John Cage's Concert for Piano and Orchestra 2019047794, 2019047795, 9780190938475, 9780190938499, 9780190938505

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John Cage’s Concert for Piano and Orchestra

Studies in Musical Genesis, Structure, and Inter pretation Beethoven’s “Appassionata” Sonata Martha Frohlich Beethoven’s Piano Sonata in E, Op. 109 Nicholas Marston Wagner’s Das Rheingold Warren Darcy Richard Strauss’s Elektra Bryan Gilliam Mahler’s Fourth Symphony James L. Zychowicz Vaughan Williams’ Ninth Symphony Alain Frogley Debussy’s Ibéria Matthew Brown Mendelssohn’s ‘Italian’ Symphony John Michael Cooper Bartók’s Viola Concerto Donald Maurice Beethoven’s Diabelli Variations William Kinderman Terry Riley’s In C Robert Carl Berg’s Wozzeck Patricia Hall Wagner’s Parsifal William Kinderman Mahler’s Seventh Symphony Anna Stoll Knecht John Cage’s Concert for Piano and Orchestra Martin Iddon and Philip Thomas 

M ARTIN IDDON AND PHILIP THOM A S

JOHN CAGE’S CONCERT FOR PIANO AND ORCHESTRA

1

3 Oxford University Press is a department of the University of Oxford. It furthers the University’s objective of excellence in research, scholarship, and education by publishing worldwide. Oxford is a registered trade mark of Oxford University Press in the UK and certain other countries. Published in the United States of America by Oxford University Press 198 Madison Avenue, New York, NY 10016, United States of America. © Oxford University Press 2020 All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, without the prior permission in writing of Oxford University Press, or as expressly permitted by law, by license, or under terms agreed with the appropriate reproduction rights organization. Inquiries concerning reproduction outside the scope of the above should be sent to the Rights Department, Oxford University Press, at the address above. You must not circulate this work in any other form and you must impose this same condition on any acquirer. Library of Congress Cataloging-​in-​Publication Data Names: Iddon, Martin, 1975– author. | Thomas, Philip, 1972– author. Title: John Cage’s Concert for piano and orchestra / Martin Iddon, Philip Thomas. Description: New York : Oxford University Press, 2020. | Series: Studies in musical genesis, structure, and interpretation | Includes bibliographical references and index. Identifiers: LCCN 2019047794 (print) | LCCN 2019047795 (ebook) | ISBN 9780190938475 (hardback) | ISBN 9780190938499 (epub) | ISBN 9780190938505 (online) Subjects: LCSH: Cage, John. Concert. Classification: LCC ML410.C24 I38 2020(print) | LCC ML410.C24(ebook) |DDC 784.2/62186—dc23 LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2019047794 LC ebook record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2019047795 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 Printed by Integrated Books International, United States of America

Contents

List of Figures List of Tables Series Editor’s Foreword Acknowledgements List of Abbreviations Introduction

vii ix xi xiii xvii 1

1. Situating the Concert for Piano and Orchestra Composing Music for Piano and Winter Music Schoenberg Jazz

11 11 40 47

2. Sketching the Concert for Piano and Orchestra Solo for Piano sketch material The Solo for Piano manuscript The earliest notations within the Solo for Piano manuscript Later notations within the Solo for Piano manuscript Structural decisions and dimensions Sketching the instrumental parts

56 56 68 75 86 93 100

3. Presenting the Concert for Piano and Orchestra The premiere Recording the Concert for Piano and Orchestra The European premiere Publishing the Concert for Piano and Orchestra

122 122 140 166 188

4. Performing the Concert for Piano and Orchestra 207 David Tudor’s first realisation of the Solo for Piano 207 David Tudor’s second realisation and the Indeterminacy recording 225 David Tudor’s third realisation and the Solo for Piano with Fontana Mix and WBAI 236 Antic Meet: Dancing the Concert for Piano and Orchestra 253

vi :  Contents

5. Interpreting the Concert for Piano and Orchestra A Concert of Solos Reading the Concert for Piano and Orchestra Conducting the Solos Sounding the Concert for Piano and Orchestra

267 267 276 285 308

7. Understanding the Concert for Piano and Orchestra Liberation and catastrophe Open form Notation Limits Networks, processes

402 402 415 419 422 429

Bibliography Index

437 447

6. Interpreting the Solo for Piano Repetition, variation, invention Notations within notations Approaches to realisation Performance techniques Compos(it)ing the Solo for Piano

337 338 360 377 384 393

Figures

0.1 The first page of the Solo for Piano 5 0.2 The second page of the Solo for Piano 6 1.1 Music for Piano 21 12

1.2 I Ching determination sketch material from 26′1.1499″ for a string player 14 1.3 Sample page of Winter Music 26 2.1 First sheet of Solo for Piano sketch material

57

2.2 Second sheet of Solo for Piano sketch material

66

2.4 Second page of the Solo for Piano manuscript

83

2.3 First page of the Solo for Piano manuscript

75

2.5 Letters faintly visible above notation 49A within the Solo for Piano manuscript 95 2.6 Sketch page for the Solo for Tuba 101 4.1 Tudor’s realisation of notation 1 A

212

4.2 Tudor’s realisation of notation 49 A

213

4.3 Tudor’s realisation of notation 36 H

214

4.4 Tudor’s realisation of notation 36 H1 215 4.5 Tudor’s composite realisation of 21–​22 AC AE

217

4.6 Tudor’s composite realisation 49–​50 AK H1 BJ1 BM

219

4.7 Tudor’s performance plans for the premiere and rehearsal of the Concert for Piano and Orchestra 222 4.8 Tudor’s performance plan for the European premiere of the Concert for Piano and Orchestra 224 4.9 The second and third pages of Tudor’s booklet of attack points

231

4.10 The first two pages of Tudor’s second realisation of the Solo for Piano 233 4.11 The third page of Tudor’s third realisation of the Solo for Piano 241

viii :  Figures

5.1 The ninth page of the Solo for Violoncello 277 5.2 The first page of the conductor’s part

296

5.3 Cage’s simplified realisation of the conductor’s part

299

5.4 Realisation of the conductor’s part, perhaps for Antic Meet 300 5.5 Realisation of the conductor’s part, perhaps for the premiere

302

6.1 Pages 9 and 10 of the Solo for Piano 344 6.2 Pages 19 and 20 of the Solo for Piano 345

6.3 Page 53 of the Solo for Piano 347 6.4 Pages 54 and 55 of the Solo for Piano 348

6.5 Page 16 of the Solo for Piano 354 6.6 Page 47 of the Solo for Piano 377

Tables

1.1 Distribution chart for Winter Music 32 4.1 Notations used by Tudor in his first realisation

208

4.2 Tabulation of the fifth minute of Cage’s realisation of WBAI 249 4.3 Outline of distribution of pages against time in Cage’s realisation of WBAI 250 5.1 I Ching ratio chart for conductor

297

Series Editor’s Foreword

The Oxford series Studies in Musical Genesis, Structure, and Interpretation extends back to 1985, when Philip Gossett’s landmark volume on Donizetti’s Anna Bolena was published. Since then, each volume in the series has sought to elucidate the detail of musical creation in a single work by a major composer. In earlier times, such works were often called ‘masterworks’. Originally, this primarily sketch-​based study was more concentrated on the relationship between genesis and the final structure of the work. From around the turn of the millennium, however, the series expanded its purpose to include issues of interpretation, with a view to placing individual works within a continuum not just from sketch to score but also on to première and subsequent reception. Under Lewis Lockwood’s founding editorship (to 1997), the Genesis series looked primarily to Romanic-​era works, while since then its balance has tilted more towards key compositions of the twentieth century. Indeed, the series will soon engage with its first volumes of major works originating in the twenty-​first century. The introduction of John Cage’s Concert for Piano and Orchestra (1957–​58) into the series raises fundamental new questions about the creation, analysis, and rendition of music. For Cage’s Concert is a work without a score, but only ‘independent’ parts plus two very important pages of instructions to the conductor. It can be performed in minutes or hours. The Concert also brings with it many close relatives that need to be considered in Martin Iddon’s and Philip Thomas’s meticulous study: not only, and most obviously, the Solo for Piano (1957–​58), but also a number of earlier and later works, to which the Concert is notationally and methodologically related. Indeed, notational questions are perhaps more central to this volume, and most of its individual chapters, than to any other composition in the entire Genesis series. With its engaging chapter titles, Iddon and Thomas unambiguously signpost the various stages of the Concert’s genesis, structure, and interpretation: with their sketching, presenting, performing, and interpreting focuses (Chapters 2 to 6). The opening (‘situating’) and closing (‘understanding’) chapters, however, necessarily delve deeply into the broader context of the work, its primary actors, its wider influences, and its place in the burgeoning world of Cage studies. In some ways, this book brings a two-​for-​one deal for the reader: not just with the Concert and its Solo ‘companion’, but also with the

xii :  Series Editor’s Foreword

creative intertwinings of John Cage and the pianist for whom he conceived most of his indeterminate works, David Tudor. Indeed, Tudor’s own scores, notational realizations, recordings and opinions are a major source for this volume. In the wings, also, is Cage’s life partner, Merce Cunningham, most notably in the conclusion to Chapter 4, the ‘performing’ chapter, where the authors address the ‘dancing’ of the Concert in Cunningham’s choreography, Antic Meet (1958). Martin Iddon’s and Philip Thomas’s comprehensive study is one of several fruits of a major British research project into Cage’s Concert and associated works. Other aspects of the project, as well as many materials relevant to this current book, can be found at the interactive website www.cageconcert.org. The fruits of this intensive project, supported by the Arts and Humanities Research Council (UK) during 2015–​18, are seen in its breaking of ground in so many aspects of Cage research, including the composer’s procedural (I Ching) sketches, his point-​drawing techniques, the Concert’s earlier recordings (including the conducting role), the Concert’s development to create later works (such as Antic Meet), and its curious synthesis of both Schoenbergian and jazz techniques and timbres. These, and many other findings, result in a probing review of all key parameters of Cage’s chance methodology. Malcolm Gillies Australian National University King’s College London

Acknowledgements

The authors gratefully acknowledge the help and assistance of a great many people and organisations without whom this volume could not have been written: Suzanne Ryan at Oxford University Press and Malcolm Gillies, the editor of the series Studies in Musical Genesis, Structure, and Interpretation, for their immediate enthusiasm for the ideas which became the present volume and for their tireless care in shepherding it through to completion; Laura Kuhn, of the John Cage Trust, for her engagement with and constant support of the project; Gene Caprioglio of Edition Peters New York who, as well as providing rich and generous encouragement of our work on the Concert for Piano and Orchestra, also opened up archival resources at Edition Peters regarding Cage’s publishing history and showed us how the Ozalid process of score reproduction worked; John Holzaepfel, who has been the spirit of scholarly cooperation and goodwill in generously sharing his own developing work on David Tudor’s approach to the Solo for Piano, Michael Gallope, who was kind enough to share with us a copy of his unpublished essay on the Solo for Piano, David Patterson, who provided a transcript of his interview with George Avakian and Anahid Ajemian, and agreed to its use here, Petr Kotik, who shared with us his recollections of conversations with David Tudor and of his long experience performing and conducting the Concert for Piano and Orchestra, and John Tilbury, who gave us access to an early Photostat copy of the Solo for Piano; Richard Herbert Howe, who clarified a great deal about the papers Cage used for manuscripts and the process of copying them, David Vaughan, who provided important insights into Merce Cunningham’s choreographic practice, and Anahid Ajemian, whose memories of working with Cage gave a rich and important set of contexts for the understanding of his collaborations developed here. Since Anahid passed away during the writing of this volume, we consider ourselves particularly blessed to have spent an afternoon listening to her recollections and are grateful, too, to the Avakian family for making this possible; Jack Adler McKean, who provided important insights in understanding exactly how slide removal might work in the Solo for Tuba, the many pianists

xiv :  Acknowledgements

who have discussed with us their approaches to the Solo for Piano—​Frank Denyer, Stephen Drury, Mark Knoop, Joseph Kubera, Sabine Liebner, Ian Pace, Marianne Schroeder, Thomas Schultz, John Snijders, and John Tilbury—​and, particularly, the numerous clarinettists who helped us to test our hypothesis that the Solo for Clarinet must have been written for a simple system instrument and what that would mean, namely Ian Mitchell, Emily Payne, Heather Roche, Andrew Sparling, Emily Worthington, and Vicky Wright; The members of Apartment House, with whom we had the opportunity to work as a part of the larger project of which this volume is a part: although their verbatim words do not appear here, the insights they offered from their expert knowledge of preparing and performing the piece were crucial in formulating many of our own readings of the practical dimensions of the instrumental parts, as were the thoughts of Jack Sheen who conducted the piece; Our colleagues at Huddersfield and Leeds, with specific thanks to Robert Adlington, whose perceptive hearing of the premiere of the Concert for Piano and Orchestra as a jazz gig informs our reading of that event, Marian Jago, who helped to establish important specifics regarded the networks of jazz musicians in the New  York of the 1950s, Chris Rainier, who showed us where Cage had borrowed a notational approach from Harry Partch, and Ian Sapiro, whose rich knowledge of the Broadway musical enabled us to pin down just where a musician might be required to double baritone saxophone and bassoon; The Arts & Humanities Research Council, who funded the broader John Cage Concert for Piano and Orchestra project; The staff of the New York Public Library for the Performing Arts, especially Jonathan Hiam, Danielle Castronovo, Jennifer Eberhardt, Suzanne Lipkin, Linda Murray, and Daisy Pommer, who could not have been more generous with their time, assistance, and specialist expertise in helping us to work through the enormous holdings relating to Cage and to Merce Cunningham; The staff of Northwestern University Library, particularly Greg MacAyeal, Alan Akers, and Sigrid Perry, both for their warm welcome to Evanston and for the tireless support we received there, with gratitude, too, for the John Cage Research Award which helped to fund the visit; The staff of the Getty Research Institute, namely Susan Flanagan and Grace Lokuszta, who not only provided exemplary archival support, but who also went above and beyond in finding solutions for an unexpected one-​day closure of the library, and with grateful thanks for the receipt of a Getty Library Research Grant which made the visit to Los Angeles possible;

Acknowledgements  :  xv

The staff of the Mandeville Special Collections Library at the University of California at San Diego, in particular Heather Smedberg and Lynda Classen, whose expertise and support made the Peter Yates and Betty Freeman Papers easy to navigate; The Historisches Archiv of the Westdeutscher Rundfunk in Cologne, and in particular Petra Witting-​Nöthen, for whom no archival request was too arcane, Matthias Kassel and Felix Meyer at the Paul Sacher Foundation in Basel, who assisted us in tracking down the fragmentary autograph of the Solo for Piano held in the Sammlung Mauricio Kagel, and Lenka Nota at the Archiv der Zeitgenossen, who generously shared with us letters Cage and David Tudor sent to Friedrich Cerha relating to the Concert for Piano and Orchestra; Our wonderful and brilliant collaborators and colleagues on the project, Emily Payne and Christopher Melen, without whose encouragement, insight, and generosity, this volume would certainly never have been finished and probably hardly begun. Working with them we have also developed a range of interactive resources which enable a rather different—​more practical and direct—​engagement with the Concert for Piano and Orchestra and the Solo for Piano. These resources can be accessed at cageconcert.org. We are grateful, too, to a large number of individuals and organisations who have allowed us to reprint unpublished or copyright materials within the present volume: the George and Anahid Avakian Irrevocable Trust, and its trustees, for permission to make use of George Avakian’s voluminous correspondence over nearly fifty years relating to his three-​disc recording of the Twenty-​Five Year Retrospective Concert; the John Cage Trust, and Laura Kuhn personally, for the use of Cage’s unpublished correspondence; Julia Connor, executrix of the estate of M. C. Richards, for permission to make use of Richards’s letters to Cage and Tudor and on the subject of the Concert for Piano and Orchestra more generally; Robbie Freeman, on behalf of the heirs of Betty Freeman, for permission to quote from Betty Freeman’s correspondence, especially regarding Winter Music; Clay Fried, on behalf of the Elaine de Kooning trustees, who has allowed the use of her letters to Cage; Mimi Johnson of Artservices, Inc., for permission to draw on David Tudor’s unpublished correspondence and working materials; Edition Peters for permission to make use of unpublished correspondence written by, inter alia, Walter Hinrichsen, as well as permission to reproduce Cage’s sketch materials and extracts from Music for Piano (EP 6734), the Solo for Cello (EP 6705-​VCL), Solo for Piano (EP 6705), and Conductor’s Part from the Concert for Piano and Orchestra (EP 6705-​COND), and Winter Music (EP 6775); Marianne Pousseur, who granted authorisation to make use of letters from Henri Pousseur to Cage (and to Angela Ida de Benedictis, who put us in touch with one another); Schott Music, and Peter Hanser-​Strecker personally, for permission

xvi :  Acknowledgements

to quote from his letters to George Avakian; Suzanne Stephens-​Janning, of the Stockhausen Verlag, for her permission to quote from Stockhausen’s letters to David Tudor; Ken Tabachnik, at the Merce Cunningham Trust, who authorised our use of Cunningham’s choreographic notes for Antic Meet; Universal Edition and the Westdeutscher Rundfunk, both of whom granted permission to quote from the letters of Otto Tomek, during his employ at the respective organisations, and the former for permission to draw on letters written by Alfred Schlee to Cage. Copyright naturally continues to rest with the original owner or owners in all of these cases. Last, but by no means at all least, we offer grateful thanks to our long-​ suffering and deeply loved families, for whom no gratitude will ever suffice, specifically Tiff, Naomi, and Jack, and Kate and Alice, all five of whom have tolerated more discussion of a single piece over three years than could ever be regarded reasonable, although since Alice only arrived during the writing, she at least has been spared the full horror. Even with the support of so many remarkable people, there will inevitably remain errors in what follows, the fault for which is entirely our own.

Abbreviations

BFP

Betty Freeman Papers, University of California at San Diego, San Diego, CA, USA DTP David Tudor Papers, Getty Research Institute, Los Angeles, CA, USA EPNY Edition Peters, New York, NY, USA FCC Friedrich Cerha Collection, Archiv der Zeitgenossen, Krems, Austria GAAAP George Avakian and Anahid Ajemian Papers, New York Public Library, New York, NY, USA JCC John Cage Collection, Northwestern University, Evanston, IL, USA JCMC John Cage Manuscript Collection, New York Public Library, New York, NY, USA MCDCCR Merce Cunningham Dance Company Choreographic Records, New York Public Library, New York, NY, USA MCDCFR Merce Cunningham Dance Company Foundation Records, New York Public Library, New York, NY, USA MCDCFRA Merce Cunningham Dance Company Foundation Records Additions, New York Public Library, New York, NY, USA MCRP M. C. Richards Papers, Getty Research Institute, Los Angeles, CA, USA PYP Peter Yates Papers, University of California at San Diego, San Diego, CA, USA

Introduction May I commission you to write a tiny little work for me for the tiny little sum enclosed? I’ve never had a piece of music of my own and I feel the time has come—​and the music must be yours—​Hope you’ll do it. —​Elaine de Kooning to John Cage, undated [1957?] (source: JCC)

The piece Cage wrote in response to Elaine de Kooning’s commission, the Concert for Piano and Orchestra (1957–​58), was far from a tiny little work. There was no unifying score. In its place there were thirteen independent instrumental parts, along with two pages of instructions for the conductor—​ transformed from the director and leader of the ensemble into a human clock, the rotation of whose arms is irregular and unpredictable—​totalling one-​hundred-​and-​eighty-​six pages. Cage wrote a separate sixty-​three page part for his notional soloist: the Solo for Piano (1957–​58). Its one-​hundred-​ and-​forty-​six individual notations—​drawing on a total of eighty-​four different types of notation, ranging from the prescriptive to the suggestive and arranged according to an alphabetical code from A through to CE—​became Cage’s visual calling card. A major piece merely in terms of the scale of its own performance materials, the Concert sits at the heart of an enormous network of pieces: Cage gave licence for it to be performed alongside many of his other pieces, on the one hand, and, on the other, the materials of the Concert contain the notations of several earlier pieces and give rise to several later ones, some of which also fall into the category of pieces which can be combined with their ‘parent’. The premiere performance lasted a little more than twenty-​three minutes, already a not inconsiderable duration, but later performances could be significantly longer: a performance at the Theatre de la Ville in Paris, on 26 October 1970, of the Concert with Cage’s later pieces Song Books (1970) and the Rozart Mix (1965), took a full two-​and-​a-​half hours. John Cage’s Concert for Piano and Orchestra. Martin Iddon and Philip Thomas, Oxford University Press (2020). © Oxford University Press. DOI: 10.1093/oso/9780190938475.001.0001

2 : 

concert for piano and orchestra

Other performances could be more fleeting, shorter than five minutes in some cases. Each of the instrumental solos uses a variant of the notation of Cage’s Music for Piano (1952–​56). Each page of each instrumental solo has five staves, sometimes densely, sometime sparsely filled with notes and noises, written in what looks like time-​space notation, with the duration of each line and page stretched or squeezed according to the predetermined length of a particular performance, once the performer has determined which, if any, of the pages of the part will be played. The Solo for Piano, in ways which will be detailed much more fully below, stems from two earlier Cage pieces: again, Music for Piano and the more recent Winter Music (1957). Those two notations literally appear as the second and third notational elements—​notations B and C—​in the Solo for Piano. The Solo for Piano’s twenty-​second notation, notation V, uses a format identical to that Cage used in the prepared piano scores of his earlier sequence of time-​length pieces (commonly named the Ten Thousand Things): 31′57.9864″ for a pianist and 34′46.776″ for a pianist (both 1954). Notations Y, AC, AO, and AQ point forward to Music Walk (1958); notation BB is closely related to For Paul Taylor and Anita Dencks (1957) as well as Variations I (1958) and II (1961), the latter pair also related to notations BJ and BV; notation CC would soon be transformed into Fontana Mix (1958). As well as the Rozart Mix and Song Books, mentioned above, the Concert can be, and has been, performed at the same time as Fontana Mix (1958), Aria (1958), Solo for Voice 1 (1958) and 2 (1960), and WBAI (1960). All these possible combinations add to the variety the piece itself already contains: any number or combination of the various instrumental parts with or without conductor—​indeed with or without the pianist one might think the essential soloist—​would represent a possible or plausible instrumentarium for the piece. For David Nicholls, the Concert for Piano and Orchestra is ‘perhaps the most remarkable product’ of Cage’s music in the 1950s and 1960s, not only ‘in effect a compendium of his compositional practices’, but also containing ‘an astonishing selection of notations, for a pianist and thirteen other instrumentalists, all of whom have an unprecedented degree of control over what (and how) they perform’.1 Michael Pisaro argues that the Solo for Piano’s catalogue of ‘notational styles [ . . . ] seems far from being exhausted in implication and in practice, even 50 years after its creation’.2 For Michael Nyman,

Nicholls, ‘Avant-​garde and experimental music’, The Cambridge History of American Music, in David Nicholls (ed.) (Cambridge:  Cambridge University Press, 1998), 526. 2  Michael Pisaro, ‘Writing, Music’, in James Saunders (ed.), The Ashgate Research Companion to Experimental Music (Farnham: Ashgate, 2009), 28–​30. 1  David

Introduction  :  3

notwithstanding any innovation the piece may exhibit, ‘Cage’s Concert for Piano and Orchestra can be viewed as nothing less than a genuine, old-​fashioned achievement’.3 This said, as the below will show, not all reactions to the piece were, especially in the first decade after its composition, anything like so effusive or positive. Half a century on, however, the piece is now not simply textbook but, more, it adorns the covers of books relating to Cage and to twentieth-​century music more broadly: one of Cage’s earliest and most vocal advocates, Peter Yates, selected notation B from the Solo for Piano for the cover of his Twentieth Century Music; the same notation (indeed the same version of that notation, the occurrence on the fifty-​third page of the part) appears on the cover of the second edition of Michael Nyman’s Experimental Music: Cage and Beyond; and the ninth page’s notation G features on the cover of the second edition of Paul Griffiths’s Modern Music and After: Directions since 1945, while the flute part, the Solo for Flute, peeks through the white title text of James Pritchett’s The Music of John Cage.4 The eighth page of the score is the central focus of the cover of Edition Peters’ first catalogue of Cage’s published oeuvre, printed in 1960. This speaks to more than the significance of the Concert as a piece: though Cage’s hand was always elegant, graceful, and highly personal, it was the Solo for Piano which introduced the possibility that his calligraphy might be, on its own terms, art. The letter offering the commission is undated, but, in truth, almost whenever it was sent, it seems likely to have been received after Cage was already at work on the piece: a letter from Cage’s closest musical collaborator and pianist of choice, David Tudor, who would premiere the piece, to Karlheinz Stockhausen dated 12 March 1957 mentions that Cage was ‘working on a piano concerto’, which would be ‘very wild’, and would have a variable length, but probably not be shorter than 15 minutes. Tudor implies that the work began almost as soon as Winter Music was completed, presumably in January or February 1957.5 That said, as demonstrated in Chapter 2 of the present

Michael Nyman, Experimental Music: Cage and Beyond, second edition (Cambridge: University of Cambridge Press, 1999 [1974]), 64. 4  Peter Yates, Twentieth Century Music: Its Evolution from the End of the Harmonic Era into the Present Era of Sound (New York, NY: Pantheon, 1967); Nyman, Experimental Music; Paul Griffiths, Modern Music and After:  Directions since 1945, second edition (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1995 [1981]); James Pritchett, The Music of John Cage (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993). 5  David Tudor to Karlheinz Stockhausen, 12 March 1957, in Imke Misch and Markus Bandur (eds.), Karlheinz Stockhausen bei den Internationalen Ferienkursen für Neue Musik in Darmstadt 1951–​1996: Dokumente und Briefe (Kürten: Stockhausen, 2001), 162. 3 

4 : 

concert for piano and orchestra

volume, Cage had at least one false start on the piece which, in all likelihood, he first expected to be on the model of his Ten Thousand Things pieces. The extant pieces in that series not only lent themselves to combination in varying and flexible ensembles, but also represented the ‘state of the art’ in terms of Cage’s thinking about instrumental parameters and, too, provided him with maquettes for keyboard, percussion, and strings (and, more obliquely, voice), leaving only two families of instruments to model. It is not at all clear what caused him to abandon this version of the piece, though there can be little doubt that scaling up the notations of the Ten Thousand Things to an orchestral canvas—​even a chamber orchestral canvas—​would have been work on a truly enormous scale, even for a composer like Cage, hardly afraid of putting in the hard yards. As Chapter 2 suggests, plans probably progressed no further than thinking about orchestral forces and the proportions of the piano part. Nonetheless, the ghost of some of the sketching he made for this ‘shadow’ concerto may play a part in the organisation of the piece he did complete. It is not clear, either, exactly what sort of progress Cage made on the piece over exactly what time period, although the date on the instruction sheet for the Solo for Piano of 27 March 1958 marks the completion of the final inked manuscript of that section of the piece. Cage had previously advised the West German radio editor, Otto Tomek, that by the end of January he had nearly completed the Solo for Piano in pencil, but not in ink.6 Moreover, at some point in February, he had completed a copy, in ink, of the first eighteen pages of the same.7 Both these matters are returned to in various guises in Chapters 2 and 3, below. As mentioned above, earlier pieces form the genetic material out of which the Concert for Piano and Orchestra is woven and, too, precisely the pieces which frame the Ten Thousand Things in Cage’s output: Music for Piano and Winter Music. These pieces feel in significant ways like prima materia since the former comprises nothing but single notes, while the latter is concerned with the making of chords (although that undertaking results in both single pitches and clusters as well). Given their importance to Cage’s process in composing the Concert for Piano and Orchestra, Chapter 1 examines what can be said, both analytically and on the basis of sketch studies, regarding Cage’s approach to writing Music for Piano and Winter Music, demonstrating amongst other matters details of the ways in which Cage used I Ching determinations, coin tosses, and transparencies, methodologies which continued to be of primary importance in the composition of the Concert itself. 6 

John Cage to Otto Tomek, 29 January 1958 (source: DTP). eighteen-​page fragment of the Solo for Piano is held at the Paul Sacher Stiftung in Basel, within the Sammlung Mauricio Kagel. 7 The

Introduction  :  5

Fig. 0.1:  The first page of the Solo for Piano On the first page of the Solo for Piano (fig. 0.1), these two repetitions of Cage’s earlier notational devices appear—​twice, in the case of Music for Piano, while the Winter Music-​style notation continues onto the second page—​along with a wholly new notation, which presents a set of pitches across treble and bass staves, joined up with a freehand shape, and accompanied by a ratio to the left, the sum of the numbers in the ratio totalling the sum of the pitches in the notation. As the codex at the head of the Solo for Piano says, the pianist is, starting from a given point, to play the notes given in opposite directions, in the proportions indicated by the ratio. This new notation receives the siglum A, while that which repeats the materials of Winter Music is notation B, and the two versions of Music for Piano are both ascribed the letter C (although notation C, which is to say Music for Piano, makes no further appearances in the piece). On the second page (fig. 0.2) appear three further notations, each different from the others, which are given the next three alphabetical markers: D, E, and F. The first two of these are clearly variations of the notations which appeared on the first page: D is a variation of B, wherein the pianist is provided with chords, but also complex instructions for how to arpeggiate them; E is a variation of A, wherein instead of the splitting of the directions in which notes are played, the notes are divided between the left and right hands. Notation F might, perhaps, be viewed as a variation of C—​the time-​space relationship is fixed but mobile in F, where in C it is fixed and static and, alongside single notes, in F there are dyads and triads—​or it

6 : 

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Fig. 0.2:  The second page of the Solo for Piano might be seen as a second new notation. Deciding which category individual notations might fall into—​whether a notation is new, a repetition of an existing notation, or a variation on an existing notation—​is sometimes straightforward, but often a fine judgement call. What is not open for debate is that all the notations in the Solo for Piano fall into one of these categories and that Cage’s decisions about the drawing of fresh notations followed from chance determinations of whether a particular notation was to be a repetition, a variation, or something new. Importantly, Cage’s impetus for thinking in this way betrays the continuing and potent influence of Schoenberg. As he said to Joan Retallack: ‘Schoenberg had taught me that music was repetition and variation. I wanted in this piece to state that there was a possibility of introducing something that was not a repetition.’8 Similarly, he wrote to Jackson Mac Low that he had ‘used Schoenberg’s idea that a variation is a repetition with some things changed and others not.’9 It is this characteristic which often leaves it open to debate as to whether there is sufficient resemblance between two notations to make it possible to claim they are variations of one another. As such, Chapter 1 also examines Cage’s relationship with the ideas of repetition and variation he had received from Schoenberg, ideas which are the central impulse for the formal characteristics of the Solo for Piano. John Cage and Joan Retallack, Musicage: Cage Muses on Words, Art, Music (Hanover, NH: Wesleyan University Press, 1996 [1992]), 297. 9  John Cage to Jackson Mac Low, February 9, 1975, in Laura Kuhn (ed.), The Selected Letters of John Cage (Middletown, CT: Wesleyan, 2016), 451. 8 

Introduction  :  7

Though Cage never denied the importance of Schoenberg in the composition of the Concert for Piano and Orchestra—​indeed this increasingly formed a part of his description of how the piece was written, especially from the middle of the 1970s—​he tended, particularly in the first decade or so of the piece’s life, to prefer the conception he gave in the programme note: ‘My intention in this piece was to hold together extreme disparities, much as one finds them held together in the natural world, as, for instance, in a forest or on a city street.’10 Here one finds an intriguing respelling of Cage’s regular insistence that, quoting Ananda Coomaraswamy (who was himself glossing St. Thomas Aquinas), ‘art is the imitation of nature in her manner of operation’, since ‘nature’ explicitly encompasses both a forest and a city street. This suggests at the very least some divergence from Coomaraswamy’s version in which ‘Nature is Mother Nature, that principle by which things are “natured,” by which, for example, a horse is horsey and by which a man is human. Art is an imitation of the nature of things, not of their appearances.’11 In truth, Aquinas was himself already paraphrasing Aristotle, who insisted, in Hans Blumenberg’s summary, that (a) work could ‘only be a copy of nature’,12 although Aquinas made Aristotle rather more radical in his insistence that the imitation of nature was restricted ‘to only what nature could just as well have made on its own’.13 The shift is, of course, important since without precisely a limitation like the one Aquinas provides, there would have been little to surprise in Cage’s claims for his approach. In the context of Cage’s desires to prove Schoenberg wrong, one might also remember that, according to Blumenberg, Aristotle ‘reached the only possible conclusion: everything “new” recalls what already is’.14 Another part of Blumenberg’s reading of the Aristotle version, too, would surely have been of interest to Cage, had he known it: ‘When Aristotle says it is the task of artists to imitate natural objects as they ought to be, that does not mean by referring to the transcendental Form of one of these objects, but rather by “extrapolating” from the developmental process to its completion, from genesis to telos’,15 later continuing John Cage, ‘Notes’, in The 25-​Year Retrospective Concert of the Music of John Cage, n.p. Coomaraswamy, quoted in David W.  Patterson, ‘The Picture That Is Not in the Colors:  Cage, Coomaraswamy, and the Impact of India’, in David W.  Patterson (ed.), John Cage:  Music, Philosophy, and Intention, 1933–​1950 (Abingdon: Routledge, 2002), 195. 12  Hans Blumenberg, ‘ “Imitation of Nature”: Toward a Prehistory of the Idea of the Creative Being’, tr. Anna Wertz, Qui Parle, vol. 12, no. 1 (Spring/​Summer 2000), 30. 13  Ibid., 41. 14  Ibid., 29. 15  Ibid., 31. 10 

11 Ananda

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that, ‘[w]‌here the discussion concerns what is not yet, but which could be, it is always about matter, the possibility of Being as formal indeterminacy, which is associated with Aristotle’.16 The Concert for Piano and Orchestra contains all manner of extreme disparities: most obviously, a performer must simultaneously be highly disciplined and free (albeit from ego and personal desires, such that freedom already begins to collapse into discipline), but others include the distinction between the Solo for Piano—​which discards, doubtless because the I Ching fell that way, one of its progenitor notations, the Music for Piano, on its first page in favour of the gradual mutation of notations through variation and introduction of new material—​and the instrumental solos, which are in this sense static, throughout and across all parts utilising the Music for Piano model. In most performances, too, the pianist ignores the changes of the speed at which time passes imposed by the conductor, when there is one, a stricture the other performers are not at liberty to ignore. Ron Kuivila recalled that Cage had told him that the pianist was expected to display virtuosity, which Kuivila thought placed the pianist ‘in tension, if not outright contradiction, with a sensibility that shuns personality and ego’, a sensibility that could certainly be claimed be for David Tudor.17 One recalls equally Retallack’s description of Cage himself: ‘He was Apollonian and Dionysian, purposeful and purposeless, serious and playful, calculatedly spontaneous.’18 Although the way in which points are inscribed in the instrumental parts, and how they are transformed into pitches, mirrors closely the way in which Cage wrote Music for Piano—​as does much of the rest of the process, as detailed more fully in Chapters 2 and 5—​the timbral resources used in the instrumental parts have a more surprising origin: it is well known that Cage consulted with players in the process of composing the Concert, but previously unknown was that these players were, save the string players, principally jazz musicians, especially session musicians, many of whom also regularly played on Broadway, and the majority of whom worked with Gil Evans, Claude Thornhill, and Gerry Mulligan. As such, Chapter 1 recapitulates what is known about Cage’s relationship with jazz, in the knowledge of its importance for the composition of the Concert, while his relationship with these musicians and the impact they had on the composition of the instrumental parts forms a part of the discussion in Chapter 2. Of course, this makes sense, too, of not just the broad sweep but the specifics of Cage’s answer to

16 

Ibid., 38. Kuivila, ‘Open Sources: Words, Circuits and the Notation-​Realization Relation in the Music of David Tudor’, Leonardo Music Journal, vol. 14 (2004), 19. 18  Joan Retallack, ‘Introduction’, in Cage and Retallack, Musicage, xxxix. 17  Ron

Introduction  :  9

his own question, ‘[w]‌hat are the orchestral timbres of the Concert for Piano and Orchestra?’: ‘It is impossible to predict, but this may be said: they invite the timbres of jazz, which more than serious music has explored the possibilities of instruments.’19 It was, in this case, literally Cage who extended the invitation, precisely so that he could take advantage of a field significantly more advanced in terms of experiment and resource than his own. Another one of those oppositions might, then, be Schoenberg and jazz, one which is also figured in the separation between the Solo for Piano, dominated by a formal approach drawn from Schoenberg, and the other instrumental solos, all of a similar kind, but their specificities characterised by a timbral approach drawn from jazz. It was, in truth, not a wholly new thought for Cage: he wrote to Peter Yates regarding his pre-​war percussion music that he was ‘sharing points of view of Schoenberg and hot jazz combined’.20 The Concert for Piano and Orchestra was the central piece, the evening’s major premiere, in Cage’s Twenty-​Five Year Retrospective Concert on 15 May 1958 at Town Hall in New York City, an event compared by many at the time to the premiere of Le Sacre du printemps (1913), for reasons both to do with the specific responses of the performing musicians and the riotous response of the audience, circumstances outlined in rich detail below. The evening was also, by some margin, Cage’s most significant and well attended concert to date (if by New York City’s art and jazz crowds, rather than season ticket holders for the New York Philharmonic). A no less scandalous and scandalised response met the piece on its European premiere four months later. The three-​ disc recording of the New York concert—​made at his own expense by surely the most significant jazz record producer of the twentieth century, George Avakian—​was Cage’s first long-​playing portrait release and brought his music to an increasingly wide, international audience. While demand may have been slow to build, it was persistent and durable: until WERGO took over distribution of the recording—​transferring it to CD in 1994—​every few years, Avakian found himself having to re-​press a new edition of the whole set, along with its pricey, luxe box. It was, too, the first piece that was thought of for publication when Cage signed with Henmar Press in 1960, even if in the end it would, instead, be the Music of Changes (1951) that would have that distinction, perhaps because of what turned out to be the enormous cost of printing the Concert. These various contexts are the focus of Chapter 3 of the present volume, while Chapter 4 turns to the work on the piece which, in various guises, occupied David Tudor over several years, as John Cage, ‘Changes’ in idem, Silence (Hanover, NH: Wesleyan University Press, 1961 [1958]), 31. 20  John Cage to Peter Yates, 14 December 1940, in Kuhn (ed.), Selected Letters, 49. 19 

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he generated three different realisations of the Solo for Piano, for performance with the instrumental parts, to be played alongside Cage’s ninety-​minute lecture, ‘Indeterminacy’—​a version which would result in a second classic Cage recording—​and for use to accompany Merce Cunningham’s choreography, Antic Meet (1958), the dance which provided many of the most iconic images of Cunningham and his company, and was the form of the piece in which it was most heard during the first ten years or so of its life. Having established the conditions for the first performances, recognising that these might be said to reflect, at least from Cage’s own perspective, both the best and worst of worlds, Chapters 5 and 6 examine the published music, considering the instrumental parts and the Solo for Piano respectively, in the light, too, of the sketches examined in Chapters 1 and 2, with an aim to defining what this music is and what it is not—​which is to say, too, what it allows and what it forbids—​as well, through the traces of its performers and performances, what it has been and, further, what it might yet be. As explained in Chapter 7, the piece played (and, indeed, plays) a central role in Cage’s European reception, while analytical philosophers have deployed notations from the Concert in showing where the limits of traditional concepts of the musical work have lain: as precisely a sort of limit case, for some thinkers, like Nelson Goodman, the piece falls outside the bounds of the musical work tout court. More recently, other thinkers have deployed a Deleuzian framework which not only opposes Goodman in insisting that the piece is, assuredly, the musical work that those who play and hear it already intuitively know it to be but, more, that this realisation shows the degree to which musical works in general are much more like the Concert than traditional conceptions of the musical work would be willing or able to allow. Unsurprisingly, de Kooning was thrilled with the outcome of her investment. On receipt of her copy of what was almost certainly a Photostat of the Solo for Piano—​Cage was most likely still working on the instrumental parts until perilously close to the date of the premiere—​she wrote to Cage: Found your gorgeous gift at my door. Your drawing is unbelievably beautiful and I believe it. I’ve been studying the different pages and am overwhelmed (terrified) by their variety. I’ve also been studying the instructions—​I’m very possessive about all aspects—​and I’d love to attend a rehearsal to read the score as it is or isn’t played. It would help me to find out how far behind my eyes my ears are. Isn’t part of the purpose of art to locate the parts of one’s anatomy for one? [ . . . ] I’d hate to think art is all a matter of social geography. I prefer a more intimate view—​it’s bigger. What I’m saying is I love the space of your music through my eyes and my ears. I can’t wait to hear the concert but am finding solace in looking at it. It’s staggering.21 21 

Elaine de Kooning to John Cage, 11 April 1958 (source: JCC).

chapter 1

Situating the Concert for Piano and Orchestra Composing Music for Piano and Winter Music Given that, as noted in the Introduction, the Music for Piano series and Winter Music form the basic material out of which the Solo for Piano is derived—​ and that the process for composing the instrumental parts of the Concert for Piano and Orchestra is, itself, a variation of the Music for Piano technique—​a useful preliminary step is to describe how these pieces were composed. This, too, naturally gives a snapshot of the ways in which Cage was working in the years immediately preceding the composition of the Concert for Piano and Orchestra. In the case of Music for Piano (the twenty-​first piece in the series is shown in fig. 1.1), one might imagine that this would be straightforward enough, both because the pieces within Music for Piano are essentially simple in their demands and because Cage himself provided an exemplary description of the process, written more or less contemporaneously with the production of the pieces.1 Although well known, Cage’s outline is important to repeat. According to that account, the method was as follows: 1. A master page containing four systems is drawn (presumably in ink), each system comprising an upper and lower staff, both amenable to Cage’s brief essay, ‘To Describe the Process of Composition Used in Music for Piano 21–​52’, was first published in the third volume of Die Reihe (‘Musikalisches Handwerk’, translated as ‘Musical Craftsmanship’ for the English-​language version published in 1959) in 1957, in a translation made by Christian Wolff, and appears in Silence,  60–​61. 1 

John Cage’s Concert for Piano and Orchestra. Martin Iddon and Philip Thomas, Oxford University Press (2020). © Oxford University Press. DOI: 10.1093/oso/9780190938475.001.0001

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Fig. 1.1:  Music for Piano 21 having a treble or a bass clef, which is to say with space enough above for nine ledger lines and below for six, with a space between them, bisected by a line. A note above that line, but within the space, would indicate a noise made within the interior of the piano; a note below the line a noise made on the exterior construction of the piano; 2. The number of sounds per page of the piece is determined by a cast—​ or perhaps a number of casts—​of the I Ching: between 1 and 128 notes for Music for Piano 21–​36 and between 1 and 32 for 37–​52, this producing,

Situating the Concert for Piano and Orchestra  :  13







by default, the likelihood that the earlier pieces would, then, be significantly notationally denser than the later ones; 3. The number given by the I Ching is used to determine the number of marks which are to be made at the points where imperfections can be seen on a sheet of transparent paper, those marks being made in pencil; 4. The transparent sheet is placed on top of the master sheet, with the staves then transcribed in ink from the master sheet onto the transparent, followed by ledger lines wherever necessary. Following this, open noteheads are inscribed in ink wherever a pencil marking falls within the area of a staff or its associated ledger lines, while a closed notehead is inscribed wherever such points appear within the space between the staves. Because necessarily more points will appear in spaces than on lines, points which are close to lines are determined as belonging to those lines; 5. The clefs for each individual staff are determined by a coin toss, since it is a binary decision between treble and bass; 6. Whether a note is to be muted, plucked inside the piano, or played ordinarily on the keys is determined via an I Ching determination, with a different weighting for the I Ching for each page: Cage’s example suggests that if he were to toss 6 and 44, this would determine the ‘conditions’ for the page, wherein future tosses for each note would be determined by the resulting range:  1–​5:  normal; 6–​43:  muted; 44–​64:  plucked. A similar process determines whether a note receives a sharp or flat sign or is left natural.2

As will become clear from the description of the sketch materials for the Solo for Piano that follows, this outline is very much akin to a more fully written-​ out version of the sorts of process diagrams Cage made for many of his pieces in the 1950s and, as a result, one might suspect that this short essay is, in fact, precisely that: a more discursive version of the sorts of notes Cage made for himself in composing the piece, what he would describe as the composing means. At this point Cage’s approach was still in development. He noted on one of his working sheets for 26′1.1499″ for a string player (1953–​55)—​a sheet which surely belongs to the very first phase of work on that piece, given the deletions and obvious changes of mind, and, as such, is essentially contemporaneous with Music for Piano 4–​19—​what seems to have been, for him, a new process 2 

Paraphrased from ibid.

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Fig. 1.2:  I Ching determination sketch material from 26′1.1499″ for a string player and which will be seen again in various guises in other pieces across the 1950s, if not in Music for Piano (fig. 1.2): Determination: for each structural area toss 4 3 numbers one larger than the preceding establishing for that area the probability proportions. e.g. 58; (19→24) (17→25) (28→46) 60 →(43) (9) (32) →62 means 1–​ 58 = maintaining 59–​ 60 = introducing imm. aggregate 61–​ 642 = angle or curve 63–​ 64 = curve

Situating the Concert for Piano and Orchestra  :  15

or e.g. (41)→42; (29) 60 3 numbers better: take 1st 2 hexagrams   1–​ 19 = maintaining   20–​ 24 = aggregate 1–​41 = maint. 1–​29 = maint.   25–​58 = angle 42–​42 = aggregate 30–​41 = aggreg.   59–​64 = curve 43 42–​ 42 = angle 43–​ 60 = curve In the first place, then, Cage seems to have expected to keep casting the I Ching until he produced a larger number than the previous one, in order to generate determining tables for the contents of structural areas. He appears almost immediately to have realised that this was inefficient, since he could simply rearrange any set of cast numbers in ascending order. This meant it was possible to cast the I Ching far less often—​here, in the last chart, at the bottom right, one sees Cage reduce the castings needed from twelve in the first instance through to a usage of just the first three numbers initially cast—​but the change had a seemingly unanticipated corollary: it was perfectly conceivable that Cage cast the same number more than once. Of course, one could simply eliminate repetitions, but Cage ultimately took this to be meaningful and, as will be seen in the discussion of Winter Music, used it to remove individual possible elements from instances of any specific determination. The sketches for 26′1.1499″ for a string player contain too an outline of Cage’s ‘Order of Action’. This defines, as that title suggests, the order in which Cage determined musical parameters and, moreover, the order in which they were apparently inscribed into the manuscript. As such one type of element would be determined in all of its aspects before the next element was considered, such that Cage would determine points—​the marking of paper imperfections—​before inserting staves. In this case staves were unconventional, with a staff at the top which indicated bowing, including bow position from sul ponticello to sul tasto, whether the hair or wood was to be used, whether an upward or downward bow stroke was to be used, and the pressure of the bow, followed by four staves which showed fingering positions on the four strings of the instrument, and a bottom staff which would indicate when noises—​such as bowing on the body of the instrument or through the use of external sound sources like whistles or radios—​were required. All details, however, were determined significantly later: only the staves themselves were inserted at this stage, followed by the inscription of noises, on the bottom staff, which was the first staff, then, to receive any musical matter as such. The

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complete chart gives an indication of the scale, then, of the sheer number of parameters Cage considered: Order of Action points staves noises sharps + flats size  (BMS) harmonics (oblig.) pizz. + kinds harm. (non oblig.) col legno–​col arco pont. tasto, ordinario slides envelope mute vibrato ? kind changes of tension One notes, too, the essential separation of the determination of an order of activity for the composer from the determinations of any of the particular elements so organised. The parameters of Cage’s activities are dealt with almost entirely independently.3 Taking Cage’s essay on Music for Piano in the context of these essentially contemporaneous sketches, the original composing means for the process in this piece might, then, have been written in a shorthand version, a little like this:

1. Draw master page (4 systems); 2. Cast number of sounds (1–​128 or 1–​32); 3. Inscribe (pencil) points on transparent; 4. Inscribe (ink) staves from master and notes onto transparent; 5. Toss (coin) and inscribe clefs (ink); 6. Toss (I Ching) and inscribe (ink) techniques; 7. Toss (I Ching) and inscribe (ink) accidentals.

See Pritchett, The Music of John Cage, 97–​102 and The Development of Chance Techniques in the Music of John Cage, unpublished PhD thesis (New York University, 1988), 237–​310 (esp. 242–​61 and 285–​90). 3 

Situating the Concert for Piano and Orchestra  :  17

Notwithstanding the reassuring similarity Cage’s text has with such essentially private (and practical) descriptions of his composing means, at least three points must be raised immediately in querying the accuracy of this description, at least so far as it might be held as a general description of the complete set of pieces given the title Music for Piano. First, and most obviously, as Cage himself notes, his report applies only to the twenty-​ first to fifty-​second pieces of the whole Music for Piano sequence, which is to say the second and third extended groups of sixteen Music for Piano pieces, all of which date from 1955. Excluded, then, are the four pieces from the series composed by the point of Cage’s writing his essay—​the later Music for Piano 85 (1962) is, of course, not mentioned by default, only appearing some five years after the date of the article—​Music for Piano 1 (1952), 2, 3, and 20 (all three, 1953), as are three other groups of sixteen pieces, Music for Piano 4–​19 (1953), 53–​68, and 69–​84 (both sets, 1956). Cage explicitly states that the first of these groups, 4–​19, ‘followed a different procedure and, furthermore, did not include interior and exterior construction noises.’4 Second—​and though this may seem pedantic it speaks to the fact that the process cannot, or cannot simply, be as described—​the order described in stage 4 is not truly plausible:  because of Cage’s insistence regarding moving points from spaces onto lines, one would need to know the position of a ledger line above a note before deciding whether that note ought to remain in a space or be raised. The decision regarding that note, then, must be taken before the ledger line is inked in, even though Cage suggests such decisions are made after ledger lines are inked in. If it were not, Cage would be liable to find himself having an excess of upper ledger lines and would be forced, as a result, regularly to raise top notes which ‘ought’ to remain in a space; if this were to occur, then Cage’s description of the grounds for moving notes would become inaccurate. The reverse of course is true below the lower staff. In short, these two operations, so neatly distinguished in Cage’s outline, cannot have been so simply disentangled from one another in practice. Third, as William Brooks has outlined, in the distribution of playing techniques and accidentals in Music for Piano 4–​19, some extremely statistically unlikely eventualities would have to have taken place in order for Cage’s description of the later pieces to apply to the earlier ones. Indeed, Brooks suggests that a healthy scepticism should be adopted with regard to the accuracy of Cage’s description even with respect to Music for Piano 21–​52. Brooks’s tally of the distribution of playing techniques in Music for Piano 4–​19 shows 4 

Cage, ‘Music for Piano 21–​52’, 61.

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that, of a total of 444 notes, 93 are to be plucked, 117 muted, and 234 played normally on the keys; similarly, 101 notes are flattened, 118 sharpened, and 225 remain natural. Certainly, there is a skew in the distribution of both playing techniques and accidentals, but that skew is a consistent one and is, as Brooks suggests, of the order of the ratio 1:1:2, in favour of ‘normal’ technique and the absence of accidentals.5 Though Brooks suggests that a ‘surmise about coin tosses’ being used to create this sort of distribution might be only ‘a convenient explanation’, as outlined much more fully later in this chapter, the sketch materials for the Solo for Piano show Cage utilising a double coin toss, such that one would have four possible outcomes—​HH, HT, TH, TT—​ where a ‘mixed’ result determined playing on the keys or a natural, with the ‘consistent’ tosses each determining one of the other results. Given that Cage later did this with the same materials and that it accounts for the disparity between his own description of the process and actual statistical results immanent in the score, there seems little reason not to think that this was also exactly what he did here. Brooks is quite right to conclude, then, that ‘[t]‌he evidence is quite conclusive that Cage did not do what he said he did; either the composed music or his account is “wrong” ’. As Brooks also notes, in fact there is no significant difference in these distributions between Music for Piano 4–​19 and Music for Piano 21–​36 and 37–​52, such that one might well speculate that, in this case at least, it is not simply the case that Cage utilised a different method in the earlier part of the sequence, but rather that he described a process which he had not used at all.6 No less significantly, Brooks notes that one would expect particular distributions of imperfections to be proportionally consistent across a page but, in the case of Music for Piano 37–​52, ‘twice the number of notes appear on the staves than one would expect’.7 When Brooks interviewed Cage in 1979, he suggested that perhaps Cage had ‘used different paper, that he inscribed the staves first, that his method of working had somehow created additional imperfections’. According to Brooks’s account, Cage rejected all such possibilities.8 Though the evidence of the sketch material and holographs for Music for Piano do not allow a definitive re-​drawing of Cage’s description of the process of writing Music for Piano, they do strongly bolster the sense that Brooks’s intuitions were close to the mark and, in turn, suggest a slight modification of what is understood of Cage’s processes in the middle of the 1950s, and, by extension, what that might have to do with the composition of the Concert 5  William Brooks, ‘In re: Experimental Analysis’, Contemporary Music Review, vol. 33,

no. 5–​6 (2014), 549. 6  Ibid., 551. 7  Ibid., 552. 8 Ibid.

Situating the Concert for Piano and Orchestra  :  19

for Piano and Orchestra, which relies heavily on the model of Music for Piano, and not only as one of its core basic materials. The focus here is, necessarily, on the earlier pieces from the set, especially up until Music for Piano 19, since in the pieces after this point, it is possible to observe little difference of note between Cage’s manuscript and the final published version, though it is worth stating at the outset that, with the exception of the first piece, no marking of imperfections can be seen at any point within any of the manuscripts and, further, the evidence broadly suggests that these manuscripts are the transparent sheets directly onto which Cage composed the piece. Naturally, the physical qualities of paper are of interest within musicological work on sketches and manuscripts in a broad sense, but here it is worth stressing that those physical qualities take on an additional dimension: the selection of particular paper types for particular purposes represents an implicit or explicit decision regarding the compositional means of a piece.9 Music for Piano 1 is abnormal, both as a part of the total cycle of pieces and within Cage’s sketches for that cycle. It is abnormal too, as noted, in that it is, perhaps, possible to see at least a little residue of Cage’s work with imperfections here, which is not the case in any of the other pieces of the cycle. The principal reason for Music for Piano 1’s unusual status is that it exists in two distinct manuscript copies and, although there is no change of note made to the musical matter, the re-​writing of the second copy nonetheless transforms the piece markedly or, more concretely, that such a re-​writing exists forces a particular sort of reflection upon the nature of the earlier copy. That first copy seems to be precisely the manuscript quickly made by Cage in the context that he later described to Daniel Charles: Using the I Ching required an enormous amount of time [ . . . ] and extreme precision. [ . . . ] One day [ . . . ] the telephone rang, and a dancer asked me to write some music for her immediately, for a performance. So I said to myself that I had to find a way to work which would be quick, and not, as was most often the case, exaggeratedly slow any more. Certainly I intended to continue working [ . . . ] by consulting the I Ching as usual. But I also wanted to have a very rapid manner of writing a piece of music. Painters, for example, work slowly with oil and rapidly with watercolours. Well, while reflecting on this problem of the speed of writing, I  looked at my paper, and I found my ‘water colours’: suddenly I saw that the music, all the music, was already there.10

a brief introduction to the topic, see Friedemann Sallis, Music Sketches (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2015), 57–​62. 10  John Cage and Daniel Charles, For the Birds, tr. Richard Gardner, ed. Tom Gora and John Cage (London: Marion Boyars, 1981 [1976]), 44. 9 For

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This, it has generally been presumed, refers to a phone call from the dancer Jo Anne Melsher (or Melcher), seeking an accompaniment for the dance ‘Paths and Events’.11 The first holograph copy of Music for Piano 1 essentially confirms both this and that Cage specifically used the physical manuscript for that purpose. It contains pencilled-​in cues in Cage’s hand for Joanne [Melsher], Nina [Greer], and Harriet [Wallman]: the three danced together on at least one other occasion at the same venue, the Brooklyn High School for Homemaking, as where Music for Piano 1 was premiered, alongside Melsher’s choreography, on 16 December 1952. As well as those cues, other pencil markings like ‘straighten out for exit’ and occasional slur markings—​ attached to single notes always at points where it would be possible to sustain them very straightforwardly without the use of the pedal—​show that this copy was certainly marked up for performance. In other respects, the manuscript is unsurprising: it is written in time-​space notation, though otherwise durations are free, as is pedalling, and the pianist is at liberty to select any mode of attack for any note; the dynamics corresponding to each note are the same as those in the published score. Yet the instructions suggest that a system is equal to eight seconds, rather than the seven of the familiar, published version and, on each of the seven pages of the musical matter of the piece, long ruled lines in pencil divide systems up into eight equal parts, with clefs inserted to the left, before the staff lines begin. Regularly—​though it must be said in no way consistently: the number of occasions on which this occurs is vastly less than those where it does not—​ what appears to be a darkening, which cannot be accounted for by the presence of a staff line, is visible behind the inked-​in notehead, perhaps most obviously in the case of the two Gs on the treble staff of the first system of the published version of the score. This darkening appears to have the quality of a pencil marking and might, very tentatively, be proposed as representing the residue of the intensifications Cage made of imperfections. Another, partly complementary, candidate for visible imperfections within this early manuscript may be seen at the bottom left of a great many noteheads: the lines with which these are drawn are assuredly thicker by virtue of the angle of Cage’s pen, but there are numerous points, too, where that pen can be seen to be extravagantly elongated, as if to cover over an underlying mark. In many of these cases, however, the manuscript suggests—​if these are taken to be initial marks—​they were not made in pencil at all, but rather in pen (or at least that an intensification of the pencil mark was made with ink), which for instance, Pritchett, The Music of John Cage, 94, and David Nicholls, ‘Getting Rid of the Glue’, in Steven Johnson (ed.), The New York Schools of Music and the Visual Arts (New York, NY: Routledge, 2002), 45. 11  See,

Situating the Concert for Piano and Orchestra  :  21

accounts for the need for so many noteheads to be drawn with such exaggerated shapes: an intensification made in ink could not be so straightforwardly removed. Indeed, Cage does appear to have made some changes—​which are retained in the second copy—​to noteheads inscribed in ink: the F-​sharp at the bottom of the bass staff in the middle of the second system of the first page initially appeared an octave higher and was scratched out; the next note in the same staff—​an A at the top of the staff—​seems initially to have been inscribed as a B, and was similarly scratched out. Only one other example of this occurs: the very final note of Music for Piano 1 was, at some earlier stage, an octave higher. A further reason for presuming this earlier manuscript to comprise the particular sheets of paper on which imperfections were to be found may be seen in another of its slight oddities: at three points in the manuscript, Cage unnecessarily—​from the perspective of reading or, indeed, writing the score—​adds an additional bass staff below the system. The only obvious grounds for these to be present are that they enable the capture of additional imperfections, whether because Cage accidentally or intentionally marked imperfections across three staves of the score rather than two. Naturally, none of these sorts of markings appear on the second holograph version of Music for Piano 1, a copy which cannot have been made all that long after the original, since it appears in almost exactly this form in David Tudor’s copy, which must date from 1953, given that it contains a copyright notice from the non-​profit Composers Facsimile Edition, which printed Cage’s music between 1952 and 1953. That second copy is, too, identical in matter to the version later printed by Edition Peters, save cut-​outs which appear in the holograph and which vanish once reproduced:  Cage wrote it on commercial manuscript paper, as can be seen from his having cut out a blank staff between each double system—​it is written on two systems throughout, demonstrating the relative ease with which the occasional three-​stave systems of the earlier manuscript could be rewritten on two staves—​but paper of a much lighter, near-​transparent onionskin weight. Although Cage changed the length of each system from lasting eight seconds to lasting seven, this does not mean he also accelerated the pace of the piece but, rather, that the last second of the first system of the earlier version has been moved to the beginning of the second system in the later version, and so forth. A further beneficial result of the change of scale was surely that the piece now no longer ended midway through a page, but rather covered a set of pages fully. One might even wonder whether this was one of the motivators for the change of scale, or whether that change would be a part of why Cage later made the individual pieces of the sequence last a single page each. Intriguingly, on the instruction page, a small square of paper has been nicked out, just before the number ‘7’ appears, a square certainly of a size large enough to have once

22 : 

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had an ‘8’ written on it, suggesting that it is at least possible that Cage may initially have retained the measure of eight seconds per system, notwithstanding the proportional extension of temporal relations that would have caused (or that he wrote the instructions before beginning to transcribe the piece). In any case, what this does allow for in that later version is that there is space for the clefs to appear on the staff, rather than to the left, as in the earlier holograph. In that earlier version, Cage has sometimes inserted an ‘x’ in pencil which denoted the point at which a new page would become necessary in the later copy. Regardless of anything else curious about the path taken by Music for Piano 1 from its earlier to later version, what is of most significance here is, quite simply, that the marked imperfections cannot have been found on the much thinner sheet of onionskin onto which Music for Piano 1 was finally copied—​ in the form in which it remains available—​but were rather, if they were to be found on any of the extant sheets, on the pages of Passantino Number 1, already lithographed with twelve equidistant staff lines. In short, in 1952, when he first developed the technique, Cage was not finding imperfections on onionskin paper, but rather on paper of a heavier weight. The reason for his use of onionskin was that, because it was translucent, it was amenable for reproduction in a way that ordinary, commercial paper was not, as will be detailed much more fully in the consideration of Cage’s publication history that follows. It is significant, too, that this is, indeed, a transcription of Music for Piano 1 onto onionskin and that the later pieces in the series are themselves all written on onionskin: in the terms in which Cage described it, the onionskin is therefore what Cage describes as a transparent (unlike the literal transparents of later pieces like Variations I). A comparison between Cage’s manuscripts and David Tudor’s copy of the first nineteen pieces in the Music for Piano series is useful, since it makes it possible to see something of the history of the manuscript, especially in the case of Music for Piano 4–​19. Tudor’s bound copy also contains the first three pieces, the first in what has just been described as its second version, more or less identical—​at least so far as the matter written on and around the staves is concerned—​to the score that Edition Peters would later publish. On the left-​hand side of the first page of Cage’s Music for Piano 4 manuscript, the first centimetre or so of the bottom staff of the first system and of the other three systems have been cut away and replaced with fresh clefs and staves, attached to the earlier manuscript with adhesive tape: a process which also necessitated the replacement of the word ‘pedal’ beneath the first system, the D-​flat below the bottom staff of the second system, and the sharp which is attached to the C at the beginning of the bottom staff of the third system. The reason for doing this was, simply, that Cage had to cut out the earlier Composers Facsimile Edition copyright notice, a notice which Tudor’s copy

Situating the Concert for Piano and Orchestra  :  23

retains. This seems to have been undertaken quite clumsily, since Tudor’s copy suggests that, with care, this could have been achieved without any damage to the staves. The replacement Henmar Press copyright notice has been added beneath the bottom system. Indeed, it was doubtless the acquisition of Cage’s music by Edition Peters’ Henmar imprint that caused the need for Cage to undertake this inelegant (doubtless because hasty) mode of editing. Since Cage’s music was no longer published by Composers Facsimile Edition after 1953, in the later pieces, there was no longer any need to remove such notices and, as discussed in what follows, whether the twentieth piece was initially thought by Cage to form a part of this first extended sub-​cycle of pieces is not wholly clear. Similar acts of simply cutting away parts of the original and replacing and/​or rewriting take place elsewhere on the page, although the musical matter attached to the staves themselves is wholly unaffected. In the earlier, pre-​Henmar version of the score, there existed quite a wide gap between the dedication—​‘For Eta Harice-​Schneider’—​below the bottom system, and the incomplete instruction that ‘[t]‌hese pages may be played as separate pieces or continuously as one piece or:’. The reason for this, given the spacing, is clearly that—​since Cage was still using pre-​printed manuscript paper at this stage, rather than drawing his own staff lines—​he had here cut out the bottom of the page’s twelve staves, another staff being excised between each of the two-​staff systems elsewhere on the page: it remains possible quite regularly to observe on the printed score that this has been done, as where the top of the sharp, appended to the final note of the second system of Music for Piano 4 is simply missing. In Cage’s revised manuscript, that incomplete instruction (along with the page number ‘1’) has been cut away from the page entirely and then reattached directly below the dedication. Although Cage’s earlier version of the manuscript had page numbers in his own handwriting at the bottom of each page, just as is retained on the first page of Music for Piano 4–​19, this same excision of matter below the bottom staff was evidently also undertaken on each of the other pages, resulting in page numbers in the printed score (and in the edited manuscript) which are consistently (too) close to the bottom staff and which are, moreover, not in Cage’s handwriting.12 Likewise, the top part of the page has been removed. In Tudor’s copy, at about the distance of a staff above the top staff of the score—​presuming a consistent space between 12  The

same handwriting provides, for instance, a page number ‘4’ at the bottom of Music for Piano 54, suggesting that it is, at least conceivably, an addition made at Edition Peters. This is, in any case, according to Cage’s later testimony (John Cage to Jeffrey Wood, 11 June 1973 (source: JCC)) how page numbers were added to Winter Music, such that it is a reasonably likely explanation here, even though the hand which added those numbers in the later score is not the same as the one here.

24 : 

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each of the page’s original twelve staves—​is written, in Cage’s handwriting ‘Music for Piano’ on the left and ‘#4 through #20’ on the right (even though Tudor’s copy does not contain the twentieth piece), with the page number ‘15’ at the top right, this page number is part of the continuous run of numbers from the beginning of Music for Piano 1, thus ending at ‘30’ on the last page of Tudor’s copy of the score, which contains the first nineteen pieces in order in a single ring binding. None of this matter is present in the later, edited version of the manuscript: in this case it is not re-​attached, just above the top of the top staff. Instead, ‘Music for Piano’ and ‘4–​19’ are rewritten, somewhat slapdash, in a hand which is, at any rate, neither Cage’s nor Tudor’s, though also not the same hand which is responsible for the rewritten page numbers for Music for Piano 5 and upwards. What above all ought to be stressed here is that, notwithstanding the quite small number of pages and relative simplicity of what was written on them, Cage consistently preferred to amend and transform an existing manuscript for publication, rather than make a copy, undertaking such an activity only very rarely; Music for Piano 1 is exceptional in this sense too. By extension, the existing holograph of Music for Piano 4–​19 is also necessarily the unique autograph manuscript. There is absolutely no trace of pencil markings for imperfections on this manuscript—​nor are there in Music for Piano 2, and a holograph of Music for Piano 3 does not appear as a part of Cage’s manuscripts—​ although of course one might speculate that such markings were essentially obliterated by the India ink which was inscribed atop of them. The use of transparent, onionskin paper is clearly necessary for tracing (although it was also necessary for the straightforward production of quality duplicates of a score), just as Cage suggests in his process description, so one must presume that there was something which needed to be traced onto these pages. Yet, given his evident avoidance of making fresh copies of pieces unless absolutely necessary, it is unlikely that these are fresh transcriptions of a version of the piece written on a different transparent sheet on which imperfections were to be found. In short, the evidence of the manuscript sources suggests that these are the original pieces of transparent paper which Cage used, but that, unless they have been entirely hidden by ink—​which is not wholly likely if Cage is to be taken at his word that paper imperfections were truly ‘intensified’ with pencil, since pencil then written over with ink, even India ink, tends to add a signature glean to the finish—​the imperfections were not found on them. Indeed, the evidence suggests that Cage did not typically, if at all, find imperfections on onionskin paper, rather finding them on other, heavier weight, rougher paper, and transplanting them onto the near enough transparent onionskin. As such, not only must Cage’s published descriptions of his processes be treated with caution—​and tested against both analytical and archival evidence—​but so

Situating the Concert for Piano and Orchestra  :  25

too is it necessary to recast exegeses which are spun out of them, as in the case, for instance, of the way in which Benjamin Piekut describes the knitting together of transparency and nature through the case study of Music for Piano, but in an interweaving that explicitly relies on natural imperfections being found upon the transparent paper itself for Piekut’s metaphorical framework to have its full force: the way in which Cage describes the work with transparencies yields the interpretive dyad upon which Piekut relies, but Cage’s actual practice is far less, metaphorically and literally, transparent.13 The archival materials, then, seem to suggest a process very similar, but distinct from the one which Cage described.

1. Draw 4 systems on transparent (= onionskin); 2. Cast number of sounds; 3. Inscribe (pencil) points on heavier paper; 4. Placing transparent over points sheet, inscribe in ink number of sounds onto transparent; 5. Toss (coin) and inscribe (ink) clefs; 6. Toss (2 coins) and inscribe (ink) techniques; 7. Toss (2 coins) and inscribe (ink) accidentals. Another version of this, which would explain yet more strongly the clustering around staves of noteheads found by Brooks, would be to swap the order of steps 2 and 3. That is to say that as many points as could be found on the heavier paper would be inscribed in pencil, but only the cast number of sounds transferred onto the transparent. Since the staff lines were almost certainly already on the transparent by this stage, even if the transcription of points were undertaken as impartially as possible, but still intuitively, the eye could hardly be prevented from being drawn toward the ink that was already on the page. Why Cage would have described this process in terms more complex than those actually undertaken is unclear. Perhaps he wanted to ensure he had given a fair indication of what he had done but without making it possible simply to follow him or because such a description demonstrated not only the basic principles of Music for Piano but also more sophisticated operations used in Winter Music or the Ten Thousand Things. Perhaps the idea of the transparency of nature was already an unspoken part of the relationship he imagined between materials, process, and product, and, as such, he described the way in which the work ‘ought’ to have been undertaken. Perhaps he wanted 13 

See Benjamin Piekut, ‘Chance and Certainty: John Cage’s Politics of Nature’, Cultural Critique, no. 84 (Spring 2013), 148–​53.

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Fig. 1.3:  Sample page of Winter Music to show his European colleagues—​the description was first published in Die Reihe, after all—​that his approaches were quite as sophisticated as theirs, still smarting a touch from Boulez’s note many years earlier: ‘The only thing, forgive me, which I am not happy with, is the method of absolute chance (by tossing the coins). On the contrary, I believe that chance must be extremely controlled: by using tables in general, or a series of tables, I believe that it would be possible to direct the phenomenon of the automatism of chance, whether written down or not’.14 That Cage remained deeply concerned, even until quite late in the day, by what the Europeans made of him, may be seen in the reassurance Peter Yates was still offering in late 1959: ‘Don’t make so much fuss about Karlheinz; he’s still a child—​yours, I believe.’15 Any discussion of Cage’s compositional process with respect to Winter Music (a page of which is shown in fig. 1.3) is significantly less clear cut than in the case of Music for Piano. This is for two simple reasons: first, even if Cage’s description of how Music for Piano was composed may be, doubtless deliberately, obfuscatory regarding the specifics of his process—​outlining, 14  Pierre

Boulez to John Cage, December 1951, in Jean-​Jacques Nattiez (ed.), The Boulez–​Cage Correspondence, ed. and tr. Robert Samuels (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993 [1990]), 112. 15  Peter Yates to John Cage, 8 December 1959, in Martin Iddon (ed.), John Cage and Peter Yates: Correspondence on Musical Aesthetics and Criticism (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2019), 89.

Situating the Concert for Piano and Orchestra  :  27

one might suggest, a way in which the piece could have been written, but not the way in which it actually was—​his account nonetheless provides a hypothetical compositional process against which to test the manuscript, but he never provided a similar discussion of his approach to Winter Music, beyond the rather limited observation that ‘[t]‌he composing means like those of Music for Piano 4–​84 involved both chance operations and observations in the paper upon which the music was written’;16 second, neither the original manuscript nor any sketches for it are extant. The copy of the score held within the John Cage Music Manuscript Collection at New York Public Library appears to be, quite simply, a photocopy of a holograph, rather than the autograph itself, although the collection does include realisations of five pages—​2, 5, 14, 19, and 20—​of Winter Music in Cage’s hand. Notably, for reasons which will become clear, the same manuscript collection contains only a photocopy of the holograph of Fontana Mix (1957). In particular, the challenge is to assess how the particular notes which appear in aggregates were determined, a challenge which is not, on the basis of the available materials wholly surmountable, even though this means that a rather fundamental question—​how Cage’s process generated chords—​remains in some respects unanswerable. Between 25 February and 29 March 1984, an exhibition of Cage’s drawings was held at Margarete Roeder’s SoHo gallery in New York. The Los Angeles-​ based Betty Freeman, who had long been a major supporter of Cage, having provided him with an annual grant to be spent as Cage wished from 1965 onwards, was in New York on 22 February 1984 to receive the Individual Benefactor Award of the Merce Cunningham Dance Foundation at the Plaza Hotel, by Central Park, the award taking the form of ‘a stone that John found’, as Cunningham advised Freeman, when making enquiries as to whether she would be willing to be the recipient and whether she could attend the ceremony.17 This meant that she was able to attend the exhibition preview, on 24 February, to which she had also been invited. As a result, Freeman purchased from Roeder three manuscripts: the autographs of Winter Music and Fontana Mix and fourteen pages of Renga (1974–​75), also originals.18 Though the invoices were dated from the day before the close of the exhibition, Freeman must have agreed to the purchase some time earlier: she sent a cheque for the first $15,000 of her purchase—​the total cost of Winter Music, with a further $11,000 left to pay for Fontana Mix and $13,000 for Renga before 20 July 1984—​to John Cage in Robert Dunn, John Cage (New York: Henmar, 1962), 14. Merce Cunningham to Betty Freeman, 27 September 1983 (source: BFP). The ceremony was, originally, intended to be a day later, on 23 February 1984. 18  Margarete Roeder Gallery, invoices 169–​71, dated 28 March 1984 (source: BFP). 16 

17 

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Roeder on 21 March 1984, thanking Roeder for a gentle prod by telephone to send the cheque which, Freeman acknowledged, was already rather late.19 The bookbinder, Carol Joyce, was to manufacture portfolio boxes—​raw linen exteriors, with acid-​free interiors, at a total cost of $285—​in which to store the manuscripts, which delayed their dispatch to Los Angeles a little, being sent on or around 6 April 1984.20 Freeman wrote to Cage that they would be her ‘secret treasures’, concealed within the portfolios.21 A month after their safe receipt, Freeman sent a cheque to Roeder for the outstanding sum, shortly before she flew to Italy for the summer.22 Only a few days after her arrival, on 17 May 1984, she heard Giancarlo Cardini perform Winter Music at the RAI Auditorium in Turin. On her programme she noted: ‘wonderful piece’. She was, presumably, pleased with her purchase. Before even taking delivery of the manuscripts, Freeman wrote to Cage to ask ‘to whom you would want them left in my will. I would like to designate them to go to a place of your choice.’23 Though no copy of Cage’s reply is available, Freeman suggested to Margarete Roeder, writing a few weeks after Cage’s death, that ‘[n]‌ext year after the big Cage MOCA [Los Angeles’s Museum of Contemporary Art] show to which I  am lending them, I  will probably donate them to the Cage archives at Northwestern which John requested at the time of purchase.’24 The show in question was Rolywholyover: A Circus, which was installed at MOCA between 12 September and 28 November 1993. The show subsequently toured the mainland United States and Europe. Initially, as Freeman wrote to Toni Stoos, curator at the Kunsthaus in Zürich, she was unwilling to allow the manuscripts to leave the United States.25 When the time came to make the loan, however, she was yet more cautious: on the receipt notice from Cooke’s Crating—​which shows that the three manuscripts were collected for delivery to MOCA on 23 July 1993, there is a note from Freeman which states ‘I will not permit these 3 scores to travel outside of Los Angeles’.26 Although Freeman wrote enthusiastically to curator Julie Lazar that her MOCA show was ‘so brilliant that I’m writing to express my compliments to the max’,27 the show’s catalogue—​which details 19 

Betty Freeman to Margarete Roeder, 21 March 1984 (source: BFP). Margarete Roeder to Betty Freeman, 4 April 1984 (source: BFP); Carol Joyce invoice, 6 April 1984 (source: BFP). 21  Betty Freeman to John Cage, 31 March 1984 (source: BFP). 22  Betty Freeman to Margarete Roeder, 8 May 1984 (source: BFP). 23  Betty Freeman to John Cage, 31 March 1984 (source: BFP). 24  Betty Freeman to Margarete Roeder, 2 September 1992 (source: BFP). 25  Betty Freeman to Toni Stoos, 4 March 1991 (source: BFP). 26  Cookes Crating receipt, 23 July 1993 (source: BFP). 27  Betty Freeman to Julie Lazar, 14 September 1993 (source: BFP). 20 

Situating the Concert for Piano and Orchestra  :  29

the locations of all of the individual items within MOCA (and, then, implicitly lists every item that was on display)—​suggests that Winter Music was not exhibited (and nor, for that matter, was Fontana Mix nor any sheets from Renga). There is nothing in Freeman’s papers to suggest that the manuscripts were ever returned to her, nor that she ever sent them to Northwestern as she had initially planned: the only copy of Winter Music held there is an exemplar of the published score. Likewise, MOCA holds no records which help to determine what happened to the manuscripts after their receipt.28 At present, then, the location of the Winter Music autograph can last be securely given on 23 July 1993 in Los Angeles. Thereafter, its location is unknown. The closest extant, available copy to the autograph manuscript is the copy which was in the possession of David Tudor. More properly, one ought to speak of copies in this case, since it seems to be the case that Tudor’s version interleaves (at least) two different copies, one perhaps earlier and one later, the earlier copy—​comprising eight leaves of the score, pages 1, 3, 5, 14, 15, 16, 18, and 20—​being on more yellowed, damaged paper, although there is only one duplicate sheet, that of the final page. Furthermore, Cage’s realisation copy, held at New York Public Library, as mentioned, contains on the reverse of some leaves the alphabetical code Tudor used to distinguish between the pages of the score, in Tudor’s handwriting, the numbers in the printed copy having been added neither by Cage nor Tudor but by Edition Peters.29 This suggests that, in truth, at least two copies may have been effectively shared between the two, especially during the periods when they were performing the piece as a piano duo. The Henmar Press copyright which was added in 1960 is present within both of the copies within the David Tudor Papers, such that both can have been Photostatted only in that year at the earliest. That said, it is plausible that one of the duplicated final pages comes from an even earlier Photostat of the score, since it is so much more significantly damaged than any other page, as might the earlier version of page 5, on which the reproduced image has begun to fade toward the right-​hand edge of the page, in a way not seen elsewhere in the copy. Both copies appear to have been duplicated directly from Cage’s original manuscript, since on some sheets one can see on both the top or bottom edges of the original page or, on the left-​hand edge, perforations where the sheet of vellum paper—​a paper which, like onionskin, is translucent and thus amenable to be used for tracing—​has been torn or cut from a larger roll or pad. That the paper of the manuscript itself is evidently vellum—​either exactly the same roll or one of precisely the same sort as later

28 

Personal communication with Emily Rose (MOCA), 12 September 2017. Alphabetically, then, the earlier pages held by Tudor are A (3), D (5), M (15), N (14), O (1), Q (16), T (18), and S (20). 29 

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used for the Solo for Piano—​suggests that, if the assertions just made regarding Music for Piano hold—​that it is highly unlikely that imperfections were ever found on the transparent paper, be it onionskin or vellum, and that they were more likely to have been found on paper of a heavier weight, and then traced onto the transparent sheet—​then even having the autograph manuscript would not reveal the underlying nature of the paper imperfections. 30 Notably, it is also only on the eight leaves mentioned that it is possible to observe details which offer significant hints regarding how Winter Music was composed, which might suggest either (or both) that Edition Peters at some point changed how the Photostatting of Winter Music was undertaken, perhaps precisely to remove some of the artefacts which are of interest here, or (or and) that between one duplication of the score and another, Cage himself decided to try to hide more carefully those elements which were still visible and seem to point toward an understanding of how (some) decisions were taken. Nonetheless, the relatively high degree to which Photostatting introduces its own artefacts onto reproduced matter alone offers a reminder that readings of compositional process at such a remove are fraught with the difficulties and dangers of over-​interpretation. In any case, in many situations 30 

As will be seen below, these same perforations can be seen on sheets of the autograph manuscript of the Solo for Piano, suggesting that Cage used either exactly the same roll of paper for both, or just the same sort of roll of paper: the height of the pages in both cases is identical—​11 inches, assessed in the case of Winter Music from the details of the manuscript provided to Betty Freeman by Margarete Roeder, and by examination of the Solo for Piano manuscript—​though, as one might expect if the sheets were manually cut or torn from a roll, the left-​to-​right dimensions are slightly different: 16½ inches in the case of Winter Music and 17 inches in the case of the Solo for Piano, more or less approximating ledger as a page size in both cases. The edges of the manuscript can be seen because the paper used by Edition Peters for duplication was slightly larger in both dimensions. Though no watermarks are visible on these pages, Tudor also possessed a Photostat of the manuscript materials for Fontana Mix, where similarly ragged page edges can be seen suggesting that again the same paper was being used, and on these pages a Permalife watermark is visible, with the additional note that the paper’s content is 20% cotton (as opposed to modern Permalife paper stock, which is 25% cotton). This is extremely durable, acid-​free archival quality paper, designed too, then, to prevent damage via acid migration. It may be that this is the same paper which was used for all of these pieces, although, as noted below, later copies of score pages necessary for the publication of the Solo for Piano probably made use of Morilla Cameo instead. It is worth noting that this is, even now, very far from cheap paper: even though Cage found himself on the poverty line quite often during this period, he evidently considered quality paper to constitute a necessity rather than an extravagant luxury.

Situating the Concert for Piano and Orchestra  :  31

what Tudor’s copy actually does is make visible elements which can, in fact, be seen in the published score, at least once one has a more precise sense of what one is looking at. Moreover, the score itself reveals a great deal, analytically speaking. With a largest number of aggregates (or single notes) on a page of 62, on page 11, and a smallest number of a single dyad on page 13, it is surely most likely that Cage determined by means of a simple casting of the I Ching how many events would appear on a page (Table 1.1). That three instances of two events on a page occur (on pages 1, 3, and 19) and two instances of twenty-eight events (on pages 14 and 15), one might wonder whether the I Ching was weighted to produce particular outcomes. It is conceivable that this is the case, of course, but each other number of icti per page is unique, and the average number of events is precisely 27½, close enough to the expected average of 32 to think that it is at least as likely statistically speaking that the simple casting produced repetitions. It is, certainly, a more straightforward method of achieving the results which appear in the score and it is, at least, comparatively difficult to use the I Ching to weight itself across the whole range of sixty-​four hexagrams. Cage typically seems to have used divisions of the I Ching as a way of weighting smaller numbers, as he claimed to have done in Music for Piano and can be seen to have done in some of the earliest notations in the Solo for Piano, as will be seen in Chapter 2. Even if it is unlikely that Cage used a weighting of the number of events per page, he surely not only used the I Ching to weight the composition of those events, but also changed that weighting on each page, although there are only eleven possible event types: single pitches through to ten-​note aggregates and clusters. It is, statistically at least, otherwise extremely difficult to account for the enormous preponderance of single notes on pages 4 and 7 or the volume of clusters on page 11. Moreover, unless the distribution of event types were weighted in some way, one would expect that over the course of the piece the total occurrence of event types, even if somewhat variable on the level of the individual page, would tend more strongly toward the average of fifty than it does. The large skews seen are, much more likely, a product of the interaction of an independent determination of the number of events per page with a particular distribution of event types, such that the total distribution is weighted towards the distribution utilised on pages which, quite simply, contain more events. Though such an endeavour must, perforce, be speculative, the data presented by the score allow for a reconstruction of what at least these distribution charts must have looked like, most straightforwardly in the case of page 4. One presumes that Cage must initially have made ten castings of the I Ching to establish division points between the eleven possible event types and,

1

1

27

2

Total

2

51

2

41

12

Total number of events: 550. Average number of events per page: 27.5. Average number of occurrences of aggregate: 50.

4

1

2

5

10

C

5

1

9

1

5

1

8

2

9

3

7

6

8

10

1

1

3

4

4

4

2

5

6

5

4

1

4

3

15

4

2

1

3

2

2

2

1

1

Table 1.1  Distribution chart for Winter Music

Aggregates

29

3

2

1

4

4

2

4

9

6

24

1

1

1

1

4

1

3

12

7

27

4

1

2

7

8

3

2

8

47

7

4

2

8

5

15

2

2

2

9

32

3

1

4

2

1

7

9

5

10

62

21

2

1

1

12

4

9

1

7

3

1

11

Pages

19

4

1

1

1

6

1

1

1

3

12

1

1

13

28

6

1

8

3

3

2

4

1

14

28

6

2

7

7

4

1

1

15

60

11

6

6

4

1

4

18

10

16

24

5

2

1

1

13

2

17

5

2

2

1

18

2

2

19

39

5

1

11

1

3

5

1

3

3

6

20

550

80

46

37

38

48

47

60

29

75

36

54

Total

Situating the Concert for Piano and Orchestra  :  33

in the case of page 4, might have cast something rather like 19, 22, 23, 27, 39, 40, 51, 52, 58, and 61. This would have enabled the creation of a distribution chart much like the following: 1: 1–​19 2: 20–​22 3: 23 4: 24–​27 5: 28–​39 6: 40 7: 41–​51 8: 52 9: 53–​58 10: 59–​61 C: 62–​64 This would then have meant that, for each event on the page, Cage could make a further casting of the I Ching to determine how many notes that event would have (or, as the case might be, that it would be a cluster). Though it is far from certain, such a method would make it possible that in the initial casting which enabled the creation of such charts, the same number would occur more than once, thus effectively removing the possibility of a certain event type occurring on that page. If, for instance, in the example given just given, the twenty-​second hexagram had been cast a second time in place of the twenty-​third, one might then rewrite the beginning of the chart as follows: 1: 1–​19 2: 20–​22 3: x 4: 23–​27  . . .  This would account for the pages, like page 16, on which, despite the presence of a large number of events some event types do not occur. Of course, all of the events of Winter Music could have been the result of an entirely unweighted process. Yet they are much more likely to result from a process like that outlined here (and, indeed, as will be seen in more detail in Chapter 2, processes very much like these can be seen in Cage’s work on the Solo for Piano, here with the benefit of a limited number of sketch materials). Notwithstanding the apparent self-​similarity of the pages—​both Cage and Tudor described it as static while Griffiths hints at the same essential sense when he describes the

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events of Winter Music as spread across the pages of the score ‘like star cracks on ice’—​these statistical weightings bring about the shifting characters of the individual pages, both in the larger sense that Cage’s first determination gives rise to large differences in the density of the number of events on a particular page but, much more specifically, in that the density of the composition of the events themselves is necessarily highly specific to each page.31 The matter of the printed score also allows one to be sure at any rate that, as in the case of Music for Piano, Cage inserted staff lines and noteheads before the insertion of clefs. Again, on page 5—​though it is evident on numerous other pages, such as pages 4, 8, 10, 11, 14, 16, and 20 as well as, perhaps, page 17—​Cage has inserted an aggregate at the very furthest position left and, rather than having the clefs intersect in some way with the staff, as they almost always otherwise do, they are forced quite some way further left in order not to clash with ledger lines. Had the clefs been determined before the pitches—​ which is to say before it was known that ledger lines would be required—​this would have been unnecessary; were there not some sort of notional left-​hand ‘limit’, the staff lines could have been extended further left in order to take in the relationship between staff and clef that is the norm elsewhere in the score. On page 8 one can see two different examples of the same principle, where, in the first aggregate of the second system, Cage’s cluster symbol is neatly aligned with the boundary pitches of the cluster, thus forcing the upper (treble) clef of the subsequent aggregate into a narrow, contingent space; the upper (bass) clef of the final aggregate of the first system of the page represents a further case, demonstrating too that accidentals were inserted after noteheads and staff lines. That there is almost never a clash between accidentals and clefs—​ the exceptional case may be seen on the fourth system of page 10, though the positioning here does not seem to invalidate the general ordering outlined here: the sharp sign is not made smaller to fit into a space as, in fact, another sharp sign in the same aggregate is—​while accidentals do occasionally overlap with ledger lines from the previous aggregate suggests that they were inserted before clefs: Cage was always aware of the (limited) space into which he had to insert clefs. The distribution of accidentals follows the same pattern as in 31 

He wrote to Daniel R. Coombs on 27 September 1977 that it was composed ‘with the Indian view of the season in mind (quiescence, as following destruction and preceding creation, fall and spring, and in its static nature somewhat like summer, preservation)’ (source: JCC), while Holzaepfel recollects that Tudor ‘once described Winter Music to Stockhausen as “completely static” to contrast it with Cage’s Concert for Piano and Orchestra:  “exactly opposite, I  think, very wild.” ’ (John Holzaepfel, liner notes to Music from the Tudorfest: San Francisco Tape Music Center 1964 (New World Records, 80762-​2 [1964] 2014)). Paul Griffiths’s remark may be found in his John Cage (London: Oxford University Press, 1981), 33.

Situating the Concert for Piano and Orchestra  :  35

Music for Piano: from a total of 2,642 noteheads, 681 (26%) are sharpened, 660 (25%) flattened, with the remaining 1,301 (49%) remaining natural; likewise, there is a close to fifty-​fifty distribution of clefs. This suggests that clefs were determined by a simple coin toss while a double coin toss was required for determining accidentals with, as claimed for Music for Piano, a ‘mixed’ result indicating a natural. Necessarily Cage could not have known whether it was necessary to insert a ratio above a particular aggregate until he knew whether the clefs which preceded that aggregate differed. In that case, some of the given pitches would need to be read in one clef and some in the other: the first number in a ratio to indicate this shows the number of pitches to be read in the upper clef, the second the number to be read in the lower. As such, one would expect these ratios to have been inserted last, an expectation seemingly borne out by the score, in that it is these ratios which, even more so than clefs, are forced into limited remaining space, finding themselves at the greatest remove of any other marking from the aggregate to which they pertain, as in the clumsy positioning of the ratios 3-​3 and 4-​1 in the central system of page  11. One presumes that ratios were determined according to a system very similar to that via which Cage determined numbers of elements in events, though whether he had a master chart that was used for every instance of, say, nine notes or whether such charts would have been made afresh for each page or each instance is hard to gauge on the basis of relatively limited numbers of examples. In any case, the overall distribution of ratios is such that the effect is one of, on the larger scale, a more or less equal possibility of each occurring, notwithstanding the localised skewing which may, on the smaller scale, appear quite extreme, as can be demonstrated from comparing the distribution of ratios for five-​, six-​, and seven-​ note aggregates: 5: 1-​4 (10 occurrences), 2-​3 (6), 3-​2 (4), 4-​1 (6) 6: 1-​5 (5), 2-​4 (4), 3-​3 (2), 4-​2 (5), 5-​1 (4) 7: 1-​6 (5), 2-​5 (6), 3-​4 (3), 4-​3 (6), 5-​2 (4), 6-​1 (2) One can assess, then, from the published materials alone both the first part of the compositional process and the latter stages. The score remains almost silent, however, upon the central matter of how Cage decided where to insert an event and, knowing the number of pitches that had to appear in such an event, how he determined which pitches those would be. Cage’s own remarks offer little hint to the researcher, beyond the reasonable certainty that at least some part of the process is a repetition or an extension—​or as Cage would surely have preferred it at the time, a variation—​on the method of Music for Piano. He pithily stated to Daniel R. Coombs, some fifteen years later

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providing only a marginally glossed repetition of the explanation of the piece cited by Dunn, that ‘[t]‌he composing means involved both I Ching chance operations and observation of imperfections in the paper upon which the music was written.’32 It is assuredly possible that initial stages of the inscription of noteheads mapped almost directly onto what had been undertaken in Music for Piano, in that Cage could have inserted single noteheads up to the number determined by his first I Ching casting following the earlier method entirely, and only once the positions of those were determined and he had made the next casting for the number of pitches in an event (or which determined an event would be a cluster) would he, by some other means, decide the positions of the other noteheads, if any were required, in that event. Equally, it is conceivable that Cage may, by some other means, have determined the positions of events before reaching the stage of utilising imperfections at all, perhaps even deploying a rhythmic structure akin to that in the Ten Thousand Things. Though such structuring devices seem in some respects very distant from Winter Music, it is worth stressing that the final complete piece in the sequence, 27′10.554″ for a percussionist (1956), was finished only a year earlier and is, thus, quite close temporally to Winter Music. There is, to be sure, some evidence for this latter possibility, as outlined in the following, though it relies heavily upon the presence of potential pencil markings in Tudor’s copy (or copies) of the score. There is, too, as discussed in Chapter 2, some sense that the events of the Solo for Piano are organised according to some version of this method. Part of the difficulty here rests in that, although dots which might be intensifications of paper imperfections from a master sheet below are actually quite common on Tudor’s copy (or copies)—​and many of those dots align either in the horizontal plane with points at which events occur or in the vertical with noteheads to their left of right—​in most cases it is practically impossible to be certain that they are not either imperfections on the paper onto which the score was duplicated or reproductions of specks of dust or something similar on the Photostat machine at the point at which the copy (or copies) were taken. Against the latter, it should be said that the positions of these marks show no consistency from page to page, which they, at least, might had the copies been very carefully made at the same time by the same hand, but this is hardly strong enough evidence to decide in favour of a particular reading of such dots. Though this does not seem to be the case from examination of Tudor’s copy, it is worth adding that they are also plausibly markings made by him either in preparing his realisation(s) or for some other purpose. 32 

John Cage to Daniel R. Coombs, 27 September 1977 (source: JCC).

Situating the Concert for Piano and Orchestra  :  37

There are many points at which one can see points which are aligned with aggregates, but which are not inscribed as a part of that aggregate: on page 16 alone, the third triad of the first system features what appears to be a pencil point in the A space of the bass clef, while the second dyad of the second system reveals much the same at the B just above the staff, if read, again, in the bass clef. In the central system, one point floats above the second upper treble clef while another is directly aligned—​a touch higher—​with the dyad which follows it. Yet there are also multiple points on the same page where one can see points which seem to align with nothing in particular: in the space of broken staff between the first and second aggregates of the fourth system, say, or almost equidistant between the third and fourth system, on a near diagonal between the second events of those two systems. Many others are visible. As such, only in very particular cases is it possible to propose that visible points exhibit a definite meaningfulness in terms of understanding how the piece was composed. Cage undoubtedly put in small, pencilled dots wherever noteheads were to be inked in or, on occasion, very short downward strokes. These remain visible on Tudor’s copy of the earlier sheets on almost every occasion where, in accordance with standard music engraving rules for chords, it proved necessary to re-​align a particular notehead to the right, to avoid its clashing with a note in the space or line above or below. This is visible, for instance, in the second aggregate of page 5, where a pencil dot can be seen where the E-​flat would appear, were it vertically aligned with the A-​flat and D that are the other notes of the triad in which it appears. Indeed, even in the published version of the score, a tiny fleck can be observed in this space, which is the residue of the pencil mark visible in the Tudor’s photostat and, presumably, yet more so in the missing manuscript. On the same page, indeed, there is another example which can be seen even more clearly in the printed score: the next to top note of the fourth aggregate of the second system, where what might be read in the published version as a careless slip in the inking in of a ledger line or of an accidental over-​extension to the left of the notehead is revealed, through reference to Tudor’s copy, as a short vertical pencil stroke. Importantly, these markings reveal the way in which, when the pencil markings are relatively close to lines, but still within the space of a staff, Cage raises them or lowers them onto the line: a raising is apparent within the sixth aggregate of the first system of page 5—​the note which would be a G an octave above the staff if read in treble clef has a pencil marking not quite half the way into the space below, visible in Tudor’s Photostat—​while a lowering can be seen on the penultimate aggregate of the penultimate system of page 14 (this latter remains visible within the published version of the piece). These motions are not undertaken wholly consistently, however. In another case which can be seen, once one is aware of what the small dots connote,

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in the published score—​the second aggregate of the penultimate system of page 6—​although both of the visible dots are practically in contact with the line below, the resulting notes are still inscribed in the space, that of the G at the top of the stave and the C an eleventh above it. These motions are significant in that they denote that at the point of making them Cage knew the left-​to-​right position of the total aggregate, but that he did not know the specific notehead positions within it: had he, he would have been able to place such pencil markings directly onto lines, rather than adjust them later. Given the relationship between those points which can be seen and the resultant noteheads, it seems implausible, however, that Cage did not also already know the horizontal positions of staff lines. It is conceivable that some distinction should be made between points and short pencil strokes: the former are much more common and more than one point can regularly be seen within a single aggregate. The short strokes always appear as singletons, such that one might wonder whether it is they that were used to mark occurrence points for aggregates, even though, when they appear, their function seems much the same as the points: they are visible when a note has been displaced to the side in order to engrave the chord correctly. Even less certain is the function of two other aspects of the appearance of points within Tudor’s copy, both of which, however, appear in a form that makes coincidence unlikely. The first of these is the usage of a pair of double dots, formatted like a colon. The first visible example of this appears before the last aggregate of the third system of page 5, with the upper dot aligned with the top of the highest note of the aggregate and the lower note with the bottom of the same note. A further example of the same practice can be seen on page 15, before the third aggregate of the third system: it is in almost exactly the same position, perhaps a fraction lower, with the upper dot almost at the centre of the G a double octave above the treble staff and the lower dot at the ledger line below it, aligned horizontally with the treble clef at the beginning of that part of the broken system. If these two examples—​there are only two—​can be taken as meaningful (and their oddity and precision suggest that they must, at least, mean something) then perhaps they indicate that Cage somehow had a method for marking out the maximum possible range of an aggregate. In this case, one might wonder whether the dot which appears directly before the second aggregate of the third system of page twelve—​this, however, on Tudor’s later copy, in precise alignment with the top note of that aggregate, a D in the bass staff an octave above the one immediately above middle C, which positioned just before it, in left-​to-​right alignment with that aggregate’s accidentals—​is a further example of the same essential process, as might be a dot which appears aligned with the highest note of the penultimate aggregate of the fourth system of page 20, visible on Tudor’s later copy of the page, though on this occasion very slightly after the notated aggregate.

Situating the Concert for Piano and Orchestra  :  39

Naturally, it should be stressed that these are limited examples across the course of a piece containing 550 separate events, but they do, very gently, suggest that in some sense Cage used the marking of imperfections before shifting those imperfections into vertical alignment in a single aggregate, wherever a single pitch was not required. A second type of point appears exceptionally on page 20 of Tudor’s copy of the manuscript, although curiously one of the versions of it is on the earlier and one on the later copies of the page. That on the later copy is most conspicuous and can be observed before the penultimate aggregate of the fourth system, just mentioned. Here there is a set of four precisely equally spaced points, running parallel to the staff lines and in alignment vertically with the top of the 8-​1 ratio. Indeed, a fifth dot in just the same plane can also be seen, further left, which looks as if, were the space between it and the set of four bisected by an additional point, there would be a set of six equally spaced points. One might imagine that this seeming residue of a dotted line represents nothing more than a marking by Cage to indicate the notional top end of the available space for notations within the fourth system. This is certainly possible—​though becomes less likely on examination of the second apparent example of the same practice—​but it is worth noting that the first point of the set of four is neatly aligned with the clefs at the start of the broken staff and, were the set projected a further equally spaced dot to the right, that dot would be precisely aligned with the aggregate. The dots are spaced an eighth of an inch apart, a standard ruler measure. On Tudor’s earlier copy of the same page, a second example of this can be seen, though it is more limited: a sequence of only two dots, toward the top of the E space in the bass staff can be seen, the first of which is, again, oriented directly beneath the bass clef just before the final aggregate of the top system. A further dot appears before it in an entirely different horizontal plane—​aligned with the C-​sharp an octave above the staff in the subsequent aggregate—​but at exactly the same left-​to-​right distance as between the two dots which are in the same horizontal plane. Projecting the dots at the same interval a further two instances to the right would result in a perfect alignment with the aggregate. As will be seen from any careful measurement of the score, these dots exhibit necessarily less left-​to-​right space between their occurrences than in the case two systems lower. Yet, on the presumption that they are nonetheless examples of the same essential practice, they show that that other example does not simply show the edge of legible space within a particular system and that, moreover, Cage appears to have made use of some sort of implicit grid, to which noteheads are ‘snapped’. This is, it should go without saying, in tacit opposition to a reading of the piece which would suggest that single points would have been intensified and then inscribed as noteheads, as in Music for Piano, according to which account

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there would be no need at all for an implicit background grid such as these dots suggest. Yet, they would certainly make it wholly possible to observe paper imperfections at various points and then shift the related noteheads to the nearest available left-​to-​right position, up to the number required by the I Ching casting. Nevertheless, if these dots hint at the use of a set of proportional relationships, as might be one implication of their existence, they would simultaneously problematise the idea that an I Ching casting determined the number of events to appear on a single page, unless the two systems were combined such that events could only appear at particular proportionally determined points, but the number of events was, too, restricted to the total provided by the I Ching. If that were the case, then the interaction of those two parameters makes the situation surely so complex that demonstrating it on the basis of the score alone, even allowing for Tudor’s early Photostat of the manuscript, is impossible. Exactly how Cage determined the elements of aggregates and their position on the page in Winter Music must remain something of a mystery. Nevertheless, as with Music for Piano, it is possible to re-​create something which must be at least a little like the composing means Cage deployed for Winter Music:

1. Draw 5 systems on heavier paper (sheet 1); 2. Cast number of events (1–​64); 3. Inscribe (pencil) points on heavier paper (sheet 2); 4. Placing transparent over points sheet, inscribe in pencil equal number of points to determined number of events onto transparent; 5. Placing transparent over systems sheet, add systems wherever points appear; 6. Cast number of pitches per event (1–​11, weighted); 7. Inscribe noteheads in ink; 8. Add accidentals; 9. Add clefs; 10. Determine and inscribe ratios.

Schoenberg The fundamentals of Cage’s relationship to and with Schoenberg, both personally and compositionally, are well known, in no small thanks to the pioneering work of Michael Hicks, David W. Bernstein, and Severine Neff, which, along with rich and important research by Thomas Hines, has done much to

Situating the Concert for Piano and Orchestra  :  41

fill in the blanks of Cage’s years in Los Angeles.33 Following Bernstein’s complaint that ‘many scholars have downplayed Schoenberg’s impact upon Cage’, Reidy concludes that ‘[t]‌he connection to Schoenberg is not used primarily to explain Cage’s music. It is used to connect Cage to a music history narrative.’34 Yet, as Hicks stresses, there was a point when the relationship between Cage and Schoenberg was taken as read: Aaron Copland noted in 1948 that Cage’s music seemed to him to proceed from an intermingling of Indian and Indonesian sources with Schoenberg, while Virgil Thomson had observed a few years earlier, in 1945, that the technical devices Cage deployed for ensuring continuity—​which might be to say ensuring work identity—​were ‘those of the Schoenberg school’.35 Yet as Cage introduced chance operations into his work, especially from 1951 onwards, critics would increasingly position him in opposition to his erstwhile teacher, while Cage encouraged such readings, delimiting the period of Schoenbergian influence to a zenith between 1935 and 1940, at its extreme in Metamorphosis (1938), in which, having ‘Schoenberg’s lessons in mind’, he eliminated variation and ‘accumulated repetitions’, in this case repetitions of invariant row fragments, the metamorphosis promised by the title resolutely refusing to arrive, on one level at least.36 By the other end of the 1950s, in his review of the recording of the Concert for Piano and Orchestra, Alfred Frankenstein would note that [i]‌n recent years Cage has taken an enormous interest in chance as a principle of musical structure and has developed a technique for the creation of sonorous accidents which is at least as elaborate as the Schoenbergian system for the conjuring of the inevitable.37

Yet not only was it the case that Cage argued in the late 1970s that he had ‘recently thought that were Schoenberg still alive, I could persuade him in Hicks, ‘John Cage’s Studies with Schoenberg’, American Music, vol. 8, no. 2 (Summer 1990), 125–​40; David W. Bernstein, ‘John Cage, Arnold Schoenberg, and the Musical Idea’, in Patterson (ed.), John Cage:  Music, Philosophy, and Intention, 15–​45; Severine Neff, ‘Point/​Counterpoint:  John Cage [sic] Studies with Arnold Schoenberg’, Contemporary Music Review, vol. 33, nos. 5–​6 (2014), 451–​82; Thomas Hines, ‘Then Not Yet “Cage”: The Los Angeles Years, 1912–​1938’, in Marjorie Perloff and Charles Junkerman (eds.), John Cage: Composed in America (Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 1994), 65–​99. 34  Brent Reidy, ‘Our Memory of What Happened Is Not What Happened’, American Music, vol. 28, no. 2 (Summer 2010), 214. 35  Both quoted in Hicks, ‘John Cage’s Studies’, 136. 36  Cage and Charles, For the Birds, 75. 37  Alfred Frankenstein, ‘In Retrospect—​the Music of John Cage’, High Fidelity, vol. 10, no. 4 (April 1960), 63 (source: GAAAP). 33  Michael

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conversation that by the use of chance operations I have not been unfaithful to him as a disciplinarian’,38 nor only that Feldman, for one, argued that Cage’s approach had, throughout, been to do with a concern for developing variation in the sense that Cage thought Schoenberg meant it.39 The Concert for Piano and Orchestra—​or to be more specific, its piano part, the Solo for Piano—​has a highly particular relationship to Schoenberg, one which Cage himself would in the late 1970s and early 1980s bring back into the discussion and make increasingly explicit. Though Bernstein rightly notes that ‘[t]‌he two figures [that is, Cage and Schoenberg] seem to represent diverging paths in the history of twentieth-​history music, especially in light of Cage’s work after 1950’,40 and, more specifically, that ‘[a]fter 1938, Cage’s stylistic development seems to take him farther and farther away from his former teacher,’ he is right too to note the persistence of ‘substantial connections’ and to suggest that one of the strongest of those connections could be found in ‘Cage’s reaction to Schoenberg’s definitions of repetition and variation.’41 Though Bernstein’s examination of the direct relationship between Cage’s compositional practice and Schoenbergian thought is rounded off at the point at which Cage turns to chance, around 1950–​51, he insists that, even after that point, ‘Schoenberg’s theories [ . . . ] may shed light on Cage’s compositional process and may even help establish the groundwork for an analytical methodology applicable to Cage’s music composed with chance operations.’42 Certainly this is the case within the Solo for Piano, which in part one might even think responds directly and urgently to the two pieces the material resources of which are its bedrock—​Music for Piano and Winter Music—​both of which comprise only repetition (or, viewed differently, comprise only variations of an extremely limited pool of material, material which is more or less ‘shuffled’ in ways which, to be sure, persistently show that material in fresh lights). Nevertheless, nothing essentially new could be expected to happen in either piece, once one has understood the restrictions under which the pieces operate. Cage’s summary of what he had learned from Schoenberg highlights more or less just this factor: The things Schoenberg emphasized in his teaching were repetition and variation, which would tend to what we call relationships. And then he said [ . . . ] that eve-

John Cage and Roger Reynolds, ‘A Conversation’, The Musical Quarterly, vol. 65, no. 4 (October 1979), 593. 39  Hicks, ‘John Cage’s Studies’, 125. 40  Bernstein, ‘John Cage, Arnold Schoenberg, and the Musical Idea’, 15. 41  Ibid., 40. 42  Ibid., 37. 38 

Situating the Concert for Piano and Orchestra  :  43 rything was a repetition. Even a variation was a repetition, with some things changed and some things not.43

This was an idea which he would, himself, repeat in more or less invariant form on numerous occasions. For instance, he wrote to Mark Owen on 17 June 1977 that Schoenberg used to say that everything is repetition, including variations. Variation, he said, was a repetition with some things changed and others not. Composition, according to him, consisted in establishing an idea (a motif ) and then proceeding farther and farther away from it by these means of repetition and variation.44

Cage’s description mirrors reasonably closely, perhaps unsurprisingly, Schoenberg’s formulations in his Fundamentals of Musical Composition, which was drawn directly from Schoenberg’s teaching at the University of Southern California and the University of California at Los Angeles, between 1937 and 1948, immediately following the period during which Cage studied with him: these are just the ideas, then, one might reasonably expect Cage to have encountered. ‘Variations are primarily repetitions, which would become intolerable without constant restimulation of the listener’s interest’, Schoenberg writes,45 having explained earlier in the published version of the text that ‘[v]‌ariation means change. But changing every feature produces something foreign, incoherent, illogical. It destroys the basic shape of the motive’ and that ‘variation requires changing some of the less-​important features and preserving some of the more-​important ones.’46 A gloss of the same ideas, in ways even closer to the formulation Cage deploys, appeared at the end of the same period, in 1948: ‘I define variation as changing a number of a unit’s features, while preserving others.’47 As noted, each fresh notation in the Solo for Piano is either a repetition of an existing notation—​two of the first three to appear in the score are repetitions of notations from prior pieces, Music for Piano and Winter Music—​a variation of an existing notation, or an entirely new notation. There is little question that Schoenberg would have been surprised, to say the least, to discover the ways in which Cage had made use of this idea. Nonetheless, what Cage does is in many respects enormously traditional: the Cage and Retallack, Musicage, 176. John Cage to Mark Owen, 17 June 1977 (source: JCC). 45  Arnold Schoenberg, Fundamentals of Musical Composition, eds. Gerald Strang and Leonard Stein (London: Faber, 1970), 167. 46  Ibid., 8. 47  Arnold Schoenberg, ‘Connection of Musical Ideas’, in Style and Idea:  Selected Writings, ed. Leonard Stein, tr. Leo Black (London: Faber, 1984 [1948]), 287. 43  44 

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relationship between notations B and D, as mentioned in the introduction, shows vertical chords transformed into arpeggios; if the relationship between notation C and notation F is regarded as a variation, one of the important changes is—​in the way in which what was a fixed left-​right relationship between time and space comes to fluctuate, such that the same horizontal distance might indicate at most five seconds or, at shortest, just a single second—​very close in effect to augmentation or diminution. Naturally, it would then be possible for variations of notation D and notation F to arise, which would have rather less in common with notations B and C respectively than their ‘parent’ notations. Much more detail of the transformations Cage applies to notations appears in the examination of the sketch material for the Solo for Piano in Chapter 2 and in the analysis given in Chapter 6. Yet, suffice to say, even if Schoenberg could not have anticipated what Cage would do with his idea, Schoenberg’s surprise would surely have had more to do with the basic fact of Cage deploying indeterminate notations than with their metamorphoses: the way in which parameters become varied is, in important ways, undertaken according to a pattern which Schoenberg surely would have been able to recognise, had he been able to come to terms with indeterminacy. The well-​known anecdote—​that Schoenberg demanded of his students that they provide all possible solutions to a given cantus firmus and then explain what principle underpinned them—​provided Cage with one of the central planks of his methodology: the common factor was not to be found in the solutions themselves, but instead in the cantus firmus. Put otherwise: the shared attribute was the question, not the answer. The branching, bifurcating paths taken by the mutations of different notations within the Solo for Piano show a slightly different, more practical way of responding to the question Schoenberg posed: if the musical idea, as expressed in the form of one of the notations from the Solo for Piano, can be varied in one way, it can also be varied in another, and those two, now different, fresh variations can themselves be varied. As Bernstein summarises the lesson Cage took from Schoenberg in this respect, ‘[j]‌ust as a counterpoint exercise could have several solutions, Schoenberg’s musical idea could result in more than one compositional realization.’48 Of course, the introduction of entirely new notations is something which would have been inconceivable in the Schoenbergian conception of working with musical materials. As Schoenberg observed in notes made on 10 June 1934—​which is to say while Cage was studying with him—​‘I can cut off pieces from an apple, I can hollow it out and stuff it with other things, but I cannot make a pear out of it. (I can give it the shape of a pear, but I can write 48 

Bernstein, ‘John Cage, Arnold Schoenberg, and the Musical Idea’, 37.

