This summer I’ll be with the Cunningham Co. at the University of Colorado and then on tour in South America. I will have a vacation at the beginning of Sept. in Cadaques, Spain, and then return to Illinois. I have been invited to Davis, California, as artist in residence for ¼ year 1969–1970. I think that’s all my news. I hope my projects don’t cause you too much trouble. 739. Antoinette Vischer (1909–1973), Swiss harpsichordist and advocate of contemporary music. She participated in the first performance of Cage’s HPSCHD (1967–69), of which she is the dedicatee.

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To Lowell Cross May 12, 1968 | Location not indicated Hi Pawn to Q4 = 32/1

To R. Murray Schafer740 May 17, 1968 | Champaign, Illinois “Music is sounds, sounds around us, whether we’re in or out of concert halls (minds changed; cf. Thoreau).” 741 Wd. enjoy coming again. Best to you.

To Minna Lederman and Mell Daniel July 26, 1968 | Hotel [Serrador?], Rio de Janeiro Dearest Minna + Mell, Meant to write to you immediately after saying good-bye to Conlon [Nancarrow] —but circumstances came between. It was a great pleasure to meet him and he said it was for him too —to meet David Tudor, Gordon Mumma, and me. We had a long period with him full of interesting conversation, food, and his new music in his home which is so well arranged for his work. Gordon took photographs as though he were Japanese and also recorded much of the music + conversation (he plans an article for Source magazine abt. Conlon’s work). Columbia Records is issuing Conlon’s music now: beginning with 3 of the studies which I suggested he title in Spanish. This use of his music seems 740. R. Murray Schafer (b. 1933), Canadian composer, music educator, and acoustic ecologist, well known for his book The Tuning of the World (New York: Random House, 1977). 741. For a booklet tentatively titled “Ear cleaning: Notes for an experimental music course,” Schafer circulated a one-page description to a variety of composers, asking each to provide a definition of music that might be used in the preface. The results finally appeared in Schaefer’s The Thinking Ear: Complete Writing on Music Education (Toronto: Arcana Editions, 1986).

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sufficient for him. In fact he seems quite content without any attention from others, although he said several times that our visit meant a great deal to him. When I arrived in Mexico I sent him a telegram, but it reached him tardily, so that when I went to sit in the audience at one of our performances in which I didn’t have to play, it happened that I sat next to him, He looked different than I had imagined. Grey (almost white) hair with goatee, quite elegant though casual. And a strange but friendly look in his eyes. I was sorry that we no longer have his piece Crises in repertoire (Viola Farber had difficulty with her Achilles tendon + no longer dances with us) + he was sorry too, for then and later he said how much he liked our work. I soon learned to believe anything he said because he also said very simply that he didn’t like certain things (parts of Silence —he prefers A Year from M[onday]) and Merce’s duet with Carolyn, Nightwandering.742 His new music is less related to popular styles than some of his earlier work. And very grand and astonishing. But it exists on single piano rolls (no copies) and in notations he makes afterwards, to be played on instruments with “prepared” hammers that are not available except in his home. We could not hear his music in N.Y. as he hears it in Mexico. And recordings (which satisfy him) don’t sound the same. He had special things for us to eat: cactus fruits and a mushroom which grows on corn that was entirely new for me.743 I cooked it, and it took abt. an hour and in the end tasted very much like corn. He has a very good car and seems well-to-do: he always insisted on paying for meals against our protests and never accepted complimentary tickets to the performances (which were costly: $8.00 or so). During one intermission he introduced me to Annette who was quite lively and a little wild looking, but also very friendly. I asked him to come with me to a luncheon in the home of Ramon Xirau744 (a friend of Octavio + editor of Dialogos), but he refused. And I was sorry when I spoke to young Mexican composers to find that they don’t take his work as important. Our trip to Rio took 20 hours! We were exhausted and fortunately don’t 742. Properly titled Night Wandering (1958), a duet choreographed by Cunningham for himself and Brown, with music by Bo Nilsson and stage decor and costumes by Nicholas Cernovich, first performed at the Kungl Teatern in Stockholm on October 4, 1958. 743. Huitlacoche, or more commonly, “corn smut,” a plant disease caused by a pathogenic fungus that causes smut on maize and teosinte. 744. Ramon Xirau (Subias) (b. 1924), Spanish-born Mexican poet, philosopher, and literary critic, best known in the English speaking world as co-author, with Erich Fromm, of The Nature of Man (New York: Macmillan, 1968).

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have to perform for a week. Rio is extraordinarily beautiful and our hotel window looks out on an unforgettable scene: Sugar Loaf, other mountains, water, hills, trees, constantly changing sky, busy traffic, etc. But a few days here and you learn of or experience difficulties. The “favelas” (mountain slums), impossibility of communication —telephones don’t work. Mail doesn’t proceed. Food’s expensive. Walking at night is dangerous, etc. Carvalho threatens to give a concert of my music but I hope it doesn’t happen: they are notoriously bad musicians. We performed (in Mexico) in the Bellas Artes (I think), had better audiences than Graham who preceded us and were found more interesting than her; the review said we were the best group the “Cultural Olympiad” had brought. Nancy Oakes745 gave an enormous party for us (270 people at dinner!) which was given full pages of photographs in the newspapers. P.S. Didn’t see Carlos C[havez]. Nancy Oakes wouldn’t invite him because he had refused some earlier invitation.

To Daniel Alpert746 September 27, 1968 | Champaign, Illinois Dear Dean Alpert: This is to inform you of the present state of hpschd begun a year ago by Lejaren Hiller and myself, assisted by Laetitia Snow,747 and to make a further request to the University Research Board for financial assistance. According to my records, $125 remains in crr Grad Music Cage 41-24-25-310, and if the present requests are approved may be transferred to the accounts requested below. When completed, hpschd will consist of 51 monaural tapes, 20' each 745. More fully, Nancy Oakes von Hoyningen-Huene (b. Nancy Oakes; 1924–2005), heiress, daughter of Sir Harry Oakes, a member of the Bahamas Legislative Council. A man of considerable wealth, Oakes was found bludgeoned to death outside his beachfront house near Nassau, which catapulted his daughter into a life of intrigue when her first husband, the Mauritian Count Alfred de Marigny, was arrested for the crime. Cunningham was a close confidante to Ms. Oakes, who, he claimed, proposed marriage to him on an almost annual basis (usually around Christmas) to her dying day. 746. Daniel Alpert, physics professor (1957–1987) and director (1972–1987) of the Center for Advanced Study at the University of Illinois. 747. Laetitia (Harrer) Snow (1933–1989), computer systems student, later expert, long associated with the Mitre Corporation in Virginia.

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(sound output from computer), and 7 harpsichord solos (transcription of computer printout), which material may be used in any amount and way to give a concert of an agreed-upon length. Nonesuch Records will issue the piece with Benjamin Johnston’s Microtonal String Quartet. Henmar Press (Peters Edition) will publish the materials. The work has attracted attention: the current issue of Source (Davis, California) contains information and interview concerning it; performances have been requested in Europe, Japan and this country. I hope for a first performance in the Assembly Hall here. The project has three stages: computer programming and output; production of tapes and manuscripts for the solos; implementation of performance. Computer programming and output. This was accomplished during the last University year and facilitated by the University Research Board’s appropriation which paid for the services of Laetitia Snow. During the summer, Lejaren Hiller and James Cuomo, with help from James Stroud (see expense item IA), obtained the sound-output at no computer expense, using Iliac II, the usefulness of which was maintained by a Mr. Krabbe —whom I have not met —of the Computer Science Laboratory who is (according to Herbert Brün (Director of the Studio for Experimental Music)) due a token fee (see below expense item IB). The day after the work was finished, August 31, the computer was no longer operable. Production of Tapes and Manuscripts of Solos. Tapes. The 51 computerproduced tapes are each in seven 3' sections preceded and followed by signals which must be removed. The spliced original is then used to make two masters. This work is being done by James Cuomo, James Stroud, and myself and will take approximately two months. Expenses of materials and labor are incurred (see below expense items IC). Finally, the 51 masters will be combined with 3 of the solos (to be recorded by David Tudor, Antoinette Vischer, and Roger Shields) for the Nonesuch Recording. Fees to these artists may not be covered by advance royalty payment from Nonesuch, but I am not requesting assistance for this expense. The recording will be accompanied by 20 versions of knobs, a program completed last year, which will permit a listener to manipulate a stereo playback in twenty different ways (altering volume, tone controls, and channels).748 748. Each of the ten thousand copies of HPSCHD first released by Nonesuch Records (1969) — with Cage’s work on side A and Ben Johnston’s String Quartet No.  2 (1964) on side B —included a unique printout of KNOBS, provided to enhance the listening experience of the LP. The printouts were executed on a CDC 6400 computer at SUNY Buffalo, and offered a series of randomly generated settings for volume as well as treble and bass for each channel at intervals of five seconds.

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IA

IB

IC

II

Manuscripts of Solos. Last spring, I employed several students (R.  Gavin Bryars, R. H. Howe, Allan Harlock, Larry Phifer) to assist in the transcription of computer printout for the seven Solos —this at a personal expense of approximately $2500. After completing Solo I during this summer (a copy of which accompanies this letter and which I would like returned), I discovered that except for Solo  II, transcribed by Allan Harlock, my confidence had been misplaced and funds misspent (unprofessional copying and many errors). I am currently proof-reading Solos III, V and VI, which need a great deal of work. IV has not been begun. III must be redone. V and VI are salvageable, but with much work. VII presents no serious problem, being simply a page of instructions. I am not requesting financial assistance with regard to the poor work already paid for, but I hope for such help in bringing this part of the project to a successful conclusion (see expense estimate II). On seeing Solo I, David Tudor suggested the designing of a pressure-sensitive amplitude control permitting 30–35 changes per second. I appealed to Hugh Le Caine749 of the National Research Council (Ottawa), and, free of charge, I have received two such devices, designed by Rene Farley, currently being tested by David Tudor. This will have a usefulness for electronic music generally and will bring to the harpsichord specifically characteristics never before possible. It will be operable manually or by foot. Performance. In order to begin this stage of the project, I am now appealing to the Board for the assistance outlined below (Expense items IA–C and II detailed above). I am pleased by this work. It seems to me both serious and surprising. I think that a maximum performance (using all 58 channels) in the Assembly Hall here would be a lively occasion. This will present problems not discussed here which will probably require industrial cooperation (amplifiers, loud-speakers, and tape recorders in quantity, plus technical assistance to set up the elaborate sound-system). cc: Mr. David Pines, Director, Center for Advanced Study

749. Hugh Le Caine (1914–1977), Canadian physicist, composer, and instrument builder. In 1937 he designed an electronic free reed organ, and, somewhat later, an electronic sackbut, now considered among the first synthesizers.

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To Lejaren Hiller September 29, 1968 | Champaign, Illinois We’re working on the tapes taking out the file signals. I’m of the opinion to preserve the other unprogrammed noises, i.e., echoes, so far one very soft gliss., and the astonishing sounds which come from scratches I’m told are on the digital tape. They have variety + in the end will modify the immediate understandability that results from harmoniousness (programming). At any rate, I vote for them. What do you say? Check enclosed. Spoke to Hinrichsen re copyright problems and have located a public domain copy of Dice Game at the Library of Congress which is being sent to me. I’ll then check it against ours and if necessary make changes in ms. Have done the same for Mozart, using the Kalmus Urtext which is not copyrighted. Today will research the rest incl. Schoenberg. Saw legal counsel here at University. We could in the end argue that the number of successive notes used, say, of Schoenberg, do not constitute infringement. But —with all the publicity re this piece, I’d rather have a clear case. The recording studio here is a mess. Was impossible last night to make a copy (recording) of the original without utterly transforming the sound (removal of overtones we thought). We have a good system going of making two protection takes, and then 2 people splice the original —taking out the signal clicks. The tapes are a great pleasure and I’m looking forward to the time of hearing them all together.

To Isaac Chocrón750 September 1968 | Cadaqués, Spain Dear Isaac, We are having a very busy vacation and your letters have added to the excitement. Merce’s foot is getting better. Nearly every day we go with friends to a different beach (by boat: sometimes fast, sometimes slow) (in the morning); then the social life begins: cocktails, lunches, dinners, interrupted by siestas and chess. There are two major irritants: a rock + roll band and a boat that 750. Isaac Chocrón (Serfaty) (1930–2011), Venezuelan playwright and translator. After studies at Columbia University, he directed the School of Arts at the Central University of Venezuela. Meeting by chance during the Merce Cunningham Dance Company’s tour in South America the previous month, he, Cage, and Cunningham became lasting friends.

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pumps water into the village reservoir. But we manage to sleep through them. We’ve told everyone about you and they’re all waiting for the curtain to go up. [Cunningham’s portion] We haven’t finished it (rum), and it is delicious. Big day yesterday —a trip to Figueras to have corduroy suits fitted by a gesturing tailor. Understanding media. Theatrical event one morning out window —a motor boat sank in 2 yds of water with 3 men in it shouting and waving. Spain and the North East. [Cage interjects] These are now the last days here —Merce goes to Paris + I to N.Y. (the dentist). [Cunningham resumes] We have just played a chess game! Naturally I won, after being given instructions. What a heady experience! Sea is beautiful today, like TV. New York will be like art nouveau —

To Gordon Mumma and Lewis Lloyd October 5, 1968 | Champaign, Illinois I think the concert idea is fine,751 but if you can still make a slight change, I’d suggest not calling it Homage since that isn’t what it is. It’s a concert of music by Conlon Nancarrow with other music which utilizes Nancarrow’s music in an electronic way. Some statement to this effect would be clear. E.g., Music by Nancarrow and transformations of it (by Gordon Mumma and David Tudor). It is questionable whether transformations of someone’s work constitute an homage. The person’s work is rather taken as a jumping off point. I have no objection to this and will be extremely interested to hear it and to particpate in what way you wish. I object to the political meaning of “homage”: lords and vassals. You might call the program Music by Nancarrow and for Nancarrow. Or Music by and for Nancarrow by Mumma and Tudor.

751. Mumma and Lloyd, under the auspices of the Cunningham Dance Foundation, Inc., were planning “Homage to Conlon Nancarrow,” a concert that would take place at New York’s Billy Rose Theatre on the afternoon of Saturday, January 18, 1969.

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To Richard Higgins November 20, 1968 | Champaign, Illinois Glad to hear you’re pleased with book. Am much looking forward to seeing it. Please send one air mail + and the others here (not Stony Point) by regular mail. I am literally bamboozled by work on hpschd (now have to extract all Ives + replace with Scriabin due to arrangements Presser (Philadelphia) insisted upon (copyright owner)). Have no time to make architecture and no idea re what is swimming on my surface. Projex 1752 sounds excellent. I’d like Notations to remain in English (except they cd. translate jacket, foreword + then in back pages give translation of mosaic text —don’t you like that idea?). Will send corrections if I see errors. Poor Mother hadn’t been herself for so long that I find myself feeling that her death753 was relief (for her, for me).

To Roger Reynolds754 November 27, 1968 | Champaign, Illinois HSCHD is out of the question, I am sorry. I have Music for Carillon No. 5 755 to propose and will send it to you separately. Perhaps Toshi would play it, either on an electronic carillon, or, if you don’t have one, on a piano prepared to sound bell-like and then each preparation connected by wire to contact microphone. 752. Higgins refers in his letter to Cage to the “Eddie Schlossberg & John McHale PROJEX 1 Book,” which he describes enthusiastically as being “somehow very practical as a mind-training system. Systems for re-designing the world, for eliminating all aphorisms, for extraordinary radio programs —all presented very logically and explicitly without any attempt at interpretation or evaluation, regardless of their feasibility, so that the reader is forced, somehow, to construct his own systems for evaluating the material he is confronted with.” Alison Knowles, long married to Higgins and queried on the subject, has no memory of this project. 753. Cage’s mother, Lucretia Cage (née Harvey), known familiarly as “Crete,” passed away on October 22, 1968 in West Orange, Essex, New Jersey. 754. See note 537. Reynolds wrote from Tokyo, where he was in residence, asking for a work and statement by Cage involving technology that he might include in a program he was producing titled “Cross Talk Intermedia.” 755. Music for Carillon No. 5 (1967), composed on a piece of plyboard, its notations following the grain of the wood. It was first performed on February 18, 1967, in Roanoke, Virginia, at Hollins College. The score comprises ten photographs of various pieces of plyboard whose structure determine the parameters normally indicated by conventional notation. The notation gives equal space for each of forty-seven bells.

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In this case use as many channels as you can muster, and if possible move the channels from speaker to speaker. The separate pieces of No. 5 should be separated by space between —say a space roughly the length of the pieces. Program note: One way to write music: study Duchamp. I enclosed a text which is the result of running through A Year from Monday and my Diary part 4, picking out and now and then adding appropriate remarks —appropriate I think to Art and Technology. I am sorry I had no time to make something fresher for you. As for a photo, please get one from Kuniharu or Joji: they took pictures while here in Urbana-Champaign. When you’re through with the music, please return to me. Otherwise please order one from Peters and have it sent to me.

To Teeny Duchamp [1969] | Location not indicated Dear Teeny, My typewriter’s on the blink + I’ve had many things to do which have kept me from writing. Barbara is fine + I often stay overnight at 28 W. 10. I’m trying to get the “lithos” 756 finished in order to come to Antoinette + you. Hope the new VW isn’t too big for those little roads. A new record has been made but it took two solid weeks of work + interrupted “litho” work. Now going to Drs. (arthritis + dentist) + the Dr. says I’m fine except for my illnesses! He advised staying flat on my back for 2 weeks! You can’t imagine what’s happening! I’m smoking less. Circa ¾ of a pack a day (i.e., 1 cig./hr) instead of 2½–3 packs a day! Imagine-ça! I’ll be a good influence! Arman came to dinner one night + won 2 or 3 games (I won the other one by some mistake of his).

756. Cage refers here to his Not Wanting to Say Anything About Marcel (1969), a group of ten related works comprising two lithographs (“A” and “B”) and eight sets of Plexigrams, created in homage to Duchamp, who had died on October 8, 1968, in Neuilly-sur-Seine, France.

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To Monique Fong Wust757 March 25, 1969 | Champaign, Illinois I like the style of your Miro translation very much.758 Do change 2nd statement so that it has 1 word less, and the last so that it has 10 more. In my notes on your typescripts, I have just put whatever came to mind; I don’t know French well, but sometimes have feelings, and I realize that there are problems which require solutions which you are finding. So for your letter, I’m just replying to the remarks I can: I mean over-all in the sense of wall-paper, something with no center of interest, no symmetry. Eclatement seems to me like fire-works. The string he dropped. I would prefer laisser tomber to faire tomber. Lâcher? If you include “Forerunners,” I would retranslate it if I were you. Why don’t you, if you wish, let me know which texts are in the book, and then I’ll know whether “Forerunners” is useful? Silence in a sense is a history of changing ideas. But your selection may not make that what it is in French. I don’t know. Wd. you be willing in translating the Diaries, to do as you did with Miro text: i.e., have the exact no. of words in French equal to those in English? I think it would make a very lively translation. As for Part IV, I want to change it somewhat, but will do that before too long, and send it on to you. And cd. you include more if I get it finished by when?

To Harvey Wheeler759 October 3, 1969 | Davis, California Dear Mr. Harvey Wheeler, Thank you for sending me your letter of Sept. 8 and the texts by you and Mr. Hutchins regarding the Center recorganization plans. 757. Monique Fong Wust (later, Monique Fong; b. 1926), member of the surrealist group in Paris, where she met Octavio Paz, who became her mentor. She befriended Duchamp upon her arrival in New York in 1951 and translated into French both Paz’s books on Duchamp and selections from Cage’s Silence and A Year from Monday. She would collaborate with Cage in what Cage called a “trans-creation” of portions of his ongoing Diary: How to Improve the World (You Will Only Make Matters Worse), published in French by Maurice Nadeau/Papyrus in 1983. 758. See note 730. 759. Harvey Wheeler, chairman of the Program Committee of the Center for the Study of Democratic Institutions, who wrote to Cage on the recommendation of Gunther Stent (1924–2008), a

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As I read the texts I made marks where I felt the most response. The first of these is on pg. 4 of Mr. Hutchins’ text at the end of the first paragraph. The intention is of course excellent: “to establish an international community of scholars.” But the word international is wrong —or, if not wrong, at least relevant to a previous social order which endures in a way that makes more + more people find it intolerable. Your intention, I assume, is to establish a world* community of scholars. By merely changing one word in that phrase one loses hopefully many of the thoughts relevant to power and divisiveness of power with which much of your good thinking (yours and Hutchins) is somehow concerned. (I was one day in Buckminster Fuller’s office when our conversation was interrupted by a telephone call to him. On the other end of the line, they were saying “international,” he was saying “world” + insisting upon it.) The use of the word international will lead to the thought of specialists coming together. The word “world” has led Fuller to the comprehensive design science he promotes. And to his working without recourse to political courses. Thus on page 6 of Mr. Hutchins’ text, the thought moves gently in the direction that technology is not entirely “good” if one wants “to make the world a decent habitation for mankind.” (And articles in the Center Magazine have warned of the dangers of letting technology freely develop: legal curbs have been suggested.) But implicit in the free development of technology is a change not only of individual mind, but of social mind also —in fact the general development of a world communituy such as you envisage. Fuller’s plans depend on technology. (The fears expressed in the Center Magazine have had to do for instance with the loss of privacy to technological advance, but surely in a tolerable society people will be together rather than, as they have cherished, alone.) On p. 7 Mr. Hutchins suggests association with younger people. This is a good idea. Can it go farther: to include the “family” we’ve lost by putting the old in homes, the children with baby sitters, the insane in asylums (another form of divisiveness —instead of international, perhaps “intergenerational” † )? It would be more “decent” to have all the ages together. And this is what happens at Bear Island in the Penobscot, which for long has been the home of all the Fullers, young and old. I have not seen the Tugwell Constitution,760 but I am not charmed by laws. molecular biologist at the University of California, whose The Coming of the Golden Age (Garden City, NJ: Natural History Press, 1969) Cage was reading at the time. Founded in 1959 by Robert M. Hutchins (1899–1977) as an influential “think tank,” the center’s goals included examining democratic institutions “by taking a multidisciplinary look at the state of the democratic world.” 760. The Tugwell Constitution was the work of Rexford Guy Tugwell (1891–1979), influential agri-

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On page 14 Mr. Hutchins says correctly “the problem now is literally how to save the world.” But his thoughts remain in the field of international law + agreements, rather than moving as Fuller’s do toward finding a solution by means of intelligence: relating world needs to world resources (these include intelligence). I am very much intersted in your remarks about the use of computers in relation to propositions + issues. Fuller would be too. I hope that your feeling that this is an urgent matter will return. Where you salute the “teacher” in each of us, Fuller would salute the “student,” ‡ the one whose head as he says is not yet full up. You may think that I am quibbling about words, but I for one feel most alive when I am not knowing rather than when I am “knowing” in such a way that I could teach. The new university, if Fuller’s dream obtains, will have no limits. It will not be in any special place. And the teachers, freed by technology, will return to their studies. And, referring to Thoreau’s thought that the best govt. is no gov’t. at all + that its absence will occur when men are ready for it —but ready or not, we are being readied. By technology. For instance: a university loses its boundary. Has sister universites. Is part of a consortium of universities. Includes a free university, etc.§ For instance again: Woodstock. A social situation alarming from a legal “law and order” point of view, insoluble from a music concert point of view. But it worked with or without music, with or without sufficient technology too —but I would think that it is actually because of the way technology is readying society that this remarkable apolitical sound event took place. P.S. As to “wisdom”: I think it will take care of itself. It cannot be, as you say, forced to exist. It is determined partly by the words that are used. Words are an ancient technology. I believe then that our illiterate (electronic) technology is very efficiently making us wise. Even as the different languages serve to divide people. Other means: TV, highway signs, film, bring them together. *“international” is a transition from “democratic” to “world.” Best not to stop along the way. † and interpsychosomatical! ‡ and I note, the Center is for “Studies.” § Ultimately becomes indistinct from society itself. What is envisaged is not a Veblen community of scholars separated like monks from the rest of society —but a society which works for any kind of living, i.e., studying.

cultural economist, early on part of Franklin D. Roosevelt’s “brain trust.” He was for a time a fellow at the Center for the Study of Democratic Institutions, for which he drafted a Constitution for the Newstates of America —that is, the Tugwell Constitution —wherein urban planning would become a new branch of the federal government.

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To Teeny Duchamp October 4, 1969 | Davis, California Dear Teeny, Your beautiful letter came but I didn’t have a minute until now to answer. The lithograph which I thought was finished became twice what it had been + another was made so that I was only a few hrs. in Stony Pt. to pack to go to Minnesota (where your letter reached me) and then there were as usual the round of tiring duties and performances. But I remembered what you said about Merce: there he was with a bad foot merely going through the motions but enjoying it so much that it was magnificent. Carolyn, too, had trouble: neck and shoulder. Merce is already far along in two new dances + has completed Canfield 761 so that it can be 1 hour long (though it doesn’t have to be —it can be performed in any part). One of the new w[or]ks will have music by Christian Wolff; the other is the Socrate of Satie of which I am making a 2 piano arrangement (I did the 1st mvt. in 1947) in collaboration with a grad. student at Illinois. I am now going over what he did in the summer. If you have a chance in N.Y., wd. you go to see what I did with Calvin Sumsion: the plexigrams + lithographs? They are at the Irwin Hollander Workshop, 8th floor, 195 Chrystie St. (which is a few blocks from Jap’s). Telephone 982-2800. I miss you and our games and wonder whether you will come to California and if so whether we can be together. I will have a phone tomorrow, both where I am living and at the school where I work on the Satie + teach each Tuesday afternoon. I haven’t done it yet + am somewhat concerned abt. it. On Oct. 14–16 I go to Oregon to lecture. Corvallis.762 There’s a marvelous restaurant in N.Y. (Sezchuan Taste on Chatham Square on the other side of the Bowery from most of Chinatown). California is much more like Hawaii than Minneapolis is. I’m getting more and more well-to-do! (Now have 2 checking accts. + 2 savings accts.) And they told me in Illinois that they’re going to refund some of the money I gave for hpschd. 761. Cunningham’s Canfield (1969), the title referring to a game of solitaire. Pauline Oliveros (see note 1111) composed the score, In Memoriam: NIKOLA TESLA, Cosmic Engineer, which wasn’t heard at the work’s New York premiere on April 15, 1969, due to a union dispute. Rather, the dancers performed to the ambient sounds of the Brooklyn Academy of Music Opera House. 762. On October 15, 1969, Cage would perform parts 3 and 4 from his Diary: How to Improve the World (You Will Only Make Matters Worse) at the Home Economic Auditorium in Corvallis, Oregon.

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I stopped in Illinois to see the Johnstons there on my way to Minnesota. Went mushrooming + found beauties. Played bridge + poker.

To Roland Jackson October 11, 1969 | Davis, California Dear Roland Jackson, Henry Cowell’s notation of clusters (hand, forearm, arm) on the keyb[oar]d goes as follows: ordinary sounded clusters are written with ordinary noteheads;* non-sounded clusters are written with diamonds (when other sounds are played with these latter, harmonies result). The notes written are the extreme ones of the cluster. If both black and white keys are to be used, the chromaticism of the cluster is indicated by putting two accidentals above the cluster notation, i.e., s n. If only the black notes are played, then only a s is written. If means silently depress all notes only the white, then only a natural. between B + Gs. (This entire work, Music of Changes, necessitates by the way your having a grand piano with 3 pedals. The sost[enuto] pedal is often required, but all this is notated.) The effect of writing silent notes (as said above) is harmonics. A note written is held until . The + above an q = stop (It has no value, i.e., the q loses its value because of the +. The reason the bar is only 8 cm instead of 10 is that C. F. Peters reduced the size of my original ms. Therefore, use the scale given at the beginning of the piece rather than an ordinary ruler. The timing should be as accurate as possible. The piece is in all respects notated. David Tudor translated the metre and changing tempi into actual seconds to the 4th decimal and played the piece with the aid of a chronometer. *with parallel vertical lines connecting them. If a ½ note, empty (open); if a ¼ note, etc., filled in (black).

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To Francis Leach763 February 5, 1970 | Stony Point, New York Dear Francis Leach, Thank you for your letter + review. If you look at my article in Silence called “Forerunners of Modern Music,” my use below of the words form, structure, + method will be clear, I hope. I now believe and have given many examples in music (since my Music of Changes) that chance (I-Ching) may provide not only method but structure + form too. In the case of 12-tone music, very often only method (note to note or procedure) is provided, structure being relatively conventional (as in much Schoenberg). I believe that chance operations constitute a thorough discipline, removing likes + dislikes of the ego + opening the music + the composer to the world around him whether musical or not. Your 2nd ? re spiritual forces controlling I-Ching: There is no split between body + spirit. We are one in and out. “Earth has no escape from Heaven.” I have not heard music in a dream or if so have not listened in a way to become interested in it. I hear things when they’re audible. Yes, music sometimes runs through my head without my willing it. This is one of the things that annoys me about music.

To James Klosty 764 May 2, 1970 | Stony Point, New York I love silence! Thank you for your thoughts. Have spoken to Jean. Hope this comes about. 763. Francis Leach, American musician, music theorist, and radio producer. At the time, Leach was conducting research into “music imagined, but not heard.” See Francis Leach, “Inner Music,” Dreamworks: An Interdisciplinary Quarterly 2, no. 4 (Summer 1982): 315–317. 764. James Klosty (b. 1943), American photographer, actor, singer, and organic gardener, longtime partner of Cunningham dancer Carolyn Brown. Klosty’s remarkable photographs of both Cunningham and Cage are the exclusive subject of Merce Cunningham (Saturday Review Press, 1975), which included Cage’s “Where Are We Eating? And What Are We Eating? (38 Variations on a Theme by Alison Knowles)” (1975), and John Cage Was (Middletown, CT: Wesleyan University Press, 2014). Although his memory is vague, Klosty may have written to Cage about his pleasure in experiencing Cunningham’s Canfield at the Brooklyn Academy of Music without music (see note 761).

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To Monique Fong Wust July 25, 1970 | Location not indicated Dear Monique, Saw the book + I’m very pleased. Aren’t you? Do whatever French obliges you to do to create a discipline, so that your translation is original —not just [i.e., translation]. I’ve just finished “36 Acrostics re + not re Duchamp.” 765 They spell his name. And will be published in Japanese in which acrostics are impossible. So I suggested as to you to find a discipline suitable to the language + then accept certain deviations from my meaning, making something else more or less in the same spirit. The no. of characters might do it but could be rather finicky. I’d enjoy seeing what you do. Will be in Stony Point Aug. 3 + on. (Japan for a wk. in Sept.; Paris for a wk. in Oct.)

To Daniel Charles August 25, 1970 | C.F. Peters Corporation, New York, N.Y. 10016 Dear Daniel Charles, About the Song Books (Solos for Voice 3–92):766 I enclose a Xerox of the general directions. The singers prepare their parts independently and do not react to one another. The composing means are: the I-Ching is used, also star maps, imperfections in paper, continuations of my Aria, Solo for Voice  1, and also of the more recent Cheap Imitation. I am also writing many of the texts, sometimes transforming through pulverization means texts already written by myself or others. Shortly after the 5th of September, Simone Rist in Paris should have a copy of some of the work.

765. “36 Acrostics Re and Not Re Marcel Duchamp” (1970), sometimes referred to as “36 Mesostics Re and Not Re Marcel Duchamp,” published in M: Writings ’67–’72 (Middletown, CT: Wesleyan University Press, 1973). 766. Cage’s Song Books (Solos for Voice 3–92) (1970), a virtuosic work for voice, with each solo belonging to one of the following categories: 1) song, 2) song using electronics, 3) theater, 4) theater using electronics. Superimpositions are permitted. Each solo is relevant or irrelevant to the subject “We connect Satie with Thoreau.” The work is dedicated to both Cathy Berberian and Simone Rist, who gave the premiere performance in Paris (Oct. 26, 1970).

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I could not find notices of the first Musicircus (November 1967 in ChampaignUrbana, Illinois). I enclose those about the Minnesota one last spring.767

To Minna Lederman December 4, 1970 | Location not indicated The thought that I have lost your friendship which has given me so much pleasure for so long now has made me unhappy, sleepless, and it made my work in Philadelphia, which began the morning after Mell’s beautiful opening, difficult to carry through with any spirit. Please let me apologize for the two things you held against me, though I am afraid that you have lost interest or confidence in my feelings and may be holding still more things against me. About plants: I have in recent years thought that had I my life to live over again I would be a botanist. But it would be a hunting one instead of a gardening one. The work I am doing, music, writing, now requires so much of my time (+ especially in the last months) that my thoughtless remark over the ’phone was equivalent to a need for less to do and take care of rather than more. But just now in Philadelphia walking from one appointment to another, I came to a very beautiful plant shop and inside + centrally placed in the window were cacti (which you had offered + Mell had prepared), some flowering, some not, all glorious. I am ashamed + sorry that owing to other matters I spoke so slightingly (and in speaking to you so thoughtlessly, for you have more than once told me how for you our friendship began: the trip to the Gardens). As for my attitude backstage: the many problems of the Dance Co., interpersonal, financial, not to mention the work and rehearsals + performances + the eating and living conditions, are so constant in my mind that after a long day I am exhausted. For Merce it is another matter. He blossoms, so to speak, because of his appetite for dancing. I have no such feelings about performing + I have recently been hoping to leave the Co. But I won’t. Though what I do for it in the way of actual performing almost any other person could do. It is in no sense invigorating for me. I will become free of that responsibility when Merce decides not to dance. This season, off stage, one of his knees troubled him so much that he was hob767. Cage refers to the Musicircus that took place in Minneapolis on April 11, 1970, at the Macalester Field House, sponsored by the Walker Art Center and the Macalester College Music Department. Included in this performance of the work was “AMFMTV,” comprising clusters of televisions and radios tuned to different channels.

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bling. My concern for that + for Carolyn (she had a muscle cramped for days so that she asked Merce if she could be omitted one evening [He said: Fake it; + she did her work as beautifully as ever]).—All this exhausts me and may explain for you my seeming unfriendliness backstage. Again, if you can, forgive me. I thought Mell’s show was beautiful, and I am glad that it was also successful in the sense of pictures being sold. Marilyn Fischback768 was delighted as you know + I think will be a very good dealer for Mell. I will not write or call again unless I hear from you, which I hope I will. You may, however, have more serious complaints and may not wish to continue our being together. I will miss you both deeply, more deeply than I can say. Personally, I am worried that I did nothing energetically to ensure the success (or further it) of Mell’s show. I wrote a text which needed completion by Elaine, but she did not find that necessary having faith that the work itself was sufficient for its own success. I found her faith convincing and so did not push through. I would certainly have sent notes with announcements had I received any announcements for that purpose. But none was sent to me. I go as you know in my taste for art to extremes. Thus I prefer the extremes in Mell’s work: of symmetry and non-symmetry. He now uses for each what I would describe as the same method. I would myself like to see that method apart from the question: Symmetry? (By method, I mean the minute activity within a shape, whatever shape.)

To Jean Rigg769 December 4, 1970 | Stony Point, New York Here is check to cover railway ticket (19.30), Virginia % (50.00), + Philadelphia % (200), i.e., $269.30. About Miro + my appealing to him for a painting: I cannot do it unless we ask him to do what he wants which is to do a décor. I just called up Jap and he said, Go ahead, but it wouldn’t be interesting. In other words, we are in danger of our need for money determining our aesthetic

768. Properly, Marilyn Fischbach, founder of the Fischbach Gallery in Manhattan, which mounted an exhibition of Mell Daniel’s work in 1970 as well as a memorial exhibition in 1976. 769. Jean Rigg (1938–2015), from 1968 to 1976 manager of the Merce Cunningham Dance Company who long served on the Cunningham Dance Foundation’s board of directors. She was a close friend and advisor to Tudor.

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choices and clearly it must not. Therefor, I will not approach Miro; I would just blush. DeMenil770 is another matter + I will take steps in that direction.

To Hans Otte February 11, 1971 | 107 Bank Street, New York Thank you for your letter and all that you are doing. However, circumstances are greatly changed: David Tudor is now a composer in his own right, and he concentrates beautifully on circuitry both audio and video, rarely touching the piano. We are the best of friends, but we don’t give concerts together as we did formerly. Recently (Oct ’70) I gave performances in Paris without him and I was not happy with the way the music was played. For my own part, I devote myself to composition (currently the orchestration of Cheap Imitation) and to my writing (currently experiments away from syntax). I therefore give as few concerts and accept as few engagements as possible. I am not as well physically as I was ten years ago. I still travel with the Cunningham Dance Co. and so does David Tudor. What I now prefer to concerts are events uninterrupted by intermissions, etc. hpschd was, for example, a 5-hr. event with 100 films, 8000 slides, 52 tape machines, 7 harpsichords. (It was very expensive to produce.) The audience free to move, go in or out. This becomes a social and architectural problem which can fail (as Musicircus in Paris771 did) if there is not enough room and if the performers do not sympathize with my notion that many musics may be heard at one + the same time. It seems to me that many still wish to have the public’s attention focused on one thing at a time. Christian Wolff may be reached through the music dept. of Dartmouth College, Hanover, New Hampshire. 770. The de Menil family, justly referred to as the Medici of Modern Art. At the helm were parents Dominique (1908–1997) and John (1904–1973), whose five children —Christophe, Adelaide, George, François, and Philippa —followed in the family tradition of honoring and collecting modern art after the death of their parents. 771. As Cage recounts in a letter to Eleanor Hakim dated December 23, 1979, several things disturbed him about the Paris event: the audience was charged an admission fee, the space was too small, and certain performers stopped playing when adjacent performers got too loud. The Paris Musicircus took place on October 27, 1970, at Les Halles, under the auspices of the Semaines Musicales Internationales de Paris. It was Europe’s first Musicircus, and by contemporary accounts a great success, attended by some five thousand people.

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To Minna Lederman 17 May 1971 | Written aboard a 747 en route to San Francisco Have been very involved in work that is fascinating to me (like potato chips —can’t stop) and so haven’t called . . . The work I’m doing is 62 acrostics on Merce’s name.772 They don’t use syntax (simply syllables + words, chancedetermined, from his book + 32 others he chose from his library. Then, using 800 different type faces or sizes, I’m setting them myself: (using instant lettering —a transfer process —so that the letters touch one another both vertically + horizontally). This turns each acrostic into a filagree which resembles a dancing figure (due to the length of Merce’s name). The dots on the j’s and i’s presented a problem which I solved by letting the dots be superimposed on what had already been a set. I had been asked to write about Merce for a book of photographs that will be published. And so got involved unexpectedly in this. Had a terrible time up at Brandeis —my back was out of whack . . . It is still poor, but I’m at least cautious.

To Lukas Foss May 26, 1971 | 107 Bank Street, New York Yes, I plan that the Cheap Imitation will fulfill the commission.773 But, though the work is finished, the copying774 remains: a year, at least, I imagine. I don’t think anyone else can do the work because it is from a kind of shorthand. I would be willing to try the Devil again775 but not having any technical 772. Sixty-two Mesostics re Merce Cunningham (1971), its chance-determined texts (syllables and wordmixes) taken from Merce Cunningham, Changes: Notes on Choreography (New York: Something Else Press, 1968) and thirty-two other books selected by Cunningham from his library. Cage’s instant letraset (for the dry transfer of text) made use of a gamut of approximately eight hundred different type faces and/or sizes. 773. Reference to the Koussevitzky Foundation commission (see note 627). 774. Music copying, usually having to do with readying a score for performance and/or publication. This can involve the creation of parts for individual players from a master score. 775. Cage’s original performance took place in “A Festival of Stravinsky: His Heritage and Legacy,” a program given on July 15, 1966, by the New York Philharmonic that included Stravinsky’s L’Histoire du soldat with the following cast: Copland (narrator), Cage (the devil), and Carter (the soldier), conducted by Lukas Foss. Cage later recalled that everyone felt he was well cast.

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control, I am not sure that what I wd. do wd. be honorable to S[travinsky]’s memory. If I do it, it should certainly be with Aaron + Elliott, for otherwise there wd. be an implicit criticism which I don’t think is due. Cd. you send me the text (or do I have it as amended?)? Then you cd. hear it in advance + decide whether or not to proceed. Unfortunately will be in Californa in July, here in August.

To Eva Smercheck776 September 15, 1971 | 107 Bank Street, New York For your auction sale I am enclosing your envelope on which I made a composition for TV. This envelope together with your letter + this one of mine will constitute a ms. to be published by the Henmar Press of C. F. Peters, NYC.

To Norman O. Brown September 21, 1971 | Location not indicated Dear Nobby, It has taken me these days to read Ellul.777 (I read all.) At first I enjoyed the “style” but later it seemed this very quality was turning the book into a work of art: a structured (not unpredictably changing) one that the author would perfect (make water-tight). Then I found the “taste” bitter, and the word sarcasm came to mind: “tearing of flesh, biting the lips in rage, a bitter tone.” Toward the end, I was so disgusted that I thought of putting the book aside, unfinished, but I continued, finally reading this cursory discussion of rebels (Breton, Miller) + 776. Eva Smercheck, of the Caledonian Women’s Club in Caledonia, Michigan, who wrote Cage asking for something that might be sold at auction to benefit developmentally disabled children. Cage sent the score for the work he was about to realize, WGBH-TV for composers and technicians (1971), written on the back of the envelope that contained her original letter. The published score consists of three leaves: the letter to Cage from Smercheck, a fax leaf of Cage’s reply to Smercheck, and directions for the realization of the film, written on a stamped envelope. For the studio recording at WGBH in Cambridge, Massachusetts, Cage is reported to have continued his work on his orchestral version of Cheap Imitation. 777. Jacques Ellul (1912–1994), French philosopher, law professor, lay theologian, and Christian anarchist. It is probable that Cage was reading Ellul’s The Technological Society, translated by John Wilkinson (New York: Knopf, 1964).

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his incorporation of their work in his thesis (or shall we say his technic?). (I had already read the epilogue.) Nothing in the book partakes of insight. Nothing corresponds to the insights of artists as I know them or sometimes have them. (I am not “put off” by his discussions here + there of contemporary art or love of nature, but I find these singularly imperceptive.) I think that it is the dualistic nature of Christian thought (Ellul, not Eckhart) that may oblige a workman to strive toward (+ into) unity. This is of course easier if he has only one idea. Ellul’s few remarks about Buddhism and his sarcastic references to paradise on earth do not put me off. He would not accept the statement, Nirvana is Samsara. Nor would he Bucky’s vision of making the world a success for any kind of living by solving the problem of the interrelatedness of men and nature. Ellul speaks of the “meaninglessness” of life under technique.778 Apparently, for him, life becomes meaningful after death in heaven. I prefer: Now that I’m enlightened, I’m just as miserable as ever (Zen). I also prefer the Fuller + McLuhan view that technique is extension of man to the Ellul view that it is outside, separated + intent on destruction. Electronics (central nervous system extended) permits the notion of a world that could come to its senses, just as individuals have been known to do. Ellul’s family looking at TV has no conversation. They are in the presence (McLuhan) of everything at once. They are with the 3rd parent (Fuller) thinking world, developing the revolutionary spirit. Mother, Dad + I looking at TV were looking at my father’s own projection machine that he’d put together in the basement. We conversed at the same time. (I notice people do this too when they listen to records of music.) Ellul’s discussion of time (the clock) + its horrors is not my experience of music. It was the old music with its counts of 2, 3, + 4 that was so constraining. Our rhythms are now aperiodic + it was by means of the clock that they were able to become so. Aperiodicity includes periodicity; it doesn’t work the other way around (ambient sound). Ellul’s view of art as self-expression is heretical (see Transformation of Nature in Art, Coomaraswamy). He also extends this erroneous view of the artist’s function to the “fullfilled life” of every man. (He should be proud of his work, of himself, etc. I do not believe it. Art is self-alteration, conduces to fluency 778. Technique, or more broadly technology. The principal themes in Ellul’s writings were propaganda, the impact of technology on society, and the interaction between religion and politics.

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with rest of creation; we become poorer in spirit, less ego-ridden. Pride is of no good use.) Non-dualistic thought may include dualistic thought + not vice versa. Accepting everything (each being, sentient or non-sentient, is the Buddha), I can also reject the poisonous or that which won’t burn (the metal Buddhas). Therefore I prefer fresh strawberries to rotten ones + wild ones to cultivated ones + Fuller to Ellul (I even got some insights out of Toffler779): Ellul is negative + deadening. Fuller is affirmative + enlivening. I do not find Ellul’s description of life under technique faithful to my experience: I leave the house to do some shopping; I go to the bus, put in 30¢. Before it leaves, I get off (having remembered that I forgot to bring my wallet). The driver is unable due to the construction of his coin-box to return my 30¢. I return to the house, get the wallet, another bus, put in another 30¢. Meanwhile I’ve been busy (hearing, seeing, having thoughts). The only intrusion of technique was the inflexibility of the coin-box. Ellul wd. say that I had the entire time been swallowed up in the urban environment, that I was as good as dead. But through art + music, my friends + work, and now yr. last letter and the Technological Society, I go on without a dull moment. P.S. (Morning after) Now that it is read, I find I enjoyed it! And this brought me to rereading here and there. E.g., his American intro. listing 3 “alternatives”: war, revolution + God. Did you say in your letter (I have misplaced or loaned it) that there’s another book: The Meaning of the City? 780 I asked for it but bookstore knew nothing of it.

To Isaac Chocrón October 13, 1971 | 107 Bank Street, New York I had a strange experience in Milwaukee. I was invited by the Center for 20th-Century Studies to stay at the Univ. of Wisconsin for a week and talk to

779. Alvin Toffler (b. 1928), American writer and futurist, well known for his thoughts on the digital revolution, communication revolution, and technological singularity. Cage is likely referring here to the bestseller Future Shock (New York: Random House, 1970). 780. Ellul’s latest book, The Meaning of the City (Grand Rapids, MI: Wm. B. Eerdmans, 1970), perhaps too recently published to be on the shelves of Cage’s local bookseller.

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various classes. One turned out to be a late afternoon coffee party with a paper read by a teacher on the meaning of Flamenco. Duende (?) + all that. I was then asked to discuss the paper! (It was a class in Hispanic traditions in lit., music + dance.) I felt that I had little to say to them, but somehow it turned out well. And of course I told the lady in charge (Prof. Marguerite Suarez-Murias) how much I love you + your work. A few days later saw 150,000 Canadian geese + heard them honk out of unison. Have finished the orchestration of Cheap Imitation! (Took 2 years nearly.)

To Alexander Smith781 October 28, 1971 | Location not indicated Greetings to you and Helen! Lois Long is making a series of lithographs: ten illustrations of mushrooms. And I am making texts (strange as some of my music) to be published with them. Over each illustration will be a Japanese tissue (not a fancy one) on which we would like to print your naming of the mushroom(s) together with any remarks about the species you’d be willing to make. My texts attempt to touch upon the many varied interests I have and are handwritten on 5 different lithographic crayon intensities (+ these are superimpositions, making each unreadable). They will therefore be printed also on the tissue overlay, enabling the reader, if he’s so inclined, to go hunting in my handwritten page. Hoping you’ll collaborate with us.

781. This letter to Smith reiterates a collaborative project Cage was speaking about a full decade before (see letter to Peters Yates dated Sept. 11, 1961) and now on the edge of fruition: Mushroom Book, published in New York by Hollander Workshop, Inc., as a limited-edition portfolio comprising lithographs and texts by Cage, Long, and Smith, each of its seventy-five volumes hand-printed, numbered, and signed by the artists.

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To Edward L. Kamarck782 December 29, 1971 | 107 Bank Street, New York I’ve recently been reading Mao + about Mao.783 My notion of the future has for several years been Bucky Fuller influenced and still is. However, in a recent text, I set myself (and others possibly) this problem: “Fuller: Don’t change Man; change his environment. Mao: Remould people to their very souls; revolutionize their thinking. (Find common denominator.)” I am not by any means certain that I can find anything useful in this direction, but it is the current direction which interests me. Furthermore, I do not wish to make a concentration in this direction, but would put it together with seemingly other “irrelevant” matters.* Do you want such a text?784 *such as The Communications Explosion.

782. Edward L. Kamarck (1919–1992), American editor of Arts in Society, an interdisciplinary journal intermittently published by the University of Wisconsin, University Extension Division, from 1958 to 1976. 783. Mao Tse-tung (1893–1976), founding father of the People’s Republic of China from its establishment in 1949 until his death. Cage had three volumes of Mao’s writings in his library: Mao Tsetung: Poems (Peking: Foreign Languages Press, 1976), Selected Works of Mao Tse-Tung (New York: Harper Colophon Books, 1970), and Mao Tse-Tung on Literature and Art (Peking: Foreign Languages Press, 1967). See David Patterson, “‘Political’ or ‘Social’?: John Cage and the Remolding of Mao Tse-Tung,” in Julia H. Schröder and Volker Straebel, eds., Cage and Consequences (Hofheim, Germany: Wolke Verlag Hofheim, 2012). 784. Cage’s text, eventually titled “Re and Not Re Fuller and Mao,” appeared in Arts in Society 9, no. 2, “The Communications Explosion” (1972): 270–74. This issue also contained two writings by Peter Yates: “On a Communication from John Dewey” (201–5) and “In the Fourth Year of Nixon” (275).

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part four

1972-1982

T

he 1970s Were years of continuing change for John Cage. In late 1971, he had engaged Mimi Johnson, co-founder of Artservices in New York, as his agent to assist with commissions and touring. By 1972 he had left Stony Point, moving back to the city into a basement apartment with Merce Cunningham on Bank Street in Greenwich Village. He had also cut back on his duties as music director to the Merce Cunningham Dance Company, leaving the job largely in the hands of David Tudor and Gordon Mumma. He had significantly altered his manner of dress, scaling down to denim shirts, jeans, and athletic shoes, and he stopped shaving altogether, allowing his graying hair to grow long on his face and neck. He had greatly reduced his smoking, and he shifted his alcohol intake away from copious amounts of red wine, which he dearly loved, to an occasional shot of vodka or whiskey. The period was also one of great reflection. Cage wrote at length to Christian Wolff about the relationship of art to politics, and politics is also the subject of a short letter to the American composer R. I. P. Hayman. His letter to the German composer Dieter Schnebel reflects at some length on his time with Arnold Schoenberg decades before, a subject reprised in his short letter to the British music critic Paul Griffiths. Cage’s long letter to the American poet Jackson Mac Low about distinctions between choice and chance is a comprehensive survey of his thoughts on the subject, and it includes much about his ongoing devotion to I Ching–derived chance operations. Occasionally wistful, in his letter to the American conceptual artist and composer George Brecht, who numbered among his students at the New School in the 1950s, Cage cheerfully admits to his own inconsistencies. Cage had worked hard for greater visibility. He no longer solicited performances or engagements, but nonetheless traveled extensively, often internationally, fulfilling countless obligations. Visibility invites others into one’s life, however, and there are numerous instances of Cage writing short, topical replies to unsolicited letters, often from total strangers. Adopting “Note-o-Grams” as 411

his principal form of stationary from the early 1960s (a “remedy” prescribed by Dick Higgins) —little tri-part, pre-printed forms with space on the left for one’s communication and on the right for the recipient’s reply, with carbon paper separating the sheets for easy filing copy and return —he confined his communications to remarkably few lines. He wrote to the Fluxus artist Donald E. Boyd on the woes of a university professor, to both Kirk Allison and Mirek Kondracki on Zen Buddhism, to Dominique de Fleury on chance operations, and to the Swiss physician Branco Suter on right behavior. This list could go on and on. Cage was also cleaning house. In his letter to Wyman W. Parker at Northwestern University’s Music Library, Cage expresses his desire to rid himself of excess papers, recordings, books, and letters by sending them off, categorically organized, to libraries across the country for archival storage and public use. Northwestern would become home to Cage’s correspondence, as well as all manner of materials that had accumulated related to music; Wesleyan University would take on materials related to his publications as well as the humanities; and the University of California, Santa Cruz would ultimately house materials broadly related to nature, which included, of course, mushrooms. Cage’s work was also changing, his attention turning as much to writing as to the composition of music, his music moving more toward theater. By 1973 three volumes of his writings had been published by Wesleyan University Press: Silence: Lectures and Writings (1961), A Year from Monday: New Lectures and Writings (1967), and M: Writings ’67–’72 (1973). For his new poetic form, which he called “mesostics,” Cage developed complex rules of composition to which he admitted feeling something akin to addiction. His mesostic poems were both formal and informal, published and not, and some even served his public-speaking needs. With few exceptions, he would use this form and its variants (rengas, autokus, “writings-through”) for virtually all of his writings to the end of his life. Examples can be found in letters to the pianist Margaret Leng Tan, a Singaporeborn musician who became closely associated with Cage’s piano works, and to the American artist Cy Twombly, expressing admiration for the artist’s work that was hung above the small breakfast table. His letter to M.C. Richards dated December 28, 1980, wherein Cage references the woeful murder of John Lennon, closes with a mesostic poem that has as its string ezra PoUnd, whose long, incomplete Cantos Cage was exploring at the time. Cage was also poised to seriously alter his diet. Consistent with his interest in mushrooms was a fondness for raw and wild foods, but his love of butter, cream, and a good leg of lamb persisted. Overweight and arthritic, he suspected his diet was partly to blame. Upon advice from his astrologer Julie Winter, 412  |  1 9 7 2 – 1 9 8 2

and from Lennon and Ono, who lived next door, Cage consulted the Japanese physician Shizuko Yamamoto, who recommended shiatsu treatments and the macrobiotic diet. Seeing almost immediate improvement with his adoption of both, Cage enthusiastically wrote to people about what he was learning: to the American composer Griffith Rose; to the expatriate American composer Conlon Nancarrow; and to Mrs. B. A. Jacob, this last on the recommendation of a mutual friend, Porter McCray, long associated with New York’s Museum of Modern Art. Cage’s letter to the Icelandic film producer and playwright Ornulfur Arnason, who would host Cage’s visit to Reykjavík in 1980, delineates Cage’s housing needs with emphasis on the kitchen’s provisions, which he hoped would include dandelions, lamb’s quarters, and bracken. Friends sent supplies in support, among them Lennon (six macrobiotic cookbooks), Higgins (a recipe for sour rye bread), Irene Solomon (a stash of black pepper), and Beth Brown (a recipe for granola). By the end of the decade, Cage’s kitchen shelves housed such naturalist standards as Edward Espe Brown’s The Tassajara Bread Book (1970) and Mollie Katzen’s The Moosewood Cookbook (1977). Specific compositions are the subject of many of Cage’s letters from the decade. He writes to Susan Dreman of the New York Audubon Society for “Diala-Bird” phone numbers for use in his Telephones and Birds (1977), a technologically reliant work that incorporates prerecorded telephone announcements; similarly, to the director at “Dial-a-Joke” for permission to access its number for pre-recorded jokes. He writes to the American composer-violinist Malcolm Goldstein about his Chorals (1978), a violin arrangement of “Solo 85” from his Song Books (Solos for Voice 3–92) (1970), and his letter to the German composer Gerd Zacher speaks in great detail about the first of his four organ works, Some of the Harmony of Maine (Supply Belcher) (1978), of which Zacher is dedicatee. Cage’s letter to the American musicologist H. Wiley Hitchcock contains one of remarkably few references to his participatory 33⅓ (1969), and he writes at length to the Italian musician, conductor, and critic Tito Gotti with a detailed proposal for an ambitious work for moving train, Alla ricerca del silenzio perduto (1977), familiarly known as Il treno. He writes to Klaus Schöning, long associated with the WDR’s Electronic Music Studio in Cologne, about two significant WDR collaborations —Roaratorio: An Irish Circus on Finnegans Wake (1979) and James Joyce, Marcel Duchamp, Erik Satie: An Alphabet (1982) —which Schöning co-produced. And Cage’s letter to the German composer Wolfgang Becker, also at the WDR, contains an unusually technical description of his Quartets I–VIII for orchestra (1976), soon to receive its first performance in Europe. Several letters of the period reveal ideas for interesting new works involv1 9 7 2 – 1 9 8 2  |  413

ing specific geographical locations. Cage writes to Joseph A. Scafidi, executive director of the San Francisco Symphony, outlining his idea for a citywide Musicircus for the San Francisco Bay Area, which would be the first of its kind. His letter to the Italian writer and film director Luciano Martinengo accepts the invitation extended to visit Ivrea in the province of Turin in order to explore the idea of creating a grand installation by amplifying a city park. Significantly, Cage’s circle of intellectual interests widened in the early 1970s to include Henry David Thoreau, whose writings, especially his antiwar, antislavery essay “Civil Disobedience” (1849), served as an underpinning to Cage’s emerging social anarchism. Cage composed many pieces deriving from Thoreau’s writings, and he wrote frequently about them. His letter to Walter Harding, the internationally recognized Thoreau authority, is a detailed account of a recent ritualistic overnight performance in Hartford, Connecticut, of his Empty Words (1973–74), a work derived from words and images drawn from Thoreau’s Journal and lasting some twelve hours. Cage proudly reports that it was broadcast via satellite over National Public Radio to some twenty-seven stations, one as far away as Juneau, Alaska. While Empty Words was not Cage’s first literary engagement with Thoreau —that heralded spot being reserved for his Mureau (1971) —it is arguably his most radical devolution of syntax into sound. As he recounts in a letter to Mario Cavista, Empty Words nearly caused a riot at Milan’s Teatro Lirico on December 7, 1977, when Cage performed its Part Three before an audience of some three thousand rowdy spectators. Cage’s letter to Harding, like his September 14, 1978, letter to the German composer Joseph Anton Riedl, also references Lecture on the Weather (1975), a collaborative radio piece created with sound artist Maryanne Amacher and filmmaker Luis Frangella on commission from the Canadian Broadcast Corporation in celebration of the U.S. Bicentennial. Cage’s politically prescient work draws from several of Thoreau’s writings —“Civil Disobedience,” Walden, and his Journal —and makes use of quotations and drawings selected by chance. Frangella’s film sequence, to be used in any staged rendition, consisted of Thoreau’s drawings, which were projected, white on black, to simulate flashes of lightning on a dark and stormy night. Several of Cage’s letters reference two other important Thoreau-derived works from the period, Renga (1975) and Apartment House 1776 (1976), which are often performed together. He wrote to the Native American tribal leader and storyteller Swift Eagle, who would perform the singing role of the Native American in Apartment House 1776, offering suggestions about how best to practice; to the celebrated Japanese conductor Seiji Ozawa, thanking him for 414  |  1 9 7 2 – 1 9 8 2

so beautifully conducting the Boston premiere; to Kurt Michaelis, suggesting that C. F. Peters consider extracting portions of each work into separate publications; and, finally, to Mildred Henninger, with a long explanation as to how both compositions relate to his overall body of work. Even Cage’s whimsical 1982 radio play, James Joyce, Marcel Duchamp, Erik Satie: An Alphabet, contains a small speaking role for “Thoreau,” who, cavorting with the title characters, describes a magical glass of his own invention that turns anything poured into it into wine, even dirt. Alphabet is the subject of Cage’s only known letter to the German artist Joseph Beuys. Having taken on the job of casting an upcoming performance, Cage invites Beuys to read the part of Duchamp, pointing out that Beuys already appears as himself in Section 17 of the narrator’s monologue: Just as thOugh they’d never left in exchange for the feathers beuYs gives the birds felt eleCtric nEsts that can be plugged in anywhere And Cage continues generously writing on behalf of others: to the California artist Tom Marioni for Bob Mahon; and to Louis Mink, longtime faculty member at Wesleyan University and author of A Finnegans Wake Gazetteer, for Jackson Mac Low. He even wrote to (Nina) Karlweiss care of Orestis Magnis, European agent for American theater director Robert Wilson, joining the chorus of voices protesting Wilson’s incarceration in Crete on charges of possession of marijuana. Cage also wrote extensively on behalf of “world improvement.” Examples can be found in his letters to J. W. de Witte, on the general bad behavior of musicians and presenters; to the librettist Eleanor Hakim, on a flawed Musicircus; to the German theorist and music critic Heinz-Klaus Metzger, expressing disgruntlement with Michael Nyman; to the American composer Alvin Lucier, on critical remarks Lucier had made in an interview; and to Rose Slivka, editor-in-chief of Craft Horizon magazine, with complaints about his Bank Street apartment, which Slivka managed as a sideline occupation. Cage even writes to Trans World Airlines with suggestions as to how they might improve their offerings of vegetarian meals.

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To Jerry Novesky785 February 9, 1972 | 107 Bank St., New York Dear Jerry Novesky, Thank you for writing. When [Charles] Olson and I first met, it was very exciting, I believe, for both of us. However, we soon became far apart, particularly when we were close together at Black M[ountain] [College]. Some years later, it seemed to me that we were on better terms: when I was at Wesleyan and he came there to read poems. However, he read at Wesleyan so poorly, so self-consciously, that the entire event focused attention on him rather than his work. Also, at Black Mtn., when he succeeded [Josef] Albers as director, his actions were such that the school fell to pieces. These experiences and his thinking of himself as the son of Pound always kept me from a devotion to his work. So that I don’t know what to say about the relation of my work to his or the absence of relation. (I am devoted to the work of Pound.) Whether or not my way of working is organic is not a question I ask. I determined to work in such a way that my work would change me, would free me from my likes and dislikes. But I have written a great deal about this. I believe that there must be, if one is speaking of organic processes, many of them. They might vary from being characterized by an individual to being unpredictable: not characterized by an individual. I did feel a possible conflict between my use of chance operations and the comprehensive design science of Buckminster Fuller to which I am devoted. I asked Bucky about this, and he said there was no conflict. If you have some response to these remarks, don’t hesitate to let me know what they are.

To Norman O. and Beth Brown May 2, 1972 | 107 Bank Street, New York Dearest Nobby and Beth, Forgive me, but I’m foolish. The house I have in the country at Stony Point became free this year (it’s not winterized; it can only be used May through 785. Gerald Novesky (b. 1948), graduate student in creative writing at Ohio University interested in the work of Charles Olson and the Black Mountain Poets.

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October) + I took it even though I must be most of that time in Europe (now through mid-July and Sept. thru Oct.), so that it wd. be available to me in years to come. Then since I wouldn’t be there, I’ve offered the use of it to several people (and now you too): Jean Rigg and Mimi Johnson, + Merce + Jap and Lois. When I called you I was, as usual at that hour, tipsy + thought only of you and not of the others nor of myself. In July when I get back I’ll have over 2000 pgs. of music to proofread + I wouldn’t have time for much else. I’m already exhausted (have been filmed for a month by a German film crew786); + I have a strenuous tour ahead. And I’ll need as simple a situation in July and Aug. as possible, because it’s then followed by 2 more months of touring. Though as you know I love to be with you, I think that this summer’s not the right time. I’m hoping to come to Calif. in the last weeks of Nov. Please understand and forgive.

To Minna Lederman and Mell Daniel May 29, 1972 | Brussels, Belgium Am still holding up, and the most difficult engagements have been given! I am very glad and have been so busy that I don’t have time to notice my arthritis. I had surprising experiences. Merce probably told you about the loss of billfold (a theme, apparently, now in my life) in a poor hotel in London. Mimi came over and I put her to work cancelling credit cards, arranging new passport, etc., only to discover that I’d hidden it from myself in among my shirts. Meanwhile had developed evil theories about the hotel servants (entering the room when I was asleep, and stealing!). The concerts have gone well, even when they don’t: in The Hague the orchestra that had worked on my new piece787 gave up, and a new one saw the music for the first time at 6:00 p.m. the evening they were to play it. I began to fear that I had spent the last two years making unplayable music. We did a rehearsal for the audience of the first movement, and the next day could play two movements. I am very pleased and have never heard anything like it. It is just that simple melody but the changes of color are extraordinary. They have now included it in the Holland Festival, and on the 20th of June the 3 mvts. will be played in Amsterdam. Again in Munich on the 28th of August. It turns out to be as I wished, playable without conductor (to his bewilderment). With 786. See Hans G. Helms, Bird Cage/73'20.958" for a Composer (1972). 787. Cage’s Cheap Imitation (1972), an orchestral work derived from Satie’s Socrate (1918), to be performed without conductor. See Cage’s letter to J. W. de Witte dated August 3, 1972.

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conductor, the rhythm gets childishly German. Without conductor it flows like a stream, + the players feel their way through the rubatos + other changes of tempi very touchingly. I am looking forward to late July and August when I’ll be able to be in Stony Point at that Lovely Stream. It will be good to be with you both and Merce, I hope.

To Karlweiss c/o Orestis Magnis July 21, 1972 | 107 Bank St., New York To Whom It May Concern: This is to add my name to all those others who hope that Bob Wilson788 will be freed from the jail he has been put in. His work is of great beauty and usefulness in society, and the sooner he is pardoned and free, the better off the people of all countries will be.

To J. W. de Witte August 3, 1972 | 107 Bank Street, New York Dear Mr. de Witte, After the failure of the Mobile Ensemble to play Cheap Imitation in The Hague, I travelled a month later to Amsterdam and spent three days (there was an airplane strike at the time); I had to do a great deal of research to discover when and where the rehearsal for the Holland Festival performance was. I noticed that posters included announcements of the piece and thought that it would be well played since it was being publicized. The following morning, after a half-hour’s search in The Hague for the room where the rehearsal was being held (it was unscheduled), I discovered that the orchestra’s final rehearsal was their first. The conductor, not Jan Stulen789 who knew the work, but another who didn’t, had not even informed himself of the 788. Robert Wilson (b. 1941), American experimental theater director and playwright, well known for his collaborations; with Philip Glass, he created the acclaimed Einstein on the Beach (1975). Wilson had been arrested in Crete with a small amount of hashish in his pocket. Although this offense carried an automatic seven-year prison sentence, Wilson was released after about six weeks. Nina Karlweiss was Wilson’s European agent. 789. Jan Stulen (b. 1924), Dutch conductor, from 1964 to 1970 under contract with the Städtische Bühnen Münster.

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number of movements. After hearing a few miserable attempts to play the first phrases, I withdrew the piece from that evening’s performance. I did not call a press conference, although most any other composer would have. Unfortunately, someone gave the media the story that I had withdrawn my work because the musicians played with too little Zen. My hotel and travel expenses were paid by Gaudeamus,790 who persuaded the directors of the Holland Festival to program my work. Because of all these experiences, I now repeat the request made by Elisabeth Hayes that I receive an indemnity of not less than $1000. For your information, Dr. Wolfgang Becker791 of the Westdeutscher Rundfunk was so charmed by Cheap Imitation (the first two movements of which he heard in The Hague rehearsals), that he has programmed the complete work (for 95 musicians) for the next year’s season. The nWdr (Hamburg) is negotiating for a performance late this year of less than the total number of parts. The first performance with 24 parts, which could have taken place in Holland (but did not after two attempts: not because of the work’s difficulty, but simply because of lack of serious work on the part of the musicians) will take place on August 28th in Munich.

To Nicolas Jowett792 August 31, 1972 | Munich Dear Nicolas Jowett, It would seem from your letter that I can be of no help to you as far as the enjoyment of my music is concerned, for you ask for a reply in words, and you already say that my words reach you, but not “my” music. Therefor, were I to write an answer to your letter which would change your mind, you would not change enough (or at all possibly) to enjoy the music. Stay with your love of Bruckner793 and your disdain of my “vulgar jingle.” It is a simple matter: what seems “boring” and “uniform” to you, and “jades” you, seems endlessly varied 790. The Gaudeamus Foundation, founded in the Netherlands in 1945 to promote contemporary music activities and concerts in the Netherlands and abroad. 791. More fully, Wolfgang Becker-Carsten (b. 1954), until 1997 head of the Studio for Electronic Music of the West German Radio in Cologne, a facility of the Westdeutscher Rundfunk (WDR). 792. Nicolas Jowett (b. 1944), Anglican priest in the Diocese of Sheffield, U.K. 793. Anton Bruckner (1824–1896), Austrian composer best known for his symphonies, considered emblematic of late Austro-German Romanticism.

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and enlivening to me. We are different people. I do not act as one who provokes. The provocation is in whomever is provoked. Likewise aural events in themselves need to “interest” or “merit.” That is given by those who listen. We are not only different people: we are in different positions of space + time, so that what seems dark to you seems light to me. If your letter means that you need to enjoy my music for some mysterious reason, then I suggest that you discipline yourself, beginning with the following exercise: listen, without permitting yourself to be distracted,* to at least two hours of Bruckner twice a day, three times on every seventh day, etc., until you discover that it is not sublime at all, but very boring. *by ice cream vans for instance, or if in a concert hall, by people coughing

To Minna Lederman and Mell Daniel September 3, 1972 | Teheran Merce brought your letter and clippings and got Virgil’s article for me to read. Thank you for all of that. Though I agree that VT’s article is up to earlier standards, it’s also somewhat earlier in subject matter. So many things have happened with which he is out of touch. And he seems to maintain his measuring means of years ago. As you see, we’re actually in Iran.794 It was a long flight (with no red wine on board!). Fortunately, I had had with others an excellent lunch with a very good Beaujolais in Paris while waiting for the Company to arrive (late) from London. Made a taste discovery in Alsace (raw beets, with a sauce to one’s taste; not grated, but sliced fairly thickly). They are juicy and crisp. I have never liked beets until eating them this way. I stayed in Antoinette Vischer’s country house in Alsace near Basel for 10 days after the London performance of hpschd. Before that, in England, I visited a Benedictine monk, the poet Dom Sylvester Houedard795 in Prinkash Abbey, Gloucester (near Wales). What a busy life these monks lead! Meals are taken in 794. From September 5–8, 1972, the onset coinciding with Cage’s sixtieth birthday, Cage appeared in the 6th Festival of Arts Shiraz-Persepolis with Merce Cunningham and Dance Company, including an afternoon performance on September 6 in the midst of Persian ruins in Persepolis, in the presence of the royal family. Among works performed was Cage’s Bird Cage (1972), which he described as “twelve tapes to be distributed by a single performer in a space in which people are free to move and birds to fly.” The score includes a reproduction of Cage’s National Audubon Society Membership card. 795. More fully, Dom (Pierre-) Sylvester Houédard (1924–1992), Benedictine priest, theologian,

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“silence.” Each one (each meal) a monk stands on a platform at one end of the refectory + reads from approved texts including, of course, the Bible. It was like a TV dinner! With father Abbott’s permission, Sylvester + I stayed up each night until one a.m. visiting poets in the neighborhood. The services that I managed to get to there were beautiful because of the Gregorian chanting. The architecture of the new abbey is modern motel in the worst sense. The food varied from nearly nothing to huge feasts with wine. Once the Abbott relaxed the rule, told the reader to stop reading + advised the rest of us to converse with our neighbors. It was rather bad weather (heavy, but no rain) in Alsace. Very few mushrooms. Antoinette had fallen on a work of art at an exhibition in June, so that I visited her each day in the hospital (her leg broken betw. the knee + hip; marvelously, while I was there she began walking with crutches —sometimes only one). It was for her that I wrote hpschd with Hiller. But she was unable to play either in Berlin or London. The London performance was “pale,” as David Tudor put it, but not disagreeable. 90 minutes of it were broadcast bbc, and I received an insulting letter from an Englishman796 saying that he liked my books but not my music (he prefers Bruckner’s solemnity to my vulgarity); however, what cd. he do, he asked, in order to get to enjoy my performances. I advised him to forget about me + concentrate on Bruckner, discipline himself by spending 2 two-hour periods each day listening undistractedly to B. (on Sundays 3 such periods) until he found it not sublime at all but very boring. Haven’t been out of the hotel’s air conditioned room. So no word re Persia.

To Nancy Wilson Ross797 Nov. 13, 1972 | 107 Bank Street, New York Thank you for the lovely letter of Happy Birthday to you. Guess what? I’ll be with Morris next wk. in Loleta798 + picking matsutake (pine mushroom). Merce is fine. Hope to see you when we’re all in the same neighborhood! and poet. In addition to his elaborate typewriter-composed poetry, he wrote commentaries on Meister Eckhart and was a founding member of the Eckhart Society. 796. See Cage’s letter to Nicolas Jowett dated August 31, 1972. 797. Nancy Wilson Ross (1901–1986), American novelist, expert on eastern religions, and author of popular introductions to Buddhism and Zen. Cage had attended her lecture “Zen Buddhism and Dada” while at the Cornish School in the late 1930s, likely his first introduction to the ideas of Daisetz Teitaro Suzuki. 798. Morris Graves (see note 295), who settled in Loleta, California.

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To Wyman W. Parker799 January 8, 1973 | 107 Bank Street, New York Dear Mr. Parker: Thank you for your recent letters. And thank you for asking me to join the Friends of The Wesleyan Library (which I am glad to do). I have been attempting to organize my papers with a view to giving many of them away. Until now it was not possible to organize them even superficially, for many were in the country, and I produced and received more here in the last two years in the city. But recently they have all been brought together, and during the past month I have been busy trying to put them in categories, etc. I have given all my mushroom books and associated papers, letters even, to the University of California at Santa Cruz. And I will continue to deposit relevant mushroom papers and books with them. I am in the process of selling (hopefully) my collection of music manuscripts and letters from composers of music. This collection was formed to benefit the Foundation for Contemporary Performance Arts of which I am one of the directors. The Northwestern University Library in Evanston is interested. They already possess the important Moldenhauer Collection of musical manuscripts.800 Because of that possession, that library is the proper place for such materials. It simplifies the travel of an interested student. The only other outstanding collections are at Yale (the music of Ives), at the Library of Congress; two collections, the music of Schoenberg, the music of Strawinsky, remain to be located. I have four boxes (largish) of music programs and critical texts from newspapers and magazines. If Northwestern wants these, I would add them to what I am offering them (which basically is the material listed in Notations [Something 799. Wyman W. Parker, Wesleyan University librarian. In time Cage would distribute his materials to three universities: Wesleyan University Press (humanities), Northwestern University (music), and the University of California, Santa Cruz (nature). 800. Hans Moldenhauer (1906–1987), German-born American music, whose Moldenhauer Archives, embodying some 100,000 documents, acquired the Webern Archive in the 1960s. At the time of his death, the Moldenhauer Archives were housed in nine institutions around the world, including the Library of Congress, where Cage’s manuscripts relating to The Wonderful Widow of Eighteen Springs (1942) are held. In 1967 Cage would request a kind of quid pro quo —a snippet of manuscript by Anton Webern for his Notations collection. Moldenhauer complied with reticence; as he wrote Cage on March 3, 1967, “Enclosed is the Webern autograph. I trust that it will give you as much pleasure as it caused me qualms to let it go.”

