Scholarly discussion of the music of John Cage.

["Ian Pace" <>]

Cage's adoption of Mao was relatively short-lived, and not, I believe, 
especially fundamental to his thought. In the interview between David 
Patterson and Christian Wolff which touches on this subject (Christian Wolff 
and David Patterson, ‘Cage and Beyond: An Annotated Interview with Christian 
Wolff’, Perspectives of New Music Vol. 32 No. 2 (Summer 1994), pp. 54-87 - a 
really excellent text in the context of this discussion), Wolff suggests 
that Cage may have moved away from this strain either as a result of 
becoming aware of the atrocities entailed in the Great Leap Forward and the 
Cultural Revolution, or as a reaction to seeing one appropriation of this 
thought used to denounce his own work in Cardew's Stockhausen Serves 
Imperialism. This latter interpretation seems likely in light of Cage's 
comments in his 1974 essay on 'The Future of Music' (off hand, without 
sources to hand, I am not sure of the exact dates within 1974 when the 
Cardew and Cage texts were published; whether or not Cage had yet been able 
to read Cardew's diatribe, he certainly was aware of the shift in Cardew's 
activities, as this text shows):

'Some politically concerned composers do not so much exemplify in their work 
the desired changes in society as they use their music as propaganda for 
such changes or as criticism of the society as it continues insufficiently 
changed.' (Empty Words, p. 183)

He goes on specifically to mention Cardew, arguing that 'Sounds by 
themselves do not put messages across' and suggesting that both in Russian 
and China, and in the work of Cardew and the Scratch Orchestra, they have to 
resort to nineteenth-century idioms if not using words, and applying the 
pronouncements on art by Mao 'as literally and legalistically as they can', 
whilst comparing this (by implication unfavourably) with the more original 
music of Rzewski and Wolff.

I am inclined to see Cage's short-lived flirtation with Mao as an extension 
of his predilection towards East Asian mystical 'gurus', with all that 
entails in terms of orientalism, etc. (an issue touched upon in the context 
of 'experimental music' in various sources, in particular Alex J. Lubet's, 
'Indeterminate Origins: A Cultural Theory of American Experimental Music', 
in James R. Heintze (ed), Perspectives on American Music since 1950 (New 
York: General Music Publishing Co, 1999), pp. 95-140, earlier in Chou 
Wên-Chung's 'Asian Concepts and Twentieth-Century Western Composers', The 
Musical Quarterly, Vol. 57, No. 2 (Apr., 1971), pp. 211-229, and also in a 
book I haven't yet read but mean to soon, Christian Utz's Neue Musik und 
Interkulturalität. Von John Cage bis Tan Dun, Beihefte zum Archiv für 
Musikwissenschaft, Band 51, (Stuttgart: Franz Steiner Verlag, 2002)). 
Cardew, on the other hand, at this time took many of his cues from the 
Communist Party of England (Marxist-Leninist), who were fundamentally 
opposed to any criticism whatsoever of Stalin, and like other 
'anti-revisionists', held a particular disdain for Khrushchev's secret 1956 
speech acknowledging some of the crimes of Stalin and critiquing the cult of 
personality (which was if anything even more pronounced around Mao). John 
Tilbury argues that Cardew saw Maoism as upholding the principles that had 
been jettisoned by all the others after Khrushchev's denunciation of Stalin 
at 20th Party Congress in Jan 1956 (John Tilbury, Cornelius Cardew 
(1936-1981): A Life Unfinished (Harlow: Copula, 2008), p. 557). Whilst 
certainly this line of thought was not sympathetic to the Soviet Union of 
the time (for not being Stalinist enough!), it was for fundamentally 
different reasons to those cited by Daniel in the context of the US left.

Information on Mao's China was in short supply in the early 1970s - it is 
not until around 1973 or 1974, I think, that Amnesty International started 
to produce their first reports from the country, though by around 1976-78 
their reports give little doubt that this was a dictatorial state with many 
human rights abuses (many of these reports are available online). Members of 
Tel Quel visited China in 1974 (leading to the publication of atrocious 
works like Julie Kristeva's 'On Chinese Women'), but it appears as if they 
were wilfully blind to anything they did not want to see. Though others did 
identify the nature of the Maoist regime quite clearly - for example Tony 
Cliff (founder of the International Socialists, later the Socialist Workers' 
Party, in the UK) in his 1957 essay 'Mao and Stalinism' - 
http://www.marxists.org/archive/cliff/works/1957/04/maostalin.htm - written 
before either the GLF or the Cultural Revolution. (For a wider consideration 
of Maoism in the West, I'd recommend the appropriate sections in Robert J. 
Alexander's book Maoism in the Developed World (Westport, CA & London: 
Praeger, 2001), which has some information (albeit rather brief) on all the 
various Maoist parties which sprung up and their relationship to other left 
organisations and thinking).