Situating the Concert for Piano and Orchestra  :  45

no piece “in the form of a pear” as the good joke by Satie pretends to do.)’49 For Cage, the solution would have been a simple one: introduce a pear. As he described the process to Joan Retallack: I called Music for Piano ‘one’, Winter Music ‘two’, and ‘three’ was a variation, first of one of them, and next of the other—​so we’d have one, two, three, four themes or variations. Then ‘five’ was the introduction of something that was not Music for Piano or Winter Music. In other words, something new.50

Cage’s sketches, examined in Chapter 2, suggest that the reality of the process was not quite as he described it, but there is little reason to doubt the fundamental idea. Schoenberg’s version was, self-​evidently, in Cage’s reading of it, a necessarily organicist, and essentially evolutionary, one: in interview with John Corbett, Cage initially seems to suggest that, given his perspective on variation and repetition, Schoenberg would be forced to admit that ‘a squirrel is a repetition of a cow’, before confessing, prompted by Corbett, that perhaps on reflection it might not be unreasonable, genetically speaking, to view a squirrel as a sort of variation on a cow.51 An earlier one of Schoenberg’s definitions of how variation might produce newness, from around 1930, would certainly seem to tally with this conclusion, even if, again, Schoenberg might have been nonplussed by the specifics introduced into his model: by variation I mean a way of altering something given, so as to develop further its component parts as well as the figures built from them, the outcome always being something new, with an apparently low degree of resemblance to its prototype, so that one finds difficulty in identifying the prototypes within the variation.52

The problem Schoenberg identifies—​of variations being such that finding their origin is practically impossible, or at least impossible to undertake with surety—​persists in the Solo for Piano, as will be seen quite clearly in Chapter 6. In this sense, one might imagine that Cage would have been satisfied with the ways in which notations could be varied on their own terms. Yet it was evidently a pressing concern for him to find a solution to what he seems to have regarded as, at a fundamental level, a shuffling of basic material: as Arnold Schoenberg, The Musical Idea and the Logic, Technique and Art of its Presentation, ed. and tr. Patricia Carpenter and Severine Neff (Bloomington, IN:  Indiana University Press, 2006 [1934]), 161. 50  Cage and Retallack, Musicage, 297. 51  John Corbett and John Cage, ‘John Cage: The Conversation Game’, in John Corbett, Extended Play: Sounding Off from John Cage to Dr. Funkenstein (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 1994 [1992]), 181–​91. 52  Arnold Schoenberg, ‘New Music: My Music’, in Style and Idea: Selected Writings, ed. Leonard Stein, tr. Leo Black (London: Faber, 1984 [ca. 1930]), 102–​103. 49 

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Hicks summarises the notes of one of Schoenberg’s other students, Leroy Robertson, ‘[e]‌lements must be preserved but succession may be changed.’53 Robertson (and Cage too) may have misunderstood the limits of what Schoenberg was proposing: the process hardly seems so restricted either in Schoenberg’s own practice or in what he said elsewhere, as in his claim that ‘[t]he change of features serves as an annihilation of former obligations and eventually as a gradual introduction of the new qualities that will make up the characteristics of the subsequent idea.’54 Yet even so this is, and could only be, gradual change. It would take too long, from Cage’s point of view, to turn the cow into a squirrel. Given the specificity elsewhere of his description, particularly in his conversation with Retallack, when Cage states that he ‘introduced into, or beside, this Schoenbergian idea of a repetition-​variation double, another notion, that of something other, which cannot be cancelled out’, it seems almost certain that it is, specifically, in the Solo for Piano that he thought to introduce this ‘something other’, new material, which took him back to thinking about Schoenberg, but also showed him how it might be possible to go beyond the repetition-​variation dyad. A slightly more fanciful, but perhaps not entirely implausible extension emphasises the stress Cage always laid upon his training in counterpoint with Schoenberg. There is no doubt that Cage regarded the Concert for Piano and Orchestra as a whole as a contrapuntal composition: one of the fundamental counterpoints in his conception of it is captured in the title (and in a way which would not be present were he to have titled it a piano concerto), but even within the Solo for Piano alone, Cage’s prefatory notes insist that ‘each page is one system’, which is to say that where notations overlap with one another, they are in a not(at)ional counterpoint. ‘Contrapuntal combination’, Severine Neff writes, ‘is Schoenberg’s term for the theme or “point of departure” whose varied repetition generates the contrapuntal work.’55 The cantus firmus exercises just noted were regarded by Schoenberg as preliminary work in advance of studying contrapuntal combinations: Cage described the preliminaries with reasonable regularity, but Neff argues that they will have led on, too, to a semester of advanced counterpoint with Schoenberg in the autumn of 1936, the last period of study Cage undertook with him in Neff ’s view.56 Here, Schoenberg

53 

Hicks, ‘John Cage’s Studies’, 131. Schoenberg, ‘Connection of Musical Ideas’, 287. 55 Severine Neff, ‘Schoenberg as Theorist:  Three Forms of Presentation’, in Walter Frisch (ed.), Schoenberg and his World (Princeton, NJ: University of Princeton Press, 1999), 55–​84 (74). 56  Eadem, ‘Point/​Counterpoint’,  474. 54 

Situating the Concert for Piano and Orchestra  :  47 described a ‘contrapuntal combination’ as a three-​dimensional musical space: a configuration heard vertically (i.e. harmonically), horizontally (i.e. linearly), and as a composite of the vertical and horizontal—​a Gestalt. The manipulation and variation of such a ‘contrapuntal combination’ or Grundgestalt of two or more lines served as the basic material for a contrapuntal work (e.g. the combination of a subject and countersubject). Schoenberg used a metaphor to describe it—​he said that the basic combination was like the frame of a film. In varying such a frame through a rhythmic shifting of parts of through so-​called polymorphous canons in inversion, retrograde, retrograde inversion, or other pitch-​based variations, a student could generate materials for a contrapuntal work or analyse an existing one.57

Once Cage had come to the realisation—​first, imperfectly, in the Music of Changes and then quite starkly and directly in Music for Piano and, too, in the Ten Thousand Things—​that the horizontal dimension of a musical notation might index on a one-​to-​one basis the passing of real time, it is hardly such a stretch to imagine that he might have projected Schoenberg’s already metaphorical composite of vertical and horizontal into a more literal version: the Gestalt would then become quite directly the vertical and horizontal space a particular notation would take on the page, an image surely suggested too by the more concrete metaphor of the frame of a film Schoenberg deployed. Though Cage never appears to have used the word, such a revisioning of Schoenberg’s Gestalt would enable it to recoup some of its other meanings: to describe the individual notations of Cage’s Solo for Piano as designs, patterns, shapes, structures, or models not only appears in no way far-​fetched, it seems too to encompass the diversity of practices Cage employed across the range of notations in the piece, while still remaining true, if in a perverse way, to the archetype Schoenberg had provided to him.

Jazz Earle Brown did not mince his words when he said that Cage ‘didn’t like jazz at all. I thought the best way to get John to listen to jazz and be a little interested in it would be the Modern Jazz Quartet. But he wouldn’t listen at all.’58 Nevertheless, Sabine Feisst hits on something important when, alongside her note that during Cage’s period in Chicago in the early 1940s he ‘not only attended jam sessions and taught group improvisation in his experimental 57 

Ibid., 461. Brown, quoted in Kyle Gann, ‘Foreword: A Less “Cloistered” Music’, in Rebecca Y. Kim (ed.), Beyond Notation: the Music of Earle Brown (Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Press, 2017), xvii. 58 

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music class at the Chicago School of Design, but he also toyed with jazz idioms’—​this latter most obviously in Jazz Study (1941), whose ‘syncopated walking bass-​line and dramatic chordal outbursts suggest that Cage was listening to jazz music at this time’, according to Paul Cox,59 but also in Credo in Us (1942)—​she stresses that his interest in jazz should be ‘linked to his exploration of percussion sounds, favoured in jazz (and non-​Western music), and his performances of William Russell’s jazz-​and Latin-​influenced all-​ percussion works.’60 The connection Feisst makes—​that it was the sound of jazz that was truly the focus for Cage, even as jazz idioms and improvisation seemed less useful to him—​is one which is of importance in thinking about the relationship jazz has to the Concert for Piano and Orchestra. Around the time that Cage was in Chicago, that distinction may have been rather less obvious to him, to be sure. One presumes that his passing reference to jazz in ‘The Future of Music: Credo’ is intended to recall, for its author at least, his work with Russell and at the Chicago School of Design: Methods of writing percussion music have as their goal the rhythmic structure of a composition. As soon as these methods are crystallized into one or several widely accepted methods, the means will exist for group improvisations of unwritten but culturally important music. This has already taken place in Oriental cultures and in hot jazz.61

Just a couple of years later, he would pithily note that ‘[f]‌or interesting rhythms we have listened to jazz’, but only, it seems, as a way to move toward thinking about what he might do with those rhythms.62 ‘Hot jazz is never unclear rhythmically’, he claimed, meaning here a clarity which ‘is cold, mathematical, inhuman, but basic and earthy’, to be contrasted with grace: ‘warm, incalculable, human, [ . . . ] like the air.’63 The conflict between clarity and grace was what made hot jazz hot, Cage claimed, suggesting in simple terms that the qualifier was produced by the particular idiomatic ways an individual performer might deviate in phrasing, beat, pulse, or bar. A certain sort of plasticity with respect to a given text (even if not a written one), not syncopation, was the key in Cage’s view.64 Cage would observe, shortly after the G. Paul Cox, Collaged Codes: John Cage’s Credo in US (unpublished doctoral dissertation, Case Western Reserve University, 2011), 175. 60  Sabine Feisst, ‘John Cage and Improvisation:  An Unresolved Relationship’, in Musical Improvisation: Art, Education, and Society, eds. Gabriel Solis and Bruno Nettl (Champaign, IL: University of Illinois Press, 2009), 40. 61  John Cage, ‘The Future of Music: Credo’, Silence [1939/​40], 5. 62  John Cage, ‘Four Statements on the Dance’, Silence [1939], 87. 63  Ibid., 91. 64  Ibid., 92. 59 

Situating the Concert for Piano and Orchestra  :  49

composition of the Concert for Piano and Orchestra that such a view—​of composition ‘as an activity integrating the opposites, the rational and the irrational, bringing about, ideally, a freely moving continuity within a strict division of parts, the sounds, the combination and succession being either logically related or arbitrarily chosen’—​was one that had concerned him at a point almost precisely equidistant between the description of flexibility within hot jazz and the composition of the Concert, which is to say in or around 1948 and, thus, pertaining to the Sonatas and Interludes (1946–​48) but not to the Music of Changes.65 As Cox argues, ‘“hot jazz” allowed him to think of rhythm and its relationship to structure in a more flexible way’,66 while at the same time ‘[b]‌oogie-​woogie may have conjured Harlem’s nightlife and more broadly the transgression of established boundaries of race, dance, music, gender, and sexuality’.67 Nevertheless, even at this point he complained that working with Russell—​surely his primary source for any knowledge of jazz at the time—​was a challenge, since, as he wrote to Henry Cowell, Russell’s ‘present preoccupation with hot jazz disconnected from his own composition has not been good for him as a composer.’68 The cluster of timings—​from about 1940 through to 1942—​and the importance of William Russell as what Rebecca Kim calls a ‘musical interlocutor’ for the jazz world is of significance for understanding some of the details of the more otherwise inexplicable attitudes Cage seems to have held with regard to jazz. The time period was of course significant for Russell too, since it was around 1940 that he abandoned composition in favour of promoting jazz musicians.69 By the other end of the 1940s, however, as Kim stresses, Cage would suggest that the source of his new thinking about rhythm derived almost entirely from Asian sources, with jazz pushed firmly into the background.70 By the time he was using jazz recordings for his realisation of his own Imaginary Landscape No. 5 (1952)—​Kim’s description states that ‘[b]‌ig band sounds dominate, some by Count Basie and Billy Eckstine, with flickers of early bebop by Louis Armstrong, Dizzy Gillespie, Coleman Hawkins, and possibly Lionel Hampton, Ethel Walters, and early Miles Davies; the concluding sample features “Fish for Supper” by Al Cooper and the Savoy Sultans’71—​it seems to have become a truism that Cage was using, exactly 65 

Cage, ‘Changes’, 18.

66 Cox, Collaged Codes, 171. 67 

Ibid., 174. John Cage to Henry Cowell, 8 August 1940, in Kuhn (ed.), Selected Letters, 35. 69  Rebecca Y. Kim, ‘John Cage in Separate Togetherness with Jazz’, Contemporary Music Review, vol. 31, no. 1 (February 2012), 70. 70  Ibid., 68. 71  Ibid., 74. 68 

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as he described it, ‘sounds which were distasteful to him’, just like his use of Beethoven within the contemporary Williams Mix (1951–​53) and perhaps one banal possibility is that, though Cage was influenced by the way in which rhythm was thought of in jazz, he genuinely was put off by the sounds it made.72 Certainly, such a simple reading would make sense of Cage’s discussion in 1958’s ‘Changes’, written in close proximity to the Concert for Piano and Orchestra, that the use of timbres otherwise distasteful was, precisely, a part of an attempt to come to terms with that distaste, an attempt Cage hints he had undertaken successfully with regard to jazz in Imaginary Landscape No. 5, but not, as yet, with respect to the vibraphone. Cage’s statement that ‘I find my taste for timbre lacking in necessity, and I discover that in the proportion I give it up, I find I hear more and more accurately’, too, becomes perfectly transparent: if Cage is to deliver upon the aim which he says began to characterise his music after 1951—​’a composing of sounds within a universe predicated upon the sounds themselves’—​then it will simply not do to have either favourites or the reverse.73 The specific need, then, with regard to jazz is also a timbral one: because, as Cage says, jazz ‘more than serious music has explored the possibilities of instruments’, coming to terms with jazz is an important step in ensuring that the broadest range of timbres is available.74 Cage avows more or less just this when he states that [t]‌he mind may be used either to ignore ambient sounds, pitches other than the eighty-​eight, durations which are not counted, timbres which are unmusical or distasteful, and in general to control and understand an available experience. Or the

72  Cage,

‘Changes’, 31. Kim posits a different, though complementary, reason, in that, during Cage’s work in San Francisco with the Federal Music Project, he observed that ‘the Chinese people I along with beautifully’, but that ‘[t]‌he blacks were so gifted that they had no need of me’. Kim juxtaposes these remarks with Cage’s later ones that he had ‘little need for jazz. I  can get  along perfectly well without any jazz at all; and yet I notice that many, many people have a great need for it. Who am I to say that their need is pointless?’ Kim perceptively notes that the common phraseology suggests a link between the two statements, proposing that a social reason may have been at least as significant a factor as a musical one in Cage’s decision to amplify the influence of Asia in his retrospective descriptions of his development. (Kim, ‘John Cage in Separate Togetherness’, 75–​76). George Lewis rightly characterises strategies like this as ones wherein ‘any imputation of influence from African American sources was generally simply denied, ignored, or actively denigrated.’ (George Lewis, A Power Stronger Than Itself: The AACM and American Experimental Music (Chicago, IL: Chicago University Press, 2008), 380.) 73  Cage, ‘Changes’, 27. 74  Ibid., 31.

Situating the Concert for Piano and Orchestra  :  51 mind may give up its desire to improve on creation and function as a faithful receiver of experience.75

Even so, it remains difficult to make sense of Cage’s remark, still roughly contemporaneous with the composition of the Concert for Piano and Orchestra, that ‘[j]‌azz per se derives from serious music. And when serious music derives from it, the situation becomes rather silly.’76 By ‘serious music’, Cage certainly seems to mean the European classical tradition, broadly conceived. As such, George Lewis is clearly right to read this as a denigration of the ‘major competitor’ for the label of the American experimental tradition, which is to say jazz.77 Moreover, if the point of Imaginary Landscape No. 5 was, at least in part, to erase Cage’s distaste for jazz, it is hard not to agree with Lewis too that by this statement Cage ‘has drawn very specific boundaries, not only as to which musics are relevant to his own musicality but as to which musics suit his own taste.’78 This aspect of Lewis’s claim remains unarguable even if one might dispute, at least in 1958 and at least in the case of Cage, that part of his argument which relies upon Anthony Braxton’s claim that ‘[b]oth aleatory and indeterminism are words which have been coined . . . to bypass the word improvisation’ since, as stressed in Chapters 3 and 4 in particular, Cage certainly did not want the performers of the Concert to improvise and, indeed, the very basis of his complaints with regard to performers of the piece rests in moments in which they did just that, though to be sure not in terribly imaginative ways.79 Notwithstanding Lewis’s terse dismissal—​ ‘[w]‌ e may regard as more rhetorical device than historical fact Cage’s brief account of the origins of jazz’—​it is not too difficult to establish where Cage might have formed his erroneous views regarding the origins of jazz.80 Between 1938 and 1941, William 75 

Ibid., 32. Cage, ‘History of Experimental Music in the United States’, Silence [1959], 72. 77 Lewis, A Power Stronger Than Itself, 379. 78 George Lewis, ‘Improvised Music after 1950:  Afrological and Eurological Perspectives’, Black Music Research Journal, vol. 16, no. 1 (Spring 1996), 99. 79 Ibid. 80  Anthony Braxton, quoted in ibid. This is, importantly, not to say that Cage did not continue to disavow improvisation, in just the ways Lewis describes, as improvisation became an explicit part of his practice in the 1960s, nor that there were not enormous institutional benefits to the route that Cage took, such that, by the point at which he was himself improvising and allowing and encouraging the musicians he worked with to improvise, he was able to retain the structural position of being a composer. Benjamin Piekut specifically notes that though ‘spontaneity’, as theorised by Daniel Belgrad, had currency for Cage and Ornette Coleman alike, Cage’s own move toward improvisation happened after the 1950s (Benjamin 76 John

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Russell occasionally wrote for the Hot Record Society Rag, the irregular journal of a group of jazz enthusiasts who repressed jazz discs which the original labels had allowed to go out of print. The Society was white, Ivy League-​ educated for the most part, and unashamedly elitist. As Alex Cummings argues, ‘[t]he white critics and collectors of the HRS sought to perpetuate recordings that they considered to be worthwhile, and they could use their status and resources to impose particular standards of value on the work of some African American musicians.’81 The members of the Society doubtless also genuinely intended to make sure that recordings of value were not lost, but were in no position to question whose values were being promoted. Russell’s reviews for the November 1940 issue of the journal of Blue Note’s release of recordings by Meade ‘Lux’ Lewis and of ones by Cripple Clarence Lofton, though effusive, authenticate the quality of both players through direct and literal reference to the Western art music tradition: Russell argues that a comparison between Lewis and Bach, in their respective musical usages of ‘improvisational and contrapuntal technique’ may be reasonable,82 but that in ‘Bass on Top’ the motival development is more suggestive of Beethoven’s painstaking elaboration. [ . . . ] The germ motive itself is derived from the bass accompaniment figure. It is treated by extension (chorus 2)  by diminution and inversion (choruses 4 and

Piekut, ‘Indeterminacy, Free Improvisation, and the Mixed Avant-​Garde’, Journal of the American Musicological Society, vol. 67, no. 3 (Fall 2014), 770). Given his admission of a basic lack of knowledge of jazz beyond that which he had learned from William Russell, statements Cage made in the mid-​1960s such as ‘improvisation is generally playing what you know’ might, according to a charitable reading, be read as rather clumsy self-​criticism in this context, that the problem Cage was himself facing was how to prevent himself from playing what he already knew (Lewis, ‘Improvised Music after 1950’, 106). There is, however, no such simple dealing with Cage’s willingness, in interview with Michael Zwerin, to argue that ‘[t]‌his reiterated beat in jazz reminds me of all those aspects of my life which don’t seem to me to be the most interesting’ except to say that it demonstrates how right Cage was that he knew little of jazz (‘A Lethal Measurement’, Village Voice, 6 January 1966). 81  Alex Sayf Cummings, Democracy of Sound: Music Piracy and the Remaking of American Copyright in the Twentieth Century (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013), 44. 82  One recalls, in this context, Cage’s own observation that ‘[j]‌azz is equivalent to Bach (steady beat, dependable motor), and the love of Bach is generally coupled with the love of jazz’. The end of this story is notable because of the commonality of expression for another one of Cage’s mention of jazz: ‘Giving up Bach, jazz, and order is very difficult. [ . . . ] For if we do it—​give them up that is—​what do we have left?’ (‘Indeterminacy’, Silence (Hanover, NH: Wesleyan University Press, 1961 [ca. 1959], 263).

Situating the Concert for Piano and Orchestra  :  53 6) twisted and turned about until its possibilities of elaboration are seemingly exhausted. Finally, in the eleventh chorus there begins a liquidation in which not only the melodic but the rhythmic motive and accompanying bass figure, as well, are reduced to their most essential features.83

Russell even provides a musical example, showing both melodic germ motive and rhythmic motive over a walking bass figure.84 Other musical examples provide chord symbols—​within an analysis which argues that that the ‘suspense as well as the feeling of momentum’ in Lewis’s ‘Honky Tonk Train Blues’ is a product of the persistent 6/​4 chords delaying the resolution of the tension until the tonic ‘proper’ is heard at the very close—​and a transcription of the boogie-​woogie cross rhythms of the same track, which necessarily undermines, if not erases entirely, the relationship between these ostinati and the African time-​line concept, as described by Wendell Logan. Samuel A. Floyd Jr., indeed, posited ‘Honky Tonk Train Blues’ as a paradigmatic example of the relationship: ‘the encounter of the right-​hand figurations with the left-​hand ostinato produces occasional polyrhythms that, together with the percussive attack and the blues mode, place the style squarely in the African-​American musical tradition.’85 In ‘Six Wheel Chaser’, Russell asserts that through the use of ‘only repeated notes, chords, or short motives’, Lewis achieves ‘[w]‌hat Stravinsky probably felt and tried to do in parts of Le Sacre’,86 while Lofton, though he ‘has his own kind of virtuosity which could never be matched by any professional concert pianist’ finds ‘I Don’t Know’ compared in its left-​hand harmonies to ‘medieval organum’.87 Of course there is an extent to which Russell’s comparisons are arch and ironic—​the references pointing out the absurdity of the associations at the same time as insisting that the music Russell is discussing is, from his perspective, quite as valuable as any piece of ‘high art’ might be: he is not ambiguous that he sets out directly to challenge the view that would fix Lofton as ‘the personification of crude, illiterate musicianship’—​but it is also unarguably the case that the standards demanded are set by the classical canon and, too, that even the rhetoric feels deeply problematic at this distance.88 All this said, though this maps on directly to Cage’s 83 William

Russell, ‘Notes on Boogie-​Woogie’, in Ralph de Toledano (ed.), Frontiers of Jazz (Gretna, LA: Pelican, 1994 [1940]), 60. See too Peter J. Silvester, The Story of Boogie-​Woogie: A Left Hand Like God (Lanham, MD: Scarecrow, 2009), 355–​81. 84  Russell, ‘Notes on Boogie-​Woogie’, 59. 85  Samuel A. Floyd Jr., The Power of Black Music: Interpreting its History from Africa to the United States (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1995), 122. 86  Russell, ‘Notes on Boogie-​Woogie’, 60. 87  Ibid., 63. 88  Ibid., 61.

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apparent understanding, it is a selective reading of Russell: the chapter he wrote on boogie-​woogie for Jazzmen a year earlier repeats the claim he made much more generally, that jazz as a whole was born from the New Orleans brass bands of the 1870s and, though he suggests that, as the piano found a place in the New Orleans orchestras, ‘its players remained more or less under the influence of European classicists’, he states too that Jimmy Yancey ‘developed a style so pianistic that it could not be imagined on any other instrument; yet it shows not the slightest resemblance to the piano music of the nineteenth century Europeans’. The point of comparison with Lewis here is, instead, the Balinese gamelan.89 In this context, at least, it may be helpful to consider the other half of Cage’s dyad. His claim that jazz derives from ‘serious music’ is evidently a spurious one. His focus, however clumsily, may have been on a criticism of what happens when ‘serious music’ borrows materials from jazz. After all, he immediately moves on to stress that the serious pieces by Russell ‘stemming from jazz [ . . . ] were short, epigrammatic, and entirely interesting’.90 As the following chapter will demonstrate in some detail, the instrumental timbres of the Concert for Piano and Orchestra were developed in consultation with performers who were, in many cases, used to performing jazz. One example of this—​quite obvious once one knows with whom Cage consulted—​is the instruction in the Solo for Sliding Trombone to play ‘without bell in jar’, which can only be a reference to Jack Teagarden’s so-​called water glass trick, which does just this.91 Cage wrote to Peter Yates on 11 September 1961 of the next orchestral piece he wrote, Atlas Eclipticalis (1961–​62) that what it

does (to an audience) is to let them hear all the things they thought they didn’t want in the way of amplification and electronics: feedback, distortion, etc. rattling loud-​ speakers, low fidelity, etc. Some of my best friends hate it. M.C. Richards said she never heard so many objections. I am certain, however, that this piece will eventually evoke gratitude since it embraces 20th-​century horror, transforming it. Otherwise, I think it is the Concert for Piano and Orchestra without the jazz sounds.92

Cage makes clear here the relationship between the two pieces, and in ways which are illuminating. As Chapter 7 will show, the reference to the evocation of twentieth-​century horror alludes to Adorno’s reading of the Concert for Piano and Orchestra while, more obviously, Cage states outright that the one 89  William

Russell, ‘Boogie Woogie’, in Frederic Ramsey Jr. and Charles Edward Smith (eds.), Jazzmen (New York, NY: Limelight, 1985 [1939]), 183–​205. 90  Cage, ‘History of Experimental Music’, 72. 91  For a description, see Dave Oliphant, Jazz Mavericks of the Lone Star State (Austin, TX: University of Texas Press, 2007), 115. 92  John Cage to Peter Yates, 11 September 1961, in Kuhn (ed.), Selected Letters, 249.

Situating the Concert for Piano and Orchestra  :  55

vital change that Cage thought was necessary was to eliminate the use of timbres drawn from jazz. One possible reading would be that, after all, Cage’s distaste for the timbres of jazz remained, against any attempt to suppress it. Like Leverkühn’s retraction of the Ninth Symphony through his oratorio, The Lamentation of Dr. Faustus, it was jazz that caused Cage in at least one sense to want to ‘take back’ the Concert for Piano and Orchestra.93 As Chapter 3 shows, it is not difficult to imagine that Cage might have felt that the introduction of the timbres of jazz caused players, especially those who were versed in performing jazz, to imagine they had liberties not indicated in the score. As Benjamin Piekut’s recent study of the New York Philharmonic’s performance of Atlas Eclipticalis has demonstrated, if Cage thought this, he was certainly mistaken. Both there, and in the Concert, the pieces themselves encode and represent, whether Cage meant them to or not a ‘complex struggle over agency’,94 an agon in which at least some of the competing poles are authority against independence, discipline against freedom, Schoenberg against jazz.

Mann, Doctor Faustus: The Life of a German Composer as Told by a Friend, tr. John E. Woods (New York, NY: Vintage, 1999 [1947]). 94  Benjamin Piekut, Experimentalism Otherwise: The New York Avant-​Garde and its Limits (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 2011), 45. 93  Thomas

chapter 2

Sketching the Concert for Piano and Orchestra Solo for Piano sketch material The available sketch material for the Solo for Piano is, as is hardly uncommon in the case of Cage’s pieces from the 1950s, extremely limited.1 Only two pages definitively show working materials related to the Solo, though those two pages are both useful for what they reveal and intriguing in what they leave unsaid. A small number of other notes appear on other sheets, but, if anything, ascertaining with certainty what use Cage may have made of these is even less possible. One sheet, at least, is unambiguous (fig. 2.1). It provides the composing means for the first three notations of the Solo, notations A, B, and C, as they become in the final manuscript (fig. 0.1). Here, however, they are given the numbers ‘1’, ‘2’, and ‘3’ (or, more accurately, the numbers ‘1’, ‘3’, and ‘2’ respectively). As well as giving a certain privileged status to these three notations—​ they are the only ones for which explicit sketch material exists—​they also demonstrate the sequence of decisions Cage made in terms of the elaboration of composing means into actual notations and show possibilities Cage made available within the composing means but which were not selected by the tossing of coins. The rejected possibilities, however, are often ones which appear in other notations later within the Solo, if sometimes in guises which do not make it obvious that they derive from these early sketches. Notation ‘1’ initially appears to be generated via a three-​step process—​‘a’, ‘b’, and ‘c’, in the sketch—​although ultimately a further two stages are necessary. First, Cage writes that he must ‘within a prescribed area (= to total

1  These

materials are held within the John Cage Music Manuscript Collection at New York Public Library (JPB 95-​3, folder 263). John Cage’s Concert for Piano and Orchestra. Martin Iddon and Philip Thomas, Oxford University Press (2020). © Oxford University Press. DOI: 10.1093/oso/9780190938475.001.0001

Sketching the Concert for Piano and Orchestra  :  57

Fig. 2.1:  First sheet of Solo for Piano sketch material piano gamut (2 staves) [treble clef]/​[bass clef]) draw a biomorphic shape’, presumably drawing the term from the work of Hans Arp, simply to indicate that the shape drawn evokes simple biological forms like amoebae. Second, he is to ‘toss number of points on line; inscribe’. Third, he must ‘place staves’ and then, ‘going round the line’, insert sharps and flats, the former given by a toss of heads, the latter by a toss of tails. Cage notes that a toss of heads and tails would give a natural. Given this last indication, one presumes that for each accidental, Cage tossed two coins and that, furthermore, there is an inbuilt bias towards naturals, since it is twice as likely that a mixture of heads and tails will be tossed than that either both coins came down heads or came

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down tails (HH, HT, TH, TT). In the final notation, fourteen notes are natural, five are sharp, and six flat, which more or less approximates this distribution. It is notable that, although the first step of this process determined that the total available range would comprise two staves with a treble and a bass clef respectively, the clefs themselves are not inscribed until rather later in the process. Indeed, as will be outlined in more detail, when Cage writes ‘place staves’, he actually probably means ‘place clefs on staves’, which is to say ‘determine how staves are to be read’, a practice derived from Music for Piano. After these three determinations—​and given that it is not written as ‘d’, perhaps something Cage had not initially considered, important for performance though it is—​Cage demands a further coin toss. Here, a toss of heads would indicate that the pianist was to follow the line (what he had, in manoeuvre ‘a’ called a biomorphic shape) in one, clockwise, direction, a toss of tails would mean that the pianist should follow the notes in time, thus ignoring the biomorphic shape, while if the two coins tossed resulted in a combination of heads and tails, the pianist would be asked to follow the line in both a clockwise and an anticlockwise direction. The combination of heads and tails, in any case, skewed the coin toss towards this possibility and, indeed, Cage’s sketch shows an arrow pointing at the third of these options. It is this option—​following the line in opposite directions—​which appears in the first notation of the Solo for Piano in its final version. Importantly, this determined the direction of performance for all instances of notation A (six in total, with notation B the most repeated notation). Had either of the other two options been selected, the instructions for drawing this notation would have been more or less complete. However, because the pianist was to be instructed to follow the indicated notes in both clockwise and anticlockwise directions around the biomorphic shape’s outline, Cage added a last determination, which was to decide the number of notes which would be played in each direction. A single I Ching casting of appears in the sketch, at the bottom left of the subsection devoted to notation ‘1’, thus determining that the first number of the ratio would be sixteen.2 Intriguingly, the second number of the ratio given in the sketch is eight, although in the realised version in the manuscript it has become nine. Indeed, on closer examination one can see in the score that the nine written in the ratio of the first notation is quite distinct from the nine of Cage’s handwriting and that, in fact, Cage initially began writing an eight, but had to correct it to read, instead, nine. Why, precisely, this happened is unclear, though perhaps the most likely solution is that Cage simply, accidentally, inscribed a note too many. If this were the case, because 2 

For a basic introduction to Cage’s use of hexagrams see, for instance, Pritchett, The Music of John Cage, 70–​71 and 78–​82.

Sketching the Concert for Piano and Orchestra  :  59

only the number for the ratio and not the total number of notes inscribed is given in the sketch, it would suggest something intriguing about Cage’s process, namely that he might very well have been inscribing this notation into manuscript at more or less the same time he was developing the sketch materials. Moreover, it would add weight to the interpretation that, when Cage writes ‘inscribe’, it is a quite literal instruction. Last, there appear a series of single-​word questions:  ‘dynamics?’, ‘duration?’, ‘pedal?’. No indications appear in the final notation to answer these, but Cage’s general response to such questions appears in the prefatory instructions in the score: ‘Here and elsewhere, the absence of indications of any kind means freedom for the performer in that regard.’ Under ‘2’, Cage’s instructions to himself are already terser. This does not necessarily indicate an immediate facility with his process for the Solo, building upon the sketch for ‘1’, since what appears under ‘2’ is immediately familiar as a repetition of the notational paradigm of Music for Piano. Significantly, what is given in the ‘composing means’ sketch for ‘2’ ultimately appears not as notation B but as notation C in the score for the Solo; notation C is, nonetheless, the second notation, reading left to right, on the first page of that score). Beneath the composing means instructions appears the hexagram for sixty-​ one and, indeed, in the first appearance of notation C on the first page of the score, there are sixty-​one indicated pitches. Cage’s method here reads:  ‘points (imperfections); toss number; apply double staff when nec.; sharps and flats, P. M. (no noises) total gamut’. In short, then, Cage’s process was to mark a number of paper imperfections. Then, having determined via the I Ching how many were necessary, that number, of those already identified, would be inked in. One might think, according to the letter of the instructions, that Cage would only draw in staff lines at this stage. Perhaps that is how things went. However, one notes his final indication in the ‘composing means’ instructions—​‘total gamut’—​ which specifies that the complete range of the piano was to be available. Cage would need to have had this information at the very least from the point when he was drawing in staff lines: if the points inked in fell within a narrow enough band, then a single staff line might suffice. A second, admittedly speculative, reading is possible, which is to note that, since no semi-​colon appears before ‘total gamut’, it should be taken to be a part of the previous directions, so that, once staff lines were drawn in, Cage would then determine sharps and flats, followed by which notes were to be plucked or muted (and the possibility for plucking or muting was to be applied across the total gamut of the piano). It is, in any case, notable that, as with the instructions for ‘1’, Cage seems to have realised, after having written out the composing means in principle, there was a further decision he had neglected: though ‘apply double staff where nec.’ might, on first impression, be taken to imply the deployment

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of a traditional upper treble staff and lower bass staff (as Cage had specifically noted in the case of means ‘1’), when the notations are elaborated in the score itself, two staves are utilised, but both have bass clefs. Underneath the more general description of the means, Cage has written a treble clef next to a sharp symbol and a bass clef next to a flat symbol. Speculatively, one might well imagine this to be a mapping of the approach from ‘1’, in that, on the toss of a single coin, heads would indicate a treble clef and tails a bass clef. If this is taken to be the case, then the further juxtaposition below this of ‘pizz’ next to a sharp symbol and ‘M’ next to a flat would imply that a double toss of coins would determine modifications to the indicated notes, a double head making it pizzicato and a double tail muting it. Thirteen of the total of sixty-​one notes are muted and twenty-​one are plucked within the elaboration of this notation in the Solo score, one then rather higher and one a little lower than the average distribution one would expect, but close enough to feel that this is reasonably likely. Unfortunately—​from the perspective of having further notations to establish whether a single staff version of this composing means might occur, or whether it would be conceivable to have cleffing other than a double bass clef—​the notation ultimately derived from these composing means appears only twice in the finished score: both of these appear on the first page, both have two staves, which are both in the bass clef on both occasions. Nonetheless, it is worth noting that these pairs of staves do not represent grand staves: both staves have nine ledger lines above and six below. Were they conventionally inscribed with treble and bass clefs, an extremely large portion of overlap would exist between the two. Composing means ‘3’, then, becomes notation B in the score, the third to appear on the page reading from left to right. The instructions are yet simpler than those given under ‘2’. They read: ‘one staff ambiguous; agg. 1–​10 + cluster divisi’ and then, beneath this, ‘toss number of events’. This last instruction—​ ‘toss number of events’—​slopes to the right, as happens in Cage’s scruffier or more hurried handwriting, rather than the neat, upright hand which appears on the page otherwise. This is, in many respects, unsurprising. The composing means denote the process for composing Winter Music, a piece so recently completed it can hardly have been especially far from Cage’s mind. As there, the ambiguous staff Cage refers to denotes that the single staff can be read in treble clef or bass clef or both simultaneously: the ‘divisi’ of the subsequent part of the instructions appears to be a sort of aide-​mémoire that, when a simultaneously cleffing occurs, the written pitches of the staff are divided between the two clefs. Though Cage’s instructions here do not note it, in practice this is achieved in identical fashion to Winter Music: two clefs are always given, one above and one below the staff, even when both are treble clefs or both are bass clefs. Where differing clefs appear and the written pitches comprise a dyad, one is to be read in the upper clef and one in the lower. For

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an aggregate of three notes or more with such differing clefs, a ratio is indicated, wherein the first number of the ratio denotes the number of pitches to be played according to the upper clef and the second number of the ratio denotes the number of pitches to be played according to the lower clef. As in Winter Music, which pitches should be selected to belong to which clef is left in the hands of the pianist, such that even a simple ratio, like 4-​1, results in 5 possible different readings of a single chord. Frustratingly, there is nothing in this sketch to indicate how precisely notes are selected: unlike inscribing points along the edge of a biomorphic shape or where imperfections fall in a piece of paper, Cage here says nothing regarding how he determines the points at which aggregates appear nor how he determines which notes ought to form a part of a particular aggregate, beyond their absolute number. As outlined in what follows, the manuscript for the Solo for Piano gives some hints regarding at least some of this part of the process, though these essentially replicate—​and corroborate—​similar features observed in Winter Music in Chapter 1, even if what the sketch material treated here suggests is that, in parts, the practical working through of Cage’s process is more complex and less streamlined than one might imagine. Here, although Cage does not specifically explain what is to be done, at least some of the actual process of what he did do is visible within the sketch. The number of events within the first instance of this notation is six. This appears, at first, to have been determined via a simple casting of the I Ching, since hexagram six appears in the sketch. Indeed, this may have been the case. However, the casting of hexagram six provided by Cage is a changing one, which, when the transformations to yin or yang are undertaken, becomes hexagram one. In both of Cage’s two subsequent operations, which determine the aggregates—​both the distribution of aggregates in general, which is to say how likely it is that an aggregate with 5 or 6 or 7 notes (and so on) appears, and the specific number of notes in the aggregates actually used—​five castings of the I Ching are deployed, which is to say the simple casting of six, minus the changed hexagram number one.3 A bold, downward stroke of the pen separates this determination from these castings for aggregates. First, Cage made five castings of the I Ching, resulting in the number stream: 28, 25, 19, 52, 13. Each of these castings provided a changing hexagram, which transformed the numbers into: 44, 1, 43, 16, 33. When arranged in ascending order, these two groups together became,

See Sau Woon Rebecca Au, I Ching in the Music of John Cage, Chou Wen Chung, and Zhao Xiao Sheng (unpublished PhD thesis, The Chinese University of Hong Kong, 2013) for further information regarding Cage’s deployment of changing hexagrams, esp. 30–​62. 3 

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then: 1, 13, 16, 19, 25, 28, 33, 43, 44, 52. From this, Cage generated a chart to determine aggregate size, with each number determining the beginning point of a range. Because the number 1 had appeared as a part of the casting and because Cage was determining starting points for each possible size of aggregate above the smallest, this chart made the appearance of a single pitch impossible (and, indeed, with every such way of arranging possibilities, there would necessarily always be a 1 in 64 chance that the method would remove the possibility of the first element ever appearing). The chart Cage ended up with then was the following: 1   2 1–​12 3 13–​15 4 16–​18 5 19–​24 6 25–​27 7 28–​32 8 33–​42 9 43 10 44–​51 11 52–​64 Here ‘11’ denotes a cluster, as suggested by Cage’s initial instructions. Cage then made a further set of five castings, resulting in the hexagrams 12, 51, 4, 36, and 52. The third and the final of these involved changes, with the third becoming 23 and the last duplicating 36 from the simple casting. As such, this ‘extra’ 36 was discarded. Mapping these numbers against Cage’s chart results in successive aggregate sizes of 2 (from 12), 10 (from 51), 2 (from 4), 5 (from the ‘changed’ hexagram 23), 8 (from 36), and 11 (from 52). This maps onto precisely the size (and order) of aggregates in the first instance of notation B within the score for the Solo for Piano itself. One should note here that Cage does not specifically outline how clefs are to be determined, nor at what stage in the process. However, the column of numbers which shows how many pitches there are to be in each aggregate is just that: a neat column. To the side of it, more loosely written, are ratios against each of those aggregates which require them. That these are not in so neat a column suggests, faintly at least, that these were written after the first column and that they were not written immediately following one another. In terms of efficiency, it would be better to know what clefs were to be used before making ratio charts, since such a chart would be unnecessary if both clefs were the same. In the case of this sketch, at least, however, Cage did not do

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that: although in the final notation the aggregate of eight notes has both an upper and a lower treble clef, thus meaning all notes should be played in that clef and obviating the need for a ratio, Cage did prepare a complete chart to determine the ratio, which actually appears above the section of the sketch related to composing means ‘3’: an arrow points up to it. The possible ratios are, more or less, equally plausible in Cage’s division of the I Ching, though there is a skew away from an equal ratio: 1–​7 2–​6 3–​5 4–4​ 5–​3 6–​2 7–​1

1–​9 10–​18 19–​27 28–​35 36–​44 45–​54 55–​64

There is no additional chart to show that Cage made a casting of the I Ching to pre-​determine this distribution, though such an even distribution would seem, if possible, relatively unlikely: more likely is that Cage simply chose this distribution, including its gentle bias. In the end, such a decision was doubly irrelevant: first, the I Ching casting was 11, a number where the chart was still continuing in regular multiples of 9 (and which resulted in a 2–​6 distribution); second, as noted, in the end this aggregate of eight notes received two treble clefs and, as such, no ratio was ultimately deployed. Two other aggregates—​those of ten and five notes—​required ratios and what Cage did helps to corroborate that he actively equalised possibilities. For five notes, only four ratios are possible and, as such, these can be selected between via the tossing of two coins; Cage provides no distribution chart here, only the four possible ratios (1–​4, 2–​3, 3–​2, and 4–​1). Cage’s distribution chart for ten notes follows the same process as that for eight, in that the 64 I Ching possibilities are divided by more or less equal sevens (there being nine possible ratios for ten notes), but with a very gentle skew introduced away from an equal division: 1–​9 2–​8 3–​7 4–6​ 5–​5 6–​4 7–​3 8–​2 9–​1

1–​7 8–​14 15–​21 22–​28 29–​34 35–​41 42–​49 50–​57 58–​64

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Though the ratio finally selected is 6–​4, this is slightly curious, since the hexagram on the page which one would expect to refer to this is 61, according to its simple reading, or 8, according to its changed reading, neither of which fall within the 35–​41 range for a ratio of 6-​4. Any number of possibilities might account for this: the casting which provided the ratio of 6-​4 may be on another sheet (and, to be sure, there is no shortage of sheets in the Cage Nachlass containing unidentified and unidentifiable I Ching castings) or this 61 may determine the 4-​1 ratio of the five-​note aggregate, since Cage would hardly have needed a distribution chart to divide 64 into four equal areas. These are just two options amongst many. On the basis of these three sketches for composing means one can draw some tentative conclusions, which develop too the speculations earlier made regarding similar processes in Music for Piano and Winter Music. First, in each case, the means for composing takes the form of a set of pre-​conditions upon which operations are imposed. More specifically, the first stage is to determine the conditions against which notes will appear, then to determine the way in which those conditions will be divided (which is to say, how many notes could appear, followed by how many notes do appear), and then to inscribe those notes. A staff or staves may be a part of the pre-​conditions or may be later imposed over or upon a field of points which become notes. Second, and only where necessary, clefs are then added. Third, accidentals are added. Other considerations follow only after this point, such as modes of articulation, dynamics, the use of the pedal (and, indeed, duration, unless this has been implicitly determined within the previous operations), if they are determined at all. Since no other sketches of composing means appear within the sketches, these three notations take on a particular importance. Although as noted presently there is good reason to suspect that at least the element of notation D which is most closely related to notation B can be seen in a later distribution chart, the composing means proper for notation D are not given. Even if sketch material once existed for other notations and is lost, these three nevertheless form the basic material from which the piece is generated, and no other notations are, apparently, treated in the same way. Indeed, that a distribution chart, but no composing means, can be seen for notation D amplifies this possibility. Though highly speculative, one might well imagine that, having increasingly reduced the specificity of ‘composing means’ across just this page of three sets of instructions, Cage might have been able more or less to write directly into the score for subsequent notations or might at least have inscribed directly onto separate individual sheets which were then re-​inscribed into the score. Though any definitive statement on Cage’s process, especially his process after this stage, is fraught with

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uncertainty, the examination of the manuscript of the score that follows tests how well the evidence of that document supports or undermines what is hypothesised here. In any case, the implications of the priority given to these three notations on the second page of sketch materials principally dealt with here emphasise their centrality and their importance in giving rise to other notations in the piece. The second sheet, headed at the left-​hand top corner ‘change of composing means’, appears to show a number of I Ching distributions for determining whether a notation was to be a repetition of an existing notation, derived from an existing notation, or entirely new: ‘new’, ‘derived’, and ‘repeat’ are the single-​word indications Cage provides (fig. 2.2), which evidently refer directly, in the latter two cases, to variation and repetition in the form Cage had adopted from Schoenberg, as discussed in Chapter 1. There are two distinct distributions provided. The first, at the top of the page, provides an extremely heavy skew towards repetition and away from derivation, if it truly is an I Ching distribution chart. For ‘new’, a range from 1–​8 is given, for ‘derived’ a range from 9–​10, and for ‘repeat’ a range of 11 upwards is noted. Written above this are the numbers 9 and 11, in the same format seen for the generation of distribution charts—​which is to say that they are I Ching numbers used to indicate where ranges begin—​strongly suggesting that this is a repetition of the same method. Below both ‘derived’ and ‘repeat’, Cage writes ‘ABC’ and, below this distribution chart is a second, relating to this alphabetic code. ‘A’ has the range 1–​16, B 17–​28, and C 29–​64. There is, then, as with the first distribution chart, a heavy—​if less heavy—​skew towards the third element, there ‘repeat’, here ‘C’. After the letter ‘C’, appears a tick. At the bottom of the page, a second, more even, distribution is provided. Here, ‘new’ is allocated the range 1–​22, ‘derived’ 23–​50, and ‘repeat’ 51 and upwards and, again, the numbers 23 and 51 appear above denoting the beginnings of ranges, with their respective I Ching hexagrams. The letters ‘ABC’ are not appended directly to the words ‘derived’ and ‘repeat’ here, but to the right there is a second distribution chart for these letters. Here, almost identical to the distribution to its left on the page, ‘A’ has the range 1–​22, ‘B’ has 23–​49, while ‘C’ is given 50 (and, though there is no dash, presumably upwards to 64). Below the heading ‘change of composing means’ appear, in a column, the numbers ‘1’, ‘2’, and ‘3’. These, one presumes, refer to the three notations for which sketch material exists, which become notations A, B, and C in the score of the Solo. As such, one might expect that the ‘A’, ‘B’, and ‘C’ indicated on this page refer directly to repetitions and derivations of these three notations. There are ticks here, too: one next to ‘derived’ and one next to ‘B’.

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Fig. 2.2:  Second sheet of Solo for Piano sketch material A further notation on this page appears to be a further distribution chart for the number of aggregates in composing means 3. At any rate, it is identical in terms of process (though the letter C, for cluster, replaces the number 11), but here the I Ching distribution threw up two duplicate numbers, 41 and 59, which Cage interprets, as proposed in Chapter 1 in a different context, as leaving insufficient space for a range. As such, according to this distribution, an aggregate of 6 or 10 notes would be impossible. This distribution chart, however, contains the numbers one to seven written alongside various parts of the chart, including 2, 3, and 4, next to the range 12–​21, which indicates an aggregate of 3 notes:

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1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 C

1–​5  6–​11 12–​21  22–​37  38–​40  v 41 42–​52  53–​58 v 59–​64

6. 2.3.4. 1. 5.

7.

That this constitutes a second page and, more, that this represents a first page of Cage’s working on the initial conditions of the piece is, if not confirmed, at least strongly suggested by the simplest reading. By this stage, Cage had flipped his composing means and alphabetical code: ‘B’ here refers to the score’s notation B and ‘C’ to notation C. Though Cage did not tick ‘repeat’ next to the distribution chart at the top of the page, he did tick ‘C’ and the first notation to appear in the score, after the initial three, is a repetition of notation C, its only repeat appearance, in fact, on the first page. On the lower chart for ‘new’, ‘derived’, and ‘repeat’, the tick next to ‘derived’, then, would be the selection that what would become notation D would be a derived one. A tick can be seen next to ‘B’, which would be correct in this case too: notation D is, doubtless, a variation of notation B: on the evidence of this, Cage made fresh charts to determine whether a notation would be a new one, a variation of a previous one, or a repetition of a previous one, and, if necessary, which notation was to be varied or repeated, afresh on each occasion, even if sketch materials only provide the concrete details of these decisions for the very earliest notations. The distribution chart on the right-​hand edge of the page mentioned, with numbers which initially appeared perplexing, is thus explained since those numbers map very closely onto the number of pitches indicated in each of the aggregates of notation D: the second, third, and fourth aggregates are all triads; the fifth aggregate comprises five pitches; the sixth is a single pitch; and the seventh is an eight-​note aggregate. Oddly, according to this reading, the first event ought only to have contained four pitches, rather than the five which appear in the notation, and the manuscript gives no indication of any error or change of mind. However, as seen in the first instance of notation A above, Cage was perfectly capable of making mistakes of just this sort and

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the accuracy in the remaining six aggregates surely makes this a highly plausible way of explaining the chart. A last distribution chart, of the sort that one might, with caution, imagine Cage had use of on multiple occasions and with reference to multiple notations, though perhaps most obviously notation S, appears on the page, generated according to the same procedure as the others, for determining mode of articulation: 1–​16 17–​28 29–​32 33–​64

Noise Tone Pizz. Mute

I–​O K

Noise here indicates any sort of intervention inside or outside (I–​O) the piano which is not already accounted for through plucking or muting the strings, while K is regularly used by Cage to denote the production of pitches via the usual means of striking the piano keys with the fingers. The page contains, too, fragmentary notes which relate to pedalling—​three types of pedalling are specified, in what may be an abortive distribution chart—​and to frequency, amplitude, timbre, and overtone structure. This latter is not a distribution chart but, rather, the result of one, apparently. Frequency is determined as ‘not continuous’, amplitude as ‘not’, timbre as ‘yes’, and overtone structure as ‘not’. What, precisely, these may mean and to what notation they may relate is wholly unclear. However, they certainly add to the sense that Cage retained this sheet to hand throughout the production of the manuscript and, therefore, to the sense that his determinations of whether a future notation was to be new, varied, or repeated retained the regular use of the distribution charts which appear on this page, not least since there are no notations in which parameters of this sort are, at least obviously, deployed until notation BB appears on page 45, even though it is also possible to think that this, rather, frames a notation which determines timbre, but not amplitude nor overtone structure, and where pitch is not continuous.

The Solo for Piano manuscript Cage’s handwritten manuscript for the Solo for Piano is held with the John Cage Collection at Northwestern University. The manuscript appears to contain leaves written at two distinct stages. First, there are pages which seem to form parts of the original autograph. These pages often have a rather ragged left edge, as if, albeit quite carefully, torn from a large pad or roll of paper, or, especially on later pages, cut with a knife or scalpel along their left edge, only

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sometimes in a straight line and only sometimes at a precise right angle to the top and bottom edges of the paper.4 As such, these pages are of, if only slightly, varying size, even though they always approximate the dimensions of the final, published score, which is to say ca. 43cm (17 inches) by 28cm (11 inches). On these it is often possible to see pencil guidelines, often, though not always, underneath the ink of the score, fragments of paper which have been cut out with a scalpel—​to remove minor errors, to remove in some cases large pieces of explanatory text, and perhaps to remove marks like cigarette burns—​and correction fluid. Each of these elements provides hints about what Cage did and the order in which he did it. Nevertheless, it is hardly unusual for what seems like compelling evidence for one conclusion on the basis of one page to be apparently contradicted by the implications of another: simple, definitive answers are not available here. The second group of pages is quite different. Though correction fluid can be seen at points and there are, occasionally, small parts of the page cut out, these are both rather fewer in number and, significantly, the very large cut-​out portions which sometimes appear in the other set of pages do not appear at all. More tellingly, these pages contain no pencil underlay and the left-​hand margins of the page are neither roughly torn nor cut but, rather, are from a different source entirely: each of them has a perforated left edge and a straight imperforate right edge, suggesting that they have been carefully taken from a large-​scale pad. These pages are, as a result, always identical in size and shape. Both groups of pages seem to be written on paper of essentially the same weight, almost certainly the same translucent vellum paper Cage had used for Winter Music—​certainly it has the same vertical dimensions as that earlier score—​even if, for reasons that will be explained in the discussion of the preparation of the score for publication in Chapter 3, it is possible that some sheets of this second group are technically not vellum paper but, rather, clay-​ coated Morilla Cameo. Given that what appear to be pencil sketches later inked in appear uniquely on the paper with the cut left edge and that those sheets with the left-​hand perforations never contain pencil sketches (with the exception of publisher’s 4 

In mind of the way in which some notations begin on one page and continue onto the next, as if the whole score should be conceived of as a sort of continuous page, Michael Gallope has observed that ‘the score of the Solo is redolent of a Chinese or Japanese scroll painting, cut into shuffle-​able pieces of card stock’. That the autograph seems, in all likelihood, to have been inscribed precisely onto a roll of paper, cut into sheets of more or less the same size surely makes the already striking comparison yet more compelling (Michael Gallope, ‘David Tudor’s Esoteric Spectacle—​ Town Hall, 1958’, paper presented to the American Musicological Society, Rochester, NY, 11 November 2017).

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purple pencil on page  8 and what also seems to be a publisher’s note on page 50), that Cage wrote to Otto Tomek on 29 January 1958 to inform him of progress on the score, noting that, ‘having been completed in pencil, it requires being done in ink’,5 and that pages from the Solo were available for sale at the Stable Gallery in New York in advance of the premiere of the Concert for Piano and Orchestra and for a time afterwards, as discussed in Chapter 3, one might well presume that this second set of pages represents the copies Cage made of any original page which someone had purchased. It neatly accounts, too, for the fact that none of the very empty or blank pages falls into this category: if one were purchasing a page for display, these would presumably be those least likely to be of interest. In any case, they are empty of any sketch material; these are simply ink copies of the score with the occasional erasure of an error. Almost half the score of the Solo for Piano, thirty pages, falls into this category. This theory can be corroborated by reference to David Tudor’s copy of the Solo for Piano, which is entirely identical to the holograph held at Northwestern with respect to the apparently original pages and (albeit largely subtly) different in the case of the other pages, the copies: an examination of the third page, for instance, shows that in Tudor’s copy the vertical alignment of notes in notation F, for instance, is more accurate than in either the published version or the copies held at Northwestern, Cage presumably having made them, relatively speaking, in a hurry, so that buyers could take ownership of what they had purchased. In general, indeed, the alignment of notes tends towards the slapdash in these copied pages: a slightly different example may be seen at the top of page 11 where, in the copied version (and also, perforce, in the published score), for each of the first three notes above the bass staff of notation O, there seem to be what might either be ledger lines extremely close to the top line of the bass staff or reinforcements of that top line, such that they are, at least, not ledger lines. In Tudor’s copy it is perfectly clear that, in the first two cases they are not, but in the third case, the line ought to be read as a ledger line. Cage’s error is both compounded (and explained) by the fact that there is also a ledger line too many between the first note above the bass staff in the last of these three aggregates and the note above that. On page 8, the hexagon which overlays the lower staff of notation K is missing an indication of one of its notes in the published version of the score, a note which might

5 

Draft of letter from John Cage to Otto Tomek, 29 January 1958 (source: DTP). A typed version of this draft was added to the end of David Tudor’s letter to Otto Tomek, dated 6 February 1958 (source: WDR, folder 10668). It is identical in content, save that the date of 29 January 1958 is removed.

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be either a C or a D, which might in turn have been flattened or sharpened, or left without accidental: Tudor’s copy of the score shows it to be a C-​sharp. In other respects, however, the later copies are tidier: a rather scrappy ‘A’ on page 5 of Tudor’s copy is much more neatly inscribed in the later version, for instance. By and large, Cage seems simply to have traced his original pages onto fresh sheets of translucent paper, using a ruler for lines which were ruled in the original and redrawing freehand lines once more by hand so that they are extremely close, but not identical, to what he had original written. The only actual error as such—​remarkable in such a complex job—​may be seen in the continuation of notation BU on page 56 from the previous page. The second event in that notation on page 56 appears in the published score as an E-​flat, while in Tudor’s copy of the score it is clearly a dyad: a D-​flat and an F. On close inspection one can even see that the flat sign is slightly misaligned, and was clearly intended to precede a D rather than an E. Here, however, the error appears to have been introduced by Cage’s copyist: on the Photostat copies from before 1968, the dyad remains visible, the two notes elided together in later copies. Thirty-​three pages of the manuscript then—​pages 1–​2, 13–​15, 17, 19, 21–​23, 25–​26, 28–​29, 32–​37, 39, 41–​42, 44–​47, 49, 51, and 60–​63—​ represent Cage’s autograph score ‘proper’. Though the other pages are, near enough, identical copies in terms of the musical matter contained within them, they are naturally missing the sketching often implied by the pencil within the original pages. It is particularly unfortunate that the pages which are missing include such a large portion—​pages 3–​12—​of the earliest parts of the score, although doubtless many, if not all, of the missing pages survive in private collections.6 Curiously, since there is no apparent reason for this to have been undertaken, the version of the score held by Tudor has a different copy of the instruction pages, even though they are identical in content and formatting; the earlier version seems, simply, to have been written in a slightly lighter pen and, too, with a slightly lighter hand, though assuredly both hands are Cage’s. It is worth noting, too, that there exists another, incomplete version of the manuscript, held at the 6 

For instance, page 18 is a part of MoMA’s collection (see: https://​www.moma. org/​collection/​works/​33472, last accessed: 27 February 2017), while page 20 of the Solo for Piano was donated to Harvard University by Sarah-​ Ann and Werner H.  Kamarsky (see James Cuno, ‘Report of the Director’, Annual Report (Harvard University Art Museums) 2000/​2001 (2000–​2001), 11). Page  6 was owned by Betty Randolph Bean, who worked in the 1950s for Boosey & Hawkes and for the New York Philharmonic, ultimately becoming a Vice President of the former and Director of Press and Public Relations for the latter. The page was sold by Bonhams in New York City on 12 June 2018 for $18,705 (see: https://​www.bonhams.com/​ auctions/​24895/​lot/​194/​, last accessed: 14 September 2018).

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Paul Sacher Stiftung, which seems to have been acquired as a part of the Mauricio Kagel Nachlass: the copy is complete and, in fundamentals, replicates the original manuscript up until the eighteenth page.7 Its instruction pages are again different: unlike the final score they are typed and only include information up until notation W , which is to say information is provided for the eighteen pages which exist of this copy. They are also dated February 1958, a month earlier than the later, complete set of instructions. It is hard to account for this version—​although in terms of Cage’s process, there is not an especial need to—​but one possibility is that this is an early version provided by Cage to Tudor to enable him to begin work on his realisation without having to wait for a complete version, Cage himself needing to retain the original to have reference to notations he might be called upon to repeat or vary. Given that Tudor was a family friend of the Kagels and godfather to their daughter Deborah, it is far from inconceivable that the manuscript was, Tudor having no further need of it, a gift.8 One strong reason to imagine this to be the case is that Tudor’s own papers include an identical copy of the instruction sheet found within the Kagel collection in Basel, though unlike that one, it is neither signed nor dated. It is also important to note that, as mentioned in rather more detail in Chapter 3, as Cage prepared the score of the Solo for Piano for official publication in 1968, he employed the services of a copyist, Richard Herbert Howe, who would also work on HPSCHD (1967–​69). Before this point, what could be obtained from Edition Peters was a Photostat, rather than a cleaner, sharper diazotyped copy: Cage’s scores were only very slowly and laboriously moved over from the former to the latter. According to both Cage’s description of Howe’s work at the time and Howe’s own recollection, this work involved simply re-​inking any places where the reproduction process used to make copies before the score’s ‘official’ release had caused the ink to become discoloured or flake off or, in the case that a page had been irretrievably damaged, to take a tracing. It might be thought, then, that at least some of the pages taken here to be Cage’s copies of sold individual sheets are actually Howe’s later copies and indeed that Howe may have retouched some of the properly original pages. However, although the print is not as clean as the later version, the earlier Photostat printing of the piece is identical to the

7  It

contains, however, one very striking distinction, in that the dotted circles which seem to set the conditions of where notes appear in notation G are absent. However, given the mapping of notes onto circles is so precise this emphasises the likelihood that this manuscript is a holograph copy of Cage’s original. It does seem to have been, however, copied first in pencil and then, later, in ink. 8  Mauricio Kagel to David Tudor, 5 September 1960 (source: DTP).

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diazotype and different, in the case of each of the given pages, from Tudor’s copy, confirming that the copies found with the manuscript were almost certainly made in the immediate wake of the Stable Gallery sale.9 Slightly curiously, the page numbers written in ink alternate recto and verso positions, but on those sheets here thought of as originals ‘proper’—​ which is to say where the left-​hand edge of the paper is not perforated and where pencil underlies many, if not most, of the notations inscribed in ink—​ erased page numbers in pencil are always at the top right of the page. This evidently active decision to move to recto-​verso numbering is perhaps a result of decisions made for the initial Photostatting of the score: the Photostat versions of the piece available between 1960 and its transfer to diazotype were indeed bound conventionally and printed double sided, recto and verso. Nonetheless, this was clearly not what Cage had planned for: regardless of whether the autograph page number is odd or even, the left-​hand margin of the page is 4cm or thereabouts, while the right-​hand margin is roughly 1cm, suggesting that Cage had personally only ever really imagined the score being published in more-​or-​less the format it finally was in 1968. In fact, the manuscript contains a single recto even page number, though a curious one: for reasons which can hardly be explained, the ‘3’ of the final, sixty-​third, page appears to have been cut out and then re-​affixed in advance of the ‘6’. Given the sequential nature of the notations—​and that this results in the manuscript having two different pages both marked as page 36—​one can hardly imagine that Cage had ever had a serious plan to re-​order the pages, and in the earlier copy of the score held by Tudor the numbers have still not been transposed. In the published manuscript, in any case, the letters have been returned to their original positions: a close examination reveals that, in the published manuscript, the lower curve of the numeral ‘3’ is squarely cut off along its right-​hand edge, a part of the re-​positioning process. Inevitably, only a relatively small number of the actual notations within the manuscript can be dealt with in full here. The purpose of these detailed examinations is twofold: first, to use the manuscript to clarify where possible ambiguities which arise in Cage’s own outline of composing means; second, to educe what can be seen of Cage’s general working method. This examination will focus most especially on the earlier notations, since it is presumed, especially given the eighteen-​page fragment, that Cage did for the most part write the piece from left to right, as it were, with the notations more or less appearing in the order in which they were devised (notwithstanding repetitions of earlier notations) and it is hypothesised that Cage’s notational 9 

Email from Richard Herbert Howe, dated 6 July 2017; see also the discussion of the publication history of the Concert for Piano and Orchestra in Chapter 3, below.

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strategies were more exploratory at the earlier stages of the piece and settled into relatively familiar patterns as the generation of the piece continued: in short, as the notations themselves became less settled and more distant from the more familiar notations of the beginning of the piece, Cage’s own method became more settled and, to him at least, increasingly familiar. No less importantly, the manuscript examined more broadly enables some degree of speculation regarding how the notations were inserted into it, which is to say how such and such a notation appeared on such a such a page and not some other notation. Excavating these more general facets is hampered by at least two factors: first, the information the manuscript provides is discontinuous, since it interleaves both Cage’s autograph and a later copy (and, axiomatically, the copy that David Tudor owned, though almost exactly contemporary with the autograph, does not contain physical traces of Cage’s activities); second, Cage went to some efforts to kick over the traces of what he had done, such that one is often drawing conclusions on the basis of the faint residue of pencil markings which Cage himself rubbed out. In truth, to say that Cage wanted to conceal his tracks may go too far. As will become clear, the published version of the score for the Solo for Piano is, precisely, a direct copy of this manuscript. Without the erasure of these markings, it would not have been possible to use it in this way. Having re-​copied out so many pages already, both in preparing the putative advance copy of the first eighteen pages for Tudor and later recopying pages sold at New York’s Stable Gallery, Cage was assuredly well aware of the work that would be involved in making a ‘clean’ copy, notwithstanding the evident aversion he had, described in Chapter 1, to making fresh holographs if the autograph or some other existing holograph could be effectively repurposed. If the presumption that these copies were the necessary result of having sold individual score pages via the Stable Gallery is correct, those copies would certainly have been made before Cage signed to the Henmar Press imprint of Edition Peters in 1960.10 Doubtless the knowledge of the backbreaking nature of this work was one of the reasons why Cage employed a copyist even for the less intensive ‘touching up’ of the autograph prior to publication.

10 

David Tudor wrote to Karlheinz Stockhausen on 7 July 1959 (David Tudor to Karlheinz Stockhausen, 7 July 1959, in Misch and Bandur (eds.), Karlheinz Stockhausen in Darmstadt, 246) that ‘some new originals had to be made—​about 30 pages!’ and that this was the reason why Stockhausen had not yet received the piano part, which would feature in his 1959 lecture series for the Darmstadt Ferienkurse, ‘Musik und Graphik’.

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The earliest notations within the Solo for Piano manuscript The first notation, on the first page (fig. 2.3), given as notation A, is, as already mentioned, an entirely new one. One can clearly see here pencil markings beneath the pen for the majority of accidentals and for the clefs, as well as, in some cases, for ledger lines. By contrast, no pencil guides are visible for the biomorphic shape which determines the possible position of notes, nor for the notes themselves, nor the staff lines, although one can faintly see guide lines for six ledger lines below the upper staff and what may be a single one above. If this was all there ever was of these ledger line guides, then Cage must never have used them, since they would have been inadequate for the ledger lines actually deployed in the notation. Given the uniformity of the heights of ledger lines across the notation, it is much more likely that more guiding pencil marks at one point existed, but were erased by Cage. The outline of the biomorphic shape has, when attended to carefully, the slightly wavering stroke of freehand drawing, and there are two points at least where the line stops and restarts (though one of these, presumably, shows Cage’s starting point; most probably this is the point above the bass clef A-​ flat towards the far right of the notation). While it is possible that this would happen while following a pencil guide, the manuscript suggests it more likely that this was simply inscribed directly in ink, notwithstanding Cage’s implicit claim to Tomek that the whole score had first been written in pencil before ink

Fig. 2.3:  First page of the Solo for Piano manuscript

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was inscribed atop the pencil. Simply put, it cannot have been the case that Cage undertook the writing of the score in this two-​stage manner, even if some notations may have been first written in pencil and even if, by the later parts of the manuscript, biomorphic shapes, too, seem to have been often sketched in pencil first. In truth, as will be noted, Cage’s description of the writing of the instrumental parts should also be treated with some scepticism. In most cases, the note heads do lie precisely on the outline of the biomorphic shape, though occasionally they are more clumsily inscribed. There is little sense, however, that noteheads have been made larger in order to appear in the ‘right’ place, which suggests that, before those which do not lie on the staff were inked in, Cage must have known the location and spacing of ledger lines (and, moreover, the ledger lines are consistent in their spacing, even if not absolutely so in lining-​up their left-​and right-​hand edges). Though it is extremely difficult to assess with certainty, it appears as if the biomorphic shape itself was drawn on top of staff lines which had already been inscribed. On the basis of this, one might speculate that, in the first instance, Cage drew two uncleffed staves directly in ink and then sketched, freehand, the biomorphic shape over it. Though Cage could have marked in with pencil at this stage where noteheads were to fall, there would be no reason then for him not to have had the chance to place them carefully, precisely on the outline of the biomorphic shape, nor would one expect those noteheads not on the staff to have been inscribed quite so conveniently. Instead, it is most likely that Cage inserted ledger lines in pencil in the areas where the biomorphic shape extended beyond the staff, then inscribed noteheads up to the number the I Ching had determined (or, here, as mentioned, one more than that number)—​which occur at more-​or-​less equally spaced points around the biomorphic shape—​ before inking in the ledger lines. Although he did not ink them in until this later stage, Cage must necessarily have known how many ledger lines he was going to require and this is, too, hinted at by the relatively close mapping of the available space onto the space which would be required by nine ledger lines above and six ledger lines below each staff, following the same pattern as in Music for Piano and, indeed, notation C. In short, the biomorphic shape is a priori contained or constrained within the total pitch gamut area which Cage had pre-​determined within his means for composing. All this recollects, too, the brief discussion of the problematic order Cage described with respect to the insertion of ledger lines and noteheads in Music for Piano. It is, of course, perfectly possible that Cage also inserted the noteheads in pencil before inking them in (and indeed there is a hint that that might be the case in the notation’s second E above the bass staff and in the final E-​sharp of the same staff ) but, in any case, there is no sense that Cage had any uncertainty about the correct distances between noteheads in order to reach the correct total, even if he ultimately inscribed one too many notes: no other

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extraneous pencil markings appear, which might suggest an error in the mapping out of the positions of noteheads. Perhaps the apparently confident assurance in entering the noteheads is also indicative of why it was possible for Cage to inscribe one too many of them. Whatever the answer here, Cage assuredly entered clefs at some later stage, followed by accidentals:  both of these were inserted in pencil and subsequently re-​inscribed in ink. Although in most instances of notation A within the Solo for Piano, cleffing is conventional—​a treble clef for the upper staff and a bass clef for the lower—​the instance on page 49 reverses this convention and, on page 53, both clefs are bass clefs. Presumably, then, as Cage’s composing means suggest, though two staves are pre-​determined, the actual clefs were only decided upon after the noteheads had been inscribed. All that is noted here remains—​with the guidance of the manuscript—​ more-​or-​less visible on the published score. A small number of issues, relating to the text which precedes the notation, rather than the notation itself are not, however, evident from the score. As suggested, the change, mid-​inscription, of an 8 to a 9 remains obvious. However, no longer visible in that score, but relatively clear on the manuscript, is that the ‘16’ of notation A’s ratio was initially written, in pencil, significantly closer to the notation itself. Though the second part of the ratio can no longer be seen—​both numbers have been erased, the latter more thoroughly—​this would have meant that the ‘9’ would in part have overlapped with the clefs. No original position for the letter ‘A’ can be seen, though it would be likely to have been directly underneath where the ratio ‘16:9’ appears in the published score, accounting perhaps for its invisibility. Whether Cage ever really intended for the ratio—​or indeed the letter which relates to this notation—​to appear so close to it is unclear: it would have been possible, and numerous later notations find themselves closed up in this manner; equally, Cage generally favours a small gap between the letter and the notation to which it refers whenever space is no object and, in other instances of notation A within the rest of the piece, one sometimes finds the ratio relatively closer to the staves, even if never so close as the pencil markings suggest it might have been here (the ratio, too, is sometimes moved so it is below the letter ‘A’). Moreover, it is not unusual in general for the letters which indicate a particular notation to have been rather larger and less stylised in pencil before they were inked over. On a broader scale, a more precise meaning of Cage’s ‘within a prescribed area’ from his composing means can be educed from the two faint horizontal pencil lines about two staff heights above the upper staff and about one-​ and-​a-​half staff heights below the lower staff respectively. The prescribed area Cage refers to, then, is in this case not simply the total gamut of the piano his instruction might suggest but, rather, a physical area of the page sufficient to encompass such a range. No vertical pencil markings can be

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seen, such as might indicate a beginning or end point for the notation. This is not the case for every notation, especially later on in the score, and such specific indications for areas will be attended to in the case of several individual notations as well as more generally. However, there are also seemingly manuscript-​wide issues related to the determination of beginning and end points of notations, which will be considered as a whole. A large, almost teardrop-​shaped excision has been made in the sheet below this letter and its associated ratio. In this case, it is not at all obvious why such a large cut would have been necessary: it is large enough to account for a second small notation although not quite large enough for, for instance, the stain from the bottom of a coffee cup to have been cut out. The manuscript’s first notation B, though, shows what matter was almost certainly initially there. To the left of this notation, beginning more or less in line with the bottom of the notation’s single staff, can be read—​in almost, but not fully erased pencil—​‘see Winter Music for directions’. On its own, one might presume this to be a sort of aide-​mémoire, though given the brevity of his description of the composing means, surely Cage required no such nudge to recognise the notational style of his own most recent piece for what it was. Instead, as becomes clear from a more comprehensive examination of the manuscript, at some point Cage had seemingly intended to have the instructions for each notation provided next to the notation, and it is, in this context, evident that what has been cut away from near notation A on page 1 was precisely the description of what to do to realise the notation. Why Cage made this change is not obvious, though it is clearly the case that some of the instructions he ultimately wrote would have taken a great deal of space on the page—​the full instructions for B, rather than this cross-​reference to another piece which appears in the manuscript, would doubtless have reached down to the bottom of the sheet—​and, moreover, having to find the first instance of a notational paradigm within a sizeable score on each recurrence would have been far less convenient than the index which was Cage’s final solution. Since Cage does not himself repeat the relevant instructions on each appearance of the same instruction, a pianist would have needed, at the very least, to have made his or her own index of the first occurrence of each notation. In short, there are several sound practical reasons why Cage may ultimately have rejected the idea of having instructions within the score pages themselves, though his concern for the visual elegance of the score doubtless additionally made the elimination of text from it a significant aesthetic decision. The reference to Winter Music as a part of the second set of instructions makes it implausible, however, to think that Cage was initially guided by the idea of the score as a sort of wholly self-​sufficient artefact, that he felt himself somehow averse to the idea of referring the pianist to an explanation which could only be found somewhere else, even if—​given that the score was first

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and foremost directed towards Cage’s longest-​standing collaborator, David Tudor, who had premiered Winter Music and played it on many occasions—​the instruction simply to do what the earlier score demanded could have seemed even clearer than the detailed directions notation B finally received in the index of the Solo for Piano. In other respects, the version of notation B on the first page reveals only a little that might not be asserted on the basis of the expectations aroused by notation A, and emphasises the continuity with the earlier piece the means for which it reproduces. Pencil markings can be seen beneath clefs and the majority of accidentals throughout the notation, placed at essentially the same points where they are inked in. Unlike notation A, there seem to be pencil sketch lines beneath the notation’s single staff and, at the end of the continuation of the notation on the subsequent page, one can even see that Cage’s pen initially overshot the end of the staff in the case of the next-​to-​top line and has been erased: within the published score one notes, with this information in hand, that this line of the staff ends much more bluntly than the other four, each of which obviously stops at the natural end of a left-​to-​right pen stroke. Above the last aggregate of the page one can see part of a largely erased horizontal line in pencil, in parallel with the lines of the staff. Presumably this marked out the top of the available area of the notation, as was suggested in the case of notation A, where these lines are more obvious. The function of such lines becomes yet clearer in later notations, as will be detailed further. Though it is hard to see, it appears that the ledger lines too were sketched in in pencil first; these guide lines can only be seen, however, in the second two ledger lines below the 6-​4 aggregate, and then very faintly. Such pencil markings appear only underneath the ledger lines inscribed in ink; if there were more general guides for ledger line positions at the beginning and end of the staff, such as those which might assist in positioning a ruler, these have been comprehensively erased. There are several starker distinctions. First, and most banal, a pencilled ‘B’ can be seen directly beneath the inked-​in version: there was no change of thinking about the position of text in this case. Second, and much more notably, it seems that at least some of the noteheads were first written in pencil before being overwritten in ink. At any rate, there is assuredly some marking beneath—​if they were being read in the treble clef—​the D-​sharp on the staff and the C-​sharp just below it within the 6–​4 aggregate. What is visible on the manuscript can even be dimly seen within the printed score: what seems to be a very minor smear appears beneath both notes. Though one might presume, then, that these were simply the result of a slight slip of the pen, not only does what appears here look more like pencil—​compared with the ink of the noteheads—​it can also be quite straightforwardly accounted for: in

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both cases, there is also a note in the space below the notes mentioned, a C and a B-​sharp, again if reading in the treble clef. The pencil marks here are actually just two points, which, in fact, mark the positions of these two latter notes. The pencil is not properly inked over by the notehead, as it is in all the other cases, because their proximity to other notes insists that be moved to the right, in accordance with standard rules of music engraving, reinforcing the speculations made regarding the inscription of noteheads in Winter Music in Chapter 1. As there, that these two are visible implies that Cage positioned each individual pitch for an aggregate with a small pencil dot before inscribing them, perhaps ensuring thus that the correct number of ledger lines was deployed, reminiscent again of the potential issue in this area, discussed with respect to Music for Piano in Chapter 1. The displacement of the accidentals—​and that the pencil markings which underlie them are consistently in exactly the same position as their inked-​in counterparts—​ suggests that Cage had indeed inscribed the noteheads of the aggregate in ink before determining accidentals. As notation B continues overleaf, one can see that—​if each notehead receives a pencil marking—​Cage does also have a tendency to inscribe in ink a little above the points made in pencil. As a part of the first aggregate of notation B’s continuation on page 2 of the manuscript, a small point in pencil is clearly visible nearly in the centre of the C space in the middle of the staff. This has seemingly been raised, once inked in, to become the D which appears in the manuscript. As in the first case, this D is offset to the right of the other notes of the aggregate, which accounts, as there, for why it remains visible: if the notes appear in the lined-​up aggregate, the ink covers over the pencil points. It is wholly impossible to tell what may once have been there, but below the first page’s notation B, there is a patch of diagonal scraping which has removed the surface of the paper without cutting through it. It is too small—​ in total it takes up the same sort of area as the aggregate with the ratio 6-​4 which appears in the notation itself—​to have ever been anything enormously significant, and the darker, roughly notehead-​sized patch in the middle of the scraping seems, on closer examination, to be nothing more than an imperfection in the paper. Such scrapings occur reasonably regularly throughout the manuscript and, in truth, investigations elsewhere are often no less inconclusive than here.11 However, one which appears at the end of this first instance 11 

Cage often used corrasable, which is to say erasable, typing paper, which had a coated surface which, as such, could be removed, albeit only once, allowing for corrections of this type, such that a process of this sort would have been well known to Cage, even though this paper was, as noted above, translucent vellum paper which does not have such a coating, which accounts for the visibility of these scrapings here

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of notation B, on the subsequent page, within a centimetre of the end of the staff, both because of its location and, because it is an almost precisely vertical scraping, may delete a pencil line which marks off the end of the area into which notation B was to fit. A less carefully erased horizontal pencil line marks off the top of the area and ends more or less at the point at which the vertical scraping begins. The implications of this—​in essence that behind the surface of the manuscript are boxes of various sizes into which notations are placed—​is one which will be, if not confirmed wholly, certainly very strongly strengthened as a hypothesis in examinations of further notations. As noted, a speculative description will also be given of at least some of the means by which Cage determined where these boxes would begin and end. Given the richness of what can be said regarding the first two notations of the first page of the manuscript, what is revealed by notation C is comparatively little, if, to be sure, far from without interest. A small cut-​out portion of the page just to the left and below the first notation C’s identifying letter presumably contained the notation’s simple instructions: ‘M = mute. P = pizz. All single tones’. Certainly it is exactly the right size to have enclosed this piece of text. As in notation B, one can clearly see that the lines of the staff were sketched in in pencil first, before these lines were overwritten in ink. Again, like that notation, one can see similar pencil markings beneath ledger lines and accidentals, as well as this notation’s own ‘M’ and ‘P’ indications. It is not obvious that the letter ‘C’ was first written in pencil, though it may be simply that the pen covered over this in toto, or that Cage was more assiduous in his erasing than usual. None of these issues is especially revealing, nor should they raise many eyebrows following the examinations just made of the manuscript’s first versions of notations A and B. There is, however, an additional matter of note.

and the damage they do to the page. The damage at least is not such that it appears in reproduction, however. Cage’s copyist appears later to have been aware of such problems and, thus, made use of a sort of vellum, Morilla Cameo, which did have a similar characteristic to corrasable bond. Further details are outlined in greater detail below, as is a description of the way in which such translucent paper is particularly amenable for reproduction via the Ozalid process, a fact Cage was clearly well aware of. He apparently composed holographs from quite an early stage, at any rate from the late 1940s or early 1950s, in mind of what would make their publication most straightforward. He would doubtless have been aware, too, that the coating of corrasable bond made such paper the bane of publishers since it also increased significantly the likelihood of ink smudging, as depicted in Stephen King’s Misery (Scribner: New York, NY, 2016 [1987]), 76–​81.

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In both versions of C on the first page—​which is to say, in the complete set of appearances of notation C within the Solo for Piano—​additional pencil points can be seen which were not inked in as noteheads, similar to those noted in respect of notation B. The first can be seen within the ledger lines for the C-​flat, which is the second note of the lower staff of the first version of C on the page, occupying the space which, if inked in as a notehead, would have been an F. Another appears above towards the top of the lower staff ’s A space, above the muted C below the same staff about two-​thirds of the way across the notation. This can be dimly seen in the published score too, though in the reproduction process it has turned into little more than a smudge. A third appears just after the next note within the notation: the point in pencil is just above and to the right—​within the B space—​of the A below the lower staff. Several further of these points are visible, almost always in extremely close left-​to-​right proximity to a notehead which has been inked in. One reading of this might be that, in fact, these mark paper imperfections and, as a result, the left-​to-​right position of where noteheads should appear, but that the actual pitch of the note does not necessarily appear at the point indicated. This is, though not impossible, quite a stretch: one would at least expect the pencil points which are not inked in to map more closely onto the positions of the noteheads which have been inscribed in ink, even if they might not be perfectly precise. It would also, perhaps not incidentally, add in an additional and unnecessary step into Cage’s process. It would also necessitate that the paper imperfections Cage marked appear on the manuscript itself, but there is no obvious reason from examining the paper to think that the paper of the manuscript is any more imperfect at the points where pencil can be seen than anywhere else and, in any case, the examples of Music for Piano and of Winter Music suggest that the translucent paper which Cage used for his autographs was not the paper on which imperfections were generally found, these appearing, presumably, on a sheet underneath more-​or-​less transparent paper, onto which they would be traced. It seems surely more likely that this represents an example of Cage’s willingness to intervene in the strict letter of his process when that process insists upon a result which is impractical: each of these points is so close to another note that it would have called into question—​notationally at least—​the central instruction for the notation: ‘all single tones’. What appears to be an actual guide point for a notehead can be seen in only one case, the G-​flat above the lower staff, a little over a third of the way into the first C notation. In the published score this appears as a tiny rightward flick out from the notehead, but in the original manuscript it is clearly a separate point. Notably, this point is not in pencil, but in pen. One implication of this might be precisely that the pencil points that Cage deployed were first re-​pointed in pen before being inked in as noteheads. This would, to be sure, allow Cage a moment of

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reflection in order to avoid clashes of noteheads or ambiguities which might result from their appearing in too close proximity to one another. Cage was assuredly keenly aware of the problems of such proximities in this notation in particular. The C-​sharp below the lower staff which is a little after the midway point of this first C notation was, according to the manuscript, intended to be a D-​flat, which can be seen from a pencilled flat sign intertwined with ledger lines between this note and the A-​sharp which immediately precedes it. There would have been, just about, enough space for this flat symbol to have been inked in, but it would have been rather more cluttered than the solution Cage ultimately opted for: he changed the note into a C and displaced its sharp symbol to the left of both notes. There are, moreover, points within this notation where clutter could not be avoided, as in the A-​flat which is the last note below the upper staff of the notation, the accidental of which overlaps to quite some degree with the note’s ledger line. The second page of the manuscript (fig. 2.4) shows the beginnings of the first—​in the last case the first and only—​occurrences of the next three notations: D, E, and F. Before each of these, beneath the letter indicating the notation, can be seen the instructions for performing that notation, originally written in pencil and imperfectly erased. In the case of notation D, a similar problem appears to have arisen for Cage as in the case of notation A, in that the instructions which finally appear in the legend at the beginning of the score are rather longer than those which Cage had space to write in here. What would have appeared in the score, had Cage stuck to his initial plan to keep instructions next to notations, would have been

Fig. 2.4:  Second page of the Solo for Piano manuscript

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only the first sentence of the score’s full instructions, which is about a third of the total, final text. In essence, Cage would have provided a pianist with enough information to know that notation D was related to notation B, but not how to deal with the differences which are, as outlined in the analysis in Chapter 6, significant and wide-​ranging. The instructions planned for notation E were also slightly different from those in the legend, though they are more comprehensively erased, such that, although that they differ is obvious, specifically how they differ is harder to assess. Certainly, if in modified form, the first two sentences of the final instructions appeared here, while the second half of the instructions appear not to have done. One of the two missing sentences of those instructions—​‘[t]‌he notes having a single stem are to be arpeggiated (up or down)’—​appears to replace the single-​word indication ‘(arp.)’, which was written in pencil in the centre of the beam of the first set of notes in the right hand. Tantalisingly, in the erased instructions one can read within the pencil ‘as in’, but it is neither possible to read what aspect of the notation is to be so read, nor the other notation (or piece) which would then determine how to treat that aspect. Given that this notation, like A, determines note positions via a biomorphic shape, one possibility might be that this instruction once told the pianist to play pitches around the biomorphic perimeters given, opposing the final score’s instruction to ‘play notations from left to right’. Since one might expect that the default position—​at least in the absence of indications to the contrary—​would be precisely to play from left to right, that Cage mentions it at all hints at the possibility that he is, here, writing this in contradiction of his own earlier thinking. This suspicion is heightened since this is the one part of the final guidance that definitively does not appear in the manuscript. In most other respects, the notations on this page fall into familiar patterns:  pencil underlies a great deal of the ink, including letters and numbers wherever they appear, clefs and accidentals, the brace between the staves of notation F (though not, or not obviously, the similar brace in notation D), the ‘LH’ and ‘RH’ markings which divide the given pitches between the left and right hands in notation E, and guidelines for stems and beams in the same notation. Pencil can be seen to underlie, too, the staves in notations D and E, though notation F seems to have had its staves inscribed in ink directly, unless the inscription of ink on pencil was unusually accurate here. As in notation A, the biomorphic shape which is used in notation E was written without any initial pencil sketch:  the other thicker lines and the noteheads of the notation exhibit the particular iridescence which ink gains when inscribed directly onto graphite, while the line of the biomorphic shape

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itself has the dullness of ink, even India ink, directly drawn onto paper. The layers of inscription too can be seen, in that the staff lines were evidently drawn in first, the biomorphic shape drawn upon them, and then noteheads, stems, and beams added. Cage determined the position of the beam for notes below the staff after having drawn in all of the necessary stems: one can see that the stems overreach the line of the beam quite regularly, whereas at the top no such extended lines occur. Having already pre-​determined where the upper beam would have to lie would be a natural consequence of having first determined the maximum upper extent of the notation and, indeed, a faint horizontal line in pencil—​about a centimetre above the upper beam and more or less in line with the bottom line of the bottom staff of notation F, which appears above notation E at the end of the second page—​is visible just at the beginning of notation E, running from a centimetre and a half or so before the letter E itself through to more or less the point at which the first notehead appears. Other than this, the horizontal line has been largely erased. Confirming the sense that, conceptually and practically, this marks part of the perimeter of a box into which notation E is inserted, at the left end of that horizontal line, a vertical line in pencil is also evident, which proceeds in dashes nearly to the bottom of the page. A further vertical pencil mark is directly in line with the start of the staff and, presumably, indicating where that was to take place before the staff was inscribed. The line mentioned, which marks out the top of notation B, as continued onto page 2 from page 1, also lies at a point roughly equidistant below the very lowest markings in notation D and above the very highest markings in notation F. A similar vertical mark, though one with a rather different function, can be seen between the second pair of clefs on the lower staff of notation D—​each staff having clefs functioning like the double clefs of Winter Music or notation B—​which seems to be there to assure their perfect alignment with one another. Such markings to align clefs do not otherwise seem to appear: either they have otherwise been thoroughly erased, which would seem unlikely given the sheer volume of pencil markings which have survived, or there is some other reason for the appearance of this guide line here. One rather mundane, but plausible explanation, is that the set of clefs immediately preceding these, on the upper system, are in fact rather poorly aligned, the treble clef some way to the left of the bass clef, and Cage felt the need to ensure the error was not repeated. This would mean that, even though each staff is in a sense independent—​notwithstanding the additional instruction Cage gives for arpeggiating aggregates, each staff is individually, like notation B, a version of Winter Music, such that in a sense two versions of Winter Music are overlaid upon one another here—​Cage still wrote the whole notation from left to right, rather than inscribing each staff in turn.

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Later notations within the Solo for Piano manuscript As noted, it is then not until the thirteenth page of the score that another of the original manuscript pages appears, with the two subsequent pages also originals. There is here—​in a continuation of notation S from the previous page which finishes on the following page, before a page devoid of notations—​little that has not already been seen in the first two score pages: pencil underlies the ink of the notation throughout in a way which does not deviate from the earlier work. Nevertheless, the writing is evidently more assured and confident. Even though, for instance, ledger lines are still underpinned by pencil guides, the guides themselves are much less obvious because they are seemingly of a more consistent length and position. The sense of this page is that Cage is, by this point, much clearer and more secure in what he is doing, adding to the sense that the pages of the score are written—​which is also to say composed, in both senses—​ essentially in order. Relatively clean though the autograph is, correction fluid is used at numerous points within the manuscript, often in situations where the most likely explanation for its use is that it prevents the reproduction of material Cage had already endeavoured to remove from the score—​it overlays several pieces of text originally written in pencil and already imperfectly rubbed out—​or, with gentle irony, paper imperfections which would become amplified by the reproduction process. At other points, small pieces of the manuscript have also been nicked out with a scalpel, or something similar, perhaps for similar reasons. On page 8, crosses in non-​reproducing blue pencil can be seen, marking out the top and bottom end points of notation K, as well as corresponding top and bottom points almost the full length of the notation again before the point at which that notation starts on the page, presumably to assist with alignment in the reproduction process somehow. A bar and line, leading to a circled A, appears at the left-​hand side of the page, apparently marking out the left margin. The same non-​reproducing pencil can be seen on the upper right of page 50 of the score, with the encircled, and rather cryptic, remark: ‘Focus 43 p. 69’. These uses of non-​photo blue are obvious interventions on behalf of the publishers, but it is not inconceivable that some or all of the correction fluid may be theirs, removing matter which caused the score to reproduce imperfectly, just as some of it may be the work of Cage’s copyist. The former possibility would help to account for the use of correction fluid over matter which Cage had already erased and perhaps accounts for why some pencil marks are erased and not others: only some of the underlying pencil marks were still visible once the manuscript had been copied; others were faint enough simply to vanish as a natural part of the reproduction process.

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The likelihood of this accounting for at least a healthy proportion of the erasures in correction fluid increases with the juxtaposition of several features:  first, correction fluid sometimes appears not over Cage’s markings at all, but over creases in the paper, or where such creases have become browned (given that most of these points are untouched, this additionally hints at such points being, in some sense, particular issues, such as those that might be revealed by a reproduction process, not obvious from the examination of the manuscript on its own terms); second, correction fluid appears on both sorts of sheet: the originals and the copies; third, on a single occasion—​on page 25, before the continuation of notation AA from the previous page—​a piece of text is deleted through the use of correction fluid in handwriting which is certainly not Cage’s (though it is also not from the hand which wrote on page 50): it is not wholly legible, but the central two words appear to read ‘correct staff ’. It is not, naturally, in non-​reproducing pencil. The implications of this are, again, that the published score for the Solo for Piano was directly duplicated from Cage’s manuscript copy, not only because of what appear to be the direct interventions of more than one person other than Cage working towards tidying up the score, but also because some of Cage’s changes and corrections can be seen in the final version, once one is aware of their existence. A rather neat corroboration of these can be seen on page 49, within notation BK, where, just above the lowest note below the lower staff, within the filled-​in biomorphic shape which implicitly covers over staves and ledger lines alike, one can still see in the published copy of the score the pencilled ledger lines which were used as guides in the manuscript. Indeed, in the manuscript copy numerous other pencil guides can be seen which are not visible in the final score, further stressing the notion that wherever possible the reproduction process itself would be used as a way of reducing the presence of such sketch markings (and suggesting an avoidance, where possible, of the blunt tool of correction fluid). That these ledger lines are horizontal strokes with a field of vertical lines filling in a biomorphic shape means that erasure through any sort of scraping of the paper may simply have been impossible and correction fluid too imprecise. By and large, what appears on the pages outlined is replicated throughout the manuscript, though there are sometimes subtle shifts. For example, on the first appearance of a particular notation, a version of the instructions for how to perform it appears. These are erased with varying degrees of success and, on many occasions, the erasure is covered over with correction fluid. On occasion, the cut-​outs which were deployed on the first page for the same basic purpose of deleting instructions re-​occur, apparently eliminating the instructions for notations X, Y, and Z on page 19. Here, however, notation Y, covers almost all the bottom section of the page, to the extent that it would

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have been impossible for even relatively short instructions to appear in their usual place, below and a little to the left of the letter which identifies the notation, and instructions for notation Y are quite extensive. They were, from the shape of the cut-​out, written above the notation, and took up some two thirds of its left-​to-​right dimensions on the page. Importantly, this suggests that Cage did not, as a part of the process of deciding how notations should appear on the page, consider that it would be necessary to leave space for notational instructions. Even though the location of these is basically consistent, the position and shape of the notations clearly took priority, which is to say these were surely wholly determined first, and the instructions were never regarded strictly as a part of the notations. That the insertion of instructions alongside notations is consistent throughout the score additionally suggests that it was a comparatively late decision on Cage’s behalf to move the instructions into an index at the head of the score and, presumably, not related to the relative inconvenience of having to fit instructions into the space left over once notations had been inserted or having to abbreviate those instructions. To be more faithful to the probable sequence of events, one might rather say that, cryptic though they sometimes remain, the fuller instructions in the index at the start of the score for the Solo for Piano are able to provide richer information than when they had to fight for available space within the manuscript, against the higher-​priority notations. In the continuations of both notations AB and AF from the previous page, the area which encloses the notation has, even more clearly than the examples already given, been delineated in the form of a box, inscribed in pencil, the pencil markings later being erased with correction fluid. Both these notations give some sense of Cage’s priorities in the drafting process, in particular that these boxes, in their vertical dimensions at least, even at this stage—​Cage having now created more than thirty distinct notations—​still retain the basic idea that the top and bottom of notational areas are fundamentally measures of a total potential pitch gamut. The beginnings and endings of these areas are bound here to staves, with the boxes closed for both notations precisely at the end of the single staves allocated to each. AB utilises numbers—​evidently straight I Ching castings—​to indicate dynamics while AF uses a system of ambiguous clefs, in which an upper clef indicates the clef in which the pianist should read the notation for his or her right hand, while the lower is for the left hand. As a result of this, and the density of dynamics in AB, in both cases these additional pieces of information are normally positioned just outside the indicated area allocated to the notation. Though space is left between areas to allow for this, this does mean that the sort of cluttering of additional information that can be seen here is a relatively likely result of the process on a notationally busy page. This is perhaps even starker in the proximity of the dynamic numbers below notation AB and the numbers to indicate the passage

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of time above notation Y—​which had, as mentioned, begun on page 19 and finishes just below this notation AB—​since the format of the two sets of numbers is similar. Nevertheless, the version of notation G which begins on this page has neither upper nor lower limit markings, simply a vertical pencil line (again, erased with correction fluid) to mark the left-​hand edge of the staff. On the following page, page 22, a similar vertical line will mark its end. Notation AA represents a further version of the approach in that, though it is essentially a complete box like those used for notations AB and AF, in those two cases they are both open at their left edges, indicating their continuations from the previous page. By contrast, notation AA is enclosed within a box with all four edges on page 21, even though it continues onto the following page. The same is essentially true of the continuation of the notation on that page, even though it continues yet further onto page 23, although the version of it on page 22 is marked out by what seem more like elongated square brackets: the top and bottom borders of the pitch gamut do not extend all the way along the notation and it does not appear as if they ever did. Notations AB and AF then have areas mapped out as continuous across two pages, while notation AA is split up into three chunks, one for each of the pages on which it appears. As noted, in the earlier pages of the manuscript, where areas were similarly delimited, there was a tendency both to mark out a total area for the notation as well as some markings within that which might determine matters related to the staff or staves which that notation necessitated. There is no absolute consistency here, but in broad terms Cage seems to have moved from ensuring there was space for the complete notation—​including the letter which indicates it, any letters or numbers which the notation might have required, time or pedal markings indicated through brackets, and so on—​to one which essentially took the staff to be the basic measure of the notation: on the first two pages, for instance, the total space occupied by all elements of notation B seems to have markings to denote its extent; by contrast, the same notation, when it appears between pages 34 and 36, has an erased border which surrounds the area only of the inscribed staff—​in the left-​right dimension—​ and the total pitch gamut, reading from top to bottom. On only one occasion can this be seen to have caused any genuinely significant spatial problems where, on page 38, notations literally overlap with one another at their top and bottom extremes. Though this page is not one of the original manuscript sheets, it is evident that this is a consequence of the way Cage appears in general to have been measuring out notations. That said, though, as will be detailed in full, it is possible to make some steps towards understand how the left-​to-​right density of notations occurs in the Solo for Piano, understanding vertical density is less simple. To be sure, notations retain the same staff size almost without exception on each occurrence, even if they are compressed or

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expanded on the horizontal plane and, as such, a certain density of notations on a page is reasonably likely to produce a situation like this one at some point. Yet here, the three fresh notations which appear on this page, AU, AW , and AX, presumably could in some respects have been different (and, to be sure, it is these three which are, as it were, the spatial ‘troublemakers’), unless there were relatively strict criteria determining what was possible for derived notations (and these three are all, surely, derived notations rather than wholly new ones). Nevertheless, two of these—​AU and AW—​are already written using one of the smallest staff sizes which occurs within the Solo for Piano and, since the other notations on the page, which continue from the previous page, were perforce predetermined as far as their vertical size was concerned, one might suspect that here, in particular, Cage was forced to reckon with the consequences of the sum total of his predetermined set of possibilities in this respect. Little more can be said on this matter on the basis of the evidence of the manuscript, however. In the earliest pages of the score, Cage appears to have drawn biomorphic shapes—​and perhaps curves in general—​essentially freehand, directly in ink. By page 21, the curved lines which gather together clusters of notes in notation AF are certainly sketched in pencil. Of course, part of the reason for this is that, here, the notes are inscribed first: the loops and curves later come to link groups together, rather than groupings being a result of inserting points and noteheads onto a pre-​existing shape. By contrast, on the same page, the imperfect circle of dots in notation G appears never to have a pencil guide. If the apparent absence of any guiding marks for the circles is held to demonstrate that no such marks ever existed, then Cage must have written out the instance of notation AC which appears between pages 21 and 22 before making a start on notation G in order to know not to ink in the top of this circle. This might simply mean that Cage wrote each page from top to bottom. It might equally suggest, surely more plausibly, that each notation was inserted from left to right on the page on which it began and that that notation was written out in its full span, even where that involved continuing onto one or more succeeding pages. This would be the implication, as suggested, of the fact that notation C on the first page of the score, notwithstanding that letter, is the second to appear, left to right, and was generated via composing means ‘2’. Naturally this would also suggest that Cage had some significant knowledge of the durations of notations in advance and was, as a matter of course, working across multiple pages at once. The manuscript provides some evidence for this, as will be outlined. On that subsequent page, page  22, the version of notation M which appears shows biomorphic lines, however, which seem to have been generative

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of the noteheads which are inscribed at their intersections: the imprecision of the intersection of lines with noteheads, as at the second G in the bass clef, is suggestive of some tweaking of the position of the notehead in order to place it ‘correctly’ on a line or in a space, while the intersection of lines is unsurprisingly a little less precise. As such, this would be a reversal of the generative freehand biomorphic shape of the very first notation and, indeed, later versions of notation A, such as that which begins on page 45, have obvious pencil sketches for the biomorphic shapes which give rise to noteheads. Cage appears, in this sense, for whatever reason, to have become more cautious as the score proceeded, in contrast to the general trend towards increased confidence. Even where lines were not apparently generative of anything before the pianist began to work with them, as in notation BC on page 47, one can see that a pencil sketch underlies the seeming freehand of the biomorphic lines of Cage’s notation. It may seem particularly curious in the case of this notation, since the resulting lines are amongst the scrappiest within the score. Ordinarily the guides do provide a means of ensuring the gracefulness of the ink in the final score. One of the obvious implications of this, and indeed a great deal of the preceding discussion, is that, notwithstanding the sketch materials relating to composing means and the possibility that further sketches of a similar type once existed and are no lost, principally Cage generated the notational materials of the Solo for Piano as it were ‘live’, directly onto the page. In general, this seems the inescapable conclusion of the evidence of the original sheets of the manuscript, especially given the forms of correction undertaken on the page. Nevertheless, it is certain that this cannot have been true for every notation. This can be seen in the case of notation BW , beginning on page 53 and, in a sense, continuing on page 54. The notation is a graphic one, consisting of three dots and three projected planes. The circumspection of ‘in a sense’ is necessary because the notation does not continue but, instead, re-​ starts on the following page. Moreover, it re-​starts not in the sense that Cage merely begins re-​drawing it, but in the sense that it begins again absolutely identically: the lines and points find themselves in precisely the same positions. In order to achieve this level of precision—​and indeed to account for the seeming error—​it seems most likely that notation BW was initially notated on a separate sheet and then traced into the manuscript. A second example of this can be seen examining notation BG across pages 47 and 48, which begins on the former page and then begins again, identically, on the latter. One might wonder, then, whether a number of the more graph-​like notations were, similarly, traced from pre-​existing source materials into the score, just as Cage would, not long afterwards, trace copies of his manuscript pages before handing the originals onto buyers. Indeed, of course, the act of tracing was

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absolutely integral to Cage’s process more generally, as seen in the examples of both Music for Piano and Winter Music in Chapter 1. On the presumption that notations B and C truly do represent repetitions of those earlier scores, it is surely reasonably likely that Cage had been tracing at least imperfections into the autograph score for the Solo for Piano from a heavier sheet of paper below it from the outset. The twin pianos of notation BT, also on page  54, represent another likely candidate for this approach; similarly, the Feldman graph notation which is the matter of notation AY, on page 40, would doubtless have been most easily inscribed into the score had it been first written on graph paper, the graph paper then placed below the Solo for Piano manuscript, and the notation traced in. More potently, this suggests that it is at least conceivable that versions of many of the later, mobile Cage pieces which appear in fixed versions in the Solo for Piano—​such as CC, which recurs as Fontana Mix—​should not be considered as necessarily being later at all. Potentially, this mode of tracing suggests that the materials necessary to produce such pieces necessarily already existed and had to in order to create the notation which was traced into the Solo for Piano manuscript, meaning that in a certain sense, pieces like Fontana Mix predate the completion of the Solo for Piano except for the fact that Cage had not, as yet, decided that these composing means could be treated as separable, just as Music for Piano and Winter Music were. Extrapolating from this, the materials for Variations I would become paradigmatic of such relationships since, of course, Variations I is a derivation of, or a version of, notations BB and BV, or, equally, vice versa. Notations BB and BV would, then, have been created with the Variations I materials, rather than those materials being spun out of the notations. This would have the benefit of making it possible to guess that—​given the dedication to David Tudor ‘on his birthday’—​on the score of Variations I that Cage had reached the point of inscribing at least one of these notations into the score of the Solo by 20 January 1958, which might, too, allow some estimate of the rate at which he was producing pages, since he wrote to Otto Tomek just over a week later that the score for the piano part of the Concert was ‘nearly completed’. If the preceding claim is correct, then that means that Cage would have reached, at the earliest, the forty-​fifth page on 20 January and, at the latest, the fifty-​third. One might imagine, then, that his work was progressing at somewhere between ten and twenty pages per week, more likely the lower end of that range, at least by the stage of having developed a good sense of how the piece was to be written. That said, as he noted to Tomek, he had only completed inscribing the part in pencil; it required still to be redrawn in ink, and when Tudor passed on Cage’s note to Tomek on 6 February, he suggested that Cage had ‘just begun inking-​in the solo piano part’, which would imply that the lower estimate of Cage’s progress

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on 20 January might be close to the mark.12 Even if this was only partly true, doubtless some notations on some pages, perhaps especially the later ones, had not yet been inked in at all. Since the page of instructions which precedes the Solo is dated 27 March 1958, one must presume, at any rate, that the inking was complete by this date. Such speculations are bolstered a little by the way in which it makes it possible to understand the otherwise cryptic addition to the dedication that the piece is for Tudor’s birthday, but somehow ‘tardily’: this would make perfect sense if the materials were indeed fully complete for inscription into the Solo for Piano on that date, but only transformed into Variations I, as such, afterwards. It is worth noting, in this context, that the materials retained by Tudor as the score for Variations I are not on transparencies, as the later published score would be, but rather on thin, translucent paper, and are inscribed in pencil.13

Structural decisions and dimensions As already mentioned on several occasions, the manuscript suggests, in several distinct ways, that Cage, before inserting notations into the page, must have had some sense of their horizontal and, albeit in a sort of varying sense, vertical dimensions. Any particular traced version would, of course, only be usable on a single occasion, unless the space occupied by that notation were always to be the same, which is not the case in, for instance, notation BG, which, as well as its appearance across pages 47 and 48, recurs on page 63. In any case, the idea that some sort of independent process pre-​determined the length of notations is surely implied by the sense that the boxes which contain notations necessarily pre-​exist the notations themselves, on the page at least, but also by a closer examination of what happens when notations are repeated within the score. Simply, on the first appearance of each notation which exists in multiple versions it appears to take an essentially 12 

Draft of letter from John Cage to Otto Tomek, 29 January 1958 (source: DTP); David Tudor to Otto Tomek, 6 February 1958 (source: WDR, folder 10668). 13 Nonetheless, Cage’s For Paul Taylor and Anita Dencks, which Cage implies in his programme note for the piece was written using notation BB, was completed in September 1957 and premiered on 20 October 1957 (see John Cage and Richard Kostalanetz, John Cage: Writer (New York, NY: Cooper Square, 2000 [1993], 56). This would seem to require the notation to have existed significantly earlier than is posited above, though the piece seems more like a liminal stage between notations AC and BB, which would mean the notation was, by contrast, a development of it. Moreover, if Cage did trace notations into the score of the Solo for Piano, then such notations were perforce first written earlier than the point at which Cage copied them into the score.

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common-​sense form in relationship to the shape and scope of information presented, while on subsequent iterations information regularly finds itself enormously compressed or expanded in ways which cause issues of legibility or, seemingly, of inscription. One thinks, for example of notation O, which is well spaced and, thus, eminently clear on its first appearance on page 10, yet is already tightly compressed on its re-​occurrence on page 27, such that the biomorphic lines which position noteheads might, if the available pitches were not already tightly compressed by another part of the notation, have become challenging to read. While its next instantiation, on page 42, is much like the original in terms of readability, the final version, which appears on page 58, presents an impossibly compact version of the notation, with lines and noteheads clustered into such a tiny space that enormous care is needed to read them accurately, or at all. Not only that, but accidentals are clustered below the notation in wholly unconventional form. To be sure this is not always the case: notation G is essentially always easily legible whereas, even in the first instance of notation E, there is some uncomfortable spacing. Nonetheless, there is a general trend which suggests that while Cage controlled to some degree the sensible distribution of information on the first appearance of a notation, he did so according to the dimensions of that first appearance: for instance, even if the number of attack points available within a particular notation were determined strictly via an I Ching casting on each occasion, the first appearance might cause Cage to delimit this in particular ways. If he did not make such a delimitation, he was evidently then committed to take the same approach on subsequent appearances, even when this meant that a notation would become stretched out far beyond the number of notes it contained or so tightly compressed that establishing which notes were which would become a significant challenge. This also suggestively puts a limit on Cage’s operations: he must, it seems, have had a system which determined the lengths of notations successively and that must have been undertaken at the very least several pages in advance of inserting notations. Nonetheless, he cannot have known in advance the detailed specifics of what this system would demand. In short, one might hypothesise, a system might well be one which would determine where notations might begin and end on a page (and, implicitly then, how many of those events would take place on a page) as well as whether the notations would be new ones, derivations of existing ones, or repetitions of existing ones, but perhaps not which notation would be repeated or from which the fresh notation would be derived. Although the system in full cannot be re-​ captured, the manuscript points towards at least some of its aspects, which can be read productively in dialogue with these hypotheses. Across the top of most of the original sheets of the manuscript can be seen letters—​always in pencil, normally quite carefully erased, such that they

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are often very faint indeed—​which appear to mark numerous score events, typically the starting or ending point of a notation—​sometimes understood as the beginning or ending of a staff or sometimes as the point at which the complete area, including the notation’s letter indicator, begins or ends—​ though in the early parts of the manuscript there also seems to be a small number of markings which note the points at which pitch content begins with a particular notation (fig. 2.5). Sometimes these letters have subscript or superscript numerals accompanying them and very occasionally, in the early pages of the manuscript, arrows appear between letters. Inevitably, no such markings ever appear on the pages of the manuscript which appear to be later copies and the discontinuity that results is one of several reasons why it is hardly possible to discover the precise operations of Cage’s system. A second reason is that Cage seems to have been more concerned to remove the traces of this part of the process than any other, such that it is wholly plausible that there were other letters within the manuscript at one point which cannot now be seen. Large parts of this process, then, are simply not recoverable. Wherever both letters can be seen, throughout the manuscript if a letter indicates the beginning point of a notation, the same letter will indicate the end of that notation. This includes, too, the presence of a subscript or superscript number. The first point at which this can be seen is on page 19, where a small ‘A’ is positioned at the starting point of notation Y. Two pages later, a further ‘A’ marks the end of the same notation. Across pages 28 and 29, ‘B’ marks the beginning and end of notation AP, while a further pair of ‘A’s indicates the range of notation AD on page 33 and two ‘B’s carry out the same role for notation S on the following page. ‘A’s and ‘B’s perform the same functions for later instances of notation Y (with an end point on page 39)

Fig. 2.5:  Letters faintly visible above notation 49A within the Solo for Piano manuscript

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and notation S (across pages 42 to 44) respectively. Similarly unambiguous examples can be seen in the latest pages of the manuscript: ‘A5’ is used to indicate the beginning and end of notation BM on page 60; ‘B1’ works in precisely the same way for page 61’s notation CF. Nonetheless, as well as there being points at which a missing page makes assertion of this as a universal impossible, there are numerous examples where an opening or closing letter is simply missing or where all that can be seen is a vertical line. On one occasion, on the second page, a right arrow seems to be aligned with the end of notation B. All this might denote a more complex system than the preceding discussion would suggest or, equally well, that these are points where letters have been successfully erased. It is also worth noting that the use of arrows does not persist beyond page 17 and can only be seen at all on that page and the second page. If arrows were intended to mark out continuations of notations or the final point to which they continued, this was seemingly abandoned in favour of the system of pairs of letter indicators which persists through the score in general terms. Importantly, though where both can be seen the same letter almost without exception begins and ends any particular notation, the same letter does not necessarily persist on each later reappearance of a notation. The version of notation AA which begins on page 21 and ends on page 21 has, like the preceding notations, two ‘D’s which mark these point. When it appears on page 29, its start point is marked with an ‘A’. One might, initially, take it that this suggests that, whatever ‘D’ may mean, ‘A’ means for Cage that the notation that appears under an ‘A’ must be a repetition of an existing notation. Yet, earlier in the score, on the second page, an ‘A’ also indicates the beginning of notation ‘F’, a notation which neither exists on the previous page of the score nor in any previous piece by Cage. Even in the case of notation AA, that a later end point, on page 44, is marked with ‘C1’ ensures one cannot imagine that a notation is pinned, as such, to any particular letter. The idea that the letters ‘A’, ‘B’, and ‘C’ in the manuscript can be regarded as having the same fundamental purpose as the letters which describe composing means or which, which might in turn be one and the same thing, determine whether a notation is ‘new’, ‘derived’, or a ‘repeat’, is surely most fatally undermined by the presence in the manuscript not only of the additional ‘D’, but also, more rarely, the letter ‘O’. Where it can definitively be said to appear, however—​at several points it is difficult to say with certainty whether the faint marking in the manuscript is a ‘C’ or an ‘O’—​the letter ‘O’ has a curious function, which certainly suggests that its purpose is quite different from the other four letters. For instance, the ‘O1’ which appears on page 19 coincides with an internal dividing line within notation Y (the line which appears above the second ‘6’ within that notation), while a further ‘O1’ on page 26—​just above and to the

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left of the numeral ‘40’, which appears in notation J on that page—​does not obviously line up with any event on that page. In general, ‘O’ seems to indicate something other than the area of notations, which doubtless accounts for Cage’s use of a letter outside the ordered A, B, C, and D. Nevertheless, a marking of ‘O2’ on page 28 does seems to indicate the end of notation W , even though no mark is visible for the starting point of that notation on page 26. It is, of course, neither inconceivable that the starting point was simply rubbed out by Cage nor that page 28’s ‘O’ ought to be read, rather, as a ‘D’ or even, if less plausibly, as a ‘C’. It is also the case that, on rare occasions, other letters seem to denote similar things: on page 36 it appears that ‘C1’ marks the beginning and end of the notes in notation H, while independently ‘B2’ marks the end of the staff (and another less legible indicator, perhaps an identical one, even though the numeral appears to be subscript here) marks the start of the same staff. One must presume that the subscript and superscript numbers are significant, but it is not possible to assess precisely what their purpose is. There are, for one thing, relatively few of them and that relative paucity of examples makes it even less straightforward to assess whether there is any useful distinction to be made between sub-​and superscript. Although on page 2 what appears to be ‘A9’ can be seen (and this does not appear to mark any particular event on the page, unusual for the letters A–​D), other than this the numerals run from 1 to 5. An obvious theory, but probably erroneous, at least in part, would hold that these numerals are used simply to distinguish different, otherwise identical letters from one another, such that if ‘B’ were expected to mark the beginning or ending of more than one notation on a single page some way of distinguishing between the differing functions of those otherwise identical letters would be useful. Although something of the kind may be a part of the purpose of these numbers, where the theory can be tested it seems to fall short. For example, on page 37, the letter ‘B’ indicates the beginning and end of notation Z but, within the span of that same notation appears another letter ‘B’ which coincides with the start of the same page’s notation AD, although this is written as if in a higher row than the other two letters, which does distinguish it to some extent. It is, perhaps, not implausible to suggest that the sub-​and superscript numeral were introduced as a way of making such distinctions, but that, first, the process was not as rigidly followed through as it might have been in its ‘pure’ form and, second, that the accretion of multiple levels of this process made it, as points, relatively difficult to keep track of. Nevertheless, the final two letters with accompanying numerals—​two instance of ‘A5’ on page 60 and two of ‘B1’ on page 62—​where there is no possibility of confusion with other notations suggest that, if this were a part of the purpose of these numerals, it was assuredly not their sole purpose.

