90年代初與陳巨擘遊哈佛大學 (住張力的宿舍沙發. 在哈佛大學書店便宜買到這套:書即錄音帶
它伴我好幾天的通勤歲月 後來跟阿擘談John Cage 他說他"見過" John Cage 我羨慕得很......沒想到在紐約時報中文網讀到此篇
The Charles Eliot Norton Lectures
音樂
每個人都體會過「約翰·凱奇時刻」
報道 2012年09月06日
Christian Hansen for The New York Times
紐約地鐵里上演約翰·凱奇的《4分33秒》。
2012年9月5日是美國前衛作曲家約翰·凱奇誕辰100周年。他打破傳統作曲技法，作品極具爭議，他影響深遠的理念是：一切皆可稱為音樂，每個人都可以創作與聆聽音樂——編注。我最近在在紐約上城地鐵A線經歷了一次特別的約翰·凱奇(John Cage)時刻。
你知道什麼是“凱奇時刻”對吧？不管你有沒有意識到，我們都有過那樣的時刻。它們隨意外事件而發生，令我們感受到一種不可思議、似乎從天而降的音樂體驗，這樣的時刻可以隨時隨地出現。今年是凱奇100周年誕辰，各種樂隊獻上了很多正式的“凱奇時刻”，比如茱莉亞音樂學院(Juilliard School)的學生們，還有“如此打擊樂團”(So Percussion)、“伊克圖斯打擊樂團”(Iktus Percussion)與日本鋼琴家Taka Kigawa，以及“弗拉克斯四重奏與朋友們”(Flux Quartet and friends)等樂隊。他們激情洋溢地演繹了凱奇的音樂，在聽眾們心中喚起了這樣的“凱奇時刻”。
但是非正式的時刻則需要等待。我自己最心愛的“凱奇時刻”發生在一年前，當時我扭傷了腳踝，去做核磁共振造影。操作人員告訴我機器的噪聲可能有點煩
人，但最後我卻忍不住專心聆聽起那台機器重複的節奏型與音調，乃至不斷變化的泛音。我非常享受這種聲音，不過到最後我發現核磁共振機的音樂其實更像早期的
菲利普·格拉斯（Philip
Glass，美國作曲家，作品經常重複簡短的旋律和節奏模式，同時加以緩慢漸進的變奏，被稱為簡約音樂——譯註）而不是凱奇。
那天在地鐵上，我其實根本就沒有想到凱奇。我剛在格林威治村的一個教堂里聽完一場舒伯特的《C大調弦樂五重奏》，樂隊的表演漂亮、飽滿，我本來根本就不應該想起凱奇。擁擠的地鐵車廂一開始也不會讓我想到他。但我注意到周圍的噪音很不尋常。
在地鐵上，大部分噪音來自列車本身：它的喧鬧淹沒了人們的交談，乘客們大都默默凝視着自己的雙腳，或者閱讀，戴耳機聽音樂。但那個星期二的晚上，車廂里的人好像都在聊天，拚命想讓自己的聲音壓過列車的聲音與身邊其他人的說話聲。
我一般都不去理會這些喧鬧，但這次我身子向後一靠，閉上雙眼，做了那件凱奇經常建議人們做的事情——專心聆聽。我並沒費心去把各種對話區分開，更沒 專心聽人們到底在說什麼。我只是去把握聲音的整體：所有人聲與機械的聲音。雖然吵鬧，但我覺得它非常有音樂性，一旦開始以這種角度去聆聽，我就再也無法停 下來。
一波又一波的談話生機勃勃、音域適中，沒有最低男低音歌手，也沒有極高的女高音。但是聽一段時間就可以把各種音調區分開來，就像一個管弦樂隊。敘事的語調平緩地流動着，襯托着由爭論聲帶來的強勁激烈的節奏。
車廂里的人們至少在說三種語言，每一種都有自己獨特的旋律性與節奏感。我左邊女子的歡聲笑語瞬間改變了這塊巨大聲音掛毯的色彩，抵消了在我右邊人們的爭論。
與此同時，金屬機械的嘯叫提供一種尖銳的固定音型，與人聲相混雜，而列車在鐵軌上行駛的隆隆聲一直都是那麼輕微，是巴洛克時代數字低音（basso continuo，一種巴洛克時期的作曲方法，以低音旋律作為基礎。——譯註）的高科技現代版。列車每進一站，剎車漸弱的尖聲、車門開關的聲音、人們上下 車所帶來的音量平衡的輕微改變，還有人們繼續進行中的交談，這一切彷彿相連樂章之間的轉換。
我聽着聽着，不覺想到凱奇最著名的作品《4分33秒》，在某種程度上，它也是凱奇最受誤解的作品，它通常被描述為凱奇“無聲”的作品；就連凱奇自己 都這麼說。它也經常被那些對凱奇的音樂哲學理念毫無興趣的人用來開玩笑，他們覺得“一段無聲的音樂”這個說法根本就是自相矛盾的。