Whilst many of Cage's statements from his 'Maoist' phase simply read as 
rather naive (as for example when he compares Mao with Gandhi or Martin 
Luther King, in the 1972 interview with Hans G Helms, cited in Kostelanetz, 
Conversing with Cage, second edition, (New York and London: Routledge, 
2003), p. 282) there is one which I continue find a little chilling:

'(Cf. Mao Tse-tung: “What should our policy be towards non-Marxist ideas? As 
far as unmistakeable counter-revolutionaries and saboteurs of the socialist 
cause are concerned, the matter is easy: we simply deprive them of their 
freedom of speech”)' (Foreword to M, p. xv)

He advocates this approach with respect to the members of an orchestra, who 
he wishes to make into 'an instance of an improved society'; this to me does 
indeed have totalitarian overtones.

Best,
Ian



--------------------------------------------------
From: "Daniel Wolf" 
<>
Sent: Monday, June 27, 2011 11:27 AM
To: 
<>
Subject: [silence] Re: Cage's prejudices

> Please consider the environments in which Cage had or exercised actual
> power.
>
> First of all the Cunningham Company, where he held various positions in
> addition to music director, including manager and Board President.
> Artistic leadership was in the hands of Cunningham. I imagine that Cage,
> as music director, could have, in principle, asserted the right to compose
> all the music used, and I am certain that he played an essential role in
> the selection of composers, but the practice was for Cunningham alone to
> formally make the request for music and it was requested of a large roster
> of composers.  In this, the record was decidedly mixed, but typical of the
> new music scene: for all the musical diversity, there were too few women
> and too few minorities represented.* There is no evidence of negative
> discrimination in the selection of music, but there is certainly a
> discussion to be had about a question of discrimination within the new
> music scene at large, and within which context it would be useful to
> discuss the question of whether Cage's clear aesthetic position of an
> non-assertion of personal expression was connected to this passive
> discrimination. (Certainly, there is nothing in Babbittonian 12-tone
> technique that should lead to a particular racial or sexual profile of
> composers using the technique, but one finds a very similar demographic
> among 12-tone composers.)
>
> Most concretely, as a manager of the institution, working constantly in
> financial crisis mode, Cage was responsible for an employment practice
> that was effectively progressive, hiring women and minorities in
> management and labor positions without discrimination.  And, it is not to
> be discounted, although often perilously close to folding, the Cunningham
> Company consistently found ways to optimize income and benefits within the
> prevailing labor system.
>
> A more subtle environment in which Cage operated was within the community
> of composers at large. Here, he had and executed influence and could be
> persuasive (as apparently was the case with the Journal *(Asterisk) which
> ceased publication after one (iirc) issue which had an interview with Cage
> which had not been sent to him in advance for editing as agreed;
> similarly, he withheld endorsement of Geoffrey Barnard's little book
> Conversations without Feldman), but it is important to keep in mind that
> his position within the larger community was always marginal, in that his
> opinion might have a negative value.  He wrote many letters of
> recommendation, but an LOC from Cage was definitely not always useful to
> someone seeking a job at a musically unadventurous institution!
>
> Cage has been criticized for operating within a restrictive network of
> composers but again this is systematic of new music in general and one
> suspects is inevitable within any such self-selecting community, or social
> network as the phrase now goes.  He was not above using his taste and
> personal experiences to make negative recommendations as well, famously in
> his critique of Julius Eastman, or in the case of a Cardew memorial, which
> Cage signed to support but, because of his personal hurt at Cardew's
> critique, refused to suppport financially.  He coudl also be very
> judicious about the use of his name, as when one younger composer was
> arrested on a drugs charge, Cage helped to organize a petition on the
> composer's behalf, helping to obtain Aaron Copland's signature, but
> refrained from signing himself on the advice that his signature would do
> more harm than good, should anyone reading the petition recognize his
> name! (One thing that I find surprising, with so much biographical
> research on Cage going on, is that it appears no one has made a FOIA
> request for Cage's FBI and other government files.  As a public persona
> who identified himself as an anarchist who traveled frequently abroad,
> including into Soviet-block countries, I would be surprised if he didn't
> have a paper trail there.)  I believe it was Olivia Matthis who reported
> here that the composer Lucia Dlugoszewski felt that Feldman had intervened
> and kept her out of the Cage-Feldman-Wolff-Brown group;  I suspect,
> however, that her aesthetic closeness to Varese and her personal and
