<<  -- 6 --  Jennifer Paull    UNCAGED JOHN

I heard Cathy Berberian singing Cage's A Flower, accompanying herself on a Japanese, hand-held fan drum many, many times. Perhaps I have a scrapbook of personal memories that render these musical soundscapes cleansing and refreshing elements for my soul? Through her interpretations, I certainly learned how to listen to, and appreciate them.

'In the late forties I found out by experiment that silence is not acoustic. It is a change of mind, a turning around. I devoted my music to it. My work became an exploration of non-intention. To carry it out faithfully I have developed a complicated composing means using I Ching chance operations, making my responsibility that of asking questions instead of making choices.'

Cage continues his autobiographical statement with a description of life at Black Mountain College. He found it to be a very German institution with an insufficient awareness of Erik Satie.

'Therefore, teaching there one summer and having no pupils, I arranged a festival of Satie's music, half-hour after-dinner concerts with introductory remarks. And in the centre of the festival I placed a lecture that opposed Satie and Beethoven and found that Satie, not Beethoven, was right'.

Black Mountain College was later to be the setting of what was arguably the very first 'happening' with Cage, Merce Cunningham, Robert Rauschenberg, Charles Olsen, David Tudor etc, and an audience seated in four isometric, triangular sections.

Cage refuted the idea that music was a language of communication. He found the answer he sought to its meaning through an Indian singer and tabla player. 'The purpose of music is to sober and quiet the mind, thus making it susceptible to divine influences'.

This experience and the inspirations he felt at Rauschenberger's white paintings led him to compose the legendary 4'33", 'my silent piece', the first performance of which took place exactly fifty years ago tomorrow, on 29 August 1952.

Continue >>

For help listening to the sound extracts here, please refer to our questions & answers page.