但是，儘管凱奇要求《4分33秒》的演奏者們保持安靜，他並不希望這段音樂聽上去完全是“無聲”的。這段音樂是他為鋼琴家大衛·圖德(David Tudor)所創作，首演於1952年8月在紐約伍德斯托克附近瑪沃里克音樂廳(Maverick Concert Hall)的一場小型音樂會上。這座音樂廳其實原本是坐落在樹林里的一座開放式的大倉庫，至今這裡仍在舉辦雄心勃勃的夏日系列音樂會。音樂廳的部分魅力來 自四周的聲音：鳥兒的歌唱、蟋蟀的啼鳴、風吹拂樹葉、雨落下的聲音與樂手們奏出的美妙音符融合在一起。
凱奇自從20世紀30年代起一直都在創作講求技巧的音樂，但從40年代起，他覺得音樂是可以從空氣中誕生出來的，這就是《4分33秒》的意義所在。 演出時鋼琴家打開琴蓋，靜坐30秒，蓋上琴蓋，然後再打開琴蓋，持續安靜2分23秒，作為第二樂章，之後是1分40秒的最後一個樂章（在瑪沃里克1952 年的演齣節目單里是這樣的。根據發表的樂譜，三個樂章的長度分別是33秒，2分40秒和1分20秒）。鋼琴確實沒有發出聲音，但身在瑪沃里克的觀眾們卻可 以聽到很多豐富的聲響；但是有些人將這個作品視為挑釁，大為震怒，從而影響了他們的傾聽。
一次乘坐地鐵的經歷能不能當作《4分33秒》在生活中的表演？完全可以。凱奇後來把這個作品的演出說明改編為樂譜，可以適用於任何樂器或樂隊在任何時間的演出。重讀凱勒·加恩對這部作品的精彩研究著作《並非寂靜：約翰·凱奇的<4>》（No Such Thing as Silence: John Cage’s 4’33” ，耶魯大學出版社，2012年）時，我發現凱奇最後覺得這個作品根本不需要表演者。
我分別聽過鋼琴家、打擊樂團、雙簧管樂手、大提琴手與管弦樂隊表演的《4分33秒》，但沒有一個版本像我此刻聆聽的、紐約A線地鐵全體發聲者的“《4分33秒：地鐵加長版》”這樣令人興奮。這場大合奏完全是概念性的，而所有參演者並沒有意識到他們在參加這場演出。
凱奇一定能理解這一幕。
“每一天我都在自己的生活與工作中應用那部作品，”1982年，他對作曲家威廉姆·達科沃斯(William Duckworth)說，“我每天都在傾聽它。”
他補充說：“我並不是坐在那裡去聽它；而是把自己的注意力集中在上面，我發現它會一直持續下去。”
我和凱奇交談過兩次，一次是1992年6月的一次電話採訪，他當時在巴黎；幾個星期後我在他的一場音樂會上遇到了他，這場演出是現代藝術博物館夏日 花園系列活動的一部分。我希望等秋天到來，他慶祝80大壽的時候能再次和他交談。但在8月12日——20年前的一個星期日——他不幸死於中風。我再也沒能 做成他的採訪，只能為他寫下訃文。
當時一切都亂成一團，簡直就是凱奇的作品《羅拉托里奧》（Roaratorio，凱奇1979年的前衛風格作品，靈感來自喬伊斯的小說《芬尼根守靈 夜》，是他“偶然音樂”理論的代表作品，提琴、吟唱、朗誦與各種生活環境中的聲音混雜在一起，聽上去如同瘋狂混亂的集合。——譯註)的媒體版。編輯們把凱 奇帶着花生醬三明治去參加高級派對之類軼事傳真給我，打電話讓我別忘了寫他在藝術和舞蹈方面的貢獻；同事們紛紛打電話問我：“你聽說這個那個了嗎？”我一 邊忙着核實摩斯·肯寧漢（Merce Cunningham，美國著名舞蹈編劇，是凱奇的長期男友——譯註）是否希望被列為凱奇尚在人世的伴侶（後來他說不願意）；一邊想着該怎麼把凱奇非凡的 藝術生涯說得盡量簡潔客觀。
寫完那篇訃告之後，當時在《每日新聞》當音樂評論員的蒂姆·佩奇打電話說要過來為紀念凱奇喝一杯，還說來我家路上可以順便買半打啤酒。30分鐘後，他出現在我家門前，手裡拿着一張白色紙條說：“你看這個。”
那是他買啤酒的收據。價錢正好是4.33美元。
你知道什麼是“凱奇時刻”對吧？不管你有沒有意識到，我們都有過那樣的時刻。它們隨意外事件而發生，令我們感受到一種不可思議、似乎從天而降的音樂體驗，這樣的時刻可以隨時隨地出現。今年是凱奇100周年誕辰，各種樂隊獻上了很多正式的“凱奇時刻”，比如茱莉亞音樂學院(Juilliard School)的學生們，還有“如此打擊樂團”(So Percussion)、“伊克圖斯打擊樂團”(Iktus Percussion)與日本鋼琴家Taka Kigawa，以及“弗拉克斯四重奏與朋友們”(Flux Quartet and friends)等樂隊。他們激情洋溢地演繹了凱奇的音樂，在聽眾們心中喚起了這樣的“凱奇時刻”。
Chris Ramirez for The New York Times
