Scholarly discussion of the music of John Cage.

[Rob Haskins <>]

Actually, I'm pretty sure that Cage made a distinction, perhaps in one of his letters, between a Musicircus and a House Full of Music, the latter indicating an event in which different ensembles played in different rooms. (I thought he described this in  Junkerman's article, "nEw / roRms of living together" (in John Cage: Composed in America) but I'm not right.  Presumably the source I'm dimly remembering postdated that event.

Rob

On Mon, Feb 14, 2011 at 2:59 AM, Clemens Gresser <> wrote:

2011/2/14 Dionisis Boukouvalas <>:

> If there are many rooms, could one still call it "music circus", or should
> one call it "music for a house"?

I always had thought of  "A house full of music" (1982) as a
realisation of the "Musicircus" (1968) concept... This is also what
André Chaudron
states at http://www.johncage.info/workscage/housefullofmusic.html
(i.e. relating to sources by David Revill: The Roaring Silence; Paul
van Emmerik: Thema's en Variaties). See also "Musicircus for Children"
(for an online description:
http://www.johncage.info/workscage/musicircuschildren.html).

I think this shows Cage as a pragmatic (not always, but definitely
here): trying to come up with a concept for a large-scale performance
which will involve a high number of people. Whereas the first
Musicircus in the 1960s could make use of the vast space available in
Bremen he needed to use a building with many rooms and a more
"vertical space", on many levels. Maybe one could see it as an
"Apartment House 1982" (as opposed to "Apartment House 1776") - just
that sounds very more divided throughout
an actual building?

Sorry if that doesn't make any sense - I just only had my breakfast... :-)
Clemens

--
*****
Blog:
MusiCB3: http://musicb3.wordpress.com/
Twitter:
Cambridge University Library - Music Dept: http://twitter.com/MCatheul
Pendlebury Library of Music:  http://twitter.com/PendleburyLib
My home page:
http://home.arcor.de/cgw/

--
Rob Haskins, Ph.D.
Associate Professor and
     Coordinator, Graduate Studies
Department of Music, College of Liberal Arts
University of New Hampshire
M-105, Paul Creative Arts Center
30 Academic Way
Durham, NH 03824
603-862-3987 (office)
603-862-3155 (fax)
<http://unh.edu/music/>
<http://robhaskins.net>
<http://musicandmiscellaneous.blogspot.com/>