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The format of these indications, however, is reminiscent of several earlier scores, perhaps most immediately, Williams Mix, in that, there, descriptions of the sonic characteristics of particular sounds were captured by an upper-​case letter—​from A to F—​followed by a set of lower-​case letters, representing the ‘controlled’ or ‘variable’ characteristics of a sound’s frequency, timbre, and amplitude.14 To be sure, the lower-​case letters are hardly identical to the sub-​ and superscript numerals which appear in the Solo for Piano manuscript, but the format is similar enough to make one believe that a relationship might exist between the two or, at any rate, that the earlier piece might give some clues to what sort of planning process might have been likely to give rise to the presence of these letters in this manuscript in the form that they appear. Hypothetically, one might imagine that Cage started this aspect of planning the background structure of the Solo for Piano—​an aspect which would be that which would define the number and density of notations—​ with thinking familiar from not only Williams Mix but also the earlier Music of Changes, Two Pastorales (1952), or 34′46.776″ for a pianist and 31′57.9864″ for a pianist in that the Solo for Piano would comprise a number of layers of material, perhaps in principle four—​A, B, C, and D—​but evidently with some caveat that events could occur in any of these layers even if something were already present, which is to say, layers could be laid on top of one another. One might see a forebear of such thinking in the division of the string instrument according to the four layers of its four strings (layers B, C, D, and E in 26′1.1499″ for a string player, not least given that, in that piece, two different forms of layer—​denoting bow pressure and noises (layers A and F, respectively)—​were available, suggesting a distinction analogous to that which obtains between the four principal layers and ‘O’ here. The use of the letter ‘O’ alongside the other four letters, however, points towards a more specific continuity with piano music written for David Tudor, and for Cage himself, which is to say 34′46.776″ for a pianist and 31′57.9864″ for a pianist and one not with score but with sketch. As Pritchett observes, ‘in the graphic scores for these two pieces’, which is to say the rolls of graph paper on which the two pieces were sketched, most of which survive within Tudor’s papers, there are notations at the beginning of each phrase that may relate to such a vertical structure. In 31′57.9864″ for a pianist, at the start of each phrase appear the letters A to D, each followed by a pair of numbers (e.g. ‘51/​61’). In 34′46.776″ for a pianist, similar notations occur, but with only the letters A and B. The letters may each refer to one superimposed part, and the pair of numbers following the letters (which are all in the range 1 to 64, except for the various occurrences of ‘0/​0’) may refer to a 14 

See Pritchett, The Music of John Cage,  90–​91.

Sketching the Concert for Piano and Orchestra  :  99 partitioning of the I Ching for that superimposed part in that phrase. If these two numbers do represent an I Ching partition, then this triple-​division would be further reason to believe in a division of events into single, aggregate, and constellation types. The periodic occurrences of ‘0/​0’ would then represent an inactive layer. In any case, the use of four layers in  34′46.776″ for a pianist and only two layers in 31′57.9864″ for a pianist, along with the different scales of time measurement in the two graphic scores, would make the former work (the one intended for David Tudor) more virtuosic and more demanding of the performer than the latter.15

Of course, the specifics are hardly identical, and what is read here as the letter ‘O’ is read by Pritchett, albeit in a different source, as the number ‘0’. It would also, surely, represent some sort of development of the earlier system—​itself very imperfectly understood—​since in none of the cases which can be seen in the manuscript of the Solo for Piano is a pair of numbers visible. Nonetheless, the commonalities are great enough that surely it must be a strong possibility that the device which structured layers in the two prepared piano pieces from the Ten Thousand Things was re-​used, in some form, here. Naturally this possibility can remain no more than conjecture—​no archival evidence is available beyond these rather neat correlations—​but it would hardly seem implausible that Cage would have retained a mode of thought that had served him well in writing large-​scale pieces until only recently before the composition of the Concert for Piano and Orchestra, notwithstanding his specific—​and perhaps anxious—​refutation of the possibility in the programme note for the piece: ‘There is no rhythmic structure nor is a page a separate unit.’ Moreover, it would surely add to the suspicions outlined in Chapter 1 that a scheme of similar sort might also underlie Winter Music in some form. Even if this were how Cage constructed a large-​scale formal outline plan for the insertion of notations into the manuscript, that there is no evident correlation between types of piano material in the score and the letters which outline their physical locations in the manuscript means that it is most likely to represent a sort of plan for the dispersal of materials—​perhaps precisely of different types, as in Williams Mix—​across the score which was abandoned on those terms. Nevertheless, if Cage had generated a perfectly effective density map of activity across a certain number of score pages—​ possibly even the 63 that the score finally comprises—​there would have been no reason not to continue to use that density map even if it were sundered from whatever materials may once have been intended for it. Speculative The Development of Chance Techniques, 284–​85. As the end of the quoted passage suggests, Pritchett has initially substituted the two pieces for one another: it is in the sketch for the slightly longer, and significantly more challenging, piece that the letters A to D appear, with just two letters in the shorter, simpler one. 15 Pritchett,

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though this assuredly is, it does have the benefit of accounting for the seeming independence (and pre-​determination) of decisions about both size and density of notations in the score proper, as well as offering some explanation for the presence of letters in the score which is grounded in Cage’s existing practice. Moreover, it would elegantly mean that these larger structural decisions exhibit characteristics like those identified within the means for composing and, potentially, in selection of notations on pages, in that this background structural layer would represent a set of pre-​conditions upon which here the notations, rather than the operations, are imposed, even though here the two processes are wholly different from one another, rather than the underlying duplication of types of process which appear in the other two cases.

Sketching the instrumental parts As in the case of the Solo for Piano, sketches for the instrumental parts are limited, falling into two principal categories. First, there are two Vanity Fair lined composition books, which contain pages describing instrumental techniques and, occasionally, contact details for performers, pages of I Ching castings, some of which can be related to the distribution of particular techniques within some of the instrumental parts, a number of essentially cryptic distribution charts regarding the arrangement of instruments and the relationships between them, and, at the end of the second book, a draft of the programme note texts for the 25-​Year Retrospective concert at Town Hall at which the Concert for Piano and Orchestra premiered and transcriptions of the alto flute part for the fourth, fifth, and sixth of the Six Short Inventions (1935–58) which were also featured on the same programme. Second, there are several sketch pages for specific pages of instrumental parts. Sketches exist for pages 5–​10 of the flute part, pages 5–​8 of the bassoon and baritone saxophone part, and the first two pages of the tuba part (fig. 2.6).16 These equate to pages 109–​ 10 (tuba), 137–​42 (flute), and 149–​52 (bassoon and baritone saxophone) of the final, published parts, which have continuous page numbers from part to part, running from page 1, which appears within the first violin part, through to page 184, which is the last page of the trombone part. In each case, two pages of the final part are compressed onto a single page of sketch. There are also sketches of various degrees of scale and completeness for parts which do not appear in the final selection of instruments within the piece:  one

16  Cage

insists on ‘baryton saxophone’, in a more direct anglicisation of the French saxophone baryton.

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Fig. 2.6:  Sketch page for the Solo for Tuba for clarinet doubling bass clarinet, and three additional violin parts, which would have taken the total to six.17 Some of these pages indicate at least some of the page numbers they would have had in the continuous run: the Like the Solo for Piano sketch materials, these too are held within the John Cage Music Manuscript Collection at New York Public Library (JPB 95-​3, folder 249 for the composition books and folders 250–​56 for the instrumental part sketches), with the exception of three pages. The one-​page sketch for the seventh and eighth pages of the Solo for Flute is not held within the John Cage Manuscript Collection at New York Public Library, but rather at the National Gallery of Art in Washington, DC, as are 17 

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fourth violin part would have included the range from pages 187–​88 and 191–​ 98, the fifth violin part would have included page 206 and pages 215–​16, the sixth violin part would have spanned, in total, pages 217–​32, and the bass clarinet pages 233–​44. On the presumption that these string parts were, like all the others, intended to be sixteen pages long each, then the range of the fourth violin part would have been pages 185–​200 and that of the fifth pages 201–​16. Despite Cage’s claim in his letter of 29 January 1958 that ‘[t]‌he other parts much simpler in character will be done directly in ink’, the sketches are written in pencil.18 Cage’s future tense implies strongly that he had not, at that stage, begun work on the instrumental parts at all. Either, then, these were written at very significant pace in the bare month and a half left after the completion of the Solo for Piano on 27 March or part of the reason that such a long time had passed between Cage’s claim to Tomek on 29 January that the Solo was nearly complete, in pencil at least, and its reaching a finished form was precisely because the inking in of the Solo and the composition of the instrumental parts was undertaken in tandem. In either case, pressure of time is surely one good reason why incomplete parts exist.19 In general, each page of these sketches has on it five hand-​drawn staves, although on some pages of the incomplete, unused parts only the top and bottom lines of the staves are drawn in or there is simply a bracket where the staff would begin. The implications of this are several: first, that Cage knew where staves would appear, that, as the sketches suggest, they appear at predictable, regular intervals along the page, but that, second, he did not actually insert them until later. The unfinished parts also, naturally, contain Cage’s process up until a certain stage, so that at least those elements which were decided earlier and which later can be gauged. In short, these incomplete sketches all contain pitches of the same variety which appear in the final parts, which is to say not only small, medium, and large noteheads to be performed at the indicated pitches, but also the use of artificial harmonics in the three additional violin parts, and the noteheads below the staff, and

two other sketch pages (pages 187 and 188 of the fourth violin part and for pages 215 and 216 of the fifth violin part), for parts uncompleted and unused with the Concert. 18  John Cage to Otto Tomek, 29 January 1958 (source: DTP). If Cage is taken at his word in this letter, he had not begun work on the parts at this stage and, as such, may only have been projecting what he expected to be the case. 19  As outlined in fuller detail in Chapter 3, at the point of Cage’s letter to Tomek, he was not as yet aware that time was at such a premium, expecting a first performance of the piece in the autumn of 1958 in Cologne. Once the decision was made to have the premiere in New York, and so early as May 1958, Cage may well have altered the way in which he had structured his working schedule.

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attached to it with a stem, which indicate that a noise is to be produced either using some extended instrumental technique or via the use of some auxiliary device. Pitches have a range of accidentals applied to them. However, this is the sum total of the content of what would have been the sixth violin part. The clarinet doubling bass clarinet part is identical, save that seven notes have the marking ‘fl ’ above them. This is written as ‘flutt.’ in the clarinet part which is a part of the ultimate instrumental resources of the Concert for Piano and Orchestra, but both clearly indicate the use of fluttertongue. On the five pages of the sketch, this marking appears regularly on pages one and three—​the second page having but a single notehead on it, indicating a noise below the staff—​but not at all thereafter. This distribution suggests that it was, precisely, in the insertion of this technique that Cage broke off the part. That only this indication exists in the part suggests, too, that Cage inserted each technique deployed in turn, perhaps with some sort of hierarchy, such that impossible combinations of technique were outlawed from the outset. With such a hierarchy, that would mean that some techniques—​like fluttertongue in the clarinet part—​would take priority over others; without it, individual instructions in the instrumental parts would be liable to be nonsensical. In the analysis of these parts that follows, precisely such issues of playability arise and, as such, seem to hint that Cage’s path lay between these two: certain impossibilities appear to have been ruled out, while others slipped in. As will be explored in more detail, the extant clarinet part is, indeed, arguably the part which contains the greatest number of instrumental infelicities of this type, although many issues are resolved once it becomes clear that, involved with the jazz community of late 1950s New York as Cage was in preparing the instrumental parts, he anticipated a simple system clarinet, which results, when attempting to play the part on a modern instrument in numerous instructions appearing significantly more counterintuitive, contradictory, or confused than they really are. This important context for the piece will be outlined in further detail. None of the incomplete parts has a clef at any point: this is hardly unexpected in the case of the violin parts, since none of the complete violin parts contains a clef either; because the clarinet part doubles the bass clarinet, a clef change is conceivable but, in truth, also unnecessary, although the clarinet part which Cage completed for the piece has a treble clef throughout. Nevertheless, the incomplete clarinet part does contain regular markings—​vertical lines drawn from above to below the staff—​which show where the clarinettist would have been expected to change between their two instruments: the same markings are used for the same purpose in the published parts, as well as indicating, for instance, a change of tuning in the string parts or, surely most ambitiously, a change of reed (albeit an optional one) in the final clarinet part. Perhaps unsurprisingly, though noteheads

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which indicate some unpitched noise in the completed clarinet part always have a description of precisely what sort of noise is expected, in this incomplete part, only the noteheads themselves appear and, unlike in that final version, only below the staff, rather than both above and below. In at least one case, Cage’s sketch is more specific regarding the deployment of noise than the final part: where simply ‘whistle’ appears in the published version, Cage’s sketch suggests, instead, ‘acc. whistle’, which is to say ‘accessory whistle’, which removes the ambiguity that straightforward whistling might be implied (although, to be sure, the introductory notes mention the former, but not the latter). A further shift may be seen in the flute part in that, in the sketch, Cage makes use of a staccatissimo symbol to indicate the diaphragmatic push which is ultimately notated through the inking in of hairpins: the symbol appears in the sketch always just below the hairpin. What would have been the fourth violin part appears to be fully notated, containing all of the elements which appear in the ostensibly complete parts, save that the staves of the second of its four pages are not drawn in. As a result, there is little additional that might be asserted about any order of the events of Cage’s process on the basis of it. It is perhaps the most curious of these sketches in its completeness, however: though it is in the form here only half the length—​four sketch pages—​of the other string parts, there is no obvious reason why this part was not, in fact, used within the piece or why it would be so thoroughly written out only to be abandoned. Much the same might be said for the putative fifth violin part, save that that, though complete in and of itself, is even more fragmentary in terms of its scope, comprising a single sketch page, equivalent to two pages of the published parts. In simple terms, Cage’s method is essentially a repetition—​if modified, not least by the sheer number of additional performance techniques available to and directly specified for each part—​of the process deployed for writing Music for Piano: a certain number of imperfections are marked and inked in with points on a sheet of paper. These points have a staff laid over the top of them, with the addition of ledger lines for points which fall above and below the staff, but within the range of the instrument. As suggested, though Cage did not write staves in until a later stage, he did sketch in on each page he used, possibly before marking imperfections, the top and bottom points of where staves would ultimately lie. In a useful correspondence with the Music for Piano pieces, the sketches for these instrumental parts of the Concert for Piano and Orchestra show Cage actually marking imperfections and, definitively, marking them on a type of paper of heavier weight than onionskin or vellum paper, as will be discussed further. To carry out this process of inserting ledger lines without error, it would have been necessary in the cases of instruments where clef changes were a possibility, or where a change of instrumental doubling changed the available

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range of pitches, to know before inserting these ledger lines when those changes occurred. The sparse sketch for a clarinet part doubling bass clarinet does, indeed, show a page on which the vertical line indicating a change of instrument has been inserted, though staff lines have not (although, as noted, a bracket does mark out where the top and the bottom of the staff would have appeared had Cage ever inked it in). A point below the bottom of the available range—​but before the fixed point at which the highest available notes of the next staff down began—​would always become some sort of noise. As noted, in some of the final parts, noteheads above the staff were also capable of indicating noises: the rule there seems, too, to be that a notehead will have that function if it is higher than a given pitch. Though the noteheads already appear in even the sparsest sketches in three sizes—​small, medium, and large—​beyond knowing that this must have been an early and a fundamental decision, these instrumental pages offer no further hints as to how that decision was taken. Cage is not methodically precise in his approach. The imperfections marked do, without further intervention save to add any necessary ledger lines, become the smallest noteheads, as such positioned within the sketch at the precise point they were marked. The transposition between sketch and part suggests that these positions are accurately maintained. The intermediate size of notehead is simply inked in within the sketch materials, such that one cannot tell whether there is any consistency in whether the point inserted to mark an imperfection falls at the left-​hand edge or the centre of a notehead, or at any other place within it. However, on the basis of the largest noteheads—​in the sketches these are open noteheads, rather than the large closed noteheads Cage used in the final parts—​there is no reason to presume a systematic approach: the marked point always becomes a part of the inked-​ in notehead, but sometimes it is at the top of the notehead, sometimes at the bottom, sometimes towards the left, and sometimes towards the right. Cage is also, as a consequence, inconsistent in the relationship between marked points and the pitches they indicate: for instance, if a point appears above a staff or ledger line, it might belong either to that line or to the space above, its distance from that line not, seemingly, a factor in making that decision. These notations suggest, too, that artificial harmonics do not, or do not simply, constitute a sort of change of sonic type for Cage, since the point which indicates where these notes should fall always appears at the sounding pitch. Taking the violin parts as exemplary, all notes which require six or more ledger lines above the staff are written as harmonics. Nevertheless, it appears too that theoretically any note above the staff can be written as a harmonic, down to the limit case of the instrument’s lowest G-​sharp. As such, though there is nothing in the sketches to describe a process for determining this, one must presume that, above a certain pitch level, Cage determined in advance

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that the note must be taken as an artificial harmonic—​and, as will be noted in richer detail, this may very well have been a stricture Cage imposed on the basis of what he had learned from performers he was working with, perhaps even from Anahid Ajemian, by this stage one of his most long-​standing collaborators—​but that between that point and the lowest possible artificial harmonic, that mode of production would also always remain a possibility. As such, one might well imagine Cage to have devised the instrumental parts with a rich—​if perhaps quite rigid—​sense of constrained possibilities. Each note of the three parts which do finally appear as a part of the completed piece has appended to it—​almost always above and in very close proximity to the note—​a number from .3 at the smallest to 6.7 at the largest. These numbers increase in size from the left-​hand edge of each staff to the centre of the staff—​in these three parts vertical lines can be seen towards the top and the bottom of each page marking out precisely this point—​and then begin again. As noted, the sketch contains one page for every two of the final part and, equally, one staff for every two of the final part. The purpose of these numbers, then, is to note, in fractions of an inch, how to transplant the positions of notes from the sketch into the part, on a scale of 1:2, where the staves of the parts would be 7 inches wide.20 None of the incomplete parts contains such numbers since, presumably, they never reached the stage where it was possible to consider turning them into parts ‘proper’. Cage assuredly never intended these sketches to be used as the parts: this transposition from sketch copy to ‘clean’ copy was surely intended from quite early on, unless Cage found himself surprised by the number of imperfections he was marking or, more properly, their density, since he appears to have written next to the abbreviated instrument names in the top left-​hand corner of three sketch sheets the number of imperfections he was to mark: 45, 39, and 14 for the respective pages of flute sketch, 30 for the single page of tuba sketch. The other sheets do not contain this information. It is most likely that these numbers were the result of a straight I Ching casting. The sketches are all written on corrasable bond: largely Cage used the best-​known brand, Eaton’s, but sheets of Eagle-​A and Macadam also appear. Plausibly the particular surface coating of this paper—​as well as its raison d’être, enabling the erasure of a single layer of ink—​made it particularly amenable for the marking of imperfections. Cage appears to have had a strong preference for it in these sketches while he used translucent

20  Although

measuring in inches, the unit beyond the decimal point is not an eighth or sixteenth, but a tenth of an inch: the numerals which follow the decimal point run exclusively from 1 to 9. Cage’s ruler, then, was presumably a decimal one, perhaps an engineer’s ruler, like the one David Tudor often used.

Sketching the Concert for Piano and Orchestra  :  107

paper, either vellum or onionskin, for any manuscript he expected to be reproduced: one wholly plausible conclusion on the basis of this essential repetition of the compositional means for Music for Piano, though extended, in the light of what was discussed in Chapter 1 would be that corrasable bond was, precisely, the type of paper on which Cage had always marked imperfections. Certainly, the surface coating emphasises the grain of the paper in ways which are, quite physically, tangible. Just as real specificity regarding translucent paper evidently concerned Cage, it is surely no less reasonable to expect that a composer concerned with the discovery of natural paper imperfections would select for a paper type most likely to enable that activity. Of course, it is also the case that there is a key difference, in that there is no reason to suspect that the page proportions of any of the Music for Piano pieces were ever re-​cast on the same scale of 1:2 as the instrumental parts seem to have been. In any case, the absence of sketches for most pages of the complete parts and for most parts in toto suggests that a great many additional materials may well be missing from the extant sketch materials for the Concert for Piano and Orchestra and the nature of only some of these can be inferred from what does survive. The two composition books mentioned earlier—​alongside a small number of additional loose sheets, found in the same folder within the John Cage Manuscript Collection as the two sheets discussed in relation to the Solo for Piano—​help to provide expansion in a number of these areas, as well as accounting, in an essentially contingent way, for the sound world of the Concert for Piano and Orchestra. The page numbers of the instrumental parts mentioned—​as might already have been presumed from a range in which the last instrument to appear would have been the bass clarinet, following three violin parts, which themselves would have followed the trombone—​do not map onto any standard ordering of orchestral instruments at all. The total order, including page numbers, is mapped out by Cage on one of the loose-​leaf sketches: Solo for Vln 1 Solo for Vln 2 Solo for Vln 3 Solo for Vla 1 Solo for Vla 2 Solo for Tpts in E-​flat, F, D, G, B-​flat Solo for Cello Solo for Tubas in F and B-​flat Solo for Cl in B-​flat Solo for Fl, Alto Fl & Picc Solo for Bn & Baryt Sax

1–​16 17–​32 33–​48 49–​64 65–​80 81–​92 93–​108 109–​120 121–​132 133–​144 145–​156

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Solo for Bass Solo for Sl[iding] Tbn Part for Conductor

157–​172 173–​184 185–​186 (2 unnumbered pages)

These are the page numbers which are retained in the published parts and, as noted, at some point a further four parts were planned, which would have taken the total number of pages to 244, not including the two pages of the conductor’s part. The presence of the conductor’s part in this list—​and its correction to the single-​word title, ‘Conductor’ that that part receives in the published version of the score—​with the allocation of page numbers 185 and 186, even though that decision was reversed, certainly suggests that this was a comparatively late chart since, because the conductor’s part as published is, as will be detailed further, at least in part a version of that part for a twenty-​ minute version of the Concert for Piano and Orchestra, it would be necessary for Cage to have done sufficient work on the parts to have this duration in mind. If written as a single, continuous document at one sitting, it could also only have been written after the point that Cage had already abandoned the fourth, fifth, and sixth violin and bass clarinet parts. Nonetheless, it reinforces the sense that the apparently odd ordering of parts is not mere chance, but is in some sense an integral part of the writing of the piece. Cage’s sketches only go a very limited portion of the way towards determining how this particular distribution came about, but probably enough to be sure that an underlying process of some sort gave rise to it. The first six pages of the first of the two composition books provide the sum total of Cage’s extant sketch work regarding this and his thinking appears to have proceeded from, first, a consideration of instrumental range, specifically available ranges of (probably) an octave, and, second, a sort of operation akin to, but not as systematic as, serial permutation is applied to instruments. On the first page of the first composition book—​with the caveat kept in mind that it is by no means clear that the first page was the first written—​ appear sketched-​out ranges for the clarinet, flute, tenor saxophone, trumpet, tenor trombone, bassoon, and tuba. On the one hand, of course, these are precisely the instruments for which Cage had written nothing since the Concerto for Prepared Piano and Chamber Orchestra (1950–​51) and the Sixteen Dances (1951). Indeed, in general, Cage had written very little wind and brass music to this date at all. As such, perhaps a note to self of ranges is less surprising than it might otherwise be. However, there seems to be a more immediately practical purpose, in that across the first six pages of the first composition book, octave ranges—​principally ‘D to D’ and ‘G to G’, and on one occasion ‘C to C’—​appear, pinned to groups of instruments. Perhaps most immediately revealing in this context is a grouping, albeit one which is struck through,

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written directly below the ranges. Here, in the most fully written-​out part of the group, next to ‘Cl’ is written ‘D to D’; above ‘to’ appears ‘middle C’, with arrows pointing left and right out from it. Certainly, the sounding D below middle C is indeed the lowest available B-​flat clarinet pitch, though the range Cage has written out indicates the B-​flat an octave above the staff as the highest sounding pitch. In the end, the highest sounding pitch of the part for B-​flat clarinet is, precisely, that B-​flat. Any imperfection which would have resulted in Cage marking a pitch higher than this is, instead, to indicate a form of instrumental noise. Nonetheless, if Cage ever intended to use these octave ranges as a way of demarcating strict available pitch ranges, this plan was evidently abandoned. In truth, even from the outset, it seems unlikely that this can have been precisely what Cage meant by it. For one thing, the grouping which contains the ‘Cl’ description above is headed by ‘Cello’, underlined, while below ‘Cl’ appear both ‘Tuba’ and ‘Cello’, neither of which has a specific range appended to it. As noted, this whole grouping is struck through with a single pen stroke. To the right of the grouping, however, appears a brace, the directing point of which is aligned with ‘Cl D to D’—​presumably the stemmata’s root, then—​and which encloses ‘Fl.’, ‘Bn.’, and what appears almost certainly to be a second occurrence of ‘Tuba’. The reason why it is hard to be absolutely certain regarding this last word is that the three items, and their brace, are significantly more comprehensively struck through. Neither the order in which Cage wrote these elements down nor the order in which he decided to delete them can be determined. There is no reason necessarily to presume that Cage repeated the word ‘tuba’ as such; he may, instead, initially have thought to arrange a particular grouping of instruments with the clarinet as the root of a particular stemmata but at some point instead decided simply on a column. This would account for why a pitch range is not given for either the ‘Tuba’ or ‘Cello’ that appear below ‘Cl’. What is more pertinent, in truth, is simply the idea of some sort of stemmatic group or familial relationship existing at the sketch level between instruments. Nonetheless, the idea of range was clearly important in some respect. Under the general heading of a circled ‘B’—​the grouping marked ‘A’ will be considered shortly—​appear a set of instruments—​violin, trumpet (possibly, specifically the trumpet in C), cello, trombone, piano, double bass, and tuba. Each of these has appended to it a number or set of numbers apparently relating to the available range of that instruments, from 1 to 3, where 1 is highest and three lowest: violin and trumpet (1), which are bracketed together seemingly as a single element (perhaps because they are the only instruments which fall into an identical range category in Cage’s outline), followed by cello (1, 2), trombone (2), piano (1, 2, 3), double bass (2, 3), tuba (3). A sort of permutation of the arrangement of these three ranges follows, developing,

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seemingly, the same pattern seen on the third page of these six, which is a simple way of arranging three elements into groups of four horizontally speaking while, perhaps more importantly, meaning that each possible combination of three elements of the four appears successively in the vertical columns: A B C

A B D

A C D

B C D

The mapping Cage produces for the second group of instruments—​all those which have a ‘2’ appended to them—​replicates this ordering precisely: Cello Tromb. Bass

Cello Tromb. Pn

Cello Bass Pn

Tromb. Bass Pn

However, the first grouping, less apparently systematic, suggests that it was a way of ensuring that three of a possible total of four elements appeared in all available combinations, vertically speaking, that mattered most: Vn Tpt Cello

Vn Tpt Pn

Tpt Cello Pn

Vn Cello Pn

The final grouping contained only three elements and, as such, could simply be written out as ‘Bass, Tuba, Pn’ with no need for any sort of permutation. Whatever Cage originally meant to make of this system was clearly abandoned, since the treatment of the piano within the piece as a whole is evidently not of the same order as the other instruments. It does, however, reinforce the notion that there was evidently a stage at which Cage had not considered that the Solo for Piano would be anything like the sort of distinct entity it would ultimately become: it may not be wholly insignificant that the permuted letters A to D above are the same ones which appear originally to have marked out the physical, left-​to-​right dimensions of particular anticipated layers of piano activity. What appears here, too, reinforces the idea that the number three was somehow significant at the background level of planning the piece. Not only does Cage insist on three pitch-​defined areas, but he also groups the instruments he has thus arranged into groups of three (necessarily three times). Moreover, on the same page that the four-​element (A-​to-​D) permutation is written appears an incomplete list of groupings of instrumental

Sketching the Concert for Piano and Orchestra  :  111

trios. Each of these is a grouping which appears in Cage’s permutation charts. Although Cage’s seven instruments can be arranged according to his process in nine distinct combinations, Cage wrote only the numbers 1 to 6 in beginning what appears to be a list of these combinations, and only filled in four elements: 1 Vn, Tpt in C, Pn. 2 Cello, Bass, Trombone 3 Tuba, Bass, Pn. 4 Tpt in C, Cello, Vn 5 6 The fourth and sixth pages of this group of material reinforce the idea that instruments are being treated, again, as if they might be grouped together according to two parameters: first, a particular octave or multiple of octaves; second, a sense that these too map onto a sense of high, middle, and low ranges, but that those ranges are not coterminous with the octave dispositions. Here, the piano does not appear, though the bass clarinet, the part for which, would remain uncompleted, still does. That the alto flute appears here suggests, too, that it is not inconceivable that these instruments, though outlined separately, were always conceptually capable of becoming conjoined. As such, just as one player might take the flute and alto flute together ultimately, so the clarinet and bass clarinet might become a single part, as the sketch for the bass clarinet part suggests would have been the case. The way in which these multiple elements are, precisely, still multiple while being elements of the same instrumental part will have consequences for the closest approximation that can be made for how these sketches relate to the distribution in the final parts. The ranges, in the order they appear in the sketches, read as follows: G to G D to D 2 octaves higher D to D G to G D to D C to C

Vn, Tpt, Cello, Fl. in G, Cl., Tuba, Bass, Bn. Vn., Vla, Fl., Cl., Tpt., Cello Bass Cl., Bn, Tuba, Bass, Cello. Cello, Bass, Tromb., Bass Cl. Tuba, Bass, Cello, Bs. Cl., Bn, Vla, Vla, Cello, Tromb.

The sense that there is some additional sort of permutation of instruments which does not appear in the available sketches is heightened when one

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notes that two of the ‘D to D’ dispositions, the second and third, contain identical elements. It is unclear what Cage may have meant by ‘2 octaves higher’—​not least higher than what—​though it appears in the same sort of position in his sketch as the other range indications. When arranged in what seem to be their ‘natural’ order, from high to low, the groups are then arranged as follows: G to G 2 octaves higher C to C D to D D to D

Vn, Tpt, Cello, Fl. in G, Cl., Vn., Vla, Fl., Cl., Tpt., Cello Vla, Vla, Cello, Tromb. Tuba, Bass, Cello, Bs. Cl., Bn, Tuba, Bass, Bn.

The surprise that the ‘2 octaves higher’ group is in the position it is—​ because it seemingly contains a C flute while the grouping above it contains an alto flute—​is explained on the page which intervenes between these two, another which contains permutation arrays. This page is headed by a circled ‘A’—​presumably the counterpart to the earlier ‘B’—​the range ‘G to G’, and an instrument list the elements of which are identical to the ‘2 octaves higher’ group, save that the flute is now specified as a flute in G. This change also means that each element can be seen to belong to an unbroken range and that the octave ranges are, too, symmetrical, though it does not account for why only one of the two violas appears in the higher G to G range: Vln

Cl

Tpt

High G Low G C High D Low D

Alt. Flt.

Vla

Vla

Tbn

Cello

Bs Clt Bsn Tuba

Cb.

The permutations on this page are distinct from those previously seen, though they evidently proceed from that more simple approach. The model used here is given in numerical form at the end of the page: 1 2 3

1 2 4

1 2 5

1 2 6

1 2 7

2 3 4

2 3 5

2 3 6

2 3 7

3 4 5

3 4 6

3 4 7

4 5 6

4 5 7

5 6 7

Again, the purpose is a distribution into every possible grouping of seven elements into smaller subsets of three. The first line contains the first five

Sketching the Concert for Piano and Orchestra  :  113

elements in incrementally smaller numbers—​five ones, four twos, three threes and so on—​while the second line takes the same approach, but beginning with two: five twos, four threes, three fours and so on. The final line then requires a slightly different process, in that the remaining numbers then incrementally decrease, narrowing to the highest number: the five elements of three to seven, followed by the four elements of four to seven, the three elements of five to seven, and so on. Exactly this process is followed across the course of the page, in three separate groups, although Cage makes a minor, albeit corrected, slip in his first group, placing the cello where the second viola ought to appear (and it is evident in this process that a second viola is definitively required): Vn [1]‌ Vla [2]‌ Cello [4]‌

Vn [1]‌ Vla [2]‌ Fl. [5]‌

Vn [1]‌ Vla [2]‌ Cl [6]‌

Vn [1]‌ Vla [2]‌ Tpt [7]‌

Vla [2]‌ Vla [3]‌ Cello [4]‌

Vla [2]‌ Vla [3]‌ Fl [5]‌

Vla [2]‌ Vla [3]‌ Cl [6]‌

Vla [2]‌ Vla [3]‌ Tpt [7]‌

Vla [3]‌ Cello [4]‌ Fl [5]‌

Vla [3]‌ Cello [4]‌ Cl [6]‌

Vla [3]‌ Cello [4]‌ Tpt [7]‌

Cello [4] Fl. [5]‌ Cl. [6]‌

Vn [1]‌ Vla [2]‌ Vla [3]‌

Cello [4]‌ Fl. [5]‌ Tpt. [7]‌

Fl. [5]‌ Cl. [6]‌ Tpt. [7]‌

Only a small direct trace of the impact of these groupings of three can be perceived in the published materials themselves and that is in the distribution of the string parts. The first page of the first composition book contains a mapping of the stringed instruments Cage used which shows how they are distributed into groups of threes which, potentially at least, gives rise to why it would be that the instrumental resources include three violins, two violas, and one cello and bass: 3 vns

2vns 1 vla

1 vn 2 vlas

vn 2 vlas cello

1 vla cello bass

cello bass

Perhaps surprisingly, Cage does not continue this sequence such that it does not loop round as it straightforwardly could have done with the addition of a column including two violins and bass. Even here, to be sure, other arrangements would have been conceivable that would have reached the same fundamental end and, moreover, Cage could perfectly easily have decided on the available string resources for the piece

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and then produced this chart to place them into groups of three. Evidently, these instrumental trios play no part in the final piece as such, since, even if a particular performance of the Concert for Piano and Orchestra necessarily takes place over a defined period of time and the conductor’s modulations the relationship of score time and actual time affect each instrumentalist equally, the individual performers are, in other respects, precisely that. There is no point at which any instrumentalist’s activities need synchronise in any way with any other instrumentalist, nor do any individual’s decisions have direct consequences for anyone else. Moreover, there is a disparity between an assertion that the preceding chart demonstrates that Cage had found a method to select three violins particularly when a further three violin parts exist in various stages of sketch (which would thus have been from the outset redundant) and that the composition book also contains charts which involve a bass clarinet, the sketch for which would have remained significant until a rather later stage. Notwithstanding this range of caveats—​including the underlying possibility that almost all of the matter in this part of the composition books was abandoned entirely, as the presence of the piano in one of the groupings might suggest—​it seems possible that at least some element of the process survived through into the piece proper. If this possibility holds, it helps to account for, amongst other matters, why the piece requires five different trumpets, why the bass clarinet and extra three violin parts were surplus to requirements (even if it does not, then, explain why they were sketched at all), and why it was necessary that the bassoon doubled another instrument, even if the fact that that doubling was the unusual one with the baritone saxophone was doubtless to do with the players available to him: these procedural decisions are, at all stages, clearly intertwined with more practical considerations. Taking it as axiomatic that each instrument, rather than each performer, was the basic unit of such a process, in the final list of forces, not including the piano, there are twenty-​one elements: three violins, two violas, five trumpets, one cello, two tubas, and so on. Of course this number is divisible by three, as one might expect if any of this process is directly related to the piece proper. If these elements are translated into a numerical code, such that the violin is 1, the viola 2, the trumpet 3, and so on, a distribution like the following could result: 1 3 6

2 4 7

3 5 6

1 3 7

2 4 8

3 6 9

1 3 10

This looks very much like it functions according to the same basic principles as Cage’s groupings—​the sequential arrangements of numbers are

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similar and possible grouping repetitions are eliminated—​though it does not permutationally account for all possible combinations of the ten elements. It is doubtless possible to imagine, too, that a similar table (or set of two tables, A and B, as hinted at in the sketches) which also included the additional three violin parts and the bass clarinet (doubling B-​flat clarinet or not) might be what Cage worked from. If he did utilise such an approach, the document which shows the precise relationship with the ultimate instrumental resources of the piece no longer exists. At best one can probably say that it is not inconceivable that a process at least a little like this one may have been used and that the particular forces within the piece are in all likelihood a sort of palimpsest of a process which was abandoned. If so, there is an elegant mirroring of the layers of the Solo for Piano which were surely devised for a different process entirely, perhaps one where the piano would have found itself part of successive combinations of trios. What one can say with some degree of certainty at least is that Cage selected definitively the addition of trombone, bassoon doubling baritone saxophone, and tuba at a point later than the other instruments, and that the introduction of the alto flute did not take place at the same time that the flute itself was selected. On the first page of the first composition book appears a complete list of the instruments—​also specifying the number of violins and violas—​which do appear in the piece, but ‘Alto’ is written to the left of ‘Fl.’ in what seems to be the same sort of pen, but one with significantly less ink than anything else on the page, while the three other instruments mentioned are written much more scruffily than the other elements of what is a neat list. Apart from these three and the two flutes, each other instrument has, too, a neat tick to its left. Other parts of the first notebook demonstrate, in part, the ways in which decisions about instrumental performance techniques and so on were taken. Moreover, these techniques were necessarily inserted in sketches where two pages of the final instrumental part were condensed onto a single page and that Cage assuredly knew at this stage that those single sketch pages were to be expanded to the two of the resulting parts. This can be seen in the determinations Cage made for the use of mutes in the Solo for Bass, plans for which are available for pages 3 to 8 of the parts (which is to say pages 159 to 164 of the total range of parts for the Concert for Piano and Orchestra) within the first of the two composition books. Here, Cage made a note of the number of pitches (discounting noises) which had been inserted on each line of his sketch part. Thus, for instance, under the sub-​heading ‘5 + 6’—​an indication that what would become the fifth and sixth pages of the part ‘proper’ were gathered together on a single page of the sketch, as suggested by the extant instrumental sketch pages—​Cage listed the numbers 10, 4, 8, 7, and 6, in order. An examination of the score, then, shows that there are ten pitches—​not including the two noises—​on the first two staves of page 161 (the fifth page of the double

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bass part), four on the next two lines, eight across the last staff of the page and the first of the subsequent page (again ignoring three noises), and so on. Evidently Cage made a casting of the I Ching for each pitch, keeping a simple tally of notes which were unmuted, and marking an ‘M’ on every occasion the system demanded a note be muted. It is presumed that the I Ching was used for this purpose rather than any sort of more simple coin toss both because of the sheer number of I Ching castings—​45 appear on the page, of which 22 are changing—​and because the results in the score show a distribution of muted notes much lower than 1 in 4, the lowest ratio available in Cage’s other common toss of two coins. Nevertheless, the precise weighting cannot be determined, not only because Cage provides no indication of it, but also because the 67 possible readings of the I Ching the page of the composition books provides fall some way short of the 83 pitches which appear across the six pages of the instrumental part. There is also no indication here of how which of the three mutes specified by the score was determined; presuming that to be the result of a process too, it was clearly a separate one. This is the most clear and complete of these modes of working within the composition books, but other, more fragmentary, charts also appear in the first of the two books, suggesting that Cage took a similar approach to other parameters. Part of a chart perhaps deployed within the flute or clarinet parts shows that fluttertongue—​marked with an ‘F’ rather than the ‘M’ for mute—​ was dealt with in precisely the same way. Here, however, it is notable that Cage almost simultaneously made determinations for the slight and gradual microtonal inflections of these notes. Next to the number four appear, first, a single ‘F’, followed by three short tally strokes, but also, second, three upward arrows—​indicating both the first fluttertongued note, and the second and third notes, performed without fluttertongue—​and then a single tally stroke. In some sense at least, then, these inflections were conceived in tandem with the determination of fluttertonguing, even if the processes remained fundamentally independent. Indeed, the parts of these charts which survive—​and one must presume that a great many other charts once existed and were used in similar decision making across the piece—​suggest that not only did Cage use them for the determination of instrumental technique at all points but also that, even where particular elements were decided in tandem, in principle all techniques could be overlaid on top of one another, even if this might lead, as it will be seen to at several points in the analytical examination of the instrumental parts that follows, to contradiction. That said, an apparently unused chart implies that this should not be taken as absolutely universal or, more accurately, that Cage thought of these techniques precisely in terms of parameters, where some parameters might exhibit a range of possibilities, rather than the simple ‘on-​off ’ binary of muting or fluttertonguing. There are two charts which contain numbers from 6 to 9,

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which are apparently two different ways of determining the same thing: the numbers indicate lip vibrato, slide vibrato, a combination of the two, or the absence of vibrato, necessarily for the trombone. How exactly Cage was to have cast for these numbers, and on what scale, is not obvious, but it does suggest that, where he was aware of irreconcilables or multiple approaches to essentially the same parameter, he at least considered how to tabulate this. In this particular case, the Solo for Sliding Trombone specifically demonstrates that Cage reverted to a binary decision: ‘All tones are to be played with vibrato (slide or lip or slide and lip) unless accompanied by the indication “N. V.” ’. A further list perhaps even shows the point at which Cage determined to eliminate this richer approach to vibrato. The list outlines the way in which Cage broke down elements of the trombone, with a cross appearing next to ‘vib. slide/​lip’, as well as there being ones next to ‘alterations of slides etc.’ and ‘no attack’. Though Cage put a cross next to ‘alterations of slides’, this appears to mean not that such alteration was to be wholly eliminated from consideration, but that it was to be instead a part of a broader range of possibilities, listed elsewhere on the page—​’without bell into jar’, ‘without bell’, ‘tuning slide out’, and ‘slide disconnected’—​all of which appear in the final piece. In any case, this was evidently not conceived of as a final, definitive list since next to ‘trem’ appears a question mark, and a tick and a cross accompany ‘arrows (micro)’: the use of arrows to indicate microtonal inflections of notes is a feature of the trombone part. More decisively, ticks appear next to ‘mute’, ‘flutter’, ‘slides’, ‘spit’, ‘tonguing’ (including indications for both double and triple tonguing), and ‘trills’. These last two appear on the same line indicating, presumably, that tonguing and trills were determined as a part of the same process as one another, which would have involved a process like that which was not used for vibrato. Notwithstanding the fact that Cage clearly did think beyond the binary, it seems too that this was his preferred method of selecting options. Lists like this are evidently related to ones which appear in the second of the two composition books, though the ones in this second volume of sketches appear to take a more specific approach to instrumental resources. If the breakdown which appears in the first composition book might be held to be the sort of parametric approach to the instrument which a composer could well have been able to make in the abstract, those in the second look much more likely to be the result of work with performers with more intimate knowledge of their instruments. The pages which detail the trombone, for instance, contain not only the information which appears in the focussed list shown previously, but also such notes as ‘conch shell’, ‘mouthpiece alone or in bell’, ‘bark speak or shout into inst.’, ‘overtone series with spit valve B-​ flat’, ‘opening + closing mute (plunger)’, and ‘changing mute position’, all of which appear in some form in the piece.

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Similarly, an instrumental resource chart for the flute covers two pages and appears to be an unsystematic description of flute techniques of the sorts that suggests note taking being undertaken in dialogue with a flautist, who was perhaps demonstrating the techniques live, perhaps most especially evident in the slightly fragmentary nature of the notes made. These include: ‘head joint alone hand modulated’, ‘warbling’, ‘harmonics (can be soft) + without vib.’, ‘slapping keys with or without blowing’, ‘push with diaphragm’, ‘unpredictable interval sounds’, ‘singing into inst.’, ‘head joint out’. Next to ‘microtonal lip slides between’ is sketched a treble staff with notes from the D at the bottom of the staff to the first C above it, and the comment that ‘bigger slides [are] easier up [the range]’. Some of the charts of instrumental techniques can be related to specific performers, very often, though not always, precisely the performers who would ultimately premiere the piece. Alongside a great many of these charts are names of and contact details for—​and occasionally the details of appointments with—​performers for the instruments featured in the piece. On occasion it is clear that Cage has spoken with more than performer. For instance, after the two pages describing possible approaches to the flute a note clearly written at the same session reads: ‘Call Lolya about Alto Flute’. Meant is evidently Andrew Lolya, who would perform in the premiere. Lolya’s phone number—​still at this time a two-​letter exchange identifier followed by five numbers, as adopted at the beginning of the 1930s—​appears just above his name. At the end of these notes are the contact details for Albert Weatherly, who was already well known as New York City’s leading flute repairer, with a remarkable understanding of the mechanics of the instrument. Whoever the flautist was who had this initial conversation with Cage, it would hardly be surprising that Weatherly was recommended, but his hours were well known enough that Cage was recommended he could call at the shop any day until 3pm. The surname of Don Butterfield, alongside his phone number, who would play the tuba part in the piece’s premiere appears, though without any notes regarding tuba technique, on one page as, on another, does an Al Martin, with contact to be made via the Casals Festival Orchestra in Puerto Rico, who would, credited as Allan Martin, be one of the violinists at the premiere. Though the only specific appointment revealed in these notebooks is one with Lolya and there are no additional notes made regarding flute technique on other pages which expands what Cage apparently knew before that meeting—​which doubtless confirmed simply that what Cage had planned for the C flute would work perfectly well on the alto too—​the implication of these notes is that, wherever possible, Cage met with a performer to talk through the extended resources of their instruments. These charts are the tangible record of those meetings. Moreover, it seems likely that many of

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these meetings were either with the performers who would premiere the piece or led, in turn, to meetings with those performers. Cage evidently had a particular interest in finding players who were capable of doubling other instruments. The concrete result of this can, of course, be seen in the unusual doubling of bassoon and baritone saxophone in the final piece. Ultimately, that strange combination would be performed by one Sy Schwartzberg, who appears to have left little trace on the record, although it seems from the little that can be assessed that he was principally a jazz bassoonist and, as such, already a rare commodity.21 Another sheet—​ this not within the notebooks, but amongst the sketch materials for the Solo for Piano discussed—​is headed ‘Saxes + Doubles’. Nothing on this sheet is in Cage’s handwriting, not even that heading. In fact, each successive set of name, address and phone number is written in a different hand, perhaps that of the named player. The list is, while not a who’s who of New York-​based jazz players, certainly a list of, notably exclusively, jazz musicians with high profiles: the tenor saxophonist Dick Hafer, who would appear on two Charles Mingus releases in the early 1960s (both of which also feature the tubist, Don Butterfield, already mentioned), is listed as being able to double clarinet and oboe; although Dick Meldonian was principally also a tenor saxophonist, he is listed here as an alto player, perhaps because he was, at that time, playing that instrument alongside the tenor of the Lester Young soundalike, Paul Quinichette, also present on the list; the multi-​instrumentalist, Gene Allen, is listed as doubling on bass clarinet and baritone saxophone; the alto saxophonist Gene Quill, too, is on the list, as well as two of the three trombonists he worked with on the 1958 release Three Bones and a Quill, Jim Dahl and Frank Rehak; a further trombonist who played with Rehak within the Gil Evans orchestra, Bill Elton, is also on the list. More notably, all of these players, with the exception of Paul Quinichette, seem to have worked within a network including Gil Evans, Claude Thornhill, and Gerry Mulligan: Evans arranged for Thornhill, of course, as did Mulligan after Evans had left the orchestra.22 One might very well suggest that this list represents a subset of New York’s

21  Listed

as Sey Schwartzberg, presumably the same musician appears playing bassoon on Patty McGovern and Thomas Talbert’s 1956 release Wednesday’s Child. Talbert had arranged music for Claude Thornhill, suggesting that Schwartzberg was a part of the same core circle of players as the others who worked with Cage, as detailed further below. 22  Quinichette is exceptional in another sense, too, in that he is the only black musician with whom Cage appears to have had any contact in developing the instrumental resources for the Concert. As noted above, he seems most likely to have been added to the list as a result of his collaboration with Dick Meldonian.

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more-​or-​less reliable, responsible, and, importantly, reading session-​playing musicians: Cage evidently needed musicians who could play without music in front of them, but who were nevertheless able to read notation. Of these performers, only one was finally involved with the first performance of the Concert for Piano and Orchestra, Frank Rehak, and Rehak’s description of working with Cage is worth quoting in full, since it reinforces strongly what is suggested by the archival sources: John Cage came to my house in mid-​town Manhattan one afternoon after having called me to ask if I were able to play the sliding trombone without having the notes written out in front of me. I more or less assumed that he was referring to the articulation of a jazz solo with a chordal reference and assured him that that was part of the business I was in and asked for a few more details. I had never heard of him at this time. About 10 minutes later, my doorbell rang and I met John for the first time. We spent much of the afternoon discussing many aspects of music, with my being critical of some of his theories and enthusiastic of others. I have long since learned that I had spent that afternoon wisely. I remember that we spent a long time with the instrument, taking it apart, playing without slide, without mouthpiece, adding various mutes, glass on the slide section, minus tuning slide, with spit valve open, and any other possibilities of producing a sound by either inhaling or exhaling air through a piece of metal tubing. We also discussed double stops, circular breathing, playing without moving slides, and on and on.23

Notwithstanding the slight confusion between Rehak and Cage regarding quite how close to jazz what Cage had outlined was, it is notable that, as a part of his planning process, Cage seems to have turned to jazz players not only for their abilities to double multiple instruments but also, surely, because they would have an intimate understanding of the most advanced extended techniques on their instruments, assuredly beyond classical or Broadway performers. The latter group would doubtless have had even

Frank Rehak to Stuart Dempster, 17 December 1977, in Stuart Dempster, The modern trombone: A definition of its idioms (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1979), 96–​97. Tudor suggested to Rivest that Rehak’s description of working with Cage may be taken as paradigmatic: ‘most of those instrumental parts were composed for specific people. And to each person that he wrote a part for he would ask them what they could do. And he asked to be shown what unusual things that they had. And the parts reflect all of those discoveries.’ (Johanne Rivest, Le Concert for Piano and Orchestra de John Cage ou les limites de l’indétermination (unpublished PhD thesis, University of Montréal, 1996), 194). 23 

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greater capabilities as multi-​instrumentalists, but not the access to extensions of instrumental technique. Perhaps Cage’s initial interest was piqued by events organised by Varèse and Earle Brown at the Greenwich House Music School, in which jazz musicians undertook collective improvisations around sketches made by Varèse. Brown remembered clearly that Cunningham attended the two or three such sessions that took place in 1957 and presumed that Cage was there too. The trombonist at these sessions was Frank Rehak and the tenor saxophonist was Teo Macero.24 Macero was clearly, shortly afterwards, an integral part of just the same scene: by 1959, he had produced the Dave Brubeck Quartet’s Time Out and the Miles Davis and Gil Evans collaboration, Sketches of Spain in 1959–​60. He was hired as a producer at Columbia only in 1957, however, by George Avakian, who also inadvertently brought about Macero’s involvement in A&R when he persuaded Cal Lampley to move with him from Columbia to Warner Brothers, opening up space for Macero to sign his own long-​time collaborator, Charles Mingus to the label, as well as Thelonious Monk.25 Avakian was married to Cage’s own longstanding collaborator, Anahid Ajemian, and, through him, Cage assuredly had a rather stronger route to New York City’s jazz community and, particularly, to this part of it: Avakian had signed Louis Armstrong, Dave Brubeck, and Miles Davis, amongst others to Columbia during his time there. Moreover, Avakian had a strong connection to Gil Evans, having engaged him as the arranger for Davis’s second release on Columbia, Miles Ahead (1957).26 Surely this list came about through Avakian, then, although the heading at the top of the sheet is not in his handwriting either, and, as what follows shows in more detail, Avakian certainly played a very significant role in bringing the Concert for Piano and Orchestra to a wider audience.

24 Olivia

Mattis, ‘The Physical and the Abstract:  Varèse and the New  York School’, in Steven Johnson (ed.), The New  York Schools of Music and the Visual Arts (New York, NY: Routledge, 2002), 71–​72. 25 Ashley Kahn, Kind of Blue:  Miles Davis and the Making of a Masterpiece (London: Granta, 2000), 198. 26  Avakian had been, it seems, a fan of the arrangements Evans had made for Claude Thornhill, further emphasising his position as the lynchpin between this group of musicians and Cage and had earlier engaged him to provide arrangements for Johnny Mathis, for the latter’s eponymous 1956 debut (see Stephanie Stein Crease, Gil Evans: Out of the Cool (Chicago, IL: A Cappella, 2002), 182) , an album which also featured Don Butterfield on the track ‘Street of Dreams’.

chapter 3

Presenting the Concert for Piano and Orchestra The premiere Simultaneously unsuccessful and ubiquitous, in the New York of the late 1950s Emile de Antonio, in the words of Tina Fredericks, knew ‘everybody in the art world’, even if no one else in that world could have suspected that he was going to become one of the most significant American documentary film makers of the second half of the twentieth century.1 He was a part too, somehow both central and peripheral, of the Cage circle: his third wife, the illustrator and textile designer Lois Long, collaborated with Cage on both the Mushroom Book and the Mud Book, and taught the mushroom identification class Cage ran at the New School alongside Guy Nearing and Cage himself, while de Antonio brokered sales of Cage’s hand-​picked mushrooms.2 For a time, too, Long and de Antonio seemingly lived close enough to Cage in Rockland County, in upstate New York, that they could regularly socialise.3 Though de Antonio evidently had dreams of becoming an artist—​in the mid-​1950s projecting a novel, rather than thinking of film, the art form in which he ultimately became famous—​he seemingly felt paralysed in creative terms, but channelled his ambitions into the promotion of others: he helped to persuade the Leo Castelli Gallery to take on Frank Stella and was

Randolph Lewis, Emile de Antonio: Radical Filmmaker in Cold War America (Madison, WI: University of Wisconsin Press, 2000), 22. 2  David Revill, The Roaring Silence:  John Cage:  A Life, second edition (New  York, NY: Arcade, 2014 [1992]), 176. 3 Lewis, Emile de Antonio,  22–​23. 1 

John Cage’s Concert for Piano and Orchestra. Martin Iddon and Philip Thomas, Oxford University Press (2020). © Oxford University Press. DOI: 10.1093/oso/9780190938475.001.0001

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instrumental in persuading Warhol to paint iconic images ‘as they were’, without abstract expressionist ‘frills’.4 De Antonio had already promoted Cage’s work as well: as chairman of the Rockland Foundation, he had presented David Tudor, the violist Harold Coletta, and the Merce Cunningham Dance Company, in a concert in the auditorium of Clarkstown High School on 15 October 1955, which included two significant premieres—​the piano version of Earle Brown’s Indices (1954), accompanying Cunningham’s Springweather and People (1955), and 26′1.1499″ for a string player, which Coletta performed simultaneously with Cage’s version of 31′57.9864″ for a pianist and Tudor’s of 34′46.776″ for a pianist—​as well as Cunningham’s Solo Suite in Space and Time (1953) and Minutiae (1954) danced to selections from Music for Piano 4–​19. Although the ‘local music lovers [ . . . ] quickly decided the performance was neither musical nor lovable’,5 the exceptionally heavy rain that was falling outside and had already flooded some local roads meant that they were forced to stay.6 Those who had travelled up from New York City—​including at least Franz Kline, Robert Motherwell, and Willem de Kooning (and, perhaps then, Elaine de Kooning too)—​appear to have had a better evening, notwithstanding the weather.7 The event also occasioned the first meeting between de Antonio, Robert Rauschenberg, and Jasper Johns, whom de Antonio encountered ‘nails in mouth and hammers in hand, working on the set’, during his inspection of the auditorium the day before the concert.8 The sense that de Antonio evidently had in the case of Warhol—​that the ‘commercial’ and the ‘artistic’ could not be simply divided into two separate spheres—​had also informed his work with Johns and Rauschenberg in the mid-​1950s: he helped them ‘to get some of their first jobs as commercial artists [as well as] promoting them with galleries.’9 The coincidence of their meeting—​though doubtless there would have been another occasion, since they moved in such tightly intertwining circles—​is emphasised by the fact that Minutiae was the first of Cunningham’s dances for which Rauschenberg provided the set (and the first on which Johns provided him assistance): almost certainly, neither Johns nor Rauschenberg would have been present had the choreography dated from any earlier in Cunningham’s 4 See ibid, 22 and Arthur C. Danto, Andy Warhol (New Haven, CT: Yale University

Press, 2009), 15–​16. 5 Lewis, Emile de Antonio, 23. 6 Revill, The Roaring Silence, 176. 7 Lewis, Emile de Antonio, 23. 8  Douglas Kellner and Dan Streible, ‘Emile de Antonio: Documenting the Life of a Radical Filmmaker’, in Douglas Kellner and Dan Streible (eds.), Emile de Antonio: A Reader (Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press, 2000), 9. 9 Ibid.

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career, at any rate not at the point at which de Antonio was making his inspection. It was these three—​Johns, Rauschenberg, and de Antonio—​then, who planned a sequel of sorts to the Clarkstown concert. Nevertheless, the whole affair sounds like a typical de Antonio project:  the vicarious success displacing his own frustrated artistic plans, while nonetheless being driven by genuine admiration for and desire to help artists in whom he believed, perhaps especially Cage whom he would later describe as ‘the greatest influence in my life as an artist.’10 It was surely de Antonio who was, at least initially, the driving force.11 Exactly when the concert began to take on a more concrete shape is also unclear, though it must, at least, have been relatively close to the date on which the concert finally took place, 15 May 1958, that it was decided to include the Concert for Piano and Orchestra, since into February, and perhaps even March, both Cage and Tudor were still expecting its premiere to take place in Cologne in the autumn. However the plans may have developed, the three agreed, under the name Impresarios Inc, to provide $1,000 each (‘a lot for us in those days’, Johns recalled) to fund a concert which would provide a showcase for Cage’s output: the Twenty-​Five Year Retrospective Concert.12 Whether the date of the concert was intentionally chosen to celebrate it or whether it was a happy coincidence, it coincided with Johns’s twenty-​eighth birthday. Cage’s initial reaction was to demur, precisely because of the volume of work required by the Concert for Piano and Orchestra, a piece he had anticipated only having to complete for a premiere date a full four months later than this one. He was, moreover, leery of retrospection in general: what seemed most urgent to him appears throughout his career to have been his most recent work. By contrast, Jasper Johns was ‘curious about the other work’ and ‘thought that something that would show an array over time would be interesting to everybody’.13 Cage was reassured that the concert would involve no additional work on his behalf: Johns, Rauschenberg, and de Antonio would deal with all the organisational matters; David Tudor designed the evening’s programme. It was probably not the case that the concert was, as such, planned 10 Lewis, Emile de Antonio, 23. 11 George

Avakian agreed that it was de Antonio who ‘put everything together’ (George Avakian and Anahid Ajemian in interview with David Patterson, 13 June 1993). 12 Jasper Johns in Carolyn Brown, Jill Jakes, Jasper Johns, and Lewis Lloyd, ‘Founding the FCPA: An Oral History’, in Eric Banks (ed.), Artists for Artists: Fifty Years of the Foundation for Contemporary Arts (New York, NY: Foundation for Contemporary Arts, 2013), 29–​30. 13  Kay Larson, Where the Heart Beats (New York: Penguin, 2013), 320.

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as a vehicle for the premiere of the Concert for Piano and Orchestra, but its inclusion doubtless reassured Cage that the climax of the concert would, precisely, focus on a genuinely significant, and wholly new, piece. Ironically, given that Cage’s concerns about the concert revolved around the extra work organising it might bring, putting the one piece on the programme that really mattered to him brought with it a challenging May deadline for its completion. With or without any steer from Cage as to the necessary inclusion of this most recent—​doubtless unfinished at the point of programming—​piece, Tudor selected the Six Short Inventions, the First Construction in Metal (1939), Imaginary Landscape No. 1 (1939), The Wonderful Widow of Eighteen Springs (1942), She is Asleep (1943), a selection from the Sonatas and Interludes, Music for Carillon (1952, though unpremiered until the Twenty-​Five Year Retrospective Concert), Williams Mix, and the Concert for Piano and Orchestra in its premiere performance. Although the Concert for Piano and Orchestra necessarily included the tour de force vehicle for Tudor’s talents, the Solo for Piano, it is surely notable that none of the other Cage pieces central to Tudor’s repertoire—​such as the Music of Changes, Music for Piano, or Winter Music—​were featured. Indeed, the other major piano pieces within the programme, the Sonatas and Interludes, were performed not by Tudor but, wholly appropriately in the context of a retrospective, by their dedicatee, Maro Ajemian. According to Revill, the three members of Impresarios Inc decided that any additional necessary funds ‘could be raised by organizing a paying exhibition.’14 As such, the exhibition of Cage’s scores held at the Stable Gallery—​once ‘an old, heavy-​timbered stable which still smelled agreeably of hay and leather’, according to Dore Ashton—​before and after the concert was probably intended not only to drum up interest in the performance but also as a way of defraying some of the costs of hiring the hall and paying the performers.15 Given that de Antonio was, by this stage, an old hand at attracting the attention of galleries on behalf of artists he felt worth their while, it seems likely that he took the practical lead here, notwithstanding reports—​probably erroneous ones, as further detailed shortly—​that Cage essentially shared his exhibition with Rauschenberg, even if it is eminently possible that the underlying idea of exhibiting Cage’s scores came from Johns and Rauschenberg. Indeed, it was seemingly these two who created the conditions whereby Cage agreed to the exhibition. He himself seems to have been surprised that his artist friends might have thought that people would want to look at his scores in any way other than as instructions for 14 Revill, The Roaring Silence, 182.

Dore Ashton, The New  York School:  A Cultural Reckoning (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1972), 215. 15 See

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performance. He would later say that he had not ‘thought of them as art. That they [Johns and Rauschenberg] thought of them as something to look at was, of course, gratifying.’16 Again, de Antonio’s practical, canny ways of thinking about delivering—​or mediating—​art worked in highly effective tandem with Johns’s and Rauschenberg’s aesthetic acuity and visual brilliance. Despite the grace and elegance of Cage’s calligraphy—​and the obviously exceptionally high level of craft that went into producing these scores—​that he would initially have been taken aback that anyone might want, as such, to look at them has the ring of truth since, as will be seen in the consideration of Cage’s publication history that follows, he does not seem at the time to have regarded his own handwriting as being an integral part of what a Cage score is. That idea came later, though perhaps the exhibition—​which featured manuscripts of Water Music and Seven Haiku (both 1952) alongside the pages of the Solo for Piano from the Concert for Piano and Orchestra—​was one of the first spurs for Cage to begin to think in this direction. The exhibition at the Stable Gallery began on 5 May 1958, with a preview from 9pm until midnight, and was scheduled to continue until 24 May. Cage’s manuscripts were exhibited on the upper floor of the gallery. While most accounts have recorded that the lower floor presented work by Robert Rauschenberg, it seems most likely that, in fact, it was instead one of the first public presentations of the now almost unknown American artist Mario Garcia.17 Dore Ashton was evidently invited to the preview: her review in the following day’s New York Times is, if not effusive, certainly extremely positive, taking Cage’s notations seriously not just as craft, but as something evidently, at the very least, approaching art: ‘In all of the manuscripts, there is a delicate sense of design at work that transcends the purely technical matter of setting down music.’18 The reviewer for Art News was more direct: ‘John Cage exhibits scores in autograph of his own compositions as works of visual art. And they are’.19 Numerous manuscript pages were sold, including, as noted, some thirty pages of the manuscripts of the Solo for Piano. A note the following year from 16  John

Cage, in interview with Irving Sandier, in Richard Kostelantez (ed.), Conversing with Cage, second edition (New York, NY: Routledge, 2003 [1966]), 180–​81. 17  Natilee Harren notes that Dore Ashton’s review of Cage’s contribution shows that it was Garcia’s work with which Cage’s was paired in Objects without Object: The Artwork in Flux, 1958–​1969 (unpublished PhD thesis, University of California, Los Angeles, 2013), 60 n. 69. 18  Dore Ashton, ‘Art Review: Cage, Composer, Shows calligraphy of Note’ (1958), in John Cage and Richard Kostelanetz (eds.), John Cage:  An Anthology (New  York, NY: Da Capo, 1991), 126. 19  Quoted in Nicholls, ‘Getting Rid of the Glue’, 19.

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Cage to the Berio family suggests that, in fact, individual pages from a great many holographs may well have been purchased: ‘Most of my manuscripts are in bad shape, because pages that were sold last spring have to be copied in order to again be complete.’20 Presumably this indicates, first, that buyers would have had to have waited to receive their purchase until the fresh copies were completed and, second and more tantalisingly, that one good reason why, as will be seen in more detail, Cage may have dropped his long-​standing hunt for a publisher in this period would have been precisely that his manuscripts were in no state to be published. As suggested, it seems likely that de Antonio took principal responsibility for generating interest in the performance. Certainly, as well as the exhibition which was designed at least in part to attract the attention of New York’s art scene, he prepared a press release in order to attract the newspapers. In general terms, though this text provides an essentially well-​worn, and accurate, description of the Concert for Piano and Orchestra, at least two aspects of it are notable. First, de Antonio notes that Cage’s recent orchestral music, a category to which only the Concert for Piano and Orchestra belongs of those pieces performed at Town Hall, involves ‘freedom for the performers characteristic of improvised jazz but unfamiliar in serious music’. To be sure, it is the freedom itself where de Antonio suggests any similarity might rest, rather than in the sounds of the piece, but the proximity of ‘improvised jazz’ to Cage’s music surely provided a significant interpretative context to recipients of the release and one wonders whether it might have been de Antonio’s words specifically which led David Dachs, in his review of the concert, to state that Cage had ‘gone Dixieland improvisation a step better by giving performers pieces of different music, and suggesting they use any piece they want, and whatever order’. Even though this suggests a freedom Cage had certainly not given his players, one can understand why Dachs might have understood this through eliding what de Antonio had led him to expect with the sounds he heard.21 Second, comparison of the press release, written by de Antonio, and the programme note provided for the concert as a whole, written by Cage, suggests that in large part, the press release represents de Antonio’s attempt to summarise what Cage had said to him as shown, for instance, in the distinction between Cage’s claim that ‘[h]‌armonious fusion of sound is not here an objective and, for audible and visual clarity, the players are separated in space as much as is convenient’ and de Antonio’s statement that ‘[a]ll the parts are solo and the players

20  John

Cage to Cathy, Luciano, and Christina Berio, 25 March 1959, in Kuhn (ed.), Selected Letters, 201–​202. 21  David Dachs, ‘Cage on Stage Is the Rage’, Cincinnati Times-​Star, 31 May 1958, 12TV (source: GAAAP).

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sit apart from one another so that the sounds remain independent in space rather than fused as in conventional harmonies.’22 More practically speaking, de Antonio’s press release suggests, too, that at least some of the booking of performers was finally settled at the last minute: Elizabeth Pharris—​who was to have sung The Wonderful Widow of Eighteen Springs and She is Asleep within the concert—​finds her name crossed out and replaced in pen with the name of the ultimate performer, Arline Carmen. Apparently de Antonio’s efforts to engage New York’s art scene were successful. Calvin Tomkins stated that ‘in a last reassertion of its old tribal solidarity’, the New York art world ‘turned out en masse.’23 Whether the evening constituted any sort of ‘last hurrah’ for the abstract expressionists or not is a moot point. On another occasion Tomkins said this represented a ‘demonstration of artistic solidarity seldom duplicated before or since’.24 In any case, George Avakian averred too that amongst the ‘large and distinguished audience’ were ‘many leaders in the visual, aural, and performing arts.’25 If the New York Times is to be believed, the audience was large indeed, numbering almost 1,000, which must have meant that even the 1,500-​seater Town Hall felt more or less full.26 For much of the evening, especially with an audience on that scale, the concert surely felt almost anticlimactic, in that a series of more or less strong, but at all times committed, performances took place of pieces which seemed canonical precisely because of this sort of context, including, for instance, incredibly warm applause at the end of the First Construction and, in truth, still a strong, though more muted, audience response to the rather less inviting Imaginary Landscape No. 1, before an almost rapturous reaction to, to be sure a fine performance of, The Wonderful Widow of Eighteen Springs with Arline Carmen accompanied on the (closed) piano by Cage himself. Though it amounts to little at the time, on the recording, one hears a small volume of audience chatter in the background of the percussion quartet section of She is Asleep and it is notable that this is, while hardly difficult in terms of the material it presents, arguably the most relentlessly unchanging of all the pieces on the programme before Music for Carillon in the third part of the evening. Yet, at the end of She is Asleep, and the end of the first part of the Twenty-​Five Year Retrospective, the applause is loud and prolonged. 22 

Both may be found within the George Avakian and Anahid Ajemian Papers. Calvin Tomkins, quoted in Kellner and Streible, ‘Emile de Antonio’, 11. 24  Calvin Tomkins, The Bride and the Bachelors (London: Penguin, 1978), 127. 25  George Avakian, ‘About the Concert’, in The 25-​Year Retrospective Concert of the Music of John Cage, n.p. 26  Ross Parmenter ‘Music:  Experimenter (Zounds! Sounds by) John Cage at Town Hall’, New York Times (16 May 1958). 23 

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The second part of the evening was wholly made up of the dedicatee of the Sonatas and Interludes, Maro Ajemian, performing their first half. Anyone who had heard Ajemian’s earlier performances of the pieces, or knew her 1951 recording, would have found little to surprise them here: these were fine, lucid performances of the pieces, and, though rather less crisp than the later performance history of the pieces might lead one to expect, there is also a sense of freedom which many later performances lack. The applause at the end of the second interlude was effusive, the audience enthusiasm clear in the way in which it was apparently impossible for the keenest audience members to wait until the final note had died away. It is, to be sure, worth bearing in mind the sheer length the evening had already run to by this stage. Though the first of the three parts of the evening comprised only about forty minutes of music, there must have been a number of relatively complex rearrangements of the stage, ensuring that at least an hour had passed before the first of two intervals and, though Maro Ajemian’s performance of the first half of the Sonatas and Interludes took only around half an hour, that would still mean that, by the time the audience returned for the final three performances of the evening, two hours or so would already have passed, containing music which, at many points, demanded more than usual attention and, importantly, rather different sorts of attention, a demand both to deal with the textures and timbres of, say, the First Construction but also to remain focussed through the hypnotic patterns of She is Asleep. Throughout the next two numbers, the beginning of the third part of the evening, one can hear a sort of bustling of crowd noise, as if a good part of the audience had not, in fact, decided to return for the finale and can be heard milling about in the lobby. The belated premiere of Music for Carillon followed this interval. Notwithstanding its rather unlovable surface—​ unpredictable patterns of shifting density of what sound like an improbably large number of doorbells—​it, too, was richly applauded for a good thirty seconds, if without the enthusiastic whistles and whoops that had met the end of Ajemian’s performance. Perhaps those who had come to Town Hall admired, not least, quite how uncompromising it was. It was, also, relatively brief. The close of Williams Mix, however, reveals a significantly more polarised reaction. There is, to be sure, enormous enthusiasm: there are bravos and cheers aplenty. Yet this is balanced almost equally with booing. What it may have been about Williams Mix in particular which caused this is hard to tell, though it is worth noting that a number of the critics, as outlined in fuller detail presently, felt this piece to be the evening’s low point too. It is also conceivable, as will also be dealt with more fully in an examination of the recording of the concert itself which follows, that the recording gives a false impression and that, for technical reasons, the audience reaction one hears at the end of Williams Mix is

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taken from part of a different recording of the much more raucous reaction to the premiere of the Concert for Piano and Orchestra. To start with, at least, this premiere—​the evening’s finale, surely intended as a major showcase for the most current themes in Cage’s work, bringing the whole event ‘up to date’—​seems to have been undertaken with seriousness: the first minute, including David Tudor’s first entry—​principally comprising thudding clusters across the range of the keyboard—​contains, at any rate, exclusively material which appears within the parts Cage had provided, even if one can hardly be certain that that material was being performed in any of the orders Cage’s parts allowed. As early as the end of that first minute, however, the sense that at least some players may have been keen to take more liberties than the instructions allowed is evident, as the trumpeter, Melvyn Broiles, interjects a fragmentary but idiomatic hunting call, comprising a pair of major thirds, although one could charitably read this as an attempt to fulfil the rubric of the part which allows for a note below the staff to indicate ‘shouts, or barks, through the instrument with any accompanying pitches, or “rips” ’, especially if he was attempting to make a distinction between this and the noisier version of the same indication, demanded when the stem of such notes was crossed, a distinction, it is worth noting, made uniquely within the trumpet part. Yet, for an experienced jazz player, as Broiles was—​he had recorded with Charlie Parker on several occasions—​it is difficult not to hear this as a decision to kick against the rules of the score, rules which elsewhere he follows well:  witness the neat ritardando Broiles delivers about fifteen seconds into the performance’s third minute. In any case, following this first, rather gentle, breach, the performance then continues for a time more-​or-​ less ‘straight’, though a hoot of laughter from somewhere in the audience around about three quarters of the way through the second minute suggests that something which occasioned this occurred on stage which is not obvious from the recording.27 Yet it is not long before the tubist Don Butterfield interjects—​shortly before three-​and-​a-​half minutes have elapsed—​a direct and extended quotation from the second episode of Le Sacre du printemps, ‘Les Augures printaniers’, and one can, already, hear quiet chatter from the audience at this stage, perhaps including attempts to identify the origin of the

27 

Notwithstanding Broiles’s solid jazz pedigree, he had been operating within a much more conservative vein for some time, having worked at West Point Military Academy in the early 1950s, and in 1958 had recently returned from a season with the Philadelphia Orchestra to take up the position of principal trumpet at the Metropolitan Orchestra, where he would remain until 2001, relatively shortly before his death on 26 August 2003.

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other piece they had just heard. After this, though, the performance again appears to settle.28 At any rate—​since without access to original performing materials it is difficult, to say the least, to disentangle individual performing decisions from the recording of the performance—​one hears no sounds which are not licit according to the materials of Cage’s parts for some time, until just before five minutes have elapsed when, again, Don Butterfield appears to quote a tonal fragment, if a rather less recognisable one on this occasion. Indeed, in the opening parts of the performance, it is regularly Butterfield who appears to be interjecting ‘foreign matter’. However, he also appears to follow carefully—​again, to the extent that one can determine of which notations he is actually making use—​the contours of indicated microtonal glissandi and their associated demands regarding tonguing. The disparity between respect and disrespect for Cage’s instructions is such that one would almost wonder if Butterfield had somehow managed to misunderstand what was being asked of him, were it not for the fact that, so far as the introduction of quotations is concerned, there could be no ambiguity: they were quite clearly outlawed. This proscription, indeed, is even stronger in the tuba part since the introduction of other noises of the performer’s own choice—​which appears in most of the other parts and could, albeit at rather a stretch, be held to include quoted matter—​is not given as a possibility there. Yet, more charitably, one could imagine that Butterfield took his cue precisely from the greater latitude offered to other instrumentalists. If in these early moments, one might still presume goodwill on behalf of the whole ensemble, this becomes increasingly difficult. By the end of the seventh minute, in rapid succession, one hears a smattering of audience laughter—​which seems to follow immediately after a sort of ‘wheezing’ sound performed by Frank Rehak on the trombone, but may equally have been related to some sort of stage action imperceptible on the recording of the piece—​then a chirruping on the head joint of Andrew Lolya’s flute, probably technically within the bounds of what was allowed by his part, but which unhappily recalls the sound of a toy slide whistle. At any rate, it is unfortunate that, if Lolya was really trying to perform his part as written, he produced a comic sound at a point which essentially endorsed the audience’s response of laughter. Indeed, although what immediately precedes this moment is surely just the head joint, accessory whistles are given as an available auxiliary

Butterfield’s actions here nevertheless seem to have come to represent the locus classicus of performer dissent in the experimental tradition, as in Piekut’s suggestion that this sort of ‘funny business’ was not only ‘plainly out of place’, but also ‘cynically inserted’ (see Piekut, Experimentalism Otherwise, 40). 28 

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resource in the flute part; it is possible that what sounds like a toy whistle is in fact a toy whistle. In any case, if Rehak’s wheezing or Lolya’s cheap glissandi were licit responses to the notation, the jazz lick which Broiles immediately followed it with was not. Increasingly, one can hear metallic noises which perfectly well might be brass instrumentalists clattering valves as suggested by their parts or, only a slight extension from those instructions, taps on the bell. Equally, though, this could be the sound of musicians, as Fredric Lieberman described it, ‘hitting their music stands and laughing with each other’, though it is worth remembering that, at least for some of the solos, striking a music stand would also be a wholly acceptable action.29 Around about the eighth minute, one hears sustained laughter from the audience, intermingled with applause which, one presumes, is directly opposed to the laughter, intermingled as it is with seemingly serious calls of ‘bravo!’ This is, presumably, the point described by Calvin Tomkins: ‘Midway through [the Concert for Piano and Orchestra] a group in the rear of the balcony stood up and tried to stop the performance with a sustained burst of applause and catcalls’, though a further moment, around fourteen minutes into the performance, occasions a similar smattering of laughter and applause, with a similar lack of obvious aural cause.30 Following so shortly after Williams Mix, it is worth recalling, mind you, Grubbs’s acute observation that it is only gradually that the audience reaction truly becomes recognisable for what it is: ‘there is mocking, disruptive applause as well as bursts of laughter that, when they first appear sound like tape-​music interjections à la musique concrète.’31 That said, such a reading of the audience reaction insists on treating the audience members as a sort of uniform ‘classical music’ audience, while in truth many audience members may have had jazz as their primary frame of reference and, in such a context, one might equally well hear the applause as hardly disruptive, but akin to that which would follow an appreciated instrumental solo: several of the performers on stage had, at least, part of their professional lives in jazz and, through de Antonio’s promotion not least, other audience members had implicitly been primed to expect this to be Cage’s ‘jazz’ piece. Shortly before the tenth minute had been reached, Lolya had resumed chirruping but this time in a way clearly beyond the limitations of the score. The other simultaneous activity is such that one cannot be certain whether any other piece is literally being quoted but, in any case, the figuration is such 29 Leta

E. Miller, ‘Cage, Cunningham and Collaborators:  The Odyssey of Variations V’, Musical Quarterly, vol. 85, no. 3 (Fall 2001), 552. 30 Tomkins, The Bride and the Bachelors, 128. 31  David Grubbs, Records Ruin the Landscape: John Cage, the Sixties, and Sound Recording (unpublished PhD thesis, University of Chicago, 2005), 55.

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that it perfectly well might be quoted matter and, as such, feels alien to the sound world Cage’s notations demand. Perhaps inevitably, any use of ‘auxiliary sound production’—​one can hear squeakers and shakers—​led to the more of the same sort of laughter, half raucous, half nervous, Cage’s music often occasioned. Given that Lolya and Broiles seem to have been the main troublemakers within the piece’s first ten minutes, notwithstanding quite how recognisable Butterfield’s quotation was (and how much comparisons with Le Sacre pervade the reception of the performance), it is notable that both their parts allow for the addition of such external noisemakers: as well as accessory whistles, the flute part allows for ‘any percussion instruments, manual and mechanical’, if under only very particular circumstances; the trumpeter was directed that ‘percussion, mechanical, or electrical sound’ was available. One suspects, indeed, that these three—​Broiles, Butterfield, and Lolya—​were almost certainly responsible for almost all the activities Haskins describes, in that some of the performers behaved as one might expect musicians who live and die by their ability to render notated music into sound would behave: they refused to take Cage’s music seriously and ended up playing whatever they felt like:  jazz riffs, favourite orchestral excerpts, whatever occurred to and amused them.32

Even this, though, may overplay at least a touch quite how disruptive the performers meant to be. Although to be sure, Butterfield regularly plays what sounds like quoted matter, Lolya idiomatic figuration purely and simply not available within the written materials, and Broiles occasional jazz figures—​as well as, on one occasion, directly mirroring, in call-​and-​response style, rips played a moment before by Butterfield—​they are also playing, with a seeming attempt at accuracy, materials which certainly can be found within Cage’s instructions. In truth, this is probably about the limit of the performer dissent, the visible disinterest some may have shown on stage perhaps being more damaging to the piece than the ‘musical’ activities. Moreover, it is impossible to discount the possibility that no small part of the hilarity was occasioned by activities undertaken by David Tudor, especially given his reputation for unfamiliar and unconventional approaches to the interior and exterior of the piano. In any case, it was enough that, by the time the performance had reached fifteen minutes—​with more than a further eight minutes to go—​one can hear rather more significant audience unrest and chatter and, indeed, a voice Rob Haskins, John Cage (London: Reaktion, 2012), 71. It is notable that, in truth, these were the members of the ensemble who least lived and died through the faithful representation of notated music into sound: these were the performers who were closest to the jazz world Cage had consulted in preparing the instrumental parts. 32 

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at about fifteen minutes and forty-​five seconds into the performance which is so loud, comparatively, that it is impossible to think it is from anywhere other than the stage. Tomkins is right that ‘[t]‌he orchestra played on, despite increasing competition from the other side of the footlights’, but parts of the orchestra were also, at least by this stage and perhaps encouraged by the audience response, complicit, in turn, in making matters worse. Certainly, after this point—​and especially following a further sustained burst of apparently ironic applause around the nineteen-​minute mark—​the highest and lowest parts of the brass section seem to have become, if anything, more wilful, further from what Cage had asked of them. Even if most of the performers seem, in all fairness, to have done their best to fulfil Cage’s instructions, the recording actually probably highlights the trumpet and tuba parts above all, so that the dissent—​such as it was—​is also amplified. Crooks’s summary—​ ‘this was greeted with both acclaim and ferocious abuse’—​is about right,33 although in truth the recording of the concert probably gives the impression that the pro-​Cage faction at least had the louder voices, if not necessarily the greater numbers. In any case, applause, cheers, whistles, and no small number of boos can be heard for a sustained three minutes after the rather abrupt end of the piece. De Antonio’s claim for the importance of the event was a bold one, that it ‘bore the same relationship to “postwar art, music, and weltanschauung in America” as the premiere of Stravinsky’s The Rite of Spring to French society in 1913.’34 It is hard not to think that Don Butterfield’s fleeting quotation of the ‘Augurs of Spring’ set the scene for this sort of reception. In this, surely Festa is quite right to observe that ‘the interjection of Stravinsky’s mythological work happened not only in regards to the delivery of Cage’s work, but also in the form of its reception’.35 De Antonio was doubtless emboldened in his claim by the testimony of an elderly painter in attendance in 1958, who told George Avakian that he had seen the Parisian debacle as well and that, as Revill relates it, ‘the retrospective had featured the same amount of derision [ . . . ] and more applause.’36 Avakian himself related what had happened in vivid terms. The painter, Avakian said, thought that descriptions of Parisian unruliness had been exaggerated over time—​before he died, he said, he expected ‘to be told that the audience rushed to the stage, tore the clothes from the musicians’ backs and tried to destroy the music’—​but that the Parisians Edward James Crooks, John Cage’s Entanglement with the Ideas of Coomaraswamy (unpublished PhD thesis, University of York, 2011), 38. 34 Lewis, Emile de Antonio,  23–​24. 35  Kay Festa, ‘More than Meets the Ear: An Account of the Shared (Ac)counts of Cage and Stravinsky’, TDR, vol. 59, no. 2 (Summer 2015), 93. 36 Revill, The Roaring Silence, 184. 33 

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were still ‘ruder’ than the Town Hall audience, even if that was because in 1913, ‘no one was used to being startled in a public hall.’ Nonetheless, he said, [t]‌he laughter tonight when the tuba player pointed the bell of one tuba into the bell of another was about the same that greeted some of the extreme bassoon and trombone notes in the Stravinsky, and I think tonight’s big burst of applause was more of a disturbance than anything that happened at the Champs Élysées.37

The mention of Le Sacre appears too in one of the finest descriptions of the event itself, which came from the Merce Cunningham Dance Company dancer, Carolyn Brown, at that time married, too, to Earle Brown: Standing on the podium, erect, regal, and elegantly dressed in a rented cutaway, Merce presided over the potential circus-​of-​chaos in the role of the conductor, performing a peculiar sort of port de bra and functioning as a kind of irregular, glorified stopwatch. Concert for Piano and Orchestra presented John the aspiring Zen Buddhist at loggerheads with John the frustrated Methodist minister. He wanted to ‘let the sounds be themselves’, but he was not happy letting people be themselves if they behaved irresponsibly, and musicians, faced with one of John’s unconventional scores and the freedom to choose their own actions, all too often mistook freedom for license. They made fun of the music, and thereby fools of themselves. John wanted people to behave ‘nobly’. He burned with evangelical zeal to convert them to the Zen view of the world but was rendered powerless by the very philosophy he so energetically espoused. The piece lasted twenty-​five minutes. Throughout there were jeers, catcalls, and vain attempts to stop the music altogether, and its end was greeted with a chorus of books, hisses, derogatory whistling, and laughter, as well as wild applause and cheering from the loyalists. People likened the event to the Paris premiere of Stravinsky’s Le Sacre du printemps in 1913.38

A rather different, but hardly less evocative, form of report was written from M. C. Richards to Rachel (presumably Rosenthal) on 20 May 1958, which usefully corroborates the impression of the recording that the musicians’ dissent was actually of a rather limited nature as well as suggesting that, in truth, Cage was probably not so upset by events, at least not in the moment, as Brown’s recollection might suggest. The richness of Richards’s description of her impressions justifies quotation at length: George Avakian, ‘About the Concert’, The 25-​Year Retrospective Concert of the Music of John Cage, n.p. It is notable that there is no part of the Solo for Tuba that would require, or even hint at, the action Avakian describes. 38  Carolyn Brown, Chance and Circumstance:  Twenty Years with Cage and Cunningham (New York, NY: Knopf, 2007), 198–​99. 37 

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The concert was a triumph. Practically a full house. Much applause. A near scandal in the last piece: the concerto. A whole balcony contingent tried to break it up by clapping, stamping, booing. Etcetera. Very lively. All musicians maintained composure, save a couple who began to show signs of the humor of the situation—​began to make it more so, that is. Stunt men. Oh well. Merce conducted like Big Ben himself. David scrambled in, under, and about the piano, bouncing sticks on the strings, playing duet with a tape recorder, jollying up the box in general. Heigh ho. I had expected to sit in the top balcony, but got windfall at last minute, and sat in 5th row orchestra. Sniffed yellow rosebud for olfactory balance mit der auditory onslaught. WOWWOW. Everything was spendid [sic]. Some soft, some loud. Some fat, some lean. Some absent, some present. I think I will send you my program, as an act of love, so that you can read the ‘notes’. DON’T THROW AWAY. John is in a state of euphoric exhaustion. Many interviews with the press, and mags like LIFE TIME SEX ERG AMP FOE FUM TYPE MOON HUM & DRUM. plus TELEVISION possibility. All this info from John, interpret accordingly. Also the Village Vanguard (sic) requests Sunday performance by analogy Fivespot. If it ‘takes’, the combo will be booked for 2 weeks. (some version of the piano concerto plus voice) of primarily financial interest, I think i think [sic]. on everybody’s part. MONEY IS A PROBLEM. don’t you?39

It is worth considering, too, that some of the more raucous laughter may have been a result of Tudor’s unconventional activities, ones licensed by Cage implicitly and explicitly. Cunningham was more nonchalant: ‘When it came to the orchestra piece at the end [of the concert], the audience was really quite boisterous—​obstreperous, whatever! [laughs] I was so concentrating on this [conducting the piece] that I didn’t dare pay any attention to it, but it apparently got quite wild.’40 George Avakian would be similarly blasé in his description for the notes to accompany his recording of the event: Discounting occasional laughter and a catcall or two, the first real effort at disruption came when a group in the rear of the balcony attempted to stop the performance with a sustained surge of applause. The fact that the protests came from the least expensive seats has provoked considerable speculation among those connected with the concert (except Cage himself, who shows no interest in the matter), the most interesting interpretation being that the people who paid most for their seats were the least willing to dislike what they paid for.41

39 

M. C. Richards to Rachel [Rosenthal?], 20 May 1958 (source: MCRP). Merce Cunningham in Peter Dickinson (ed.), CageTalk: Dialogues with and about John Cage (New York, NY: University of Rochester, 2006), 62. 41  George Avakian, ‘About the Concert’, The 25-​Year Retrospective Concert of the Music of John Cage, n.p. 40 

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Arguably the press response matches the idea that the split between derision and applause was, just about, tilted in favour of approbation. David Dachs’s review for the Cincinnati Times-​Star, written a few weeks after the event, explicitly noted that Cage got ‘more applause than boos’ and that, in truth, the press had given him his best reviews to date. That Dachs was even present—​that it was considered possible that Ohio music lovers would be interested in a concert devoted exclusively to the music of Cage alone—​perhaps implicitly bolsters Robinson’s assertion that this event marked the peak, too, of Manhattan-​based journalistic interest in Cage’s work: she suggests that ‘an unprecedented number of local music critics were in attendance’.42 Though Dachs was cautious not to pass a personal judgement, he too noted that Cage is ‘at the crest of popularity after years of comparative neglect’, ‘besieged with offers to lecture’, and had ‘just been booked for a two-​week stay at New York’s Village Vanguard’.43 Dachs may have slightly misunderstood, or been slightly misled by Cage’s enthusiasm: Cage was booked for a further performance a little under two weeks later, on 25 May 1958, at the Village Vanguard, which included the second and third performances of the Concert for Piano and Orchestra, with a smaller ensemble principally made up of performers who had played in the premiere: Albert Kaufman (clarinet), Melvyn Broiles (trumpet), Frank Rehak (trombone), Don Butterfield (tuba) and, naturally, David Tudor. Cunningham was once again the conductor. It is surely important to note that, notwithstanding the centrality of the Stravinsky quotations in reports of the issues with the players at the premiere, the culprit, Don Butterfield, was invited back (and not only for this second performance; he played in the premiere of Theatre Piece (1960) a few years afterwards) as was Melvyn Broiles, who appears on the basis of the recording to have been perhaps the leading mischief maker.44 Both performances at the Village Vanguard were significantly shorter than the premiere: David Tudor’s notes suggest the first 42 Suzanne

Robinson, ‘ “A Ping, Qualified by a Thud”:  Music Criticism in Manhattan and the Cage of Cage (1943–​58)’, Journal of the Society for American Music, vol. 1, no. 1 (February 2007), 82. 43  David Dachs, ‘Cage on Stage Is the Rage’, Cincinnati Times-​Star, 31 May 1958, 12TV (source: GAAAP). 44  David Tudor would later note that ‘John decided to have only the brass players. The whole orchestra, of course, wouldn’t fit on the small stage anyway. I remember the tuba player, a big guy, what was his name . . . Don Butterfield, a marvelous player. He did the piece so well.’ (Petr Kotik, ‘A Visit with David Tudor: notes from an evening with David Tudor, Sarah Pillow, Joseph Kubera, Wofgang Trager, Tina Trager, Didi Shai and Petr Kotik’ (Tompkins Cove, NY, 14 September 1993) (source: DTP).) Clearly, in Tudor’s recollection whatever Butterfield had done at the premiere did not suggest that he was anything other than a player of the first order.

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lasted around 4′45″ with the second marginally longer, at 4′50″. As M. C. Richards’s report suggests, this booking was, most likely, a test performance for a possible two-​week residency at the Village Vanguard and, too, that the promoters there may also have misunderstood what they thought they were booking: the slightly curious note that the performance was to be ‘by analogy Fivespot’ refers to the Five Spot Café, a New  York jazz club, which had hosted residencies from, for instance, such luminaries as Thelonious Monk and Ornette Coleman. That the quintet of players was also principally the jazz specialists from the larger ensemble along with Richards’s description of the line-​up as a ‘combo’ surely indicates that what was expected was, even if in a very broad definition, jazz. The other pieces selected for the performance, framed by the two performances of the Concert, seem to suggest that what was presented came as close as Cage could to provide the right sort of programme for the venue: adding the solo piano piece A Valentine out of Season (1944) and A Flower (1950), along with The Wonderful Widow of Eighteen Springs, Arline Carmen again the singer, these songs the closest to making a contribution to the Great American Songbook Cage ever came, this being too the era of Ella Fitzgerald’s famous Song Books recordings. A further reprise from the Town Hall concert, Tudor’s rendition of Music for Carillon No. 1, must have seemed to have strained the analogy too far. In any case, since the venue had focussed entirely on jazz—​jazz with no qualification needed, from Gerry Mulligan and the Modern Jazz Quartet to Thelonious Monk and Charles Mingus—​ since the previous year, Cage could surely have hardly been surprised that the performances there did not lead to a longer-​term booking, although it is no less possible that the owner of the Village Vanguard may have been hoping for more controversy than he got. Indeed, rather than a two-​week residency, Holzaepfel suggests there may not even have been a rehearsal for the Village Vanguard performances.45 Nonetheless, in the second version of the Concert for Piano and Orchestra that evening, there was a major change, which already signalled the way in which Cage came not to regard the boundaries of the piece as being strictly fixed at the limits of the notations he had initially produced: Carmen simultaneously performed Solo for Voice 1, in its own premiere performance. The evening’s first performance of the piece was billed as Concert for Piano and 4 Instruments, the second as Concert for Piano, Voice, and 4 Instruments. Avakian’s claim is that this second outing for the Concert was, in fact, the result of journalistic enthusiasm: Gilbert Millstein of the New York Times, he suggests, recommended to the owner of the Village Vanguard, Max Gordon, that this would work Holzaepfel, David Tudor and the Performance of American Experimental Music, 1950–​1959 (unpublished PhD thesis, City University of New York, 1994), 218. 45  John

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well in his venue. Following the hubbub of the premiere, Gordon was disappointed to find the audience at the second performance ‘rapt and approving’. ‘Doesn’t anybody disapprove of this?’ he asked.46 Given Millstein’s apparent enthusiasm it is perhaps surprising that, as detailed in what follows, his organ would provide one of the most negative reviews of the recording that was soon to be released of the evening. The immediate reaction of the Times, its review penned by Ross Parmenter, was that the Concert for Piano and Orchestra in particular had ‘presented some of the craziest mixed-​up sounds ever heard on a concert platform’, though it hardly seems that Parmenter regards this as a negative characteristic. Parmenter repeats, too, the ‘more applause than boos’ theme, but with a very slight twist: ‘The audience often cheered the composer, though toward the end of the concerto there were some who began to make sounds of their own to try to stop it.’47 Even the largely negative Miles Kastendieck, who thought that the ‘conventional music lover’ would have regarded the evening as ‘sophisticated primitivism’ was moved to confess that Cage’s music represented ‘one of the acoustical phenomena of our times’ and that ‘his work with the prepared or “stopped” piano, percussion, magnetic tapes etc. has exploratory significance.’ In truth, much of Kastendieck’s review concerns itself with trying to play, in increasingly contrived ways, with the idea that ‘the music of the future’ might very well be something of a ‘throwback’, a notion which reaches its zenith in his note that ‘[i]‌n advocating sheer anarchy in performance, the new “Concerto for Piano and Orchestra” may have established a kind of evolutionary cul-​de-​sac’.48 Likewise, the beginning of Louis Biancoll’s brief write-​up for the New York World Telegram and Sun might have prepared one to expect a rather stereotypical slighting—​he suggested that the stage ‘looked more like an auction sale of living room and kitchen appliances than a concert platform’—​but was quick to add that ‘John Cage is neither a fool nor a charlatan’ and that he was ‘getting exactly what he wants’. Indeed, Biancoll seems to have been thoroughly won over: in answering his own question as to whether the proceedings constituted music, there seems to be no sarcasm and only approbation in his answer: ‘even the applause sounded like music last night’.49 Even a more George Avakian, ‘About the Concert’, The 25-​Year Retrospective Concert of the Music of John Cage, n.p. 47  Ross Parmenter ‘Music:  Experimenter (Zounds! Sounds by) John Cage at Town Hall’, New York Times (16 May 1958). 48 Miles Kastendieck, ‘Cage’s Music Still a Phenomenon’, New  York Journal-​ American, 16 May 1958 (source: GAAAP). 49  Louis Biancoll, ‘John Cage Gives Review of Work’, New York World Telegram and Sun, 16 May 1958 (source: GAAAP). 46 

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tempered review, like Jay S. Harrison’s for the New York Herald Tribune, which notes that ‘it is very easy to laugh at Mr. Cage’s efforts’, stresses that that laughter surely provokes one to think about the questions experimental music might pose. Some pieces, Harrison claims, without naming which pieces are which, ‘emerge purely and simply as experiments in tone that have gone sour somewhere along the way’, but that nonetheless ‘Mr. Cage writes music by the yard and some of the yardage is first rate’ and that ‘he continues to make occasional magic’.50 Magic notwithstanding, at least two reviewers did not make it through the programme. The Nation’s Lester Trimble and The Saturday Review’s Irving Kolodin departed before the end, Kolodin cattily noting that ‘ “music” had fled, and I followed’.51 A further swathe of reviews of the event, however, would follow the release of George Avakian’s live recording of the whole evening.

Recording the Concert for Piano and Orchestra That a recording of the twenty-​five year retrospective concert would be made was evidently an integral part of the planning of the event. That George Avakian—​who signed Miles Davies and Dave Brubeck to Columbia, and, indeed, was personally responsible for the introduction of the LP format—​was to be responsible for that recording was surely much less obvious. Nonetheless, two of Avakian’s other achievements—​he produced the first live long-​playing record, Benny Goodman’s The Famous 1938 Carnegie Hall Jazz Concert and became known as ‘the father of jazz album annotation’,52 following his production for Columbia of the richly annotated Hot Jazz Classics series of re-​issues—​made him the ideal producer for Cage’s first substantial portrait on disc. Indeed, it is more or less reasonable to suggest that the very idea of a richly annotated, live long-​playing portrait of an individual musician was a format Avakian pioneered. Avakian had not only the skills for the task, but also, rather more surprisingly, the motivation, though the disparity between George Avakian, the jazz producer, and George Avakian, the promoter of John Cage was one which was noted and which, ever the smart marketer, Avakian was happy to Jay S. Harrison, ‘John Cage Retrospective Is Presented at Town Hall’, New York Herald Tribune, 14 May 1958 (source: GAAAP). 51  Robinson, ‘ “A Ping, Qualified by a Thud” ’, 106. 52  Felix Contreras, ‘George Avakian:  “The Father of Jazz Annotation” ’, NPR Jazz: a blog supreme, 29 January 2010, available online at: http://​www.npr.org/​sections/​ ablogsupreme/​2010/​01/​george_​avakian_​father_​of_​jazz_​album_​annotation.html . 50 

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exploit: he wrote to the San Francisco Chronicle’s Alfred Frankenstein—​who also regularly wrote for High Fidelity, where his review of the Cage discs would be published, and was also a more than fair clarinettist before his turn to journalism—​that ‘a jazz magazing [sic] got excited about the angle of how someone like myself gets into recording an album like this one’.53 How Avakian ‘got into’ recording Cage is actually quite simply explained. The first classical concert Avakian attended after his war service was given by Maro Ajemian and also happened to be at Town Hall in New York City, on 14 April 1946. To be sure, Avakian was taken with Ajemian’s programming, including a duo piano work by Alan Hovhaness, with the composer at the second piano, and, vitally, what were then Cage’s Four Sonatas for Prepared Piano, later substantially expanded into the Sonatas and Interludes. By the following year, Avakian had arranged for Cage’s Three Dances (1945) for two prepared pianos to have received a release on Disc Records, across three seven-​inch 78rpm discs, with Ajemian on one piano and William Masselos on the other. Though licensed to Disc, Avakian paid for the whole venture out of his own pocket, a situation he would surely have had cause to remember in the production of the recording of the Twenty-​Five Year Retrospective Concert. The boldness of Ajemian’s programming was not the primary reason why the concert was unforgettable for Avakian, though. His devotedness to Cage was intertwined with the fact that it was at the same concert that he first met Maro Ajemian’s sister, Anahid, who had regularly performed Cage’s music as violinist in a duo with her sister and as a member of the Composers String Quartet and to whom, more pertinently, he was married just over two years later, in May 1948.54 Notwithstanding this, Avakian was certainly committed to Cage’s music on its own terms too. His letter to Frankenstein includes the remarkable—​ and perhaps overstated, since he was angling for a High Fidelity review of his disc—​claim that ever since first hearing Maro Ajemian play their music, he had ‘found that Cage, Harrison, Hovhaness and about xxxxxx [sic] six or seven other composers are far more interesting than jazz musicians ever can hope to be’. Even if there is some marketing spin involved, his genuine spirit of enthusiasm is clear in the close of that letter: [I]‌n a case like this retrospective concert, it was too good an opportunityh [sic] to record an album which is unlike anyh [sic] other ever ade [sic], although had I known

53 George

Avakian to Alfred Frankenstein, undated [February 1960?] (source: GAAAP). 54  George Avakian to Joseph (Jody) Dalton (Composers Recordings Incorporated), ca. early September 1995 (source: GAAAP).

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how must it would eventually cost, I probablyh [sic] would have hesitated longer than I did –​although I don’t think anything would have stopped me!55

Although Avakian would regularly complain about the costs of producing the record, it was certainly only ever tongue in cheek, even if Cage felt that the recording ought to be taken much more seriously by all involved with it, even, perhaps especially, the man who had bankrolled it. The programme note for the Town Hall concert states—​perhaps to ensure attendees at the concert were aware that anything they might do was being recorded for posterity—​that ‘[t]‌he entire concert is being recording by Bill Randall [sic; recte Randle] of Station WERE Cleveland and will be released as a commercial recording’, although precisely who was to release the recording was apparently not yet settled by the time of writing this note. A later letter from George Avakian, however, suggests that the recording engineer was not Bill Randle but, rather, Robert Blake, one of the pioneers of multi-​microphone recording, which he termed ‘musirama’, a portmanteau of music and panorama. Blake worked with the sound technicians Richard H. Ranger—​who had received an Oscar in 1956 for his contribution to the development of magnetic tape recorders and work in synchronising video and audio—​and Louis A. Stevenson Jr.56 In truth, it seems that Randle’s role—​under the aegis of Cleveland’s WERE-​FM—​was not to record as such, but rather, in part at least, to underwrite the recording. It may have been that Randle put Avakian in touch with the recording engineer and sound technicians who worked on the recording; equally, Avakian’s production work at Columbia could perfectly well have meant that he contracted them personally. Either way, Randle was involved enough, according to a letter Avakian sent him only a few days later, to be at the Town Hall premiere. In that letter, Avakian reiterated the decision he had made, that it was ‘unfair to my partners to ask them to share in the cost of the Cage album’. As such, Avakian had decided to take on the very far from inconsiderable costs himself: ‘The union scale for the performers comes to $1,738.50 and the recording charge was $360.50 plus $46.25 for tape’, he advised Randle. Although he hoped that WERE-​FM might underwrite up to $1,300 of the total sum of nearly $2,150.00, he also noted that he was ‘quite prepared to go the bundle; by the time the artwork, plates, printing, manufacturing and advertising bills are paid, the difference won’t matter’. Avakian also apologised to Randle that it had proved impossible to record an interview 55  George

Avakian to Alfred Frankenstein, undated [February 1960?] (source: GAAAP). 56 George Avakian to unknown recipient [Schultz?], 26 July 1978 (source: GAAAP).

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with Cage which, presumably, would have been used by WERE-​FM to promote the recording.57 Given that Avakian does seem, in the end, to have been the sole funder of the release—​he wrote to one potential purchaser that ‘[p]‌erhaps the most vital statistic of all is that if I don’t sell a thousand of these, my kids drink watered soup for the next fifteen years’—​one might be surprised that it was ever in doubt that the discs would have been distributed wholly by him.58 Yet David Dachs’s Cincinnati Times-​Star review of the Twenty-​Five Year Retrospective itself suggested that World Pacific Records of Los Angeles planned to release a double LP of the concert,59 a suggestion confirmed by Avakian’s letter to Randle, in which he seems to suggest that World Pacific would act more or less as a distributor for the disc, with ownership of the masters—​and responsibility for the bills—​continuing to rest with Avakian.60 Pacific Jazz Records had changed its name to World Pacific only a year earlier, precisely with the intention of diversifying their output. While that diversification ultimately never included new music, or indeed classical music of any kind, it is hardly implausible that World Pacific might have been willing to consider Cage’s music nor that, as an extremely well-​connected individual within the jazz world, Avakian might not have acted as a broker. Moreover, Avakian seems to have been thinking strategically about this: he suggested to Randle that, if the venture were a successful one—​by which one might presume he meant if he proved capable of returning WERE-​FM’s investment—​they might work on another collaboration, this time focussing on the music of Ravi Shankar, who would, in fact, become a significant World Pacific artist after 1960.61 Whatever plans Avakian may have had, they came to little. Whether because he finally decided to go it alone or because World Pacific backed out, the recording of the Twenty-​Five Year Retrospective Concert was ultimately arranged, paid for, and distributed, without a label, directly by Avakian himself. The structure of the recording seems to have taken shape relatively rapidly: the complete concert fitted nicely onto three long-​playing records, retaining the order of live performance. On the first side of the first disc, then, 57 

George Avakian to Bill Randle (WERE-​FM, Cleveland), 20 May 1958 (source: GAAAP). 58  George Avakian to Bob [Rolantz? Robert Evett?], 5 February 1960 (source: GAAAP). 59  David Dachs, ‘Cage on Stage Is the Rage’, Cincinnati Times-​Star, 31 May 1958, 12TV (source: GAAAP). 60  George Avakian to Bill Randle (WERE-​FM, Cleveland), 20 May 1958 (source: GAAAP). 61  George Avakian to Bill Randle (WERE-​FM, Cleveland), 20 May 1958 (source: GAAAP).

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appeared the Six Short Inventions, the First Construction in Metal, and Imaginary Landscape No. 1, with The Wonderful Widow of Eighteen Springs and She is Asleep on its reverse. The second disc was taken up entirely with the first half of the Sonatas and Interludes, with the first four sonatas and first interlude on one side, and the second four sonatas and second interlude on the other. On the third disc, the first side comprised Music for Carillon and Williams Mix, with the second side entirely devoted to the Concert for Piano and Orchestra as well as, importantly, what followed. Avakian’s working notes for the release also suggest the benefits of his long experience in the production of live recordings and knowledge of how to prevent future errors. That the set of three discs was to be available in both monaural and stereophonic versions was clearly planned from the outset, with microphones set up to record for both, and safety recordings being made in case of any failure with the masters, even if it would finally prove to be, as will be seen, the safety recording where the issues, minor though they were, would be found. Avakian ensured, too, that he had separate microphones to record applause.62 The same notes include what was presumably at one point intended to be a part of the commentary within the accompanying booklet and demonstrate Avakian’s wisdom in recording the audience separately: regarding the close of the Concert for Piano and Orchestra, he writes ‘[a]‌s the audience reaction at the conclusion of this work is particularly interesting, it is reproduced on this recording in full’. Indeed, he even made notes to track the whole three minutes or so which followed the piece’s premiere, which are worth quoting in full: Applause—​strong start + bravos, crash at 0:10. Cheers at 0:47 + more at 0:58—​more at 1:15 1:25 “it stinks, it stinks” cheers + whistles up again at 1:45    cheers + boos at 2:13 boos at 2:26    dies down slowly to 2:45 Rustles until 3:08 The sense that the unrest at the concert, however, really began earlier, with Williams Mix, can be seen, too, in Avakian’s notes. On the earlier piece, he wrote: ‘mixed reaction, starts with bravos later boos at 0:50 also goes to 1:18’. These notes were clearly intended not simply to be a record of what one can hear on the tape, but also to enable consideration of what might be done in mixing and mastering the whole. Before the performance of the Concert for 62 Subsequent

GAAAP).

quotations are drawn from Avakian’s working notes (source:

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Piano and Orchestra itself began on the recordings, Avakian made a further note which describes not only what happened, but also what might be done with it: ‘Some applause, pause, applause for Merce (usable elsewhere if needed.)’ Though he did not realise it at the time, many years later, as will be noted, Avakian would discover that, on the safety recordings made alongside the master, the engineer had, in fact, simply pressed ‘stop’ at the end of the Concert for Piano and Orchestra and, as such, on that back-​up recording, the first fifteen seconds of applause were missing; presumably it was moments of other applause like the one which greeted Merce Cunningham’s arrival on stage that were used to fill in such gaps. In broader terms, too, the recording process was not without its problems and the audio recording itself remained, in Avakian’s view, imperfect, despite all attempts to improve it. Cage’s notes on the recording identify, amongst other issues, a frying sound, especially on the left channel, across the first two discs and, to some extent, on Music for Carillon too, though the two pieces which followed, by their very natures, made that sound rather less obvious. Avakian was aware of the problem, but ‘I don’t think anything can be done about the “frying sound”, which is caused by a faulty tube in one channel of the original recording. We tried to take out as much as we could during the making of the master tape’, he commented.63 Cage also noted a ‘curious flutter’ on the monaural recording of The Wonderful Widow of Eighteen Springs, as well as a touch of distortion at 1′04″.64 This, at least, Avakian was able to deal with. His notes to the mastering engineer insist that for this recording it would be necessary to ‘[r]‌educe LEFT SIDE throughout up to before Night Isobel, then keep up’. Most of the rest of Avakian’s notes are of a similar sort: pithy, but effective. In the quartet section of She Is Asleep, for instance, he writes: ‘at end, no sprocket noise for one note and the pause that follows’ and ‘2 EQ switches beginning with last splice in above’. Most obviously, he is careful to ensure that the mastering engineer knows precisely how tape splices need to be dealt with. For the Concert for Piano and Orchestra, however, matters are simple: ‘OK as is’. There is, however, an intriguing note appended to his instruction for Williams Mix—​’[b]leed channels + crowd loop. Fade out after ‘bravo’ at end of applause’—​which reads: ‘+ CONCERT APPLAUSE TRACK FOR STEREO’. It is possible, then, that the recordings which are available today—​and which are derived from Avakian’s stereo recording of the concert—​overplay the discontent which began after the performance of Williams Mix, by deploying a part of the applause track not from the ‘concert’, 63 

George Avakian to Carl Reinschild (RCA Victor), 2 November 1959 (source: GAAAP). 64  John Cage to George Avakian, 9 July 1959 (source: GAAAP).