約翰·凱奇的《4分33秒》是為1952年瑪沃里克音樂廳的一場演出而作，音樂廳離紐約伍德斯托克不遠。
那天在地鐵上，我其實根本就沒有想到凱奇。我剛在格林威治村的一個教堂里聽完一場舒伯特的《C大調弦樂五重奏》，樂隊的表演漂亮、飽滿，我本來根本就不應該想起凱奇。擁擠的地鐵車廂一開始也不會讓我想到他。但我注意到周圍的噪音很不尋常。
在地鐵上，大部分噪音來自列車本身：它的喧鬧淹沒了人們的交談，乘客們大都默默凝視着自己的雙腳，或者閱讀，戴耳機聽音樂。但那個星期二的晚上，車廂里的人好像都在聊天，拚命想讓自己的聲音壓過列車的聲音與身邊其他人的說話聲。
我一般都不去理會這些喧鬧，但這次我身子向後一靠，閉上雙眼，做了那件凱奇經常建議人們做的事情——專心聆聽。我並沒費心去把各種對話區分開，更沒 專心聽人們到底在說什麼。我只是去把握聲音的整體：所有人聲與機械的聲音。雖然吵鬧，但我覺得它非常有音樂性，一旦開始以這種角度去聆聽，我就再也無法停 下來。
一波又一波的談話生機勃勃、音域適中，沒有最低男低音歌手，也沒有極高的女高音。但是聽一段時間就可以把各種音調區分開來，就像一個管弦樂隊。敘事的語調平緩地流動着，襯托着由爭論聲帶來的強勁激烈的節奏。
車廂里的人們至少在說三種語言，每一種都有自己獨特的旋律性與節奏感。我左邊女子的歡聲笑語瞬間改變了這塊巨大聲音掛毯的色彩，抵消了在我右邊人們的爭論。
與此同時，金屬機械的嘯叫提供一種尖銳的固定音型，與人聲相混雜，而列車在鐵軌上行駛的隆隆聲一直都是那麼輕微，是巴洛克時代數字低音（basso continuo，一種巴洛克時期的作曲方法，以低音旋律作為基礎。——譯註）的高科技現代版。列車每進一站，剎車漸弱的尖聲、車門開關的聲音、人們上下 車所帶來的音量平衡的輕微改變，還有人們繼續進行中的交談，這一切彷彿相連樂章之間的轉換。
我聽着聽着，不覺想到凱奇最著名的作品《4分33秒》，在某種程度上，它也是凱奇最受誤解的作品，它通常被描述為凱奇“無聲”的作品；就連凱奇自己 都這麼說。它也經常被那些對凱奇的音樂哲學理念毫無興趣的人用來開玩笑，他們覺得“一段無聲的音樂”這個說法根本就是自相矛盾的。
但是，儘管凱奇要求《4分33秒》的演奏者們保持安靜，他並不希望這段音樂聽上去完全是“無聲”的。這段音樂是他為鋼琴家大衛·圖德(David Tudor)所創作，首演於1952年8月在紐約伍德斯托克附近瑪沃里克音樂廳(Maverick Concert Hall)的一場小型音樂會上。這座音樂廳其實原本是坐落在樹林里的一座開放式的大倉庫，至今這裡仍在舉辦雄心勃勃的夏日系列音樂會。音樂廳的部分魅力來 自四周的聲音：鳥兒的歌唱、蟋蟀的啼鳴、風吹拂樹葉、雨落下的聲音與樂手們奏出的美妙音符融合在一起。
凱奇自從20世紀30年代起一直都在創作講求技巧的音樂，但從40年代起，他覺得音樂是可以從空氣中誕生出來的，這就是《4分33秒》的意義所在。 演出時鋼琴家打開琴蓋，靜坐30秒，蓋上琴蓋，然後再打開琴蓋，持續安靜2分23秒，作為第二樂章，之後是1分40秒的最後一個樂章（在瑪沃里克1952 年的演齣節目單里是這樣的。根據發表的樂譜，三個樂章的長度分別是33秒，2分40秒和1分20秒）。鋼琴確實沒有發出聲音，但身在瑪沃里克的觀眾們卻可 以聽到很多豐富的聲響；但是有些人將這個作品視為挑釁，大為震怒，從而影響了他們的傾聽。
一次乘坐地鐵的經歷能不能當作《4分33秒》在生活中的表演？完全可以。凱奇後來把這個作品的演出說明改編為樂譜，可以適用於任何樂器或樂隊在任何時間的演出。重讀凱勒·加恩對這部作品的精彩研究著作《並非寂靜：約翰·凱奇的<4>》（No Such Thing as Silence: John Cage’s 4’33” ，耶魯大學出版社，2012年）時，我發現凱奇最後覺得這個作品根本不需要表演者。
我分別聽過鋼琴家、打擊樂團、雙簧管樂手、大提琴手與管弦樂隊表演的《4分33秒》，但沒有一個版本像我此刻聆聽的、紐約A線地鐵全體發聲者的“《4分33秒：地鐵加長版》”這樣令人興奮。這場大合奏完全是概念性的，而所有參演者並沒有意識到他們在參加這場演出。
凱奇一定能理解這一幕。
“每一天我都在自己的生活與工作中應用那部作品，”1982年，他對作曲家威廉姆·達科沃斯(William Duckworth)說，“我每天都在傾聽它。”
