Scholarly discussion of the music of John Cage.

[John Hails <>]

Dear all

I couldn't watch the broadcast live (I've been having migraines for the last couple of days) but I put it on this morning.

My favourite moment was the ten minute countdown before the lecture started.

While I am sad about this, I went away and read more of Cage's texts this morning than I have all year... And I was reminded of how I approached performing the Lectures on Nothing, Something, and 45' for a Speaker, and it made me want to do it all again and more. (Not because I think that my performances would be better or that I have an audience, but because the reading out loud and performance of them gives me pleasure.)

'It is only irritating    to think one would like   to be somewhere else.'

'Nothing is not   a pleasure   if one is irritated'

And I was irritated particularly by the fourth large part.

Before that, Wilson's delivery was Wilson's delivery and I enjoyed many moments ('but suddenly   it is a pleasure') where the delivery exposed a word or a phrase that might otherwise have been normalised in delivery. But then he got into bed which demonstrated the extent to which this was 'Nothing' by Robert Wilson rather than 'Lecture on Nothing' by John Cage. So just as Jonathan Miller's production of Bach Passions is not to my taste, this is generally not to my taste.

But I worry that my taste for styles of performance might get confused with conceptions of purity and authenticity as a gatekeeping mechanism.

When is a performance embarrassing, and when does it embarrass me, and is there a difference?

'Remove the records from Texas   and someone   will learn to sing'

Should we just start with Cage's text rather than the performance tradition?

'We need not destroy the past:   it is gone;   at any moment,   it might reappear and   seem to be   and be the present  .'

I am reminded of Neil Gaiman on film adaptations: the book hasn't actually gone anywhere and you can go back to read it.

'Would it be a   repetition?   Only if we thought we owned it,   but since we don't,   it is free   and so are we...'

Many thoughts, few answers.

Thursday 13th October 11:19 BST, Edinburgh UK.

On Thu, Aug 13, 2020 at 7:11 AM Stefano Pocci <> wrote:

Hi all,
I did not want to spoil anyone's view on the matter in advance and I confess I did not watch the live stream, but just saw a few instants now.

Some years ago while visiting an exhibition on silence in Tallinn's Kumu Museum (https://kumu.ekm.ee/syndmus/vaikus-on-kuldne-ilmar-laaban-ja-eksperimendid-helis-ning-keeles/,  "vaikus on kuldne" translates into "silence is golden"), I stumbled upon another version of Wilson performing Cage's Lecture on Nothing. It was a version commissioned by Ruhrtriennale Festival in Bochum, Germany (http://www.robertwilson.com/lecture-on-nothing). The exhibition in Tallinn was projecting the video of that 2012 performance.

After seeing Wilson's interpretation, I was also struck by the amount of ego poured over the piece. This recent homemade broadcast was much much humbler in that respect, to what I had seen in Tallinn. It was frankly embarrassing from a Cagean perspective: what I was looking at was not Cage anymore, but 101% Robert Wilson, which I guess would have also been fine, if the video was properly understood/advertised :)

Speaking of Lecture on Nothing, Centro Studi Luciano Berio in Florence (http://lucianoberio.org/) is working on the re-issue of the magazine Incontri Musicali, which featured Lecture on Nothing for the first time. The project is slowly progressing and I will keep the Silence list posted about it.

Have a nice day,

Stefano

Il giorno gio 13 ago 2020 alle ore 06:17 Thomas Moore <> ha scritto:

Embarrassingly awful is a good description. To take a work like Lecture on Nothing, a floating Zen-timeless-egoless construction (which, despite my saying timeless, is all about time), and to imbue it with ego (Wilson even chuckled at one point), was revolting. It was all about Robert Wilson, not at all about John Cage or Lecture on Nothing ... and the point of the artwork, and its relevant experience, would have been completely lost on anyone with whom it was unfamiliar (or, indeed, anyone with whom it was familiar). To put it bluntly, Wilson destroyed John’s work.

Onward.

Be well.

Best,

Tom

——

Thomas Moore
Director, Arts and Culture
Institutional Advancement
UMBC

Office: 410-455-3370 - Cell: 301-807-1369
http://thomasmoore.info

 

On Aug 12, 2020, at 10:09 PM, Rod Stasick <> wrote:

Well, that was embarrassingly awful.

Personally, I kind of wondered how

this would go, but I didn’t want to

imprint my personal feelings onto the 

announcement of the “performance.”

The moment I did like was about 45 minutes in

when the camera was trained on the backyard

and you could hear John speaking, but that was all.

Rod

*************

Now Playing:

‌Isidore Isou:‌ Rituel Somptueux Pour La Selection Des Especes, I. Isou
‌

‌from:

‌Futura Poesia Sonora (Disc 4)‌

‌Last.FM:

https://www.last.fm/user/rostasi2

Mixcloud:

https://www.mixcloud.com/rostasi/

GoodReads:

https://www.goodreads.com/rostasi