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Else Press]). If they do not want them, would you want them added to what I wish to deposit with you? What I would like to give to the Olin Library are all the papers associated with my books, Silence, A Year from Monday, and M,801 and those associated with writings I have not yet written. These amount now to four boxes of material, only one of the boxes on the large side. To this I would wish added, after my death, my general correspondence, not including letters about mushrooms or music. At the present time this is one large box. I also have a collection of newspaper and magazine texts regarding my books. These could be given to you. I am, I must say, glad that you are willing to take some of this material. I will make no requirements about how you care for them. If, at some future time, the laws are changed so that one can receive tax-exemption for such gifts, please at such a time let me know the value placed on my papers. I can also offer you a portfolio of lithographs, ten by Lois Long and ten in my handwriting. The portfolio is called Mushroom Book,802 and a printing of my handwritten lithographs is included in M. Of the material I have described above, please let me know what you want. I will then or actually before hearing from you put it in some order.

To Branco Suter January 9, 1973 | 107 Bank Street, New York Dear Branco Suter, Thank you for your letter. Your question, it seems to me, does not yet have an answer. However, the fact that you ask it encourages me, for you too have courage. Your question, I think, is this: Having a vision of a good life, what shall I do to bring it about here on earth? Now, for all human beings, for all creation, for animals, for plants, for the total environment. Since I will give my life to this end, I wish to proceed efficiently, not repeating the ineffective steps of others in this direction (“the world didn’t change”), but going on to the next steps which have not yet been taken. As for your technical ability, you mention that you can write German well. 801. M: Writings ’67–’72, Cage’s third book published by Wesleyan University Press (1973). 802. See note 781.

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Language. I am certain that the various world languages act as demarcations between men. They intensify past errors. They form the way men think (and act). Furthermore, they make thinking about total environment, if not impossible, extremely difficult. The difficulty is not related to one’s ideal (that is merely a problem to be solved: e.g., how to make the world work for any kind of living); it arises from the language itself. We need a new language which can be experienced by all human beings immediately, which at the same time gives equal place in creation to the animals, the plants, the air, water, and earth. Chinese ideograms did this anciently. We need ideograms that will do this now. If your technic is writing, I advise you to work for such a world language. I’ve heard that a book was published in Munich in connection with the Olympiad ’72 that takes steps in this direction. If you know of it or find out about it, please let me know how to obtain it. I have made up my mind about syntax: we need just as with government, to become free of it. Words (ideas) need to float, only assuming particular relationships in individual minds momentarily (like the play of sunlight through trees). A fixed syntax implies monarchic mentality. Remove syntax. I could go on but I don’t want to lose you. Let this be the beginning of a conversation between us. If you also play chess, we could carry on this conversation and have a game too. Let me know. P.S. I am sending a copy of our correspondence to Norman O. Brown. He may wish to join in the conversation. He also plays chess!

To Donald E. Boyd January 19, 1973 | 107 Bank Street, New York Thank you for the drawing and for your interesting letter. I sympathize, but certainly you must take the consequences of your actions which were initially to get all those degrees. A composer friend of mine was given a position in one university as head of the Music Dept., only to find himself asked after 5 months to please leave! I myself have been offered now 3 degrees (honorary) all of which I’ve refused; I was a college drop-out. What right have I to their crumbs? Read Veblen, or perhaps you already have. The Higher Learning in America: A Memorandum on the Conduct of Universities by Business Men. I was also offered a life position in my favorite university; I refused it, because I noticed that their 1 9 7 2 – 1 9 8 2  |  425

decisions, even those of the best people, were necessarily based on power and money (budgets and struggles between departments, etc.). Therefore, if you are obliged to stay in a university teaching position, you will have to adapt yourself to the school’s demands. That is clear. You could quite gracefully do that and then surreptitiously do what you know best. However . . . I am no more charmed by unions than I am by universities. Power and money both of them. Schools that seem “good”: Goddard College, Plainfield, Vt., Antioch College, Yellow Springs, Ohio (but then Keith McGary was obliged to leave Antioch!), etc. Maybe some school in Canada. People speak well of York University, Toronto. Remember Thoreau: he taught a few classes and then walked out, and did odd jobs for Emerson the rest of his life. I never made enough money (from my music) to live on until I was fifty. Interrupted my music in order to do odd jobs in order to eat, etc. In general things are better now than formerly (I mean with regard to modern artists being given jobs teaching). Another book to read if you haven’t: Deschooling Society (Ivan D. Illich).803 Your address is a farm; your work now is carpentry. Sounds very good. As far as your teaching goes, continue it as you surely do apart from an organization. This is what many modern dancers do automatically. Students flock to them because of reports regarding excellence, etc. I don’t know whether this letter is depressing or not. I reread it just now, but can’t decide. As far as eating goes, develop, if you haven’t already, a knowledge of wild edible foods. The earth is covered with better food than sold in the markets. You will say that I can talk this way because I never had to support a family. But during their last years, I supported my mother and father, and until then had never made more than just a little or just enough money to live from day to day. When I was obliged to support them, I raised my prices for lectures and concerts, etc. If you are in a position where money is absolutely necessary, then make it; play the game to win. Don’t lose. Do you play chess, for instance? Then learn the endgame first, i.e., how to win the end. Startle people with your openings. Use your imagination in the middle.

803. Ivan Illich (1926–2002), Austrian philosopher and social critic whose Deschooling Society (New York: Harper and Row, 1971), advocating self-directed education, brought him to public attention.

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To Dean Cadle804 January 19, 1973 | 107 Bank Street, New York Am sorry to say that I am not sympathetic with your projected program re B[lack] M[ountain] C[ollege]. There is now too much interest in BMC; there was too little when it actually needed help + interest. Furthermore, it is in no need of being “evaluated.” That is: its spirit which still invigorates some groups needs no evaluation. With, nevertheless, best wishes, P.S. What is in great need of thought and action now is our country itself particularly with respect to everything: govt., schools, environment, all organizations, etc. But you surely already know this.

To Mirek Kondracki805 January 29, 1973 | 107 Bank Street, New York Dear Mirek Kondracki, Though I am not sure that I understand all of your questions, I attempt a reply. 1. It is by means of value judgments and likes and dislikes that a human being is able to put up a wall between himself and the rest of creation that comes to him (and of which he is a part) through his senses and through his dreams. Suzuki taught me that what Zen desires is not this ego-constructed wall but rather a fluency in and out. I have noticed that what is bad art for one person is often good art for another. I even imagine that if someone makes something (even dishonestly, insincerely) one could (in certain cases perhaps with difficulty) find at least one other human being who found it good. Wittgenstein said that the word beauty has no other meaning than that we accept what we call beautiful. It clicks for us. He suggested that we keep mechanical clickers in our pockets so that when something we come across does not click for us, 804. Dean Cadle (1920–1998), author and photographer, assistant librarian at the University of North Carolina, Asheville. 805. Mirek Kondracki, Polish composer and theoretician, director of the avant-garde instrumental ensemble MIRGAB-70.

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we would be able to change our minds by taking one of the clickers out of the pocket and clicking it! All the above concerns the aesthetic faculty (kama in Indian philosophy), and even the moral life (dharma) I imagine, and certainly enlightenment (moksha) as individual experience. The problem nowadays is that our experience is necessarily social: we can no longer tolerate the division of human beings into those who have what they need to live and those who do not have what they need to live; and we can no longer tolerate our continuing actions which bring the environment close to total destruction. All of these current concerns now have priority globally, and they demand clear headedness with regard to what is right and what is wrong. We are in a situation where disastrous mistakes must cease being made. (Artha.)806 Art simply means making something. Artisan. No matter how much we prefer nature, we will surely go on making things. We could revive, could we not, the traditional reason for making things: to imitate Nature in her manner of operation? Art then continually changes in accord with our changing understanding of the operation of Nature. Those who have been called artists and composers no longer need to be so called. Already more than 50 years ago Satie was not enchanted to be so called. He was simply a musician, engaged in “a dirty business.” If Gombrowicz807 changes his sentence slightly (pluralizes form and shape), he is again in direct contact with chaos from which he was born. If he does not agree that this is the case, require of him that he explain in rational measurement terms the structure of an environment, and if he succeeds, enlarge the environment until he fails. Do not let him overlook the slightest detail. 2. I do not understand your second question. As far as music goes, I for one no longer need it; I find it all around me. I hear all the time, and it all clicks. The only times it doesn’t is when the sounds suggest that something else —not musical —something dangerous (see paragraph 2 above) is going to happen: the roof falls in, the brakes go out, etc. I agree that our minds as they have been used are not suitable for current experience. That is why we must change our minds. (See paragraph 1 above.) Revolution, not psychical collapse. 3. You speak of the emotions of mankind. You might as well speak of 806. In Indian philosophy, Artha is one of the four aims of human existence, translating as “meaning, sense, purpose, essence.” The others are Dharma (virtue, morals), Kama (pleasure, emotion), and Moksha (liberation, self-actualization). 807. Witold (Marian) Gombrowicz (1904–1969), Polish writer and playwright who rose to

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“human nature.” We do not yet know what human nature is. We know that it shows itself differently. It appears to have changed just recently in China due to Mao Tse-tung’s teachings. I have noticed that selfish people become generous when they have more than they want. For centuries we have thought that the best rule of all was to do unto others as you would be done by. Now we suspect that that rule can be improved: Do unto others as they would be done by. Economical, sociological and technical “emotions” are socially proper; aesthetic “emotions” are individually proper. I see no conflict between these differences. 4. We see no longer any division between East and West. The interpenetration of the two is as necessary globally as technological advances are. It will take many forms. Best, I believe, if we concentrate our attention not on superficial influences but on the interpenetration of underlying principles. 5. No need for God (cf. Marcel Duchamp: God is Man’s stupidest idea). No need for goals. Nirvana is samsara. We are already there. (Individual realization.) But where we are is a mess (social realization): we must clean it up. That will take some time and be very boring: and when we are bored is when we get ideas. It will go on and on. I have been trying to put my papers in order. And since I no longer need them, I am giving them to three different universities where they may be found useful. Mushroom books and papers to the Univ. of California at Santa Cruz; music mss. and sketches to Northwestern University at Evanston; literary mss. to Wesleyan Univ. at Middletown, Conn. This putting my house in order has taken 2 months. While doing it, I got the idea of what to do next. How long will that take me? Will I live long enough? Etc. 6. If I didn’t believe in the future existence of art, somebody else would. However, for your information, I am absolutely certain that art will continue. And not just advertising art (cf. Mao-influenced art). The reason lies in metabolism: we go to sleep and then wake up with energy; before we know it, we’re busy making something. Glory be!

international prominence with his serialized Diary (1953–1969), the first three volumes of which would be published by Northwestern University Press in 1988, translated by Lillian Vallee.

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To Lowell Cross May 22, 1973 | 107 Bank Street, New York If Alan Gillmor808 could visit me here or in Stony Point, I would be able to do the Satie interview. I would like as high a fee as the cbc can afford. Do let me have the chessboard as soon as you can. You may give Alan my phone numbers: (212) 989-7132, and, in the country, (914) 786-5296.

To David Alexander809 June 25, 1973 | 107 Bank Street, New York Dear President Alexander: Thank you for your letter offering me an honorary degree of the College. For a number of reasons, I cannot accept. First: At the end of my second year at Pomona, I left to continue my education without organizational assistance. One of my reasons then could be one of my reasons now: though I hadn’t done my work as instructed, I received an A. Second: Innovative acts in the arts are criminal. (Duchamp agreed with me on this point.) Though I’ve not been able to refuse punishments, I can refuse rewards. In fact, it is my obligation to do so. Third: It was in ’68 or ’69 that York University in England offered me an honorary degree: In my letter of refusal I promised not to accept such a degree from any institution in the future. I’ve had occasion to keep my promise and do not wish now to break it. Fourth: Just as I look to that individual life which is free of likes and dislikes, so I look to that social life which is free of rewards and punishments. I have the example of China. However, let me mention that your letter brought tears to my eyes. But life, as I trust you agree and Pomona teaches, cannot be well-conducted sentimentally.

808. Alan Gillmor (b. 1938), Canadian musicologist and teacher, active as a commentator/writer for CBC radio, which aired his radio program on Erik Satie in 1973. He conducted and published several interviews with Cage. 809. John David Alexander, president from 1969 to 1991 of Pomona College.

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To Mlle. Benedicte Pesle810 July 25, 1973 | 107 Bank St., New York Thank you for writing the letter which Merce brought with him. However, particularly in the fourth paragraph (suggested by Constant and Mme. Salabert), my project811 is so modified as not to be itself. (It is now fairly clear to me that my project will not be accepted; however, for the record, please send a new letter, yours with the changes detailed below, signing it with my name and accompanying it with a carbon of this.) Conclude the first sentence of the third paragraph with an explanation that each work would sometimes be represented by some phrases rather than being played completely. Omit the fourth paragraph, substituting the following: If you wish, I would limit the superpositions to the three parts of the Musique d’Ameublement, doing without the piano and vocal soloists and without the recordings (that is, without 2) and 3) above). Please conclude the last paragraph with this: A cinquante-cinq ans, Satie disait a ses amis: “Si quelqu’un trouvait quelque chose de vraiment neuf, je recommencerais tour.” It seems to me that part of what is new in my proposal is the playing of several pieces at once and sometimes some of them not completely, rather than the conventional practice of playing each piece one after the other and each in its entirety. Even though I do not expect any longer that my project will take place, I 810. Benedicte Pesle (b. 1927), founder in 1976 of Artservices International, a nonprofit “foreign association” to establish long-term collaboration with U.S. artists. She was a close collaborator with Mimi Johnson of Performing Artservices, Inc., in New York, its affiliate, and for decades the sole representation of Merce Cunningham’s Dance Company abroad. Her life partner was the French journalist Arlette Marchal (1928–2012). 811. Cage hoped to obtain permission from Satie’s publisher, Éditions Salabert (later DurandSalabert-Eschig), to use Satie’s Socrate as the basis of a new composition, one that began life in 1944 as an arrangement for solo piano of Satie’s first movement. Cage hadn’t licensed the initial use, but in 1968, now publicly “on the radar” and wishing to complete the second and third movements, he initiated contact with Éditions Salabert to set things straight. Permission was not forthcoming, and Cage’s response was to “recompose” the work, using chance means, resulting in music with the same phrasing, rhythms, and general contours of Satie’s composition but which is otherwise distinct. Cage renamed his new work Cheap Imitation, and went on to create versions for piano (1969), orchestra (1972), and solo violin (1977). Cage’s 1947 two-piano arrangement of Satie’s first movement was published by Satie’s publisher in 1984, with the second and third movements indicated as being “assisted” by Arthur Maddox. Cheap Imitation was used for Cunningham’s Second Hand, with costumes (the work had no stage decor) by Johns (Brooklyn Academy of Music, January 7, 1970).

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do hope to have a reply from Mme. Salabert. If you receive one, or if, after a reasonable length of time, you receive nothing, please let me know.

To Minna Lederman and Mell Daniel October 16, 1973 | Paris Dear Minna and Mell, Today was my first rehearsal at the Opera,812 and things went quite well. The conductor, Marius Constant813 (also a composer) had visited me twice, once alone and once with the two other conductors. He likes the piece and works with the musicians very well. He is not French, but Roumanian. One of the others is White Russian, + the 3rd is a young French lady. (She seems very selfconscious, but on the whole friendly.) The next rehearsal is on Friday + will be in groups: strings first, winds, etc. They obviously intend to do as well as they can. The pit where they will perform is enormous + excellent for my plan which involves their leaving their seats where they play without conductor and going to “stations” where they accept to be conducted. Constant may record the piece (he has a record company “en plus”). Merce is in excellent spirits but will have a great deal to tell you about working with French people. The opera has many habits + Merce says that they ought either to change their ways or just give up the ship. (The opera is a ship. The whole thing is balanced on a subterranean lake. One day I’m going down to see it!) I do a lot of cooking + am studying French ways a little. Turnips are marvelous parboiled for 3 minutes after peeling + quartering, then slowly cooked in stock + butter, + finally when the stock goes away, more butter + parsley. Shopping is a pleasure: the vegetables are always so fresh. You can’t keep 812. Ballet de l’Opera Paris, where Cage and Cunningham were in residence preparing for the premiere performance of Cunningham’s Un jour ou deux with Cage’s Etcetera, which would take place on November 6, 1973, lasting ninety minutes, with stage decor and costumes by Johns, assisted by his collaborator, British artist and designer Mark Lancaster (b. 1938). The instrumentation of Cage’s Etcetera includes cardboard boxes that, when struck, create sounds resembling the rustling of leaves and the patter of raindrops; thus the work belongs with other of Cage’s “environmental pieces” —Branches (1976) and Child of Tree (1975). The tape employed in performance was created by David Behrman and includes the sounds of birds, wind, and distant traffic recorded in Stony Point, New York. 813. Marius Constant (1925–2004), Romanian-born French composer and conductor. Cage’s orchestral score required the services of three conductors; in addition to Constant, Catherine Comet and Boris de Vinogradow.

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things from day to day because they’re ready to use the day you buy them. Cheese of course fabulous + créme fraiche indispensable. I don’t know how we managed in America to lose that art. Anyone in his right mind (B. Franklin for example, who must have tasted it) would have written it into the Constitution. And raspberries! Now! And chanterelles, Cêpes Oyster mushrooms in the market just down the street. But I also visit Teeny and pick mushrooms in the forest near Fontainebleau. Got lost one day but not too seriously. More serious: I also lost at chess! I also go on with my writing (this is one of my worksheets). I got the name of a Chinese acupuncture doctor, Dr. Yen, + he just visited me. He was extraordinary. He refused to give me acupuncture because he s[ai] d it wouldn’t help. He said I should not drink white wine or champagne; that I could drink a little whiskey or red wine, but only a little, that otherwise my wrists will become more deformed. That I should let them rest. Never lift heavy things. He examined my feet also + talked beautifully for half an hour. When I asked him how much I owed him (he came to the apartment), he said, “Nothing: I haven’t done anything for you.” He advised me to continue with aspirin, to have my blood examined when I return to N.Y. + to have an analysis made to discover what had caused the inflammation. He was amazing. And when I tried to insist on his taking some money, he refused again. He said that if I were in a crisis of pain, that then he could modify the pain with acupuncture. The pain, of course, is worse because it’s so damp + then I’m concerned abt. our work + it’s clear that the situation is not just physical but also psychological. Now we’ve agreed to go to Rome after Paris to do a performance of the Song Books, Merce and Simone Rist814 + I. After that we’d come back here for further performances + they speak of an evening of my music Nov. 24th. I would rather not stay that long. It is too damp. There’s a possibility Jap would take us to St. Martin’s. Going out now to buy some non-alcoholic juice!

814. Simone Rist, French singer who, with Cathy Berberian, gave early performances of Cage’s virtuosic Song Books (1970).

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To Teeny Duchamp December 5, 1973 | 107 Bank St., New York Dearest Teeny, This is a difficult situation I’m in, so please don’t get cross until you’ve counted up to ten. While I was in Paris, I was interviewed re Marcel by Alain Jouffroy.815 I remember mentioning this to you but didn’t say anything further because you remarked that he talks too much. I’m afraid I do too. What happened is that in the course of talking with him, I got on to the subject of Schwartz816 and my views of his book (which I started to tell you about, but then stopped). I asked him at the time not to include my remarks on this subject in his interview. However, he finds them interesting, and, forgive me please, I do too. But in no case do I want them published if you find them offensive. I think that my ideas have the advantage of shifting critical attention to Schwartz’s book in a livelier direction than has been taken. Even if they are not true factually. When I got back I called Kynaston817 to get information about the museum for you, but he said he was on his way to France and would be with you, so I did nothing further. Now I’ve been invited to speak again at the museum about Marcel as I did in Philadelphia, in February. Kynaston gave me the idea that the show wouldn’t open until April. It’s all very confusing. Jack* sends his love. I told him the only thing you don’t like about France is that it doesn’t have him in it. He laughed and said the only thing that he likes about France is that it has you in it. Back to the Jouffroy problem: he says the whole matter is urgent. I have sent him a cable telling him that I just rec’d. the text, not to make any publication until he hears from me. After reading all this, please let me know as soon as possible what you want me to do. I enclose a xerox of his letter to me. I am typing out the section of the interview concerning Schwartz —not the en815. Alain Jouffroy (b. 1928), French writer and poet who published “Entendre John Cage, Entendre Duchamp,” Opus International, no. 49 (March 1974). In the end, Jouffrey incorporated all of Cage’s “corrections and suggestions” into the text before publication. 816. Properly, Arturo (Umberto Samuele) Schwarz (b. 1924), Egyptian-born Italian scholar, art historian, poet, curator, and collector, well known for his extensive writings on Dada and surrealist art and artists, especially Duchamp. Both Jouffroy and Cage alternate erratically in their spelling/ misspelling of Schwarz/Schwartz (and occasionally Scwarz). 817. Kynaston McShine (b. 1935), American curator, from 1968 associated with the Museum of Modern Art in New York. His 1970 landmark show “Information,” which gathered together work from one hundred artists, was the first survey of conceptual art by a major American museum.

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tire interview. I have already indicated the omission of many remarks in the original. A.J.: Au sujet de Duchamp toute la critique reprend ajourd’hui la même thèse. Ils disent, tous, la même chose depuis sa mort: Schwartz a fait un énorme livre et sa thèse, vous le savez, c’est que Duchamp était amoureux de sa petite soeur. Schwartz déclare qu’il s’agit de Suzanne. Cela pourrait être Yvonne ou Magdeleine, peu importe. Pour eux, la Mariée mise a nu . . . c’est cette petite soeur . . . Le signe qu’il s’agit d’elle, c’est son jeur de mots de 1924: “Une nymphe amie d’enfance” —Infamie! Etc . . . J.C.: On se retrouve a nouveau dans la philsophie allemande. (Rires). (Earlier in the interview I had opposed the goal of German philosophy to unify everything with the activity of Indian philosophy which tends towards multiplicity.) A.J.: Absolument. Je suis contre ce système. Ils n’ont pas osé le faire quand il était vivant; ils le font après sa mort. “La petite soeur.” Ils sont contents. Il fallait une clé pour cette porte fermée . . . et la clé d’Etant Donnes: c’est encore Suzanna! J.C.: Vous connaissez l’histoire? Quand on a demandé à Marcel ce qui’il pensait du livre de Schwartz? Il a dit “ce n’est pas sur moi, c’est par Schwartz.” Mais . . . (hésitations) je n’ai pas lu le livre, je l’ai ouvert, et —refermé . . . J’ai l’intention de la lire. La raison c’est que j’ai senti (comme beaucoup), que c’était un tort de reduire tout à ce business psych-analytique . . . J’avais quelque chose contre Schwartz . . . Bon . . . Un our, j’etais en tournée avec la Compagnie de Merce Cunningham . . . Nous étions à Milan . . . Un membre de la Compagnie voulait acheter un Duchamp. Il a vu Schwartz et il m’a dit que je devrais le rencontrer. J’avais correspondu avec Schwarz . . . à propos du livre. [There follows an account of the membership card in the Czechoslovakian Mushroom Society which Marcel signed.] De toute facons. Je suis allé voir Schwartz, je l’ai trouvé aussi devoué à Marcel que moi. Schwarz est comme un rabbin. Il voit l’attitude de Marcel vis-à-vis du sexe en termes de “Moksha,” [We had earlier in the interview discussed the four divisions of Indian philosohy] n’est-ce pas? De plus, une forme de liberation [Moksha] des “concerns” sexuels serait un bénéfice pour la societé en general. C’est une attitude mystique envers le sexe. N’êtes-vous pas d’accord? Schwarz m’a parlé de ses visions. Il en a eu deux à dix ans d’intervalle. Le première, une vision de l’appartement de Marcel à New York. Il lui a envoyé une lettre, le lui décrivant, bien qu’il ne l’ait jamais vu. Schwarz dit que la description était si exacte que Marcel fut impressioné. C’est ce qu’il dit. Teeny c’est pas d’accord. Elle dit qu’elle et Marcel one ri de tout ça. Schwarz dit qu’a cause de l’exactitude de sa vision, Marcel était d’accord avec l’idée d’être analysé. Et que cette analyse s’est faite par correspondance sur une période de 10 ans. Et 1 9 7 2 – 1 9 8 2  |  435

que les résultats, c’est le livre. (According to Schwartz), Marcel pouvait voir tout ce que Scwarz écrivait et pouvait changer . . . opposer son veto, etc . . . A.J.: Marcel a fair des changements? J.C.: Non jamais, je crois . . . Par exemple Scwarz dit qu’il a une lettre de Duchamp, montrant qu’il était en faveur du livre . . . qu’il voulait qu’il éxiste. Çela m’a donné l’idée que Marcel avait reconnu, en Schwarz, une personne capable de faire un travail (perform) de Duchamp. Et il avait l’idée de faire un livre écrit par quelqu’un d’autre . . . Schwartz . . . au sujet du sexe qui est tellement dérangeant pour les gens géneralement, et l’approcherait d’une facon tout à fait neuve . . . et qu’ainsi ceux qui comprendraient le livre serient liberés des contraintes (concerns) sexuelles . . . Je n’ai pas lu le livre. Mais j’ai l’impression que dedans Marcel prend sur lui toutes ces choses à propos du sexe que l’on cache d’habitude. Et, ainsi, e’il prend les aspects du sexe les plus décriés . . . et maintenant vous croyez peut-être que mon idée est stupide, mais c’est vraiment .  .  . une action du Christ (Christ action). A.J.: Vous êtes sur qu’il était favorable au livre? J.C.: A mon avis Schwartz n’a pas l’imagination pour ecrire un tel livre. Et je crois . . . que Marcel l’a choisi . . . pour faire un travail et qu’il l’a fair si astucieusement que même Schwarz ne le sait pas. N’est-ce pas beau? Une belle idée? Même si ce n’est pas vrai, c’est merveilleux! A.J.: Vous pensez . . . que Duchamp a choisi Schwarz pour faire un livre. J.C.: Comme un compositeur choisit un exécutant . . . A.J.: Qui puisse liberer le lecteur des contraintes sexuelles? . . . J.C.: Oui. A.J.: Mais qu ça n’avait pas d’importance d’il disait vrai ou faux sur lui, Duchamp? C’est ça? R.C.: [Robert Cordier818] Mais . . . que Schwarz ne sait pas qu’il a eté choisi en tant qu’exécutant . . . A.J.: instrument. Un ready-made au second degré. Schwarz est un readymade. J.C.: C’est incroyable: c’est connecté avec tant de choses que Marcel a dites. Que l’artiste doit aller underground . . . comment mieux aller underground que de faire un travail que même la personne qui le fait l’ignore! (Rires) .............. J.C.: Mais apparement il éxiste les lettres . . . je crois qu’avant vous devriez voir ces lettres . . . 818. Robert Cordier (b. 1933), Belgian director, filmmaker, and teacher, founder of the Course Robert Cordier and Association Action Theatre.

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A.J.: Jamais Schwarz ne me motrerait ces lettres. J.C.: Alors vous devez lui donner l’exemple du President Nixon! (Rires) A.J.: C’est formidable. Le Watergate de Schwarz .  .  . c’est Duchamp? Non, c’est la correspondance de Schwarz avec Duchamp. J.C.: C’est tres compliqué. R.C.: “It’s none of your business”! (This is a reference to a remark of Schoenberg’s to me when I showed him a twelve-tone piece I had written.) I hope you’re not too angry with me. Please send word. *He wants me to be one of many (Dec. 17) who’ll play with Sal Matera819 at the Marshall Chess Club. I agreed.

To Joseph Kover820 December 10, 1973 | 107 Bank St., New York I was 12 yrs. old. I got out my bicycle and rode over to kfWb. They said, “What do you want?” I said, “I’d like to give a weekly radio program for the Boy Scouts.” They said, “Are you an Eagle?” I said, “No, I’m a Tenderfoot.” They said, “Did the Boy Scouts send you?” I said, “No, I just got the idea and came over.” They said, “Well, run along.” So I went over to knx. They liked the idea and arranged a time for the first program. I then went to the Boy Scouts, told them what had happened, + asked for their approval and cooperation. They said it was all right to give the program, but that they wd. not cooperate. In fact, they never did. Every time I asked for the Boy Scout Band, they said No. Individual Scouts all gave their services willingly. There were boy sopranos; trumpet, trombone, and piano soloists; and Scouts who spoke on their experiences building fires and tying knots. The volume of fan mail increased each month. After 2 yrs., the organization called up knx, said they’d never authorized the program, + demanded that I be put out + they be put in. They were. The band finally played. A few weeks later, knx took the program off the air.

819. Salvatore Joseph Matera (b. 1951), American chess master, a U.S. junior champion in 1967. 820. Joseph Kover, scoutmaster and merit badge counselor for the Boy Scouts of America, who had asked Cage, once a Tenderfoot, to reflect upon his experiences with the organization in his youth.

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To Mr. [Peter] Naumann821 December 11, 1973 | 107 Bank St., New York Dear Mr. Naumann, In my thinking, and in two musical works (The Seasons; String Quartet) the seasons themselves (Spring, Summer, Fall, Winter) are as Indian thinking has it Creation, Preservation, Destruction, Quiescence. The String Quartet begins in Summer; The Seasons (for orch.) begins and ends in Winter. I think it was from Japanese thought that I got the notion of the New Year and its celebration. Something of this may be felt in the last movement (a quodlibet) of the String Qt. I have always used the term “Imaginary Landscape” in connection with works involving technology. That is why they were not called Landscapes. Water Music used water for several of its sounds. Winter Music was written during the Winter; it seemed to me to share with ice and winter landscape a certain immovability that musically is the result of isolated aggregates. A certain fixedness even in the face of interpenetrations. Atlas Eclipticalis is the title of a Czechoslovakian book of star maps. I used these to place the notes. And tried in that work, and in some others, e.g., Music for Carillon No. IV, to give to sounds characteristics of space such as stars and planets have. Bird Cage is so-called because it uses bird songs and sounds, and my own chanting together with other sounds (not mentioned in the title).

To Dieter Schnebel 822 December 11, 1973 | Location not indicated Dear Dieter, I studied with Schoenberg in Los Angeles for two years: ’33–’35 or ’34–’36. I prepared myself for study with him by study with his pupil, Adolph Weiss (that was done in New York City for the period, say, of a year). With Weiss I stud821. Peter Naumann, signatory for Georg Rebscher at the Pädagogische Hochschule Rhineland in Bonn, who was conducting research on the relationship of nature to twentieth-century music. He asked Cage to explain the significance of some of his titles —Water Music, Winter Music, Bird Cage, and others. Rebscher’s work would be published as Natur in der Musik unter besonderer Berucksichtigung gegenwartiger Musik (Breitkopf und Härtel, 1976). 822. Dieter Schnebel (b. 1930), German composer who served from 1976 to 1995 as professor of experimental music at the Berlin Hochschule der Kunste.

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ied harmony, and he would also look at my compositions and give criticisms of them. It seemed to me at the time that a student could only go in one of two possible directions. He would either follow Stravinsky or Schoenberg. (I had made a survey of the then-modern arts and that was my conclusion.) I chose Schoenberg not as a matter of taste, but because of his composition with twelve tones, or, say, my understanding of it: the equality of the twelve, rather than the predominance of one of them. Furthermore, after seeing my early works (which were chromatic and dealt with the non-repetition of tones in a gamut of 25, i.e., two octaves) Henry Cowell, with whom I also later studied, advised me to study with Schoenberg. I was with him as often as possible during the period of my study. There was always a small group, 2, 3 or 4, who met with him in his home once a week. In addition, I went to his classes first at U.S.C. (Univ. of Southern California) and later at U.C.L.A. (University of California at Los Angeles). Sometimes I was able to borrow my mother’s car; when this was possible I used to chauffeur Schoenberg. From time to time he invited me to his home for dinner and the evening conversation. The small weekly group studied counterpoint. And finally we got to fugue. Before that, when a cantus firmus was required, only one was permitted: C, D, F, E, D, C. When an exercise involved going from one tonality to another, any cross-related tones had to be resolved in each voice (all F’s to E before the appearance of any F sharp; all B’s to C before the appearance of any B-flat) without the writing of parallel octaves. Our work, both in terms of quantity and quality, never satisfied him. He always wanted more than we gave. When we wrote strictly, he inquired about the absence of freedom. When we took liberties, he said: Why do you break the rules? After two years of never pleasing him, after looking at our fugues, he amazed me by saying he was pleased with our work. Somehow, he didn’t convince me. At U.S.C. I also attended the class in counterpoint. It was also not large, never more than 4, and often the same 4. I also went to his larger class there in analysis (Beethoven: piano sonatas, or rather sonata: his analysis was so detailed and revealing that we never got very far along in even the one sonata; curiously, I don’t now recall which one it was!). At U.C.L.A. I attended the class in harmony; this had at least 30–40 people in it. Once I showed Schoenberg one of my compositions. He refused to look at it. At another time I asked him a question about one of his own works, a dodecaphonic question. His reply “That is none of your business!” 1 9 7 2 – 1 9 8 2  |  439

The works which I knew before I knew him were the piano works, Opus 11 (Richard Buhlig, the first to play it, was another teacher of mine and a friend) and the Suite, Opus 25 and the group of short, easier piano pieces. While studying with him, there were concerts of his music here and there in the area. And one heard, particularly, the String Quartets. At the time he was writing the String Trio, which I later heard at its first performance in Cambridge near Boston. I also was present when he conducted the Los Angeles Philharmonic in a program of his works. Which ones? (!) I am sending you with this a review of Schoenberg’s letters which I wrote and in which I try to answer your question: What was he like as a teacher and as a person? For me he was a god, not a mere human being. For himself, perhaps, he was a law-giver. My title for my review of his letters is Mosaic. It is included in my book: A Year from Monday. That’s a pun. How did I get along with him? How can I say? He could do no wrong, while I could do no right. After his death, I was several times with Mrs. Schoenberg. Once she asked me how I was getting along. I said: Fairly well. She said: I would say: Entirely too well! I am, of course, sad that the collection of music mss., which includes one of yours,823 includes nothing by Schoenberg. I think had he still been alive when I was forming it that he would have given something. And perhaps Mrs. Schoenberg would have too, except for all the legal problems and family desires that grew up after his death. I was very glad, of course, to hear in the late forties through Peter Yates about the correspondance between Schoenberg and Scherchen.824 That you may know about, in which Schoenberg said in response to the question: Did you have any good pupils in America? There was one, and he named me. Of course he’s not a composer, but he is an inventor of genius. That was my diploma. But why he gave it remains a mystery. How did he know? He would neither look at my work, nor listen to it. I invited him once to hear my early work for percussion. He said he was busy. Perhaps, after I left him, one way or another, he saw or heard something. I have no way of knowing. You ask me, dear Dieter, what knowledge I gained from this period of being with Schoenberg. Do we ever learn anything? I was deeply struck when he said, before a large class at Usc: My purpose in teaching you is to make it impossible for you to write music. I determined then and there to devote my life to nothing 823. The Notations collection contains three items by Schnebel: Visible Music II (1961–1962; one leaf of music, ink on vellum), Reactions (1960–1961; three leaves of music, ink on vellum, and performance instructions), and Zeitbilder (n.d.; one leaf of music, ink on vellum). 824. Hermann Scherchen (1891–1966), German conductor. See Arnold Schoenberg Letters, ed. Erwin Stein (New York: St. Martin’s, 1965).

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else. People may think that I’ve been unfaithful to myself, but I haven’t: music has been generous to me. When I first went to Schoenberg, and asked him to teach me, he said: You probably can’t afford my price. I said: Don’t bother to mention it: I have no money. He: Will you devote your life to music? Yes. Then I won’t charge you anything! Another time I was deeply moved was when he sent us all to the blackboard to solve a problem: this was a largish class at Ucla. He said: When you have a solution, turn around and I’ll look at it. I turned around after awhile. He said: Now solve it again. Etc. Finally I replied: There aren’t any more solutions. He said: What is the principle underlying all of the solutions? For me he had always been a god; at that moment he was God! Let us say that he was devoted to discipline and that he was gifted to transmit to others that devotion. My understanding of discipline is that it frees us from the tyranny of likes and dislikes that arise within us. Could Schoenberg have seen my composition using chance operations as following essentially his teaching? I doubt it. He tended, I believe, to look backward (to Bach, Beethoven, Brahms, Schoenberg) more than to look forward, though he did look forward (Webern). Dear Dieter, I will not answer your last question: What is the most important aspect of Schoenberg for you? I’ll ask you instead to search in this haystack and find that needle for yourself!

To Christian Wolff January 17, 1974 | Location not indicated Dear Christian, This is an attempt to answer your letter of long ago. It is difficult for me. I do not agree that “Power is what it is all about.” Even in the case of chess where most people would say I’d be obliged to agree. Marcel used to say: Don’t just play your side of the game; play the whole game. What is it all about? Power is, say, part of it, but includes to begin with the powerless. When I think of the categories of Indian thought (Artha, Kama, Dharma, Moksha), power belongs I suppose in Artha, the practice of bringing things to successful conclusions. “Success is dust.” Conclusion is not end but precedes the next beginning. Over a long period of time power is finally powerless or better expressed as activity. (The rise and fall . . .) 1 9 7 2 – 1 9 8 2  |  441

I have never decided what Suzuki meant when he said, in the course of a discussion after one of his talks at Columbia, There seems to be a tendency towards the good. That is, whether such a tendency exists in all creation, or whether that tendency was characteristic of mind and that he (S.) was teaching No-Mind, or whether the person who had spoken just before S. spoke was being gently criticized by him for not thinking clearly but just wishfully. I confess that I want to be good. That each project I devote myself to has been considered in advance from that point of view. Preliminary in the ’40s was my involvement in oriental thought and that involvement was necessary just in relation to activity. Without it I would have stopped (writing music). It changed my mind and made it a pleasure to go on working with sounds, not exercising power over them, but letting them act from their own centers in “interpenetration and non-obstruction.” Interlude: Another reason that it is difficult to write this letter is that I know you know what I have to say. Consider it then a request to advise me. That “not exercising power over sounds” I then carried over to not exercising power over people. (Much earlier, in the ’30s, I had noticed in the dance-music collaborations power involvements; they were changed by means of rhythmic structures which left the dancers and musicians free to work together but not dependently, not forcing one another to do so and so.) It was not easy to bring my association with David Tudor to an end. I knew that it had to stop because of a recurring twisted expression around his lips (he was clearly suffering because he was doing “my” work, even though in “my” work I was no longer determining the sound events). He was not unhappy when we toured last in Europe together.825 I had arranged that our performances were those of two of us, each doing his own work, but simultaneously. And now I’ve come to the view that on occasion it is “good” to work alone, but that the more urgent “good” is that we all work together (no split between performers and audience ([Frederick] Rzewski). However, I act, as you know, in a variety of ways, writing on occasion music for orchestra or, as just now, music for Grete.826 This may explain my new piece for Grete, each hand doing its own work; interpenetration of centers rather than one helping the other. 825. Cage refers to his last European tour with Tudor as duo performers, May to August 1972. They would appear twice more: at the State University of New York in Buffalo (Dec. 9, 1972) and the State University of New York in Potsdam (Dec. 16, 1975), in both cases giving simultaneous performances of Cage’s Bird Cage (1972) and Tudor’s Monobird (1972), a pairing first heard at Munich’s Musik Film Dia Licht Festival on August 29, 1972. 826. Grete Sultan (see note 423). Cage refers here to his monumental piano cycle, Etudes Australes

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What I’ve done so far “with everyone” is described in the foreword to M. I also worked with the audience as performers in Montreal.827 Musicians, as we are, desiring, as we do, a changed society. What is right action? You write of politics and power and of the adding of these to music by means of words. Are then the words alone insufficient? Wasn’t Mao right (being interested in power) to let music go and add guns to his words? Yes and no. You say that a given music could go along with different words. The power then resides in the words. Music is not necessary. But you “are best at it and enjoy it the most.” I have thought in recent years that since my practice of music changed my mind, that it might change the minds of some other people (that seems to be the case) and further that since society is like mind that it too might change through music’s practices. And this too seems to be the case, though insufficiently. Not enough people take revolutionary music seriously, that is, not enough to change the society. Or are we impatient? (Interlude re your trouble with my distinction between politics and society, my refusal of politics. Cf. periodic and aperiodic rhythm: aperiodic can include periodic (society can include politics), not vice versa. I should say that I begin to use the word but not as signifying government, to which I continue to object. I met a Swiss, asked him “what he did.” He said he was a politician. I laughed because in one ear he was wearing a ring. He then explained that politics was “all of the actions of all of the people.” To that I am devoted, if we add nonsentient beings. I see too the connection as words between city and politics. And here I notice the decay of the old cities and the move towards wilderness. I do believe that our present “politics” outside of China both as environment and as government is bad. But I also believe that we will not change for the good by means of an academic transfer of Chinese politics to our situation. I hope for a world that will work for everyone. And so I return to the utilities rather than to power politics. And to Fuller. Adding to his above-earth energy networks, changed mind.) (1974–75), derived from tracing star charts contained in Antonín Becvár’s Atlas Australis (1964). The work comprises thirty-two etudes written as duets for two independent hands. It is composed in conventional notation, with no indications for dynamics, attack, or use of the pedals. 827. Cage refers to his attendance at a two-day event, Musialogues, 2 Journées avec John Cage, sponsored by the Université de Montréal’s L’Atelier-laboratoir de la Faculté demusique (Feb. 15–16, 1973). He conducted a “collective performance” with students and faculty of his Mureau (1970). See note 842.

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In impatience, or desperation (Cf. Nobby’s Closing Time828), I work with language, to change it, to change mind. Jackson Mac Low is less confident, less optimistic about the usefulness socially of changing language. He suggests that a changed language is merely beautiful. And a form of beauty which is not easily understood. I suspect that his views are influenced by psychoanalytical thought which is often merely adapting people to the social status quo. How interesting the newspapers have been in recent days! On the one hand the dreams and non-violence of Martin Luther King, on the other the fall from power of Richard Nixon. However, I am not as optimistic, as a musician, as I was. At least I do not see that by my continuing my work that society will change. Then why do I go on? I think the going on is partly habit, partly some continuing energy, and partly hope of discovery. Words and/or music, removing insofar as I can aspects of power from each, trying to suggest a state of affairs in which all men, women and children live (and die) honored by and honoring one another in an environment which itself honored lives and dies. If you would pass on to me any of the literature of socialist critique of new music you mention, I’d be grateful. I don’t have Cornelius’s829 articles! I have been attending many musical performances. Almost all of them beneficent. My impression from observing others listening is that they too find them beneficent. The atmosphere is one of attention to what is happening rather than attention to one’s ability to make judgments. Much of your letter is obscure to me because it takes an on-going conversation with Cornelius for granted. The question remains: What is right action for musicians to bring about the revolution? For me, what you do is right (I’m thinking of my response to Burdocks830 when you and others performed here in NYC). And what I recently experienced of Philip Corner’s work. In both cases, no words; just sounds and silences. At one point Philip quietly invited audience participation. Some did. Some didn’t. But it was beautifully clear that we were all together and that we lived, if not forever, in a world without barriers and power for a few hours in such a room. 828. Norman O. Brown, Closing Time (1973), an arrangement of fragments from Giambattista Vico’s Scienza Nuova (The New Science; 1725) and James Joyce’s Finnegans Wake. 829. Cornelius Cardew (see note 428). 830. Wolff’s Burdocks (1970–1971) for one or more groups of five or more players, a collection of parts from which an ensemble performance can be assembled.

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P.S. (Next day) When one activity is considered more important than another, e.g., revolution than music, isn’t the situation brought about by such consideration unrealistic, less complex than the situation naturally is? Instead of doing one thing at a time, practicing doing everything at once. I’m full of admiration for the way revolutionary Chinese grow vegetables, but not for the way they make their arts propagandistic. They honor the stomach more than the ears, than the eyes. Today I read What Is the Human Prospect? (Robert L. Heilbroner in the N.Y. Review of Books.) After arguing for a diminution of science and technology to the pt. of a minimum “necessary evil,” he suggests that a post-industrial society would resemble a pre-industrial “primitive” society, having as pillars tradition and ritual, communally organized and ordained roles. There were two Seneca Indians with us when Philip’s work was being done. Philip’s work? Philip’s work.

To Octavio + Marie-Jose Paz February 3, 1974 | 107 Bank Street, New York 10014 Will be again in Cuenavaca Feb. 8–18 with Dorothy Norman.831 70 B Humboldt (Privata). Telephone 2-10-53. Hope to be with you.

To Joseph Byrd 832 May 22, 1974 | 107 Bank St., New York I have read your proposal and am delighted with your project + the thorough way in which you have planned to realize it. It is of course of great interest, and I hope that the required funds are forthcoming. 831. Dorothy Norman (b. Stecker; 1905–1997), American photographer, arts patron, and social activist. From 1942 to 1949 she wrote for the New York Post and published the journal Twice a Year (1938–1948). Cage’s reference to seeing Brown while traveling to Cuernavaca is unclear, although he may have considered adding a stop in California, where Brown taught at the University of California, Santa Cruz, to his itinerary. While in Cuernavaca, Cage completed his Series re Morris Graves, a text underway for the Drawing Society (New York Graphic Society, 1974). Uniquely, it includes nonsyntactical chants drawn from The Gospel of Sri Ramakrishna. 832. Joseph Byrd (b. 1937), American composer, arranger, and producer. He proposed to record and disseminate twelve albums of pre-twentieth-century American music, together with fifteen

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To Dennis Russell Davies833 December 6, 1974 | 107 Bank Street, New York Hope the radio piece and the solo et al. went well; would you ask someone on your staff to send me reviews? I am angling to get a recording co[mpany] to make records of what you’re doing. (In this connection: I did, and you too, give an interview to 2 young men from Ann Arbor for a magazine; I then later proofread it for them + corrections; then never heard boo. Do you remember the name of the magazine, or does your staff have a copy; would, if so, like a xerox.) I wd. like reviews of all the concerts sent to me. My principal reason for writing this is to give you information about 9'  51.44".834 First of all, it is very difficult, but each person can prepare his part by himself: there is no fixed relation of the parts. I strongly suggest people beginning to work on it as soon as possible. I will of course be glad to answer ?’s. The four string parts are as follows: 9' 51.44" (pg. 59 to end of the score known as 26' 1.1499" for a String Player); 7' 28.5399" (pg. 28 short arco [H] sound following dotted vertical line through page 58); 5'59.11" (page 9, beginning with second arco [H] sound, through repeated double stop [dotted line] page 28); 2' 42.06" from the beginning through 3rd noise on page 9. Note that the time-lengths are increasingly shorter than the first one which gives the title to the entire performance. This latter is like a bracket (time-bracket) within which the others must fall. Taking as an example the second one (7' 28.5399"), subtract this time from the longest (9' 51.44"); then the second player begins his shorter part at any time betw. 0' and 2' 22.9001" (!). The subtraction must be made for all the other parts so that they know during what period of time a beginning can be made. There are 2 possible parts for the pianist out of the music known as 34' 46.776" for a Pianist. 9'7.82514" (begin page 22 (dotted line at end through pg. 38: first s[oun]d. only) or 8'  17.493" (begin pg. 8, or split second before [see pg. 7] and play through pg. 22, dotted line near end). For the percussionist either 9' 49.118" (pg. 1 through dotted line pg. 10; or 9' 15.882" (pg. 18 dotted line last system to end); or 8' 5.554" (pg. 10, last system dotted line through page 18 ditto). lecture/recital radio programs, five radio documentaries dealing with music in American culture, and a series of weekly American music radio programs. 833. Dennis Russell Davies (b. 1944), American conductor and pianist, champion of modern music through his work with such organizations as the Saint Paul Chamber Orchestra (1972–1980), American Composers Orchestra (1977–2002), and the Brooklyn Philharmonic (1991–1996). 834. Cage is writing here about compositions emanating out of a grand project, “The Ten Thousand Things” (1953–1956). See note 612.

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To Jackson Mac Low February 9, 1975 | Location not indicated Dear Jackson: Thank you for your letter, part of which appears above. I don’t recall answering it. At the time (circa New Years 1963) I was already plagued by correspondence and was using for it a remedy prescribed by Dick Higgins, the Noteogram,835 which so limited the space available for writing that I was able to write or answer up to thirty letters a day without interfering seriously either with my mushroom hunting (Collybia velutipes and Pleurotus ostreatus and sometimes ulmarius at that season), my writing (perhaps “Jasper Johns: Stories and Ideas” 836), my composition (Variations V or VI?), or my activities in show business (with or without David Tudor, at that time the pianist, or Merce Cunningham and Dance Company with whom I am about to go on still another tour). Nowadays I continue to use the Noteogram, though not in the present instance. I also have the services of Artservices, so that “I” write many letters that I never see and make many telephone calls without speaking a word. (This is due to my complete confidence in Mimi Johnson.837 ) The reason I’m telling you all this (which after all isn’t irrelevant to the subject of chance operations) is that I find your letter difficult to answer. It is true that I’ve made a habit of not properly answering letters now for a long time. You cd. say that I’m out of practice + that in ’63 I was studying how to get out of practice. But this letter of yours presented at the time certain difficulties. And it does again now, 12 years later. It, so to speak, resists being answered. And the funny thing is: I can’t quite tell why. Some years ago I sent your letters along with my correspondence with other composers plus the collection of music mss. I formed to benefit the Foundation for Contemporary Performance Arts which includes work of yours to 835. “Note-o-Grams” —small, tri-part, preprinted forms with space on the left for one’s communication and on the right for the recipient’s reply, with carbon paper dividing the sheets; used by Cage from about 1963. 836. John Cage’s “Jasper Johns: Stories and Ideas,” which appears in A Year from Monday (Middletown, CT: Wesleyan University Press, 1967), 73–84. Cage delivered this piece at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art on Jan. 6, 1965, where it was recorded. Johns would also be the subject of two later pieces by Cage: “What You Say . . .” (1979) and “Art Is Either a Complaint or Do Something Else” (1989). 837. Mimi Johnson (b. 1946), founder of the nonprofit organization Performing Artservices, Inc., and the record label Lovely Music, Ltd. Cage was among her first clients, who also included the Sonic Arts Union (Mumma, Tudor, Behrman, and her husband, Robert Ashley [see note 657]). Her aunt was the American artist Dorothea Tanning.

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Northwestern University Music Library in Evanston, Illinois. So that when I got the idea of answering your old letters in vort in order to celebrate your work as a musician-poet, all I had to do was get Mimi to telephone Don Roberts, the Music Librarian at nU, and ask for xeroxes of your file. However, as so often happens, the xeroxed pages that I rec’d. are slightly smaller than your original handwritten pages +, moreover, someone had stapled them together. I had to remove the staples in order to read the words that had been underneath them in the upper left-hand corners, and in doing so I tore the pages slightly. This didn’t help matters. In some instances I’ve had to guess what words fell off the edges of the xeroxes all the way down both sides of the pages. Worst of all are the partial omissions of the top and bottom lines of each page. I’ve had to make guesses and when they seemed reasonable in context I’ve not indicated in any way that all they are are guesses. Where I simply cdnt even imagine what you’d written, I put dots signifying a deletion. But, to get down to business, I was surprised to learn that in the light poems you mixed, as you say, choice + chance somewhat scandalously.838 Perhaps I take the word “mixed” too literally. I know that the light poem, “In Memoriam Paul Blackburn,” doesn’t use chance at all. It begins, in fact, with the words “Let me choose.” And the one “In Memoriam Charles Olson” has two movements, the first in choice, and the second in chance. Are there are any light poems or other poems of yours which actually do mix choice + chance (I mean methodically from word to word)? If there are, I’m sure I’d find them very interesting. For your choices in such a case would probably be so close in spirit to the chances you’d take (or rather receive) that I wouldn’t be able to tell one from the other. At least I bet such a mixture in your hands would neither suggest a discourse, nor a drama, nor an object divisible into parts as it might in the hands of a Boulez or [Earle] Brown. And it wouldn’t give me the feeling that I often get from Stockhausen that chance cd. do whatever it did do provided it stayed within the confines of choice. I never have felt in your work an obsession with beauty, as I often have in Feldman’s work. Instead, you seem open to whatever. In the way I read or hear your work, it seems to me you’ve left space around each and every thing so that the work does its own writing and speaking, and I do my own reading or listening, which after all is all I can do. The notion of the work’s writing itself is like a passage in another one of your letters (July 1, 1962) that I had remembered all these years but had forgotten 838. See Jackson Mac Low, 22 Light Poems (Los Angeles: Black Sparrow Press, 1968), which includes “7th Light Poem for John Cage —17 June 1962.”

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that it had been written by you, a passage abt. handwriting. I feel it’s important that I keep the pen on the paper thruout each word —the pen sometimes seems to be writing by being pulled by a magnet from underneath the paper when I do this thoro[ugh]ly. At the end of that letter, you ask whether I have any thoughts abt. handwriting. I don’t really. I notice, however, that your idea of keeping the pen on the paper throughout a word is a ballpoint or fountain pen idea (doesn’t involve the need to dip the pen in ink). And I just noticed that your handwriting in the letter about composition methods is much smaller than in any of the other letters. It’s true the paper you used was also smaller. But then on postcards or the reply section of Noteograms your writing tends to be larger than that of most people. I remember (or think I remember) thinking that your handwriting was not very good, not very attractive. Particular letters are inconsistently written. And the slant to the right is not always maintained. But all these idiosyncrasies now seem to make your handwriting beautiful. I have finally changed, whereas your handwriting long ago was in constant flux. Notice the changing width of its line: it suggests music. But, to come back to chance operations, Octavio Paz recently gave a reading of his poems at the ymha + included the one about reading my writings. He introduced it by saying that he favored not chance itself but corrected chance. I cdn.’t help thinking of the wild food collector who said about strawberries, “I’d rather have ½ pint of the wild than a gallon of the tame.” But the I Ching (you ask in another letter whether I still use the I Ching; I do, but now I have it computerized) —the I Ching is very precise about whether one is to fiddle with chance or just take it straight. I forget how it goes, but the I Ching says in effect that anyone who finds the oracle unacceptable has no right to ask another question, certainly not to ask again the same one. (I now see composition, by the way, as a ? of asking questions.) This is like the traditional attitude towards suicide: once you are born, you have no right to kill yourself. Implicit in one’s conception and birth is a wild chance operation identical with those of the I Ching (64, hexagrams, the whole kit’n’caboodle). You can read abt. this in Gunther Stent’s Coming of the Golden Age (1969), or Harvey Bialy839 could tell you. Some critics, I’m told, think the reason we use chance operations is that we’re bamboozled in the face of the vast number of possibilities in the 20th century and can’t make up our minds. Nonsense. Chance is a discipline that frees the ego from its likes + dislikes, + its reliance on taste and memory. And opens it to fluency with the rest of creation. 839. Harvey Bialy (b. 1945), American poet, novelist, and molecular biologist who later became well known as an HIV/AIDS denialist.

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I notice, however, that though you love to be surprised, you don’t, I take it, want to be unpleasantly surprised. It’s like the other day when you said you were having technical difficulties, I said, “How nice!” And you said, “What’s nice about it?” Later that afternoon I went up to hear the Waldrops840 read, and Keith read a poem abt. money that was to the effect that to have it is better than not to have it. But I prefer what Jasper Johns said. He was deliberating whether or not to buy the property he now owns down on Houston St. I was trying to persuade him not to. I said, “You never know when people will stop buying your pictures, or the prices for them will go down, or something else awful.” He said (+ I’ll never forget it), “I have been rich + I know how to do that; and I have been poor and I know how to do that too.” It is, it seems to me, more desirable in fact to be in an unpleasant circumstance than to be in one which is merely pleasant. The mind is more apt to change and not just temporarily. With its change one’s enjoyment of life is greatly expanded. I remember years ago feeling marvelously liberated. I was still married to Xenia. We found ourselves in NYC literally penniless. Not a cent. There is an enormous difference between a dime and nothing at all. This is also true of food. I fasted recently. I felt quite elated on the 2nd day. I’m going to make some kind of habit out of it. But, to come back to chance operations, implicit in the I Ching is that any of the answers answers any of the questions. There is therefore no need to correct chance, even if one’s stomach’s stuffed + the checks one writes don’t bounce. The more I reread yr letter the more I recognize experiences I have while composing. The daily work is often quite tedious and rather clear ideas abt. how to do it differently (to change the ?’s asked) just naturally arise. I told Merce, just a few days before I finished Etudes Australes (that took me 13 months), that I had in mind several different ways to write other books of piano etudes. However, I doubt very much whether I’ll actually write them, though, having said that, I think, “Why shouldn’t I?” Very often a long work of mine is some kind of metamorphosis. That’s the case with the Music of Changes (goes from generally short durations to generally long ones), the recent Etudes, 32 of them (goes from mostly single notes to single notes with more and more aggregates). And Empty Words841 too: that took over a year and goes from language (albeit nonsyntacti840. Keith (b. 1932) and Rosmarie (née Rosmarie Sebald; b. 1935) Waldrop, contemporary American poets, translators, and publishers (Burning Deck Press). 841. Cage’s Empty Words (1973–1974), a marathon text work to be spoken aloud, in four parts and drawn from the Journals of Henry David Thoreau. This is Cage’s most sustained demilitarization of language: Part 1 omits sentences, Part 2 omits phrases, Part 3 omits words, and Part 4, which omits syllables, leaves nothing but a virtual lullaby of letters and sounds. See letter to Branco Suter (January

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cal) to just letters and silence, i.e., music. I didn’t change my working method in any of these works because a metamorphosis has change, so to speak, built into it. But other changes, such as the ones you mention in your letter and which I recognize as ideas that crop up in my mind while I’m working, I put into the future, to be realized or not as the case may be; I don’t put them into the work I’m then writing. There’s another working situation in which new ways of composing are not only springing up in the mind but are welcome and required. I’ve done it twice, once in the Solo for Piano of the Concert for Piano and Orchestra; the other time in the Song Books. In each case I outlined the work to be done in terms of repetition, variation, or introduction of new composing methods. Once some method had been introduced it became available for repetition or variation. (I used Schoenberg’s idea that a variation is a repetition with some things changed and others not; this is identical with your notion of “changing the rules slightly.”) This is a very stimulating way of working. There’s never a dull moment. It’s as though your mind had turned into a circus. You might say it’s overstimulating. In the course of the Song Books (90 Solos for Voice) I wrote not only the music + the directions for theatrical activity but some 45 texts, all during a 6-week period. I sometimes used more or less the same compositional method, but, as you have, with respect to different sources. Thus I experienced the great difference between Thoreau + Joyce, between Thoreau or Joyce + Duchamp. Anyone knows there’s such a difference. But experience is another matter. This last year when I was writing Empty Words, I naturally thought of you and your work often. I am, as you know, devoted to your work, but I didn’t in my work want to repeat yours, though, already with Mureau,842 I felt that I was following in your footsteps. Then, through the repeated circumstances of hearing your performances and giving my own, I began to enjoy the differences between some recent works of ours: particularly the repetition of words in the case of your works, and the absence of repetition in mine. This difference between us makes us necessary for one another. Don’t you think so too? The subject of repetition and its absence brings me back to the I Ching, the 9, 1973) for Cage’s early thoughts on language; also Cage’s letter to Walter Harding (October 2, 1981) for an account of a memorable performance. 842. Mureau (1970–1971), like Cage’s Empty Words (1974), a work with a dual musical-poetic nature, to be read aloud. It departs from conventional syntax in its mix of letters, syllables, words, phrases, and sentences created by subjecting al the remarks of Thoreau aboout music, silence, and sound to a series of I Ching chance operations. It was given a remarkable performance (as Mueau) by Cage at the Pro Musica Nova Festival in Bremen May 5, 1972, simultaneous with Tudor’s Rainforest III (1972).

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computerized I Ching. All of my work since hpschd has used printouts from an iching program by Ed Kobrin,843 whom I met at the University of Illinois. Kobrin gave me two decks of cards and said that wherever I fd. myself in the world one or the other deck wd. run successfully in the computer whatever kind happened to be around. However, up at Wesleyan University, where the computer was made available to me, the man in charge said neither deck wd. function, but that he wd. make another for me that wd. I now suspect that a microsecond stimulus that certain computers have and that K. used in his program was not available at WU. This stimulus, or whatever it was, as K. explained it to me, insured the uniqueness of any running of the program. It wd. never repeat itself. However, as I continued writing Empty Words, it seemed to me that repetitions were creeping into my text, and that the only way they cd. be doing that wd. be if they existed in the printout to begin with. I then went back and fd. that the printout indeed repeated itself, so that all my work since 1969, since all of it one way or another used the I Ching (not just music but my writing too), beginning with Cheap Imitation, was not what it wd. have been had I been tossing pennies manually (as I did from ’51 or thereabouts until I went to the U[niversity] of I[llinois]). I confess that at first I was shocked, but then realized that what has happened all along is not a slavishness to heads and tails, but a changed mind, one more open than it formerly was and also not enslaved by its purposes or by any superstitions associated with the I Ching. The repetitions that had arisen had not been intended. Therefore they were not only acceptable but, as I found from studying them, enjoyable. Many people, of course, wd. also be shocked not only by the use of the computer but by the use of the coin oracle. They’d insist on the yarrow stalks. The only reason for yarrow stalks is that they take time; during that stretch of time the mind of the person asking the ? is supposed to have a chance to get “sober and quiet.” If the mind is quiet to begin with, then the faster you go the more gifts you receive which you can then give away. Another thing along this line that sometimes happens as I work is that I suddenly notice I’ve made a mistake. If I can go back and correct it, I do. If I can’t (if, for instance, the printout used had already been thrown into the garbage which had already been collected), I accept what’s happened and continue my work. 843. Ed Kobrin, a colleague of Cage and Hiller at the University of Illinois who designed the FORTRAN computer program based on I Ching hexagrams via which the harpsichord solos for HPSCHD were created from randomly processed pieces by Mozart, Beethoven, Chopin, Schumann, Gottschalk, Busoni, Schoenberg, Cage, and Hiller.

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And here’s something else. Recently two different people, one in a letter, the other (Spencer Holst844) in conversation (between moves of one of our games of chess), told me that the way I interpret the coins (3 tails equals a moving straight line; 3 heads equals a moving broken line) is wrong (and, furthermore, that some scientists using I  Ching chance operations make the same misinterpretation I do). That is, my heads shd. be tails and my tails shd. be heads. However, I shall just keep on in my wicked way, “following” (insofar as I can) “the general outlines of the Christian life.” So often, Jackson, you sent poems along with your letters. That always gave me a great deal of pleasure. I’m enclosing some mesostics845 written on your name. The I Ching determined how many + which were Jackson and which Mac Low. I think that’s all for now. Except this: (I’m doing a good deal of cooking these days. I don’t think we’ve ever had a meal together. I’ve never visited you in your home.) wd. you come to dinner sometime? How many of you are there? P.S. If you do come, please bring your music with you that you say in your letter of May 6, ’54 you’d like me to see (particularly the piece having “very irregular rhythms,” using the Circle of Fifths as a row).

To Joseph A. Scafidi 846 October 23 [1975?] | 107 Bank Street, New York Dear Mr. Scafidi: A week or so ago I spoke by telephone with Mr. William Bernell. He said I might think along more or less unlimited lines with regard to a celebration of the 1976 bi-centennial (municipal and national). 844. Spencer Holst (1926–2001), American writer and storyteller, resident at the Westbeth Artist Housing in lower Manhattan where the Cunningham Dance Foundation and Company was based. 845. A mesostic is pithily defined by Cage in his I–VI (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1990, 1–2) as an acrostic whose operative word or letter string runs down the center of the text. “This vertical rule,” says Cage, “is lettristic and in my practice the letters are capitalized. Between two capitals in a perfect or 100% mesostic neither letter may appear in lowercase. In an imperfect or 50% mesostic the first letter may reappear but the second one is not permitted until its appearance on the second line as a capital in the string.” It was Louis Mink (see note 976), Cage’s colleague at Wesleyan University, who pointed out the distinction between the two. 846. Joseph Scafidi (b. 1920), whose tenure with the San Francisco Symphony Association included positions as assistant manager (1954–1963), general manager (1964–1974), and, finally, executive director (1975–1978).

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What I’m imagining is a city-wide Musicircus. Musicians would not be limited to the members of the symphony association, and there would be, rather than a single concert, a large number as many as possible. Each concert would present several performances simultaneously (not, as is conventional, one piece at a time). The celebration would be day-long. Preliminary to bringing it about would be the gathering of the following information: 1. The names of all musical performing organizations, regardless of aesthetic biases, divsions or judgments, and all musician soloists in the city. The terms musical and musician would be extended to include poetry, etc. 2. A listing of all performance spaces (indoors and outdoors, the latter to have protection from weather changes). 3. A listing of all “municipal” sound sources: sirens, horns, bells, etc., public and private. 4. A modification of the above lists due to “willingness to perform” and, say, practicality of facilities. And a list of the repertoires of each group, and each soloist. The above information would be subjected to I Ching chance operations to bring about “a large number” of events. Audiences would likewise be formed by means of chance operations. Tickets would be required for each event (but would be free). Their distribution would be chance-determined. People ordinarily together would find themselves at different concerts sitting (or walking around) with people they hadn’t met before. The city’s restaurants would be invited to serve free meals, reservations for these obtained through chance operations. For those who remain at home, reportage of the events by radio and TV and intermittent use of the municipal sound sources (also chance programmed). To give the municipal celebration a national flavor at least one soloist or performing group would be invited from all the States (including some other chance-determined city or town in California). Each of the States, I should say. The date should be late in ’76 in order to take advantage of the larger repertoires that would result from the earlier celebrations. This would be the first city-wide Musicircus. Earlier ones have been localized: in a stock-pavilion on the campus of the University of Illinois, ChampaignUrbana; a gymnasium on the campus of Macalester College, St. Paul, Minnesota; a pavilion in Les Halles, Paris. 454  |  1 9 7 2 – 1 9 8 2

Rather than going into further detail, I look forward to your reply to this suggestion. Please give my friendliest greetings to Seiji Ozawa.847 P.S. You may also reach me through Miss Mimi Johnson, Artservices, 463 West St., New York 10014. (212) 989-4953. P.P.S. Before the use of chance operations, a division might be made between groups or individuals using amplification means and those not using such means. P.P.S. Could we include the entire population area? I.e., Berkeley, Oakland, etc. P.P.P.S. A special law for the day: Places having only one music-dispensing system (a single juke box or muzak) would not be permitted to use it.

To Esther Dick Snell848 June 21, 1976 | 107 Bank Street, New York Am still working on the piece which will be played in Boston the last day of September (30th), October 1, 2, + 5. It is called Renga with Apartment House 1776.849 (Renga is Japanese linked poetry 5-7-5 which is haiku + 7-7, which together with haiku makes waka [5-7-5-7-7 meter] + continued 36 times makes renga). I have used drawings of Thoreau to make graphic music notation within the renga structure. Now I am working on imitations of 1776 music, sacred, 847. Seiji Ozawa (b. 1935), Japanese conductor, from 1970 to 1977 music director of the San Francisco Symphony; later music director of the Boston Symphony Orchestra and principal conductor of the Vienna State Opera. He conducted the premiere performances of Cage’s Apartment House 1776 and Renga (Boston, September 30–October 1, 2, and 5, 1976). See note 849. 848. Esther Dick Snell, second wife of Walter H. Snell, both mycologists and he a longtime faculty member in the botany department of Brown University. Together they published The Boleti of Northeastern North America (Verlag Von J. Cramer, 1970) and A Glossary of Mycology (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1971). 849. Cage’s Apartment House 1776 (1976), which, paired with his Renga (1975–1976), would be given its premiere performance by the Boston Symphony Orchestra on September 30, 1976. Apartment House 1776 is scored for four voices and/or instruments, the voices performing Protestant, Sephardic, Native American songs, and African American calls and hollers. Its “44 Harmonies” and “14 Tunes” can be performed separately; further, the “Harmonies” may be played on any keyboard instrument, while the “Tunes” may be transposed and played on any instrument. Renga calls for seventy-eight instruments or voices, in any combination, its score consisting of 361 fragmented drawings by Thoreau, sometimes superimposed.

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secular + military. I hope to have four singers: an American Indian, Negro, Puritan psalmist, + Sephardic cantor. You might call it an orchestral happening. It will be different each time. Let me know + I’ll arrange for tickets.

To Swift Eagle850 September 14, 1976 | 107 Bank Street, New York Dear Swiftie and ChiChi Bird, I will see you soon (on the evening of the 27th) (a Monday). I must be in Boston for a rehearsal at 2 o’clock in the afternoon of the part of the music without the singers. I think we will have to leave Schroon Lake very early. (Up with the sun!) Here are some ways you could practice, if you want: 1) Try singing while other sounds are going on. Turn on the TV and a radio, and then sing at the same time. Don’t try to be louder; don’t strain yourself; just sing as you would if they weren’t on. With the orchestra you will have a microphone, so you don’t have to sing loudly. What you are practicing if you do this is not being disturbed by the fact that other things are happening at the same time you are singing. 2) Please sing your songs and use the stopwatch to find out how long they last, the songs themselves (not the songs and the silences between them). If it is longer than ten to twelve minutes, then please shorten a song or songs until you get a program that lasts not less than ten minutes, and not more than twelve. If you don’t want to bother with the watch, ask ChiChi Bird to do it for you. The watch is pushed at the top to start; this should be done when you begin the first song. Then pushed again when you finish the first song (that stops the watch). Then pushed when you start the second song, etc. The watch will add up the lengths of all the songs. When you want to go back to zero, push the projection on the left hand side of the watch. I look forward to being with you both again soon.

850. Swift Eagle (1911–1981), Pueblo storyteller, singer, and dancer, one of the original singers, representing the Native Americans, in the premiere performances of Cage’s Apartment House 1776 with Renga. His artistry was captured on a 1955 Folkways LP, The Pueblo Indians in Story, Song and Dance (fW07200).

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To Alvin Lucier October 22, 1976 | 107 Bank Street, New York Here is the quote which seems unfriendly (not to say innacurate) to me:851 A.L. Yes, the Outlines one, the Outlines performance that we did, the, I told you that the second piece was John Cage, Joel Chadabe and David Tudor, and it struck me that what they were doing, well, John Cage was at a table with a mixer and a lot of tapes machines. Chadabe was at another table, and they just seemed to be playing alone and the materials were electronic or taped, and they were just panning and mixing and it didn’t matter who was there or how many people or what the situation was, they were isolated in a way from the sounds being, although, from, not the sounds being produced but any reaction or any response, which is all right but this piece of mine will be so immediate and so open and so vulnerable, that I kind of like that. It is made very clear that you like your own work and do not like what we were doing. (There is as you say nothing wrong in that, but having read this I would not think of asking you to support an application by myself, and I find it strange that you didn’t hesitate to ask me, —to support your application.) Another composer who felt the need that you say you continue to feel “to discuss differences among composers’ ideas in order to help clarify basic and complex issues” was Earle Brown. In the end I would advise affirmative action with your own work in mind and that of others. Or if you criticise others, to also criticise yourself as I did in that fine-printed text on Indeterminacy in which I praised Christian Wolff’s work (and Feldman’s) but not Bach’s, nor mine, nor Stockhausen, nor Brown. I have on the other hand friendly feelings for you as ever[.]

851. Cage had taken offense at Lucier’s comments about his music that appeared in Lucier’s interview with Douglas Simon in Big Deal (Summer 1976), a small arts and literature magazine that appeared irregularly out of New York beginning in 1973. He was also bothered by Lucier’s request for him to write a Guggenheim recommendation on his behalf. Lucier responded saying he’d found nothing objectionable in the interview, and that he would remove Cage’s name from his list of recommenders.

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To Seiji Ozawa November 7, 1976 | Location not indicated This is just to say what you must already know: that I am glad you asked me to write for you, and that I think the way you prepared and conducted the work was marvelous and beautifully appropriate. I am gaining a great deal of experience through going from one orchestra to another. The piece changes (as it did in successive performances in Boston, but more radically and in its spirit). You gave it great flexibility in the Renga so that it sounded like events in nature, with Pierre852 (who minimized the sliding tones) it became more like a chorus (not exactly Greek). I think of you often and hope we will work together again.

To Susan Dreman853 December 15, 1976 | 107 Bank Street, New York I enjoyed our telephone conversation just now. As I told you Merce Cunningham and Dance Co., will be performing on Jan. 18, 20 and 22, a new work for which I am composing the music.854 I would like to include recorded telephone announcements received after having been dialed from the orchestra pit of the Minskoff Theatre, 200 West 45th St., NYC 10036. These will be made audible to the public through suitable amplification means. After this week in January, the dance Company will tour, largely in Texas, Iowa and Minnesota and during February. I would be very grateful to receive information from you regarding the numbers for Dial-a-Bird throughout the country. And I would like to have permission to use the 212 number which I understand is 832-6523.* I am enclosing 50¢ in stamps for the national information you mentioned. I had been told 852. Pierre Boulez, who conducted the New York Philharmonic in performances of Cage’s Apartment House 1776 and Renga November 4–9, 1976, following the Boston premiere. 853. Susan Dreman, vice president of science for the National Audubon Society and editor in chief of American Birds. 854. Cage’s Telephones and Birds, which premiered in New York on January 18, 1977, in conjunction with Cunningham’s Travelogue, with stage decor (titled Tantric Geography) and costumes by Rauschenberg, scored for three performers, telephone announcements, and recordings of bird songs. For the first performances, Cage used recordings by Norman Robinson, drawn from the Australian National Collection of Recorded Bird Calls, recordings obtained from the Rare Bird Alert Network, and recorded messages of Horse Race Results, Dial-A-Plant, Dial-A-Prayer, Dial-A-Money-Saving-Tip, Dial-A-Joke, etc.

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that there was in Buffalo a bird-song recording available by telephone 24 hrs. a day, but when I dialed (716) 896-1271, the recording was verbal regarding birds recently sighted. Do you know of bird-song recorded “announcements”? I have received permission from Canberra855 to use tapes I have been sent which are part of a field guide to the bird songs of Australia. It would be marvelous to have our birds with the others. *but which I just now dialed only to receive a busy signal!

To Kurt Michaelis December 20, 1976 | 107 Bank Street, New York First of all, Season’s Greetings and Best Wishes to you! I am never-endingly grateful to you for taking care of my work, which must be a very difficult job. After our talk with Evelyn and Trudi, I had the following thought: The Harmonies, Tunes, Imitations, and Marches (i.e., Apartment House 1776) constitute 64 pieces which can be played alone or together and with or without Renga. Renga can also be played alone or in combination, say, with bird-calls (e.g, to celebrate the centennial of the Audubon Society!). However, the 64 pieces of Apartment House can become very much used in the musical world, for they are “accessible” in a way that some —perhaps most —of my work isn’t. They are not difficult to play (in the solo forms) and can be used by any suitable quartet (SATB) (even vocalized!). If they remain as rental materials only, they will never see the light of day. I am turning eight of them (Harmonies IV, V, XVIII, XIX, XXI, XXVIII, XXXVIII, into the Quartets for Orchestra (I–VIII) in three versions.856 A) for fl., 2 oboes, 1 cl., 2 hns., 2 bns., 5 I vn., 4 II vn., 3 vla., 3 celli, 1 cb. (24 in all) B) for 2 fl., 2 oboes, 2 cls., 2 bn., 2 tpts., 2 hns., 8 I vn., 7 II vn., 6 vla. 5 celli, 3 cb. (41 in all) C) for 3 fl., 3 oboes, 1 e.h.., 3 cls., (one in E-flat), 1 bass cl., 3 bn., 4 tpts., 6 hns., 3 tbns., 1 tuba, 18 I vn., 15 II vn., 12 vla., 11 celli, 9 cb. (93 in all). and I am 855. Presumably, the Canberra Ornithologists Group, which works to develop knowledge of the birds of the region in and around Canberra, Australia. 856. Cage’s Quartets I–VIII (1976), in versions for twenty-four, forty-one, and ninety-three instruments, so titled because at any given time only four instruments play simultaneously. All eight quartets were derived via subtractive method from eighteenth-century American hymns and anthems.