他補充說：“我並不是坐在那裡去聽它；而是把自己的注意力集中在上面，我發現它會一直持續下去。”
我和凱奇交談過兩次，一次是1992年6月的一次電話採訪，他當時在巴黎；幾個星期後我在他的一場音樂會上遇到了他，這場演出是現代藝術博物館夏日 花園系列活動的一部分。我希望等秋天到來，他慶祝80大壽的時候能再次和他交談。但在8月12日——20年前的一個星期日——他不幸死於中風。我再也沒能 做成他的採訪，只能為他寫下訃文。
當時一切都亂成一團，簡直就是凱奇的作品《羅拉托里奧》（Roaratorio，凱奇1979年的前衛風格作品，靈感來自喬伊斯的小說《芬尼根守靈 夜》，是他“偶然音樂”理論的代表作品，提琴、吟唱、朗誦與各種生活環境中的聲音混雜在一起，聽上去如同瘋狂混亂的集合。——譯註)的媒體版。編輯們把凱 奇帶着花生醬三明治去參加高級派對之類軼事傳真給我，打電話讓我別忘了寫他在藝術和舞蹈方面的貢獻；同事們紛紛打電話問我：“你聽說這個那個了嗎？”我一 邊忙着核實摩斯·肯寧漢（Merce Cunningham，美國著名舞蹈編劇，是凱奇的長期男友——譯註）是否希望被列為凱奇尚在人世的伴侶（後來他說不願意）；一邊想着該怎麼把凱奇非凡的 藝術生涯說得盡量簡潔客觀。
寫完那篇訃告之後，當時在《每日新聞》當音樂評論員的蒂姆·佩奇打電話說要過來為紀念凱奇喝一杯，還說來我家路上可以順便買半打啤酒。30分鐘後，他出現在我家門前，手裡拿着一張白色紙條說：“你看這個。”
那是他買啤酒的收據。價錢正好是4.33美元。
本文最初發表於2012年8月8日。
翻譯：董楠
翻譯：董楠
John Cage Recital? Take the A Train
September 06, 2012
Christian Hansen for The New York Times
The subway provided its own performance of the John Cage piece “4’33” " recently.
I HAD a spectacular John Cage moment on an uptown A train recently.
You know about Cage moments, don’t you? We all have them, whether we think of them that way or not. They occur when happenstance kicks in, and surprising musical experiences take form, seemingly out of nowhere. They can happen anywhere at any time. This year, thanks to the Cage centenary, official Cage moments have been plentiful, with performers of all stripes — students at the Juilliard School; ensembles like So Percussion, Iktus Percussion and the pianist Taka Kigawa, and the Flux Quartet and friends — inducing them through spirited renditions of Cage’s music.
But the unofficial moments are the ones to wait for. My earlier
favorite Cage moment occurred just over a year ago, when I sprained an
ankle and had an M.R.I. The technicians warned me that I might find the
noise annoying, but as it turned out, I couldn’t help focusing on the
