Scholarly discussion of the music of John Cage.

[David Badagnani <>]

Ethnomusicologist and friend of John Cage Fredric Lieberman (co-author of the Lou Harrison biography) has just passed away.  Here is a remembrance from ethnomusicologist Robert Garfias, posted to the H-ASIA listserv by Frank Conlon <conlon AT U.WASHINGTON DOT EDU> 

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H-ASIA
May 7, 2013

A further obituary for Fredric Lieberman
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Ed. note: My friend and former colleague Robert Garfias has
kindly sent along his obituary note for Fred Lieberman which
will appear in the Ethnomusicology Newsletter.            FFC

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From: Robert Garfias <rgarfias AT uci DOT edu>

Frederic Lieberman

1940-2013

When Frederic Lieberman embarked on his career in ethnomusicology,
the discipline was still in its very early stages. The discipline was
just forming and Fred played an important role in its development.
The first generation of ethnomusicologists, all European, were
trained in such fields as mathematics, physics and law.  The next
generation of ethnomusicologists, into which both Fred and I fell,
were mostly performing musicians or composers. We were all people who
were fascinated by the structure and mechanics of music and wanted to
get closer to the makings of all the musics of the world that were,
post WW II, suddenly becoming accessible.

Training in ethnomusicology  at UCLA was rigorous and required that
we each go through thorough training in Western music equivalent to
what was required of those in Western Musicology. In addition to this
we had training and research in ethnomusicology. Fred came to the
UCLA Ethnomusicology Program with a varied set of skills under his
belt.He started out as an undergraduate major in music composition at
Eastman but was also taking classes at Rochester in Chinese. He had
completed an MA at the University of Hawaii.  He was fluent in French
and had very strong backgrounds in both electronics and mathematics.
In fact, some years ago when my colleague, the mathematical
psychologist, Vladimir LeFebvre, asked who might examine one of his
theories as it touched on music,  Fred Lieberman was the only
ethnomusicologist that I knew who could possibly decipher and
understand the math. Fred was a film maker as well and made an
excellent documentary on music in Sikkim. He successfully edited a
set of my films of the then living African American Blues musicians.
He had a long and close connection with John Cage, wrote on the music
of John Adams, and he authored two books on our mutual friend, Lou
Harrison. Each of Fred's many enterprises was undertaken with a
exacting level of professional skill.

While we ethnomusicologists of the 50s and 60s each went off around
the world studying the music that would become our point of research
focus;-  and indeed Fred did work intensely on Chinese, Vietnamese
and Japanese music;- he did once confess to me that he was ill at
ease at the idea of being a "foreign expert" on someone else's music.
He had even suggested working on the guilds of piano tuners and their
lore and technique in the U.S. for his Ph. D. thesis at UCLA, but
that was not permitted and so he continued to work on Chinese music.

He taught at the University of Maryland and at Brown University
before coming to the University of Washington. I hired Fred at the
University of Washington in 1975 and that was to me the high point in
the development of the UW program, the time when it really began to
coalesce. Then a few years later Fred and I hired Lorraine Sakata and
then Dan Neuman.  That period in my memory remains a kind of Golden
Age.

One of my happiest and most satisfying memories is of a joint seminar
that Fred and I taught together assisted by Park Heon-Lin at the
University of Washington on the ancient court musics of China, Korea
and Japan. It was a magical sharing of information that no one of us
could have done alone and, although it is said that it is not a good
situation when the teacher and those being taught are being
enlightened at the same time, this is exactly what made this class so
memorable for me.

As a colleague Fred was a happy, energetic and resourceful ally. He
was a "can do" sort of person with virtually limitless ideas. During
those happy years we had so many projects going, that I cannot recall
them all.  Many of them came to naught like our attempt to create our
own record label, Golden Oriole Records, but many succeeded and we
went on to others. Later he developed a connection with the Grateful
Dead and  that became a major focus for him for many years and
resulted in  numerous publications.  Most recently he became
fascinated by questions of musical forensics and he served as an
expert witness in cases of music plagiarism. He was just embarking on
this new career during his last years and with renewed enthusiasm.

Sadly, I  always felt that I could only keep up with a small portion
of Fred's many interests. His areas of expertise were so wide as to
be formidable. There was no one I knew who could match his universe
of knowledge and expertise although we all might try and at least
listen to him with interest. He was never arrogant or overbearing and
I never saw him angry. He was always patient and open to hearing
others out. He has now suddenly left an emptiness in all of us that
will not be easily filled and a pang of regret at all those
unfinished conversations.

Robert Garfias
------------------

Robert

Robert Garfias
Professor of Anthropology
UCI
www.socsci.uci.edu/rgarfias
rgarfias AT uci DOT edu