Scholarly discussion of the music of John Cage.

[John Hails <>]

Dear Silencers (Silencists?)

I am planning a performance of Cage's Electronic Music for Piano, and have been contemplating the notation - what it tells me and what it does not tell me.

I've done an initial literature review, and compared it to a few other similar hand-written (a posteri) scores like 0'00", Child of Tree, Branches, Variations V, etc. but I'm left with a few questions:

1. What is the significance of the text and numbers in the right-hand margin?
2. I am happy to see that words like 'Variation', 'Repetition', 'New' might be suggestions for what one can do with the original Music for Piano notations, but why is 'Variation' repeated?

3. Is there any significance to 'transformations' being placed in the left-hand margin rather than the right-hand margin?

4. Is that word 'Fruition' or 'Friction'? If it is 'Friction', I know how I would go about interpreting it, but if it is 'Fruition', I'm at a bit of a loss.

5. What is the significance of 'Music for 1-n' at the bottom of the page? Presumably, since n is usually an integer, this means Music for 0 or -1 or -2 etc. Giving the impression of no performers or the absence of performers - the system taking on a life of its own (as it did in Tudor's compositions); but is that it? Does anyone know of a further significance?

If anyone can help out with ideas or texts on anything I've posed I would be very grateful. I've found Christopher Burns' article Designing for Emergent Behavior: a John Cage realization, but (unless I've overlooked something major) most of the books I would usually consult for Cage information skim over the work or describe the notation rather than interrogating it.

If there isn't any further clarification out there then I'm quite happy to go away and interpret it in my own sweet way (taking into account some of the usual JC performance practice considerations of course!) but if there is a precedent for this kind of notation, I'd be really very happy to hear about it.

Many many thanks
John