machine’s repeating rhythmic patterns, pitches and changing overtones. I thoroughly enjoyed it, although in truth I found the M.R.I.’s music closer to early Philip Glass than to Cage.
On the A train I wasn’t thinking about Cage at all. I had just heard an exquisitely turned, energetic performance of Schubert’s String Quintet in C at a church in Greenwich Village, and Cage could not have been further from my thoughts. Nor did the crowded subway car bring him to mind at first. But I noticed that it was unusually noisy.
Typically, most of the noise you hear comes from the subway itself: its din drowns out conversations, and people tend to stare at their feet, or at whatever they are reading, and listen to their portable music players. But this Tuesday evening just about all the people were talking, and working hard to drown out both the subway and the chats taking place around them.
I would normally have tuned all this out, but instead I sat back, closed my eyes and did what Cage so often recommended: I listened. I made no effort to separate the strands of conversation or to focus on what people were saying. I was simply grabbed by the sheer mass of sound, human and mechanical. It sounded intensely musical to me, noisy as it was, and once I began hearing it that way, I couldn’t stop.
Strand upon strand of the chatter was animated and midrange: there were neither basso profundos nor soaring sopranos in this choir, but after a moment the pitch levels began to sort themselves out as a kind of orchestration. Argumentative voices created driving, punchy rhythms that sailed over more smoothly floating narrative tones.
At least three languages were being spoken, each with its own melodic lilt and rhythmic character. To my left, a woman’s laughter momentarily changed the coloration of this vast choral tapestry and offset the argument to my right.
