Scholarly discussion of the music of John Cage.

[Lowell Cross <>]

On Oct 26, 2011, at 7:47 AM, Matt Rogalsky wrote: 

Perhaps this connects somehow with Reunion (also 1968), although in that collaborative performance the game players' actions were not amplified.

There were 8 channels of audio (amplifiers and loudspeakers) at Reunion. The loudspeakers surrounded the audience.  The actions of the 2 chess players (Cage and the Duchamps) were those of making the moves in a chess game on an electronic chessboard of my design and construction, the 8 outputs of which were individually directed to the 8 channels of audio amplification.  The chessboard has 16 inputs (it still exists at the John Cage Trust); at the first performance of Reunion, 4 collaborating composers each provided 4 inputs to the chessboard -- from their own compositions of electronic music.  The composers were Behrman, Mumma, Tudor, and Cross.  The moves on the chessboard selected audio signals from among the 16 inputs and directed those signals to the 8 individual outputs.  

The chessboard could be described as a 16 input / 8 output matrix mixer.  See LC, "Reunion: John Cage, Marcel Duchamp, Electronic Music and Chess," Leonardo Music Journal, Vol. 9, pp. 35-42 (1999).