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scoring Harmony IV as Quartet for Concert Band and Twelve Amplified Voices (for 4 flutes, the first sometimes playing alto fl., 2 oboes, 9 cls., 2 tpts., alto cl., 2 alto sax, 4 hns., 3 cornets, bass cl., 2 bns., 1 tenor sax, 3 tbns., 1 euphonium, 1 baritone sax, 2 tubas, timp., 4 s., 4 a., 4 t., 4 b. (39 insts. and 12 voices). The solo forms are good for any keyboard instruments. Please share this letter with Trudi, because she wanted some of this information. This general usefulness is also true of Song Books, but as they are now solo (in two volumes only) is very little known.

To Dominique de Fleury [1976] | 107 Bank Street, New York For your box (the determination of what to put in it), I suggest submitting a dictionary’s nouns to a series of I Ching chance operations.857 The first step would be to ascertain the number of pages in the dictionary you decide to use. (Frequently books do not begin on page 1.) Then relate this number of pages to the number 64. Do this by dividing it by 64. The remainder will be the number of groups having n + 1 pages in them. (Where n = the number you get after dividing.) For instance, to relate the number 157 to 64, we divide it by 64, getting 2 with a remainder of 29. There will therefore be 29 groups of 3 (2 + 1). Then subtract the remainder from 64 obtaining 35. There are 35 groups of 2. The proof is that 29 x 3 = 72, and 35 x 2 = 70, and 87 + 70 = 157. Then make a table placing 17 or 18’s at the beginning (of the 64 groups), then the 2’s, and then the rest of the 3’s at the end. Then by obtaining an I Ching number (use the coin oracle described in the I Ching itself) you will be able to single out a group. Then using the appropriate table, the one for 2 or the one for 3. you would determine which member of the group. If this were a page in a dictionary, you would then count the nouns on that page, make an appropriate table relating that number to 64, use an I Ching number, and you would know what to put in the box. Say it is too big, a refrigerator for instance. Then make a drawing of it or a photograph and use that. 857. Although Cage’s calculations are somewhat askew, this letter provides a rare example of him explaining how one might apply I Ching chance operations to elements that are not evenly divided by sixty-four.

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To Rose Slivka858 March 1, 1977 | 107 Bank Street, New York Here is the check + thank you for getting the plumber. He found a small leak. Please don’t typewrite all night long or after ten. I awoke last night at 1:00 because of it and the heavy running on the stairs + didn’t get to sleep until you stopped (around 5!). I didn’t telephone because my copyist was asleep in the other room. In the lease there is a section on noise. I also am working against a deadline, performing this evening, + having painful dentistry done. So that getting disturbed rest (as I have for 4 recent nights with 1 quiet one in between) is exhausting.

To Griffith Rose859 April 10, 1977 | 107 Bank Street, New York Thank you very much for your letter and for the page of music which must sound beautifully. I became ill in Paris, I thought because of too many interviews. But now it appears that I have burned the candle, not utterly but dangerously. I developed a pain in my left eye which finally led to an abscessed tooth (dead one so that it didn’t hurt). Then when the tooth was all fixed, the pain, not so intensely returned. I still have this trouble, but through my complaints to everyone (the doctors, eye, sinus, teeth, meanwhile, along with my internist, all baffled) was led to a Japanese lady Dr. who does the massage that is related to acupuncture.860 Shatzu? Anyway, she has insisted on a macrobiotic diet: whole grains, vegetables, nuts and seeds, no fruit, no lemon, no avocado no cheese, no wine, no meat except rarely some fish or some chicken. I am now in the initial state of shock, but just ate a delicious piece of bread with my homemade peanut butter. I will know, I am told in two months or so, whether this massage and diet is working. I was too heavy, she said, too much water sugar, mucous, etc. She warned of cancer even and thoroughly frightened me. 858. Rose Slivka (1919–2004), critic and expert on crafts who edited Craft Horizon magazine from 1957 to 1979, wherein her interview with Cage and M.C. Richards appeared. She was also Cage and Cunningham’s landlady in their Bank Street apartment from 1971 to 1978. 859. Griffith Rose (b. 1936), American composer. 860. Shizuko Yamamoto (b. 1924), advocate of macrobiotics, shiatsu healer, and writer, Cage’s first complementary-medicine therapist who treated his various ailments, especially arthritis.

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Teeny is back in Villiers/s/Grez without the last operation on her knee (which may never be operated). She can walk with crutches, and has three people to take care of her. Thank you for your music and the dedication. When next I get to Europe, will hope we can meet.

To F.S.H. [Friends of the Schindler House] May 16, 1977 | 107 Bank Street, New York With deepest sympathy to the family of Pauline.861

To Augusto de Campos862 May 31, 1977 | 107 Bank Street, New York Thank you for everything and now for the pentahexagram.863 Just recently a very beautiful Brazilian lady brought me presents from Décio Pignatari.864 The plexigram865 I have given you is one of eight different plexigrams, and in addition there are two lithographs. I no longer have copies of the lithographs, so that I could only send the one plexigram. Nowadays I am busy with the proofreading of Quartets for Orchestras (24, 41 and 93). Only four musicians play at a time. Plus the color and position in space of the sounds is always changing. And a new book, and I am studying the violin 861. Cage refers to the recent death of Pauline Schindler, who bequeathed her home, the so-called Schindler House (or Schindler Chase House) in West Hollywood, California, to the Friends of the Schindler House. Cage reputedly stayed in the Chase studios in the early 1930s. 862. Augusto de Campos (b. 1931), Brazilian translator, music critic, and visual artist. He and his brother, Haroldo de Campos (1929–2003), founded the concrete poetry movement in Brazil; in 1952 they founded the literary magazine Noigandres. 863. More fully, pentahexagram for Cage by Augusto de Campos, which uses musical notation as a vehicle for a poem. Four musical notes appear on an I Ching hexagram that resembles a musical staff; if read as if on a treble staff, they spell C-A-G-E. 864. Décio Pignatari (1927–2012), experimental Brazilian poet, essayist, and translator, co-editor with Augusto and Haroldo de Campos of the journals Noigandres and Invention. Pignatari translated works of Marshall McLuhan. 865. Cage apparently sent de Campos one of the Plexigrams from Not Wanting to Say Anything About Marcel (see note 756).

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(not to play it, but to write for it) with Paul Zukofsky.866 Also biological music (cactus; now sea shells and pine cones).867

To Profs. Kenneth Atchity and Marsha Kinder868 June 5, 1977 | 107 Bank Street, New York These are excerpts from an as yet unfinished (ergo unpublished) installment of my Diary. I did verbalize the first one for a film about dreams by Stan Vanderbeek.869 Are you in touch with him? Dreamt I’d composed a piece all notes of which were to be prepared and eaten. Lemon’n’butter, salt’n’pepper. Some raw. Finished score on day of performance. (I was to perform it.) Set out for concert hall, had difficulty finding my way. Decided to stop and rehearse. As soon as first notes were cooked, dogs and cats came around and ate them all up. Towed away in NYC. They wouldn’t take a check because I didn’t own the car. Went to sleep. Dreamt I was caught speeding a week later in California. Cop said they charged fifty dollars for each person in the car. Had two friends with me. When I woke up, realized I’d saved one hundred and fifty dollars just by being asleep. P.S. Please copyright in my name or do something so that I can use these in my next book (which is now in process of being put together). 866. Paul Zukofsky (b. 1943), American violinist and conductor of contemporary music. He assisted Cage in composing for the violin, especially with Book 1 of his Freeman Etudes. His father was the American poet Louis Zukofsky (1904–1978), prominent among the Objectivist poets. 867. Cage refers here to several compositions: Branches (1976) and Child of Tree (1975), both making use of plant matter as sound sources, and Inlets (1977), scored for water-filled conch shells and (the sound of) burning pine cones. All three were so-called “works of contingency,” by which Cage meant that while performers were mandatory for their realization, the “instruments” were largely unmanageable and thus not easily controlled or mastered. Inlets was originally used as music for the eponymous choreographic work by Cunningham, with stage decor and costumes by Morris Graves, first performed at the Cornish College of the Arts in Seattle on September 9, 1977. 868. Kenneth (John) Atchity (b. 1944) and Marsha Kinder (b. 1940), soon to be co-founding editors of Dreamworks: An Interdisciplinary Quarterly devoted to “the art of dreaming.” Cage’s dream does not appear to have made the cut for the debut issue in 1980. 869. Stan VanDerBeek (1927–1984), American experimental filmmaker who Cage had met at Black Mountain College in the early 1950s. His films often contained random image sequences and discontinuities. He and Nam June Paik provided filmed projections and visual effects for Cage’s Variations V (1965).

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To H. Wiley Hitchcock870 June 16, 1977 | 107 Bank Street, New York I think your idea of including a “response” or independent talk by Charles Hamm is very good. Some years ago at Davis in California (1969), I presented a piece called 33⅓.871 The lobby was filled with musicians (live) playing Satie’s Musique d’A (3 of the pieces). When a person entered the hall, he saw it was empty except for 12 playbacks, stacks of lP’s, 12 lg. speakers, 12 assistants standing at the playback stations and whatever other members of the audience there were already assembled. The fact that he cd. play and/or stop a record finally dawned on each person + if he had trouble with the machine, the asst. would help. What I envisage now is the audience so occupied while a panel (yourself, Charles H., etc.) acts similarly. With respect to Cassettes of talks (talks by anyone on any subjects, though I would provide cassettes of talks of my own). This state of affairs (33⅓ with Cassette) should continue for at least the period of an academic lecture (40' or 1 hr.?). Let me know what you think of this proposal. I have a fine sound engineer who cd. be helpful. His name is John Fulleman.872 Ideally there wd. be in the nature of 18 channels (12 for 33⅓; 6 for Cassette) Let us establish a minimum of 8 for 33⅓; 4 for Cassette. There should be an empty hall (no fixed chairs) so that the people present (except the assts. + the panel on a platform or stage) could move around freely. If the Satie is included it should be live: (fl., cl., tpt., 2 vns., vla., vc.; fl., cl., 2 vns., vla., vc.; picc., cl., [illegible] tpt., perc. (1), 2 vns., vla., vc., cb. ) and outside. I think the Cunningham Dance Fndn. cd. provide 4 of the channels.

870. H(ugh) Wiley Hitchcock (1923–2007), American musicologist and founder of the Institute for Studies in American Music at Brooklyn College of the City University of New York (1971). He wrote much about contemporary American music and composers, including Cage, Thomson, Ives, and Cowell. 871. Cage refers to 33⅓ (1969), a work for a large number of LPs and at least twelve turntables to be operated by the audience, first performed as part of Mewantemooseicday, a one-day musical exposition that took place in fall 1969, centering on the music of Satie at the University of California, Davis. 872. More fully, John David Fulleman, sound engineer and collaborator with Cage, most notably on Roaratorio: An Irish Circus on Finnegans Wake (1979). See note 910.

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To Jan Williams873 Sept. 20, 1977 | 107 Bank Street, New York Of course you may combine the Mesostics with 27'10.554" for a Percussionist. I hadn’t thought of it, but now that you suggest it it seems interesting. There are only 3 Constructions for perc. Why don’t you do 27'10.554" for the Whitney program? In Dec. at the Kitchen,874 I will do a solo version of Branches (now available at Peters); and a trio version of a new piece (Inlets, not yet at Peters). Branches uses amplified cacti + other plant materials + Inlets uses amplified conch shells, the shells filled with water + then tipped to produce gurgles, together with a recording of fire and a conch blown once (using circular breathing) for at least 2 minutes. I had thought of the Constructions because of yr. excellent perf. of the 3rd.

To Nobby and Beth Brown October 28, 1977 | 107 Bank Street, New York Miss you. Do you make that herbaceous bread we ate next door to the chickens? Tell me how to do it. I make the granola, and still my Tibetan bread (it is very good with sesame seeds). The shells worked perfectly in the music. It is very delightful to hear. I go to Europe in late November for a few weeks, and while I’m gone I give the keynote “address” for a symposium on the Phonograph in Our Musical Life.875 Recorded, of course. Do you remember in Davis the piece called 33 and ⅓? The audience entered a room empty of chairs but with stations from which records could be played, but by them, not by other “performers.” Outside in the lobby, 873. Jan (Gardner) Williams (b. 1939), American percussionist and an early creative associate of the Center of the Creative and Performing Arts at the University of Buffalo. 874. The Kitchen, a New York performance venue founded in 1971 by Woody and Steina Vasulka providing space for experimental artists and composers, among the first to embrace video and performance. 875. This event took place at the Brooklyn College Student Center, December 7–10, 1977, organized by the Institute for Studies in American Music, and involved the first performance of Cage’s Address (1977), consisting of simultaneous performances of works by Satie, Cage’s 33⅓ (1969), and a new piece, Cassette, in which five panelists played various lectures (on cassettes) provided by Cage. See ISAM monograph no. 14, “The Phonograph and Our Musical Life,” Proceedings of a Centennial Conference, December 7–10, 1977, ed. H. Wiley Hitchcock (see note 870).

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live musicians were playing the Furniture Music of Satie. All of that will happen here, and in addition there will be 6 panelists who will play a new piece called Cassette. I will have recorded a dozen of my speeches on cassettes, and speeches by other people will be available too (for the panelists to play). Would you, Nobby, happen to have some cassettes of your lectures which you’d be willing to contribute to this shindig? I hope so. They would be returned afterwards.

To Paul Griffiths876 November 2, 1977 | 107 Bank Street, New York When I was in Schoenberg’s harmony class at Ucla, he sent us all to the board to solve a problem in counterpoint. “When you have a solution, turn around with your hand up and let me see what you’ve written.” I did. He approved but asked for another solution of the same problem. I found another. And another. And another. Etc. Finally, with some confidence, I said: There are no more solutions. (I had always considered him superior to other men, but now when he spoke he seemed to me more elevated than I had ever been able to imagine him.) “What is the principle underlying all of the solutions?” I was not able to answer his question. Only recently has it seemed to me that were he still around he might accept a reply that’s finally entered my mind: The principle underlying all of the solutions is the question we ask.

To Dr. Wolfgang Becker November 23, 1977 | 107 Bank Street, New York Dear Dr. Becker: It was good to speak with you on the telephone. This will be the first performance of Quartets I–VIII for orchestra.877 In different orchestrations I have 876. Paul Griffiths (b. 1947), British music critic, novelist, and librettist, best known for his writings on modern music, especially Modern Music: The Avant Garde Since 1945 (New York: Braziller, 1981). 877. Cage means to specify the first performance of the version of Quartets I–VIII (1976) for ninetythree players, which took place in Bonn on December 9, 1977, Hiroshi Wakasugi conducting. The version for twenty-four players premiered on August 20, 1977, in Aptos, California, and the version for forty-one players would be first heard on May 31, 1978, in St. Paul, Minnesota.

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made the pieces also for 24 instruments and for 41. This full version is for 93 instruments. In each of the Quartets some musicians are tacet. Eighty-eight play in I; 76 in II; 69 in IV; 63 in VIII. Not as many play in III, V, VI, and VII. I therefore suggest that all 93 rehearse for two three-hour rehearsals. They are: 3 fls., 3 oboes, E.H., 2 cls. in B-flat, cl. in E-flat, bass clarinet, 3 bassoons, 6 horns, 4 trpts., 3 tbns., tuba, 18 violins I, 15 violins II, 12 violas, 11 celli, 9 contrabasses. And that a smaller group have two two-hour rehearsals. They are the musicians (their numbers are important): 3 fls., 2 oboes (1 and 2), e.h., all four clarinets, three bassoons, one trumpet (number 4), two trombones (numbers 2 and 3), tuba, all six horns, the following violins I: numbers 4–16 and number 18, the following violins II: numbers 4–10, 12, 14 and 15, the following violas; numbers 2–5, 8, and 10 and 11, the following celli: numbers 1, 2. 5. 7–11, and the following contrabasses: numbers 1–5 and 8. Sixty-eight in all. Then on Friday there would be the final rehearsal. The smaller group would rehearse Quartets III, V, VI and VII. The full group would rehearse Quartets I, II, IV and VIII. Quartet I is 10'50". II is 11'45". III is 2". IV is 3'54". V is 1'48". VI is 43". VII is 5'52". VIII is 4'12". The Quartets are literally quartets. Only four musicians play at a time, but which four is constantly changing with each phrase, so that the color is always changing, and when it doesn’t, the point in space from which the sound issues does change (when, for instance the 5th violin I is followed by the 11th violin II). The Quartets are subtractions from 18th-century American hymns and anthems: I from “Lift Up Your Heads, O Ye Gates” (Jacob French); II from “The Lord Descended”; III from “Old North” (both by William Billings); IV from “New York” (Andrew Law); V from “Heath”; VI from “Judea” (both by William Billings); VII from “Greenwich” (Andrew Law); VIII from “The Lord Is Ris’n” (William Billings). I suggest that the violinists be seated in a semi-circle so that the conductor can readily know the number of each one, and similarly for the others.

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To Tito Gotti878 December 1977 | Location not indicated Dear Tito Gotti, It was a pleasure to meet you and spend the day with you in Bologna. And to ride on the train. I now make the following proposal: 1) That the “happening” have the title Il treno di John Cage alla ricerca del silenzio perdut with the subtitle “3 excursions, variations on a theme by Tito Gotti” with the assistance of Juan Hidalgo and Walter Marchetti. And that the three “movements” be listed (on programs or detailed announcements) each with its own date, time-table, destination and stops en route in such a way as to suggest a musical work; 2) Where N = the number of cars carrying the public, that a sound system having N x 2 channels be installed so that each car would have two loudspeakers (A and B). NA speakers will receive signals from N microphones picking up noises exterior to each car, probably underneath the car. NB speakers will receive signals from N microphones picking up noises (squeaks, rattles, etc. — not conversation ) from the interior of each car. Switching means (but neither volume nor on-off controls) below (or near) A and B, enabling a passenger to switch from any one of the N channels to any other. This sound system would operate from the moment of any departure until the moment of any arrival. At a stop or the destination (but not at the end of a round-trip) the same system would be switched abruptly from NA and B to C and D speakers placed exteriorly on top of each car, C ¼ the length of the car from one end of it, D ¼ the length of the car from the other end of it, NC speakers receiving signals from any one of a supply of N x N or preferably N x N x 2 cassettes (prepared by Hidalgo and Marchetti from sounds environmental to the RR station in Bologna) played on any one of N cassette machines placed in one of two freight cars central to the train (and open to the public), or in one part of a single freight car. In the other freight car or other part of the same freight car another set of N cassette machines will be used to play any one of an equally large supply of cassettes 878. Tito Gotti (b. 1927), Italian conductor, musicologist, and music organizer interested in the use of architectural and urban spaces as performance venues. He is known in Cage circles as the initiator of Cage’s Il treno (more fully, Alla ricerca del silenzio perduto, 1977), subtitled “three excursions in a prepared train, variations on a theme by Tito Gotti by John Cage with the assistance of Juan Hidalgo and Walter Marchetti,” which premiered in Bologna and vicinity, June 26–28, 1978.

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prepared by Hidalgo and Marchetti from recordings of the region local to the stop representing the people living there, their work, their music, the noises and sounds, “musical” or not, of their daily life, week-days and Sundays. These cassettes will be transmitted by ND speakers. The public will be informed of its freedom to start and stop and change cassettes during the stop in the station. [along left side of the page] also video (closed television) means controllable by passengers to scan interiors of any one of the cars whistles horns etc. available for public to play. 3) In the spaces around the station there will be as many television sets as there are TV channels, each tuned to a different station, each placed at a height of about 8' (so that they are easily visible above a standing public). In addition there will be as many live performing musicians or groups of musicians as are willing to play simultaneously and as can (in terms of a budget) be afforded. These groups should be genuinely of the neighborhood of the station, representing the life of the place and its culture. The station itself should present an exhibition of the arts and crafts of the people who actually live in that town or part of town. And the normal services of food and drink should be available or even be made unusually festive. 4) At a scheduled time the Pa system of the station will be used to reiteratively announce the train’s departure, and all other usual means —whistles, shouts, etc. —will be used so that the public returns to the cars, during which time there will be no diminishing of the performances, live from the station yard, and recorded from the NC and D speakers, or broadcast from the TV stations. However, the moment the train actually starts there will be an abrupt switching from cassette machines as sound sources to microphones as sound sources and from exterior speakers NC and D to interior speakers NA and B. 5) Should some of the performers from the community come aboard the train continuing to play, sing, or dance, they should be welcomed. Omnibus means should be available from one stop to the next just in case some of the public have failed to board the train. And taxi means should be available for those who decide for some reason to change their plans. The above is my basic proposal. I can imagine also the following which may be included or not as you choose. (a) Food and drink should be available in the station from which the first departure is made. (b) In that station an orchestra of any 23 instruments having three 1 9 7 2 – 1 9 8 2  |  469

conductors (Marcello Panni,879 Juan Hidalgo, and Walter Marchetti) playing my composition Etcetera (score and parts available through C. F. Peters) for the hour preceding the departure. This music involves a stereo tape recording of environmental sound including airplanes passing above which should be heard from speakers placed high above the station floor or yard. (c) These musicians would join the public, taking the trip on the train. They should be distributed more or less equally (or according to the needs of their repertoires [memorized], solo or ensemble [e.g., Hidalgo and Marchetti need the presence of Esther Ferrer880 in order to perform as the zaj group]) in the N cars at the time of departure (being the last to board the train). Once there they would play from time to time any pieces they knew by heart.

To Heinz-Klaus Metzger February 2, 1978 | 107 Bank Street, New York Michael Nyman881 was very friendly to me in La Rochelle and spoke as though he understood and sympathized with my ideas. He then made a recording of my improvised speech to the musicians, who later played very badly. Nyman then used this circumstance of the bad behaviour of the musicians to discredit my ideas in general. He seemed to me to have acted dishonestly at some point either when he was friendly to begin with or when he was misunderstanding and worse misinterpreting to end with. I would not trust him on any side of the street (let alone the ocean which separates us!). You may of course disagree with my view which I hope isn’t too self-conscious; in which case you are free to do whatever you wish. I finished Variations VIII 882 some time ago, but ran into the problem of copy879. Marcello Panni (b. 1940), Italian composer and conductor, one of the three conductors (with Hidalgo and Marchetti) of Cage’s Il treno. 880. Esther Ferrer (b. 1937), Spanish interdisciplinary artist and performance art teacher, Cage’s most informed contemporary on the subject of anarchy. With Marchetti and Hidalgo, she formed the contemporary music group ZAJ. 881. Michael (Laurence) Nyman (b. 1944), English composer, pianist, and musicologist whose Experimental Music: Cage and Beyond (1974) drew important distinctions between the European avantgarde and American experimental music movements. 882. Variations VIII (1978), first conceived by Cage in 1967, on very short notice for the Skowhegan

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right, legality etc. These problems were solved and Peters sent, I understand, the score which is also a poster in colors to Dr. Herzogenrath.883 I don’t think you should use it as a cover for the magazine unless you get permission from Peters. In fact they would descend on you if you did! The original poster unfortunately must be returned to Peters [in] N[ew] York. My most recent works are Apartment House 1776 (1976); Branches (1976) and Child of Tree (1975) for percussion using plant materials; Lecture on the Weather (1975)884 Quartets for Orchestra (24, 41, 93) and for Concert Band with 12 Amplified Voices Renga (1976) for orchestra; Telephones and Birds (1977); Inlets (1977); Etudes Australes for pn. solo (1974–5), for vn. solo (1978); Cheap Imitation for vn. solo (1977). texts: Writing Through Finnegans Wake and Writing for the Second Time Through Finnegans Wake (1977).885 graPhic Work: Score Without Parts (etching); Seven-day Diary portfolio of etchings (1978).886 And forgot Variations VIII (1978). Variations VII by the way has not been written down. The last problem is impossible. I cannot ask people to write at this late date (the 2nd to reach Germany by the 6th)!

School of Painting and Sculpture in Skowhegan, Maine. In 1976, Cage gave the piece its title, and in 1978 revised it, creating a score that consisted of a poster for Metzger and Reiner Riehn, the work’s dedicatees, for their 1978 tour with Ensemble Musica Negativa. The score, published by C. F. Peters, is chaotic, in Cage’s original hand, and begins “no music no recordings.” It constitutes a poetic history of the work, as well as instructions for creating a performance for which one has no prepared materials. 883. Wulf Herzogenrath (b. 1944), German art historian and curator, at the time director of a German Kunstverein in Cologne. As director of the Kunsthalle Bremen (1994–2011), he would install in 1998 the first permanent installation of Cage’s Essay (1987). 884. Cage’s Lecture on the Weather (1975), a bicentennial piece for twelve speaker-vocalists (or instrumentalists), constituting materials drawn from Thoreau’s Journals for an unconducted radio broadcast or theatrical performance. Weather (breeze, rain, thunder) simulation was provided by Maryanne Amacher, and a film representing lightning by means of briefly projected negatives of drawings by Thoreau by Luis Frangella. See note 903. It was first performed in Toronto on February 26, 1976, by American men who had become Canadian citizens. 885. Cage’s first reference in the present collection to the variation on the form of his mesostic poetry called “writing through,” an appropriative form that takes its substance from the linear reading of a text by another author; other of Cage’s forms included rengas (a mix of a plurality of source mesostics), autokus (mesostics limited to the words of the mesostic itself), and “globally” composed mesostics, that is, letting words come from here and there through chance operations in a source text. Cage would in time write five “writings through” of Joyce’s Finnegans Wake. See note 939. 886. Visual artworks produced at Crown Point Press. See notes 893 and 894.

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To George Brecht February 4, 1978 | 107 Bank Street, New York Hopelessly inconsistent is what I am, I hope. As a matter of fact both my concern for mushrooms + chess have nothing to do with chance operations but rather act to balance them (with strategy, etc., observation with end in view). There is a difference betw. German thinking (the tendency towards unity + order and consistency) and Indian philosophy (Artha, Kama, Dharma, Moksha) (the tendency towards differences, multiplicity, chaos, anarchy). Of course I take the Indian path which allows me to cook one minute and write music the next. Re Bryars,887 I have no feeling there of new music. And I still have trouble with Indian music! In fact I have trouble with my own! What is it abt. music that makes it so very bothersome?

To Luigi Gianni Sassi888 March 10, 1978 | 107 Bank Street, New York Dear Gianni, Thank you for the letter and the records and books. I just now found the letter in the midst of the newspaper articles. I am very busy writing music for the violin. Mimi has now gone off to Thailand with Bob Ashley.889 She will be back in a few weeks. Before she left, I was with her when, by chance, Tito Gotti telephoned, and we discussed the matter of the rights to make a film of the Train Event. He explained that the costs of the event are very great and that they 887. (Richard) Gavin Bryars (b. 1943), English composer and double bassist. He worked with Cage and Hiller on HPSCHD while in residence at the University of Illinois. 888. Luigi Gianni Sassi (1938–1993), Italian record producer and entrepreneur. In 1972, he cofounded the Milan record label Cramps, which gained notoriety for its release of Cage’s performance of Part 3 of Empty Words at the Teatro Lirico in Milan under the auspices of the radio station Canale 96. See Cage’s letter to Mario Cavista dated July 9, 1978. 889. Robert (“Bob”) Ashley (1930–2014), American composer, best known for operas and theater works incorporating electronics and extended vocal techniques. With Reynolds, Mumma, and others, he organized the ONCE Festival in Ann Arbor, Michigan; with Lucier, Mumma, and Behrman, was a member of the Sonic Arts Union. In 2002 he would receive the John Cage Award from the Foundation for Contemporary Performance Arts. He was the husband of Mimi Johnson (see note 837).

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are running into the possibility of not being able to do it unless they get funding from the Italian TV. Tito Gotti realizes that you would make a better film but is in the situation of having to raise money. Therefore he required me to give the OK to the festival superintendant in Bologna to go ahead with the Italian TV. However, I hope that this will not interfere with your projects of making records and books. Furthermore there is the possibility that the Italian TV will decide not to do it. But then the whole project might collapse. Who knows? In view of all this please let me know your wishes, and I will write a formal letter. Together with a recipe for the Risotto!

To Jeanne Kirstein890 April 9, 1978 | 107 Bank Street, New York Dear Jeanne, I am sending you the piano pieces. “Met” means metal. “W” means wood, parts of the piano construction in both cases. These are differentiated sometimes when there is no differentiation of place, you may play anywhere on the piano construction observing only the diff. of metal + wood + the different beaters. Not always, as being RF (right front), RR (right rear), LR (left rear), LF (left front). See drawing on verso. When these differentiations obtain, the type of beater is given following it. I have distinguished between six beaters: the fingers, tympani stick, yarn (-covered gong beater), rubber, wood, and metal. When a tone appears on a five-line staff without any other indication, it is to be played on the keyboard. When a capital M appears above it, it is to be played on the strings firmly muted at the end of the string. I have written “Pizz.” for the plucking of the strings which is done either with the finger (flesh), nail (fingernail) or plectrum (probably metal, though it might be plastic). When the two letters M and P are bracketed above a note, it means that the string is to be both muted and plucked. The muting may take place anywhere on the string, but if the M is above the P, the muting should take place farther from the keyboard than the plucking does —and if the P is above the M, the plucking will take place further from the keyboard than the muting. A ◊ means muting the string lightly so as to produce a harmonic (any one). STG means string (any muting or pizz.). 890. Jeanne Kirstein, American pianist whom Cage had met at the University of Cincinnati, College-Conservatory of Music in 1967. She made an important recording with CBS (French release, CBS 5–34–61225, 1970) of his early piano music.

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Sometimes the keyboard or string sounds are sustained either by holding the key down with the finger or by use of the pedal. Before the beginning of some pedalled passages, a keyboard tone to be sustained will be taken first with the sostenuto pedal and after the aggregate is sounded, the ordinary pedal will take over. I am aware that these pieces are difficult and perhaps at points impossible. Please look them over and let me know where these impossibilities take place for you, thinking, however, at the same time of the possibility of your having an assistant. Or a tape which accompanies you (this wd. be impractical to coordinate). It might be that instead of distinguishing six beaters, your problems might be simpler if there were, say, two or three beaters and in some cases this might be more beneficial for the piano structure itself! Materials may be placed on the soundboard, etc., to protect it from being damaged, e.g., a cork, or piece of cardboard. The title of the piece will be Etudes Boreales for cello solo891 and Piano Solo. As I told Jack, these pieces may be played alone as solos or together, solos played simultaneously. (I would like to avoid the term duo or duet). Each stave has seven equal “measures” (corresponding to the seven equal measures in the cello parts).* Corresponding to an agreed-upon or (in the case of solo playing) decided-upon time. I am hoping to find a better notational procedure for these pieces, one in which the percussion staff would change into the piano stave, rather than being beneath it. See verso.

Get as much variety in sound as you can find. 891. Cage’s Etudes Boreales I–IV (for solo cello) (1978t), later used for Cunningham’s Arcade (1985), with stage decor and costumes by Dove Bradshaw (see note 958). Cage used the star charts contained in Antonín Bečvář’s Atlas Borealis (1962) as his composing means. The composition was dedicated to Jack and Jeanne Kirstein.

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The ends of the Pedal indications are measured (should be observed as to time). This is the form of notation I hope to get.

A solution of the “impossibility” problems wd. be this. Find out after practicing a particular passage what action “cannot” be made. Then form another practice which includes that one but omits some other. After you have several “possibilities,” I will use chance operations to determine which is kept. Or it cd. be left indeterminate which of several events was to be omitted. Finger = fingers = hand = fist (acc. to dynamic given) *This is also the case with the Freeman Etudes for vn. solo. But they were composed somewhat differently.

To Mme. Teeny Duchamp April 15, 1978 | 107 Bank St., New York Sorry not to have answered your letter sooner but now I will see you soon (in May).892 I have to teach for 2 wks. in Paris and then hope to stay a few days with you before I go to Chicago. For the orchestra piece with the singers. I have a kind of Niagara Falls schedule now, and it begins tomorrow. I go to Kansas, then back here for the concert at the Whitney, then Minneapolis + Winnipeg, then Bologna, then Paris, then Chicago, then Amsterdam (June 5–15), then Genena and Basel, then Italy (Rome, Bologna, Pavia, and Milan) with Grete + Paul Zukofsky, an astonishing violinist whom I’ve written lots of music for. Made etchings and had a show. Diet continues; have lots of energy.

892. From May 8 to 19, 1978, Cage was in Paris at the American Center for Students and Artists for its Spring Festival, directed by Judith Pisar. The result of his two-week workshop with sixteen music students on composition and improvisational structures was a two-hour performance of his Branches (1976). See note 867.

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To Kathan Brown893 April 22, 1978 | 107 Bank St., New York Signed the prints894 and found them very beautifully printed. I am delighted. I am just back from Kansas and in the midst of all the travel that will eventually bring me to Basel where I’ll see you. Mimi Johnson has arranged for me to stay in Ste. Baume in southern France for a week, so I have still more ahead than I had thought. The Finnegans Wake book must be finished; and I’ve decided to tour with the Dance Co. again as I always did for 35 yrs.895 I will work the last two weeks of July in Vermont on the book (I have to put in the chance-placed punctuation marks); then I’ll know how much more time if any is needed for that and be able to say when I can come in September. Schedule: Until May 4: here, Minnesota and Canada May 4–20: Paris May 21–29: Villiers/sous Grez or here May 29–June 4: Chicago June 5–11th: Amsterdam June 12–13: London June 14–15: Amsterdam June 16–20: Switzerland (Geneva and Basel) June 21–29 or so: Italy July 14–end of July: Vt. (Finnegans Wake) 1st wk of August: Ste. Baume Aug. 16–28: Cunningham Co. Toronto and Chicago Sept. 26–Oct. 8: NYC City Center with Cunningham Co. Oct. 12–Nov. 5: Tour with Cunningham Co.: Buffalo, Minneapolis, Berkeley, San Jose, L.A., Greensboro, N.C. Nov. 6–Dec. 6: Vacation!

893. Kathan Brown (b. 1935), American printermaker who founded Crown Point Press in 1962 in Oakland (later San Francisco), California. Cage would engage in printmaking there on an annual basis from 1978. 894. Cage’s first two series of works at Crown Point Press, both completed in 1978, were Seven Day Diary and Signals, the latter thirty-five related color etchings, both in an edition of twenty-five. 895. Cage’s first reference to his emerging ambivalence about continuing to tour with the Cunningham Dance Company.

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To Mario Cavista July 9, 1978 | 107 Bank Street, New York Thank you for sending all the programs. You have been busy. I read the 3rd part of Empty Words (2½ hrs.) last December in Milan. The audience began making sounds after 15 minutes + continued with fireworks, dirt thrown, water, etc., dancing, singing, percussion. I also kept on going. Now they say it was an important turning point for the youth. There were 3000 present. Just a week ago in Genoa a similar reaction was had for a program of Grete Sultan (the Etudes), Paul Zukowsky (Freeman Etudes for solo violin), + Demetrios Stratos896 (voice, singing mesostics). I’d never thought of Cheap Imitation with Harmony XIV. There are 63 other pieces that can be used with the Harmony to make Apartment House 1776. Tell me how much time + what instruments* Saw your friend (in London?) but so briefly —only to say hello. *and how many musicians and I’ll send materials. If, however, you want to do something else, just present it as your idea. (I have no objection.)

To Luciano Martinengo897 September 13, 1978 | 107 Bank Street, New York Thank you for the story (2 versions; I prefer the longer one!). I would like to accept the invitation to come to Ivrea. An initial idea wd. be to amplify a city park so that trees, bushes, etc. become musical instruments, and the children would “play” them. It would mean a very large sound installation. Many channels, loudspeakers, etc. I would like the cooperation of John Fulleman who works with me for technical matters. I am also proposing this for Zagreb, but 896. Efstratios Dimitriou, better known as Demetrio Stratos (1945–1979), Greek-born Italian lyricist, instrumentalist, and co-founder and lead singer of the Italian progressive band Area-International POPular Group. Gifted in extended vocal techniques, he performed and recorded Cage’s Sixty-two Mesostics re Merce Cunningham (1971) in a version for solo voice and microphone. His Nova Musicha No. 1: John Cage (CRS LP 6101) inaugurated the Cramps label’s “Nova Musicha” series. 897. Luciano Martinengo, television producer who would later document Cage’s Musicircus for Children taking place during the John Cage Festival in Turin and Ivrea May 5–20, 1984. The festival also featured Cage performing from Muoyce and Mushroom Book for the first time in Italy, and the world premiere of Book 1 of Freeman Etudes, performed by János Négyesy.

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not this coming biennale. The time of that and your time (Oct–April) don’t fit very well. Anyway an idea. I Ching = ⇒ 27 ⇒ 21 The corners of the mouth Providing Nourishment) Did we talk about diet? Leading to Biting Through. The emphasis here on penalties is not to my liking.

To Joseph Anton Riedl September 14, 1978 | 107 Bank St., New York Dear Joseph Riedl: In reply to your letter of June 9, here are comments on the various festival works as well as some additional information: Works of Calder circa 1949, first performed circa 1949 at Woodstock, New York, first prize in the Woodstock Art Film Festival. wgbh 1971,898 first performed in Boston at station Wgbh, 1971. We don’t understand the phrase “John Cage ist anwesend.” Is this the title of a film? hpschd is a collaboration with Lejaren Hiller, Jr., 1967–’69. First performed in 1969 at the University of Illinois, Urbana. I would welcome the participation of F. Rzewski, although I continue to not want Cornelius Cardew. There are seven parts for harpsichord which are very difficult, except for two which may be not so difficult. A very good musician who might not be available but who played in the first performance is Neely Bruce,899 Wesleyan University, Middletown, Connecticut 06457. Sixteen Dances 1951, first performed January 21, 1951, at Hunter College, New York City. Written for the dance by Merce Cunningham which was called Sixteen Dances for Soloist and Company of Three. (Nine Microtonal Chorales) now called Chorals900 1978, first performed in Paris, September 21, 1978 by Paul Zukofsky. 898. Cage’s WGBH (1971), instructions for the realization of a television program/film written at the request of WGBH in Cambridge, Massachusetts. See note 776. 899. Neely Bruce (b. 1944), American composer, long associated with Wesleyan University and distinguished for his stagings of Cage’s Song Books (1970). 900. Chorals for solo violin (1978), a microtonal composition arranged for violin from Cage’s Solo

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Music Walk: I question the usefulness of putting this piece on the program, and I suggest some prepared piano pieces since they do not figure in any of the programs and this seems to be a place where it might be included. It seems curious to have a festival of my work without the prepared piano. I think perhaps the well-known Amores should take the place of Music Walk. The reason that I choose it is that it uses the prepared piano and also percussion performers. It is about nine minutes long. Should you agree with me, Amores was written in 1943, was first performed February 2, 1943, at the Museum of Modern Art in New York and was dedicated to Mrs. Rue Shaw. The Seasons: Ballet in One Act (not Set as on your program) 1947, first performed May 13, 1947 at the Ziegfeld Theater, New York City, Leon Barzin, Conductor. Commissioned by the Ballet Society, choreographed by Merce Cunningham. Atlas Eclipticalis written 1961–62, first performed by the Festival Orchestra Society. The first performance used about forty parts. Further parts were written in 1962. Winter Music 1957, first performed 1957 by David Tudor and John Cage at the Academy of Music in Brooklyn, New York. Dedicated to Robert Rauschenberg and Jasper Johns. Cheap Imitation written 1969 (piano solo), 1972 (orchestral version commissioned by the Koussevitsky Foundation), and 1977 (violin solo). I can’t remember when the orchestral version was first performed. It was announced in Holland, but they failed to do it. It was done well by Dennis Russell Davies in New York, Minneapolis, St. Paul, and Aptos, California. In this connection, I would like to know if Dr. Becker will make a workshop situation developed to Cheap Imitation. I also think that The Seasons should be conducted by Wakasugi.901 Zukofsky should conduct Sixteen Dances and Cheap Imitation. I can conduct Atlas, but would want the help of Wakasugi to instruct the orchestra. Wakasugi should conduct Renga. for Voice 85 (from Song Books, 1970). It derives from Satie’s posthumous Douze petits chorals, dating from the composer’s years at the Schola Cantorum (1905–1908). Zukofsky’s suggestion was that Cage “make a continuous music of disparate elements, single tones, unisons, and beatings.” 901. Hiroshi Wakasugi (1935–2009), U.S.-born Japanese conductor who led premieres of many western operas in Japan; held posts at the Tokyo Metropolitan Symphony Orchestra (1986–1995) and the New National Theatre in Tokyo (2007–2009), among others. On December 9, 1977, he led the Cologne Rundfunk-Sinfonie-Orchestra in the premiere performance of Cage’s Quartets I–VIII for ninety-three instruments (1976) in Bonn.

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Musicircus 1967 or 1968, University of Illinois, Urbana. It is not a written composition of mine; no materials exist, but I would like to be kept aware of all the possibilities of groups and soloists as the work proceeds. Empty Words: I don’t understand when you plan to present this. Empty Words needs to begin nine hours before dawn.902 There are activities Friday, Saturday and Sunday. It seems that the only time it could be done is on Thursday. If it overlaps with the films, it would not be a great loss since people could go to one or the other. Empty Words was finished in 1973, begun some years earlier. Various parts have been read separately, but this will be the first performance of all four parts in a single session. Lecture on the Weather, commissioned by the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, 1975. Recently received a prize in Canada. First performed 1975 at York University, Toronto, Canada. It involves recordings by Maryanne Amacher and a film by Luis Frangella.903 I want their presence and employment to bring about the performance. I am also anxious to have as many of the twelve speaker- vocalists from Canada as are available, since part of the work is concerned with the fact that many American men have in recent years become Canadian citizens. Renga with Apartment House 1776 (not Appartment) 1976, commissioned by the Boston Symphony Orchestra in collaboration with the National Endowment for the Arts. First performed in September 1976 in Boston, Massachusetts, with Seiji Ozawa conducting. The necessary singers for this work are: Helen Schneyer, Chief Swift Eagle, Jeanne Lee, Nico Castel. They can be contracted for by Mr. Ludwig Luftig, 111 West 57 Street, New York, N.Y. 10019, phone (212) JU 6-3976. Hymns (not Hymsis) not yet written I plan to write this in the period December–February of this and next year. You will of course receive parts as soon as possible. Could you please let me know how many singers and the distribution of voices in whatever group you plan to use? My plan is to make it unaccompanied. 902. See Cage’s letter to Riedl dated March 23, 1979, for a detailed description of how Empty Words is to be performed. 903. Maryanne Amacher (1938–2009), American experimental composer and installation artist, and Luis Frangella (1944–1990), Argentine-born American painter, sculptor, and filmmaker. Both collaborated with Cage on his Lecture on the Weather (1975) and Empty Words (1973–1974).

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I understand through the Cunningham Dance Foundation that you may engage the dance company not during this period, but during a previous week. I hope this comes about. This would not be impractical for me since Paul Zukofsky and I will be there two weeks before the actual performance for rehearsals. I am optimistic about being able to provide you with a discography, but I am very careless about my programs and posters, particularly from the past. Those that I have had are now in the possession of the music library of Northwestern University, Evanston, Illinois 60201. Don Roberts is the music librarian there, and you may ask for his cooperation. He is certain to give it. Adelina von Furstenburg (Centre d’Art Contemporain, 6 rue Plantamour, Geneva, 1201, phone 022-320-321) knows of another collection of these things that was exhibited in Geneva in June of this year. A list of my books is enclosed. copies to: Dr. Wolfgang Becker Mr. Hansjurgen Nagel Ms. Mimi Johnson

To Ornella Volta904 November 22, 1978 | 107 Bank St., New York Dear Ornella Volta: In reference to the Song Books, I used imitations not only of the second and third movements of the Socrate,905 but also of the Ludions La Grenouille Americaine. I also made an imitation of the melodic line of the Messe des Pauvres and then, as you know, of the Twelve Posthumous Chorales. I made two different imitations of these, one the rubbing which I have told you about, and the other simply an imitation in the manner of the first Cheap Imitation. I won’t be able to give you materials to show in a concrete way the manner in which I made the rubbing. 904. Ornella Volta, Erik Satie scholar and in 1981 founder of the Archives de la fondation Erik Satie. Among her publications are Erik Satie (1979), L’Ymagier D’Erik Satie (1979), and Satie: Seen Through His Letters (1984). 905. As a pure arrangement in 1944, as Socrate, and, later, recomposed, as Cheap Imitation (see note 811). Relative to use in Song Books, see especially Solos Nos. 18 and 30, which Cage specifies may be performed simultaneous with the orchestral version.

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I don’t have them. What I could give you for the exhibit would be one of the notebooks associated with the Song Books. Under separate cover I am sending a copy of pages 7–43 from an out-of-print book, John Cage, put out by Henmar Press, listing and describing my work to about 1960. Since then another catalog has not been issued. I am enclosing pages from Contemporary Music catalogue from C. F. Peters Corp., 373 Park Avenue South, New York, N.Y. 10016. I hope this will give you more information to work with.

To R. Philip Hanes906 November 29, 1978 | 107 Bank Street, New York hand over Fist, we mUst raise moNey hanD oveR fist to meet whAt’s called a challenge grant gIven by the nea. if we don’t raiSe three tImes what They’ve giveN, they’ll take what they’ve “Given” away! No beer is necessary (for me)! I’ve stopped drinking the amber fluid. (I began to expand.) This is written for the Cunningham Dance Foundation. Hope you’ll help.

906. R. Philip Hanes Jr. (1926–2011), American philanthropist active in the arts and conservation, particularly in North Carolina.

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To Martha Lohmeyer and Art Becofsky 907 December 14, 1978 | 107 Bank St., New York I noticed in the last papers I received from CDFinc908 that the Board had moved that I be reinstated as Musical Director of the Company. I must refuse. It was a matter of principle that moved me to no longer have that title. I am simply one of the musicians, and, I hope, Musical Advisor. I notice that my commitments in Europe and those of the Company are beginning to get so close together as to possibly conflict. (As they did at the time of my Bicentennial commitments.) It will probably be wise to obtain some word from Joe Kubera909 for those engagements that I can’t fulfill. I have been asked by ircam (the Boulez-headed musical research organization at Beaubourg) to make a new work for them. Benedicte told me that 3 composers were to collaborate with Merce on new projects for Beaubourg. And that I was one of these. I have therefore planned a second work to be done. From conversation with Merce I gather that this plan is no longer held. He says that “things change every day.” If I don’t have to do this new work for Merce at Beaubourg I have nevertheless to do it for Wdr (Köln). It will be a collage of Irish ballads and jigs with the sounds of Finnegans Wake together with my Writing for the Second Time Through Finnegans Wake.910 As far as I can foresee I will be kept in Europe from April when I can go there with the Company until the conclusion of the Company’s performances there in Oct. or November. I might be able to return briefly for the summer performances, but I am not sure. I must be in Köln from approximately May 24 until the conclusion of my programs there (June 10). The engagement the Company has there is in relation to this “Portrait” of me being made by Wdr and the city of Bonn. I have other engagements after 907. Martha Lohmeyer and Art Becofsky, joint senior administrators at the time of the Cunningham Dance Foundation. 908. A shorthand reference by Cage and Cunningham for Cunningham Dance Foundation, Inc. 909. Joseph Kubera (b. 1949), American pianist who toured widely with the Merce Cunningham Dance Company throughout the 1970s and 1980s. He became well known for his performances of Cage’s most challenging piano works, especially Music of Changes. 910. Cage refers here to his Writing for the Second Time Through Finnegans Wake, which would serve as the basis for the text for Roaratorio: An Irish Circus on Finnegans Wake (1979) for voice, tape, and any number of musicians, originally on tape. Cage’s score for this work, __________, ___ _______ Circus on ______________, constitutes a means for translating a book into a performance without actors, one which is either or both literary and musical. The first blank space in the title is the title the work will take (e.g., “Roaratorio”); the second and third consist of an article and an adjective (e.g., “an Irish”); the last is the title of the original book from which the work was drawn (e.g., Finnegans Wake).

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Köln, particularly in Belgium. And then I will need the rest of the time to do the 2 ircam works.

To Katherine Aune January 23, 1979 | Location not indicated Dear Katherine Aune: Thank you for your letter and your interest in my music. I have written a number of books and if you read them I think many of the questions that you have will be answered for you. I don’t think that music should have a definition. That would keep it from being what it necessarily is. The most you can say, I believe, is that it has to do with time and sounds (rather than space and images for instance). For if you define it in any other way, someone will come along and make music outside your definition. Definitions are like law. And art is not concerned with law; if it is concerned with law, it is criminal. But it is not concerned with law. It helps to change minds and spirits. I call my music music in order to make the nature of my revolution exact. What I wanted to do was to show the possibility of a music that was hospitable to noise, and that honored not only those noises but so-called musical sounds too. Therefore I needed to give instances of music free from tonality as a structuring means. I have given many such. If you look up my article called “The Future of Music” in a magazine called Numus West, these ideas will be answered in or rather discussed in greater detail. A new version of that same text will conclude my next book, which is called Empty Words911 and will be published this spring by Wesleyan University Press. I was given the notion that every sound in the world is worthy of attention by a man no longer living, a filmmaker, Oscar von Fischinger. He said that everything in the world has a spirit which is released when it is set in vibration. I began hitting and rubbing, etc., on everything I came across. Finally I put things in the piano as you mention. More recently, using contact microphones, I can use plant materials or conch shells filled with water and made to gurgle. The notion that every sound is worthy of attention is, you might say, a Buddhist notion. Every being whether sentient or nonsentient is the Buddha, and is therefore at the center of the universe. Tonality and other theories merely take away from each sound its Buddha nature, giving it a particular relation to 911. John Cage’s fourth book with Wesleyan University Press, Empty Words: Writings ’73–’78 (1979).

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a few other sounds, in the case of the triad, two, thereby impoverishing them all. Your question about other people and what they thought of my work is somewhat beside the point. I have had to continue no matter what. You say that composition class was difficult for you because you were writing down a melody that was in your head, and you failed to remember it long enough to get it written down. I do not write something that’s in my head. In fact, I don’t hear anything until it is audible outside my head. In this way I can sometimes write something that hasn’t been heard before. Besides writing music, I particularly like to write texts, to cook, to hunt wild mushrooms and other edible wild plants, to play chess, to make etchings. I don’t think of these activities as unrelated to music, just going along with it. In fact, you can’t get away from sounds. There is always something to hear. Please give my friendliest greetings to Conrad DeJong.912 And best wishes to you.

To Joseph Anton Riedl March 23, 1979 | Location not indicated Dear Joseph, Empty Words should be performed in a place which is less formal and more “gemütlich” than the pavilion of the Akademisches Kunstmuseum. It is necessary that we be able to open the doors and windows. The building should be wood rather than stone. It should be like a farm house rather than an institution. The presence of food should be natural as at home. It wouldn’t be that way with those Greek statues and plaster walls. Please try to find another place even if it is out in the country. Maryanne Amacher will be available for both events, Empty Words and Lecture on the Weather. She will need amplifiers and speakers, but she or I will write separately on this subject. The equipment should be of excellent quality. I think it is not yet clear to you what the necessary schedule for Empty Words is. If dawn is at 4.21, then Part I begins at 19.21 and lasts until 21.51. It is followed by a half-hour intermission with soup (bean soup, no potatoes or tomatoes or peppers or meat or butter or cream; it can have vegetable oil, salt and black 912. Conrad DeJong (b. 1934), American composer and faculty member (1959–1990) at the University of Wisconsin River Falls.

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pepper and perhaps onions and soy flavoring; it could be lentils instead of beans). At 22.21 Part II begins lasting until 24.51 (or do you say 0.51?). Then comes the second ½-hr. intermission (with brown rice and cooked vegetables). Part III begins at 1.21 and ends at 3.51. Then the third and last ½-hour intermission begins (bancha tea or gen mai cha, with, perhaps, nuts and seeds). The doors and windows are then opened, and Part IV begins at 4.21 (If this is not the hour of dawn, which can be verified through a weather bureau, then everything changes accordingly) and lasts until 6.51 (2 and ½ hrs. later). This schedule means that the Eröffnung der Austellung should begin in the afternoon, not at 18.00. Perhaps at 16.00? Have you informed the Ensemble Musique Vivante that it is my wish that Paul Zukofsky conduct? I hope so. If not, I will write to them when I hear from you. Unfortunately Nico Castel (the Sephardim in Apartment House 1776) must be represented by a tape recording. He is unable to be in Germany at the time of our program. Please let Dr. Becker know that I will bring the tape with me. Do you want me to write program notes? I would rather not, but will, of course, if you ask me. If you want a text of mine I suggest part or all of Empty Words. That would be available through Wesleyan University Press and would not require translation. Do remember that I wish to project slides during the performance of Empty Words. I will need an assistant. I can bring a box to house the slide projector, and I have a fine dimming mechanism made by John Fulleman.

To Malcolm Goldstein913 April 17, 1979 | 101 W. 18 St., New York 914 The Chorals were first written as one of the songs in Song Books. I used my Atlas Eclipticalis staff (the five lines differently distanced according to minor or major thirds, giving = space for each chromatic tone) inscribed on transparent paper and simply placed it over the printed Satie, tracing on my staff the tones of his melody. This preserved his durations, but altered his pitches. The chorales became microtonal in a graphic sense. For the violin chorals, I established 913. Malcolm Goldstein (b. 1936), American composer and violinist, co-founder with James Tenney (see note 563) and Philip Corner (see note 676) of the Tone Roads Ensemble. 914. Cage’s first letter in the present collection sent from the 18th St. loft in Manhattan, the former B. Altman department store.

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the use of single tones, unisons, and beatings, and then employed chance operations to detail the notation. The Etudes will be (eight of them) available by the first of May. I will have them sent to you. Your playing of the Chorals and your Soundings was a great musical experience. You are a marvelous musician and person. That you’re with us, so many of us, makes us glad and keeps us going. Love to you

To Cy Twombly 915 April 22, 1979 | 101 W. 18 St., New York merCe and i have moved and hope You’ll visiT next time you come to neW yOrk. in the Morning when we have Breakfast your drawing’s beside us on the waLl. we love it your show at the whitneY is magnifiCent, so manY beautiful painTings and draWings. and prints i saw in califOrnia were Marvelous too and yesterday at the sonnaBend gaLlery illYanaa showed me three works with Colors You

915. (Edwin Parker) “Cy” Twombly Jr. (1928–2011), American painter and sculptor.

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made in sevenTy-five: I Was delighted tO see theM. And in the whitney catalog i read the text By [line illegible] to see You eiTher here or Where yOu are. in May we tour (france and germany) in june i’ll Be (11–15); in köLn (6–10); then brussels / merce’ll be back in new York. then i go to ireland to Collect sounds for a work related to joYce’s wake (unTil july 15); then i Will wOrk in paris (until 8/15) putting the Music together. in septemBer merce and the co. wiLl perform in Scotland after that i go to italY to amplify a park for Children in ivrea. then rendezvous with merce & companY in paris for performances in and ouT of beaubourg (october after that (november) We just might tOur in italy. in the Meantime greetings love and Best wishes. we Look forward to seeing You wherever whenever. we thank you for your work. 488  |  1 9 7 2 – 1 9 8 2

To Minna Lederman July 24, 1979 | Location not indicated By now I am mostly thinking of being home, but most of the time not thinking —just working like a beaver on the Finnegan piece. We spent an extraordinary month in Ireland916 —all over it, because of the chance operations, making recordings of environmental sounds. It was strange to drive 200 miles and then record a bird in a tree or a chicken or simply the opening of a door or gate. Ireland is poor but full of new modern bungalows. There are only a few cottages with thatched roofs left. The country is various and glorious. Our favorite part is Galway —Connemara. It has the starkness of Nevada but the presence of water. Empty, but now being made comfortable with TV, automobiles, etc. The social centers of Ireland are the churches and the pubs. “Guinness is good for you.” People go to the pubs just to be together, not necessarily having any alcohol. And the draught ales are delicious. I drank as much as I wanted (which was as much as I could hold), and, mirabile dictu, haven’t changed weight to speak of. We drove everywhere in the Fulleman’s Volvo (1965 vintage), an excellent car which, however, broke down in Donegal and, luckily, we were able to get a necessary piston in Dublin (a day’s journey) and bring it back for the mechanic to put it in. The Irish people all very friendly. It was like being at home, but all the friends changed. They have an institution we used to call B&B (bed and breakfast). It is very cheap and very good: the Irish form of the motel. Many of the new bungalows are designed to be B&B’s: A hallway with bedrooms. The only thing that’s missing is the private bath. In the morning breakfast (which I ate only in part since I brought my own). They also let us cook dinner in our rooms. We traveled with provisions, rice cooker + wok! P.S. no mushrooms! No rain.

916. From June 15–July 15, 1979, Cage traveled throughout Ireland with John David and Monika Fulleman, collecting sounds for his Roaratorio: An Irish Circus on Finnegans Wake (1979).

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To Thom Holmes917 August 18, 1979 | 101 W. 18 St., New York I enjoyed reading your letter and for the most part I find myself thinking as you do. Music has to do with mind, opening it again and again + more and more. In whatever I do as “music” no matter how “large” or “complex” I still find that the work is simpler than the “world as it is” and therefor not as silent. It has through its simpler (categories etc.) an idea or ideas which keep it from being no mind (which I had worked for [wanted] it to be). That and lesser concerns, an interest in numbers with which I still have difficulty, for instance, keep me going.

To Morton Feldman September 23, 1979 | 101 W. 18 St., New York How are you? Hope all goes well. We’ve moved as you see into what used to be B. Altman’s in the last century; mahogany windows, pyramidal skylight, etc., beautiful view.918 I am very happy and hope I never have to move again. When you come to NYC, please call (same old number: 989-7132) and visit. Dinner macrobiotic yum yum. Writing now about Paul Zukofsky’s desire to conduct my Sixteen Dances with members of Speculum Musicae919 and make a tour charging $3000 for an engagement. Could one be arranged in Buffalo? March, April or May? Program could be completed either with more of my music or music of yours or whatever you’d choose. In two weeks I’ll be in Paris with Merce and the Co. Back here in Nov. Made an hour-long piece for Wdr Hörspiel (Klaus Schöning) called Roaratorio: An Irish Circus on Finnegans Wake. Spent a month in Ireland collecting sound and music for it. Then a month at ircam in Paris putting it together. Could be done live with more than 60 channels. It is very thick. Hope we get together soon. 917. Thom Holmes (b. 1951), American author, music historian, and amateur paleantologist; from 1979 to 1985 publisher and editor of the magazine Recordings of Experimental Music. In collaboration with Cage, he created the first John Cage Discography. 918. Cage would quickly fill this last apartment top to bottom with rocks and plants of all kinds (many cacti), simulating for him a Bolivian forest. 919. Speculum Musicae, American chamber ensemble devoted to contemporary classical music and formed in 1971 by cellist Fred Sherry (b. 1948), pianist Ursula Oppens (b. 1944), and others.

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To Jasper Johns November 15, 1979 | 101 W. 18 St., New York Here are the appearances in Finnegans Wake of Jasper: 249.08 The roof herof is of massicious jasper and a canopy of Tyrian awning rises and still descends to it. 479.10 and .11 Do you know my cousin, Mr. Jasper Dougal that keeps the Anchor on the Mountain, the parson’s son, Jasper of the Tuns, Pat Whateveryournameis? 494.05 Talk about iridecencies! Ruby and beryl and chrysolite, jade, sapphire, jasper and lazul. and of Johns: 172.05 Johns is a different butcher’s. 172.07 Johns is now quite divorced from baking 281. Margin left 3 TwosDonsJohns Threes Totty Askins.

To Alvin Lucier December 3, 1979 | 101 W. 18 St., New York Thank you very much for writing the introductory text in Zero.920 I was deeply touched and remain so. At the moment I’m writing a strange text about three ghosts (Joyce, Satie, + Duchamp) who make contact alphabetically with many other ghosts and some live people.921 One of these latter is Jonathan Albert. Have you come across him or his work? He lives in Oakland, Calif. He is doing extraordinary things with his voices (comes out of theater), has a notation + following it is able to produce sounds he hasn’t heard before. 920. Zero: Contemporary Buddhist Life and Thought, vol. 3, ed. Eric Lerner (1979), which also included interviews and writings with and by Leonard Cohen, Allen Ginsberg, Joni Mitchell, John Ashbery, Gregory Bateson, and others. 921. Cage’s James Joyce, Marcel Duchamp, Erik Satie: An Alphabet (1981–1982), a hörspiel (radio play) first broadcast from the WDR Studio Akustische Kunst on July 6, 1982. It premiered as a live performance in Cologne with Cage’s participation on February 14, 1987, as part of a twenty-four-hour homage by WDR in celebration of his seventy-fifth birthday. The jury of the international KarlSczuka-Prize designated it the most extraordinary piece of radio art in 1982. The text is included in Cage’s X: Writings ’79–’82 (Middletown, CT: Wesleyan University Press, 1983).

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The Zukofsky–Spec[ulum] Musicae tour ideally would be in Dec. 1980 acc. to Ursula Oppens.

To Ms. Eleanor Hakim922 December 23, 1979 | 101 W. 18 St., New York Thank you for sending me your text. You have clearly devoted a great deal of thought to what you’ve written. Some of the assumptions, however, are not factual, and I wonder whether your ideas would change if your information was correct. The Musicircus was done in the proper spirit in Illinois and Minneapolis previously. One very important element is that there should at all times be many people performing simultaneously. The next is that, since none of the musicians are being paid, there being too many of them, the entire event must be free to the public. Neither of these essential aspects took place in Paris. Admission was charged. The space was too small. When one group that was loud was performing, the others all stopped. I had done what I could to advise the organization, but my advice was not followed. More recently (last June) there was in my view a more successful realization of the Musicircus directed by Walter Zimmermann.923 By the way, in harmony with the separation of this work from conventional economics, I have not made a score nor have I published one of course. So far I think the best Musicircus was that in St. Paul/Minneapolis. I am about to leave NYC for 5 weeks. If you want to get together sometime in February, after the 15th, I would enjoy that. My number is 989-7132.

To Ira D. Sahlman February 21, 1980 | 101 W. 18 St., New York Virtually every day in the mail one to three requests for autographed musical mss. arrive. That is only one of the many interruptions of my work “I study.” 922. Eleanor Hakim, from 1960 to 1963 managing editor of Studies on the Left, a journal of New Left radicalism published between 1959 and 1967 in Madison, Wisconsin, and later in New York. 923. Walter Zimmermann (b. 1949), German composer. He published Desert Plants: Conversations with 23 American Musicians (1976). The Musicircus Cage refers to took place at the Tage Neuer Musik, John Cage Festival in Bonn (June 6–10, 1979), where he and Amacher also gave the first complete performance of Empty Words (1973–1974).

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I have found several ways to keep my peace of mind in a society of greater population. One is not to give autographed musical mss. Another: not to accept honorary degrees. Another: not to listen to cassettes or tape-recordings that arrive unsolicited. Etc. In this way I manage to do my work which is extensive; 3 new books last year + at least 2 hours of new music + 17 new etchings. My mss. (worksheets etc.) are handled by Margarete Roeder Fine Arts,924 545 Broadway. I hope you will accept this explanation.

To Irene Solomon925 March 9, 1980 | 101 W. 18 St., New York Thank you very much for the new supply of pepper. It makes a very interesting roast chicken. Hope you have a Rohmertopf. clay baking dish with cover. Put in the chicken and the juice of two or three lemons over it, stuffing the inside with the skins of the lemons. Garlic if you like here and there. And then about three or four tablespoonsful of peppercorns over the chicken. And about half a cup of tamari. Perhaps put the tamari first and then the peppercorns, so that they don’t get washed off. Slices of fresh ginger could be added between the wings and the legs and the body of the bird.* I will fly to LA on the 6th of April; there’s a rehearsal from 5:30 to 8:30. Concert on the 7th. Program on the 9th at Irvine. On the 12th and 13th at Ucla. I have been a little sick since the City Center performances (2 weeks), virus or flu. Have to take naps every now and then! I will stay in Westwood with Pia Gilbert.926 She is a composer and teaches at Ucla in the dance dept. Her phone is (213) 472-6958, 11400 Berwick, LA 90049. Greetings to all the friends! *Then put it in a cold oven but turn it up to 425. Leave it covered for an hour; then uncovered for 15 minutes. 924. Margarete Roeder (b. 1939), Austrian-born Canadian-American art dealer who began representing Cage in the mid-1970s. In 1986 she opened the Margarete Roeder Gallery in New York. In late 2008 she joined the board of directors of the John Cage Trust. 925. Irene Solomon, media contact at the University of California at San Diego for its Contemporary Music Ensemble. 926. Pia Gilbert (b. 1921), American composer and teacher, first at the University of California, Los Angeles in the dance department and later in the graduate division of the Juilliard School in New York. A close friend to both Cage and Cunningham, her compositions were much influenced by Cage.

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To Prof. Gerd Zacher927 March 10, 1980 | 101 W. 18 St., New York Am very glad that you like the organ pieces. C.M. means common metre and refers to the versification which is 8,6,8,6, syllables for the phrases. L.M. is long metre which is 8,8,8,8. Short metre may be 6,6,6,6, though I’m not sure. I got this information from Neely Bruce who is an authority on early American music, but examining the pieces, I note that Alpha, which is C.M., is 6,6,8,6. So I don’t know what to say. Harmony, on the other hand, is as Bruce told me. I don’t think it will help to know this. I should probably omit it from the ms. The tempi can be as slow as you wish. I have made a number of pieces derived from 18th-century American music. The first was Apartment House 1776, which with Renga was my fulfillment of a bicentennial commission from Seiji Ozawa and the Boston Symphony. Later I made Quartets for orchestras of three different sizes (24, 41, 93 instruments) and for concert band with 12 amplified voices. More recently I made Hymns and Variations for 12 amplified voices and then these pieces for organ. The method I have used to free the original music of the theory of harmony, at the same time that its flavor is kept, is as follows: to count the number of notes in each line (sop. alt., ten. and bass) and to ask which numbers are passive and which active, getting with the I Ching the answers, passive being 1–32, active 33–64. An active number is first a sound which is held through to the next active number, which is then a silence that lasts until the next active number, etc. In the case of melodies, there are no silences but there are fewer tones in them than in the original tunes. The result, I believe, is a music in which each tone, since it is preceded and followed by silence, vibrates from its own center rather than because of a theory which controls it in hierarchical relations to other tones. I have tried to emphasize the autonomy of each tone (or melody) by giving it its own chance determined registration. The indeterminate character suits I hope the differences between instruments. Will try to send you a copy of the original Belcher pieces.928 927. Gerd Zacher (b. 1929), German composer, organist, and writer. Cage refers to his Organ2/ ASLSP (As SLow aS Possible) (1987), adapted from his earlier work, ASLSP (1985), of which Zacher is the dedicatee. 928. Supply Belcher (1751–1836), an early American “hymnodist” who created a new, raw vocal style that broke radically with European convention. Cage composed Some of “The Harmony of Maine” (1978), scored for organist and six assistants, which makes use of thirteen three-part songs from Belcher’s 1794 book of part songs, The Harmony of Maine.

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To Klaus Schöning929 March 30, 1980 | 101 W. 18 St., New York I do hope you receive this before you leave. The closer your visit gets the unhappier I am not to be in New York when you are. I now have a serious question: can I use the music of the Irish musicians for other projects, or must I have Wdr permission (or get the Irish musicians to play other tunes)? Actually what has happened is this. Merce made a brilliant dance called Duets,930 and we got the agreement of Paedher Mercier and his son Mell931 to use their improvisations. I then made a plan for 4 cassette machine players (each having all the improvisations) to play piannissimo except once during the entire dance (betw. 15 and 20 minutes), at which time he would make a crescendo (fast or slow), followed by a return to piannissimo. The result is glorious. We have done this, and we have paid the Merciers as though they were the composers, and they are happy. (I hope Wdr is.) And now Merce has made another dance called Fielding Sixes.932 It is jiglike, and naturally I thought of the fiddle and flute tunes of Malloy and Glackin. Will it be all right if we use that material? We will of course pay them afresh and give them royalties for each performance. (Will Wdr accept this?) What I plan to do is to have some gad[g]ets made that change the speed slidingly of cassette machines so that instead of rising to a cresc. as in Duets, cassette improvisers would simply depart from the established tempo quickly or slowly and then come back to it at an equal speed. There will be four machines using any of the reservoir of material. Each performance will be different. Do let me or Mimi know your answer to my questions. If we can’t use that material, I will get them to provide us with other, but this would be the better way. Though John Fulleman says we should have copies of the original 929. Klaus Schöning (b. 1936), German radio playwright and director, founding director of the WDR’s Acoustic Art Studio. 930. Cunningham’s Duets (1980), with stage decor and costumes by Mark Lancaster, first performed in New York on February 25, 1980. Cage’s music, titled alternatively Improvisation III (1980), scored for one or more musicians with stereo cassette recordings, consisted of manipulated recordings of traditional Irish drumming provided by Paedher and Mell Mercier (see below). 931. Paedher (“Paddy”) and Mell Mercier, father and son, both bodhrán players, two of the original performers in Cage’s Roaratorio: An Irish Circus on Finnegans Wake. 932. Cunningham’s Fielding Sixes (1980), with stage decor and costumes by Monika Fullemann, first performed in London on June 30, 1980. Cage’s music, titled alternatively Improvisation IV (1980; rev. 1982), scored for three cassette players, makes use of three sets of twelve identical cassettes containing traditional Irish music played by Matt Molloy (flute) and Paddy Glackin (fiddle), two of the original performers in Cage’s Roaratorio: An Irish Circus on Finnegans Wake.

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tapes which you have. Could that be arranged? The first performance is to be in London on the 30th of June. Love to Fanny, Nadja and U. Love to you all!

To Christian Wolff April 30, 1980 | 101 W. 18 St., New York Forgive me please for not writing sooner. The tour was 3 weeks and tiring, and getting back has been such a pleasure that I’ve acted as though I had nothing to do but carry on my work. The concert in LA was a bit difficult because for all the music there were only two rehearsals! Since it was chamber music, so to speak, I had thought they would work individually, but no, they stopped like good orchestra members right on the dot. They got very interested in Braverman Music933 and worked a third time just on it just before the program. I think they did it quite well. At least I enjoyed it. Nine was played quite well and is very beautiful. I had told the audience that the reason it was on the program was that I had never heard it and had always wanted to. A lady afterwards asked what I thought of it now that I’d heard it. And I said I thought it was very beautiful and included clearly a larger universe of possibilities than the Trio, included in fact things that were disparate. The Trio was played well, I thought. The program unfortunately had no notes about your works or your life. I didn’t realize this when I spoke introducing your work (I hadn’t studied the program). Fortunately, I had decided that the best introduction to Braverman Music was to read passages from your letter to me telling what your current concerns musically are. David Tudor later said that it was fortunate that I did that, since the program was lacking in information which it should have had. When they telephoned one day asking me for such information, I referred them to you. They must not have reached you. I am sorry. There was a review in the L.A.Times, and there may be others. The Times one was not good, the critic finding our work tedious. He said the audience (which was full and enthusiastic) was long-suffering! Many told me 933. Wolff’s Braverman Music (after Harry Braverman) (1978), an homage to the American Marxist, political economist, and revolutionary, a politically explicit composition. Wolff’s Nine for chamber ensemble and Trio for flute, trumpet, and cello are short works (five minutes and six minutes, respectively), both composed in 1951.

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how special an experience the concert was. Your works together were played after the intermission. Love to you all!

[To Elfriede Fischinger]934 May 8, 1980 | Location not indicated forgive me when yOu Said eaCh inAnimate object has a spiRit that can take the Form of sound by beIng Set into vibration i beCame a musician it was as tHough you had set me on fIre i raN without thinkinG and thrEw myself into the wateR For Elfriede Fischinger May 8, 1980

934. Elfriede Fischinger (1910–1999), wife of Oskar Fischinger.

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To Ornolfur Arnason935 May 13, 1980 | 101 W. 18 St., New York Thank you for the ticket (which, however, if you can, please change, for I plan to leave Reykjavik on June 12 and one way or another reach Paris; from there I go to Liverpool on June 22, then to London returning here from London on the 19th of July —if you can take care of NY-Reykjavik-Paris, I would be pleased). I have a reservation on the 5th, so that I’ll arrive with Zukofsky the morning of the 6th. Can you please arrange a place for me so that I can cook my own meals. I follow as you probably know, the macrobiotic diet in a slightly unorthodox way. I am enclosing a copy of the cable I sent to Thorgerdur Ingolfsdottir.936 In addition would like to know whether you have lemons and fresh ginger. Do you have cumin seeds? The utensils for cooking the rice should be heavy with tight-fitting lids and cloth to go between the pot and the lid. Tamari is a form of soy sauce. I am most interested in whether or not you have any wild edible plants. A botanist at the Univ. should know. They can be seashore plants or from fields and woods. I can identify wild mushrooms. Do you have dandelions, lamb’s quarters (also known here as pig weed [genus Chenopodium]). There is also one that grows in sand. And bracken, Pteridium aquilinum, do you have that? The meal will basically be brown rice (cooked with hijiki and cumin and possibly fried afterwards with scallions, sesame seeds and some mixture of whatever suitable vegetables we have, including mushrooms, we’ll see). 2) Beans, soaked overnight, cooked with some flavoring such as chicken broth cubes, do you have those? 3) Fish. This I leave to you. Please do not use any dairy products, butter, cream, cheese, etc., in its preparation. Wine can be used and salt and pepper and herbs. I like good fish simply prepared. 4) Whatever vegetable we come up with. 5) A few accompaniments such as [a few words illegible]

935. Örnólfur Arnason (b. 1941), Icelandic writer, film producer, and playwright, from 1979 to 1983 producer of the Art Festival in Reykjavík, where Cage performed with Zukovsky. Cage’s participation in the “Eat-In Symposium” included his cooking a macrobiotic meal for some 150 guests. 936. Thorgerdur Ingólfsdóttir (b. 1943), Icelandic music teacher and choirmaster.