Within it all, squeaking metal yielded a high-pitched ostinato, and the ever-so-slightly-clattery rumble of the train was the high-tech equivalent of a Baroque basso continuo. As the train pulled into each station, the muted squeal of the brakes, the opening and closing of the doors and the slight shift in the balance of voices as some people left and others entered, already talking, suggested shifts between connected movements.
As I was listening, I began thinking about “4’33,” Cage’s most famous and, in some ways, most misunderstood piece. It is often described as Cage’s “silent” work; even Cage called it that. And it is frequently treated as a joke by people who have no interest in Cage’s philosophical approach to music and for whom a piece of silent music is, by definition, a contradiction in terms.
But if Cage intended the performers of “4’33” ” to keep quiet, he did not mean for the work to be heard as silence. He wrote it for the pianist David Tudor to perform in a recital at Maverick Concert Hall, near Woodstock, N.Y., in August 1952. The hall, which still hosts an ambitious summer series, is an open barn, set amid acres of woodland. Part of its charm is that the sounds of the environment — birds, crickets, the wind rustling through the trees, the patter of rain — mingle with the artful tones the musicians produce.
Cage had been supplying artful tones since the 1930s, but in the 1940s he began thinking about the music that could be plucked from the air. That was the point of “4’33”.” The pianist was to open the keyboard lid, sit quietly for 30 seconds, then close the lid and reopen it for the 2-minute-23-second second movement, and again for the 1-minute-40-second finale. (Those, at any rate, are the durations printed in the 1952 Maverick program. In the published score, the movement lengths are 33 seconds, 2 minutes 40 seconds, and 1 minute 20 seconds.) The piano was indeed silent, but the Maverick audience had plenty to listen to, or would have if its members weren’t busy being scandalized by what some regarded as a provocation.
Can a subway ride count as a performance of “4’33” ”? Absolutely. Cage later revised the performing directions to allow for readings by any instrument or group of instruments at any duration. And as I was reminded when I revisited Kyle Gann’s delightful study of the work, “No Such Thing as Silence: John Cage’s 4’33” ” (Yale University Press, 2012), Cage eventually came to feel that no performers were necessary.
I have heard “4’33” ” performed by pianists, percussion ensembles, oboists, cellists and orchestras, but none of those versions were as exciting as what I now think of as “4’33”: The Extended Subway Remix” by the A Train Yakkers, an ensemble so conceptual that its members had no idea they were in it.
Cage would have understood.
“No day goes by without my making use of that piece in my life and in my work,” he told the composer William Duckworth in 1982. “I listen to it every day.”
“I don’t sit down to do it; I turn my attention toward it,” he added. “I realize that it’s going on continuously.”
I spoke with Cage only twice: in a telephone interview (he was in Paris) in June 1992 and a few weeks later at a concert of his music in the Summergarden series at the Museum of Modern Art. I was hoping to speak to him again during the coming season, when he was to have celebrated his 80th birthday, but on Aug. 12 — 20 years ago on Sunday — he died of a stroke, and instead of another interview I wrote his obituary.
It was a mad scramble, a journalistic version of Cage’s “Roaratorio.” Editors were faxing stories about Cage taking peanut butter sandwiches to fancy parties and calling to make sure I would account for his importance in the art and dance worlds; colleagues were calling to ask, “Have you heard?,” and I was trying to ascertain whether Merce Cunningham wanted to be listed as Cage’s surviving companion (he did not) while searching for concise ways to put Cage’s extraordinary career in perspective.
Just as I finished writing, Tim Page, then Newsday’s music critic, called to suggest raising a beer in Cage’s memory and volunteered to pick up a six-pack on his way to my apartment. Thirty minutes later he was at my door, holding up a strip of white paper and saying, “Look at this.”
It was the receipt for the beer. The price? $4.33.
*****
Submitted by david on Mon, 13/12/2010 - 1:27pm
This article is based on a talk I gave at the recent John Cage exhibition in Kettles Yard gallery in Cambridge.
Cage is perhaps best known for his avant-garde music, particularly his
silent 1952 composition 4′33″ but also for his use of randomness in
“aleatory music”.
