Scholarly discussion of the music of John Cage.

["Heimbecker, Sara" <>]

Dear Ian and Sebastian and List,

This is a great discussion.  I am really glad to see so many people thinking
deeply about these issues.

It's one thing to retreat, and it's another to "pick and chose" issues.
Yes, Cage did not get involved in local-level, specific social/political
movements or protests (see Ian's excellent list below).  However, he did
have a notion that he was addressing "meta" issues:  poverty, the
distribution of resources, the role of government, technology, etc.  Perhaps
he meant for the resolution of these issues to have a kind of "trickle down"
effect.  If the poverty issue was solved, and we had no need of government
in our lives, and we had equal distribution of resources, then would we be
fighting a war?  (He has a point here!)

My assertion is that race was (and still is) a "meta" issue.  Cage did not
approve of any protest movement, and yet, a piece like HPSCHD was meant to
function in a somewhat similar manner:  it was meant to make people aware of
the ideas of utopia and anarchy, of "life without a conductor."  How is this
not like a protest, which also is meant to increase people's awareness of an
issue?

Cardew's critique of Cage goes too far, in my opinion.  However, Cage's
"anarchic utopia" does not seem diverse.  It seems pretty restrictive.  And
the politics of the American university in the late 1960s were
uncomfortable.  One of the most interesting discoveries I made during my
dissertation research was exactly how problematic the race issue was at the
University of Illinois in 1968.  After the relatively mild "sit in" in the U
of I Student Union, the Chicago Sun Times wrote that "black slum products...
went ape and swung from the chandeliers."  This is just one example of the
racial climate at the time.

For me, this is what makes Cage naïve.  Racism was hugely problematic, and
for this to fall almost completely off of Cage's radar makes me
uncomfortable.  As I wrote in the diss, perhaps his colleagues in the
composition world were no better, but his theater colleagues were on it.
They were in the middle of the Civil Rights debates with their work.

I am glad that we are at a point where we can look back at Cage's work and
philosophy with a critical eye, while still appreciating the huge
contributions that he made musically (and artistically, and poetically).
This issue does not diminish Cage's impact in my mind.  He was human, like
the rest of us.  

Thanks,

Sara



On 6/21/11 8:37 AM, "Sebastian Berweck" 
<>
 wrote:

> Does this mean that there's an uncomfortable dimension of Cage on these
> issues? Or just that he decided to not take immediate action on them? That
> said: One could see the whole act of composing as a retreat and thus follow
> Cardew's later route. But did that help? At least this Cage list is full of
> discussions on zen, anarchy, politics. Almost 20 years later.
> 
> I do sympathize with the portrait of him as someone who consciously
> positioned himself in his world and was aware of his chances though. That
> sounds much more humanoid than some portraits I've read.
> 
> 
> 
> -----Original Message-----
> From: Ian Pace 
> [mailto:]
> Sent: Dienstag, 21. Juni 2011 14:24
> To: Sebastian Berweck; 
> 
> Subject: Re: [silence] RE: Re: Re: Re: Cage's prejudices
> 
> Time has not yet permitted reading this dissertation (but I hope to do so
> soon), but I thought I might mention the argument on this type of issue made
> 
> in my paper and then article on Cage's anarchism. In a nutshell, that Cage's
> 
> disapproval of all protest movements - expressed most fervently at a time
> when protest movements were at their height - would involve dismissal of the
> 
> African-American civil rights movement, the Vietnam War protests, early
> protests from within modern feminism, Stonewall, later environmentalist
> protests, etc. And for all that none of the issues about which these groups
> were protesting are in any sense wholly resolved right up into the present
> day, could one really say they did nothing but 'only make matters worse'?
> The USA (and many other developed countries) is still permeated by severe
> racism and discrimination, but it would be crass to dismiss such a matter as
> 
> the removal of all the major pre-civil rights obstacles to African-Americans
> 
> simply being able to vote, which was a very real achievement of the
> protests.
> 
> Cage's particular form of anarchism strikes me as for the most part
> constituting a political retreat, which ultimately did little to upset the
> status quo, unlike the protestors of the 1960s.
> 
> Best,
> Ian
> 
> --------------------------------------------------
> From: "Sebastian Berweck" 
> <>
> Sent: Tuesday, June 21, 2011 1:05 PM
> To: 
> <>
> Subject: [silence] RE: Re: Re: Re: Cage's prejudices
> 
>> Hi Sara,
>> 
>> I just read your PhD and would be interested to hear more about the "quite
>> uncomfortable racial dimension" in Cage's politics. I can see that Cage
>> didn't take part in any direct political action and I can see that this
>> could be criticized. What I can't see so far is where this personal
>> decision
>> and what you call his "overly abstract and naive" "utopian politics" of
>> his
>> amounts to a racial dimension, especially since he sort of states and
>> explains his discomfort in the interview with Nyffeler, which I understand
>> as a discomfort with the fact that the struggle for equality in a given
>> society does not change this society but rather strengthen a form of rule
>> which he rather would have liked to abolish.
>> 
>> All the best
>> Sebastian
>> 
>> PS: The quotation marks have no other quality than to indicate a more or
>> less direct quotation.
>> 
>> 
>> 
>> -----Original Message-----
>> From: Heimbecker, Sara 
>> [mailto:]
>> Sent: Montag, 20. Juni 2011 07:13
>> To: 
>> 
>> Subject: [silence] Re: Re: Re: Cage's prejudices
>> 
>> 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?
>> 
>> 
>> 
>> 
>> 
>> 
>