Scholarly discussion of the music of John Cage.

["Heimbecker, Sara" <>]

For those who are interested, I address a number of these issues in my recent 
dissertation, John Cage’s HPSCHD, (University of Illinois, 2011).  I touch on 
the issues of Beethoven vs. Mozart, Cage’s dislike of jazz, his understanding 
of anarchy, etc., but perhaps most interestingly in this context, I do make a 
case that there is a racial dimension to Cage’s politics that is quite 
uncomfortable.  Cage was staging an event that he intended to represent an 
anarchic utopia in one of the most elitist arenas of American life in 
1968-69—the University.  (Please see chapter 4:  “The Participatory Politics 
of HPSCHD.”)

Please note that David Patterson’s letters were reprinted in the diss without 
the proper permissions.  He does not wish to be associated with a discussion 
of Cage and race.

The document is available here and it is searchable:  
https://www.ideals.illinois.edu/handle/2142/24332

Best wishes,

Sara Heimbecker



On 6/19/11 5:28 PM, "Rob Haskins" 
<>
 wrote:

Hi Ian,

His remarks about Mozart are almost as odd as the ones about Beethoven. He 
likes Mozart for his "quantity"--all the scales and passagework, the 
chromaticism. It's bizarre.

I believe that I remember your anarchism paper. I think the best source for 
understanding Cage's concept of anarchism--and I agree with you, pace Petr 
Kotik, it was very serious and lasted to the end of his life--starts properly 
with Men Against the State, by James Martin. Martin wrote about the American 
anarchist tradition, which was quite pacifistic in nature. (And Martin was 
one of Cage's neighbors at Stony Point.) As for whether Cage's anarchism 
falls within a theorized political tradition, I'm not so sure. (I remember 
Esther Ferrer's remark in a letter to Cage about anarchism: "Anarchism does 
not fear contradictions, she is submerged in them.")

Another little nugget that I haven't followed up on sufficiently: Andrew 
Culver once wrote me, in response to my question to name the best source I 
could consult on Cage's understanding of anarchism, "Bakunin." (Some one-word 
responses are the best ones.) While I haven't read deeply Bakunin's work, I 
am not completely sure what he meant by that. I know Andrew reads the Silence 
list; perhaps he might speak to this question.

Lewis's article, as I recall, indeed brings a racial dimension to the 
argument, and I tend to think that it's justified. Cage's remarks about 
blacks, while few, are very odd. (For instance, his recollection that the 
young black children "had no need of [him]" when he was teaching them rhythm. 
I haven't read it in a long time, and initially I thought some of it was 
problematic. I have a feeling I'd find less of it problematic now.

All best,
Rob

On Mon, Jun 20, 2011 at 7:10 PM, Ian Pace 
<>
 wrote:
I’d be quite interested to know how anyone feels about how Cage’s (sort-of) 
defence of Mozart fits into this picture as well – haven’t got my texts to 
hand at the moment, but I remember at least one occasion on which he made a 
case for Mozart as against Beethoven, mostly on account of the Musikalisches 
Würfelspiel but also concerning wider aspects of Mozart’s approach.

When writing my own piece critiquing Cage’s anarchism around 5 years ago I 
put together some material (not all used) on his relationship to various key 
anarchist thinkers, which I’ll dig out and have a look at. I recall that 
whilst he cites Mikhail Bakunin and Emma Goldman in the context of the 
mesostic Anarchy and in the preference to that work, nonetheless he doesn’t 
appear to have engaged with either figure in any serious depth (unlike his 
relationship with Thoreau), and Goldman’s actions in terms of inciting 
unemployed workers or distributing birth control literature would be pretty 
hard to reconcile with Cage’s rather blanket disdain for serious political 
activism. The term ‘anarchism’ is often used rather loosely in the context of 
discussing Cage’s work, whereas I do believe he, at least some of the time, 
was quite serious about situating himself within one particular strand (not, 
to my mind, one of the more progressive varieties) of a theorised political 
tradition.

Should Cage’s dislike for jazz be treated separately from his wider dislike 
of improvisation (of any type)? I haven’t yet read Lewis’s article (but 
thanks for the pointer) – does he bring a racial dimension to the argument, 
and is this justified?

best,
Ian Pace

From: Rob Haskins 
<mailto:>
Sent: Sunday, June 19, 2011 10:57 PM
To: 

Cc: 

Subject: [silence] Re: Cage's prejudices

The arguments in the Defense of Satie are less arguments against Beethoven so 
much as they are Cage's own carving out a place for himself by appealing to 
other composer-forbears whose approach was more amenable to his own. (And not 
a little of the anti-Beethoven posturing had to do with the circumstances 
surrounding its presentation at Black Mountain, then dominated by lots of 
people with pro-German musical sentiments including Albers and Erwin Bodky.)

My general feeling is that Satie's harmony is interesting and often plays at 
least a quasi structural role in his music (albeit that structure is much 
different from Beethoven's). Likewise, I'm not sure that Cage's description 
of Webern is very satisfying other than as a(n admittedly interesting) report 
of a surface impression.

Cage's dislike of jazz is very well known and, in its way, about as off the 
mark as Adorno's view is. A good starting point for a nuanced critique would 
be George Lewis's article, “Improvised Music After 1950: Afrological and 
Eurological Perspectives.” Black Music Research Journal 16 (1996): 91–122.

All best,
Rob
On Fri, Jun 17, 2011 at 4:20 PM, 
<>
 wrote:

Cage  often spoke of his lack of likes and dislikes when given the chance, 
but as we  all know there certainly existed a gulf between his point of view 
and things  such as jazz musics and Beethoven. I'd like to hear any of the 
Silence  members' takes on these musical stances. For instance, he'd speak of 
jazz  musicians as disparate members of a panel concurrently discussing 
topics  oblivious to what each other might be saying, or referred to it as a 
political  noise, and he held Beethoven and Beethoven's music with equal 
criticism. I've  never read his Defense of Satie, but could any of you that 
have read the essay  outline any of the more  convincing points Cage made 
that stood pejoratively against Beethoven's music  and positively for Satie's 
(other than Satie's music superficially organized  with time unit as opposed 
to Beethoven's frequency)? And how do Cage  enthusiasts interpret his views 
on jazz music?