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which would mean the Twenty-​Five Year Retrospective Concert, but rather from the Concert, the Concert for Piano and Orchestra. Nonetheless, Avakian’s own description of the event insists that ‘protests were loudest after the playing of Williams Mix’ and that, in truth, the point was that, during the performance of the Concert for Piano and Orchestra ‘the dissenters made themselves part of a performance.’65 Though Avakian would later aver that the design of the booklet was entirely Cage’s, he surely underplayed the importance of his own annotations to numerous jazz releases. Avakian never claimed to have invented the jazz liner booklet—​he insisted that the first was by Warren W. Scholl, for the Bix Beiderbecke Memorial Album of 1936 and that the second was John Hammond’s, for 1938’s Bessie Smith Memorial Album—​but after these first two, and making use of their template, Avakian came into his own, beginning with a twelve-​ page booklet to accompany the six ten-​inch discs of Decca’s Chicago Jazz, released in 1940, before continuing the model in his Hot Jazz Classics series for Columbia.66 Although Cage may have determined the content of the booklet which would accompany the release, the model was really Avakian’s. Certainly, it is a sumptuous affair, reproducing photographs of the event and its rehearsals from Robert Rauschenberg, the Merce Cunningham Dance Company’s Remy Charlip, and George Moffett, at the time a reasonably well-​ known documentary photographer, specialising in images of the New York art scene, with the Lensgroup agency. Perhaps most striking was the photograph which spread from the second onto the third page of the booklet, featuring a laughing Cage, with M.C. Richards, smiling, behind him, her hand on his left shoulder, flanked by a motion-​blurred Cunningham and Tudor, an image taken by Avakian’s colleague at Columbia, Bob Cato, who would later win two Grammys for the images he produced for the covers of Barbra Streisand’s People (1964) and Bob Dylan’s Greatest Hits (1968). As well as Cage’s programme notes for each of the pieces within the concert, appear versions of his texts ‘The Future of Music: Credo’ and ‘Experimental Music’, and Avakian’s two-​page description of the concert. The whole package—​three long-​playing discs with the accompanying thirty-​eight-​page booklet which also enclosed finely reproduced score extracts from the pieces performed, including the eighth page of the Solo for Sliding Trombone (the one-​hundred-​ and-​eightieth page of the whole Concert for Piano and Orchestra, then) and a George Avakian, ‘About the Concert’, The 25-​Year Retrospective Concert of the Music of John Cage, n.p. 66  Felix Contreras, ‘George Avakian:  “The Father of Jazz Annotation” ’, NPR Jazz: a blog supreme, 29 January 2010, available online at: http://​www.npr.org/​sections/​ ablogsupreme/​2010/​01/​george_​avakian_​father_​of_​jazz_​album_​annotation.html . 65 

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cropped version of the fifty-​first page of the Solo for Piano, in a handsome case—​ultimately had a retail price of $25.00, regardless of which version, monaural or stereophonic, one might choose, a price which certainly reflected the premium nature of the product: this was equivalent to the purchasing power of almost $200 fifty years later. Avakian’s wry sense of humour—​ which should hardly be taken as suggesting any lack of seriousness about the project—​can be seen through his correspondence with his future colleague at RCA Victor, Carl Reinschild, whom he had contracted to deal with the actual pressing and labelling of the discs. He wrote to Reinschild that he initially wanted to press 300 stereophonic and 300 monophonic copies of the release, noting that he was having 600 copies of the booklet printed, ‘in case my guess is wrong and there are 600 customers in this world’. Certainly, by the time of this letter, 14 October 1959, Avakian had determined irrevocably that this release would be his and his alone. He advised Reinschild that ‘[t]‌here is no label name—​just the name of the concert itself, up at the top’ and that ‘There are no catalog numbers—​just side numbers and master numbers’.67 His mailshot for the release had a similar clarity: ‘it is simply the John Cage Retrospective Concert Album’.68 A little later, on 3 November 1959, he would advise Reinschild that the boxes in which the discs were to be released and the booklet which would accompany them were practically ready, and that Cage had arranged for them to be delivered to Reinschild ten days later, a Friday, the thirteenth, ‘a nice date for a project like this’, Avakian added. Avakian noted to Reinschild that his ‘unfounded optimism’ had led him to increase the pressing order to twice its original scale: as of 18 December 1959, Avakian had received 483 stereo sets and 270 mono sets, with the remainder coming in in dribs and drabs over the first couple of months of 1960.69 He drily commented that ‘I am happy to say that the word has gotten around amongst the vast number of John Cage fans, and I already have six orders which I am panting to fill to help get me out of the debt I am already in’.70 Cage evidently felt that Avakian’s arch comments about the sheer costs he had incurred went too far. His complaint, though he stressed that it was ‘written in a friendly spirit with our mutual interests in mind’, is worth quoting at length:

67 George

Avakian to Carl Reinschild (RCA Victor), 14 October 1959 (source: GAAAP). 68  George Avakian draft mailshot [early 1960?] (source: GAAAP). 69  George Avakian, Twenty-​Five Year Retrospective Concert recording sales ledger (source: GAAAP). 70 George Avakian to Carl Reinschild (RCA Victor), 3 November 1959 (source: GAAAP).

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Various friends have brought to my attention the unbusinesslike way in which their interest in the Town Hall program has been received. [ . . . ] Carolyn Brown showed me your letter to her from which I quote: ‘I regret that it (the cost) is so high, but I find that the expenses are so great that without a high price I have little or no chance of coming close to recouping what I laughingly call ‘this investment’. Now George, this use of humor is not funny. If this is not an investment on your part then it should not be called one at all. $25 today is a small price and certainly for something which offers as much as this album does. Need I tell you what is in it? If you consider the whole thing a poor investment then for our mutual sakes, consider it an act of devotion on your part, not to me, but the art of music of which my work is more and more being seen to be a serious part. Get ahold [sic] for instance of a copy of the N.Y.Public Library’s publication ‘Some twentieth century composers.’ About 4 times as much space is devoted by [Peter] Yates to me than, for example, to Copland. Wesleyan University now contemplates a book bringing my lectures etc. together. Schirmers is very probably going to undertake the publishing of my work. I also quoted your letter to De Antonio, whose business sense I know you regard. He found it poor business. Also, and the following is invisibly underlined. I want a written agreement between us regarding this entire enterprise. In having it made up, please keep in mind that I not only wrote the music, but most of the words, that I have faithfully and at no little expense kept every (and nearly countless) engagement [sic] with regard to the printing, proof-​reading, editing, etc. Although I congratulate you on bringing this album to publication, I want you to rest assured that as an artist I am not satisfied by just seeing my work placed before the public. I have had sufficient glory: I would like to be treated in a business-​like way when it comes to my work to which I have given so much time.71

Cage went on to assure Avakian that, as far as Cage could see, the prospect of a return on the investment was a real one, but could only be realised if the venture was taken wholly seriously, indeed—​though Cage did not name any names—​presumably with the sort of seriousness Avakian applied to the jazz artists for whose recordings he was responsible. Though no copy of the written agreement Cage mentions survives, it appears that one was made: a letter from George R. Ruditz, at the Law Offices of Frisch & Goldfluss, to Avakian on March 23, 1960, claims that its enclosures were the original and three copies of this agreement.72 Notwithstanding this (and, to be sure, a marked change of the tone Avakian used when talking about the recording after this point), in other respects Avakian still treated 71 

John Cage to George Avakian, 18 November 1959 (source: GAAAP). George R. Ruditz (Law Offices of Frish & Goldfluss) to George Avakian, 23 March 1960 (source: GAAAP). 72 

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his dealings with Cage rather more personally than he did those of his day-​ to-​day work as a record executive. Indeed, he would later comment to Hugo Truyens that he ‘always enjoyed his company, and did not experience the stubbornness which many people have noted, perhaps because we never had a real business relationshipe [sic]—​only that of an admirer who wanted to help his career as a composer’.73 When Cage later wrote to Avakian to ask if he would be willing to re-​ assign the copyright for the texts Cage had written for the notes which accompanied the recording to their author, so that it was possible for them to appear in Silence,74 Avakian confessed that, in fact, he had never had the material copyrighted, notwithstanding the fact that a copyright notice did, indeed, appear on the booklet accompanying the recording.75 Indeed, regarding copyright, Avakian, with all his record experience, seems to have been essentially, if rather endearingly, clueless. When Jennings Wood, at the Library of Congress, requested a copy of the recording, Avakian was only too happy to oblige, in part it seems because it might solve the question of copyright, about which his understanding was vague at best. As he wrote to Wood: ‘I would like very much to copyright the contents of the album, but I don’t know how to proceed. Would it be possible to do it merely by submitting a copy of the album to the proper department of the Library of Congress, with whatever forms and payment are required?’76 In the end, however, Avakian decided not to copyright the album. Nevertheless, he sent Wesleyan University Press a letter which, while not disclosing that no copyright subsisted in the recording or its documentation, advised the press that he granted permission for the use of the texts in his role as producer and publisher of the recording.77 His own professional background and standing was far from insignificant, however. Given his experience at Columbia—​where it would only be a slight exaggeration to suggest that he was personally responsible for the creation of the whole category of jazz recordings—​and more latterly as one of Warner Bros. Recordings’ founding, and necessarily most senior, A&R men, it is hardly surprising that Avakian had a wealth of contacts at radio stations across the country to whom he could pitch the recording for radio play. He certainly had success with this across the whole network of stations owned by the liberal Pacifica Foundation, including WBAI in New York, KPFK in Los Angeles, and KPFA in Berkeley, broadcasting to the whole of the Bay Area. 73 

George Avakian to Hugo Truyens, 23 December 1993 (source: GAAAP). John Cage to George Avakian, 28 Feburary 1961 (source: GAAAP). 75  George Avakian to John Cage, 3 March 1961 (source: GAAAP). 76 George Avakian to Jennings Wood (Library of Congress), 8 August 1960 (source: GAAAP). 77  George Avakian to John Cage, 3 March 1961 (source: GAAAP). 74 

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It was hardly surprising that KPFK would take an interest, since the Cageian partisan Peter Yates broadcast his Evenings from the Roof programme there. KPFA’s Gertrude Chiarito exclaimed: ‘The records are magnificent, of course!’, letting Avakian know that they were already scheduled for broadcast in New York and Los Angeles, and that a Berkeley date for broadcast was in the offing.78 He was active, too, in the distribution of copies for review, and was reasonably successful in achieving the same. Hardly surprisingly, Avakian seems not to have retained a copy of Eric Salzman’s review of the disc for the New York Times, whose view was that these were ‘surprisingly modest efforts, strong on ideas and short on aural interest’ and that ‘[p]‌erhaps we need a new word. Say “cisum”. “Cisum” takes everything that music does and then does it backwards’.79 He also did not bother to retain Herbert Kupferberg’s note in the New York Tribune that Cage’s music was merely ‘bizarre’.80 But other than these few negative voices, Avakian surely had reason to be pleased with the generally positive responses the album enjoined. Though one might feel that Clifford Gessler, writing for the Oakland Tribune, was rather clutching at straws in describing the ‘intriguing’ Concert for Piano and Orchestra as ‘giving both “specific directions” and “specific freedoms” to players and conductor’, his broad description of the release was simply that it represented a ‘fascinating adventure in sound, and a historical document’, the latter surely because of the inclusion of ‘audience reaction, at times more cacophonous than any of the music. There are some angry buzzings, cat-​calls, whistles, and hostile pseudo-​applause along with the genuine variety.’ Similarly, John Beckwith’s notice for the Toronto Star is balanced between the controversy occasioned seemingly by Cage’s mere presence (‘that durable American bad boy of music’) and a rather hazy understanding of the demands of his scores, including ‘elaborately prepared “hazard” numbers such as “Concert for Piano and Orchestra,” no two performances of which could ever be alike’, while antinomies are evident again in Mike Gross’s short piece for Variety: ‘There’s one thing that can be said about Cage’s compositions and that is that one can’t be indifferent to ’em. A listener is either for him or agin’ him and the reaction is violent in one direction or the other.’ The sheer quality of the product was regularly highlighted too. Beckwith notes that a ‘fascinating series of manuscript reproductions are [sic] included’, Gross that the ‘zestful [ . . . ] package is heartily persuasive’, while Edward 78 Gertrude

Chiarito (KPFA, Berkeley) to George Avakian, 9 February 1960 (source: GAAAP). 79  Eric Salzman, ‘In and Out the Piano with Cage’, New York Times, 14 February 1960, X12. 80  Quoted in Robinson, ‘ “A Ping, Qualified by a Thud” ’, 107.

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Tetnall Canby, writing for Audio, repeats the well-​worn line that ‘[t]‌he portfolio of reproduced samples of Cage’s written scores is as interesting as the sound itself ’. Even if that line was one which many repeated about Cage’s scores, Canby could hardly have been more effusive:  ‘The piano concerto is a whole side of amazing squawks, blats [sic], wheezes, crashes, electronic bleeps, during which the audience bursts into applause heartily at one point. It’s very long, but I like it, infinitely.’ He closed, simply, ‘[g]et it!’ Avakian must surely have been most personally pleased by Fred Grunfeld’s tribute in The Reporter to the quality of the whole package: ‘In every respect, the booklet (the most comprehensive notes ever compiled for contemporary recordings) and the records are a milestone for the experimental wing of contemporary music’, as he must have been by Leo Lerman’s insistence in Mademoiselle that ‘[t]‌echnically this is a brilliant album’, even if Lerman’s review didn’t make the sheet of clippings Avakian prepared for advertising purposes, perhaps in part because of Lerman’s equivocation: ‘Mass audiences and orthodox musicians, if they think of him at all, place him far out on the lunatic fringe. Serious modernists place him at the very head of their vanguard. [ . . . ] To quite untutored ears it [the prepared piano] sounds like a piano that has had a serious accident. But if listened to carefully, a basic and definite musical pattern emerges.’ That said, Lerman clearly found the album vibrant. He had, seemingly, been at the event, and found his live experience directly mirrored in the recording: Here is the excitement of that amazing evening, an evening like the one described in memoirs of what happened in Paris when Stravinsky’s Le Sacre du Printemps was first performed. I do not remember anyone in the Cage audience coming to blows, but the pro-​Cages and the anti-​Cages certainly did mutter and murmur at one another and those who dared to giggle were vociferously menaced by the devout.81

The most substantial, and substantive, responses, however, came from Virgil Thomson, writing for Saturday Review, Alfred Frankenstein in High Fidelity, and Peter Yates in Arts & Architecture. Yates, as noted, also featured the recording on his regular show on KPFK, as befitted one of Cage’s strongest advocates on the West Coast, and his Arts & Architecture feature was more-​or-​less a published version of the same words he had used on air. Yates in fact contributed a double review, across the March and April 1960 editions of Arts & Architecture, with an ostensible focus on Folkways’ Indeterminacy recording, which interleaved ninety stories told by Cage with Tudor’s performance of the Solo for Piano and Fontana Mix in the first and Avakian’s recording of the Town Hall concert in the second. Neither, in truth,

81 

Leo Lerman, ‘Cagey Music’, Mademoiselle [early 1960?], 159 (source: GAAAP).

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represents simply a review, notwithstanding Yates’s insistence near the beginning of the first that even if ‘to have them together may strain the pocketbook’, the recordings ‘belong in any library, public or university, that wishes to make available to the public the source of much seemingly unrelated experiment which has been going on here and abroad during recent years.’ The first of the two reviews is concerned above all, however, with providing a framework for listeners through which to listen to Cage, particularly because, even allowing for Yates’s long-​standing friendship with Cage, he confessed that he had never ‘discovered for certain, in the midst of Cage’s lucidity, what it is about himself, or if there is indeed anything, John Cage wishes not to be known’ and was, then, ‘left at the end with the necessity of producing [his] own supplementary explanation’.82 The first part of Yates’s review, then, comprised Yates’s own supplementary explanation, with mention of the Indeterminacy album being perfunctory in comparison, although the second half of the review does discuss it, largely in the form of extended quotations from the stories Cage tells on the album. Yates claims that, really, he has not provided any explanation at all; rather, he has ‘tried to set [Cage] within a context, to ask question about him, to let him speak in his own words’. In truth, the second half of the review is frustrating in that it offers little in the way of an opinion, little in the way even of a description, although Yates seems to peer above the parapet, despite himself, when, in relating Cage’s stories, he notes that [n]‌ames are dropped continually, some famous, all of acquaintances or friends, except the anecdotes related of Confucius, Ramakrishna, and some mythical persons. I find the names dropped more distracting than the music. Why? I can hear Cage asking; and I must admit I am not sure. The precise names substantiate an individual landscape. But is it the common flaw by which many of us unwittingly try to place ourselves within a smaller group of assured fame that approves us, among whom we may face the general refusal we expect? 83

Nonetheless, it was precisely Yates’s version of Cage, precisely his supplementary explanation, which would come to dominate exegeses of the music over the next several decades. Rather than a composer, Yates argues that ‘we may start by thinking of John Cage as a philosopher, who uses instead of arguments esthetic instances. He is a thinker who will not be confined within esthetics, for whom the doings of music and words and poetry reach out into and affect a larger context than the appreciative.’84 It is just this view—​though Yates, ‘Two Albums by John Cage—​Part  1’, Arts & Architecture (March 1960), 5. 83  Ibid., 8. 84  Ibid., 5. 82  Peter

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Yates is unnamed—​that James Pritchett sets out to overturn at the start of his The Music of John Cage, where he states he must defend the ‘obvious’ premise that ‘John Cage was a composer’.85 Of course, Yates was hardly suggesting that Cage was not a composer, even if his thought later became calcified into a hard-​and-​fast distinction between music and philosophy through the removal of Yates’s insistence on the aesthetic—​just not only the aesthetic—​in the case of Cage. Philosophy, Yates insisted, from his perspective, ‘subsists in a constant questioning of the apprehension and joining of the facts. The apprehension has to do with whether or not they are fact; the joining with the manner in which the facts may or may not be connected.’ Such a philosophy, Yates argued, would necessarily reject normative patterns of thinking, would reject habit in favour of interrogation. Similarly, since in art—​music included—​Yates argues that people are conditioned to reject ‘any experience which threatens to break up this easy patterning of habit’, what Cage does in music is close to what he argues a critical philosophy would undertake: one of ‘Cage’s purposes is to break up our habitual patterns of receiving esthetic experience and thinking of it as and after we receive it.’ His understanding of what the two discs of Indeterminacy do, then, is that, at least on the level of Cage’s words, the stories run along fresh from incident to incident, an occasional story being spread, with chance of pace in the telling, over two minutes; there is no continuous narrative. As is the way of thinkers nowadays, distinguishing them from professional explainers, Cage allows the listener to make his own cross-​references. This way of pricking to a graph, which may have to do deeply with our new awareness of the statistical nature of what we had thought to be reality—​the chair is there but where is the chair, if it is made of what we know it is made of, by what suspension of other possibilities can we sit it it?—​seems to be what is held up by the stories against the formlessness, the emptiness, the chaos. In each an unplanned spontaneity accomplishes or undoes what might have been expected.

From the review, however, one would know little regarding the presence of Tudor’s performance of the Solo for Piano on the recording, or of the part Fontana Mix played, save that ‘at first hearing unassimilated and seemingly unassimilable noises were allowed to come between the speaker and the listener like sounds of traffic through an open window’.86 Nevertheless, this sets the context for Yates’s second review, which also exhibits a curious relationship to its supposed subject, the recording of the Twenty-​Five Year Retrospective Concert. This review, too, begins with a 85 Pritchett, The Music of 86  Peter

1960), 6.

John Cage, 1. Yates, ‘Two Albums by John Cage—​Part  1’, Arts & Architecture (March

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sizeable digression, here on Satie and Webern. The purpose, such as it is, of this diversion is to adumbrate further what Yates means by his proposition that Cage be understood as a ‘philosopher of esthetic instances’, suggesting that a ‘lyric is an esthetic instance’ as a hinge into the comparison toward which he has been working: The music of Anton Webern is a succession of such lyrical events, each proceeding from the last in an almost stanzaic perfectness, as if the entire body of his composition were a single lyric. In Cage’s work the esthetic instances are being constantly combined, experimentally, towards new process, and the relevance of any single event is not, simply, what it is but what it may be.87

Cage’s achievement, then, for Yates, was ‘to create a focus, a frame, a rhythm, to formalize an experience which, unformalized, would be beyond our capacity to receive’ in directing the listener’s attention toward ‘commonplace miracles which are happening everywhere around us, sounds, noises, comments, contradictions of expected happenings, which require us to open our attention and examine freshly what we have been taking in all the time.’88 Again, one of the important things Cage does from Yates’s perspective is to kick against habit while and through (re)framing experience. Whether one might ‘like’ Cage’s music or not would be, in such a context, an irrelevance. What mattered was the experience a friend related to Yates after listening to the Indeterminacy recording: I didn’t particularly like what I was hearing, but when it was over I understood that there was only one other thing I could do about it: I had been compelled to listen with an open mind. You could, undoubtedly, listen to it with a closed mind, but then you wouldn’t hear it. 89

Perhaps it is fortunate that Yates frames his thinking in this way, since although this second review actually does describe the Town Hall recording, there is no point at which Yates actually tells the reader that he has moved into description of the contents of the release: when he outlines The Wonderful Widow of Eighteen Springs, it might still be taken as introductory matter before which he will turn to what can be heard on the three discs of the Retrospective. This ambiguity may, perhaps, be a product of having directly translated words he had used on air into print. Still, Yates provides insightful, expert descriptions of the pieces which appear on the first two discs—​putting the music into the various contexts of Yates, ‘Two Albums by John Cage—​Part  2’, Arts & Architecture (April 1960), 10. 88  Ibid., 10. 89  Ibid., 12. 87  Peter

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study with Schoenberg, musique concrète, Boulez, and Indian classical music, amongst others—​although one would struggle to tell from this outline that this was a live recording: ironically, Yates is concerned above all with what Cage’s music, in the abstract, might say about the world, even while something rather worldly might be thought to happen in a live recording that might not in a studio. As such, the reader might be taken slightly aback when the review suddenly changes its tone to describe Williams Mix: ‘The response of the Town Hall audience, elsewhere favorable, divided equally between approval and boos, after hearing Williams Mix. I don’t dig it myself. This is one case where, in my opinion, the theory interests more than the result. Cage’s best work concentrates the attention; this diffuses it.’90 Yet this change of tone mirrors what Yates sees as a radical change in Cage’s output. He explains, albeit indirectly, the way in which the eruption of audience response after Williams Mix seems too to figure a vital shift in what Cage’s music means, heading ineluctably toward the Concert for Piano and Orchestra:

Hereafter in Cage’s compositions there is no such thing as a ‘work’. There are just the occasions according to or within which a musical event happens. The recorded album preserves a group of such fortuitous events as they happened on one occasion before an audience at Town Hall. Playing the same record a second time one has already passed outside the limiting circumstance. These works are not meant to ‘endure’ infinite repetition, like the Beethoven symphonies. Each performance will be as casual, final, controlled by its own circumstances and independent of all others as a street accident. 91

The Concert for Piano and Orchestra is for Yates ‘the summation’ of all that has preceded it on the discs and represents ‘for the candid listener either the final glory or the final frustration of his searchful listening’. Yet, aside from a repetition of Cage’s own notes that each player has specific directives and specific freedoms, that the piece holds together extreme disparities without fusing them, and that the conductor represents a chronometer, Yates’s description here is far more elusive (and allusive) than any other description of music in the piece.92 Indeed, his description of performer dissent—​noting that players ‘must be induced to share in the common experience, not sabotage it’—​recounts Schoenberg’s negative experience of the Los Angeles Philharmonic, rather than relating what had happened at the Town Hall, even though he also states that ‘Cage poises his work at the edge of chaos but is grieved when by indiscipline among the players it becomes chaos’. He quotes,

90 

Ibid., 36.

91 Ibid. 92 

Ibid.,  36–​37.

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too, Lou Harrison’s first response on hearing the piece: ‘John’s music is descriptive, a vegetable growing, a description of all natural events’.93 None of this is to say that the description Yates provides is unhelpful, but rather that it remains both open and, following Harrison’s example, lyrical. Remembering his suggestion earlier in the review that hearing a recording of such music for the second time would be moribund, Yates instead quotes his own unmediated reaction to hearing the last piece on the recording, written to Cage after first hearing the disc: The Retrospective is enchanting—​I mean the full meaning of that word. Listening to the Concert is like walking out in the mountains under a night full of stars, a lazy enormousness and nothing in the way of anything else. Like non-​ representational painting it fills the area it creates. Only it goes beyond painting, because there the limitations of the medium and the museum destination are in the way. 94

Although together these two reviews by Yates provide important context for the reception of Cage’s music more broadly over the next several decades, Avakian did not keep a copy of the second review or, at any rate, there is no copy in his papers, while there is of the first. Doubtless, as a practical man first and foremost, even though it was obvious that Yates wanted to stress to his readers the deep importance he placed on Cage’s work and the way in which Cage placed music as it had hitherto been understood in the West into question, Avakian’s first response was surely to note, perhaps ruefully, that there was little chance of Yates providing useful ‘pull quotes’ to drive sales. Yates’s ‘reviews’ may have represented important, thoughtful reflection on Cage and his music, but they were far from quotable in the ways Avakian required. By contrast, Virgil Thomson was happy to provide rich, quotable description, though at the expense of the subtlety of Yates’s approach. The opening of Thomson’s review gives a sense of the positivity of the whole: ‘Both the music and Cage’s statements about it reveal a powerful personality long preoccupied with both abstraction, as the art world now understands that term, and with naturalistic expression’. Thomson is, like Yates, certainly a member of Lerman’s pro-​Cage camp, but he is, too, critical, in the sense that he evidently has a rich enough knowledge of Cage’s music to engage in critique, rather than mere approbation or disdain. He saved especial praise, however, for the Concert for Piano and Orchestra, ‘Cage’s most complex work and certainly his most entertaining’, which ‘makes a jolly row and a good show’. The

93  94 

Ibid., 36. Ibid., 37.

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balance Thomson stresses between abstraction and naturalism pervades his account, in that, on the one hand the subject of the piece is ‘its palette of sounds, nothing else’, but at the same time, ‘[w]‌hat with the same man playing two tubas at once, a trombonist using only his instrument’s mouthpiece, a violist sawing away across his knees, and the soloist David Tudor crawling around on the floor and thumping his piano from below, for all the world like a 1905 motorist, the Town Hall spectacle, as you can imagine, was one of cartoon comedy’. In like vein, he insists on the simultaneity of the ‘aristocratic, inherently ‘musical’ character of the instruments’ and ‘the general effect [ . . . ] of an orchestra just having fun’. He is probably at his most acute, however, with the passing caution in his description of just how the effect was achieved, ‘with every instrument improvising, or seeming to, its most outlandish effects—​bleats, burps, bangs, tweaks, squeals, guffaws, and sudden trills’. Perhaps oddly, there is no mention within Thomson’s description of the disc of the more negative audience reactions. His only gesture toward the audience is to suggest that ‘it is doubtful whether any orchestra ever before [ . . . ] gave such joyful hilarity to its listeners’.95 Frankenstein, by contrast, leaves his reader in no doubt. One may well have the sense in his description, too, of a ‘jolly row’, as Thomson put it, since ‘the protest that arose during the Concert for Piano and Orchestra is clearly audible; it is quite in place, however, as part of the wonderful hullabaloo. After all, if the players are to do pretty much what they please, why shouldn’t the audience join in?’ In general, Frankenstein finds himself much less convinced by the artistry of Cage than, for instance, that of Morton Feldman. He argues that ‘Cage has a first-​rate intellect, capable of analyzing and synthesizing ideas about music in an extremely brilliant fashion; but the music he writes in response to these ideas is sometimes not first-​rate’, Williams Mix the piece in particular he regards as having been ‘completely overshadowed’ by the other pieces on the recording and, in particular, by the Concert for Piano and Orchestra, which he regards as ‘stupendous’ and, by some degree, the stand-​out piece, although he apparently over-​estimates the degree or form of licence given to the performers, perhaps because of the extra licence some of those performers took: ‘The piece has an absolutely epical, spine-​tingling quality to it, rather like that of Varèse’s orchestral works but less massive, and with an element of humor in its improvisation which Varèse never affords’. Yet his review makes it clear that, although he has not understood quite the demands placed upon the pianist, thinking that the potential re-​ordering of the pages

Thomson, ‘John Cage Late and Early’, Saturday Review, 30 January 1960 (source: GAAAP). 95 Virgil

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is where the difficulties begin and end, he is not so far off in his description of the trombone part: If the trombonist decides to hop aboard the ensemble he is offered the opportunity to play with his spit-​valve open, with his slide removed, with a glass jar replacing his bell, and so on; three different sizes of note-​head are employed, relating either to duration or intensity as the player wishes. And so on.

Most notably, in this respect, having come to a comparatively nuanced understanding of what the trombonist has to do, Frankenstein is also, to a greater or lesser extent, convinced: ‘There is, I suspect, an element of blague in all this, but not much’. Perhaps his strongest praise, though, is reserved for Avakian, highlighting, first, the quality of the stereo recording and, second, stating outright that ‘[t]‌he accompanying pamphlet is one of the finest ever issued. Record annotations could be distinguished additions to literature on music, but they seldom are. Avakian’s is, and his booklet alone would be a welcome addition to any library shelf.’96 Avakian’s marketing in the wake of these positive notices was bullish. His advertising blurb read as follows: When Was the Last Time You Saw the ‘SATURDAY REVIEW’ Devote a Page and a Third to Just ONE ALBUM? ONLY A GREAT musical event on records could achieve this kind of coverage from a publication of the stature of the ‘Saturday Review,’ particularly when the article is written by one of the world’s leading music critics, composer-​conductor Virgil Thomson. IF YOU have customers and clients who are well above the average in intelligence and in their appreciation of important developments in the arts, you will be interested in one of the most unusual record albums of all time.97

Notwithstanding the enthusiasm which reviews of the recording largely showed, Avakian was doubtless right in his assessment that, by and large, they were ‘long, detailed, but basically unquotable. The writers don’t seem to want to let themselves get committed to so daring a man as Cage.’ Although he was pleased with ‘Bob Rolantz’s Billboard piece which ended with a frank plug to dealers’: ‘Select shops would be wise to know where to order it, or even to have one or two in stock at all times’.98 In short, achieving sales was evidently to prove harder than achieving column inches. Frankenstein, ‘In Retrospect—​the Music of John Cage’, High Fidelity, vol. 10, no. 4 (April 1960), 63–​64 (source: GAAAP). 97  Advertising materials for 25-​Year Retrospective LPs (source: GAAAP). 98  George Avakian to John [surname unknown], 16 February 1960 (source: GAAAP). 96  Alfred

Presenting the Concert for Piano and Orchestra  :  159

That said, according to his own sales ledger, by the end of 1960, Avakian had sent out nearly 300 copies of the monaural set: the three-​hundredth set was sent out to Harold E. Samuel, the music librarian of Cornell University on 29 January 1961. By the same time, however, he had only dispatched about 100 copies of the stereo version: the hundredth order on his list—​to Brigham Young University—​is undated, but the ninety-​ninth was paid for by the Cardinal Export Company on 13 January 1961.99 Had Avakian been receiving the full price of $25.00 per set for each of these, he would have reached a not inconsiderable total, but this included not only all the free copies which were sent out for review, but also all manner of reductions for those who had been involved in the recording, as well as special deals and, worse, unpaid returns. For the 300 monaural sets, Avakian had earned just over $4,050 and for the 100 stereo sets a little above $1,050, which meant that on average the sales were coming out at about half the retail price Avakian had listed: closer to $12.50 than $25.00. Given that he estimated it cost him about $10 to produce a set, this meant that the profits he had made were only in the region of $1,000 and, in any case, as he would later write he gave ‘my friend Cage the most extraordinary royalty out of respect and admiration’.100 The precise percentage Cage took is unclear, but it may perfectly well have been as much as 50%, since when Avakian much later licensed the recording to WERGO for CD release, this was the split he arranged for the resulting payment.101 Whatever the case, and whatever Cage’s worries about his levity regarding the finances, Avakian evidently produced the Twenty-​Five Year Retrospective Concert recording as a labour of love—​love for both Cage and for Anahid Ajemian, surely—​but with no real expectation that he would ever receive back the monies he had poured into it. He must, however, have been gratified by the roll call of notables who snapped up the early copies, especially of the monaural recording: amongst those who paid, one sees Tina Fredericks, Henry Flynt, Leo Castelli, Richard Lippold, Stephen Sondheim, William Masselos, Merle Marsicano, Stan Brakhage, as well as numerous copies purchased by the Living Theatre; free copies were taken by Lou Harrison, Henry Cowell, Alan Hovhaness, Luciano Berio, and Leonard Bernstein, amongst others. Notably, given the sense that his quotation from Le Sacre was, at least, ‘part of the problem’ of performers being unwilling to act nobly, Don Butterfield took two copies of the monaural edition and one of the stereo, at cost.

99  The

sales ledger ends at the three-​hundred-​and-​fiftieth monaural recording and the hundred-​and-​eighteenth stereo recording (source: GAAAP). 100  George Avakian to Rob Meehan, 6 December 1978 (source: GAAAP). 101 George Avakian to Peter Hanser-​ Strecker (WERGO), 7 October 1992 (source: GAAAP).

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Even if he could attract famous names, some sense of the challenges Avakian had in achieving sales may be seen in the favours he endeavoured to call in: he had, for instance, evidently asked Gertrude Chiarito whether KPFA would be willing to sell copies directly.102 Though Harold Winkler, the President and Station Manager, seemingly demurred, other correspondence suggests that he was willing to help out at least so far as sharing with Avakian a list of potential record shops and distributors.103 Yet, as Avakian noted in the cover letter for the review copies he sent out, in this context the essentially private nature of the recording caused an additional difficulty for even an old record company hand such as he was. In short, ‘many record shops will not handle it because it is not an openly commercial recording’ and, while some would, and, while a small number of galleries and art dealers were also willing to take it on, largely the album was available for direct order from Avakian himself, at the Radio City offices of Warner Bros.104 This essentially personal approach was in line, arguably, with his evident attempt to keep the whole endeavour distinct from his day-​to-​day role, even if it would, in effect, be to Warner Bros. that a potential purchaser would be most likely to have to apply. As he wrote to Harry Lew, of Stanley-​Lewis Record Distributors, in April 1960 no individual dealer had taken more than twelve copies, and Chicago’s Summit was the only distributor which had made an enquiry, taking and selling twenty copies. By contrast, by the same point Avakian himself had directly sold about 140. To the degree that Avakian was serious about the recuperation of his investment, these direct sales were certainly enormously more profitable: he made about $15 on each set when he sold them in this way, as opposed to the two to five dollars he made when the discs went to distributors or dealers, even though, of course, the time he spent in dealing with those sales was quite significantly greater.105 Even so, the recording was very far from an immediate success. Though Cage felt that Avakian was frivolous in the way he described the financial loss he had incurred in the production of the discs, that loss was a very significant one, as he wrote to Cage in March 1961: Sales are quite slow now—​just an inquiry every other week or so—​and I am at something of a loss as to what to do. Every advertisement, without fail, has been a considerable financial loss. No one review has ‘pulled’ well. Most of the sales 102 Gertrude

Chiarito (KPFA, Berkeley) to George Avakian, 9 February 1960 (source: GAAAP). 103  George Avakian to Howell [KPFA?], 10 February [1960?] (source: GAAAP). 104  George Avakian draft mailshot [early 1960?] (source: GAAAP). 105  George Avakian to Harry Lew (Stanley-​ Lewis Record Dist.), 22 April 1960 (source: GAAAP).

Presenting the Concert for Piano and Orchestra  :  161 resulted from two mailings I  made to university and public libraries. I  will be working on my income tax in the next 3 or 4 weeks, and will of course have to bring the accounts up to date and in order, and when I do I’ll have a statement of earnings vs. costs for you; I expect, however, that I am still about $4,500 in the red.106

Perhaps one might feel charitably that Avakian’s decision to deal with these problems via humour was a sensible response, perhaps especially since even his comparatively successful approaches to libraries led to negative responses. No record of the letter which Avakian received from Harvard University’s Edna Kuhn Loeb Music Library survives, but his response lets one imagine: ‘In kindness to you, I shall cancel your order and forget that someone connected with so distinguished an institution as Harvard could write a letter such as the one I received from you.’107 In Europe, distribution was also rather homespun, though doubtless in some eyes this must have added a little to the recording’s mystique. A German advertisement, albeit written in English, directed potential purchasers to Haro Lauhus’s studio in Cologne, which is to say indirectly to Lauhus’s partner Mary Bauermeister, whose own studio on Lintgasse, just off Alter Markt, in the city would be the site of many significant performances of Cage’s music—​and that of many other experimental musicians—​in Europe from 1960 to 1962.108 Given that by late May 1961, Cage would write to Tudor of Bauermeister’s fractious relationship with Lauhus, and of their split, presumably this arrangement was, in any case, a short-​term one.109 Avakian clearly hoped for a more permanent European solution, though David Drew, then music critic of the New Statesman, pooh-​poohed Michael Horovitz’s suggestion that Universal Edition might take on distribution in Europe. He was surely absolutely right about this, even though he could hardly have known, as will be outlined in more detail, the complex history of Cage’s own negotiations with them. Drew suggested instead that Discurio—​on Shepherd Street in Mayfair—​might take on the role. Discurio specialised, as Drew said, in ‘out of the way’ recordings, though he felt that the list price of $25 for either the monophonic or stereophonic set of three discs was likely to prove 106 

George Avakian to John Cage, 3 March 1961 (source: GAAAP). George Avakian to Mary Lou Little (Edna Kuhn Loeb Music Library, Harvard University), 2 June 1960 (source: GAAAP). 108  See, especially, Amy C. Beal, New Music, New Allies: American Experimental Music in West Germany from the Zero Hour to Reunification (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 2006), 116–​18. 109  See John Cage to David Tudor, 23 March 1961, in Martin Iddon, John Cage and David Tudor:  Correspondence on Interpretation and Performance (Cambridge:  Cambridge University Press, 2013), 131. 107 

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a challenge, suggesting, first, that $6 would be a realistic maximum per disc and, second, that it might help if Avakian would be willing to split the sets up into single discs.110 Avakian was insistent upon the unity of the three discs and their packaging, noting quite sensibly that, in truth, breaking them up would have resulted in the need to create new and different packaging at extra expense, in any case. He estimated too that, with the set retailing at $25 and production costs per set to him in the region of $10, he would be able to let a dealer like Discurio purchase copies at $15 per set. If Discurio were willing to take fifty sets—​as would befit the principal European distributor—​Avakian was even willing to let the price drop to $12 per set.111 In the end, Discurio did not go so far as that, but took an initial order of twelve copies, at least a good proportion of which apparently Drew was happy to deliver to them by hand.112 Avakian would later thank Drew, not unreasonably, for his part in launching Cage sales in the United Kingdom.113 By this stage, Cage’s publishers or, at any rate, the Frankfurt office of Edition Peters were concerned by what they seemed to regard as an essentially amateur—​if not perhaps amateurish—​operation, although, as will be noted, the European wing of Peters was far from convinced by Cage in general. They wrote to Avakian that, without the sales and marketing apparatus that might, for instance, be provided by one of the leading record companies—​in the West Germany of the 1950s: Deutsche Grammophon, Electrola, Philips, or Telefunken/​Decca—​it would essentially be impossible to have any reach into retailers. Their representative went so far as to say that he considered it his ‘duty to say quite frankly that it would be very unwise to undertake the distribution of the discs personally. It would do neither you nor Mr. Cage nor indeed the publisher any favours.’ His suggestion to Avakian was that Electrola maintained a so-​called Auslandssonderdienst [foreign special service], which distributed ‘off beat’ issues and, indeed, had a specific part of its catalogue devoted to new music. He advised Avakian that, if there was interest from him, Electrola was, in principle at least, interested in handling the release.114 It seems unclear whether Avakian finally took up this possibility—​that his approach was hands-​on does not mean that Edition Peters was right to think it amateurish—​but he wrote to Drew that the model seemed ‘quite ideal’.115 Avakian continued actively to market the recording at least into 1964, though now with a focus on the academic market, perhaps especially with 110 

David Drew to George Avakian, undated [June 1960?] (source: GAAAP). George Avakian to David Drew, 20 June 1960 (source: GAAAP). 112  George Avakian to David Drew, 25 November 1960 (source: GAAAP). 113 Ibid. 114  CF Peters (Frankfurt) to George Avakian, 1 September 1960 (source: EPNY). 115  George Avakian to David Drew, 15 September 1960 (source: GAAAP). 111 

Presenting the Concert for Piano and Orchestra  :  163

a mind to ensure that well-​funded university libraries had a copy of the release on their shelves, paying for full-​page advertisements in the Journal of the American Musicological Society and Notes. Yet it was really over the long term that the recording’s significance became evident, testament not only to its quality as a recording, but also to Avakian’s decision simply to keep it in print. Although it may well have taken Avakian a long time to recoup his initial outlay, by the end of 1978, he could write to Rob Meehan that the Cage concert album recording is in its third edition, and has by now sold about 1,000 sets. In 20  years, it has paid for itself, I  think—​I’m not sure because the lasting pressing and packaging cost so much (rising prices) but I don’t worry about that. 116

Keeping the venture going was, in fact, not quite so straightforward as it might have seemed. Indeed, with each new edition, it seemed that some vital part of the materials had gone missing. For instance, in 1983, the original films for the booklet had vanished, he complained to Nina Iacona, the office manager of Paterson, New Jersey’s Windsor Records, which had just pressed a new edition of 300 sets of the discs for him (‘sounds good, looks good’, he pithily commented), presumably the recording’s fourth edition.117 A fifth edition was printed toward the end of  1987. Having kept the recording in print for such a long time, with only a few brief points at which it was unavailable, it seemed a natural next step, with the advent of the compact disc, to transfer it to the new format. By 1987, however, while the recording was out of print, Avakian was returning orders uncompleted and, though he had committed to himself that he would undertake another edition, he was wary of the costs that would be involved, not to himself this time, but to consumers: a price tag of $75.00 seemed likely, which would have made the set something of a luxury item, although in terms of purchasing power this probably meant it was if anything slightly cheaper than the original release. He also recognised the need to ‘face the fact that this [compact disc] is the long-​play version of the future’ and was resigned to producing such an edition sooner or later.118 By 1993, he was assembling copies of the set for sale out of incomplete parts of existing sets and, indeed, occasionally sent out sets with missing or supplementary elements to customers who were happy to pay a reduced price for a reduced product, including on at least one occasion the replacement of the central disc of the 116 

George Avakian to Rob Meehan, 6 December 1978 (source: GAAAP). George Avakian to Nina Iacona (Windsor Records), 27 October 1983 (source: GAAAP). 118 George Avakian to M.  Rubin (Audio Buff Co.), 9 December 1987 (source: GAAAP). 117 

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Sonatas and Interludes with a seven-​inch copy of Maro Ajemian’s earlier, shorter Dial recording.119 Although Richard Kostelanetz appears to have announced that the CD edition, too, would be an all-​Avakian production, Avakian ultimately licensed the recording to WERGO in Germany.120 A major part of the reason for this seems, in fact, to have been the degree of attachment he had to the total package developed for the first release: he could hardly bear to see his elegant twelve-​inch booklets—​which he was actually by this stage selling without the discs at $10 a piece—​compressed down into the seven-​inch CD format.121 How Avakian came to WERGO is unknown, but a letter from the German company’s Peter Hanser-​Strecker only a few days after Cage’s death signals the company’s willingness to produce the CD version, either under licence or via buying a digital tape with the simultaneous transfer of all of Avakian’s rights as producer to them. Avakian was doubtless horrified to read: ‘Since it is a re-​ release, the booklet does not have to be of top quality. However, if we could get from you the original photos, this would, of course, improve things very much.’ He may, however, have recognised an individual with an attitude not an enormous distance from his own in Hanser-​Strecker’s observation that ‘[o]‌f course we shall not sell very many copies, so it is not an economical, but a very prestige project.’122 In any case, given that Avakian technically did not own the copyright—​indeed there simply was no copyright—​but only the tapes, this doubtless seemed like both a good deal and a good way of ensuring the continued survival of the recording. To be more precise, Avakian only owned the safety recordings, since the masters appeared to have been lost when Master Disc, which was responsible for their storage, moved from its base at 61st Street in New York City some years previously.123 Hanser-​Strecker and Avakian were in fact able to meet in New York in mid-​September and, presumably, Avakian received the assurances he needed that the booklet would not be neglected.124 Even aside from the emotional cost of repackaging, Avakian was doubtless reminded that re-​mastering the recording would have been an expensive business: he had the analogue tapes baked and transferred to DAT in October 119 George

Avakian to Ms. [Tina Kilvio?] Tüscher, 22 November 1993 (source: GAAAP). 120  Kostelanetz’s announcement is mentioned in George Avakian to Hugo Truyens, 23 December 1993 (source: GAAAP). 121  George Avakian to Clive Graham, 16 March 1994 (source: GAAAP). 122  Peter Hanser-​Strecker to George Avakian, 20 August 1992 (source: GAAAP). 123 George Avakian to Peter Hanser-​ Strecker (WERGO), 28 February 1993 (source: GAAAP). 124  Peter Hanser-​Strecker to George Avakian, 18 September 1992 (source: GAAAP).

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1992 for delivery to WERGO at a cost of $852.47.125 Foothill Digital, which undertook the transfer, noted some of the same problems in the recording that had been there since 1958: ‘Hiss, hum, spurious noises, clicks, ticks, etc.’ and ‘[d]‌istortion—​especially on shrill clangy stuff ’, as well as that the analogue signal cut out for 15 seconds at the end of the Concert for Piano and Orchestra, where at the premiere the recording engineer had abruptly stopped the tape before the applause—​and the rest—​had begun, if only on the safety recordings.126 Avakian wryly commented to Hanser-​Strecker that he was ‘sure the engineer never thought I would hear the safety’, but through the combination of these safety recordings and the existing discs, it was reasonably straightforward to correct.127 He noted, too, that ‘[i]f I could remember the engineer’s name I would give him bloody hell.’128 The financial costs were, in any case, immediately recouped via the deal with WERGO: a $6,000 payment was to be split fifty/​fifty with Cage’s estate as an advance against royalties of 20% of the wholesale price or 10% of sales to licensees.129 The deal was to last initially for ten years, with the possibility of further continuation.130 That Avakian remained, even now, slightly cautious about letting anybody else deal with the recording may be seen in the fact that he kept a copy of the DAT himself, just in case he needed to make his own CD edition at the end of the deal.131 Avakian continued negotiating with WERGO with respect to the booklet which would accompany the CD, even trying to persuade their sales people that a special package which would include the full-​size twelve-​inch booklets would be successful, at least for the American market.132 Doubtless Avakian was not being wholly altruistic in this suggestion. Though it clearly mattered to him that ‘the original design of the booklet was conceived by John Cage himself ’, he also confessed that ‘the 1,800 or so booklets I have on my hands 125 

Foothill Digital invoice, 14 October 1992 (source: GAAAP). Foothill Digital transfer notes [undated, ca. Autumn 1992] (source: GAAAP) 127  George Avakian to Peter Hanser-​Strecker (WERGO), 28 February 1993 (source: GAAAP). 128  George Avakian to Ronald Freed (WERGO), 15 October 1992 (source: GAAAP). 129 George Avakian to Peter Hanser-​ Strecker (WERGO), 7 October 1992 (source: GAAAP). 130 WERGO contract, 14 October 1992 (source:  GAAAP). Avakian only finally signed the contract on 28 February 1993. 131  George Avakian to Ronald Freed (WERGO), 15 October 1992 (source: GAAAP). 132  George Avakian to Suzanne Hagadorn (European American Music), 20 October 1993 (source: GAAAP). European American Music was (and is), like WERGO, a part of Schott Music, but had its base in Valley Forge, PA, in the United States of America. 126 

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constitutes [sic] a storage problem, and I cannot bring myself to destroy even one of them.’133 At the beginning of 1993, perhaps—​given that this was a point between Avakian’s receiving the WERGO contract and his finally signing it more than four months later—​with plans for, precisely, a CD edition as he had envisaged it—​a twelve-​inch package with two discs and the original booklet—​Avakian had purchased a total of 2,000 new booklets, at a cost of $7,573.38.134 The WERGO payment assuredly did not cover that sort of expense. Nonetheless, the solution offered by WERGO honoured the original design as much as possible, including the complete original text of the booklet, prefaced by a brief introduction, images of many of the score pages which had appeared in the original release, and numerous photos which had been taken by Avakian’s brother, Aram, during the rehearsals and performance at Town Hall. Avakian’s verdict was, finally, positive: ‘Very good, very effective!’135 By the beginning of January 1995, Avakian had only a single complete copy of his original recording left for sale, which was then retailing at $90.00.136

The European premiere Many of Cage’s European contacts must have been surprised to learn that his new piano concerto had been premiered in North America since, for a long time, Cage and Tudor had been negotiating with Eigel Kruttge, Herbert Eimert, and, especially, Otto Tomek, to have the premiere in Cologne. These discussions hardly came to nothing, since the European premiere of the piece did take place there, on 19 September 1958, within the Westdeutscher Rundfunk’s Musik der Zeit series, shortly after Cage’s infamous and explosive visit to the Darmstadt New Music Courses.137 Moreover, the protracted planning process reveals some interesting facets of the history of Concert for Piano 133  George

Avakian to Angelika Servatius (WERGO), 11 December 1993 (source: GAAP). 134  Robin Press invoice, 15 January 1993 (source: GAAAP). 135  George Avakian to Angelika Servatius (WERGO), 13 July 1994 (source: GAAAP). In this letter Avakian also made a number of corrections and amendments to the captioning of the photos in the booklet, but as Servatius noted in her later letter of 6 October 1994 (source: GAAAP), for some reason the letter containing Avakian’s additional information was waylaid by customs officials for some two months and, as such, the corrections were never made. 136  George Avakian to Ursula Block, 6 January 1995 (source: GAAAP). 137 See Martin Iddon, New Music at Darmstadt:  Nono, Stockhausen, Cage, and Boulez (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2013), 196ff.

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and Orchestra, not least regarding how early on Cage had plans for it and how long, by extension, it took him to complete the piece. Cage and Tudor were already reasonably well known in Cologne: Kruttge, then head of new music for the Nordwestdeutscher Rundfunk—​which was split into two stations, the Norddeutscher and Westdeutscher Rundfunk, based in Hamburg and Cologne respectively, until the end of 1955—​had invited Cage to perform, alongside Tudor, on 19 October 1954, just two days after their hardly less scandalous Donaueschingen performance.138 Even if the Europeans were leery of Cage—​by turns primitive and clownish, according to the cultural arbiters of the West German new music scene—​Tudor’s capabilities as a pianist were never in doubt: he was in regular demand by the various West German radio stations, especially from 1956 onwards, as the performer par excellence of the otherwise apparently unperformable. It was on one such occasion—​recording Bo Nilsson’s Schlagfiguren (1956) and Henri Pousseur’s Variations I (1956) alongside the Music of Changes and parts of Music for Piano—​that Tudor may first have mentioned the prospect of a piano concerto to Kruttge. Tudor had written to Stockhausen, on 12 March 1957, that John is composing again—​we have played one piece already for two pianos. It is causing a great consternation, it is absolutely static. Probably you would be greatly astonished—​because you thought his music static before. Now he is working on a piano concerto, which will be exactly opposite, I think, very wild. Would you mind talking to Dr. Kruttge on my behalf and John’s? Tell him that the piano concerto is not finished and that John would be willing to send some sample pages of the work if Dr. Kruttge wishes. The length of the work would be adjustable of course, but probably it should not be less than 15 minutes. John could also send an earlier work (that I mentioned to Dr. Kruttge also) for prepared piano and small orchestra, but would greatly prefer to have the new piece performed. The other question is, is there a possibility of performing it during October, or will I have to make a second trip in ’58? Say if you don’t like to make these arrangements.139

That Tudor had mentioned this prospect to Kruttge in or around November 1956 suggests that Cage had begun plans for the Concert for Piano and Orchestra—​ even if nebulous ones to begin with—​some time before completing Winter Music, perhaps indeed before beginning to compose Winter Music. One might very well imagine, then, that this projected piano concerto would have been the result of the apparently abandoned sketches for a piece of a wholly different nature detailed in Chapter 2, even if it remains possible that some or all of the positions of notations in the published score were determined by work 138 

Ibid., 156–​64. Tudor to Karlheinz Stockhausen, 12 March 1957, in Misch and Bandur (eds.), Karlheinz Stockhausen in Darmstadt, 162. 139  David

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undertaken for this earlier piece. That it seems to have been on Cage’s mind even before Winter Music emphasises too the possibility that it may have been expected to have to do with the same structural processes Cage had developed for the Ten Thousand Things. Stockhausen would reply to Tudor on 24 March 1957 to suggest that, in order to secure a concrete date for the premiere of the new piano concerto, ‘John (or you) must write personally to Kruttge, saying that you talked with him last winter about the performance of Johns [sic] piano concerto.’140 The problem, according to Stockhausen, was that Kruttge was unwilling to make any positive decision on the programming of a new piece without having seen the score. One might imagine that this was because of a specific wariness about the sorts of scandalous activities a score by Cage might promote. In truth, it was ‘these young composers’ in general against whom Kruttge’s animus was directed, and not because of anything Cage—​or for that matter Stockhausen—​had done, but instead because Boulez, eight days before a projected premiere for the Nordwestdeutscher Rundfunk, had still not delivered the score, causing enormous panic on Kruttge’s part. Stockhausen insisted that Kruttge would ‘never program John’s piano concerto, if he has not the score in his hands’. Even if the plan was to offer the rather more conventional Concerto for Prepared Piano and Orchestra, Stockhausen told Tudor: ‘you must immediately send the score to him’.141 By May 1957, Otto Tomek, who had joined WDR from Universal Edition in Vienna, had taken charge of chamber music at the station and, with it, the Musik der Zeit concerts.142 Nonetheless, the position regarding programming enforced Kruttge’s party line: Tomek wrote to Tudor on 6 May and then again on 22 May to stress that neither the older nor the newer concerto could be programmed without sight of a score or, hinting of at least some softening of WDR’s stance, at least a few pages of the new piece.143 Clearly there must have been a degree of genuine desire to see the score, as well as anxiousness regarding its continued absence, since Stockhausen—​also apparently involved, if unofficially, in some programming decisions by the stage—​wrote to Tudor only a few days after Tomek’s second letter to say ‘it is very difficult to arrange concerts for you in summer: and you make difficulties: why? In the radio they absolutely want to have John’s score; Tomek asked you once more four weeks ago to send the score: nothing came.’144 Though Tudor’s reply to Tomek is 140 

Karlheinz Stockhausen to David Tudor, 24 March 1957 (source: DTP).

141 Ibid.

Michael Custodis, Die soziale Isolation der neuen Musik: zum Kölner Musikleben nach 1945 (Stuttgart: Franz Steiner, 2004), 94. 143  Otto Tomek to David Tudor, 6 May 1957 and 22 May 1957 (source: DTP). 144  Karlheinz Stockhausen to David Tudor, 26 May 1957 (source: DTP). 142 

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not extant, the simple message it communicated may be seen in his reply to Stockhausen: ‘I have written to Tomek [ . . . ] explaining about John’s new concerto—​it can’t be ready in time and he no longer wants to revive the old one.’145 Though letters trail off a little on the subject at this point, the reason was seemingly not to do with any waning of West German interest, but rather a result of Tudor’s cancellation of all plans to travel to Europe in the second half of 1957, following the development of a kidney complaint.146 Indeed, notwithstanding the fact that Tudor had apparently made clear to Tomek that the Concerto for Prepared Piano and Chamber Orchestra was, by this stage, of relatively little interest to Cage, when Tomek renewed correspondence on 20 January 1958, he stressed that he would nevertheless like to receive a copy of the earlier score and the First Construction, as well as the new piano concerto, if it had been, in the interim, completed.147 As noted, in the Introduction and Chapter 2, Cage wrote a little over a week later that the Solo for Piano was “nearly completed”, in pencil, at least, and that he would “assuredly have material ready for a performance in the Fall of this year”, suggesting that at this stage, especially given the implication that he was not anticipating needing to have completed the remaining parts of the piece any sooner than the second half of 1958, Cage was still working on the presumption that the most likely venue for the premiere of the piece was on the other side of the Atlantic.148 Cage’s note was retyped at the close of Tudor’s reply to Tomek on 6 February: in the interim, by Tudor’s account, Cage had started to ink in the piano part and ‘would be able to send some sample pages of it within a month’s time’. Perhaps, indeed, the copy of the early pages of the score in the possession of Kagel—​which is to say in Europe—​represents exactly this sample. The reason for the delay in replying to Tomek, Tudor said, was that Cage had fallen ill at precisely the point Tomek’s letter had arrived, making it difficult to discuss plans; by contrast Tudor assured Tomek that he was once again fully returned to good health. He regretted that providing a copy of the First Construction would be impossible, as a result of the poor condition of the score, and that as for the earlier piano concerto ‘only one movement of it is sympathetic with [Cage’s] present style of working, and so the work is mainly of historical interest.’149 Tomek’s reply provided a tentative date for the performance of the new, as it was still named, Concerto—​19 September, a date which stuck—​on the grounds that this would mean rehearsals could 145 

David Tudor to Karlheinz Stockhausen, 4 June 1957 (source: DTP).

146 Iddon, New Music at Darmstadt, 183. 147 

Otto Tomek to David Tudor, 20 January 1958 (source: DTP). John Cage to Otto Tomek, 29 January 1958 (source: DTP). 149  David Tudor to Otto Tomek, 6 February 1958 (source: WDR, folder 10668). 148 

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begin straight after the Darmstadt New Music Courses, for which Tudor was already engaged.150 The contents of Tomek’s letter also suggest that the prospect of a New York premiere for the piece may have eventuated at some point in the early days of February since he stressed that he would be interested in Musik der Zeit taking on the performance of the piece whether it be a world or only a European premiere. Tomek remained clear, though, that he would be unable to finalise any arrangements without sight first of a part of the piece’s notations: in his letter ‘score’ is crossed out and replaced with the handwritten correction, ‘parts’. Nevertheless, one senses Tomek’s relief that the piece was to be flexible both in terms of length and instrumentation, since he was obliged in the context of the 19 September concert only to include chamber music and, as such, informed Tudor that, aside from the pianist himself, a maximum of ten instrumentalists would be available.151 Given that Cage could barely have begun writing the instrumental parts by the point of Tudor’s receiving this letter from Tomek, and given the degree to which the instrumental parts essentially are conventionally notated, Tomek’s caution—​this time specifically regarding Cage’s writing, rather than the problematics of getting young composers to turn scores in on time in general—​that if the piece were notated in any manner other than the conventional WDR’s ‘untrained’ musicians would struggle is notable. It is conceivable, at least, that part of the reason why the instrumental parts are so relatively straightforward in notational terms is precisely that Tomek was unambiguous in his warning that any other decision would be unwise, pragmatically speaking. The question of instrumentation was complicated by the fact that the concert which was to feature the European premiere of the Concert for Piano and Orchestra was intertwined with a WDR guest concert at the Darmstadt New Music Courses on 7 September 1958. Krenek’s Hexaeder (1958)—​which required flute (doubling piccolo), trumpet, clarinet (doubling bass clarinet), violin, double bass, piano, and percussion—​and Kagel’s Sexteto de cuerdas (1953/​57)—​which added a second violin to that in Hexaeder, as well as two violas and two violoncelli—​were the common elements between the two programmes and, in broad terms, what was made available to Cage was built 150  On

11 September 1958, M. C. Richards wrote to the artist Sari Dienes, a little later her Stony Point neighbour, that Tudor had been the driving force behind the whole of the 1958 European tour: ‘David arranged (he really did, he did it all, wrote hundreds of letters, etc) concerts and lectures for the two of them: beginning Sept 2 in Darmstadt for 2 weeks, then Cologne, then Stockholm, then Brussels and the Fair, then Copenhagen, and Hamburg. And I think a couple of appearances in England’ (source: MCRP). 151  Otto Tomek to David Tudor, 10 February 1958 (source: DTP).

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upon what had already been agreed with Krenek, clearly by some margin the more senior of the two composers, even if only twelve years separated them in age, and what was necessary for Kagel’s string sextet. Krenek and Kagel would appear in the first half of the programme, each succeeded by an interpretation of Stockhausen’s Klavierstück XI (1956), performed by Tudor. The Concert appeared immediately after the interval, followed directly, in a curious juxtaposition, though one likely to throw both pieces into sharp relief, by Boulez’s Sonatine (1946), the piano part again taken by Tudor, with Severino Gazzelloni the flautist. Perhaps the parts—​or parts of the parts—​were dispatched to Tomek shortly after the piece’s premiere, but in any case the delay in finally confirming the date was then on the European side: prodded by Tudor, Tomek had to confess that, though he was notionally in charge of programming, Kruttge still had to approve things and, in June, Kruttge was ill and, as a result, away from the office.152 The European premiere of the Concert for Piano and Orchestra, then, was only finally confirmed on 2 July 1958, following Kruttge’s return, with a proposed instrumentarium of string quintet, flute (doubling piccolo), clarinet (doubling bass clarinet), trumpet, trombone, and tuba, the last two the only extra players not already needed for the rest of the programme.153 Tomek suggested that this was on the basis of their earlier correspondence and, though no letter corroborates this, Tomek’s subsequent letter to Cage, on 7 July, asks him to provide the exact title of the piece, since the score does not provide it, suggesting strongly that it must have been the receipt of Cage’s performance materials which enabled Tomek to set the date in stone: it seems inconceivable that Kruttge would have been willing to sign the performance off without at least sight of some notational materials, notwithstanding the fact that his major concern—​that the piece did not really exist—​must have been allayed by the fact of its premiere.154 In any case, Tomek’s proposal seems evidently an attempt to square the already agreed-​upon instrumentation of the Krenek and Kagel pieces with at least some sense of what Cage had available—​the instrumentation is, in theory, one available within the part for the Concert for Piano and Orchestra, but the doublings are drawn directly from Krenek—​while still ensuring the piece was clearly for a large chamber ensemble, rather than a small chamber orchestra. Since Tomek specifically asked Cage on 2 July if he could provide the necessary parts for the instrumentation given, one possibility is that Cage had provided only pages from the Solo for Piano in the first instance, along with a 152 

Otto Tomek to David Tudor, 7 June 1958 (source: DTP). Otto Tomek to John Cage, 2 July 1958 (source: DTP). 154  Otto Tomek to John Cage, 7 July 1958 (source: WDR, folder 10668). 153 

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list of instruments for which parts existed, but omitting doublings. In that case, he must either have omitted to mention the bassoon part, or given its full title as a part for bassoon and baritone saxophone, since Tomek asked too whether it would be possible to replace the tuba with a part for bassoon, presumably without, though Tomek did not specify it, a doubling highly unlikely to suit an orchestral bassoonist.155 Tomek also requested that Cage make a version of the piece lasting between twelve and thirteen minutes, with Cage ultimately plumping for the longest possible of Tomek’s preferred duration range: thirteen minutes.156 About some of these issues, Cage was seemingly unruffled: on 11 July, he stated that he would be keen to create a part for clarinet doubling bass clarinet and, less than a week later, he noted that he was already in the midst of preparing it; by contrast, he stated that, though he would be willing to write a part for bassoon and double bassoon (a doubling in truth that Tomek had not apparently offered), he would do this only if ‘absolutely necessary’ or if it would cause Tomek ‘grave difficulty’ for his to do otherwise, repeating the latter expression in his 16 July letter.157 Though one presumes that Cage never completed it, this may well provide one explanation for the presence of the sketch of a part for bass clarinet discussed in Chapter 2, though it makes no clearer why it would be that that part received page numbers higher than the presumably equally unused fourth, fifth, and sixth violin solos: even had Cage thought to create a complete set of fresh string parts for Cologne, only two violins would have been necessary. About other issues, he was keen to clarify: he checked whether the flute player was able to play alto flute (and, perhaps more obviously a problem, whether such an instrument was available), how many trumpets and tubas (and in which tunings) their respective players had, and checked that the trombone was to have a slide rather than valves.158 This last would surely have seemed a curious question to the letter’s intended recipient, since the slide trombone would have been the default position, but it surely belies the degree to which Cage had worked with jazz, rather than orchestral, musicians in preparing the part, for whom the common fingering makes the valve trombone a possible doubling for trumpeters, perhaps most prominently Bob Brookmeyer, who was part of the same Claude Thornhill and Gerry Mulligan circle of players in the New York of the 1950s as all of the other jazz players already mentioned in Chapter 2. In fact, however, Tomek may well never have

155 

Otto Tomek to John Cage, 2 July 1958 (source: DTP). Otto Tomek to John Cage, 2 July 1958 (source: DTP). 157  John Cage to Otto Tomek, 11 and 16 July 1958 (source: WDR, folder 10668). 158  John Cage to Otto Tomek, 11 July 1958 (source: WDR, folder 10668). 156 

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seen the letter: both he and Kruttge had departed on holiday by the time of its receipt. It fell to a member of the secretariat, Fräulein Elsner, to discover the necessary information: she advised Cage that the flautist engaged for the performance did not in fact play the alto flute (though the orchestra’s second flautist, who had not been engaged, did), that the trumpeter could be expected to have instruments in B-​flat, high D, and high F and the tubist instruments in B-​flat and F, and that the trombonist would be just as happy to play a trombone with valves as one with a slide.159 There remained, too, further questions regarding who was to conduct. Originally, Tudor had anticipated that Cunningham would repeat his role as the conductor of the piece, though he was aware in advance that employing a dancer to undertake the role of the Concert’s human clock might add fuel to the fire of an already provocative move: ‘will this make a scandal at the radio?’ he enquired of Stockhausen, noting that, if Cunningham’s involvement seemed too much, ‘[o]‌f course, John could always do it himself.’160 How any of these matters was resolved is a question that the archival materials cannot answer, though it is worth noting that all of the instrumental musicians save the tubist, Berthold Haas, had already been booked by Tomek, with confirmation letters sent on 8 July. Haas’s was to follow on 23 July, sent by Karl O. Koch, rather than the absent Tomek.161 Moreover, one reviewer notes that an alto flute could be seen alongside the C flute and the piccolo, suggesting that one must have been procured from somewhere.162 Clearly Cage’s 11 July letter did not arrive before Tomek left for vacation, while Cage’s 16 July letter was certainly not sent until after that point. Doubtless, by the point at which the music department at WDR was to be at full strength again, the arrival of Cage and Tudor in Europe must have been imminent and, in any case, if there was a problem with the doublings of instruments, that was clearly impossible to change at this late stage. Before Cage’s arrival in Cologne, he would, in any case, have had ample opportunity to discuss things in person with Tomek and Kruttge at Darmstadt, who were in attendance. As Cage noted in one of the stories in ‘Indeterminacy’, presumably written almost immediately after the European premiere had occurred, in advance of the performance, he worked on a one-​to-​one basis with each of the

159 

Elsner to John Cage, 23 July 1958 (source: WDR, folder 10668). David Tudor to Karlheinz Stockhausen, 6 April 1958 (source: DTP). 161  Karl O. Koch to Berthold Haas, 23 August 1958 (source: WDR, folder 10668). 162 [HvL],’ Im Klavierkonzert ging es absunderlich her:  Musiker spielen, was sie wollten—​USA-​Vertreter ‘östlicher Weisheit’ in Köln‘, Westdeutsche Rundfunk, 23 September 1958. 160 

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musicians.163 Perhaps Tomek agreed to such intensive work only so long as Cage agreed that he would conduct the piece himself. Cage’s laconic description of individual rehearsal in ‘Indeterminacy’ disguises the sheer volume of them. The first ten were across 15 and 16 September, with one performer an hour attending on the first day, beginning at 10am and finishing at 7pm, with an hour break between 1 and 2pm.164 Two individuals were scheduled on 16 September—​Haas, the tubist, at 1pm and the violist Paul Schröer at 2pm—​with the rest of the day, again until 7pm, indicated as consisting of further sessions to which players would be invited: one might presume that Cage’s aim was to concentrate on work with players where difficulties could be foreseen and waylaid, while allowing those who seemed better to understand what was expected essentially to get on with it. A further six hours, from 2pm to 8pm, were set aside on 17 September for the same purposes, and two more, from 1pm to 3pm, on 18 September, by today’s standards an almost unimaginable twenty-​four hours of individual rehearsal, unimaginable too in terms of the sheer level of work it demanded from Cage. Even if a great deal of the time was taken up in explaining the instructions for and demands of each part, this work was also physically demanding, since Cage would have little option but to perform the role of conductor during these sessions: though it looks reasonably straightforward to turn one’s arms around in the manner of a clock, undertaking this in a controlled manner, including increasing and decreasing the speed at which the arms rotate, becomes taxing much more rapidly than one might intuitively expect, akin to the experience of being asked, simply, to keep one’s arms in front of the body, at right angles to the torso or, for that matter, holding a plank position. The last two hours of individual rehearsals were the only ones not to take place in the rather small Saal 4—​hardly large enough really to constitute a hall as such at all—​but were instead relocated to Saal 2, the Kleiner Sendesaal, in which the concert was to take place. A general rehearsal, also in the Kleiner Sendesaal, was scheduled for the evening of 18 September, from 8pm to 11pm. On the morning of the second day of individual rehearsals, Tudor wrote to M. C. Richards: ‘Rehearsing players individually for the Concert. Hope to eliminate general rehearsal and resultant psychology. Director Tomek terrified by this prospect of no rehearsal + invites me to lunch today to try to get one.’165 It is not clear how to decide one way or the other who came

John Cage, ‘Indeterminacy’, Die Reihe, vol. 5 (1961 [1959]), 118. für das Konzert “Musik der Zeit,” Freitag, den 19.9.1958’ (source: WDR, folder 10668). 165  David Tudor to M. C. Richards, 16 September 1958 (source: DTP). 163 

164 ‘Probenplan

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off the better in this contest—​Tomek, a gently persuasive man, was certainly accustomed to getting what he wanted, while Tudor was capable of remarkable feats of bloody mindedness—​since the result was, at least according to Cage’s account, that there was a general rehearsal, but Cage was silent in it, presumably doing nothing more than undertaking his role as chronometer.166 It is interesting that Tudor implies that he was involved with the individual rehearsals, since both the rehearsal plan and the film footage which exists of them show only Cage, accompanied by Cornelius Cardew acting as his translator. Cardew had also been engaged to provide translations into German of the prefatory notes for the instrumental parts. These are generally rather good, though on occasion Cardew’s specificity fixes an ambiguity which Cage had left unspecified: his translation of Cage’s ‘[t]‌he following [ . . . ] may be played with or without other parts for other players’ instead says that they ‘may be played with or without other players (with other parts)’. Cardew also prepared small crib sheets of words which appeared in the wind and brass parts with German translations. More immediately significant is an addition which predetermines the length of the performance for the players, which is to say the number of rotations of the conductor’s arms rather than ‘real’ minutes: ‘Given a total performance time-​length (Cologne performance: 10 minutes), the player will make a plan that will fill it.’ This is hardly surprising, since Tomek had been so specific about the maximum length of the performance, such that Cage must have calculated in advance—​and perhaps even as early as the time of his reply to Tomek—​that a thirteen-​minute duration in performance would necessitate ten arm rotations on behalf of the conductor. Moreover, Cardew introduces a potential confusion by translating Cage’s ‘sliding tones’—​which is to say glissandi—​as Gleittöne. Literally this is not wrong, but Gleitton more typically refers to an upper leading note: one wonders whether the clarinet grace notes mentioned below represent an attempt to provide just such decoration. The word glissando would have been wholly unambiguous. Ordinarily rehearsals, especially individual rehearsals, are privileged spaces, but WDR filmed just over two minutes of these sessions for broadcast on their—​still then rather new—​early evening news magazine show, Hier und Heute. These two minutes comprise the same single minute of Cage’s conducted time for a rehearsal with Haas and one with a violinist, either Theo Giessen or Ernst Nagel.167 In each, Cage advises the player that he will 166 

Cage, ‘Indeterminacy’ [1959], 118. broadcast of Hier und Heute on 18 September which featured this footage included, too, an interview with Cage and Tudor which preceded it, as well as, afterwards, a performance from Tudor at the piano. Because the show went out live, 167 The

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begin five seconds before fifteen seconds before three minutes—​which is to say there are five seconds for nothing before the player begins at 2′45″—​with the extracts finishing at roughly 4′05″. That additional five-​second upbeat also allows Cage time to place his stopwatch—​held in his left hand, while his right arm is already imitating the conductor’s human clock—​on the music stand.168 The distinction between the time of the human clock and real time will be returned to in fuller detail in Chapter 5, but it is worth noting here that it is plausible that Cage is conducting from a reading of the conductor’s instructions which are now published: in the notional third minute of these renderings, which Cage begins, as noted at or around 2′45″, he indicates an accelerando, the first thirty conducted seconds of the fourth minute then takes roughly fifteen seconds of real time, with an indicated decelerando into the second half of the minute, which is undertaken in a one-​to-​one relationship to the real passage of time, a relationship which continues into the fifth minute of the piece. Such a sequence may be found at the bottom of the first column of the conductor’s part, where the fourth minute would begin at the penultimate row. Projecting forward from here means that one reaches the tally of thirteen minutes for the performance at the eighth row of the second large column of the conductor’s part. Though this then feels likely to map onto what Cage actually did, it would require an improbable eleven-​and-​ a-​quarter rotations of the conductor’s arms, improbable not only because complete rotations are clearly implied by the instructions, but also because Cardew’s translation had specified that the performers ought to expect ten however, these segments were not filmed, and no record of them, beyond the fact that they happened, survives, not even to suggest what it may have been that Tudor performed. Nevertheless, even though the cover page of TV Köln suggests that it was written in October, its duration and format would have made it ideal for this purpose (and indeed Eberhard Ortland claims in the notes to his edition of Adorno’s 1958–​59 lectures on aesthetics that the piece was broadcast on WDR in September, rather than October, of 1958 (see Eberhard Ortland, ‘Editor’s Notes’, in Theodor W. Adorno, Aesthetics, ed. Eberhard Ortland, tr. Wieland Hoban (Cambridge: Polity, 2018 [1958]), 300). 168 Slightly abbreviated, and rather grainier, versions of this footage appear in Hans G. Helms’s 1972 film collage, Birdcage: 70′20.958″ for a Composer (musicAvision MV8065, 2012). Helms neatly, though rather misleadingly, edits the two pieces of footage together, in order to give the appearance that violinist and tubist are in the same room at the same time, even dubbing the viola audio over the cut into the second piece of footage, and ensuring that Cardew’s face is disguised behind Haas, so the viewer does not have the disconcerting sense that Cardew has teleported a few feet to the left.

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such rotations. Neither is there a solution whereby omitting a particular row or group of rows within this range would help, extending the way in which omission number function in the part (although that part is clearly written—​ and only functions effectively—​for versions comprising twenty rotations of the conductor’s arms). Assessing exactly what is being undertaken on the basis of relatively fragmentary pieces of footage—​in which the only spoken portions comprise Cage (and, by extension, Cardew) providing a start point to the performers—​ is relatively challenging. What Cage undertakes as conductor is, at least, relatively clear: his arms rotate mimicking the arms of a clock just as the instructions for the conductor suggest and, similarly, in advance of a decrease in the speed of his arms, he indicates this with his free hand, as if pushing something downwards gently, but repeatedly; the motion is reversed in the case of an increase in speed. These motions seem to cause him to be a little inaccurate at the points where arms change over: the last two or three seconds before a change of arm tend to be snatched or lost in the motion of the exchange. Notably, Cage also provides a visual cue for which minute of the piece has been reached, showing three fingers of his free hand for three minutes and four for four minutes. This practice seems to have been one which Cage generally adopted and promoted, with the count restarting with a single finger for the sixth minute, two for the seventh and so on.169 The tubist’s part is glimpsed only briefly, and at quite a sharp angle, from his left-​hand side, but a large change of instrument marking can be seen on the fourth system of the verso page, marking it out as the second page of the part—​page 110 in Cage’s continuous numbering system for all of the instrumental parts—​and, once that has been established, it is straightforward to tell by ear that he begins playing, on the stroke of the third minute, at the mid-​ point of the fourth system of the subsequent page. Haas makes what feels like a laudable attempt at accuracy in terms of the techniques demanded by his part, though glissandi are largely beyond him, replacing the upwards smear Cage indicates at the top of page 112 with upwards motion through the harmonic series, and the microtonal downward bend which immediately follows it with a simple semitone step: the latter might be explained by a misreading of Gleittöne, but the former cannot. Moreover, the temporal relationship of what is on the page to the notes Haas plays seems to be far from exact. At a rough estimate, Haas appears to cover two-​and-​a-​half systems in the minute that Cage conducts: at the same rate throughout, it would take twenty-​four rotations of Cage’s arms for him to perform his complete part. One may reasonably presume that Cage did not begin by rehearsing performers at the pace 169 

See, too, John Cage to Friedrich Cerha, 3 November 1959 (source: FCC).

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that would ultimately be required or that, if he did, he did not immediately correct failure to achieve the required pace. In the footage of the violin rehearsal, the part is more visible, though there are no convenient markers like the change of instrument in the tuba part to determine exactly what is being played. Nonetheless, the distribution of indications of each page tends to be relatively distinctive and, helpfully, there is a page turn in the footage, meaning that four pages can, if at rather a distance, be seen. Thus viewed, the pages appear to be the fourth to the seventh pages of Solo for Violin 3, pages 36 to 39 in Cage’s numbering system. The performer begins the extract with the penultimate event of page 37 and ends with the only event on the first system of page 39. There exist all manner of oddities here, especially if one attempts to square the disparities between what the violinist and tubist respectively undertake with the set of suggestions and claims Cage would later make to Friedrich Cerha: though he said that the ‘normal’ length in conducted time of a system was fifteen seconds in the string parts and twenty in the other parts, he also said that that resulted in twenty-​minute versions—​which is to say those comprising twenty rotations of the conductor’s arms—​and that for shorter versions, fewer pages should be used; in the same breath, he advised Cerha that, in Cologne, all pages were used.170 Presuming his report to Cerha to be essentially accurate in terms of the number of pages used, however, then the calculation remains a simple one, in that each system in the string parts would have lasted seven-​and-​a-​half seconds of conducted time and ten seconds in the other parts. Very broadly, the violinist appears to cover about two systems in the first forty-​five seconds Cage conducts and four across the next thirty seconds, meaning that, whatever else, he is very far from rigidly attending to where on the page events ought by rights to occur. Overall, he covers roughly six systems in a minute and a quarter, which would mean that Cage’s arms would need to rotate an unlikely sixteen and two-​thirds times to complete his part and some significant distance from the ten rotations presupposed in the instructions provided to the performers. Even more improbably, the same player would have had to have read the preceding twenty-​four-​and-​a-​half systems in the preceding 2′45″, which would have meant each system taking a little less than seven seconds of conducted time, exhibiting then a further rather significant variability of pace. Cage himself, however, indicates a radical slowing of speed for the second half of the third minute and, as a result, one likely possibility is simply that the violinist has misunderstood that he is supposed to follow the clock as a clock, not that when it goes more slowly, he should redouble that slowness by 170 

John Cage to Friedrich Cerha, 15 October 1959 (source: FCC).

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taking more time over his part. Such confusion is perfectly understandable, as will become clearer in the examination of the function of the conductor in Chapter 5. Surely, however, the most likely explanation is simply that this piece of footage is drawn from an early rehearsal and, indeed, there is confusion aplenty between performer, composer, and perhaps translator too regarding exactly what is required. More notable, in truth, is the degree to which the sounds produced are some way from those which appear in, at any rate, the published version of the part. The pizzicato at the very end of page 37, ostensibly to be stopped with the finger nail, is rich and heavy with vibrato; the noise demanded at the top of the following page is rendered as a rather graceful balzato fourth; while the dotted line below the staff, which means that a mute should be deployed, is taken instead to indicate a very slow tremolo, at least in the case of the otherwise unadorned E-​flat on the fourth system of the same page. All of these are explicable as the products of unfamiliarity and, indeed, the last of them may perfectly well be a rendering of Cage’s instruction that notes determined to be long in duration need not be played continuously but instead intermittently. However, the fact that the following note—​indicated as arco, sul tasto in the part—​is played pizzicato is harder to explain, as is the appearance, the last note heard, of a pizzicato unmarked on the printed part on what would be the first system of page 39. Perhaps, ultimately, what is evident above all is that Cage was doubtless right to have desired the rehearsal arrangements he did and that the footage taken comes, almost certainly, from those earliest sessions, and there is no evidence to document the period between these rehearsals and the performance itself, save Cage’s statement that he remained silent throughout the general rehearsal. The recording of the Concert made in Cologne is, by no means, so famous as that made by Avakian. Unlike its much better-​known forebear, it is available only as an archival recording held at the Westdeutscher Rundfunk in Cologne. As is almost inevitably the case in any large recording of the piece, especially in one where it is not absolutely sure that all of the players have wholly understood the details of their parts, assessing the degree to which the performance accurately reflects the score is near enough an impossibility: even taking Cage at his word that all pages were played—​necessarily meaning an average pace faster than a minute of real time per page for the string players, and very close to that for everyone else—​so many sounds are capable of being drowned out by or intermingling with others or—​surely, at such a pace—​must simply be omitted in some of the densest passages that only comparatively rarely does aural analysis prove a useful way of educing what decisions performers have made in a specific recording of the piece. At any rate, the results of such analysis are rarely worth the candle. Nevertheless, given Cage’s own assertion that ‘the result’ of his rehearsal strategy ‘was in some cases just as unprofessional

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in Köln as in New York’, one might expect to hear some fairly serious dissent on the recording, even if Cage’s ‘in some cases’ hints that the issues were to his mind less widespread. There is little doubt that such issues as happened in New  York were minimised to a very great extent, yet the precise dissent which Cage experienced, limited though it was, must have stung more because of its similarity to the earlier event. Indeed, as noted, his initial reaction in New York seems to have been to regard the problematic actions of a small number of performers at the premiere of the Concert for Piano and Orchestra at Town Hall as, at any rate, less foolish than others seemed to feel they were. In Cologne, the sole obvious and unambiguous note of dissent and defiance emanated from Martin Härtwig’s clarinet: at about three and three-​quarters of a minute into the performance he inserted an unmistakeable, schoolyard sol-​mi-​la-​sol-​mi figure. He had, in fact, moments before also played an arpeggiated figure of a kind impossible to imagine from the Solo for Clarinet, where each sound, no matter the density, is clearly distinct from those around: such continuity as the arpeggiation implies is alien to the part. Indeed, much of the clarinet part for the previous minute seemed to have featured occasional grace notes in advance of extended pitches, even though those longer pitches themselves seem in line with at least one possible interpretation of the part and, as noted, may even have represented a laudable attempt on Härtwig’s part to reproduce score instructions which he had still not fully understood. In any case, these decorations were so anonymous as for them to be more or less ignored. The change of tack, however, was not ignored: it resulted immediately in the first ripple of laughter the piece occasioned in Cologne. A bare ten seconds later, one of the upper strings seems to play the fate motif, recognisable even if the final note here is a tritone distant from the initial pitch, rather than a major third. A fraction of a second later, Tudor himself provides one of the loudest of his duck whistles, in an unfortunate coincidence, since that at least assuredly was pre-​planned and, moreover, licit within the terms of the instructions provided. A later loud whistle, too, elicits its own eminently audible audience laughter. Yet, with the exception of these two moments—​the childish and the fateful—​the musicians seem, on the whole, to be doing their committed best with materials which must, given that they were more-​or-​less jobbing orchestral musicians who also played new music rather than specialists, have seemed extremely unfamiliar: in particular fairness to Härtwig, it is worth adding that his renditions of the multiphonics and boat whistle effects the piece demands are excellent: he may well have achieved these by using more than one clarinet at once. Nonetheless, as Cage seems to have found often with performances in West Germany, once the spell has been broken, even by a single act of dissent which a player may, apparently, then attempt to take back as having

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gone rather too far, audience reaction can be, by turns, uncontrollable and unforgiving. After that cluster of events just before the fourth minute of the piece began, the audience had become and remained unsettled: occasionally there were bursts of laughter and, probably rather worse, chatter. Just before ten-​and-​a-​half-​minutes of the piece had elapsed, with two-​and-​a-​half still to go—​and again surely the parallels with New York were what were what was painful, rather than the event itself—​there was a burst of applause, if rather less sustained than Cage had experienced at the premiere. As there, there is little on the recording to indicate what may have occasioned it, though it is certainly the case that the audience in Cologne would have been, to a large extent, a new music audience, rather than the artists who had been such a significant part of the New York audience for whom, perhaps, the idea that it would be gauche to applaud mid-​performance might be either unknown or absurd. Applause in the middle of a piece within the Musik der Zeit series in Cologne cannot be read as anything other than intended to damn the performance. What Härtwig’s motivations may have been in the first place are entirely unclear, but, as will be returned to in Chapter 5, it is worth stressing that the Solo for Clarinet is from a certain perspective one of the weakest of the instrumental parts, since so many of the highly specific technical demands it makes are either impossible or produce no appreciable change in sound: of all the instrumental parts, it is the one where a performer might be most likely to suggest that the composer did not really know how to write for the instrument. What Härtwig certainly did not know was that the part was almost undoubtedly written for a simple-​system clarinet, a substitution which, if it does not deal with all of the oddities of the part, at least resolves a great number of its infelicities. Indeed, Härtwig was almost certainly performing on a German system clarinet which amplifies the peculiarities of the Solo for Clarinet, a distinction which could well have been lost on Cage himself. Even if it was the fact that the in-​depth, generous approach to rehearsal Cage seemed to imagine he had taken had led to a situation more or less identical to that in New York was what made the experience almost unbearable for Cage, the recording in truth offers little evidence to support Carolyn Brown’s assertion that the performance was ‘an unmitigated disaster, a scene close to chaos, where John discovered just how stupid and childish the average orchestral musician can be when faced with the freedoms he offered them.’171 One wonders whether the straw that broke the camel’s back with the audience was just that which did for Cage too: the clarinettist’s deployment of a schoolyard taunt perhaps likely to gnaw at a Cage who recalled that as a child he was ‘continually under attack from other children. They would lie in ambush to make 171 Brown, Chance and Circumstance, 226.

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my going home or coming to school physically painful and would laugh at me every time I answered a question.’172 Brown’s recollection that Cage had, after the concert, confessed ‘in a tearful, sweet-​tempered, champagne-​laden state that in the middle of the performance he’d prayed “Forgive them, Lord, they know not what they do” ’ could perfectly refer to a thought he had the moment after Härtwig’s outburst. In any case, it is hard to imagine psychic poise returning after such a low. Brown is doubtless precisely correct that Cage’s understandable response was to get ‘royally drunk’.173 She noted too that a second performance was recorded after the concert, with the intention that this be used for radio broadcast, and that the performers behaved in significantly worse manner without an audience.174 This may well be the case, since a studio recording, even if intended for radio broadcast, was not made use of on the radio: when the piece was broadcast on the Nachtprogramm on 30 July the following year, what the listeners heard was the concert version. The evening’s programme notes had been prepared by Herbert Eimert, a role he had fulfilled for the Musik der Zeit series for many years. Eimert’s notes are often sharp and insightful, if also largely rather conventional in their approach, but in the case of the Concert for Piano and Orchestra, the musical description of the piece Eimert provides is little more than a translation of Cage’s own reworking of the notes prepared for the Town Hall premiere, which would later appear, in their English version, within Avakian’s recording of the Twenty-​Five Year Retrospective Concert. It is not, however, identical to the note which accompanies that recording, omitting, most strikingly, any description of the conductor, which must have made the unconventional motions undertaken by Cage on stage all the more surprising, though one presumes that the performers were, by this stage, blasé regarding it. The translation, too, changes the last clause of the subjective final sentence—​‘I regard this work as one “in progress”, which I intend never to consider as in a final state, although I find each performance definitive’—​into a statement of objective fact: ‘[ . . . ] although of course each performance displays a definitive character’.175 There was nothing especially unusual about Cage speaking in his own words in this way: in the rest of the note, Eimert treats Krenek and Stockhausen similarly, while providing a personal gloss in the cases of Kagel and Boulez. Here, as was the case stateside with some of the more perplexed reviewers of the Twenty-​Five Year Retrospective concert and its release on disc, some 172 Revill, The Roaring Silence,  9–​10

173 Brown, Chance and Circumstance, 226–​27. 174 

Ibid., 226. Eimert, programme note for Musik der Zeit, 19 September 1958 (source: WDR, folder 11617). 175 Herbert

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of the reports of the evening rely directly the programme note by way of explanation, the correspondent of the Westdeutsche Rundschau going so far as to reproduce it in full.176 However in Europe, for the most part, this was used more as some sort of rhetorical flourish than as a placeholder for judgement or description. In neither respect did the Europeans hold back and, though Cage was perhaps expecting it from his previous visits, the reviews are, by and large, not kind, although none debates Tudor’s qualities as a pianist. The ‘fault’ is clearly laid at Cage’s door. The most generous of the reviews insist that Cage should not be taken too seriously, with one suggesting that it would be hard for an audience not to feel that it was having its collective legs pulled.177 The challenge, though, for the reviewers who tried to read Cage as some sort of satirist was that they rapidly tired of what they took to be a joke. ‘The initially amusing cabaret number is much too long’, opined Diether de la Motte, ‘and ends in the crashing boredom of a humourist who just won’t stop’.178 Der Mittag’s Herbert Schultz came to more or less the same conclusion: ‘since nobody is claiming that this is music, one might read the whole thing as a grotesque cabaret or a practical joke [ . . . ] but one so long that the punchlines wear thin’.179 Likewise, Kurt Driesch, for the Rhein-​Neckar-​Zeitung, argued that ‘for such a gag, a third of the length would have sufficed’.180 Both Schultz and de la Motte highlighted how well applauded the piece was, however, even if the former was convinced that the audience was simply showing its appreciation for a good joke well told, the audience less bored than the reviewers, and the latter felt sure that, moments afterwards, the response was tinged with the question: ‘was that really serious?’ It stays funny, de la Motte suggests, only so long as one doesn’t imagine that Cage really means it. The reviewer for the Kölnische Rundschau hit precisely on what seemed to be this misreading of the humour of the piece, if humour it was. The notion that the audience was not laughing at but only along with the piece was stressed 176  [HvL],‘

Im Klavierkonzert ging es absunderlich her: Musiker spielen, was sie wollten—​USA-​Vertreter ‘östlicher Weisheit’ in Köln’, Westdeutsche Rundfunk, 23 September 1958. 177  [MF], ‘Ein Ding mit Pfiff: Avantgardisten im ersten Abend “Musik der Zeit” ’, Neue Rhein Zeitung, 22 September 1958. 178  Diether de la Motte, ‘Musik der Zeit:  Demonstration neuer Kompositionstechnik’, Rheinische Post, 23 September 1958. 179  Herbert Schultz, ‘Nicht mehr den Ton macht die Musik: Erstes Konzert “Musik der Zeit” des Westdeutschen Rundfunks’, Der Mittag, 23 September 1958. 180 Kurt Driesch, ‘  “Avantgardistischer Musik” am Abgrund:  Europäischer Erstaufführung von John Cage’s “Klavierkonzert” in Köln’, Rhein-​Neckar-​Zeitung, 30 September 1958.

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here too, the ‘sneezing of the tuba, grunting of the trombone, wailing of the string quartet, the banging and rattling of the piano (all this to be read literally)’ in no way marking any sort of dissent, but instead an enthusiastic alignment with the generally jollity of the occasion. The problem was not that the joke palled rapidly, but rather that Cage’s aim—​to portray ‘the collision of extreme phenomena’, as the reviewer described it, seemingly discarding the place of nature in Cage’s construction—​dealt precisely with issues which, unhappily and problematically, dominated people’s everyday lives. Such serious matter, the reviewer opined, needed to be dealt with seriously and, perhaps, urgently; one wonders whether Cage might have been sympathetic to at least part of this reading. In other respects, however, the misunderstanding was on the part of the reviewer: the view of the Kölnische Rundschau was that, unambiguously, the piece was improvised, even if within some limited set of constraints.181 Friedrich Berger, writing for the Kölner-​Stadt-​Anzeiger wrote in similar vein, but in rather more brutal mode, even beginning his review by noting that he was going to deal quite quickly with the parts of the programme one ought to take seriously, which was to say everything on that programme save Cage. The only major difference, Berger argued, between this ‘noise circus’ and what readers might already expect from Cage’s prepared piano music, if they knew it, was that this circus required more ‘acrobats’. Naturally this was not meant positively, even if Berger was reasonably acute in noting not only how physically demanding Cage’s music was—​how theatrical it was, even when it was not, ostensibly, theatrical—​but also the importance of the carnivalesque: Cage would, of course, later reclaim Berger’s pejorative description of his music as a ‘circus’ in more positive guise. The boredom, for Berger, was not a product of the joke getting tired but, rather, that the sonic resources themselves quickly palled. The best that might happen to a reviewer, he suggested, was that one would join in with the rest of the audience members, and no longer endure the discomfort of trying to prevent oneself from laughing out loud. On occasion, Berger reckoned that the performers were laughing too. This is not audible on the recording but, if Berger is right, it could have been no less visible to Cage than it was to Berger. ‘Except for some deadly serious snobs’, Berger suggested that one could tell that the applause was intended at best as an indication that the audience had been pleasantly diverted, but it was certainly given without any respect for Cage as an artist. Cage, Berger felt, ought probably to have sensed that palpably too.182 181 

[H.R.], ‘In der Werkstatt der direktiven Freiheit: 1. Abend “Musik der Zeit” im Funkhaus’, Kölnische Rundschau, 21 September 1958. 182  Friederich Berger, ‘Alibi für die Gestrigen: Erste WDR-​Konzert der Saison mit “Musik der Zeit” ’, Kölner Stadt-​Anzeiger, 24 September 1958.

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Driesch’s review ties together a number of these aspects, stressing the general view already outlined—​funny for a while, perhaps, but overlong—​but provides some rather striking additional anecdotal comment. First, Driesch insists that there is, in this music, no longer a conductor. He does not mean that no-​one stands in that place—​none of the reviewers misses the opportunity to mention the human clock—​but that the players are making no attempt to follow Cage’s directions: ‘Cage might just as well have made different movements’. There can, at any rate, be no doubt that in the available rehearsal footage, neither player’s performance seems to exhibit any obvious relationship to Cage’s conducting; it is not inconceivable that, whether those are early rehearsals or not, this attitude continued through to the performance. Second, Driesch points out, if does not name, the stage malcontent as Härtwig, though it is clear, too, that he regards the clarinettist as so prominent that naming him would be moribund: The effects of the hullabaloo: a clarinettist places two clarinets simultaneously into his mouth and makes with them ‘boooo’. When that doesn’t work, he puts both clarinets to the side and wolf whistles like a spiv. That finally does the trick: everyone understands the well-​known and well-​liked clarinettist’s joke, and gives him particular applause for it.183

It is naturally the case that this may not have been quite the whole-​heartedly dissenting action that Driesch takes it to be: at least part of the reason for using two clarinets could have been precisely to make possible a multiphonic demanded by the score beyond Härtwig’s technical capabilities. Regardless, the recording suggests that Driesch is right to make the claim that Härtwig specifically intended to be disruptive, and it is significant that he suggests that none of this was lost on other audience members. Driesch reports too an audience wag who, seeing Tudor rise from his stool, commented, ‘he’s going to repair the piano now’. Driesch’s conservatism should be already reasonably clear—​and he was certainly deeply unhappy about the directions new music was taking in Cologne more generally: in April 1955, he wrote to Hans Pischner, then Director of the Music Section of East Germany’s Ministry for Culture, that he felt he had to suffer ‘a more difficult situation than [his] colleagues in the GDR’—​but even within this context some of the other parts his review take the contemporary reader aback.184 The most staggering of these is his closing remark that ‘in politics there were war crimes tribunals; in art there is no such court of arbitration’, but one wonders whether part of his animus against Cage is driven 183 

It is worth adding that, in the West German context, a wolf whistle does not connote (if unwelcome) approbation; it clearly implies a negative reaction. 184  Toby Thacker, Music after Hitler, 1945–​1955 (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2007), 205.

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by the apparent homophobia he expresses regarding the parts of the audience which showed an unambiguous enthusiasm for Cage: ‘a sort of “hot club” has been smuggled into the hall, young “sexless” beings (boys look like girls, girls like boys) with haircuts which look like a mouse has gnawed away at a wig. They conceive of the work not as a descendent of Beethoven, but rather as a new form of improvised jazz.’ Cage too is described—​‘saucer-​eyed with an American crewcut’—​and the relative proximity of two descriptions of hairstyles (no other person’s coiffure is mentioned in the reviews) makes one consider the possibility that Driesch may also be making tacitly homophobic remarks about Cage. Driesch’s view of the applause differs from that of the majority of reviewers, however: though he is careful to deploy scare quotes, he seems to feel that the public, even if the wool is being pulled over that public’s eyes, reacted with such enthusiasm that the piece must be regarded as ‘one of the greatest “artistic” successes in Cologne for some time’.185 Curiously, the WDR archives hold only one review, that by Heinrich Lindlar, for the Die Welt, although numerous other reviews of the concert were published and, for the rest of that season’s Musik der Zeit concerts, a comprehensive number of reviews was in each case retained. Lindlar’s review appears to have been something of a special case, however, since it occasioned a corrective to be drafted for dispatch to the paper, presumably from the hand of Tomek. Where Driesch, no matter how much he may have disagreed, at least confessed that at least some members of the audience found the experience valuable, lively, and perhaps even ground-​breaking, Lindlar offered no such quarter: the whole programme was, to his mind, ‘a self-​destructive undertaking’. ‘What’, he asked, ‘were the programmers thinking?’ Lindlar’s critique becomes almost rabid at the point at which he suggests that the promotion of Cage’s work represents not only a ‘betrayal’, but also that the work itself appeared, albeit ‘diabolically’, to justify the Nazi regime’s critique that new music was ‘degenerate’ and ‘schizophrenic’.186 The relationship to Driesch’s tasteless mention of the apparent need for a tribunal to assess the abuses perpetrated by new music is intriguing. Though surely it was the remarkably aggressive tone of Lindlar’s review that meant Tomek could not help himself, Tomek’s response was largely restricted to factual inaccuracy, even if it is not difficult to sense that the measured tone conceals much stronger feelings, observing, for instance, that the close of Lindlar’s review is misleading, in that he wonders what those watching the televised performance of the Concert 185 Kurt

Driesch, ‘  “Avantgardistischer Musik” am Abgrund:  Europäischer Erstaufführung von John Cage’s “Klavierkonzert” in Köln’, Rhein-​Neckar-​Zeitung, 30 September 1958. 186  Heinrich Lindlar, ‘Was man hörte, war verwirrend: Fragwürdiges Funk-​Konzert asu Köln mit “Musik der Zeit” ’, Die Welt, 25 September 1958.

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must have made of it, a performance which, as Tomek pointed out, seemed intended to blur the Hier und Heute feature on Cage and Tudor into the performance itself, which would not be broadcast until a later date. The very close is surely the most telling: ‘As for the tastelessness and falsity of the allusion to the musical politics of the Hitler regime, the readers will have come to their own judgements’.187 Even if there had been an enthusiastic audience, there were assuredly no enthusiastic reviews, with those who did not take it seriously finding the joke both too contrived and too long-​winded balanced against those for whom the Concert was no laughing matter. One presumes that Tudor at least felt that the performance may have left a few lasting wounds on the WDR administration. Almost nine months later, proposing a new programme to Stockhausen for Cologne, he worried that ‘the subject of the Concerto’ might still be ‘anathema’.188 Certainly Tudor had a warm, continuing relationship with WDR, in the form especially of Otto Tomek, while Cage had little direct contact with the institution after his 1958 visit until he began work with Klaus Schöning’s HörSpielStudio in the late 1970s. Yet if Tomek was at all stung by the press reception—​and in truth he was probably wise enough to feel that at least some element of controversy was not just beneficial but vital for the Musik der Zeit series—​this seems not to have lasted: Tudor recorded parts of Music for Piano for WDR in 1959, and Tomek’s suggestion that, had Tudor alerted him to the possibility earlier, he would have been interested to add Cage’s Music for Carillon—​presumably No. 1, though this is not specified—​to another programme in the second half of that year seems genuine enough.189 Tudor would, too, with the violinist Kenji Kobayashi, record 26′55.988″ for pianist and string player, a confabulated version of 34′46.776″ for a pianist and 26′1.1499″ for a string player, for the station on 13 October 1961.190 Nevertheless, there is a palpable undertone in Tomek’s comment to Tudor in August 1959—​a year in which Tudor was once again engaged to perform in the first concert of the Musik der Zeit season, but only to perform the music of Europeans: Cardew’s Third Piano Sonata (1957–​58), Stockhausen’s Kreuzspiel (1951) and Refrain (1959), and Bruno Maderna’s Piano Concerto (1958–​59)—​ that ‘of course’ he had not ‘lost interest in new American composers’, but, Tomek continued, he asked for Tudor’s understanding if the production of concerts featuring for such music were, temporarily at least, put on hiatus.

Otto Tomek to Die Welt, undated (source: WDR, folder 10668). David Tudor to Karlheinz Stockhausen, 1 May 1959, in Misch and Bandur (eds.), Karlheinz Stockhausen in Darmstadt, 234. 189  Otto Tomek to David Tudor, 22 August 1959 (source: DTP). 190  Otto Tomek to David Tudor, 14 September 1961 (source: DTP). 187 

188 

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Publishing the Concert for Piano and Orchestra Cage evidently regarded it as a universal truth from early on that a composer in possession of a work list of quality must be in want of a publishing house. While it would be an exaggeration to say that it seems to have obsessed him throughout the 1950s, it was surely rarely all that far from his mind, as he pursued strategies either side of the Atlantic. Early on in his correspondence with Boulez, he made encouraging noises regarding the publication of the younger composer’s music, having spoken with a representative of Éditions Salabert,191 and proposed that, if Salabert decided against publishing Boulez’s music, then Henry Cowell’s New Music Edition would be keen to take on that role.192 Indeed, as Nattiez notes, it was Cage who introduced Boulez to his first two publishers: Amphion and Heugel.193 By contrast, the only music by Cage which Cowell would release was Amores (1943), in October 1943.194 Cage had earlier hoped that Cowell would also publish his Sonata for Clarinet (1933), but this came to nothing, Cowell apparently having felt the piece the work of a still immature composer.195 Between 1952 and 1953, Cage’s music was briefly published through the American Composers Alliance’s (ACA) Composers Facsimile Edition. Precisely which scores were released under this imprint is difficult to establish with total surety, though 1′5½″ (1953), and perhaps the other pieces which would ultimately contribute to 26′1.1499″, and the first nineteen pieces of the Music for Piano sequence were certainly available: a copy of the former was recently sold by the Schubertiade Music & Arts dealership, while David Tudor’s copies of the latter still bear the Composers Facsimile Edition copyright markings. As noted, one can see in the manuscripts of Music for Piano points where such copyright notices have been cut out. For instance, the bottom of the third page of Music for Piano 1 has been entirely cut away and replaced with a fresh insert containing the page number. As discussed in Chapter 1, on Tudor’s copy, surely one of the earliest surviving copies of Music for Piano 1, this part of the page is where the Composers Facsimile Edition copyright notice can be seen. Likewise, the original manuscript of Music for Piano 4–​19 shows John Cage to Pierre Boulez, 4 December 1949, in Nattiez (ed.), Boulez–​Cage, 37. John Cage to Pierre Boulez, before April 1950, in ibid., 57. 193  Ibid., 5. 194  Christopher Shultis, ‘Cage and Europe’, in David Nicholls (ed.), The Cambridge Companion to John Cage (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002), 24. 195  Simon Anderson, The Prepared Piano Music of John Cage:  Towards an Understanding of Sounds and Preparations (unpublished MPhil thesis, University of Huddersfield, 2012), 27. 191  192 

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that the Composers Facsimile Edition notice—​still visible in Tudor’s copy—​ has been cut away from the left-​hand edge of the page. Indeed, in this earlier version, the title of the piece is also inscribed in Cage’s handwriting, while in the Edition Peters publication (and the manuscript held at New York Public Library) the top of the page which contained the title has also been cut away and then rewritten in a hand which is, at any rate, not Cage’s. Cage may well have abandoned the—​in fairness, at best, homespun, though certainly supportive—​approach of the ACA because of his confidence that Europe would provide a solution to his problem. By 1954, it was clear that Philippe Heugel, who had taken over artistic direction of Éditions Heugel from his father Jacques in 1948, was also keeping an eye on Cage’s progress, even if there seems to have been no real possibility of Heugel offering Cage a contract.196 A little earlier, at the beginning of 1953, according to Revill’s account, Stockhausen had provided Universal Edition’s Alfred Schlee with a copy of Music of Changes.197 Schlee seemingly wasted little time in contacting Cage to express an interest, at least in principle.198 Schlee was enthusiastic in practice too. Knowing that Cage, along with David Tudor, was already contracted to appear at the Donaueschinger Musiktage in October,199 his first instinct was to publish the music Cage planned to present there, doubtless so that it would be possible to have it available for sale at or immediately after the date of its premiere. Yet in order to achieve this, Schlee felt he would have to have the manuscript by April 1954.200 If Cage had any real sense of the music he planned to write for Donaueschingen, he must have known already that this would be implausible. According to Revill’s account, Cage only finally completed the two new prepared piano pieces for Donaueschingen—​34′46.776″ and 31′57.9864″ from the Ten Thousand Things—​shortly before setting out for Europe.201 In truth, this was probably fortunate: on hearing the simultaneous performance of the two pieces the director of the Musiktage, Heinrich Strobel, was apparently horrified and insisted on an abbreviated version, which was entitled, for

196 

Pierre Boulez to John Cage, July 1954, in Nattiez (ed.), Boulez–​Cage, 147.

197 Revill, The Roaring Silence, 192.

John Cage to Pierre Boulez, 1 May 1953, in Nattiez (ed.), Boulez–​Cage, 143. Cage’s invitation to Donaueschingen had probably been sent out in early January 1954. That Schlee was fully aware of this by the beginning of February gives some indication of the then intimacy of the Germanophone new music community. See Gisela Nauck, Risiko des kühnen Experiments: Der Rundfunk als Impulsgeber und Mäzen (Saarbrücken: Pfau, 2004), 189. 200  Alfred Schlee to John Cage, 8 February 1954 (source: JCC). 201 Revill, The Roaring Silence, 175. 198 

199 

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the occasion, 12′55.6078″.202 Had the publication been ready, no-​one would have been able to purchase a written record of quite what they had just heard and one of Schlee’s initial questions to Cage about the piece—​‘Have you already an approximate idea of how long it will be?’—​would have acquired a pointed irony.203 In any case, within weeks of Schlee’s initial discussions with Cage, an alternative plan had been agreed: Cage proposed instead that the Music of Changes might make for a more appropriate first publication and, notwithstanding some concerns regarding the length of the score, Schlee felt that this would be plausible, so long as it was possible to make the Universal Edition copy directly reproducing the transparencies Cage had already made from his holograph.204 What was meant by transparencies in this context does, in fact, almost certainly reveal the way in which Cage would make later pieces, like Fontana Mix, which would include the use of transparencies as an integral part of the score proper, though he had not, apparently, considered their deployment in such a context at this stage. From the publishers’ perspective, transparencies ordinarily meant the production of a photogram on transparent film, via the so-​ called Ozalid, or diazo, process, Ozalid being a trademarked anagram of the ultraviolet-​sensitive diazol compound which coated the transparent film (and which, along with the ammonia used to develop the image, gives diazotypes their characteristic smell). Before the advent of Xerox photoreproductions in the 1970s, this was the method used by most music publishers—​certainly including Universal Edition and Cage’s ultimate publishers, Edition Peters—​to create a master copy for the accurate reproduction of manuscripts. It resulted in better quality reproductions than a Photostat machine and was, notwithstanding an involved chemical process, quicker and cheaper.205 In order to make such master copies using the Ozalid process, it is helpful for the manuscript paper itself to be transparent or translucent, as is the onionskin or vellum paper on which many of Cage’s manuscripts of the period are written. Whether the light, thin onionskin paper was what Cage used because of the necessary economies of the time and that it merely happened to prove ideal for diazotype reproduction or because, knowing of the need for the process from a publisher’s point of view, he selected it for these purposes can hardly be determined, though vellum paper was assuredly not so favourably priced. For a description of these events, see Iddon, New Music at Darmstadt, 156–​64. Alfred Schlee to John Cage, 8 February 1954 (source: JCC). 204  Alfred Schlee to John Cage, 24 February 1954 (source: JCC). 205  See Melina Avery, ‘Ozalids in the Music Library: Life Before Xerox’, Book and Paper Group Annual, vol. 31 (2012) (online at: http://​cool.conservation-​us.org/​coolaic/​sg/​ bpg/​annual/​v31/​bp31-​02.pdf ) for a detailed description which includes particular reference to Cage’s own usage of Ozalids. 202  203 

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Nevertheless, it is notable not only that Cage was well aware of this process—​ perhaps from his own work with Cowell’s New Music Edition—​but also that he apparently had such transparencies ready to be sent to a publisher, just, as it seems, in case. On 5 March 1954, Cage passed on the news to Heinrich Strobel that ‘Mr. Alfred Schlee of the Universal Edition has decided to publish my Music of Changes’.206 Schlee promised Cage that, shortly after receiving the transparencies, they would have a proof made which would, too, reveal whether there was any need to re-​copy pages.207 It took Cage only a few days to send the transparencies, but after almost a month—​during which time Schlee appears to have been away from the office—​on 7 April, Universal Edition sent Cage disappointing news: Our trials with the transparencies of your manuscript have unfortunately not yet led to any positive result so that we are not quite sure if it will be possible to print the work from these transparencies. We will, however, do our best to find a method that makes a publication possible.208

One reason for the problem may well have been the fact that Cage’s own reproduction process was slightly different from that which publishers—​or, for that matter, architects and engineers—​typically used, in that their transparencies typically contained a negative version of the matter to be printed, while Cage’s was a positive version, essentially identical to what would finally appear on the printed page.209 Though this may have scotched his publication prospects with Universal Edition, Cage’s method of printing transparencies was, evidently, to prove enormously artistically productive by the close of the decade. The letter closes with a promise to write further to Cage about this after Easter, which was to say after 18 April. It seems unlikely that Universal Edition would not have followed through on this promise, but such a letter is not extant within the collection of Cage’s letters held at Northwestern University. Intriguingly, however, the 1955 edition of the music fraternity Sigma Alpha Iota’s journal, Pan Pipes, reports that Music of Changes had been published by Universal Edition in the previous year, though one presumes this is likely to have been a result of Cage having over-​optimistically reported this to them.210 Later correspondence, however, suggests that Cage may have broken off pursuit of Universal Edition because they had contrived to John Cage to Heinrich Strobel, 5 March 1954, in Beal, New Music, New Allies, 66. Alfred Schlee to John Cage, 10 March 1954 (source: JCC). 208  Universal Edition to John Cage, 7 April 1954 (source: JCC). 209  Email from Richard Herbert Howe, 6 July 2017. 210  Pan Pipes of Sigma Alpha Iota, vol. 47, no. 2 (1955), 35. 206  207 

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lose his original manuscript or, at any rate, the transparencies made from it for reproduction purposes. On 11 October 1956, Tudor wrote to Karlheinz Stockhausen that, having made enquires of Universal Edition’s Otto Tomek, he had ‘not heard from Vienna about the ms. of the Changes, so don’t know whether it still exists’, suggesting that, perhaps, Cage’s own transparencies having failed, he had also provided them with the holograph itself, or that the transparencies literally were the holograph, inscribed directly onto onionskin.211 That Tudor had made the contact rather than Cage was, presumably, so that Stockhausen would be able to print high-​quality music examples of the score alongside Tudor’s projected contribution to an edition of Die Reihe, developed from his Darmstadt seminar of that year, in which Music of Changes had played a significant role, a text which Tudor would ultimately never write. In any case, as the seminar might suggest, Tudor certainly still had his own copy of the score from which he performed the piece, or parts of it, regularly between 1954 and 1956, but the manuscript—​precisely that copy of the score which would be necessary to make a professional publication, without Cage having to rewrite the piece from scratch, at least if his own calligraphy were desired which, then as now, seemed so integral to the musical text, at least to everyone other than Cage—​was missing during that whole period. It would be little surprise if Cage had become concerned that Universal did not represent the safe pair of hands his music required. Nonetheless, after a couple of months of hunting, Otto Tomek was able to reassure Tudor: ‘The matter of the lost transparents of the Music of Change [sic] worried me quite a lot but fortunately in the end I did find them after all’.212 Tomek sent the manuscript, or the transparents made from it, or both, back to Tudor with the request that he deliver the materials into Cage’s safekeeping. Europe having proved a dead end, between 1955 and 1957, Cage found a solution of sorts, though the short-​term nature of that solution—​its span lasting in total from 22 April 1955 to 14 January 1957—​suggests that he was not wholly happy with it: he was represented by Ray Green’s American Music Edition.213 Green’s path had run in parallel with Cage’s in many intriguing ways: he spent two years of the 1930s in Paris; he was married to a dancer and choreographer, May O’Donnell, and much of his music was written for dance, including American Document (1938) for Martha Graham; the Cage percussion orchestra featured his music in their concerts of the late 1930 and early 1940s.214 If Cage’s deal with Green was similar to that which Carl Ruggles 211 

David Tudor to Karlheinz Stockhausen, 11 October 1956 (source: DTP). Otto Tomek to David Tudor, 5 December 1956 (source: DTP). 213  American Music Edition to John Cage, 14 January 1957 (source: JCC). 214 William Fetterman, John Cage’s Theatre Pieces:  Notations and Performances (Amsterdam: Harwood Academic, 1996), 3. 212 

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had, 20% of Cage’s earnings would have been payable to American Music Edition for any performance.215 Whatever the reasons for Cage’s dissatisfaction, he was not long with Green and, indeed, he seems then not to have been especially concerned with publication as a major goal for a couple of years. One good reason for this may have been that, as noted, for a period following the sale of a number of score pages at the Stable Gallery in 1958, many of Cage’s scores were simply not in a state in which they could realistically be published. Nonetheless, in 1959, he began the hunt for a publisher again, with the same initially unsatisfying results: his music was rejected by G. Schirmer’s Hans W. Heinsheimer, who had learned his trade at Universal Edition in Vienna and had moved to Schirmer after his dismissal from Boosey & Hawkes in 1947, for whom he had worked since emigrating to the United States in 1938.216 By the end of the year, though Cage’s tone suggests enthusiasm, the content of a letter sent to John Edmunds at New York Public Library—​a composer and more latterly curator of the library’s Americana collection, a position which he held from 1957 to 1961—​might also imply that Cage had begun to feel his options were narrowing significantly; while he claims that ‘[e]‌ven Mr. Heinsheimer said he felt a certain obligation to publish it’, he notes too that Heinsheimer said ‘it would only produce a headache for Schirmers’.217 Cage’s proposal is, he suggests, not a way of dealing with the distribution of his own music but, rather, he is seeking to outline ‘a solution of the problem of making experimental music available to those who are interested no matter who wrote it’. In his letter, Cage rejects the idea of a composer’s cooperative—​since this would do no more than transfer the business end of composition from the level of the individual to the collective—​as well as the idea of publication outside the country: while Cage insists that Universal Edition would still publish his music (suggesting that it was, indeed, he who withdrew from them, perhaps because of their carelessness, rather than they from him, because of the challenges his scores represented), as would Cologne’s Ernst Brücher, he is uncomfortable, as an American, with having a European publisher.218 It is far from inconceivable, indeed, that this, J. Ziffrin, Carl Ruggles:  Composer, Painter, and Storyteller (Urbana, IL: University of Illinois Press, 1994), 202. 216 Revill, The Roaring Silence, 192. This meeting took place in the week of 9 November 1959, according to M. C. Richards, who wrote to David Tudor on 16 November 1959 that ‘Schirmers may publish J’s music; will know in 2 weeks; he had appointment with high mucky-​mucks last week’ (source: MCRP). 217  John Cage to John Edmunds (NYPL), 31 December 1959 (source: JCC). 218  Ernst Brücher was the publisher of the DuMont imprint in which, for instance, the first volumes of Stockhausen’s Texte zur Musik were published, along with many 215 Marilyn

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rather than any of the other difficulties, was the basis of the reasons why Cage did not continue to pursue Schlee after his initial difficulties: he did sign up to American operations, even if not wholly commercial ones, like Composers Facsimile Edition and American Music Edition, while the projected deal with Universal Edition foundered. Notwithstanding his desire for a publisher definitively of the United States, Cage also rejects the idea of a university press, like Illinois, Wesleyan, or Dartmouth, taking on the role of music publisher since not only would it be ‘of no help to composers who are not as experienced and famous’ as Cage, but it would also ‘suffer from [the] weight of the academy’. Cage’s proposal, then, was that music publication should be undertaken by the public libraries of the United States, ‘available to any composer, regardless of his fame or quality’. The music would be given over to the libraries free of charge, with no expectations of future royalties, save via performing rights agencies, and in return the libraries would loan scores or provide copies for nominal photostatting costs. Cage notes that he feels sure that the libraries would not be overwhelmed since so few composers, relatively, would be willing to give up the potential profit of traditional publishing. There is no record of Edmunds’s feelings on the matter but, it goes without saying, New York Public Library did not take on the role of publishing Cage’s music. Cage seems, above all, to have grown tired of the sheer level of effort being his own distributor involved, much more so than being especially concerned about the financial outlay and risk it incurred, though having been far from wealthy throughout the 1950s he was doubtless as aware of these matters as anybody. In short, publication at this stage was seen less as a solution to financial difficulties than to logistical ones. Cage need not finally have worried so much as he apparently did. Within six months of his letter to Edmunds, Walter Hinrichsen’s Edition Peters would take him on, a publishing house which happily had a European heritage (and European reach, through the offices of the company in Frankfurt, London, and Zürich), but a base in New York City. Cage’s own account seems to have overstated Hinrichsen’s enthusiasm to become Cage’s publisher but, in the final analysis, probably not by all that much. Cage compresses time rather than exaggerates interest. As he related it, I was living in the country then, and I had quite a problem supplying copies of my music to people who wanted to have it. [ . . . ] People kept writing to me asking for copies, and I kept on writing music. Finally, one day—​it was while I was writing the incidental music for Jackson MacLow’s play called The Marrying Maiden—​I put

other volumes which bespoke Brücher’s intimate knowledge of the European post-​ war avant-​garde, especially the Cologne circle.