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To Klaus Schöning May 27, 1980 | 101 W. 18 St., New York I hope your visit here was good and I hope to be here next time you’re here. About Mr. Dragutin Boldin.937 I think he should be allowed to do what he wants. I don’t know his work. It may be something I wouldn’t enjoy; most dance, except Merce’s, horrifies me! Music may be the most irritating of arts, but dancing when it is poor is certainly the most disgusting. However, I feel that my life goes on independently of the lives of others (each hopefully is centered in itself) and this independence extends to our works. Therefore Roaratorio should be made available to those who wish to use it. If Mr. Boldin has any questions, give him my address and I will respond. Did you have any conversations here about a Usa performance of Roaratorio? In June we can talk about possible realisation for the radio of the Alphabet. Though a change from lecture there would seem to go towards films. I would however certainly give you the rights for the radio performance. It seems that there must be a live partial performance at ircam of Roaratorio next January. I am corresponding with Boulez about it. I had hoped, as you know, to do it with Merce, but they want something smaller: Heaney, myself, Glackin, and Ennis, and I am trying to change that to have Molloy instead of Ennis or Molloy instead of Glackin, but preferably Glackin and Molloy.938 Have now finished Writing for the Fourth Time Through Finnegans Wake.939 It is the shortest of all, about 34 pages, and the farthest from the original sense. It is quite strange. When I have it all proof-read, etc., you will receive a copy (and of the Third Writing, and of Themes and Variations940). Recently sent organ 937. Dragutin Boldin (1930–1994), Croatian ballet dancer and choreographer, active in Germany from 1959. 938. See note 932. 939. Cage would altogether write five “writings through” of Joyce’s work: Writing Through Finnegans Wake (1976–77; Tulsa, OK: University of Tulsa Press, 1978), Writing for the Second Time Through Finnegans Wake (1976–1978), in Empty Words: Writings ’73–’78 (Middletown, CT: Wesleyan University Press, 1979), Writing for the Third Time Through Finnegans Wake (1979; uncollected), Writing for the Fourth Time Through Finnegans Wake (1979–80), and Muoyce (Writing for the Fifth Time Through Finnegans Wake) (1982), the last two in X: Writings ’79–’82 (Middletown, CT: Wesleyan University Press, 1983). 940. Themes and Variations (Barrytown, NY: Station Hill Press, 1982), which began in 1980 as a twelve-minute presentation at “Word of Mouth,” an artist’s symposium held on the South Pacific island of Ponape. By the time of its publication, it had grown into an hour-long mesostic poem comprising five sections, its text embodying fifteen themes based on the names of fifteen men of nearly lifelong importance. The “110 Ideas” explored in the volume —an essential compendium of philosophical tenets now firmly associated with Cage’s life and work —were compiled by Cage from his own published writings at the time.

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pieces to Zacher in Essen; he will give a concert of my work with Satie pieces in October or November. Hope to see you in England.

To Mrs. Patti Arthur941 August 3, 1980 | 101 W. 18 St., New York Good to hear from you. Do hope I see you again sometime. The diet is basically (at the center) brown rice and beans (any dried beans, soaked and then cooked). That makes a complete protein. Then going towards fruit, you can have nuts, seeds, and vegetables, avoiding raw vegetables (too liquid), potatoes, tomatoes, eggplant and peppers. Don’t eat fruit unless you can’t resist it. (This is true too for alcohol, though I still don’t resist it. I was drinking beer in Ponape, but that is too liquid; now I’m drinking whisky straight, preferably single-malt Scotch.) Going in the opposite direction towards meat, you can have chicken and fish. Eggs are all right, I don’t take many of them; no omelettes. But mayonaise now and then. Seaweeds are excellent: hijiki cooked with the rice. Wakame in a miso soup. And kombu in a tempura sauce (the water from boiled kombu is good as a general stock). No cayenne unfortunately. But ponape pepper is good. Salt should be sea salt. My breakfast is gen mai cha (brown rice tea, a mixture of popped brown rice with a green tea without caffeine) or bancha tea (also Japanese). Then a granola made by baking together 6 cups of rolled oats, 1 cup of wheat flakes, 1 cup of wheat germ, ½ cup of sesame seeds, ½ cup of sunflower seed, 1 cup of cashew nuts raw, with ¼ cup of olive oil, ¼ cup of corn oil, ¼ cup of sesame oil, ¼ cup of water and a tablespoon of vanilla. Mix well and bake for an hour at 350°, mixing every 15 minutes. For lunch a piece of unleavened bread with or without peanut butter. The bread is made with all vegetable leftovers that are going bad, raw or cooked made into a gruel and then kneaded with whole wheat flour, left overnight covered with damp cloth, then baked for 1¼ hrs. at 375°. For dinner last night chick peas with dill and fresh coriander, oil, lime, salt and pepper, radishes and olives; brown rice fried with scallions and celery with a little turmeric; roast.

941. Patti Arthur, proprietress of the Village Resort Hotel and Restaurant in Panope, Caroline Islands, whom Cage had met while attending the “Word of Mouth” symposium there in January 1980. The wife of Arthur’s new chef suffered from lupus, and Cage responded to her letter with dietary remedies.

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To Gary Nargi 942 October 6, 1980 | 101 W. 18 St., New York Unfortunately I don’t know the precise nature of Burroughs’ work. Just now I was at the Univ. of Kansas; Burroughs and Ginsberg943 were there at the same time. I heard readings by both and do not feel sympathetic to the bondage they both have to their likes and dislikes. My use of chance operations is as strict and disciplined as sitting cross-legged. I do it in order to free my work from my ego, or to open the ego to the world outside (and hopefully full circle to the world inside). I am not so interested in organization as I am in changing my mind (and suggesting to others the changing of theirs). I agree with Joyce’s love of comedy because it is freest from desire and loathing. A year or so ago I heard Ginsberg being interviewed on a TV show. That I enjoyed more than his poetry. He seemed to have an open quiet mind.

To Irene Solomon October 6, 1980 | 101 W. 18 St., New York Still remember how to get from the motel to the school parking lot. The text I so diligently wrote while there is going to be published by the Station Hill Press in Barrytown, NY.944 Will send you a copy when it gets done. Thank you for rose peppers. I will enjoy them. I was in Iceland and played with a grandmaster who is one on the international chess jury. He beat me very quickly twice. I asked him where I made my mistakes. He said: in you r las t mov e! 942. Gary Nargi, editor of the short-lived periodical Fly By Night (Huntington, New York, 1981). 943. William S(eward) Burroughs (1914–1997), American novelist, essayist, painter, and spokenword performer; and Allen Ginsberg (1926–1997), American poet. Both were key figures in the 1950s beat generation and the ensuing counterculture. In 1984 Cage would compose Writing Through Howl, wherein he applied his “writing through” technique to Ginsberg’s now-classic text; at Cage’s wake in the Cunningham Dance Studio on October 31, 1992, Ginsberg would perform Hare Krishna chants. 944. Cage’s Themes and Variations (see note 940).

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Also, besides black and blue toes, contracted a miserable case of shingles! Was stung twice in one day (while hunting for wild greens near Fontainebleau) by bees. Triggered the shingles. Confined to left arm but was awful. Had to perform and teach in London with cotton glove on left hand. Was very debilitating and painful. Had to rest all the time I wasn’t obliged to work. Now it is over, thank the Lord. Was in Oakland making more etchings in Sept. Also lectured at U. of Kansas in Lawrence. Enjoyed seeing Stephen Addiss,945 who had been in my class at the New School and who now is curator of Asian Art in the u[niversity] museum and also teaches a class in the music dept. He has a magnificent collection of scrolls, pots and sculpture. On the 20th go to Europe with Dance Co. Back here on 8th of Nov. Then to Paris in January for “live” performances of Roaratorio. Look forward to next time I see you. Greetings to Steed and all the friends.

To Mr. Meyer, President of TWA Oct. 20, 1980 | 101 W. 18 St., New York I am flying again today on tWa and being obliged to take my own food with me because the vegetarian meals are not actually vegetarian, and not at all macrobiotic, which is the diet I follow. Many vegetarian meals include animal fats (dairy products, which I don’t eat). The others that don’t include dairy products emphasize fruit or the Solanaceae (potatoes, eggplants, tomatoes, peppers —all poisonous plants related to the deadly nightshade). If I eat any of the Solanaceae, I have trouble walking. I managed with the macrobiotic diet to get rid of arthritic pain and inflammation. I now take no aspirin or any other drugs. I am sure that should you change the vegetarian meals to go with the macrobiotic diet that many travelers would be grateful. Essentially what we want is brown rice, beans, some vegetable, preferably carrot, turnip, broccoli, or squash, with ginger pickle or daikon pickle, and then some fish, not shell fish. Instead of butter, sesame oil should be used. Tamari instead of salt. There are of course many other possible menus. Vegetable couscous for 945. Stephen Addiss (b. 1935), American poet, scholar, and musician, associated with the University of Richmond in Virginia.

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instance with chick peas.

To R.I.P. Hayman946 October 20, 1980 | 101 W. 18 St., New York I am not active within political bounds in my life and work. I live as an anarchist though I pay taxes. I do this (unlike Thoreau) in order to keep my freedom from governmental constraints. I hope I am beyond use by politics, though that is not always the case (my music was used in WWII, beamed towards Indonesia to give them the impression that we love and understand Asia!). Your other question —Is politics to society what music is to sound? —is a little too mathematical, but my answer is yes if music is thought of as a body of laws to protect musical sounds from noises, as government protects rich from poor. Why do we do it? My books are my answer to that question. Two good reasons: 1) To quiet and sober the mind thus making it susceptible to divine influences (and since electronics is the extension of the central nervous system —McLuhan — revolution is therefor feasible); 2) to imitate nature in her manner of operation.

To M.C. Richards December 28, 1980 | 101 W. 18 St., New York It must be a great pleasure to be you and where you are. Here it is cold, though snow on the rooves now melted. And I’ve just broken a week-long fever (practically slept night and day for a week) but have less temperature now than normal. So have begun eating again. Have had to take aspirin and antibiotics. (Flu.) Now getting better. I worry more about the son than Yoko.947 She is very strong; but John had been the one who was close to Sean. However, it’s hard to worry about someone you never even met. Many magazines asked me to write about John L., but I couldn’t. I never really used his music. We never conversed. 946. Richard Perry Hayman (b. 1951), better known as R.I.P. Hayman, American composer, performer, and founding senior editor of and frequent contributor to EAR Magazine (1978–1991). 947. Cage refers here to the murder of John Lennon, which took place on December 8, 1980, outside their apartment building, the Dakota, on the Upper West Side of Manhattan.

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I helped whenever I could for him legally, getting the grrreeeen cd. And once I served him dinner backwards. Desert first (he had before the macrobiotics a sweet-tooth) and then vegetables etc. And I owe them both, J and Y, the change in diet. We sent a love-you letter to Yoko offering her help she doesn’t need. One strange new development in my work: writing through The Cantos! 948 Have just gotten to what Nobby tells me is the turning point, if truly is will be grateful, the Pisan ones. Have located copies of the two missing anti-American ones written in Italian, LXXII + LXIII. (In a Canadiana collection in a library in Toronto!) Haven’t rec’d. them yet because didn’t have wit to request the mailing to be first class. Result: bogged down in Xmasrush. Am also practicing my Finnegans Wake reading for the Paris performances. I leave on the 10th of Jan. and return here on the 25th. Am also fairly clear in my head how to put the next orchestra piece on paper. We have your new Steiner books which are very well-done, I think and thEn with bronZe lance heads beaRing yet Arms

3 4

sheeP slain Of lUto stroNg praiseD

To Kirk Allison January 28, 1981 | 101 W. 18 St., New York Thank you for your thoughtful letter about your discontent with Zen Buddhism. When I first became a student of oriental philosophy, I read The Gospel of Sri Ramakrishna.949 It was after that that I studied with Suzuki and chose Zen 948. Cage’s writing through Ezra Pound’s classic text, titled Writing Through the Cantos (1983), in X: Writings ’79–’82 (1983). “The Pisan ones” are The Pisan Cantos, the section Pound wrote at the end of World War II while interned in U.S.-occupied Italy. 949. The Gospel of Sri Ramakrishna, first published in English in 1942 (New York: RamakrishnaVivekananda Center) in translation by Swami Nikhilananda, a record of conversations between Ramakrishna and his disciples, as recorded by Mahendranath Gupta.

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rather than some other path. (Sri Ramakrishna had said that God is like a lake that can be approached from many directions, that people are thirsty but call Him by different names.) Zen had the right flavor for me: humor, intransigence, and a certain feet-on-the-ground character. It has helped me in my work and personal life and continues to do so. The Christian thought that I find useful is expressed in the Sermons of Meister Eckhart. I think your desire to make judgements and to express a tendency toward the Good may make you feel as though you’re personally doing the right thing, but it doesn’t really take the whole situation into consideration, nor does it affect the situation in any real way. (Thoreau: the only true answer will serve to set all well-afloat.) The other day the hostages were on their way home; Reagan was being inaugurated with celebrations to the tune of 8 million; an old lady was found in her apartment in the south Bronx frozen in a block of ice.950 Eckhart: “Earth has no escape from Heaven. Flee she up or flee she down, there is Heaven to invigorate her, whether for her weal or for her woe” embraces all of this.

To Mrs. B. A. Jacob III April 13, 1981 | 101 W. 18 St., New York Our friend Porter McCray951 told me of your arthritis. I am sending him and you a copy of Lima Ohsawa’s Art of Just Cooking.952 About six years ago I shifted from cooking with butter, eating meat, cheese, etc., to the macrobiotic diet. Previously I had taken 12 aspirin a day for 15 years, but arthritic pains merely increased and inflamation and distortion. After a week of the changed diet, I had no pain. I have not taken any aspirin since. Basically, the diet is a shift from animal fats to vegetable oils. The combination of brown rice with beans gives a complete protein. Seaweed cooked with the rice, a little hijiki, or wakame, gives it many minerals and vitamins we need. Supplement the rice and beans 950. Cage refers here to January 20, 1981, the day Iran released fifty-two Americans who had been held hostage for 444 days, minutes after the presidency had passed from Jimmy Carter to Ronald Reagan. 951. Porter A. McCray (1908–2000), American museum administrator, long associated with the Museum of Modern Art in New York. 952. Lima Ohsawa, The Art of Just Cooking (Brookline, MA: Autumn Press, 1975). This is one of many letters from Cage to others on the subject of the macrobiotic diet, which he had abruptly adopted in the late 1970s and which was extremely efficacious in the treatment of his debilitating arthritis. Earlier known for his coq au vin and crème brûlée, Cage became an exceptional macrobiotic cook.

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with vegetables. Do not eat tomatoes, potatoes, eggplants or cayenne or fresh peppers. You may have black pepper, fish + chicken (if you have a source of good chicken). Those vegetables are relatives of the deadly nightshade. And they are particularly bad for people with arthritis. If you have questions, I’ll be glad to answer them if I can. The book is out of print but is being republished. It will come to you from the printer.

To Joseph Beuys953 June 6, 1981 | Köln Dear Joseph Beuys, Tried to reach you by ’phone but no success. I have written a text which will become a hörspiel. (You appear in scene XVII.) Klaus Schöning of Wdr is sending you a copy of the German translation. I am hoping that you will read the part for the ghost of Marcel Duchamp. Rrose Sélavy (a woman) will read the quotations from Duchamp’s writings. If you are willing, please let Schöning know. Auf wieder sehen hier oder?

To Marion d’Cruz and Margaret Tan954 July 17, 1981 | 101 W. 18 St., New York Dear Marion and Margaret, I am enclosing a mesostic on your names. You might enjoy using some or all of the Sonatas and Interludes. (It would make a complete program!) Perhaps the Interludes could be piano solos, during

953. Joseph Beuys (1921–1986), German Fluxus artist, sculptor, and theorist, who Cage is inviting to perform in an upcoming staged reading of his James Joyce, Marcel Duchamp, Erik Satie: An Alphabet (1982). See note 921. 954. Marion d’Cruz (b. 1953), dancer, and Margaret Leng Tan (b. 1945), Singapore-born classical musician who became closely associated with Cage’s piano works.

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which Marion would change costumes. Another piece will shortly be available, called Mysterious Adventure.955 i aM Accustomed to choReography whIch is independent Of the music which accompaNies it so that i was surpriseD to find m’self enjoying these danCes which Repeat the mUsic so to speak which visualiZe it they Are imagiNative inventive surprising anD tasteful and the Music wAs played by a pianist who has a fine eaR and is devoted to what she does my pieces and hovhaness’s were Given excellent performAnces bad music may be the most iRritating of arts but bad dancE is cerTainly The most disgusting these orientAl artists gave me No trouble at all July ’81

955. Cage’s Mysterious Adventure (1945), for solo prepared piano, being readied for publication. It was first heard at the Hunter Playhouse in New York on January 9, 1945, as (untitled) music for the eponymous choreographed work by Cunningham, using a compatable rhythmic structure.

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To Tom Marioni956 September 2, 1981 | 101 W. 18 St., New York A most interesting thing happened late last year for me in the field of photography. Bob Mahon957 asked to take photographs of me, and I tried to put him off. Then he called again and said that before taking photographs of me, he would want to read all my books. I gave him the books, and about two months later he returned and said he would like to have me help him take photographs by means of chance operations. I did this, and he has as a result made six times thirty-six portraits of me which I find extremely interesting and recommend them to you for your show. It would be necessary to exhibit at least 36 in a single sequence, rather than a single photograph, because, through the chance operations, quite a number of the images are nothing more than black or white rectangles. The quality of the whole series is extraordinarily impressive, however, and has impressed not only me but Weston Naef of the Metropolitan Museum and others. Since Bob Mahon is doing what I would do if I “became” a photographer, I have no need to do it. His address is: 20 West 22nd Street New York, NY 10010 tel. 741-0533 (studio) 675-8511 (home) I would like to recommend to you the work of William Anastasi,958 who doesn’t himself take photographs but who directs photographers to do what he has in mind. He is at: 640 Riverside Drive N.Y., N.Y. 926-9396 956. Tom Marioni (b. 1937), American conceptual artist. His early art memoir The Act of Drinking Beer with Friends Is the Highest Form of Art (1970) became a legendary example of using social situations as art. He is married to Kathan Brown (see note 893). 957. Robert Mahon (b. 1949), American photographer who adopted chance methodologies. His 216-image portrait of Cage (John Cage: A Portrait Series, 1980) was acquired by the Philadelphia Museum of Art. Mahon’s photographic illustrations of fifteen chance-determined prints from a single negative of the first autograph page of Cage’s Sixteen Dances (1950) would be later interwoven into Cage’s I–VI (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1990). 958. William Anastasi (b. 1933), American painter, conceptual artist, and writer. Cage and Anastasi were close friends and played chess almost daily. In 2010 he would receive the John Cage Award from the Foundation for Contemporary Arts. He is married to the American artist Dove Bradshaw (b. 1949), who pioneered the use of indeterminacy in her own visual art works in 1969.

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To Lanfranco Bombelli Tiravanti 959 September 10, 1981 | 101 W. 18 St., New York Dear Mr. Tiravanti, I am between the devil and the deep blue sea. I spend too much time away from home, and so am inclined now not to accept further invitations. This year I am particularly committed. However, I love to be in Cadaques, and I particularly enjoy being there with Teeny. Would you be able to invite Grete Sultan to play some or all of my Etudes Australes? She would have to have a fine piano. The complete work takes two programs. If you don’t want that, she could play a selection of the Etudes, and I could arrange with her a realization of Marcel’s piece involving the train into different cars of which notes fall. For the exhibition of my drawings and prints, please write to: Margarete Roeder 545 Broadway New York, N.Y. 10012 I would not be able to stay very long in Cadaques because I have to attend the Cabrillo Festival in California, for which I will have written a new piece for orchestra, and before that I expect to be in Dublin.

To Conlon Nancarrow September 27, 1981 | 101 W. 18 St., New York Sorry you won’t be coming this way, but glad you’re busy. Will give your message to them. Am interested that you are finishing an aleatory sound for two pianos. Hope to hear it some day. You may be interested to know that the term “aleatory” with respect to music was first introduced by Boulez in his article “Alea,” 960 which was a denunciation of my work with chance operations and a statement by him on the proper use of chance (i.e., in a dialectical situation 959. Lanfranco Bombelli Tiravanti (1921–2008), Italian painter, architect, and curator. He founded the Galleria Cadaqués, famous for its exhibitions of artists such as Duchamp, Beuys, and David Hockney. Cadaqués was a favorite second home location for the Duchamps, and during his visits, Cage and Duchamp would often play chess together in the café Meliton. 960. See Pierre Boulez, “Alea,” Nouvelle Revue française, no. 59 (Nov. 1, 1957). Reprinted in English, in translation by Stephen Walsh, in Pierre Boulez, Stocktakings from an Apprenticeship (New York: Oxford University Press, 1991).

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involving its opposite: total control). My arthritis hasn’t hurt me now for 7½ years (change of diet to the macrobiotic and the rather regular receiving of shiatsu massage [once a week]). Throughout this period I have not needed aspirin! Before: 12 a day for 15 years.

To Dr. Walter Harding961 October 2, 1981 | 101 W. 18 St., New York As you see above, I’ve moved, but I still love Thoreau. On the night of Sept. 25 through the morning of the 26th I read my Empty Words, derived from Thoreau’s Journal. There are 4 parts, and each part takes 2½ hours. There were three ½-hr. intermissions during which macrobiotic food was served by the East-West Restaurant in Middletown, NY. I began reading in the Christ Cathedral Church in downtown Hartford, Connecticut at 9:42 p.m. At 6:12 a.m. the curtains were opened to let the first light in. At 6:42 (dawn) the windows were opened so that the sounds of the outside came into the room. The fourth part was then chanted. The entire event was broadcast by National Public Radio by satellite as far as Juneau, Alaska. Some 27 stations broadcast the reading. This was sponsored by Real Art Ways, Joseph Celli.962 During the reading of the first part, 75 drawings were projected on a screen by Luis Frangella using a dimmer designed by John Fullemann. During second part, 38 drawings were projected. Third part: 24. Fourth part: 5. During the first part, I faced the audience. Second part: sideways. Sideways 3rd prt. Then with the audience back to it during the last part. 150 came and stayed all night.

961. Walter Harding (1917–1996), American scholar whose biography The Days of Henry David Thoreau (New York: Knopf, 1965) is considered definitive. He helped to found the Thoreau Society, serving as its first secretary. 962. Joseph Celli (b. 1944), American musician and composer. He was active with Real Art Ways, founded in Hartford, Connecticut in 1975.

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To Daniel Charles November 3, 1981 | 101 West 18 Street, New York Thank you for being Satie,963 and I look forward to seeing you both in Puerto Rico in March. In a few weeks I will be in Metz (16–22); then to Holland for two days with Teeny and Frans van Rossum.964 Dear Daniel, I wish I could go to Normandy and Villeneuve-les-avignon, but I can’t do anything more than I am already committed to this year. The birds are flying, got out of their cages!

To Yvar Mikhashoff 965 Nov. 9, 1981 | 101 West 18 St., New York Thank you for your letter. Unfortunately, I am no longer a friend of Virgil. We enjoyed one another’s friendship very much years ago. I think it would be more realistic if you omitted my music from the program. Naturally, I am sorry to have to say this.

To Dr. Stuart Smith966 February 25, 1982 | 101 W. 18 Street, New York Dear Dr. Smith: In answer to your questions: 1. I remain a percussion composer whether I write for percussion instruments or not. That is, my work is never based, structurally or as an instance of 963. Daniel Charles had read the role of Erik Satie in a recent performance of Cage’s James Joyce, Marcel Duchamp, Erik Satie: An Alphabet (1982). 964. Frans van Rossum, Dutch musicologist and, from 1983, dean of music and director of the Contemporary Music Festival at the California Institute of the Arts (CalArts) in Valencia, California. He would retire in 1988, ostensibly to undertake a multimedia biography of Cage with his colleague, Stephen Lowy. 965. Yvar Mikhashoff (b. Ronald Mackay; 1941–1993), American pianist. From 1983 to 1991, he commissioned 127 solo piano tangos from 127 composers, including Cage’s Perpetual Tango (from Sports et Divertissements) in 1984. 966. Stuart (Saunders) Smith (b. 1948), American composer and percussionist, at the time associate professor of music at the University of Maryland, where he served as director of its New Music Ensemble. From 1982 to 1984 he was executive editor of Percussive Notes, Research Edition.

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process, on frequency but rather on duration considerations. With time I write for friends who are virtuosi, strangers who play in orchestras, myself growing old, indeterminately or determinately, always non-intentionally. Since I have found two ways of turning intention toward non-intention: musicircus (simultaneity of unrelated intentions) and music of contingency, improvisation using instruments in which there is a discontinuity between cause and effect. 2. Variation in gongs, tom toms, etc. and particularly variation in the effects on pianos by the use of preparations prepared me for the renunciation of intention and the use of chance operations. Study of the philosophy of Zen Buddhism with Daisetz Suzuki was substantial to these steps. Suzuki gave a lecture on the structure of the mind. He drew an oval on the blackboard. Halfway up the left-hand side, he placed two parallel lines. “They are the ego which has the capacity of flowing with its experience —out through the sense perceptions to the world of relativity; in through the dreams through the collective unconscious of Jung to the ground of Meister Eckhart —or closing itself off from that experience by means of its likes and dislikes, its memory. What Zen wants is that ego flow full circle.” Needing a musical discipline as strict as sitting crosslegged, I chose chance operations. 3. I still believe what I wrote in 1939 (Silence, pg. 87). “Percussion music is revolution.” New music: new society. I don’t think, as some seem to be thinking, that the percussion should become like the other sections of the orchestra, more expressive in their terms (overtone structure, frequency). I believe that the rest of the orchestra should become as noisy, poverty-stricken, and unemployed as the percussion section (or at least grant its acceptability in musical society). I do not mean anything hierarchical. I just mean accepting the fact that noises are sounds and that music is made with sounds, not just musical sounds. Hopefully, new society based on unemployment. Why have labor-saving inventions otherwise? 4. ? 5. The use of plant materials as instruments brings about a continual change of instruments. Obsolescence leads to music of contingency (see above #1. Example is Inlets which uses conch shells filled with water. They must be tipped in order to “make” them gurgle, but sometimes they gurgle and sometimes they don’t.)967

967. While Cage has answered all five questions posed to him by Smith, this letter may be incomplete.

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To Klaus Schöning February 28, 1982 | Location not indicated We finished the Alphabet yesterday. We are both very pleased. I hope that you will like it. We have no way of knowing details since we don’t speak German really. For instance, we have sped up Daniel Charles’ German so that we save ¼ of the time without losing the pitch. The result is that he goes at a kind of stumbling clip which I hope is amusing. At least it seems it might be. What I propose about the introduction is that I speak in English in the background, with someone else, you or Reichert,968 giving the German simultaneously. Before that can be another introduction telling about the way of making Alphabet, translating the mesostics into songs etc. To my English and your German could be added Chinese or Russian translation of the introduction. It could become very musicalingual.

To Mrs. Marilyn S. Gibbs March 26, 1982 | 101 W. 18 St., New York I made rhythmic structures to be used instead of tonal structures so that the music could include noises rather than being limited to “musical” tones. Some “colleagues” were not interested, others said, “Why didn’t I think of that?” (The prepared piano.) My feelings now have to do with my current work. When I was young you had either to follow Schoenberg or Stravinsky. Now there is clearly a large field of possibilities, and no one needs to follow anyone else. I was present. I never have preconceptions about audience reactions. They were not prepared (I don’t believe in education, but in experience). I have no desire in my music to get ideas across. Involved with ideas I write books. These are both understood and not. Suggest you read my text in Empty Words called “The Future of Music.” I have another recent text called “Composition in Retrospect” 969 that has re968. Manfred Reichert, conductor of Ensemble 13, which gave many performances of Cage’s works throughout the 1980s. After Cage’s death, Reichert would lead his group in the premiere of Cage’s Thirteen on February 11, 1993, in Gütersloh, Germany. 969. “Composition in Retrospect” (1981), written in mesostic form and comprising a statement of methodology that examines central issues of Cage’s life and work: method, structure, intention, discipline, notation, indeterminacy, interpenetration, devotion, and circumstances. Cage would later add five more to this list —variable structure, nonunderstanding, contingency, inconsistency, and

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cently been published in Mexico by Mario Lavista in both Spanish and English. His address is Yautepec 24, Colonia Condesa, Mexico 11, D.F.

To Sheila Kasabova970 May 11, 1982 | 101 W. 18 St., New York Just rec’d. yr letter of March 3. I don’t know why so late though I’ve been away and busy a great deal. It is too late for me to send a text for the program + I would not have wanted to write one any way. Cornelius attacked my work vehemently + it would have been strange for me to reply with a “tribute.” 971 I have, however, been active in behalf of his memory here + have raised significant money to subsidize a concert + recording of his music. And I was just now in Bremen in the audience of Rjewski + Tilbury.972 We hope to raise money which can be sent to you. With best wishes + deepest sympathy.

To Larry Duckles973 June 26, 1982 | 101 W. 18 St., New York When Dennis Russell Davies asked me to write a new piece for orchestra, I was still writing Thirty Pieces for Five Orchestras974 for the Orchestre de Lorraine. Five years ago I began the thirty-two Freeman Etudes for solo violin. Only sixteen performance —for a revised publication of the text that would appear in 1993 by Exact Change in Cambridge, Massachusetts. 970. Sheila Kasabova, partner to Cornelius Cardew after his separation from his first wife. Kasabova was requesting a text from Cage for inclusion in the program that would accompany the recording of the Queen Elizabeth Hall Cornelius Cardew Memorial Concert scheduled to take place on May 16, 1982. As this letter suggests, Cage did not comply. 971. Despite their differences, the two composers were extremely collegial, and Cardew often performed Cage’s work. 972. John Tilbury (b. 1936), British pianist, a foremost interpreter of Feldman’s works. From 1980 he was a member of the free improvisation group AMM. He would later author Cornelius Cardew: A Life Unfinished (Harlow, U.K.: Copula, 2008). 973. Lawrence Duckles, American musician, from 1965 a flutist with the Cabrillo Music Festival Orchestra; in 1974 he became its music librarian. 974. 30 Pieces for 5 Orchestras (1981), first performed in Pont-a-Mousson, France (Nov. 22, 1981); each of the five orchestras is conducted separately. This is Cage’s first work to make use of time-bracket notation. See note 1032.

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are finished. I have never worked so many years on a single composition. I was not inclined to further interrupt that work. However, the Thirty Pieces use two different ways of notating events in time; simply placing them in a space equal to time, the event itself to be signalled by the conductor, and writing strong or weak beats in a measured space that could be conventionally conducted. Using as I do chance operations to determine whether a beat was present or not, I had become fascinated by what happened to the most familiar of rhythmic patterns. I had told Davies that I wasn’t certain whether I would write another orchestral work, to call me back in a few weeks. When he called, I said yes, having decided to make a piece which would concentrate entirely on metrically notated events. The orchestra is divided into four groups so that a complex experience may result from the simultaneity of four tempi. How long each orchestra remains with two facing pages is at the discretion of each conductor. The two facing pages have at least one part which must be repeated for at least 2½ minutes but not more than 30, often several parts which may be repeated da capo or from the beginning of any section the conductor chooses. There are twelve such pairs of facing pages for each orchestra. Of course, no two performances of Dance/Four Orchestras975 will be the same. I anticipate with pleasure any one of them. I do not know what the experience “will be like,” never having had it before, but I suspect that the dance of the title will be in the mind of the listener, the listener who succeeds in imagining it. (1981) Amores: The first trio is written in the rhythmic structure ten times ten. The second employs fixed rhythmic patterns which are never subjected to variation. The piano preparation for the solos is not elaborate. The work is an attempt to express in combination the erotic and the tranquil, two of the permanent emotions of Indian tradition. The second solo is written in the rhythmic structure 3,3,2,2. (1943) Credo in Us: This is a suite of satirical character composed within the phraseology of the dance by Merce Cunningham and Jean Erdman for which it was written. The instruments are muted gongs, tin cans, tom toms, an electric buzzer, piano and radio or phonograph. (1942) Third Construction: The rhythmic structure is 24 times 24. This is differently expressed in each part. An attempt was made to compose rhythmic “cadences.”

975. Cage’s Dance/4 Orchestras (1982), first performed in San Juan Bautista, California, on August 22, 1982, by the Cabrillo Music Festival Orchestra, conducted by Dennis Russell Davies, Ken Harrison, Gregory Barber, and James Shallenberger. It is written in time-bracket notation.

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The instruments are rattles, drums, tin cans, claves, cowbells, lion’s roar, cymbal, ratchet, teponaxtle, quijadas, cricket caller and conch shell. (1941)

To Dr. Louis Mink976 September 15, 1982 | 101 W. 18 St., New York There is an extraordinary poet in financially dire circumstances. His 60th birthday was just celebrated by many other artists reading and performing his work for eight hours at the Washington Square Church. I enclose a poster for that event. Dick Winslow tells me you now head what was the Center for Advanced Studies. If you can give Jackson Mac Low an appointment, it would be of effective service to poetry and modern arts generally in this country and Europe. His address is 42 N. Moore St., New York, N.Y. 10013. He can give you a biography and list of his many published works and books. If you cannot, please send me as soon as possible a list of other academic centers near NYC (Jackson needs to be near the city) and names of people to whom I should write. I go tomorrow to Minneapolis, back next Monday, then Tuesday eve. to Europe. I could write letters during my brief stay here. Though I hope you’ll not have to send me this information. My best wishes and friendliest greetings to you both. I am just now finishing my 5th and last Writing Through FW.977 It is not mesostics. Instead it follows the same process with respect to the Wake that Mureau did with respect to Thoreau’s Journal. P.S. I refer to Jackson Mac Low on the second page of my introduction to M (last complete paragraph on the page).

976. Louis Mink (1921–1983), American philosopher of history, chair of the philosophy department at Wesleyan University (1967–1976), and director of its Center for Humanities. Mink’s A Finnegans Wake Gazeteer (1979) documents all the place names in Finnegans Wake and was useful to Cage in his composition of Roaratorio: An Irish Circus on Finnegans Wake. Mink is also acknowledged by Cage in the introduction to his Writing for the Fourth Time Through Finnegans Wake, in X: Writings ’79–’82 (1983) as having pointed out the 50% (or “imperfect”) mesostic. 977. Fully titled Muoyce (Writing for the Fifth Time Through Finnegans Wake) (1982). See note 939.

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To Yvar Mikhashoff Dec. 16, 1982 | 101 W. 18 St., New York Glad to hear that I will be seeing you again in April. And glad to hear that Isabelle Ganz978 will be involved. I don’t think it should be called a 50-yr. retro[spective] unless it spans the time. I recently sent Isabelle quite a number of songs. There are some still earlier ones (Three Songs with texts by Gertrude Stein, 1933) that I didn’t send her. It is very hard for me to suggest what works should be played. I think it should follow from what excellent musicians are available. This past year I have heard many performances of my music, and some have been played quite poorly. Particularly is this true of orchestras and even chamber groups when there is insufficient rehearsal. You will be able to judge what is best for the musicians you have. With Postcard from Heaven979 a good deal of indoctrination is necessary. In Minneapolis I visited most of the harpists individually and helped them to come to an understanding of the work. In this case I wouldn’t have time to do that. My composing is now in a backlog situation. I cannot accept further commissions at the moment; I have made already too many promises. I am sorry, Yvar, but I would not be able to write a new piano piece.

To Bill de Kooning980 December 26, 1982 | 101 W. 18 St., New York Season’s Greetings! This coming year in order to increase the capital of the Foundation for Contemporary Performance Arts, Jasper Johns has the idea to form a show of paintings of great value, not a large show, but as large as possible. He asked me to ask you if you would contribute an important work. Frank Stella has agreed, and naturally Jap will give one. Through Jap’s insistence on 978. Isabelle Ganz, American vocalist and teacher, noted for performances of works by Cage, Berio, Foss, and others. She is the dedicatee of Cage’s Ryoanji for voice and percussion (1983–1985). 979. Postcard from Heaven (1982) for one to twenty harps, wherein performers play improvisatory ragas. At its first performance at the Walker Art Center in Minneapolis in 1982, some eighty musicians participated. 980. Willem de Kooning (1904–1997), Dutch-born American abstract expressionist artist closely associated with “action painting.” His wife, the artist Elaine de Kooning (1918–1989), was a close friend to Cage who served for a time as an editorial associate for Art News.

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our giving only a percentage of our annual income, the Foundation has become more considerable. At the last meeting we were able to make grants to many needy performance artists totalling $50,000. We have been grateful for your support in the past, and I hope that you will again help the Foundation. I asked Jap what he meant by “of great value.” He seemed reluctant to answer, but when I repeated the question, he said “around $100,000.” Needless to say, we hope you will do this. Our gratitude also will be enormous.

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part five

1983-1992

I

n november 1988, Cage and Cunningham’s 18th Street loft was featured in a special issue of Architectural Digest, in an article titled “Inside New York.” Cage had spent a great deal of time and energy in its renovation and design, knocking out walls, tiling bathrooms, building a cook’s kitchen, and even installing a Jacuzzi tub for Cunningham’s use after long rehearsals in the studio. Striking in the photographs accompanying the piece, in addition to the glorious art collection, were the hundreds of plants and rocks that had been carefully arranged throughout. In addition to cooking macrobiotic meals, playing chess, and writing letters, Cage spent much of his free time in this indoor garden. (He once said that anyone who claimed to have a green thumb was simply someone who had enough sense to pull the brown parts off.) The rocks had come from a variety of places, the most impressive from southwest Virginia, gifts from Ray Kass, director of the Mountain Lake Workshop, which brought together guest artists and members of the academic and local communities in the Appalachian region of Giles County. Cage visited Mountain Lake first in 1983 to attend a mycological foray with the esteemed authority Orson Miller. Intrigued by his experimentation with materials and chance processes Kass provided at their first meeting, Cage returned twice more to make two significant bodies of original watercolors tracing around rocks drawn from the New River, New River Watercolors (1988) and River Rocks and Smoke (1990). Cage’s use of rocks as a means of composition also emerged in his work at Crown Point Press in Oakland (later San Francisco), California, where from 1978, at the invitation of its director, Kathan Brown, he visited annually to make etchings and prints. His first “Ryoanji” print was made in 1983, titled 2r + 13–14; one from the series was used as the cover for Pierre Lartigue’s translation into French of Cage’s Mushroom Book, which appeared as Le livre des champignons (Editions Ryoanji) that same year. Around this time Cage also began making “Ryoanji” drawings at home, tracing with chance-determined pencils around chance-determined and chance-placed stones onto handmade Indian rag 521

paper affixed to a light box built into his office desk. Cage’s collection of rocks for these drawings simulated those seen in the Kyoto rock garden known as Ryōan-ji (“The Temple of the Dragon at Peace”), which Cage had visited with Tudor in 1962 and of which he was particularly fond. Using stones as compositional means was a practice that found its way into musical works as well. From 1983 to 1985, Cage composed five works for solo instruments titled Ryoanji: for double bass, oboe, voice, percussion, and flute, each with percussion or orchestral obbligato. These works are the subject of Cage’s letter to Joseph Di Girolamo, a response to an inquiry about a possible commission. Other compositions of the period find their way into letters to a variety of prominent individuals: to the founder of the Huddersfield Contemporary Music Festival Richard Steinitz (Freeman Etudes, 1977–1980; 1988–1990); to the Japanese pianist Aki Takahashi (The Beatles 1962-1970) [1989]); to the German composer Walter Zimmermann (the “number pieces,” 1984–1992); to the American pianist Ellsworth Snyder (One5, 1990); to the Swiss pianist Werner Bärtschi (Empty Words, 1973–74; One3, 1989); to the Japanese composer long in service to the Merce Cunningham Dance Company, Takahisa Kosugi (Sculptures Musicales, 1989); and to Brazilian composer Emanuel Dimas Di Melo Pimenta and his wife, Luciana (Fourteen, 1990). Another letter, addressed to the Seattle composer Neal Meyer, pertains to a far earlier work, Music for Piano (1952), and still another, to the German conductor and composer Hans Zender, asks Zender to reconsider his idea to perform Apartment House 1776 without Renga, which Cage was very much against. But the principal compositions addressed in Cage’s letters of this final period are far fewer in number —three to be exact —one fully realized, one left incomplete, and one hardly begun at all. The first is Europeras 1 &  2 (1984–1987), a commission from the Frankfurt Opera that occupied Cage’s time for three years. The title brings together the words “Europe” and “operas,” suggesting the work’s content, and, when spoken aloud, sounding unmistakably like “Your opera,” alluding to the work’s populist leanings. Its musical “content” is the presentation of arias and duets heard within a decontextualized mass of one- to sixteen-measure instrumental fragments drawn by chance from sixty-four European operas of the past, ranging from Gluck to Puccini. By opera standards, its cast is somewhat small: nineteen singers, twelve dancer/athletes, and a twenty-four-piece orchestra, without the usual body of strings and with the unusual addition to its percussion section of “Truckera,” a tape of 101 layered fragments of European operas mixed live at a 522  |  1 9 8 3 – 1 9 9 2

1987 broadcast at New York’s Wkcr. Its extra-musical elements, of which Cage took full charge, are those commonly associated with the genre: elaborate lighting cues, costumes and props, varied stage actions, intermittent dance, and an imaginative, subtly shifting stage decor. Cage made use of his emerging time-bracket notation in composing the orchestral parts for Europeras 1 &  2, a compositional strategy wherein notes are placed inside of time brackets (fixed or flexible) that are positioned at the beginning and end of each staff; the notes are to be freely performed within the given ranges of time, at the performer’s discretion, ensuring that no two performances will be heard precisely the same way. Cage used this system for virtually all of his “number” pieces (works with numbers as titles composed between 1987 and 1992) as well as in such other works of the decade as Thirty Pieces for Five Orchestras (1981) and Music For (1984; rev. 1987). Cage’s letters tell us a great deal about both Europeras 1 & 2 and his feelings about it: a joint letter to Heinz-Klaus Metzger, Rainer Riehn, Gary Bertini, and Ursula Markoff, all associated with the Frankfurt Opera, outlining his initial ideas; to the German-born Chilean composer Leni Alexander, admitting to feeling oppressed by the sheer volume of his work; to the German composer and Frankfurt Opera technician Gunther Hampel, with all manner of technical data; and to longtime C. F. Peters administrator Don Gillespie, rueing the day he’d accepted the commission. His letter to the present editor expresses cautious optimism about the progress he’d seen on a recent trip to Germany, and it also references his attendance at the first installation of his Essay (1987), yet another Thoreau inspiration, at Kassel’s Documenta 8. Cage also writes to the American composer/pianist Hal Freedman about the film that would be used as an intervening element, and to the soprano Harolyn Blackwell, who appeared in the Frankfurt performances. “Unfortunately,” Cage says to her in closing, “not all the world is as funny as the one we’re making.” His last word on the subject is again to Alexander, just after the work’s premiere, which Cage anticlimactically reports “turned out well.” He was already hard at work on other projects, noting that he’d just completed a new, long text, titled “Anarchy” (1988). The second composition is The First Meeting of the Satie Society, Cage’s collaborative project with Ben Shiff of Limited Editions, not quite finished by the time of Cage’s death. This work is the subject of a detailed letter to Cy Twombly, requesting his participation as a contributing visual artist. As Cage explains, the work began its life in 1984 as an electronic publishing project to be made available online from The Well (The Whole Earth ’Lectronic Link) in San Francisco, one of the first virtual communities. The work ultimately took the less 1 9 8 3 – 1 9 9 2  |  523

ephemeral form of eight handmade books collected into a cracked glass valise, à la Marcel Duchamp. These unique volumes contain texts by Cage, based on his own writings and the writings of others, as well as original “illustrations” by Johns, Rauschenberg, Cunningham, Robert Ryman, Sol Lewitt, Mell Daniel, and Cage himself. The third composition is Cage’s Nohopera, Or the Complete Musical Works of Marcel Duchamp, central to which would be a performance of a replication of Duchamp’s Étant donnés. This piece would have been Cage’s most lavish tribute to his beloved Duchamp, and a major collaboration with Cage’s assistant, Andrew Culver, whose keen understanding of the concepts of R. Buckminster Fuller would have been brought fruitfully to bear on the project. Cage enthusiastically outlines his initial ideas in a lengthy letter to Teeny Duchamp, and, then, more succinctly, to the Japanese art historian and critic Yoshiaki Tono and to the Japanese conductor and percussionist Hirayuko Iwaki. Another significant preoccupation in this period was Cage’s series of six lectures composed for Harvard University as holder of the Charles Eliot Norton Chair in Poetry (1988–1989), which he would publicly deliver throughout the academic year. These formidably dense lectures, composed entirely in mesostic form, were collected into an edition Cage engagingly titled MethodStructureIntentionDisciplineNotationIndeterminacyInterpenetrationImitationDevotionCircumstances VariableStructureNonunderstandingContingencyInconsistencyPerformance. In the end, it was published by Harvard University Press as simply I–VI so the title might actually fit on the book’s spine. Only one letter relates to Cage’s position at Harvard University, addressed to Dean A. Michael Spence, thanking him for the invitation and asking for specifics pertaining to the appointment. We see Cage writing frequently in this decade to others about specific individuals: to Thomas Kort about Harry Partch; to Ornella Volta about Erik Satie; to Mrs. James Clark about Mark Tobey; to John Duffy/Meet the Composer about the S.E.M. Ensemble; and to Stephen Fisher at C. F. Peters about William Russell, this last in support of the publication of Russell’s small body of works. He also writes at length to David Tudor about David Tudor, making suggestions as to what shape a book devoted to his colleague’s life’s work might take. Cage’s letter to the MacArthur Foundation is one of very few negative replies of the decade: this one in response to a request for him to evaluate the work of the American innovator of the free jazz movement of the 1960s, Ornette Coleman. A particularly curious letter dates from July 3, 1984, addressed to Dick Higgins, in which Cage provides a translation of Bergbo’s “Sonnet #92.” The 524  |  1 9 8 3 – 1 9 9 2

pseudonymous Skogekär Bergbo was a sixteenth-century Swedish poet whose 101 sonnets, pieced together to show the proficiency of the Swedish language in rhyme, were collectively published in a book titled Wenerid (1684). How Cage came to create a translation of a Swedish poem, or whatever happened to the Higgins collection of translations (itself a collaboration with the American poet Robert Kelly), remains the work of future scholars. Cage included new mesostic poems in several letters in this decade: to Deborah Kinsella —a fundraising letter, built on the string the mUsic school at rivers, an academy in Weston, Massachusetts, where in 1983 Cage attended its Fifth Annual Seminar on Contemporary Music for the Young; to both Stephen Fisher, current president, and Evelyn Hinrichsen, former president, of C. F. Peters, with praise for A John Cage Reader: In Celebration of His Seventieth Birthday, which Peters had published in 1983; and to the French musicologist Daniel Charles, with a mesostic built on the string meister eckhart. He writes to Norman O. Brown, asking him to once again lecture at a proposed benefit for the (now renamed) Foundation for Contemporary Arts, and he warmly endorses the idea posed by the American music critic Mark Swed that Swed write a full-scale John Cage biography. And at the instigation of the American soprano Joan La Barbara, he also writes an unusual fundraising letter for the American Music Center, addressed “To You, Whomever You Are,” reportedly one of the most successful in the history of the organization. His acceptance speech for the Inamori Foundation medal ceremony as laureate of the Kyoto Prize in Creative Arts and Moral Sciences in the field of music at the Kyoto International Conference Hall on November 10, 1989, is written entirely in mesostic form, its string to kazUo inamori President the inamori foUndation the kyoto Prize. On a more personal note, Cage writes to Carolyn Brown assuring her that he’s not “hiding behind” his work, and to both Minna Lederman and the Australian musician Geoffrey Barnard, lamenting the death of Morton Feldman. His letter to the American double bassist Robert Black reports that his beloved cat Skookum had undergone abdominal surgery after ingesting a stray piece of dental floss on the bathroom floor. He writes to Isaac Chocrón complaining about Cunningham’s aloofness, and to his Aunt Lucile, addressed to Mrs. B. F. Garrison, candidly clarifying details about his seventy-fifth birthday celebrations in Los Angeles. He also writes to Robert Rauschenberg, answering questions about his and Cunningham’s wills, to Christian Wolff in response to Wolff’s observation that feminine pronouns appear with alarming infrequency in Cage’s Harvard lectures, and to Richard Winslow and his wife, Betty, 1 9 8 3 – 1 9 9 2  |  525

on matters of health in which he makes warm reference to his two primary caregivers, Loretta Mears (chiropractics) and Elaine Stern (acupuncture). He also writes to his ex-wife, Xenia, offering money so that she might make an exploratory trip west to find a new place to live. In the last months of his life, Cage would make one final tour of Europe — performing in Halle, Bratislava, Perugia, and Florence —and also visit Villierssous-grez, outside of Paris, to spend time with Teeny Duchamp. Upon his return to New York, he attended performances of his recent music at MoMA’s Summergarden, performed in the main by students of the Juilliard School of Music organized and conducted by his long-time colleague Paul Zukofsky. In late July, on a Saturday afternoon just before leaving to attend one of these concerts, he was robbed at knifepoint in his Manhattan apartment. Throughout July and into August, Cage also spent much time responding to requests from Julie Lazar, curator at the Museum of Contemporary Art in Los Angeles with whom he was working on his Rolywholyover: A Circus for Museum, and from various individuals in both Frankfurt and Cologne on matters pertaining to the upcoming John Cage Anarchic Harmony Festival ’92, which would coincide with his eightieth birthday. It was a very warm summer in New York, and in lieu of air conditioning, large industrial fans were positioned precariously throughout the loft. Cage drank an enormous quantity of very strong iced black tea. He collapsed in his kitchen on Tuesday, August 11, just before 6  p.m., while pouring himself another glass. Diagnosed that night as having suffered a massive stroke, he never regained consciousness. He died the following day, Wednesday, August 12, 1992, at St. Vincent’s Hospital in New York.

In 1996, after the death of David Tudor, Cunningham decided to finally scatter Cage’s ashes, which had lived in his bedroom closet since 1992. At the invitation of Jean Rigg, a close friend, an informal ceremony took place in Stony Point, New York, attended by a few old friends who made the journey from Manhattan as well as friends still living within the Gate Hill Cooperative. Cage and Tudor’s ashes were scattered together at the snowy base of several small trees that had been planted decades before. Merce Cunningham and M.C. Richards performed a duo of Cunningham’s choreographic work, Hands Birds (1960), in an adaptation for voice (Richards reciting the poem) and hands (Richards and Cunningham performing together, their hands simulating the movements of birds). 526  |  1 9 8 3 – 1 9 9 2

To Thomas J. Kort981 January 26, 1983 | 101 W. 18 St., New York I met Harry982 in the thirties and admired his early work (the Hobo songs) very much. I was visiting him when he rec’d. his first grant. I sd.: Isn’t that great? You’ll be able to do all you wanted so long to do! He sd.: It comes too late. We took different paths. He did not like my indeterminate + chance works + I didn’t like his ostinato works. Recently from Dean Drummond983 I heard that Harry loved my String Quartet. When I was gathering a chance-determined number of words from chance-determined composers abt. notation (for Notations), I got 43 from H[arry] P[artch]. He took it as an insult. I explained it was only chance. However he sent me a longer text with permission for me to reduce it to 43, which I did.* *He then wrote back saying my rewriting was better than his original. Betty Freeman for whom I wrote the Freeman Etudes supported him in his later life.

To Ms. Lindsey Maxwell 984 February 28, 1983 | 101 W. 18 St., New York I have known Yoko Ono for a long time, first as the wife of Toshi Ichiyanagi. They both visited me in Stony Point, at Wesleyan University where I was a fellow in the Center for Advanced Studies, and I was on tour in Japan with a group of Japanese musicians and composers together with Toshi and Yoko at the time that Tony Cox (who had fallen in love with her through some dream or vision experience) was in Japan attempting, and finally succeeding, to take her away from Toshi. Because of the size of the traveling group and circumstances of where we were housed (monastaries, etc.), women were separated from men. Peggy Guggenheim was often with Yoko, who let her know details 981. Thomas J. Kort (b. 1953), American keyboardist, performer, and composer. 982. Harry Partch (see note 339), with reference to his U.S. Highball (A Musical Account of Slim’s Transcontinental Hobo Trip) (1943/1955). 983. Dean Drummond (1949–2013), American composer, conductor, and inventor whose works employed microtonality, electronics, and percussion. Among his inventions was the Zoomoozophone (1978). From 1990 he would be the conservator of the Harry Partch instrumentarium. 984. Lindsey Maxwell, Scottish writer, at the time conducting research for a biography of Yoko Ono.

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of her complicated life. Following this time in Japan, Yoko moved to London, and my impression is that she and Tony were very poor (her family not helping them). Later when she was with John Lennon, these circumstances changed. Once through Yoko, on the occasion of a performance at the Brooklyn Academy of Music with Merce Cunningham and Dance Company, John sent me roses, though we had not met. I am glad to have been able to help Lennon in his efforts to stay in the USA through statements to the authorities and presence at hearings. Through John and Yoko I changed my diet and that of Merce Cunningham to the macrobiotic diet. I am very grateful to John and Yoko for their generosity to the Cunningham Dance Co. If you have specific questions please send them to me.

To Yasunari Takahashi 985 March 1, 1983 | 101 W. 18 St., New York Like Mureau (Music Thoreau), Muoyce (Music Joyce) or Writing for the Fifth Time Through Finnegans Wake 986 departs from conventional syntax. It is a mix of phrases, words, syllables, and letters. Like Empty Words and unlike Mureau, Muoyce does not include sentences. The phrases, words, syllables and letters are each one taken by means of I Ching chance operations from a particular line of a particular page of one of the seventeen chapters of the Wake. Following the ten thunderclaps, the shorter conglomerates or rumblings, the portmanteau words, etc., of Finnegans Wake, punctuation is entirely omitted and space between words is frequently with the aid of chance operations eliminated. This was done in order to facilitate the present Japanese publication by Yasunari Takahashi of the first six chapters on two pages, each thirty-eight characters. The complete text has just in excess of four thousand events (phrases, words, syllables, or letters). It has been cut into chapters in such a way as to maintain in terms of the number of events the exact proportions of the seventeen parts of Finnegans Wake. Hope that satisfies the need. 985. Yasunari Takahashi (1932–2002), Japanese scholar of English literature, expert on William Shakespeare and Samuel Beckett and with keen interest in alternative Japanese drama. 986. See note 939. In 1992, Cage would compose Muoyce II: Writing Through Ulysses, to be performed by a soloist accompanied by six tapes of traffic sounds recorded in different cities. He performed excerpts from the work in New York at The Kitchen, October 31–November 2, 1991, in a series titled “Five Generations of Composers.”

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To Ornella Volta May 25, 1983 | 101 W. 18 St., New York I have finished reading your book (in French; no English has arrived);987 I love it. I can say that for few others. Like yours they are profoundly touching: Norman Malcolm’s Memoir of Ludwig Wittgenstein and Templier’s Erik Satie (not in the English translation, which I find impossible to read). This making reading matter touching must be what death does to biography. I remember Bucky Fuller telling me how Anne, his wife, nearly died and how he received from a convict in a California penitentiary a beautiful letter about love, that it depends on impermanence, that consoled him. For mourir you use disparaitre. The closest word in English is pass away, an expression that would surely have disgusted Satie as much as it does everyone I know. I can imagine using disappear, but it would only be puzzling. Death is better when attempts aren’t made to hide it (treated as Satie did that of Socrates, or as you have that of Satie.) You have changed Satie for me. I now know so much more about him than I did before I read your book. I have a new lease on my love of him. I even have to get to know this new one. He is not tall as the photograph on pg. xvi in Templier led me to believe; and he is in all aspects of his life, work, and relations to other people totally unpredictable (or do I not yet know him? should I have said mercurial?); on the other hand, he seems to have known very well the path he was on. I must read your book again; if not very soon in English, then once more in French. Did he actually make that remark to God, “Le temps de passer un jupon, et je suis à vous”? The implied friendship makes me think of Thoreau on his deathbed. A visiting relative asked, “Have you made your peace with God?” T. replied, “I wasn’t aware we had ever quarelled.” There is, by the way, a beautiful book about T. by Walter Harding that is a collection of stories about him, pro and con, by people who actually knew him. It is called Thoreau, Man of Concord. You are Satie’s Walter Harding. He is Thoreau’s Ornella Volta.

987. It is uncertain whether Cage refers here to Volta’s Erik Satie (1979) or L’Ymagier D’Erik Satie (1979), both of which first appeared in French.

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To Deborah Kinsella988 May 29, 1983 | 101 W. 18 St., New York iT became clear tHat i should stay in Europe not kill Myself by going back and forth across the ocean but i coUldn’t get out of that engagement in weSton massachusetts “three hundred chIldren devoted to modern musiC” i couldn’t believe it So instead of going from rome to Cologne i Had tO crOss the ocean two extra times and here i am seventy years oLd but i don’t regret it the children plAyed beauTifully and the paRents were wIde awake the day remains Vividly in my mind the school nEeds suppoRt here’S hoping they get it!

988. Deborah Kinsella, administrator at the Rivers School, a private, co-educational preparatory school situated in Weston, Massachusetts. Cage participated in its Fifth Annual Seminar on Contemporary Music for the Young on May 7–8, 1983, reading from his “Composition in Retrospect” (see note 969).

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To Stephen Fisher989 June 6, 1983 | 101 W. 18 St., New York The day the ten copies of A John Cage Reader990 arrived was also the day of the celebration for the Brooklyn Bridge. That night I had an imaginary conversation with the bridge (having seen some of the fireworks live and via TV) that I turned into a mesostic on the name Peters. I gave the original page to Don991 to thank him for all the work he did so beautifully. I am sending this now to you to tell you how pleased I am with the publication, as, indeed, I am with our continuing relation in all of its aspects. I am sending another + note to Evelyn Hinrichsen.992 in the middle of the night before the full flower moon 5/25/83. we were comParing notEs the bridge’n’i fireworks?! floTilla?! cakE?! spectaculaR but ephemeral what’ll laSt’re my books! for Don Gillespie gratefully

989. Stephen Fisher, then president of the C. F. Peters Corporation. 990. Jonathan Brent and Peter Gena, eds., A John Cage Reader (New York: C. F. Peters Corporation, 1983). 991. Don Gillespie (b. 1936), American music historian, from 1970 to 2001 a valued employee of C. F. Peters who settled into its copyright division in 1979; also was head of Special Editorial Projects. 992. Evelyn Hinrichsen (1910–2005), lifelong champion of music and composers, especially Cage. She dedicated her life to the international music publishing house C.  F. Peters, Cage’s publisher, founded by her husband, Walter Hinrichsen, serving as board chair.

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To Ms. Natalie Schmitt993 June 11, 1983 | 101 W. 18 St., New York It seems to me that we must have our cake and eat it too. Every day is a beautiful (and miserable) day. If political (my “new key”) then without any exercise of power, i.e., not political in the ordinary sense. I am continually receiving letters from people who “understand” Silence who have as a result renounced activity. I write back abt. the revised version of the 10 oxherding pictures, ending with the return from No-Mind to the Village, smile on the face, bearing gifts, fat. My first clear statement of life as paradox-activity is towards the end of the 1st installment of the Diary (ayfm) life-art, art-life. Now in X (new book) no difference (not much) betw[een] life + death. Another way to say it is to say that artha kama dharma moksha are not separate from one another. I hesitate to send this (you already know it). I have written strongly in favor of your fellowship.

To Mrs. James Clark June 25, 1983 | 101 W. 18 St., New York Yesterday evening Merce Cunningham and I had dinner here with our mutual friend Richard Lippold. I told him of having learned from Eliza Rathbone of the National Gallery of Art that you own Tobey’s Crystallized Forms994 which, during some of the ’40s, used to belong to me. I now have one Tobey that I love and which I bought from him in Basel. It is a monoprint that has no brushwork at all. How it was made I am by no means sure. I am not a good historian, but in the earlier ’40s, say ’4 4, I bought from Marian Willard,995 first the Crystallized Forms and later another Tobey, the upper part of which is not painted, only the 993. More fully, Natalie Crohn Schmitt, long associated with the University of Illinois at Chicago’s School of Theatre and Music, author of numerous articles about Cage and theater. She would author the influential Actors and Onlookers: Theater and Twentieth-Century Scientific Views of Nature (Evanston, IL: Northwestern University Press, 1990). 994. Cage probably means Crystallizations (1944; tempura on paper, 18 x 13 inches), one of Tobey’s “white writings” works wherein he synthesized earlier experiments with Arabic, Japanese, and Chinese script. 995. Marian Willard Johnson (1904–1985), American contemporary art dealer who introduced the work of Tobey and Morris Graves to New York audiences. She opened her first gallery in New York with an exhibition of the watercolors of Lyonel Feininger; in 1947 her gallery hosted the first exhibition of the works of Richard Lippold.

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lower part. It is about the size of Crystallized Forms, but is horizontal rather than vertical. I have often thought that those three Tobeys together would exemplify convincingly the great beauty of his work. I sold them (the first two) back to Marian Willard for the same amount I had paid for them ($300 each on the installment plan!). She told me later that the same day I gave them back to her she sold them for double what I had paid. I needed the money at the time in order to continue my work on the Music of Changes, a piano solo that took me nine months to write, and which was the first to be written by means of I Ching chance operations. Since 1960 when I was made a fellow in the Center for Advanced Studies at Wesleyan University in Connecticut (and so enjoyed a change in fortune), I have hoped to find the two Tobeys I used to have and reacquire them, or at least bring the three together (one completely painted, one partly painted, and the 1 now I have not painted at all). Marian Willard never kept a record of who had acquired what. So it is only now that I have learned of your collection and the fact that C. F. is in it. You may also own the other, the title of which I do not know. I realize that you may not be willing to part with them or even with one of them. Both he and Eliza Rathbone have told me of your collection, and in any case, I would deeply enjoy seeing it, not only the Tobeys, but the Mondrians which must be magnificent to see. I once saw in the Santa Barbara Museum of Art a retrospective exhibition of his work which gave me my lasting love for it. Sometimes I am invited to Dallas for concerts and lectures. I would greatly enjoy meeting you and seeing your collection. Or if you come to New York, please call me at 989-7132. I knew Mark Tobey in Seattle in the late ’30s. I wrote music for the modern dancers at the Cornish School. It was when I came to New York and saw the first show of White Writing that I became devoted to his work. C. F. was not hung by Marian in the exhibition. It was kept in the office where I happened to see it. I loved it immediately because of the absence in it of any representational image. Richard Lippold has a beautiful white painting by Tobey, but it includes a figure. I don’t know how to conclude this letter, but I hope you will reply.

To Nobby and Beth Brown July 14, 1983 | 101 W. 18 St., New York Thank you for your beautiful text + note about Merce. Every day it seems some close friend dies: Bucky Fuller + Anne Fuller so beautifully (she 40 hrs. 1 9 8 3 – 1 9 9 2  |  533

after him in a coma nonintentionally), Claus Adam996 (in his sixties!), + yesterday dear Edwin Denby, the greatest writer on dance humanity’s ever had (they said suicide, which I knew wasn’t possible in his case; what happened was that, not knowing he’d already taken sleeping pills, he took some more [and] died in his sleep. We had had dinner with him a wk. before very happily; I am making drawing, writing music, new books, etc.). Off to Finland to teach(!) . Miss you both! I am glad you’re teaching uS ALl over Again [illegible]

To Ms. Marsha Meyer September 22, 1983 | 101 W. 18 St., New York Ms. Joan Tarshis told me to send this to you in response to the two questions about music. While I was at the University of California in Davis in the late sixties, I was asked to make a piece of music for an exhibition in the Art Department. One morning just in time when I went to pick up my mail in my box at the School of Music there was a small whistle. I used it to produce as long a sound as I could that afternoon at the exhibition. I called it Sound Anonymously Received.997 In the future I hope to enjoy as I have for a long time the ever-changing sounds of traffic in the world around me. I live on Sixth Avenue in New York City; the sound is continuous. It’s like a good restaurant I remember in Lisbon called Noit y Dia.

996. Claus Adam (1917–1983), American cellist and teacher, from 1955 to 1974 second cellist with the Juilliard String Quartet. 997. Sound Anonymously Received (1969), scored for “unsolicited” instrument; in a revised version (1978), and joined with Cage’s Letter[s] to Erik Satie (1978), used for the choreographic piece by Cunningham, Tango (1978), a duet for Cunningham and television set, with stage decor and costumes by Mark Lancaster.

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To Elizabeth Streb998 February 15, 1984 | 101 W. 18 St., New York I am very hard to please in the field of dance (I have worked closely with Merce Cunningham for forty years): mostly I find the art of dancing disgusting, for physical, emotional, or even political reasons. On the other hand, I prefer dance to other forms of theatre. Theatre based on written texts has rarely interested me.

To David Tudor March 23, 1984 | 101 W. 18 St., New York What I propose is not a conventional biography but a togetherness of a variety of materials: 1) autobiographical statements or sections recorded by you without the prompting of questions, then made into a typescript by a secretary (I propose Essie Borden), reviewed by you, finally existing as “material for the book”; 2)  biographical statements (not 2 statements, but secondly) by other people whom I would like you to name or approve, e.g., M.C., your sister, the saxophonist you toured with if he’s still alive,999 hopefully someone who knew you as an organist, a teacher? (I would like this list to have at least twelve names, preferably twenty-four or even thirty-two, and “to cover” the points in your life where you have given your attention: i.e., anthroposophy, various aspects of music performance and composition, cooking (Manorama?1000), health (perhaps the anthroposophic doctor in the country1001); and 3), mesostics on your name by me. I would not limit my contributions to the book to these mesostics; I would also include stories. Some of which are already written. If you 998. Elizabeth Streb (b. 1950), American choreographer, performer, and teacher of contemporary dance. Much of her work is physically demanding. In 2003 she would establish SLAM (Streb Lab for Action Mechanics) in Brooklyn, New York, and later would author How to Become an Extreme Action Hero (New York: Feminist Press, 2010). 999. Sigurd M. Rascher (1907–2001), classical saxophonist with whom Tudor often performed. 1000. Manorama Sarabhai, a member, by marriage, of the Sarabhai family of Ahmedabad, India, sister-in-law to Gira and Gita Sarabhai. The modernist Village Sarabhai, designed by Le Corbusier and constructed during the years 1951–1955, was built for her and her two sons, Suhrid and Anand. 1001. Paul Scharff, physician, psychiatrist, and co-founder with his wife, Ann, of the Fellowship Community in Chestnut Ridge near Tudor’s home in Rockland County, New York, a summertime residence for devotees of Rudolf Steiner, founder of anthroposophy.

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come up with a list of people for 2), please send it to me with addresses and, if convenient, telephone numbers. For 1), I would be willing to guide you through the recording of autobiographic materials, or to leave you free to do this by yourself, whichever you wish. It could be chronological. Try, for instance, to find your earliest memories. Then when they get thick, go year by year. In any case, I look forward to the process of bringing this work about you into existence. Let me know whether you approve of the plan generally. The various different materials wd. have different typefaces. Plethora of photographs, e.g., Peter Moore1002 + musical examples.

To Joseph Di Girolamo March 23, 1984 | 101 W. 18 St., New York ryoanji is the name of the Zen Buddhist temple in Kyoto famous for its rock and sand garden. The music I have written is in dialog with drypoints I have made which have the same title.1003 In both cases the same fifteen stones were used. The music is written for bass with free vocalise and is dedicated to the soloist Joelle Leandre.1004 She has made the pre-recorded parts that issue from different points in space. The accompaniment, the sand, is for percussion solo, or, as in the present concert, is a “Korean unison” for any twenty instruments, each musician playing any sound of his choice, but, having chosen it, the same one throughout. By “Korean unison” is meant the practice of playing the same thing but not at precisely the same time. Microtonal inflections are also introduced so that what is the same is also always new. Please let me know something about the financial nature of the commission, or tell me whom in the Ministry of Culture can give me that information.

1002. Peter Moore (1932–1993), American photographer well known for his work with dancers and musicians, especially Fluxus artists. 1003. Cage created three related series of works inspired by the Kyoto garden: drypoints at Crown Point Press (1983) and hand-drawn rock tracings on handmade Indian rag paper (1983–1992), both titled with numbers denoting the number of pencils and stones used or simply Where R = Ryoanji, and five musical compositions (1983–1985), each titled simply Ryoanji and variously scored for oboe, voice, flute, double bass, and trombone, each with percussion obbligato and orchestra. 1004. Properly, Joëlle Léandre (b. 1951), double bassist, vocalist, composer, and jazz performer. She is the dedicatee of Cage’s Ryoanji for double bass (1983).

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To Stephen Trimble1005 June 26, 1984 | 101 W. 18 St., New York Actually the first performance of 0'00"1006 was in Tokyo and was the amplification of my writing in ink the score. I think that what we do is music if we pay attention to the sounds that are unintentionally produced while we are doing whatever we do. I limit what we do in 0'00" to the fulfillment (fully or partially) of an obligation to others. My music continues to be written: Thirty Pieces for String Quartet, Souvenir for organ, Ryoanji (a series of pieces for flute, voice, oboe or bass with percussion or orchestra), + Music for Six (fl., cl., pn., perc., vn. + cello).1007 This piece is parts without score (each performance will be or could be different).

To Dick Higgins July 3, 1984 | 101 W. 18 St., New York Herewith translation of Bergbo Sonnet #92.1008 Noh home, all child it with, in width then long strands in folly, half launder tree oh pocket tacet salt, 1005. Stephen A. Trimble, a music student resident in Centerville, Massachusetts. 1006. Cage’s 0'00" (4'33" No. 2), first performed in Tokyo, October 24, 1962. Its original score comprises one sentence: “In a situation provided with maximum amplification (no feedback), perform a disciplined action.” A day later, Cage added further instructions, allowing interruptions of the action, not repeating the same action in another performance, and asking that the action should not be the performance of a musical composition. The work is dedicated to Ichiyanagi and Ono, with whom Cage was working and traveling in Japan at the time of its composition. 1007. Four works from 1983–1985: Thirty Pieces for String Quartet (1983), a “coincidence of solos” with each soloist alternating between three kinds of music (tonal, chromatic, and microtonal); Souvenir for solo organ (1983), composed on a commission from the American Guild of Organists; Ryoanji (1983–1985), five compositions for any solo from or a combination of voice, flute, oboe, trombone, double bass ad libitum with tape and obbligato percussionist or any twenty instruments (see note 1003); and Music For (1984/1977), consisting of seventeen parts for voice and instruments without an overall score, its title completed by adding the number of performers, e.g., Music for Six. 1008. In 1984 Higgins and the American poet Robert Kelly (b. 1935) began work on a book to be titled Sounds Like, a collection of “homeophonic translations,” or translations based on sound and the interaction between the words of one language and the imagination of someone using another. They invited about fifty poets to create translations, although rights issues stalled their work. It is unclear, despite the fact that Higgins announced in an “Introductory Note” dated 10 September 1990 that the “Bergbo group” had found its way into print, whether these translations ever saw the light of day.

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red moss that was just length, o grunt oh rent o callet moss that was just redder, lark rewoven stark in sands, moss rat bring mailers half. Lit the last of all on lands the day in low places is warm summer tallet imlet it death core drift where no one overhaulet match children lit up ink where no one hill if hands. Smart ladies’ children have smart polyps, the oh poor you —the illustrated lark, o been unwaltz rash ohm — so scared at night. Say oh candy them forest who near ah, have poking quiet law held near in lit up home, oh —that they educate for match there as will he ask — unflicked half snacked, stung all the same as anger mask.1009

To David [Rothenberg]1010 [Fall 1984] | Location not indicated Dear David, When I received your thesis and letter, I had no time literally to read it so that I gave it to Andrew Culver,1011 the young Canadian composer who is helping me in my use of an ibm Pc which I got last January. Andy is learning the C [programming] language, and Jim Rosenberg,1012 a poet who lives in Grindstone, Pa., near Pittsburgh, who makes his living programming, is making more elab1009. This is Cage’s poem verbatim from his original communication to Higgins. In Higgins’s setting of the poem, which he provided to Cage in 1990, he omitted the “h” from the first word, “Noh,” making it simply “No.” 1010. David Rothenberg (b. 1962), American philosopher, writer, and musician. His dissertation for Harvard University was titled “Dreamers of a Common Language: Improvisation in Music” (1984). 1011. Andrew Culver (b. 1953), Canadian composer and builder of instruments based on the tensegrity structural principles developed by R.  Buckminster Fuller. Culver developed databases and software to assist Cage in the realization of his work. Culver’s largest project after Cage’s death was Ocean 1–95 (1994), the acoustic (orchestral) component of the score for Ocean (1994), an elaborate Cage-Cunningham conception, with choreography by Cunningham, electronic music by Tudor (Soundings), and stage decor, lighting, and costumes by Marsha Skinner. 1012. Jim Rosenberg (b. 1947), American hypertext theorist and author of spatial hypertext poems. He developed software for Cage’s use in the creation of mesostic poetry, specifically mesolist, which finds all the words in a source text that match all the letters in a string, and mesomake, which takes a source text and a string of letters and produces a “writing through” mesostic. He is married to the American painter Mary Jean Kenton (b. 1946).

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orate programs in relation to my writing of mesostics. Andy both writes music and improvises. His improvisations are on an instrument of his own construction which uses tensegrities (he is devoted to the work of Buckminster Fuller). Like you, Andy is not certain how to proceed with his music, and I thought reading your thesis would help him. I don’t know whether it did or not; we have had no conversations about it. What I suspect is that someone who improvises has difficulty listening to someone else who improvises, that, as you say in your first letter, an improviser has to find his own path. Last night I read perhaps too quickly through your thesis. I was prompted by your letter from London. I am still very busy, and I must take care of what little time I have. However, I enjoyed your text. I thought it was melodic and poetic. It was a performance (improvised to be sure) but with a motive (improvisation) in mind. I have a little trouble with texts that remain so close to their subject. But, it is true, your text does wander. I wish in the part about birds1013 that you had included mention of Erik Satie’s texts: L’Intelligence et la Musicalité chez les Animaux and La Musique et les Animaux (“leur système musical diffère du nôtre. . . . C’est une autre école . . .”). However, it was a pleasure to read and it leaves a shape and a feeling. Why don’t you show it to Marion Boyars,1014 who publishes my books? Her assistant who reads books for her is a very fine fellow, Ken Hollings. You will find them at 18 Brewer St., W1r 4as. 397-8278. Even if they don’t take your text you can have a good meeting. If they don’t take it, I suggest your having it serialized in some magazine. There are many of these, even in Japan. I think your concern with ecology is excellent. Have you looked into the work of the Windstar Foundation?1015 Box 286 Snowmass, Colorado 81615 (303-925-4954). Tom and Cathy Crum, John Katzenberger, [and] Hensley Spain continue the work of Buckminster Fuller, concentrating at the moment on geodesic domes specialized for food production in third-world situations. I don’t think you should go any more to school. But that advice comes from a drop-out. What I suggest you do in the wealth of possibilities that there are is get not my advice but that of a good astrologer; naturally, as Satie would say, not a bad 1013. Interestingly, Rothenberg would return to the subject of birds in a later book, Why Birds Sing: A Journey into the Mystery of Birdsong (New York: Basic Books, 2005). 1014. Marion Boyars (1927–1999), founder of Marion Boyars Publishers in London, whose catalog included six titles by Cage in European editions, including Silence, For the Birds, and Empty Words. 1015. The Windstar Foundation, an environmental education and humanitarian organization founded in 1976 by John Denver and Thomas Crum.