He also used randomness in his art. The Kettles Yard exhibition featured wonderful film of assistants reading computer-generated random numbers off a list which determined which of a row of stones were to be chosen, which brush to use, and the position of the stone on the paper; Cage finally paints around the stone, stands back and announces the results as ‘beautiful’. He also dictated the use of chance in the form of the exhibition, and Kettles Yard used computer-generated coordinates to determine the heights and positions of the pictures, removing and adding pieces during the exhibition using a random process.
See more arrangements of this work at the Kettles Yard facebook gallery.
In this process Cage is deliberately sacrificing some control - “I use chance operations instead of operating according to my likes and dislikes”. It is important to distinguish this approach from artists such as Jackson Pollock, whose work may at first appear haphazard but is a form of controlled expression. Pollock claimed that no chance was involved: “When I am painting I have a general notion of what I am about. I can control the flow of paint, there is no accident just as there is no beginning and no end” and in these paintings “I want to express my feelings rather than illustrate them.”
MORE: http://understandinguncertainty.org/node/1066
You know about Cage moments, don’t you? We all have them, whether we think of them that way or not. They occur when happenstance kicks in, and surprising musical experiences take form, seemingly out of nowhere. They can happen anywhere at any time. This year, thanks to the Cage centenary, official Cage moments have been plentiful, with performers of all stripes — students at the Juilliard School; ensembles like So Percussion, Iktus Percussion and the pianist Taka Kigawa, and the Flux Quartet and friends — inducing them through spirited renditions of Cage’s music.
Chris Ramirez for The New York Times
John Cage wrote “4’33” ” for a recital in 1952 at Maverick Concert Hall, near Woodstock, N.Y.
On the A train I wasn’t thinking about Cage at all. I had just heard an exquisitely turned, energetic performance of Schubert’s String Quintet in C at a church in Greenwich Village, and Cage could not have been further from my thoughts. Nor did the crowded subway car bring him to mind at first. But I noticed that it was unusually noisy.
Typically, most of the noise you hear comes from the subway itself: its din drowns out conversations, and people tend to stare at their feet, or at whatever they are reading, and listen to their portable music players. But this Tuesday evening just about all the people were talking, and working hard to drown out both the subway and the chats taking place around them.
I would normally have tuned all this out, but instead I sat back, closed my eyes and did what Cage so often recommended: I listened. I made no effort to separate the strands of conversation or to focus on what people were saying. I was simply grabbed by the sheer mass of sound, human and mechanical. It sounded intensely musical to me, noisy as it was, and once I began hearing it that way, I couldn’t stop.
Strand upon strand of the chatter was animated and midrange: there were neither basso profundos nor soaring sopranos in this choir, but after a moment the pitch levels began to sort themselves out as a kind of orchestration. Argumentative voices created driving, punchy rhythms that sailed over more smoothly floating narrative tones.
At least three languages were being spoken, each with its own melodic lilt and rhythmic character. To my left, a woman’s laughter momentarily changed the coloration of this vast choral tapestry and offset the argument to my right.
Within it all, squeaking metal yielded a high-pitched ostinato, and the ever-so-slightly-clattery rumble of the train was the high-tech equivalent of a Baroque basso continuo. As the train pulled into each station, the muted squeal of the brakes, the opening and closing of the doors and the slight shift in the balance of voices as some people left and others entered, already talking, suggested shifts between connected movements.
As I was listening, I began thinking about “4’33,” Cage’s most famous and, in some ways, most misunderstood piece. It is often described as Cage’s “silent” work; even Cage called it that. And it is frequently treated as a joke by people who have no interest in Cage’s philosophical approach to music and for whom a piece of silent music is, by definition, a contradiction in terms.
But if Cage intended the performers of “4’33” ” to keep quiet, he did not mean for the work to be heard as silence. He wrote it for the pianist David Tudor to perform in a recital at Maverick Concert Hall, near Woodstock, N.Y., in August 1952. The hall, which still hosts an ambitious summer series, is an open barn, set amid acres of woodland. Part of its charm is that the sounds of the environment — birds, crickets, the wind rustling through the trees, the patter of rain — mingle with the artful tones the musicians produce.