Presenting the Concert for Piano and Orchestra  :  195 my pen down, and I determined not to write another note until I found a publisher. I  picked up the Yellow Pages and I  ran down the list of music publishers, and I  stopped at Peters. The reason I  stopped there was because someone—​I think someone in some string quartet—​had said that Mr. Hinrichsen was interested in American music. So I simply called and asked to speak with him. He said, very cheerfully over the phone, ‘I’m so glad that you called. My wife has always wanted me to publish your music.’ That day we had lunch and signed the contract.219

One might well imagine from Cage’s account not only that Hinrichsen more or less snapped Cage up there and then, but also that Cage had not been pondering ways to distribute his music more effectively (and, in truth, more profitably) for quite some time. It exaggerates, too, the sense that Hinrichsen’s was in a way the first name to which Cage, propitiously, came, given the sequence of attempts Cage had made over the decade to see his music successfully into print. Cage appears to have written the notational materials for his Music for ‘The Marrying Maiden’ at some point after 18 April 1960, having mentioned it to Christian Wolff on that date as a future project,220 turning these notations into a tape piece at Richard Maxfield’s studio in the first half of June, before its premiere accompanying Mac Low’s play on 15 June 1960. As such, one would imagine that any such two-​day period—​from phone call to contract—​ would necessarily have had to have occurred before the end of May, before, that is, Cage put his pen down and turned to the electronic studio. Even if the pen were a metaphorical one and Cage’s call was during the period of studio work, in a letter to David Tudor on 22 June Cage is rather more cautious, as well as rather less sure of who, precisely, Hinrichsen was than one might expect. He wrote: ‘Am also having rather promising conversations with Hendrickson [sic] of Peters Edition. They contemplate publishing the Concert for Piano and Orch. Plus another piece. I will propose something with transparencies.’221 The tone, surely, suggests a correspondence only a little more definitive than when Cage had said to Boulez that he had ‘had a very pleasant letter from Schlee of Universal about the possible publication of my Changes’ and rather less so than his claims to Strobel regarding the surety of that publication. 222 That said, perhaps the failure of that venture had caused Cage to think in more cautious terms regarding even a wholeheartedly enthusiastic response. A further letter to Tudor the following day

John Cage in Kostelanetz (ed.), Conversing with Cage,  21–​22. John Cage to Christian Wolff, 18 April 1960, in Kuhn (ed.), Selected Letters, 221. 221  John Cage to David Tudor, 22 June 1960, in Iddon, John Cage and David Tudor, 117. 222  John Cage to Pierre Boulez, 1 May 1953, in Nattiez (ed.), Boulez–​Cage, 143. 219  220 

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spells out the fact that, from Cage’s perspective, matters were certainly not concluded and he intended not to make any presumptions regarding success: The conversations with the Peters Edition continue promisingly. If they decide, however, to do nothing, I will bring something for Mary Bauermeister. Otherwise not, since I hope to give Peters an exclusive position. Their plan is to begin with the Concert plus parts, another piece, and information about the pieces that are available on transparencies, and as orders for these latter give indication, add to the publishing. 223

Whatever the specifics, it is clear that no contract was signed within a day of the first contact between the two. Indeed, the shift from the first letter to Tudor to the second—​such that a piece involving transparencies has seemingly been scotched as the score to accompany the publication of the Concert for Piano and Orchestra as Cage’s first releases with Peters—​is suggestive of an ongoing discussion. Notwithstanding such inconsistencies—​ ones which even charitably cannot be put down to the vagaries of memory—​it is nevertheless the case both that Cage proceeded to sign his contract with Edition Peters, through their Henmar Press imprint, rapidly and that Evelyn Hinrichsen played a role at least in expressing to her husband an evidently heartfelt admiration for Cage. The same day, 27 June 1960 that Tudor replied—​a letter sent from Cologne which would not have reached Cage until several days later—​that, as far as Edition Peters was concerned, Cage should ‘keep the pot boiling’, Cage signed with Hinrichsen.224 The contract committed Edition Peters, in the form of Henmar Press, to publish Cage’s music for the next ten years, Cage setting over the copyright of his complete output—​save Winter Music, Amores, and Fontana Mix—​to them for the sum of one dollar, paying Cage a 10% royalty on sales of scores and 50% of the mechanical reproduction income.225 Hinrichsen was keen to deal with these exceptions rapidly, both so that he could advertise that the complete oeuvre was available under the Henmar imprint, but also because once advertising had begun, the value of those exceptions would rise and it would become more expensive to re-​ purchase the copyright.226 The case of Amores was easily settled: though published by Henry Cowell’s New Music Edition—​which had been taken over by Philadelphia’s Theodore Presser by the time of these negotiations—​the original publication noted that Cage had retained the copyright on the piece.227 Indeed, by the time John Cage to David Tudor, 23 June 1960, in Iddon, John Cage and David Tudor, 118. David Tudor to John Cage, 27 June 1960, in ibid., 122. 225  Contract between John Cage and Henmar Press, 27 June 1960 (source: JCC). 226  Walter Hinrichsen to John Cage, 17 August 1960 (source: EPNY). 227 Ibid. 223  224 

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of a letter to Hinrichsen on 12 July 1960 only Winter Music and Fontana Mix remained in question. Cage evidently felt it was important to recover these two items, stating in that same letter that ‘[t]‌hese two works are important in the body of my recent work.’228 Fortunately, Cage also provided solutions, or part-​solutions. Winter Music was not available because Cage had signed the piece over for publication in Michael Horovitz’s New Departures, where it was published in the second edition (a double, comprising numbers 2 and 3) in June 1960 but Horovitz was having problems finding the finances to issue the second edition of New Departures, and Cage thought that some accommodation might be come to, with Edition Peters assisting the publication in exchange for the copyright. Evidently this cannot have been precisely what was agreed, since New Departures had gone to press before Cage had even signed his contract, but clearly Horovitz and Hinrichsen came to an amicable settlement: Hinrichsen had certainly written to Horovitz to confirm these arrangements before the end of August 1960.229 The case of Fontana Mix looked likely to be more complex. Luciano Berio had negotiated with Pál Ruzicska at his own publisher, Suvini Zerboni, that Cage would be paid 30,000 Lire (equivalent to roughly $50.00 in 1960) for the rights, although Cage had not delivered the notations to them as yet, having retained them for the purposes of composing further pieces, such as Aria, Sounds of Venice (1959), Theatre Piece, Water Walk (1959), and WBAI. Cathy Berberian had advised Cage that Zerboni would be willing to return the rights on return of the payment. This, Cage was quite happy to undertake, though he thought that the rights might be passed more seamlessly to Peters if the whole transaction was undertaken by them, even if Cage still paid for it. When Cage met with Ruzicska, a few weeks later, on the way to Venice, he was able to reimburse him, although Ruzicska had apparently regarded the sum as an advance rather than as a payment for the rights as such (and, in any case, it transpired that Cage had signed no contract with Suvini Zerboni, although Hinrichsen had had legal statements prepared in advance that would have enabled the smooth transfer of copyright from one publisher to another).230 Though Berio had apparently suggested that the physical tapes of Fontana Mix remained the property of RAI in Milan—​and that, furthermore, any presentation of Fontana Mix would incur royalties due to the studio—​Hinrichsen assured Cage that not only was this not the case but that were RAI to broadcast the tape, a royalty, ultimately due to Cage, would be payable to the Italian

228 

John Cage to Walter Hinrichsen, 12 July 1960, in Kuhn (ed.), Selected Letters, 232.

229  Walter Hinrichsen to John Cage, 31 August 1960 (source: EPNY). 230  John

235–​36.

Cage to Walter Hinrichsen, 27 August 1960, in Kuhn (ed.), Selected Letters,

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mechanical copyright protection organisation. Hinrichsen also observed that the studio would have been perfectly well aware of this and, as such, Cage had no reason even to debate with them regarding to whom the copyright of the information stored on the tapes of Fontana Mix fell: what RAI owned was a copy of the tape, not the copyright on its contents.231 By this stage, Cage and Hinrichsen were on first-​name terms, this shift probably following their meeting in person on 21 July, mentioned in Cage’s letter a week and a half earlier.232 It was almost certainly at that meeting that Cage and Hinrichsen definitively set on Music of Changes as the first score which Edition Peters would release, mirroring Cage’s conversations with Schlee several years before. The catalogue numbers that Hinrichsen confirmed to Cage on 4 August—​EP 6256, 6257, 6258, and 6259—​remain current today. There is little reason to doubt that this was, in most respects, Cage’s decision rather than that Hinrichsen expressed any concerns about the potential difficulties of publishing the Concert for Piano and Orchestra. As Cage wrote to Tudor in advance of his meeting with Hinrichsen: ‘I have the choice of what will be published this year—​ready for the fall. I first thought the Solo for Piano with all the Orchestral parts, but now I’ve decided on the Music of Changes and one of the early chromatic pieces, probably the six short inventions with the preceding solo with canon. Everything seems so graphic now, I thought better to put conservative feet forward.’233 It was probably at the same meeting with Hinrichsen that Cage discovered that he had a champion within the Hinrichsen household. He wrote to Tudor: ‘The wife of the publisher was at Mills years ago when I gave percussion concerts there, and she has been telling him all along you should have heard, you should print it, etc.’234 Perhaps more intriguingly, Cage also asked, possibly urged on by Hinrichsen whether Tudor would be willing for the timings he had carefully worked out for his own performances to be inserted into the published scores: clearly Cage did not, in principle, think that a pianist somehow ‘ought’ to undertake the same graft as Tudor in order to be able to offer an ‘appropriate’ performance of Music of Changes. Nonetheless, the score would surely have been quite different from the one that was released had it been published with Tudor’s timings.235 Tudor’s reply is not extant, though one must presume it to have been a negative one, at least so far as the timings are concerned. After all, Tudor’s timings do not appear, and have never appeared, in the printed score. This refusal may 231  Walter Hinrichsen to John Cage, 31 August 1960 (source: EPNY).

John Cage to Walter Hinrichsen, 12 July 1960, in Kuhn (ed.), Selected Letters, 232. John Cage to David Tudor, 7 July 1960, in Iddon, John Cage and David Tudor, 122–​23. 234  John Cage to David Tudor, 27 July 1960, in ibid., 125. 235  Ibid., 124. 232  233 

Presenting the Concert for Piano and Orchestra  :  199

even have been a spur to Cage to ensure that only the bare essentials appeared in his published work. It was, certainly, in response to a letter in which Cage communicated what Tudor had said to Hinrichsen that the publisher agreed that he would present the scores ‘without additions such as biography, statement of intention, photograph—​in other words, only the music itself, the explanatory note for performance, the dedication, will be included in these volumes and on the back of each of the four covers a complete listing of your works’.236 What Tudor’s letter did contain, however, were ‘some very necessary corrections to be made in the transparents of the Changes’. 237 Surely no less surprising than Cage’s apparent willingness to introduce Tudor’s timings into his published score is the fact that he did not regard his calligraphy as integral: since he was staying in Venice as a guest of Peggy Guggenheim between August and October 1960, he was unable to carry out the two pages of corrections personally until after then and thus recommended to Hinrichsen that, if he wished them completed before then, the corrections could be undertaken by Toshi Ichiyanagi.238 It was Hinrichsen, then, who regarded Cage’s own hand as vital; he preferred to wait until Cage’s return to New York on 14 October.239 The plan for Edition Peters was, apparently, gradually to transfer Cage’s back catalogue from manuscript to Ozalids. As noted, though Photostats were unwieldy and comparatively expensive, while the transfer process was underway—​a process which apparently took most of the initial ten-​year contract Cage signed—​Peters would make available other scores via just this sort of copy. Although Cage had ultimately decided that the Music of Changes was a better first publication than the Concert for Piano and Orchestra, notwithstanding his first instincts in favour of the more recent piece, it seems clear that this piece had come into the discussion and that either Cage had stressed to Hinrichsen its importance or Hinrichsen had recognised it already as a significant part of Cage’s output or, more cynically, had realised the marketing potential of the score in its guise as a compendium of elegant graphical notations: page 8 of the Solo for Piano adorned the first promotional materials Peters developed for Cage, which, since they mention Fontana Mix and Amores (though not, as yet, Winter Music), must have been produced at some point between late August and November 1960: they promise that a full catalogue will be available by December of the same year.240 It may, indeed, have been 236  Walter Hinrichsen to John Cage, 17 August 1960 (source: EPNY).

John Cage to David Tudor, 16 August 1960, in Iddon, John Cage and David Tudor, 120. John Cage to Walter Hinrichsen, 31 August 1960 (source: EPNY). 239  Walter Hinrichsen to John Cage, 6 September 1960 (source: EPNY). 240 The cover design was, according to Don Gillespie’s account, undertaken by Edition Peters’ house artist, Johanna Ribbelink (see Don Gillespie, ‘John Cage 237 

238 

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the production of these materials that caused Hinrichsen to write to Cage on 11 October to say that having ‘already spent a very substantial amount for John Cage promotion and photostat copies’, he needed to reduce the royalties on sales of photostat scores to 5%,241 a reduction Cage neither quibbled nor queried.242 The Solo for Piano was registered for copyright with the Library of Congress on 29 December 1960 under what was, presumably, a dummy catalogue number, EP 283670.243 The Concert for Piano and Orchestra was, however, central to Hinrichsen’s thoughts regarding his new signing from the start. In his first letter to Cage after the meeting on which they settled on Music of Changes as the first score to be published, it is the only piece in question, aside from that first publication. Even more significantly—​and adding to the sense that Hinrichsen had identified the Solo for Piano as having such a strong graphic identity that it was the right score to work with immediately from a marketing perspective—​it was this score, not the Music of Changes, that Hinrichsen had sent to the European offices of Edition Peters, even if his letter to Cage suggests that he had, in part at least, misunderstood the nature of the score, probably mistaking the Solo for Piano for the Concert as a whole: We made a few photostat copies of the score to your CONCERT FOR PIANO AND ORCHESTRA, naturally in loose leaf sheets so that conductors can interchange all pages in accordance with their desire in performing it. So that our representatives will have immediately at least one copy on hand of your work, I  am sending now one of these photostat copies to each of the below-​mentioned addresses in London, Frankfurt, and Zuerich.244

Hinrichsen’s note to these three offices is yet more suggestive of both his thoughts with regard to the importance and centrality of this score and his sense of the opportunities it, in particular, would afford his company. Though Hinrichsen notes the problems the score presents—​its sheer size making photostatting even more expensive and inconvenient than normal and, because the various pages need not all be used, nor need the used pages appear in their numerical order, rendering conventional binding an impossibility—​he stresses that, already, this is not hindering sales: ‘We are selling this Score here for $25.00 (up to now we have sold already 4 copies of it within 4 weeks); the and Walter Hinrichsen: The Early Years with Edition Peters (1960-​1969)’, in Julia Schröder and Volker Staebel (eds.), Cage and Consequences (Hofheim: Wolke, 2012), 89. 241  Walter Hinrichsen to John Cage, 11 October 1960 (source: EPNY). 242  John Cage to Walter Hinrichsen, 17 October 1960 (source: EPNY). 243  Library of Congress Catalog of Copyright Entries: Music, Current and Renewal Registrations, Third Series, vol. 25, part 25, no. 1, sect. 1 (January–​June 1971), 126. 244  Walter Hinrichsen to John Cage, 4 August 1960 (source: EPNY).

Presenting the Concert for Piano and Orchestra  :  201

dealer’s discount is 25%’.245 Hinrichsen recognises that the cost might seem prohibitive but, as well as indicating the success that his office has already had in selling a copy a week, adds that ‘[u]‌ndoubtedly you are acquainted with the fact that Universal Edition sells their Stockhausen and similar other publications for fantastically high prices, because sales are naturally still rather limited for this type of Musique congrete [sic], but those people who are interested in such type of music will pay any kind of price in order to be able to own works by such composers’. He stresses too—​even though the score of the Solo for Piano itself would surely have been the most compelling evidence on its own—​his feeling that Cage’s own calligraphy is a central part of the appeal of the score as a physical object: It might interest you to know that all facsimile editions of the music of John Cage have been reproduced from transparencies written in his own handwriting, which you will agree is extraordinarily beautiful and represents in itself a piece of art—​ many pages of his manuscripts have been framed and are being exhibited in museums here as paintings.246

According to Don Gillespie’s account, the Europeans were, to say the least, less convinced by Hinrichsen’s decision to sign Cage. His brother, Max, ‘considered it a terrible misjudgement for his London catalogue’, while the Frankfurt office’s Johannes Petschull feared that it would inflame the continuing scandals surrounding Cage’s work in Europe, scandals in which Peters would now become complicit.247 Their feelings could hardly have been made warmer by what seem to have been rather poor-​quality reproductions: David Tudor was in possession of three Photostatted sheets—​pages 24, 30, and 31 of the Solo for Piano—​marked ‘john cage exklusiv bei edition peters, frankfurt–​ london–​new york’ which, while legible, do not give a terribly compelling impression of the score.248 Hinrichsen was undeterred. As well as progressively moving pieces from Photostat copies to Ozalids, his plan with the Photostats was ‘to make photostat copies in the sequence of importance and forward copies to the Peters firms in London, Frankfurt and Zurich’. That the Concert for Piano and Orchestra was the first score to receive this treatment emphasises the notion that, from 245  Walter

Hinrichsen memo to Edition Peters London, Frankfurt, and Zürich, 17 August 1960 (source: EPNY). 246  Walter Hinrichsen memo to Edition Peters London, Frankfurt, and Zürich, 17 August 1960 (source: EPNY). 247  Gillespie, ‘John Cage and Walter Hinrichsen’, 86. 248  Curiously, and amusingly, these pages are found within a folder of the David Tudor Papers marked ‘Unidentified Schoenberg counterpoint exercises’. None of the three pages, in this format, has a page number.

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his perspective at least, it represented a cornerstone of the output as a whole. At the same time, Hinrichsen stressed that he would take his lead from Cage on what seemed most important, asking him to provide a list of which pieces it would be most worthwhile having ready on hand in Photostat copies.249 The Photostat copies were not made ‘in house’, but by a reproduction service, Mapleson.250 Although the process was a cumbersome one in general, Hinrichsen regarded working with Mapelson as ‘uncomplicated and fast’, at least comparatively.251 Notwithstanding these benefits—​and the obviously strong support Hinrichsen personally had for Cage’s music—​it took time for various challenges and difficulties with the reproduction of Cage’s music to be ironed out. Cage brushed off the problems after Tudor had told him that copies of his music appearing in Europe were not cleanly reproduced: ‘Sorry to hear that music is dirty. Believe Satie remarked that about the music business.’252 Indeed, he had not mentioned this to Hinrichsen at first, thinking he had done what he ‘could to facilitate the proper reproduction of my work that is provided transparencies and directions for their duplication’ and feeling ‘that if things were not well done that that was in a sense the way the world goes’. However, in residence at the Center for Advanced Study at Wesleyan University and thus able to check the copies of his scores which arrived in the library, Cage discovered that the copy of Fontana Mix that Wesleyan had purchased was missing its transparent sheet, making it not merely difficult to read, but actually impossible to use. This frustration caused a brief flash of apparent, if wholly understandable, temper: This omission could be the fault of Mapleson. Since he, like anybody else in the world, is capable of mistakes, I think it would be wise if an examination of work done by him was always made with the directions for duplication which I have provided in front of the person making the examination. Another step that could be taken is to request that Mapleson actually read the directions for duplication. And himself check his work.

Nevertheless, Cage continued to think that ‘Mapleson is the best place in New York for our purposes’ and, cattily or kindly, suggested that the problem was that ‘[p]‌erhaps it has been too hot lately’.253

249  Walter Hinrichsen to John Cage, 17 August 1960 (source: EPNY). 250 

Laura Kuhn suggests, indeed, that at the time Mapleson not only undertook this but also diazotype reproduction for Peters, the company having no internal print department in the United States. See Kuhn (ed.), Selected Letters, 244, n.494. 251  Walter Hinrichsen to John Cage, 17 August 1960 (source: EPNY). 252  John Cage to David Tudor, 31 May 1961, in Iddon, John Cage and David Tudor, 132. 253  John Cage to Walter Hinrichsen, 4 July 1961, in Kuhn (ed.), Selected Letters, 244–​45.

Presenting the Concert for Piano and Orchestra  :  203

The immediate upshot was that, on the side of Edition Peters, Hinrichsen checked stock to ensure that it was an isolated incident, which it proved to be, and ensured that the missing transparency was mailed out, while a note, presumably from Mapleson, confirming that new and correct copy had been made read: ‘Suggestion: pieces containing transparencies, especially those of various and small sizes, should be sent out (and kept) in envelopes. ? [sic]’254 The longer-​term upshot was that Cage took a keener interest in, and was more specific regarding the details of the publication of his music.255 It was almost ten years after the date of his initial contract with Edition Peters that Cage finally reached the stage of publishing the score with which he had thought to begin that relationship or, more accurately, publishing it beyond the distribution of Photostats of Cage’s holograph. Given the complications the score presented, Cage was fortunate that it had not, in the end, been printed any sooner. It was necessary not only that he had a detailed idea of what he wanted for the publication, but also that he had a strong relationship with Hinrichsen in order to achieve it. Indeed, most of the experience of publishing his music that Cage had had to date came together in the act of publishing the Concert for Piano and Orchestra. Early in 1968—​the tone suggesting that an earlier conversation had agreed that the Solo for Piano would form part of the next tranche of score releases in diazotype copies, replacing the Photostat that had been in circulation for a little over seven years—​Cage wrote to Hinrichsen that he had ‘employed a copyist in Illinois who is working on the SOLO FOR PIANO from the CONCERT FOR PIANO AND ORCHESTRA’.256 Though the idea of Cage having a copyist was not so radical an idea as it had been when he first signed with Peters—​indeed multiple copyists were employed later that same year for work on HPSCHD, including Richard Herbert Howe who was, as noted, the copyist who worked on the Solo for Piano—​in the case of a score so profoundly intertwined with Cage’s calligraphy, Hinrichsen was taken aback.257 The idea made him, he said, ‘very sad because [his] intentions were to print this SOLO FOR PIANO in your handwriting’, even though 254 

Mapleson memo to Edition Peters, undated (ca. July 1961) (source: EPNY). Almost all of the Cage manuscripts held at the New York Public Library contain a specific set of instructions for publication. Many of these instructions seem, without knowledge of this history, to repeat what should have seemed obvious from Cage’s materials. Yet Cage was evidently, following these difficulties, happy to be didactic, even pedantic, if it would avoid future problems. 256  John Cage to Walter Hinrichsen, 3 March 1968 (source: EPNY). 257 For information regarding the copyists who worked on HPSCHD, see Sara Heimbecker, John Cage’s HPSCHD (unpublished PhD thesis, University of Illinois at Urbana-​Champaign, 2011),  59–​64. 255 

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it seems that this had always mattered more to Hinrichsen than to Cage.258 Hinrichsen was also evidently aware that Cage had been disappointed with copyists he had worked with before—​Heimbecker notes that their work had ‘had to be closely proof read and often re-​written’—​asking Cage to ‘make double sure that when you proofread this copyist’s work that no mistakes are included because this would be terrible if we would have to add later on an errata sheet to the printed copy’.259 Hinrichsen need not have worried, at least not about the copyist. As Cage advised him, the copyist was ‘not copying the ms.: he is merely putting ink where it is missing. I shall double-​check his work.’260 Howe’s own recollection suggests his work was more involved than this, but not all that much: as well as filling in patches where ink had faded to brown or peeled away from the page—​a product of the damage caused by the ammonia used in reproducing the score—​he suggest several pages needed to be retraced in full, using a large light box which he built himself.261 These new pages were drawn onto a heavy paper, made by Morilla, which was, according to Howe’s account, more like a sort of plastic imitation of vellum.262 The challenges for publication, then, lay not with the score itself but, instead, with the way in which Cage wished the score to be packaged. A conversation the details of which Cage confirmed to Hinrichsen on 8 April 1968, gives the impression of quite how specific and detailed Cage’s plans for the piece were: 258  Walter Hinrichsen to John Cage, 7 March 1968 (source: EPNY).

John Cage’s HPSCHD, 63; Walter Hinrichsen to John Cage, 7 March 1968 (source: EPNY). 260  John Cage to Walter Hinrichsen, 21 May 1968 (source: JCC). 261  Naturally this suggests that some of Cage’s careful selection of high-​quality archival paper was, if not pointless, at least undermined by a later stage of the process:  though a paper like Permalife bond may well have been highly effective at ensuring that, in storage, acid would not be transferred from one page to another, that would, of course, not prevent the damage caused by the composer actively treating the page with ammonia directly. For a composer who spent such a long time on the breadline in this period, this must have made the expensive paper seem, ultimately, like something of an extravagance. 262  Email from Richard Herbert Howe, dated 6 July 2017. The paper Howe used was probably, in fact, Morilla Cameo, which was actually coated in clay rather than plastic, and was specifically intended for silverpoint drawing, but had the benefit, from Cage’s perspective, of its being possible to use a razor blade to erase mistakes by scratching the top layer off the paper, a benefit which Cage also had with the corrasable bond he used for sketching the instrumental parts for the Concert for Piano and Orchestra, suggesting this was a facility he valued in the (highly specific) papers he selected. 259 Heimbecker,

Presenting the Concert for Piano and Orchestra  :  205 I wish to recall that we agreed: a) that it would be published in its own size, not reduced and b) in portfolio form, that is: each page printed on one side only, and the pages not stapled, bound together or in any other way physically connected. AMP [Associated Music Publishers] did an excellent publication of compositions by Earle Brown in a portfolio with each page separate, and also large size pages; and c) that the cover not be modernistic but rather ‘classical’ Peters style. I will be gratified in this case if all advertisements including those of my own music be omitted. The title page and the two pages of notes are not to be numbered.263

Apart from any other consideration, it is worth recalling that, from the very outset and in connection with this precise score, Hinrichsen had cautioned the other offices of Edition Peters that part of the problem with Cage’s music and part of the reason why it was expensive to produce was the sheer size of the pages. Here Cage was insisting not only that the pages of the score retain his own large (though thankfully standard, ledger) page size, but also that a unique box be made to house the score. Surely one would have not regarded Hinrichsen unreasonable to have balked at least a little. Yet Hinrichsen did not. Having had the opportunity to inspect one of the Earle Brown portfolios, he simply checked with Cage that he had correctly understood the requirements and proposed a very minor change, which would distinguish the prefatory matter of the Solo for Piano from the notations themselves: ‘One production question came up in my mind and that is the inside title page plus the two pages of your instructions, shouldn’t they be three pages of a four page sheet instead of being all loose sheets like the music sheets?’ Nonetheless, though he made no argument about the matter nor suggested for a second that this would, in fact, prove a prohibitive factor, he did note the need to ‘discuss something which is rather embarrassing and that is the fantastic cost of the printing of the music and the special folder you desire for it’. Hinrichsen’s initial proposal was reasonably straightforward. He proposed that the Foundation for Contemporary Arts, which Cage had established with Jasper Johns and Robert Rauschenberg, purchase 100 copies of the score, from a first print run of 300, in advance, at a cost of $15 per score, a reduction of 40% on the then list-​price for the score, available in a Photostat version. Cage was still to receive his 10% royalties on this purchase, which would have meant that Edition Peters would have received subvention costs in the sum of $1350.00.264 Whether or not the Foundation would have had any interest in owning so many copies of single score or would have had any ideas for what they might do with them, Cage informed Hinrichsen by telephone on 4 June that they assuredly simply did not have the cash. 263 

John Cage to Walter Hinrichsen, 8 April 1968 (source: EPNY).

264  Walter Hinrichsen to John Cage, 29 May 1968 (source: EPNY).

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Cage suggested an alternative, though one which was not in the event pursued. Cage proposed that Gemini Graphic Editions Limited—​where Robert Rauschenberg had, in 1967, developed Booster, the then-​largest art print ever made—​might publish lithographs of individual sheets of the Solo for Piano. Gemini projected that they could sell individual lithographs for $500.00 a piece and would be willing to pay a 10% royalty to Edition Peters for the licensing cost, with a $1500.00 advance to cover the necessary subvention.265 The next discussion of the publication between Cage and Hinrichsen shows that this proposal was not finally ultimately pursued. Hinrichsen had contrived to cut the necessary subvention in half, via the simple method of making the projected list price not $10 cheaper than the Photostat, but only $5, to retail at $20. This would mean, then, that only $750.00 would be required—​ notwithstanding Hinrichsen’s note that he had ‘just received the final quotation from our printer to which the astronomical amount of $439.00 was added just for the boxes’—​a sum which Hinrichsen had understood either Cage personally or the Foundation for Contemporary Arts would now be willing to provide. Hinrichsen returned, with the intent of ensuring that the transaction was an equitable one, to his earlier solution that Peters would simply turn over an appropriate number of copies of the score to Cage. He proposed that Cage, in effect, purchase 42 copies of the score at the $20 retail cost, but with the 10% discount ordinarily given to musicians and educational institutions, which would have totalled $756.00. Cage’s reply indicates not only how utterly transformed his financial position was by the late 1960s—​he encloses a cheque in the requested sum of $750.00 without any apparent concern, noting too that he had already provided $339.34 toward the costs of copying The Seasons (1947) in 1968—​but also how consistent he had been in what service he wanted a publisher to provide (and, equally, precisely the work he wanted to have nothing personally to do with): ‘[Y]‌ou propose sending me 42 copies of the SOLO when it is finished. What would I do with them? I do not wish to become a distributor or publisher.’ Cage proposed instead ‘some special change in my royalties for pieces in the publication of which I cooperate financially.’266 A handwritten note, initialled ‘WH’ and dated 30 December 1968, on the top of Hinrichsen’s letter of 5 December provides the detail of the resolution, ultimately a simple one: ‘Cage agrees instead of copies to a royalty of 15% sold 6705’.

265 

Memo of telephone conversation between John Cage and Walter Hinrichsen, 4 June 1968 (source: EPNY). 266  John Cage to Walter Hinrichsen, 12 December 1968 (source: EPNY).

chapter 4

Performing the Concert for Piano and Orchestra David Tudor’s first realisation of the Solo for Piano David Tudor not only devised the programme for the Twenty-​ Five Year Retrospective Concert, he was also responsible for performing the solo part in the evening’s major event, the premiere of the Concert for Piano and Orchestra. Tudor’s work in preparing a realisation of his part, the Solo for Piano, may not have been as great as Cage’s in composing the score, but it was surely not all that far behind, especially in mind of the relatively condensed time Tudor must have had to work on his realisation. Since by the end of January 1958, if Cage is to be taken at his word, the piano score was not only still incomplete in pencil—​even if only a little work was still required—​but also still required the addition of ink throughout, a complete score can hardly have been turned over to Tudor before the beginning of March, and even if the first eighteen pages were available earlier, this gave him little time to establish what he intended to do with the notations, let  alone to have learnt the material he had prepared. Since the completed instruction page is dated 27 March 1958, Tudor may well not have received the remainder any sooner. This was surely a challenge, even for a pianist of Tudor’s capacity for work and appetite for challenge: as he said of his own abilities, he had ‘always been well known for his ability to handle complex scores—​it could be as black as sin and I could still play it’.’1

1  David Tudor,

1972), 24.

‘From Piano to Electronics’, Music and Musicians, no. 20 (August

John Cage’s Concert for Piano and Orchestra. Martin Iddon and Philip Thomas, Oxford University Press (2020). © Oxford University Press. DOI: 10.1093/oso/9780190938475.001.0001

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In performances of this, his first realisation of the score, Tudor made use of only a limited number of its notations.2 One might immediately make the presumption that such restrictions were forced upon Tudor by virtue of the constraints of the available time. Yet even if there is something in this, in later performances of his first realisation Tudor took no advantage of the increased time available. Of the eighty-​four notational types deployed in the Solo for Piano, Tudor’s performance and rehearsal plans—​on which more information follows—​make use of just forty-​six, leaving thirty-​eight types of notation entirely unused, even though sketch materials exist for rather more of these notations, in versions never apparently used in performance or in rehearsal (see Table 4.1). Though it is certainly not clear that Tudor knew precisely which notations were, according to Cage’s determinations, variations Table 4.1  Notations used by Tudor in his first realisation 4 5–​7 8 9–​10 11–​12 12 16 16–​17 19–​21 21–​22 27 29–​31

H J K P G T U T {X, Y, Z, AB, AD, AF, AG} {AC, AE} O {I, AA, AR, AS} I {AA, AR, AS} {AR, AS}

29 29–​31 31 31 34–​36 36

2 Though

AC B H

the term ‘notations’ is preferred here—​and throughout this text—​ Tudor referred to each of these notational types instead as ‘graphs’, each notation representing a ‘distinct graphic object’, as Holzaepfel summarises the conception which lay at the heart of Tudor’s reasoning (see Holzaepfel, David Tudor, 205).

Performing the Concert for Piano and Orchestra  :  209 Table 4.1  Continued 37–​38 38–​40 40 42–​44

AV AX AY {BA, AT} BA AT

42 43–​44 43–​44 45 47–​49 49–​51

K AL AO {A, AK, H, (BJ)}

49 49–​51 50

A {A, AK, H} BJ

50–​51 51–​52 52–​53 53 53–​54 54–​55 54 55–​56 55–​56 55–​56 56–​57 56–​57 57 57 59–​60 62

BN BR BO BB BW {BT, BY} BT {BU, CA, CB} CA BZ AE {BX, BX} CC CD CE CF

These indicate notations appearing in performance plans and sketches for the same:  notations in italics (AO and BN) appear only in performance plan sketches. Indented groupings indicate that these are subsets of the largest indicated reading, though they appear in performance plans in their own right.

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of others, it may well be that he endeavoured to realise only what seemed to him to be unique notations, which would assuredly be in line with the general view of Tudor as not only a solver of puzzles, but as someone who had little interest in solving the same problem a second time.3 Of the types of notation realised, thirteen types are used in Tudor’s extant performance and rehearsal plans four times or fewer: A, B, O, P, AK, AL, AX, AY, BB, BN, BW , BY, and CF. By contrast, the most utilised notational type, AC, appears seventeen times in total across these plans, which outline which notations Tudor would perform and in what order for a particular performance (or, for that matter, rehearsal) and which will be examined in more detail. As a result, Tudor’s work on just thirty-​three types of notation forms the major part of what an audience was likely to have heard in any early performance of the Solo for Piano and, by extension, the Concert for Piano and Orchestra. Several further observations are worth making at the outset. First, Tudor regularly combined multiple notations from Cage’s score into a single realisation of his own, to a limited extent accounting for why a notation like AC appears so often: he makes use of two different versions of the AC notation type, both as a single notation and placed into a combination with AE; the former version, specifically, is the one on page 31—​hereafter 31 AC—​while the other is the one which begins on page 21, finishing on page 23, which is combined, then, with the version of notation AE which appears on the first two of those pages. The largest such agglomeration combines seven notations: X, Y, Z, AB, AD, AF, and AG which appear across pages 19 to 21. Second, as is to some extent implied by the first point, Tudor carefully distinguishes between instances of notations within the score such that, for instance, the only version of notation A he employs is that on page 49, while he uses all three versions of H, creating distinct versions for 4 H, 36 H, and 50 H, although the last of these appears in performance only in a combined reading, alongside 49 A, 49–​50 AK, and, in one version, 50 BJ, a notation which is also used on its own, albeit differently realised. Naturally, it is worth adding, as a generality, that notational types which appear on many occasions are also types of which Tudor makes multiple realisations: notation H is the second most common notational type, making twelve appearances, but, like AC, that is in part a product of the fact that notation H is realised in three different ways, for its different appearances on page 4, page 36, and page 50. Most of the notations realised for performance by Tudor appear in his plans for performance between seven and nine times, which is to say too that—​even though his performances were flexible, as will be outlined in more detail—​there was

3 

See Iddon, John Cage and David Tudor, 67.

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also an essentially common reservoir of material that constituted the ‘core sound’ of the first realisation.4 Notwithstanding the limited number of notations Tudor treated in his first realisation, the sheer scale of the work means that only a relatively limited number of the notations can be examined.5 Nevertheless, although one should of course be wary of treating Tudor’s approach to the notations as in any sense sacrosanct—​his approach might wisely, as Mark Nelson puts it, ‘be viewed as exemplary but not definitive’—​as well as representing the first mode of approach a pianist made to these notations, the examination of what performance decisions might be taken in response to the notations of the Solo for Piano is, in itself, a sort of analysis.6 As such, the consideration of Tudor’s decisions here acts, too, as a sort of upbeat to the analyses of a broader range of notations in Chapter 6. Though Tudor never used notation 1 A within any of his performance plans, he did, nonetheless, create a realisation of it (fig. 4.1), perhaps unsurprisingly given it would have been the first notation he came to in the score. Not only does Tudor follow the instructions of the notation quite literally, he attempts—​a feature which is far from uncommon in his realisation—​to retain as much as possible the form and format of Cage’s notation. Cage insists that the notes inscribed on his ‘perimeter’ line be played in opposite directions in the proportion indicated: here sixteen notes are to be played in one direction, and nine in the other. Since there are twenty-​five notes in total indicated by the notation, it would be entirely conceivable that a realisation would start and end with a dyad, formed of two adjacent notes on Cage’s perimeter, with seven intervening pitches in one staff and fourteen in the other, superimposing two lines atop one another and making the ratio, too, a temporal one. Equally, the lines might not be performed synchronously at all (and many other readings would be possible too, to be sure). Tudor’s version notionally—​if not necessarily audibly—​retains the perimeter of Cage’s shape: while there are sixteen notes in his lower staff and nine in his upper,

4 This

reservoir includes twenty-​six notations:  notations G, AD, AT, and BT make seven appearances, notations J, X, Y, Z, AA, AB, AF, AG, AV, BR, BU, BX, CB, CD, and CE make eight (and the presence of the subset {X, Y, Z, AB, AD, AF, AG} on this list shows that that seven-​notation grouping only ever appears precisely as a combined reading), while I, U, AE, AR, AS, CA, and CC make nine appearances. 5 The most comprehensive examination of the first realisation is Nicasio Gradaille’s exhaustive El Solo for Piano de John Cage según la primera realización de David Tudor (unpublished PhD thesis, Universida de Vigo, 2010). 6  Mark Nelson, Quieting the Mind, Manifesting Mind:  The Zen Buddhist Roots of John Cage’s Early Chance-​Determined and Indeterminate Compositions (unpublished PhD thesis, Princeton University, 1995), 345.

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Fig. 4.1:  Tudor’s realisation of notation 1 A he inscribes lines between the notes, such that it seems as if both upper and lower staves begin and end at the same point, even if that might then feel, conceptually, as if the ratio had become 16:11. Tudor’s realisation has an additional notable feature:  he selects a particular reading wherein the notes on the upper staff are almost without exception higher in pitch than those on the lower staff. Many of his other sketched versions do not exhibit this characteristic. This may or may not have been intentional—​his reading begins with what feels like the most intuitive first note, the F-​sharp beneath the upper, treble staff—​but there exists too what looks to be an earlier sketch version in which both staves would have begun on the repeated E below the bass staff, an alternative which was wholly rejected. Tudor also, quite practically, re-​notated noteheads which were, because of an excess of ledger lines, difficult to read in more straightforward positions on the page. Less practical, Tudor’s realisation indicates too that he expected to perform the notation—​or would have expected to, had it ever been used in this format—​in a duration of five seconds. This seems essentially proportional to the relative lack of space on the first page allocated to the notation: it occupies more or less a twelfth of the usable left-​to-​right space of a page, suggesting that, at least at some point, Tudor had considered that a page might represent a minute of clock time; even if this was certainly not a conception he followed through, it seems to have been a sort of base-​level presumption which is deviated from to a greater or lesser extent, rather than an initial thought which was later decisively overruled. His reading of the rather denser version of notation A on page 49—​with instructions to read fifty-​six notes in one hand and thirty-​three

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Fig. 4.2:  Tudor’s realisation of notation 49 A in the other—​remains practical in one sense, since the reading again seeks (here entirely successfully) to avoid the crossing of hands, but in other ways is assuredly ambitious: this notation, too, takes up little left-​to-​right space on the page and Tudor, in turn, suggests the notation should take five seconds, which would necessitate more than eleven notes being struck, accurately, per second. While not impossibly fast, it is certainly a virtuosic pace (fig. 4.2). As noted, Tudor created readings of multiple versions of notation H, even providing two distinct complete versions of 36 H, and a draft of another. These differences show, or at least hint at, the diversity of thinking Tudor adopted to solve the puzzles of Cage’s score, even in the case of a notation which might seem to be essentially unambiguous. A less charitable reading might argue that what is demonstrated is the sheer level of liberty Tudor took with Cage’s instructions. H presents a sort of fragmented version of notation C, with the materials of the earlier notation split across multiple staves, such that the performer can play ‘any one of these’ staves (presumably, though Tudor’s reading seems to embrace the ambiguity that Cage leaves by not specifying the referent with absolute precision) or any number, including all of them, with the proviso that the staves chosen must be played in sequence and that the clef attached to the first staff selected then applies to all of the staves performed. One of Tudor’s versions—​marked simply as 36 H, with an expected duration in performance of thirty to forty seconds—​is purely and straightforwardly a transcription of the fourth line of Cage’s notation (fig. 4.3). Unusually, Tudor does not even go so far as to amend inconvenient enharmonic spellings: though this is explicable where the motion makes some

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Fig. 4.3:  Tudor’s realisation of notation 36 H sort of tonal sense—​as in the opening D-​flat–​F-​flat–​E-​flat figure—​it is more surprising in the case of the later B-​sharp, especially given the relative preponderance of C-​naturals in the second half of the line. Tudor applies just the same solution—​here with far simpler results—​to 50 H2 (his other version, 50 H1, will be discussed shortly), where the notes of the top line of Cage’s notation are simply written out, rectus, such that they are read according the opening F clef ottava bassa. The only change Tudor makes is to change the clef to a standard bass clef, thus transposing the physical location of the notes on the staff down by an octave. A further version, catalogued by Tudor as 36 H1, takes a quite different approach, and one that is surely at odds with Cage’s instructions or at least takes a contrary approach to reading them (fig. 4.4). When Cage writes ‘any one of these’, Tudor appears to have read ‘these’—​as an alternative to that version in 36 H without the superscript numeral 1—​as referring to particular pitches. Tudor determined that the single pitch he would use would be C-​natural. Tudor appears then, further, to have taken ‘or any number’ to provide licence to delimit the particular set of single pitches to be used: the only way to arrive at the sequence Tudor has—​presuming it to be an attempt to map more-​or-​less faithfully the proportions of Cage’s notations—​is to begin with the penultimate C of the second line of 36 H (thus giving the clef to be used throughout the reading as an F clef ottava bassa) and then to wrap around onto the third line of 36 H, reading it in reverse, with the last C of the line being the first Tudor takes from it, and the first C of the line being omitted. One might imagine this sort of backwards reading of a line seeming licit to

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Fig. 4.4:  Tudor’s realisation of notation 36 H1 Tudor on the basis of Cage’s own double-​cleffed versions in 50 H, which could be read both traditionally and, as it were, backwards and upside-​down. Tudor does, however, wholly remove the distinction Cage makes between notes to be plucked, muted, and played ordinario on the keys: he applies the description ‘ruler-​friction’ to the whole, which is to say, presumably, that a ruler was dragged—​rather than bounced, most likely—​along the indicated string. This version has an indicated duration of thirty seconds in performance and, since a single staff of 36 H takes up somewhere close to half of the width of the page, some sense that a page might be notionally about a minute long—​at least as a starting point—​seems to continue to be Tudor’s thinking. Almost exactly the same solution is applied to 4 H. Here a single F an octave below the bass staff is indicated, again to be played with ruler friction. Though only one F is notated, Tudor adds, in pencil, the cautionary ‘(or x2)’. In theory, he might have reached this by any number of routes: an appropriate F—​with the right clef—​can be found on either the fourth or sixth system of 4 H. One might think that the potential second F is indeed a version where both are played. Equally, there are two other F-​naturals on the intervening fifth staff, the first of which could be performed alongside that on the fourth system if reading forwards, the second alongside that of the final system, reading backwards. The precise route Tudor took ultimately hardly matters in this case, though it is notable that there are several possible ways to achieve the outcome he did. In any case, his thinking on duration is rather different here, with a given duration of between twenty and thirty seconds for a notation which takes up only about a tenth of the width of the page: even if

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with a repetition of the low F, here the sense that notations are conceived of as essentially proportional to the physical space they take on the page is undermined. Moreover, this notation is hardly so complex that taking such a comparatively long time over its performance has any practical benefit. No less interesting is the version of 36 H which exists only in a draft form. Tudor did not make use of it, though it again speaks to a different approach to resolving the same essential puzzle. Here, Tudor quite literally overlays the second and sixth lines of 36 H on top of one another, to create a composite of the two. Although one might imagine that Cage’s insistence that one take the clef of the line one begins with would mean that the clef of the staff of the first note be used—​a simple bass clef—​Tudor’s use of the clef of the notation’s second system—​a F clef ottava bassa—​suggests that his reading was that he would write out that line first, including its clef, and then overlay the other line on top of it, such that, even though the C-​sharp which begins the second line was to become the second note of the realisation (and thus the second note played), it was the first note Tudor transcribed. As written, notation AC looks likely to be challenging to realise, particularly on its second appearance on page 31, one of the two instances of AC elaborated by Tudor. Fifty-​one points are distributed across a short four-​line staff, the top space of which denotes noises made on the inside of the piano body, the bottom noises made on the exterior of the instrument, and the central space noises to be made using auxiliary instruments or devices. The vertical position within a space determines the dynamic of a particular noise, the higher, the louder. Yet, the performer need perform only a small fraction of these fifty-​one possibilities: just three points are to be realised in this case. The three selected by Tudor appear all to have been drawn from the central space, probably from the second half of that space, since there one finds three points, more or less equidistant, sitting on the line at the bottom of the space: Tudor’s notation demands three pianissimo notes on a squeaker, notes written at equidistant points in his realisation. He does, however, provide distinctions between the three notes: the first is on an indrawn breath, the second blown normally, with the third, still at this low dynamic, overblown. A duration of between fifteen and twenty seconds is proposed for the performance of this realisation, which is some way from what one might expect were its scale on the page proportional to its duration: something more in the region of five seconds would have been expected had Tudor carried this through and again, to be sure, there would have been no practical difficulty in performing the realisation so quickly. Tudor’s other reading of AC presents it in combination with notation AE, as already noted, an approach he uses regularly within his first reading (fig. 4.5). In many respects, AE seems a perverse notation: pitches, almost always at or beyond the extremes of the standard two staves indicated, often many

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Fig. 4.5:  Tudor’s composite realisation of 21–​22 AC AE ledger lines above the upper staff or below the lower, are joined together by straight lines. Seemingly, the very extreme noteheads must have been notated first: further noteheads regularly appear at the intersections of the lines which connect the extremes. However, only where Cage has indicated a number—​ related to one of the spaces between a particular set of lines—​is the pianist to play, and to play only that number of pitches from the implicit total range. In the case of Tudor’s combined reading, which uses 21–​22 AE, only at the very end of the notation do the numbers 10 and 6 appear, demarcating aggregates to be drawn from the C at the very top of the piano keyboard and the E-​flat below it (which is to say a ten-​note aggregate) and from the B at the top of the piano and the F below it (which is to say a seven-​note aggregate), respectively. In the first case, Tudor simply transcribes the complete available aggregate as a cluster, though transposing the written pitches down by an octave, adding an ottava marking. In the second he adopts a similar procedure, but eliminates the top B, making a six-​note aggregate from F to B-​flat. In his realisation, 21–​ 22 AC AE, these clusters are intersected by an auxiliary noise—​a short blow on a duck whistle—​which is the last of the seven events Tudor takes from 21–​ 23 AC: his notation refers to the last page as 22 not because that is where this version of AC ends, but because that is the point at which he ceases to read it. This intersection, and this ending point, is significant too because it indicates the way in which Tudor reads each page as a single system: where he combines two readings they take place in proportional relationship to one another on the page, such that this auxiliary noise is the third event within notation AC on page 22, a point which does indeed appear between the two clusters of

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AE, reading left to right. The previous two events in the combined reading confirm this, as close in Tudor’s realisation as they are on the page: first, an interior noise on the body of the instrument, which Tudor determines to be a hard rubber beater on the rear of the metal construction of the piano and, second, an exterior noise, the same beater being used on the case of the instrument. The other four events which precede this are, naturally, drawn from the portion of 21–​23 AC which appears on the first page of the notation. As a whole, Tudor suggests the combined realisation might take between twenty-​ five and forty seconds in performance. Like AC, Cage’s notation AK is one of those which appears on the page to make significantly more complex demands than it actually does. 25 AK presents, simply, two exploded aggregates (what Cage calls ‘universes’), one of eleven pitches and one of fifteen, the explosion left-​to-​right making it possible to create a dynamic scale from soft to loud and back again which is disconnected from the positions the notes might have had if organised as a vertical chord. Just one pitch from each aggregate is to be selected by the pianist. A time scale along the top runs from 0 to 5, taken by Tudor to indicate seconds, since the total length in performance for this realisation is given as precisely five seconds. He transcribes, in an accurate proportional relationship to the score, the top G at the end of page 25, with its fortissimo dynamic, as his first note, and the very last note of the notation—​a B on the bass staff, translated by Tudor into the same treble clef as his first note—​as his other, at the pianissimo Cage indicates. By contrast, notation 50 BJ—​its sole appearance in the piece—​looks much more straightforward than it is. It appears, according to Cage’s instructions, to be a single-​point version of notation BB. In BB, a cluster of points is contained within a box, with straight lines across it denoting the essentially serial parameters of duration, pitch, volume, point of occurrence (relative to the other events), and timbre (dubbed ‘overtone structure’ in Cage’s terminology). The values of these parameters for each point were determined by the distance of the points from the lines, according to a scale to be determined by the pianist. Where that earlier notation is analogous to Cage’s Variations I—​as suggested in Chapter 2 surely composed in tandem with the Solo for Piano—​this, then, represents the motion towards what would become Variations II. The lines here are, in effect, the sides of the rectangular box itself, but Cage no longer tells the pianist which side, which line, is to refer to which parameter (and, having only one point, the parameters can be reduced to four, eliminating a determination of point of occurrence). Tudor’s realisation—​a single point, positioned at more-​or-​less the same position left-​to-​right as the point within Cage’s box, with the note that it represented ‘glass friction’ (glass to be drawn along the piano strings) at a dynamic of ‘6’ (a scale Tudor borrowed from the Swedish composer Bo

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Fig. 4.6:  Tudor’s composite realisation 49–​50 AK H1 BJ1 BM Nilsson ran from 0.5 to 10.5,7 suggesting that Tudor must have taken the bottom line of the rectangle as the determining one for volume)—​could have been undertaken essentially freely, a sort of improvised version of the notation, with distances observed by eye, but a small cluster of worksheets suggest that he took the measurements with as much care as he had for, for instance, 53 BB, though it is notable that there every determination was for noises made by some sort of external device: an alarm, a deflating balloon, a bicycle horn, and various sorts of bird whistle are amongst those called for. No proposed duration is given for 50 BJ, however, although it appears regularly in Tudor’s performance plans, discussed more fully shortly, with a duration of either ten or thirty seconds. Tudor also on occasion combines multiple notations into large composite realisations, such as 49–​50 AK H1 BJ1 BM (fig. 4.6). This does not tally particularly effectively with what Tudor appears actually to have done in performance, though the ambiguities seem ultimately to be reasonably straightforwardly accounted for. In his plans for both the premiere performance and its rehearsal, what look to be variants of this composite notation can be seen: for the rehearsal 49–​51 A AK H (BJ), to last twenty seconds, is demanded, while 49–​51 A AK H, the combination given a duration of fifteen seconds, appears in the plan for the premiere. In the first place, Tudor appears straightforwardly to have performed his realisation of 49 A, previously 7  Nilsson

used this method in several pieces in Tudor’s repertoire, including Schlagfiguren, Bewegungen (1956), and Quantitäten (1958).

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described, before moving to his combined reading, which maps onto the presentation of the notations in the score, where there is no overlap between notation A and the next notation to appear, AK, while the other notations all overlap with 49–​51 AK. 50 BM, though it appears within Tudor’s combined reading, seems never to have been called for in performance, though his notation makes it eminently simple to remove, since it (and nothing else) appears on the bottom staff of Tudor’s reading. There would have been little need for Tudor to have transcribed it independently either, since it is, relatively unusually, an almost entirely fixed notation, its indeterminacy a part of the compositional activity, not part of its performance: the two pitches—​a B-​flat and a D—​are ‘pinned’ by means of straight lines to a curving line, indicating amplitude—​the higher, the louder—​though both are determined somewhere in the middle range. Tudor, using Nilsson’s scale of dynamics, appends a 7 to the first note and a 4 to the second. 50 BJ, too, is easy to see (and thus be discarded, as it apparently was for the premiere), since it is again a noise to be produced within the body of the instrument (again friction, this time made with a cork beater, within the alto range of the piano), with the same dynamic level, a 6, that it received in its singleton form. As with 4 H and 36 H1 in their solo ‘flavours’, Tudor appears to have read Cage’s instruction to play ‘any one of these’ as referring to individual notes and not staves, not least since only one note is taken from 50 H in the composite realisation. Tudor takes some liberty with even this. He indicates a pizzicato G above the treble staff: the only combination of written pitch and clef that can achieve this result comes from taking the clef at the beginning of the middle staff of the notation (an ottava treble clef ) and the first pitch of the bottom staff (a notehead on the next-​to-​bottom line of the staff ). Tudor can hardly, then, have fulfilled Cage’s instruction to maintain ‘the clef sign of the first one [here, presumably, this must be read as note] played’. The notes taken from 49–​50 AK are then easy to observe, especially since each is marked fff by Tudor, making only a limited number of notes available, given the way in which a dynamic scale is appended to each of the constellations presented. From these, Tudor selected the very last notes of the first and third constellations and a high F-​sharp from the middle of the central constellation. Each of these notes are the closest in their respective constellations to an fff marking in the accompanying scale of dynamics, which suggests that a systematic decision of some sort was made in this respect by Tudor. Although notation AK essentially frames the combined reading, if Tudor were making use of the number scale written above it in the way in which he did when using AK as a singular notation, he would have been required to condense his combined reading into fewer than four seconds; his realisation suggests that the combination AK H1 BJ1 BM should

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last between ten and twenty seconds. On the presumption 49 A, played in advance, lasted the five seconds Tudor had sketched for it, this means in practice this combined reading lasted either ten or fifteen seconds when it was actually deployed. Again, the order in which the events selected by Tudor appear mirrors precisely their appearance, left-​to-​right, on the page of Cage’s score, including what is evidently an attempt to retain, largely successfully, their proportional relationships to one another in this dimension. Even if Tudor may have taken liberties with the specifics of individual notations, he evidently took seriously Cage’s dictum that each page represented a single system, ensuring that that was respected when notations were thus combined. In this first realisation Tudor took only three broad routes through the Solo for Piano conceived as a score. The rehearsal and performance plans for the Town Hall premiere of the piece on 15 May 1958 treat the score more-​or-​less traditionally, in that Tudor began on the first page and continued through to the final page, although he hardly played every notation, nor a notation from every page (nor, axiomatically, could he have done, since he had realised, relatively, so few): the first page from which he took a notation is page 4 (where he uses notation H) and the last is page 62 (from which he takes notation CF) (fig. 4.7). Each of the notations selected is allocated a duration, normally in line with the range Tudor had predetermined as appropriate for the notation when making his realisation, with a running count kept of the time, these numbers always indicating the point in clock time by which an action was to have been completed. Tudor’s complete performance in both rehearsal and premiere lasted twenty-​three minutes and fifteen seconds, including five minutes and twenty seconds of silence, indicated by an ‘S’ in the plan.8 As will be explored more fully, how precisely Tudor determined where he would introduce a period of silence and how long that silence was to be is far from clear, although it does seem from sketches for these performance plans that Tudor first selected which elements of his total reservoir of material he intended to play, always less than would fill the total duration of a particular performance, and then, subsequently, introduced silences to bring the length up to that total. That said, since silences almost always follow the same notations, there was evidently some sort of process, even if it was an intuitive one in part. 8 These

timings refer to the actual passage of time, rather than the passing of time modulated by the conductor. As Cage explained to Pousseur, ‘the alterations of time by the conductor are, in practice, applied only to the orchestral instruments and not to the solo for the piano’. He confirmed too that he had ‘always informed the pianist [ . . . ] of the total length of the performance’ (John Cage to Henri Pousseur, 4 December 1969 (source: JCC)).

Fig.  4.7: Tudor’s performance plans for the premiere and rehearsal of the Concert for Piano and Orchestra

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For the first of his two subsequent performances at the Village Vanguard on 25 May 1958, Tudor adopted the same approach, but with a restricted page range, beginning on page 16, with notation U, and finishing with notation CC on page 57. His second performance at the same event then reads backwards through the score, beginning with notation CF on page 62 and finishing with notation T, written across pages 16 and 17, resulting in performance durations of four minutes and forty-​five seconds and four minutes and fifty seconds. This reversed approach was seemingly the form of reading which Tudor then used most often: it appears in all three of the extant plans for performances of the piece alongside Merce Cunningham’s choreography Antic Meet (1958), as well as what seems to be a draft for a further Antic Meet performance, which, where durations are indicated, are to last twenty-​six minutes, the duration of the choreography. This was also the format Tudor deployed for a performance on 15 November 1959 at the Mozartsaal in Vienna, in a plan which has no indication of duration, save for four silences, a minute each in duration. His plan for the European premiere in Cologne on 19 September 1959 uniquely interweaves two strands, both reading score pages back to front, alternating a reading which runs backwards from notation H on page 36 to notation J, written across pages 5 to 7, and one which takes a tighter page range, from notation CE across pages 59 to 60, back to notation BR, across pages 51 to 52 (fig. 4.8). This performance has an indicated duration of thirteen minutes, precisely half that of Antic Meet: here there is a final tacet, following the thirty-​second reading of 5–​7 J, though it lasts for only ten seconds. Except where it is explicitly called for in Cage’s instructions, Tudor never reads a notation in reverse—​starting from its right-​hand edge and reading it right to left—​but on the structural level, in planning the deployment of his readings, he always pays attention to where notations are on a page, such that, in a plan reading forward through the score—​when both notations CC and CD from page 57 appear in a plan, as is quite common—​CD will appear earlier than CC, because it appears closer to the left-​hand side of the score page (and, in a back-​to-​front reading CD will appear after CC). This recalls Cage’s own description of how the Solo for Piano might be read by a performer: ‘The whole work is to be thought of as a book and so treated. Some people read books from beginning to end; others, having already read them, read here and there in them. It is possible, then, to read a page near the end of the book following it with a reading of a page earlier in the book.’9 One might dip into a book more or less at random, but still read from left to right. As noted, Tudor interpolates periods of silence between notations or groups of notations: for the most part these are either short silences of about 9 Ibid.

Fig. 4.8:  Tudor’s performance plan for the European premiere of the Concert for Piano and Orchestra

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ten seconds’ duration or long silences lasting a minute, indicated by an ‘S’ in his plans. The similarity of where silences appear in the plans for the premiere at Town Hall and its rehearsal should lead one to imagine that this is not wholly coincidental and, indeed, a sketch for the Town Hall plans shows that Tudor specifically counted the three blank pages of the Solo for Piano (pages 15, 32, and 61), along with the very nearly blank page 41, as denoting periods of silence which could be utilised like any other piece of musical material. At its clearest—​in the plans for the Vienna performance, as mentioned, and one of the versions for Antic Meet—​Tudor simply inserts four minute-​long silences into the run of notations, which recalls the fact that at some point he surely felt that this was the default length in time of a page. In the European premiere, half the length of Antic Meet, two minutes of silence is distributed across the plan in eight ten-​second chunks and one larger forty-​second break, while in the two plans for performance at Village Vanguard, the silences last fifty and fifty-​five seconds, in performances a little shy of half that length again. This might lead one to imagine that, in general terms, Tudor aimed to make somewhere around a sixth of his performance time silent, but it is important to note that this is certainly not consistent and it cannot even be said that the notional four minutes of silence made available by the blank pages of the score were the maximum that would be available for introduction. Though part of the reasoning must, necessarily, have been to ensure that what Tudor played lasted for the same duration as the final performance time of the Concert in each of these versions, a decision taken in advance and not by Tudor, this cannot be the whole story. In short, how precisely Tudor decided when silences would interrupt his realisations of Cage’s notations and for how long those silences would last is, in some respects at least, a mystery. The presence of these silences in Tudor’s plans points to an important fact: notwithstanding the title of his part of the piece—​Solo for Piano—​Tudor never appears to have performed his first realisation as a solo.

David Tudor’s second realisation and the Indeterminacy recording Cage had first given a lecture which had the formal characteristics of his reading stories of varying length, each in the span of a minute at the Brussels World’s Fair on 9 October 1958, under the title ‘Indeterminacy’, there in the course of a thirty-​minute presentation (including, thus, thirty stories). By Cage’s own account, that version of the lecture was given without musical accompaniment, though it was probably succeeded by a performance including Cage and Tudor as a piano duo, performing Variations I and Wolff ’s Duo for

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Pianists II (1958), drawing on their Darmstadt programme of the previous month, and what was in all likelihood Nilsson’s Quantitäten as well as Boulez’s Second Piano Sonata (1948) and Stockhausen’s Klavierstück XI, by Tudor as a solo pianist: these three were essentially staples of Tudor’s concerts in the period.10 The following year, after Cage had returned from six months in Europe—​initially on tour in northern Europe, then from November until the beginning of March more or less settled in Milan—​he was invited to speak at Teachers College, at Columbia University, as he had on an annual basis for several years, normally on the topic ‘How to Become Uncultured’.11 On this occasion, however, Cage changed his theme, extending the thirty stories of the Brussels lecture to ninety. A further change was that he asked Tudor to accompany the lecture. In and of itself, this was not an entirely radical move in the context of Cage’s public speaking: his first Darmstadt lecture, ‘Changes’, had been written such that the duration of the spoken text mirrored that of the Music of Changes, meaning that whenever a chance-​determined silence punctured the flow of Cage’s text, as happened at regular intervals, the part of the Music of Changes that Tudor would have been playing at that point—​had he been performing continuously—​was to sound, as though the Music of Changes was continuing in the background, albeit silently, even when Cage was speaking. Nevertheless, in that case the two portions—​words and music—​were kept scrupulously separate: Cage’s ‘Changes’ was interrupted by music, while the Music of Changes was punctured by text. In the approach adopted for ‘Indeterminacy’, ‘accompaniment’ rather miscasts Tudor’s activity, a misprision later shared by the recording engineer responsible for capturing the lecture, Tudor included, on disc:  just as the Concert for Piano and Orchestra was characterised by multiple individuals carrying out their musical actions in the same broad space, so here Tudor carried out his activity, while Cage carried out his. Appropriately, then, Tudor determined 10 Holzaepfel, David Tudor, 225.

Cage wrote to the music critic, and founder of The Musical Quarterly, Paul Henry Lang on 22 May 1956 that ‘you are pleased that the machine has made possible the hitherto unequaled “dissemination” of culture we nowadays everywhere observe. It is precisely this function of the machine that, filling me with concern, makes it necessary for me, annually at Teachers College, Columbia University, to give a lecture on “How to Become Uncultured.” The question is serious, for people must decide whether their homes are going to be those of curators or the homes of artists, hangers-​on-​to-​what-​has-​happened, or makers-​of-​what-​is-​and-​is-​becoming’ (Kuhn (ed.), Selected Letters, 188). A letter to David Tudor from the summer of 1951 mentions a lecture of the same title, suggesting that Cage had given it in the same forum as early as that year, if not earlier (John Cage to David Tudor, ca. early June 1951, in Iddon, John Cage and David Tudor, 12). 11 

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that his activities would be to perform a version of the Solo for Piano. Perhaps this was precisely because of the simultaneity of activity which the context of the Concert implied. Even so, the Solo for Piano must itself have seemed in the first instance to be a deeply unpromising selection: even had Tudor performed every one of the notations he had prepared for his first realisation—​in the form that he had prepared them, at any rate—​it would have been challenging for him to have created a version which would have filled even half the span Cage had projected. Evidently, whatever Tudor decided, a radically different approach was called for. It has long been known that Tudor prepared a second realisation of the Solo for Piano in order to deal with the problem of the length of Cage’s text.12 Though Holzaepfel has proposed that Tudor prepared ‘two separate but related versions of his second realization’, this too must be nuanced further. In fact, Tudor appears to have developed three realisations:  that used for Indeterminacy represents an intermediate stage between the one used for the premiere and the one previously regarded as the second realisation, which Tudor presumably—​for reasons that will be explained more fully—​first used alongside a performance of Cunningham’s Antic Meet on 10 December 1959 at Bennett College’s Harkaway Theatre in Millbrook, near Poughkeepsie, halfway to Albany up the Hudson from New York City, half a year later than the first performance of the second realisation. This third realisation, then, was not, as previously thought, used either for the lecture at Teachers College, nor for the Indeterminacy recording, but was a later recasting and rethinking of the second realisation ‘proper’. In some respects Tudor’s second approach to the Solo for Piano represents a step backwards for him, since unlike the flexible way his first approach to the piece allowed him to re-​order the notations he played—​theoretically in any order, even if Tudor seems to have taken only a limited number of routes through it—​the second realisation was fully determined, with every event of its ninety-​minute duration plotted out with a precise attack point, determined in minutes, seconds, and, where appropriate, fractions of seconds.13 Yet from for instance, accounts in John Holzaepfel, ‘David Tudor and the Solo for Piano’, in David W. Bernstein and Christopher Hatch (eds.), Writings through John Cage’s Music, Poetry, and Art (Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 2001), 137–​56 and Iddon, John Cage and David Tudor,  75–​80. 13 The second realisation exists in a small notebook of eight-​stave manuscript paper and is held not within the David Tudor Papers, but instead with Cage’s materials at Northwestern University, specifically in those devoted to Cage’s ‘Notations’ project. The title page explicitly states that it was ‘for Indeterminacy’, aligning the notebook with Tudor’s own comment, in a lecture given at the University of Illinois in April 1961 on ‘The Realization of Graphic Musical Material’ that ‘so far’, the Solo for Piano had been ‘realised in three different ways’. John Holzaepfel’s work on the second 12  See,

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another perspective it arguably represents a more radical reading of the score than any of the liberties Tudor took in respect of individual notations in the first realisation. If one takes as a paradigm Cage’s later note to Henri Pousseur that the Solo for Piano ought to be considered as a book, in which one might begin at the beginning reading forward, might read backwards from the end, or might dip into the volume at various points, Tudor’s extension of this idea was, almost, to imagine a version in which the pages—​or the notations at any rate—​had become transparencies, in which the whole book was legible at once: each of the notations he used for the second realisation was stretched, as it were, to the full ninety-​minute duration, and overlaid upon every other selected notation. Perhaps Cage’s increasing use of transparencies in, for instance, Variations I suggested such a solution, or perhaps the knowledge that Cage’s lecture would simultaneously exist with Tudor’s performance in a way which suggested they had been overlaid upon one another was the spur: how Tudor came to decide on his solution to this difficulty is a matter for speculation only, not least given that he provided no more than tantalising hints even of his activities during his lifetime, and gave away next to nothing regarding his motivations. Nevertheless, it is notable that the second realisation was devised for a specific purpose—​a usage of the materials of the Solo for Piano understood as a solo—​just as, when viewed from this perspective, the first realisation was surely designed from the outset in mind of its usage in an ensemble context. In this sense, Tudor’s second realisation (or, for that matter, his third) clearly does not replace the first; it is better thought of as the solo counterpart to the earlier ensemble version. Tudor determined that only those notations which were capable of being realised in the form of single icti would be utilised, which is to say notations which comprised ‘discrete, independent attacks rather than ones which implied forms of phrasing, or simply relationships, between notes or attacks’.14 Implicitly, this stressed the connection between the Solo for Piano and the two pieces from which it was principally derived, Winter Music, which is to say the Solo for Piano’s notation B, and Music for Piano, notation C, both of which were characterised specifically by singularity of attack, comprising nothing but single icti, single notes in the case of Music for Piano and aggregates in the case of Winter Music; simultaneously, this pushes to the margins a notation like A, the design of which intimated note-​to-​note relationships, which were realisation—​forthcoming in John Cage:  Concert for Piano and Orchestra:  Solo for Piano, Realization by David Tudor (Madison, WI: A-​R Editions, 2020)—​has been invaluable in establishing the status of the notebook, though, it should be reiterated, Holzaepfel regards the second and third realisations as defined here as being two variants of what is essentially the same realisation. 14 Iddon, John Cage and David Tudor, 75.

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retained in Tudor’s realisations. Unsurprisingly, then, notation A is unused in his second realisation. Again, Tudor’s motivations are unclear:  on the one hand, he may have worked in the knowledge that, intersecting with Cage’s lecture as his second realisation would, punctual attacks may have interfered less with the sense of the text (even though it is eminently clear that Cage would not have objected). Equally, surely Tudor needed some criterion for inclusion, especially when the time restrictions to complete the realisation can hardly have been any less pressing than in the case of the first realisation, Tudor having at most three months between Cage’s return to New York on 7 March and the presentation of the ‘Indeterminacy’ lecture at Teachers College. Reducing the acceptable forms of material in this manner was, surely, as good a way of framing that decision as any other. Tudor seems not to have had an exceptionally hectic concert schedule in the period—​solo concerts at various venues in New York City on 19 March, 7 April, and 26 April and performances with Cunningham in Washington, DC on 11 April and Chicago on 13 April—​but nevertheless time was certainly tight, at least relatively, and he must have been well aware from having prepared his first realisation of the Solo that a second realisation on the same basis would have been impractical. Paradoxical though it might appear in terms of filling the time, Tudor used a total of just twenty-​nine notations for the second realisation, deploying, then, a little fewer than two-​thirds of those in the first realisation. In other respects, of course, this was highly practical, since fewer notations meant, axiomatically, that there was less to do. Moreover, almost all the notations Tudor used within the second realisation were already realised for the first, even if not all of those realisations had ever been used in performance.15 There are only three notations—​9 B, 23 B, and 36 AI—​which Tudor utilised in the second realisation for which a complete version does not exist in the materials used to develop the first realisation and, given that notation B was a repetition of a compositional means exceptionally well known to Tudor, which is to say Winter Music, it is hard to imagine that he would have had much need to undertake extravagant work to complete the two examples of that approach. In essence, only one notation was truly realised anew for the second realisation. This re-​use of previous realisations must have saved an enormous

15 The

total gamut of notations used for the second realisation is, following Tudor’s practice at this stage of identifying the first page on which a notation appears, rather than giving the complete range: 4 H, 8 K, 9 B, 9 P, 16 U, 21 AC AE, 23 B, 31 AC, 31 AR, 31 AS, 36 AI, 37 AV, 38 AX, 39 AT, 42 BA, 45 BB, 49 AK, 50 H, 50 BJ, 51 BP, 51 BR, 53 BW , 54 BT, 54 BY, 55 BZ, 55 CA, 57 CC, 57 CD, and 59 CE. Of these, 39 AT, 45 BB, and 51 BP had been realised for the first version, but not performed.

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amount of labour and time. It was, however, in the understanding of how time was to function in the piece that the bulk of the labour was undertaken. In short, Tudor made all of the notations he used—​or more accurately, his realisations of them—​take the same amount of time: ninety minutes. In order to achieve this, he simply stretched them so that they fitted proportionally into a time span of 5,400 seconds. The process was simple only conceptually: actually undertaking it for the resulting three hundred and fourteen attack points must have been back breaking. Readings from the very beginning of the second realisation demonstrate effectively the principles by which Tudor worked. The sketch materials for 9 B, the first aggregate of which constitutes the first event of the second realisation, certainly emphasise the sense that Tudor could realise the notational means of Winter Music rapidly, if not exactly at sight. While in his earlier realisations of Winter Music itself, he had tabulated every possible reading of Cage’s ambiguous clefs, here he seems directly to have written out versions of each of the twenty-​seven aggregates indicated in the score more or less intuitively. He must then have measured 9 B, left-​ to-​right, determining it to be 4 inches across: a working sheet contains the shorthand A = 40, ‘A’ presumably denoting ‘area’ and ‘40’ representing 40 tenths of an inch.16 Below this appear a sequence of twenty-​seven numbers, corresponding to the twenty-​seven aggregates of 9 B: .3, 1.3, 2.5, 4, 6, 6.5, and so on, finally reaching 39.2. From this, it was simple enough—​if, again, time-​ consuming—​to translate such left-​to-​right spacing proportionally into the ninety-​minute span of ‘Indeterminacy’. 5,400 seconds were divided by 40, to establish how many seconds one-​tenth of an inch would indicate. This result, 135 seconds, was then multiplied by 0.3, the position of the first event of the notation, in order to establish when it should occur within the realisation, which resulted in an attack point for this first aggregate of 40.5 seconds. Having similarly calculated the timings for each of the other events of 9 B—​ the next occurring at 175.5 seconds, the one after that at 337.5 seconds, and so forth—​these readings were inserted into a hand-​made ninety-​page booklet (fig. 4.9), with each page equating to a minute of performance time (a second 16 As

Holzaepfel observes, this suggests that Tudor was using an engineer’s ruler—​rather elegantly a ruler designed precisely to enable the accurate proportional translation of lengths at fixed ratios, which may indeed be why he selected it—​rather than a standard ruler, which would divide inches into sixteenths of an inch (see Holzaepfel (ed.), John Cage: Concert for Piano and Orchestra). Elsewhere in his realisation, Tudor would use a circular slide rule, where notations could not simply be measured in straight lines. In his realisation of Variations I, by contrast, Tudor would use a standard ruler and, precisely, division of sixteenths of an inch (see Iddon, John Cage and David Tudor, 86).

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Fig. 4.9:  The second and third pages of Tudor’s booklet of attack points booklet, identical in format, but containing different information will be considered presently). It was this booklet which made it possible for Tudor to overlay attacks from different notations upon one another since, having indicated at the top of each page of the booklet the range in seconds to which that page related, he could make a reasonable guess how far up or down the page an individual attack ought to be. He may, indeed, perfectly well have inserted the attack points of the selected notations into the booklet in the order in which they appear in the score, beginning with 4 H, the first event of which does not occur until forty-​seven minutes and fifteen seconds into the piece, and demands, re-​using the version of the notation Tudor had prepared for his first realisation, ruler friction on a low F. As a general rule—​though there are one or two apparent exceptions—​ Tudor did, wherever he made use of a notation he had previously realised for his first version of the Solo, use that same realisation, albeit in this radically exploded form, in the second approach he took to the Solo. That is perhaps most evident in his use of 21–​22 AC AE, in fact the only instance of a combined reading in the second realisation: all other readings are of one notation at a time, notwithstanding the ways in which they are then, in another sense, overlapped with one another. To be sure, Holzaepfel is in a sense quite right that Tudor ‘read these two graphs as the upper and lower parts of a single system’.17 Yet the specifics of what Tudor undertakes with this realisation are 17 

Holzaepfel (ed.), John Cage: Concert for Piano and Orchestra.

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wholly predicated upon what he had done with his first realisation, and the work on this notation undertaken there. As noted, Tudor referred to the notation as 21–​22 AC AE, rather than, as it more properly ought to be in order to include the complete notation within the score, 21–​23 AC AE because he stopped reading the notation on page 22 (see fig. 4.6). This stopping short is of even greater significance here since, though Tudor certainly measured the length of the notation from the score anew, he takes the end of the score notation to be precisely at the point of his last reading from it. With an area for the notation, then, of 11.33, Tudor created a table to show the nine attack points: the specifics of these in pitch (where indicated) or location within the instrument to create noise for the seven events taken from 21–​23 AC remain the same, including the dynamic of the attack, still given according to Nilsson’s scale:      21–​22 AC + AE 1    47.66 I 2 405.12 O 3 643.42 I 4 1072.37 O 5 4694.62 I 6 4766.11 O 7 5004.41 eb3–​C4 8 5242.72 A 9 5400 f3–​bb4

3.5 1 9.5 6 6 6.5 6

What this meant was that not only did the realisations of individual notations made for the first version of the Solo for Piano give rise to the sound world of the second—​albeit restricted in the ways already outlined—​but that, in this case, Tudor’s earlier reading had structural ramifications: by taking the last event of that earlier version of 21–​22 AC AE as the close of the realisation of the combined notation, Tudor as a consequence either implicitly or explicitly selected the very last event of the second realisation. The cluster indicated as the ninth event of 21–​22 AC AE is, indeed, the final event of the realisation, occurring at precisely ninety minutes (and is, moreover, the last sound heard on the recording of the lecture, as will be described in more detail). Once he had completed the task of establishing the attack points for those notations comprising single icti—​by and large, this meant those notations meeting both this condition and of which Tudor already had a version prepared or, in the case of the two versions of notation B utilised here, that he could generate very rapidly—​he simply inscribed those events, in order,

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Fig. 4.10:  The first two pages of Tudor’s second realisation of the Solo for Piano into a booklet of eight-​stave manuscript paper, providing a double bar line to indicate each minute—​with the number of minutes which had passed in numerals above it—​and a note of the time in seconds within each minute at which each event was to occur (fig. 4.10). The exception to the rule regarding single icti was Tudor’s realisation of 54 BY, which he used to determine when he would turn radios on and off or, as the case might be, turn on or off any of the four tracks of Fontana Mix, an aspect which added a sense of continuity in contrast with Tudor’s performance at the piano, or as in his realisation of 9 P, say, the use of external noise-​making devices like bird whistles. These were notated in Tudor’s score via large cocktail-​glass shaped graphics, which, in the bowl of the glass, as it were, apparently indicated relative pitch, on a scale running from EL (extremely low) to EH (extremely high), with Tudor turning a device on on the first appearance of the notation and off again on the next appearance.18 Though Tudor suggested to Holzaepfel that he did not remember having used radios at the Teachers College lecture, apparently sure that he had always used spools of Fontana Mix—​which he certainly deployed to realise the same notation in the recorded version of the lecture, detailed in the following—​it seems that one reasonable reading of the scale might be that it denoted relative radio frequency, later translated into being an indication of dynamic once Fontana Mix was utilised.19 18  This

appears to map quite neatly onto what can be heard on the recorded version of ‘Indeterminacy’ (Indeterminacy (Smithsonian/​Folkways CD SF 40804/​5, 1992 [1959]), although the materials for Tudor’s third realisation, more fully detailed below, contain specific instructions for turning some (unspecified) devices on and off, with a seeming maximum of four devices which might be so treated. 19  Compare John Cage, ‘Indeterminacy: New Aspect of Form in Instrumental and Electronic Music’, liner notes to Indeterminacy (Smithsonian/​Folkways CD SF 40804/​5, 1992 [1959]) with John Holzaepfel, David Tudor, 309.

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Though Cage’s recollection was that the lecture at Columbia was delivered in the spring, M. C. Richards’s contemporary account shows that it must have taken place on 9 June 1959, writing two days later to Fance Franck: Tuesday, for example, was a typical glorious exceptional day. Got up at 7 a.m. and found the day already very hot. Washed dishes of the day before, tidied up mess, prepared clothes to wear to NY, and got breakfast. Set out at 9 a.m. by car for N.Y., picking up neighbor (Lois Long ex de Antonio). Destination Chapel of Teachers College, Columbia Univ, where John Cage was to lecture to the class in ‘Cultural Resources of NY’. He has been invited every year for the past 15 years to give the lecture on music to this class. This year he was performing a formal lecture, 90 stories, 90 minutes; David Tudor prowling about in the pit playing piano, radio, tape machines, etc. Superb experience. NINETY STORIES! Exhilarating, inspiring, stirring. An hour and a half. Air-​conditioned. ‘how to be free without being foolish’20

After the lecture, which finished at half-​past twelve, Richards notes that most of the Cage circle—​Rauschenberg, Johns, Cunningham, Long, Carolyn and Earle Brown, Vera Williams, as well as Richards, Tudor, and Cage himself—​ retired to Angelo’s on Lower Mulberry Street in Little Italy for a farewell party for Christian Wolff, who was about to begin his military service. According to Cage’s account (and, frustratingly, his is the only account which exists of what happened to ‘Indeterminacy’ over the next month or so), within a few days of the lecture he had provided Emile de Antonio with a copy of what he had said: De Antonio was insistent that the lecture should be published; Tudor—​perhaps in mind of the fact that a third of the lecture already had been published—​proposed that a publication in the form of a recording would be the ideal format. The following day, Cage recounted, he received a letter from Roger Maren, suggesting that Moses Asch was keen to release a Cage disc. This is, surely, redolent of the sort of happy coincidence that Cage described with respect to his negotiations with Walter Hinrichsen, discussions which were, as described, significantly more complex than Cage was either willing publicly to allow or, alternatively, able to remember. One should doubtless retain a healthy level of scepticism regarding the neatness of Cage’s version of events.21 That said, there is no reason to be especially 20 

M. C. Richards to Fance Franck, 11 June 1959 (source: MCRP). Franck was, like Richards, a potter, and was part of the artistic circle around Johns and Rauschenberg. To be sure, technically speaking, 9 June falls within the astronomical spring, but culturally speaking, summer in the United States begins on Memorial Day, which fell on 30 May in 1959. 21 John Cage, ‘Indeterminacy:  New Aspect of Form in Instrumental and Electronic Music’, liner notes to Indeterminacy (Smithsonian/​ Folkways CD SF 40804/​5, 1992 [1959]). The recording must have taken place at some point between

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surprised that Asch would be interested in adding a disc from Cage to the Folkways catalogue:  the 1947 release of Cage’s Amores on Disc may have been financed, as noted, by Avakian, but the full name of the record company was Asch’s Disc Company of America, and the recording engineer one Moses Asch.22 Moreover, one of Cage’s Three Dances—​the complete version of which had had a separate 1947 Disc release—​had been re-​released on Folkways’ 1957 Sounds of New Music LP. Given this, alongside Folkways’ mission to document ‘the whole world of sound’, it seems reasonable that Asch would have thought to include Cage within that broadest of categories.23 Moreover, in some respects Asch had already released at least one album which might be regarded not only as more radical in concept than Indeterminacy, but also one which pre-​figured Cage’s own later work, which is to say Tony Schwartz’s New York 19 (1954), a collection of field recordings from the area of the city referenced in the title—​what would, a couple of year later, become the 10019 ZIP code, Manhattan’s West Midtown—​which includes Nigerian traditional music through buskers (of rather variable quality) in Times Square to Pete Seeger leading a group of teenagers playing improvised instruments in a version of ‘Wimoweh’, but also features the sounds of everyday life: a jackhammer, street vendors, a doorman, a grocer or a plumber in conversation. The recording engineer assigned to the project, Mel Kaiser, however, seems never to have worked with someone like Schwartz—​for whom the boundaries between everyday life and sonic art appear to have been permeable—​ largely having recorded American folk music to this point, performed by, inter alia, the Kossoy Sisters and Guy Carawan, although Folkways had released Kaiser’s Science Fiction Sound Effects, towards the back end of the previous year, a disc which found itself a ‘Billboard Pick’ in The Billboard’s 10 November 1958 the date of the lecture, 9 June and Tudor’s return to Europe to perform with that year’s Darmstädter Ferienkurse, which began on 25 August. With performances alongside Merce Cunningham at the Twelfth American Dance Festival, which ran from 13 to 16 August, it seems most likely that the recording was undertaken in the intervening period and certainly that necessarily brief available span of two months suggests that the early parts of the planning must surely have taken place quite rapidly, even if not quite as propitiously as Cage implied. 22 The three-​disc set was enjoyed at the time of its release by, amongst others, Woody Guthrie, who listened to it on the occasion of the birth of his son, Arlo. He wrote to Asch: ‘I need something like this oddstriking Hovaness [sic] and Cage music to match the things I feel in my soul tonight’ (Hank Reineke, Arlo Guthrie: The Warner/​ Reprise Years (Lanham, MD: Scarecrow, 2012), 5). 23 Anthony Olmstead, Folkways Records:  Moses Asch and his Encyclopedia of Sound (Abingdon:  Routledge, 2003), 72. Roger Maren was responsible for the essay ‘Concrete Sound’, which formed part of the liner notes for Sounds of New Music.

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edition.24 Notwithstanding that album, Kaiser’s instinct seems to have been to achieve a rather traditional balance between voice and accompaniment, the latter here including Tudor’s auxiliary devices, such as various whistles and an amplified slinky spring, and the tape machines which were to play elements from Fontana Mix. Previously he had largely been called upon to balance a singing voice against a guitar or, more often, banjo. One presumes, then, that his initial—​doubtless wholly fruitless efforts—​were directed towards ensuring Cage’s delivery of his ninety stories could be heard above Tudor’s rendition of the second realisation of the Solo for Piano. After recording the first side of the four which make up the Folkways release, Kaiser appears to have understood that his task was a quite different one from the one he had anticipated, having understood through the practice of recording what Cage remarked to him: ‘a comparable visual experience is that of seeing someone across the street, and then not being able to see him because a truck passes by’.25 Beginning again, the recording was made with a different sort of transparency in mind, one in which what Cage and Tudor had (again, metaphorically and literally) inscribed might overlap and obscure the other.

David Tudor’s third realisation and the Solo for Piano with Fontana Mix and WBAI The reason why Tudor would have made a third realisation of the Solo for Piano is relatively straightforward to explain, even in the absence of any explicit statement regarding it: it enabled the performance of Cunningham’s Antic Meet without the presence of an orchestra. An account of Antic Meet as a piece of choreography follows, addressing the important additional set of interpretative contexts into which it places Cage’s music, but it is important to note, in purely practical terms, that almost all of Cunningham’s performances took place in situations which allowed for musical accompaniment by at most two pianos and tape. Even where the venues made it possible, an orchestral accompaniment was self-​evidently prohibitively expensive for a dance company and could only happen on rare occasions where the costs could be defrayed in some way, as on the occasion of Antic Meet’s premiere as a part of the 1958 The Billboard, 10 November 1958, 24. The sound world of the album is rather closer to Louis and Bebe Barron’s score for Forbidden Planet (1956), however, than it is Fontana Mix. 25 John Cage, ‘Indeterminacy:  New Aspect of Form in Instrumental and Electronic Music’, liner notes to Indeterminacy (Smithsonian/​ Folkways CD SF 40804/​5, 1992 [1959]). 24 

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American Dance Festival, where the festival orchestra is available. It is notable that the next performance of the choreography took place almost exactly a year later, this time at the 1959 edition of the same festival. Indeed, the extant performance plans noted cover all of the performances given by Tudor of his first realisation up until February 1960, a total of seven. Even after this point, on at least one occasion—​on 3 April 1964, during the so-​called ‘Tudorfest’, which was held at the San Francisco Tape Music Center—​Tudor used his first realisation, presumably because this performance included a chamber orchestra.26 However, no performance plan survives which shows the notations he performed, nor the order in which he performed them and, although the performance is precisely the duration of a performance of Antic Meet, Tudor’s performance, for instance, does not begin with his realisation of notation 59–​ 60 CE, whereas the three extant plans for performances of Antic Meet with the first realisation all do. He may perfectly well also have used the first realisation for other performances of the Concert with orchestral musicians during this period, such as a performance at the Music Biennale in Zagreb, on 20 May 1961, with the Kölner Ensemble für neue Musik, under the direction of Mauricio Kagel, or at the Warsaw Autumn, on 27 September 1964, with Musica Viva Pragensis, conducted by Cage, this latter an unusual occasion on which Antic Meet was danced with an ensemble, rather than to piano and tape. In any case, after February 1960, there are no performance plans which document what Tudor may have done if the first realisation were to have been used and, aside from that from the Tudorfest, there is little in the way of recordings to assist. Regardless, performances with a chamber orchestra are rare, whereas performances alongside Antic Meet, and without accompaniment other than tape, are commonplace, with upwards of twenty-​five such performances in 1964 alone, that number albeit amplified by the Cunningham Dance Company’s world tour of that year. After this point, Tudor would perform the Solo for Piano, with or without orchestra, only a handful of times until the 1980s, most of the intervening performances during a brief revival of Antic Meet in the first half of 1969, when it was typically performed alongside two of Night Wandering (1958), Scramble (1967), Canfield (1969), and Rainforest (1968), the last danced to Tudor’s own piece of the same name. As implied, Tudor’s first realisation of the Solo for Piano is fundamentally ineffective as a solo; it works only as a solo part within an ensemble. Or, at any rate, it appears that this was Tudor’s judgement. There is at least one obvious reason for this: Tudor treated notations in his first realisation—​even when

26  Tudor

explained to John Holzaepfel that, in principle, he thought of the first realisation as the Concert for Piano and Orchestra and his later work on the piece as the Solo for Piano (personal communication, 26 May 2018).

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they were read in combination—​almost as if they were separate pieces, hardly surprising given that, from the perspective of Tudor’s own performance history, notations B and C were precisely that and were staples of his solo concerts, in the sense that they replicated Winter Music and Music for Piano. In an ensemble context, there was no reason to worry about either the fragmentariness of Tudor’s approach nor the lack of any sense of consistent approach between notations: musical identity in this sense was not a problem with which Tudor needed to contend. To the extent that such matters are problematic, they are resolved by his second realisation: it was conceived from the outset as a singular entity, with fragmentation harnessed to continuity, through the way in which notations which are realised in broadly similar ways—​as single icti—​comprise the matter of the realisation while being nonetheless statistically distributed across the whole. Of course, that very singularity speaks to why the second realisation was not—​at least was not conveniently—​ amenable to use as an accompaniment for Antic Meet: the realisation was ninety minutes long, while the choreography had a duration of twenty-​six minutes. Naturally, one solution would have been simply to take a twenty-​six-​minute continuity from within the second realisation. Perhaps this was considered as a possibility but, even if it was, it would doubtless have seemed a backwards step: both of the performances of Antic Meet that Tudor had undertaken by the middle of 1959 had involved the generation of a fresh ordering of performance materials, even if the materials themselves were fixed; it surely seemed integral to Antic Meet that the same musical events did not accompany precisely the same choreographic elements. Cage and Tudor had long taken the same general approach for Cunningham’s Suite for Five (1956), which they would accompany as a piano duo with various pages from Music for Piano, changing the particular distribution and durations of the selected page regularly: even if this did not happen for each performance, it seems to have happened regularly enough that ‘settled’ relationships between sound and movement could not arise.27 As noted, at the end of 1959, then, Tudor made use, for the first time, of a further iteration, a third realisation, of his work on the Solo for Piano, for a performance alongside Antic Meet at Bennett College. By the middle of May 1960, the new realisation had already been used more times than the first had in the preceding year and a half. In the simplest of terms, Tudor copied each minute of his second realisation onto forty-​five unlined loose leaves of thin, nine-​and-​a-​half-​by six-​inch paper, a minute per side of each leaf, on an upper and a lower staff, each of which is broken, before collecting them in a handmade ring binder, which precisely would have made it possible to reorder any particular number of 27 

See Iddon, John Cage and David Tudor,  50–​55.

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pages at will: the pages are numbered, from one to ninety, such that putting them back in to their original order would, too, have been simple. Though the broad picture is simple enough, some of the specifics of what Tudor undertook—​the ways in which the third realisation is not simply a copy—​ require more elaborate explanation. In the first case, though the ninety pages could still be performed in order and with a timing of a minute-​per-​page, Tudor’s materials provide indications of several other routes. Two of these are simple accelerations of the pace at which Tudor progressed through pages:  in one of these versions, three systems—​a page and a half—​are to be performed every minute, reducing the total duration from ninety minutes to an hour; in another, three pages are to be performed per minute, twenty seconds per page, such that a complete run of the realisation would last thirty minutes. The numbers in both cases run continuously and, one presumes then, imply complete performances of the realisation. They are, however, probably later ways of thinking about how to organise a version of the realisation in performance: the continuous count of the former version is always indicated by a numeral followed by a full stop and the latter increasingly by an underscored numeral. This distinguishes these two modes from one which was probably Tudor’s first approach—​identifiable since the numbers which indicate it are always centrally at the right-​hand edge of the page, displacing the underscored ones, variously, above, below, and to the left on the occasions when they coincide. The other numbers (because which system, upper or lower, marks the end of a minute) appear at the end of whichever system they relate to. In this earliest version, Tudor proceeds in numerical sequence, with each page having a duration of a minute, but often eliminates pages entirely. For instance, he reads pages 8 to 11 of his realisation as the fifth to eighth minutes of his performance, then skips ahead to page 14—​the ninth minute of his performance—​removing pages 12 and 13. A little further on, on page 21 of his realisation, which equates to only the twelfth minute of his performance, he indicates that he will eliminate pages 22 to 24 inclusive, beginning the thirteenth minute of his performance, then, on the twenty-​fifth page of the realisation, before then immediately skipping pages 26 to 30, such that the performance continues on page 31 of the realisation, which represents the fourteenth minute of performance. A performance of this version of the realisation would have lasted thirty minutes in total, ending on the eighty-​fourth page of the realisation. Even though pages are omitted in only one version, each of these, nonetheless, reads pages in ascending order. Nevertheless, it is also the case that none of these versions matches the duration of Antic Meet: they clearly do not alone account for the total number of performances of the piece Tudor undertook. What they demonstrate, however, is that Tudor did not necessarily simply perform a continuous run of pages up to the twenty-​six-​minute

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duration of Antic Meet and that he continued to consider other possible ways of ordering—​as well as stretching and compressing—​the material he played. These durations—​half an hour, an hour, and an hour and a half—​do, however, map onto realisations of WBAI apparently prepared for simultaneous usage alongside the Solo for Piano and to be discussed more fully, though there exists an additional realisation of WBAI which is the precise length of Antic Meet, which is to say twenty-​six minutes, the materials for which seem to suggest Tudor’s involvement. The pages gathered together in this binder are not simply identical to the second realisation: the introduction of the possibility of omitting or, perhaps, reordering pages alone is arguably insufficient to suggest that this is really a wholly distinct realisation. On numerous pages of the third realisation, one can see that, as well as the second realisation ‘proper’—​identical here to all intents and purposes beyond the possibility of selecting and reordering pages—​there are additions made in pencil: the realisation in general terms is inscribed in pen. For instance, the first of the additions can be seen at the top of the second page where, in the treble clef, a closed notehead, indicating the G immediately below the staff, is linked to an open notehead, indicating the E at the top of the staff. What this is is easy enough to identify—​it is the very first ictus of the first appearance of notation B, on the first page of the score—​ but why it should appear here is less easy to explain. The next similar event is on the upper staff of the third page of Tudor’s third realisation, where one sees a vertical line—​presumably intended to denote the precise point of attack—​ alongside the text, to the left of the line, ‘RUB. B. GLISS. ON VERT. BS. STGS.’, which is to say ‘rubber beater glissando on vertical bass strings’. Here what the attack is is, more or less, made explicit on the page: atop the line, Tudor writes ‘BB1’, which is to say the first ictus of an instance of notation BB (though Tudor does not write this detail down, it is drawn from his reading of 53 BB). The second ictus of the same notation appears on the lower staff of the same page. Again, it takes the form of text: ‘BIG PLASTIC SCRAPE’ (fig. 4.11). Multiple other readings of this sort—​which is to say notations inserted in pencil into what seems to be an already complete realisation in pen—​appear across these forty-​five leaves, sometimes including Cage’s alphabetical code for notational type, sometimes not. In a limited sense, Tudor ‘fills in’ gaps left by his previous work on the Solo for Piano. For instance, in his first realisation, he had made use of that version of notation B which begins on page 34 of the Solo for Piano. The second realisation used those beginning on the ninth and twenty-​third pages. This third realisation adds to the second not only the version of notation B from pages 1 to 2 already mentioned, but also the sixteen icti of the version that begins on page 55. Ultimately, then, the only version of notation B wholly unused by Tudor is that on page 53.

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Fig. 4.11:  The third page of Tudor’s third realisation of the Solo for Piano In other cases, Tudor reintroduces elements he had prepared for his first realisation but which do not follow the rule that they must comprise single icti and were, thus, disallowed from his second realisation, as in the case of his realisation of Cage’s notation T, from page 12 of the Solo for Piano. Cage’s instructions suggest that the biomorphic shapes of his score should be treated as mobile clusters. Tudor’s re-​notation seems like it might be an attempt to follow this prescription quite literally: though the shapes in his sketch for notation T have straight lines, they mirror the extreme points on the staff mapped by Cage’s apparently hand-​drawn outlines and would make it possible, perhaps principally playing with the forearms, to fill in this space. Precisely because they denote a space to be filled in, however, there is no sense in Tudor’s version that it was ever conceptually made up of single attacks rather than a more amorphous, and certainly less vertical, approach. Each of the ten shapes of notation T, which Tudor had sketched for his first realisation—​a realisation of notation T used at least once in performance, alongside Antic Meet—​is transposed in pencil into the third realisation, but, in line with the more general principles of the second realisation, the shapes appear distributed proportionally across the whole ninety minutes of the realisation: the first instance—​the first shape, that is—​of 12 T, say, appears at the very end of the tenth page of Tudor’s score, the next not occurring until the fourteenth page: if the pages were read in continuous sequence, this would mean that the first would appear at 9 minutes and 56.4 seconds and the second at 13 minutes 32.2 seconds. All other instances are spread out similarly though, of course, given that the pages of the third realisation do not have to

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be played in order—​indeed seem designed precisely so that they do not have to be and, in one case visible within the materials evidently were not—​there is no reason to expect such relationships to have been retained, even if one imagines them to be palpable in principle at all, in any performance. Last, several notations previously unused by Tudor are added: 25 AK, 47 BD, and 50 BI make their first appearances in any of Tudor’s work on the piece here. Seemingly no sketch material at all appears for 25 AK, although it is an even simpler notation than the version already mentioned with respect to the first realisation, where 49 AK is used within a combined reading with A, H, and BJ, which doubtless accounts for this in part: Tudor had to do no more than select two notes and give them the dynamic the notation indicated: an fff A at the top of the bass staff appears on page 32, while a fortissimo B is inscribed two octaves above the treble staff on page 85. What precisely Tudor did with notation BD is not clear: Cage’s notation provides only the means to determine the dynamic of its five noteheads and, while those dynamics are translated into Tudor’s score, he provides no information about any other dimension: the vertical lines used to denote events from 53 BB are used once more here, but what appears alongside them is, for instance, no richer than ‘BD3 pp’. Tudor notates 50 BI in pretty much exactly the same manner: at various points a vertical line appears along with the notational code and a superscript numeral: BI2 at the beginning of page 10, for instance, with BI3 at the end of the same page, with the final instance, the eighth, occurring on page 29, simultaneously with the seventh.28 Notwithstanding the seeming—​and surprising—​vagueness of some of Tudor’s pencilled additions, in all these cases, the same proportional relationship between single icti (or groups of notes, in the case of notation T) and the whole which is the defining characteristic of the second realisation is again maintained, such that, for instance, the first appearance of notation T is on the lower system of the tenth page of Tudor’s third realisation, with the next following on the lower system of the fourteenth page, the last not appearing until the eighty-​third page. The sum total of notations—​here with their total 28 Tudor’s

supplementary materials for the third realisation, described in more detail below, provide a touch more detail, which, by cross-​reference with the first realisation, helps to explain some of what is intended. Tudor’s readings of 50–​51 BI appear in the same positions in this supplementary score but are sometimes notated in the form of the letter H, sometimes followed by a number (10, 11, 31, 53, 79, and 82 are those which appear). ‘H’ seems to indicate ‘harp’, which is to say an upward or downward glissando on the strings of the instrument. The numbers may indicate the size of the glissando, since no number is greater than 88. On one occasion the additional instruction ‘slap R’ is given, presumably requiring Tudor to slap the right of the body of the piano.

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page range, rather than Tudor’s shorthand—​added to the second realisation to comprise the available materials of the third, then, is: 1–​2 B, 12 T, 25–​26 AK, 43–​44 K, 47 BD, 50–​51 BI, 53 BB, 55–​57 BZ, 56–​57 AE, and 62 CF. How or why Tudor selected these as additional notations is wholly unclear, especially given that they do not share any apparent commonality in their relationships to the work he had already undertaken. The difficulty in assessing why it was these specific notations which found their way into the third realisation is compounded by the fact that Tudor had apparently prepared far more for the third realisation than he actually finally inserted into it. Indeed, there exists an incomplete independent version of the third realisation, a supplementary version, and it is from this that the pencil additions in the third realisation ‘proper’ are drawn. Tudor made two ninety-​page booklets, on plain paper, one per minute of the realisation. The first one of these, already described, is straightforward: as noted, it contains all of the notations—​and no others—​used for the second realisation. The second contains all of the notations just mentioned—​those added to the second realisation in pencil in its re-​transcription in a more mobile format for the third realisation—​but also contains numerous others: 1 C, 9–​10 N, 16–​17 T, 20–​21 AB, 20–​21 AG, 34–​36 B, 41–​42 T, 46–​47 I, 47 bc, 50 H, 52 BK, 52 BS, 53 BV, 55–​57 B, and 56–​57 AS. Because these booklets are identical in format, one conclusion would be that they were made at the same time as one another. Yet this would mean that Tudor either had both booklets at the time of preparing the second realisation or that, despite having a complete list of timings already available for the second realisation, he more or less did the same work over again, apparently unnecessarily. It may be that Tudor had, initially, decided to make a wholly fresh version of the Solo for Piano, on the basis of the notations which appear in the second of these two booklets, and, then, the incomplete supplementary version already mentioned—​written on ninety sheets of hand-​cut six-​stave manuscript paper, using two double staves, treble and bass, each indicating the passage of thirty seconds—​was expected to form the performance materials for this version. At some point, according to this version of events, Tudor would have decided to abandon his plan, reverting more or less to the second realisation but adding the mobility of pages the first realisation exhibited and, by extension, the ability to make longer or shorter versions, but nevertheless decided to retain some of the notations he had projected for this new version. Though superficially attractive, this seems unlikely: the added notations take the form of pencil additions to the third realisation and, had Tudor already made such a decision before coming to write the performance materials for the third realisation ‘proper’, he would have been able to insert the supplementary notations in pen. Perhaps more plausibly, he may have intended to create such a wholly fresh version for his third realisation, but always with the

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intention of merging it with the materials he had already prepared for the second. In this case, one would have to presume that the second booklet was made some time after the first and that the version why they are identical in format is not because they were simultaneously created, but because Tudor was, straightforwardly, satisfied that this had enabled him to put notations in order for his second realisation, so followed the same model. This would explain why there exists a chart which maps the correct position of all notations used both in the first and second booklets, effectively integrating the two booklets in a single master document. In any case, such complete integration was not pursued in the third realisation, with only the selection of notations mentioned earlier drawn from the supplementary version into the performance copy. Whether Tudor felt that the resulting version would ultimately have been too dense—​either aesthetically or for his ability to realise it effectively, remembering that, as noted, what had been a minute in a performance of ‘Indeterminacy’ might be reduced to twenty seconds in the third realisation—​or he had insufficient time to complete the creation of fresh realisations or found himself satisfied at some intermediate stage, even having had the original intention to complete the ‘full’ third realisation implied by the master chart can hardly be answered on the basis of the sources. The situation is made no clearer by the existence of a thirty-​two-​page fragment of the third realisation. Although it is more or less a direct copy of the first thirty-​two pages of the third realisation, some, but not all, of the materials of the second realisation are inscribed in pen and the additional materials introduced to the second are sometimes inscribed in pencil and sometimes in pen. This version appears to have been used for performance, since it has pencilled timing markings every three pages, meaning that it would have taken ten minutes and forty seconds to complete a performance of it: the presence of those markings surely suggests it should be viewed as a derivative of the third realisation ‘proper’ rather than as a sketch for it, but for what purpose it may have been used is unclear. The duration does not map neatly onto any extant recording of the piece made by Tudor and it is, by some margin, too short to be used to accompany a performance of Antic Meet, although conceivably it could have been used for that purpose if each page were read as having a duration of a minute by the elimination of six pages. It is written on heavier paper than that used for the third realisation proper, which would certainly make it less likely to have become damaged if it were used for touring purposes. From the outset, the third realisation was performed in ways closely related to that of the second: it was accompanied by Fontana Mix—​or was presented simultaneously with Fontana Mix—​with a third element, either Cage’s reading

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of ‘Indeterminacy’ or the Cunningham company’s performance of Antic Meet: the performance of Antic Meet at Bennett College on 10 December 1959 was swiftly followed by a performance of ‘Indeterminacy’ accompanied by the Solo for Piano and Fontana Mix at the Living Theatre, in New York City, on 25 January 1960. The earlier, recorded version of ‘Indeterminacy’ already necessarily involved complex work to expand Fontana Mix such that it could last for ninety minutes: though Cage suggested that Tudor simply substituted sections of Fontana Mix where he would, in previous performances, have used a radio, this reveals nothing of the important matter of how Tudor went about it: the way in which he selected which parts of Fontana Mix for performance in this context is a mystery.29 It was probably at least something of a mystery to Cage too, highlighted in the disparity between what he felt he could do with the piece and what Tudor undertook: as he noted to Peter Yates, though Fontana Mix was ‘[a]‌ctually by measurement 17 minutes long, I was able recently to perform it as twenty-​six minutes and fifteen seconds. And David on the 25th will spread it out to 3 hours.’30 Not only did Cage expect the duration of Fontana Mix to change, he also expected its other parametric characteristics to be altered on each performance: even though Cage advised Yates that the tape machines he was using were not yet capable of such sophisticated operations, he hoped for it to be possible to modify frequency, amplitude, and overtone structure, as well as duration.31 The three-​hour performance Cage mentioned was precisely that at the Living Theatre and, presumably, indicated too that that performance of ‘Indeterminacy’ would be the first to include the (almost) complete set of 180 stories. Further performances of Antic Meet, accompanied by both the Solo for Piano and Fontana Mix occur regularly at the beginning of 1960: on 28 January at Western Illinois University and a few days later on 3 February at Southern Illinois University, on 25 February at Wesleyan University, with, as noted, a performance of Antic Meet using Tudor’s first realisation—​apparently without Fontana Mix—​intersecting these on 16 February at the Phoenix Theatre in New York City. April and May featured numerous performances of the Solo 29 John

Cage, ‘Indeterminacy:  New Aspect of Form in Instrumental and Electronic Music’, liner notes to Indeterminacy (Smithsonian/​ Folkways CD SF 40804/​5, 1992 [1959]). 30  John Cage to Peter Yates, 28 December 1959, in Kuhn (ed.), Selected Letters, 213. Cage’s note regarding the duration he had recently stretched Fontana Mix out to surely refers precisely to the performance at Bennett College a few weeks before his letter to Yates. 31  Cage insisted that, so far as he was concerned, such technical means were ‘simple in construction and utterly practical.’ Ibid., 212–​13.