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one but a good one. Here in New York is Julie Winter,1016 36 West 15, NYC 10011 (212-807-7352). She has really in many ways improved my life, and for at least ten years now. When I first went to her, she was living with the composer (and improviser) Philip Corner. I see her once a year, and she gives me a picture of the circumstances I am entering. For instance a year ago in ’83 in late September, she said, You are going to go to places both geographically and mentally you have never been. At first I thought she was obliging me to have yet another idea. (I knew I was going to Korea and Norway where I’d never been.) But after Xmas when I decided (not remembering at the moment what Julie had said) to get a computer and to get Andy employed guiding me, I knew that that was the new mental place I was going to. All of this is connected obviously with the mind, the central nervous system, electronics, etc. I mean that astrology is relevant now, more so, I think, than the highly specialized sciences (e.g., medicine, which seems with a few exceptions to remain in the dark ages; we are suffering even at this 20th-century moment an unknown mysterious plague: aids). I would be guided if I were you (I am not you to quote Toshi Ichiyanagi, who was studying composition with me), by whether or not viewpoints are comprehensive (e.g., Fuller, McLuhan, Joyce, macrobiotics, for me not so much the Michio Kushi ideas, as the food itself and the relation of macrobiotics to Zen: Eat when hungry; shiver in Winter). I was not here in May when you were planning to do a production of the Tibetan Book of the Dead. Would have been interested to see and hear that. Best wishes to you in your present work. There is an excellent macrobiotic restaurant in Old Street. I will be here around Christmas. On the 31st of Oct. I go to Ann Arbor to hear a new work, Music for Three, played with an old one, Renga. Back here on the 4th; then away on the 23rd of November until the 11th of December. Between the 6th of December and the 11th, I’ll be with the Cunningham Dance Company in Angers in France. At the moment, there is a show of my books, prints, and drawings at Kettle’s Yard in Cambridge,1017 your new Cambridge the old one, not your old one the New England one!

1016. Julie Winter, New York–based psychospiritual counselor who employs astrology and hypnosis. Winter first interpreted Cage’s natal chart on March 21, 1973, and thereafter the two met regularly, with conversation ranging from the I  Ching’s relationship to astrology to the nature of numerical symbols. (According to Winter, Cage’s birth-path number was 9, signifying completion and free choice.) 1017. One of Cage’s earliest visual art exhibitions, the work of curator Hilary Gresty (b. 1954), who brought works by interdisciplinary artists to Kettle’s Yard.

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To Malcolm Goldstein December 29, 1984 | 101 W. 18 St., New York I hope to hear your work in March. (I will if I’m here then.) As for new music of mine: there are three new sets of unaccompanied melodies with texts. I could make a vn. piece (suite) from one of them if you like them. Eight Whiskus; Selkus2 (13 pieces); Mirakus2 (12 pieces).1018 I don’t want to do this unless you see whether they’d please you. Please look first at the Whiskus. (All three sets are too low now: I wd. raise them an octave + specify strings.)

To Heinz-Klaus Metzger, Rainer Riehn, Gary Bertini, and Ursula Markoff 1019 June 2, 1985 | 101 West 18 St., New York Dear Heinz-Klaus Metzger, Rainer Riehn, Gary Bertini, and Ursula Markoff, Here are my first ideas. Title: Europera. Empty stage (no curtains). On the back wall a changing collage of slides, changing here and there not allover change, scenes and closeups of opera performances both in color and black and white. In the stage space a changing collage of parts of sets (flats) from the repertoire of the Frankfurt Opera, flying in and flying out, carried in and carried out from the sides, all according to a schedule to be composed. Individual parts for both singers and orchestra members chronometrically written —some instruments, e.g., violins either amplified or used in unison groups (that is, no score), derived from parts in operatic literature (those operas in the Frankfurt Opera 1018. Three works from 1984: Eight Whiskus for solo voice, comprising eight mesostics written on the first three words of a text by Chris Mann titled “Whistlin is did,” its title a conjoining of “Whistlin is Did” and Haikus; Selkus2 (1984), thirteen mesostics for unaccompanied low voice, notated in the alto clef, its title derived from a conjoining of “Marchand du Sel” and Haikus, its text derived from “Marcel Duchamp, Notes,” edited by Teeny Duchamp and Paul Matisse; and Mirakus2, comprising twelve songs, each a different collection of twelve tones, its title a conjoining of Mirage Verbal and Haikus, to a text based on “Marcel Duchamp, Notes,” edited by Teeny Duchamp and Paul Matisse. Goldstein took Cage’s suggestion to “look first at the Whiskus,” which resulted in a version of this work for solo violin (1985), first performed in New York on April 23, 1986. 1019. A joint letter to those concerned at the Frankfurt Opera with the commission to Cage, outlining his ideas for his Europeras 1 &  2 (1984–1987). Metzger and Riehn (see note 382) served as dramaturgs, Markoff was a chief administrator, and Bertini (1927–2005) was the incoming director and conductor. See also Cage’s letter to Gunther Hampel, dated May 6, 1986.

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repertoire) with “mistakes” I would introduce by means of chance operations in collage with silences (exits and entrances up into the flies, down through traps in the stage, off to the sides). Costume changes with assistants on stage behind screens painted by different modern artists. The screens would be flown in from above sometimes, other times brought in from the sides. They would make up our exhibition for Europera. The costumes, of course, are those already in the Frankfurt wardrobe. I will write at least twelve different “arguments” (texts to be read in the programs) that are collages of the literature. That is, different people in the audience would often be reading a different storyline. The opera ballet to be used, also in collage, but the dancers sometimes kept in their choreography, only at chance-determined points separated from one another with respect to which dance they were performing. Jets of air here and there on the stage unpredictably blowing upwards (causing skirts to rise). Also an unpredictable turning round of the stage causing the singers to sometimes be seen unprotected by the screens. A café for the conductor who will have his own part. He sits in a film director’s chair with his back to the audience. He wears a visored hat and watches any of several closed and open television screens in front of him which are also visible to the audience, TV cameramen throughout actively filming the proceedings. In London in conversation with Ursula Markoff and Gary Bertini, I mentioned asking Robert Rauschenberg to collaborate with me. But with this plan I will not do that, though I will ask him and others (Jasper Johns, Mark Lancaster, Louise Nevelson, Ellsworth Kelly, Cy Twombly, William Anastasi, Dove Bradshaw, myself) to design screens for the “dressing rooms.” The wardrobe assistants should be dressed in black following Japanese convention. Following oriental convention there should be a maximum length (?) to the performance (at least 2 hrs.). There will be no dropping of the curtain or division into acts. Even when the audience first comes in, the entire stage will be visible with the changing slide show in operation and any necessary preparations by cast or crew visible. This is an oriental work made up of occidental materials. No two parts (except sometimes those for dancers, and unaccompanied duets, trios, etc., or accompaniments in string, woodwind, or brass section) have the same relation they have in the literature. That is, all performers are soloists. The work is one of pulverisation. If there are any animals in the Frankfurt opera repertoire, they shall from time to time make exits and entrances. This is all I have in mind at the present time. If you like the idea and want me to proceed, I should receive lists of singers, their repertoires, lists of musicians, their repertoires. Exclude all operas for which you do not have costumes, sets, and musical materials. 542  |  1 9 8 3 – 1 9 9 2

To Melody Sumner1020 June 4, 1985 | 101 W. 18 St., New York I do not like the mishmashed introduction for Mushrooms et variationes.1021 I would like to know how much introduction you feel is necessary (what ?’s you think should be preanswered) + then I would make a new text for you. This Themes and Variations preface has been published twice already. I think it can be referred to but ought not to appear again. I also think my language is too careless in our interview (which I find dated: e.g., I have different ideas abt. the Bible project, abt. drinking, Bucky is dead, etc.). I could be persuaded to keep this latter interview. But how many texts are there for the other authors? I don’t want to be overly present.

To Miss Jeannette Hopkins1022 June 8, 1985 | 101 West 18 St., New York Dear Jeannette: We have come to an impasse. Though I was happy for more than twenty years to have my writings published by Wesleyan University Press, I no longer am. X, published under your direction, by means of twelve 4-color illustrations misrepresents my work and thought (the illustrations are objects; my work and thought are concerned with process) so seriously that I encourage no one to acquire it, and I myself do not own a copy. I did not see proofs on the illustrations until one week after the book had been published. Furthermore, X is the only one of my books that is of smaller trim size than the others, though at least three times by telephone during the period of proofreading I questioned both the type size and the contemplated trim size. 1020. Melody Sumner, with Michael Sumner and Kathleen Burch, co-editor of Burning Books, which brought out The Guests Go In to Supper (1986), an anthology of interviews, libretti, poems, and song texts by Cage, Ono, Laurie Anderson, and others. 1021. Cage’s Mushrooms et variationes, contained in the aforementioned anthology, was described by the New York Times at Cage’s first performance (April 24, 1986) as “an autobiographical stream-ofconsciousness-styled meditation that touches glancingly on many themes —mushrooms, nature, cooking, music, art and the composer’s interactions with friends and associates.” 1022. Jeannette Hopkins (1922–2011), American book editor, director and editor-in-chief of Wesleyan University Press from 1980 until her retirement in 1989.

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Neither my letters nor telephone calls serve any constructive purpose. Your replies are incomplete (“More later”) and beat around the bush, which is money and time which has nothing at all to do with my work or thought. In your last letter you question my seriousness (“If you really mean that the book ‘should be withdrawn from circulation’”); I am therefor writing this and any others to come in quadruple, sending copies to those named below. A paperback edition could correct the illustrations, and the present small type size would be suitable for a paperback, but no steps have been taken in this direction. A year and a half have passed since the mispublication of X. Apart from X, I wish to mention another matter. Augusto de Campos, who with Rogério Duprat1023 has translated A Year from Monday, has a Brazilian publisher, Hucitec Editora de Humanismo, Ciência e Tecnologia Ltda. De Campos has several times written saying that Hucitec is unable to get replies to its letters. “It is regrettable that after more than 10 years of struggle, when we eventually find a publisher for that book in Sao Paulo, communication fails. I hope you can help us.” However, my telephone calls to you regarding this have been to no avail. What I propose now is that I leave Wesleyan and find another publisher (my first choice would be Marion Boyars, who has published my books in England and who now has facilities for also publishing in the U.S.A.) who will present my work in accord with its intentions. We would begin with a paperback edition of X. With what materials can you provide us to expedite this project and at what cost?

To Neal Meyer1024 August 14, 1985 | 101 W. 18 St., New York Dear Neal Meyer: Thank you for your letter, your interest in my work, and your activity performing. I have not received the cassette but it is just as well; I don’t enjoy recordings and I don’t have the time it takes to listen to them. What you did with 1023. Rogerio Duprat (1932–2006), Brazilian composer and musician. In 1985, Editora Hucitec published Cage’s work, a first in Brazil, as De segunda a um ano: Novas vonferencias e escritos de John Cage. It would be reissued by Cobogo in Sao Paolo in 2013. 1024. Neal Meyer, Seattle-based composer and musician, co-founder of Banned Rehearsal, an “ongoing argument in creative expression.”

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the Music for Piano is something I would not have thought of doing with it.1025 What I always did (my example, which perhaps has not been well documented) was to have the number of pianos equal to the number of pianists, and I didn’t plan what pieces or how many pieces each would play. I simply gave each his own book (the books by the way are not anthologies; they are all the pieces I wrote), gave everyone the total time length of the performance, and asked them to make their own schedule of playing; I also suggested establishing a time length for each system and adhering to it in terms of proportional notation not only within a piece but from piece to piece. The result was always very beautiful in a musical way, not theatrical, though the sounds came from different points in space around the audience. What you did, as you can see, was very different. It is, curiously, more organized than my nonplan, but the result was more theatrical than musical, at least as far as I can tell from your letter. I had thought of a congested piano situation such as you describe in Music Walk, where there is only one piano no matter how many pianists there are. Cartridge Music (which can be performed as piano duet, trio, etc.) also had congestion built in, so to speak, even though it is often performed without piano, just with cartridge-equipped objects and a plurality of sound systems. I particularly like what you did with the lighting. Far too little composing of lighting has taken place in my experience. I am glad you think in this direction. I am sorry that the Meany staff was permitted to get away with not permitting muting and plucking of strings. They should be ashamed. A single experienced concert pianist is far more damaging to a piano. I confess that I have some trouble with your thesis plan. I am not involved with composition as a means to an end. I have said clearly that composing is one thing, performing another, and listening a third, and that they have (finally in my work) nothing to do with one another, and that for that reason “Our ears are now in excellent condition.” Ritual I see as a theatre circumstance (performance and audience), including food. I don’t understand your then going on to “art-objects, private performances.” If you have further questions don’t hesitate to write.

1025. Meyer sent Cage a binaural recording of a performance he’d mounted of Cage’s Music for Piano (1–84), programmed as Music for Four Pianos, in the Studio Theater of Meany Hall, University of Washington (April 17, 1985). He also sent a detailed description of the score he created for the four performers, as well as a schematic of the floor plan.

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To Mark Gresham1026 December 18, 1985 | 101 W. 18 St., New York Thank you very much for sending your computer work. We have made a copy of it + are returning your diskette. I am at the point in my “thinking” that requires some feeling of non-knowing. I accept the computer of course but something either from within it (multiple programming perhaps) or from outside it (interpenetration of non-programmed action) seems to me effective in a move towards mystery. However, I enjoy hearing the Pc play music and so did Scucum (a beautiful black cat who has never been concerned much with auditory experience but now can be pleased by your pieces).1027

To Leni Alexander December 27, 1985 | 101 W. 18 St., New York I am fairly well but my spirit is not good. I am troubled by the fact that I agreed to write an opera and now I find the project oppressive. I think I would be happier not doing it. We shall see. Also I have stopped travelling with the Dance Co. (which I did for forty years!). I don’t quite know how to live this different life.

1026. Mark Gresham, American composer and writer at the time engaged in designing computer programs for IBM-compatable personal computers that utilize only the resident sound-producing circuits and the interpreted computer language “BASIC A” to create music. 1027. Skookum, sometimes spelled Scucum, Cage’s beloved black cat, whose life was ill-fated. In January 1987 she would ingest dental floss, necessitating surgery. Some years later, she would fall from the fifth-floor bathroom window to the cement enclosure below, cracking a tooth. One year later, while roaming the rooftop, she was thought to be a stray by a workman and was put on the street. She was never seen again, and Cage was bereft for weeks. Xenia Cage wrote him a consoling letter on April 21, 1987, wherein she proposed various “cheerful” possibilities for Skookum’s whereabouts.

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To Richard Duncan1028 January 4, 1986 | 101 W. 18 St., New York The best advice I ever rec’d. was to not get involved with something (architecture, for instance, or music) unless I was willing to devote my life to it utterly. When I asked myself that question in relation to architecture, my answer was no, but when I was asked whether I wd. devote my life to music, answer was yes.1029

To Mrs. Elfriede Fischinger April 22, 1986 | 101 W. 18 St., New York I don’t remember whether face to face or phone nor the date. But the story is as I remember it happening. I must have been very slow because he had actually fallen asleep. And I was very foolish to burn the camera. That’s why I call the poem “forgive me.” 1030

To Gunther Hampel May 6, 1986 | 101 W. 18 St., New York Dear Gunther, Herewith I am sending you the images for the flats and slides for Europeras 1 & 2. The maximum number of images to be made from a single source is three 1028. Richard Duncan, a teacher at Northside Junior High School in Roanoke, Virginia. 1029. See Cage’s letter to Dieter Schnebel dated December 11, 1973. Cage’s synopsis conflates two bits of advice gleaned from his early mentors: the first, while in Europe, from the architect José Pijoan, whom Cage overheard saying “in order to be an architecture, one must devote one’s life to architecture”; and the second from Schoenberg, who made Cage’s absolute “devotion to music” a condition of providing Cage with composition lessons free of charge. See John Cage, “Autobiographical Statement,” Southwest Review 76, no. 1 (Winter 1991). 1030. Elfriede Fischinger (see note 934) had written to Cage dismayed by Dr. William Moritz’s recent article recounting the details of Cage’s mishap with her late husband, Oskar Fischinger. We may never know for sure what happened, and Cage’s reference here to “burning” the camera conflicts with earlier accounts, wherein he, rather, “drowns” it with water. See Cage’s mesostic poem on the subject, “forgive me,” dated May 8, 1980.

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(the minimum is 1). These are distinguished on the xeroxes by pencil, red pen, and blue pen, where the final size in meters of each image is also given. There are to be 18 flats and 18 rear-projection screens, 36 in all, having the following 18 dimensions (horizontal; vertical) in metres: 1x1, 2x2, 3x4, 4x3, 2x3, 3x2, 4x6, 6x4, 3x5, 5x3, 2x4, 4x2, 1x3, 3x1, 2x6, 6x2. 1x5, 5x1. The set of 18 flats will be hung and will have photographically blown-up images. If these are light rather than dark (some of the “images” are actually blank surfaces), they can receive projections as well (from the front). I have renounced the plan involving changes of weather effects (for I did not want a fixed centeredness); instead the decors will be a chance-determined “garden of images” probably not less than three at a time, and not more than five, extending as far into the distance backstage as practical in view of other opera sets that will take up the space. In this rear space the set of 18 rear-projection screens having the above sizes should be made as movable as possible from one position to another without the benefit of flying (e.g., easels, tracks, etc). In August we can establish the positions of all these flats and screens. If at that time I could see a few photo-enlargements and a few slides, I would be pleased. In August I would also like to establish the lighting environment. You may tell me what lights are free of the other operas in the repertoire-to-be, and which are constrained by them as to focus and position. I will then place and focus the free lights that will be specific to my works, and will also make use of the others as they are. Though I will have some plan of action it will not be very detailed since I do not know how many singers there will be nor what they can sing. In this connection I would prefer to have a few very good singers rather than a larger group of mediocre ones. If you can put me in touch with the singers in August so that I can hear them, that would be, I believe, a step in the right direction. I am now at work on the instrumental parts. There will also be a string quintet (quartet with bass) which can be doubled in any way wished, or just amplified, which is to be conducted (I have thought of something for Gary to do!1031). Some of these materials will be ready to show you in August, e.g., the 2 flutes and piccolo are now being copied. Briefly, the parts are not conducted but 1031. Cage’s commission for Europeras 1 & 2 by the Frankfurt Opera was in large part due to the institution of Gary Bertini as its new music director and conductor. Thus it is ironic that Cage conceived his work to not require a conductor. As indicated here, Cage solved the problem by writing parts for strings, doubled or amplified, which Bertini could then conduct. Bertini, however, was not satisfied with this “solution,” and by year’s end informed Cage that he would not be available. The work was nevertheless completed.

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consist of fragments from opera parts in the literature which are to be played at any time within specified time brackets.1032 I am not necessarily making a collage of recorded operas as I had planned, since such a collage has been made by Alvin Curran1033 and is at my disposal. Instead of the tape’s being a constant presence, I am making the string quintet, reserving the collage for a special event (like a truck passing by). If it turns out that I have time to make my own collage, I will, using Alvin’s in the foyer.

To Christophe Charles1034 July 29, 1986 | 101 West 18 St., New York What I said as I recall is that you sustained your music very well. That is, you let it hold itself up. I found it a pleasure to listen to. P.S. Your father told me you’re also reading Smithson.1035

1032. In Cage’s time-bracket notation, notes are placed inside of time brackets positioned at the beginning and end of each staff, which are to be performed within the given ranges of time, at the performer’s discretion. This ensures that no two performances of any composition will be heard the same way twice. Cage used this system for all of his “number” pieces, or works with numbers as their titles, as in Four (1989), 101 (1988), and Two5 (1991); the number in the title designates the number of players (or, occasionally, the number of parts), while an added superscript number denotes multiple pieces by Cage in time-bracket notation for the specified number of players/parts. This compositional method was derived from the same method Cage employed in the making of his early series of etchings titled On the Surface (1980) at Crown Point Press. 1033. Alvin Curran (b. 1938), American composer whose works often utilize electronics and environmental found sounds; co-founder, with Rzewski and Teitelbaum, of Musica Elettronica Viva. A taped opera mix by Curran had been considered for inclusion in the percussion section of Cage’s Europeras 1 & 2, but in the end this idea was rejected. This was also the case for Hal Freedman’s Ring Précis (see Cage’s letter to Freedman dated July 21, 1987). 1034. Christophe Charles (b. 1964), French composer, writer, and installation artist, son of Daniel Charles (see note 963). 1035. Likely Robert Smithson (1938–1973), American artist well known for his use of photography in sculpture and land art.

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To Marjorie Perloff 1036 November 19, 1986 | 101 W. 18 St., New York Music Lesson #1 In reading one of my mesostics, read a “stanza” in one breath, pausing (to take another, if more breath is needed) and then going on with the next “stanza.” These stanzas are sometimes only one line long but they are indicated by empty lines before and after. P.S. I will not be offended if you say you don’t want any “music” lessons.

To Don Gillespie December 13, 1986 | 101 W. 18 St., New York Dear Don, News that Gary Bertini, after asking me to think of something for him to do, is not free to conduct the string sections of Europeras 1 & 2, and news that the forty or so dancers are otherwise engaged (even though in descriptions of the project I always mentioned them as assistants to the singers) give me pause. I guess that Gary and the opera are not happy about the project and would willingly call it to a halt. I am myself not happy. I asked in August for information from the singers that I still do not completely have. Thus I cannot answers questions such as: “How many dancers do you need?” If I were to complete the work now that Gary is not available to conduct it (I would not employ another conductor), I would write a solo for each of the string players. However, that would take me at least another month. Fortunately, we have not signed a contract. We can if we wish call a halt to the project. In any case, I plan to complete the music so that it would be available for concert purposes. My time would not have been entirely wasted. There are other unresolved problems. One of the singers is not sure he wants to perform in the work; others have not yet been named. I am expected to live away from home for at least two months while I do the work of direc1036. Marjorie Perloff (b. 1931), American poetry scholar and critic, long associated with Stanford University and the first scholar to delve seriously into Cage’s poetic works. She would co-edit, with Charles Junkerman, John Cage: Composed in America (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1994).

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tion, etc., without per diem recompense, bringing about meanwhile an almost insurmountable backlog of correspondence, and a serious interruption of my normal activities, my life, that is to say. Even though I have found the project interesting, I have no confidence in its happy conclusion. In fact, I am stopping my work until these issues are resolved and a contract is signed.

To Robert Black1037 January 2, 1987 | 101 W. 18 St., New York Our cat Skookum had major surgery having swallowed flossing thread that blocked her intestines entirely. Now, thank heaven, she is alive and both eating and shitting beautifully. However she has to grow a new fur coat because there are three holes in her old one, belly and forepaws (intravenous, etc.).

To Laura Kuhn1038 March 13, 1987 | 101 W. 18 St., New York August at first seems good for learning from Andy how to handle the computer, but when we go to Frankfurt what is there for you to do? Bible1039 won’t work: there will be constant choices to be made + I will not have put them in a form that cd. be delegated. Another problem is the salary, which I don’t want to pay if I have nothing for you to do. When you write $100/day, I take it you mean $500/wk. Andy gets $400/wk but now asks for a raise to yr. $500. This suggests finishing the opera + then training you. That wd. limit the time of paying 2 salaries at once to the time when you were actually working with Andy. Andy is planning to sublet his apt. from Oct. 1, but he cd. return to NY by Nov. 25 to stay with friends + to work with you till Xmas. 1037. Robert Black, American double bass player, improviser, and educator. 1038. Laura Kuhn (b. 1953), American musicologist and arts administrator. She was Cage’s assistant from 1986; after his death, in 1993, she co-founded (with Cunningham, David Vaughan, and Anne d’Harnoncourt) the John Cage Trust, which she served as executive director. 1039. Among Cage’s unrealized projects was a “writing through” of the King James Bible. He completed only two mesostic stanzas on the name Jehovah.

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Plants + Skookum will be taken care of by Sean1040 when neither Merce nor I are here. X Not sure about Johns mesostic (setting it to music). I remember having an idea but now don’t find it. Skookum must have swallowed it (but with no ill effects, I hope).

To Samuel Grupper/The MacArthur Foundation March 21, 1987 | 101 W. 18 St., New York I am not the right one to evaluate the work of Ornette Coleman.1041 I pay too little attention to it.

To Mrs. B.F. Garrison1042 March 29, 1987 | 101 W. 18 St., New York Dad was born in 1886, and his name was John Milton, and I am Jr. Dear Lucile, the Los Angeles Festival is celebrating my 75th birthday with a week of concerts beginning on Sept. 5. In preparation for that we drove all over the city in two trips to visit the places [where] I used to live. And of course I went to Margie’s house in the Pacific Palisades. But she was no longer living. I was told by the people living in the house that she passed away at home and without pain. I am sorry not to have seen her or to have known that she had gone or to have once again heard her voice and laughter which I’ll never forget. I made new etchings in January in San Francisco. I am still working on the opera. It will have taken 2½ years, though I managed to write shorter pieces at the same time. Thank you for your beautiful letter. 1040. Sean Bronzell (b. 1962), American poet, chess player, and occasional housesitter for Cage and Cunningham when both were touring. 1041. (Randolph Denard) Ornette Coleman (b. 1930), American saxophonist, violinist, trumpeter, and composer, an innovator in the free jazz movement of the 1960s. 1042. Cage’s paternal Aunt Lucile, wife of Blanton F. Garrison, the third and last child of Cage’s grandfather Gustavus Adolphus Williamson Cage and his second wife, Fannie Davis McGill; as John Milton Cage Sr. was the third child born to Gustavus and his first wife, Mary Lou Newsom, Lucile was thus half-sister to Cage’s father and an aunt to Cage. Aunt Lucile was a frequent correspondent with Cage’s mother and, later, with Cage. She assisted Roy Close toward the end of her life on his research into Cage’s genealogy in anticipation of Close’s biography of the composer. She lived well into her nineties, reputedly being Cage’s last living relative on his father’s side.

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To Geoffrey Barnard 1043 April 29, 1987 | 101 W. 18 St., New York Europeras 1 & 2 virtually finished except for details. I will live for 2 months (!) in Germany (!!) (Frankfurt)!!! 1st Perf. Nov. 15 (10 others scheduled into the following year (Spring). Crown Point has moved to San Francisco: 871 Folsom St., S.F. 94107. Jackson Mac Low is still 42 N. Moore [St.] 10013. Andy Culver will continue working until opera is finished, (i.e., performed). Then he is spending 6 months in China (his wife is Chinese). Merce is constantly on tour. I leave for Italy on Fri; he returns on Sunday. I come back on Thurs. He leaves on Saturday, etc., ad infinihorrifiticum. Writing other pieces besides opera. Latest = fl. + pn. (Two) + hn. + tpt. (parts of Music For).1044 Good to hear from you. Suffered heartbreaking loss of Skookum (beautiful black cat); now have Losa, a male but also black. S. was a lady.

To Lou Harrison and Bill Colvig1045 May 24, 1987 | 101 W. 18 St., New York The Lou Harrison Reader is a great pleasure for me and, I am sure, for you. Both. What a great you are to all of us! (I left out “gift” but it seems larger because of that and that’s what I mean). We have gone “each his own way,” as Peter Garland1046 mentions, and it is perhaps because of that that reading about your work since our working together is so much a pleasure (information I needed to 1043. Geoffrey Barnard (b. 1950), Australian musician and theorist, from 1970 to 1972 a member of the new music organization AZ Music. His master’s thesis was on the music of Cage, Cardew, and Wolff. He published Conversation Without Feldman (Darlinghurst, Australia: Black Ram Books, 1980). 1044. Cage refers to two works: Two for flute and piano (1987), the first of his so-called “number” pieces in time-bracket notation, dedicated to Roberto Fabbriciani and Carlo Neri, who gave the first performance in Gibellina, Sicily, on August 6, 1988, and Music For (1984; rev. 1987), consisting of parts without score, its title to be completed by adding the players performing in any given realization, for example Music for Horn and Trumpet. 1045. William (Bill) Colvig (1917–2000), electrician, amateur musician, and instrument builder, Harrison’s partner for over thirty years. Colvig helped construct the “American gamelan” used in several of Harrison’s works, including La Koro Sutro (1972) and Suite for Violin and American Gamelan (1974). 1046. Peter Garland (b. 1952), American composer and publisher of Soundings Press, an important source for new music, whose volumes included Conlon Nancarrow: Selected Studies for Player Piano (1977) and the referenced A Lou Harrison Reader (Santa Fe, NM: Soundings Press, 1987).

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set you floating in my mind). My congratulations and love to you both. So many interesting letters in the reader, Ives, Schoenberg, Henry + Partch. I get a new glimpse of Harry (also from Betty). How do you feel about Ben Johnston? Too European? (Beethoven?!) How about Tenney? I like his music very much.1047

To Laura Kuhn May 25, 1987 | 101 W. 18 St., New York Thank you for forward and sorry you were (instead of are —I hope) limping. Andy and I just got back from Joymeny, Kassel where Essay1048 was beautifully installed to last 100 days (with proper care) by Andy, and Frankfurt where we saw hats, dresses, etc. You wd. be pleased with your costumes.1049 Elegant + beautiful. Last bit of terror aroused by rehearsal schedule + rehearsal space (latter is miniscule not permitting practice with props) (+ former is complicated by the fact that singers have to take other jobs to make a living. Result: no rehearsals with everyone together until last few days!). Today I feel better believe it or not. Aug. 3 it is then. I have 1 more trip (to London middle of July for Roaratorio); otherwise here. Will see Elektra + NS1050 on Sat.

1047. Tenney’s later work profoundly affected Cage. Upon first hearing Tenney’s Critical Band (1988), Cage opined, “If that’s harmony, I take back everything I ever said. I’m all for it!” Tenney’s essay “John Cage and the Theory of Harmony” (1983) is the fullest exposition of his theories of harmonic space. 1048. Cage’s only installation work, Writings Through Essay: On the Duty of Civil Disobedience (Henry David Thoreau) (1986–1987), familiarly known as Essay, first exhibited at Documenta 8, Kassel, Germany. In 1989 it was installed at the Wexner Center for the Arts in Columbus, Ohio, and in 1990 at the Espai Poblenou in Barcelona. In 1998, through the diligence of curator Wulf Herzogenrath (see note 883), Essay would be permanently installed in Germany’s newly-renovated Kunsthalle Bremen. 1049. Part of Kuhn’s work on Europeras 1 & 2 was the creation of a database from which costumes for the opera would be chance selected. For complete documentation of each element of Cage’s work, see Laura Kuhn, “‘Europeras 1 & 2’: The Musical Means of Revolution” (PhD diss., University of California, Los Angeles, 1992). 1050. Properly, Electra Yourke, daughter of Nicolas Slonimsky (“NS”), who lived on Waverly Place, near Cage and Cunningham’s apartment. Kuhn would live with her intermittently during her years working with Cage in New York.

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To E. J. Applewhite1051 June 3, 1987 | 101 W. 18 St., New York It was a great pleasure to read your account of writing Synergetics with Bucky. What an amazing, nearly impossible task accomplished (you may not agree) easily and successfully. Your sustained right plan did it, and quickly I would say. It brought Bucky to mind as though he were (he was) with us, and tears to my eyes. You are a great writer. What are you writing now?

To Carolyn Brown June 12, 1987 | 101 W. 18 St., New York Dearest Carolyn, I’m unnecessarily touchy, I guess. You were expressing your enthusiasm over Paul Taylor’s book1052 and turned to me + said that unlike him I had used my work to hide my feelings. Actually, you didn’t use the word feelings, you just said I hid behind my work. Forgive me for taking it seriously at the time (no longer).

To Dean A. Michael Spence1053 July 5, 1987 | 101 W. 18 St., New York Thank you very much for inviting me to Harvard as Norton Professor.1054 Please have further details sent to me. What does being in residence oblige? 1051. E(dgar) J(arratt) Applewhite (1919–2005), American writer, former CIA officer, and protégé of R. Buckminster Fuller. Cage refers here to Applewhite’s Cosmic Fishing (1977), a memoir of his collaboration with Fuller on the inventor’s multivolume magnum opus on synergetic geometry (see note 598). 1052. An autobiography, Paul Taylor, Private Domain (New York: Knopf, 1987). 1053. A(ndrew) Michael Spence (b. 1943), American economist, from 1975 to 1990 professor of economics and business administration at Harvard University. 1054. The Charles Eliot Norton Professorship of Poetry at Harvard University, established in 1925 as an annual lectureship in poetry and named for the university’s former professor of fine arts. Cage would hold the position in the 1988–1989 academic year, his six lectures published as I–VI (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1990).

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Would I be able to spend weekends in New York (where I have a cat, friends, and over 200 plants)? I sometimes receive “important” engagements abroad. Would I be able to accept them? And is an apartment provided or must I rent one? These are the first questions that enter my mind. Otherwise I would enjoy the work and find it, I am sure, a challenge. P.S. Could I have a list of Norton books published?

To Isaac Chocrón July 5, 1987 | 101 W. 18 St., New York Travelling salesman1055 returns the day after tomorrow + then off again on Saturday, 4 days later for another 3–4 week tour. We have no connection! I can hardly believe it after all these years. I will be away from 1st of Sept. until Xmas. If he would just stay away completely, I could remember that I love him, but when he comes back + leaves the next minute for the studio, I know I don’t. He has to do what he’s doing. This is our Golden Anniversary. And I wouldn’t know what to do with anyone else. Shall I just go away? How is S the Magnificent?1056

To Hal Freedman1057 July 21, 1987 | 101 W. 18 St., New York Hal, you must know that I have been working intensively on these operas (Europeras 1 & 2) for over two years now. At one point a taped opera mix by Alvin Curran was offered to me (which I wanted to use as part of the percussion section), but when I set out to include it Alvin made demands which seemed excessive to me and I am presently making my own mix. Your requirements also seemed too much, and I did not want a situation in which the making of 1055. Merce Cunningham, whose touring schedule required frequent absences from New York. 1056. The reference here is to Sarah, Chocrón’s long-time housekeeper and friend, whom Cage adored. She spoke little English except for the expletives she shouted at the birds that congregated on Chocón’s patio (and which, Chocrón pointed out, she simultaneously fed small bits of fruit). 1057. Hal Freedman, American composer and pianist whose Ring Précis (1974) is a four-minute piano work consisting of two hundred short, overlaid snippets drawn from each of the four operas making up Wagner’s monumental Ring Cycle (with an original running time of approximately sixteen hours).

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the work would be dispersed in several aesthetic directions (I am doing with Andrew Culver’s programming assistance “everything”: lights, costumes, the music, the decors, flats and properties); I will also live in Frankfurt for 2 mos. directing the production. It is best, I believe, that your Ring Précis (which I admire) (as you know) not be a part of it. At present the Ring as a film, conceived by me, realized by Frank Scheffer,1058 will be shown with a variation of 4'33" accompanying it during the intermission.

To Minna Daniel September 15, 1987 | 101 W. 18 St., New York I am sorry that I did not see you today or yesterday: obligations [arrow directing reader to upper-right corner of note] “food, clothing opera” were imperative. [return to main body of letter] All went well in Los Angeles: excellent performances and good organization. I was driven everywhere I needed to go and I had a kitchen. The weather was not hot but it was a little NY-like (humid). The final event, a circus of 90 performances of my music in 3 hours, some recorded, some live, was transparent and extraordinary.1059 Even during complex loud moments one could hear soft elements, the Suite for Toy Piano or the Sonatas for prepared piano. The death of Morton Feldman was in our minds.1060 He was to have performed in the circus and he was also to have spoken. Instead, at his request (before his death “naturally”), I read a poem (mesostics on his name) I had written a year before to celebrate his birthday, and this was read the same day same hour in NY at St. Marks (memorial service).1061 See you in December. 1058. Frank Scheffer (b. 1956), Dutch cinematographer and producer of documentary films. He distilled Richard Wagner’s Ring Cycle into a 3'50" film, and also created Stoperas  ½, both shown within Cage’s Europeras 1 &  2 in Frankfurt. He also collaborated with Cage on the conceptual film Chessfilmnoise (1988). He and Culver would produce a documentary on Cage, From Zero (1995), released by Mode Records in 2004. 1059. Enormously successful Musicircus, produced by Larry Stein (b. 1950), American composer and longtime member of the Repercussion Unit, who also produced the 1984 Olympic Arts Contemporary Music Festival. This was part of a larger John Cage Celebration in Los Angeles (Sept. 5–12, 1987) that included “An Evening of Words About, For, and By John Cage,” wherein Cage read his little-known text “Other People Think” (1927), an early essay presented at the Hollywood Bowl, representing Los Angeles High School. 1060. Feldman died on September 3, 1987, of pancreatic cancer. Although he and Cage were not on the best of terms in the preceding years, they spent substantial time on the telephone during Feldman’s hospitalization. 1061. “Scenario for M. F.” (1986), a mesostic poem in thirteen stanzas composed by Cage in honor

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To Betty Freeman September 15, 1987 | 101 W. 18 St., New York Thank you for letting me stay in the Hillcrest home. Grete Sultan had no rehearsal piano, so I asked Berta if she could fix a place for her, and she did: the orange room with Andy’s Nixon1062 in it. I trust that was OK to do. A young Mexican composer drove us wherever we needed to go. I shopped at Erewhon on Beverly and cooked all our food. The performers were all excellent. The audiences were very small ($25.00 tickets and also much else going on), but those who came enjoyed it except that stupid L.A. Times critic. Never saw Alan Rich1063 nor Nicolas S[lonimsky]. Smoliar1064 came often with his girlfriend + wrote reports of the concerts for the computer bulletin board. I’ve asked him to send them to you. Best wishes to you always + to Franco + love to you both + gratitude.

To Harolyn Blackwell 1065 October 25, 1987 | 101 W. 18 St., New York I hope all goes well for you now, that operation and recovery take place beautifully so that you are soon bird again. It has been a great pleasure to be with you, your vitality, your music, + I look forward to the next time I see and hear you. We go on working, and the first performance gets closer. We have of course less time on the stage than I would wish, but the circumstances of the of Feldman’s sixtieth birthday. It would appear in Thomas DeLio, The Music of Morton Feldman (New York: Excelsior Music, 1996). 1062. A screenprint portrait of Richard Nixon created in 1972 by Andy Warhol to be sold in aid of the Democrats’ presidential candidate, George McGovern. This is one of many contemporary artworks that hung in the Freeman home. 1063. Alan Rich (1924–2010), American music critic who wrote for the New York Times, Newsweek, and the Los Angeles Herald-Examiner. Rich and Freeman worked closely to present the music salons that took place in Freeman’s home in the 1980s and 1990s. 1064. Stephen Smoliar (b. 1946), American researcher in artificial intelligence at the Information Sciences Institute (ISI), affiliated with the University of Southern California, situated in Marina del Rey. ISI was one of the first nodes on ARPANET and played a major role in the integration of various computer networks of the time into the Internet. The bulletin board system referenced here was called Usenet. 1065. Harolyn Blackwell, lyric (coloratura) soprano, one of the original singers in Europeras 1 & 2 in the first performances in Frankfurt.

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other two operas tighten the situation, but I think all the cast and the workmen will cooperate to bring about a good show. Last night in the bar next door one of the beer drinkers said, Do you know who I am? I asked him to tell me. “I work for you,” he said. He was one of the stagehands + says he will do his best. He likes the absence of a director and the presence of the clocks. He says this is the world we’re living in. Unfortunately, not all the world is as funny as the one we’re making.

To Geoffrey Barnard January 19, 1988 | 101 W. 18 St., New York When I get something about the Europeras 1 & 2, I will send it to you. I used 70 operas Gluck-Puccini to make it. It extends the separation we’ve practiced betw. music + dance to all the other theatre elements: costumes, lights, action, decors, properties. Working on it broke down my barrier against vibrato, and I saw more operas in the period Sept.–Dec. ’87 than I’d seen in all the rest of my life. I particularly like Verdi’s Falstaff. Morton died of cancer (+ complications). It began in the pancreas and went to the lungs. It was very fast and quite unexpected. Here are the addresses you want: Mac Low, 42 N. Moore St., NY 10013; Crown Pt. Press, 871 Folsom St., S.F. 94107 (CA); Yoshi Wada, 110 Mercer St., NY 10012. My health is OK though I had a stroke in Germany but thereby found a really good doctor (a wholistic one).1066 Merce is good (better than I). But has pains when he walks or even stands ↑ up. The bigger the shell, the better conch or not (provided it has that shape).1067 I think Mimi is receiving 2 shortly.

1066. Dieter Bialon (b. 1956), German naturopathic physician with offices located outside of Frankfurt am Main. 1067. Cage refers here to conch shells, which are required for any performance of his Inlets (1977), first performed in Seattle on September 10, 1977; additionally this piece was later used for Cunningham’s Inlets 2 (1983).

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To R. Wood Massi 1068 January 31, 1988 | 101 W. 18 St., New York I look forward to seeing you soon. I’m sure an interview cd. be arranged. I will be staying with Emily Bueno in Haddam (345-2350). But I will attend all of the events + before or after one of these wd. be a convenient time. I think your references to my relationship with Merce (to which I don’t object per se) make your text better published by some magazine, e.g., specializing in such (homosexual) matters. I see no reference to Bob Ashley’s relation to Mimi Johnson. Though that wd. seem equally relevant. In this connection I liked very much the recent book edited by Peter Garland about Lou Harrison. There was a marvelous interview with Lou by Winston Leyland just published in Gay Sunshine Interviews.1069

To Leni Alexander January 31, 1988 | Location not indicated Everything turned out well with the opera.1070 It was performed (and still is) in the Schauspiel,1071 which is smaller for the audience but equally large for the actors + decors. It will be done in the Paris Autumn Festival and hopefully later in Amsterdam, here at Purchase (outside of NY in July) + earlier in Jerusalem!1072 I am much better now that I am home. I have written a new (long) text 1068. R(ichard) Wood Massi, doctoral student in musicology at the University of California, San Diego. An interview held on February 26, 1988, in Middletown, Connecticut, would be noteworthy for Cage’s candor about his own sexuality. Massi had earlier conducted an interview in the same vein with Feldman that would be published as “Captain Cook’s First Voyage: an Interview with Morton Feldman,” in Cum Notis Varioru, no. 131 (April 1989). 1069. See Winston Leyland, “Lou Harrison,” first published in Gay Sunshine Interviews 1 (Gay Sunshine Press, 1978); reprinted in the Garland monograph on Harrison referenced in note 1046. 1070. Cage received many letters expressing alarm over reports that on November 13, 1987, a fire destroyed much of the Frankfurt am Main Städtische Bühnen’s mainstage, causing the opening of Cage’s Europeras 1 & 2, slated for a November 15, 1987, premiere, to be postponed until December 12 and moved to the theater complex’s smaller Schauspielhaus. (Cage was in fact resident in one of the building’s apartments at the time and had to be evacuated.) The cause of the fire was cause for much speculation at the time. 1071. Properly, Schauspielhaus (drama theater) stage. 1072. Cage’s Europeras 1 & 2 has had a scant performance history. After its Frankfurt run, the German production was presented at State University of New York, Purchase as part of the Pepsico

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on anarchy.1073 I am writing music also. I have found another new way to do that. And I am making a new series of drawings. I hope all goes well for you. And that it is not too long before we meet again.

To Teeny Duchamp March 3, 1988 | Location not indicated Dearest Teeny, This is a longish letter about my project (which I have not yet suggested to Hiroyuki Iwaki1074 and will not unless you give me a go ahead sign). In December 1988 I made Etcetera 2/4 Orchestras1075 for the new Suntory Hall in Tokyo. The chief conductor was Iwaki, who asked me about Europeras 1 & 2, which I was still preparing for Frankfurt. He then asked me if I would make Nohopera1076 for a new music theatre under construction in Tokyo for which he would be the director. I said that I didn’t have an idea at that time but that if I did get an idea (probably after producing Europeras 1 & 2), I would let him know. When I received in Frankfurt the Etants Donnes1077 manual of instructions, Summerfare festival (July 8–31, 1988). Later, the work was staged in Zurich, as part of the Junifestwochen “James Joyce/John Cage” (May 28–30, 1991), initiated by Werner Bärtschi (see note 1105). In Cage’s centennial year, the work would be staged at the Ruhrtriennale International Festival of the Arts in Germany, directed by Heiner Goebbels (Aug. 17–Sept. 2, 2012). Cage would go on to compose two more works in the series: Europeras 3 &  4, scored for singers, pianists, gramophone operators, lighting, and tape (London, June 17, 1990) and the demure Europera 5, scored for two singers, piano, tape-machine operator, and lighting technician (Buffalo, New York, April 18, 1991). 1073. “Anarchy” (1988), a lecture consisting of twenty lengthy mesostics, with a source text derived from the writings of well-known anarchists throughout history (Peter Kropotkin, Emma Goldman, Mario Malatesta, and others), published posthumously by Wesleyan University Press (2001). It was first delivered by Cage in Middletown, Connecticut, on the final day of John Cage at Wesleyan: A Festival/Symposium (Feb. 22–27, 1988). 1074. Hiroyuki Iwaki (1932–2006), Japanese conductor and percussionist. With Ichiyanagi, Toshiro Mayuzumi, and Joji Yuasa as fellow conductors, Iwaki led the first performance of Cage’s Etcetera 2/4 Orchestras on December 8, 1986, in Tokyo’s Suntory Hall. 1075. Etcetera 2/4 Orchestras (1985), materials for an orchestral performance with and without four conductors and a tape recording of sounds captured from the environment of Cage’s 18th St. loft in New York. 1076. Nohopera, Or the Complete Musical Works of Marcel Duchamp, central to which would be a performance of a replication of Duchamp’s Étant donnés (see below). Although never realized, this would have been Cage’s most lavish tribute to his beloved Duchamp, and a major collaboration with Andrew Culver. 1077. Marcel Duchamp’s enigmatic assemblage, fully titled Étant donnés: 1. La chute d’eau, 2. le gaz d’éclairage (Given: 1. The Waterfall, 2. The Illuminating Glass), twenty years in the making (1946–1966) and

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I wrote enthusiastically to Anne1078 and included my desire that Etants Donnes be performed. In my opinion, Etants Donnes is a piece of music, since in fulfilling the instructions sounds would inevitably be made (merely needing amplification for their enjoyment as music theater). I then thought of offering the performance of Etants Donnes to Iwaki as central to Nohopera or The Complete Musical Works of Marcel Duchamp. I thought of putting this together with Yoshiaki Tono’s1079 project you had mentioned to have a copy of Etants Donnes made for Japan. The one made for Nohopera could be the one owned by whatever museum (Seibu?) Tono would be connected with. The other musical works of M. D. are Sculpture Musicale, the Erratum Musical, the moving freight train, and the inframince (sound of velvet against velvet, corduroy trousers).1080 I imagine Nohopera to be a performance of all these, each by itself, together with the taking down of Etants Donnes, followed by its being put up again, probably on a slowly-revolving stage. My work would consist in composing the program of the five Duchamp works, timing it, arranging it, etc. I will not do this work, which would be exciting for me to do, until I have your confidence and permission. The new Etants Donnes should be as faithful a copy of Marcel’s work as the copies of the big glass are of the big glass. Essentially the music would be percussive (amplified noises), but when the demontage or remontage was not being done, it would have other sounds, the from 1969 permanently installed at the Philadelphia Museum of Art. Duchamp’s three-dimensional environmental work invites viewers to peek through small holes cut into a solid wooden door at the tableau beyond: a splayed woman in the woods, reputedly the female form of the sculptor Maria Martins, Duchamp’s inamorata from 1946 to 1951, and the arm of his second wife, Alexina (“Teeny”) Duchamp. Cage refers to Duchamp’s Manual of Instructions (Philadelphia Museum of Art, 1973), which includes 116 black-and-white Polaroids taken by the artist as well as thirty-five pages of handwritten notes and sketches. 1078. Anne d’Harnoncourt (1943–2008), American museum director and historian of modern art, from 1982 director of the Philadelphia Museum of Art and expert on the works of Duchamp. She was a founding board member of the John Cage Trust. 1079. Yoshiaki Tono (1930–2005), Japanese theorist and art commentator, with Hariu Ichirō and Nakahara Yūsuke, one of the three “greats” of Japanese art criticism. Tono is credited for coining the term “anti-art,” in reference to Kudo Tetsumi’s “Proliferating Chain Reaction” in 1960, and was Teeny Duchamp’s choice to oversee the construction of a replica of Duchamp’s Large Glass; given the work’s fragility, it had been previously replicated three times, the first two under Duchamp’s supervision (signed “Par copie conforme”). After Duchamp’s death, Tono oversaw the third replication for the University of Tokyo Museum of Arts and Sciences. 1080. Duchamp composed two musical works that may be performed: Erratum Musical, for three voices, composed in Rouen for himself and his two sisters (its three parts marked Yvonne, Magdelaine, Marcel); and Sculpture Musical, instructions written on a small scrap of paper that might result in a kind of event or happening, anticipating certain Fluxus works of the 1960s. Both were likely composed in 1913, and both were conceived with chance operations.

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singing of the melodies taken out of a hat, the Sculpture Musicale sometimes acoustic with instruments, sometimes electronic, the freight train probably always instrumental, the infra mince, a choreography. But the changes, timing, etc., would be my work, which I have not yet done and so cannot describe. I hope you accept the project and like it as much as I do and that it will happen in the near future. P.S. If I hear yes from you I will write to Iwaki. I have already talked with Paul, not in detail to Anne. Paul was enthusiastic.

To Yoshiaki Tono March 11, 1988 | 101 W. 18 St., New York Dear Tono, As you can see from the enclosed letter to Teeny, I have an interesting project (which I have not yet mentioned to Iwaki Hiroyuki). Some time ago, Teeny mentioned to me that you have a project to have a copy of Etants Donnes made for Japan. Is that true? Do you think we could either make one copy which would be used first for the opera and then go to a museum collection, or make two copies, one of which would belong to the opera and the other to the museum? I  suggest the two-copy idea. Teeny telephoned me today. She would like to know your attitude towards this project and any ideas you have to implement it. I think the craftsmen should be Japanese and chosen or approved by you. My mind is beginning to race with respect to the possibilities. Please do not inform Iwaki until we have Teeny’s go-ahead.

To Xenia Cage March 17, 1988 | 101 W. 18 St., New York How are you? I hope you are well. In connection with my tax return, the accountant has asked me to give him your social security number. Could you send it or phone it to me? A few years ago I asked whether you’d like to look on the West Coast for a different from New York place to live. It seemed to me you liked the idea, but 1 9 8 3 – 1 9 9 2  |  563

nothing has happened. What I want to say is that I would be glad to give you money to facilitate such an exploratory trip.1081

To John Holzaepfel 1082 March 22, 1988 | 101 W. 18 St., New York I have [Wittgenstein’s] Philosophical Investigations, Blue & Brown Books, On Certainty, and Zettel. Thank you for your letter. For any materials from Wittgenstein even remotely connected with the 15 words of my Norton lectures that you can refer me to or send me I will be very grateful. The 15 words are Method, Structure, Intention, Discipline, Notation, Indeterminacy, Interpenetration, Imitation, Devotion, Circumstances, Variable Structure, Nonunderstanding, Contingency, Inconsistency, Performance.1083

To Hiroyuki Iwaki April 25, 1988 | 101 W. 18 St., New York Dear Yuki, I now have an idea for Noh-opera. Its subtitle is: Or the Complete Musical Works of Marcel Duchamp. The works are five in number: 1) the songs taken from a hat to be sung by himself with his sisters; 2) the toy train which, in this case, would receive (instead of coal) excerpts from Nohdrama and European Opera; 3) Sculpture Musicale; 4) Inframince (the sound of corduroy against corduroy; 5) the Manual 1081. Xenia’s reply, dated April 7, 1987, states emphatically that she wished “to get the hell out of this dreadful city. No more blacks, Hindus, Koreans, Puerto Ricans, Chinks, Japs, Jews, joggers, Yuppies, bicyclists, muggers, burglars, democrats, pigeon-feeders, politicians, landlords, Marian Burros, Jack Anderson, Kiwi fruit, etc.” Never one to mince words, she allowed at the end of her letter that she was at a loss figuring out how or where to go. 1082. John Holzaepfel (b. 1948), American musician and scholar whose research focused on the work of Tudor and on clarifying Tudor’s role in Cage’s development as a composer in the 1950s. Cage found helpful Holzaepfel’s knowledge of Wittgenstein’s dense writings, which resonated with many of Cage’s own ideas. 1083. These fifteen words, strung together without benefit of commas or space between the words, was Cage’s chosen title for his six mesostic Norton lectures, to be published by Harvard University Press. As this would not comfortably fit on the spine of a book, the title was shortened to I–VI.

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of Instructions for Etants Donnés (taking something apart and then putting it back together again). If you like the idea for Noh-opera, I would begin my composition of it. This would include all the aspects of theatre, though I would like the choreography for the Inframince (4) done by Merce Cunningham. I would also like the assistance of Andrew Culver for programming and lighting. (We developed a program for Europeras 1 & 2 which was great before the opera house burned; later the lighting was imitated rather than duplicated). I would also like to have a Japanese assistant, someone experienced in terms of Noh (not as an actor but as an historian and observer). David Tudor or Takehisa Kosugi would be great for one or two versions of the Sculpture Musicale. I also want to make one of my own. (I would be the composer of the entire work but almost nothing, or very little, would be by me.) The Etant Donnés would not be a replica of the original Duchamp work. It would be a chance-determined tensegrity structure designed, I hope, by Andrew Culver, which would be “taken apart and put back together again.” Europeras 1 & 2 was successfully done in Frankfurt and could be done in Tokyo by the Frankfurt Company. Or a new production could be made in Japan after December ’88. Let me know what you think.

To John Holzaepfel May 16, 1988 | 101 W. 18 St., New York Thank you for your letters. The missing letters, of course, come about through there being no word in the text that follows the mesostic rules for that letter at that point. (I can no longer make sense easily.) I have been reading Wittgenstein: I notice it puts me in a state of elevated humor (at least I feel more up than down). I have taken sixteen volumes, numbered their pages. 1st ? = Which volume? 2nd  ? = Which page? I then browse, make up my mind which ¶ to choose (or ¶s) + then place it in one of the 15 sources: method, structure, etc. That is all I have done so far. Off to Russia tomorrow.1084 Back from there, etc., incl. France early in June.

1084. At the invitation of Alexander Ivashkin, Cage attended the Third International Music Festival in the USSR, taking place May 20–June, 1988, organized by the Youth Commission of the Union of Soviet Composers. He traveled within Russia in the company of Nicolas Slonimsky.

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To Helen Thorington1085 July 16, 1988 | 101 W. 18 St., New York This is to say that I think the work you are doing is great, and it will continue if properly supported. We all want a radio in America that we look forward to turning on (as we used to, e.g., with the Columbia Wkshop) (or as we do now if in Germany, e.g., the Wdr Hörspiel). We are starved for “lordly entertainment.” P.S. Best best wishes!

To Mark Swed 1086 August 7, 1988 | 101 W. 18 St., New York I think your plan is excellent and I will help you when you wish. I must tell you that there are two other projects in process, but I think essentially different. One is Charles Shere.1087 He plans three “life and works books for the layman, abt. 100 pages long, the first half on life, childhood, travels, rearing, associates, etc., + the 2nd half a sort of overview of pivotal pieces.” He is writing one on [Robert] Erickson and another on Lou [Harrison]. The other is Frans van Rossum + Stephen Lowy.1088 Their plan is to make a pilot open-ended “biography” which makes relevant materials accessible by floppy discs. Another more musicological work is by James Pritchett,1089 who will be teaching a course in my work at Madison in Wisc. I would be willing to “authorize” your work if my doing so doesn’t upset the others. P.S. I will write to them. 1085. Helen Thorington, writer, sound composer, and founding producer of the national weekly radio series New American Radio (1987). 1086. Mark Swed (b. 1947), musician and music critic who wrote at the time primarily for the Wall Street Journal. In 1996 he would become chief music critic at the Los Angeles Times. 1087. Charles Shere (b. 1935), American composer, radio producer, and journalist, associated in the late 1960s with KPFA Radio in Berkeley and then with KQED-TV in San Francisco. He wrote music criticism for the Oakland Tribute from 1971 until his retirement in 1988. He is married to Lindsey Shere, celebrated pastry chef at Chez Panisse in Berkeley, California, from 1971. 1088. See note 964. 1089. James Pritchett (b. 1959), American musician and writer who would author The Music of John Cage (Cambridge University Press, 1993). He was a frequent visitor to Cage’s 18th St. loft, where he conducted research in preparation for the writing of his doctoral dissertation (upon which his book is based). He also assisted Cage in the completion of Book 2 of Cage’s Freeman Etudes (1990).

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To Stephen Fisher October 5, 1988 | 101 W. 18 St., New York Some time ago, I proposed the publication by Peters of the complete works for percussion of William Russell. This would be a very important step for Peters to take. Percussion has the interest of many musicians, + Russell’s work is of first and basic importance. I am aware that Don Gillespie will edit the works, and I am asking him to give you this note. I would like to make an introduction for the publication, and I will do anything further that I can to insure the success of this project. Russell is now 83. It would be great to let him know the good news of making his music available.

To Christian Wolff October 22, 1988 | 101 W. 18 St., New York I was very glad you came to the first of my talks + thank you for writing.1090 I remembered a cadence on “Her” and looked for it in the 2nd lecture only to finally find it in the first! “and we follow their Her.” It’s quite emphatic but perhaps too early to catch your attention. Grete Sultan comes in to the 3rd. It’s true that Thoreau mentioned women rarely; all my source texts lack her except one from McLuhan about her intuitions. I must say I didn’t shape the source material with women (or blacks) in mind. And my shaking language loose has only that source material to deal with. I look forward to being with you soon and always whenever.

To Whom It May Concern1091 December 19, 1988 | 101 W. 18 St., New York In the course of an interview in Frankfurt with Henning Lohner, I developed the idea in which I am interested to make a 90-minute film, a composed film by 1090. Wolff’s letter to Cage, written shortly after he attended Cage’s first Charles Eliot Norton lecture at Harvard University on October 12, 1988, is a gentle admonishment to Cage for a lack of feminine pronouns in his writings. 1091. This letter, provided to German composer and filmmaker Henning Lohner (b. 1953), was

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means of chance operations applied to all the variables. I now give him exclusively the right to do whatever is necessary to bring this project to realization. He likes it, so do I. I think (he is a composer also interested in film) we could make something interesting.

To Richard Steinitz1092 December 27, 1988 | 101 W. 18 St., New York Thank you for inviting me again to your festival. I do hope one year to be with you. You are making beautiful programs. I have recently had a “breakthrough” with regard to the Freeman Etudes which I began 11 years ago and have never finished 17–32. I now plan to do this because of the excellence of Irvine Arditti’s1093 playing of 1–16. He now does those in 46 minutes! I asked him why so fast. He pointed out I’d said play as fast as possible in the directions. 17–32 are in places impossible because of there being too many notes. I will write them anyway, giving the direction play as many as possible. Irvine A. has agreed. I plan to do the work after I finish the Norton Lectures at Harvard. Hopefully you would have another year the first perf. of 1–32. Also Mathias Bamert1094 has invited me to Glasgow after ’89. Perhaps that year (’90) with you.

written in support of their idea to collaborate on John Cage’s One11 (1992), a ninety-minute film without subject, to be produced and directed by Lohner and shown with or without 103 (1991), one of Cage’s late “number” pieces, scored for orchestra without conductor. When the two works are performed together, the title changes to One11 and 103, Film with Orchestra. The first joint performance took place in Cologne on September 19, 1992. 1092. Richard Steinitz, musicologist and founding artistic director of the Huddersfield Contemporary Music Festival. Cage’s music was widely performed at the November 16–26, 1989, festival. 1093. Irvine Arditti (b. 1953), British violinist and founder of the Arditti Quartet. He inspired Cage to complete his long-dormant Freeman Etudes and gave the first complete performance of Books 1 and 2 in Zurich on June 29, 1991. Cage’s Four (1989) is dedicated to the Arditti Quartet. 1094. Matthias Bamert (b. 1942), Swiss composer and conductor, from 1985 to 1990 director of Musica Nova, the Glasgow Contemporary Music Festival, where Cage was composer-in-residence September 15–22, 1990. Among works performed was the premiere of Cage’s Scottish Circus, commissioned by Eddie McGuire and the Whistlebinkies and based on Scottish traditional music selected and formed into programs by participating players (Sept. 20, 1990).

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To David Revill 1095 March 14, 1989 | 101 W. 18 St., New York Thank you for your letter. There are two other projects about my life and work. One is undertaken by Frans van Rossum and Stephen Lowy, 23139 8th St., Newhall CA 91321. The other by Mark Swed, 600 W. 115, NYC 10027. And James Pritchett is working on analysis of the music. He is in the Music Dept. of the Univ. of Wisconsin in Madison, W. If with this knowledge you wish to continue your work you of course have my “blessing” + I will be glad to see you here or there. I will be at Huddersfield next November.

To Cy Twombly April 24, 1989 | 101 W. 18 St., New York Dear Cy, It would have been a great pleasure to see you in New York, but I didn’t, and so I am writing again to tell you why I hope very much that your work will be part of The First Meeting of the Satie Society.1096 When I was asked in 1984 to make a lecture on Satie in Bonn, I said it would not be an informative lecture. I was told that was not expected (someone else was doing that). What was expected was an expression of my devotion to his work. What I decided to do was to make a celebration, a coming together of people (in my mind) of the same feather, all of them bringing Satie presents. These presents were to be a way of writing I have found which is like acrostics, but instead of a word or words going down the left hand edge, they go down the middle of the poem. Once I wrote one on your name in the form of a letter telling you about the 1095. David Revill, English composer, producer, and musicologist who would write the first biography of John Cage, published as The Roaring Silence: John Cage, a Life (New York: Arcade, 1992). 1096. The First Meeting of the Satie Society, Cage’s late-life collaborative merger of poetry, performance, visual art, sculpture, and music, finalized by his collaborator, Ben Shiff (see note 1098). The work consists of a cracked glass valise, à la Marcel Duchamp, containing eight handmade books with texts and visual art by Cage and visual art by Johns, Rauschenberg, Sol LeWitt, Robert Ryman, et al. Cage’s words, taking the form of lengthy mesostics, use as source texts writings by Joyce, Duchamp, Thoreau, and Satie, and others. As Cage notes, this project began life on the Internet via the Well (Whole Earth ’Lectronic Link) in San Francisco. In the end Twombly was not a contributor.

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pleasure your work gives me and Merce and how our work was going and how we hope to see you here or in Europe. The first lines were merCe and i have moved and hope You’ll visiT next time you come to neW yOrk. in the Morning when we have Breakfast your drawing’s beside us on the waLl . we love it. your show at the whitneY1097 Between the C and the Y there is no Y and between the Y and the T no T, etc. I have found several ways of writing mesostics. Some are called “Writings Through.” The “gift” from Thoreau to Satie is Writings Through the Essay on the Duty of Civil Disobedience, using Satie’s title Messe des Pauvres as the words down the middle. My “own” gift is a renga, a single poem made up of lines from five other poems I wrote about him and then mixed together by chance operations on his name (Variations) and the titles of many of his works (Interludes). The “gifts” from Joyce, Chris Mann, Marcel Duchamp, and Marshall McLuhan are all kus (from haikus) using Satie titles that seemed appropriate to me down the middle. I chose Trois Poèmes d’Amour for Joyce using the last paragraph of Finnegans Wake as source material. All the words in that paragraph having a T not followed by an R were listed, and one was chosen by I Ching chance operations. This was done for all the other letters: an R not followed by an O, etc. In ’86 I arranged the electronic publication of the First Meeting through The Well in San Francisco. It is accessible by modem, from any personal computer with one. Shortly after that “publication,” Ben Shiff 1098 of Limited Editions telephoned asking whether I had a text which he could publish. I said I had just made the “Satie Society” accessible electronically. He asked to see it, liked it, and we began a plan for its publication with fine printing and illustration. From the beginning we were in agreement: that the Thoreau would be illustrated by Thoreau himself, the Duchamp by Jasper Johns, the Chris Mann by Bob Rauschenberg, the Marshall McLuhan by Sol Lewitt, my Variations with Interludes

1097. For the complete mesostic, see Cage’s letter to Cy Twombly dated April 22, 1979. 1098. Ben Shiff, American printmaker, first with Limited Editions, later with Osiris Editions, and still later (renamed) Isis Editions. From 1988 he was a close collaborator with Louise Bourgeois.

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and Variations by monoprints I’ve made with fire and smoke, the Sonnekus from Genesis by Mell Daniel, an artist no longer living whom I knew in Rockland County, and hopefully the Mesdamkus by you. Everything else has been done. Bob has made extraordinary prints unlike anything of his I’ve seen before. Dear Cy, I can’t help it, I still hope you will make some work for this book. I enclose the Mesdamkus and the Introduction to the collection of texts.

To Bob Rauschenberg June 10, 1989 | 101 W. 18 St., New York What Merce and I both did was give what we have in a will first one of us to the other (which ever), then to a foundation which would further [experimental] work in the arts. Your foundation may be that one or the Foundation for Contemporary Performance Arts of which I am a director. Beyond that I would not want to specify what is to be done, since things that need doing arise and change and fall away. There is also Merce’s Dance Foundation. I love what you did for the book; I hope gets published one day. Cy, who I hoped would also do something, is being silent which should not disturb me. Love to you and if you want some other kind of answer let me know[.]

To Takehisa Kosugi June 29, 1989 | 101 W. 18 St., New York Here is the piece for Arles.1099 There will only be 8 loudspeakers there. But in California we may have many more small ones in the space; Rob Miller is preparing that. The number of sources for a single performance will change from performance to performance. It will be planned ahead of time, each of you in turn deciding how many sculptures and when they start and stop. The beginnings and endings should be in unison, either with one person in control, 1099. Cage’s Sculptures Musicales (1989), described as “sounds lasting and leaving from different points and forming a sounding sculpture,” given its unofficial premiere performance as music to Cunningham’s Inventions, without stage decor, in the Théâtre Antique at the Festival of Arles on July 23, 1989. The official premiere was given in Berkeley on September 23, 1989, with stage decor and costumes by Carl Kielblock.

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or with cues. There will be a minimum of 2 sculptures, but there could be several. There is no limit. If you want to talk about it please call 989-7132. Hope you are well.

To Aki Takahashi August 8, 1989 | 101 W. 18 St., New York I have received Beatles sheet music from the Toshiba Co. I can prepare an eight-minute piece1100 (or you can play only three or four minutes if you wish) in which within time-brackets I would give you a number of measures to play, either melody alone (or in octaves) at any tempo of your choice, or several measures of accompaniment alone also at any tempo. I would give you six such time-bracket plans which could be superimposed for the recording. If you were playing solo for an audience, you could play with a recording of five of the time-bracket plans. Without such recordings it could not be played as a solo. Will this work be suitable for your Toshiba project? I will not do it until I hear whether or not you could use it. [written across the top] Please answer to Mimi Johnson, 105 Hudson (Performing Artservices), NYC 10013 or (212) 941-8911. I am not at home.

To Kazuo Inamori, President, The Inamori Foundation1101 November 10, 1989 | Kyoto, Japan This is tO 1100. Cage’s The Beatles 1962–1970 (1990), scored for multiple pianists or, alternatively, solo pianist with other parts on tape, all playing chance-determined excerpts drawn from arrangements of Beatles’ songs. The work was composed for a project initiated by Takahashi, whose resulting collection was released on a 4-CD set on the Toshiba EMI label in Japan. Cage’s piece is included on Hyper Beatles Best, which also includes works by Rzewski, Takemitsu, Tenney, and others. 1101. This is Cage’s acceptance speech as laureate of the Kyoto Prize in Creative Arts and Moral Sciences in the field of music delivered November 10, 1989, at the Kyoto International Conference Hall. Cage received 45 million yen, the equivalent of about $380,000, in an elaborate ceremony. Kazuo Inamori (b. 1932), at the heart of this mesostic as its string, is a celebrated Japanese philanthropist and entrepreneur.

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thanK you for this Award this priZe which “expresses yoUr gratitude tO socIety aNd the world for hAving sustained and nurtured you given you the notion the supreMe act Of a human being woRks toward the greater good of humanIty and society the balanced develoPment of science technology and spiRit” I agrEe and think of r. buckminSter fuller comprehensIve worlD architEct his projects for japaN ciTies floaTing witHout nEed for earth supported by water supported by aIr his plaN for bringing About equation between huMan needs equatiOn between human needs and Resources world resources “change hIs environment don’t change man” Fuller is nO longer living bUt his spirit is iN 1 9 8 3 – 1 9 9 2  |  573

what we Do when we mAke The world work Intelligently fOr all of us aNd noT just for merely some of us wHat doEs this have to do with music what does it not with your encouragement I will taKe each daY the next step in my wOrk iT is a nOt knowing what will haPpen next staying in the daRk fInding a muZhik wE have not yet met

thank you

To Aki Takahashi December 31, 1989 | 101 W. 18 St., New York I enjoyed the Beatles tape. And I have no objection to it. However, for performances I think it would be more interesting to play each part without listening to another or others. So that there would be no coincidence of metre. Just follow the time brackets placing the Beatles’ material anywhere in it but not intentionally together with another part. It (Two2) wd. be in February a world premiere, but please do not advertise this because the Double Edge1102 will not play it until later, and it was written for them. Love to you and Kuniharu.1103 And Happy New Year! 1102. Double Edge, comprising pianists Nurit Tilles and Edmund Niemann, who commissioned Cage’s Two2 and gave its first performance in New York on May 4, 1990. Two2 is one of Cage’s late “number” pieces, unique in the series in that it does not make use of time brackets. Inspired by a remark of the Russian composer Sofia Gubaidulina that “there is an inner clock,” Cage created a

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To Christina Tappe1104 January 9, 1990 | 101 W. 18 St., New York Thank you for the call + the card. No one is working to help me. But I am not doing anything except a few mesostics. I am not well. It’s both my insides and outsides (a very bad case of eczema —very itchy). I am not drinking except dandelion tea. No alcohol or caffeine, nothing fermented, not even miso. It is quite a trial. The Harvard book is going to be very beautiful. They are using one of my prints on the dust jacket. It is large and everything is beautiful: the photographs all of the same negative and two cassettes! One of the reading of IV + one of the seminars. I don’t know when it will be available, but soon, and I will send you one.

To Werner Bartschi1105 January 24, 1990 | 101 W. 18 St., New York I like your plan for Sunday morning with the single piano Winter Music1106 as an environment. For the lecture I will read an excerpt from Empty Words IV (letters and silences) about 30' or so. Then for the “silent piece” I would like to perform a “new” piece which is also silent: One3 = 4'33" (0'00") + T. What composition consisting of thirty-six lines of music, each containing five measures. Within each line, thirty-one events occur —5 + 7 + 7 + 7 —as in Japanese renga poetry. The pianists play a measure in their own tempo, but the next measure may only commence when both have completed the previous. 1103. Kuniharu Akiyama (1929–1996), Japanese avant-garde composer, music critic, producer, and poet, a founding member of the Jikken Kobo group of avant-garde artists in the 1950s. He was well known for his studies of Satie and of Japanese film music. He was married to Aki Takahashi. 1104. Christina Tappe, a member of the production staff for the premiere performances of Cage’s Europeras 1 & 2 at the Frankfurt Opera in 1987. She subsequently moved to New York and worked for a brief time as Cage’s assistant. 1105. Properly, Werner Bärtschi (b. 1950), Swiss pianist and composer, early on much influenced by and devoted to Cage and Dieter Schnebel. 1106. Cage’s Winter Music (1957), twenty numbered pages with performance instructions, used in whole or in part by one to twenty pianists, heard May 12–13, 1990, at the Kantonsschule Zürcher Oberland simultaneous with Cage’s performance of One3 = 4'33" (0'00") + T (1989), for performer amplifying the sound of an auditorium to feedback level. This was Cage’s last variation on 4'33", first performed by him in Kyoto on Nov. 14, 1989. The fax leaf of the manuscript is addressed to Yutaka Fujishima, from Mimi Johnson, Artservices, Inc., dated Oct. 19, 1989.

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happens is that when it begins I am on stage or in front of audience which is then brought to feedback level (not actual feedback but very near it, someone controlling the situation); I then sit in the audience for an indeterminate length of time (in Japan it was about 12½ minutes) not measuring it and then I return to stage + bow and leave, the feedback stops when I return to stage. Please forgive me but I do not want to do the Theatre Piece. I hope to write a new piece for you for piano and instruments. The piano will be bowed (with some heavy plastic fishing string).1107 Looking forward to being with you[.]

To Emanuel and Luciana D. de Melo Pimenta1108 March 8, 1990 | 101 W. 18 St., New York I am finally getting better (practically or relatively, no itching) but I am lacking in energy. Your letter is full of ideas, but I have almost none. I am, so to speak, writing on water. I just finished a new piece for Switzerland in May called Fourteen,1109 which is for that number of instruments and which pays no knowing attention to the differences between instruments. An orchestra without orchestration. No effects. Merce is about to begin the New York season of performances. He has almost no time in which to finish a new piece. This year we will be often without seeing one another. The company is planning a trip to India in the fall. Perhaps I will go at least to Calcutta.

1107. The bowed piano was the 1972 invention of the American composer Stephen Scott (b. 1944), in his conception, a grand piano played by musicians using lengths of horsehair, nylon filament, or other materials to activate the strings of the piano. Scott founded the Bowed Piano Ensemble in 1977, for which he composed. For Cage’s “new piece,” Fourteen (1990), see note 1109. 1108. Emanuel Dimas de Melo Pimenta (b. 1957), Brazilian musician, architect, and intermedia artist whose projects often involve virtual reality and cyberspace technologies. He was founder/ director of the Foundation for Arts, Sciences, and Technology in Portugal. He composed several works for the Cunningham Dance Company, including Gravitational Sounds (1991) for Trackers (1991), the first dance Cunningham developed in part with the use of an early model of the computer software Life Forms (later Dance Forms). 1109. Fourteen (1990) for chamber ensemble, Cage’s only work including a part for bowed piano. It was commissioned by the Zürcher Oberland for Werner Bärtschi and René Müller and first performed in Zurich on May 12, 1990.