Cage had been supplying artful tones since the 1930s, but in the 1940s he began thinking about the music that could be plucked from the air. That was the point of “4’33”.” The pianist was to open the keyboard lid, sit quietly for 30 seconds, then close the lid and reopen it for the 2-minute-23-second second movement, and again for the 1-minute-40-second finale. (Those, at any rate, are the durations printed in the 1952 Maverick program. In the published score, the movement lengths are 33 seconds, 2 minutes 40 seconds, and 1 minute 20 seconds.) The piano was indeed silent, but the Maverick audience had plenty to listen to, or would have if its members weren’t busy being scandalized by what some regarded as a provocation.
Can a subway ride count as a performance of “4’33” ”? Absolutely. Cage later revised the performing directions to allow for readings by any instrument or group of instruments at any duration. And as I was reminded when I revisited Kyle Gann’s delightful study of the work, “No Such Thing as Silence: John Cage’s 4’33” ” (Yale University Press, 2012), Cage eventually came to feel that no performers were necessary.
I have heard “4’33” ” performed by pianists, percussion ensembles, oboists, cellists and orchestras, but none of those versions were as exciting as what I now think of as “4’33”: The Extended Subway Remix” by the A Train Yakkers, an ensemble so conceptual that its members had no idea they were in it.
Cage would have understood.
“No day goes by without my making use of that piece in my life and in my work,” he told the composer William Duckworth in 1982. “I listen to it every day.”
“I don’t sit down to do it; I turn my attention toward it,” he added. “I realize that it’s going on continuously.”
I spoke with Cage only twice: in a telephone interview (he was in Paris) in June 1992 and a few weeks later at a concert of his music in the Summergarden series at the Museum of Modern Art. I was hoping to speak to him again during the coming season, when he was to have celebrated his 80th birthday, but on Aug. 12 — 20 years ago on Sunday — he died of a stroke, and instead of another interview I wrote his obituary.
It was a mad scramble, a journalistic version of Cage’s “Roaratorio.” Editors were faxing stories about Cage taking peanut butter sandwiches to fancy parties and calling to make sure I would account for his importance in the art and dance worlds; colleagues were calling to ask, “Have you heard?,” and I was trying to ascertain whether Merce Cunningham wanted to be listed as Cage’s surviving companion (he did not) while searching for concise ways to put Cage’s extraordinary career in perspective.
Just as I finished writing, Tim Page, then Newsday’s music critic, called to suggest raising a beer in Cage’s memory and volunteered to pick up a six-pack on his way to my apartment. Thirty minutes later he was at my door, holding up a strip of white paper and saying, “Look at this.”
It was the receipt for the beer. The price? $4.33.
*****
Pure Randomness in Art
This article is based on a talk I gave at the recent John Cage exhibition in Kettles Yard gallery in Cambridge.
Cage is perhaps best known for his avant-garde music, particularly his
silent 1952 composition 4′33″ but also for his use of randomness in
“aleatory music”. He also used randomness in his art. The Kettles Yard exhibition featured wonderful film of assistants reading computer-generated random numbers off a list which determined which of a row of stones were to be chosen, which brush to use, and the position of the stone on the paper; Cage finally paints around the stone, stands back and announces the results as ‘beautiful’. He also dictated the use of chance in the form of the exhibition, and Kettles Yard used computer-generated coordinates to determine the heights and positions of the pictures, removing and adding pieces during the exhibition using a random process.
Cage at Kettles Yard
In this process Cage is deliberately sacrificing some control - “I use chance operations instead of operating according to my likes and dislikes”. It is important to distinguish this approach from artists such as Jackson Pollock, whose work may at first appear haphazard but is a form of controlled expression. Pollock claimed that no chance was involved: “When I am painting I have a general notion of what I am about. I can control the flow of paint, there is no accident just as there is no beginning and no end” and in these paintings “I want to express my feelings rather than illustrate them.”
MORE: http://understandinguncertainty.org/node/1066
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