I can’t say I ever
really met John Cage, but I certainly
encountered him. Cage was guest and
subject of a festival held at the Royal
Conservatoire in The Hague in 1988.
As a post-graduate composition student,
still very much wet behind the ears,
I was one of many to be charmed but
mystified by this legendary figure.
This book read a little
strangely to me at first, but only because
I hardly remember him saying anything
while at the Conservatoire. Not
that he needed to: the place became
a buzzing hive of creativity of all
kinds merely through his presence, activity
both challengingly stimulating and entirely
impractical and misguided.
My reasons for pedalling
my meagre experience of the man is only
to indicate that, like the comments
of most of the interviewees in this
book, whatever your attitudes to John
Cage were before coming across him in
person, they were unlikely to be the
same afterwards. His was an unforgettable
aura, gentle and charming even when
dealing out the sharpest of criticism.
The patiently inflected but unequivocal
words; "you’re doing it all wrong"
will remain with me to the grave, spoken
as we composition students made a complete
hash of one of his less penetrable improvisation
scores. I was told after one of those
marathon concerts where we were allowed
to present our own ‘instant compositions’
that he had been amused, had even laughed
at my ‘act’. Man, that was praise enough.
This book should swiftly
establish itself as essential reading
on the subject of John Cage. It consists
largely of the typescripts of a number
of interviews conducted by Peter Dickinson
for the BBC in the late 1980s. The Radio
3 documentary, first broadcast in 1989,
lasted about one hour, but the substance
of the interviews has the potential
to fill many such programmes. Some earlier
BBC interviews outside the scope of
the programme have also been included,
and Dickinson is to be applauded for
making sure that such vital material
has been preserved and made generally
available. All of these interviews add
to our view of Cage as a man and as
an artist, and make him much more of
a three-dimensional character than just
the uniquely influential creative personality
behind the music and the writings.
Peter Dickinson, himself
a respected composer and musician, first
met Cage in the 1960s, and followed
his work and others reactions to it
ever since. His own comments are, as
a result, informed by familiarity with
his subject, and a reflection of his
own personal responses. I like the way
in which he remains objective – admitting
Cage’s inconsistencies and occasional
wilfulness, while at the same time giving
us all of the warmth and respect which
he obviously holds for the great man.
The book is divided
into four sections. The first section
after the introduction is ‘Cage and
Friends’, starting with Cage himself
and covering Merce Cunningham, Bonnie
Bird, David Tudor, Jackson Mac Low and
Minna Lederman. Part II is ‘Colleagues
and Criticism’, including Cage’s great
friend and ally Virgil Thomson, and
with interviews from Karlheinz Stockhausen,
Earle Brown and La Monte Young among
many others. Cage’s earlier BBC interviews
follow, and Part IV has a section called
‘Extravaganzas’, which have Musicircus
and Roaratorio as their starting
point. All of the interviews are copiously
cross-referenced with detailed and informative
footnotes, and there are, of course,
the usual scholarly and comprehensive
appendices, bibliography and index.
All this might seem
like dry and unappetising fare, but
nothing could be further from the truth.
Turn to a page almost at random, and
you can fill the rest of your review
with intriguing and entertaining quotes.
Even if Cage as a composer might be
less interesting to you as a reader,
there is much to be learned here about
American music-making and the art ‘scene’
in the past century, particularly in
the 1960s and 1970s. Subjects such as
Zen philosophy, some of the origins
and thoughts on seminal works such as
4:33, Schoenberg, anarchy and
structure, ‘happenings’, acceptability
and the pushing of boundaries, all of
these are aspects of music and art which
generate their own interest, both within
and beyond Cage’s own life and work.
The overall sense in many of the interviews
is of Cage ‘coming through’ in the anecdotes
and thoughts of others. Even the vast
ego of Stockhausen admits in Cage "the
musician who hears and makes other people
hear the unheard." La Monte Young
sums up the ‘Cage effect’ succinctly:
"It’s always preferable to have
John [at a performance] because he has
such charisma, such a radiant personality.
You have a remarkable understanding
of him through the osmosis of being
in his presence." What this book
represents is a number of people, significant
in their own right, who have experienced
and absorbed this osmosis, and who bring
Cage to life through the skilful and
sensitive interviewing of Peter Dickinson
and others. It is our good fortune that
Cage’s personality had such a positive
effect on so many people. This is something
fairly rare in music books in general,
but if you are anything like me you
will find yourself being educated and
cheered up at the same time.
"…I have very
little experience as a pessimist. Once…
I told [some] students that I was less
optimistic than I had been – and they
all begged me to continue in my foolish
ways! [laughs]"
Dominy Clements