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for Piano precisely as a solo—​on 4 April at the Living Theatre, on 26 April at the University of Buffalo, on 27 April at Colgate University, 13 May at Cleveland Museum of Art, and 19 May at Antioch College, in Yellow Springs, Ohio—​and of versions of the ‘Indeterminacy’ lecture, accompanied by the Solo for Piano at the University of Michigan at Ann Arbor (14 May), and Antioch College, the day before the concert already noted, 18 May, as well as at Jamestown Community College at some other point within May, probably in the first half of the month. On each of these occasions, seemingly, the Solo was performed alongside a version of Fontana Mix. At some point in this period, Cage begin to use his ‘auxiliary score’ WBAI to determine how Fontana Mix would be used in performance. WBAI comprises twenty pages—​which could be arranged in any order—​each page having three systems, containing four notional voices, numbered from one to four. At some points, horizontal lines appear in each of these voices, perhaps no more than for a fifth of the possible space of each page: where the line is present, a performer—​an operator of machines—​is to carry out some sort of action, turning a record player on, for instance, until the line stops, or to control volume or tone controls. Cage provides a transparent graph to help with transforming the left-​to-​right dimensions of the page into sound, suggesting that one scale might be that an inch equal ten minutes, resulting in a ninety-​minute duration, or twenty minutes, for a total time in performance of three hours, both durations that, as will be noted, map onto Cage’s own realisations. Though, according to Cage’s own description, WBAI was composed using the means of Fontana Mix, it was composed at a quite different time from other Fontana Mix derivatives, such as Sounds of Venice or Water Walk—​ both close to contemporary with the development of the Fontana Mix tapes and premiered by Cage on the Italian game show Lascia o raddoppia?—​or Aria. It shares a certain kinship with the last piece, however, given that Aria was not only composed using the compositional means of Fontana Mix but the two were also regularly performed together. WBAI, by contrast, was composed a year after the pieces just mentioned which have similarly intimate connections to Fontana Mix, seemingly in January 1960, perhaps in conjunction with another imaginative purposing of the Fontana Mix tools to create a new piece: Theatre Piece was premiered on 7 March of the same year and, to be sure, the time brackets of Theatre Piece are not wholly unlike the means of determining time in WBAI, either in form or function. WBAI’s purpose, however, was quite different from Theatre Piece and could not, in any case, stand as a piece in its own right: it is necessary that something pass through WBAI, since it essentially provides the instructions for processing four channels of other media, which could, in theory, include live performance, although the score suggests that it be used to control the use of tape machines, record players, or

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the amplification and tone controls of a live speaker’s voice.32 In this period, it seems to have been above all as a control mechanism for Fontana Mix that WBAI was used—​that it provides materials to modify four tape machines or record players, or what have you, is hardly coincidental: there is one for each of the mono tracks of Fontana Mix—​although later it was used for a much wider spread of purposes.33 Indeed, the first usage of WBAI was to process a reading Cage made of his lecture, ‘Communication’, made for the New York-​based Pacifica radio station, WBAI, from which the piece takes its name.34 Notwithstanding this, WBAI was surely developed at least in part as a way to formalise the work that Tudor had already undertaken with respect to Fontana Mix, which is not necessarily to say that there is any particular similarity in the way in which Tudor may have gone about dispersing the Fontana Mix materials and the approach implied by WBAI. Nevertheless, Gordon Mumma notes—​precisely in the context of discussing the use of pre-​recorded materials alongside the Solo for Piano in performances of Antic Meet—​that ‘Tudor often supplied fundamental ideas as well as innovative performance procedures’.35 By the time of performances in April 1960, programmes would note that performances of the Solo for Piano with Fontana Mix would be undertaken ‘with 32 

Of course these four channels could just as well be conceived as, parametrically, referring to the parts of a single record player, with one of the WBAI voices determining whether the record player is in use at all, one determining volume, one treble, and one bass, even though that would mean that, for large portions of such a rendition, one would be called upon to modify the dynamic and equalisation of a wholly silent sound source. 33  One of these, not discussed in detail here, is Cage’s 1961 lecture ‘Where Are We Going? And What Are We Doing?’, which takes the form of four lectures, any number of which may be delivered simultaneously, any number of which may be delivered in the form of a tape recording of the lecture: Cage suggests that WBAI may be used to alter the amplitude of any of these four, linking the four tapes directly to Fontana Mix, on the one hand, but also suggesting that the existence of WBAI as a processing means may have been an unacknowledged factor in the way in which Cage structured this lecture, a lecture which he, perhaps not coincidentally, seems to have regarded as being at least more like a piece of music than many of his other lectures. ‘Where Are We Going? And What Are We Doing?’ was, of course, composed using the means developed for Cartridge Music (1961), generating further complex interrelationships between the compositional processes involved in Cage’s music of the period. 34 Dunn, John Cage, 41. 35 Gordon Mumma, ‘From Where the Circus Went’, in Gordon Mumma, Cybersonic Arts: Adventures in American New Music (Chicago, IL: University of Illinois Press, 2015 [1975]), 111.

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the composer’s assistance’, which is to say that Cage would manipulate the four channels of Fontana Mix live, according to readings he prepared of WBAI. Cage had prepared multiple—​and in part overlapping—​realisations of WBAI for the purpose.36 Each is simple in principle: four rows indicate four sound sources—​four tape machines in this case—​while time code in minutes and seconds is provided from left to right. In one version, the time code is written along the top edge of the paper, with one minute and forty seconds per page, such that the thirty-​six pages of the realisation allow for a sixty-​minute version of WBAI. Though Cage may have stressed to Yates that all parameters of sound would ideally be controlled according to these means, no such indications are provided in the surviving materials, which show nothing more than timings for when each one of four tape machines should be turned on or off. This is indicated via horizontal lines with numbers at either end, indicating the second within a minute when a particular machine should start or stop playing, a notation reminiscent of that which Cage used, almost contemporaneously, in Theatre Piece, itself devised using the Fontana Mix materials. If Cage undertook more than this, it is not captured in his notation. Though simple in theory, his approach makes for some complex choreography at points, as can be seen in the abbreviated transcription of the fifth minute of this version (table 4.2). The fifth minute of the realisation is unusually busy but gives a clear indication of the very simple means by which Fontana Mix is distributed across a longer time period:  the tape machines quite straightforwardly are allowed to run only intermittently, according to readings determined via WBAI. This means that, for instance, in the first five minutes of this realisation, the third tape machine has only played the first thirty-​seven seconds of its contents. At such a pace of unfolding, less than seven-​and-​a-​half minutes would have been required for a sixty-​minute performance. The same thirty-​six pages, however, are provided with a separate reading of the passage of time which allows for them to take two hours. In principle this is undertaken via exactly the same rescaling of pages that can be seen in Tudor’s third realisation: rather than three pages taking five minutes, they now take ten and, as such, second indications do not need to be recalculated from scratch and can, simply, be doubled. However, the first page of the sixty-​ minute version is not the first-​page of the two-​hour version: instead, this longer version begins its count on the tenth page of the shorter version. This 36  These

realisations are held as a part of the David Tudor Papers at the Getty Research Institute (Box 8, Folder 10). That they are here rather than amongst any of the collections of Cage’s own materials surely speaks to the way in which they relate specifically to Cage’s activities with Tudor, most especially while touring with the Cunningham Dance Company.

Performing the Concert for Piano and Orchestra  :  249 Table 4.2  Tabulation of the fifth minute of Cage’s realisation of WBAI

1 2 3 4

1 2 3 4

14

15

19

20

25

ON

-​

-​

-​

OFF

26

27

28

29

30

-​ OFF

-​ ON

-​ OFF

-​

53

ON

OFF

ON

-​

ON -​

31

32

35

36

37

39

41

45

50

ON ON -​

-​ OFF OFF

OFF ON

OFF ON -​

OFF OFF

ON ON

-​ -​

OFF OFF

ON

means that, for instance, an instruction to turn on the fourth tape machine from fifteen minutes and two seconds until fifteen minutes in the shorter version—​the first event on page  10—​becomes an instruction to turn on the same tape at four seconds and off again at fourteen seconds on the first page of the longer version, although, after thirty minutes of the longer version, specific indications of seconds cease to be provided, suggesting that in practice the exact points of occurrence of the turning on or off of tapes must have been undertaken by eye, with the minute markers acting as a sort of correcting mechanism in case of any drift in, presumably, the densest of passages. Reading this longer version means that at the end of the original run of pages—​where the shorter version comes to an end at an hour—​one has reached ninety minutes, across twenty-​seven pages. The first nine pages of the shorter version are then used to generate a further half an hour, as seen in table 4.3. What this additionally means is that, since the shorter version comes to an end at the end of the thirty-​sixth page, the long version is also implicitly capable of being read as a ninety-​minute version, without the extension of the first nine pages. Nine pages of this version—​the tenth to the nineteenth—​exist in a second copy. This is identical in all respects, such that the lower count runs from zero through to thirty minutes, while the upper count stretches from fifteen minutes to thirty minutes, save the fact that a square bracket appears in front of the very last event, which would otherwise continue into the next page. As such, the last event according to the upper count ends at twenty-​ nine minutes and forty-​three seconds and according to the lower count at

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Table 4.3  Outline of distribution of pages against time in Cage’s realisation of WBAI Version

Pages

Short

Long

1–​9

0′–​15′

90′–​120′

10–​36

15′–​60′

0′–​90′

twenty-​nine minutes and twenty-​six seconds. Although this still seems overlong for use alongside Antic Meet, it is at least rather more possible to conceive of its being appropriate for such purposes. It is also notable that, as mentioned, it is on these pages, and only these, that seconds are indicated in the lower, slower, count. A separate version—​quite distinct in form even though evidently operating according to broadly similar principles—​was, however, certainly devised for use alongside Antic Meet, since it lasts for twenty-​seven minutes, thus allowing for the duration of the dance plus a little extra either side for the raising and lowering of the curtain. Here, each page lasts a minute, with an upper staff lasting for thirty seconds and a lower staff for a further thirty, an arrangement which seems to mirror Tudor’s own for the third realisation of the Solo for Piano. The time brackets of the other version are notated here too, but slightly differently, and in a way which feels more sophisticated: the brackets take the form of horizontal lines, horizontal lines which terminate in an arrow pointing to the right, and a combination where a horizontal line is immediately succeeded by a horizontal line terminating in a right-​facing arrow. With the exception of these arrows, indeed, the formatting of the lines and voices is practically identical to the published version of WBAI, although almost all of the lines in the realisation are extremely short in comparison with those in the copy finally printed and, in general, the realisation is not only much sparser, but also does not seem obviously to map onto the materials publicly available: in this sense it seems more to be a version of WBAI than a realisation as such and might perfectly well predate the print version. Further materials absent from the published score are present here: first, notional bar lines—​divisions of ten seconds—​are ruled vertically on the page in blue pencil. Second, there are also five stars indicated, though their appearances do not seem to follow any apparent pattern: one is inscribed at fifty seconds in what seems to be tape 4, then again in tape 4 a full fifteen minutes later; at twenty-​one minutes precisely, a star is indicated in tape 1, followed by a further pair in tape 2, one at twenty-​three minutes and forty seconds, one at twenty-​five minutes and twenty seconds. A last indication can be seen at the bottom of the twentieth page, below the notional bar which

Performing the Concert for Piano and Orchestra  :  251

would indicate the last ten seconds of the page: Cage has written here the word ‘arbitrarily’. Though the handwriting on the pages of this realisation does seem in the main to be Cage’s—​the page numbers are, generally at any rate, as well as that sole handwritten word—​the realisation in broad terms looks to have a format closer to one which Tudor might have adopted and the numbers which accompany barlines to indicate the passage of ten seconds might perfectly well be in Tudor’s hand rather than Cage’s, notwithstanding the striking visual similarity of the realisation to the published score. The idea that the realisation might not (or might not simply or straightforwardly) be attributed to Cage alone is amplified by the fact that, although the page numbers look to have been written by Cage, they are written in a format which is characteristic of Tudor’s more general practice, which is to say that they only indicate page numbers as an secondary characteristic: they are principally intended to notate time, and thus at the top left-​hand corner of each page the time in minutes at the beginning of each page appear (so ‘0’ on the first page) and at the bottom right the time when the page ends (‘1’, then, on the same page). It is even conceivable that the page numbers for the first four pages were written by Tudor and only thereafter by Cage: the numeral ‘1’ when it appears on those pages does not have the serifs which it ordinarily would if inscribed by Cage and the numeral ‘4’—​which appears, as described, both at the end of the fourth page and the beginning of the fifth—​exhibits the same tendencies, a much plainer number in the former case, and a more flamboyant one in the second. It may also be that the numbers were added at some later point and are, as such, misleading: there are no points at which a line continues from one page onto the next, such that the pages are amenable to shuffling and, thus, generating an extremely wide range of different versions out of ostensibly the same materials, again following the sorts of pattern familiar from Tudor’s work. This is not so straightforwardly the case for the realisation of WBAI already described, where time brackets run across the page regularly and, in any case, a page does not equate to the passage of a minute (or at any rate there are no timings on any pages which would suggest that those materials were ever used in that fashion). At some point between 1960 and 1964, the recordings which WBAI processed changed entirely, and in a surprising direction:  Fontana Mix was replaced by multiple versions of the final disc of the Twenty-​Five Year Retrospective recording: presumably four identical copies were transferred onto magnetic tape. The change seems a major one, transforming entirely the context in which the Solo for Piano would be read, though Gordon Mumma’s description—​‘[b]‌y 1958 they [Cage and Tudor] were at work on the bizarre, virtuoso Antic Meet, for which a tape recording of Cage’s Concert for Piano and Orchestra was often used’—​appears to regard it as an essentially mundane

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decision, although it should be borne in mind that since Mumma only began his involvement with the Cunningham Dance Company in the middle of the 1960s, this was, necessarily from his perspective, nothing other than a matter of fact.37 There is a significant gap in performances of Antic Meet between the performance at Phoenix Theatre on 16 February 1960 and the next securely datable performance almost a year later, at the Northern Illinois Teachers College in De Kalb on 11 February 1961, although as noted there were multiple performances of the Solo for Piano, apparently with Fontana Mix, well into May of the same year, and further performances in Europe in September and October. Similar gaps appear between performances at Wesleyan University on 25 April 1961 and the next, on 4 December of the same year, in Ann Arbor, and between 14 April 1962, when Antic Meet was performed at Princeton’s McCarter Theatre, and 14 January 1963, when it was performed at the University of Delaware. Thereafter there are only sporadic performances until the Merce Cunningham Dance Company’s world tour, which began in June 1964, lasting until November. The change could have happened during any of these breaks: though the first one seems, at least, the most significant—​ since before that point the music for Antic Meet was advertised as the Solo for Piano with Fontana Mix, while thereafter it was, simply, Antic Meet, with a note that music was by Cage—​the later gaps are much more substantial ones in terms of the periods during which the piece was not performed (at any rate, not by Cage and Tudor). Whenever the change occurred, what it does in performance, notwithstanding the content of Antic Meet itself, is remarkable. On the basis of the only easily available recording of a version of Tudor’s final realisation performed alongside Cage’s manipulation via WBAI of the premiere recording of the Concert—​available because it was recorded for Swedish television on 9 September 1964, during the World Tour—​it is hard to generalise, since perhaps it is a literally exceptional version, not least because of its having been recorded. However, if it is in any way exemplary, it seems that all of the tapes begin at some point during the recording of the Concert for Piano and Orchestra on the Twenty-​Five Year Retrospective and, as a result, one hears multiple versions of Tudor in a sense accompanying himself or, thought differently, one hears two soloists, both of whom are Tudor, and one of whom appears in multiple ‘reflections’: either way, both Tudor’s earlier and later approaches to the Solo for Piano are fused together in this context. One wonders whether the stars which appear in the realisation demand a rewinding of the tape back some indeterminate amount, which might mean that a tape goes back before the 37 

Mumma, ‘From Where the Circus Went’, 111.

Performing the Concert for Piano and Orchestra  :  253

Concert and, when it is next played, what is diffused might then turn out to be either Music for Carillon No. 1 or Williams Mix. However this was achieved, both those two earlier pieces can be heard at various points in the performance, the latter ensuring that the electronic textures of Fontana Mix are not wholly removed via the introduction of an essentially acoustic recording, while the former appears most audibly precisely at a point where it appears to introduce, with a peal of bells, the faux cocktail party which is the dance’s sixth scene, ‘Social’. Why it would have been that Cage decided to replace Fontana Mix with this recording can only be a matter of speculation: though it is clear that using the recording for Antic Meet necessarily meant that an audience would hear something rather closer to the full orchestra by which the dance had been accompanied in its earliest performances, and perhaps Cunningham himself felt that this was somehow integral to the conception of the dance, that does not account for using tapes which also included the other two pieces available on the final disc of the recording of the Retrospective, especially since they were on the other side of the LP. However, whether this was intended or not, it surely did allow Cage to undertake one personally important act of reclamation: both the jazz figuration which had seemingly so upset Cage at the premiere and the applause which had attempted to bring that performance to a premature end can be heard on the tape, now reconfigured on the one hand as simply interacting with and amplifying stage vaudeville or, on the other, perhaps especially from Cage’s perspective, hearing these elements night after night on tour transformed into mere sonic material, no different from any other.

Antic Meet: Dancing the Concert for Piano and Orchestra Although the centrality of the Concert for Piano and Orchestra to Cage’s output and to indeterminate music more broadly means that the primary frame of reference seems naturally to fall around ‘the piece itself ’, in the first ten years of its life in performance, far more people would have heard it in its guise as the score for Merce Cunningham’s choreography Antic Meet, as one might imagine from the sketched outlines of the performance history already noted. Not the least reason for this was that Cunningham was, in the late 1950s, assuredly the more famous artist of the two; it was not until the later 1960s that this position, in the popular consciousness, was arguably reversed. Indeed, as a live piece, it is probably still the case that that is the guise in which the Concert for Piano and Orchestra (or, at any rate, the Solo for Piano) has been heard by the greatest number. Even before the Merce Cunningham Dance Company’s world tour in 1964, Antic Meet had been performed around 40 times, about twice as often as the Concert for Piano and Orchestra or any of

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its potential subsets had been, although radio play for the recorded version of the piece must surely have meant that Cage’s music had also made it into the homes of many, especially in and around Los Angeles, given Peter Yates’s enthusiastic championing of the piece and the recording which featured it. Only on a relatively small number of occasions was it logistically possible for Antic Meet to be presented with a full orchestral version: as noted, it was heard in this form at its premiere on 14 August 1958, at the Eleventh American Dance Festival, at Connecticut College, New London, at a repeat performance at the Twelfth American Dance Festival precisely a year later, on 13 August 1959, and at Phoenix Theatre in New York City on 16 February 1960. Under most circumstances—​even when the music was advertised as the Concert for Piano and Orchestra—​it was danced either to a version of the Solo for Piano with Fontana Mix, the latter controlled by Cage according to a reading of WBAI, or, increasingly and surely by the time of the 1964 world tour almost exclusively, with Fontana Mix replaced by tapes made from the last disc of the Twenty-​Five Year Retrospective, with Tudor performing the Solo for Piano from his second realisation and Cage operating the tape machines. Doubtless this was in part practical, since these resources made touring the piece relatively straightforward. Nevertheless, a Merce Cunningham Dance Company performance at John Hancock Hall in Boston on 17 March 1962 included a performance of Cunningham’s Aeon (1961) as the accompaniment to which Tudor performed Winter Music while a small ensemble of clarinet, trumpet, two percussionists (one of whom was Christian Wolff ), violin, and double bass played parts from Atlas Eclipticalis and, even though amenable performers were evidently available, Antic Meet was danced to the Solo for Piano and WBAI on the same evening, suggesting that there was at least some degree to which either Cunningham or Cage or both felt that there was some way in which this version was not merely a pragmatic preference. In contrast to a score which presents itself as a more-​or-​less abstract way of organising musical structures, Antic Meet provides a sequence of scenes which, necessarily, provide a radically different—​and highly specific—​interpretative context for the piece. It is worth adding too that, in contrast to the significance and importance of the Concert for Piano and Orchestra, Antic Meet, while no ‘lollipop’, is not one of the ‘great’ pieces of Cunningham choreography. At any rate, it is a more minor piece than other nearly contemporaneous pieces danced to Cage’s music such as Suite for Five, choreographed to Music for Piano, or Aeon, as just noted choreographed to Atlas Eclipticalis or Winter Music (or, on occasion, both). Indeed, Antic Meet is arguably the most ‘minor’ of the pieces it was regularly programmed with in its early days: Rune (1959) and Changeling (1957) (danced respectively to Christian Wolff ’s Duo for Pianists I & II (1957 & 1958)—​as well in early performances to his For 6 or 7 Players (1959)—​and Suite (1954)) and Summerspace (1958) (danced to Morton Feldman’s Ixion

Performing the Concert for Piano and Orchestra  :  255

(1958) in its two piano arrangement). Unlike those pieces, too, Antic Meet was choreographed without the use of chance operations; in that sense it is one of the most traditional of all Cunningham’s dances. For all that, or perhaps even because of that, Antic Meet provides many of the most iconic tableaux of the Merce Cunningham Dance Company, and Cunningham himself, in performance: Cunningham trapped inside a sweater with twice as many arms as necessary, but no neck, accompanied by Carolyn Brown, Viola Farber, Cynthia Stone, and Marilyn Wood in the impossibly manifold pleats of their parachute dresses, Cunningham’s white-​overalled soft-​shoe routine, Cunningham and Remy Charlip tumbling across the stage, and, perhaps most famous of all, Cunningham gracefully suspended in mid-​ air, as if coming to earth were inconceivable, a chair strapped to his back. These, and many other images, costumes, and movements, provide a context for interpreting the Concert for Piano and Orchestra which necessarily includes—​ indeed embraces—​the comedy and vaudeville which Cage would be so wary of when the piece was performed without choreography. It is not entirely clear when Cunningham began work on Antic Meet. On the one hand, he wrote to Robert Rauschenberg on 12 July 1958—​a fraction more than a month before the August premiere—​that the piece was ‘barely begun and [ . . . ] should be unbegun’.38 Yet in one of Cunningham’s notebooks, there is a suggestion that the very earliest thinking coincided with Cage’s work on the Concert for Piano and Orchestra. A list of pieces which Cunningham was seemingly considering for choreography includes, alongside Williams Mix, the note: ‘Concerto (orchestra)—​10 minutes’.39 Evidently this cannot indicate the earlier Concerto for Prepared Piano and Orchestra, since its more-​or-​less fixed length of around 22 minutes would have been well known to both composer and choreographer. This might offer a hint, then, that the ‘shadow’ Concert for Piano and Orchestra which can be seen in the sketch material—​which seems to have been projected to have layers rather like those in Williams Mix or the pieces from the Ten Thousand Things and to have initially treated the piano as if it were essentially an instrument just like the others in the ensemble—​might have been expected to last a relatively brief ten minutes. It is, at best, a tantalising hint of the piece that might have been and, in any case, only a few pages later—​within what seems to be an extensive listening list of potential pieces for choreographic treatment in Cage’s, rather than Cunningham’s hand—​appears ‘Concerto [sic] for Piano + Orchestra’.

38 

Merce Cunningham to Robert Rauschenberg, 12 July 1958 (source: MCDCCR). The Merce Cunningham Dance Company Choreographic Records are held at the New York Public Library, in box 1, across folders 3 and 4. 39  Merce Cunningham, Antic Meet notebook (source: MCDCCR).

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Cage initially indicated that this piece was of ‘any len[gth]’, but struck this through, suggesting that the piece would last twenty minutes. There are numerous possible implications that might be taken from this. The first is that, unless this was somehow a careless slip, Cage had not settled on the title Concert and was at this stage still conceiving of the piece as a ‘concerto’ perhaps in a slightly more traditional sense (even if the materials for the piece were essentially completed by this stage, and this really was a question only of what he thought the piece represented), although establishing quite when ‘this stage’ was is probably not possible. The second, which is not unrelated, seems to suggest that Cage was proposing a fixed duration of twenty minutes for presentation of the piece alongside Cunningham’s choreography. That he initially wrote that it might have any duration surely indicates that, regardless of whether the conductor’s part was complete or not, he was well aware of the sorts of flexibility the piece might have with regard to its duration in performance. Yet it is not inconceivable that the note might be more meaningful than this. Only a few pages later, in a page of imagistic notes with relation to the piece, Cunningham wrote ‘huge stop-​watch on stage + we relate to it’, an image which would take concrete form in the mechanical conductor Paul Williams designed for Cage’s Atlas Eclipticalis. Perhaps there was even a point when what was planned was that Cunningham would choreograph a twenty-​ minute piece by the clock, but that the dancers would be subject to its variability in performance in just the same way as the instrumental performers. Later, Cunningham would suggest that, once his choreography was completed at least, it was he who provided the duration of the piece to Cage: [Antic Meet] was one of the first times I gave him only the length of the total dance (twenty-​six minutes), but no time points in between. His score is indeterminate in length, and also in the proportions within the piece, so even though the dance was set, we could not count on the sounds as cues, as they never fell in the same place twice.40

The sketch in which the abandoned idea of the stopwatch appears is already headed ‘Antic Meet’, but this is far from the only possible title that was considered. Several other options appear in the sketches. One, ‘Antic Bee’, recalls Cunningham’s thought that the chair strapped to his back in Antic Meet’s second scene, ‘Room for Two’, was ‘like a large mosquito that won’t go away’, though of course ‘bee’ has a secondary meaning of ‘gathering’, as in a spelling bee or, in an older sense, it suggests the gathering of a community to work on a single task which helps a neighbour in need. Perhaps the 40 Merce

Cunningham, ‘A collaborative process between music and dance’, in Peter Gena and Jonathan Brent (eds.), A John Cage Reader: A Celebration of His 70th Birthday (New York, NY: Peters, 1982), 112.

Performing the Concert for Piano and Orchestra  :  257

insect imagery was derived from ‘bee’ in this other sense, then.41 Other possibilities included ‘Antic Repository’, ‘Antic Fertility’, and ‘Archaic Fertility Ceremony’. There is rather more to say about the impact of these rejected titles, but a single important observation should be made in that the possible exchangeability of ‘Antic’ and ‘Archaic’ is suggestive of another way in which one might hear the title: ‘Antic’ ought to be heard as figuring, too, ‘antique’. As such, though David Vaughan’s description—​‘ “Meet” is used in the sense of an athletic meet; “clichés of vaudeville and various styles of dancing take the place of contests” ’—​is enormously useful in providing a first interpretative guide to following the matter of Antic Meet, it underplays the sheer multiplicity of reference, from the directly figured to the elusive and fugitive. Despite the apparent specificity of Vaughan’s outline, he juxtaposes it with Cunningham’s apparently unrelated programme note for the piece—​‘Let me tell you that the absurd is only too necessary on earth’—​attributed not to Fyodor Dostoyevsky, but to the character into whose mouth he put it, Ivan Karamazov.42 The quotation is drawn from the extended dialogue between Ivan and his brother Alyosha at the heart of the fifth book of The Brothers Karamazov which represents, too, an elaborate disquisition on the relationship between the intellect and faith, a pairing—​perhaps necessarily an unresolved pairing—​central to both Cunningham’s and Cage’s work. The very use of this quotation—​with its absent twin, the figure of Alyosha—​is suggestive, as is so much in Antic Meet, of its own unresolved pairing, wherein a part of the pair cannot be directly apprehended: here the intellectual Ivan is quoted, but the quotation necessarily implies his faithful brother Alyosha’s existence (and, in fact, the quotation follows immediately after Alyosha has been led into suggesting that it would have been better, morally speaking, for a young boy to have been shot rather than torn to death by dogs, a conclusion Alyosha regards a moment later as, precisely, absurd). In a sense, and especially in the context of some of Cunningham’s sketch material, Ivan might be thought as the intellectual, controlled Apollonian counterpart to Alyosha, even though it would be hard to apply Nietzsche’s category of the Dionysian to the latter, without feeling that this, too, is somehow unresolved. Moreover, one of the central facts of Dostoevsky’s novel is the fact that one of the brothers of its title, Smerdyakov, is not only literally a half-​brother to Mitya, Ivan, and Alyosha, but his status is that merely of a servant. Nevertheless, with this

41 

Merce Cunningham to Robert Rauschenberg, 12 July 1958 (source: MCDCCR). Vaughan, Merce Cunningham:  Fifty Years (New  York, NY:  Aperture, 1997), 103. 42 David

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simple quotation, Cunningham seems to demand that the absurdity, even if it is funny, should be taken seriously. Cunningham himself captures the dislocation of the whole piece in discussing the seventh scene of the dance, ‘Bacchus and Cohorts’. This is the sequence in which Cunningham finds himself trapped in a four-​armed, no-​ necked sweater in a geometric pattern of terracotta, olive green, and white, which he had made himself:  Cunningham, then, is Bacchus—​around him his cohort of four female bacchantes in parachute dresses—​here made by Rauschenberg from real parachutes from an army surplus store.43 The cohorts almost unmistakeably parody Martha Graham’s Night Journey (1947), which has a chorus of its own, while Cunningham, trapped inside his sweater, seems to reference Graham’s Lamentation (1930), a dance in which Graham found herself constrained by an extended cowl: Cunningham’s sweater has the arms Graham’s cowl was missing while her cowl dress was, as it were, all neck. Cunningham obfuscates a little, then, when he says that ‘the point is, it’s not just that, the sweater has nothing to do with Martha Graham, that has to do with me. In other words it’s a thing where there are several things and not one thing’, but his emphasis that the dance is multiply coded surely is the point.44 It references, part kindly, part pointedly, Cunningham’s teacher, but that is not all that it does: it is too what it seems to be, a dance about being trapped in a sweater. Reviewing the piece in 1960, Jill Johnston insisted that ‘[i]‌t is not really so important that the dance is mostly a spoof of various kinds of dancing; the idea provides a good excuse for a wonderful collection of absurdities. And except for two or three numbers, you can’t be too certain what is a take-​off on what.’45 As Cunningham said too: That’s what it started from—​everybody thinks it’s all about Graham, but they miss the point that it’s about both those things. I thought, what would the dance be, and then I thought of all those Graham gestures, but if it had been only that I wouldn’t have been very interested in it. Chaplin says someplace, you mustn’t do one thing which might be funny, you’ve got to have a lot going on at any time, so that it keeps mounting up.46

Carolyn Brown insisted on a similar relationship to Chaplin and Buster Keaton elsewhere in the dance, describing in ‘Opener’, ‘a wonderfully 43  Aside

from Cunningham’s sweater, the rest of the props and costumes were devised and made by Rauschenberg. 44 Merce Cunningham in interview with Roger Copeland, 11 February 1999, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, MI (source: MCDCFR). 45 Jill Johnston, ‘Merce Cunningham & Co’, Village Voice, 24 February 1960 (source: MCDCFRA). 46  Merce Cunningham, quoted in Vaughan, Merce Cunningham, 108.

Performing the Concert for Piano and Orchestra  :  259

sentimental Chaplinesque moment when Viola [Farber] spurned Merce’s offer of a pop-​up bouquet (found in a magic shop by Bob [Rauschenberg]), pulled from his sleeves like a rabbit from a hat’ and in ‘A Single’ that ‘Bob dressed Merce in all-​white—​shoes, socks, shirts, and workman’s overalls. Its effect was Keatonesque and brilliant.’47 In her profile of Cunningham shortly after his death in 2009, Marcia Siegel described Antic Meet as a whole as ‘a comedy in the zany spirit of the silent movies’.48 One might remember in the context of this that the European reception of Cage had, as early as 1954, insisted on a relationship between what he and Tudor did and, variously, Chaplin and Buster Keaton, though the comparison was not intended to flatter, notwithstanding the remarkably precise and sophisticated choreography of the violin and piano duet in Limelight (1952), which was the sequence the critics had in mind, even though the uproarious audience depicted there was of a type with which Cage became quite familiar.49 If there is anything of the sort in Cage’s music, it is surely Cunningham’s choreography, especially in Antic Meet, which draws it out into something more explicit, although the relationships Adorno drew between Cage, Beckett, and absurdity—​to be explored in more detail shortly—​might make one recall not only that Keaton starred as O in Beckett’s Film (1965), but also that Beckett had originally wanted Chaplin for the part.50 By contrast, Roger Copeland perceptively picks up on the Dionysian context implied by the scene’s title, noting the relationship to both Cunningham and Graham and, indeed, the way in which this dance about Graham is, as a result, about Cunningham. The latter’s dancing, Copeland says ‘always exudes a slight aura of aloofness, a delicate disdain for unimpeded flow that resists the look of “natural,” Dionysian abandon’ which places Cunningham ideally to parody what Copeland calls ‘Graham’s Dionysian ambitions’ here.51 Indeed, one might go so far as to wonder whether the way in which the dance is ‘about’ Cunningham is precisely in what it exposes about the ways in which he cannot present the Dionysian. Indeed, in what seem to be some of the earliest notes for the piece, one of Cunningham’s terse descriptions reads: ‘satyr play satirizing oneself ’.52 If the parody is at Graham’s expense, it is at Cunningham’s 47 Brown, Chance and Circumstance, 216.

Marcia B. Siegel, ‘Prince of Lightness: Merce Cunningham (1919–​2009)’, The Hudson Review, vol. 62, no. 3 (Autumn 2009), 473. 49  See Beal, New Music, New Allies, 70. 50  For a brief account of Beckett’s work with Keaton on Film, see James Knowlson, Damned to Fame: The Life of Samuel Beckett (London: Bloomsbury, 1997 [1996]), 522–​24. 51  Roger Copeland, Merce Cunningham: The Modernizing of Modern Dance (New York, NY: Routledge, 2004), 116. 52  Merce Cunningham, Antic Meet notebook (source: MCDCCR). 48 

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too, picking up the Pierrot-​like figure of the first scene, ‘Opener’, where, as Vaughan describes it, Cunningham portrayed ‘a clown-​like figure “who falls in love with a society whose rules he doesn’t know.” Finally he produced the conjurer’s paper flowers from his sleeve, buried his face in them, and went off.’53 Again, the clown cannot simply be reduced either to imitation Chaplin or imitation Graham. The figure of the clown, or fool, is central to the conception of Antic Meet, not least because it is here where Dionysius meets Karamazov, though a Karamazov who is both the intellectual Ivan and the ‘holy fool’ Alyosha. Numerous notes through the Antic Meet sketches make reference to this character as well, vitally, to the multiplicity of his identity, historically speaking. Answering his own question in his sketches, ‘what is a clown?’, Cunningham responded: ‘a rustic; churl; ill-​bred person; boor; fool as buffoon in a play, circus’, while elsewhere he noted: ‘fool is the center of indifference’. Here, Cunningham was quoting Wylie Sypher’s notes on comedy, which themselves form a sort of intersection between Nietzsche’s exegesis of the Dionysia and Kierkegaard’s description of the figure of the ‘holy fool’: ‘[I]‌n almost all his roles the fool is set apart, dedicated, alienated, if not outcast, beaten, slain. Being isolated, he serves as a “center of indifference,” from which position the rest of us may, if we will, look through his eyes and appraise the meaning of our daily life.’54 That Cunningham is working from Sypher’s theory of comedy is made evident by other parts of his notes which precisely mirror Sypher’s text. Though conceivably he could have drawn the three types of comic character he outlines—​buffoon, ironist, and imposter—​directly from Aristotle, precisely those words are used for the division by Sypher to translate Aristotle’s bômolochus (the buffoon), eirôn (the ironist), and alazṓn (the imposter), the three stock characters of ancient Greek comedy. Aside from a single use of the word buffoon, Cunningham’s notes do not directly make reference to the bômolochus, but evidently reproduce two key sections of Sypher’s description of the Dionysia. The first describes precisely the fertility rites to which the ‘antic’ element of the title in part refers: In its typical form the archaic fertility ceremony—​involving the death or sacrifice of a hero-​god (the new year), and a purging of evil by driving out a scapegoat (who may be god or devil, hero or villain)—​requires a contest or agon between the old and new kings, a slaying of a god or king, a feast or marriage to commemorate the ini-

53 Vaughan, Merce Cunningham, 107. 54 Wylie

Sypher, ‘The Meanings of Comedy’, in Robert W. Corrigan (ed.), Comedy: Meaning and Form (New York, NY: Harper & Row: 1981 [1956]), 18–​60.

Performing the Concert for Piano and Orchestra  :  261 tiation, reincarnation, or resurrection of the slain gwod, and a final triumphal procession or komos, with songs of joy.55

The second deals with the details of the agon, notably removing the third character, the buffoon, from the agon ‘proper’, or eliding the buffoon with the ironist, a manoeuvre that plays out in Cunningham’s choreography: In the oldest comedy there was a struggle, or agon, with the Imposter (or alazon) who looked with defiling eye upon the sacred rites that must not be seen. The alazon was put to flight after a contest with either the young king or with a character known as the eiron, ‘the ironical man.’ The alazon is a boaster who claims, traditionally, more than a share of the agonist’s victory. It was the duty of the eiron, who often professed ignorance, to reduce the alazon, to bring him to confusion. Sometimes the king himself assumed the character of the eiron—​the ‘ironical buffoon’—​to deflate the boaster or ‘unwelcome intruder’ who appeared to know more than he actually did. Thus somewhere at the heart of old comedy—​ritual comedy—​was a combat of the king-​eiron against the imposter-​intruder-​alazon. 56

It is in the midst of these notes that Cunningham writes the quotation from Dostoyevsky that will eventually become the programme note for the dance as a whole. This quotation does not appear in Sypher, though the one context in which Karamazov is mentioned is perhaps instructive: The comic hero finds himself in situations like Abraham’s [poised to sacrifice his son Isaac, outside moral norms, either a murderer or a believer] because comedy begins from the absurd and the inexplicable and, like faith, tolerates the miraculous. Dostoevsky, as usual, begins with the Unaccountable when old man Karamazov lies with Stinking Lizaveta and begets Smerdyakov, who is as truly his son as the saintly Alyosha.57

This, then, is the intersection where absurdity meets morality, which is part of the central concern of the spine of Antic Meet, even where the surface elements are those of vaudeville and farce. At some point, Cunningham seems to have planned to have specific ‘absurdities’ as very short inserts in between the main scenes, including, for instance, this wonderfully described sequence: ‘take center stage + do pirouette à la seconde (single–​double–​en l’air) hopping in plié—​turning on toe-​en l’air repetitions/​(end in hobbling chaos (like suddenly no legs)’.58 This idea must have persisted in Cunningham’s thinking for quite some time, since an 55 

Ibid., 34. Ibid.,  41–​42. 57  Ibid., 48. 58  Merce Cunningham, Antic Meet notebook (source: MCDCCR). 56 

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absurdity of this sort is sketched on the back of an advertisement for the exhibition of Cage’s score at the Stable Gallery in advance of the premiere of the Concert for Piano and Orchestra. It suggests, then, a little greater precision regarding when Cunningham began work on Antic Meet in earnest—​before, if only slightly before, the Concert for Piano and Orchestra was itself completed—​ but also that work on Antic Meet was very far from fully developed by the point of the premiere of the score it would ultimately be performed alongside, even if Cunningham’s claim in July that it was ‘barely begun’ should, then, perhaps be regarded as slightly exaggerated, notwithstanding the obviously significant work still to be done at that point working with the dancers who were to perform it. Despite Cunningham’s claim that ‘Antic Meet is a series of absurd situations, one after the other, each one independent of the next’,59 the form of Antic Meet in general might be said to retain essentially the structure of ancient Dionysian comedy Cunningham took from Sypher with the insertion of three scenes each entitled ‘Sport and Diversions’, the former sections, then, representing the ‘antique’ half of the title, the second the sports ‘meet’; understood this way, two scenes remain unaccounted for, and those rather elegantly are titled almost numerically: ‘Room for Two’, the duet in which a chair is strapped to Cunningham’s back, and ‘A Single’, the most overtly vaudevillian scene, a soft-​shoe number, danced by Cunningham in white overalls. The second of the ‘Sports and Diversions’ numbers was the point at which the Dostoyevskian aspects of the piece were to the fore. Cunningham’s notes initially describe it as a ‘tumbling act that goes wrong’, which it certainly is, but the reasons for what goes wrong are not obvious on stage. Cunningham wrote to Rauschenberg that it was ‘a tumbling act with one tumbler missing, but no one knows that but you and me’,60 while in his notes it is normally referred to as the ‘3 Ivans’.61 This sequence, then, continues the ideas of absence and pairing implied throughout: there are multiple, impossibly many, representations of Ivan Karamazov on stage, though, even then, one is missing; the simple presence of a Karamazov brother implies the absence of the others, including one who is almost, but not quite, a Karamazov. The absent Ivan might, too, be the buffoon who drops out of Cunningham’s description of the three stock characters of Greek comedy in favour of the ironist and the imposter. As Vaughan describes the section,

Cunningham, in Jacqueline Lesschaeve, The Dancer and the Dance (London: Marion Boyars, 1991), 94. 60  Merce Cunningham to Robert Rauschenberg, 12 July 1958 (source: MCDCCR). 61  Merce Cunningham, Antic Meet notebook (source: MCDCCR). 59 Merce

Performing the Concert for Piano and Orchestra  :  263 The two fell to the floor, rolled along, and jumped over one another. Again Cunningham appeared to be incompetent, missing beats and fumbling. At the end, Charlip collapsed, and Cunningham went off, to return wearing a long and mangy raccoon coat (something else Rauschenberg had found). He took hold of Charlip’s hands and dragged him offstage, as Cunningham has said, ‘like a Rotarian hauling off a fellow-​drunk.’62

Cunningham’s staged incompetence here might well stress, further, that he presents the figure of the imposter here, while the raccoon coat might perhaps first remind the auditor of the cuckolded ‘gentleman in raccoon’ in Dostoyevsky’s 1848 ‘Another Man’s Wife’, even while its manginess is closer to Chaplin’s little tramp or, for that matter, Beckett’s own tramps, Bouvard and Pecuchet down on their luck. The section Cunningham initially describes as the agon becomes titled, first, ‘mock battle’ and then ‘Mockgame’, the title which stuck, although Cunningham also referred to this, the third scene, as his ‘shoot the chutes’ section, or rather ‘shoot the chutes’, since it is the section in which the company is ‘falling as though they didn’t mean it’.63 Carolyn Brown, perhaps without realising quite how accurate the linguistic link she was making was, described the scene as ‘agony, but only in the first week of rehearsals, when our muscles weren’t used to repeating again and again and again (as one must do in rehearsal) so many kinds of falls at such a variety of speeds’.64 The sixth scene, ‘Social’—​essentially a satirical version of a high-​society cocktail party—​was undertaken as if in slow motion and is the only scene of the whole dance in which Cunningham is not on stage. This, too, is drawn from Greek comedy, and represents the parabasis, a point during which the chorus addresses the audience directly to talk about some matter separate from the thrust of the play more generally. The satire then is redoubled when given this context, since Vaughan is surely right that the subject was also ‘the lack of communication among people in a social situation like a cocktail party’,65 such that, in a sequence where the chorus is at least expected to communicate something, even if something essentially irrelevant, these chorus members have, precisely, nothing to communicate. Likewise, the first scene ‘Opener’, is specifically referred to in the notes via the term for the chorus’s first ode, the parados, and the finale, ‘Exodus’, as a kōmos, a drunken procession undertaken either at the close of athletic games or at the end of a ritual, thus tying together the two strands of Antic Meet, since it forms the end point 62 Vaughan, Merce Cunningham, 107. 63 

Merce Cunningham to Robert Rauschenberg, 12 July 1958 (source: MCDCCR).

64 Brown, Chance and Circumstance, 216. 65 Vaughan, Merce Cunningham, 107.

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of each. Vaughan’s description captures the raucousness of the model: ‘Each dancer had his or her own movements, moving diagonally across the stage in a clump that kept flying apart and then re-​forming, with Cunningham himself still tying to keep up with everybody. The curtain came down while all this was still going on.’66 Perhaps most pertinently in the context of the Concert for Piano and Orchestra, all of these potential references and half-​references, pairs and absent pairs fail to resolve into a single potential reading which would provide some sort of ‘key’ to explain Antic Meet in a way which mirrors the relationship between Antic Meet and the Concert for Piano and Orchestra. They co-​exist, to be sure, in a way which goes far beyond either a simplistic reinforcement of one another or, for that matter, a mere failure to congeal. Antic Meet makes it possible to hear—​or reinforces the possibility of hearing—​absurd elements in Cage’s score. The vaudevillian nature of Antic Meet similarly amplifies the gently referential content one might hear in Cage, particular the jazz timbres Cage introduced (as well as the jazz figuration which he did not). One might, though, suggest that the very possibility of Antic Meet enabling these readings reveals it as a sort of Dionysian unshackling of Cage’s Apollonian score: the seeming abstraction of the score, especially in the case of the Solo for Piano potentially viewed as a set of quasi-​intellectual puzzles for solution. Yet this too is surely a failed pairing, not only because Cage’s puzzles—​though they certainly are puzzles—​are also often simple, practical, and elegant solutions to practical problems (which is to say: they are not just puzzles), but also because the Dionysian is, notwithstanding his training with Graham, simply not a category wholly available to Cunningham as a performer: his particular brand of stiff alertness militates against the Dionysian. Intriguingly, apparently without knowledge of Antic Meet, it is precisely absurdity that Adorno finds in the Concert for Piano and Orchestra and that too in the context of a discussion of the sorts of absurdity found in Beckett, who might be held to represent the absent part of either the triad Cunningham-​ Keaton-​Beckett or, equally, Cage-​Keaton-​Beckett.67 Adorno might have said, too, of Antic Meet, that it is ‘absurd not because of the absence of meaning’ but because it ‘puts meaning on trial’. The mechanism for this, here, is surely 66 

Ibid., 108. Notably, according to Stefan Müller-​Doohm, Adorno was not only extremely well inclined towards Chaplin personally, he also regarded Chaplin’s Monsieur Verdoux (1947) as a ‘masterpiece’ (Stefan Müller-​Doohm, Adorno:  A Biography, tr. Rodney Livingstone (Cambridge: Polity, 2005 [2003]), 312). That said, Adorno had also earlier asserted to Walter Benjamin that the idea that ‘a reactionary individual can be transformed into a member of the avant-​garde through an intimate acquaintance with the films of Chaplin strikes me as simple romanticization.’ (Ibid., 218). 67 

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that the elements of Antic Meet are not simply recognisable, they are semantically saturated, but that saturation is so excessive that a reading which resolves the piece’s contradiction is not available: the piece is a set of satires of dance forms, but it is also a satyr play; the satire is aimed at Graham and at Cunningham; Cunningham is holy fool and scapegoat; the piece derives in its entirety from Greek comedy and from Dostoyevsky: neither the Dionysian nor the Apollonian is capable of expressing itself in its fullness, nor can either really achieve supremacy. Adorno’s concluding notes on Beckett are surely not far from what one might say about Antic Meet: it is governed by ‘a parodic unity of time, place, and action, combined with artfully fitted and balanced episodes and a catastrophe that consists solely in the fact that it never takes place’. In the same breath, Adorno suggests that the same sort of acquisition of meaning through the refusal to allow meaning to arise in any sort of resolved fashion, may be seen in ‘certain musical works such as Cage’s Piano Concerto, which impose on themselves a law of inexorable aleatoriness and thereby achieve a sort of meaning: the expression of horror’.68 That Adorno apparently misses or finds it difficult analytically to discuss the fact that none of this can be disentangled from what is actually funny in Beckett (or for that matter, Antic Meet) does not diminish the acuity of his insight: if the Concert for Piano and Orchestra is absurd, it is absurd in the same sort of way that Beckett is, and is funny for the same reasons. However, it is in the context of its performance alongside Antic Meet that that aspect of the piece necessarily takes on its fullest form and that precisely because it is not simply a piece full of wild abandon. In fact, Antic Meet amplifies the abstractions of the Concert for Piano and Orchestra, but amplifies them to such an extent that, alongside the choreography, the absurdity of such abstractions becomes audible. In truth, in the rehearsal and development of the piece, Cunningham himself seems to have been as deadpan as Adorno and, appropriately, unwilling to provide any key to the piece to the members of his company, who seemingly did not have access even to the brief quotation from Dostoyevsky during the initial rehearsal process. Nevertheless, as Carolyn Brown recalls, by the time the rehearsals were advanced, ‘we had more than an inkling that Antic Meet was supposed to be “the funny piece”, so naturally we couldn’t help having certain expectations about audience response. But at the final dress rehearsal, which summer faculty, students, and company members were allowed to attend, there was not a laugh, not a chuckle, not even a stifled snicker.’69 Unsurprisingly, Cunningham and the company were concerned. As it turned W. Adorno, Aesthetic Theory, tr. Robert Hullot-​Kentor (London: Athlone, 1997 [1970]), 153–​54. 69 Brown, Chance and Circumstance, 216–​17. 68 Theodor

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out, they need not have been: unbeknownst to them, as a matter of policy, dress rehearsals were to be undertaken without any audible response from the audience, presumably out of respect for the process. The audience, as Brown says, ‘let loose’ during the performance itself.70 In the end it would be the response to Summerspace, with which Antic Meet was paired, that disappointed its choreographer: though Antic Meet ‘because it was humorous, was well received, Summerspace made no impression. I think the audience didn’t see or hear a thing’, Cunningham concluded.71 Notwithstanding such occasional dissent as Time’s unsigned reviewer’s insistence that the piece contained ‘few outright ballet [sic] laughs’, this has been precisely the reception the piece has enjoined.72 Even the Los Angeles Time’s Albert Goldberg, who regarded the activities of the piece as only ‘purportedly humorous’, confessed that the audience was ‘in stitches’, even if he was not,73 while Bill (professionally P.W.) Manchester suggested that, over time, Antic Meet had moved from being ‘very funny in fits and starts’ to the point where ‘the audience is almost continuously either smiling at some happy, fleeting reference or laughing uproariously’.74

70 

Ibid., 217. Cunningham, in Cunningham and Lesschaeve, The Dancer and the Dance, 148. 72 [unsigned author], ‘How Strange’, Time (29 February 1960) (source: MCDCFRA). 73  Albert Goldberg, ‘Dances, Audience “Way Out” ’, Los Angeles Times, 28 February 1962 (source: MCDCFRA). 74  P. W. Manchester, ‘Merce Cunningham & Dance Company, at Phoenix Theatre, N.Y., Feb. 16’, Dance News (March 1960) (source: MCDCFRA). 71 

chapter 5

Interpreting the Concert for Piano and Orchestra A Concert of Solos It is far from clear the extent to which Cage really concerned himself with etymology. Yet the distinction between the title of his earlier Concerto for Prepared Piano and Chamber Orchestra and the Concert for Piano and Orchestra is notable, on the one hand because the ‘orchestra’ in the latter piece is much smaller—​much more ‘chamber’—​than in the former, and on the other, because the latter piece both seems to gesture towards its status as a sort of piano concerto while simultaneously retreating from it. In performance, too, the prepared piano of the earlier concerto forges, in traditional guise, a dramatic dialogue with the orchestra, although this facet of the piece fades across its course. In the case of the latter composition, it is not even necessary that what is, apparently, the solo instrument, the piano, feature. Whether Cage meant it so starkly or not, marking his piece as not quite a concerto in the conventional understanding of that word might remind one of the sort of, albeit probably dubious, tracings of the history of the word, which would suggest that both consort, in the sense of a coming together in agreement, and concert, to imply a form of disagreement—​from the Latin concertare, to strive or compete—​find themselves elided in concerto.1 In such a context, too, one might even wonder whether Cage would have considered the etymology of the word orchestra, both in its more literal borrowed sense of the space where a Greek chorus would have danced, and in the verb from which this sense is derived: ὀρχέομαι, ‘I dance’ or, more seductively, ‘I

1 Charles

Burney outlines more or less this etymological explanation in his General History of Music: From the Earliest Ages to the Present Period, vol. 2 (London: Robson, 1782), 338. John Cage’s Concert for Piano and Orchestra. Martin Iddon and Philip Thomas, Oxford University Press (2020). © Oxford University Press. DOI: 10.1093/oso/9780190938475.001.0001

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represent through dance or pantomime’, and its cognate ἔρχομαι, which is to say ‘I come’ or ‘I go’. This sort of philology may seem rather distant from stereotypical perceptions of Cage, but of course ideas of just this sort are surely reminiscent of the cluster of associations which dominate Antic Meet, arguably the most pantomimic of Cunningham’s dances, and Cunningham certainly appears to have been interested to chase up obscure references and to intertwine disparate signifiers which, nonetheless, somehow speak to one another. It is hardly possible not to hear another sort of echo in the title, however, and one of a quite different sort of orchestra, given the degree to which Cage’s interactions with jazz musicians seem to have informed the instrumental resources of the piece: an orchestra too was the ensemble which resulted from the augmentation of the jazz big band with additional winds and strings, as in the orchestras of, say, Paul Whiteman, Duke Ellington, or Benny Goodman, whose 1938 Carnegie Hall recording, released in 1950, was produced by George Avakian.2 Though Cage’s knowledge of jazz may have been imperfect, at best, he can hardly have been unaware of this additional meaning of the word ‘orchestra’. Moreover, the sort of separate togetherness, the way in which each instrument functions as a soloist but is nevertheless an integral part of the ensemble, may very well have been informed by just such an understanding of the roles of instrumentalists within a large jazz ensemble. Cage’s title is, in any case, hardly itself as fixed as it might seem. As noted in Chapter 3, on the second performance of the Concert, at the Village Vanguard on 25 May 1958, it was retitled Concert for Piano and 4 Instruments and, in the third performance at the end of that same concert, Concert for Piano, Voice, and 4 Instruments. A performance without the piano, then, might be titled Concert for x Instruments or, for example, Concert for Flute, Trumpet, and Cello. Since any combination of the parts provided would represent a licit performance of the Concert, it might, then, taken to its fullest extent, be performed as any one of fourteen solos, any one of ninety-​one possible duos, any one of three hundred and sixty-​four trios, and so on, leading to a total number of 16,383 combinations of the fourteen instruments alone, although one might argue that, since performances of the individual parts (and not only the piano part) have tended to be referred to as Solo for . . ., a performance of only one instrumental part represents a performance of something other than the Concert itself. Even so, this would still mean than some 16,369 possible combinations would exist. However one counts it, any of these combinations, even the solos, could be conducted, doubling that total to 32,766, though of course it should be See Catherine Tackley, Benny Goodman’s Famous 1938 Carnegie Hall Concert (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2012), 157. 2 

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stressed that the conductor’s role is of a quite different nature from the instrumental parts, one reason why it is not counted here as a solo in its own right. The variability hardly ends there, since Cage states that, though in the case of the string parts say, there are sixteen pages per part, ‘any amount of them might be played (including none)’. Cage explicitly does not say that any number of them might be played, which would unambiguously mean that a particular set of pages would have to be selected by a string player (and a very similar note appears in all the instrumental parts other than the Solo for Piano: such an instruction is not restricted to the strings). ‘Any amount of them’ could be a grammatical slip to be sure, but it can also be read in a more colloquial form to suggest that part-​pages would be acceptable too, which is to say that Cage would then be read to say ‘any amount’—​necessarily uncountable since each page could be broken up into theoretically infinitely small parts—​‘of each page might be played (including none)’. In this sense, the Concert allows for performances where, from the materials provided, from nothing to everything might be performed, by from one to fourteen players. Even in the maximal case, though, some of what might potentially be performed cannot be but absent. Though the instruments of the orchestra might perform every element indicated in their respective parts, the pianist could not perform everything indicated in every notation across the sixty-​three pages of the Solo for Piano: practically it seems unlikely that this would happen, to be sure, but more pertinently, many notations demand that the pianist select only part of what they potentially allow for. Though practice has typically been that performances of the individual solos from the Concert have not been labelled performances of the Concert itself, the performance materials allow them to be so conceived: in theory a violinist, say, might play less than a single second from the Solo for Violin 1 and feel justified in claiming that she has undertaken a complete performance of the Concert for Piano and Orchestra by John Cage. That second need not even involve her making any intentional sounds. Equally a performance—​even a performance of this imagined silent fragment—​might be spread out over a very long time. A performance over a long duration, say of a couple of hours or greater, might be expected to result in significant periods of silence between sounds, even in the case of a performance involving all fourteen players, all of whom have the intention of making use of the greatest possible amount of the given material. As such, the premiere of the Concert for Piano and Orchestra represents only the very tiniest fragment of the possible configurations of the piece, taking twenty-​three and a half minutes, or thereabouts, in performance, and utilising all thirteen possible orchestral parts plus the piano, and being characterised by relatively dense activity for the most part. Indeed, the premiere is surely on the denser end of the possible spectrum of conceivable performances: more durations exist that are longer than twenty-​three and a half minutes than

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those that are shorter, even if one might think that performances which go beyond the hour mark would be, in practical terms, rather rare; no greater number of players is conceivable without adding further possibilities which do not appear in the published materials for the piece (though, as noted more fully below, such possibilities do form a part of the subsequent performance practice of the piece, and not only in the way in which, for instance, Cage himself added the Solo for Voice to the licit set of possible combinations, as at the Village Vanguard performance); as is also described in greater detail below, it seems likely that performers in early versions of the piece used, encouraged by Cage, as much of the given material as possible. In terms of averages, then, the premiere performance is, if anything, something of an outlier, even if at the same time one must stress that no particular version is, according to the letter of the instructions, to be preferred over any other. Wide though they may be, these are the boundaries of the Concert for Piano and Orchestra as described within the materials Cage prepared for the piece. However, in the sixty years since the piece was premiered, those frontiers have been broadened further, in ways clearly licensed by Cage and in ways less obviously part of even his expanded sense of what the piece might be. As already mentioned, as early as ten days after the premiere, Cage himself expanded the frame of what might licitly be regarded as a sanctioned performance of the piece, by introducing his Solo for Voice 1 into what was billed as the Concert for Piano, Voice, and 4 Instruments. His Solo for Voice 2 was premiered by Marguerite Willauer at the 1960 Tanglewood Festival within the context of the Concert, though here as the Concert for Voice, Flute, Clarinet, and Strings, which is to say without the piano part.3 Another vocal piece, Aria, had been performed by Cathy Berberian in combination with Fontana Mix since the premiere of the former piece on 5 January 1959 to the degree that for anyone who knew Aria in the first few years of its existence, it would have been impossible to say that Fontana Mix was not integral to its performance: both pieces—​that is Aria and Fontana Mix—​were performed simultaneously in Osaka with the Solo for Piano, Tudor at the keyboard and Yoko Ono the vocalist on 17 October 1962.4 Some years later, on 26 October 1970, Cage’s Song Books (otherwise Solo for Voice 3–​92) 3 

Cage was unimpressed by Willauer’s performance, writing to David Tudor on 16 August 1960: ‘The singer was the main problem a bird from Boston Soprano who found the situation ludicrous and so operatically tried to let audience know she was in it but not of it. Cellist took toy gun he had with him and shot her at one point in the Concert’ (Iddon, John Cage and David Tudor, 129). 4  This recording was released on John Cage Shock Vol. 2 (EM Records, EM1105CD, 2012), though mislabelled as 26′55.988″. The latter piece was what had been originally programmed, but was, in the event, substituted with the combination of Aria, Fontana Mix, and the Solo for Piano.

Interpreting the Concert for Piano and Orchestra  :  271

were premiered, again by Berberian, alongside Simone Rist, in a veritable jamboree of simultaneous performance: at the same time, the Rozart Mix ran, presumably, continuously—​given that its score insists that it begins as the first audience member enters and ends when the last leaves—​while Cage himself performed a version of 0′00″ (1962) and the Concert for Piano and Orchestra was performed by the Groupe d’Etude de Réalisation Musicale under the direction of Pierre Mariétan, with Urs Peter Schneider at the piano. ‘Putting together these two pieces, Concert and Rozart Mix, seemed quite feasible to me’, Cage would comment to Daniel Charles.5 Moreover, as described earlier, for its part, the Solo for Piano had been regularly heard alongside Cage’s Indeterminacy lecture, Fontana Mix, and WBAI. This sort of flexibility should not necessarily be taken as a suggestion that the Concert for Piano and Orchestra or any of its constituent parts can simply be combined with any other Cage piece. For instance, a combination of the Concert with, say, Winter Music would seem—​at least in the context of the performance history of the piece—​to be erroneous, since the ‘proper’ combination would be to ally Winter Music with the piece which in some respects both takes back and extends the Concert, Atlas Eclipticalis: this particular combination dominates historical performances of Atlas and was, too, used for the premiere on 3 August 1961 in Montréal. This suggests that, for instance, Anne Speer Aitcheson and Robert Sheff ’s performance of the Solo for Flute with Winter Music on 27 October 1963, part of a fundraiser for Robert Ashley and Gordon Mumma’s ONCE Festival apparently at Grace Bible Church in Ann Arbor, would, at any rate, not have been a combination on which Cage himself would have been happy to sign off, even though it is exceptionally like the sorts of approach Cage did sanction.6 Equally, one might wonder whether Cage would have regarded it as ideal to combine Cartridge Music with Atlas Eclipticalis and Winter Music—​as happened at the Westdeutscher Rundfunk, with pianists Gertrud Meyer-​Denkman and Fredric Rzewski and the Ensemble für Neue Musik Freiburg conducted by Kurt Schwertsik, assisted by one-​time Feldman student, Michael von Biel, on 26 April 1967—​given that, though Cartridge Music appears never to have been performed in combination with the Concert, it may be—​and often was, as for instance at Mary Bauermeister’s Cologne atelier on 6 October 1960—​performed alongside Solo for Voice 2, which, in turn, was sanctioned for simultaneous performance with the Concert. Indeed, if the combinations Cage himself seemed to favour are taken as a guide, one might start to feel that some pieces have their own centres of gravity, around which other pieces rotate. For instance, Fontana Mix appears 5  6 

Cage and Charles, For the Birds, 132. Gordon Mumma to John Cage, 21 October 1963 (source: JCC).

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to derive from notation CC of the Concert for Piano and Orchestra, but, in turn, Water Walk, Sounds of Venice, Aria, Theatre Piece, and WBAI are all generated from the materials of Fontana Mix. Moreover, Aria and Fontana Mix themselves might co-​exist—​with or without the Concert or any part of it—​and the latter might be controlled—​might have some of its elements determined—​by the usage of its own derivative, WBAI. This makes such combinations more like assemblages of differently laid-​out and differently weighted elements than any sort of integral work, an upper-​level mirror of the relationships between the various elements which fall under the general rubric, Concert for Piano and Orchestra. Just the same sort of connections will be seen to characterise the relationships between the specific requirements of those instrument parts. Yet, on the broader level, these assemblages often appear to have been, from Cage’s perspective, independent universes with the grounds for separation not always clear: while one might see a clear dividing line between, for instance, the Ten Thousand Things—​performed as a complete set, for instance, the day before the premiere of Song Books—​and the set of pieces which immediately followed, why it would be that Fontana Mix (or further derivatives of it) co-​exist with the Concert when Winter Music, of which the Concert itself is, in part, a derivative ought not to is hardly obvious.7 Cage’s sanctions, in truth, seem often to have confused rather than clarified matters: a performance at the 1964 ‘Tudorfest’ at the Tape Music Center in San Francisco, alongside flute, clarinet, trombone, tuba, double bass, and two violas, appears to have included two horn players, Douglas Leedy and Pauline Oliveros, even though the solos in the published version of the Concert contain no horn parts. Stuart Dempster recalled that Oliveros ‘was playing horn, but I think she also had her sousaphone with her and was making these roaring sounds into the sousaphone’, suggesting that Oliveros performed from the tuba part, using her horn whenever a tuba in F was called for and sousaphone in place of the tuba in B-​flat.8 What Leedy did is, in any case, unclear, as is what use Robert Mackler made of the viola d’amore, interpolated by him as a doubling into the standard viola part. It stretches things a little to insist on this performance as wholly ‘Cage-​approved’, however: according to Dempster’s recollection, it was Tudor who worked with the performers on 7 

Nevertheless, the divisions seem to have been clear in Cage’s mind from early on. He wrote, for instance, to Morton and Cynthia Feldman on 11 November 1958 that he was composing Fontana Mix ‘so that it can go with Concert for Pn and Orch or alone or with parts from Concert’ (John Cage to Morton and Cynthia Feldman, 11 November 1958 (source: PSS)). 8  Stuart Dempster, ‘Interview with Thomas M. Welsh’, in David W. Bernstein (ed.), The San Francisco Tape Music Center: 1960s Counterculture and the Avant-​garde (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 2008), 257.

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rehearsing their parts.9 Even so, Tudor’s agreement surely seemed, at the time, as near to official approval as made no odds. There was also a second pianist, Warner Jepson, within the performance of the Concert at the Tudorfest and, in truth, the doubling of parts has not been an uncommon strategy, from a six-​piano version performed at the Hurley Woods Summer Music Festival in 1977 to the Barton Workshop’s 1992 recording of the Concert for Piano and Orchestra, in which Anne La Berge and Jos Zwaanenburg apparently prepared two independent versions of the Solo for Flute, rather than dividing the part between them.10 Such doublings may, at least in part, have been impelled by a notable occasion on which a doubling of instrumental resources was, specifically, achieved through dividing one part between two players, a performance organised by Petr Kotik—​who would also play flute in the ensemble, Musica Viva Pragensis—​and again involving Tudor as pianist, in Prague on 22 September 1964. As Kotik recalled it, he had to get volunteers because there was no money involved [ . . . ]. So I took everyone who was free to play and we pretty much formed the whole ensemble needed to perform the piece. And more, there were two trombonists, for example. We were waiting for Cage and Tudor over two hours on that morning and all the musicians were getting a little restless. When Cage and Tudor finally arrived and John saw [ . . . ] two trombonists, he said to me, ‘We need just one trombone’. So I told them, Sorry—​one of you can go home. They got very angry for making them wait so long and then telling them that one had to leave. I went back to Cage and said, ‘We have a problem. The guys are mad at me; they both want to play. Couldn’t we figure out something for the second trombone to do, so he can also be in the concert?’ And he said, No problem and took the trombone part and tore it in half. He passed the two halves to me and said: ‘double each part's time markings, so that they both can play the piece’.11

That last note—​that Kotik, the prime mover behind the concert, personally had the trombone part to hand, inclusive of indications of the passage of time, and it was he who changed those markings—​is itself notable and will be returned to. More immediately pertinent is the fact that Cage himself permitted Kotik’s proposed doubling of an instrument, the trombone, but 9 Ibid.

The Barton Workshop, The Barton Workshop plays John Cage (Etcetera, KTC3002, 1992). The former is referenced in Arnold Jay Smith, ‘Reaching Out for the Cosmos: A Composers’ Colloquium’, Downbeat, vol. 40 (20 October 1977), 19–​20. 11  Petr Kotik, ‘A Visit with David Tudor: notes from an evening with David Tudor, Sarah Pillow, Joseph Kubera, Wofgang Trager, Tina Trager, Didi Shai and Petr Kotik’ (Tompkins Cove, NY, 14 September 1993) (source: DTP). Transcription lightly modified at the request of Petr Kotik. 10 

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insisted on maintaining the proportions of the page-​to-​page material of the part. Since then, Kotik, now a well-​known interpreter of Cage’s music and comparatively regularly performer of the Concert for Piano and Orchestra, has gone rather further, sometimes doubling the whole orchestra in advance of a performance and allocating pages from each part to each performer. While this does not, of course, increase the material available for performance—​as would be the case if one generalised the La Berge and Zwaanenburg approach mentioned earlier—​it does allow for moments of significantly greater density and, equally, of sparseness. Naturally Kotik is himself turning a particular encounter with Cage into a norm, though he argues too that the limited number of thirteen instrumentalists, not including Tudor, was surely a product of the relative lack of funding for the Retrospective and, had more funding been available, Kotik believes more players would have been engaged.12 Perhaps there is truth in this—​as already shown, sketches for further incomplete parts exist and, of course, Cage did complete his first Solo for Voice precisely to expand the available resources of the Concert—​but Arline Carmen was already engaged for Town Hall, as were no shortage of percussionists so, in terms of simple resource, more performers would have been available, albeit not ones whose instruments, or even broad instrument types, were represented in the first set of parts for the Concert. Even if funding played a part, as stressed earlier, time was clearly tight in advance of the premiere and this too would have prevented any significant expansion. For his part, Cage would continue to describe the Concert as ‘in progress’ for some time after its apparent completion—​the expression appears both in De Antonio’s press release for the Twenty-​Five Year Retrospective Concert (as suggested, probably more-​or-​ less dictated by Cage) and in Cage’s notes on the piece in the liner notes for the Avakian recording, though not within the evening’s programme notes—​ even if he never made any literal amendment to the materials which the piece included and, in particular, did not complete the sketches for additional parts mentioned in Chapter 2. Though the Concert for Piano and Orchestra is itself, at least relatively speaking, well served by recordings, produced on average at about two a decade since its premiere, given the enormous number of possible combinations of its parts—​ even without considering the simultaneous performance of other pieces—​ what a listener might have the opportunity to hear is rather more limited than one might imagine. There are more or less the same number of available recordings of instrumental solos—​other than the Solo for Piano which 12 

Petr Kotik, ‘A Visit with David Tudor: notes from an evening with David Tudor, Sarah Pillow, Joseph Kubera, Wofgang Trager, Tina Trager, Didi Shai and Petr Kotik’ (Tompkins Cove, NY, 14 September 1993) (source: DTP).

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represents, as ever, something of a special case—​as there are of the ‘complete’ piece, though these recordings are, themselves, limited to a subset of what is available in the solos themselves: of the ten commercial recordings, four are of the Solo for Sliding Trombone, two of the Solo for Flute and of the Solo for Cello, and one each for the saxophone and trumpet parts.13 This means that eight of the solos do not exist in commercially recorded form, perhaps especially surprising in the case of the Solo for Clarinet—​one of the most dense and complex parts—​and the Solo for Tuba—​surely no less promising as a solo piece than the flute or trumpet parts—​even if some of the specific oddities of the clarinet part, to be outlined more fully in the following, may account for this in part. Three of the recordings of what are ostensibly solos contain multitracked versions of performances, with Mike Svoboda’s recording of the Solo for Sliding Trombone overlaying no fewer than eight realisations of the part, while the Composers Slide Quartet have been known to perform the same ‘solo’ as a trombone quartet.14 Perhaps these activities stress not only laudable attempts on behalf of performers to generate imaginative responses to the instructions included in the parts of the Concert for Piano and Orchestra, but also an acknowledgement that the solos, taken as a group, are limited as independent concert pieces, recalling Taruskin’s biting assessment of Eberhard Blum’s multitracked version of the (to be sure, even less promising) three flute parts from Atlas Eclipticalis as ‘sixty minutes of virtual sensory deprivation’.15 Naturally, properly solo performances of one or other of the Solos from the Concert lack precisely the qualities of surprise brought about by (happy) coincidences in the intersections of more than one part, often surprises in performance to the performers too. Moreover, one might sympathise with the San Francisco Chronicle’s evidently disgruntled Carl Cunningham, reviewing one of Stuart Dempster’s early performances of the Solo for Sliding Trombone, who dubbed it ‘a tasteless inventory’ of techniques and isolated sounds.16 That said, as might be anticipated from the several recordings which exist, precisely this solo seems to be something of a case apart, reflecting not only the inherent theatricality of the part, but also its place in be more accurate, the recording made by Ulrich Krieger (on John Cage: The Works for Saxophone 2 (Mode, mode 160, 2002)) is, according to the letter of the release, a recording of the Solo for Baritone Saxophone, a part which does not exist, which omits all notes which the score says should be played on the bassoon. 14  The Svoboda recording is a track on Da Lontano (WERGO, WER6744-​2,  2012). 15  Richard Taruskin, ‘No Ear for Music: The Scary Purity of John Cage’, The New Republic, 15 March 1993, 26. 16  Quoted in James Gregory Chilton, Non-​intentional Performance Practice in John Cage’s Solo for Sliding Trombone (unpublished DMA thesis, University of British Columbia, 2007 [1966]), 26. 13  To

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the development of a solo repertoire for the instrument, promoted by such performers as Dempster—​who commissioned, amongst many other pieces, Luciano Berio’s Sequenza V (1966) for the instrument, premiered alongside the performance mentioned earlier—​or, in Europe, Vinko Globokar. As Cage had himself noted: ‘I love the theater. In fact, I used to think when we were so close together—​Earle Brown, Morton Feldman, Christian Wolff, David Tudor, myself—​I used to think that the thing that distinguished my work from theirs was that mine was theatrical.’17

Reading the Concert for Piano and Orchestra Although an extremely large number of instrumental combinations is possible, and despite the fact that the title of each instrumental part indicates its soloistic character, the given title of the piece in its fullest form indicates the essential separation between the Solo for Piano and the other instrumental parts: the piano part stands alone, the title might seem to say, while the other performers have things in common. Thus, in what follows, although the Solo for Piano is, by name, a solo within the Concert for Piano and Orchestra, when solos are discussed in general what is under discussion is all the instrumental parts other than the piano part. The various solos, other than that for the piano, then, bear out this sharp distinction: the notational means of each is generated via the same compositional approach, as outlined in Chapter 2, and, as one might expect as a result, the instructions which preface each of the solos follow a common structure and, in large part, have the same contents (fig. 5.1). Though the things the orchestral musicians are asked to do are necessarily undertaken as independent actions, the actions themselves are drawn from a common pool of material and ways of approaching that material. Nonetheless, the instructions provided by Cage are not identical for each part and the distinctions which may be seen are, by turns, instructive and mysterious. Each solo includes a single page of typed instructions, all of which appear to have been produced on an old-​fashioned manual typewriter, almost certainly the same typewriter for each, given that they share characteristics such as the way in which the lower-​case c is slightly lower than might be expected or the way in which the serif of the descender for the lower-​case p is consistently cut off.18 The exception is the Solo for Bassoon and Baryton Saxophone which Sara Heimbecker, ‘HPSCHD, Gesamtkunstwerk, and Utopia’, American Music, vol. 26, no. 4 (Winter 2008), 483. 18  These characteristics also confirm that that manual typewriter was Cage’s own, since his typed correspondence of the same period exhibits identical features, though 17 

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Fig. 5.1:  The ninth page of the Solo for Violoncello appears, because it is set in an italic typeface, to have been produced on an electric typewriter, such as a Varityper, suggesting that for some unknown reason this was later re-​typed. Notwithstanding this curiosity, each set of instructions follows a similar sequence, beginning with essentially the same paragraph concerning the way in which the Solo might be performed in the often, because the instructions for the instrumental solos of the Concert have evidently been Photostatted, these amplify the eccentricities of the machine.

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context of the other available parts. The first paragraph of the instructions for the Solo for Cello, for example, reads:

The following 16 pages for a string player may be played with or without other parts for other players. It is therefor [sic] a solo or a part in an ensemble, symphony, or concerto for piano with orchestra. Though there are 16 pages, any amount [sic] of them may be played (including none). No part once played is to be repeated.19

This opening paragraph is—​as one might suspect from the rubric ‘string player’ rather than ‘cello player’—​reproduced identically in all the other string parts, save the bass, although a slip later on in the instructions, which refers to ‘the box of the violin’, suggests that Cage may at one point have envisaged differentiation between the strings.20 In any case, the string parts other than the Solo for Bass hold their complete instruction set in common, making them a conceptual subset of the instrumental resources for the piece in a way unlike any other possible instrumental grouping within the Concert. All seven of the string parts, the Solo for Bass included, have sixteen pages, while all other parts have twelve. In this sense the Solo for Bass is very close to seeming a member of that subgrouping, but there are several ways, outlined more fully below, in which its instruction page is different from the other string parts, suggesting that it ought to be regarded as, at least, to some degree separate from them.21 Every solo includes the possibility that the performer may choose not to play every page, though the instruction is typically ambiguous:  that Cage specifies—​indeed repeats—​the number of pages might make one read ‘amount’ as a grammatical error, presuming that Cage means a player might choose to play any number (including none) of them; another reading would take Cage at his word, that any amount of material on each page—​uncountable because theoretically infinitely divisible in ever smaller chunks—​might be played, 19 

Cage’s misspelling, ‘therefor’ (an archaic word which properly means ‘for that purpose’), which appears in the first paragraph of most other parts, the exceptions being those for flute, trombone, and bass, was, as Kuhn notes, a more-​or-​less habitual one (see Kuhn (ed.), Selected Letters, xviii). 20  Cage uses this phraseology of an instrument type followed by ‘player’ in all parts save the Solo for Clarinet, which is explicitly for a clarinettist. 21  To extend further the speculative idea that the ‘orchestra’ element in the title of the Concert for Piano and Orchestra might refer to a jazz orchestra, which is to say an augmented big band line-​up, then it would be precisely these other string parts which would be the major part of the augmentation: the double bass would already be present as part of the rhythm section. While of course this would then tend to beg the question as to why it was that Cage produced no percussion parts for the piece, Cage had noted to Tomek that he ‘contemplate[d]‌composing parts for strings, percussion, brass & woodwinds’ (John Cage to Otto Tomek, 29 January 1958 (source: DTP)).

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including none of it. In the first case, one would presume that complete pages ought to be played, but that all pages need not be; in the second case, one would select material from each page, even though one might select nothing from one or more pages. These readings are not mutually exclusive: the second reading includes all possible renderings of the first. There are, as ever, distinctions to be drawn between the solos. First, only the string parts—​not including the Solo for Bass—​include the demand that once a part has been played it may not be repeated. Thus, the maximum possible material available for the string parts is the given sixteen pages while, in the case of all the other instrumental parts, the possibility of repetition is not explicitly ruled in, but it is not explicitly ruled out, either, and the absence of a prohibition which does explicitly appear in some parts might well lead one to read it as, at least, implicitly making something possible. On 31 August 1970, Cage wrote to Pierre Mariétan regarding the performance of the Concert which was to run simultaneously with the premiere of Songbooks, amongst other pieces, that, in mind of the two-​and-​a-​half-​hour running time of the whole programme, ‘there could be some replaying [of the instrumental parts of the Concert] if one were conscientious to play differently the second time (different interpretation of the ambiguous notation)’.22 In this letter, at least, he makes no distinction between the string parts and others. Second, all solos excepting the string—​but including the Solo for Bass—​provide the option to introduce additional silences not found in the part. Cage does not offer any guidance as to where any additional silences, if desired, are to be introduced, retaining the same ambiguity as characterised the first paragraph of instructions described earlier; they might be interpolated between complete pages or between events on a page or, just as well, both. One could imagine that this disparity allows the twelve-​page-​long wind and brass parts to be easily expanded to the sixteen-​page scale of the string parts, though that makes the Solo for Bass in this respect an even more curious outlier, containing both of these options for expansion, while also being sixteen pages long. A seemingly reasonable extension of the guidance Cage provides would be to reorder the pages or, in yet more extreme fashion, the staves on individual pages, following directly the example Cage had provided in Music for Piano or Winter Music or, for that matter, in the Solo for Piano. One might expect the consequences of such an operation would be negligible, given the degree of liberty Cage specifically authorises and, as suggested earlier, where Cage has not directly prohibited a particular manoeuvre, there is reason to consider it possible. Yet there are several reasons to be wary of treating the instrumental solos in this way. First, though no performer could know this without having 22 

John Cage to Pierre Mariétan, 31 August 1970 (source: JCC).

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examined the sketches detailed in Chapter 2, each page of each instrumental part is a transcription of only half of a compositional sketch page, on which a presumably I Ching-​determined maximum number of events might occur: this explains why the maximum number of events across two pages is the sixty-​ one events which appear between pages 13 and 14 of the first viola part and the lowest a single event over two pages, as on pages 7 to 8 of the violoncello part and across the fifth and sixth pages of the otherwise rather dense Solo for Sliding Trombone. What this means is that, by and large, pages fall into pairs of relatively similar density, though, because Cage evidently used observations of paper imperfections to determine the specific locations of events and such imperfections do not fall evenly, this is hardly an absolute rule. One reaction to this might be that, if Cage’s interest was, as his proposal to Mariétan suggests, to avoid anything which might smack of repetition, even this sense of local repetition of density ought to be avoided, encouraging the rearrangement of the given page order. However, the continuity that Cage’s process implies leads to the second, and more significant, observation: because the parts contain instructions regarding changes of instrument, clefs, tuning, and so on, in practice an instruction on one page often has consequences on its successor. In many cases, such issues are easily surmountable. If one were to choose, say, to play the fifth page of the Solo for Flute, which includes an instruction to change to alto flute at its midpoint, before the fourth page, which begins with the performer continuing to use the standard flute from the previous page, the cautionary ‘(FL.)’ at the head of the page could be read as an instruction rather than a reminder, in essence doing nothing more than removing its brackets. Even so, to do this involves amending the letter of the score through erasure. In the case of the Solo for Tuba or the Solo for Bassoon and Baryton Saxophone, where Cage does not provide or provides inconsistently such cautionary markings, rather than an erasure, one might have to insert the direction for the change of instrument into the score. If one simply attempted to play on, with the instrument in hand, rather than introducing a change where none was indicated, problems can rapidly arise: again taking the Solo for Bassoon and Baryton Saxophone as an example, playing page 7 then page 4, say, would cause the player to be asked to play the ‘motor sound’ on the baritone saxophone, a technique Cage pins to the bassoon in his instructions. String scordatura, too, can become rather confused: in the case of the Solo for Violin 1, if a violinist played page 16 before page 15, the indication to return the E string to its normal tuning on the first system of page 15 becomes meaningless, since the string is already so tuned. If one continued backwards through the score, to page 14, because at the end of page 15 the same string is to be tuned sharper, on page 14, faced with a further instruction to sharpen the E string, one is forced to make the decision as to whether—​as the case of repeated natural

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accidentals would suggest—​that indication should be ignored, because the string is already sharpened, or whether the string should be sharpened yet further; if one were, then, to decide that page 10 should be the next to be played, a further decision becomes necessary when an indication to flatten the E string appears: the performer would have to decide whether the string is merely to be slackened slightly back in the general direction of its standard tuning or whether it should be retuned to be flatter than E-​natural. When the pages of the part are read in order, no such conflicts arise. Surely part of the reason for this, at least, is found in exactly the fact that pairs of pages were originally written as single pages, such that some continuities might have been invisible at the point of composition. Nevertheless, one sees continuities across pages which would not have been paired in this way too, as in the dotted line to indicate the use of a mute which can be seen extending from the tenth to the eleventh page of the Solo for Violin 1, for instance, or, in truth, in the way in which scordatura functions across the string parts in more general terms, such that an already sharpened string is never asked to become more sharp nor a flattened one flatter. Evidently, the individual pages of the instrumental solos cannot be considered to be discrete entities in the straightforward way that the pages of Music for Piano or Winter Music might be. All this said, clearly solutions exist to such apparent problems and taking such decisions necessarily involves a performer in making considered, responsible decisions of a sort which would seem wholly in accord with Cage’s general view of ideal performers. Moreover, many of the issues noted can arise while following rigorously the instructions Cage does give, even if one takes the more extreme reading that only what Cage explicitly allows can be undertaken in a performance: if one were to omit the first page of the Solo for Bassoon and Baryton Saxophone, the beginning of the second page does not explicitly state that a bassoon is the starting instrument, even though the first notehead demands a ‘motor sound’; if one were to begin the Solo for Viola 2 on its third page, one would find an instruction to return the C string to its normal tuning, which one would have either to ignore or to begin the page with the string sharpened, following the instruction on the first page of the part. Doubtless this is one reason why the most common approach to the Solos appears to be, precisely, to play the pages in sequence, which is certainly not to say that there do not exist other approaches which provide compelling results. As noted, in the early performances in which Cage had the greatest involvement, players made uses of all pages and, so far as one can tell from recordings of these early performances, played them in order, though the density of activity in the premiere, notwithstanding the apparent interpolation of foreign elements by some performers, makes it difficult to assess this with absolute certainty. Eberhard Blum’s 1992 recording of the Solo for Flute, to take a more

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recent example, begins on the third system of the fifth page and continues as far as the second system of the ninth, meaning too that his realisation is almost exclusively played on the alto flute, including just two notes on the piccolo and three on the standard flute,23 while the Barton Workshop’s near-​ contemporaneous recording of the Concert includes complete, and in sequence, versions of the Solos for Flute and Bass, alongside more partial renderings of other Solos which are, for the most part, still in sequence, but with elements omitted.24 By contrast, however, James Fulkerson’s recording of the Solo for Sliding Trombone (with Fontana Mix) reads from the back of the score to the front, for the most part, beginning on the final page, followed by pages 11 and 10. Thereafter a long silence is presumably the result of playing the empty sixth page, followed by the second page and part of the third, with the rendition ending, as if abruptly cut off, with the barking sound towards the end of the third staff of that page.25 As noted, the density of sounds per page varies across the thirteen instrumental solos from pages demanding no activity on behalf of the performer—​ there are four pages containing no events, one each in the Solo for Sliding Trombone, the Solo for Violin 1, the Solo for Viola 2, and the Solo for Cello—​to those requiring a great deal, with the highest number of events being thirty-​six on page 101 of the Solo for Cello, that part thus containing both the sparsest and densest pages of the piece. As already described, the densest pair of pages, containing sixty-​one events, occurs in the Solo for Viola 1, with the least dense pages—​a single element across two pages—​appearing in both the Solo for Cello and the Solo for Sliding Trombone, leading to the sense, mentioned earlier, that an I Ching determination led to the maximum number of possible events across a pair of pages. The lowest total number of events appears in the Solo for Tuba, a mere 140, while the greatest number, more than double that, appears in the Solo for Bass, a total of 294 across its sixteen pages, forty-​four more—​just over a sixth more—​than appear in the Solo for Viola 1, which has the second greatest total number. The Solo for Sliding Trombone is the densest part, with an average of nineteen events per page, the Solo for Trumpet and Solo for Bass only a little behind, with eighteen-​and-​a-​fifth and eighteen-​and-​three-​eighths of an event per page respectively. The third violin part, by contrast, is less than half as dense as the trombone part, with slightly fewer than nine events per page on average. Of course if, in a performance, all the performers were to work to a common

23  This recording is available on The New York School (hat ART, 6101, 1992).

recordings are available on, respectively, The New York School (hat ART, 6101, 1992) and The Barton Workshop plays John Cage (Etcetera, KTC3002, 1992) 25  James Fulkerson, John Cage: Music for Trombone (Etcetera, KTC1137, 1992). 24 These

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total duration, such as twenty minutes, and played every element of their parts, the question of density per page would become in some senses moribund, with the question of the total number of events then being the determining factor of absolute density, although local densities would be, in such a case, affected by the 4:3 ratio between the numbers of pages in the string parts and the other instruments. On each page of each of the published Solos, as described in brief in the Introduction, distributed across five systems are indications of pitches and noises. Each of these is small, medium, or large in size, representing either dynamic—​quiet, medium, or loud respectively—​or duration—​short, medium, or long—​or both.26 As such, a large notehead might be played at any dynamic for a long duration or very loudly for any duration, but cannot be both short and quiet (or, for that matter, simultaneously moderately loud and moderately long). In this way, the notation allows a performer considerable latitude in determining the parameters of each event. The possibilities are, nevertheless, clearly skewed by Cage: more or less 50% of the noteheads are small, with a broadly equal distribution between the other two types. Presumably this, too, would have been the result of a double coin toss. All this is, or might be, in a volatile relationship with the spatial positions of the noteheads on the page. The instructions given with each part might seem unambiguous—​’[e]‌ach page has 5 systems. The time-​length of each system is free. Given a total performance time-​length, the player may make a program that will fill it’—​but performance practice, particularly that sanctioned by Cage, is to some degree at odds with this. According to the letter of the instructions, so long as the total given time of the performance is respected, the length of each system is potentially highly flexible. For an imagined fifteen-​minute performance of the Concert, a performer might decide to perform only the first page of their part, talking fourteen minutes to play the first staff, and then fifteen seconds for each of the other four staves on that first page. Following such decisions, the first staff would be particularly amenable to the performance of large noteheads as long, while the most straightforward decision for the remainder of the page would be to regard such noteheads as loud. Yet this is only one reading of an instruction which is more ambiguous than it at first appears. A less intuitive reading might take Cage’s instructions gloss the former to suggest that quiet would mean ppp, pp, or p and loud f, ff, or fff, with the medium range incorporating, then, mf and mp. Curiously, Cage uses the word length, rather than duration, in the flute, clarinet, trumpet, and trombone parts, though these words are used seemingly interchangeably in the string parts. In the strings, he suggests that the large notes denote only a medium duration, rather than a long duration. This is countermanded by the next sentence in the instructions and is surely simply a slip. 26 

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‘each system’ as suggesting instead that all systems should be treated in the same way—​have the same length—​but that that length was not determined by Cage, save that it fill the given length of the piece as programmed. Cage’s programme note for the premiere performance suggests that ‘each part is written in detail in a notation where the space is relative to time determined by the performer and later altered by a conductor’, which seems to imply an essentially consistent relationship of space to time as would have been familiar to Cage from Tudor’s contemporaneous performances of Music for Piano.27 With much greater specificity, Cage wrote to Friedrich Cerha, as mentioned in Chapter 3, that ‘[i]‌n general the average length (which may be shortened or lengthened by a player but in a way which he predetermined and strictly adheres to) of a system for the string players is 15 seconds, for winds 20 seconds’.28 Such averages would allow, as Cage says, every page of each part to be played in full for a performance lasting twenty minutes. Cage’s description seems to signal an essentially pragmatic approach to this intersection of the demands of the notation since one reading of the combination of these attitudes with what is encoded in the score would hold that a performer might well lengthen a particular system from this average duration to allow for a large notehead to be read as indicating a long duration which, if the system were read strictly proportionally, might otherwise be impossible because there was insufficient space between such a notehead and the next indicated event. A player might, then, either simply extend that individual event, displacing the subsequent events of a system until a later point, while still retaining the general relationship of time and space, or might change the relationship of space and time for that whole system. Either way, once undertaken, if would be necessary to find a way of reducing the time taken by another system or group of systems by an equivalent amount, a procedure which could be undertaken in just the systematic way Cage clearly hopes for. For all that, one might well argue that, if this broader mode of thinking about the relationship between what the noteheads allow and how time passes in the solos were essential, Cage would have been better advised to have written it into the instructions in the parts and it is notable that, if this is to be taken as his own preferred approach, it removes the option explicitly given for some of the parts to introduce additional silences. Whatever decisions a player may take—​and surely the most important broader point is that, in order to perform one of the instrumental parts in a way which responds faithfully to the, See Iddon, John Cage and David Tudor,  47–​55. John Cage to Friedrich Cerha, 15 October 1959 (source: FCC). The reason why Cage wrote to Cerha with such detail was, presumably, that this related to the first performance of the piece with which Cage was himself uninvolved, even though the pianist was Tudor, at the Mozartsaal in Vienna on 15 November 1959. 27 

28 

Interpreting the Concert for Piano and Orchestra  :  285

to be sure ambiguous, instructions, a performer must take no shortage of decisions—​once a conductor is involved, the particular way in which a player has made these choices takes on an added significance, while also making such determinacy become, again, flexible and surprising.

Conducting the Solos In the small amount of music Cage wrote before the Concert for Piano and Orchestra where a conductor was necessary—​The Seasons, the Concerto for Prepared Piano and Orchestra, and the Sixteen Dances—​that role was a wholly conventional one, matching the conventional scores of these pieces. Across the decade which followed, Cage seemingly systematically worked first to problematise the synchronisation of individual performers the traditional score implies, then to untie those tightly coordinated relationships between individuals almost entirely. Such a disentangling of musical bonds is precisely what is most characteristic and, arguably, most radical about Cage’s work in the 1950s, analogous to, but more extreme in conception and consequence than, the separation of musical tones into their constituent parameters, an approach which Cage, nonetheless, simultaneously undertook. The Music of Changes announces the extremity of Cage’s position, comprising multiple layers of material—​up to eight—​composed independently but then superimposed. Here, though, the superimposition is both handed to a single pianist and its elements are framed by an approach to structural segmentation familiar from Cage’s music in the 1940s, thus reunifying in the score—​and in the hands of the pianist—​that which was held in tension at the compositional level.29 Rapidly, Cage sought ways to retain these forms of compositional separation in performance, such that independence became more than notional or conceptual: within the Music for Piano series—​in which from the fourth entry in the sequence on, each page constitutes a piece, both in the sense that it should be thought of as an element of something larger and that it represents an independent musical entity—​Cage’s instructions and his own practice as a pianist encourage the simultaneous performance of different pages (or, in theory, the same pages) by two or more pianists, up to sixteen per set in the case of Music for Piano. The order of events in the pieces is fixed—​as is the pitch of those events which are not to be performed as noises within or without the body of the instrument—​but the time each page takes is not, nor is any page-​to-​page succession of the pages of Music for Piano. As such, a superimposition of pages by multiple pianists is, in some respects, 29 

See Pritchett, The Music of John Cage,  78–​88.

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much like the superimposition of layers within the Music of Changes, but the scaling of the structural boxes that contain the musical material is no longer held in common and nor is it predetermined by the composer. The decisions regarding page order and duration taken (independently) by pianists mean that it is in performance itself where unpredictable collisions of pitches and noises occur, rather than having been held in suspension by the score in advance. For early performances, given alongside Cunningham’s choreography, Solo Suite in Space and Time, Cage and Tudor decided which pages they would use independently of one another as well as determining the time lengths of pages without reference to one another, save ensuring that the total duration of the dance would be respected, using a stopwatch to time when events should occur.30 Because of the variability of what might happen in performance with regard to Music for Piano, even had Cunningham wanted to choreograph the Solo Suite to music, it would have been impossible with this music. In performance, then, an audience would have encountered three superimposed solos, two for pianists and one for dancer, in which any relationships which did form happened, by turns, spontaneously in the moment of performance and in the imaginations of those watching and listening.31 Though in some respects seemingly more determinate—​because the succession of events is, if no more strict, more detailed and more substantial—​ the Ten Thousand Things—​that is 45′ for a speaker (1954), 26′1.1499″ for a string player, 31′57.9864″ for a pianist, 34′46.776″ for a pianist, 27′10.554″ for a percussionist—​are similar in that any of these pieces may be performed simultaneously with any others, up to the complete set of five. In such performances, no synchronisation is presumed between the parts and, by extension, players might begin at any point within a pre-​determined total duration. Moreover, the instructions for the pieces allow for the larger pieces to be performed in smaller structural chunks, ordinarily chunks determined by the underlying rhythmic-​durational structure of the piece, an option which Cage and Tudor, as mentioned earlier, took to abbreviate early performances in response to the concerns of, predominantly, European gatekeepers. Cage later wrote to Pierre Mariétan that it would be possible not only to abbreviate the pieces by playing only these smaller structural divisions of the larger items but that one might also extend each of the pieces, in a combined performance of the See Iddon, John Cage and David Tudor,  47–​55. Cunningham would also use Music for Piano for the later expansion of the Solo Suite, Suite for Five (1956), which added a duet, a trio, and a quintet to Cunningham’s solo choreography, which had, in any case, already been adapted through the removal of two of Cunningham’s five solo dances and the addition of a solo performed by Carolyn Brown, as well as for the 1954 choreography, Minutiae, which used exclusively Music for Piano 1–​20. 30 

31 

Interpreting the Concert for Piano and Orchestra  :  287

Ten Thousand Things, by introducing silences in between those divisions.32 In Winter Music, aside from the indeterminacies of its on-​page notations, any number of the twenty pages may be played in any order over any period of time by any number of pianists up to twenty, though each page’s five systems are expected to performed left to right and top to bottom in traditional fashion, even if it is not absolutely clear that a more-​or-​less fixed relationship between time and space is intended, even on an individual page. The implication of that maximum number of twenty pianists might be that each pianist would take a single page in such a situation, but the score certainly does not specify such a limitation. In fact, the score does not even quite specify that the pages must be played in a traditional sense, but rather ‘used’. Perhaps it was such ambiguity that led David Tudor to make combined readings of individual pages, such that he, as a single pianist, might play, for instance, pages 5, 14, 15, and 20 simultaneously, often in piano duet performances with Cage, such that another page occurred simultaneously.33 Little surprise, then, that when Cage returned, at the other end of the 1950s, to a large ensemble piece he both made it possible for the piece to be performed without a conductor at all and also that, if a conductor was to be used, that role too would be quite different from his conception of it in 1951. The Concert for Piano and Orchestra, conductor or no, clearly relates to and expands upon these modes of thinking. Like the Ten Thousand Things—​if that is considered, as it surely should be, at least amongst its other aspects, as a piece for chamber ensemble—​there is no score and the instruction for each of the instrumental parts states, in a description immediately redolent of Winter Music: Each page has 5 systems. The time-​length of each system is free. Given a total performance time-​length, the player may make a program that will fill it (including or not additional silences).34

32 

John Cage to Pierre Mariétan, 31 August 1970 (source: JCC). This glosses the instruction in 26′1.1499″ for a string player, which states that ‘[a]‌ll of these pieces may be played alone or in combination, and in whole or in part, the title to be appropriately changed to indicate time in minutes and seconds and the instrumentalists involved.’ This instruction does not appear, however, in any of the other pieces from the Ten Thousand Things. 33  See Iddon, John Cage and David Tudor,  56–​64. 34  In this sense, one might make an argument that the instrumental Solos represent the material resources of Music for Piano filtered through the instructions of Winter Music, with the new element of noteheads of multiple sizes, a mode of thinking thus analogous to that which gives rise to the Solo for Piano.

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Though the instructions for the Solo for Piano are distinct in many respects, there are important points of commonality: Each page is one system for a single pianist to be played with or without any or all parts written for orchestral instruments. [ . . . ] A programme [is] made within a determined length of time [ . . . ].

Cage’s programme note for the premiere stresses that it is the role of individual performers to determine matters of timing with respect to the details of their parts, even if the total time-​length of a performance is not determined by the instrumental performers: ‘each individual independently makes his own time-​program from the material supplied’. As the discussion of the European premiere in Chapter 3, and Cage’s letter to Cerha mentioned earlier, might imply, it is not wholly clear that this is actually what performers did do for the first performance: Cage appears to have had a greater involvement in making decisions about timing than the instructions would demand. Nonetheless, in theory at least, the general parameters for and order of activity are thus clear: first, a total duration for a performance is determined, a decision in which there is no reason to presume the involvement of individual performers (nor, it should be said, from Cage’s instructions is there any reason to imagine the a priori exclusion of performers from such decision making); second, each instrumentalist would determine the number of pages (or, for that matter, systems) to be played, perhaps simultaneously with a decision of precisely which pages (or systems), from none to twelve or sixteen (or, in the case of systems, sixty or eighty) and including or not page (or system) repetitions, according to instrument type, including (or not), too, additional silences. This would mean that—​if whole pages are being played—​the performer might already be able to decide the system by which a total duration would be reached, most straightforwardly by dividing the resulting total number of systems into the predetermined length of the performance and taking the result as the average duration. Equally, the performer might, before reaching this stage, want to determine the order of pages and which systems of each page are to be played, especially given the, albeit ambiguous and inconsistent, distinctions Cage makes between pages and systems. If such changes were part of a performer’s plan, it would, under most circumstances, be vital for this to be undertaken before working out the durations of individual systems, unless the performer were to decide upon an accretive method, whereby a system would be selected for use and allocated a duration immediately, simply adding durations until reaching the pre-​given  total. In certain respects, the results of this process are counterintuitive, in that greater detail and specificity provided by the performer in terms of these timings can, under certain circumstances, tend to flatten the page out, while

Interpreting the Concert for Piano and Orchestra  :  289

the regularisation of timings does not: because the densities of pages and systems are themselves already highly variable—​notwithstanding the low-​level generality of pairs of pages in total sharing similar total densities—​standard, regular timings retain this variability, while reading busier systems over a longer period necessarily makes the unfolding generally more evenly paced and predictable. As noted earlier, Cage’s own proposal to Cerha was that, for a twenty-​minute version, all pages and systems should be used, with a duration of fifteen seconds per system for the string players—​including the double bassist—​and twenty seconds per system for all others. Though Cage seemed on the one hand to state that he had more or less determined the general length of systems, on the other he stressed to Cerha the dual independence of performers since a player both ‘need not know what pages or number of pages another player has decided upon’ and must ‘plan ahead of time how much he is going to play and in what amount of time, marking his part at the end of each system so that he can relate his actions to those of the conductor who indicates time’.35 He must have expected, then, in the absence of a conductor at any rate, that a page of the string parts would take one minute and fifteen seconds, while a page of any other part would take one minute and forty seconds, speeds which could, as the following discussion outlines, become even faster—​though, admittedly, more often slower—​in the presence of a conductor. This pace is, to say the least, brisk, probably near the limit of what is feasible and surely, by extension, indicative of the sort of character Cage hoped for in these early performances, recalling Tudor’s note to Stockhausen that he expected the Concert to oppose the stasis of Winter Music, to be, by contrast, ‘very wild’.36 As should be clear, the conductor is not a necessary element in a performance of the Concert—​the preceding actions could be undertaken quite simply with a stopwatch—​a fact underlined by Cage’s own instructions in the instrumental parts: The action of the conductor (where there is one) will alter the length of minutes (time-​units). Therefore, in the circumstance of having a conductor, the player’s program should be made so that he will be able to play faster or slower than he would with a standard chronometer.

The conductor’s part, too, is distinct from the instrumental parts. As noted in Chapter 2, Cage’s loose-​leaf sketches show that, at one point, Cage intended the conductor’s part to receive page numbers, as the other instrumental parts do, but the planned numbers—​185–​186—​were crossed out. Moreover, though 35 

John Cage to Friedrich Cerha, 15 October 1959 (source: FCC). David Tudor to Karlheinz Stockhausen, 12 March 1957, in Misch and Bandur (eds.), Karlheinz Stockhausen in Darmstadt, 162. 36 

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it was clearly never intended to be a solo in the sense that those other parts are, Cage also apparently backtracked on what looks to have been an earlier thought to title it Part for Conductor. Had these earlier plans been retained, the ambiguity might have been sufficient to make one think it performable as an independent piece, perhaps essentially a piece of theatre, given that the performer of it functions, as described both in the Introduction and in Chapter 3, as a human clock. As it is, its status amplifies the functional nature of the conductor: the part comprises a set of timings to convert ‘clock time’ to ‘effective time’. How this functions practically will be outlined in significantly greater depth, but in simple terms, the conductor changes the speed at which time passes within the world of the piece, so that the durations instrumentalists have previously inscribed into their parts are, in performance, very often shorter or longer, sometimes significantly so. As a result, when a conductor is present a performance is highly likely to be shorter or longer than the pre-​ determined duration given to the instrumentalists in advance of preparing their parts (though in reality, the specifics of the conductor’s instruction mean that there are very few circumstances in which a performance would be shorter): the premiere, for instance, was almost certainly a twenty-​minute performance from the perspective of the instrumentalists, but a twenty-​minute performance which actually took twenty-​three minutes and fifteen seconds, as shown by the duration of Tudor’s performance and rehearsal plans discussed in Chapter 4. Tudor, like most pianists since, was in the arguably aristocratic position of being able to ignore the conductor’s modifications (and was, of course, privy to the total time to which the conductor’s actions would expand the theoretical twenty-​minute performance time: this suggests too an intimate relationship between the pianist, the conductor, and whoever makes the decision regarding the total duration of a performance, a relationship from which the other performers are excluded and, too, one reminiscent of the more typically privileged positions of conductor and soloist in traditional concerto situations). Given the sheer number of variables already outlined, especially in terms of the many differing ways in which individual players might have approached the passage of time within their individual parts, this additional manipulation of the passage of time might seem extravagant or unnecessary. As already outlined, the materials for the piece make perfectly clear that it is, specifically, not necessary, representing an entirely optional part. Moreover, extravagant or not, this approach is assuredly consistent with Cage’s general thinking going back at least as far as the Music of Changes, wherein the up to eight layers of material mentioned earlier in and of themselves contain varying patterns of density, such that the demands of the page move—​and sometimes move quite rapidly—​from the minimal to the almost overwhelming. Yet, following the underlying durational structures of the piece, Cage inserted very regular

Interpreting the Concert for Piano and Orchestra  :  291

chance-​determined tempo changes: where the next tempo is the same as the present one, the rate of the passage of time remains constant in a particular group or subgroup of bars; but where it changes, an accelerando or ritardando is expected. In the first eight bars of the piece alone, the pianist is expected to achieve an acceleration from 69 beats per minute to 176 beats per minute before slowing to 100 beats per minute. This has an effect very similar to that achieved by the conductor in the Concert, not least in that a very dense passage may be made much simpler by a slower tempo and a seemingly straightforward passage complicated by a faster one. Naturally, it also means that there are situations where already highly complex material becomes yet more challenging.37 Tudor would later describe the conceptual (and literal) move he had to make in learning and performing the Music of Changes as a shift to ‘watching time rather than experiencing it’.38 In the Concert, Cage takes the literalism even further, as the instrumentalists must watch, in the body of the human clock the conductor becomes, the passage of a time different from that which they experience. The similarity with what occurs in the Concert for Piano and Orchestra is striking, but there is at least one key distinction to be drawn. Difficult though the Music of Changes may be—​and, to be sure, it is in principle significantly harder than any of the individual instrumental parts of the Concert—​the pianist is, because these shifts in tempo are written into the score, able to learn them in advance, perhaps determining, as Tudor did, precisely how long each section would be expected to last as some sort of guide. In a performance of the Concert, the specific changes of tempo the performers encounter happen live, through the interaction of decisions independently made by individual performers and decisions independently made by the conductor. Of course, the conductor could inform players in advance of the timing decisions taken, though that would undermine almost entirely the function of such choices being taken separately by individuals without reference to others, beyond the common reference point of reaching a common total tally. One implication of the approach Cage outlines is surely that the familiar physical actions of a performer, habituated through rehearsal and time spent working through the part (at the very least annotating it in the form of timings), are to be de-​ familiarised through the way in which the conducted changes of pace demand shifts in energy or movement. Those shifts might be more-​or-​less nebulously felt, but wholly tangible would be the different ways in which some actions

See Iddon, John Cage and David Tudor,  36–​40. David Tudor, quoted in John Holzaepfel, ‘Cage and Tudor’, in David Nicholls (ed.), The Cambridge Companion to John Cage (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001 [1972]), 174. 37 

38 

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must be articulated at an unexpectedly faster or slower pace or, equally, the way in which, should a sudden, unexpected accelerando take place the way in which a particular, well-​known musical event might need to be dropped entirely or, in the case of an equally unexpected ritardando, an event perhaps not seemingly amenable to extension has to be somehow stretched or otherwise drawn out. The indeterminacies Cage introduces to the performance situation must be, then, worked through in real time, the first time on which Cage introduced such a live element, changing, as Cage put it, ‘the normal rules of the game’.39 That said, in another sense, the conductor reintroduces—​ if transformed—​one of the usual strictures of large ensemble music: with a conductor, the ensemble is no longer simply a group of co-​existing soloists, but an assemblage of intersecting individuals who exist in collective temporal space. The fact that, and the way in which, those individuals intersect should not be viewed as a subsidiary factor: though their independence is maintained, a curious energy—​with the sort of uncanniness of a murmuration of starlings—​occurs as, for instance, the ensemble as a whole (or, importantly, almost as a whole) responds to a sudden and unexpected increase in tempo or radical ritardando. It is not clear when it was that the idea that Cunningham might be the conductor of the premiere performance of the Concert for Piano and Orchestra was mooted. By the date Cage wrote his note to Otto Tomek, 29 January 1958, regarding the first performance—​still at that stage an event expected to take place in Europe—​the decision had certainly not been taken since Cage noted that the unusual actions projected for the conductor required that either he would conduct himself or train someone else to undertake the role.40 Even allowing for the possibility that, at this stage, Cage knew nothing about the part the conductor would play beyond the fact that it would be in some way unconventional, it seems relatively unlikely that the part—​theatrical though the idea of a human clock may be—​was designed in mind of the fact that it would be undertaken by Cunningham or, for that matter, by a dancer or other non-​musician more generally. For his part, Cage seems to have suggested that the decision was an essentially practical one: Cunningham ‘was available. I knew he could do it’.41 It is nevertheless no less clear that Cage could have undertaken the role at the premiere himself and chose not to, which is not to say that he may have had all manner of perfectly sound reasons for making this decision. One of those reasons might well be as Cunningham described John Cage in Cage and Charles, For the Birds, 211. John Cage to Otto Tomek, 29 January 1958 (source: DTP). 41 John Cage in William Fetterman, ‘Merce Cunningham and John Cage: Choreographic Cross-​currents’, Contemporary Music Review, vol. 18, no. 1 (1999 [1986]), 124. 39  40 

Interpreting the Concert for Piano and Orchestra  :  293

it: ‘John asked me to do it because he thought it was physically difficult’.42 Though Cunningham suggested to William Fetterman that what was required ‘soon doesn’t become difficult’, 43 he told Peter Dickinson that ‘[i]‌t was physically very hard in the beginning until one got used to it’.44 ‘Soon’ is clearly relative in such a context and, to be sure, few conductors would have had the combination of stamina and physical control of Merce Cunningham. As Fetterman describes approaching the part, ‘[t]he balance, the need to work from the lower back, is very quickly felt when practicing the conductor’s score for only a few minutes. Although Cage’s score may not seem to do so, it requires the use of the entire body, just as sitting, standing, or walking also involve the whole body.’45 As was doubtless clear in Carolyn Brown’s recollection, mentioned in Chapter 3, Cunningham made an impact not only because of the odd experience of watching a conductor’s arms turn like a clock—​and an unevenly ticking one—​but also because of his sheer physical presence, ‘erect, regal, and elegantly dressed’, starkly at odds, then, with the other events on stage.46 Though the instructions do not insist that the conductor ought to be quite so upright as one might imagine Cunningham, clearly in practical terms the performers need to be able to see the arms of the conductor, even when they are at the bottom edge of the notional clock face. Tudor wrote to Cage regarding a performance of the Concert in Zagreb, conducted by Mauricio Kagel, in which Kagel ‘didn’t wish to extend his arms fully (because he is so visible)—​so it was all quite timid [ . . . ]. Much as I admire him, his concern for the way he appears to the public seems unfortunate to me.’47 One might imagine that a conductor like Cunningham, unguarded, imposing, yet neutral, could hardly be bettered. Whatever the circumstances, in retrospect, the preceding description of performers could hardly make one think of anyone other than Cunningham: as Roger Copeland notes, glossing Carolyn Brown, ‘everyone on stage in a Cunningham dance is always, ultimately, a soloist’.48 Indeed, this is surely one of the defining characteristics of Cunningham’s choreography, even if Antic Meet is arguably one of the dances wherein this aspect is least predominant. Cunningham must have been, in one way, absolutely in his

42 

Merce Cunningham in ibid., 126.

43 Ibid.

Cunningham in Dickinson (ed.), CageTalk, 62. Fetterman, ‘Merce Cunningham and John Cage’, 133. 46 Brown, Chance and Circumstance, 198. 47  David Tudor to John Cage, 23 May 1961, in Iddon, John Cage and David Tudor, 131. 48 Copeland, Merce Cunningham, 140. 44  45 

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element, since he was coordinating discoordinated activities on behalf of an ensemble of soloists. Precisely what a conductor is to do in a performance of the Concert for Piano and Orchestra has been outlined in various, sometimes conflicting, ways. Yet at least part of Cage’s instructions to the conductor seem unambiguous: Standing where he may be seen by all the players, he represents to them the movement of a second-​hand, but counter-​clockwise (beginning each minute with the left arm high and descending to the left. At effective 30″ the right arm continues to the right and up to effective 60″. When a change in speed in approaching he indicates this with his free hand, an upwards motion announcing a faster speed, a descending one announcing a slower one. Throughout the final minute he keeps the free arm at 0, the end being indicated by the touching of the two palms.

There is little lack of clarity here, that the clock runs counter-​clockwise being easily explained by the presumption that the conductor will be essentially conventionally located in front of on-​stage players, such that the reversal is necessary in order to make it appear to players facing the conductor that the second hand is turning normally. This does imply, however, that at the point of writing, the spatialisation of players from the ensemble which became a feature of many later performances was probably not regarded as a likely possibility, and may well not even have been considered at all, even though by the time of the premiere, Cage’s programme note would stress that ‘the players are separated in space as much as is convenient’. One might also, surely not unreasonably, ponder exactly how to indicate any necessary speed changes in the final minute: while the free arm is pointing straight upwards, motioning upwards or downwards at the same time would be challenging, especially if one is to avoid its being an extremely conspicuous physical motion. Again, this suggests that the conductor will be forced to make decisions about how to handle such issues within the final minute. The insistence on how to deal with this final minute does suggest strongly that the conductor is expected to use only a certain number of complete rotations of the arms: at any rate, the human clock must end at 0, even if, perhaps, one might conceive of beginning midway through a rotation. The only other ambiguity surrounds the description Cage has of the arm when it is pointing directly downwards (‘effective 30″’) or directly upwards (‘effective 60″’), though in point of fact what seems initially unclear helps to unpick the rest of the instructions, which show how the conductor ‘changes clock-​time to effective time’, giving a conversion chart for the purpose: each row of the table provides an indication of ‘clock time’ and ‘effective time’, and the conductor is instructed that, subject to a small number of restrictions, it is possible to begin on any row, continuing in sequence down the column.