> professional relationship to Erick Hawkins — a competitor to Cunningham,
> after all — were more critical factors.
>
> The only anarchist joke goes:
>
> Q: How many voters does it take to change a light bulb?
> A: None. Because voting doesn't change anything.
>
> As to real politics, Cage was inconsistent about voting, usually
> refraining but I believe that he made exceptions depending on the
> immediate situation.  IIRC, he took the opportunity to vote against
> Reagan's reelection, as he had watched the Iran-Contra proceedings on TV
> with considerable fascination and shock.  Cage refrained from partisan
> politics, but he was a card-carrying member of several organizations
> involved with environmental protection.
>
> Finally, the question of Cage's temporary enthusiasms for Mao's Cultural
> Revolution-era China should be addressed.   We have all the benefits of
> hindsight in recognizing how misplaced this enthusiasm was.  However, it
> has to be put in the context of how unknown China was at that juncture.
> Trade and communications to and from China were, for an American, nil.
> The US has relations only with Taiwan.  With the exception of the
> Soviet-supported CPUSA, there was more or less universal recognition on
> the radical left in the US that the Soviet Union had been a disaster**,
> particularly on issues of human rights, but increasingly in terms of
> economic success, cultural policy, and basis democracy and the measure of
> the catastrophes of WWII and the Gulag system were increasingly apparent,
> thus there was a tremendous eagerness on the left for evidence of a
> functioning socialist state.  Suddenly, after two decade of radio silence
>   from China, a very few, very selective reports (most prominently, 
> perhaps,
> that of Jan Myrdahl, later an apologist for the massacre at Tiananmen
> Square) appear describing Mao's apparent successes in creating, if not a
> utopia, at least a China that was said to be feeding, clothing, housing
> its people, providing health care, educating peasants, and creating
> spectacular cultural events (i.e. stadium shows and revolutionary opera).
> I never had the opportunity to ask Cage about China or his refusal to
> withdraw his earlier statements about China, but I did speak with
> N.O.Brown about it.  As recorded in the _Diaries_, Brown was someone who
> pointed Cage towards China and Mao, and when I asked him about it, he
> simply said, "we didn't know enough, we didn't know anything about
> China."  As to Cage's reluctance to indicate a revision of his opinion of
> China, I can only speculate: (1) Cage did not revise his works, musical or
> otherwise; each score or article is left as an accurate record of its
> moment. Once he figured out how a piece was to be made, he did not revisit
> chance operations to optimize results. (That said, Walter Zimmermann has
> found at least one example of possible "cherry picking" of results.) (2) A
> possible dislike for the constant revisionism and self criticism on the
> left.  Instead of going on to new work, clearly asserting new concerns,
> lessons learned etc., in the new work, the left's (particularly
> Marxist-Leninist left's) obsession with self-criticism and theorizing can
> definitely test one's patience.  (As David Graeber points out, anarchism
> (as opposed to Marxism, the only social movement invented by a PhD) has
> little affinity for the University and its style of formal discourse;
> anarchy is, untimately, pragmatic and happens, spontaneously, all the
> time, every time people initiate forms of organization or interaction
> neither foreseen nor supervised by some state; leaving a proper paper
> trail is, for anarchists, beside the point.) (3) Once burned, best leave
> it alone.  Once committed in print to positions that have become untenable
> because they were based on wrong or insufficient information, it is an
> entirely reasonable proposition to simply let the topic drop, which Cage
> did with regard to China.
>
>
> Daniel Wolf
> composer
> Frankfurt
>
>
> ______
> * Cage's record of working with women and minority artists dates as early
> as his collaboration with the African-Amertican dancer Syvilla Fort on
> _Bacchanale_, the first prepared piano piece, in 1940.
> ** Although Cage toured in some East Block countries, his official status
> in the Soviet Union — as reflected in his Great Soviet Encyclopedia entry
> — was not that of a welcome western personality and he did not travel to
> Russia until the Gorbachev era.
> In a conversation with Robert Duncan some 30 years ago, Mr Duncan
> indicated to me that a political identification with anarchism as a young
> adult was not unusual for artists and gay men like himself for whom the
> authoritarian Soviet system would have made their lives and work
> impossible.  Although Richard Kostelanetz has made a case for Cage as an
> "old leftie", although I am certain that Cage's anarchism, gnosticism and
> artistic practice form a relatively coherent unit, I am altogether
> uncertain as to when Cage's identification with anarchism came into form
> or as to whether this was made in the context of any relationship, postive
> or negative, to to the so called real exisitng socialist states.