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To Walter Zimmermann May 18, 1990 | 101 W. 18 St., New York Stefan Schädler’s letter and your note came. Please don’t make a long series of concerts. I am just beginning to write music in the way that I want it to be heard. Your plan would involve orchestra, and they are very expensive, do not listen, and cannot hear. (Bertini, etc., are not necessary in my new music.) If you want to play for my 80th birthday, play only works in the new series which are identifiable by the titles: One, One2, One3, Two, Two2, Three, Four, Five, Seven (I will now write Seven2), Fourteen, Twenty-three, 1O1 (after ninety-nine title goes arabic).1110 It would not be a challenge nor would it be difficult. I would write a new piece for you: perhaps 80, who knows. Your music has been very important for me and that of James Tenney and Pauline Oliveros.1111

To Ulrich Moscopp May 25, 1990 | 101 W. 18 St., New York Now 4'33" has become One3 = 4'33" (0'00") + T. It means silence is put together with doing something that is the whole or partial fulfillment of an obligation to others (0'00") + “you must remember there is an inner clock” (a remark to me by Sofia Gubaidulina in Leningrad at the 3rd International Festival of Contemporary Music): I go on the stage and the space in the auditorium is brought to the edge of feedback. Then I leave the stage and sit in the audience for an unmeasured length of time. Then I return to the stage + the feedback level is reduced to normal. All of it, this, and “art” too, is a matter of placing attention. Give me an idea of what you’re doing (as a painter).

1110. All works classified as Cage’s “number” pieces, composed between 1987 and 1992. Cage’s 1O1 would be commissioned and premiered by Seiji Ozawa and the Boston Symphony Orchestra (Boston, April 6–8, 1989), dedicated to the BSO in Ozawa’s honor. 1111. Pauline Oliveros (b. 1932), American composer and accordionist, central figure in the development of experimental and postwar electronic art music and a founding member of the San Francisco Tape Music Center in the 1960s. She developed the term “deep listening” in the 1980s, later applied to her group the Deep Listening Band as well as the Deep Listening program of her Deep Listening Institute, Ltd. In 2012 she would receive the John Cage Award from the Foundation for Contemporary Arts.

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To Chris Shultis1112 August 7, 1990 | 101 W. 18 St., New York I agree with you about Levinson.1113 1) If your first toss is 33, it would mean 3" for the first section; if then 49, 4" for the second section, leaving 1" for the 3rd and last section. I don’t see it as a two-step operation. 2) 9 instruments, not ten, since the 10th is reserved for the last section. 3) Yes. If you or Allen Otte1114 writes an article re all of this, please include a facsimile pg. showing how the score was made (so that it is not easy to understand). This doesn’t mean that you shouldn’t clarify it.

To Dick and Betty Winslow November 11, 1990 | 101 W. 18 St., New York What a great birthday surprise party! And didn’t one of the “kids” come from Japan? Glory be! I’m going to a chiropractor1115 too, but she’s large and black, and she helps me very much (twice a week) + an acupuncturist and herbalist1116 who also helps: stiff neck, sciatica (lower discs disintegrating), returning eczema.* Though I don’t move around very well, I think I’m healthier for the most part. I’m actually finishing the Freeman Etudes for solo violin, 32 altogether. I began them 12 yrs. ago, put them aside after 16 and then picked them up again. 17 + 18 are clearly impossible, but Irvine Arditti played 17 and will continue playing them. I employed a musicologist1117 to study how I wrote 1–16 + then I just follow the rules. I’ll be finished this month except for proof-reading. (*on the shins) 1112. Chris Shultis (b. 1957), American percussionist and composer, from 1995 to 2011 on faculty at the University of New Mexico. He published Silencing the Sounded Self: John Cage and the American Experimental Tradition (Hanover, NH: University Press of New England, 1998). 1113. Paul Levinson, Mind at Large: Knowing in the Technological Age (Bingley, UK: Jai Press, 1988). 1114. Allen Otte, percussionist and teacher, co-founder of the Blackearth Percussion Group (1972) and the Percussion Group Cincinnati (1979). Shultis and Otte had planned to co-author an article for Percussive Notes about Cage’s Child of Tree and Branches, which did not happen. 1115. Loretta Mears, New York–based chiropractor and clinical licensed nutritionist who treated Cage throughout the 1980s and ’90s. She also played a therapeutic role in Cunningham’s life. 1116. Elaine Stern, New York–based licensed acupuncturist, nutritionist, and herbalist who treated Cage in the last few years of his life. 1117. James Pritchett (see note 1089).

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To Nobby and Beth Brown November 22, 1990 | 101 W. 18 St., New York My love and best wishes to you both (I heard from Dick W[inslow] that Beth suffered a heart attack). I hope to hear of strong recovery. More and more of my time is taken up with trying to be well without pain, etc. I have no news about the lecture series (the other directors are not enthusiastic, about your lecture, yes, but not about the others I proposed). One actually was to be by Andrew Weil,1118 author of Natural Health and Natural Medicine. Another was to be by David Tudor. It is now unfortunately at a standstill. There is much to tell you (I have been working closely with Paul Zukofsky and have read your text, largely about his father’s work in Tikkun.1119) The Freeman Etudes are now finished after 12–13 years of work. Written at a time when my spirit is elsewhere.

To Diane Hill 1120 February 4, 1991 | 101 W. 18 St., New York Five or six years after I had stopped smoking and had moved, I dreamed I was back in the old place and had found a cigarette in a package in a pocket, smoked it and found it so pleasant that I looked everywhere for another, but unsuccessfully. It was night. I got dressed and went out to the shop where I used to get my cigarettes (I smoked 3½ packs a day) and noticed there weren’t any. I said, Where are the cigarettes? The man said, We don’t sell them anymore. I remembered a restaurant nearby that had a machine. I went over there and couldn’t find it. When I asked the man at the bar where the machine was, he said, We got rid of it.

1118. Andrew Thomas Weil (b. 1942), American physician and naturopath who taught and wrote extensively on holistic health. His field of integrative medicine (combining allopathic and naturopathic tools), as well as his emphasis on diet, greatly interested Cage. 1119. Tikkun Magazine, a bimonthly Jewish left-progressive critique of politics, culture, and society, founded in 1986 by Rabbi Michael Lerner and his wife, Nan Fink Gefen. 1120. Diane Hill, one of two California-based writer/editors (with Karen Kenyon) compiling an anthology of dreams tentatively titled Bridge of Dreams: Night Visions of Creative Individuals.

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To Natsuki Emura1121 April 2, 1991 | 101 W. 18 St., New York You play very well. The preparations are not always good. In Tossed, etc., we do not hear the high sounds that come toward the end of the piece. In Root there should be greater contact between the long bolt + the soundboard of the piano so that it is shocking. The new tones near the end of the string should be in contact with the construction of the piano. The preparation for Spontaneous Earth is not good. It is too “jangly” (buzzes + rattles). Do something to make the tones more constant. A Room is all right. I didn’t hear Totem. With your preparations you are free to make your own instrument. Try to make one which you enjoy. The pieces are short because they were accompaniments for dances which were short. Best wishes for you in your work.

To Daniel Charles April 14, 1991 | 101 W. 18 St., New York I have sent a Lullaby to Redolfi,1122 it is an alteration of the Vexations of Satie. I am using an extended form of this for Merce’s next dance which will be performed in Zurich (called Beach Birds). My title is Four3.1123 Here is a mesostic for you on the name of Meister Eckhart. meister duchamp or living on water to reach the iMpossibility in thE presence 1121. Natsuki Emura, Japanese composer and pianist. The early works referenced in this letter are fully titled Tossed as It Is Untroubled (1943), Spontaneous Earth (1944), Root of an Unfocus (1944), and Totem Ancestor (1942). 1122. Michel Redolfi (b. 1951), French composer, from 1986 director of the Centre International de Recherche Musicale (CIRM) in Nice, France. In 1991 the CIRM released a compilation CD titled Berceuse (Livre/Laser ll 1101) containing lullabies by more than twenty composers. Cage’s contribution, Lullaby, was a three-minute version of his “Extended Lullaby” (see following note). 1123. Cunningham’s Beach Birds (1991), with Cage’s Four3 (1991), scored for four performers on one or two pianos, rainsticks, violin or oscillator, and silence, with stage decor and costumes by Marsha Skinner. In this piece, the players perform four actions: 1) silence; 2) the sound of a rainstick; 3) a sine wave; 4) excerpts from Cage’s “Extended Lullaby,” a set of twelve chance-determined variations on the cantus firmus and counterpoint of Vexations by Erik Satie. The work premiered in Zurich on June 20, 1991, a commission from the Junifestwochen “James Joyce/John Cage.”

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of two lIke objectS To makE the memoRy imprint follow your principlEs and keep straight on you will Come to the right place Keep emptiness in view not wondering am I rigHt or doing something wrong thAt is the way to foRge ahead wiThout a qualm

To Nancy Gilden April 19, 1991 | 101 W. 18 St., New York I changed my diet about 20 years ago because I had been suffering so much from arthritis. It was painful to walk, difficult (needed 2 hands to raise a glass to drink) to lift anything; I was taking 12 aspirin each day for 15 years. Finally the exploding pills.1124 Fortunately, I changed my diet to the macrobiotic one, and, since all pain disappeared in a week, I have become careful about maintaining the diet and quick to tell others of my good fortune. I am enclosing a short text giving recipes.1125

1124. A mysterious reference, perhaps alluding to something akin to antacid tablets that actively (and audibly) dissolve into a fizzy carbonation in water. 1125. Likely a copy of the piece Cage contributed to Aerial #6/7 (Washington, D.C.: Edge Books, 1991), edited by Rod Smith, about macrobiotic cooking, which included recipes. Its cover sports a reproduction of Cage’s visual work Fire No. 13 (1985).

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To Ellsworth Snyder1126 April 29, 1991 | 101 W. 18 St., New York I have had an idea about One5. I think it should be played hermetically (which I think you could do superlatively). That is, it should be basically inaudible. So that the actually inaudible, the silences, would be thick with sounds that are not heard or the sounds that are touched on the tips that project from a sea of silence. So that people listening would not be sure whether they were hearing anything. You would have to listen very hard. And fail to hear (the music).

To Malcolm Goldstein July 8, 1991 | 101 W. 18 St., New York All 23 parts need to be played.1127 The piece is to be conducted as 5-7-5. It is up to the conductor how slow or fast each haiku goes. You should try to make the picture “sound.” Ryoanji: The orchestral version has to have 20 or whatever total number it is. They don’t overwhelm anything because of the spaces between attacks. I prefer this piece with one soloist and prerecorded tapes, either with orchestra or solo percussionist. If it is done with several soloists, I think it is best to omit the precorded tapes.

1126. Ellsworth Snyder (1931–2005), American abstract painter, pianist, and scholar. He wrote what may be the first doctoral dissertation on John Cage (University of Wisconsin, Madison, 1970) and later published two interviews with him (1985; 1990). Cage’s One5, among the late “number” pieces, is dedicated to Snyder and was first performed by him on April 6, 1991, at the First Unitarian Society Meeting House on the University of Wisconsin, Madison campus. Cage attended, where he also saw the exhibition John Cage: Works on Paper, 1982–1990 at the Elvehjem Museum of Art. 1127. Cage refers to his Score (40 Drawings by Thoreau) and 23 Parts (1974), a work comprising fragmented drawings by Thoreau, superimposed on twelve lines, each divided into 5, 7, 5 segments, the structure of Japanese haiku poetry. A tape recording of the dawn at Stony Point, New York, made by David Behrman, is played at the end of any performance. As to Ryoanji, Goldstein was preparing its performance for the John Cage Anarchic Harmony Festival ’92, in celebration of Cage’s eightieth birthday. It was performed in Frankfurt, in Cage’s absence, on September 19, 1992.

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To Patrick Nguyen1128 November 23, 1991 | 101 W. 18 St., New York I no longer perform. Sometimes I recite. I am now 79, going on 80. I am most interested in music that doesn’t say anything. I am a college drop-out (as a sophomore). I studied privately with Richard Buhlig, Henry Cowell, Adolph Weiss, and Arnold Schoenberg. I do not like records. I do not listen to them. I do not stop people from having them (of my music). I am about to go to Stuttgart in Germany to hear a work for cello and orchestra which I wrote this past year: One8 (the cello part; the title means that it is the 8th piece in recent years for one instrument) and 108 (the number of people in the orchestra).1129 It has no conductor. I want my music to suggest that society could get along without government.

[Unaddressed]1130 January 1, 1992 | Location not indicated To You, Whomever You Are, Even though I am opposed to institutions and to government, I belong to the American Music Center1131 and I pay my taxes, though Henry David Thoreau, whose work I otherwise follow, didn’t. I mean he didn’t pay his taxes and was put in jail because of that. What are you doing in there?, Emerson asked him. His reply: What are you doing out there? My reply’s I’m out here because among other things I’m writing music, and I have less time now than I used to have. 1128. Patrick Nguyen, a sixth grade student at Beverley Hills Intermediate School in Houston, Texas. 1129. One8 for solo cello and the orchestral 108, both from 1991, two late “number” pieces that may be performed together or separately. They were first performed together in Stuttgart, Germany, on November 30, 1991, with the German cellist, composer, and visual artist Michael Bach (b. 1958), the work’s dedicatee, performing with a “curved bow” of his own invention, and the Radio-Sinfonieorchester Stuttgart. 1130. This is a fundraising letter written by Cage on behalf of the American Music Center. Reportedly, it was their most successful campaign. 1131. The American Music Center, a nonprofit organization created in 1939 to promote the creation of new American music. Its founding members included Copland, Howard Hanson, and, Luening. In 2011 it would merge with Meet the Composer to form New Music USA.

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When I was asked by Joan La Barbara1132 to help the American Music Center in their membership drive, I automatically said I would. I love her singing, her music, her way of living and working in the world, the society. Since about to be eighty I have many commissions, the Center sent me a draft of the letter I should sign to save me time, but I couldn’t sign it. This takes its place. I am, like you whoever you are, living in a complex time. My life is one inconsistency after another. I do some things to save my skin, others because they give me pleasure. Still others because they seem right or good. I write music when I am not doing any such things. That is why I use chance operations. I am at the point of not thinking and not feeling. All I write is sounds. But now I am not writing music. I am writing what I told Joan I would write: To Whom It May Be, asking you to join the American Music Center for no reason at all. If you need a reason call up the Center (212) 366-5260. They’ll give you one.

To Julie Lazar1133 February 29, 1992 | 101 W. 18 St., New York Thank you for your fax of Feb. 25. I am willing to make many of the loans you suggest, but the encaustic of Jasper Johns is not mine. It belongs to Merce + we missed it very much when it was for a year in England. We do not want to live 3 or ? yrs. without it. I have called Jap + toward the end of March, he will let me know what he would loan us to take its place. Also the cross-hatching is one of an edition (not an original). See you soon. I am anxious to have 2 more works by Fanny Schöning1134 + 2 more by Irwin K.1135 etc. 1132. Joan La Barbara (b. 1947), American vocalist and composer, known for her extended vocal techniques. She performed many of Cage’s works throughout her lengthy career; on September 28 and 29, 2010, she would perform Cage’s Aria (1959) at performances of Cunningham’s XOVER (2007), with stage decor and costumes by Rauschenberg, at New York City Center’s Fall for Dance Festival. 1133. Julie Lazar (b. 1951), founding curator of the Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles, the originating institution for Cage’s Rolywholyover: A Circus for Museum (September 12–November 28, 1993); later seen in Houston (Menil Collection), New York (Guggenheim Museum Soho), Japan (Mito Art Tower), and Philadelphia (Philadelphia Museum of Art). 1134. Fanny Schöning (b. 1941), German artist, wife of Klaus Schöning (see note 929). 1135. Irwin Kremen (b. 1925), American artist and director of Duke University’s graduate program in clinical psychology. Kremen was a close friend to Cage and the dedicatee of his 4'33".

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To Richard Churches1136 March 20, 1992 | 101 W. 18 St., New York All my life I have spent looking for alternatives to harmony. Now I have the experience that sounds are harmonious + that it was only the legal aspect of harmony for which I had no feeling. I therefore speak of anarchic harmony. Giving no rules or thought to it I find I am writing I think the most interestingto-listen-to music I have ever written.

To Thomas J. Kort April 4, 1992 | 101 W. 18 St., New York Your feeling that my compositions are “me” and me alone is very curious. They are sounds. I am not a collection of sounds. Furthermore they (the sounds) are different at each performance.

To Siegfried Unseld + Ulla1137 April 10, 1992 | 101 West 18 St., New York I hope all goes well with you both. I will be coming to Frankfurt late in August of this year and some of September. There is a festival of my work because I will be very old! 80. I hope you will let me stay in your author’s house as before. And that we can play chess. I don’t know whether you know the name of David Tudor, who was a great pianist but is now also a great live electronic composer. Anyway, I introduced him to Dieter Bialon, the Dr. I favor, + David would like to come to Frankfurt in the latter part of May to be frequently with Bialon. Would it be possible for him to stay in the house? (He doesn’t play chess.) Please let me know + please tell me how you both are.

1136. Richard Churches (b. 1966), Welsh composer and baritone. 1137. Siegfried Unseld (1924–2002), head of the German publishing house Suhrkamp Verlag, considered one of Germany’s leading literary publishers, and Ulla Berkéwicz (b. 1948), German actress and publisher, Unseld’s second wife.

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To Hans Zender1138 April 12, 1992 | 101 W. 18 St., New York Having heard of your proposal to perform Apartment House 1776 without Renga, hoping to change your mind, I am writing to explain the meaning of the two works together. They were composed in 1976 to celebrate the American bicentennial. Renga represents the earth, the land. It requires the orchestra and conductor to make Thoreau’s rough sketches from nature audible. Renga is a Japanese poetic form needing many poets to give it shape. This suggests, I think, a land that is part of the whole Earth, both the East and the West, not just the USA. Apartment House 1776 represents the people who lived here 200 years ago: their hymns (the quartets) their struggles (the drum solos), their racial and spiritual differences (the Christians, black and white, the Sephardic Jews, the Indians). This is expressed by a mixture of musics, instrumental and vocal, none of it orchestral, all of it small in relation to Earth which is its home. Very few of my orchestral works need a conductor except as a coach. But Renga does. The conductor’s score is a series of complete sketches. The instrumental parts are just parts, none of them complete, of the score. The conductor sees where the sounds are + where there are none. I hope you will let us hear this work again, this time in September, in Frankfurt.

To Hans Marklund 1139 May 2, 1992 | 101 W. 18 St., New York Thank you for sending me part I of the photoflora about Corimarius.1140 Congratulations for your work and those with whom you work. I am sending you a book that includes a text of mine called Mushrooms et variationes and which has 1138. (Johannes) Hans (Wolfgang) Zender (b. 1936), German conductor and composer. Zender took Cage’s appeal seriously, and the two works were performed together as part of the John Cage Anarchic Harmony Festival ’92, which Cage did not live to attend. The performance took place on what would have been Cage’s eightieth birthday, September 5, 1992, in the Alte Oper, Grosser Saal, performed by the Radio-Sinfonie Orchester Saarbrucken, under Zender’s baton. Two of the original vocalists for Apartment House 1776, Helen Schneyer and Nico Castel, joined the cast. 1139. Hans (Gilbert) Marklund (b. 1958), Swedish choreographer and director. 1140. Cage likely means Cortinarius, a genus of mushrooms that contains some two thousand different species worldwide.

586  |  1 9 8 3 – 1 9 9 2

interviews with me etc. that may tell you (answer your questions) about my relationship to my work and to the fungi. I shall spread the information you sent about your work to mycology friends in this country. Thank you again for your work.

To Exact Change1141 May 19, 1992 | 101 W. 18 St., New York Sometime ago you asked whether there was some text of mine that I wanted to have published. I have an idea now: to print as a pamphlet or small book my “Composition in Retrospect” which is in X together with its recent additions which are in the source texts of I–VI, but not in mesostic form. Would you want to do this? I find it would be useful because at present I am obliged to Xerox, etc., in order to prepare copies of the complete text.

To Jorge Helft/Fund. San Telmo1142 May 31, 1992 | 101 West 18 St., New York Thank you for your call and now for your letter. I am very sorry not to be able to be with you. Please accept and transmit my best wishes particularly to Gerardo Gandini1143 but all those others too who have organized or will perform and/or listen. Here in N.Y. there will be Summergarden programs of my recent works each weekend of July and August organized by the violinist and conductor Paul Zukofsky,1144 and then there are programs from Aug. 28–Sept. 20 1141. Exact Change, an independent book publishing entity formed in 1990 by Damon Krukowski and Naomi Yang, specializing in the republication of nineteenth- and twentieth-century avant-garde works. Their publication of Cage’s revised “Composition in Retrospect” (with “Themes and Variations”) came out after Cage’s death, in 1993. 1142. Jorge Helft, founder of the Fundacion San Telmo in Buenos Aires, a private institution that promotes the culture of Argentina. In its holdings is the collection of Jorge Luis Borges. 1143. Gerardo Gandini (1936-2013), Argentine pianist, composer, and music director of the Buenos Aires Philharmonic and the Teatro Colón, where he founded the Opera and Ballet Experimentation Center. 1144. Cage’s recent music was featured at the Museum of Modern Art’s Summergarden series from July 3 to August 29, 1992, in the main by young artists and graduates from the Juilliard School, under the artistic direction of Paul Zukofsky (see note 866). Highlights included Cage’s own reading

1 9 8 3 – 1 9 9 2  |  587

in Frankfurt in Germany. In 2 weeks I go to Bratislava, Florence, Perugia, Innsbruck, and Paris, particularly for meetings of musicologists in Perugia.1145 I will visit Teeny Duchamp, the widow of Marcel, who lived some of his life in your city.1146 Hoping someday to be with you (in the garden of the Museum of Mod. Art).

To K. Eric Drexler1147 June 1, 1992 | 101 W. 18 St., New York I am very grateful for your work and your book Unbounding the Future. Would you keep me informed on developments in nanotechnology? Thank you for what you’re doing.

To Per Brevig1148 June 14, 1992 | 101 West 18 St., New York Thank you for writing and suggesting that I might be a speaker or panelist at the Grieg celebration in 1993. I think it is better if I don’t do that. It is a long of Part 4 from Empty Words (July 10–11), Europera 5 (July 31–Aug. 1, Aug. 14–15, Aug. 21–22), and One8 (July 17–18). The final weekend presented two realizations of Cage’s Ten (1991) and But what about the noise of crumpling paper which he used to do in order to paint the series of “papiers froisses” or tearing up paper to make “papiers dechires?” Arp was stimulated by water (sea, lake, and flowing waters like rivers), forests for percussion ensemble (1985). 1145. This would be Cage’s last trip abroad, in the company of Laura Kuhn, the primary purpose to attend John Cage e l’Europa, a conference given in Perugia June 19–27, 1992, under the auspices of the Quaderni Perugini di Musica Contemporanea. Among performances of Cage’s works were Two3 (Mayumi Miyata and Isao Nakamura), Etudes Australes (Marianne Schroeder), Seven2 (Ensemble of the Quaderni Perugini di Musica Contemporanea), and One8 (Michael Bach). Cage also gave the first and only performance of his One12 for solo voice (1992), part of “Without Notations,” works collected and edited by the Hungarian musicologist and musician András Wilheim (b.  1949), essentially an improvisation on a score comprising only numbers. 1146. Buenos Aires, Argentina. 1147. K(im) Eric Drexler (b. 1955), American engineer who rose to prominence through his work on the potentials of molecular nanotechnology. Cage was deeply inspired by Drexler’s Engines of Creation (New York: Bantam Doubleday, 1986), Unbounding the Future: The Nanotechnology Revolution (New York: William Morrow, 1991), and Nanosystems: Molecular Machinery Manufacturing and Computation (Hoboken, NJ: Wiley, 1992). 1148. Per Brevig (b. 1938), Norwegian-born American conductor and trombonist; in 1991 founding

588  |  1 9 8 3 – 1 9 9 2

time since my youth so that my love of Grieg is nostalgic, not strong as it was for me long ago.

To Robert Aitken1149 July 4, 1992 | 101 West 18 St., New York So good to hear from you. I don’t know what to suggest unless it be that I write a new piece for you. Circumstances alone have kept me from doing that in recent years. Now it seems possible. Please send me specifications (time-length) (may I write microtonally, i.e., 6 degrees within each ½ step:

etc.).

To John Duffy/Meet the Composer1150 July 11, 1992 | 101 West 18 St., New York I am writing at the S.E.M. Ensemble’s request to support their request for a grant. It is quite amazing to me to know that this performance of Atlas Eclipticalis will actually take place. All the instruments (86)! A two-hour performance! I am sure that any help you can arrange that they will have will be received gratefully and fully used and very well. I have heard with pleasure recording president of the Edvard Grieg Society in Orangeburg, New York. He invited Cage to serve as a panelist at a symposium at Teachers College, Columbia University as part of the celebration of Grieg’s 150th anniversary in 1993. As a youth, Cage had been enamored with the piano works of Grieg and had contemplated devoting his life to their study. 1149. Robert (Morris) Aitken (b. 1939), Canadian composer and flutist. He taught at the University of Toronto (1960–1975), the Shawnigan Summer School of the Arts (1972–1982), and the Staatliche Hochschule für Musik in Freiburg (1988–2004). From 1985 to 1989 he was director of advanced studies in music at the Banff Centre in Alberta, Canada. 1150. John Duffy (b. 1926), American composer and arts administrator, founder and long-time president of Meet the Composer, an organization that worked to advance American music.

1 9 8 3 – 1 9 9 2  |  589

sessions by smaller members. I therefore return to my being amazed that 86 are going to play together on Oct. 29th.

To Armin Köhler/SWF Musik I/Neue Musik1151 July 12, 1992 | 101 W. 18 St., New York Thank you for your letter. And for your interest in commissioning a new piece. I have been in Europe and also performing here; please forgive my tardy reply. I hope you will reconsider your thematic concept “Music without sauce” to find some concept less culinary. Lately Madison Ave., wishing to sell more cds, provides recipes and menus to go with whatever is offered for auditory consumption. Unfortunately, it is working to their advantage. In the meantime, know that I am glad you want me to come again to Donaueschingen. If you insist on food as your theme rather than music, know too that I follow my form of the macrobiotic diet: beans ’n’ rice without dairy products. P.S. Could it be a string quartet played by Arditti?

To Jakob Ullmann1152 July 26, 1992 | 101 W. 18 St., New York I am sorry not to have written sooner in response to your last letter. I will bring the contracts and will see you in Frankfurt. I am not clear about what I should write that will be useful about the East. My impression is that the spirit in the East is just as alive as it is in the West. But that the economic circumstances in the East are not as fortunate as they are in the West. I also think that the economic circumstances of the future everywhere, both in the East and West, will be better than they are now. I can write about that but is it useful to you and others? I have very little experience of the East. The spirit is in you, in Sofia Gubaidulina, in Milan Adamciak in Bratislava, etc., in Hungary, etc. We will be together in Frankfurt. 1151. Armin Köhler (1952–2014), German musicologist, festival director, and radio producer. From 1992 he was head of the Donaueschingen Music Days, which, founded in 1921 under royal patronage, is one of the oldest and most established festivals of new music in the world. 1152. Jakob Ullmann (b. 1958), German composer and teacher.

590  |  1 9 8 3 – 1 9 9 2

To Martine Joste1153 July 28, 1992 | 101 W. 18 St., New York Two4 1154 was written for violin + piano /or sho.1155 It has been played both ways. If I were to write for sheng1156 I would write for its notes. If Picard1157 wants to play it with sheng, he may make an arrangement of his own. The pitches at the octave are not important. Make an arrangement that fits the instrument which I do not know. My new piece for you and Ami1158 includes the “Extended Lullaby” of Four3. It would seem better not to use Four3 for this reason. I called Peters to have the missing time brackets sent to you but Don Gillespie is not there for the next week. I will then ask him to send the missing material though I suggest your not using it at this time. One7 is now a part of Four6 (piano, voice, percussion, voice), which I suggest you use instead of One7.1159 I will be with you in Dec. but don’t expect me in ’93. I will explain. [at the top of the letter] By now you should have received Two6. If not, please telephone (212) 989-7132. I am having Four3 (brackets) and Four6 sent to you

1153. Martine Joste, French pianist specializing in contemporary music. 1154. Cage’s Two4 (1991) for violin and piano or shō, a “number” piece notated in flexible time brackets. The shō part makes use of the instrument’s full range of seventeen pitches, while the violin part employs microtones. It was first performed in Washington, D.C., on November 15, 1991. 1155. The shō, a Japanese free reed musical instrument, modeled on the Chinese sheng (see below), but generally smaller in size. 1156. The sheng, a Chinese free reed instrument. 1157. François Picard, French ethnomusicologist and musician, from 1998 a professor at the Université Paris-Sorbonne. 1158. Cage’s Two6 (1992), for violin and piano, one of his last compositions, written for Joste and violinist Ami Flammer, to whom the piece is dedicated. Cage did not live to hear their first performance, which took place on December 5, 1992, at the Musée des Beaux-Arts in Orleans, France. 1159. Cage’s One7 is derived from his Four6, and is the title given when a performer chooses to play only the first part of Four6. As in any performance of Four6 as a whole, in One7 the performer chooses twelve different sounds and then plays them within flexible time brackets.

1 9 8 3 – 1 9 9 2  |  591

aPPendix Cage’s Correspondents, with Sources of His Letters All of the letters in the present edition have been drawn from the John Cage Correspondence Collection at Northwestern University, with the following exceptions: ajemian, maro George Avakian and Anahid Ajemian Papers, Music Division, The New York Public Library albers, josePh (and anni) Black Mountain College Collection, North Carolina State Archives allison, kirk As reproduced in Grand Street, no. 45 (1993): 116 antheil, george George Antheil Papers, Rare Book & Manuscript Library, Columbia University berberian, cathy Collection Cristina Berio becker, Wolfgang John Cage Trust berio, lUciano, cathy, and cristina Collection Cristina Berio bernlef, j John Cage Trust beUys, josePh Stiftung Museum Schloss Moyland boUlez, Pierre Letters dated December 18, 1950, and May 22, 1951, Jean-Jacques Nattiez, ed., Robert Piencikowski, trans, The Boulez-Cage Correspondence, New York: Cambridge University Press (1995) broWn, carolyn Collection Carolyn Brown broWn, earle Collection Carolyn Brown broWn, merton American Antiquarian Society casPari, c. As reproduced in Grand Street, no. 45 (1993): 104 cavista, mario John Cage Trust charles, christoPhe Collection Christophe Charles charles, daniel Estate of Daniel Charles, except letter dated November 3, 1981, Northwestern University Library chocrón, isaac Collection Isaac Chocron coffin, Patricia John Cage Trust cohen, selma jeanne John Cage Trust coolidge, elizabeth sPragUe Elizabeth Sprague Coolidge Foundation Collection, Music Division, Library of Congress coWell, henry (and sydney) Henry Cowell Papers, Music Division, New York Public Library cross, loWell Collection Lowell Cross, except letter dated May 22, 1973, Northwestern University Library cUmmings, e. e. Houghton Library, Harvard University

593

cUnningham, merce Collection Laura Kuhn, except letter dated January 4, 1967, Northwestern University Library denney, alice Collection Julie Martin/Experiments in Art and Technology Archives de Witte, j. W. John Cage Trust dimas de melo Pimenta, emanUel and lUciana Letter dated March 8, 1990, John Cage Trust; letter dated February 29, 1992, as reproduced in Emanuel Dimas de Melo Pimenta, John Cage: The Silence of Music (Milan: Silvana Editoriale, 2003), 165 dreier, katherine soPhie (and josePh albers) Black Mountain College Collection, North Carolina State Archives dreman, sUsan John Cage Trust dUchamP, marcel (and alexina [teeny]) Collection Jacqueline Monnier dUchamP, alexina (teeny) Collection Jacqueline Monnier, except letter dated October 23, 1981, Northwestern University Library esPinosa, gUillermo Collection Don Gillespie feldman, morton (and cynthia) Letters dated March 15, 1954, ca. May 30, 1956, and ca. 1957, Paul Sacher Foundation fisher, thomas hart Ruth Page Collection, Music Division, Library of Congress fong WUst, moniqUe Collection Monique Fong, except letter dated March 25, 1969, Northwestern University Library freeman, betty Betty Freeman Papers, Mandeville Special Collections, University of California, San Diego fUller, bUckminster R. Buckminster Fuller Collection, Special Collections and University Archives, Stanford University fUrst-heidtmann, monika As reproduced in Grand Street, no. 45 (1993): 111 glanville-hicks, Peggy Peggy Glanville-Hicks Papers, Mitchell Library, State University of New South Wales, Sydney gUerini, giamPaolo As reproduced in Grand Street, no. 45 (1993): 115 hamPel, gUnther John Cage Trust harrison, loU Lou Harrison Papers, Special Collections and Archives, University of California, Santa Cruz, except letter dated May 24, 1987, Northwestern University Library heliker, jack, and merton broWn American Antiquarian Society herr jaWlinski (alexej von jaWlensky) As reproduced in Kornelia von Berswordt-Wallrabe, John Cage: Arbeiten auf Papier (Wiesbaden: Kulturamt der Landeshauptstadt, 1992), 6 higgins, alison Letter dated February 10, 1967, as reproduced in Wolf Vostell and Dick Higgins, Fantastic Architecture (New York: Something Else Press, 1970) “jerry and liz and family” (hiller, lejaren) Letter dated Christmas 1967, Lejaren Hiller Papers, Music Library, University at Buffalo hinrichsen, Walter (and evelyn) Collection Don Gillespie ives, charles Charles Ives Papers, Irving S. Gilmore Music Library, Yale University

594  |  Appendix

ives, mrs. charles Irving S. Gilmore Music Library, Yale University joWett, nicolas Collection Nicolas Jowett kamarck, edWard l John Cage Trust kennedy, john l John Cage Trust kerr, marian j John Cage Trust klein, kenneth Carnegie Hall Archives klosty, james Collection Carolyn Brown kort, thomas j Letter dated January 26, 1983, John Cage Trust kosUgi, takehisa Archives of the Cunningham Dance Foundation krUmm, PhiliP Collection Philip Krumm lang, PaUl henry As reproduced in Richard Kostelanetz, ed., John Cage: Documentary Monographs in Modern Art (New York: Praeger Publishers, 1970), 116–118 larsen, jack lenor John Cage Papers, Special Collections and Archives, Wesleyan University lazar, jUlie Collection Julie Lazar leach, francis As reproduced at innermusicproductions.com/cage.htm lederman, minna (and mell daniel) Minna Lederman Daniel Collection, Music Division, Library of Congress liPsett, arthUr Archives of the Cinémathèque Québécoise, Montreal loWens, irving Irving Lowens Papers, Special Collection in Performing Arts, University of California, San Diego lUcier, alvin Alvin Lucier Papers, Music Division, The New York Public Library, except letter dated December 3, 1979, Northwestern University Library macdoUgall, laUrie John Cage Trust mac loW, jackson Letter dated February 9, 1975, as reproduced in Barry Alpert, ed., Vort: Twenty-first Century Pre-Views 3, no. 2 (Silver Spring, MD: Vort Works Ink, 1975) malcolm, donald John Cage Trust matter, herbert Herbert Matter Papers, Department of Special Collections, Stanford University mclaren, norman Archives of the National Film Board of Canada metzger, heinz-klaUs, rainer riehn, gary bertini, and UrsUla markoff As reproduced in Grand Street, no. 45 (1993): 126 meyer-denkmann, gertrUd John Cage Trust mikhashoff, yvar Yvar Mikhashoff Papers, Music Library, University at Buffalo moorman, charlotte John Cage Trust morton, laWrence Lawrence Morton Papers, Special Collections, Charles E. Young Research Library, University of California, Los Angeles nene (james graham-lújan) Special Collections and Archives, University of California, San Diego neW york mycological society Library of the University of California, Santa Cruz

Appendix  |  595

“noctUrnal telePhonist” (david tUdor) David Tudor Papers, Getty Research Institute “no addressee” Letter dated ca. late 1952, Ransom Archives, University of Texas; letter dated September 9, 1961, John Cage Trust nono, lUigi (and nUria) Archivio Luigi Nono oliveira, jocy de Collection Jocy de Oliveira olson, charles Charles Olson Archives, Thomas J. Dodd Research Center, University of Connecticut otte, hans John Cage Trust ozaWa, seiji John Cage Trust Page, rUth Ruth Page Collection, Music Division, Library of Congress PetschUll, dr. johannes Collection Don Gillespie richards, m.c. Mary Caroline Richards Papers, Special Collections, Getty Research Institute, except letter dated December 28, 1980, Northwestern University Library riedl, josef anton Letter dated January 2, 1963, John Cage Trust rigg, jean Archives of the Cunningham Dance Foundation ross, nancy Wilson Nancy Wilson Ross Papers, Harry Ransom Center, University of Texas at Austen schafer, r. mUrray John Cage Trust schindler, PaUline Special (Los Angeles) Collections, Getty Research Institute schnitzer, robert Irving S. Gilmore Music Library, Yale University shaW, mrs. rUe The Newberry Library smercheck, eva John Cage Trust smith, alexander h. Library of the University of California, Santa Cruz smith, cecil Wesleyan University Library solomon, alan John Cage Trust steinecke, Wolfgang Archives of the Internationales Musikinstitut Darmstadt (IMD) stojanović, josiP John Cage Trust ströbel, dr. heinrich Südwestrundfunk Archive, Baden-Baden stUckenschmidt, hans heinz John Cage Trust takahashi, yasUnari As reproduced in Rolywholyover (Los Angeles: Museum of Contemporary Art and New York: Rizzoli International Publications, 1993) thomson, virgil Virgil Thomson Papers, Irving S. Gilmore Music Library, Yale University, except letter dated January 18, 1968, Northwestern University Library tiravanti, lanfranco bombelli Museu d’Art Contemporani, Barcelona to Whom it may concern John Cage Trust tUdor, david (and m.c. richards) David Tudor Papers, Getty Research Institute, except letters dated October 17, 1967, and March 23, 1984, Northwestern University Library

596  |  Appendix

tWombly, cy Letter dated April 22, 1979 as reproduced in Grand Street, no. 45 (1993): 112 varèse, edgard Paul Sacher Foundation Weiss, adolPh (and mrs. adolPh Weiss) University of Southern California Library, except letters dated October 13, 1966 and January 10, 1967, Northwestern University Library Wiggen, knUt Collection Julie Martin/Experiments in Art and Technology Archives WigglesWorth, frank Frank Wigglesworth Papers, Music Division, New York Public Library Will (no last name given) John Cage Trust Williams, jan Jan Williams Papers, Music Library, University at Buffalo Winkfield, trevor John Cage Trust Wolf, daniel Wesleyan University Library Wolff, christian (and holly) Collection Christian Wolff, except letters dated April 30, 1980, and October 22, 1988, Northwestern University Library Wolff, helen Collection Christian Wolff yates, Peter (and francis) Peter Yates Papers, Special Collections and Archives, University of California, San Diego yoUng, la monte MELA Foundation zahn, michael As reproduced in John Cage, A Year from Monday (Middletown, CT: Wesleyan University Press, 1969), 37–40

Appendix  |  597

illUstr ation credits page i Letter from John Cage to Merce Cunningham (postmarked July 22, 1974/see transcription, pp. 70–72). Collection Laura Kuhn. iv–v Envelopes of piano preparations created by John Cage for performances of Sonatas and Interludes for Prepared Piano (1946–1948). Archives of the John Cage Trust. Photographer: Chad Kleitsch. x Letter from “Icebox” (John Cage) to Merce Cunningham (n.d.). Collection Laura Kuhn. 1 John Cage, manuscript from his two-piano arrangement (1947) of Erik Satie’s Socrate. John Cage Music Manuscript Collection, New York Public Library for the Performing Arts. 61–73 Snippets of letters (1943–1945) from John Cage to Merce Cunningham. Collection Laura Kuhn. 125 John Cage, instrumentation (and floor plan) for Water Walk (1959). John Cage Music Manuscript Collection, New York Public Library for the Performing Arts. 255 John Cage, transcription of Erik Satie’s Vexations (n.d.). Archives of the John Cage Trust. 409 John Cage, manuscript from James Joyce, Marcel Duchamp, Erik Satie: An Alphabet (1981–1982). Archives of the John Cage Trust. 519 John Cage, manuscript from Two6 (1992). John Cage Music Manuscript Collection, New York Public Library for the Performing Arts.

599

index Specific works will be found under the author’s/artist’s name, except for those of John Cage, which are listed as main entries. Works starting with numbers are alphabetized as if they were spelled out (so 0'00" is found in the z’s). Page numbers in italics indicate illustrated material. Page numbers in bold indicate specific letters. Abas String Quartet, 17, 21 Abel, Lionel, 98 Achron, Joseph, 13 Acoustical Society of America, 47 acrostics. See mesostic poetry acupuncture, 433, 461, 526, 578 Ad Lib (Cage; 1943), 53n78, 55n90, 56n92 Adam, Claus, 534 Adamciak, Milan, 590 Adams, Brook, and Charles A. Beard, The Law of Civilization and Decay (1943), 73 Adams, Stanley, 215n436 Addiss, Stephen, 502 Address (Cage; 1977), 465 Adler, Stella, 207 “Adolph Weiss: Reminiscences” (Cage), 350n660, 355n668, 356 Adorno, Theodor W., 205 African Americans: children taught by Cage as recreation counselor, 29–30; composers associating with Cage, 13, 27; as street musicians, 49, 60 AGMA (American Guild of Musical Artists), 296 Aitken, Robert, 589 Aix-en-Provence festival (1949), 105, 109, 110, 112, 114 Ajemian, Anahid (married name Avakian), 113n202, 115, 145, 153, 267 Ajemian, Maro: biography, 90n 151; Boulez and, 140, 191; copying by, 142; European tour plans (1952), 153; fees paid to, 190; haiku composed for, 145; letter to, August 20, 1949, 115–16, 593; in Paris

with Cage, 7, 90, 97–98, 107, 110, 114, 116, 117, 118, 119, 123; performances of Cage’s piano works by, 6, 7, 76, 87n 149, 90, 113n202, 115–16, 123, 143 Ajemian, Mrs. (mother of Maro and Anahid), 7, 117, 118 Akiyama, Kuniharu, 575 Albers, Anni Fleischmann, 79–80, 172, 593 Albers, Josef, 7, 79–80, 87, 121, 171n340, 417, 593, 594 Albert, Jonathan, 491 Alcazar, Mr., 287 Alexander, David, 430 Alexander, Leni, 523, 546, 560–61 Algeria, Cage in, 9–10 alimony paid to Xenia Kashevaroff by Cage, 76n 128, 263 Alla ricerca del silenzio perduto (Il treno) (Cage; 1977), 413, 468–70 Allison, Kirk, 412, 504–5, 593 Alpert, Daniel, 386–88 Alsace, Cage in, 421, 422 Altec Lansing, 223 Alverno College, Milwaukee, 263 Amacher, Maryanne, 414, 471n884, 480, 485, 492n923 America Was Promises (Cage; 1940), 347 American Academy/National Institute of Arts and Letters, 62n 104, 91n 153, 262, 382 American Center for Students and Artists, Paris, 475n892 American Composers Alliance, 340n638 American gamelan, 553n 1045

601

American Guild of Musical Artists (AGMA), 296 American Guild of Organists, 537n 1007 American Music Center, fundraising letter for, 525, 583–84 American Music Records, 183n358 American National Theater and Academy (ANTA), International Exchange Program, Dance Advisory Panel, 179–80 American Recordings Project, Music Library Association, 248 American Society of Composers, Authors and Publishers (ASCAP), 108, 215, 258, 340n638 Amey, Frank, 220, 227, 236–37 “AMFMTV” (Cage; 1970), 400n767 Amores (Cage; 1943), 198n390, 231, 232n475, 347, 380, 479, 515 Amsterdam, Cage on, 89, 90–91 anarchic harmony, 585 Anarchic Harmony Festival ’92 (for Cage’s 80th birthday), xiii, 526, 582n 1127, 586n 1138 anarchism, Cage on, 297–98, 381, 414, 472, 503 “Anarchy” (Cage; 1988), 523, 561 Anastasi, William (Bill), xi, 296n565, 508, 542 Anderson, Edgar and Dorothy, 267 Anderson, Guy, 158n295 Anhalt, Istvan and Beata, 268 animated films, Cage attempting to get work on, 181 ANTA (American National Theater and Academy), International Exchange Program, Dance Advisory Panel, 179–80 Antheil, George, 42, 46, 107, 157, 593; Volpone, 169 Antheil, Mrs. George, 42 Antioch College, 320, 426 Apartment House 1776 (Cage; 1976), 414–15, 455–56, 458, 459–60, 471, 477, 480, 486, 494, 522, 586

602  |  Index

Apollinaire, Guillaume, 95n 162, 118, 209; L’esprit nouveau et les Poètes (1917), 118n210 Apostel, Hans Erich, 94n 159 Applewhite, E. J., 555; Cosmic Fishing (1977), 555n 1051; Synergetics (1975), with R. Buckminster Fuller, 319n598, 555 Architectural Digest, 521 Ardevol, Jose, 31, 40; Suite, 35 Arditti, Irvine, and Arditti Quartet, 568, 578, 590 Aria (Cage; 1959), 193n376, 197n384, 203, 231, 291, 399, 584n 1132 Arnason, Ornulfur, 413, 498 Aroul, G., 379n730 Arragon, Reginald and Gertrude, 269 “Art is Either a Complaint or Do Something Else” (Cage; 1989), 447n836 Art News Annual, 213 Artaud, Antonin, 128–29, 139, 152–53, 160, 273; The Theater and Its Double (1938), 128, 139n244, 156, 175–76 Artha, 428, 441, 472, 532 Arthur, Patti, 500 Arts Club of Chicago, 5, 54, 56, 57, 58n97, 73 Arts in Society (journal), 262, 408 Artservices, 411, 431n810, 447 ASCAP (American Society of Composers, Authors and Publishers), 108, 215, 258, 340n638 ashes of Cage and Tudor, scattering of, 526 Ashley, Robert (Bob), 295n565, 349, 447n837, 472, 560 ASLSP (Cage; 1985), 494n927 astrologers and astrology, 412, 539–40 Atchity, Kenneth, 463 Atlas, Charles, 296n565 Atlas Borealis with Ten Thunderclaps (Cage; unrealized), 334, 383 Atlas Eclipticalis (Cage; 1961–1962), 132, 238–39, 245, 246, 249, 250, 252, 266–69, 270–71, 277, 278–79, 283, 284, 293, 316, 375n720, 438, 479, 486, 575n 1106, 589 St. Augustine, 119

Aune, Katherine, 484–85 Austen, Hans and Sulamith, 267 Austin, Larry, 365 Australian National Collection of Recorded Bird Calls, 458n854, 459 autokus, 412, 471n885 Avakian, Anahid (née Ajemian), 113n202, 115, 145, 153, 267 Avakian, George, 113, 130, 204n406, 267 AZ Music, 553n 1043 B. Altman department store, Cage’s loft in former building of, 486n914, 490 Babbitt, Milton, 134, 199, 222, 246, 332, 365 Bacchanale (Cage; 1940), 62n 104 Bach, Johann Sebastian, 14, 16, 72, 97, 160, 336, 362n683, 441, 457; Goldberg Variations, 14; Kunst der Fugue, 14, 15, 19; Well-Tempered Clavichord, 19 Bach, Michael, 583n 1129, 588n 1145 Bacon, Grace, 269 Bacon, Louella, 267 Balanchine, George, 111n200, 186n366 Ballet de l’Opera Paris, 432 Ballet Society (later New York City Ballet), 186n366 Ballinger, Mr. and Mrs. John H., 30–31 Bamert, Matthias, 568 Barab, Seymour, 142, 147 Barber, Gregory, 515n975 Barnard, Geoffrey, 525, 553, 559 Barrault, Jean-Louis, 102n 186, 158, 160, 166n324 Barron, Louis and Bebe, 163nn315–16, 164, 224 Bartók, Béla, 10n3, 14, 47, 115 Bärtschi, Werner, 522, 561n 1072, 575–76, 576n 1109 Barzin, Leon, 479 Bate, Peggy. See Glanville-Hicks, Peggy Bate, Stanley, 89n 150 Bates, Marston and Nancy, 269 bathing in France, problems with, 93, 97, 98, 99–100, 106, 113

Bauermeister, Mary, 228, 234, 268 Bay Area Radio Drama conference (1989), xii BBC, 307–8 Beard, Charles A., and Brook Adams, The Law of Civilization and Decay (1943), 73 Beatles, 260, 362, 363, 371, 572, 574 The Beatles 1962–1970 (Cage; 1989), 522, 572, 574 Beck, Julian, 128, 207n414, 221 Becker, Wolfgang, 413, 420, 466–67, 479, 481, 486, 593 Beckett, Samuel, 528n985 Becofsky, Art, 483–84 Bečvář, Antonín: Atlas Australis (1964), 443n826; Atlas Borealis (1962), 474n891; Atlas Eclipticalis (1958), 238n485 Beethoven, Ludwig von, 14, 16, 81, 83, 137n237, 138, 215, 308, 383, 439, 441, 452n843, 554; Violin Concerto, 25 beets, Cage on, 160, 421 Behrman, David, 261, 293n559, 295– 96n565, 349, 377, 382, 432n812, 447n837, 472n889, 582n 1127 Belcher, Supply, 494 Bell, Alexander Graham, 269 Bell, Mary, 15n 15 Bell and Howell, 52, 53 Bell Telephone Laboratories, 36, 41n56, 43, 47n67, 269, 290, 316, 322, 323n603, 348n656 “Bender,” 37, 43 Benham, T. A., 257, 318 Bennington School of the Dance, 32, 50, 57, 62 Berberian, Cathy (married name Berio): biography, 196n379; Atlas Eclipticalis dedication, 267; Cage on voice of, 237; Cage’s friendship with, 130, 222, 223; marriage to Luciano Berio, 196n379; performing Cage’s work, 197, 225, 226, 233–35, 399n766, 433n814; recordings, 249; on rights to Fontana Mix, 231; Song Books (Solos for Voice 3–92) (Cage; 1970) and, 399n766, 433n814

Index  |  603

Berberian, Cathy, and Luciano Berio, letters to: March 25, 1959 (to Cathy, Luciano, and Cristina), 200–202; April 30, 1959 (to Cathy, Luciano, and Cristina), 202–3; September 12, 1960 (to Cathy and Luciano), 236–37; August, 1961 (to Cathy and Luciano), 245–46; sources, 593 Berea, Dorothy, 80n 137, 142n251 Berg, Alban, 11n5, 97n 167, 133, 330 Bergbo, Skogekär: “Sonnet #92,” Cage’s translation of, 524–25, 537–38; Wenerid (1684), 525 Berger, Arthur, 143, 144, 213 Berger, Dr., 78 Berio, Cathy. See Berberian, Cathy Berio, Cristina, 200–203, 235, 246, 593 Berio, Luciano: biography, 197n384; Atlas Eclipticalis dedication, 267; Cage’s friendship with, 130, 196, 222–23; Circles for Voice, 233; recordings of works of, 226n460; rights to Fontana Mix and, 235–36; Studio di Fonologia and, 130, 196, 231; at Tanglewood, 235, 236; Visage (1961), 223n454. See also Berberian, Cathy, and Luciano Berio, letters to Berkéwicz, Ulla, 585 Berlioz, Hector, 322 Bernell, William, 453 Bernlef, J. (Hendrik Jan Marsman), 162n312, 258, 333, 593 Bernstein, Leonard, 213, 288–89, 355 Bertini, Gary, 523, 541–42, 548n 1031, 550, 577, 595 Beuys, Joseph, 415, 506, 509n959, 593 Beyer, Johanna M., 28, 29, 31, 32, 40, 224 Bialon, Dieter, 559n 1066, 585 Bialy, Harvey, 449 Bible project (Cage; unrealized), 543, 551 Bicentennial celebrations, U.S., 414, 453–55, 471n884, 483, 494, 586 Biel, Michael von, 274 Big Deal (journal), 457n851 Bigelow, Howard E., 299

604  |  Index

Bill, Max, 121 Billings, William, 467 Bird, Bonnie, 4, 28n31, 101 Bird Cage (Cage; 1972), 421n794, 438, 442n825 Bird Cage/73'20.958" for a Composer (film; 1972), 418n786 Black, Robert, 525, 551 Black Mountain College, 7, 76n 129, 79, 81, 113, 127–29, 165, 175–76, 417, 427 Blackearth Percussion Group, 578n 1114 Blackmur, Richard Palmer, 346 Blackwell, Harolyn, 523, 558–59 Blair, Shareen, 267 Blank, Julius, 201n399 Blin, Bernard, 166 blind, sensing devices for, 257, 318 Blinken, Judith (later Pisar), 304, 304n579, 341, 362, 365, 378, 475n892 The Blue Angel, 64 The Blue Four, 13n 12, 27n28 The Blue Rider, 13n 12 Blythe, R. H., 138 Boas, Franziska, 31, 32, 58 Boldin, Dragutin, 499 “Bolivia Mix” (Cage; 1989), xii Bolshanin, Martha (married name Kashevaroff; mother of Xenia), 21n24, 25 Bonwit Teller & Co., New York City, 168 A Book of Music (Cage; 1944), 68n 113, 73n 122, 345, 380 Boone, Charles, 373 Borges, Jorge Luis, 587n 1142 Boston Symphony, 233, 455n849, 480, 494, 577n 1110 Botstein, Leon, xvi “Bottoms” (No. 4; Fluxus film), 363, 372n712 Boucourechliev, André, 348, 370 Boulanger, Nadia, 8, 120 Boulez, Pierre: biography, 99n 173; Adorno on, 205; Cage considering article about, 104, 109, 113; Cage on music of, 100, 103, 115, 119, 158, 160; chance operations and,

128, 213; conducting Cage’s Apartment House 1776 and Renga, 458; Cowell article on music of Cage, Feldman, Wolff, and Boulez, 159; Domaine musical concert series, with Souvtchinsky and Barrault, 102; friendship with Cage in Paris, 8, 99, 100–101, 103, 104, 111; at Huddersfield Contemporary Music Festival, 1989, xii; IRCAM, 483; Mac Low compared, 448; Neuhaus championing work of, 321n600; Nono compared, 196n381; recordings, 226n460; Roaratorio and, 499; on Satie, 102; Tézenas and, 103n 188; Tudor performing works of, 127, 139–40, 152, 153, 158, 162n311, 166, 174, 178, 272–73, 274; Wolff and, 158; Yates on, 336; mentioned, 143, 146, 161, 162, 169, 184 Boulez, Pierre, letters to, xvii, 127; January 17, 1950, 133–37; December 18, 1950, 139–41; May 22, 1951, 147–53; Summer 1952, 163–67; sources of, 593 Boulez, Pierre, works: “Alea” (article; 1957), 509; Char Trilogy, 139n240; Un Coup de Des, 152; Cummings ist der Dichter (1968–70), 140n245; Étude sur septs sons, 163; First Piano Sonata (1946), 158, 166; “4 Musicians at Work” (Cage, Feldman, Boulez, Wolff; 1952), 152n278, 209; Livre pour quatuor (1948–1949), 134; Oubli signal lapidé, 114n205; Polyphonie X (1950–1951), 166; “Propositions” (article), 135; Second (Piano) Sonata (1948), 100, 119, 127, 134, 139–41, 148, 153, 158, 162n311, 172, 272–73; Le soleil des eaux (1948–1965), 139; Structures for Two Pianos, 173, 191; Third Piano Sonata (1955–1957/1963), 166n327, 198n389 Bourgeois, Louise, 570n 1098 bowed piano, 576 Bowles, Jane, 102n 182 Bowles, Paul, 102, 106, 110, 380 Boy Scout, Cage as, 437 Boyars, Marion, 539, 544

Boyd, Donald E., 412, 425–26 Bradshaw, Dove, 474n891, 508n958, 542 Brahms, Johannes, 224, 441; 4th Symphony, 19 Branches (Cage; 1976), 432n812, 463n867, 465, 471, 475n892, 578n 1114 Brăncuşi, Constantin, 7, 123, 349n658 Brant, Henry, 207, 211, 225 Brecht, George, 224, 265, 274, 411, 472 Breton, André, 157n292, 404 Brevig, Per, 588–89 Brickner, Richard M., 77, 78 Broekman, David, 166 Bronzell, Sean, 552 Broughton, Shirley, 80n 137 Brown, Beth, 269, 301, 320, 413, 579. See also under Brown, Norman O., letters to, for letters Brown, Bob, 263 Brown, Carolyn (Carol): biography, 158n298; Atlas Eclipticalis dedication, 269; Berlin Festwoche, 220, 226; on Cunningham at Teatro de Bellas Artes, Mexico, 184n361; dancing with Merce Cunningham, 220, 236, 385; Earle Brown writing music for, 168; on Event No. 5 (Cunningham; score by Cage), 358n673; injuries of, 396, 401; Klosty and, 398n764; letters to, 260, 302–6, 525, 555, 593; on Sisler, Mary, 309n585; touring finances and arrangements, 226, 227, 234, 237; Tudor, David, and, 158; on vantage point for dance, 225; mentioned, 169 Brown, Earle: Atlas Eclipticalis dedication, 269; Available Forms I & II (1961; 1962), 158n298; Bernstein, Leonard, and, 288; at Capitol Records and Time Records, 226, 232, 249; concerts, 202, 208, 273; December 1952, 158n298; FCPA and, 319, 329, 579; Feldman and, 174n343; Folio (1952), 226; 4 Systems, 207n415; Hodograph I (1959), 208n418; John Cage Award, FCPA, 295n565; Jones, Joseph,

Index  |  605

studying with, 229; letters to, 161, 261, 593; Mac Low compared, 448; Mellers/ BBC, recommended by Cage to, 308; Music for Cello and Piano, 202n401; New York School, 127, 174n343; Pentathis, 217; publication of music of, 196; teaching at New School for Cage, 265; Trio for 5 dancers, 168; Tudor, David, and, 158, 162; Williams Mix (Cage) and, 163n316, 173; Yates, recommended to, 211; mentioned, 169, 184, 224, 457 Brown, Edward Espe, The Tassajara Bread Book (1970), 413 Brown, Kathan, 476, 508n956, 521 Brown, Merton, 7, 85–86, 94, 100, 103, 118–19, 133, 593, 594 Brown, Norman O. (Nobby): biography, 208n421; Atlas Eclipticalis dedication, 269; Cage’s friendship with, 259, 264, 345; Closing Time (1973), 444; as FCPA/FCA lecturer, 260, 319, 320–21, 326, 330, 525; Life Against Death: The Psychoanalytical Meaning of History (1959), 208, 210, 221, 264, 269, 277; Suter, Branco, and, 425 Brown, Norman O. (Nobby), letters to, 260, 525; December 11, 1964 (to Nobby and Beth), 300–302; June 12, 1965, 320–21; December 8, 1966, 352; September 21, 1971, 404–6; May 2, 1972 (to Nobby and Beth), 417–18; October 28, 1977 (to Nobby and Beth), 465–66; July 14, 1981 (to Nobby and Beth), 533–34; November 22, 1990 (to Nobby and Beth), 579 Brown University, 167 Bruce, Neely, 478 Brucher, Ernst, 209, 214, 226, 229 Bruckner, Anton, 420, 421, 422 Brün, Herbert, 133n223, 253, 329, 387 Brussels World’s Fair (1958), 201n398 Bryars, Gavin, 388, 472 Buckley, Charles E., 171–72 Buddha and Buddhism, 128, 136, 136n235,

606  |  Index

168n329, 259, 282, 313, 352n662, 360, 405, 406, 484, 491n920, 536 Budowski, Ed, 361n681 Bueno, Emily, 269, 560 Bueno, Jose de la Torre, 269, 368 Buhlig, Richard, 3, 10, 11, 13, 14, 15, 16, 22, 101, 157, 210n423, 336, 440, 583 Buñuel, Luis, 269n518 Burch, Kathleen, 543n 1020 Burning Books, 543n 1020 Burris-Meyer, Harold, 41 Burroughs, William S., 501 Busoni, Ferruccio, 10n3, 14, 452n843 Bussotti, Sylvano, 203, 211, 274 But what about the noise of crumpling paper . . . (Cage; 1985), 588n 1144 Butterfield, President and Mrs. Victor, 269 Bwana Devil (film, 1952), 169n337 Byrd, Joseph, 445 C. F. Peters Corp., 131, 272, 366–68, 415, 471, 482, 524, 525, 531, 567. See also Hinrichsen, Walter Caccialanza, Gisela, 80n 137 Cadle, Dean, 427 Cage, Gustavus Adolphus Williamson (grandfather), 552n 1042 Cage, John: 1930–1949, 3–8; 1950–1961, 127–32; 1962–1971, 257–62; 1972–1982, 411–15; 1983–1992, xi–xiv, 521–25; biography, 599; alimony paid to Xenia, 76n 128, 263; archiving of papers by, 412, 423–24, 429, 447–48, 481; ashes, scattering of, 526; autographs not supplied by, 492–93; biography of himself, enthusiasm for, 535, 566; book publications, 131–32; as Boy Scout, 437; correspondents, list of, 593–97; creative work, changing patterns in, 412; death of, 526; Diary and letters compared, xiv–xv; dress and grooming pattern, changes in, 411; education and studies, 3–4; fees charged by, 32, 74, 217, 250, 251, 252, 270, 328, 339,

377, 430; final trip abroad (1992), 526; financial struggles, 129–30, 131, 145–46, 152, 154, 155, 181, 257, 263, 323–24, 341, 396, 426; first trip abroad (1930), 3, 9–10; health issues/smoking/drinking/ diet, 203, 241, 257, 267, 282, 321, 392, 403, 411, 412–13, 415, 418, 421, 432–33, 461, 465, 482, 485–86, 489, 490, 493, 498, 500, 502–6, 510, 526, 528, 540, 559, 575, 576, 578, 579, 581; homes of, xi, 8, 52, 58–59, 76n 128, 87, 121, 122, 123, 129, 167, 168n333, 177n350, 182, 185–86, 411, 417–18, 461, 490, 521, 534; Jaguar loaned by Johns to, 260–61, 314, 320, 325; John Cage Trust, formation of, xv–xvi; lost in Canadian wilderness, 328; marriage, xiv, xvii, 4–6, 13, 18, 23, 25, 26, 27, 60n 100, 311, 450; Methodist upbringing and early desire to be a minister, xvii, 178, 313n589, 360; morals conviction, 34n44; nature, interest in, 182; no addressee, letters with, 167–68, 247, 596; on photography, 508; publication of music of, 132, 213, 214–15, 228 (See also Hinrichsen, Walter); as recreation counselor with WPA, 29–30; reproduction and formatting of letters, xviii; robberies experienced by, 353, 418, 526; romantic and sexual relationships, xiv, xvii, 4, 6, 127, 357–58n673, 560 (See also Cunningham, Merce; Kashevaroff, Xenia; Schindler, Pauline; Tudor, David); scores, no longer writing, 205; separation and divorce, xv, 6, 65, 67n 111, 76n 128; shock value, accused of composing for, 188; sources of letters, 593–97; story told by letters of, xvi– xviii; television set purchased by, 269; visual artwork (drawings, watercolors, etchings, etc.), 471, 521–22, 540, 549n 1032, 552, 561, 581n 1125; wake for, 501n943; will of, 525, 571; world events and politics, involvement with, xiv–xv, 359–60, 371, 411, 413, 414, 415, 441–45,

503, 583; writer’s block experienced by, 76–77, 108. See also specific works Cage, John Milton, Sr. (father): biography, 3, 17n 18; Atlas Eclipticalis dedication, 268; Cage on watching TV with, 405; Cage working intermittently for, 17n 18, 19, 60n99, 337; Cunningham’s translation work (from Spanish) for, 60, 62, 63, 64; death and estate issues, 257, 263, 290–91, 306–7; in Indeterminacy, 351, 361; inventions of, 37, 41, 42, 114, 290–91; move to East Coast, 5, 15n 14; scooter made for Cage by, 314; mentioned, 22, 24, 26 Cage, John Milton, Sr. and Lucretia (parents), letters to: from first trip abroad, 3; before March 24, 1949, 86–87; April, 1949, 89–90; April, 1949, 90–91; April 15, 1949, 91–92; ca. April 26, 1949, 92–93; May 17, 1949, 95–96; May 20, 1949, 96–98; May 20, 1949, 98–100; June 1, 1949, 103–4; June 22, 1949, 104–5; June 27, 1949, 105–6; July 8, 1949, 109–10; July 13, 1949, 111–12; July 23, 1949, 112–13; August 8, 1949, 113–14; August 16, 1949, 114; August 20, 1949, 116–17; August 27, 1949, 117–18; October 5, 1949, 122; October 8, 1949, 123; ca. February 6, 1959, 199 Cage, Lucretia (Crete) (mother; née Harvey): biography, 3, 15n 14; Atlas Eclipticalis dedication, 268; Cage on watching TV with, 405; on Cage’s Sixteen Dances, 144; in Indeterminacy, 351, 361; move to East Coast, 5, 15n 14; stroke, medical care, and death of, 257, 260, 261, 263, 303, 313–14, 320, 331, 341, 356, 391; tickets obtained by Cage through newspaper connections of, 15; vitality of, 21; mentioned, 14, 22, 24. See also Cage, John Milton, Sr. and Lucretia (parents), letters to Cage, Xenia (wife). See Kashevaroff, Xenia Andreyevna

Index  |  607

Castelli, Leo, 227n464 Cage family in Denver, 9–10, 68 cats: German rumor that Cage must kill a Cage Percussion Players, 4, 32n40 cat in order to give a concert, 286; Losa, “Cagefest” (National Academy of Sciences, 553, 556; Skookum/Scucum, 525, 546, Washington, D.C., 1991), xiii 551, 552, 553 Cage’s Satie: Composition for Museum, Cave, John, 24 Musée d’art contemporain de Lyon Cavista, Mario, 414, 472n888, 477, 593 (exhibition, 2012), 81n 139 CBS Radio Workshop, 5, 55, 56 Calder, Alexander, 121n216, 171n340, CBS Records Columbia, 148n273 357n672; Red Petals, 58n97; Works of Cedar [Street] Tavern, New York City, Calder (film, music by Cage; 1949–1950), 343n644 121, 134, 148, 155, 380n733, 478 Celli, Joseph, 510 Cale, John, 258 Center for Advanced Study, University of Callahan, Kenneth, 158n295 Illinois, 257, 383 Calliope (muse), 63n 105, 65, 68, 71 Center for Experimental Music, Cage’s Campbell, Joseph, 58n96, 71, 145; A Skeleton efforts to establish, 5, 30n38, 34–36, Key to Finnegans Wake (1944), with 40–45, 50, 51, 132, 219, 221 Henry Morton Robinson, 71 Center for the Study of Democratic Campos, Augusto de, 462–63, 544; Institutions, 393–95 pentahexagram for Cage, 462 Center for 20th-Century Studies, Campos, Haroldo de, 462n862, 462n864 Milwaukee, 406–7 Canadian Broadcasting Corporation (CBC), Center Magazine, 394 325, 414, 430, 480 Centre International de Recherche Capri, Cage on, 9–10 Musicale (CIRM), 580n 1122 Cardew, Cornelius, 208n419, 211, 274, Cerha, Friedrich, 206 361, 444, 478, 514, 553n 1043; Treatise Cernovich, Nicholas, 226, 227, 266, 385n742 (1964–1967), 361n681 Chadabe, Joel, 457 carillon, music for. See entries at Music for chance operations, 128, 140n247, 141, Carillon 147–52, 213, 273, 334n627, 376n722, Carlson, Effie B., 347–48 377n723, 411, 412, 417, 441, 448–53, 454, Carmen, Arline, 206–7, 217 460, 501, 508, 521, 527, 528, 533, 565, 570 Carter, Elliott, 120n213, 402n775, 403 “Changes” (Darmstadt lecture, Cage; 1959), Cartridge Music (Cage; 1960), 227n463, 229, 209–10 232, 233, 241, 276, 291, 328, 341n640, 375, Chapin, Schuyler, 70, 71 545 Chaplin, Charlie, 42 Carvalho, Jocy de (Jocy de Oliveira), 259, Chapman, John Jay, 218 331, 351–52, 596 Char, René, 139n240, 273 Casals, Pablo, 250n505 Charles, Christophe, 549, 593 Caskel, Christoph, 208n418 Charles, Daniel, 370, 376, 399–400, Caskel, David Cornelius, 208n428 511, 513, 525, 549n 1034, 580–81, 593; Caspari, Arthus C., 262, 381, 593 “Soixante Réponses a trente questions Cassette (Cage; 1977), 464, 465n875, 466 de Daniel Charles” (1968), 370, 376 Cassidy, Dr. (at Mills College), 34, 35 Charlip, Remy, 101n 180, 191n371, 266 Castel, Nico, 480, 486, 586n 1138 Castelli, Iliana (née Sonnabend), 227, 251–52 Chase, Gilbert, 362

608  |  Index

Chávez, Carlos, 14, 47, 364, 386; Sinfonía india (1935–1936), 364n689; Soli III and Toccata, 364n690; Towards a New Music, 337 Cheap Imitation (Cage; 1969/1972/1977), 66n 109, 334n627, 399, 402, 403, 404n776, 407, 418n787, 419, 420, 431n811, 452, 471, 477, 479–80, 481 Cherry Lane Theatre, New York City, 128, 160–62, 169, 258 chess, xi, xiii, xvii, 261, 339, 345, 352, 384, 389, 390, 425, 426, 433, 437, 441, 453, 472, 485, 501, 508n958, 509n959, 521, 552n 1040, 585 chess game, electrified, between Cage and Dunchamp (Reunion, Cage; 1968), 212n429, 261, 291n555, 377n723, 382 Chess Pieces (Cage; 1944), 107n 192 Chessfilmnoise (film, Cage and Scheffer; 1988), 557n 1058 Chicago, Cage on, 52–53 Chicago School of Design (New Bauhaus), 5, 36, 41, 42, 50, 53, 54 ChiChi Bird, 456 Child of Tree (Cage; 1975), 432n812, 463n867, 471, 578n 1114 Childs, Lucinda, 348n656, 349, 353 chiropractics, 200, 202, 526, 578 Chocrón, Isaac, 262, 389–90, 406–7, 525, 556, 593 Chopin, Frédéric, 452n843 Chorals (Cage; 1978), 413, 479, 486–87 Chou Wen-Chung, 357 Churches, Richard, 585 Churchill, Mili, 80n 137, 142n251 Circque Medrane, 106 CIRM (Centre International de Recherche Musicale), 580n 1122 The City Wears a Slouch Hat (Cage; radio play, 1942), 5, 53n79, 56–57 Clark, Mr. and Mrs. (in Paris), 94 Clark, Mrs. James, 524, 532–33 Clark, Walter Van Tilburg and Barbara, 269 Close, Roy, 552n 1042

Cocteau, Jean, 100n 176 Coffin, Patricia, 371, 593 Cohen, Leonard, 491n920 Cohen, Selma Jeanne, 271–72, 593 Cohn, Arthur, 43 Coleman, Ornette, 524, 552 Columbia Records, 113n202, 148, 194n377, 211, 382, 384 Columbia Teachers College, 145 Columbia Workshop, 5, 566 Columbia/CBS Odyssey, 193n375 Columbia-Princeton Electronic Music Studio, 199 Colvig, William (Bill), 553–54 Comet, Catherine, 432n813 “Communication” (Darmstadt lecture, Cage; 1958), 209–10 Compagnie Renaud-Barrault, 158n297 composed book, Cage’s plans for, 248 Composer’s Forum, 156, 158 Composer’s Quartet, 142n254 Composition as Process (3 Darmstadt lectures by Cage; 1958), 208–10 Composition for Three Voices (Cage; 1933?), 10, 12n6 “Composition in Retrospect” (Cage; 1981), 513–14, 530n988, 587 computer/electronic music, development of Cage’s interest in, 31, 36, 163–65, 173 Concert for Piano and Orchestra (Cage; 1957–1958), 130, 193, 204, 205, 207n415, 212, 217, 228, 230–31, 232, 235n481, 246, 249, 252, 341n640, 382, 451 Concerto for Prepared Piano and Orchestra (Cage; 1950–51), 140–41, 142, 143, 144, 149–50, 166, 175, 348, 382 Constant, Marius, 432 Contexts (journal), 204, 209 contingency, works of, 463n867 Contrepoints (journal), 95n 164, 138n238, 139 Coolidge, Clark, 335n631 Coolidge, Elizabeth Sprague, 40–41, 593 Coomaraswamy, Transformation of Nature in Art, 405

Index  |  609

Copland, Aaron, 8, 14, 99, 100, 120n213, 133, 235, 289, 325, 340, 403n775, 404, 583n 1131; film score for Something Wild (1961), 232n476 Corazzo, Alexander, 52, 53, 58, 59, 79, 80; “Composition,” 53 Corazzo, Gretchen (née Schoeninger), 52, 53, 56n92, 58, 79, 80 Cordier, Robert, 436–37 Corner, Philip, 358–61, 444, 445, 486n913, 540 Cornish School, xvii, 4, 6, 28n31, 30–31, 44, 158n295, 533 Council of Learned Societies, 155 Couper, Mildred, 32 Couperin, François, 138 Cowell, Henry: biography, 10n4; article on music of Cage, Feldman, Wolff, and Boulez, 159; Buhlig and, 10; Cage and pupils of, 134; Cage as student under, 3, 264, 310, 311, 336, 347, 439, 583; Cage’s Living Room Music and, 33; Cage’s prepared piano inspired by, 6; cluster notation of, 397; Harrison and, 4, 28n33; on Mellers’s Music in a New Found Land, 308; percussion and experimental work, 28, 31, 32, 40, 47; records given to Cage by, 15; Rhythmicon commissioned by, 36, 41; in Santa Fe with Cage, 12, 14; Schillinger, as student of, 230n473; Tamada and, 19; Weiss and, 3, 10–11; mentioned, 24, 86, 94, 203, 224 Cowell, Henry, letters to: October 26, 1933, 11–12; ca. 1935, 17–18; ca. July 1939, 29–30; August 8, 1940, 34–37; August 16, 1940, 37–39; October 3, 1940, 42–44; November 4, 1965 (to Henry and Sydney), 331–32; sources for, 593 Cowell, Henry, works: Aeolian Harp, 161–62; New Musical Resources, 337; The Universal Flute, 19n22 Cowell, Sidney Robertson, 10n4, 78, 331–32, 593 Cox, Tony, 363, 527–28