Interpreting the Concert for Piano and Orchestra  :  295

One might, quite easily, think that clock time referred to the time indicated by the human clock the conductor represents (with effective time then being the time in effect, which a Francophone writer like Cage might allow to have the synonymous character of en effet and en fait). Yet this description of the arm insists that clock time is, truly, the passing of time indicated by a real clock—​in the case conceived by Cage, that clock was almost certainly actually a stopwatch, visible in his Cologne rehearsals, as noted in Chapter 3—​while effective time refers to the passing of time indicated by the conductor’s arms. The first line of Cage’s conversion chart, then, says that clock time of one-​ and-​a-​half minutes should become an effective time of fifteen seconds, which is to say that if the conductor were to begin at this first line, her left arm would move from pointing directly upwards to pointing horizontally left, at a right angle to the conductor’s body, over the course of ninety seconds (fig. 5.2). All rows of the conversion chart take a similar format, with a duration of real time and a description of the physical motion which will fill that time. These are given in fifteen-​second increments, from the least, fifteen seconds itself, up to the greatest, two minutes, a total of eight possibilities. One possible conclusion from this might be that the ratios between clock and effective time were determined by Cage via resource to the I Ching, since these eight possibilities make the construction of a chart for this purpose incredibly simple (as shown in Table 5.1). Yet in practice the arms of the conductor move more slowly than real time much more often than they do more quickly and the fastest demanded is twice that of real time, while the slowest is an eighth of real time. Naturally chance operations could have made such a determination—​in the midst of composing the Music of Changes Cage wrote to Tudor that ‘the coins are aware, clearly, that this is not only a long piece but a 2nd mvt’—​but the heavy skew towards ratios where the conductor moves more slowly than real time, especially given that there are fifty-​one rows in the conversion table, suggests that the determinations were somehow weighted in order to achieve this (in Table 5.1, boxes in grey indicate relationships unused in the published part for conductor).49 There are twenty-​seven different conversions deployed in Cage’s table, representing a total of twenty-​two types of ratios: the only duplicated ratios are of 1:2 (clock times of 15″ and 45″ converted respectively to 30″ and 1′30″) and of 1:1 (in the case of 15″, 30″, 1′00″, 1′15″, and 1′30″). One way of reaching such a situation—​though there are many others—​would be for Cage to have begun with a table like table 5.1, determined via the I Ching the number of combinations that the part would utilise, and then to have made a further 49  John

Tudor, 11.

Cage to David Tudor, ca. early June 1951, in Iddon, John Cage and David

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Fig. 5.2:  The first page of the conductor’s part twenty-​seven castings of the I Ching to determine precisely which those would be. A further chart would then be necessary to determine which conversion would be inserted into each column, utilising charts much like those seen in Chapters 1 and 2. If it were very much like those charts, then two further facets of the process would be likely: first, it would have been highly probable that Cage would have started off with more numbers than twenty seven, some being eliminated through duplicate castings of the I Ching; second, while in

Interpreting the Concert for Piano and Orchestra  :  297 Table 5.1  I Ching ratio chart for conductor 15″

30″

45″

30″

9

10

45″

17

1′00″

Effective Time

15″

1

2

3

Clock time 1′00″ 1′15″

1′30″

1′45″

2′00″

4

5

6

7

8

11

12

13

14

15

16

18

19

20

21

22

23

24

25

26

27

28

29

30

31

32

1′15″

33

34

35

36

37

38

39

40

1′30″

41

42

43

44

45

46

47

48

1′45″

49

50

51

52

53

54

55

56

2′00″

57

58

59

60

61

62

63

64

general the distribution would be expected to be even, one would also expect in most versions of the final table Cage would have generated there to be some conversions which would be more likely to occur than others. This is precisely what happens: almost all conversions appear between one and three times, in line with the expected average, with three conversions appearing more often: 30″ to 30″ and 30″ to 45″ are conversion which appear four times each, while the conversion 1′30″ to 15″ appears on five occasions. That said, though this is one way of explaining what seems to be a bias, it is also the case that of the twenty-​seven conversions, fourteen involve the slowing of time, while thirteen are either in real time or faster. If this were the binary decision at the heart of Cage’s decision making, then the results are essentially equal. Each of the first twenty-​five rows has a third column, alongside ‘clock time’ and ‘effective time’, with the heading ‘omit’, which contains a further sequence of numbers. These ‘omission numbers’ are at the heart of the restrictions in the use of the conductor’s part noted and, too, of most confusion regarding the part. It is vital for their understanding that Cage’s note in the instructions that the numbers given are specifically provided for a twenty-​minute version of the piece are attended to closely. By this Cage means too—​though regarding this he is certainly not clear—​that he means a version of the piece with an effective duration of twenty minutes: the actual duration in real time—​ Cage’s clock time—​might (and indeed under almost all circumstances will) be quite different. In preparing a realisation of the material Cage provides to the conductor for performance, then, the conductor must decide a row at which to begin and, proceeding in sequence down the column, add up the sum of the given effective times until reaching twenty minutes. Undertaking this with a start point at the third, fourth, or seventh row, for instance, would mean

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that a total of exactly twenty minutes is reached (on reaching the twenty-​fifth, twenty-​ninth, and thirty-​third rows, with total clock times in performance of twenty-​five minutes, twenty-​eight minutes, and twenty-​eight-​and-​a-​half minutes). The number given in the omission column for each of these rows is zero, because there is no need to omit anything in order to generate a twenty-​ minute version of the piece. The same, then, is true for all of the other situations where an omission number of zero is given. If the conductor were to decide to begin at any other row—​say, the first or second row—​then the numbers given in the effective time column do not neatly add up to twenty. A version which began at the beginning would reach a total effective time of twenty minutes and thirty seconds at the twenty-​ fourth row. As such, the omission number given alongside the very first row is thirty seconds. Similarly, by beginning on the second row, the conductor’s tally would also pass twenty minutes at the twenty-​fourth row, on this occasion summing twenty minutes and fifteen seconds. Thus, the omission number next to the second row is fifteen seconds. Cage does not provide any guidance regarding the details of the removal, such that, in the latter version, one might imagine removing any of the eight fifteen-​second chunks of effective time which appear in that sequence, which could reduce the clock time of the performance by fifteen seconds, thirty seconds, a minute, one-​and-​ a-​half minutes, one-​and-​three-​quarters of a minute, or two minutes from the twenty-​four minutes and fifteen seconds it would otherwise take. The former case is perhaps even more variable, since one might remove a complete thirty-​second chunk or two smaller fifteen-​second sections. As Cage says, the conductor can only select as their first row one where an omission number is provided, including of course omission numbers of zero. This is quite simply because, if the conductor were to begin at the twenty-​sixth row or below, the sum total of the available effective time does not reach twenty: it is impossible, therefore, by following Cage’s instructions to make a twenty-​minute version, and these instructions are designed expressly for twenty-​minute versions. Several realisations of the conductor’s part can be found amongst the papers in the John Cage Music Manuscript Collection at New York Public Library, each of which lasts for twenty minutes effective time and follows the principles outlined here, though one, in Cage’s hand, simplifies the transformations into being simply slower, faster, or the same as clock time and, as such, elides multiple passages in the part, as in two long passages—​from 1′45″ to 5′30″ and 7′30″ to 12′15″—​which are simply faster than clock time, rather than the more variegated translations the score would suggest (fig. 5.3). A further set of three sheets—​presumably the workings for this summary page, since they are identical save being significantly more detailed—​show that, before the elision, the first of these moments comprised a translation, first, of 2′00″ clock time into 1′15″ effective time, followed 1′45″ into 1′15″. The difference is perhaps not

Interpreting the Concert for Piano and Orchestra  :  299

Fig. 5.3:  Cage’s simplified realisation of the conductor’s part great—​the matter of a few beats per minute—​but at the same time an important shift in detail is lost. The latter set of working sheets shows that Cage began his realisation at the beginning, at the first row of the first large column. This indicates an omission number of thirty seconds and, as such, eliminates the penultimate row of the first large column, where clock time of fifteen seconds is translated into thirty seconds of effective time. The total number of twenty arm rotations is reached at the end of the second row of the second large column, with a total duration by the clock of 26′30″. Another version, again written by Cage and on the same basic model, which also starts at the beginning of the first column instead omits the fifth column—​where clock and

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effective time are in equilibrium, both lasting 30″ (fig. 5.4). One might imagine this to be an earlier version, since Cage adds an exclamation mark to the note ‘slow’ in the very first transformation: fifteen seconds of clock time into a minute and a half of effective time. Curiously, the sixteenth row changes the indication of clock time from the score’s two minutes to 1′45″. The number of arm rotations the conductor undertakes is, thus, unaffected, but the actual time of a performance is reduced from 26′15″ to precisely twenty-​six minutes, the duration presumably not coincidentally of Antic Meet. Even odder, the last two rows of the first column are flipped, which does have the effect of extending the one-​to-​one temporal relationship of the antepenultimate column into the

Fig. 5.4:  Realisation of the conductor’s part, perhaps for Antic Meet

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penultimate one, simplifying the overall form, but with little other effect. This version also features clock-​face diagrams, which show where the conductor’s arms should be at the beginning of each fresh transformation. A scrappier version—​which also ends at ten rotations and may be incomplete or is another candidate for what was used at the European premiere—​suggests beginning at the fourth row of the first column, which would require no time to be omitted: at ten rotations a performance would have lasted for fifteen-​and-​ a-​half minutes. Had Cage completed the realisation so far as the full twenty rotations, the duration would have been twenty-​eight minutes. A further realisation, the only one amongst those in his papers not in Cage’s handwriting, begins at the second row of the first column and, requiring fifteen seconds to be omitted, duly eliminates the sixteenth row, resulting in a total performance duration of 23′15″, though an additional ‘minute for nothing’ is added to the beginning of the list: though one could imagine this having been a genuine insertion of a minute conducted in clock time, it is surely more likely an effective upbeat, a long one, to be sure, but if the conductor were to begin with both arms pointing upwards, it would be necessary to have started the stopwatch earlier and, given the stopwatch mechanism, a minute earlier is the only likely or logical approach (fig. 5.5). Although it is impossible to identify the hand of the author of this realisation with absolute certainty, it is at least similar to Cunningham’s. As such, it is tempting to imagine that this is the version of the conductor’s part used at the premiere: as well as the resemblance of handwriting, the timing coincides with the total duration Cage claimed in the liner notes and with the durations of Tudor’s performance plans for both the rehearsal and the performance itself.50 In similar vein, one good reason for thinking that the incomplete draft was the version used at the European premiere would be that these four versions would then comprise the total versions where Cage was directly involved with conducting or with decisions about conducting, save the Village Vanguard performances, which is to say the premiere and European premieres, and the two performances of Antic Meet at the Eleventh and Twelfth American Dance Festivals in 1958 and 1959.51 Cage’s note on the reverse of the extract from the Solo for Sliding Trombone provided as a part of the Avakian recording’s supplementary materials also stresses that these were decisions taken by Cunningham himself: ‘The conductor’s part consisted only of directions for transforming clock time into actual performance time. On this occasion, his choices from among the many variations of clock time offered by his part, produced a performance of 23′15″.’ 51  In interview (14 May 2016), Petr Kotik suggested both that his practice was to improvise the conductor’s timings and argued that Cage had himself never conducted from the part. These sheets of timings give the lie to that, but do suggest that by 50 

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Fig. 5.5:  Realisation of the conductor’s part, perhaps for the premiere Of course, the published part can be, and has been, used for durations other than twenty minutes, but it is particularly amenable for this duration: all the ‘omit’ numbers enable that duration to be met. The reason why omission numbers cease at the fourth row of the second column is, precisely, because a 1964—​when Kotik was conducted by Cage in a performance of the Concert—​Cage was no longer using the part but, himself, improvising, which recalls Piekut’s contention that Cage improvised at the mixing desk by 1964 (Experimentalism Otherwise, 48). Clearly there was a significant and notable shift in Cage’s own practice between 1958 and 1964.

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twenty-​minute effective duration cannot be achieved from this point onwards. In short, there is an additional sense in which this is not a part in the way that the other parts are. It is a realisation of the set of instructions which would truly have been what might have been titled the Solo for Conductor, a particular iteration which would enable the conductor to have a performance of the Concert for Piano and Orchestra lasting twenty minutes, even though it necessarily contains a range of other possible durations beyond the one it is ‘meant’ to produce: the maximum length possible without, for instance, looping the part round on itself or otherwise repeating the given material, creates a total duration in clock time of 55′30″, though because the total number of rotations of the arm to produce this is 40′45″, the conductor would also be required to remove that forty-​seconds of effective time, which would reduce the clock time by a minimum of thirty seconds to fifty-​five minutes or shorter. This is, doubtless, one additional reason why performances of the piece lasting for longer than an hour are so rare. Likewise any performance other than one lasting for twenty minutes using the part provided would require a conductor to calculate whether or not an omission is needed and, if so, how large that omission would need to be. In any case, once the part is understood as a realisation of an absent original, the latitude of freedoms available to the conductor becomes significantly greater. Looked at as a realisation, one can start to imagine the set of instructions that might have led to its production and, as such, establish how to make other realisations. One of the freedoms available to the conductor, surely, is precisely to produce a fresh realisation of what they might do in terms of these translations, rather than being bound to the published realisation. Such a realisation might, for instance, take from the outset an unweighted version of the conversion chart given earlier, as a starting point, creating, at least potentially, the possibility of versions of the Concert in which time would pass more rapidly than the rotations of the conductor’s arms might suggest, even if performers with materials already compressed to the point of near or actual impossibility might not be grateful for the exercise of this additional freedom. An extension of this, however, would also suggest that if durations were desired beyond twenty minutes—​and especially beyond forty rotations of the arm, the sum total of arm rotations afforded by the part being equivalent to 40′45″ of effective time (and fifty-​five minutes of clock time)—​then even if a realisation were not generated through an imaginative re-​rendering of the process Cage used to create the published materials, nevertheless some sort of disciplined approach is called for. Cage, one might imagine on this basis, would have looked askance at a conductor improvising the timings of the part. Though the part itself makes, perhaps unsurprisingly, no reference to it, a more traditional role which a conductor might often retain in practice is that

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of ensemble director since there is at least one decision that must be provided to the instrumentalists: the total duration of an individual performance.52 In performances over which he had any control, as he wrote to Henri Pousseur in late 1969, that decision was ordinarily taken by Cage and, in his absence, communicated onward by Tudor, on the presumption that it was he, as was usually the case, who was to perform the Solo for Piano.53 According to the letter of the materials this is, at least, the only additional decision which could fall to the conductor and one might presume, then, that in the absence of any other means of determining the total time of a version of the Concert then no further involvement on behalf of a conductor would be necessary or, perhaps, acceptable. Yet, in practical terms, it would hardly be unusual for a conductor to be involved in the hiring or selection of individual performers and, where necessary, in coaching them in realising individual parts, perhaps amplifying Cage’s demands or removing for the convenience of the whole ensemble areas in which Cage’s instructions might be seen as ambiguous. Again, in early performances, this role was taken by Cage, leading to Yates’s characterisation of the performers at the premiere as ‘an ensemble of musicians trained by the composer’.54 As described earlier, Cage continued this practice for the European premiere and proposed something similar for a projected performance under the auspices of the Pan American Union in Washington, DC, where he stated that he ‘would conduct and would require in addition to 2 or 3 rehearsals the opportunity to visit each instrumentalist individually before the general rehearsals’.55 Cage’s approach in this respect is adopted and expanded upon by Petr Kotik, who argues that the difference between the Cageian conductor and the traditional orchestral conductor does not seem to me to be all that great. Both have to rely on the cooperation of the musicians. The traditional conductor studies the piece with the musicians beforehand and he exercises a kind of moral authority over them during the performance, yet he has no direct control over what they will actually deliver, except in matters of tempo. All of this is equally true for the Cageian ‘human clock’.56 52 

Friedrich Gauwerky comments that, in respect of the total duration of a performance, ‘[i]‌n case there is a conductor, of course the conductor will do that work’ (see Hans Meier, ‘Friederich Gauwerky, Masterclass for John Cage’s Concert for Piano and Orchestra’, 6 April 2012, accessed 15 March 2018, https://​www.youtube. com/​watch?v=xNs7C72Cm1M). 53  John Cage to Henri Pousseur, 4 December 1969 (source: JCC). 54  Peter Yates and John Whitney, ‘Notes for Music,’ [1961] unpublished manuscript, typewritten (source: JCC). 55  John Cage to Guillermo Espinosa, 6 January 1960 (source: EPNY). 56  Petr Kotik, liner notes for John Cage (WERGO, WER 6216-​2, 1993), 8.

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However, Kotik does appear to exert quite significant control over what performers ‘actually deliver’, beyond the letter of Cage’s instructions, if not necessarily beyond the reality of what Cage undertook himself in pre-​ rehearsal activities: in a copy of the Solo for Viola 2, marked as having been prepared for the premiere of Antic Meet at New London, Connecticut, on 14 August 1958, markings can be seen in what appears to be Cage’s handwriting, showing that each system is to last fifteen seconds, each page one minute and fifteen seconds, and all pages are to be used to reach a total duration of twenty minutes. The liberties and freedoms Cage’s instructions appear to give to performers are not necessarily ones he was willing to deliver upon in practice.57 Such a restrictive approach to apparent freedom is, perhaps unsurprisingly because sanctioned as an element of the piece’s performance practice by Cage, pursued by Kotik, though he goes a little further: he determines which pages each performer will play, as well as their order, assigning carefully time-​space-​calculated timings for events on each page of each part, which are then relative to the movements Kotik will himself make as conductor.58 The authority of the conductor, if taking Kotik’s approach, is surely more than simply ‘moral’. Perhaps unsurprisingly, questions of authority and power have regularly occurred in discussion of the conductor’s role: Robinson describes the use of Cunningham, by virtue of his being a dancer, ‘as a means of unmanning the authority of the conductor role’,59 while William Brooks asserts that the conductor ‘serves simply as a clock, with no interpretative or directive power whatsoever; in effect, the conductor is transformed from government official to utility technician’.60 These two discussions are fused in—​and surely in no small part derive from—​Cage’s discussion of the piece with Daniel Charles, in which he deployed the term ‘utility’ as a description of the conductor’s status, opposing Charles’s recollection of Heinz-​Klaus Metzger’s view that the use of a dancer as conductor presaged revolution. Charles suggested that it might follow that the revolution would ‘seek to kill the orchestra conductor who directs the world—​that is, capitalism’. Cage replied:

57  This

part is available with the John Cage Manuscript Collection at New York Public Library (JPB 95-​3, folder 257). 58  Interviews with Seth Woods (11 May 2016), Petr Kotik (14 May 2016), and Conrad Harris (20 May 2016). 59  Julia Robinson, ‘John Cage and Investiture: Unmanning the System’, in Julia Robinson, The Anarchy of Silence: John Cage and Experimental Art (Barcelona: Museu d'Art Contemporani de Barcelona, 2009), 106. 60 William Brooks, ‘Music and Society’, in David Nicholls (ed.), The Cambridge Companion to John Cage (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002), 221.

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Unfortunately for that analysis, I believe that the role of orchestra conductor in my 1958 Concert is not a caricature. Not of a conductor or a leader, but of a utility [sic]! Consider an orchestra; if each musician had a watch and if all these watches could be synchronized there would be no need for an orchestra conductor. But the musicians don’t have a watch, and it’s better to have at least one person around who has one—​that is, a conductor who could be one! All that supposes a measured time, regularly tapped out: the tempo of a work. So, I added to my Concert the requirement that it had to go at different speeds. If you only have one precise chronometer, a regular time-​piece, you will never obtain but one single speed. But with a dancer scanning an irregular tempo, no one has to feel bound by clock time.61

He would amplify this view in ‘An Autobiographical Statement’, in which he states that here, and in Atlas Eclipticalis, ‘the conductor is not a governing agent but a utility’.62 Elsewhere in his conversation with Charles, however, Cage is more equivocal, in a way which suggests that the distinction may be one of degree rather than a hard-​and-​fast division, in discussing the two musicircuses which had to date taken place in the United States: [B]‌oth times, in Illinois and in Minneapolis, someone was there to assume the role of a utility. Not someone who acted like a director, saying ‘Don’t do that’, but who acted in a way that facilitated the work of others. [ . . . ] I know that it’s difficult to draw a line between the activity of a well-​contained utility and that of, say, a policeman. But I’m sure that the difference exists and that it can be sensed. It’s really a question of recognizing how important the difference is and not letting it escape.63

Cage stresses that it may be challenging to distinguish between utility and governance and finds himself defining instead what the conductor is not: neither a governing agent, nor a director. Part of the challenge of definition presumably lies in precisely the forked meanings of the words deployed: the Greek root of the English word govern, κῠβερνᾰ́ω, means both to govern and direct in the senses Cage uses, but also to steer, in the sense of acting as a helmsman, a role distinctly separate from that of the skipper and, in any larger vessel, separate too from the officer of the watch, who takes charge of navigation. The helmsman, then, is more like a utility than a governor.64 Yet Cage and Charles, For the Birds, 109. Cage, ‘An Autobiographical Statement’, Southwest Review, vol. 76, no. 1 (Winter 1991), 75. 63  John Cage in Cage and Charles, For the Birds, 196. 64  Given what the conductor is asked to do, it is also rather elegant that according to at least one account, the Greek verb derives in turn from the Proto-​Indo-​European verb kʷerb, meaning ‘to turn’, perhaps even leading to the modern English word warp, via κύρβις, which refers both to a set of triangular tablets which could form 61 

62  John

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more striking is an older doctrine of the police, which operated between the seventeenth and nineteenth centuries in parallel with the doctrine of the state, the latter defining governance ‘proper’, whereas—​albeit in the service of the service of the state’s survival—​the police concerns itself with the aims of the state, including what Hunt and Wickham describe as ‘the utilitarian aim of the happiness of the population’, since an unhappy population has little invested in the continuance of the state apparatus.65 As Foucault describes this older definition: In seeing to health and supplies, the police deal with the preservation of life. Concerning trade, factories, workers, the poor, and public order, the police deal with the conveniences of life. In seeing to the theatre, literature, and entertainment, their object is life’s pleasure. In short, life is the object of the police. The indispensable, the useful, and the superfluous: Those are the three types of things that we need, or that we can use in our lives.66

Cage seems to intuit, particularly in discussing what happened in the case of the later musicircuses, the ways in which roles which might perfectly well be regarded as separate could become fused.67 Of course, he was also aware personally that one might distinguish quite sharply between one who organised, who ensured that things happened, and one who led others: Cage spent much of his professional life involved with performance, on tour, applying for funding, ensuring that musicians and dancers found themselves at the right venue at the right time. To be sure, often his own work was central to this work, but that was far from always the case. in combination a pyramid with the laws written on the sides and metaphorically to a pettifogging lawyer. 65  Alan Hunt and Gary Wickham, Foucault and Law: Towards a Sociology of Law as Governance (London: Pluto, 1994), 128. 66  Michel Foucault, ‘ “Omnes et Singulatim”: Toward a Critique of Political Reason’, in Michel Foucault, Power: The Essential Works of Foucault 1954–​1984, ed. James D. Faubion (London: Penguin, 2002 [1979]), 321. 67 That said, though one must presume Cage’s knowledge of the realities of Maoism was as limited as most at the time—​Pierre Ryckmans’s Les Habits neufs du president Mao (Paris:  Champ Libre, 1971) was only recently published (and would not appear in English until 1977)  and his Ombres chinoises (Paris:  Union générale d’Editions, 1974) still some years away, and Ryckmans’s criticism of the Maoist regime was very far from universally accepted—​the way in which one might mistake the authoritarian for the utilitarian is clear, when Cage explained to Hans G. Helms that ‘Mao’s solutions appear to many people to be political, but I like to think of them as being utilitarian’ (quoted in Richard Toop, ‘John Cage Defended Against His Appropriators’, Literature & Aesthetics, vol. 3 (1993 [1972]), 96–​107 (98)).

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Six years after the composition of the Concert, in 1964, Cage replaced the human conductor with a mechanical clock, the invention of the architect Paul Williams, his neighbour in Stony Point, for Atlas Eclipticalis, in a performance by the New York Philharmonic scrupulously detailed by Benjamin Piekut. One might well view this as in part a reflection of Cage’s general concern about policing, about what happens when ‘utility’ breaks down into its etymological parts: something which seeks to take advantage of, or profit by, its usefulness. Nevertheless, the mechanical clock would form at least a part of the reasons for the open rebellion by members of the orchestra against what Cage had asked: ‘Enrico DiCecco also criticised the robotic nature of the mechanical conductor; the device may have given the impression of granting players freedom, but this was never more than “freedom within the barline”, because there was no chance that the rate of the armature’s rotation would ever change’.68 By 1967, albeit still in connection with a projected performance of Atlas rather than the Concert, Cage would write to Yūji Takahashi that he should ‘Call David Tudor [ . . . ] abt the conducting machine. You cd. borrow it. You don’t need the conductor part in any case really.’69 Despite the essential failure of the mechanical clock in the case of Atlas, many years later, Cage would, while apparently tacitly recognising the issues DiCecco raised, still opine that ‘with a small advance in technology, we could easily create a mechanical clock with a variety of speeds. Or we could even produce, as Wittgenstein projected, a ruler which would not be straight. Then we could definitively get rid of measure. My solution, in the Concert for Piano and Orchestra, is not yet technological; it is hand-​made.’ 70

Sounding the Concert for Piano and Orchestra As implied in Chapter 1, it is evidently the case that one of Cage’s central aims in the instrumental solos was to broaden the timbral spectrum of the whole ensemble, so far as he was able. The oppositions that Cage noted were to be held in tension within the piece are in evidence throughout, but so is the messy flux between the extremes: each of the solos spans the continuum from pitch to noise, from extremely quiet to extremely loud, very short to very long, the top to the bottom of the ranges of the instruments. Each also makes use of a wide range of extended techniques, a great many of which

68 Piekut, Experimentalism Otherwise, 45. 69 

70 

John Cage to Yūji Takahashi, 12 November 1967, in Kuhn (ed.), Selected Letters, 375. Cage and Charles, For the Birds, 109.

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would have been, at the time of composing, on the fringes of what classical players would have regarded as possible and, surely, in many cases some way beyond that boundary. As discussed in Chapter 2, in preparing the various instrumental parts, Cage met with the most expert players he could in terms of these limits—​the most imaginative and extreme of these were jazz players, though for the most part performers for whom jazz was only a part of a broader range of session work—​and made lists of possible sounds and techniques. These he put alongside the other parameters of sound production, subjecting the whole to chance operations, in a manner probably little different in its fundamentals from the way in which, as detailed in Chapter 1, he determined the parameters of Music for Piano, the parent piece in any case of the instrumental solos. Here, however, there was a significantly greater number of parameters involved and, as such, Cage’s chance operations were likely to, and did, produce unstable combinations of techniques, often with surprising results (though, to be sure, also sometimes producing apparently contradictory or otherwise ineffective results). In the case of the Concert at least, especially in its premiere performance, Earle Brown’s criticism of Cage’s indeterminacy—​that ‘John was not giving enough information to the musicians to allow them to have the confidence to do what he imagined they might do’—​can hardly stand. The challenge of engaging with Cage’s music at this point was clearly not, for these early performers of the Concert, an absence of instructional information, not least since they had worked with Cage on developing their individual parts. As will be demonstrated in what follows, as an outgrowth of those sessions, Cage set up certain rules and conditions for the combinations of parameters, apparently always endeavouring to eliminate the impossible—​even if some impossibilities may remain, though far fewer than one might expect—​but to keep, however improbable, whatever remained. These rules and conditions represent what George Brecht had termed the previous year ‘the universe of possible results’.71 Equally, the critical response to the European premiere—​a reaction summarised pithily by Amy C. Beal as feeling that they had experienced ‘a “grotesquely comic” piece in which the musicians could “play anything” ’—​is shown to be wrong-​headed.72 The problems came, in many cases, from a particular intersection, a double opposition whereby the combinations of parametric instructions, as will be shown below, sometimes generated results which were, traditionally speaking, ineffective or at odds with what the page seemed to say the results ought to be; and wherein, as Frank Rehak described it, ‘the classically-​trained guys were so imbued with getting the pure sounds out of their instruments that they 71 

George Brecht, Chance Imagery (New York, NY: Something Else, 1966 [1957]), 2.

72 Beal, New Music, New Allies, 101.

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couldn’t break away from it. We were at the Circle in the Square in Greenwich Village, and they realised what he was trying to do and got very loose, and understood that we weren’t supposed to sound good by puritanical standards, that we were trying to get some new sounds.’73 Indeterminacy in this sense is not simply a working through of the various options and freedoms afforded to performers, but is also a result of the inherent instability and unpredictability of the sounds themselves, an unpredictability often redoubled by the superimposition of one technical parameter atop another, causing players to have to make decisions about how to consolidate or reconcile the multiple properties and priorities of any specific event. Rehak’s recollection was that Cage directed their session and, indeed, caused Rehak to expand his armoury, though as noted in Chapter 1, there is also the tell-​tale Teagarden water glass trick, which Cage can hardly have invented himself and must, surely, have come from a player like Rehak, familiar with the broader spread of jazz techniques. Nevertheless, according to Rehak, Cage started fooling around with my horn, saying ‘what happens if you play with the spit valve open, and what happens if you play without a mouthpiece, and what happens if you just play with the mouthpiece alone? What happens if you take this piece of the back end, and what happens if you play it without the bell? What happens if you play it without the slide?’ He gave me all these ideas about totally different sounds. And I became hooked.74

One imagines that Rehak may have exaggerated the novel ideas Cage provided him a little—​he surely already knew the answers to many of these ‘what if ’ questions (after all, the water glass technique involved playing without the bell)—​but it is plausible that he may have been less convinced, without Cage’s example, of their more general musical validity, beyond being more or less flashy gimmicks. In any case, in this light it is hard to view the sounds of the individual solos as so neutral as the process which ordered them might suggest: they are portraits of the musicians Cage worked with, if portraits the features of which have been systematically reordered with no interest for the ways in which they ‘ought’ to fit together, a little like the sort of family portrait one might find in Rauschenberg’s Charlene (1954), in which highly personal materials are geometrically composed according to a ‘loose, gridlike arrangement’.75 Frank Rehak, ‘A Call from Cage’, YLEM, vol. 18, no. 10 (September–​October 1998), 4. 74 Ibid. 75  Branden W. Joseph, Random Order:  Robert Rauschenberg and the Neo-​ Avant-​Garde (Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press, 2003), 141. 73 

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Cage himself recalled that he had developed the notation for the instrumental solos ‘with the players themselves, so the notation was not strange to them, but arose out of our conversations. [ . . . ] [W]‌hen I made the notation, it was made with people who knew its meaning. Since then, the ambiguity that you speak of is certainly present, and sometimes it works and sometimes it doesn’t. But that’s true of any notation’.76 However, in truth, there is relatively little in terms of what the notations—​viewed as instructions for actions—​ ask that is ambiguous. However, what is sometimes unclear—​indeed sometimes wholly perplexing—​is the relationship between the instructions and the expected sonic results, especially where a particular combination of instructions seems to lead to a result which might, in conventional terms, be felt to be ‘unsuccessful’ or, for that matter, not clearly differentiated from other sonic results, particularly ones which could be achieved more simply.

Changes

A feature of almost all the instrumental parts—​the exception being the Solo for Sliding Trombone—​is a kind of change between or upon instruments, indicated by a thick vertical line, which itself maps the range of the instrument: the line ends at the position of the E below the bass staff for the double bass, say, while the line for the violoncello ends where a C would be written. The most seemingly extreme shift is demanded—​and is indicated in the title of—​the Solo for Bassoon and Baryton Saxophone, a shift between radically different fingering systems, mouthpieces, and, indeed, clefs. That said, so far as much is known about him at all, the performer at the premiere, Sy Schwartzberg, appears to have been a session musician and jazz bassoonist, for whom the switch between bassoon and saxophone may well have been much more familiar, appearing as it does in, for instance, the fifth reed part in Kiss Me, Kate (1948), Gentlemen Prefer Blondes (1949), and The Pajama Game (1955). Extreme in a different fashion is the demand that the trumpeter move between five different instruments, in E-​flat, F, D, C, and B-​flat, though Cage does not state which of the two potential F trumpets—​sopranino or alto—​is intended. Less obviously extreme—​for the non-​tubist—​is the motion between the highest and lowest members of the tuba family, those in F and B-​flat, although that change of instrument happens only once in the part, quite near the beginning, such that the majority of the Solo for Tuba is played on the lower instrument. More conventionally, the flute player moves between the standard

76 William

Duckworth, ‘Anything I Say Will Be Misunderstood: An Interview with John Cage’, in Richard Fleming and William Duckworth (eds.), John Cage at Seventy-​Five (London: Associated University Press, 1989), 24–​25.

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C flute, the piccolo and the alto flute, while the clarinettist’s alteration is wholly unconventional: Cage asks for a change of reed on each appearance of the vertical line, though perhaps in recognition of the fact that the change would create little sonic difference, while proving genuinely inconvenient for the player, he says that this change is optional. The string solos all, bass included, use this notation to indicate a change in the tuning of one or more of the strings: a flat or a sharp immediately preceding one of the vertical lines indicates a flattening or sharpening of the string by ‘any amount of tension’ with whose standard tuning the accidental is aligned. A natural sign denotes the return of the string to ‘normal (approx.) tension’. Both this approximation and the insistence that the change of tension may be of any degree suggest that Cage may well have had in mind microtonal as well as diatonic scordatura. There is no point at which an indication to sharpen or flatten a string is not succeeded by an indication to return it to its normal tuning, reinforcing the sense that Cage composed the pages of each of the instrumental solos in sequence and, by extension, that although Cage suggests a performer might play any selection from a particular solo, he probably anticipated the order of pages remaining the same in order to make sense of these changes in instrumentation and scordatura. At any rate, it is useful to make such decisions in the knowledge that there is an apparent underlying logic to the parts which is sequential and that by discarding that one could, in theory at least, generate impossible demands, like that of the saxophone being required to play the bassoon’s motor sound, mentioned earlier, challenges unsurmountable without some adaptation to the score not anticipated in Cage’s instructions. As mentioned, only one part does not feature these vertical lines: the Solo for Sliding Trombone. That is not, however, to say that it does not feature instrumental modifications. In fact, it probably features more such adaptations than any of the other parts or, at least, a greater variety of them. These are indicated by text rather than lines in the score, and this difference in practice leads to an ambiguity as to whether, for instance, ‘tuning slide out’, ‘slide disconnected’, or ‘without bell in jar’ ought to be read as actions to be undertaken in and of themselves or more like what happens in the other parts, such that these indicate a change of instrumental state to apply to the succeeding pitch(es). There is no indication to return to a normal state, further confusing matters: the trombonist is required to follow the direction ‘tuning slide out’ three times on the first page of the part, with no indication that it is ever to be replaced. Whichever reading is taken, the actions demanded of the trombonist represent extreme points on a continuum of physical actions asked of the performers: string players are asked to change mutes, sometimes in rapid succession, wind and brass players to remove and play mouthpieces, and it is perfectly possible that many of the decisions a pianist might take to realise

Interpreting the Concert for Piano and Orchestra  :  313

their part would result in similarly ‘theatrical’ activities. As noted earlier, Cage had long regarded his interest in theatre to be something which distinguished him from his contemporaries and peers and, though an obvious starting point for such an explicit consideration of stage choreography would be Water Music, the period around the Concert for Piano and Orchestra showed an explicit revival of interest, as seen in Music Walk and Water Walk, whose titles clearly signal their relationships as a sort of trilogy with the earlier piece. More literally, and perhaps even more pertinently, the premiere of Theatre Piece included Don Butterfield on tuba and Frank Rehak on trombone, who had both played in the premiere performance and the subsequent two at the Village Vanguard, as well as Arline Carmen, who had premiered Solo for Voice 1 on the latter occasion. Carmen seems principally to have delivered parts of her operatic repertoire and a rendering of W. C. Handy’s ‘St. Louis Blues’ (1914), but, according to Tudor’s recollection, Butterfield and Rehak ‘were probably using the score of the Concert for Piano and Orchestra because they had already done it, so that was material that they had, and John worked with those guys to actually make the parts for that.’77 Not long afterwards, Michael Kirby noted that, in Cage’s music more generally, ‘how the sound is produced becomes as significant a part of the experience as the quality of the sound itself ’, a claim that is, at the very least, prefigured in the experience of watching, as well as hearing, the Concert for Piano and Orchestra,78 an aspect only highlighted in performance where it is possible to deliver on Cage’s suggestion that ‘for audible and visual clarity, the players are separated in space as much as is convenient’, as the programme note for the premiere performance had it. Though the Town Hall stage did not allow for any very significant use of the space, by the time of the Austrian premiere on 15 November 1959, the reviewer for the Neues Österreich—​who may, though unsigned, have been Hermann Ullrich—​complained that there was practically no-​one on the stage. One looked for musicians there in vain. Some were sitting in the gallery, some in the stalls, scattered far and wide across the whole hall, the audience members around them, who no longer knew in which direction they should orient their ears.79

It is in connection directly with his note that a ‘dominant aspect of Cage’s thought has been his concern with the environmental or directional aspects David Tudor, quoted in Fetterman, John Cage’s Theatre Pieces, 110. Michael Kirby, ‘The New Theatre’, Tulane Drama Review, vol. 10, no. 2 (Winter 1965), 25. 79 [unsigned author], ‘Tumulte im Mozart-​ Saal des Konzerthauses:  Musiker saßen im Publikum, Reindl, Wecker und Türen spielten mit—​Ein Konzert der “reihe” führte zu Demonstrationen—​Klavierkonzert von Cage: mehr Sensation als Musik’, Neues Österreich, 21 November 1959. 77 

78 

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of performance’ that Kirby comments that, in happenings, ‘[s]‌pectators are frequently placed in unconventional seating arrangements so that a performance element which is close to some is far from others and stimuli reach the observer from many different directions’.80 It is clear that, in Kirby’s mind, much of this work is already presaged in the theatrical elements of pieces like the Concert for Piano and Orchestra. Cage, Kirby would aver, ‘is the backbone of the new theatre’.81

Noises

While these changes naturally have sonic consequences, the basic way in which the sounding materials of the Concert are expanded is represented through noteheads—​like the others in the piece, small, medium, and large—​above or below the staff, and connected to it with a stem, which indicate noises, broadly understood in the same sense and in the same manner as those which appear in Music for Piano from the twenty-​first piece in the sequence, though with different and varying degrees of specifics according to the particular instrument. Across the solos for stringed instruments, noises are always notated below the staff, reflecting the comparatively limited range into which any of the strings can extend below the staff and, equally, the much greater pitch space available above it. No instructions for interpretation of these noises appear alongside the notations, but Cage’s prefatory notes state that they indicate ‘noises to be produced on the box of the violin (by percussion or friction) or on any auxiliary sound producing means (e.g. percussion, mechanical, electrical, wind means, etc.)’. As well as the anticipated tapping or bowing on various parts of the instrumental body (Virgil Thomson described ‘a violist sawing away across his knees’ at the premiere),82 the possibility of utilising auxiliary devices to produce a wider range of noises might be thought to be a response to the relatively limited potential for making louder noises available on the upper strings through percussion or friction, at least without causing damage to the instrument, but the same option is found in all of the other instrumental solos save, curiously, those for clarinet and tuba. This last characteristic—​that a particular element is shared or shared in part across many, but not all, of the instrumental parts—​is a recurrent one, and gives rise to the sense that the solos operate in a sort of matrix or network of more or less familial relationships: it is clear that the parts are closely related to one

80 

Kirby, ‘The New Theatre’, 30. Ibid., 24. 82 Virgil Thomson, ‘John Cage Late and Early’, Saturday Review, 30 January 1960 (source: GAAAP). 81 

Interpreting the Concert for Piano and Orchestra  :  315

another, that they exhibit strong and recognisable similarities, but that they simultaneously have their own independent existences, their own lives. Such a distinction may be seen in that, in the Solo for Trumpet, as in the string parts, Cage allows latitude to the player to choose from a range of options, writing that the player ‘may decide these noise elements and write in his own directions’. By contrast, in the trombone and flute parts, Cage inserts directions into the score, alongside each indication of a noise in the score, even while stressing in the prefatory notes that these are simply suggestions: ‘These are all free elements which the player may choose’, he tells the flautist, instructing the trombonist that ‘[t]‌hese are verbally indicated but may be exchanged for other noise elements freely chosen by the player.’ The Solo for Bassoon and Baryton Saxophone offers a more limited range of options in what Cage actually describes, but adds a gloss: ‘Furthermore any noises may be substituted here, the desire being for sounds of an extra-​musical character’. The Solo for Trumpet seems to expand upon this idea in the case of eleven of the twenty-​seven notes which ask for noise: these have a thick bar across their stem which indicates that ‘the sound produced should be more “unmusical” (noisy) than when uncrossed’. Of course, one eminently practical reason why such distinctions might appear would be that, on the basis of the work Cage had undertaken with each performer, this reflected what he expected would be most useful or helpful to them, or for that matter what he thought were the limitations of their individual capabilities. Whatever the reason, these resemblances and disparities are an integral part of the character of the various instrumental parts. In truth, though Cage defines the whole category as ‘noise’, what he describes ranges across quite a broad continuum, including a number of sounds which are less sonically noisy than some of the techniques required to play pitched material. Indeed one option provided within the Solo for Bass—​to interpret the noteheads which demand noise as ‘microtonal (up to a minor second) double stops’—​could perfectly well produce nothing other than pitched material. As it happens, the Solo for Bass is, even without this possibility, the least ostensibly noisy of all the instrumental parts, containing only thirteen noises, five of which appear on a single page, the fifth. At the opposite end of the spectrum is the Solo for Clarinet, in which (just) over a quarter of the total indicated sounds are noises, fifty-​three from a total of two-​hundred and eleven.83 Nevertheless, this simple statistical analysis is misleading, since the 83 

Excepting the bass part, noise elements make up between 15 and 25% of the sounds in each instrumental solo. The three wind instruments feature the highest proportions (as noted, a quarter of the sounds in the Solo for Clarinet are noises, while more than a fifth are in the Solo for Flute and the Solo for Bassoon and Baryton Saxophone) along with the Solo for Violin 3 which contains thirty-​two noises within what is, more

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clarinet part affords far more potentially pitched sounds, including ‘any high squeeks [sic]’, ‘any high tones played softly producing undertones’, ‘tremolos of any two tones within ranges indicated’, ‘the use of the upper of lower 1/​2 of the instrument with mouthpiece with free choice of tone or tones’, and ‘singing or gargling apart from or into the instrument’, this last comprising four distinct modes of production two of which result in clear pitch, one of which when disentangled might simply read: ‘sing’. This is related to the instruction in the Solo for Flute which asks for ‘singing associated with any tone or tones (any tremolo may be substituted here, also any other additional vocalising or throat sounds with or without the flute tones played’, one version of which might also result in nothing more complex than a sung pitch. Aside from this effective crossover with another instruction in another part, these sounds are unique to the clarinet part. In common with the other wind and brass parts, the clarinettist might also play the mouthpiece (substituted by the head joint in the Solo for Flute) alone, which is also likely to produce stable pitch content. The broader gamut of noises suggested by Cage run a wide range from the thuds and rattles of the flute’s key slaps and the trumpet and tuba’s valve clatter to ‘extremely high sounds (above E flat)’ on the trombone, from the employment of auxiliary instruments such as the flautist’s whistles or the trombonist’s conch shell to more abrasive or allusive sounds like the ‘motor sounds’ which appears on the bassoon, the brass rips long famous from the practice of Louis Armstrong, amongst others, ‘shouts or barks through the instrument with any accompany pitches’ (or, for the trombone, ‘barking, speaking or shouting into the instrument’), and ‘mouthpiece in bell’.84 These sounds in particular accentuate the perceived sense that improvisation is involved in the performance of the Concert, not least because it is here that players have the greatest flexibility in the decisions they make and are, in many cases, directly encouraged to be creative in their approaches.85 generally, one of the sparsest parts: it contains one-​hundred-​and-​forty-​three individual events, second only to one-​hundred and forty of the Solo for Tuba, but spread across sixteen, rather than twelve, pages. No individual page contains more noise than the ninth page of the Solo for Viola 2, which includes a total of fourteen noises, albeit within an already busy page of thirty-​five sounds. 84  This last, as Stuart Dempster has observed, could mean either (or both, albeit not simultaneously) playing with the mouthpiece into the bell, with the body of the instrument thus reversed so that the bell faces the player, or removing the bell section and inserting the mouthpiece in its place (Dempster, The Modern Trombone, 49). 85  Stuart Dempster recalled that, on the first occasion he played the Concert, during the 1964 Tudorfest, he ‘had various instruments in my quiver [ . . . ], including the garden hose’ (Dempster, ‘Interview’, 257). On another occasion, recalling the

Interpreting the Concert for Piano and Orchestra  :  317

Pitch

As noted, just as not all of those sounds notated as ‘noise’ are especially noisy in any sort of absolute sense, not all of those sounds which appear to be unambiguous pitches can be quite so clearly defined. Almost every pitch—​the number of exceptions is vanishingly small—​is accompanied by between one and six directions which colour the indicated pitch, which include: transformations of pitch which subsist throughout the articulation of the given sound, such as the use of harmonics; transformations of pitch which are variable across the duration of a given sound, such as the use of glissandi; physical manipulations of the sound, such as the use of mutes or the wood of the bow; instructions for changing the selected dynamic across the duration of a given sound; modes of articulation, such as tremolandi; and instrument-​specific techniques, like pizzicato. Each of these categories functions independently of the others, which is to say each may be ‘on’ or ‘off ’ without regard for the consequences for the others, in what Magnus Andersson describes as a practice of ‘severing the parameters’.86 Unsurprisingly, these combinations sometimes obfuscate one another, sometimes result in contradictions to be resolved, and sometimes generate unstable and unpredictable outcomes. Resolving the ensuing conflicts often involves performers in a complicated sequences of decisions, especially regarding which parameters—​if any—​to prioritise with each such event. Although Cage took care to understand pitch and register for each of the instruments—​ranges appearing for all the instruments used in his sketches—​ he did not undertake this entirely without error. For instance, although he correctly wrote down the lowest note of the standard piccolo as a D, the part reasonably regularly goes down to C-​sharp, C, and even B. The lowest of these remains impossible even with a foot extension, and suggests at least two things: first, that Cage wrote in the pitches before writing in changes of instrument (or, at least, specific changes of instrument); second, that he did not, having done this then re-​check whether the change of instrument would result in an impossibility.87 One reason for the latter might be simply pressure same performance, Dempster remembered that Loren Rush had ‘hit his five-​gallon water jug with the bass bow one too many times. An incredible shatter, and I made the mistake of turning around. There was Loren, with a look of utter disbelief.’ (Stuart Dempster, ‘Working with David Tudor and the Merce Cunningham Dance Company’, Musicworks, 73 (Spring 1999), 14.) 86  Magnus Andersson, ‘John Cage as meta-​ composer’, in William Brooks and Heike Vermeire (eds.), metaCage: Essays on and around Freeman Etudes, Fontana Mix, Aria (Leuven: Leuven University Press, 2009), 31–​32. 87  One might imagine that Andrew Lolya was able to procure a piccolo with a low C foot joint and that he had said he could lip down from there to the B. He appears

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of time: there seems little doubt, as suggested elsewhere, that once the premiere was moved from Cologne to New York and the date thus advanced by some four months, Cage had to accelerate the pace of his work on the instrumental parts enormously. Nevertheless, such slips are not entirely out of line with the ways in which parameters interact with one another in the parts more generally—​sometimes particular combinations throw up results which are seemingly impossible or ineffective, and a performer must make a decision what to do with that, a decision which might include rejection of course—​ and, moreover, they are in line with what seems to have been Cage’s principal need, which was to understand how many ledger lines would be necessary and, as such, where marked imperfections would actually be translatable into pitches. As with the pieces of the Music for Piano series, accidentals appear to have been determined by simple coin tosses, those too though sometimes creating impossibilities which are left uncorrected: one of the erroneous piccolo pitches only becomes so when a flat is added to a D, for instance. Yet no such errors appear in the string parts, where lowest strings determine lowest possible notes and where, too, notably, those notes appear often enough that it is at least statistically unlikely that a flat was never cast to appear alongside one of them. One must probably presume, finally, that what look like errors in this respect are errors and that, so far as he could, Cage endeavoured to prevent such mistakes arising. The reason why such an error occurs here is simply the apparent oddity from Cage’s perspective that members of the same family would have different ranges, though that such a mistake works its way into the part offers an interesting insight into some of Cage’s underpinning assumptions about instrumental resources. In general terms, clefs only appear where necessary: there are no clefs in the violin parts, nor the double bass, flute, trumpet, or tuba. There are also none in the Solo for Sliding Trombone, even though the tenor clef might have been used, while there are treble clefs, unnecessarily, through the Solo for Clarinet. The Solo for Violoncello also eschews tenor clef, moving between bass and treble, though the tenor clef does appear in the Solo for Bassoon and Baryton Saxophone. Curiously, changes between clef in the two viola parts seem to occur without any apparent regard for whether they are either helpful or necessary, suggesting that here at least there is pre-​determination at work. Much would presumably have been revealed regarding exactly how Cage went about determining clef changes or harmonics had a part of the sketch

to have performed the Schoenberg Wind Quintet, op.  26 (1924), which requires a piccolo which can go down so far as C, with the New Art Wind Quintet a few years earlier at Carnegie Recital Hall (as reported in the New York Herald Tribune on 28 January 1955).

Interpreting the Concert for Piano and Orchestra  :  319

material for the Solo for Violoncello survived: on the second system of the second page of the part, the final note requires a fingered F-​sharp, below the system, to create an artificial harmonic. Of course, this note, with this number of ledger lines would not be available on the instrument in the bass clef. The sketch materials seem to indicate that sounding notes were the ones which were the result of a paper imperfection, so here an imperfection on or around the top line of the system. If the casting for whether this pitch was to be taken as a harmonic or not was positive, then it would have been vital the part was, here, in the treble clef. Perhaps, of course, the stars simply aligned here—​a harmonic was demanded by one system and the part was already in treble clef—​and Cage was not even forced to make a decision. Perhaps there was a caveat in the system which insisted that no harmonics could be written in where they were impossible. In the absence of further sketch materials, how exactly Cage dealt with such quandaries remains a mystery. An example of where Cage surely must have had a rule, however, that said something like ‘in this circumstance, this parameter is available, but not otherwise’ may be seen in the Solo for Sliding Trombone, where the indication to play with the water key open is only appended to notes which are overtones of B-​flat, presuming that one reads the part in a bass clef throughout.88 That the sounding pitch and the marked imperfection are one and the same is emphasised, even if that did not seem clear from the sketch materials, by the fact that a particular range of higher notes in the string parts—​G-​ sharp5 to C-​sharp7 in the violins, C-​sharp5 to E6 in the violas, and C-​ sharp4 to E5 in the violoncello—​are always taken as artificial harmonics at the fourth: in short, if one of these notes were to appear by virtue of the marking of imperfections, it would have to be produced in this way. Of those pitches, then, which could be played as harmonics, somewhere between a tenth (in the Solo for Violoncello) and two-​fifths (in the Solo for Viola 1) actually are. In the former case, a high number of pitches fall into the upper range, however, where only artificial harmonics are possible, meaning that the total percentage of artificial harmonics in the Solo for Violoncello is very similar to the other string parts: roughly three-​fifths of those pitches which could be taken as artificial harmonics are.89 The three incomplete string sketches all feature artificial harmonics, both in the upper range and below, including the 88 This

is surely one good reason to presume that that is exactly what one was expected to do: the technical demands make sense in that situation in a way in which they would not if the part were read in whole or in part in the tenor clef. That said, the absence of a specified clef leaves the option open to a trombonist to read any note in any amenable clef. This is the only one of the parts where this option is, realistically, available to a performer. 89  The exception is the Solo for Violin 3, which is rather lower, at only half.

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least detailed of these sketches—​that for the putative Solo for Violin 6—​which contains markings only for pitches (including artificial harmonics) with their associated accidentals and for noises, but no markings for bowing, dynamics, pizzicato, bow position, or anything of the like. If this is representative of Cage’s process in general, which notes were to be artificial harmonics was determined very early on, with other parametric determinations later grafted atop them. Only a very tiny number of natural harmonics appear in the string parts—​ between one and three per part—​save the Solo for Bass, which features twenty-​ nine, almost three times as many as in the other parts combined. Though even with an essentially flat distribution, especially since this would necessarily interact with another parameter, which is to say the determination of pitches, it is of course possible that such a disparity could simply be what occurs, it adds to the sense that the Solo for Bass is something different from the other parts. Moreover, the Solo for Bass features artificial harmonics at the major and minor third, as well as at the fifth. It seems reasonably likely that the distribution charts used to create it are also sui generis. A final curiosity in the determination of pitch in the string parts may be found in that, in Solo for Violin 1, fifteen pitches are to be produced on specific strings, recalling Cage’s String Quartet in Four Parts and Six Melodies (both 1950). Were it not for the fact that the same technique appears in the Solo for Violin 3 and Solo for Viola 2, albeit to the tune of one and two instances respectively, one might presume that time or some other factor caused Cage to abandon making determinations of this parameters. It is also the case that, if for this parameter, a first casting of the I Ching determined the general likelihood for a part, followed by a further casting to determine whether an individual note would be so treated, one could imagine a single one of the string parts exhibiting a much higher likelihood than others, even if the results on the page still seem somewhat improbable. The technique may have been included in particular in Solo for Violin 1 in the knowledge that that part would be taken by Anahid Ajemian, who had certainly performed the Six Melodies, albeit at a private function, in the middle of 1951: Cage wrote to Tudor that ‘Anahid + I played the vn + pn. pieces at a party and practically no one liked them’.90 Given Cage’s general practice in developing the instrumental parts in dialogue with specific performers, it is not inconceivable that Ajemian had stressed that one of the things she specifically had liked about the Six Melodies was this aspect. By and large, there is little more unusual regarding decisions about range in the other instrumental parts, though one sees in the Solo for Sliding 90  John

Tudor, 12.

Cage to David Tudor, ca. early June 1951, in Iddon, John Cage and David

Interpreting the Concert for Piano and Orchestra  :  321

Trombone the extraordinarily low double pedal B-​flat, presumably the product of Rehak having demonstrated the possibility via an extremely slack embouchure to Cage, or, of course, having simply shown him a contrabass trombone which had two triggers, an increasingly common instrument in the post-​war era, making the note, if still hardly child’s play, at least a much more reasonable proposition.91

Preparations

In most of the instrumental solos—​they are absent only from the Solo for Flute and the Solo for Bassoon and Baryton Saxophone—​dotted lines appear underneath notes. In all of these, save the Solo for Tuba and the Solo for Clarinet, the dotted lines indicate the use of mutes. The Solo for Sliding Trombone is the most specific in its use of mutes, calling for five, which are indicated by means of numbers alongside the dotted lines in the score. Three mute types are determined by Cage: a plunger mute (given the number ‘2’), a hat mute (number ‘5’), and a mute which ‘produces a buzz’, suggesting that perhaps Cage expected a buzz-​wow mute, though he is not so specific (this mute is given the number ‘4’). The two other mutes (thus, numbers ‘1’ and ‘3’) are freely selected by the performer. About 45% of the sounds in the part are muted in some way, with numbers ‘3’ and ‘4’ predominating, while mutes ‘1’ and ‘5’ are rare, used on six and three occasions respectively. The Solo for Trumpet uses more mutes, six, but with less specificity: all decisions regarding mute types are to be made by the performer. Exactly the same principle is used in the Solo for Bass, but with only three mutes. The other string parts are then slightly more distant, in that there are no numbers and, as such, no expectation that there must be different types of mute, but Cage simply writes that ‘[i]‌f several different mutes are available, number them and use them to vary the sounds.’ Given that there are no numbers in the parts, one might presume that a player would then be at liberty to add such numbers, hinting that Cage would have expected that work to be undertaken on the model of the Solo for Bass or Solo for Trumpet though, of course, he does not turn such an insinuation into a diktat. As late as 1974, Bertram Turetzky said that he knew ‘of only one composer who has made use of the different timbres available from various mutes’, specifying precisely this deployment in the Concert for Piano and Orchestra.92 In the context of these broader uses of muting, the trombone is an outlier: the 91  Chilton

however insists not only that the instrument was Rehak’s standard tenor, but also that it was without a trigger mechanism (Non-​intentional Performance Practice, 40–​41). 92  Bertram Turetzky, The Contemporary Contrabass (Berkeley, CA:  University of California Press, 1974), 75.

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first and third violin parts, the second viola, and the trumpet use muting for around 30% of the given material—​albeit still rather a high percentage—​ while the first viola, the violoncello, and the bass are all around half that. The apparent neatness of percentages hovering around 15%, 30%, and 45% is, however, undermined by the Solo for Violin 2, which is muted for about a fifth of the time. Nevertheless, it is not impossible that these percentages do reflect some kind of pre-​determined weighting. What certainly does seem to be the case is that density of muting falls into a two-​page pattern—​such that, for instance, an odd-​numbered page with very few muted sounds on it is highly likely to be succeeded by an even-​numbered page wherein the muting is similarly sparse—​which is a reminder that the pages were, in their sketched layout composed in a condensed format, two pages of the published score to every single page of sketch. This is, perhaps unsurprisingly, a common feature across many of the determinations Cage made. The dotted lines recur in the Solo for Tuba and the Solo for Clarinet, but to different ends. In the former they indicate the removal of slides and, in the latter, the half-​depression of side keys. Both, then, are to do with altering the way in which air flows through the instrument. Both are also numbered, according to the same system described earlier, here according to a tripartite division, if in near-​parodic fashion in the case of the tuba. Here, the technique is used only five times, applying to a single note on each occasion from the total of one-​hundred and forty events in the part. More, the second slide is never removed: only the numbers ‘1’ and ‘3’ appear in the part. However, on each occasion a slide is removed, it is removed in connection with a note where the removal of that slide—​presuming the player has numbered them in conventional fashion, although Cage provides the player with the option not to—​will have an appreciable, audible effect, suggesting as seen elsewhere that, while many of the parameters which Cage determines function in a sort of binary way—​they are either on or off—​an additional caveat is added to the effect of ‘unless this will have no effect’, at least so far as Cage’s work in advance of the piece is capable of determining this. This last being said, the use of the dotted line in the Solo for Clarinet is, at first blush, perplexing. According to the letter of the score, a little more than a fifth of the given sounds require one or more of the right side keys to be half depressed, half of these occurrences requiring three side keys to be depressed simultaneously, the others divided between single keys and the pairings ‘1’ with ‘3’ and ‘2’ with ‘3’ (‘1’ with ‘2’ does not occur). For a modern clarinettist, this immediately provokes questions: for one thing, the clarinet is highly likely to have four rather than three side keys, requiring a determination of to which of these four keys the three numbers given by Cage should refer; for another, the mechanism is essentially a binary one, such that the key is either depressed or not. The difficulties do not end there, however: in almost all of the given instances, the

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resulting sound is a more-​or-​less coloured concert G, which seems at odds with Cage’s general interest in expanding so much as possible the timbral world of the ensemble. Perhaps worse, on a great many occasions, the requirement that side keys be depressed is physically impossible to fulfil if one is also to fulfil the other requirements of the notation. Impossibilities of this sort do exist to a greater or lesser extent in other parts, but here it is so pervasive as to be unproductive and almost certainly guaranteed to evoke frustration on behalf of a player at being asked to undertake multiple impossible things, the results of which tend to create pretty much the same results. In reality, the solution is, literally, a simple one: the piece is almost certainly not written for a Boehm-​system clarinet (nor for that matter an Oehler-​system one), but rather for an Albert-​or simple-​system clarinet. Though the clarinettist of the premiere, Albert Kaufman, is barely known of, save for his performance at the Twenty-​Five Year Retrospective Concert, one might presume, as a result, that he too came from a jazz background, in his case perhaps even a Dixieland background, recalling that the Albert-​system clarinet was in some ways synonymous with New Orleans. As Ellington later recalled of Sidney Bechet: ‘He had a wonderful clarinet tone—​all wood, a sound you don’t hear anymore. The New Orleans guys absorbed something down there with the Albert system.’93 In any case, on a clarinet of this type, the instructions become straightforward: a simple-​system clarinet has only three side keys and those keys can indeed be depressed half-​way without affecting a second key, a technique which causes the resulting pitches to be more unexpected and unpredictable, particularly in the upper registers of the instrument. Not only that but the part is no longer physically uncomfortable or, at points, impossible. The reduced keywork of the Albert system affords it greater flexibility where glissandi are concerned, a feature obviously of use in jazz repertoire, but also in the case of the Solo for Clarinet in which such pitch bends are a particular feature. All this suggests that the dotted line has a specific function across all the parts in which it is used, regardless of the shifts in what it practically demands: it specifies a change of timbre or, more specifically, a filtering of timbre, through mechanical means. These filters are applied to pre-​existing materials—​laid over, for instance, in the string parts even those noises which, as noted, can already find themselves drowned out by the significantly louder instruments around them—​but almost without exception with a genuine sensitivity to the contingencies of the specific instrument in hand. Duke Ellington, quoted in James Lincoln Collier, Jazz: The American Theme Song (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1993), 37. 93 

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Articulation

Though the various instrumental solos feature a welter of articulation types, as might be suspected from what has previously appeared, perhaps more significant are two general instructions which pertain to the whole piece. In the first case, though the exact phrasing fluctuates a little from part to part, ‘all sounds’, Cage insists, ‘are separate from one another in time, preceded by and followed by a silence (if only a short one)’. This is an essential part of the character, then, of the instrumental solos and, too, a wholly Cageian demand: each individual sound—​regardless of dynamic, duration, or the density of its surroundings—​is also an individual, discrete event and continuity, as such, is outlawed. The significance of this instruction is at its apogee in extremely dense passages—​even the idea of describing sections of one of the instrumental parts as passages is misleading—​where learned musical responses would almost insist on eliding one event with the next, to generate shape and phrase. The Solo for Bass, again exceptional, omits the parenthetical qualification of the general instruction and adds its own qualifier: ‘Exceptions may be made where sounds can be produced while an earlier sound is continuing’. One possible way of making such an instruction meaningful would be to take it that, for instance, pizzicati or harmonics which continue to resound on one string need not be stopped dead before a fresh attack is taken on another string, although if that fresh attack needed to be on the same string it would have first to be fully damped. Equally, as happens at the bottom of the fifth page, where two noises follow one another in relatively close proximity, if they were both to be produced via auxiliary devices, providing all the other determinations could be fulfilled, the first noise could overlap with the second. One sound should not, however, Cage insists, ‘move melodically to another’, which would mean that, at the bottom of the first page, though the glissando from the A-​ sharp at the beginning of the last system looks as though it is directed towards the succeeding E, the temptation to slur them together must be resisted. One wonders why the same clarification is not given in the Solo for Violoncello or Solo for Viola 1, in both of which—​on more than one occasion in the former—​a glissando line literally overlaps with the next event, a noise, as on the first event of the third line of the first page of the violoncello part. Naturally, in practical terms, in performance the events can be separated and, as outlined more fully below, Cage even adds a caveat about the length of glissandi to allow for just such a contingency. Another option would be to import the instruction for the Solo for Bass, though it feels in so many respects unlike the other string parts that one would surely do this with at least some caution. A different qualification is provided in the Solo for Bassoon and Baryton Saxophone, in which Cage literally states: ‘Exceptions: trills, tremolos’, which is

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analogous to instructions elsewhere, as in, for instance, the Solo for Clarinet, that ‘tones having duration may be expressed constantly or intermittently (trills, fast repeated tones, etc.)’ or, in the string parts, that ‘[n]‌otes given appreciable duration may be played constantly or intermittently (spicc., trills, etc.)’. One reading of this is a simple one: decoration of a note—​which might introduce other notes or repetitions of that note—​does not and should not prevent one thinking of that note as a single unit. An E with an upper mordant is still (just) an E. Yet the Solo for Bassoon and Baryton Saxophone offers a different reading, should a player choose to take it, in that the exception to the rule regarding the separation of notes might be found in the use of trills and tremolos, such that a note so decorated could, in this part only, be slurred into the next. The second of the two general instructions takes the form of words, in the parts for strings (including the double bass) and tuba, that ‘[a]‌ll tones are to be played non vibrato unless indicated otherwise’. For the tuba, this is shown simply by the abbreviation ‘vib.’ over a sixth, or thereabouts, of the pitches. By contrast the strings—​here not including the double bass—​use a wave-​like symbol which indicates speed of vibrato. The Solo for Bass uses the same symbol, but here to indicate width of vibrato. Across all string parts, there are four different versions of the vibrato symbol—​only two of which, the two simplest, appear in the Solo for Bass—​from a single crest and trough to four. Although the indication perfectly well could be applied to a plucked note, it never is, and, since this is the case across seven parts, wherein for the most part it applies to between 15% and 27% of bowed pitches, one must presume that a part of the process specifically prohibited the combination of vibrato and pizzicato.94 As was the case with the use of dotted lines, the distribution suggests that it was determined afresh for each page of sketch material, thus resulting in similar distributions across each pair of pages in the resulting part. That said, the proportion of sounds which require vibrato is so comparatively limited that this underpinning regularity would hardly be noticed even in a performance of just a single one of the string solos, using all the available pages. By contrast, the parts for flute, trumpet, trombone, and bassoon doubling saxophone all state that ‘[a]‌ll tones are to be played vibrato unless accompanied by the indication N.V.’,95 with an additional gloss in the case of the Solo Solo for Violin 2 is, again, an exception to this generality, with only about a tenth of its bowed notes requiring vibrato, which might suggest that that part received, for reasons unknown, a slightly different form of distribution. 95  To be precise, the Solo for Trumpet spells N.V. out as ‘non vib.’ The change is curious, but in line with the general sense that the instructions for the parts—​and the parts themselves—​function as a sort of network of lines that intersect. 94 The

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for Trombone that that vibrato might be ‘slide or lip or slide and lip’.96 Cage evidently at one point considered that this would be determined via a chart of some description—​one sees in the sketches two pages where the techniques, including no vibrato, are accorded the numbers six through to nine—​but this was evidently abandoned and, as with other similar pages, which often contain I Ching castings, it is not obvious how these divisions could have been used. The proportion of notes without vibrato to the remainder in these parts is broadly equivalent to the proportion of those with vibrato in the strings and tuba parts, suggesting that the same basic device was probably used in both cases. Curiously, in both the Solo for Trumpet and the Solo for Flute a single noise is also marked to be played without vibrato. Perhaps this is nothing more or less than an error—​though in the Solo for Flute the marking appears next to an ‘interval sound’, which is to say a multiphonic, such that the marking makes sense—​but, equally, it acts as a reminder that the barrier between pitch and noise is not always an absolutely one and suggests that, where a noise includes pitch, perhaps Cage’s ideal is that the pitched content is subject to the same general ideas about vibrato as any event which is regarded as a pitched one without qualification. The Solo for Clarinet includes no directives regarding vibrato. Instead—​at the equivalent place in the instructions—​appears the instruction that ‘[a]‌ll tones are to be played without tonguing unless accompanied by the indication, “T” ’. The Solo for Bassoon and Baryton Saxophone includes an equal and opposite instruction, though here in addition to directions regarding vibrato: ‘All tones are to be played with tongue [  .  .  .  ] unless accompanied by “No Tongue” ’. While the proportion of tongued to untongued notes in the latter is similar to the proportion of notes with and without vibrato—​there are seventeen notes without vibrato and eighteen untongued notes—​the ratio in the Solo for Clarinet is wholly different and must, presumably, have been undertaken differently in some way: here, almost half of the pitches are to be tongued. The distinction matches, of course, the impact of the techniques:  a note with vibrato is clearly distinct from one without, whatever the instrument, while the difference in clarinet sound between a tongued and untongued note, while palpable, is much more subtle and, since it applies only to the onset of a sound, it is also much more likely to be hidden in an ensemble context. Curiously, the Solo for Clarinet also includes the instruction ‘no attack’, though it is not entirely obvious how the clarinettist is, in practical terms, to distinguish this from an untongued note, even if the instruction evidently asks, psychologically, for a different attitude. The Solo for Sliding Trombone asks use of key vibrato in the Solo for Bassoon and Baryton Saxophone is a separate technique and, indeed, is combined with the instruction N.V. in the score. 96  The

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for around half of its pitched sounds to be articulated with a hard tongue, a soft tongue, or breath, these three modes near enough evenly distributed. Likewise, a little less than a fifth of the pitched sounds in the Solo for Bassoon and Baryton Saxophone receive one of the instructions: slap tongue, lip mute, or air tone.97 Again these three are pretty much equally distributed amongst the pitches to which they apply. An equivalent may be found in the slap key instruction in the Solo for Flute, which is applied to more or less a fifth of the sounds in the part—​including, here, noise sounds—​and is, as such, both an articulation for pitched sounds and a percussive noise elsewhere. These different proportions suggest that, while Cage must have used distribution charts for many, if not most, parameters in most parts, sometimes, as with the distribution of tonguing in the Solo for Clarinet (and, presumably, accidentals throughout) simple coin tosses. One might imagine that one reason was speed: if the Solo for Clarinet were one of the latest parts to be completed, Cage was surely coming very close to the date of the premiere. Yet it might equally well reflect choice. There is, after all, a good musical basis for thinking that one ought to treat vibrato as a sort of articulation with different parameters, characteristics, and effects from tonguing. Whether the change was the result of either of these considerations or some other possibility is hardly knowable.

Dynamics

In almost all of the parts, the issue of dynamic is yoked to the question of expressivity. More precisely, of course, what is in question is the fluctuation of dynamic, since whether a particular event is quiet or loud, or somewhere between those poles, is determined by the player on the basis of the size of a given notehead, or freely, if the notehead has been used to determine duration, as described earlier. As such, what is under discussion is Cage’s deployment of crescendo and diminuendo markings, which appear both individual and in combination, the latter laid atop the former. In almost all of the parts, Cage makes the link to expression explicit: ‘Crescendo and diminuendo marks are alone or combined. When combined, the player may make any combination of two of more of them (espressivo). The amount of cresc. or dim. is free in both intensity and duration.’ Only in the Solo for Bass and the Solo for Bassoon and Baryton Saxophone does the word ‘espressivo’ not appear, though the instruction is otherwise retained. The vast majority of notes across all of the

97 

Cage provides no useful gloss to explain what he means by lip mute, though presumably it must involve some sort of restriction of breath entering the instrument through the reed.

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instrumental parts receive one of these three types of marking and this is for the most part true of noises as well. In the string parts, save the Solo for Bass, noises are without dynamic indications. In the same string parts, as well as in the Solo for Trumpet, there is an additional qualifier, which is that ‘[t]‌he absence of these signs means constant dynamic’ or, as expressed in the Solo for Trumpet, ‘steady, unchanging dynamics’. Whether this might be taken to mean in any other part that the absence of such indications should be taken to have a different meaning is far from clear. Further glossing in the parts for trumpet and tuba suggests a relationship between dynamic and articulation—​that there is a particular point, one might think, where articulation in the Solo for Clarinet meets and touches dynamics in the Solo for Trumpet and the Solo for Tuba—​in that Cage allows either a crescendo or a combined hairpin to ‘be interpreted as a tone without attack (especially when soft in amplitude)’. Uniquely in the Solo for Flute dynamics—​about a quarter of those in the part—​are sometimes inked in, an addition which requires ‘pushing with the diaphragm at any point or points in the sounding of the tone’. Between 80% and 90% of sounds in the parts for wind and brass instruments have dynamics. The same is true for all bowed pitches in the string parts: as noted earlier noises do not have dynamics in these parts and nor, axiomatically, do pizzicati. One presumes that the same basic approach to distribution must have been applied to all parts, then. Nonetheless, as so often, there is one part which is an exception to this rule: in the Solo for Viola 2 only about 70% of bowed notes receive dynamics. These regular exceptions to rules occur with such consistency that one might almost wonder whether they were selected for, that for each rule that Cage applied one part was selected to do something different, even if only in minor fashion. This again would be in line with the way in which the regulations, as articulated in the instructions for each part, seem to have particular centres of gravity, or particular folds or knots, around which ideas coalesce, but which allow for differentiation and, indeed, for some threads to become disentangled. Similarly, though in general terms, diminuendi make up only 10–​15% of the dynamics in a part, in the Solo for Violin 2 this is the case for more than 25% of dynamics, in the Solo for Violin 1 the proportion approaches 30%, and in the Solo for Clarinet close to 40% of dynamics demand decays. The general pattern, too, is that whatever percentage may remain is more or less split equal between crescendi and the combined dynamic symbol, save in the Solo for Bass, where crescendi predominate. Given their different starting points with regard to the proportion of events which are given diminuendo markings, the two violin parts just mentioned weight crescendi and diminuendi equally, while the Solo for Clarinet has essentially equal proportions of diminuendi and combinations, such that crescendo are comparatively rare in this part. Notwithstanding such exceptions—​and regardless of how they arose in the compositional process—​the general weighting means

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that diminuendi are at least comparatively rare: the dynamic profile of the piece is, consistently, in the direction of expansion and projection.

Microtones

As well as being a noisy piece, the Concert for Piano and Orchestra is characterised by its microtonality. This pins it to its successor, Atlas Eclipticalis, too, but it is also another one of the ways in which a stark opposition is stressed between the piano and the rest of the ensemble: there are numerous ways in which a pianist might make decisions which would bring about microtonal results, but it would equally be possible to avoid them in the Solo for Piano. The instrumental parts provide no such options: all of them include instructions for microtonal adjustments and inflections of the indicated pitches, beyond the ways in which the scordatura of the string parts is likely to produce tunings other than the diatonic unless a player makes a very conscious, considered decision to prevent this happening. These are indicated through the use of what Cage calls ‘curves’ following notes, but which are probably better thought of as wavy lines, which indicate glissandi, and through arrows written above a pitch, for which Cage provides the following instruction: ‘An arrow going up means to slightly sharpen the tone as it continues, arrow going down to slightly flatten the tone as it continues, up and down, microtonal slides’. To make the latter distinct from the former, one might imagine thinking of the arrows as indicating microtonal pitch bends. Cage implies something of the sort in the instructions for the Solo for Sliding Trombone, where, perhaps in mind of the trombone’s greater apparent natural facility for slides, he expands the instruction to state that the arrows are ‘smaller microtonal slides’, smaller, that is, than the glissandi. The arrows are never applied to bowed sounds and, as such, are likely be rather less palpable, at least in an ensemble context. Given that they apply, in the string parts, only to pizzicati, which already comprise a minority of the string sounds—​as noted below between about a fifth and a quarter of the pitched material—​they are, by default, relatively rare in any case, almost always less than 5% of the total number of pitches, and regularly much less frequent even than that. The clarinet and tuba find themselves at the opposite end of the spectrum, a little less and a little more than 35% of their pitched material respectively is so treated. The instructions suggest that Cage discussed with performers what it would be possible for them to achieve, detailing the use of the lip for the trumpet, the bassoon and baritone saxophone, as well as for the clarinet. In the Solo for Clarinet, however, Cage is more specific, distinguishing between lip and finger modulation to achieve microtonal shifts in pitch: of the total of fifty-​three events which receive microtonal modification of this sort in the clarinet part, twenty involve finger modulation, of which fourteen also include

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lip modulation. In both the trumpet and tuba parts, Cage insists that any pitch bend be undertaken without the use of half-​valving, which would have made such modifications easier, although at the cost of a significant change in timbre which, on this occasion, Cage seemingly rejected. The number of instances of the different types of arrow is so relatively small as to make vanishing any certainty about how distribution charts may have been prepared, though it is difficult not to notice that a form of arrow which is marginal in most parts—​one which goes down and then back up—​represents almost half of the total instances of arrows in the Solo for Flute. For the most part, the simplest arrows, those which just point up or down, predominate, though in the case of the most flexible of instruments, the trombone, an arrow which goes up then down and then back up again appears twice, a form of arrow which can be found in no other part. The curves—​the wavy lines, which represent the other way in which microtonality is introduced—​take a near-​identical format across all the parts and appear to have been drawn freehand, although it is naturally also possible that they were the result of some other procedure that is concealed by their seemingly improvised character. It is possible to be at least reasonably certain that they were added to notes already inscribed, which is to say the position of which was already fixed. This is strongly suggested by the sketch for what would have been the Solo for Violin 6, which contains fully specified pitches and no such lines, but the parts themselves confirm this impression, since the curves occupy the space—​not necessarily all the space—​between the sound to which they are attached and the following sound. This is to say that, where space allows, Cage allow himself the freedom to have longer lines.98 The exceptions, just noted, may be found in the Solo for Violoncello or Solo for Viola 1, where glissandi overlap with indications of noises which follow in rapid succession and where there would have been insufficient space to insert a curve between pitch and noise. This too emphasises that such lines were only added after the noteheads were inscribed. Though the lengths of the curves—​and those points of overlap—​are suggestive on the page, Cage’s instructions, albeit ones absent from the parts for bass, bassoon and baritone saxophone, and tuba, explain that, ‘[t]‌hey do not refer to time-​length but only to direction in pitch’. The longer lines, then, might suggest, but do not require, an elongated glissando, which is not to say on the eleventh page of Solo for Violin 1, a curved line wraps round onto the next line. This occurs at precisely what would have been the midpoint of a single line in the sketch and thus Cage presumably copied it almost directly from those materials. Elsewhere, lines extend into the right margin rather than do this, perhaps most obviously on the eighth page of the Solo for Sliding Trombone or page eleven of the Solo for Trumpet, though less flamboyant examples can be found elsewhere. 98  Uniquely,

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that such an interpretation would be prohibited either. Simply, a longer such line could, in performance, be undertaken over a much shorter duration than a much shorter line, and vice versa, even if one implication of the parts just mentioned not receiving this addition might be that, there, one ought to consider that there is a stricter mapping between the space a line occupies on the page and its duration in performance. Equally, one might take it that, as in the Solo for Piano, ‘the absence of indications of any kind means freedom for the performer in that regard’. Perhaps this instruction is, above all, intended to explain situations such as those that arise in the Solo for Violoncello or Solo for Viola 1, so that a performer knows that the overlap on the page need not—​ indeed should not—​be taken to mean what it appears to mean, even though the instructions of the Solo for Bass make a very particular sort of overlap conceivable. Here, the Solo for Tuba is the exceptional part: only seven of the wavy lines appear, comprising a mere twentieth of its events. Otherwise, the glissandi tend to apply to between 15% and 20% of the events of a part. Though the Solo for Violin 3 and the Solo for Viola 1 initially look they are outliers too, if not on the scale of the tuba part, both around a tenth of the events, it is worth noting that in the case of the strings, these lines are the opposite of the arrows, in that they are only applied to bowed sounds. When so analysed, the ratios naturally change, in that between about 15% and 30% of bowed sounds are followed by a curve. Exactly what the general parameters were, however, is not obvious: the curved lines apply only to pitched notes in the Solo for Trumpet and the Solo for Tuba, though because they are such a rare occurrence in the latter case, it hardly makes sense to generalise too much from it. Yet, the Solo for Sliding Trombone includes a noise sound—​a sound to be produced with the mouthpiece in the bell—​which requires a glissando, while the same happens twice in the Solo for Flute, both of these ‘noises’ including singing. It is conceivable, then, that this is another case where the rule indicated that a glissando would not apply to noises, unless that noise were one where a glissando was possible. Though the Solo for Clarinet and the Solo for Bassoon and Baryton Saxophone feature a much more extensive use of glissando lines appended to noises, to most of the noises in the latter case, the specifics seem to favour such a hypothesis: in the former curves follow sounds made with the mouthpiece only or with the lower joint of the instrument, singing and gargling sound, interval sounds (which is to say multiphonics), and tremolos; in the latter case, the vast majority are for the baritone saxophone mouthpiece and neck only. Though the use of distribution charts seems as likely as it does for most other parameters, the fact that the rule for whether the parameter should be deployed at all has such a relatively far-​reaching caveat probably makes it more challenging here than elsewhere to recover any real sense of the sorts of distributions Cage deployed.

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Disruptions

In many respects, the simple combination of parameters which may exhibit contradictions with one another is already a mode of disrupting the ways in which instruments produce sounds, but there are, too, numerous rather more literal and direct disruptions of sound production, above all in the Solo for Clarinet and the Solo for Sliding Trombone, both of which include reconfiguration, sometimes extensive reconfiguration, of the instrument, applied above all to pitched events, though in some cases to noise events too. The clarinettist, for instance, is required to snap the fingernail against the reed on six occasions: this is indicated with a cross notehead, but one which is written on the staff, sometimes including an accidental, suggesting that a particular pitch should be fingered at the same time the reed snap sounds. On three occasions, the clarinettist is asked to play without the mouthpiece, utilising trumpet embouchure—​a seeming reversal of the instruction elsewhere to use only the mouthpiece—​which transforms the clarinet into an instrument a little more like the cornetto.99 A fifth of the events in the Solo for Clarinet are undertaken with the thumbhole open or the register key depressed, both of which destabilise both pitch and timbre in unpredictable, if relatively limited, ways, while the three brass instruments are required to play with the water valve open or, in the case of the trumpet and tuba, at half valves, or both simultaneously. Such instructions accompany almost a third of the pitches in the Solo for Tuba. In general, the use of the water key on the trombone is another one of those cases where Cage’s set of instructions for himself must have included the additional requirement that a particular note be an overtone of B-​flat since, otherwise, it would be physically impossible both to reach the key and maintain the physical stability of the instrument. There is, however, an exception, which is doubtless revealing of the way in which Cage probably had set himself parametric instructions, but did not intuitively think of the physical realities of his requests: on the seventh page of the Solo for Sliding Trombone, Cage requires the water key to be opened while the buzz mute is applied. Chilton explains both the problem and a solution to it: Since the performer must use the left hand to hold the mute in the bell, the trombonist must first hold the trombone vertically resting it on the ground before inserting the mute with the left hand. The performer must then grasp the spit valve with the right hand, and lift the trombone in this way, bringing the mouthpiece to his or her lips.100

described by Philip Rehfeldt, New Directions for Clarinet, revised edition (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1994 [1977]), 78. 100 Chilton, Non-​intentional Performance Practice, 39. 99 As

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This does not, of course, necessarily account for the physical difficulties of achieving this piece of choreography in the context of a sequence of other events. If the instructions for dismantling the trombone described earlier are not regarded as more or less theatrical events but changes which, when undertaken, then apply to pitched and noise events, the sound of the instrument is radically altered and to a sixth of all the events in the Solo for Sliding Trombone. Of course, those actions will nonetheless remain theatrical ones in this event too: there are multiple points at which a mute is demanded but can produce no effect beyond a theatrical one, since the tuning slide has already been removed.101 Cage specifies that the trombonist, in an instruction which surely resonates with the other instrumental parts too, ‘make the action, not necessarily producing the pitch notated, but attempting to make a sound of that general range’. More generally, in many cases, endeavouring to produce the pitches that are indicated will result in a pitch that is different—​if often only slightly—​and, moreover, part of the process of making decisions about exactly how to respond to an instruction requires prioritising aspects of that instruction of another: here Cage specifically directs the trombonist to think that action trumps pitch. A similar sentiment is found in the Solo for Bassoon and Baryton Saxophone, where Cage suggests that ‘[i]‌f key vibrato is not possible of the note written, keep the key vibrato and change the note to another where key vibrato is possible’. The technique applies to a tenth of the pitched events in the part and, as such, this is hardly, potentially at least, an insignificant liberty to grant. A no less great freedom is available elsewhere in the part—​though always on the bassoon—​where tremolandi are to be undertaken between one fixed pitch and one freely chosen by the performer from a given, though often quite wide, range. The ninth page of the part features eleven such tremolandi so, here at least, a substantial portion of the pitch content of the page is left at the discretion of the bassoonist.

Other techniques

Though the preceding discussion has largely concerned itself with the generalities of Cage’s approach, stressing the ways in which certain techniques exhibit familial likenesses, even where the particulars of instrumental resource require rather different implementations, there are of course also matters where instrumental specificity is to the fore, as in the case of string pizzicato and bowing techniques and fluttertonguing and double or triple tonguing in the case of the winds and brass. Nevertheless, these essentially represent 101 

Ibid., 41.

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microcosms of the previous discussion, with the approach taken for the larger ensemble mapped onto the specifics of the smaller family of instruments. For instance, the average ratio of arco to pizzicato comes out at almost precisely 4:1, with the lowest proportion of pizzicati, about 12%, appearing in the Solo for Viola 1 and the highest, about 28%, in the Solo for Violin 2. Four types of pizzicato are used across the six string parts, including, here, the Solo for Bass: a normal pizzicato, one stopped against the fingerboard (presumably a standard snap pizzicato, one stopped against the fingernail (which would buzz or rattle), and ones noted earlier, which include a slide following the attack. The string parts contain a total of fifty of the first type, seventy-​nine of the second, seventy-​five of the third, and fifty of the fourth. Those numbers are such that one could quite easily imagine their being the result of a very simple distribution pattern, since the proportions come very near to reducing to 2:3:3:2, even if the distribution within the individual parts is rather less even. Such a possibility does allow for what would be otherwise implausible skews, such as the fact that of the sixty-​four pizzicati in the Solo for Bass, twenty-​four are of the normal type and, yet more complex, the part includes a form of pizzicato unused in any other part, which is again drawn from popular music, which is to say a slap pizzicato, as performed by, amongst many others, the Dixieland bassists, William Manuel Johnson, Steve Brown, or Pops Foster. Although in general the expectation of the preceding analyses is that fresh distribution charts were created for each double page—​and in most cases the ways in which particular events cluster across those double pages makes it impossible to think otherwise—​it is not impossible that some techniques utilised a much simpler approach like this, particularly if they are used to ‘qualify’ another technique. Equally, it is possible that average distributions like this one demonstrate some of the background functioning of Cage’s distributions, such that they would, here for instance, always be likely to ensure that on average 20% of pitches within a string part would be played pizzicato, but that on individual pairs of pages that distribution could be skewed more or less in one direction or another. Certainly, in the case of bowing, the distribution of sul tasto and sul ponticello playing is suggestive of the use of a coin toss, just, as noted earlier, one might think he had undertaken with clarinet tonguing, except in the case of the Solo for Bass, where sul tasto bowing takes place twice as often as sul ponticello. Similarly, the distribution of ordinary bowing to the total number of events would be very nearly precisely 50%, if one were able to exclude the Solo for Violoncello, where ordinary bowing represents, rather closer to a third of the total activity. All that can comfortably said is that Cage alternates between crini bowing and col legno tratto, with the former always in the ascendency by quite some margin, and that both these forms of bowing might be positioned over the fingerboard, over the bridge, or in between, creating an interior network of six possible bowing

Interpreting the Concert for Piano and Orchestra  :  335

positions. Even this simple summary is hampered by a unique occurrence in the Solo for Bass of a traditional tremolo, notated according to standard practice. These are relatively rare—​there are only eighteen in the part, less than a tenth of the bowed sounds—​but striking, not only because they do not appear in the other parts, but also because a third of them include an additional possibility which appears nowhere else, of moving between bowing positions, from ordinario to sul tasto on the first appearance, say, or from sul tasto to sul ponticello on the second. All of the wind and brass instruments, save the clarinet, feature notations for double and triple tonguing as well as trills. The Solo for Clarinet enables the appearance of the same techniques, but through the note in its instructions that ‘[t]‌ones having duration may be expressed constantly or intermittently (trills, fast repeated tones, etc.)’, a near repetition of the instruction in the string parts that ‘[n]otes given appreciable duration may be played constantly or intermittently (spicc., trills, etc.)’. Double and triple tonguing is indicated by two or three slanting lines above the note, as if indicating a measured tremolo but on the horizontal rather than vertical plane.102 Each of these markings is accompanied by indication of speed: slow, fast, rit., accel., rit.–​accel., or accel.–​rit. Moreover, they may be accompanied by a curve (described instead in some parts as a half-​circle), which indicates ‘a sustained sound before or after the tonguing’, according to whether the curve itself appears before or after the tonguing marking. About a tenth of pitched events receive one such indication but, though there is perhaps a slight favouring of double tonguing over triple, the numbers involved are not such that it is possible to establish any sorts of principles behind the distribution. Things are a little clearer with regard to the appearance of curves, in that approximately a quarter of tonguing markings have a curve after them, with the presence of a curve before the marking or the absence of a curve equally distributed amongst the remainder. Perhaps more notably, intentionally or not, these techniques are surely in many cases likely to force notes to be longer than might otherwise be the case, especially if one is obliged, for instance, to include a sustained sound followed by tonguing which must both accelerate and decelerate. Of course, this could be compressed into a short period of time, but the tendency must be, on average, to extend. Fluttertonguing, too, appears in all wind and brass parts, applied to around a fifth of all pitched notes. Unlike the other tonguing instructions, this includes the clarinet, which is also the same notation is used in both the Solo for Clarinet and the Solo for Bassoon and Baryton Saxophone to indicate actual tremolos, including what can surely only be a theoretical tremolando finger snap against the reed of the clarinet (although a sort of roll would perfectly possible, even if it would both be extremely quiet and far from a ‘snap’). 102  The

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only part where the technique is applied to noises, although only those noises where fluttertonguing is genuinely conceivable, as, say, on the ‘high squeek [sic]’. The Solo for Flute uniquely includes the instruction: ‘warble’. One might immediately think that this refers to a further jazz-​specific technique, but it seems instead to refer to a technique most familiar from Native American flutes and flute playing. Where any of the flautists Cage may have consulted, including Andrew Lolya or Albert Weatherly, may have come to know about the technique is impossible to say, but it is significant in the texture of the Solo for Flute: about half of the pitched sounds in the part are produced using either fluttertongue or warble though, since those events are pitched, what is intended cannot be quite the warble Clint Goss describes—​‘If you close all of the holes, and breathe into it with a steady breath pressure, the flute itself will begin to vibrate—​between two octaves. It’s not vibrato; the flute is oscillating between the lower and upper octave (or warbling)’—​though it is possible, through vibrato, to achieve a similar-​sounding result without all the holes of the instrument closed.103 Trills also form a standardised part of the texture of all woodwind and brass solos, save the clarinet. It seems likely that the speed indications available from the compositional point of view functioned in the same way as those for tonguing, but because trills are much rarer—​appearing no more than four times in a single part—​the total possible speed types do not appear in any one instrumental solo. Flats and sharps follow the word ‘trill’, suggesting a lower or upper trill, but without adding any greater pitch specificity. Though this sort of trill does not appear in the clarinet part, a single trill of a different kind does. On the seventh page of the Solo for Clarinet, there appears a F–​B-​flat dyad, with the marking ‘trill’ above it. One wonders whether Cage somehow managed to mark two imperfections which turned out to be too close to one another to be independent events and, rather than amend the process, turned the error into a virtue. Whatever the reason, this is a particularly peculiar event.

Clint Goss, quoted in Craig Harris, Heartbeat, Warble, and the Electric Powwow: American Indian Music (Norman, OK: University of Oklahoma Press, 2016), 28. 103 

chapter 6

Interpreting the Solo for Piano It is surely hard not to sympathise with Michael Pisaro’s assertation that the score of the Solo for Piano has ‘few rivals [ . . . ] in physical beauty’. 1 The sixty-​three pages of notations and their accompanying sheet of handwritten instructions are, themselves, the products of virtuoso draughtsmanship. There is no question that in these terms, though surely not only these, it was Cage’s most ambitious score to date, a tour de force of the most innovative graphic scoring methods imaginable at the time. Nevertheless, notwithstanding the fantasy and inventiveness of the visual appearance of the score, when the notations are read and realised in consort with the instructions, the sonic results are, in large part, notable for their comparative lack of diversity. Far from the invitation to improvisational caprice that might be imagined, the Solo for Piano tends to sound very much like a product of its time. In part, there are two very obvious reasons for this: first, the history of the Solo for Piano is seemingly ineluctably bound up with the performance practice of David Tudor, a situation true for the music of Cage in the 1950s in a way perhaps more completely than in any other musical collaboration; second, because the very foundations of the Solo for Piano precisely are two pieces, on the slightly longer view, contemporary with it, namely Music for Piano and Winter Music. As discussed in Chapter 4, however, while Tudor’s realisations are certainly of great significance, they include readings which are, by turns, brilliant, personal, idiomatic, perverse, misconceived, and fallacious. Cage would, one presumes, not have extended the liberties he did to any pianist other than Tudor, even presuming he was actually aware of the strategies Tudor adopted in any detail, which is far from certain. As Benjamin Piekut argues, ‘[w]‌ith Tudor at the keyboard, Cage accepts whatever will come, regardless of the consequences, but this is not a real acceptance—​he already knows that he will approve of what is to come’.2 As such, and in mind of the 1 

Pisaro, ‘Writing, Music’, 29. Experimentalism Otherwise, 57.

2 Piekut,

John Cage’s Concert for Piano and Orchestra. Martin Iddon and Philip Thomas, Oxford University Press (2020). © Oxford University Press. DOI: 10.1093/oso/9780190938475.001.0001

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detailed examination already made of Tudor’s various approaches to the Solo for Piano in Chapter 4, the examination in this chapter instead pushes Tudor to the side, considering instead the particular relationship the score has to its ‘parents’ and, in following the consequences of that relationship, its central thrust is an examination of the freedoms and the limits of the piece in performance, through analysis of the graphic properties, characteristics, and interpretative means both of individual notations and of notations considered in larger groupings, which is to say families of notations. By extension, performance possibilities which are neither specifically ruled in nor ruled out by Cage’s instructions—​such as the use of electronics or amplification—​fall outside the scope of this analysis.

Repetition, variation, invention As well as what can be seen in the sketch materials for the Solo for Piano, discussed in Chapter 2, Cage made three specific references to the compositional process deployed in the piece, two of which emphasise, as noted in Chapter 1, that the initial thoughts derive from Schoenberg. In the last days of 1970, at some point between Christmas and New Year’s Day, interviewed by Daniel Charles, Cage described the process of writing the piece: I asked myself whether I should repeat a way of composing which I had already used, whether I should vary what I had done, or finally, whether I should innovate. I assigned a letter to each possibility. A second letter served when there was a varied repetition of a type of composition already elaborated. Different letters represented variations and innovations. Only repetitions kept the same letters. And they were nothing but repetitions of composing means, not repetitions of the music itself.3

Prompted by Charles, Cage confessed too that these repetitions of composing means resulted in what Schoenberg would still have termed variation. From this perspective, what changes when, for instance, the notation B of the first page reoccurs on the ninth is not the compositional means—​that is a repetition as Cage conceived of it—​but the particular instantiation on the page. Though Cage does not dwell on this, it is important that there are two different sorts of variation in the piece. Indeed, from one point of view, the very presence of the means of Music for Piano and Winter Music in this fresh context makes them, already, a sort of variation. As such, the paraphrase Cage made of the lesson he took from Schoenberg might also be reversed: even a repetition is a variation, with some things changed and some not.4 For Cage, though, 3  4 

Cage and Charles, For the Birds, 145. Cage and Retallack, Musicage, 176.

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conceptually the question of repetition and variation played out exclusively, it seems, on the level of compositional approach and not the results of those approaches. He expanded upon the point when he told Charles that he decided to apply that principle of variation and repetition, and then innovation and invention of new forms, to the entire work, that is, to the ways of composing. But as the work advanced, I was forced to invent more and more graphisms to solve my problems. It was all done by chance operations, to avoid slipping into uncontrolled improvisation. So, the arrangement of notations on a given page later appeared to convey a certain visual interest. Still, it was only the result of a certain work, and within that work, of my faithfulness in following through to the end the plan I had drawn up for myself, which was to apply, with the help of chance operations, Schoenberg’s distinctions.5

Five years later, Cage likened the compositional process to the one he undertook in composing Songbooks, in a letter to Jackson Mac Low:

In each case I outlined the work to be done in terms of repetition, variation, or introduction of new composing methods. Once some method had been introduced it became available for repetition of variation. (I used Schoenberg’s idea that a variation is a repetition with some things changed and others not; this is identical with your notion of ‘changing the rules slightly’.) This is a very stimulating way of working. There’s never a dull moment.6

Probably the most detailed exegesis was the one Cage gave to Retallack towards the end of his life, although the distance of almost thirty-​five years between undertaking the work and outlining it may account for the degree to which what Cage had to say in 1992 is at odds with the evidence of his sketch material. The Solo for Piano, he suggested, began with the assumption of two ways of writing music. One was Music for Piano, which is single notes [ . . . ] [a]‌nd the other one is not single notes, but is chords and is called Winter Music. So I took those as a and b—​as given. Then, assuming that there could be a variation for one of those, of either one, I made three possibilities: I called Music for Piano ‘one’, Winter Music ‘two’, and ‘three’ was a variation, first of one of them, and next of the other—​so we’d have one, two, three, four themes or variations. Then ‘five’ was the introduction of something that was not Music for Piano or Winter Music. In other words, something new. Schoenberg had taught me that music was repetition and variation. I wanted in this piece to state that there was a possibility of introducing something that was not a repetition. [ . . . ] So that

Cage and Charles, For the Birds, 159. Cage to Jackson Mac Low, February 9, 1975, in Kuhn (ed.), Selected Letters, 451. 5 

6 John

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makes one, two, three, four, five possibilities. Now, say you put in ‘five’, that is, you do put in something new. Then of course you have three things that are not new for a subsequent time, so it leaves room for still another possibility. But since chance can deal with any number of alternatives, I proceeded that way, and I don’t know the statistics of it, but repetition and variation did happen and the introduction of new things did happen and the piece continued until I elected to stop.7

Despite the slippage in specifics, the description Cage gave certainly matches the impression given by his sketches: each instance of a notation in the score is either a repetition of an earlier notation, a variation (or as Cage termed it in those sketches, a derivation) of an earlier notation, or a newly invented notation. At the beginning of the process, which is to say before anything has been inscribed within the score, the possibilities available for repetition or variation are the compositional means of Music for Piano and Winter Music. Once a new notation or a fresh variation is introduced, the notations available for further variation increase cumulatively and incrementally. In a certain sense, Cage’s approach is a formalisation, if on a different level, of the approach he had proposed to Morton Feldman: ‘He said that it’s a very good idea that after you write a little bit, stop and then copy it. Because while you’re copying it, you’re thinking about it, and it’s giving you ideas.’8 One might recall here, again, the eighteen-​page fragment which Cage may have prepared for Tudor in February 1958: whatever its primary purpose, it doubtless provided Cage with precisely that space to reflect. Notwithstanding Cage’s description above, the sketch material for the Solo for Piano does not suggest that any casting of the I Ching set its initial conditions. Indeed, on the contrary, as suggested in Chapter 2, the sketch material suggest that those conditions were specifically selected—​a mode of composition which produces points (Music for Piano or notation C), which produces chords (Winter Music or notation B), and something which is new (which is to say notation A)—​and only then did Cage use distribution charts to determine whether the next notation would be an invention, repetition, or variation (and, in the latter two cases, of what (see fig. 0.1)). The first determination was of a repetition of notation C and the second required a variation of notation B, which became notation D on the second page (see fig. 0.2). Cage’s materials give the lie to the implication in his discussion with Retallack that the selection was a one-​step process: determination of which notation would be subject to repetition or variation was clearly undertaken after the determination of whether it would be one of those two processes or innovation Cage and Retallack, Musicage, 296–​97. Morton Feldman, ‘Darmstadt Lecture, July 1984’, in Chris Villars (ed.), Morton Feldman Says: Selected Interviews and Lectures 1964–​1987 (London: Hyphen, 2006), 204. 7 

8 

Interpreting the Solo for Piano  :  341

which was called for. The notations were, presumably, subject to the additional requirement that they had to align to the structural determinations left over from Cage’s earlier plan for the piece, the putative ‘shadow concerto’, on the model of the Ten Thousand Things. No distribution charts exist which show how determinations were undertaken once more notations than the initial three were available, but in the absence of any evidence to the contrary and on the basis of the two charts which do exist, it seems most likely that a new pair of charts was created each time the score called for the insertion of another notation, rather than, say, a chart being created for each page. What is summarised here is the totality of the information available concerning the compositional process and, since this means that the relationship between notations B and D is the only relationship by variation for which there is such primary source material, it is a particularly important one, especially in assessing which elements of D are ones retained from B and which are new. Like B, notation D consists of aggregates of up to ten pitches, dyads, and a very occasional single note. Notation D does not, however, contain clusters as B does: this not a part of the variation as such, but rather a consequence of one of the elements of variation discussed below. In both notations, staves receive two clefs, each of which may stay the same or flip from treble to bass or vice versa. The different available spaces into which for the notations to fit mean that while, on the first appearance, the clefs are neatly aligned before the notes to which they pertain, on the latter two appearance of notation D each of the two staves has a single pair of clefs which persist throughout the instance of the notation. The appearance of the first instance suggests, at least, that the cramped space of the latter two is the cause and that this should be regarded as a necessary shorthand, rather than an additional variation. The fundamental principle, that all pitches in each event are read in either one clef or the other, according to a given proportion when those clefs are different, remains consistent. There are two differences of more significant kind which mark out the varied elements. First, notation D uses two staves as opposed to the single staff of notation B. One might imagine that this is really to do with the extra density of information presented in notation D, but in truth the first instance of the notation could have been condensed on to a single staff while later instances of notation B, such as that on page 9, could usefully have been split across two. The distinctions seem much more fundamental, regardless of practicality: they are a part of the identity as well as the properties of these notations. The second variation is more obvious, having an aural as well as a visual dimension, which is not to say that the physical aspects of the score do not have an impact on what a pianist does with it. Here, all events are to be arpeggiated across time, whereas in notation B, each event is to be performed as a single ictus. A system of arrows and numbers—​a further change to the

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appearance of the notation but, again, a consequence of variation rather than variation in itself—​indicates how this is to be undertaken (as is visible in fig. 0.2). The first event of D, for instance, which is a five-​note aggregate, is accorded the numbers ‘1, 1, 1, 2’, which indicates three single notes, followed by a dyad. The arrow which points upwards indicates that the pitches should be successively higher—​though where a dyad or a larger pitch group is demanded, only one of the pitches must be higher than the highest preceding pitch—​while the arrow pointing to the left indicates that the pitches should sound sooner than would be indicated implicitly by the notation. Arrows in the opposite direction have, thus, the opposite effect; those pointing inwards compress time or cause the arpeggiation to move towards a central point and vice versa. Notation D thus retains the indeterminacy of notation B—​in the sense that where different clefs precede an aggregate, a ratio determines how many pitches should be read in one clef and one in another—​but adds further indeterminacies in terms of the sequence of notes and their timing. One version of arpeggiation might be comparatively florid, while another could, even though splitting the notes of the given aggregate up, recombine those notes with one from other aggregates, turning the notation into a sort of grid. How possible this latter approach might feel is surely intertwined with how a pianist reads Cage’s indications that particular events should occur earlier, later, or at the point indicated, an instruction Cage leaves, one presumes deliberately, vague: the pianist might, for instance, keep all the events within the notional range specified by the notation in the score or, equally in keeping with the instructions, might displace an arpeggio which is to appear later by minutes, even tens of minutes. Notation D also, naturally, loses the cluster elements, which cannot be arpeggiated according to the numerical schema Cage provides, though curiously retains single notes, which cannot be arpeggiated at all. In what follows, these four functions—​retention, adaptation, addition, and deletion—​serve as both the analytical categories for judgements regarding whether a particular notation might be considered a variation or an invention. This basic framework makes it often relatively straightforward to identify whether a particular notation is a new one or a variation. Some, to be sure, can be assessed almost immediately through their visual appearance or through Cage’s instructions, which sometimes point to the relationships, this very fact surely suggesting that Cage had no particular desire to obscure these relationships, nor to set analytical puzzles: if the score has a riddle-​like aspect, it remains in the relationship between notation and performer; the challenges for the analyst are in part corollaries, in part collateral to this. Nonetheless, before considering any later notations, it is also useful to have a case study of what constitutes a ‘new’ notation, with the piece’s first notation, notation A, the ideal candidate. As described in Chapter 2, notation A consists of a closed biomorphic shape drawn freely upon a double staff,

Interpreting the Solo for Piano  :  343

around which a predetermined number of noteheads are, relatively evenly, inscribed. The staff is of the same type employed for notation C, which is to say that it allows for up to nine ledger lines above the lower staff and six below the upper staff. Though most occurrences of the notation are conventional in that the upper staff receives a treble clef and the lower a bass clef, this is not universal: the instance of the notation on page 49 reverses this convention, while both staves have a bass clef in the version on page 53. Presumably the process would also have allowed two treble clefs to have appeared, though no instance of notation A has this characteristic. The possibility that an upper staff might receive a bass clef or the lower a treble is a feature common to all of the first three notations within the Solo for Piano and, as such, is a point of commonality between a great many notations in the piece, although, as noted below, Cage does use it as a means of variation between two similar notations. Equally, the way in which Cage uses the intensification of imperfections into points and, then, noteheads and his approach to generating accidentals through coin tosses must be read as nothing more than a part of Cage’s technique: these are simply generalities within the piece as a whole and cannot form part of the grounds for determining whether a particular notation ought to be regarded as variation or innovation. The instructions for realisation require the pianist to read from any note around the shape, simultaneously clockwise and anticlockwise, the numbers in each direction determined by a ratio inscribed to the left of the notation. What marks notation A out as a new notation, then, is the way in which its method leads to a highly particular graphical identity—​a biomorphic shape with notes inscribed along its perimeter—​combined with the mode of realisation, which is to say that the notation is read around that perimeter, rather than left to right. Other than what are its essentially conventional aspects—​both the conventions of traditional music engraving and Cage’s own technical conventions—​notation A shares no common ground with either notation B or C. By contrast, a variation like notation N—​which appears just once, across pages 9 to 10—​retains the essential graphic and sounding properties of notation I, the first instance of which occurs between the fifth and eighth page: fixed pitches from a restricted gamut on a grand staff, notated as single notes, dyad or three-​note aggregates, with selections of notes consistently played pizzicato or muted, notating the lower note as a harmonic wherever a particular three-​note aggregate would otherwise be physically impossible. However, it deletes the slurs which indicate sustained tones, and adapts the way in which dynamics are applied, such that, where in notation I Cage asks for ‘reappearances of tones to be played as originally’, in notation N different dynamics are assigned to each event. Last, Cage adds indications for the use of the sostenuto pedal, in effect swapping the held notes indicated by slurs in notation I for notes to be sustained by the pedal in notation N (see fig. 6.1).

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(a)

(b)

Fig. 6.1:  Pages 9 and 10 of the Solo for Piano Similarly, notation Q can be seen to be a variation of notation M (fig. 6.1): it retains both the method of composition and the graphic elements of the earlier notation—​freehand lines mark out the paths of an implied four-​ voice counterpoint, if one which need not be sounded as such—​but changes the grand staff to a single staff, removes pedalling indications, and adds an indication of the passage of time, which has a significant consequence for how the notation must be played: the freehand lines enable the player to change direction where they intersect, forward or backwards, which, in notation M,

Interpreting the Solo for Piano  :  345

can extend the time the notation takes in total, but in notation Q must compress the space between sounding pitches in order to retain the fixed time scale. Notation AB is no less clearly a variation of notation Z (fig. 6.2), retaining that notation’s graphic elements—​both are comprised of triangles, with one side oriented vertically—​and the method of realisation—​the vertical side of the triangle indicates a cluster, with the opposite side indicating a single tone—​but in the earlier notation, the vertical side is consistently to the left,

(a)

(b)

Fig. 6.2:  Pages 19 and 20 of the Solo for Piano

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such that clusters always become single tones, whereas in the later notation not only can the vertical side of the triangle be at either the left or the right, it is also possible for two triangles to be elided, sharing this vertical side. Such resulting larger shapes are always also triangles, emphasising the retention of the graphical aspect of the notation. Dynamics, indicated by I Ching numbers, which is to say numbers between one and sixty-​four, assigned to both clusters and single pitches are held in common between the two notations, but the grand staff of notation Z is replaced by a single staff in notation AB. Curved lines—​smaller contours, rather than the longer arcs of, say, notations M or Q—​linking noteheads together, those noteheads marking changes in the direction of the contours (such that one imagines, here, that the noteheads were inscribed first) are a feature of both notations AF (fig. 6.2) and AH, the latter clearly a variation of the former. Notation AH makes use of a double staff with no clef indications, the upper staff indicating notes to be played in the right hand and the lower staff those to be taken by the left, while notation AF had placed all the notations onto a single staff, with clefs above and below the system both determining how the notation is to be read in terms of register and the hand which is to play it, clefs above the system being for the right hand and those below for the left. Notation AH also contains arrows, which indicate the order in which linked pitches ought to occur. The earlier notation contains no such indication, such that the pitches might be played simply left to right, or aggregated into single icti, or through the pianist adding arrows for direction. Though these relationships are paradigms of the process as a whole, relatively few notations exhibit such tidy correspondences to all the possible transformations which occur and, for the most part, fewer than four are deployed (though, since these are analytical, rather than compositional, categories, there is perhaps little reason for this to be especially surprising). What is certainly notable is in what close succession variation follows parent notation here. However Cage may have devised his process—​whether such proximities were intentionally favoured or not—​it is a reasonably common feature for sets of variations to cluster together:  whatever the reasons, the score for the Solo for Piano sees Cage reflecting on the propinquity, in the dual sense of adjacency and of kinship, of his notations. Two such clusters appear towards the latter portions of the score. Notation BH is the first of a sequence of variations on notation A, replacing notation A’s double staff with a single one with an indeterminate clef: the notation can be read in either treble or bass clef. Similarly, notation BK (fig. 6.3) varies notation A by adding additional smaller biomorphic shapes, which overlap with the larger shape, indicating the production of noises wherever intersections occur. The double staff of notation A also becomes a grand staff. Notation BN is a further variation in which, rather than one large biomorphic shape, there are four, the pianist being required to move around the complete set

Interpreting the Solo for Piano  :  347

Fig. 6.3:  Page 53 of the Solo for Piano separately, before arriving in the centre. One might imagine these notations to be too far distant from notation A for any sense of propinquity to make real sense: they appear between pages 49 and 51. However, these are also precisely the page ranges of the fifth appearance in the score of notation A: these variations are, in fact, always seen in relationship to their parent. A second cluster of variations begins with notation BB—​a version of the notation Cage also deployed in Variations I—​and is developed in differing ways in notations BJ, BV, and BW (fig. 6.3). These, too, occur in a rather limited page range: notation BB appears first across pages 45 and 46 and second (and last) on the fifty-​third page, notation BJ’s sole occurrence is between these two points, on the fiftieth page of the score, while the latter two notations appear more or less in consort with the second use of notation BB, entirely on the fifty-​ third page in the former case and spilling on to the succeeding page in the latter. Such proximities are not absolutes, however: the box which is so visually characteristic of notation P—​essentially the outer limits of a single staff are transformed into the perimeter lines of an elongated rectangle—​recurs in significantly later notations, which cannot but be variations of the earlier one: the first of these, notation BY, does nothing more than change what the vertical axis indicates—​from amplitude to pitch—​while the other, notation CA, adds three types of shading to indicate different means of producing sound (fig. 6.4). It should be noted that notations BJ and BY both also make use of this box notation and that CA is graphically distinct from the others,

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(a)

(b)

Fig. 6.4:  Pages 54 and 55 of the Solo for Piano in that although it clearly still is a box, the left-​and right-​hand lines of the rectangle have not been inscribed, bringing it back closer to being a staff once again. Another reading would perhaps suggest that two strands of variation become intertwined in this portion of the score in ways which make it impossible simply to disentangle them. The second half of the Solo for Piano, in broad terms, includes more notations in which the elements subject to variation are fewer and the

Interpreting the Solo for Piano  :  349

variations themselves simpler. Doubtless one conclusion that might be drawn from this is a simple one: it is difficult to maintain the same level of notational ingenuity over such a large scale. The difference between, say, notations Y and AQ is nothing more than the addition of dotted lines, requiring the pianist to play only sounds which appear above or below the dotted line (fig. 6.2). Notation AQ , then, is identical to its forebear, save that it includes a filter. Notation AT retains the crossing, angled lines of its parent notation, AE, which demarcate pitch areas within which specific numbers of notes are to be played within given units of time, but changes a single staff to a grand staff with changing clefs and, moreover, uses those lines to create a broken staff, though this disruption has no indicative effect, save precisely the graphical change it causes. Notation AU is a further part of the family which began with notations M and Q , mentioned above, but the only change it makes to its immediate antecedent is that different clefs precede each of the lines, thus causing ambiguity, in some cases, where notes intersect and could, thus, be read in two different clefs. Other variations are simpler yet: notation AV replaces the grand staff of notation AR and adds numbers to indicate dynamics; notation BF enacts a transformation upon notation W of similar degree to that undertaken between notations Z and AB, in that the triangles drawn between pitches in the earlier notation are supplemented by trapezoids, while notation BO is a different variation of W , which features the addition of time units like those first used in notation F, which change the relationship between space and time across the course of the notation. This is a further reminder that, although in some senses variation can be reasonably straightforward to track and is to a great degree linear, that in no way prevents the possibility of a sort of cross-​fertilisation from other notations, even though where that occurs it almost always plays a significantly more minor role than the more obvious transformation by variation. That said, though such variations may be clear and visible, the cases just mentioned demand only relatively minor changes on behalf of the pianist and, even if one knows the notations well, in performance can be practically impossible to distinguish between (a difficulty compounded, of course, by any of the many other decisions the pianist may have taken with regard to questions of ordering or combination of notations). One variation remains curious—​and near-​inexplicable unless one takes it as a private joke, a riff upon the idea that even a repetition is a variation—​in that the unique instance of notation AW is identical in all respects to notation AD (fig. 6.2), save that the braces which determine which parts of the staff are to be read in treble or bass clef, or which are ambiguous, are the other way around in the latter notation: bass follows treble, rather than the reverse. What the braces indicate is entirely unaltered by this change, however. The instructions for notation AW even simply tell the pianist to ‘[s]‌ee  AD’.