610  |  Index

Craft Horizon magazine, 415, 461n858 Cramer, Hazel Witman, 202 Cramps (record label), 472n888, 477n896 Crane, Louise, 146 Crawford, Dorothy Lamb, 46n65, 336 Crawford, Ruth (married name Seeger), 211, 224, 336 Credo in US (Cage; 1942), 55n90, 56n92, 515 Creeley, Robert, 175n345 Cross, Lowell, 261, 291, 342, 343, 369–70, 373n715, 382, 384, 430, 593; 0.8 Century (1962), 369n702 Crown Point Press, xiii, 471n886, 476, 521, 536n 1003, 549n 1032, 553 Crum, Thomas and Cathy, 539 Cuenod, Hugues, 107, 108 Culver, Andrew, xi, 524, 538–39, 540, 551, 553, 554, 557, 557n 1058, 558, 561n 1076, 565 Cumming, William, 158n295 Cummings, E. E., 140n245, 146, 209, 243–44, 594 Cummings, Mrs. E. E. (Marion Morehouse), 140 Cummings, Robert, 67n 112 Cunningham, Merce: biography, 54n82; alimony paid to Xenia on Cage’s behalf by, 263n513; artistic collaboration with Cage, xii, 6, 50n71, 56n92, 66nn 109–10, 74n 125, 86, 103n 187, 112, 129, 140, 153, 204, 207, 217, 225, 226, 227, 239–41, 246, 250, 358n673, 365, 433, 458, 483, 515, 535, 565, 580; Atlas Eclipticalis dedication, 269; Ballet de l’Opera Paris, on working with, 432; Bennington School of the Dance, performing for, 50n71; Bird, Bonnie, study under, 101n 180; at Black Mountain College, 7, 79n 135, 80, 128–29, 183n357; Brown, Carolyn, Cage addressing complaints of, 302–6; Cage instructing pupils of, 167; Cage on dance of, 59, 85, 100, 111, 112, 115, 134, 142, 250n507, 260, 304, 305, 345, 400–401; Duchamp, Teeny, and,

349n658; “enigma” (penis), references to, 61, 70, 72; first trip to Europe with Cage (1949), 7–8, 85, 86–87, 89–123; health of, 559; home shared with Cage, xi, 521, 552; Impresarios Inc. and, 204n406; John Cage Trust, formation of, xv, 551n 1038; Johns encaustic owned by, 584; on macrobiotic diet with Cage, 528; Marsicano and, 162n310; Oakes, Nancy, and, 386n745; “Package Festival” marketed by Cage and Tudor, 130, 171–72; on Paris, 116; relationship with Cage, xvii, 6, 259–60, 525, 556, 560, 576; San Francisco Ballet and, 186–87; scattering of Cage’s and Tudor’s ashes, 526; Sixty-Two Mesostics re Merce Cunningham (Cage; 1971), 403, 465, 477n896; Stony Point house used by, 418; at Teatra de Bellas Artes, Mexico, 184, 362; translation work (from Spanish), 60, 62, 63, 64; vantage point for dance, views on, 225; Wike, Joyce, and, 54n83; will of, 525, 571; Wolff, collaboration with, 142, 217, 220, 396; mentioned, 54, 55, 92, 95, 97, 98, 99, 102, 103, 105, 119, 123n210, 219, 220, 234, 236, 237, 250, 325, 366, 389, 418, 419, 421, 422, 431, 450, 499, 533, 553, 570. See also Merce Cunningham Dance Company/ Cunningham Dance Foundation Cunningham, Merce, letters to: undated, postmarked March 21, 1942, 57–58; undated, postmarked June 28,1943, 60; undated, postmarked June 29,1943, 61; undated, postmarked July 12,1943, 62; undated, postmarked July 20,1943, 63–64; undated, 1944, 65; undated, postmarked July 3, 1944, 66–67; undated, postmarked July 12, 1944, 67–68; undated, postmarked July 20, 1944, 68–69; undated, postmarked July 22, 1944, 70–72; undated, postmarked August 17, 1944, 72; undated, postmarked March 19, 1946,

76–77; January 4, 1967, 353; letters of recommendation from Cage, 179–80, 247; sources of, 594 Cunningham, Merce, letters written with Cage: after April 8, 1948, to Anni and Joseph Albers, 80; November 1948, to Jack Heliker and Merton Brown, 86; ca. 1954, to Charles Olson, 175–76; September 1968, to Isaac Chocrón, 390 Cunningham, Merce, works: Aeon (1961), 238n485, 250n507; Antic Meet (1958), 204n406, 207n415; Arcade (1985), 474n891; Beach Birds (1991), 580; Canfield (1969), 396, 398n764; Changeling (1957), 204n406, 207n415; Changing Steps (1973), 227n463; Collage I, 207n415; Collage III, 341n640; Crises (1960), 211n426; Cross Currents (1964), 211n426, 341n640; Duets (1980), 495; Effusions Avant L’Heure (1949), 111n200; Event No. 5 (score by Cage), 358n673; Excerpts from Symphonie pour un homme seul (1952), 166; Exercise Piece II (1978), 227n463; Exercise Piece III (1978), 227n463; Field Dances, 292n558, 293, 341n640; Fielding Sixes (1980), 495; Fragments (1953), 163n313; Galaxy, 207n415; Hands Birds (M.C. Richards’s “Diana the Huntress”), 226n459, 526; Idyllic Song (1944), 66n 109; Inlets (1977; music by Cage), 463n867; Inlets 2 (1983; music by Cage), 559n 1067; Inventions (1989), 571n 1099; Labyrinthian Dances (1957), 221n452; Minutiae (1954), 191n371; “Museum Event #1” (1964), 238n485; Music for Merce Cunningham (Wolff ), 217, 220; Music Walk with Dancers (1960; music by Cage), 216n438; Mysterious Adventure (music by Cage; 1945), 507n955; Night Wandering (1958), 385; Nocturnes (1956), 186–87; Paired, 229n471, 341n640; Rune (1959), 204n406, 226; The Seasons (with Cage; 1947), 6, 74n 125, 85, 86, 111, 186, 382, 438, 479; Second Hand (1969), 66n 109; Second Hand

Index  |  611

(Cunningham choreography, Cage music, Johns costumes; 1969/1973), 66n 109, 293n559, 431n811; Sixteen Dances for Soloist and Company of Three (music by Cage; 1951), 140n247, 142, 478; Story (1963), 306; Suite by Chance (1951), 212n430; Summerspace (1958), 204n406; Tango (1978), 534n997; Trackers (1991), 576n 1108; Travelogue/Tantric Geography, 458n854; Un jour ou deux (Cunningham choreography, Cager music, Johns staging and costuming; 1973), 293n559, 432n812; Variations V (Cage/Cunningham; 1965), 257, 315, 316, 353; Walkaround Time (designs by Jasper Johns, music by David Behrman; 1968), 293n559; Winterbranch, 206n408; XOVER (2007), 584n 1132 Cunningham Dance Foundation. See Merce Cunningham Dance Company/ Cunningham Dance Foundation Cuomo, James, 387 Curran, Alvin, 286n546, 549, 556 Dada, 100n 176, 118n211, 221, 249n504, 422n797, 434n816 Dahl, Ingolf, 157 Dalí, Salvador, 100n 176 Dallapiccola, Luigi, 94, 101, 143 Dam, Esther, 268, 297, 299 Dana, David, 97 Dance Advisory Panel, International Exchange Program, American National Theater and Academy (ANTA), 179–80 dance and dancers, Cage on, 49, 57–58, 59, 442, 535; Brown, Carolyn, dancing with Merce Cunningham, 220, 236, 385; Cunningham, Cage on dance of, 59, 85, 100, 111, 112, 115, 134, 142, 250n507, 260, 304, 305, 345, 400–401; Flamenco, Cage invited to discuss, 407; “spirit dancing,” Cunningham’s interest in, 54n83; vantage point for dance, 225

612  |  Index

Dance Forms (computer software), 576n 1108 Dance Music for Elfrid Ide (Cage; 1941), 30n38 Dance Perspectives 16, Composer/Choreographer (Cage; 1963), 271–72 Dance/4 Orchestras (Cage; 1982), 515 Dangles, M. and Mme. (Parisian hoteliers), 156 Daniel, Mell, 118n207, 268, 364, 400, 401, 571, 595. See also Lederman, Minna, letters to, for letters Daniel, Minna. See Lederman, Minna Danieli, Fred, 80n 137 Darmstadt International Summer Courses for New Music, 174–75, 178, 199–200, 202, 206–10, 213, 219, 220, 221 Darmstadt lectures (Composition as Process, Cage; 1959/1961), 208–10 Darmstadter Beiträge zur neuen Musik (journal), 196, 204, 209 Daughters of the Lonesome Isle (music by Cage; 1946), 58n96 Davies, Dennis Russell, 446, 479, 514, 515, 515n975 Davies, Molly, 355n667 d’Cruz, Marion, 506–7 de Antonio, Emile, 113n202, 130, 204n406, 268 de Menil family, 402 de Witte, J. W., 415, 418n787, 419–20, 594 Debussy, Claude, 72, 85, 93n 157, 97, 101, 160, 189, 224 decomposition, 234 “deep listening,” 577n 1111 “Defense of Satie” (Cage; 1948), 137n237 Deja, Lora, 30–31 DeJong, Conrad, 485 Del Tredici, David, 258 Denby, Edwin, 71, 96, 97, 116, 261, 279, 534 Denison, Doris, 28n31, 32n40, 52–57, 157–58 Denney, Alice, 338–39, 595 Denver, John, 539n 1015 Désormière, Roger, 100, 101–2, 153

Dewees, David, 178n350 Dharma, 428n806, 441, 472, 532 d’Harnoncourt, Anne, xv, 551n 1038, 562 Di Girolamo, Joseph, 522, 536 “Dial-a-” phone recordings, 413, 458–59 Diamond, David, 120n213 “Diary: Audience” (Cage; 1966), 356 “Diary: Emma Lake Music Workshop 1965” (Cage; 1966), 324n604, 325, 328n613, 356 Diary: How to Improve the World (You’ll Only Make Matters Worse) (Cage; published 2015), xiv–xv, 112n201, 259, 261, 335n631, 337, 346–47, 355, 356, 380, 392, 393, 396n762, 463, 532 Dickinson, Emily, 15n 15 Dienes, Sari, 169 Dietrich, Marlene, 64n 106 Dillon, Fannie Charles, 336 Dimas de Melo Pimenta, Emanuel, 522, 576, 594; Gravitational Sounds (1991), 576n 1108 Dimas de Melo Pimenta, Luciana, 522, 576, 594 dissonant counterpoint, 85n 142 Dlugoszewski, Lucia, 224 Documenta 8, xii Domaine musical concert series, 102n 186 Donaueschingen Festival of Contemporary Music, 129, 172–73, 174, 178, 213, 273–74, 590 “Dorothy” (with “Grant,” Cage on personality of ), 24 Double Confession (film), 168 Double Edge, 574 Double Music (Cage; 1941), with Lou Harrison, 4, 34n43, 382 Downes, Edward, 257, 315–16 Downes, Olin, 97 dreams, Cage on, 398, 463, 579 Dreams That Money Can Buy (film, 1947), 155 Dreier, Katherine Sophie, 80, 594 Dreman, Susan, 413, 458–59, 594 Drexler, K. Eric, 588; Unbounding the Future (1991), 588

Drummond, Dean, 527 Duchamp, Magdelaine (sister of Marcel), 562n 1080, 564 Duchamp, Marcel: biography, 349n658; The Bride Stripped Bare by Her Bachelors, Even (“The Large Glass,” 1915–1923), 285, 562n 1079; Cage citing, 429, 430, 441; Cage playing chess with, 339; Cage’s friendship with, 261, 509n959; death of, 261, 393n757; Erratum Musical, 505, 562, 564; Étant donnés (1946–1966), 524, 561–62, 563, 565; as FCPA lecturer, 326; The First Meeting of the Satie Society (Cage, with Ben Shiff; unfinished) and, 524, 569n 1096, 570; Fong translating, 393n757; Inframince, 562, 564, 565; James Joyce, Marcel Duchamp, Erik Satie: An Alphabet (Cage; 1982), 413, 415, 491, 499, 506, 511, 513; Jouffroy interview on, 434– 37; Joyce and Thoreau compared, 451; Kubota, Shigeko, Marcel Duchamp and John Cage (1968), 212n429; letter to Teeny and (September 22, 1966), 349, 594; L.H.O.O.Q. rasée (“shaved”) (1965), 337; Manual of Instructions (1973), 561, 564–65; “Marcel Duchamp, Notes” (ed. Teeny Duchamp and Paul Matisse), 541n 1018; Music for Marcel Duchamp (Cage; 1947), 155n286, 328; Nohopera, Or the Complete Musical Works of Marcel Duchamp (Cage; unrealized), 509, 524, 561–65; Not Wanting to Say Anything About Marcel (Cage; 1969), 261, 365n694, 392n756, 396, 462n865; Paz and, 362; Reunion (Cage; 1968, memorializing electrified chess game between Duchamp and Cage), 212n429, 261, 291n555, 377n723, 382; Sculpture Musicale (c. 1913), 562, 563, 564, 565; Selkus (Cage; 1984), 541n 1018; Société Anonyme, 80n 136; 36 Acrostics Re & Not Re Duchamp (Cage; 1970), 261, 399; “26 Statements re Marcel Duchamp” (Cage; 1963), 356; Yates on, 337; mentioned, 392

Index  |  613

Duchamp, Teeny (Alexina): biography, 349n658; Cage’s friendship with, xii, 261, 526, 588; children with Pierre Matisse, 355n667; health issues, 462; “Marcel Duchamp, Notes” (ed. Teeny Duchamp and Paul Matisse), 541n 1018; Nohopera (Cage; unrealized) and, 561–63; Reunion (Cage; 1968) and, 260, 291n555, 382; mentioned, 433, 509, 511 Duchamp, Teeny (Alexina), letters to, 524; September 22, 1966 (to Marcel and Teeny), 349; 1969, 392; October 4, 1969, 396–97; December 5, 1973, 434–37; April 15, 1978, 475; March 3, 1988, 561–63; sources, 594 Duchamp, Yvonne (sister of Marcel), 562n 1080, 564 Duckles, Lawrence (Larry), 514–16 Duet for Cymbal (Cage; 1964), 229, 232, 341n640 Duffy, John, 524, 589–90 Dugan, Thomas, 324 Duncan, Richard, 547 Duncan, Robert, 219, 221 Dunham, Maggie, 96, 114 Dunn, Robert Ellis (Bob), 226, 227, 235, 267, 281; as Atlas Eclipticalis dedicatee with wife Judith, 267; John Cage (catalog of works, 1962), 226n462, 482 Dupin, Jacques, 332–33 Duprat, Rogério, 544 Dushock, Dorothy, 80n 137 Dyer, Louise, 115 Eckhart von Hochheim (Meister Eckhart), 85, 86, 159, 338, 405, 422n795, 505, 512, 525, 580–81 “Edgard Varese” (Cage; 1958), 209 Éditions Salabert, 109n 198, 367, 431–32 Edizioni Suvini Zerboni, 197, 231, 235–36, 237, 367 Edmunds, John, 131, 205, 214–15, 248, 253 Edwin Fleischer Collection of Orchestral Music, Philadelphia, 40, 43, 44

614  |  Index

Eichheim, Henry, 47 Eight Whiskus (Cage; 1984), 541 Eisenhower, Dwight D., 198 electrified chess game between Cage and Duchamp (Reunion, Cage; 1968), 212n429, 261, 291n555, 377n723, 382 electronic keyboards, 75 Electronic Music for Piano (Cage; 1965), 191n371 electronic/computer music, development of Cage’s interest in, 31, 36, 163–65, 173 Elektra Records, 380n732 Elgar, Edward, 97n 167 Eliot, T. S., 138 Ellington, Duke, 201n397 Ellison, Harlan, 156n287 Ellul, Jacques, 259, 404–6; The Meaning of the City (1970), 406; The Technological Society (1964), 404n777 Emerson, Ralph Waldo, 426, 583 Emma Lake Artist’s Workshops, 324, 325 Emmerik, Paul van, xvi Empty Words (Cage; 1973–1974), 374n719, 414, 450–52, 472n888, 477, 480, 485, 492n923, 496, 510, 513, 522, 528, 575, 588n 1144 Empty Words: Writings ’73–’78 (Cage; 1979), 484, 499n939, 519, 539n 1014 Emura, Natsuki, 580 “enigma and his little friend,” 61, 70, 72 Ensemble Musica Negativa, 197n382 Ensemble Musique Vivante, 486 environmental sound, 88n 149, 145, 273, 432n812, 463, 465, 512, 534 Epstein, Miss, letter to, 242–43 Erdman, Jean, 50n71, 56n92, 57–58, 59, 145, 146, 182, 243n493, 515; Changing Women, 146n266; Portrait of a Lady, 163n315 Erdmann, Martin, xvi Erickson, Robert, 566 “Erik Satie” (Cage; 1958), 209 Ernst, Max, 118 Errera-Finck, Muriel, 91, 96, 99, 109, 112–13 Escher, Rudolf, 94, 115

Espinosa, Guillermo, 217, 594 Essay (Writings Through Essay: On the Duty of Civil Disobedience (Henry David Thoreau), Cage; 1986–1987), xii, 523, 554, 570 Etcetera (Cage; 1973), 432n812 Etcetera 2/4 Orchestras (Cage; 1985), 561 ethnic elements, compositional use of, 13, 34n46, 54n83, 62, 161 Etudes Australes (Cage; 1974–1975), 442– 43n826, 450, 471, 477, 509, 588n 1145 Etudes Boreales I–IV (Cage; 1978), 474 Europeras 1 & 2 (Cage; 1987), xi, xii, 522–23, 541–42, 547–54, 557n 1058, 558–59, 560–61, 565, 575n 1104 Europeras 3 & 4 (Cage; 1990), 561n 1072 Europera 5 (Cage; 1991), 561n 1072, 588n 1144 Euterpe (muse), 63, 64 Evangelisti, Franco, 214, 274 Evans, Bill, 201n397 Evenings on the Roof (concert series), 5, 33n41, 132 Everest Records, 339n637 Exact Change, 587 Experiences No. 2 (Cage; 1948), 243n493 experimental music: Center for Experimental Music, Cage’s efforts to establish, 5, 31n38, 34–36, 40–45, 50, 51, 132, 219, 221; differences between Yates and Cage regarding, 170–71; distribution system for, 131; origins of Cage’s interest in, 6, 33–34, 36–38, 45–51 “Experimental Music” (Cage; 1957), 209 “exploding pills,” 581 Explorations (journal), 335 Extended Lullaby (Cage, from Four3; 1991), 580, 591 Fabbriciani, Roberto, 553n 1044 Fads and Fancies in the Academy (Cage; 1940), 30n38, 34n45, 347 Fahlström, Öyvind, 267 (with Barbro Fahlström), 348n656, 349 Farber, Viola, 260, 267, 303–4, 304n578, 385 Farley, Rene, 388

Fashion Institute of Technology, xi FCPA. See Foundation for Contemporary Performance Arts Federal Music Project, 29n36 Federal Radio Co., 37 Feininger, Lyonel, 27n28, 532n995 Feldman, Cynthia, 193–94, 267, 594 Feldman, Morton: biography, 139n242; Atlas Eclipticalis dedication, 267; Bernstein, Leonard, and, 288; Cage on music of, 140, 143–45, 158–59, 168, 212; concerts, 156, 158, 160, 162, 184, 189–90, 191, 202; copying by, 142, 144; Cowell article on, 159; death of, 525, 557, 559; Donaueschingen Festival (1954) and, 173; FCPA and, 319, 329; graphic notation of, 127, 142, 273; love life of, 160; Massi interview, 560n 1068; McLaren and, 161, 162; Mellers/BBC, recommended by Cage to, 308; at performance of Boulez’s Second Sonata, 140; recordings, 193, 211, 226n460; relationship of New York School members, 174, 273; “Scenario for M. F.” (Cage mesostic poem; 1986), 557–58n 1061; at Sixteen Dances for Soloist and Company of Three (Cunningham, music by Cage; 1951), 142, 144; teaching at New School for Cage, 265; Tilbury as interpreter of works of, 514n972; Tudor introduced to Cage by, 127, 139, 272; on Wolff’s music, 145; Wolpe, as student of, 133n223; mentioned, 148, 157, 184, 365–66, 457 Feldman, Morton, letters to: March 15, 1954, 173–74; May 30, 1956, 189–90; ca. 1957 (to Morton and Cynthia Feldman), 193–94; May 20, 1967, 368; September 23, 1979, 490; sources of, 594 Feldman, Morton, works: Atlantis, 270; film score for Something Wild (1961), 232; “4 Musicians at Work” (Cage, Feldman, Boulez, Wolff; 1952), 152n278, 209; 4 Songs to e. e. cummings (1951), 146n268;

Index  |  615

Intersection 2 (1951), 162n311; Intersection for Magnetic Tape (1953), 173–74; Ixion, 217; Last Pieces, 202n401; Nature Pieces (1951), 146n266; Piece for Four Pianos (1957), 193n375; Projection 2 (1951), 142n251, 144; Two Pieces for Clarinet and String Quartet (1961), 194n377 Felton, Mrs. Charles, 43 feminine pronouns in Cage’s Harvard lectures, Wolff on lack of, 525, 567 Fernbach-Flarsheim, Carl, 375 Ferrara, Ralph, 268, 299 Festival of Art and Technology: Visions of the Now (Stockholm, September 19–25, 1966), 348–49, 353–55 Festival of Music and Art of This Century, University of Hawaii, 292–94 “A Few Ideas About Music and Films” (Cage; 1951), 209 59½ Seconds for a String Player (Cage; 1953), 367–68 Finck, Guy, 99, 112–13 Fire No. 13 (Cage, visual work; 1985), 581n 1125 First Congress for Dodecaphonic Music, Milan (1949), 94, 95, 98n 172 First Construction (In Metal) (Cage; 1939), 29, 56n92, 135–36, 204, 204n406, 347 The First Meeting of the Satie Society (Cage, with Ben Shiff; unfinished), 523–24, 569–71 Fischbach, Marilyn, 401 Fischinger, Elfriede, 497, 547 Fischinger, Oskar Wilhelm von, 48, 484, 497, 547n 1030 Fisher, Dorothy, 56n92 Fisher, Stephen, 524, 525, 531, 567 Fisher, Thomas Hart, 7, 75–76, 594 Five (Cage; 1988), 577 Five Songs for Contralto (Cage; 1938), 140n245, 243 Fizdale, Robert, 68n 113, 73n 122, 74n 126, 86, 95, 99, 102–7, 110, 115, 380 Flamenco, Cage invited to discuss, 407

616  |  Index

Flammer, Ami, 591 Fleury, Dominique de, 412, 460 flute, Cage planning to learn, 14, 16 Fluxus, 228n468, 229n472, 260, 357n670, 358n674, 363n686, 412, 506n953, 536n 1002, 562n 1080 Foldes, Andor, 96 Fong Wust, Monique, 261, 379n730, 393, 399, 594 Fontana, Signora (Roman landlady), 193n376, 202 Fontana Mix (Cage; 1958), 130, 193, 197n384, 201, 202, 203–4, 207n415, 212–13, 222, 223, 225, 231, 232, 234, 235–36, 244, 249, 279–80, 284, 285, 291, 321, 367 For Paul Taylor and Anita Dencks (Cage; 1957), 242 Ford, Edsel, 42 Ford, Gordon Onslow, 157–58 “Forerunners of Modern Music” (Cage; 1949), 102, 105, 123, 209, 393, 398 Forever and Sunsmell (Cage; 1942), 56n92, 243n493 “forgive me” (Cage, mesostic poem; May 8, 1980), 497, 547 Fort, Syvilla, 62n 104 FORTRAN, 373, 452n843 45' for a Speaker (Cage; 1954), 328, 366n698 Foss, Lukas, 303, 308, 315, 341n639, 377n726, 382, 403–4, 403n775, 517n978 Foundation for Contemporary Performance Arts (FPCA; later foundation for Contemporary Arts), 260, 292n558, 293n449, 295, 319–21, 329–30, 337, 343, 344, 363, 367, 370–71, 374, 423, 447, 472n889, 517–18, 525, 571 Four (Cage; 1989), 549n 1032, 568n 1093, 577 Four3 (Cage; 1991), 580, 591 Four6 (Cage; 1990/1992), 591 4'33" (Cage; 1952), 129, 168, 176–77, 189, 212n429, 577, 584n 1135, 599 Four Dances (Cage; 1942), 55n90 “4 Musicians at Work” (Cage, Feldman, Boulez, Wolff; 1952), 152n278, 209

Four Walls (Cage; 1944), 66, 69 Fournier, Pierre, 97 Fourteen (Cage; 1990), 522, 576 Fourth Construction (Cage; 1942), 53, 55 Frangella, Luis, 414, 471n884, 480, 510 Frankenstein, Alfred, 31, 43 Frankfurt Opera, xi–xii, 522–23, 541–42, 548n 1031, 560n 1070, 565, 575n 1104 Frankfurt School, 205n407 Franklin, Benjamin, 433 Frasconi, Antonio, 292n557 Frederick R. Weisman Art Award, xiii free jazz movement, 524, 552 Freedman, Hal, 523, 556–57; Ring Précis, 549n 1033, 556n 1057, 557 The Freedom of Sound: John Cage Behind the Iron Curtain (ed. Katalin Szekeley, 2012), 276–77n531 Freeman, Betty (Mrs. Stanley), 276, 327–28, 527, 558, 594 Freeman Etudes (Cage; 1977–1980/1989– 1990), 276n530, 463n866, 474, 477n897, 487, 514–15, 522, 527, 566n 1089, 568, 578, 579 French, Cage on speaking/writing, 10, 99, 111, 112, 139 French, Jacob, 467 French horn, Cage taking lessons in, 3, 13, 16, 17, 19, 24, 26–27, 312 Freund, Marya, 93 Friends of the Schindler House, 462 Friends of the Wesleyan Library, 423 From Zero (documentary on Cage; 1995), 557n 1058 Fromm, Erich, 385n744 Fromm, Paul, 235 Fulleman, John David, 464, 477, 489, 495 Fulleman, Monika, 489n916, 495n932 Fuller, Anne, 360, 529, 533–34 Fuller, R. Buckminster: biography, 319n598; Bell Labs and, 348n656; Cage influenced by ideas of, xv, 291, 335, 352, 359, 394, 395, 405, 406, 408, 443, 540, 573–74; Cage’s friendship with, 259, 290; in

Cage’s staging of Satie’s Ruse of Medusa at Black Mountain College, 7, 183n357; chance operations versus design science of, 417; Chinese-Russian-American project, 360; Corner, Philip, and, 359–60; Culver and, 524, 538–39; death of, 533–34, 543; as FCPA lecturer, 260, 319, 320, 326, 330, 345–46; at Festival of Art and Technology, Stockholm (1966), 348n656; geodesic domes of, 539; Ideas and Integrities (1963), 291; letter from convict about love received by, 529; letter to (June 12, 1965), 319, 594; “Re and Not Re Fuller and Mao” (Cage; 1972), 408n784; Rosenberg on, 343; son-in-law, 250; Synergetics (1975), with E. J. Applewhite, 319n598, 555 Fuller, Richard, 31 Fuller-Snyder, Allegra, 250n505 Fundacion San Telmo, Buenos Aires, 587–88 Furstenburg, Adelina von, 481 Furst-Heidtmann, Monika, 594 “The Future of Music” (Cage; 1974), 484, 513 “The Future of Music: Credo” (Cage), 209 Futurists, Italian, 36 Fylkingen Society, 283n543, 348n654, 353–54 Gaburo, Kenneth, 379n729 Gale, William, 230 Galli-Curci, Amelita, 71 gamelan, American, 553n 1045 Gandini, Gerardo, 587 Ganz, Isabelle, 517 Garfein, Jack, 232n476 Garland, Peter, 553, 560 Garrison, Blanton F., 552n 1042 Garrison, Mrs. B. F. (Lucile; aunt of Cage), 314, 525, 552 Gate Hill Cooperative, Stony Point, New York, 129, 130–31, 164n320, 169n335, 178n350, 182, 185–86, 198n390, 200, 259, 411, 417–18, 419, 526

Index  |  617

467, 494; Methodist upbringing and Gatti, Armand, 114, 136, 141 early desire of Cage to be a minister, Gaudeamus Foundation, 420 xvii, 178, 313n589, 360; Prinkash Gay Sunshine Interviews, 560 Abbey, Gloucester, Cage at, 421–22; Gazzelloni, Severino, 197, 208n418 Thoreau on, 529; Trappist Monastery, Geldzahler, Henry, 293 Gethsemani, Kentucky, 79, 80; Zen geodesic domes, 319n598, 539 philosophy, Cage influenced by, xviii, George, William B., 310–12, 350, 355 128, 136, 259, 262, 275, 282, 352n662, 360, Gerhard, Roberto, 364 420, 422n797, 427, 504–5, 512, 540, 599 Gerhart, Martha, 269 Godwin, Ted, 325 Gershwin, George, 230n473 Goebbels, Heiner, 561n 1072 Giacometti, Alberto, 7 Goff, Eleanor, 80n 137 Gibbs, Marilyn S., 513–14 Gold, Arthur, 68n 113, 73n 122, 74n 126, 95, Gilbert, Alan, 213n433 99, 102–7, 110, 115, 380 Gilbert, Pia, 493 Gold, Morris, 192, 210 Gilden, Nancy, 581 Gold H. L., 156n287 Gillespie, Don, 183n359, 523, 531, 550–51, Goldbeck, Frederick, 85, 87, 103, 104, 106, 567, 591 124 Gillmor, Alan, 430 Goldberg, Frédéric, 139n240 Ginsberg, Allen, 501 Goldman, Emma, 561n 1073 Glackin, Paddy, 495, 499 Goldstein, Malcolm, 358n676, 359, 413, Glanville-Hicks, Peggy (Peggy Bate): 486–87, 541, 582; Soundings, 487 biography, 7, 87n 147; article about Gombrowicz, Witold, 428 Cage, 87n 147, 104; Cage’s trip to Europe Gomez-Ibanez, Jose and Lidia, 268 in 1949 and, 87; letters to, 93–94, Goodman, Benny, 113n202 100–103, 106–7, 110–11, 118–20, 594; Goodwin, John, 105 mentioned, 89, 90, 156 Gordon, David, 268 Glass, Philip, 230n474, 419n788 “Gordon,” 54 “globally” composed mesostics, 471n885 Gorewitz, Rubin L., 296, 303, 304 “Gloria Issue” (Immaculate Heart College, Gorky, Arshile, 327n610 1961), 253 Gortner, Ross and Priscilla, 267 Gluck, Christoph Willibald, 522, 559 Gnazzo, Anthony (Tony), 342n642, 380–81 The Gospel of Sri Ramakrishna, 445n831, 504 God, religion, and philosophy: Buddha and Gotti, Tito, 413, 468–70, 472–73 Gottschalk, Louis Moreau, 452n843 Buddhism, 128, 136, 136n235, 168n329, Goya, 105 259, 282, 313, 352n662, 360, 405, 406, Gradowitz, Mr. (Israeli fan of Cage), 92, 94 491n920; Duchamp and Cage on, Graham, Martha, 50n71, 54n82, 55, 57, 59, 429; Eckhart von Hochheim (Meister 63, 101n 180, 296n566, 386 Eckhart), 85, 86, 159, 405, 422n795, Graham-Lújan, James (Nene), 186–87, 595 505, 512, 525; Gregorian chant, 79, Grainger, Percy, 34 421; Hindu/Indian philosophy and Grant, Margaret, 334 aesthetics, 76n 129, 85n 145, 87n 148, graphic notation, 127, 142, 158n298, 111, 182, 207, 301, 336, 428–29, 438, 242n492, 273, 292, 361n681, 368, 455, 471, 441, 445n831, 472; hymns, 18th486–87 century American, Cage’s use of,

618  |  Index

Graves, Morris, 158, 301, 332n621, 422, 445n831, 463n867, 532n995 Green, Ray, 28, 31, 32n40 Green, Samuel and Bunnie, 269 Greenwich School Music House, 82 Gregorian chant, 79, 422 Gresham, Mark, 546 Gresty, Hilary, 540n 1017 Grieg, Edvard, 588–89 Griffiths, Paul, 411, 466 Grimaila, Raymond, 267 Grimaud, Yvette, 141, 158 Grinich, Victor, 201n399 Grosser, Maurice, 107 Grove Press, 203, 205 Grupper, Samuel, 552 Grutman, Bennet, 296n566 Guardiani, Francesco, 342n641 Gubaidulina, Sofia, 574n 1102, 577, 590 Guerini, Giampaolo, 594 The Guests Go In to Supper (Cage and others; 1986), 543n 1020 Guggenheim, Pegeen Vail (married name Rumsey), 98n 171, 99, 266 Guggenheim, Peggy, 5, 65n 108, 98n 171, 99, 118n211, 199, 220n447, 227, 237, 268, 527 Guggenheim Fellowship, 8, 91, 92, 94, 95, 121, 122, 143, 154 Guggenheim Foundation, 29, 36, 37, 62n 104, 247, 457n851 Guggenheim Museum, 277, 325, 584n 1133 Guston, Philip, 345 Guttman, Newman, Computer Music, 202 Haba, Alois, 336 Hager, Leopold, 228 Hähnel, Folke, 353–55 haiku, 138, 145, 235, 274, 455, 541n 1018, 570, 582 Haikus (Cage; 1950–1951), 145 Hakim, Eleanor, 402n771, 415, 492 Hall, David, 213 Halprin, Ann, 62n 103, 181, 182, 216, 228, 230, 231, 266

Halprin, Lawrence, 266 Halprin-Lathrop Dance Studio Theater, 62n 103 Hals, Franz, 105 Hambraeus, Bengt, 228, 274 Hamhill, Sara, 80 Hamm, Charles, 329, 464 Hampel, Gunther, 523, 541n 1019, 547–49, 594 Hanes, R. Philip, 482 Hansen, Al, 224, 265 Hanson, Howard, 583n 1131 “happenings,” 129, 218n442, 224, 226n461, 265, 456, 468 “Happy New Ears!” (Cage; 1963), 274, 356 Harding, Walter, 414, 451n841, 510; Thoreau, Man of Concord (1965), 510, 529 Harlock, Allan, 388 Harmon, Leon, 322 Harper’s Bazaar, 56 Harper’s Magazine, 230 Harris, Roy, 331 Harrison, Jay H., 192 Harrison, Ken, 515n975 Harrison, Lou: biography, 28n33; in Aptos, California, 181; on Cage’s Sixteen Dances, 144; Korean music project, 263, 282; Lou Harrison Reader (1987, ed. Peter Garland), 553–54, 560; on making teponaztli out of bakelite, 29; at Mills College, 4, 34–35; nervous breakdown and recovery, 6, 77–79, 82, 85; percussion and experimental work, 31, 32, 33–34, 40, 43, 53, 56n92; review of Cage’s A Book of Music, 380–81; Schoenberg, study with, 11n5; The Seasons (Cage), orchestration of, 85n 145; Shere, Charles, writing about, 566; Suite for Toy Piano (Cage), orchestration of, 245n495; Yates’s interest in, 211; mentioned, 44, 94, 98, 101, 224, 346 Harrison, Lou, letters to: August 10, 1951, 155–56; May 20, 1955, 181–82; June 16, 1956, 191–92; March 2, 1963, 282–83;

Index  |  619

March 25, 1965, 313–14; May 24, 1987 (to Harrison and Bill Colvig), 553–54; sources of, 594 Harrison, Lou, works: About Carl Ruggles (1946), 77; Canticle, 43; Double Music (1941), with Cage, 4, 34n43, 382; 5th Simfony, 28, 43; La Koro Sutro (1972), 553n 1045; Suite for Violin and American Gamelan (1974), 553n 1045; Wesak Sonata (1964), 313 Harvard lectures (I–VI; Cage, 1990), xii, 508n957, 524, 525, 555–56, 564, 567, 568, 575, 587 Harvard University, xii, 524, 555–56 Harvey, Josie (aunt), 112n201 Harvey, Marge (aunt), 112, 351, 552 Harvey, Minnie (maternal grandmother), 313n589 Harvey, Phoebe (aunt), 112n201 Harvey, Sadie (aunt), 112n201 Hassan, Ihab, 268 Hatfield, Ruth, 55, 56n92 Hauer, Josef Matthias, Labyrinthischer Tanz (1955), 221 Hawkins, Alma, 287 Hawkins, Erick, 57, 192n373, 224n457 Hay, Alex, 348n656, 349, 353 Hay, Deborah, 348n656, 349, 353 Hayman, R. I. P. (Richard Perry), 411, 503 Heart Sutra, 313 Heilbroner, Robert L., What Is the Human Prospect?, 445 Heinsheimer, Hans, 213, 214, 215 Helft, Jorge, 587–88 Heliker, Jack, 7, 85–86, 103, 119, 594 Hélion, Jean, 98, 99, 102, 103, 111n200 Helm, Everett, 174 Helmholtz, Hermann, On the Sensations of Tone (1954), 372 Helms, Hans G., 209, 278, 418n786 Henmar Press, 232, 272, 278, 387, 482 Henninger, Mildred, 415 “Henrietta,” 59 Henriot, Nicole, 134

620  |  Index

Henry, Pierre, Symphonie pour un homme seul (1949–1950), with Pierre Schaeffer, 166n323 “Herb,” 55 Here Comes Everybody: The Music, Poetry, and Art of John Cage (Stanford University conference, 1992), xiii Herzogenrath, Wulf, 471, 554n 1048 Heugel, François, 139n241 Heugel, Philippe, 139, 158 Hibbits, Bernard, 342n641 Hidalgo, Juan, 198, 274, 468, 469, 470 Higgins, Alison. See Knowles, Alison Higgins, Richard (Dick), 261, 265, 353, 357, 361–62, 363, 391, 412, 413, 447, 524–25, 537–38 Hill, Diane, 579 Hill, Martha, 50n71 Hiller, Lejaren (Jerry), 257, 262, 314, 329, 372, 373, 377–78, 389, 422, 452n843, 594; HPSCHD (1968–1969), with Cage, 257–58, 314n591, 372n710, 373n713, 382–83, 386–88, 391, 396, 402, 421, 422, 452, 472n887, 478 Hindemith, Paul, 46, 47, 197n388, 336 Hindu/Indian philosophy and aesthetics, 76n 129, 85n 145, 87n 148, 111, 182, 207, 301, 336, 428–29, 438, 441, 445n831, 472 Hinrichsen, Evelyn, 259, 266, 272n524, 275–76, 525, 531, 594 Hinrichsen, Walter: Atlas Eclipticalis dedication, 266; copyright issues referred to, 389; Phetteplace and, 366, 368; publication of Cage’s music by, 131, 227–28, 241–42; Source, publication of Cage material in, 365; mentioned, 282 Hinrichsen, Walter, letters to: July 12, 1960, 231–32; August 27, 1960, 235–36; New Year’s Eve, 1960, 237–38; July 4, 1961, 244–45; October 10, 1962 (to Walter and Evelyn), 259, 272n524, 275–76; ca. late October, 1962, 276; March 3, 1968, 381–83; sources, 594 Hirsh, Hy, 34n45

Hitchcock, H. Wiley, 413, 464, 465n875 Hockney, David, 509n959 Hogan Jazz Archive, Tulane University, 183n358 Holiday, Billie, 201n397 Holm, Hanya, 50n71 Holmes, Thom, 490 Holst, Spencer, 453 Holzaepfel, John, 564, 565 Home, Washington State, 158 Honegger, Arthur, 101 honorary university degrees, Cage refusing, 425, 430, 493 Hoover, Kathleen O’Donnell, 130, 192 Hopkins, Gerard Manley, 72 Hopkins, Jeannette, 543–44 Horovitz, Michael, 232 Horror Dream (music by Cage; film, 1947), 34n45 Horse Race Results phone recordings, 458n854 Horst, Louis, 58 Horton, Lester, 35, 157 Hoss, Wendell, 3, 16, 19, 24, 26 Houedard, Dom Pierre-Sylvester, 421–22 Hovhaness, Alan, 77, 94, 115, 224 “How to Become Uncultured” (Cage; 1951), 145, 188 “How to Cut Someone in Half and Then Put Him Back Together Again” (Christmas letter to Hiller family, Cage; 1967), 262, 377–78 Howe, R. H., 388 HPSCHD (Cage; 1968–1969), with Lejaren Hiller, 257–58, 314n591, 372n710, 373n713, 382–83, 386–88, 391, 396, 402, 421, 422, 452, 472n887, 478 Huang-Po Doctrine of University Mind (1957), 360 Hucitec Editora de Humanismo, Ciência e Tecnologia Ltda., 544 Huddersfield Contemporary Music Festival (UK), xii, 522, 568, 569 Huguet, Georges, 110

Hull House, 54 Hultberg, Paul and Ethel, 178n350 Humphrey, Doris, 50n71, 52n77 Humphrey-Weidman Group, 50n71, 52 Hunter, Sam and Edys, 362 Hurlburt, Allen, 346–47 Hutchins, Robert M., 393–95 Huxley, Aldous, 198 HV2 (Cage; 1991), xiii Hyde, Joe, 298 hymns, 18th-century American, Cage’s use of, 467, 494 Hymns and Variations (Cage; 1979), 480–81, 494 Hymovitz, Edwin, 193n375 I Ching, xviii, 128, 142n253, 144, 145, 149–52, 154, 176–77, 273, 334n627, 357n671, 373, 398, 399, 411, 449, 450, 451–53, 454, 460, 462n863, 478, 494, 528, 533, 540n 1016, 570, 578, 599 Iceland, Cage visiting, 413, 498, 501 Ichirō, Hariu, 562n 1079 Ichiyanagi, Toshi: biography, 219n445; as assistant to conductor for Atlas Eclipticalis, 271; Atlas Eclipticalis dedication, 268; Cage and Tudor’s tour of Japan and, 259, 274, 275n527, 276, 278; Cage seeking publisher for, 276; concerts, 220, 241, 242, 291n556, 372, 373, 391; Etcetera 2/4 Orchestras (Cage; 1985) conducted by, 561n 1074; Kosugi and, 358n675; Music for Piano No. 4, 291n556; Ono, Yoko, and, 219n445, 259, 372, 527, 537n 1006; performing with Cage, 358n673; Sapporo, 278, 279, 283, 284; Stanzas for Kenji Kobayashi (1961), 241n488; Story (Cunningham; 1963, with music by Ichiyanagi), 306n580; as student of Cage, 219, 265, 336, 540; Tudor performing, 274; Yates on, 336; 0'00" dedicated to, 537n 1006 Idyllwild, California, 187 Illich, Ivan D., Deschooling Society (1971), 426

Index  |  621

Imaginary Landscape No. 2 (March No. 1) (Cage; 1942), 46, 55n89, 204 Imaginary Landscape No. 3 (Cage; 1942), 56n92 Imaginary Landscape No. 4 (March No. 2) (Cage; 1951), 147n270, 152, 154, 175, 187, 188 Imaginary Landscape No. 5 (Cage; 1952), 163, 212 Imaginary Landscape series (Cage; 1939–1952), 212, 438 imagined music, Cage on, 398 Immaculate Heart College, Los Angeles, 253, 263 Impresarios Inc., 113n202, 130, 204n406 Improvisation III (Cage; 1980), 495n930 Improvisation IV (Cage; 1980), 495n932 In the Name of the Holocaust (Cage; 1942), 53n78, 56n92 Inamori, Kazuo, and Inamori Foundation medal, 525, 572–74 Incontri Musicali, 197n382, 203, 205 indeterminacy, principle of, 130, 132, 287–88, 508n958, 513n969, 524, 564, 599 “Indeterminacy” (Darmstadt lecture, Cage; 1958), 208, 209–10 Indeterminacy: New Aspect of Form in Instrumental and Electronic Music (Cage, 1959), 207, 210, 235n481, 246, 259, 275, 288n549, 351n661, 360–61, 457 India, Cage’s first trip to, 301–2 Indian/Hindu philosophy and aesthetics, 76n 129, 85n 145, 87n 148, 111, 182, 207, 301, 336, 428–29, 438, 441, 445n831, 472 Ingólfsdóttir, Thorgerdur, 498 Inlets (Cage; 1977), 463n867, 465, 471, 512, 559n 1067 Interior Design (journal), 194n378 Interiors (journal), 194n378 International Design Conference, Aspen, Colorado, 346–47 International Exchange Program, American National Theater and Academy (ANTA), 179–80

622  |  Index

International Herald Tribune, Cage as music correspondent for, 92n 155, 95, 96–97, 98, 102, 117 International Society for Contemporary Music (ISCM), 90, 92n 155, 93, 110, 111, 115, 264 Iran, Cage and Merce Cunningham Dance Company in, 421 Iranian hostage crisis, 505 IRCAM, 483, 484, 490, 499 Ireland, Cage on, 489 Irish traditional music, Cage using, 495 iron curtain, Cage’s desire to distribute music behind, 276 Isaacson, Leonard, 314n591 ISCM (International Society for Contemporary Music), 90, 92n 155, 93, 110, 111, 115, 264 It Is (journal), 209, 211 Italian Futurists, 36 Italy, Cage on, 95, 96 Ivashkin, Alexander, 565n 1084 Ives, Charles: biography, 31n39; Cage’s reflections on, 294–95, 308, 325, 336, 338, 356; Fourth Symphony, 336, 338; Harrison, Lou, funding for treatment of, 6, 77–79; HPSCHD (Cage; 1968– 1969), with Lejaren Hiller borrowing from, 391; influence on American music, 210–11; letters in Lou Harrison Reader (1987), 554; letters to, 31–32, 77–78, 594; scholarship on, 183; Sonata, 115; Third Symphony, 78n 133; Yale’s collection of music of, 423; mentioned, 101, 184 Ives, Mrs. Charles (Harmony Twitchell Ives), 78–79, 211, 595 I–VI (Cage’s Harvard lectures; 1990), xii, 508n957, 524, 525, 555n 1054, 564, 567, 568, 575, 587 Iwaki, Hirayuki, 524, 561, 562, 563, 564–65 Jack Lenor Larsen, Inc., 194n378 Jackson, Roland, 397

Jacob, Max, 118; Conseils à un jeune poête: Suivis John Cage Festival, Turin and Ivrea (1984), 477n897 de Conseils à un étudient (1972), 118n210 “John Cage in Östberlin” (Akademie der Jacob, Mrs. B. A., III, 413, 505–6 Künste, Berlin), xiii Jacobs, Paul, 235n481 John Cage Music Manuscript Collection, Jacob’s Pillow Dance, 186 New York Public Library for the Jacoby, Herbert, 64n 106 Performing Arts, xvi, 168n330 Jaguar loaned by Johns to Cage, 260–61, A John Cage Reader: In Celebration of His 314, 320, 325 Seventieth Birthday (ed. Jonathan Brent Jakes, Jill, 343, 344, 362 and Peter Gena, 1983), 525, 531 James Joyce, Marcel Duchamp, Erik Satie: An John Cage Trust, xv–xvi, 551n 1038, Alphabet (Cage; 1982), 413, 415, 491, 499, 562n 1078 506, 511, 513 John Cage: Works on Paper, 1982–1990 “James Joyce/John Cage” (Zurich (exhibition, Elvehjem Museum of Art, Junifestwochen, 1991), xiii University of Wisconsin, Madison, Jansen, Margaret, 28n31, 32n40, 52–53, 55 1991), 582n 1126 Japan, Cage’s first tour of, 259, 263, 272–78, Johns, Jasper (Jap): biography, 293n559; 522 accompanying Cage to Hawaii, 293; Japanese music, Cage article on, 303, 356 American Embassy program, 249, “Jasper Johns: Stories and Ideas” (Cage; 250; American flag paintings, 260, 1963–1964), 356, 447 325n607; Atlas Eclipticalis dedication, Jawlensky, Alexej Georgewitsch von, 267; Cage writing about, 248, 13–14, 27n28, 594 343, 356, 447; collaborating with jazz and jazz elements, 55n90, 163n315, 249 Cage and Cunningham, 227, 542, The Jazz Record Book (1942), 183n358 569n 1096, 570; Duchamp, Teeny, and, Jazz Study (Cage; c. 1942), 55 349n658; encaustic owned by Merce Jean Erdman Dance Group, 58n96 Cunningham, 584; FCPA and, 260, Jefferys, William, 267 293n559, 295n565, 320, 321, 342, 517–18; Joglars (journal), 335 Finnegans Wake, appearances of “Jasper” John Cage Anarchic Harmony Festival and “Johns” in, 491; Fuller and, 345–46; ’92 (for Cage’s 80th birthday), xiii, 526, “grays” of, 344; Impresarios Inc., 582n 1127, 586n 1138 113n202, 130, 204n406; Jaguar loaned John Cage Award, FCPA, 295–96n565, to Cage by, 260–61, 314, 320, 325; letters 358n675, 472n889, 508n958, 577n 1111 to, xvii, 324–25, 491; on McLuhan John Cage: Composed in America (ed. Perloff and Yates lectures for FCPA, 343; and Junkerman, 1994), 550n 1036 Merce Cunningham Dance Company/ John Cage Correspondence Collection, Cunningham Dance Foundation and, Northwestern University, xvi, 593 293n559, 303, 309; mesostic for, 552; John Cage e l’Europa (conference, Perugia, new direction in American art and, 1992), 588 168n332; Second Hand (Cunningham John Cage 80th Birthday Celebration choreography, Cage music, Johns (Herbst Theatre, San Francisco, 1991), costumes; 1969/1970), 66n 109, 293n559, xiii 431n811; Stony Point house used by, John Cage Festival, Tage Neuer Musik, 418; Un jour ou deux (Cunningham Bonn (1979), 492

Index  |  623

choreography, Cage music, Johns staging and costuming; 1973), 293n559, 432n812; Winter Music dedicated to, 479; Yates on, 243, 344–45; mentioned, 433 Johnson, David, 201, 202 Johnson, Mimi, 411, 418, 431n810, 447, 448, 455, 472, 476, 481, 495, 559, 560, 572 Johnson, Philip, 357; “Glass House,” New Canaan, Connecticut, 357n673 Johnston, Ben, 163n316, 269, 329, 365–66, 374, 397, 554; Microtonal String Quartet, 387; Quintet for Groups, 365 Johnston, Betty, 269, 365–66, 397 Johnston, Jill, 277n534 Jolivet, André, 120, 133 Jones, Archie N., 32 Jones, Genevieve, 77 Jones, Joseph, 229 Jonson, Ben, Volpone, 169n338 Josephson, Arthur and Mary Caroline, 266 Joste, Martine, 591 Jouffroy, Alain, 434–37 Jouvet, Louis, 160 Jowett, Nicolas, 420–21, 422, 595 Joyce, James: comedy, love of, 501; comprehensive viewpoint of, 540; Duchamp and Thoreau compared, 451; James Joyce, Marcel Duchamp, Erik Satie: An Alphabet (Cage; 1982), 413, 415, 491, 499, 506, 511, 513; Junifestwochen “James Joyce/John Cage,” 580n 1123; Muoyce II: Writing Through Ulysses (Cage; 1992), 528n986 Joyce, James, Finnegans Wake: The First Meeting of the Satie Society (Cage, with Ben Shiff; unfinished), 569n 1096, 570; “Jasper” and “Johns” in, 491; Mink, Louis, A Finnegans Wake Gazetteer, 415, 516n976; Roaratorio: An Irish Circus on Finnegans Wake (Cage; 1979), xii, 413, 464n872, 483, 489, 489n916, 490, 495nn931–32, 499, 502, 504, 516n976, 554; ten thunderclaps from (for Cage’s unrealized Atlas Borealis), 334, 335, 341,

624  |  Index

383, 528; Writing Through Finnegans Wake (Cage; 1976–1977), 471, 499n939; Writing for the Second Time Through Finnegans Wake (Roaratorio: An Irish Circus on Finnegans Wake), (Cage; 1976–1978), 471, 483, 499n939; Writing for the Third Time Through Finnegans Wake (Cage; 1979), 499n939; Writing for the Fourth Time Through Finnegans Wake (Cage; 1979– 1980), 499, 516n976; Writing for the Fifth Time Through Finnegans Wake (Muoyce) (Cage; 1982), 477n897, 499n939, 516; “writings-through” by Cage, 471n885 Judson Dance Theatre, 305, 329 Juilliard Quartet, 184, 534n996 Juilliard School, 143, 160, 184, 241n488, 356, 493n926, 526, 587n 1144 Junifestwochen “James Joyce/John Cage,” xiii, 580n 1123 Junkerman, Charles, 550n 1036 Kafka, Franz, 123 Kagel, Mauricio, 207–8, 226n460, 245, 268 (with Ursula Kagel), 274, 336, 377n723 Kaiser, Paul, 296n565 Kalmus Urtext, 389 Kama, 428, 441, 472, 532 Kamarck, Edward L., 262, 408, 595 Kandinsky, Wassily, 27n28 Kapleau, Philip, 352 Kaprow, Allan, 224, 265, 317, 366; SelfService (1966), 366n696 Kaprow, Vaughan Rachel, 366n697 Karl-Sczuka-Prize, 491n921 Karlweiss, Nina, 415, 419 Karnes, Karen (married name Weinrib), 178n350, 185n362 Kasabova, Sheila, 261, 514 Kasemets, Udo, 377 Kashevaroff, Andrew Petrovich, 21, 25 Kashevaroff, Martha (née Bolshanin; mother of Xenia), 21n24, 25 Kashevaroff, Xenia Andreyevna (“Bunny”; married name Cage): in Alaska visiting

parents, 13, 21; alimony paid to, 76n 128, 263; bookbinding of, 55; letter to (March 17, 1988), 526, 563–64; Living Room Music (Cage; 1940) dedicated to, 33n42; on loss of Cage’s cat, 546n 1027; marriage to Cage, xiv, xvii, 4–6, 13, 18, 23, 25, 26, 27, 60n 100, 311, 450; mobiles of, 53, 55; money for exploratory trip offered to, 526, 563–64; as percussion player, 32n40; separation and divorce from Cage, xv, 6, 65, 67n 111, 76n 128; as translator, 36; Weisses and, 311; mentioned, 21–22, 52, 56 Kass, Ray, xii, 521 Katzen, Mollie, The Moosewood Cookbook (1977), 413 Katzenberger, John, 539 Kazaras, Mike, and wife, 98 Kelly, Ellsworth, 156, 542 Kelly, Robert, 525, 537n 1008 Kendergi, Maryvonne, 228 Kennedy, John L., 342–43, 595 Kent, Sister Korita, 253n508 Kenton, Mary Jean, 538n 1012 Kenyon, Karen, 579n 1120 Kenyon Review (1944), 72 Kepes, Gyōrgy, 263, 328n611 Kerr, Marian J., 225n458, 257, 292–94, 595 Khan, Ali Akbar, 182 Kielblock, Carl, 571n 1099 Kiesler, Frederick, 160 Kinder, Marsha, 463 King, Martin Luther, Jr., xiv, 444 King James Bible project (Cage; unrealized), 543, 551 Kings Row (film, 1942), 67 Kinsella, Deborah, 525, 530 Kirby, Michael, 337n634 Kirchner, Leon, 134 Kirkpatrick, John, 336 Kirkpatrick, Ralph, 148n273 Kirstein, Jack, 474 Kirstein, Jeanne, 473–75 Kirstein, Lincoln, 186

The Kitchen (New York performance venue), 465, 528n986 Klee, Paul, 27n28, 83, 105, 138 Klein, Kenneth, 87–88, 595 Klemperer, Otto, 21 Klosty, James, 379n730, 398, 595 Klüver, Johan Wilhelm (Billy), 257, 290, 323, 348n656, 354, 360 Knapp, Robert H. and Johnsia, 268 Knighton, Harry, 300 Knisely, Bertha McCord, 15 KNOBS, 387 Knowles, Alison (married name Higgins), 260, 358, 362, 366, 371, 373, 375, 391n752, 594; Notations (Cage and Knowles; 1969), 260, 329n615, 340, 361n682, 363, 364, 367, 369, 370, 371, 372, 373, 391, 423–24, 527; “Where Are We Eating? And What Are We Eating? (38 Variations on a Theme by Alison Knowles)” (Cage; 1975), 398n764 KNX, 437 Kobayashi, Kenji, 241, 276 Kobrin, Ed, 452 Köhler, Armin, 590 Kondracki, Mirek, 412, 427–29 Kooning, Elaine de, 7, 183n357, 320, 517n980 Kooning, Willem (Bill) de, 293n560, 327n610, 343n644, 517–18 Korean music, Lou Harrison’s writing project on, 263 Korean War, xiv, 140 Kort, Thomas J., 524, 527, 585, 595 Kosugi, Takehisa, 295n565, 358, 522, 565, 571–72, 595 Koussevitzky, Olga, 234 Koussevitzky, Serge, 234n480 Koussevitzky Music Foundation, 234n480, 258, 325, 334–35, 340n638, 341, 403n773 Kover, Joseph, 437 Krabbe, Mr., 387 Kraft, William, 250 Kremen, Irwin, 168n330, 584

Index  |  625

Krenek, Ernst, 143; Double Concerto for Violin, Piano, and Small Orchestra (1950), 153 Krishnamurti, 351 Kropotkin, Peter, 561n 1073 Krukowski, Damon, 587n 1141 Krumm, Philip, 237, 241–42, 595 Kubera, Joseph (Joe), 483 Kubota, Shigeko, Marcel Duchamp and John Cage (1968), 212n429 Kuhn, Laura, xi–xiii, xv–xvi, 81n 139, 523, 551–52, 554, 588n 1145, 594, 599 Kulka, Ernest W., 6 Kushi, Michio, 540 Kyoto Prize in Creative Arts and Moral Sciences, xii, 525, 572–74 La Barbara, Joan, 296n565, 525, 584 La Touche, John, 64, 380 Labyrinthian Dances (Cunningham; 1957), 221n452 Lal, Chatur, 182 Lancaster, Mark, 432n812, 495n930, 534n997, 542 Lang, Paul Henry, 145n263, 187–89, 595 language, Cage on, 425 Lankāvatāra Sūtra, 168 Larsen, Jack Lenor, 130, 194–96, 595 Lartigue, Pierre, 521 Lascia o Raddoppia (Italian TV show), 130–31, 197n385, 198, 203n404 The Last Supper (Leonardo Da Vinci), 95 Lathrop, Welland, 62 Laussat (cat), 76 Lavista, Mario, 514 Law, Andrew, 467 Lazar, Julie, 526, 584, 595 Lazare-Lévy, 336 Le Caine, Hugh, 388 Le Corbusier, 201n398, 328n611, 535n 1000 Leach, Francis, 262, 398, 595 League of Composers, 5, 147n269, 264, 340n638 Leandre, Joelle, 536 Leavitt, Gerard, 80

626  |  Index

LeClerq, Tanaquil, 80n 137, 111, 113 “Lecture on Commitment” (Cage; 1961), 278, 356 “Lecture on Nothing” (Cage; c. 1949), 205, 209 “Lecture on Something” (Cage; c. 1950), 209 Lecture on the Weather (Cage; 1975), 414, 471, 480, 485 Lederman, Minna (married name Daniel): biography, 117n207; Atlas Eclipticalis dedication, 268; on Cage’s articles, 117; conversation about music with, 143; as editor, 210; on Mellers’s Music in a New Found Land, 308; relationship with Cage, 261, 400–401; mentioned, 340, 364 Lederman, Minna (married name Daniel), letters to, 525; July 26, 1968 (to Minna Lederman and Mell Daniel), 384–86; December 4, 1970, 400–401; May 17, 1971, 403; May 29, 1972 (to Minna Lederman and Mell Daniel), 418–19; September 3, 1972 (to Minna Lederman and Mell Daniel), 421–22; October 16, 1973 (to Minna Lederman and Mell Daniel), 432–33; July 24, 1979, 489; September 15, 1987, 557; sources, 595 Lee, Jeanne, 480 Lee Hye-Ku, 263n514 Leeds, Mervin, 182 Legley, Vic[tor], 94, 115 Leibowitz, René, 94n 159, 102, 107, 108, 115 Lennon, John, 260, 362n683, 363, 371, 372, 412, 413, 503–4, 528 Lennon, Sean, 503 Lerner, Eric, ed., Zero: Contemporary Buddhist Life and Thought (1979), 491 Letter[s] to Erik Satie (Cage; 1978), 534n997 Levant, Oscar, 230n473 Levinson, Paul, 578 Lévy, Lazare (Lazare-Levy), 336 LeWitt, Sol, 524, 569n 1096, 570 Lewitzky, Bella, 35n47 Leyland, Winston, 560 Library of Congress, 423

Lichtenstein, Roy, xiii Lieberman, Frederick, 240 Life Forms (computer software), 576n 1108 The Life of Mila Repa, the Tibetan Yogi (proposed Cage collaboration with Henri Michaux), 109 Lighthouse for the Blind, 318 Lindsey, Brabazon, 53, 56 Lippold, Louise, 80, 268 Lippold, Richard, 80, 167, 268, 309n585, 379, 532, 533 Lipsett, Arthur, 261, 287–88, 595 listening, Cage on, 26, 129, 176–77 Living Room Music (Cage; 1940), 33–34 Living Theatre, 128, 131, 207, 210, 212, 219, 220, 221, 222, 265 Livingston, Helen, 183n357 Lloyd, Lewis, 303, 319, 390 Lloyd, Norman, 325–26 Lloyd, Stuart, 56n92 Lockwood, Louise, 268 Lockwood, Willard, 268, 374–75 Lohmeyer, Martha, 483–84 Lohner, Henning, xii, 567–68 Lombard, Val, 159 “London Lecture” (“39'16.95" for a Speaker,” Cage), 209. See also 45' for a Speaker, 328n612 loneliness, Cage on, 110 Long, Lois, 197, 248, 258, 259, 265–66, 293, 297, 299, 300, 303, 407, 418; Mushroom Book (Cage and Long; 1972), 248n502, 259, 407, 424, 477n897, 521 Lopatnikoff, Nikolai, 46 Los Angeles Festival John Cage Celebration (1987), xii, 552, 557–58 Los Angeles Times, 3, 496, 558, 566n 1086 Losa (cat), 553, 556 Love, Iris, 260, 295–96 Lowens, Irving, 154, 222, 595 Lowrié, Arthur, 119 Lowy, Stephen, 511n964, 566, 569 Lucier, Alvin, 321n599, 349, 377n725, 415, 457, 472n889, 491–92, 595

Luening, Otto, 199, 224, 364, 583n 1131; Rorschach Symphonic Sonata, 364 Luftig, Ludwig, 480 Lutosławski, Witold, Trois poèmes de Henri Michaux, 271n521 M: Writings ’67–’72 (Cage; 1973), xiv, 412, 424, 443, 516 Mac Low, Jackson, 359, 411, 415, 444, 516, 524, 553, 595; “In Memoriam Paul Blackburn,” 448; letters to, 447–53, 595; The Marrying Maiden, a Play of Changes (1960), 221, 222, 265; “7th Light Poem for John Cage —17 June 1962,” 448n838; 22 Light Poems (1968), 448n838 MacArthur Foundation, 524, 552 MacDougall, Laurie, 595 Machatton, Rachel, 56n92 MacIver, R. M., 299 MacMillan, James, xiii macrobiotic diet, Cage adopting, 413, 461, 490, 498, 502–3, 504, 505–6, 510, 528, 540, 581, 590 Madawick, Paula, 266 Maddox, Arthur, 431n811 Maderna, Bruno, 94n 159, 196n379, 197–98, 203n402, 223, 226n460, 234 Mahler, Gustav, 93n 157 Mahon, Robert (Bob), 415, 508 Mailamm Society, 19 Malatesta, Mario, 561n 1073 Malcolm, Donald, 289–90, 595 Malcolm, Norman, Memoir of Ludwig Wittgenstein, 529 Malina, Judith, 128, 207n414 Mallarmé, Stéphane, Un Coup de Dés, 152, 273 “Manifesto” (Cage; 1952), 209 Mann, Chris, 570; “Whistlin is did,” 541n 1018 Manning, Katherine, 56n92 Manning, Kay, 52, 54 Mantelli, Maestro, 236 Mao Tse-tung, 259, 408, 429, 443

Index  |  627

Mapleson (copying and printing service), 244–45 Marchand, Luther, 36 Marchetti, Walter, 198, 274, 468, 470 Margarete Roeder Fine Arts, 493 Marigny, Count Alfred de, 386n745 Marioni, Tom, 415, 508 Markgraf, Bruce and Rosemary, 267 Marklund, Hans, 586–87 Markoff, Ursula, 523, 541–42, 595 Marshall Plan exhibition (1950), 122–23 Marsicano, Merle, 162, 329 Marsman, Henrik Jan (J. Bernlef), 162n312, 258, 333, 593 Martenot, Maurice, 101n 181 Martha Graham Dance Company, 6, 55n88, 57nn93–94, 62 Martin, Judith, 80 Martin, Julie, 323n603 Martinengo, Luciano, 414, 477–78 Martins, Maria, 562n 1077 Martirano, Salvatore, 329 Mary Sisler Foundation, 309n585, 322 Masselos, William, 119, 134, 139, 272, 273 Massenet, Jules, Elegy, 358n677 Massi, R. Wood, 560 Matera, Salvatore Joseph (Sal), 437 Mathews, Max, 257, 290, 316, 372; International Lullaby, 358n677 Matisse, Henri, 349n658 Matisse, Jacqueline (Jackie; married name Monnier), 355n667 Matisse, Paul, and Teeny Duchamp, eds., “Marcel Duchamp, Notes,” 541n 1018 Matisse, Pierre, 349n658, 355n667 Matta, Roberto, 96, 97, 100, 104 Matter, Herbert, 121, 595 Matter, Mercedes (née Carles), 121n217 Maxfield, Richard, 202, 211, 224, 265, 268, 271, 358; Concert for Piano, 241; Electronic Score for Stacked Deck (1959), 202 Maxwell, Lindsey, 527–28 Mayer, Clara, 269 Mayer, Gita (née Sarabhai), 7–8, 87, 95,

628  |  Index

110, 113, 114, 120, 198n391, 301n571, 302, 535n 1000 Mayuzumi, Toshiro, 242, 561n 1074 McAllester, David and Susan, 268 McCartney, Paul, 260, 362n683, 363, 371, 372 McClellan, Myron, 264 McCray, Porter, 413, 505 McGary, Keith, 320, 426 McGill, Fannie Davis (paternal stepgrandmother of Cage), 552n 1042 McHale, John, and Eddie Schlossberg, Projex 1 project, 391 McKay, George, 31 McLaren, Norman, 147, 155, 161, 162, 259, 595 McLuhan, Eric (son of Marshall McLuhan), 335, 341–42 McLuhan, Marshall: biography, 307n583; Cage influenced by ideas of, xv, 259, 291, 307, 335, 352, 405, 503, 540; Cage’s friendship with, 259; on Cage’s Silence, 325; Chinese-Russian-American project, 360; as FCPA lecturer, 260, 319–20, 326–27, 330, 335, 342, 343; at Festival of Art and Technology, Stockholm (1966), 348n656; The First Meeting of the Satie Society (Cage, with Ben Shiff; unfinished) and, 570; on Hopkins, Gerard Manley, 72n 120; Ong, Walter Jackson, and, 253n510; Pignatari translating works of, 462n864; “Seriously Comma” (Cage; 1966) on, 348, 356; Yates on, 344, 346; mentioned, 567 McLuhan, Marshall, letters to: June 12, 1965, 319–20; September 30, 1965, 326–27; December 12, 1965, 335 McLuhan, Marshall, works: Explorations: Studies in Culture and Communication (journal), 335; The Gutenberg Galaxy (1962), 291, 307; Understanding Media (1964), 307 McPhee, Colin, 119, 161–62, 224 McShine, Kynaston, 434

Mears, Loretta, 526, 578n 1115 Meet the Composer, 524, 583n 1131, 589–90 Meister Eckhart (Eckhart von Hochheim), 85, 86, 159, 338, 405, 422n795, 505, 512, 525, 580–81 Mellers, Wilfred, 307–8; Music in a New Found Land (1964), 307–8 Memling, Hans, 105 Menuhin, Yehudi, 182n355 Merce Cunningham Dance Company/ Cunningham Dance Foundation: Brown, Carolyn, complaints and concerns of, 302–6; Cage raising money for/serving as Musical Director/ touring with, xii, 199, 260, 295–96, 303, 305, 309, 329, 340, 354, 369, 400–402, 411, 476, 482, 483, 490, 540, 546, 576; formation of, 79n 135; at International Week of Today’s Music, 1961, 245; in Iran, 421; John Cage Trust, formation of, xv; Johns, Jasper, and, 293n559, 303, 309; at Johnson’s “Glass House,” New Canaan, Connecticut, 358n673; Mexico/ South America tour, 362n684, 379–80, 384–86, 389n750; Miró paintings and, 332n623, 401–2; Reunion (Cage; 1968) and, 261; Riedl’s engagement of, 481; Roaratorio with, xii, 499; tours, 199, 200; Volkswagen bus purchased for, 131, 198n390, 202; world tour of 1964, 259–60, 295–96, 301n571, 307, 309, 319, 329, 340, 354; Yoko Ono and John Lennon supporting, 528 Mercenier, Marcelle, 198n389 Mercier, Paedher and Mell, 495 Mercure, Pierre, 245, 267 mesostic poetry, xii, 48, 261, 412, 471n885, 525, 575; acceptance speech for Kyoto Prize, 572–74; “Art is Either a Complaint or Do Something Else” (Cage; 1989), 447n836; Cage on how to read, 550; “Composition in Retrospect” (Cage; 1981), 513–14; computer programming and, 539; d’Cruz, Marion, and Margaret

Tan, letter to, 507; defined, 453n845; on Eckhart von Hochheim (Meister Eckhart), 580–81; Fischinger, Elfriede, letter to, 497; Fisher, Stephen, letter to, 531; “forgive me” (May 8, 1980), 497, 547; “globally” composed, 471n885; Hanes, R. Philip, letter to, 482; for Johns, Jasper, 552; Kinsella, Deborah, letter to, 530; for Mac Low, Jackson, 453; on Pound, Ezra, 412, 504; Richards, M.C., letter to, 504; “Scenario for M. F.” (1986), 557–58n 1061; Selkus (Cage; 1984), 541; Sixty-Two Mesostics re Merce Cunningham (Cage; 1971), 403, 465, 477n896; 36 Acrostics Re & Not Re Duchamp (Cage; 1970), 261, 399; for Tudor, David, 535; Twombly, Cy, letter to, 487–88, 570; “What You Say . . .” (Cage; 1979), 447n836 Messiaen, Olivier, xii, 7, 8, 98, 101, 103, 115, 133, 170, 197n383; Turangalila, 133 Metamorphosis (Cage; 1938), 347 “Meth-E rampage,” 169 Methodist upbringing and early desire of Cage to be a minister, xvii, 178, 313n589, 360 Metro (journal), 248 Metzger, Heinz-Klaus, 197, 203, 205, 214, 415, 470–71, 523, 541–42, 595; “Della Liberazione,” 205 Mewantemooseicday at UC Davis (1969), 258, 365n394, 365n694, 464, 464n871, 871 Meyer, Leonard and Lee, 267 Meyer, Marsha, 534 Meyer, Mr. (president of Trans World Airlines), 415, 502–3 Meyer, Neal, 522, 544–45 Meyer-Denkmann, Gertrud, 283–84, 285, 286, 595 Michaelis, Kurt, 266, 382, 415, 459–60 Michaux, Henri, 109, 110–11, 112, 271n521; A Barbarian in Asia, 110 micro-macrocosmic (square-root) principle, 102

Index  |  629

Moore, Douglas, 219 Mies van der Rohe, Ludwig, 58n97 Moore, Marianne, 146n265 Mikhashoff, Yvar, 511, 517, 595 Moore, Peter, 536 Milhaud, Darius, 74n 124, 134; Oresteia and Moorman, Charlotte, 287, 317, 358, 363, 595; Christophe Colomb, 46; Saudades do Brazil Opera Sextronique (Paik/Moorman; 1967), (1920–21), 134n231; Scaramouche (1937), 358–59n677; Topless Cellist (film, Paik/ 134n231 Moorman; 1995), 359n677; TV Bra for Miller, Henry, 157, 250n505 Living Sculpture (Paik/Moorman; 1969), Miller, Orson, 521 363n687 Miller, Philip, 340 Moran, Robert, 230–31 Miller, Rob, 571 Morehouse, Marion (Mrs. E. E. Cummings), “Millers,” 55 140 Mills, John, A Fugue in Cycle and Bels (1935), 47 Moritz, William, 547n 1030 Mills College, 4–5, 30, 32, 34–36, 41, 42, 44, Morton, Lawrence, 132, 204n405, 238–40, 49–50, 157, 233, 373 251–52, 595 Mink, Louis, 267 (with Pat Mink), 453n845, “Mosaic” (Cage; 1966), 356, 440 516; A Finnegans Wake Gazetteer, 415, Moscopp, Ulrich, 577 516n976 Moscow Third International Music Festival Mirakus (Cage; 1984), 541 (1988), xii Miró, Joan, 120, 261, 332–33, 356, 357n672, Motherwell, Robert, 7 393, 401–2 Mountain Lake Workshop, xii, 521 “Miró in the Third Person: 8 Statements” Mozart, Wolfgang Amadeus, 67, 72, 86, (Cage; 1967), 332n622, 356 100, 107, 161n308, 372, 380, 383, 389, Miroglio, Francis, 357 452n843 Mitropoulos, Dimitri, 133 Mulholland, Don, 147n270 Miyata, Mayumi, 588n 1145 Müller, René, 576n 1109 “Mme. Eta H.-S.,” 168 Mumma, Gordon, 261, 295n565, 358n673, Modern Music (journal), 48, 210, 261, 380 373, 377, 382, 384, 390, 411, 447n837, Moe, Henry Allan, 29, 91, 219 472n889 Moholy-Nagy, László, 5, 35n48, 36, 41, 50 Muoyce (Writing for the Fifth Time Through Moksha, 428n806, 441, 472 Finnegans Wake) (Cage; 1982), 477n897, Moldenhauer, Hans, and Moldenhauer 499n939, 516, 528 Collection, 423 Muoyce II: Writing Through Ulysses (Cage; Mollet, Jean (“Baron”), 95, 97, 110 1992), 528n986 Molloy, Matt, 495, 499 Murder Without Crime (film), 168 MoMA (Museum of Modern Art), New Mureau (Cage; 1971), 414, 451, 516, 528, 534 York City, xiii, 5, 168, 182, 212, 219, 241, Museum of Contemporary Art (MOCA), 353, 380, 413, 434n817, 479, 526, 587–88 Los Angeles, 526, 584n 1133 Monday Evening Concerts, 132, 204, 250, Museum of Modern Art (MoMA), New 252 York City, xiii, 5, 168n330, 182, 212, 219, Monk, Felonious, 184 228, 241, 353, 380, 413, 434n817, 479, 526, Monnier, Bernard, 355 587–88 Monnier, Jacqueline (Jackie; née Matisse), Mushroom Book (Cage and Long; 1972), 355n667 248n502, 259, 407, 424, 477n897, 521 Moog, Robert (Bob), 257, 322, 323–24

630  |  Index

mushrooms, Cage’s interest in, 130–31, 185nn362–63, 197n385, 198, 205, 208, 246, 248, 258–59, 265, 275, 297, 314, 337, 378, 385, 421, 422, 423, 433, 447, 472, 485, 489, 498, 521, 586–87. See also Lascia o Raddoppia; New York Mycological Society Mushrooms et variationes (Cage; 1986), 543, 586–87 Musialogues, 2 Journées avec John Cage, Université de Montréal, L’Atelierlaboratoir de la Faculté de musique (1973), 443n827 Music For (Cage; 1984/1987), 523, 537, 540, 553 Music for Amplified Toy Pianos (Cage; 1960), 218–19, 221, 245 Music for Carillon No. 1 (Cage; 1954), 204, 291 Music for Carillon No. 4 (Cage; 1961), 246, 249, 250, 438 Music for Carillon No. 5 (Cage; 1967), 391–92 Music for Marcel Duchamp (Cage; 1947), 155n286, 328 Music for Piano series (Cage; 1952–1962), 191, 207n415, 210n423, 275, 522, 545 Music for “The Marrying Maiden” (Cage; 1960), 221n450, 222 Music for Wind Instruments (Cage; 1938), 347 Music for “Works of Calder” (Cage; 1949– 1950), 121, 134, 148, 155, 380n733, 478 music generally, Cage on, 83, 132, 384, 472, 484–85, 503 Music Library Association, American Recordings Project, 248 “Music Lovers’ Field Companion” (Cage; 1954), 209 Music of Changes (Cage; 1951), 128, 131, 139n239, 146, 148, 150n277, 154, 155, 159–65, 171–73, 209, 210, 232, 235, 242, 273, 397, 450, 533 Music Walk (Cage; 1958), 216, 276, 479 Musica Elettronica Viva, 286n546, 366n698, 374n718, 549n 1032 Musica Nova (Glasgow), xiii, 568n 1094

Musical America (journal), 95, 98–99, 102, 103–4, 137–38, 143 Musicians’ Union, 166 Musicircus events: Champaign-Urbana (1967), xii, 258, 373n716, 400, 454, 480, 492; Hakim letter on, 415, 492; Los Angeles (1987), 557; Minneapolis (1970), 400, 454, 492; Musicircus for Children, John Cage Festival, Turn and Ivrea (1984), 477n897; Paris (1970), 402, 454, 492; Tage Neuer Musik, John Cage Festival, Bonn (1979), 492; U.S. bicentennial event in San Francisco (proposed), 414, 453–55 Musikalisches Würfelspiel (musical dice game erroneously ascribed to Mozart), 372n710, 383, 389 musique concrète, 155n285, 163, 166 Muzički Biennale Zagreb, 270–71 Mycological Society of America, 299 Myers, Rollo H., Erik Satie (1948), 123, 137 Myrick, Julian, 211n424 Mysterious Adventure (Cage; 1945), 507 Nabokoff, Nicolas, 86 Naef, Weston, 508 Nagel, Hansjurgen, 481 Nakamura, Isao, 588n 1145 “Nam June Paik: A Diary” (Cage; 1965), 356 Nancarrow, Conlon, 211, 221–22, 224, 261, 384–85, 390, 413, 509–10, 553n 1046 nanotechnology, Cage’s interest in, 588 Naples, Cage on, 9–10 Nargi, Gary, 501 National Endowment for the Arts (NEA), 480, 524 National Institute for Biochemical Research, 61 National Institute/American Academy of Arts and Letters, 62n 104, 91n 153, 262, 382 National Public Radio, 414, 510 National Research Council (Ottawa), 388 Naumann, Peter, 438

Index  |  631

Newsweek, 204n406, 293 NEA (National Endowment for the Arts), Nguyen, Patrick, 583 480, 524 NHK (Nippon Hōsō Kyōkai; Japan’s public Nearing, Guy C., 185, 258, 265, 266, 290, broadcasting service), 274, 275–76 297–99 Niblock, Phil, 296n565 Negri, Mario, 100 Nichols, Betty, 111, 113 Négyesy, János, 477n897 Niemann, Edmund, 574n 1102 Nelson, Richard, 226, 227 Nigg, Serge, 102 Nemiroff, Isaac, 144 Nilsson, Bo, 274, 385n742 Nemiroff, Joy (née Tudor), 144n258, 535 Nin, Anaïs, 250n505 Nene (James Graham-Lújan), 186–87, 595 “9 Evenings” presentations, Park Avenue Neri, Carlo, 553n 1044 Armory, New York, Experiments in Neuhaus, Max, 321, 329 Arts and Technology, 257, 323n603, Neuman, Morton, 332 348n656, 349, 353–54 Neumann, Sigmund, 267 Nixon, Richard, xiv, 444, 558 Nevelson, Louise, 542 NMS (New Music Society), 17, 43, 147 New Departures (journal), 231, 232 No. 4 (“Bottoms”; Fluxus film), 363, New Munich Artist’s Association, 13n 12 372n712 New Music Quarterly, 11, 15n 15, 17n 19, 44 “no addressee,” letters to, 167–68, 247, 596 New Music Society (NMS), 17, 43, 147 “nocturnal telephonist,” David Tudor New Music String Quartet, 148n273 addressed as, 169, 596 New Music USA, 583n 1131 Noguchi, Isamu, 6, 74, 85n 145 New River Watercolors (Cage; 1988), xii, 521 Nogueira, Maggie, 7, 89–90, 94, 95, 96, 97, New School [for Social Research], New 99, 104, 110 York City, 3, 29, 68n 113, 73n 122, 130, 131, Noh, Japanese, 38, 179 200, 201, 219, 258, 264–66, 292, 311, 411, Nohopera, Or the Complete Musical Works of 502 Marcel Duchamp (Cage; unrealized), 524, New World String Quartet, 15n 15 561–65 New York Academy of Sciences, 299 Nonesuch Records, 383, 387 New York Avant-Garde Festival, 287n547 Nono, Luigi, 196, 198, 199–200, 208, 237, New York City Ballet (formerly Ballet 596; Variazioni canoniche sulla serie dell’op. Society), 186n366 41 di A. Schoenberg (1950), 196n381 New York Herald Tribune, 6, 28n29, 87n 147, Nono, Nuria (née Schoenberg), 196n381, 95, 96, 187n368, 380 199–200, 596 New York Mycological Society, 185n363, Nordwestdeutscher Rundfunk, Hamburg 197n385, 258–59, 265–66, 289–90, (NWDR), 420 297–300, 303, 320, 596 Norman, Dorothy, 445 New York School (art), 327n610 Northwest School (of painting), 158n295 New York School (composers), 127, Northwestern University, xvi, xviii, 53, 139n242, 158n298, 174n343 139n243, 260, 329n615, 359n677, 412, New York Studio School, 121n217 423–24, 429, 448, 481, 593 New York Times, 6, 97n 167, 174n343, 543n 1021 Norton lectures, Harvard University (I–VI; Newman, Barnett, 330 Cage, 1990), xii, 508n957, 524, 525, Newsom, Mary Lou (paternal grandmother 555–56, 564, 567, 568, 575, 587 of Cage), 552n 1042

632  |  Index

Not Wanting to Say Anything About Marcel (Cage; 1969), 261, 365n694, 392n756, 396, 462n865 Notations (Cage and Knowles; 1969), 260, 329n615, 340, 361n682, 363, 364, 367, 369, 370, 371, 372, 373, 391, 423–24, 527 Notations collection, 260, 329–32, 337, 340, 349, 352, 356–57, 363, 364, 366, 369–71, 374, 375, 423–24, 440, 447–48 Note-o-Grams, xviii, 374, 411–12, 447, 449 Notoprojo, K. P. H., 28n33 Novesky, Jerry, 417 “number pieces” (Cage; 1984–1992), 522, 523, 549n 1032, 553n 1044, 568n 1091, 574–75n 1102, 577. See also specific pieces Numus West (journal), 484 NWDR (Nordwestdeutscher Rundfunk, Hamburg), 420 Nyman, Michael, 415, 470 Oakes, Sir Harry, 386n745 Oakes von Hoyningen-Huene, Nancy, 386 Oboler, Arch, 169n337 O’Hara, Pat, 12 Ohsawa, Lima, Art of Just Cooking (1975), 505 Oliveira, Jocy de (Jocy de Carvalho), 259, 331, 351–52, 596 Oliveros, Pauline, 296n565, 396n761, 577 Olson, Charles, 128, 129, 175–76, 193, 417, 448, 596 Olympics: Mexico 1968, 386; Munich 1972, 425 “On History of Experimental Music in the United States” (Cage; 1958), 209 “On Rauschenberg, Artist, and His Work” (Cage; 1961), 248 On the Surface (Cage, etching; 1980), 549n 1032 Ondes Martenot, 101 One (Cage; 1987), 577 One2 (Cage; 1989), 577 One3 = 4'33" (0'00") + T: (Cage; 1990), 522, 575–76, 577 One5 (Cage; 1990), 522, 582

One7 (Cage, from Four6; 1990/1992), 591 One8 (Cage; 1991), 583, 588nn 1144–45 One11 (film collaboration between Henning Lohner and Cage; 1992), xii, 567–68, 568n 1091 One12 (Cage; 1992), 588n 1145 1O1 (Cage; 1988), 549n 1032, 577 103 (Cage; 1991), 568n 1091 “One Thousand Words” (Cage), 209 Ong, Walter Jackson, 253 Ongaku, 358n675 Ono, Yoko: Beatles mss. provided for Notations collection by, 260, 363, 372; Cage on death of Lennon, 503–4; Cage writing to Leon Wildes on behalf of, 415; Cox, Tony, and, 363, 527–28; in The Guests Go In to Supper anthology (Cage and others; 1986), 543n 1020; Ichiyanagi, Toshi, and, 219n445, 259, 372, 527, 537n 1006; letters to, 363, 372; macrobiotic diet adopted by Cage recommended by, 413, 528; Maxwell, Lindsey, biographer, Cage’s letter to, 527–28; No. 4 (“Bottoms”; Fluxus film), 363, 372n712; performing with Cage and Tudor, 259, 275–76, 527, 537n 1006; 0'00" dedicated to, 537n 1006 Ophelia (music by Cage; 1946), 58n96 Oppenheim, Claire, 56n92 Oppenheim, David (Jerome), 194 Oppens, Ursula, 490n919 Optical Poem (film, 1937), 48n70 Oranu, Mother Mary Magdalena, 253 Orchestre de Lorraine, 514 organ works by Cage, 413, 494, 499–500, 537 Organ2/ASLSP (As SLow aS Possible) (Cage; 1987), 494n927 organized sound, music defined as, 49 Osborne, Nigel, xiii “Other People Think” (Cage; 1927), 557n 1059 Otte, Allen, 578 Otte, Hans, 274, 283, 402, 596 “Overpopulation and Art” (Cage; 1992), xiii

Index  |  633

Ovid, 63n 105 Ozawa, Seiji, 414–15, 455, 458, 480, 494, 577n 1110, 596 Page, Ruth, 7, 74, 75, 76, 596 Paik, Nam June: biography, 211–12n429; Atlas Eclipticalis dedication, 266; Cage on music of, 211, 220; collaborating with Cage and Cunningham, 257, 316, 317n596, 463n869; Moorman and, 287n547, 317n596; “Nam June Paik” (Cage), 356; Opera Sextronique (Paik/ Moorman; 1967), 358, 358–59n677; Topless Cellist (film, Paik/Moorman; 1995), 359n677; A Tribute to John Cage (1973), 211–12n429; TV Bra for Living Sculpture (Paik/Moorman; 1969), 363n687 Painters Eleven, 342n643 Palermo, Italy: Cage on, 92–93; ISCM Festival (1949), 92–94 Palestrina, Giovanni Pierluigi da, 72 Pan American Union, 217 Panni, Marcello, 470 Pantheon Press, 127, 142n253, 176, 212, 337 Panufnik, Andrzej, 92, 93 Paper Bag Players, 329 Paris, Cage on, 92, 95, 96, 98, 99, 100, 102, 104, 105 Paris Review, 370 Parker, Harley, 335n629 Parker, Wyman W., 412, 423–24 Parkin, Marjorie, 56n92 Parsons, Michael, 211n428 Partch, Harry, 170–71, 211, 337, 346, 374, 524, 527, 554; Hobo songs, 527; And on the Seventh Day Petals Fell on Petaluma (1963–1966), 374n717 Patchen, Kenneth, 5, 56, 58–59, 60; Journal of Albion Moonlight (1941), 54, 55; Teeth of the Lion (1942), 59 Patchen, Miriam, 58, 60 Patterson, Ben, 276 Paxton, Steve, 267, 348n656, 349, 353

634  |  Index

Paz, Marie-Jose, 357, 379–80, 445 Paz, Octavio, 261, 301–2, 357, 362, 364, 379–80, 393n757, 445, 449; “Lectura de John Cage” (“Reading John Cage”), 379n730 Pendleton, Ralph, 267 Penn, Arthur, 183n357 pentatonic music, 136 Peoples, Joe and Ruth, 267 People-to-People Sub-Committee on Fungi Convention (1965), 300 Percussion Group Cincinnati, 578n 1114 percussion music, development of Cage’s interest in, 4–5, 28, 30–39, 44, 45–51, 53, 60, 75, 312, 318, 347, 511–12 Pérez Galdós, Benito, Halma (1895), 269n518 The Perilous Night (Cage; 1943–1944), 67, 68, 380 Perkins, Francis, 117 Perloff, Marjorie, 550 Perpetual Tango (Cage; 1984), 511n965 Perry, Alfred, 169n338 Perry, Burton, 50 Pesle, Benedicte, 268, 431–32, 483 Peters (publishing house). See C. F. Peters Corp. Peterson, Sidney, 34n45 Petschull, Johannes, 257, 281, 284–85, 596 Pettis, Ashley, 43 Phetteplace, Jon, 366–68, 374–75 Phifer, Larry, 388 philosophy. See God, religion, and philosophy photography venture with Robert Mahon, 508 Picard, François, 591 Picasso, Pablo, 71, 349n658 Pierce, Donald J., 72–73n 121 Pierce, John Robinson, 348n656 Pignatari, Décio, 462 Pijoan, José, 547n 1029 Pimsleur, Susan, 220, 226, 227, 228, 229, 234, 250, 303, 304 Pines, David, 388

Rachel, Vaughan (married name Kaprow), 366n697 Rachmaninoff, Symphonic Dances (1940), 139n242 Radio Music (Cage; 1956), 187, 240 radio music at Northwestern University, Cage doing experimental work in, 53, 55 Rainer, Priaulx, 235 Rainer, Yvonne, 348n656, 349 “Raison d’etre de la musique modern” (Cage; 1949), 95–96 Ramakrishna, 360–61, 445n831, 504, 505 Rao, Shanta, 182 Rare Bird Alert Network, 458n854 Rascher, Sigurd M., 535n999 Rathbone, Eliza, 532, 533 Rauschenberg, Robert (Bob): biography, 168n332; Aeon (Cunningham), collaborating on, 238n485, 250–51n507; American Embassy program (1961), 249, 250; Atlas Eclipticalis dedication, 266; Black Mountain “happenings” and, 129; Bonwit Teller, windows contract for, 168; Cage article on, 248; Cage on painting of, 189; Elgin Tie (1964), 353–54n666; Europeras 1 and 2 (Cage) and, 542; Experiments in Art and Technology, founding of, 323n603; Festival of Art and Technology, Stockholm (1966), 348n656, 353; Field Dances (Cunningham), collaboration on, 292n558; The First Meeting of the Satie Society, collaborating on, 523–24, 569n 1096, 570–71; Impresarios Inc., 113n202, 130, 204n406; LA festival plans (1961), 250, 251; letter to (June 10, 1989), xvii, 525, 571; Linoleum (1966), 353–54n666; on McLuhan lecture, 343; Minutiae, collaborating with Cunningham on, 191n371; Music Quartet for percussion (Cage; 1935), 48–49, 347 Walk with Dancers, collaborating with Quartets I, V, and VI for concert band and 12 Cage and Cunningham on, 216n438; amplified voices (Cage; 1976), 460, 471, 494 new direction in American art and, Quartets I–VIII for orchestra (Cage; 1976), 413, 168n332, 293n359; “9 Evenings” 459–60, 462, 466–67, 471, 479n901, 494

Pisar, Judith (previously Blinken), 304, 304n579, 341, 362, 365, 378, 475n892 Piston, Walter, Sonatina for Violin and Harpsichord (1945), 148n273 player-pianos, compositions for, 46, 211n426, 221–22 plexigrams. See Not Wanting to Say Anything About Marcel Poe, Edgar Allan, “The Bells,” 7, 74n 124 poker, Cage playing, 156, 301, 397 Poland, Mr., 23 Polignac, Winnaretta Singer, Princesse Edmond de, 91 Pollock, Jackson, 327n610, 343n644 Polyphonie (journal), 135, 139 Pomona College, 3, 430 Pop Art, 227n464, 253n508, 294, 371n707 Possibilities (art and literary magazine), 7 Post, J. Robert, Jr., 306–7 Postcard from Heaven (Cage; 1982), 517 Poulenc, Francis Jean Marcel, 97 Pound, Ezra, 417; Cantos, 412, 504; mesostic poem on, 412, 504 Pousseur, Henri, 266 (with Thea Pousseur), 271, 274 prepared piano, 6, 62n 104, 73n 123, 87n 149, 115, 116, 133, 163, 166, 170, 188, 312, 474, 513 prerecorded telephone announcements, Cage’s use of, 413, 458n854 pressure-sensitive amplitude controls, 388 Pribble, Easton, 85 Prinkash Abbey, Gloucester, 421–22 Pritchett, James, xvi, 328n612, 566, 569, 578n 1117 Pro Musica, 17 psychoanalysis, Cage on, 110, 120, 194 Puccini, Giacomo, 101, 522, 559

Index  |  635

Revill, David, 569 presentations, Park Avenue Armory, Revue d’Esthétique, 370, 376 New York, 348n656, 349, 354; Nocturnes Reynolds, Lloyd, 101, 158 (Cunningham), collaboration on, 186, Reynolds, Roger, 261, 278, 391–92, 472n889 187; “On Rauschenberg, Artist, and Reynolds, Virginia, 101 His Work” (Cage; 1961), 248; Paired “Rhythm, Etc.” (Cage; 1961–1962), 263n512, (Cunningham), collaboration on, 328, 356 229n471; relationship with Cage, 354; Rhythmicon, 36, 41 Story (Cunningham), collaboration on, Ribbelink, Johanna Alida, 269 306n580; Tantric Geography stage decor Rich, Alan, 558 for Cunningham’s Travelogue, 458n854; telephone, tendency not to answer, 250, Richards, M.C. (Mary Caroline): biography, 159n302; on Atlas Eclipticalis, 249; Cage 251; theater event with Cunningham on Tudor’s biography and, 535; “Diana and Cage in Illinois, 365; in Venice with the Huntress” (poem), 226n459, 526; Cage and Cunningham, 227; Winter in Gate Hill Cooperative, Stony Point, Music dedicated to, 479; Winterbranch, New York, 178n350, 185n362; Rudolf collaborating with Cunningham on, Steiner Threefold Educational Center, 206n408; on world tour of Merce Chestnut Ridge, New York, and, 233; Cunningham Dance company, 260, at scattering of ashes of Tudor and 301n571, 354; XOVER (Cunningham), Cage, 526; Slivka interview, 461n858; collaboration on, 584n 1132 translation of Artaud’s The Theater and Ray, Man, 80n 136 Its Double, 139n244, 176n346; translation “Re and Not Re Fuller and Mao” (Cage; of Satie’s Le piège de Méduse, 183; Tudor’s 1972), 408n784 romantic involvement with, 127, 159–61; Reagan, Ronald, 67n 112, 505 mentioned, 158, 412 Real Art Ways, 510 Richards, M.C. (Mary Caroline), letters to: Rebscher, Georg, 438n821 ca. late September 1951 (to David Tudor Redolfi, Michel, 580 and M.C. Richards), 159–61; between Reher, Kurt, 18 November and December 1958 (to David Reichert, Manfred, 513 Tudor and M.C. Richards), 197–99; May Die Reihe (journal), 204, 212, 246, 356–57 24, 1963?, 285–86; December 28, 1980, Reinhardt, Aurelia Nancy, 35–36, 40–41, 50 412, 503–4; sources, 596, 597 religion. See God, religion, and philosophy Richter, Hans, 155n286 Remains to Be Seen (film), 168 Ricketts, Ed, 51n74, 157n291 “Remarks before a Visit to Japan” (Cage; Riedl, Josef Anton, 278–79, 414, 478–81, September 14, 1962), 272–75 485–86, 596 Renaud, Madeline, 158n297 Riegger, Wallingford, 85n 142, 115, 310, 331 renga, 412, 455, 471n885, 570, 574–75n 1102 Riehn, Rainer, 197n382, 471n882, 523, Renga (Cage; 1975), 414–15, 455–56, 458, 459, 541–42, 595 480, 494, 522, 540, 586 repetition, as means of music composition, Rieti, Vittorio, 107; Pasticchio (Chess Serenades), 107n 192 451–52 Rigg, Jean, 401–2, 418, 526, 596 Reunion (Cage; 1968), 212n429, 261, 291n555, Rihm, Wolfgang, xiii 377n723, 382 Rio de Janeiro, Cage on, 385–86 Reviel, Rudy, 64

636  |  Index

Rist, Simone, 399, 433 River Rocks and Smoke (Cage; 1990), 521 Rivera, Diego, 42 Rivers School, Weston, Massachusetts, 525, 530 Roaratorio: An Irish Circus on Finnegans Wake (Cage; 1979), xii, 413, 464n872, 483, 489, 489n916, 490, 495nn931–32, 499, 502, 504, 516n976, 554 Robbins, Jerome, 71 Roberts, Don, 448, 481 Robinson, Henry Morton, and Joseph Campbell, A Skeleton Key to Finnegans Wake (1944), 71 Robinson, Norman, 458n854 Roche, Maurice, 97 rock ’n roll, 240, 336, 338, 389 Roeder, Margarete, xv, 493, 509 Rogers, Calista, 16, 21 Rogerson, Clark T., 299 Roldan, Amadeo, 31, 32, 40, 232n475; Ritmica, 29 Rolywholyover: A Circus for Museum (Cage; 1992), 526, 584n 1133 Ronald, William, 342 Roosevelt, Franklin D., 395n760 Root of an Unfocus (Cage; 1944), 580 Rosbaud, Hans, 153n282 Rose, Barbara, 323n603 Rose, Griffith, 413, 461–62 Rosen, Lucille, 37 Rosenberg, Harold, 326, 330, 343 Rosenberg, Jim, 538 Rosenthal, Albrecht Gabriel (Albi), 329n615, 369n703, 375 Rosicrucians, 82 Ross, Betsy, 325 Ross, Nancy Wilson, 422, 596 Rossum, Frans van, 511, 566, 569 Rothenberg, David, 538–40 Rothko, Mark, 327n610, 343n644 Rothschild, Baroness, visit to home of, 8, 105 Roueche, Berton, 73n 123

Rozart Mix (Cage; 1965), 320–21 Rudhyar, Dane, 331 Rudich, Norman and Linda, 266 Rudolf Steiner Threefold Educational Center, Chestnut Ridge, New York, 233n477 Ruggles, Carl, 77, 85, 86, 183, 184, 331; Portals, 101 Rusk, Dr. (at Mills College), 36 Russell, William, 28, 31, 32, 34–35, 40, 49, 56n92, 183, 224, 232n475, 347n651, 524, 567; Fugue, 32, 35, 44; Studies in Cuban Rhythms, 44 Russolo, Luigi, 6, 40, 45–46, 47, 48, 50; Art of Noise (1916), 36, 40n55, 45; Dining on the Hotel Terrace; Awakening of a City; Assembling of Automobiles and Aeroplanes, 46 Ruzicksca, Professor, 235, 236 Ryman, Robert, 569n 1096 Ryoanji (Cage; 1983–1985), 331n619, 517n978, 522, 536, 537, 582 Ryoanji (Kyoto temple), 522, 536 “Ryoanji” drawings and prints (Cage; 1983–1992), 521–22, 536n 1003 Rzewski, Frederic, 286, 442, 478, 514, 549n 1032, 572n 1100 Saby, Bernard, 136 Sahlman, Ira D., 261, 492–93 Saint Phalle, Niki de, 249, 250 Saito, Kiyoshi, 292n557 Salabert (publishers), 109n 198, 367, 431–32 Salabert, Constant and Mme, 431–32 Sample, Don, 3, 4, 9n 1, 14, 65n 108 San Francisco Ballet, 186–87 San Francisco Dance League, 55n87, 182 Sanders, Job, 80n 137 Sandler, Irving, 343 Santa Barbara Dance League, 182 Sapp, Alan, 341 Sarabhai, Anand, 535n 1000 Sarabhai, Gira, 87n 148, 120, 207n416, 268, 301n571, 302, 362, 535n 1000

Index  |  637

pensees, 83; La Belle Excentrique, 102, 138; Sarabhai, Gita (married name Mayer), 7–8, Les Courses, 138; Croquis et Agaceries, 87, 95, 101, 102, 110, 113, 114, 120, 198n391, 83, 102; Danses Gothiques, 82, 138; 301n571, 302, 535n 1000 Descriptions, 83; Diner des Peintres Sarabhai, Manorami, 535 Francais, 108; Douze petits chorals (Twelve Sarabhai, Suhrid, 535n 1000 Posthumous Chorales; 1905–1908), Sarah Lawrence College, 58 479n900, 481; Embryons Desseches, 83, “S[arah] the Magnificent” (housekeeper and 138; En Habit de Cheval, 82; Enfantines, 83; friend of Isaac Chocrón), 556 Fils de Etoiles, 82; 5 Grimaces, 82; Genevieve Sassi, Luigi Gianni, 472–73 de Brabant, 82, 102, 111; Gnossiennes, Satie, Erik: biography, 81n 139; on being 82; Gymnopedies, 82, 138; Illusion, 108; called a musician, 428; Cage searching Imperial Oxford, 108; L’Intelligence et for compositions in Europe, 8, 94, 95, la Musicalité chez les Animaux, 539; 97, 102, 104, 106, 107, 108, 111, 119, 123; Intermedes, 108; Jack in the Box, 82; Legende Cage teaching courses at New School Californienne, 108; Ludions La Grenouille on, 130; Cage writing to Ornella Volta Americaine, 83, 481; Le Medecin Malgre Lui, about, 481, 524, 529; Cage’s music 108; Mercure, 83, 108; Messe des Pauvres, influenced by, 336; CBC interview 81, 82, 481, 570; Musique d’ameublement or regarding, 430; copyright permissions, “Furniture Music,” 33n42, 108, 358, 371, 109n 198, 367, 431–32; humor in music 431, 464, 466; La Musique et les Animaux, of, 137–38; scholarship on, 183; Skulsky 539; Nocturnes, 83, 108, 138, 186; Ogives, article in Musical America on, 137–38; 102; Pain benie de la Gaite, 108; Parade, value of manuscripts of, 375; writings, 83; Paul et Virginie, 108; Petit Recueil des Cage’s interest in re-translating, 248; Fetes, 108; Le piège de Méduse (The Ruse Yates, Cage’s critical response to, 81, of Medusa), 7, 83, 102, 108, 183; Porte 82–83, 84; Zacher concert of Cage and Heroique du Ciel, 82; Le Prissonier Mausade, Satie pieces, 500; mentioned, 65, 215, 108; Quatre Melodies, 83, 138; 4 Preludes, 235 82; Relache, 83; Sarabandes, 82, 138; Socrate Satie, Erik, Cage works associated with: (1918), 66–67, 82, 83, 91n 154, 102, 106, Address (1977), 465n875, 466; “Defense of 107, 108, 109, 138, 258, 396, 418n787, Satie” (1948), 137n237; “Erik Satie” (1958), 431n811, 481; Sports et Divertissements, 83, 209; The First Meeting of the Satie Society 511n965; Sur un mur (On the Wall, from (with Ben Shiff; unfinished), 523–24, Nouvelles pièces froides, 1907; referred to 569–71; James Joyce, Marcel Duchamp, Erik by Cage as Stand-Wall), 108; Sylvie, 138; Satie: An Alphabet (1982), 413, 415, 491, Third Nocturne, 82; Three Flabby Preludes 499, 506, 511, 513; Letter[s] to Erik Satie for a Dog, 137–38; Transatlantique, 108; (1978), 534n997; Mewantemooseicday Trois melodies, 83; Trois Morceaux, 82; Trois at UC Davis (1969), 258, 365n394, Poemes d’Amour, 83, 570; Trois Preludes, 83; 365n694, 464, 464n871, 871; Music for 3 Valses, 83; Uspud, 102; Vexations (1893), Marcel Duchamp (1947), 155n286; “Satie 138, 160, 162, 258, 303n575, 333, 580 Controversy” (1950), 143n257; Song Books “Satie Controversy” (Cage; 1950), 143n257 (Solos for Voice 3–92) (1970), 399n766, Sauguet, Henri, 108, 119, 138n238 481, 486 Scafidi, Joseph A., 414, 453–55 Satie, Erik, works: Allons y Chochotte, 108; Scarlatti, Domenico, 138 Apercues desagreeables, 82; Avant-dernieres

638  |  Index

scattering of ashes of Cage and Tudor, 526 “Scenario for M. F.” (Cage; 1986), 557–58n 1061 Schädler, Stefan, 577 Schaeffer, Pierre: À la Recherche d’une Musique (1952), 155, 166; Symphonie pour un homme seul (1949–1950), with Pierre Henry, 166, 207n415 Schafer, R. Murray, 384, 596 Scharff, Paul and Ann, 233n477, 535n 1001 Schary, Dore, 373n716 Schearer, Douglas, 47–48 Schechner, Richard, 337n634 Scheffer, Frank, 557 Scherchen, Hermann, 153n282, 197n383, 440 Scheyer, Galka, 13n 12, 27 Schiaparelli, Elsa, 100, 104 Schillinger, Joseph, 229–30 Schindler, Mark, 12, 23 Schindler, Pauline, xvii, 4, 12–13, 15–17, 18, 22–23, 27n28, 157, 462, 596 Schindler, Rudolph, 4, 12n6, 33n41 Schirmers, 213–15 Schloezer, Boris de, 104 Schlossberg, Eddie, and John McHale, Projex 1 project, 391 Schmitt, Natalie Crohn, 531 Schnebel, Dieter, 411, 438–41, 547n 1029, 575n 1105; Reactions (1960–1961), 440n823; Visible Music II (1961–1962), 440n823 Schneider, Alexander, 148n273 Schneyer, Helen, 480, 586n 1138 Schnitzer, Robert, 179–80, 596 Schoenberg, Arnold: biography, 11n5; Buhlig concerts, 14; Cage meeting and studying with, xvii, 3, 7, 10n2, 11, 12, 15, 16, 19, 20, 22, 23, 24, 26–27, 48, 49, 310–12, 336, 347, 411, 438–41, 466, 513, 547n 1029, 583; Cage’s ideas about tones and, 72; conducting, criticism of, 19; conventional acceptance of, 224; English mastery of, 26; Harrison

as student of, 28n33; HPSCHD (Cage; 1968–1969), with Lejaren Hiller borrowing from, 383, 389, 452n843; letters in Lou Harrison Reader (1987), 554; “Mosaic” (Cage) on, 356, 440; music, Cage on contribution to, 83; music papers of, 423; Notations collection and, 260, 329–30, 352, 440; Scherchen and, 440; Strang and, 160n307; twelvetone technique, 11n5, 81, 160n307, 221n452, 398, 439; Variazioni canoniche sulla serie dell’op. 41 di A. Schoenberg (Nono; 1950), 196n381; mentioned, 146, 157 Schoenberg, Arnold, works: Book of the Hanging Gardens, 19, 21; Opus 11, 440; Opus 25, 440; Pierrot Lunaire, 92, 93, 96–97, 106, 107, 108; Serenade, 133; String Quartet No. 3, 17, 19, 21; String Quartets, 440; String Trio, 440; Suite in Old Style, 21, 22, 440; Verklaerte Nacht, 19 Schoenberg, Gertud, 260, 329–30, 352, 440 Schoenberg, Nuria (married name Nono), 196n381, 199–200, 596 Schoeninger, Gretchen (married name Corazzo), 52, 53, 56n92, 58, 79, 80 Schönberg Medal, xiii Schöning, Fanny, 584 Schöning, Klaus, 413, 490, 495–96, 499–500, 506, 513, 584n 1134 Schott Music, 196–97, 211 Schroeder, Marianne, 588n 1145 Schuller, Gunther, 211, 222, 224, 308 Schulmerich Carillon Co., 249 Schuman, William, 365 Schumann, Peter, 329 Schumann, Robert, 452n843 Schwartz, Polly Ann, 54, 57, 207 Schwarz, Arturo, 434–37 science fiction writers, Cage playing poker with, 156 Score (40 Drawings by Thoreau) and 23 Parts (Cage; 1974), 582n 1127 Score Without Parts (Cage etching; 1978), 471

Index  |  639

Scott, Stephen, 576n 1107 Scottish Circus (Cage; 1990), 568n 1094 Scrabble, Cage playing, 168 Scratch Orchestra, 211n428 Scriabin, Alexander, 14, 104n 190, 336, 391 Scriabin, Marina, 104 Scucum/Skookum (cat), 525, 546, 551, 552, 553 Sculptures Musicales (Cage; 1989), 522, 571–72 Seashore, Carl E., 43 The Seasons (Cage/Cunningham; 1947), 6, 74n 125, 85, 86, 111, 186, 382, 438, 479 Second Construction (Cage; 1940), 30n38, 32n40, 44 Second Hand (Cunningham choreography, Cage music, Johns costumes; 1969/1973), 66n 109, 293n559, 431n811 Seeger, Charles, 211n427 Seeger, Pete, 211n427 Seeger, Ruth Crawford, 211, 224, 336 Sekula, Sonia (Sonja, Sonya), 95, 96, 97, 106 Sélavy, Rrose, 506 Selkus2 (Cage; 1984), 541 S.E.M. Ensemble, 524, 589–90 Sender Barayón, Ramon, Desert Ambulance (1964), 294–95 Sender Freies Berlin, 284 Senff, Tania, 269 September Theremin, 37n52 Series re Morris Graves (Cage; 1974), 445n831 “Seriously Comma” (Cage; 1966), 348, 356 Sessions, Roger, 199 Setterfield, Valda, 268 Seven-day Diary (Cage etching portfolio; 1978), 471 Seven (Cage; 1988), 577 Seven2 (Cage; 1990), 577, 588n 1145 Shakespeare, William, 138, 528n985 Shallenberger, James, 515n975 Shapira, Nathan and Irene, 268 Shaw, Artie, 158 Shaw, Rue (née Ruth Winterbotham), 5, 57, 58–59, 73, 479, 596

640  |  Index

She is Asleep (Cage; 1943), 204, 206n410, 347, 380 Shearer, Sybil, 146 sheng, 591 Shere, Charles, 566 Shere, Lindsey, 566n 1087 Sheridan, Ann, 67n 112 Sherman, Russell, 193n375 Sherman Fairchild Associates, 201 Sherry, Fred, 490n919 shiatsu, 413, 461 Shields, Roger, 383, 387 Shiff, Ben, The First Meeting of the Satie Society (with Cage; unfinished), 523–24, 569–71 Shimmera (Cage; 1943), 53n78, 56n92 shō, 591 Shultis, Chris, 578 Sibelius, Jean, Fifth Symphony, 25 silence and “silent” pieces, 129, 141, 176–78, 284–85, 335n629, 398, 451, 494, 575, 580, 599 Silence: Lectures and Writings (Cage; 1961), 132, 152, 209, 241, 242, 246, 248, 251, 261, 272, 277, 285, 291, 294, 325, 341, 385, 393n757, 398, 412, 424, 532, 539n 1014 Silva, Conrado, 336 Silverberg, Robert, 156n287 Silverman, Kenneth, xvii, xviii; Begin Again: A Biography of John Cage (2010), xvi Silverstein, Lois, 266 Simon, Douglas, 457n851 Singer, Winnaretta, Princesse Edmond de Polignac, 91 Singer-Polignac Foundation, 91n 154 Sisler, Mary, 260, 309 Les Six, 97n 169 Six Melodies for Violin and Piano (Cage; 1950), 145n261, 149 Six Short Inventions (Cage; 1933), 204 Sixteen Dances (Cage; 1950), 140n247, 142n251, 144, 150, 478, 480, 490, 508n957 Sixty-Two Mesostics re Merce Cunningham (Cage; 1971), 403, 465, 477n896

Skempton, Howard, 211n428 Skinner, Marsha, 528n 1011, 580n 1123 Skookum/Scucum (cat), 525, 546, 551, 552, 553 Skulsky, Abraham, 137, 138 Slivka, Rose, 415, 461 Slonimsky, Nicolas (NS), xii, 46n63, 554, 558, 565n 1084; Music Since 1900, 45–46 Small Town Girl (film), 168 Smallens, Alexander, 289 Smercheck, Eva, 404, 596 Smith, Alexander H., 229, 248n502, 259, 299, 407, 596; The Mushroom Hunter’s Field Guide (1958), 289 Smith, Cecil, 7, 106, 109, 137–38, 596 Smith, Oliver, 70–71, 380 Smith, Stanley J., 299 Smith, Stuart, 511–12 Smithson, Robert, 549 Smoliar, Stephen, 558 Snell, Esther Dick, 455–56 Snell, Walter H., 455n848 Snow, Laetitia, 386, 387 Snyder, Ellsworth, 522, 582 Snyder, Robert, 250, 251 Societa Italiana degli Autori ed Editori, 596 Société Anonyme, 80n 136 Socrates, 66–67, 529 Sogetsu Art Center, 271, 272–75, 277, 358n675 Solo for Piano (from Concert for Piano and Orchestra, Cage; 1968), 382, 451 Solo for Voice 1 (Cage; 1958), 399 Solo for Voice 2 (Cage; 1960), 232, 235n481 Solo for Voice 85 (Cage; 1970), 479n900 Solomon, Alan R., 370–71, 596 Solomon, Bernard C., 261, 339–40 Solomon, Irene, 413, 493, 501–2 Solos I–VII (from HPSCHD, Cage; 1967– 1969), 388 Solovox, 50 Some of the Harmony of Maine (Supply Belcher) (Cage; 1978), 413, 494n928 Something Else Press, 329n615, 335n631,

340, 357n670, 358n674, 367, 369–70, 371, 372 Something Wild (film; 1961), 232n476 Sonata for Clarinet (Cage; 1933), 11, 12 Sonata for One Voice (Cage; 1933?), 10 Sonata for Two Voices (Cage; 1933), 10, 12 Sonatas and Interludes (Cage; 1946–1948), 6, 7, 62n 104, 76, 80n 138, 84, 85n 145, 87–88, 90, 97, 98, 102, 115, 134, 136, 141, 204, 293, 506–7, 557 Song Books (Solos for Voice 3–92) (Cage; 1970), 399, 413, 433, 451, 460, 478n899, 479n900, 481–82, 486 Sonic Arts Union, 349n657, 377n725, 447n837, 472n889 Sonnabend, Ileana (married name Castelli), 227, 251–52 Sonnabend, Michael, 227n464 sound, Cage on aspects of, 224–25 Sound Anonymously Received (Cage; 1969), 258, 534 Sound Experiments course, Chicago School of Design, 5 Soundings Press, 553n 1046 Sounds of Venice (Cage; 1959), 193n376, 198n390, 199, 203, 231 Source (Source Magazine), 365, 384, 387 Souris, André, 114, 119 Souvenir (Cage; 1983), 537 Souvtchinsky (Suvshinsky), Pierre (Pyotr Petrovich), 102, 107, 141 Spain, Hensley, 539 Speculum Musicae, 490, 492 Spek, Jaap (Jacob), 372 Spellman, Francis, Cardinal, 359n678 Spence, A. Michael, 524, 555–56 Spencer, Chaloner and Helen, 266 Sperling, Allan, xv “spirit dancing,” Cunningham’s interest in, 54n83 Spivacke, Harold, 334 square-root (micro-macrocosmic) principle, 102 Stanislavski, Constantin, 207n411

Index  |  641

Stein, Gertrude, 28n29, 33n42, 103, 181n352, 218, 517 Steinbeck, John, 51 Steinecke, Wolfgang, 174–75, 178, 196, 596 Steiner, Leonard, 300 Steiner, Rudolf, 233n477, 535n 1001 Steinitz, Richard, 522, 568 Stella, Frank, 293n560, 517 Stent, Gunther, 393–94n759; Coming of the Golden Age (1969), 449 Stern, Daniel, 159 Stern, Elaine, 526, 578n 1116 Still, William Grant, 13, 16n 16, 27 Stimson, Mrs. Thomas, 31 Stockhausen, Doris, 267 Stockhausen, Karlheinz: biography, 184n360; Adorno on, 205; Atlas Eclipticalis dedication, 267; chance operations and, 213; Gruppen für drei Orchester (1955–1957), 213; letters to, 266– 69, 356–57; Mac Low compared, 448; Maderna and, 197n383; Metzger on, 197n382; Moorman performing works of, 287n547; Neuhaus championing work of, 321n600; Nono compared, 196n381; Notations collection and, 356–57; Notes from Tokyo (1967), 356n669; Thomson on, 192; Tudor performing, 274; Yoko Ono and, 372; mentioned, 184, 198n389, 220, 227, 457 Stojanović, Josip, 270–71, 596 Stokowski, Leopold, 43, 47 stones, Cage’s compositional use of, 521–22, 536 Stony Lodge (sanatorium), New York, 77–78 Stony Point (Gate Hill Cooperative), New York, 129, 130–31, 164n320, 169n335, 178n350, 182, 185–86, 198n390, 200, 259, 411, 417–18, 419, 526 Stradley, Bland L., 44–45 Strang, Gerald, 28, 31, 32, 160, 253, 271, 337 Stratos, Demetrios, 477 Strauss, Richard, 192, 234

642  |  Index

Stravinsky, Igor, 46, 83, 93n 157, 97, 133, 143, 184, 224, 336, 423, 439, 513; “Eight Pieces” (8 Instrumental Miniatures for 15 Players) and The Firebird, 18; L’Histoire du soldat, Cage performing in, 403–4 Streb, Elizabeth, 535 String Quartet in Four Parts (Cage; 1949– 1950), 85n 145, 116, 118, 119, 120, 135, 136, 140, 148, 149, 438, 527 Ströbel, Heinrich, 129, 172–73, 174, 596 Stroud, James, 387 Stuckenschmidt, Hans Heinz, 130, 279–81, 284, 285, 596 Studio di Fonologia, 196n379, 231, 236, 520 Studio for Electronic Music, University of Toronto, 326 Stulen, Jan, 419 Sturdy, Herbert, 257, 290–91, 306 Suarez-Murias, Marguerite, 407 Südwestfunk (SWF) Musik, 590 Suite for Toy Piano (Cage; 1948), 245, 282, 557 Sultan, Grete, 190, 191n371, 210, 442, 475, 477, 509, 558, 567 Sumner, Melody, 543 Sumner, Michael, 543n 1020 Sumsion, Calvin, 396 surrealists, 100n 176, 118n211, 157n292, 277n532, 393n757, 434n816 Suter, Branco, 412, 424–25, 450–51n841 Sutras, 159, 168, 313 Suvini Zerboni (publishers), 197, 231, 235–36, 237, 367 Suzuki, Daisetz Teitaro, xviii, 128, 136, 143, 259, 275, 282, 351, 422n797, 427, 442, 504–5, 512 Swarsenski, Hans, 366, 367 Swed, Mark, 525, 566, 569 SWF (Südwestfunk) Musik, 590 Swift, Mrs. Henry, 43 Swift, Richard G., 378 Swift Eagle, 414, 456, 480 Sykes, James and Clay, 267 synthesizers, 257, 322, 388n749 The System (film), 168

“Theatre Piece No. 1” (Cage; 1952), 218n442 Taft, William Howard, xiv Themes and Variations (Cage; 1982), 499, Tage Neuer Musik, John Cage Festival, 501n944, 543, 587n 1141 Bonn (1979), 492 theremin (musical instrument), 37, 47, Takahashi, Aki, 375n720, 522, 572, 574–75 101n 181, 318 Takahashi, Yasunari, 528, 596 Theremin, Léon, 6, 36n50, 37n52, 41 Takahashi, Yuji, 276, 375, 382 Third Construction (Cage; 1941), 465, 515–16 Takemitsu, Toru, 292n557, 572n 1100 Third Stream, 211n427 Takiguchi, Shuzo, 277 Talk of the Town (New Yorker), Cage appearing Thirty Pieces for Five Orchestras (Cage; 1981), 514–15, 523 in, 73 Thirty Pieces for Strong Quartet (Cage; 1983), Tamada, Kitaro Nyokyo, 19, 160, 203 537 Tan, Margaret Leng, 412, 506–7 31'57.9864" for a Pianist (Cage; 1954), 129 Tanglewood Festival, 40n54, 101, 133, 136, 33⅓ (Cage; 1969), 413, 464, 465–66 231, 233–35, 289 34'46.776" for a Pianist (Cage; 1954), 129, 241, Tanning, Dorothea, 118n211, 447n837 274, 328n612, 446 Tappe, Christina, 575 36 Acrostics Re & Not Re Duchamp (Cage; Tarshis, Joan, 534 1970), 261, 399 Taylor, Paul, 242; Private Domain (1987), 555 “39'16.95" for a Speaker” (“London Lecture,” Tchaikovsky Pyotr Ilyich, Sixth Symphony, Cage), 209, 328, 366n698. See also 45' for 25 a Speaker, 328n612 Teitelbaum, Richard, 286n546, 374, Thomson, Virgil: biography, 28n29; on 549n 1033 Antheil, 107; arranging for Cage to Telephones and Birds (Cage; 1977), 413, cover music festivals in Europe, 92n 155, 458n854, 471 99, 102; book-length account of life and Telluride Composer-to-Composer Festival work by Cage, 28n29, 130, 181, 184, 185, (1989), xii 192; Boulanger and, 120n213, 135; Boulez Telson, David R. and Paula, 267 and, 133, 135; Cage teaching courses Templier, Pierre-Danile, Erik Satie (1969), at New School on, 130; on Cage’s 82, 123n220, 138n238, 529 Sixteen Dances, 144; critical abilities Ten (Cage; 1985), 588n 1144 of, 191–92; critical praise for Cage, 71, “The Ten Thousand Things” (Cage; 73, 91n 153; expressivity, conversation 1953–1956), 328n612, 446n834 with Cage about, 77; on Feldman, 143; “10 Rules for Teachers and Students” (Cage; foundations, familiarity with, 200; n.d.), 253n508 musical portraits composed by, 108; Tenney, James, 258, 295, 316n594, 486n913, relationship with Cage, 5, 28n29, 511; 554, 572n 1100, 577 Satie compositions collected by Cage teponaztli, 29, 161 for, 8, 108, 109; The Seasons (Cage), Terpsichore (muse), 63n 105 orchestration of, 85n 145; on Stein, 218; Teshigahara, Hiroshi, 275n528 Tommasini, Anthony, Virgil Thomson’s Teshigahara, Sofu, 275 Musical Portraits (1986), 108n 197; Tetsumi, Kudo, 562n 1079 weekend in New Jersey with Cage, Tézenas, Suzanne, 103, 106, 108 66–67; Yates article on, 210; mentioned, Theatre Piece (Cage; 1960), 207n410, 218, 220, 86, 95, 103, 114, 421 225, 231, 233, 236, 241, 293, 317, 576

Index  |  643

Thomson, Virgil, letters to: March 15, 1939, 28; June 29, 1949, 108–9; February 24, 1955, 181; May 5, 1956, 185–86; November 1, 1958, 196–97; January 18, 1968, 379; sources, 596 Thomson, Virgil, works: “Atonality Today” (1950), 135n233; “Expressive Percussion (John Cage)” (1945) (review of Cage’s A Book of Music), 73n 122, 380; Filling Station, 67; Five Phrases from the Songs of Solomon, 28; Four Saints in Three Acts (1934), 28n29, 67, 107n 193, 181, 192; The Mother of Us All (1947), 28n29, 107n 193; Susie Asado, 192; Symphony in a Hymn Tune (1926–1928), 181 Thoreau, Henry David: on the best government as no government at all, 395; Cage influenced by, xii, 374, 384, 395, 414–15, 426, 451, 503, 505, 523, 528, 529, 569n 1096, 583, 586; “Civil Disobedience” (1849), 368, 413, 414; drawings by, 455, 471n884, 570, 582n 1127, 586; Empty Words (Cage; 1973–1974) and, 451n841, 510, 528; Essay (Writings Through Essay: On the Duty of Civil Disobedience (Henry David Thoreau), Cage; 1987), xii, 523, 554, 570; The First Meeting of the Satie Society (Cage, with Ben Shiff; unfinished) and, 569n 1096, 570; Harding, Walter, Thoreau, Man of Concord (1965), 510, 529; James Joyce, Marcel Duchamp, Erik Satie: An Alphabet (Cage; 1982), 415; Journals, 368, 380, 414, 450n841, 471n884, 510, 516, 534; Lecture on the Weather (Cage; 1975) and, 471n884; Mureau (Cage; 1971), 414, 451n842, 516, 528, 534; remarks on deathbed, 529; Renga (Cage; 1975) and, 455, 586; Score (40 Drawings by Thoreau) and 23 Parts (Cage; 1974), 582n 1127; Song Books (Solos for Voice 3–92) (Cage; 1970) and, 399n766; taxes, nonpayment of, 503, 583; Walden, 414; women mentioned rarely by, 567; Writings Through Essay:

644  |  Index

On the Duty of Civil Disobedience (Henry David Thoreau) (Essay, Cage; 1986–1987), xii, 523, 554, 570 Thorington, Helen, 566 Thorne Music Fund, 258, 379 Three (Cage; 1989), 577 3D movies, Cage on, 169 Three Songs (Cage; 1932–1933), 103n 189, 517 Tibetan Book of the Dead, 540 Tiger’s Eye, 95, 102, 105, 123 Tikkun Magazine, 579 Tilbury, John, 514 Tilles, Nurit, 574n 1102 Time Records, 226, 232, 249, 291, 308 time-bracket notation, 514n974, 515n975, 523, 549n 1032, 553n 1044, 591 Tinguely, Jean, 249, 250; Hommage to New York (1960), 219, 249n504 Tiravanti, Lanfranco Bombelli, 509, 596 “To Describe the Process of Composition Used in Music of Changes and Imaginary Landscape No. 4” (Cage; 1952/1958), 152n278, 209 Tobey, Mark, 158, 221, 524; Crystallized Forms (Crystallizations; 1944), 532–33 Toch, Ernst, 46 Toffler, Alvin, 406 Togni, Camillo, 94n 159 Toklas, Alice B., 7, 8, 103, 110 Tomek, Otto, 198n389, 233 Tommasini, Anthony, Virgil Thomson’s Musical Portraits (1986), 108n 197 Tompkins, Beatrice, 80 Tone Roads Ensemble, 486n913 Tono, Yoshiaki, 524, 562, 563 Topless Cellist (film, 1995), 359n677 Toshiba EMI, 572 Tossed as It Is Untroubled (Cage; 1943), 580 Totem Ancestor (Cage; 1942), 50n71, 56n92, 580 toy pianos, music for, 218–19, 221, 245, 282, 557 Trans World Airlines (TWA), 415, 502–3 Transformations (journal), 162

Trappist Monastery, Gethsemani, Kentucky, 79, 80 Trautonium, 47 Trautwein, Friedrich, 47 Tremblay, George, 20, 157, 337 Il treno (Alla ricerca del silenzio perduto) (Cage; 1977), 413, 468–70 Trimble, Stephen, 537 Trio (Cage; 1936), 347 Trouble Along the Way (film), 168 Tudor, David: biography, 139n239; Atlas Eclipticalis dedication, 269; Cage on proposed biography of, 524, 535–36; as composer, 261, 353–54n666, 382, 402, 442, 538n 1011, 585; concerts, tours, and recordings, 160, 162, 216, 217, 219, 220, 225–30, 233, 238, 239, 240, 249, 250, 251, 252, 263, 270–76, 277–81, 283, 288n549, 291, 292–94, 318, 325, 326, 338–39, 342–43, 358n673, 373, 375, 377, 387, 390, 402, 442; Darmstadt International Summer Courses for New Music and, 174–75, 178, 199, 202, 206–8; death and scattering of ashes with Cage’s, 526; Donaueschingen Festival (1954) and, 172–73, 174, 178; end of concert work with Cage, 402, 442; Epstein, Miss, recommended to, 243; as FCPA lecturer, 579; at Festival of Art and Technology, Stockholm (1966), 348n656; Fluorescent Sound, 353–54n666; in Gate Hill Cooperative, 178n350; Harper’s Magazine article about, 230; Japan tour with Cage (1962), 259, 263, 272–78, 522; John Cage Award, FCPA, 295n565; Mellers/BBC, recommended by Cage to, 308; Merce Cunningham Dance Company and, 358n825, 411; Monnier, Jackie, and, 355n667; Monobird (1972), 442n825; “9 Evenings” presentations, Park Avenue Armory, New York, 348n656, 349; “nocturnal telephonist,” addressed as, 169, 596; “Package Festival” marketed with Cage,

130, 171–72; performances of electronic work by, 173, 387, 388, 457; performing Boulez’s work, 127, 139–40, 152, 153, 158, 162n311, 166, 174, 178, 272–73, 274; performing Cage’s work, 128, 129, 130, 146, 154, 162n311, 163n315, 168n330, 176n347–48, 177, 191, 201, 204, 207, 212, 218, 239, 259, 285, 316, 341n640, 383, 397, 479, 565; performing Wolff, Brown, and Feldman, 158, 162n311, 173–74, 193n375, 207–8, 220; Rainforest III (1972), 451n842; relationship with Cage, xvii, 127, 140, 144; on reproductions of Cage’s music, 244–45; Reunion (Cage; 1968) and, 261, 382; Satie’s Vexations performed by, 258; in Sonic Arts Union, 447n837; Williams Mix (Cage), work on, 163nn315–17, 164, 166; on Wolff’s Braverman, 496; Wolpe, as student of, 133n223; world tour, Cage organizing, 181–82; mentioned, 208n418, 219, 222, 223, 236, 237, 238, 241, 242, 277, 324, 361, 365, 384, 422, 564n 1082 Tudor, David, letters to: between January 21 and 27, 1951, 142–44; ca. early June 1951, 144–46; ca. late August-early September, 1951, 157–59; ca. late September 1951 (to David Tudor and M.C. Richards), 159–61; mid-November, 1951, 161–62; after July 2, 1953, 169–70; between November and December 1958 (to David Tudor and M.C. Richards), 197–99; October 15, 1959, 206–8; June 22, 1960, 225–28; June 23, 1960, 228–30; July 27, 1960, 232–33; August 1, 1960, 233–35; September 20, 1967, 372; October 17, 1967, 373; March 23, 1984, 524, 535–36; sources of, 596, 597 Tudor, Joy (married name Nemiroff; sister of David), 144n258, 535 Tugwell, Rex Guy, 394–95n760 Tugwell Constitution, 394 Tulane Drama Review, 337 Turi, Edward, 290

Index  |  645

TWA (Trans World Airlines), 415, 502–3 12'55.6078" for Two Prepared Pianos (Cage; 1954), 129 twelve-tone technique, 11n5, 81, 85, 94, 98, 100, 102, 107, 160n307, 221n452, 439 Twenty-Three (Cage; 1988), 577 “25-Year Retrospective Concert of the Music of John Cage at Town Hall,” New York City, 1958, 113n202, 130, 204, 207n410, 312 “26 Statements re Marcel Duchamp” (Cage; 1963), 356 27'10.554" for a Percussionist (Cage; 1956), 326, 465 Twitchell, Harmony (married name Mrs. Charles Ives), 78–79, 211, 595 Twitchell, Joseph, 78n 134 Two (Cage; 1987), 553n 1044, 577 Two2 (Cage; 1990), 574, 577 Two3 (Cage; 1991), 549n 1032, 588n 1145 Two4 (Cage; 1991), 591 Two6 (Cage; 1992), 591 Two Pastorales (Cage; 1951–1952), 162, 163–64 “Two Statements on Ives” (Cage; 1964–1966), 356 Twombly, Cy, 412, 487–88, 523, 542, 569–71, 597 Tworkov, Jack, 327 typewriters, Cage’s use of, 10, 91, 280, 285, 291, 335, 353, 392

Université de Montréal, L’Atelier-laboratoir de la Faculté de musique, 443n827 university degrees, honorary, Cage refusing, 425, 430, 493 University of Buffalo (later SUNY Buffalo and University at Buffalo), 308, 335, 341, 377n726, 382, 387n748, 442n825, 465n873 University of California, Davis (UC Davis), 258, 262, 369n694, 378, 383, 464–65, 534 University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA), 11, 182, 250, 283, 292–93, 439, 441, 466, 493 University of California, Santa Cruz (UC Santa Cruz), 412, 423, 429, 594, 596 University of Cincinnati College— Conservatory of Music, 353 University of Illinois, Champaign-Urbana, 166, 314, 329, 364, 365–66, 372, 383, 400 University of Southern California (USC), 3, 157, 439, 440 university professorships, Cage on, 425–26 Unseld, Siegfried, 585 U.S. Bicentennial, 414, 453–55, 471n884, 483, 494, 586 US Lines Review, 209 USC (University of Southern California), 3, 157, 439, 440 Ussachevsky, Vladimir, 199 utopia, Cage on, 344, 345, 381

UC Davis (University of California, Davis), 258, 262, 369n694, 378, 383, 464–65, 534 UCLA (University of California, Los Angeles), 11, 182, 250, 283, 292–93, 439, 441, 466, 493 UC Santa Cruz (University of California, Santa Cruz), 412, 423, 429, 594, 596 Ullmann, Jakob, 590 Umbrella concert series, Toronto, 342–43 Un jour ou deux (Cunningham choreography, Cage music, Johns staging and costuming; 1973), 293n559, 432n812

Vaine, Martha, 269 A Valentine Out of Season (Cage; 1949), 111n200 Van Tuyl, Marian, 34, 35 Vance, Jack, 156n287 VanDerBeek, Stan, 463 Varda, Jean, 101, 158 Varèse, Edgard: biography, 37n53; “Edgard Varese” (Cage; 1958), 209; experimental music of, 6, 31, 37, 38, 48, 170; Hyperprism, 101; Integrals, 101; Ionization (1931), 44, 46, 48, 143, 153; letter to (January 3, 1941), 51, 597; Moorman performing works of, 287n547;

646  |  Index

Offrandes, 43; “Organized Sound for the Sound Film” (1940), 51; percussion work of, 31; at performance of Boulez’s Second Sonata, 140; Poème électronique (1958), 201, 202–3; on Russolo, 46; mentioned, 40, 50, 85, 87n 147, 119, 169, 184, 224, 357 Variations I (Cage; 1958), 225, 242, 279n540, 315 Variations II (Cage; 1961), 241, 246, 249, 252, 270, 279n540, 284, 285, 291n556, 292, 315 Variations III (Cage; 1962–1963), 279–80, 284–85, 291n556, 292, 315, 373n715 Variations IV (Cage; 1963), 292–93, 308, 315–16, 339, 341n640 Variations V (Cage; 1965), 257, 260, 309n585, 316, 318n497, 322n602, 325, 353, 357n672, 372n709, 447, 463n869 Variations VI (Cage; 1966), 332n622, 338n636, 342n642, 354n666, 447 Variations VII (Cage; 1966/1972), 257, 323n603, 348n656, 471 Variations VIII (Cage; 1967/1978), 470–71 Variations series (Cage; 1958–1967), 225n458, 257, 315 Variations with Interludes and Variations (monographs for The First Meeting of the Satie Society) (Cage, 1989), 570–71 Vaughan, David, xv, 303, 305, 551n 1038 Vaurabourg-Honegger, Mme., 139n243 Veblen, Thorstein, 259, 368, 395; The Higher Learning in America, 425 Verdi, Giuseppi, Falstaff, 559 Versailles, Cage on fireworks at, 109 Very Nice, Very Nice (film; 1962), 287n548 Vietnam War, xiv, 359n678 Viggiani, Carl and Jane, 267 Village Gate, New York City, 201, 202 Village Voice, 277, 336, 338 Vinogradow, Boris de, 432n813 violin, Cage studying how to compose for, 462–63 Viridiana (Buñuel film; 1961), 269 Vischer, Antoinette, 383, 387, 392, 421, 422 Volta, Ornella, 123n220, 481–82, 524, 529;

Erik Satie (1979) or L’Ymagier D’Erik Satie (1979), 529 Vostell, Wolf, 377, 594 Wada, Yoshi, 559 Waddington, C. H., 268 Wadsworth Atheneum, Hartford, Connecticut, 171–72 Wagner, Richard, 224, 557n 1058; Ring Cycle, 556n 1057 Wagstaff, Sam, 294 Wakasugi, Hiroshi, 466n877, 479–80 Waldhauer, Fred, 323n603 Waldrop, Keith and Rosmarie, 450 Walter, Arnold, 326 Warhol, Andy, 293n560; screenprint of Richard Nixon (1972), 558 Waring, James (Jimmy), 360, 361n680 Water Music (Cage; 1952), 163–64, 168, 438 Water Walk (Cage; 1959), 193n376, 198n390, 203, 231 Watts, Alan, 145, 157, 160 WDR (Westdeutscher Rundfunk, Cologne), 413, 483, 490, 495, 506, 566 Webb, Mary, 73n 123 Webber, Gordon, 35, 290 Weber, Ben, 133 Webern, Anton: Babbitt and, 134; Boulez and, 101, 171; Cage on music of, 81, 82, 83, 102, 115, 170; Cage’s music and, 336; Downes, Olin, on, 97n 167; Goldbeck on, 85; Notations collection and, 330, 362, 423n800; Schoenberg and, 11n5, 441; Smallens and, 289; Symphony, op. 21, 272; Symphony No. 20 (1928), 139n242; Variations, 83; Weber, Ben, and, 133; Wolff and, 184, 212; Wolpe and, 133 Weidman, Charles, 50n71 Weil, Andrew Thomas, Natural Health and Natural Medicine, 579 Weinberger, Eliot, 379n730 Weinrib, David and Karen (née Karnes), 178n350, 185n362

Index  |  647

Weiss, Adolph: biography, 10n2; “Adolph Weiss: Reminiscences” (Cage; 1965), 350n660, 355n668, 356; bitterness regarding Cage’s remarks on, 312, 350; Cage as student of, 3, 16, 24, 48, 310–12, 336, 347, 438–39, 583; 7 Songs, 15n 15; Tudor recommended to meet, 157; mentioned, 14, 15, 261 Weiss, Adolph, letters to, 261; Spring 1933?, 10–11; Winter, 1934?, 13; March 30, 1935?, 19–20; May, 1935, 20–22; early summer, 1935, 23–25; early August, 1935 (to Mr. and Mrs. Adolph Weiss), 25–27; October 13, 1966, 350; January 10, 1967, 355–56; sources of, 597 Weiss, Mrs. Adolph (Mitzi), 12, 13, 14–15, 20, 22, 25–27, 157, 310, 311, 597 Weiss, Paul, 269 Weissel, William, 322 The Well (The Whole Earth ’Lectronic Link), 523, 569n 1096, 570 Welland Lathrop School and Dance Company, 62n 103 Wesleyan University, 218, 219, 221, 263, 337, 412, 417, 423–24, 429, 452 Wesleyan University Center for Advanced Studies, 132, 227, 292, 533 Wesleyan University Press, xiv, 132, 214, 218, 367, 412, 423n799, 543–44, 561n 1073 Westdeutscher Rundfunk, Cologne (WDR), 413, 483, 490, 495, 506, 566 Weston, Edward, 4 WGBH (Cage; 1971), 404n776, 478 “What You Say . . .” (Cage; 1979), 447n836 Wheeler, Harvey, 393–95 Wheeler, Monroe, 168 “Where Are We Eating? And What Are We Eating? (38 Variations on a Theme by Alison Knowles)” (Cage; 1975), 398n764 “Where Are We Going? and What Are We Doing?” (Cage; 1960–1961), 248, 251, 270, 328, 356, 366n698, 367

648  |  Index

Where R = Ryoanji (Cage, “Ryoanji” rock tracings and prints; 1983–1992), 521–22, 536n 1003 White, George, 290 Whitman, Robert (Bob), 323n603, 348n656, 349 Whitman, Walt, 311 Whitney, John and James, 224 The Whole Earth ’Lectronic Link (The Well), 523, 569n 1096, 570 Widman, Anneliese, 142n251 Wiggen, Knut, 283n543, 348–49, 353, 597 Wigglesworth, Frank, 100, 258, 264–66, 597 Wike, Joyce, 54 Wilheim, András, xvi; “Without Notations,” 588n 1145 Wilhelm, Richard, The I Ching (1950), 142n253, 176n347 “Will,” letter of November 20, 1962 to, 277–78, 597 Willard, Marian, 532–33 Williams, Mrs. Harrison, 56 Williams, Jan, 465, 597 Williams, Jonathan, 183–84 Williams, Paul, 128, 129, 164, 178n350, 185n362, 190, 303 Williams, Tennessee, 146n265 Williams, Vera, 129, 164n320, 178n350, 185n362, 190, 303 Williams Mix (Cage; 1952), 128, 148n274, 163–67, 204, 212, 236, 365n693 wills, of Cunningham and Cage, 525, 571 Wilson, Connie, 267 Wilson, Robert (Bob), 415, 419 Windsor, Duke and Duchess of, 106 Windstar Foundation, 539 Winkfield, Trevor, 260, 369, 597 Winslow, Betty, 266, 525–26, 578 Winslow, Richard (Dick), 132, 208–10, 266, 516, 525–26, 578 Winter, Julie, 412, 540 Winter Music (Cage; 1957), 132, 202n401, 231, 232, 235n481, 238n485, 240, 246,

Horn and Piano, 238; Duo II, 220; For 5 250n507, 270, 276, 277, 278, 293, 316, 331, or 10 Players, 278, 279; For 6 or 7 Players 375n720, 479, 575 (1959), 238, 270–71; For Magnetic Tape Winterbotham, Ruth (married name Rue (1952), 163; For Pianist (1959), 270; For Shaw), 5, 57, 58–59, 73, 479, 596 Prepared Piano, 162n311; “4 Musicians at Without Horizon (Cage; 1991), xiii Work” (Cage, Feldman, Boulez, Wolff; Wittgenstein, Ludwig, 427, 529, 564, 565; 1952), 152n278, 209; Four Pieces, 158; Blue & Brown Books, 564; On Certainty, Music for Merce Cunningham, 217, 220; 564; Philosophical Investigations, 218, 564; Nine (1951), 496; Suite, 207n415; Trio Zettel, 564 (1951), 142n251, 496 Wolf, Daniel, 338, 597 Wolff, Helen, 127, 129, 142n253, 176–78, Wolff, Christian: biography, 142n253; in 597 army, 212, 220, 242; Atlas Eclipticalis Wolff, Holly, 597 and, 267, 271; Barnard, Geoffrey, and, Wolff, Kurt, 127, 142n253, 176n347, 212, 337 553n 1043; Boulez and, 158; Cage on Wolpe, Stefan, 184, 274, 336, 359; Battle Piece music of, 143, 145, 212, 220; concerts, (1932–1943/1947), 363; Sonata for Piano 156, 158, 160, 191, 207–8, 238–39, 240, and Violin (1949), 133 283, 284; Cowell article on music of, 159; The Wonderful Widow of Eighteen Springs Cunningham, collaboration with, 142, (Cage; 1942), 204n406, 206–7n410, 217, 220, 396; Donaueschingen Festival 423n800 (1954) and, 173; Feldman, as student Wood, Charles Paige, 31 of, 127; I Ching copy given to Cage by, Wood, Robert and Marilyn, 266 128, 142n253, 273; in Indeterminacy, 457; Woodstock, New York, 139n239, 168n330, John Cage Award, FCPA, 295n565; on 176n348, 177, 395, 478 lack of feminine pronouns in Cage’s Woodstock Art Film Festival, New York, Harvard lectures, 525, 567; Mellers/ 121n216, 478 BBC, recommended by Cage to, 308; “Word of Mouth” Symposium, 499n940, proofing of Feldman’s Projection 2, 144; 500n941 recordings, 226n460; relationship of Works of Calder (film, music by Cage; New York School members, 174n343, 1949–1950), 121, 134, 148, 155, 380n733, 273; Satie’s Vexations performed by, 258; 478 at Sixteen Dances for Soloist and Company “works of contingency,” 463n867 of Three (Cunningham, music by Cage; Works Progress Administration (WPA), 1951), 142; Sultan and, 210n423; Yates, 29n36, 33 recommended to, 211, 212; mentioned, World War II, xiv, 5–6 161, 162, 176, 184, 224, 402 Woronoff, Wladimir, 93–94, 101, 115; Sonnet Wolff, Christian, letters to, 411; 1951, 156; to Dallapiccola, 136 March 28, 1956, 184–85; April 18, WPA (Works Progress Administration), 1960, 219–22; April 6, 1961, 240–41; 29n36, 33 January 17, 1974, 441–45; April 30, 1980, writing process, Cage on, 33 496–97; October 22, 1988, 525, 567; Writing Through Finnegans Wake (Cage; sources of, 597 1976–1977), 471, 499n939 Wolff, Christian, works: Braverman Music Writing for the Second Time Through Finnegans (after Harry Braverman) (1978), 496; Wake (Roaratorio: An Irish Circus on Burdocks (1970–1971), 444; Duet II for

Index  |  649

Finnegans Wake, Cage; 1976–1978), 471, 483, 499n939 Writing for the Third Time Through Finnegans Wake (Cage; 1979), 499 Writing for the Fourth Time Through Finnegans Wake (Cage; 1979–1980), 499, 516n976 Writing for the Fifth Time Through Finnegans Wake (Muoyce) (Cage; 1982), 477n897, 499n939, 516, 528 Writing Through Howl (Cage; 1984), 501n943 Writing Through the Cantos (Cage; 1983), 504 Writings Through Essay: On the Duty of Civil Disobedience (Henry David Thoreau) (Essay, Cage; 1986–1987), xii, 523, 554, 570 “writings-through,” 412, 471n885, 551n 1039, 570 X: Writings ’79–’82 (Cage; 1983), xiv, 491n921, 516n976, 532, 543–44, 587 Xirau, Ramon, 385 Yaddo (artists’ community in upstate New York), 169 Yalkut, Jud, 359n677 Yamamoto, Shizuko, 413, 461n860 Yang, Naomi, 587n 1141 Yates, Frances Muller, 5, 33n41, 157, 204n405, 263–64, 597 Yates, Peter: biography, 33n41; Brown, Earle, and, 174n343; critical responses of Cage to, 7, 45–51, 81, 82–83, 170–71, 336–37, 344–46; Evenings on the Roof/ Monday Evening Concerts, 5, 33n41, 132, 204, 250, 252; as FCPA lecturer, 326, 330, 343; on Fontana Mix, 234; illness of son of, 203, 263; as mentor to Cage, 5; “On a Communication from John Dewey” and “In the Fourth Year of Nixon” (1972), 408n784; as preface writer for Cage book, 210; on Schoenberg/ Scherchen correspondence, 440; Tudor recommended to meet, 157; mentioned, xvii, 101, 214n434, 314 Yates, Peter, letters to, 5, 7, 131, 132; January

650  |  Index

13, 1940, 33; 1940, 33–34; December 14, 1940, 45–51; September 9, 1948, 81; undated, ca. mid 1948, 81–84; August 4, 1953, 170–71; May 19, 1959, 203–5; December 28, 1959, 210–13; March 12, 1960, 218–19; May 27, 1960, 222–23; June 6, 1960, 224–25; August 17, 1961, 246–47; September 11, 1961, 248–49, 407n781; September 22, 1961, 250–51; November 20, 1961, 253; May 14, 1962 (to Peter and Frances Yates), 263–64; January 16, 1963, 281; January 1, 1966, 336–37; May 8, 1966, 343; May 23, 1966, 344–46; sources of, 597 A Year from Monday: New Lectures and Writings (Cage; 1967), xiv, 249n561, 271n523, 274n526, 278n536, 324n604, 328n611, 332n622, 335n631, 348n653, 350n660, 355n668, 356, 357, 368n700, 370, 375, 381, 385, 392, 393n757, 412, 424, 440, 532, 544 Yen, Dr., 433 Yomiuri Shimbun (Japanese newspaper), 277 Yorinks, Arthur, 230n474 York University (UK), 430 Yoshida, Hidekazu, 274 Young, La Monte: biography, 206n408; Cage and music of, 131, 206, 228, 241, 345, 363; letters to, 206, 216, 597; Mellers/BBC, recommended by Cage to, 308; Poem for Chairs, Tables, Benches, Etc. (1960), 131, 220; Trio for Strings (1958), 206; Tudor performing, 274; Vision (1958), 216; Winterbranch (choreography by Cunningham; music by Young), 206n408; mentioned, 224, 230 Yourke, Electra, 554 Yuasa, Joji, 561n 1074 Yūsuke, Nakahara, 562n 1079 Zacher, Gerd, 413, 494 Zahn, Michael O., 294–95, 597 Zen philosophy, Cage influenced by, xviii, 128, 136, 259, 262, 275, 282, 352n662, 360,

405, 412, 420, 422n797, 427, 504–5, 512, 536, 540, 599 Zender, Hans, 522, 586 Zerboni (Edizioni Suvini Zerboni), 197, 231, 235–36, 237, 367 0'00" (4'33" No. 2) (Cage; 1962), 259, 261, 382, 537, 577, 599

Zimmermann, Walter, 492, 522, 577 Zuccheri, Marino, 223, 236, 237 Zukofsky, Louis, 463n866, 579 Zukofsky, Paul, xiii, 463, 475, 477, 479–80, 481, 486, 490, 492, 498, 526, 579, 587 Zürcher Oberland, 576n 1109 Zwerin, Michael, 338

Index  |  651

john cage (1912–1992) was an experimental American composer whose unorthodox ideas profoundly influenced the direction of twentieth-century music. His principal contribution to history was his systematic establishment of the principle of indeterminacy: by adapting Zen practices to composition and performance, Cage succeeded in bringing both authentic spiritual ideas and a liberating attitude of play to the enterprise of Western art. In an effort to reduce the subjective element in composition, he developed methods of selecting the components of his pieces by chance, first through the tossing of coins and later through the use of computerized random number generators that simulated the divination practices of the I Ching. Thus Cage’s mature works did not originate in psychology, motive, or drama, but, rather, were just sounds, free of judgments, free of fixed relations, free of memory and taste. His most enduring composition is the radically tacet 4'33" (1952), in three movements, during which no sounds are intentionally produced. A decade later Cage created a second “silent” piece, 0'00" (4'33" No. 2) (1962), “to be played in any way by anyone.”

laUra kUhn is executive director of the John Cage Trust and John Cage Professor of Performance Art at Bard College.