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New notations are, broadly speaking, relatively straightforward to identify, especially at the beginning and the end of the score: in the former case, there are fewer notations to be varied and, as such, innovation is comparatively straightforward to spot; in the latter, as noted above, the inventiveness of variation has tended to decrease making it, itself, more obvious, while there is also a great number of notations for which there is simply no precedent, self-​ evidently categorized, then, as new. During the early pages, particular graphic types are introduced which become recurrent features later on and, in some cases, such an integral part of the score that one need not always think that their presence means that they are a marker of variation. As well as the more obviously eccentric notations—​such as notation BT, which comprises an outline of two grand pianos, with points in a vertical column along the back of one and the front of the other, doubtless the inspiration for Cardew’s Memories of You (1964)—​grids, shapes, lines, numbers, and boxes, combine with the point, the notehead, to comprise the essential visual elements and graphical identity of the Solo for Piano. Even though in many cases notations are readily identifiable as new or as variations, there are others which might justifiably be read as belonging to either category. Ambiguity obtains regarding the degree to which any particular property of a notation—​its means of composition, presentation, or realisation—​can be said to derive from an earlier notation or whether the degree of change is sufficient to nudge it from variation to innovation, just as sometimes saying that a notation is a variation of one of the several earlier notations with which it shares characteristics, as in the instance noted above, wherein notation BJ borrows the box notation used in notation P (fig. 6.1) but transforms the meaning of the box, such that the notation can only be a variation of notation BB. At the same time, without imagining that BB is anything other than a new notation, one could conceive of it as being a generalisation of notation P, such that the way in which dynamic is determined is generalised to all parameters via the same means. Even new notations are not necessarily wholly without precedent, but the degree of innovation must be regarded as significant. Early on in the score, notation E retains only the biomorphic shape from notation A (figs. 0.1 and 0.2), distributing noteheads around the shape and, too, utilising varying clefs. There are multiple alterations: the double staff is replaced by a single staff, with clefs above and below and, more, there are multiple shapes, each of which receives a pair of clefs, just as in notation B, such that where clefs differ a note might be read in either clef. There are also, then, multiple additions, in that each notehead receives an upwards or a downwards stem, the sum of which are beamed together: the notation is read left to right, unlike A, and the stemming adds a further dimension in that an upward stem is to be played with the right hand and a downward stem with the left. All

Interpreting the Solo for Piano  :  351

this being undertaken, there is necessarily a deletion in that the ratio which precedes instances of notation A is unnecessary. One reading of this would surely be, not unreasonably, that such a large volume of changes and alterations is sufficient to view notation E as a new notation. Equally, one might argue that the graphic character—​the way the notation looks on the page—​the varied cleffing, the technique of taking two readings through the shape (the parameter of direction being simply replaced by hands), and, perhaps most tellingly, a tight interrelationship of composing means combine to suggest that it is more likely that notation E is a variant of notation A. The relationship is perhaps made clearer by an examination of what the composing means might have been and how alike this speculative version is to the means used for notation A shown in Chapter 2. The process for notation E might, then, be something a little like the following: 1. Cast number of shapes (1–​8); 2. Within a prescribed area (= single staff with nine ledger lines above and six ledger lines below) draw given number of biomorphic shapes; 3. Toss number of points on lines; inscribe; 4. Place staves; going round line insert sharps and flats; 5. Toss to assign clefs for each shape; 6. Toss to assign hands per note. Here, the first and last instructions are additions, the second is a variation (and a variation of very mild hue), while the remainder of the instructions are retained from notation A. Though it is hardly an exact science, the similarity seems sufficient to regard notation E as more likely to have been composed as a variation than as a new notation. Notation G features multiple shapes around which notes are evenly distributed, upon a double staff with varying clefs, numbers preceding the notation, and instructions for realisation which suggest a non-​linear reading, all features which are recognisable from notations A and E. If notation G is regarded as a variation of one of these, then the elements which have been altered can be straightforwardly enumerated: biomorphic shapes are replaced with circles (in a way, quite a minor change, since it might be thought of as a sort of normalisation or generalisation of the curves of the biomorphic shape), consistency of shape (all the circles are the same size across all instances of G), number of notes (all complete circles have twelve notes), and change of the function of the number, which now denotes how many of the given notes should be played. Arrows are added indicating beginning and ending points, though these in part serve the same function as the non-​linear reading of notation A. Further additions are a scale of dynamics

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aligned with each circle, linearly pinning dynamics to particular pitches which will not be performed in such linear fashion, and an additional instruction which frees the pianist from being obliged to sound the given pitches on the keyboard. Arguably, then, even with what is a considerable shift in graphic identity, there is good reason to regard notation G as a variation, even if it is hard to be certain whether it is a variation of notation A directly or mediated through notation E: it certainly has features drawn from both, as well as features which are common to both. Whether Cage meant it to be either or whether, from his perspective, it constituted a new notation is unknown and, in all likelihood, unknowable. Importantly, aspects of notation G recur in later notations which are assuredly not variations of it—​specifically the scale of dynamics and the number indicating how many sounds are to be made from a given set of possibilities—​suggesting that these techniques become part of the common pool, the vocabulary of the piece, compositional, notational, and practical, which may be reused in many different circumstances. In this context, an examination of notations K and T may usefully suggest where the limits of variation lie, which is to say at what point a notation must regarded as a new one, even if it may share some characteristics with others. Notation K (fig. 6.1) is probably one of the better known notations from the Solo for Piano, having featured on the front cover—​in a full-​colour version prepared by Edition Peters’ house artist Johanna Ribbelink—​of Robert Dunn’s 1962 catalogue of Cage’s music.9 The characteristics notation K shares with both notation A and notation G are that it comprises shapes with notes dispersed around the parameter—​these notes are inscribed as letter names rather than noteheads, perhaps a function of the super-​sized, double-​lined staff employed, a feature held in common with notation AI, another difficult case, which might, itself, be regarded as a new notation or as a variation of either G or K—​and instructions which imply a non-​linear realisation, stating ‘disregard time’, though, granted one could perhaps imagine other ways of following the instruction. The shapes, however, are convex polygons with between three and six sides. They are distributed in close to vertical alignment on a grand staff on the first two appearances of the notation, though on the third and last the alignment shifts into the horizontal plane, as the grand staff becomes a treble staff only, a decision taken in all likelihood to avoid notation K spilling over into the space already allocating to an instance of notation S below it. The instructions for performance ask the pianist to make a selection of only odd or even numbers of the given pitches, with the residue deployed as ‘graces or punctuations’. This last aspect resembles notation G, in the process of selection, and notations A and E in the way in which 9 

See Gillespie, ‘John Cage and Walter Hinrichsen’, 89.

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a binary decision is called for. Though the geometrical distinction is more than of a little significance—​no circles can tessellate on their own while some polygons can—​in the context of the score it would be difficult to argue that the move from biomorphic shape to circle is a more fundamental change than that from circle to polygon. Moreover, there are, as shown above, several other relations. If notation K is regarded as a variation of notation G—​a part of the larger family of notations which includes not just these two, but also notations A and E—​then notation AI must also be included as a part of that same grouping, the regular circles of notation G replaced by freehand circles with multiple chords drawn across them, intersecting at a point which is rarely quite the centre, looking rather like wheels with axles—​just as Cage describes them in his instructions—​which have been slightly bent out of shape. These lines join noteheads inscribed around the edge of the circle—​from two to five in number—​to a central notehead, the binary choices described above replaced here by a decision to play either the wheel or the axle normally on the keys, the remainder being taken as harmonics. The question of propinquity described above—​a notation which is varied not only necessarily has a strong family resemblance to its progenitor, it is also likely to appear in relatively close proximity to it in the score—​is true here too, if the family as a whole is imagined as starting to become available for variation: notation AI first appears on the twenty-​fourth page, while an instance of notation G comes to a close at the very end of page 22, though it should be stressed that such a description relies on the possibility of a sort of cross-​fertilisation within and between family members that Cage never described or even hinted was at play in the piece. Further variations of notation A which appear later in the score—​notations BH, BK, and BN—​have already been described above and there are other notations which clearly belong to this broad family of notations. Notation L, for instance, is self-​evidently a variation of notation E: it retains multiple biomorphic shapes with notes inscribed around the perimeter, specifications regarding which notes are to be taken by which hand, changing clefs, and is read from left to right. It differs from notation E in that it uses a double rather than a single staff, which eliminates the need to beam notes together to indicate which hands play which notes, and it adds the use of the ratios from notations B and D for reading changing clefs. The very tight relationship between notations E and L or between notations A and BH, say, surely throws into question whether less direct resemblances, such as those described between notations A or E and G, K, and AI, are truly sufficient to enable them to be regarded as ‘true’ variations, even if a broad familial resemblance can still be seen. This broad sense of families could be used to link notation T (fig. 6.5) to those just discussed: though it is assuredly more like them than it is any other potential forebear, it also exhibits quite a number of its own characteristics.

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Fig. 6.5:  Page 16 of the Solo for Piano It is made up of several biomorphic shapes—​more varied in form and dimensions than in previous appearances—​distributed across a grand staff, more or less filling it, enclosed within a box which circumscribes the available pitch space and, presumably, total duration. The box itself might be thought to come from a different family of notations, redolent as it is of notation P, even if its dimensions are rather different. Noteheads do not appear on the perimeters of these shapes but, instead, at their centres, recalling the axles of notation AI, discussed above, even though that notation had surely not been devised by the point Cage was considering notation T. What purpose, however, these noteheads serve is obvious neither from the notations itself, nor from Cage’s instructions: Cage has notated, according to his own description, ‘shapes with center points, to be audible as clusters, a single one changing in its course.’ Perhaps, then, there is a reversal of the process used in notation A: there the shape determined the inscription of noteheads, while here the inscription of a notehead as a centre point determined the drawing of a shape. In both cases, the compositional device is left on the page, but is unused in realising the notation. Of course, what the shape is then left to do—​to control the pitch range of mobile clusters—​is something wholly unanticipated in any of the previous uses of shapes in the piece. The numbers of notation G recur here, but not to determine a number of pitches since the shape has already taken that role; rather the numbers indicate a dynamic scale, an approach which will also, in turn, be generalised. Page 12, on which notation T first appears, also features notation G. The question probably

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rests in no small degree on whether one believes that the biomorphic shape has become part of the generic materials for the score as, in notation L, one might argue that the deployment of the ratios which seemed to be such an integral aspect of the Winter Music-​like materials have done, passing from that family of notations into general use. The final appearance of the biomorphic shapes within the score begins on the fifty-​fifth page, with notation CB (fig. 6.4), which features nested shapes suspended over a single bass staff with six ledger lines below and nine above, each shape containing a further two to four shapes, each allocated numbers from one to eight, which indicate the number of pitches to be played within the pitch areas circumscribed by the shape. If this is a further variation—​perhaps a variation of notation T—​it is nonetheless quite distant from it, both in terms of content and proximity to the most recent appearance of notation T in the score, which came to a close some thirteen pages earlier (though, to be sure, an instance of notation A can be seen on page 53). Notwithstanding the fertility of Cage’s invention, it is surely inevitable, and becomes more inevitable as the score develops, that individual notations might be seen to share properties with a number of otherwise apparently disparate notations. While notation T resembles notation A  in aspects of its graphic character, the usage of those shapes to delineate pitch range anticipates several subsequent notations, including the one which immediately follows in Cage’s alphabetical code, notation U, though its first appearance in the score is four pages later than the first appearance of notation T, the two intersected by a long appearance of notation S and one of the score’s three blank pages. Like notation T, notation U takes the form of a box with internal divisions laid out on a grand staff. The box here is, however, first divided up more or less equally into a three-​by-​three grid, the top portion of the grid encompassing the total space above the staff, the bottom portion the total space below. Four diagonals cut across the grid, dividing the six parts of it to the right into sixteen smaller, uneven portions, delineating a total of nineteen pitch areas. Here, rather than clusters, the numbers indicate the number of pitches to be sounded within the given space: this might be achieved through clusters, but could just as well be a sequence of single pitches, or anything in between. This aspect of the notation is prefigured in notation J, where numbers accompany diagonal lines between two pitches to indicate the number of tones which should sound in that space. In this sense, one could imagine notation U as a variation of notation J, undertaken in the light of notation T: notation J projected into the sort of space notation T occupies. Seductively, both notations J and U regularly ask for more pitches to be played than the pitch space contains, though simply repeating particular tones is of course the simple solution to the problem in both cases. Yet surely here it is more plausible to consider notation U as a new notation—​given

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that it takes only a single aspect from each of these possible predecessors and transforms essentially all other aspects—​but a new notation which draws upon aspects of the developing vocabulary for the piece as a whole. The grid and box notations themselves begin with notation P (fig. 6.1) (a box occupying the vertical space of a single staff, with the axis determining instead dynamic, filled with points which signify indeterminate noises) and continued especially in notation Y (in part an exploded version of P in that it is an eight-​row grid, each row now subject to the same control of dynamics as P, but with points signifying shifting and indeterminate pitch ranges) can be seen as notational types which not only produce variations and but also see aspects of the resources they propose shared much more generally. Notation AC, for instance, makes clear that the box of notation P should be seen as a sort of single-​staff substitute, presenting the box with open left and right ends and two internal horizontal divisions. One would happily describe it as a four-​line staff, since that is what it most resembles, were it not for the fact that each of the resulting three internal divisions has the same vertical relationship to dynamic as seen in notations P and Y and points within each row indicate noises, just as in P, except with greater specificity: the top row demands noise within the piano construction and the bottom row outwith it, with the central row given over to the use of auxiliary sound devices. In almost all respects, it is clear that this is a variation of notation P, but ‘unboxing’ the notation makes it resemble a four-​line staff in ways which surely feel potent for the reader, so much so that it becomes difficult to see this as so close to notation P as what one has to do with the notation would suggest. Of course, it is all too easy to be misled by the appearance of notations: the grid is surely the foundation of notation AL, in which no grid can be seen. Here, noteheads align on the horizontal plane with a column of eight numbers, from one to eight, at the far left of the notation, which represent a gamut of any eight pitches. The alignments are always accurate and, indeed, one could easily inscribe the rows which Cage has left invisible in the score. Notation AO represents another implied grid: it is a box with points inscribed, looking much like a version of notation P expanded out in the vertical dimension (which, in a sense, it is: if behind notation P there hides a single staff, behind notation AO there is a single staff with a complete set of ledger lines, nine above and six below, with the five of the staff line totalling twenty lines), though it adds horizontal lines to signify sustained sounds and vertical lines to indicate clusters. Cage’s instructions state that the vertical axis of the box represents frequency, demanding that it be divided into a minimum of twenty chromatic tones. The vertical dimension of the box is precisely two inches, meaning that if employing Cage’s minimum subdivision—​which is also the one which maps onto a staff format regularly used elsewhere in the score—​one can easily measure each unit of the graph according to tenths

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of an inch, an approach which clearly anticipates notation AY, described explicitly by Cage as ‘graph music’, wherein a tenth of an inch is equal to a time unit. Naturally, if one were to choose to employ a division other than twenty, the measurements may be less straightforward to measure, but the constellation of correspondences suggests strongly that twenty divisions was, precisely, what Cage himself measured. Again, though the relationship to notation P is obvious—​and one can imagine a case being made that notation AO is really a variation of it—​there are simultaneously a great many changes and innovations made. Notation AO is another that implicitly asks the question of how much need be changed before a notation constitutes an original one, how much need be retained for one truly to agree that ‘some things have been changed and not others’. One extreme of this argument would presumably insist that just as notation P leads on to AO, the same sequence of events leads to notation BB and the rest of that family which relates to the Variations I notations (indeed, the truly extreme position would surely argue that notation P finally gives rise to all of the Variations pieces, up to and including Variations VIII (1967)). The other end of the argument would suggest that variation can only truly be said to have been undertaken where one can see very clearly the direct continuation of certain elements, unmodified, and one can similarly observe more or less incremental change in a very limited number of other dimensions. Notation AO usefully demonstrates that this is not really an either/​or choice, however: certainly there are ways in which it could hardly have been written without the existence of notation P, but that does not mean that it can only be read as a variation of that notation, nor that the precedent really acts as a model for it. At most it suggests that what is meant by a ‘new’ notation is hardly absolute novelty. A useful example of precisely this may be found in the case of notation F (the beginning of which appears in fig. 0.2). This is a more-​or-​less fixed notation, the materials of which comprise three types of pitched material—​ single notes, dyads, and three-​note aggregates, a specific resource which will be seen again in notation I—​distributed in a fixed left-​to-​right relationship upon a double staff with conventional cleffing, treble above, bass below. What characterises notation F in particular is its relationship to time: above the staff are numbers indicating the passage of seconds in performing the notation which are, themselves, regularly spaced but which do not increase in equal intervals. The sequence runs 0, 3, 6, 9, 14, 18, 21, 23, 24, such that an initial regularity is then stretched before being incrementally shortened. At first glance, one might imagine that really this is a variation on the materials of notation C, which is to say of Music for Piano. Yet, though it resembles notation C, it has little in common with it: it adds dyads and three-​ note aggregates, as opposed to the exclusive use of single notes, and removes the possibility of muting or plucking strings. Conceivably, had notation F

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been repeated, the clefs deployed might not always have been arranged conventionally, but on the basis of the single example in the score, it also does not have the same flexibility in this respect seen in notation C. Last, but hardly least, the treatment of time is wholly different. Though its passage may not be regular in notation F, it is wholly fixed: the notation cannot take other than just shy of twenty-​four seconds (or, as Cage adds, other time units) to perform. Notation AM adopts a similar strategy with respect to time, if reversed: the space between dashes above and below the notation’s single staff always marks out the passage of the same amount of time, but the dashes themselves do not appear at regular intervals. However, the double staff of notation F is here a single staff, a staff which changes clef periodically, and the musical materials are, almost without exception, single sounds: there are three dyads from a total of fifty-​eight icti. This similarity, then, striking though it is, is surely not sufficient to prevent notation AM being regarded as a new notation. An even more conventional notation, AP, which occurs just once, between pages 28 and 29, and consists of five straightforward piano notes on a grand staff, two of which are staccato and three of which are sustained, must also be regarded as a new notation: all of the elements which make the notation up—​the grand staff, horizontal lines to denote sustained notes, single pitches—​can be found elsewhere in the Solo for Piano, but not in any combination which has any real similarity to this entirely straightforward, almost wholly fixed notation. Surprising though it might be that something so plain might—​indeed must—​be regarded as also new, even this is trumped by notation AS, a notation which presents itself on the page, and is described in Cage’s instructions as ‘a single note’ (fig. 6.4). The notation—​which demands an F-​sharp, notated in the bottom space of the treble clef—​is wholly unique in the context of the Solo for Piano, even if other F-​sharps might readily be found in other notations. It, too, is clearly ‘new’ by Cage’s definition of the term, and on the terms the piece sets for itself. One notation has the unique property of being able to be regarded as simultaneously a new notation and a repetition. Notation V, which makes its sole appearance on page 18, is unlike every other notation previously seen in the Solo for Piano, but it replicates the notation of the two prepared piano pieces from the Ten Thousand Things—​that is, 34′46.776″ for a pianist and 31′57.9864″ for a pianist—​almost completely. To be precise, it mirrors the former of these, using four concurrent lines (rather than the two of the shorter, and simpler, piece) of pitch material, made up of single notes, dyads, aggregates, and clusters, as well as noises, each sound having its own precise—​ and idiosyncratic—​notation for degree of force, vertical distance of attack, and speed of attack. This is the only example of Cage drawing literally on earlier material resources—​save Music for Piano and Winter Music—​in the Solo for Piano, although as discussed at several points in the present volume, there

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are other pieces, such as Variations I or For Paul Taylor and Anita Dencks which were composed contemporaneously and the notational resources of which are tightly intertwined with the Solo. Ambiguities aside, there are certainly either sixty-​two or sixty-​four repeated notations in the Solo for Piano—​depending on whether one regards the first instances of notations B and C as new or repetitions of Winter Music and Music for Piano respectively—​which means that there are eighty-​two or eighty-​ four notations which are either new or variations, such that about four-​ninths of all notations are repetitions. Earlier notations are repeated the most, unsurprisingly: they are available to be repeated for a significantly greater portion of the score’s span. Notations A and B are repeated on five occasions, notation M four times, and notations G, I, and O three times each. Notation AD is repeated twice, after which only one other notation is repeated more than once, notation BK also being repeated twice. Notation BX is the last notation to be repeated at all. Perhaps no less strikingly, of the eighty-​four notational types in the Solo for Piano, forty-​nine are never repeated, which is to say that almost 60% of notations appear once and once only. Of the eighty-​two (or eighty-​four) notations which represent the total set of variations and innovations (which is to say, simultaneously, the set of notation types, either excluding or including the Winter Music-​ and Music for Piano-​type materials), it should be clear from the above that a definitive categorisation of which fall into which subset is not truly practicable. Nevertheless, there are thirty-​one notations which can securely be placed into the category of variation and thirty-​seven or thirty-​nine which can safely be regarded as new (depending again on the categorisation of notations B and C, but including in both counts notation V, which is to say the notation derived from the Ten Thousand Things).10 According to this analysis, then, it is only in the cases of fourteen notations that it remains unclear whether the notation is a variation or a new type of notation, which is to say notations K, R, T, U, Z, AC, AE, AI, AM, BD, BE, BM, BS, and BU, the problematics of several of which have been specifically examined already. A relatively small subset of the notations, twenty-​four in total, are definitively subject to variation, while a further seven are possibly varied, a statistic which reflects the degree to which it is very rare to find a chain of variations which can be definitively pointed to as such: though notation A may give rise to notation E and then G, as already 10  The

notations belonging to the variation category are D, E, G, H, L, N, Q , S, AB, AD, AG, AH, AJ, AQ , AT, AU, AV, AW , AZ, BF, BH, BJ, BK, BN, BO, BR, BV, BW , BY, CA, and CF, while those belonging to the new category (in its larger version), then, are notations A, B, C, F, I, J, M, O, P, V, W , X, Y, AA, AF, AK, AL, AN, AO, AP, AR, AS, AX, AY, BA, BB, BC, BG, BI, BL, BP, BQ , BT, BX, BZ, CB, CC, CD, and CE.

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shown, it begins to become rapidly a question of interpretation as to whether one is willing to grant that any of these then, in turn, generates notations K or, for that matter, AI.11 A maximum of fifty-​three of the piece’s eighty-​four notation types could be new ones, then, and a maximum of forty-​five could be variations. This would mean that, allowing notations B and C to constitute new notations in this context, between 37 and 54% of notational types in the piece should be read as variations and between 46 and 63% as new. Even taking the largest possible figure for new notations, then, this analysis would suggest that Tudor’s categorisation, mentioned in Chapter 4, of what constituted a new notation was over generous, if perhaps only a little. Nevertheless, distributing the average of the notations which might be new or might be variations between the two categories—​and still counting notations B and C as new rather than repetitions—​the total count suggests simply that repetitions were most likely to occur (there would be, then, sixty-​two repetitions or 42%) and variations least (thirty-​eight, which is to say 26%) with a probable gentle bias in favour of innovation if Cage were called upon to do something other than repeat material he already had, 46 or 32% of cases falling into this category.

Notations within notations Though following what was, seemingly, Cage’s preferred reading of his approach to the Solo for Piano is instructive and illuminating, what that reading provides is also partial and, moreover, far from comprehensive in its explanatory power. As noted on several occasions above, though Cage’s own description stresses that his approach to innovation, variation, and repetition occurred on a notation-​to-​notation basis, it is equally clear, whether he intended this so specifically or not, that the individual elements within notations can be viewed too as isolated—​or certainly isolatable—​properties which are also subject to the same principles. Though Cage stressed the connection to Schoenberg above all, he could hardly have been unfamiliar with Ferruccio Busoni’s parallel—​if much more obviously, and explicitly, organicist—​argument  that [e]‌very motive [ . . . ] contains, like a seed, its life-​germ within itself. From the different plant-​seeds grow different families of plats, dissimilar in form, foliage, blossom, fruit, growth and color. 11  Those

notations which are assuredly subject to variation are A, B, C, E, F, I, J, M, P, Q , W , Y, Z, AD, AE, AF, AG, AM, AR, BB, BD, BE, BJ, and BZ, and to them it might be possible to add G, K, R, T, U, V, and BG.

Interpreting the Solo for Piano  :  361 Even each individual plant belonging to one and the same species assumes, in size, form and strength, a growth peculiar to itself. And so, in each motive, there lies the embryo of its fully developed form; each one must unfold itself differently, yet each obediently follows the law of eternal harmony.12

On its own, to be sure, the reference hardly seems to allow for the sort of intermingling of elements proposed here (and, of course, Busoni’s immediate frame of reference for the claim was a remark made by Vincent d’Indy regarding Beethoven). Yet Busoni’s description certainly seeks to describe ‘art imitating nature in the manner of her operation’, just as Cage had long insisted was his aim and, of course, one recalls the ways in which a nature which at first included forests and city streets slowly, in Cage’s descriptions, came to occlude the urban. One might, too, note that the instructions for notation BX (fig. 6.4)—​‘All at once like a moment of a plant’—​which suggest, at least, that the metaphor was at least sometimes on his mind during the compositional process, especially since that is no typographical error: it is a moment rather than a movement of a plant Cage asks for. Admittedly mixing Busoni’s and Schoenberg’s terms of reference, it is notable that the motive was an organisational principle a level below that of Gestalt for Schoenberg, which is to say, of course, that particular constellations of motives constitute Gestalten, just as particular arrangements of, say, clefs, staves, points, shapes, lines, arrows, numbers, grids, and boxes go to make up the individual notations of the Solo for Piano. Whatever the grounds for it, the particular ways in which these elements are deployed across the piece both transcend notations and are undertaken in ways which are functionally similar to them, emphasising further the matrix-​like nature of the score—​a character described in the case of the instrumental parts as fundamental to that part of the larger piece too—​as well as its rather curious self-​similarity, its uncanny organicism.

Clefs and staves

Each notation is assigned a size and type of staff which remains consistent in all iterations of a type of notation. Sixty-​three of the eighty-​four notational types make use of musical staves, which is to say that staves are used in the precisely three-​quarters of notations: in thirty-​six of these cases the staff height is 5mm and in twenty-​seven it is 10mm. The same measurements arise in several other notations which do not, apparently, make use of staff lines although, as noted earlier, in several cases it is clear that a staff of some Ferruccio Busoni, Sketch of a New Esthetic of Music, tr. Theodore Baker (New York, NY: Schirmer, 1911), 10–​11. 12 

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description is hidden behind the notation, even in the cases where that appears to have been of compositional significance rather than meaningful information for anyone seeking to realise the score. Specifically, notations P and AC have heights of 10mm, while notations Y, AQ , and BE utilise grid rows each of which measures 5mm in height. Multiple other notations have simple proportional relationships to these measurements: notation AC contains three rows, each 2.5mm in height; notation AL is, as described earlier, an invisible grid of eight rows, with a total height of 20mm, measurements precisely replicated in notation BD, where, however, the grid can be seen; notations BB and BV are rectangular boxes, with dimensions of 50mm by 15mm; notation BT—​ the outlines of two grand pianos—​has a height of 50mm. Other notations are in inches, including apparent subdivisions in tenths of an inch: notation AO is a box 2″ in height with instructions which suggest it should be divided into twenty equal parts; notation BS, too, is a grid or modified box 2″ tall; notations BJ and BY are boxes half an inch tall, while notation CC measures 3″ from top to bottom. These different scales are not pinned to variations of notations: notation BZ nests six modified 10mm staves atop one another, while its variation, notation CF, totals 3″, meaning that its subdivisions are instead each half an inch tall. Only a very small number of notations do not fall into these two categories: first, notation K, which features a double staff of very thick staff lines resulting in staves with the unique height of 37mm and, second, notations AI and AS, which utilise staves of not thick but double lines—​a sort of staff identical in appearance, if not in function, to that used by Harry Partch in his Seventeen Lyrics by Li Po (1930–​33)—​each of which is 1–​ 2mm in height, the resulting staff heights being 20mm and 16mm respectively, the spaces between staff lines being different in each case. One way or another, the vast majority of notations take 5mm or 10mm as a primary measurement and the number of exceptions is relatively small. There is but one inconsistency: notation AK has a staff height of 10mm on the first occasion it appears, between pages 25 and 26, but that is halved when the notation reappears on page 49, spilling over onto page 50. The explanation may be a simple one: the fiftieth page is one of the densest of the whole score, featuring the largest number of notations on a single page, and, positioned at the bottom of the page in a narrow strip below an instance of notation E, there is insufficient space for a staff height of 10mm and the size of the notation is thus proportionally reduced to fit. On the presumption that, whatever the details of the process Cage used, the left-​to-​right positions which a notation would occupy were pre-​determined—​suggested by the erased pencil marks at the top of the autograph, as described in Chapter 2, and of the ways in which, on the first occurrence of a notation, the spacing is almost always straightforwardly legible but on later occurrences it can be uncomfortably narrow—​and that a process like the one he described to Retallack determined which notation

Interpreting the Solo for Piano  :  363

would appear where, it is if anything surprising that more problems of the like do not occur in the score. Less consistent is the thickness of the lines used to draw the staves, which are for the vast majority of notations either simply thick or thin. Exclusively in the case of the 10mm high staves there is a small group of six notations (notations B, D, E, I, S, and T) which use both thick and thin staff lines. There is no obvious reason for this shift to have been made, nor for its restriction to these notations. Of those notations which make use of staves, thirty-​eight use a double staff and twenty-​five a single staff (that is, 60 and 40% of those notations); of the thirty-​eight double-​staff notations, two-​thirds (twenty-​five of them) use a grand staff, which is to say that a single ledger line, for middle C, divides the upper and lower staves, and the clefs are always by definition conventional. The remaining double-​staff notations have a greater distance between the two staves, allowing for as many as nine ledger lines above the lower staff and six below the upper staff, and two of these—​ notations S and V—​also have an additional line between the two staves, which indicates the production of noises. Of the double-​staff notations with ledger lines, only three have a standard layout with an upper treble and lower bass clef and it seems that, further, a central aspect of these double staff notations is, precisely, that they allow experimentation with cleffing. As well as determining clef by chance at the outset, Cage has notations with this staffing arrangement where clefs change on multiple occasions across the notation, ones with two such changing clefs per staff, and forms of indeterminate clefs. The first form, where chance-​determined clefs are set at the beginning of an instance of a notation and then persist, is largely used in early notations only—​notations A, C, G, V, and BN are the only places where this occurs (the last a much later notation, but a variation of A, to which it is very close)—​ and is clearly derived from the practice of Music for Piano, although even in this case, one instance of notation G, the third, assigns fresh clef pairings to each new circle of notes in the notation, which is to say the second of these four types, but this does not happen on any of its other three appearances. Perhaps notation V, were it longer, would also change clefs, as occurs in 34′46.776″ from which it derives. The only other notation which features changing clefs across a double staff is notation S: it is just this feature which, along with the introduction of noises, makes it a variation of C. Notations D and L are the only two notations to feature the changing double clefs—​one above, one below—​of notation B, but that earlier notation in drawn with a single staff. The result of applying the same method to these double-​staffed notations is that four clefs are employed at a time and, as in B, these determine the proportion of notes to be read in each clef—​wherever clefs differ—​from a particular group, written as an aggregate in notation D and on the perimeter of

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a biomorphic shape in notation L. These notations represent the third of the four possible forms of cleffing which intersects with the double staff layout. There is a range of approaches to indeterminate cleffing in the piece. A  simple version of this occurs in notation AH, which, while specifying which hand should play which note, is without clefs, the pianist expected to insert them, though Cage only allows them to be treble or bass. The pianist might fix the clefs at the beginning of the notation or might change them, as regularly or irregularly as desired. Notation AY is more complex and sophisticated, featuring mobile staves, one in the treble clef and one in the bass, with limits within which they can move. The instruction simply observes ‘treble and bass areas mobile’, though it is straightforward enough to see that an upper horizontal line is aligned with what would be nine ledger lines above the staff and, likewise, a lower line is where one would find six ledger lines below the bass clef: as such any note above the upper line can, counterintuitively, only be read in the bass clef and any note below the lower line can only be read in the treble clef. Equally, though the clefs are mobile, the lines mark out their maximum vertical positions, inclusive of ledger lines. Within those limits, however, one is apparently able to read any sounds which are in alignment with either staff. The same approaches to cleffing are also applied to single-​staff notations, though in the case of notations which contain but one clef and are unrepeated, it is by definition impossible to assess whether that clef would always have been the same: the same problem, in truth, occurs with notations where there are repetitions, if all instances share the same clef, as in notations Q and BM. Notation H is exceptional in that it consists of six staves, each of which receives its own, presumably chance-​determined, clef, but, if the pianist chooses to play more than one of the staves, the clef of the first read is to apply to all of the others. It is exceptional too in its third instance—​again on the over-​full page 50—​which only contains three staves, the other three to be found by turning the notation upside down: clefs are provided at either end of the staves, inverted at the right-​hand side, inverted accidentals appear to the right-​hand side of notes (as well as the usual ones to the left), and indication to pluck or mute the strings appear below as well as above each string (again, upside down in the former case). It is also one of just two readings which indicate transpositions at the octave and double octave. The other, notation CD, as it happens, also involves rotational reading, but is in all other respects far too distant from H for it to be plausible to think of it as a variation. Nine of the single staff notations employ changing clefs. Two others use the same sort of double clefs seen in notation B. But for the most part these are simply standard clef changes inscribed on the staff itself, according to common practice, although in notation AJ, where three diagonal lines drawn

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above, on, and below the staff map out pitch ranges in which a particular number of notes should occur, the clefs are aligned with the lines, changing how to read the pitch areas through which the lines pass. In the view of the whole score, it is as late as notation R, which is to say page 9 (see fig. 6.1), that Cage adds additional freedom in reading clefs. Here, it is such that clef areas overlap—​a prefiguring in some ways of the mobile staves of notation AY—​everything below the staff being read in the bass clef and everything above it in the treble, but with everything in between able to be read in either. Something similar—​though for very different reasons—​happens in notation AU where, as described earlier, each of the four implied polyphonic lines receives its own clef and, where the lines intersect, a note can be read in either clef, resulting in ambiguity at those points where the clefs differ. In notation AA (fig. 6.2), Cage generalises the approach of notation R and simply places both clefs at the start of the staff, allowing any pitch to be read in either clef, although one wonders whether the bass clef may have been a comparatively late addition, since its inscription coincides with the first written pitch of the notation. In any case, this approach to cleffing is reproduced in notation BH, the change being one of the ways in which that notation differs from its parent notation, notation A. Notation AN takes a similar approach, but here the pianist decides which of the two clefs is to apply to which hand and reads a number (chosen by the pianist) of the pitches of the notation in that clef to be played with that hand, repeating the process with the other clef and the other hand (and so on, until all the pitches have been used). Cage’s approach to the deployment of clefs and staves mirrors his approach more generally. First, there is a highly limited number of central possibilities, the possible combinations of which are rigorously explored. Second, there are, too, imaginative versions of those possibilities which are not technically predictable from the initial combinatorial approach. Third, and no less importantly, these more-​or-​less independent modes of considering a particular parametric thread of Cage’s approach is put into dialogue, sometimes a dialogue of incommensurables to be sure, with other parameters which operate in similar ways, but where the results of the parameters rubbing up against one another become even less predictable.

Graphics: Points, lines, shapes, numbers

For a perhaps surprising amount of the time, the elaborate imagery of the Solo for Piano is but part of the composing means—​the way in which Cage determined where or how to inscribe noteheads, for instance—​such that a pianist can safely ignore the calligraphy as such: the images are, in this sense, useless. At the same time, that is hardly to say that a pianist must or ought to ignore the images: in less tangible ways they may prompt particular thoughts

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about how to approach a particular notation and, of course, so long as the instructions for realisation are not contravened, a pianist might well allow any aspect of the notation—​including those which are technically without function—​to inform the approach taken. Only in a small number of cases does Cage directly restrict a pianist in this sort of way, as will be described. Though Cage was no novice graphic designer, the Solo for Piano is his first sustained excursion into graphic notation.13 Cage was employed between July and December 1957 as a designer by Jack Lenor Larsen, hired to ‘style, execute, and arrange printing and placement of [Larsen’s] advertising and mailing program’, his work appearing in, for instance, Interiors and Interior Design.14 Yet his concern for the elegance and grace of musical calligraphy was a much earlier concern, dating at least from his attempts in 1934—​attempts which were, at the time, unsuccessful—​to create copies of his teacher Adolph Weiss’s manuscripts beautiful enough to receive the approbation of his teacher.15 Regardless, it is difficult to imagine that Cage’s work for Larsen—​which included playful arrangements of words in different typefaces of different sizes, tracing out circles and other shapes, including, for instance, the Manhattan skyline—​left no imprint upon the visual design of—​or the concern for visual design in—​the Solo for Piano, even if there is no direct corroboration of such an influence. The primary graphic elements with which Cage works in the Solo for Piano are points, lines, shapes, and numbers. Points become noteheads—​in the process described in Chapters 1 and 2—​so rapidly that they merit only relatively brief discussion, but it should be remembered nonetheless that, in this sense, noteheads are figured as having an essentially graphic origin. As Branden Joseph has argued, in a reminder that the point is the central compositional element in the Concert for Piano and Orchestra as a whole, that ‘[c]‌omposition consists in devising ways of translating the spot on the part (a potential or virtual sound) into an actual sound by determining—​through the use of chance operations and/​or varying degrees of indeterminacy—​all components necessary to provide the identity of the sonic event’.16 Points 13  Though

there are certainly graphic elements in, say, the Ten Thousand Things pieces or in the distribution of materials in Water Music, these are slight in comparison with the Solo for Piano. Notably, after this point, such means become a standard part of Cage’s approach to notation, as in, say, Aria, Variations III (1962), Song Books, Score (40 Drawings by Thoreau) and 23 Parts (1974), or Ryoanji (1983–​85). 14  Rebecca Y. Kim, ‘In No Uncertain Musical Terms: The Cultural Politics of John Cage’s Indeterminacy’ (unpublished doctoral dissertation, Columbia University, 2008), 120. 15  Kenneth Silverman, Begin Again (New York, NY: Knopf, 2010), 13. 16  Branden W. Joseph, Experimentations:  John Cage in Music, Art, and Architecture (New York, NY: Bloomsbury, 2016), 152.

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generally indicate either a sound to be made (or, in the case of diamond noteheads, prepared), whether pitched or not, played on the keyboard, frame or interior of the piano, or by auxiliary means, or one extreme of a pitch range within which sounds can be made. If indicative of a pitched sound, points are accompanied by accidentals, in all likelihood always following the method of tossing two coins discussed in Chapter 2. Relatively few notations include no points: notation K names pitches at the point where one would ordinarily find a notehead; notations U, AY, and BC feature numbers which indicate how many sounds should be produced within a given pitch area; notations AR, AV, and BQ superimpose shapes over a given pitch area, but are unspecific regarding the details of where sounds are to be made; notations BZ and CF contain instructions for pedalling but not for pitch or noises, other than the sounds of the pedals; and notation CC, wherein the intersection of straight with curved lines gives rise to readings for the parameters of particular sounds. Nevertheless, points do not only indicate single sounds: they are not exclusively translated into noteheads. In Notation T, as discussed above, the points are centre points for the biomorphic shapes of the notation; in notation V some points become noteheads, but others remain visibly points, indicating force, distance, and speed of attack; and, in notation BV (fig. 6.3), different sizes of point indicate different sizes of groups of sounds. Points, then, indicate: first, pitched sounds on a staff (pitches which the uses of clefs described above may render amenable to multiple readings); second, pitches or noises within other frameworks like the use of grids or boxes; third, events to be measured and given definition in relation to other graphics, which might include boxes; or, fourth, where within the performance space a sound should be made, as in notation BT. Points are more-​or-​less ubiquitous in the Solo for Piano, but lines are hardly much less common. Indeed, in a certain sense, for all its originality, a major part of the resourcefulness employed by Cage in designing the score must be found in the way in which essentially conventional notational devices are repurposed: lines of various sorts—​straight, wavy, or freehand; continuous, dashed, or dotted—​appear on almost every page of the Solo for Piano but almost never undertaking any of the purposes one might expect them to have in conventional notation, pedal markings being one of a tiny number of exceptions to this rule. For the most part, lines are used either to connect noteheads or have noteheads inscribed on them. Lines may indicate pitch ranges, as in notations J, AJ, and BG, all of which add numbers to the lines which specify how many notes are to be played in the range between two noteheads which the line maps out, or as in notation AA, which consists of multiple short lines, which Cage describes as ‘sticks’, joining pitches of unspecified clef, such that even a short line could indicate a large gap in pitch if one note were read in one clef and another in the other. Elsewhere, in

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notations AF and AH, from two to ten notes which are displaced in left-​ to-​right space are joined together by freehand lines to form ‘events’, which might indicate that despite their apparent temporal position, the group is to be played as a single ictus, in a sort of fusion of notations B and C. In notation AK, multiple straight lines (from two to forty-​two) project outwards connecting one central notehead to the same number of other noteheads as there are lines, each such grouping described by Cage as a ‘universe’, from which only a single note should actually be played. Notation BX which, as noted above, is to be performed in some way like a plant features what looks like a notational tree diagram, with noteheads placed at every point the lines branch off into separate directions. Lines may have other specific functions with relation to realisation: notations V and AP use lines to indicated duration, as does notation AO, though there horizontal lines indicate indeterminate durations which are relational with respect to a horizontal axis, while vertical lines indicate clusters, zig-​zags in notations BZ and CF indicate the physical motions of the piano pedals, while in notation CA (fig. 6.4), lines are used as a sort of shading to indicate playing methods, vertical lines denoting muting and horizontal lines the application of friction, methods thus eminently combinable. In notations BB, BJ, BM, BQ , BV, BW , and CC, lines are used (and required) to define what the points of the various notations mean, parametrically speaking. In a subset of these—​notations BB, BJ, BV, and BW—​the pianist must create additional perpendicular lines to ascertain values for duration, frequency, overtone structure, amplitude, and the order in which the determined sounds should be heard in performance, all according to a scale the pianist must also determine. Just as graphical resources in general combine with staves both to multiply resources and further to define them, lines are used in combination both with other lines or with shapes to generate, express, or demarcate musical materials. Frequently, Cage inscribes notes at the intersections of lines, an approach first seen in notations M and Q (and then, later, in notation AU, a variation of at least one of them), in which four freehand lines are drawn, connecting four pitches at the far left to four different pitches at the far right. Though giving the impression that Cage has, simply, taken a line for a walk, the lines in question are clearly and carefully designed to cross and intersect, with noteheads inscribed at intersections. While the lines could simply have been generative of pitch material—​they could have had merely a compositional function—​Cage imbues them with interpretative significance too: at any point of intersection the pianist is at liberty to change the direction of reading, with four possible directions available, two forward and two backward, at every intersection. The pianist might, too, be undertaking this process across a total of four contrapuntal lines.

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Such interpretative possibilities are eliminated in notation R (fig. 6.1)—​ Cage going so far as to declare in the instructions that ‘[l]‌ines were part of composing means’, which removes all doubt—​where noteheads are again inscribed at the intersections of lines. Here, though, quite different sorts of lines are used: first, a regularly zig-​zag pattern is drawn across the staff, using the extremes of the piano keyboard as the outmost points of the patterns; second, other lines are drawn from the same extremes, but wholly irregularly, creating unpredictable intersections of regular and irregular lines, at which noteheads are inscribed. Those noteheads—​and the regular and irregular noteheads at the extremes of the keyboard—​are to be performed, as Cage insists, ‘rigorously in time’, providing, as he does, a timescale (presumably in seconds) above the notation. The lines, however, are merely the vestiges of the compositional process. As such, the lines could have been erased, with no apparent change to the sounding properties of the notation, an approach which Cage took in the case of several other notations. That Cage did not do this, indeed that Cage ensured that the pianist would be aware of what the lines connote, might suggest that, in some cases at least, the visual appearance of a notation was something Cage continued to place store by, whether because he felt it important that what he was doing compositionally remained tangible in the compositional output or because he believed that a pianist’s response would be or could be different as a result of the intangibles of notational design or for one of a number of many other possible reasons. In any case, there is little consistency in which notations continue to bear the scars of their production and in which the traces of the process are kicked over. The inscription of noteheads at intersections is a technique which appears in various forms across several notations, across the second alphabet of notations, such as notations AA, AE, AN, AT, and AX. However, on occasion, lines are superimposed upon another graphic in order to filter or add definition to the material suggested by that image. For instance, notation O (fig. 6.1) features multiple thread-​like vertical freehand lines, sometimes close to the next instance, reading left to right, sometimes rather distant. Superimposed upon these are two continuous straight lines, which proceed largely horizontally, but occasionally turn at right angles, to shift their position in horizontal space. The space between the two straight lines acts a filter: only here does one find noteheads inscribed on the vertical threads. Sometimes the resulting space only allows for a single notehead, sometimes as many as seven are inscribed. On the first repetition of the notation, however, the band is extremely narrow, and consistent, throughout, such that only various inflections of three notes—​G, A, and B above the treble staff—​can appear. On its final appearance, on page 58, a seemingly enormous number of threads (in fact, fifty-​three) occupy a rather brief left-​to-​right space, again similarly cramped in terms of the vertical pitch space for more than two thirds of the threads.

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Nevertheless, as in R, though this instance of the notation gives the visual impression of being on the one hand dense and over-​crowded and, on the other, physically confined and restricted—​it contains too much, and those elements it does contain are packed too tightly together—​these aspects are of no necessary relevance to any realisation since they have no effect other than to define which pitches appear and in which groupings. By contrast, straight diagonal lines in notation CC indicate a different sort of boundary, defining time boundaries within which sounds might occur: their usage renders almost two-​thirds of the area of the notation unavailable and thus, in a different sense, useless. Arrows appear regularly enough that they ought to be regarded as a distinct subset of lines, alongside which they also sometimes appear. Arrows, however, never indicate only a compositional means: they are also of interpretative significance. In notation D, as mentioned above, a pair of crossed lines—​each end of each of which could have an arrowhead pointing in either direction, making for four possibilities for each line—​indicate the directions in which a given aggregate should be arpeggiated and the degree and direction in which it should be displaced in time in comparison with the relations the page might suggest. The arrowheads in notation G indicate with which pitches a particular sequence should begin and end, the intervening pitches presumably freely chosen from those possibilities given. In notations J and AJ, an arrowhead lies on, rather than at the end of, lines, indicating a ‘direction in space-​time’, which both suggests sometimes reading pitches from right-​ to-​left, but also having those pitches appear earlier or later than ones on lines which—​in a conventional left-​to-​right reading of a score—​appear to coincide to a greater or lesser extent with them. In a similar way, lines with arrows indicate the order in which pitches should sound in notation AH, regularly meaning that pitches which are notated later, sound earlier. A small number of types of shape are used in the Solo for Piano. The first to appear are the biomorphic shapes used in notation A, on the first page. As is the case with most of the shapes deployed, these are inscribed upon the musical staves, although, as Chapter 2 makes clear, it is not always possible to be sure whether the staff lines were inscribed before the shape or vice versa, although it is clear that the total area available for the notation must have been pre-​determined. Here—​and in later variations of the same notation, notations BH, BK, and BN—​the shape both determines where notes can be inscribed and has a function for realising the notation, requiring the pianist to read the noteheads in sequence around the shape. The shapes are conditioned by the area available and, as such, vary in size and scale from, say, the sprawling instance of notation A across pages 45 to 47 through to the highly compressed and tiny version on page 49. In this latter case, the shape itself has not been inscribed, presumably for the sake of clarity. The biomorphic

Interpreting the Solo for Piano  :  371

shape has the same basic function in notation E, albeit working with a different set of parameters. In notations T and CB, however, biomorphic shapes delineate boundaries for available pitch ranges, a little like a sort of inverse image of notation A: in the latter, only what is on the perimeter is available; in the form, only what is within the perimeter. These notations tend to involve smaller shapes, significantly smaller in the latter case, given that shapes are nested within shapes there. In both cases, the shapes bear resemblance to the contour lines of topographic maps and it is not impossible that map tracings provide their source, just as Cage would use Bečvár’̌ s celestial atlas in Atlas Eclipticalis a few years later. Circles appear in notations G and AI and, although they differ in appearance—​those in notation G are almost precisely circular, and are nearly the same size and shape on each appearance; those in notation AI are drawn freehand, are of differing sizes and, though they approximate circles, are rather less regular in shape than that might suggest—​they have the same function in both cases, a function shared with the shapes in notations A and E: they allow noteheads to be placed around their perimeters. In both notations G and AI, it is possible for circles to overlap, even though these tends to occur only in the shorter instances of the notations. The instructions for how to realise these notations is less clear than in the cases of notations A or E, however. Lines (or arrows) join one note from one circle of notation G to one note inscribed on the next circle, with an instruction which reads ‘beginning and ending as indicated by arrow’. This suggests, perhaps, some sort of non-​linear reading of the notation, but including fixed points within the process, but detail beyond this is absent. Notation AI, by contrast, is unambiguously linear—​the instructions specify that it should be played from left to right—​but is less clear when it asks the pianist to ‘[p]‌lay “wheel” or “axle” using one(s) not played as harmonic(s)’, the extreme notes of an axle, where it meets the wheel, presumably counting too as notes on the wheel. Triangles appear in various guises. On one occasion, in notation BQ , they function much as biomorphic shapes had done in notations T and CB: isosceles right-​angled triangles of different sizes, their vertical and horizontal sides aligned with axes of pitch and time respectively, denote ranges within which events can occur. More usually, triangles are a consequence of drawing lines from point to point in a notation, as in notations W , Z, AB, and BO. Though the triangles could have preceded the inscription of points in all these cases, this seems unlikely in the first and last of those named, both of which include isolated points as well as triangles, suggesting that points were first inscribed and then only a certain number of those were joined together in the larger shape. The triangles in notations W and BO (fig. 6.3) indicate articulation: those notes joined by lines—​which is to say those notes which are part of a triangular shape—​are to be performed legato, the note further left

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played legato with respect to the subsequent pair of notes. Triangles are often conjoined—​as in the long sequence of notation W which spans pages 36 to 39—​such that the furthest right note of one triangle may act as the beginning of another or the second and third notes of one as the first and second of another, thus also potentially creating longer chains of legato playing. The triangles in notations Z and AB have a different function, the vertical sides indicating clusters, with the opposite point denoting a single tone. Here, since the vertical sides have such defined functions—​and since they must be vertical—​it is surely most likely that the shape was drawn before the points in these cases. Various other shapes are employed, but their usages are in practical terms analogous to the cases already described. Notation K (fig. 6.1)—​ already described as a possible variation of G—​uses polygons to the same basic effect as the biomorphic shapes in notations A and E, in that notes are inscribed at the edges, though here in the angles rather than around the perimeter. Notation BF extends the principle employed in notation W by adding quadrilaterals to the triangles of the earlier notation. Notation BG consists of differently sized rectangles, with noteheads in each corner and straight or angled lines projecting from one corner (one presumes that the rectangles indicate the sustaining of a dyad, though the instructions offer no clarity, describing them simply as ‘intervals’). Notation AY, which features the mobile clefs already discussed, consists of polyonimoes comprising between one and fifteen tiles a tenth of an inch square each. Conjoined cuboids—​five in the former, four in the latter case—​make up notations AR and AV, both of which are to be played ‘in any way suggested by the drawing’. Perhaps the openness of the instruction reflects the openness of the space suggested by the empty projections of the notations, projections which might in turn recall Cage’s own home at Stony Point, designed by Paul Williams.17 All the notations involving shapes thus far mentioned use musical staves in some way to concretise the meaning of the shapes used. Notation BT is quite different, although it still signifies register, if in a distinct manner: the outlines of two grand pianos are drawn with dotted lines, side by side, such that the rear curve of the left piano touches the bass register of the keyboard of the right piano. Points are distributed within 17 

For an examination of Cage’s relationship to architecture which draws particular links between Stony Point and Cage’s compositional practice, see Branden W. Joseph, ‘John Cage and the Architecture of Silence’, in Julia Robinson (ed.), John Cage (Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press, 2011 [1997]), 73–​99. Naturally, as Joseph argues (81–​85), the Cageian understanding of transparency and openness is also indebted to Duchamp’s The Bride Stripped Bare by her Bachelors, Even (The Large Glass) (1915–​23).

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a vertical band such that, while seeming to be aligned with where the keyboard would be on the right piano, they appear within (and also without) the rear curve of the left piano. These represent the ‘place of performance with respect to the piano’ and could, of course, then be played entirely upon the keyboard or still at the right-​hand piano only, in front of the keyboard on the body of the instrument, or atop the keyboard lid, or a combination of these. Equally, they might be played at the rear of the instrument, again perhaps without and within (or below) the instrument. Combining both ways of reading would presumably at the very least involve the pianist moving from the front to the back of the instrument and vice versa once as a minimum. While a number of notations in the Solo for Piano—​and indeed in the Concert for Piano and Orchestra more broadly—​tend towards tablature in the sense that they indicate what one is to do rather than how those actions should sound, notation BT is the only notation actually to depict the body of an instrument and where sounds are to be made in relationship to it, although the what and the how of those sounds remains entirely free. Numbers appear regularly within the Solo for Piano, ordinarily serving an interpretative function with relation to the graphic matter of the notation, defining inter alia dynamics, durations and timing, or numbers of sounds to be played. Numbers will be discussed further below where they act in this essentially qualificatory mode, but in one notation, notation BI, they have a special function, in that the numbers are the notation: the notation consists of nothing other than a sequence of fifty-​eight single-​digit numbers. The numbers are used to indicate frequency and duration, either single or in pairs, such that the first four numbers—​1, 3, 4, 5—​could be read in any one of the following ways:

frequency 1, duration 3 & frequency 4, duration 5 frequency 1, duration 3 & frequency 45 frequency 1, duration 34 & frequency 5 frequency 13, duration 4 & frequency 5 frequency 13, duration 45

In the central three cases, the duration of the second sound would have to be determined by reference to the next or next two numbers in the sequence. What is not indicated by the notation is how the numbers are actually to be translated into actual frequencies and durations: a pianist might choose to have the numbers from one to eighty-​eight map directly onto the piano keys (though there are four numbers in the nineties which could arise which would not, then, be accounted for) or might use some other form of look-​up  table.

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Grids and Boxes

Across the course of the Solo for Piano, the use of traditional staves (and, for that matter, clefs) lessens:  between notation A  and AF only three do not use a staff of some kind; between notations BA and CF, fourteen do not. Nevertheless, it is worth stressing again that these staff lines feature in the vast majority of notations and, indeed, some of the most graphically arresting notations—​notations AR, AY, and BQ , for instance—​still retain them. Moreover, in almost all those notations which do make use of a grid or of a box, as suggested in the discussion above, the grid or box can be mapped onto the dimensions of other standard staves in the piece to the extent that they seem not just to be substitutes but close analogues. Nonetheless, the alteration in appearance affords numerous changes in function too. The first notation to feature no explicit musical staff is notation P (fig. 6.1), which first appears on page 9 and is, too, the first notation to include instructions for the production of noises, even though noises of just the sort proposed here are a feature of the pieces in the Music for Piano sequence from its twenty-​first number onwards. The particular format used in Music for Piano, however, does not appear in the score until the first instance of notation S on page 12. The version of notation P on page 9 continues onto the subsequent page and includes sixteen noteheads, inscribed at irregular intervals both horizontally and vertically, stretching to the very edge of both in the latter dimension, such that three of these points touch the sides. The way in which the box here represents a substitute staff is exaggerated if one presumes—​as must be the default reading—​that the notation is to be read conventionally, from left to right. Cage makes no explicit statement regarding this, but does explain that the vertical axis does not indicate frequency but, instead, amplitude, such that any noteheads may indicate any sort of noise; only the resulting dynamic and the onset of an attack are specified (moreover, one might note that it is only a little later, in notation V, that Cage disaggregates the dynamic from force of attack). Notation AC is a version of notation P with greater specificity, achieved by adding two horizontal lines to the box to designate particular areas as referring to particular sorts of noise while, simultaneously, reinforcing the notation’s staff character by, simply, making it look more like a staff (in this sense, one might imagine, according to the description below, that notation AC turns the box of notation P into a sort of grid). Similarly, notation BY, though replicating P graphically, turns the vertical axis back into one which represents relative pitch. Boxes are also used in combination with staves, as in notations T and U (fig. 6.5). In both cases, a grand staff is used and the extreme top and bottom of the box outline the highest and lowest possible pitches: nine ledger lines above the treble clef and six below the bass clef with the bottom line of the box positioned where the seventh ledger line would occur, such that there remains

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space for the lowest note of the instrument. One might, in this context, reverse the notional relationship between boxes and systems: just as much as a box is a sort of staff with no (or fewer) indicated divisions, so a staff can be thought of as a box with divisions. Conceived so, the boundary lines between boxes and staves become rather flexible and permeable. Notation AO exemplifies this fluidity since, though it has the general appearance of notation P, here, like the later notation BY, the vertical axis and its twenty (or more) divisions both retains the frequency equivalence of a staff. Its indeterminate aspects are, in a sense, a function of how the pianist chooses to translate the box back into a staff. Yet some instances of boxes remove the relationship to staves, specifically the family of notations which beings with notation BB (fig. 6.3), such that the staff-​box hybrid begins to seem like the central point on a longer continuum of possibilities. Notation BB also looks a great deal like P, though here there are not just points but also lines. The differences do not end with that addition, however: neither the vertical nor horizontal signification of a musical staff is retained, even though the relationship between line and point (or notehead) do, if via quite other means, determine pitch, occurrence in time, and duration (as well as, as it happens, timbre and dynamic, which naturally cannot be determined in the traditional relationship between notehead and staff line). In any case, the sides of the box are not used to indicate pitch or duration, marking out instead only the periphery of the notation as a whole, although in order to take a measurement of the distance between some points and some lines (and, thus, to establish a reading for the realisation of a particular sonic parameter) it is necessary to extend lines beyond the given outer boundaries of the notation. That said, this situation is reversed in notation BJ, in which the sides of the box are used—​by measuring their distance from the single point of that notation—​to determine an event’s frequency, duration, amplitude, and timbre, though the performer is to decide which side of the box refers to which parameter. Given that there is only one point—​and thus one event—​there is no need to have any determination of the fifth parameter of notation BB, the order in which events occur: in order for the sides of the box to be usable in this way, it was already necessary that the notation contain only one possible event. Notation BV is something of a fusion of the two: it consists of lines and points, as in notation BB, but which line is used for which parameter is left at the pianist’s discretion, rather than being fixed as it is in the earlier notation, while notation BW represents three simultaneous implicitly three-​dimensional projections of notation BJ, alongside three points which have apparently ‘escaped’ the confines of their boxes. The illusion of perspective here is used to determine which of the three events should occur first: the closer a particular projected box may seem, the earlier in time the event it refers to should occur.

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If a box, under most circumstances, relates to a musical staff through omission, a grid does so through extension, in that it marks vertical or horizontal divisions or both. A traditional musical staff, then, is a sort of five-​line grid, including implied horizontal divisions of pulsation as well as the more literal one of bar lines and, again, this means that there is a certain degree of slippage between categories. Notation U, for instance, includes a staff and a box as described above, but the box itself is divided into three pitch areas and three time areas, creating a three-​by-​three grid. Though the internal divisions are less clear cut, notation BP is similar. The first more-​or-​less ‘pure’ grid notation—​even though one way of having reached it would have been to consider it a development of the box notation of P—​is notation Y, which has eight 5mm-​high rows—​as such, these could be likened to the five rows of a traditional double staff, with the central division removed—​and, on its first appearance between pages 9 and 11, sixteen unevenly spaced columns (halved to eight when the notation is repeated). As with a conventional musical system, the vertical axis denotes pitch and the horizontal time, but each is unconventional in its detail: the eight rows represent chromatically adjacent pitch areas, the number of pitches within each area determined by a number between one and eight at the beginning of each division left-​to-​right, resulting in total pitch spaces for each of these between eight and sixty-​four adjacent pitches. In a sense, of course, something similar happens in traditional notation, in that through the use of accidentals each line or space already figures three chromatic possibilities, before one considers double sharps or flats or, for that matter, microtonal accidentals. The importance of the number eight here is a reminder too that, especially when it can be multiplied by itself to generate the maximum I Ching number of sixty-​four, eights are common in the score, doubtless in no small part because it is so straightforward to use the I Ching to operate in octal. Page 47 (fig. 6.6) has the unusual distinction of presenting three different grid methods. Notation BC is an eight-​by-​eight grid superimposed upon a grand staff, the lines of the grid drawn freehand in a way reminiscent of notations M and O, the vertical axis delineating pitch areas according to the grand staff in which sounds might be made, the horizontal presumably indicating time, although Cage provides no specific instruction regarding the latter. Notation BD is a grid of eight rows—​and contains no vertical divisions—​in which each row indicates a different dynamic, but not in any graded sequence: reading from top to bottom, fortissimo leads to piano which leads to pianissimo and back to piano, and so on. Like notation AC, one could conceive of this as a further sort of rethinking of notation P, if with much more abbreviated horizontal dimensions, but where not only are the possible internal gradations of dynamic delineated, they are also then shuffled.

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Fig. 6.6:  Page 47 of the Solo for Piano Notation BE looks similar to notation BD, but has fourteen rows, one for each of the pianist’s ten fingers and four to denote clusters to be taken with the left or right hand or forearm, and neither of these two notations is in any way determinate with respect to pitch: one possibility for the performance of BE might be to fix the hands, such that, say, the third finger of the right hand strikes the same key each time, but the notation choreographs only that the correct finger goes down, not where that finger is supposed to be at the time. Just as there is a way in which some boxes feel a great deal like staves where the staff elements themselves have been eliminated, so, in notation AL, one can observe a notation clearly composed used an eight-​row grid, but wherein the grid itself has not been copied into the score. Here, given that numbers show the positions of the rows of the grid, the performer might well feel the need to inscribe it.

Approaches to realisation As suggested above, although the graphic character of the Solo for Piano is richly manifold, the elements which comprise its notational vocabulary are relatively few: clefs, staves, points, lines, shapes, numbers, boxes, and grids. In a similar vein, the ways in which the pianist is directed, and seemingly expected, to make use of—​to interpret, realise, and perform—​the notations are relatively few, but in combination create a diverse network of possibilities.

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Though in around three-​quarters of the eighty-​four notational types in the Solo for Piano, the pianist is expected to read in conventional fashion from left to right, a number of other methods disrupt or otherwise interfere with this. That said, only in a relatively small number of cases do Cage’s instructions explicitly insist on a left-​to-​right reading or that a particular notation should be read ‘in time’ (notations E, L, M, U, AI, and AN fall into the former category, and notations Q , R, and, by implication, AU into the latter). Where notations have no explicit indication of this sort, the default reading is surely that they are, nevertheless, read left to right, unless some other aspect of the notation suggests that approach to be wrong-​headed, especially where the irregular spacing of noteheads in a notation implies a temporal irregularity of attacks. Even amongst the later, more often non-​linear notations, there are many cases in which the conventional approach seems to be implied by the notation. Nonetheless, Cage’s general instructions that ‘the absence of indications of any kind means freedom for the performer in that regard’ is certainly enough to argue that the score itself mandates other approaches to such conventions wherever they are not specifically demanded. A small number of notations include a regular time measure as a part of their design: notation R (fig. 6.1), for instance, is the first notation to include regularly spaced brackets, each measuring 15mm, above the staff, each followed by a gap also 15mm long, with numbers indicating time units, each bracket and each space equivalent to a single unit. One obvious possibility is to regard a second as equivalent to a time unit, but Cage does not make such a demand (and, indeed, given the ultimate freedoms of the score, one might argue that the value of a time unit need not remain constant or consistent). The same essential format is used in notations AE, AT, AU, and BU, though not always with the same measurement. In notation AL, one might sense a regular time measurement sitting behind the notation in that, in the space between each event there is a number indicating time units: these units typically approximate to 2mm of space on the page representing a single unit of time, though the longer the space, the more inaccurate that measurement seems to be. Notation BQ is more precise, in that the staff and ledger lines of the vertical axis are reproduced on the horizontal axis, with each here representing a single unit of time, thirty-​nine in total. In other notations numbers are used for similar purposes, but the relationship between units and measure is not a regular one. In notation F, the first to employ this method, the notation begins with equally spaced time units increasing by three on each appearance (thus: 0, 3, 6, 9), spaced 12.5mm apart from one another. From the unit ‘9’ onwards, however, Cage adds, first, 5, then 4, then 3, 2, and 1 to the count (resulting in time units of 9, 14, 18,

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21, 23, and 24), but retaining a regularity of spacing: now there is a space of 25mm between each time unit. Thus, for instance, the seven chords notated over the 25mm between the fourteenth and eighteenth time unit should take four times as long to play as the seven chords in the final time unit. Cage employs the same basic approach in both notations AZ and BO.18 Similarly, in notation Y (and in its variation, notation AQ) Cage segments the grid into irregular units of space with equally, but differently, irregular units of time (fig. 6.2). On the first appearance of the notation, the first segment measures 22mm and is to take four-​and-​a-​half seconds (Cage here specific regarding seconds rather than time units), while the second segment measures 60mm but is to last for only three-​tenths of a second, with the other divisions lying between these extremes of 5mm and 200mm per second. On the reoccurrence of notation Y, the poles are even wider: from 2.5mm to 323mm per second. Notation AM, as noted above, uses small vertical dashes to segment the staff to similar effect: the dashes appear at intervals of 12mm, 58mm, 65mm, or 134mm, but the space between each dash is always to have the same duration. Before the Solo for Piano, Cage’s approach to time—​even with a certain radicality with regard to how it is structured, filled, emptied, or measured—​ was orthodox in at least one sense: a score was read from left to right and that motion included the passage of time, whether or not at a fixed rate. It was Christian Wolff, seemingly, who first spurred Cage to think of the measurement of musical time in less conventional ways, in the time units of zero within, first, his For Piano with Preparations (1957), where one sees, for instance, tempos of ♩  =  0. Here, there are notations in which Cage suggests time should be reversed, which is to say that in practical terms—​actual reversal of time lying beyond the capabilities of even the finest of pianists—​notations are sometimes read backwards or are to be played in time earlier than the point the notation’s appearance on the page might suggest. This is implied as early as notation D, in which arrows ask for sounds to appear sometimes earlier or later than the point at which they are notated in the score. This could be achieved by regarding such notes as acciaccature before or after other sounds, but the instruction might equally well be followed by placing sounds much earlier or much later, minutes or more before or after the point they ostensibly appear in the score. Arrows are also used in notation J to disrupt the flow of time, but Cage provides a little more detail regarding his aims:  ‘arrows indicate direction in space-​time backwards and forwards’. This cannot simply mean ‘read This also, of course, reflects the changing values of time-​space in Cage’s Music of Changes, his first essay in such an approach (see, for instance, Iddon, John Cage and David Tudor, 36–​40). 18 

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backwards’ because another notation already allows for that to happen. As an example, on the first appearance of the notation, between pages 5 and 7, the second pitch in the treble clef, an A-​sharp above the treble staff, is joined to the third, a C at the very top of the piano keyboard, by a straight line, with an arrow pointing backwards. The line is accompanied by a number, ‘7’, to indicate that seven pitches in the range between these notes should be sounded, but that number is underlined, which indicates that the pitches should descend, which is to say the left-​to-​right relationship of A-​sharp to C has already been reversed. One resolution of this might be to displace the whole earlier in time, as suggested by notation D but, of course, there are many others. A more playful approach to time can be seen in the relationship between notations M and Q (fig. 6.1): in the former, the pianist is at liberty to move backwards and forwards between the noteheads at the intersections of lines for as long as desired, giving the notation a theoretically infinitely long possible duration; in the latter, the same motion can be undertaken, but rather than extending time, it is compressed, such that any realisation of the first instance of notation Q , no matter how dense, takes the roughly four-​and-​ a-​half time units indicated above the notation. Of course, the time units themselves could be of any duration if, granted, presumably not infinite ones. Depending upon the decisions a pianist takes, these notations allow for significant levels of repetition and, as a result, for the establishment of a particular and specific harmonic character comparatively rare in the notations of the Solo for Piano, notwithstanding the more general sense that the pitch material indicated remains broadly redolent of the late 1950s. Repetition is a feature too of notation X (fig. 6.2), which includes literal da capo markings which allow the pianist to repeat something, some things, or everything, but with a change of dynamic. One presumes that Cage means the pianist to repeat something already played from within notation X, but in truth he is not specific, such that the pianist could insert elements from the realisation up until that point or could even repeat everything played until that point. Even according to the version limited to the notation itself, the da capo markings make it possible to extend the duration of the notation significantly. Elsewhere, the relationship between the dimensions of the score and the heard dimension of the piece is wholly or partially abandoned. This is evidently the case in notations A or G, where by reading noteheads around the shapes of the notations, the left-​to-​right spatial properties of those graphics are necessarily effaced, though it is, of those related notations, only in notation K that Cage specifically demands the performer ‘disregard time’. In notations BB, BJ, BV, and BW the measurement of duration and point of occurrence in time is a necessary part of a realisation, but the scale of that measurement—​the way it is translated from physical measurement to musical parameter—​is left in the hands of the pianist. Also concerned with time is,

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of course, notation BX (fig. 6.4), leaving the performer to decide exactly what sort of moment is involved in realising the direction ‘[a]‌ll at once like a moment of a plant’.

Durations

Though Cage can be highly specific about the attack points—​the onsets—​of sounds, their duration remains for the most part unspecified. In some cases, however, a notational technique is employed which does determine a release point. Notation I, for instance, uses slurs to indicate the start, the continuation, and, perhaps, the release of particular pitches. Many pitches, however, are indicated without slurs, leaving them as indeterminate of duration as most other noteheads within the piece. Even those pitches where there appears to be an endpoint may not be quite so clear-​cut: harmonics in the notation are preceded by a slur, to indicate that they must be prepared in advance, but if that notation is taken elsewhere to indicate the very end point of a sustained pitch, here it would suggest that the harmonic should be released in the very moment of its sounding. The usage of the same essential device in notation X (fig. 6.2) is clearer, in that an opening slur following a notehead is always matched by a notehead with a closing slur. In fact, these are almost always pairs of noteheads, which is to say dyads. In order to achieve this in a texture with multiple overlapping dyads, judicious use of the sostenuto pedal is required, a procedure notated exactly and accurately by Cage, such that it could not conceivably be the result of chance operations. In both notations AO and AP, horizontal lines indicate the extension of a sound in time, related to specific pitches in the former and indeterminate pitches in the latter. In the latter notation, the approach is clearly and recognisably drawn from Earle Brown’s notational practice in, say, Music for Cello and Piano (1955). The same lines have the same function in notation BG, though here always for dyads, which create the rectangular shapes described above. Perpendicular lines drawn by the pianist in notations BB, BJ, BV, and BW enable the determination of values for duration, albeit according to a scale which the pianist must also determine independently. Last, the numerical sequence of notation BI determines duration, alongside pitch.

Choosing pitches

While the paper imperfection method described with respect to Music for Piano and Winter Music in Chapter 1 is apparently still the dominant means of inscribing pitch—​indeed of inscribing points more generally—​Cage employs other means which set limits upon otherwise indeterminate pitch selections. One such method can be seen in notation J, which provides an

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example of Cage providing the pianist with a pitch range from which to make a selection. Here, one presumes that two separate processes are in play, such that the number of pitches required was determined independently of the range from pitch to pitch. This would, at any rate, account for the disparities which arise: the pianist is required to play seventy-​nine pitches from an interval of fifty-​one available pitches or twenty-​four from a space of two; equally, Cage requires the pianist to select four pitches from a range spanning seventy. Of course, there is an enormous range of ways in which the pianist might solve even the apparently most limited of these cases, including, but not limited to the use of repetitions of single sounds and dyads, or the use of overlapping aggregates and clusters. Elsewhere Cage creates restricted pitch ranges through the use of shapes or grids, as in notation U, where numbers are used to demand a particular number of pitches selected from one of the three pitch areas determined by the vertical boxes of the three-​by-​three grid. Here, too, the combinations sometimes appear perverse: at its extreme, fifty-​ six pitches are required from a pitch area comprising, at most, eight tones. These two methods, from notations J and U, recur regularly in the second half of the piece, used in notations AE, AJ, AT, AY, BC, BG, BP, BU, and CB. At no point in these notations does Cage give any further indication of the further details as to the nature of these pitches, whether they ought, for instance, to be single tones, dyads, larger aggregates, or clusters, even though in some cases, as suggested, the demands of the notation limit what choices the pianist can make in this respect. Cage includes a number of notations which restrict the available pitches to a particular gamut—​a technique familiar from rather earlier pieces, such as his The Seasons or String Quartet in Four Parts—​such that only that constellation of pitches is used for the complete notation and, perforce, those pitches are repeated, making such notations amongst the most aurally recognisable notations of the piece. This approach is utilised both in notations where Cage pre-​determines the gamut of pitches and ones where that task is handed over to the pianist. Those in the former category include notations I and N: in notation I, the gamuts range from thirteen pitches at largest—​ seen on its first appearance, in a voicing which also looks like predetermination is involved, arranged from the top in nested fifths, followed by thirds, accompanied by four irregularly distributed pitches below the bass staff—​to a single pitch, on the notation’s third appearance, wherein a muted D, in the middle of the bass staff, is repeated fifty-​seven times, the most recognisable instance of this, one of the most recognisable of notations. Indeterminate versions of the same underlying principle can be seen in notation AL—​in which an eight-​tone gamut is selected by the pianist, its elements sounded according to noteheads aligned with the numbers one to eight—​and notation AO, who gamut-​like quality is clearly more likely to be perceived if the pianist

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selects a division closer to the minimum gamut size Cage allows, which is to say twenty. Though it would be unlikely to be so aurally perceptible, notations Y and AQ also use a gamut technique, but one in which the gamut is in flux: the first instance of Y requires gamuts which shift from twenty-​four to sixty-​four to forty-​eight to a different forty-​eight to eight pitches and so on, such that the shifts almost certainly happen too rapidly for a listener to recognise the gamut as such.

Choosing sounds

Cage combines pitch ranges with numbers in ways which both filter the pitch range (when the number is lower than the total available) or amplify it (when the number is higher than the total available): since the pitch range cannot be expanded by the number by necessity some elements of the range will be repeated in some way. That is to say, numbers in this sense are means by which a pitch range is qualified. Equally, graphical means can be used to eliminate material or to filter in advance where it is possible for material to arise. Hardly less commonly, graphical elements have no significance for a realisation, being artefacts of the compositional process, such that a given notation appears denser or, simply, otherwise different from the actuality of any conceivable licit realisation. This alone already hints at the fact that the idea of a ‘complete’ performance of the Solo for Piano is a chimera. Elsewhere, the literal truth is revealed: only an incomplete performance of the piece could be a legitimate one, notwithstanding Cage’s claim at the head of the score that the maximum limits of the piece should be regarded as, simply, ‘everything played’. The disjunction is presented early on, in notation G, whereby the number inscribed before the staff begins indicates that fewer of the total available pitches should be played. The second instance of the notation, for example, features ninety notes, of which only twenty-​three should actually be played. Likewise, in notation AC, twenty-​seven noises are reduced to seven and on its repetition, Cage’s procedure generating apparently whimsical results, fifty-​ one noises are reduced to three. In notation BE ten sounds are reduced to two. Elsewhere the same sort of filtering is achieved by other means: in notation AG, the pianist is instructed to omit any two notes from each aggregate, such that the maximum aggregate size for the notation drops from eight to six and, perhaps more tangibly from a listener perspective, three-​note aggregates become single pitches. Another wryly amusing situation arises in the ‘universes’ of notation AK where, from groups of two to forty-​two possible sounds, the pianist is to select but a single one. In notation AQ , diagonal dotted lines are superimposed upon what would otherwise be a repetition of notation Y, indicating that the pianist should play only sounds which appear above or below the line, such that of the sixty-​two sounds available, between twenty-​three

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and thirty-​nine will actually sound. Other notations present such filtering as an option, although the pianist might choose to play the complete notation. Such a situation arises in notation H, where the pianist might choose to play between one or all six of the staves of the notation or in notations M, Q , and AU, where the pianist can play between one or all four of the available contrapuntal possibilities.

Performance techniques Beyond the means of notating and realising notations, several instructions require particular performing means to be used or undertaken by the pianist. These include overtly physical demands of the performer, such as the specification of hands and the use of pedals, but also indications of articulation and dynamics—​with or without a description of the physical force an action might require, perhaps quite independent of the resulting dynamic—​as well as the use of acciaccature or clusters, the use of harmonics or other techniques within the body of the instrument, and the use of noises, including or not the use of auxiliary instruments and objects.

Hands

Suggestions—​even detailed and extensive ones—​for fingering and hands are hardly uncommon in the piano literature, but it is rare that recommendations become prescriptions. Post-​millennium one finds a small cluster of such pieces—​including Wieland Hoban’s when the panting STARTS (2002–​04), Kunsu Shim’s 12 Intermezzi (2002), and Christian Wolff ’s Pianist: Pieces (2001)—​but Cage’s deployment of the idea in the Solo for Piano seems to be a novel one, closer to the ways in which the means of production were determined in 26′1.1499″ for a string player, although it also expands Cage’s apparent interest through much of the 1950s in prescribing action rather than sound. Notation E (fig. 0.2), with pitches partly fixed and partly indeterminate, is entirely determinate with regard to which hand is to take which event, using upwards and downwards stems to indicate the right and left hands respectively. Since the determination of which hand is to take which note appears to be the result of an unweighted chance operation, the pianist is regularly required to cross hands in ways which would be otherwise unnecessary and, as a result, interferes with the smooth passage of left-​to-​right time, introducing a degree of likely rhythmic irregularity, which cannot be (indeed, arguably need not be) wholly controlled. Where the pianist is able to choose whether a particular pitch should be read in treble or bass clef, naturally such difficulties can be, if desired, tempered.

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Notation L (fig. 6.1) is similarly complex both to read and to execute. The single staff of notation E becomes two staves, one for each hand, which removes the forest of stems, but double clefs are used for each hand, with a ratio added, as in notation B, to determine how many of a given group of pitches should be read in each clef. Matters are fixed in notation AF (fig. 6.2)—​in that each group of notes is specifically allocated to a hand and to a clef—​but the fixing means that the hand crossing, of which there remains a great deal, is also fixed: the pianist cannot make use of indeterminate aspects of the notation to lessen the load. By contrast, one could choose to read the instruction ‘clefs free’ in notation AH as allowing a change of clef before every note, if so desired, making it possible to create a realisation of greater or lesser difficulty. Likewise, the freedom allowed in notation AN to choose both which clef is assigned to which hand and which notes are played according to which clef—​the instructions allowing for almost any decisions to be made, except that each group of notes must be a different size from its predecessor—​allows both complex and conventional figurations to be generated. Later notations fragment and subdivide possibilities further: in notation BE, the actions of fingers, hands, and arms are determined, though the results of those actions are not. A similar approach is taken in notation BS, though here only with respect to hands. Hands are required to move independently, too, around the biomorphic shapes of BN, a sort of decoupled revisioning of notation A. Notation BP also uses a sort of decoupling: here, the pitch range technique is deployed, but differently for the right hand (which has five divisions of the piano keyboard) and the left (which has only three). Nine of the eighty-​four notational types—​a tenth, more or less—​are involved in some way with a choreography of the hand.19

Pedalling

Directions for the movement of the foot are almost as common as those for the hand, with six notations falling into this category. Three of these appear in immediate succession towards the beginning of the piece, in notations M, N, and O (fig. 6.1). In notation M (and, one might imagine, then, also O), the instructions both state that pedals should only be used at the points specifically indicated and that following this is not obligatory, suggesting that if the instruction is not observed then, presumably, the pedal can be deployed ad libitum. In both these notations, all three pedals are used, but it seems likely 19 

Cage’s interest in this approach persisted, reaching its zenith in the four books of the Etudes Australes (1974–​75) which feature a double staff for each hand throughout.

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that, at least in part, these are determined via chance operations: on the first appearance of each, the sostenuto pedal is both depressed and released while the sustain pedal is continuously down, making it, at least in terms of sonic result, ineffective. Moreover, there are times when all three pedals must be depressed—​each with different depression and release points—​which, if not impossible, is physically awkward, since one foot must deal with two pedals. Here, pedals seem to be determined without reference to the inscription of pitches, since there is no obvious coordination between the two: the first use of the una corda pedal in notation M, for instance, is to be depressed and released between attacks, such that it has no sonic effect. This is quite different in notation N, where the sostenuto pedal is used precisely to sustain pitches at highly specific points. There are further problems raised by the pedalling in notation M, in that if the pianist has chosen to realise more than one of the potential four contrapuntal lines but, in one case, has generated a line which turns back upon itself and, in the other, a line which does not, it is quite possible to generate pedalling requirements which are different for each of the two lines. Similarly, even though notation X (fig. 6.2) makes use, like notation N, of wholly conventional pedalling so far as a literal left-​to-​right reading of the notation is concerned, the introduction of repeat markings can force the pianist to adopt a more ingenious solution (or take advantage of Cage’s note in the instructions that ‘[p]‌edals are optional’). The other two notations which specifically notate instructions for the use of pedals, notations BZ and CF (part of the former visible in fig 6.4), are, as well as being almost identical, as already noted, also far more radical and unconventional in their usage of the pedals than the other notations described here. These notations are, in fact, nothing but pedalling instructions, such that ‘any or no keyboard, harp or noise sounds’ could be combined with them. The note that ‘no sounds’ would be as viable a solution as ‘any sounds’ might make one reflect that even though some earlier pedalling markings produce (almost) no aural effect, that does not make them any less significant or necessary. Nonetheless, the situation is different here, both in choreography and effect. In both of these two notations, each pedal has its own independent line of activity (or, as the case may be, inactivity). A pianist endeavouring to read the detailed specifics of all three lines simultaneously is likely to discover that a third foot is really required: at any rate, the footwork is as virtuosic as anything else in the repertoire. If a pianist does perform the pedal notation alongside no other sound-​making activity then the results include not only the thuds of foot on pedal, but also a surprisingly diverse and engaging range of iridescent string resonances, the combination of sostenuto and sustain pedals causing dampers to hit strings in surprising and unpredictable ways. Equally, if performed alongside other sounds, the instructions for the use of pedals constrain the pianist physically in what can simultaneously be achieved,

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while also filtering the sonic results of those actions. The interaction of different sound systems, filtered and modified through moves on a chess board in Reunion (1968) seems like a later version of the same underlying idea.

Dynamics and articulation

For the most part, dynamics and articulation are treated in the same way as durations, which is to say that they are unspecified, though, also like durations, there are exceptions. For instance, in notation G, although there is no reason to imagine the pitches inscribed around the edges of circles being played from left to right, the circles are accompanied by dynamic scales which are read in linear fashion, such that the linear dynamic scale gives amplitude to pitches which are subsequently decoupled from that linearity. On some occasions these are notional scales only, as in the case of the first circle of the first appearance of the notation in the score, which accords a dynamic of forte to all the pitches given, or may run from one value to another, as in the second circle of the same instance, where sounds at the far left of the circle are to be performed pianissimo and at the far right fortissimo. The total number of dynamics is, perhaps unsurprisingly, eight and one presumes that Cage simply determined by chance operations a starting and a closing dynamic, inscribing a single indication if the I Ching indicated that the pair had the same value: the instances in the score show no particular favour towards crescendi or decrescendi, nor towards narrower or wider bandwidths of dynamic change. Something similar occurs in notation AK, where each universe has a dynamic scale attached to it, providing an indication, therefore, of the amplitude of whichever pitch is selected. Here the scale is almost always a crescendo followed by a decrescendo, largely using dynamic extremes, though the smallest universes in the piece, both in the second instance of the notation, are simply crescendi. Notation BQ likewise deploys a single scale from ppp to fff drawn diagonally across the notation, parallel with the hypotenuse of each of the triangles of the notation. Elsewhere implicit dynamic scales appear, as in notation P, where the higher the notehead is within the box, the softer it should be played, an approach which is mirrored at the level of the grid row in notations Y, AC, and AQ. Given that a certain degree of measurement could be involved here to determine the exact amplitude of a particular event, one might see this aspect of these notations as a precursor of the similar measurements required by notation BB and its successors. On the presumption that the octopartite division of dynamics reveals that I Ching determinations were used by Cage to determine dynamics in the ways described above, one might read notation T, Z, AB, AV, and BA as turning over the bare bones of that system to the pianist:  here numbers between one and sixty-​four indicate dynamics, wherein one might represent either

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extreme, either the loudest or softest point in the dynamic scale. Of course, even knowing that Cage was likely to have divided the sixty-​four numbers of the I Ching into groups of eight to make his own scale, the pianist could well select other divisions and a different, more or less specific, scale. Where notations Z and AB use the same set of numbers to indicate dynamics for their triangles—​’clusters ending as single tones’—​the numbers are separated by semi-​colons (fig. 6.2). Though the idea that the clusters end as tones might be read as clusters somehow becoming single pitches, where Cage has wanted to indicate that sort of continuity elsewhere a line tends to show the passage between two extremes. Here, the semi-​colon seems to mark such a sharp divide that one must imagine the triangle to be essentially a remnant of compositional process and that what the notation expects is two separate, distinct events: a cluster followed by a single tone. Dynamics and articulation can sometimes be implied by the instructions, as in notation I, where although dynamics are not inscribed within the notation, Cage notes that repeated pitches should be ‘played as originally’, which presumably includes repeating whatever decisions the pianist had made with regard to all parameters on the first appearance of a particular pitch, including both articulation and dynamics. A part of what makes notation N a variation of notation I is, precisely, that dynamics are specifically determined and are not pinned to particular pitches. Notation X also specifies dynamics but here insists that any material the pianist should decide to repeat must be played at a different amplitude. Perhaps unsurprisingly, conventional modes of articulation are also specified through unconventional means: again, one recalls that the piece, in many respects, sounds much more conservative than its notation might imply, even if the stages necessary to reach such comparative orthodoxy are many and varied. Those conventional modes are, in any case, restricted to two, legato and staccato, the former in fact typically having more of the sense that a particular note or group of notes should be sustained, rather than that they should be smoothly phrased together and, by extension, the latter simply insisting on the relative punctuality of a particular note. Nevertheless, in notations W , BF, and BO, then, notes that are joined by the lines of a triangle (or, in notation BF, other shapes) are to be played legato, which must mean that they are to be joined together, with all other notes to be played staccato, presumably as what Cage describes elsewhere as ‘punctuations’. Notation AL confuses matters a little, since it features slurs as well as lines (and also staccato dots). Here, however, the lines simply serve the function of indicating that a particular set of noteheads belong to the same group. Slurs are opposed to staccato markings here, the former denoting what Cage terms legato, but here is certainly best understood as meaning that those notes with a slur to their successors should be sustained, in much the same manner as straight lines

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function in notations AO and AP, while those with a dot should be played as brief points. This helps to make sense of the final note of notation AL on its first appearance, which receives a slur, but has no successor: here the only option is simply to extend the note. Less clear is Cage’s more general use of ‘punctuations’ and acciaccature, which Cage calls ‘graces’. The terms first occur in notation K (fig. 6.1), for which the instruction reads: ‘Play only odd or even number of tones in a performance, using others of a given 3, 4, 5 or 6 sided figure as graces or punctuations’. Cage elaborates no further here or elsewhere in the instructions, though a grace note in the case of a three-​sided figure might mean that, in the most straightforward reading of the instruction, one note of the three should played immediately before the other two notes, making of it a wholly conventional acciaccatura. What Cage might mean by punctuations is less clear, but a commonplace in Cage’s earlier piano music is a gesture in which one sustained sound is accompanied by a shorter, more punctual sound, the attacks taken simultaneously, such that the attack of the sustained sound is coloured, an approach drawn ultimately from the sonorities of the prepared piano, and from Cage’s work with it.20 Notations of just this sort appear in notation X (fig. 6.2), but to quite a different potential end: Cage observes that quavers should be regarded as punctuations ‘before, at, during, or end of interval they accompany’, thus suggesting that the quaver note could act as the same sort of punctuation one finds in, for instance, the Seven Haiku, but could equally well act as a conventional grace note before the interval notated or a less conventional grace note which follows it. Equally, it could more overtly ‘puncture’ the interval at some point during its sounding. The instruction here might cause one to rethink what seemed like two different options in the instructions for notation K, instead wondering whether, for Cage, ‘graces’ and ‘punctuations’ are really more or less the same thing. That re-​reading would then figure the instruction as closing: ‘using others [ . . . ] as [what I call either] graces or punctuations’. Notation BG looks rather different, but the instruction to interpret the diagonal lines which stem from one of the four corners of each of the notation’s rectangles as ‘approaches, departures and simultaneities’ surely parallels directly the instructions given in notation X. While notation BG seems to clarify and formalise, notation AA’s instructions muddy matters more, in that there, again with no further explanation, Cage asks that grace notes—​which occur where ‘sticks’ intersect—​be used as ‘assistance’. One way of reading this might be to produce the notes as what Cage calls harmonics, silently depressing the keys in advance, as in Pritchett, The Music of John Cage, 40–​45 for a discussion of this sonority within the context of Cage’s gamut technique. 20  See

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notations B, I, N, AI, and BR, which would have the merit of seeming a more concrete form of assistance, becoming an integral part of the sonority, but not identical with its other elements. That said, had Cage meant harmonics specifically, presumably he would have written it. The notation used here for grace notes here, however, distinguishes them from those in notation X: both are notated as quavers of a standard size, but in this case the stems are slashed, making of them, visually at least, true acciaccature, even if they can hardly be performed as such, and also suggesting that there is a distinction to be made between grace notes and punctuations.

Clusters

Many of the more advanced technical devices deployed by Cage in his piano writing stem directly from his knowledge of the piano music of Henry Cowell. Cage had made long use of clusters—​tone clusters in Cowell’s terminology—​as well as other techniques learned from Cowell: In the Name of the Holocaust (1942), for instance, incorporates not only clusters, but also the plucking and muting of strings inside the piano. This pairing is another one which characterises the distinction between Winter Music and Music for Piano, in that the first represents Cage’s first structural and systematic integration of clusters into a compositional framework (although they appear in numerous other prior pieces, including the Music of Changes), while the latter does the same work for the use of piano pizzicati and muting. The clusters in both Winter Music and the Solo for Piano can be defined, albeit in quite broad terms as a fully chromatic aggregate containing a minimum of two chromatic tones and a maximum limited by and to the eighty-​eight chromatic keys of the piano. Within the Solo for Piano, as well as notation B which mirrors Winter Music entirely in this respect, as in most others, clusters are central to notations Z, AB, AO, AZ, and BE. It is, however, in the three instances of notation T (see fig. 6.5) that the cluster reaches its zenith: the instruction, as suggested above with reference to the essential irrelevance of the notated pitch, is cryptic—​‘influences in pitch and time notated as shapes with center points, to be audible as clusters, a single one changing in its course’—​but make clear, whatever else, that clusters are to be deployed as the means of translating the biomorphic shapes into sound. This idea of shifting and polyphonic clusters—​one which Tudor’s realisation of the first instance made wholly tangible—​was surely a direct influence on Stockhausen’s Klavierstück X (1961), which not only features just such an approach, but which was also developed with the intention of its being premiered by Tudor, although in the event it was completed too late for this, and was ultimately given its first performance by Frederic Rzewski.

Interpreting the Solo for Piano  :  391

Inside the piano

As noted above, alongside clusters, Cage derived from Cowell’s string piano techniques a formidable arsenal of means of plucking and muting strings, an approach which can be heard in the Music of Changes, the two piano pieces from the Ten Thousand Things, and Music for Piano. In this context, especially given that the latter is one of the two ‘seed’ pieces for the Solo for Piano as a whole, it is something of a surprise that playing which involves the harp is such a comparative rarity in the piece. This is, in fact, another of the ways in which—​ at any rate, once the decisions have been taken regarded how to realise the notation—​the score follows convention:  most of the notes are played on the keyboard. There is, granted, nothing in the instructions that suggests that the piano ought not to be prepared, nor that any of the notations which make no mention of playing inside the piano cannot be realised in that manner. As ever, the freedom Cage grants the performer to make decisions about anything that he has left unspecified would make such options wholly legitimate. One could even take the instruction given for notation G—​‘[o]‌f notes written play number given in any manner (keys, harp)’—​to provide a licence to take the same approach more widely (although, equally, a pianist might think that, since Cage specifies such freedom here and here alone, it ought not to be so generalised). In any case, relatively few notations specifically prescribe techniques which involve playing within the piano and the majority of this small set belong to the family derived from notation C, which is to say which stem from Music for Piano. Though this set of notations—​which is to say notations H, I, N, and S, as well as notation C itself—​is, in many respects, apparently the most determined region of the piece, it is in the use of the techniques inside the piano that their range becomes clear: Cage specifies neither where a plucked string should be plucked, nor where a stopped string should be stopped, the variables not only physically but timbrally very great indeed. Moreover, in ‘To Describe the Process of Composition Used in Music for Piano 21–​52’, Cage allowed a further timbral modification, which is surely available here too, in that a plucked attack might also be muted and a muted string might also be plucked.21 Only at the very close of the piece do specific directions for playing within the piano return, in notations CA and CD. The former is indeterminate with respect to pitch, but wholly determinate with regard to the mode of production of individual sounds, using different types of lines, which often overlap, to indicate notes to be played on the keyboard, plucked and muted notes, and friction sounds. Notation CD similarly requires sounds to be played on the keyboard or on the harp, depending upon the horizontal and vertical readings 21 

John Cage, ‘Music for Piano 21–​52’,  60–​61.

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of the notation. The only other notation which might be taken to suggest such an approach is notation BT in which, as noted above, five noteheads appear in the rear curve of the left-​hand piano silhouette, which might be taken to indicate sounds to be made within the piano, whether on the strings or not; another point appears to the front of the right-​hand piano silhouette, which could be read as an indication of string sound near the pins. That said, precisely because these images are silhouettes, there is no indication as to height: the sounds demanded could just as well be made below the piano or above it and fulfil the requirements of the notation.

Noises

Though Tudor’s performances and recordings feature the regular use of auxiliary objects—​beaters, whistles, the Slinky spring—​as well as preparations, amplification, and recorded sound, and despite the fact that none of these breaches the letter (or, arguably, the spirit) of the score, it is assuredly the case that on a neutral reading of its notations and instructions alone—​and without making reference to what Cage’s music ‘ought’ to sound like—​the impression would be gained that the Solo for Piano is, overwhelmingly, pitch-​based music, to be played more or less conventionally. Of the eighty-​four notational types, ten require the production of noise, and in six of those cases, noises are to be produced alongside pitched sounds, such that just four demand only noise. This means that noise is, at its greatest reach, about as common, on the level of what is strictly demanded, as choreographic instructions for the use of the hands are, making the former surely surprising rare, even while the latter is surprisingly pervasive. Noises are either indeterminate, as in notations P, V, and BU, the instructions for the first of which specifically state ‘[a]‌ny noises (including auxiliary)’, or provide some sort of prescription regarding the type of noise or the area or means of its production. Notation S, for instance, which repeats the technique of the Music for Piano pieces, requires noise to be made either on the inside of the piano construction or the exterior, according to whether noteheads appear above or below the central line which bisects the notation’s two staves. A  third category, auxiliary noises, is added by notations AC, BA, and BK. Notation AX specifies not the type of noise but the type of beater which should be used, according to four categories—​ wood, metal, plastic, and miscellaneous—​while notation BY specifies the relative pitch relationship between noises otherwise freely chosen, and notation CA demands nothing other than friction noise. All this said, while the notations make no demands for the extensive use of noise, as noted earlier, the pitched material on its own terms does sound both like it was composed by Cage and like it was composed in the 1950s: one would hardly blame a

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pianist for deciding that the noises which characterise Cage’s music of the period deserve a central place in the piece. Equally, however, there is clearly no need for them to, nor to feel restricted to such a limited cache of sonic resources.

Compos(it)ing the Solo for Piano There is no shortage of attempts to portray the Solo for Piano by analogy, as a cluster of associations which suggests a source from which something is to be drawn, complete or incomplete, a source which itself is assembled from distinct parts or materials. Cage’s own description of it as a book is mirrored in Ron Kuivila’s description of the score as an ‘encyclopaedia’, John Holzaepfel’s or William Brooks’s ‘compendium’, and, to some extent, David Sylvester’s suggestion that the notations are akin to ‘architectural plans’.22 That last idea is reflected, with differing nuances, in Edward Crooks’s use of the word ‘maps’ to describe the notations and Michael Rebhahn’s claim that the whole represents a sort of ‘proposal’. 23 Elsewhere, Stephen Drury has referred to the piece as an ‘assemblage’, a characterisation which is returned to in Chapter 7, while Paul Griffiths regards it as a ‘store’ or ‘treasury’.24 The degrees of performer choice and decision are almost as varied as the notations themselves. Allowing for the fact that the total duration of any notation is always indeterminate, perhaps most surprising is the number of notations which feature almost no indeterminate aspects: notations F and AM use irregular time units (and, of course, the duration of time units need not simply be that each one is a second) but are otherwise fixed, their sonic characteristics predictable from the score in conventional fashion. Pitches are fixed too in many notations, such as notations W , Z, AB, AP, AZ, BF, or BO, and, even with variability of dynamic, duration, or performance technique, these notations are often readily aurally recognisable. Notations C and S contain limited timbral indeterminacy: the precise characteristics of the plucked and muted sounds are decided upon by the pianist in the former case, the precise ‘Open Sources’, 19; Holzaepfel, ‘David Tudor and the Solo for Piano’, 138; William Brooks, ‘Choice and Change in Cage’s Recent Music’, in Peter Gena and Jonathan Brent (eds.), A John Cage Reader: A Celebration of his 70th Birthday (New York, NY: Peters, 1982), 86; David Sylvester, ‘Points in Space’, in Judy Adam (ed.), Dancers on a Plane: Cage, Cunningham, Johns (London: Thames & Hudson, 1990), 47. 23 Crooks, Cage’s Entanglement with Coomaraswamy, 33; Michael Rebhahn, ‘Autonomy by the rules’, liner notes to John Cage: Solo for Piano (WERGO, WER 6768-​2, 2013). 24  Stephen Drury, liner notes to John Cage: The Piano Concertos (Mode, mode 57, 1997); Griffiths, John Cage, 33. 22  Kuivila,

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noise elements deployed in the latter. It may speak to the persistent centrality of pitch that it is so straightforward to imagine great variety in the cases of notations E, R, AD, or AW , but aside from the possibility of some pitches being read in either one of two clefs, these notations are otherwise wholly fixed. In fact, over a quarter of notational types are either more-​or-​less fixed or contain small degrees of indeterminacy like those described above. In the first half of the Solo for Piano, such notations predominate; in the final third they are largely absent. Nevertheless, only two notations take the pianist towards total freedom of choice, notations AR and AV, even the latter including indication of dynamic. One might imagine that, in these cases, a pianist who has carefully worked through the puzzles of the rest of the score is at least relatively unlikely to adopt an approach for these two wholly at odds with what has been done elsewhere, even if nothing is actually excluded. Amongst the most indeterminate of notations are those which allocate ranges to both pitch and time—​the parameters being, then, restricted but open—​while leaving all other performance decisions open, as in notations J, U, and BP, and those which involve the use of measurements—​according to a scale determined by the performer—​to define parameters otherwise open, such as notations BB, BV, CC, and their variations and relations. Other largely indeterminate notations include notations BI, BT, BX, and BZ. The notations which feature greater degrees of indeterminacy are, as should be clear, clustered together in the latter parts of the score. It is also the case that Cage’s own instructions regularly introduce ambiguity, even where the language suggests that something highly specific is intended. Cage was perfectly well aware of this feature, countering Feldman’s insistence that a score should itself provide, at least implicitly, all the direction a performer would need: Either that or, if you’re going to have notes of explanation, I think the notes should have at least some of the ambiguity of poetry so that one wouldn’t know exactly what they meant, in order that, reading them, the reader would somehow come to life and be in a position to deal with the music [ . . . ]. It’s a far cry from notation as a blueprint and a way of measuring whether something has been done correctly.25

One might think, of course, that part of the play of the piece is also precisely in the ways in which what is stressed is its radical, as opposed to its conservative, face.

John Cage and Morton Feldman, Radio Happenings: Conversations/​Gespräche, 1966–​ 1967, second edition (Cologne: MusikTexte, 2015 [1967]), 198–​200. 25 

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For the most part, however, notations intermingle indeterminate and fixed elements in more-​or-​less equal proportions. This is true for just over half of the notational types in the Solo and—​since the more indeterminate notations can be found much more commonly towards the end of the score, which is to say where fresh notations are almost never repeated—​the proportion increases further in the favour of such mixed notations if one counts examples of notations rather than types of notations. It is both the case that fixed pitches are balanced by indeterminacies of sequence or timing and that fixed successions and spacing of sounds are balanced by indeterminacies of pitch or noise. Equally, pitches which look fixed are troubled by repetitions, omissions, additions, or performance technique, while sounds which look free are constrained by conditions of articulation, choreography, or other rules which govern and limit the possibilities for realisation. Each notation is in some way the articulation or filtering of a set of parameters—​or a particular set of questions—​presented in the form of a cryptic puzzle, such that there exists a greater or fewer number of legitimate answers, or solutions, to each question. In part, this clearly forms a significant part of the private relationship between Cage and Tudor: Retallack queried whether Tudor had ‘any role in composing the notations? Or did you present them to him as sort of a gift of multiple puzzles?’ False binary though this may be, Cage had no hesitation in plumping for the second option.26 Of course, too, it cannot but recollect Cage’s studies with Schoenberg, wherein, as Chapter 1 recalls, what underlies all possible solutions—​all possible answers—​is the same notation, the cantus firmus, and the same set of instructions. In this general sense, there is little distinction to be drawn between Cage’s studies with Schoenberg and what Cage asks of any pianist—​or, for that matter, analyst—​approaching the Solo for Piano. As Johanne Rivest argues, Cage ‘seems to base his method on an underlying question that contains all possible answers, as a kind of fidelity to the notion of Schoenberg’s Grundlage’.27 Yet it is important to stress that this generalisation obscures the degree to which some of the puzzles of the score present their solutions readily and in singular fashion, others afford a finite number of solutions (even where that number is a very large one), and, for others yet, the number of possible solutions is unbounded. One of the most significant puzzles, however, is of wholly different hue, and is a conundrum for which Cage provides little guidance, which is to say how the pianist is to construct a performance from the sixty-​three pages and 146 notations of the score. Cage’s own guidance is, in sum total that ‘[e]‌ach page is one system Cage and Retallack, Musicage, 298. Johanne Rivest, ‘John Cage’s Concert for Piano and Orchestra’, in James R. Heintze (ed.), Perspectives on American Music since 1950 (New York, NY: Garland, 1999), 90. 26 

27 

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for a single pianist’ and that ‘[t]he whole is to be taken as a body of material presentable at any point between minimum (nothing played) and maximum (everything played), both horizontally and vertically’. As has already been noted above, the notations themselves militate against the possibility of a pianist truly playing everything that the score contains, a fact still not recognised in Cage’s expansion of the directive in his programme note: ‘The pianist is free to play any elements of his choice, wholly or in part and in any sequence’. Moreover, the idea that the performer might choose to play nothing is in part contradicted by Ron Kuivila’s recollection that ‘[l]ike most concerti the Solo is intended to be a virtuosic exercise. (Cage himself told me this after a performance in which he was dissatisfied with the soloist.)’28 Of course one might offer the rejoinder that, first, a virtuosic silence is surely perfectly conceivable; second, if Cage objected to such a version so vehemently, he ought not to have inscribed the option to deliver it in the score; and, third, Cage’s personal tastes ought surely not to trump the instructions of his score, a score which is more fundamentally intertwined with an approach which allows performers to make considered decisions, even where the results are not ones the composer could possibly have foreseen. The first part of Cage’s outline for the piece, more descriptive than prescriptive, can be fruitfully compared with instructions in contemporaneous pieces. The instructions for Winter Music state that ‘[t]‌he notation, in space, 5 systems left to right on the page, may be freely interpreted as to time’, while the Solo for Voice 1 affirms that ‘[e]ach page has 8 systems. The time-​length of each system is free’, a mirror of the instruction in the instrumental solos of the Concert for Piano and Orchestra: ‘Each page has 5 systems. The time-​length of each system is free.’ Here, then, according to Cage’s instructions, each page has (and is) a single system and, since each notation is itself free as to duration, by extension the time-​length of each system, of each page, is also free. By consequence, there is no vertical division of the page: material higher on it is not supposed to be presented earlier than material lower, even on those odd pages, like page 38, which might give the impression that they consist of multiple systems. It seems clear, however, from the essentially sequential appearance of letter names to denote notations (although there are several exceptions to the rule), from the way in which notations continue in conventional fashion from page to page, from what can be adduced of the compositional method analytically, and from what can be said of Cage’s process on the basis of the sketch materials and the autograph, that the Solo for Piano was at least composed from left to right for the most part, the single system of each page running continuously onto the next page, an impression compounded 28 

Kuivila, ‘Open Sources’, 19.

Interpreting the Solo for Piano  :  397

by the fact that notations which run across pages always continue in the same vertical position on the following page. Moreover, Cage’s programme note included the comment that a page ‘is a single system and the notations that may be superimposed (though they need not be) appear above and below one another. The space of a page (from left to right) may be interpreted as time, but specific time is not always given.’ Indeed, specific time is rarely given (though one notes that the realisations in Tudor’s first approach to the piece do superimpose notations in just the way Cage described). Of course, this in no way means that the only option for the pianist is to begin at page 1 and continue through to page 63, but it does suggest that whatever elements are selected, the page is at least notionally read from left to right, just as the notations generally are, unless specific instructions to the contrary are provided. Pousseur wrote to Cage on 28 November 1969, in preparation for a performance of the Concert, to query what specifically he ought to understand by Cage’s directions: you write that each page is “a system”. Is something special meant by that, and what? For instance: can one mix simultaneously various lines, belonging to various letters [ . . . ]? Or: As one has turned a page, can one come back to the previous one, or is the order to be strictly respected?29

Cage’s reply clarifies that his own anticipation was that the page would be read from left to right but that the sequence of pages was far from sacrosanct: The term system means that everything that is on a page goes together, for instance, something above something below is simultaneous. However this may naturally not be possible and therefore I have remarked in the introduction that one need not play all of the music but may play any part of  it. The whole work is to be thought of as a book and so treated. Some people read books from beginning to end; others, having read them, read here and there in them. It is possible, then, to read a page near the end of the book following it with a reading of a page earlier in the book.30

Even taking Cage at his word, in practice this is not without complications since, even if the page is read from left to right and most notations are, the exceptions require a different approach. For instance, across pages 5 to 6, an instance of notation A—​which requires a circular reading—​is placed above notation I, which requires a left-​to-​right reading. As such no note-​to-​note correspondences can be made, even though both could be performed simultaneously, or interwoven once realisations of each have been independently determined. These two might just as well be combined in similar fashion with 29  30 

Henri Pousseur to John Cage, 28 November 1969 (source: JCC). John Cage to Henri Pousseur, 4 December 1969 (source: JCC).

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notation J, which is also coincident with them or, equally—​since Cage allows not only any number of the notations to be used (including none of them) and states that the pianist’s approach ‘may involve any reading, i.e., any sequence of parts or parts thereof ’, which might be read as parts of notations—​ the pianist could choose to use only one (or none) of the three, or make use of only a vertical tranche of a moment where they are superimposed. That Cage adhered to a more-​or-​less pre-​determined plan for the positioning of notations on a page is more or less certain, as discussed in Chapter  2. While some aspects of notations are modified for reasons of space, there is little to suggest that the notations were composed in relation to others on the same page or surrounding pages as such: though variations are often proximate to their progenitors, this probably speaks to the way in which variations were determined, a process, like the rest of the compositional process undertaken seemingly independently of the positioning and spacing of notations. Nonetheless, when a page is regarded as a single system, with all of the notations on it belonging together in performance, the various ways in which notations are scaled and re-​scaled to account for the demands of that independent plan for the arrangement of notations on the page has consequences for the performer. Cage’s instructions are loose enough to allow the performer to accord wholly different durations to each notation on a page, disregarding the more details specifics of the spatial relationships and, thus, making all the material easily playable. Yet the counterpoint of shapes, sizes, and positions on the page is surely suggestive of an approach which seeks to reflect, if not absolutely mirror, these relationships. Certainly, there are occasions where achieving this is comparatively straightforward, both practical and practicable, but often a page may contain notations of radically differing densities and sizes, ways of playing and of reading (including, of course, non-​linear approaches), where the reality of endeavouring to combine all notations would demand exaggeratedly long durations for particular pages to make it possible to come to terms with the range of conflicting technical and physical demands. This is not even only a challenge which arises on the most dense of pages, such as those three—​pages 21, 50, and 56—​which feature ten notations. The presence of a single particularly dense notation, such as the instances of notation D on the fourth and the thirty-​seventh page, can bring about similar challenges. In practical terms, in performance, such observations can rapidly become moribund, even while, perforce, they cause reflection during the period preparing the piece: a pianist could, having determined a duration of fifteen minutes, play a single page of ten notations, or ten notations drawn from ten different pages, or two pages containing a single notation, or two pages containing ten notations in total, but selecting only five of them. The instructions permit any of these possibilities and, moreover, these possibilities represent only the tiniest fraction of what a pianist

Interpreting the Solo for Piano  :  399

might decide to do. Nevertheless, the problematic outlined here surely offers one reason why, if it appeared as if Tudor began with the expectation that each page might represent a minute of clock time, that plan did not stick. Notwithstanding the fundamental difficulties such an approach would involve from the outset, approaches to realisation in practice do not seek—​or at any rate have not sought—​to produce a complete realisation of all sixty-​three pages in a single performance: none of the available commercial recordings undertakes anything of the sort and there is no record of any performance having done so either. This is hardly to say that a pianist could not make such an attempt, making allowances for those notations which, according to their instructions, cannot be played in full without ceasing to be those notations. More recent recordings of the Solo for Piano reflect a tendency towards the performance of single notations in succession, making their identification comparatively straightforward.31 Individual notations within larger ensemble recordings are far less readily identifiable and, while a part of this is a consequence of the density of activity within the ensemble—​including piano sounds which do not sound like the piano as well as ensemble sounds which do—​this also seems likely to be a result of combining notations within a page and of adopting less literal readings of particular notations.32 Of course, this is more or less a reversal of the approach taken by the piece’s first performer, Tudor having played individual notations in sequence when performing the Concert for Piano and Orchestra, but adopting a significantly more idiomatic approach to the piece conceived as a solo. Pianists unsurprisingly adopt a wide range of approaches to the piece more generally: some perform from the published score, some even without annotating it, while others create realisation copies of varying degrees of specificity; some performers are willing to improvise their approaches to (some) notations, in whole or in part, while others notate fully and in detail each element of what they will play. On the structural level, some pianists favour deciding the lengths of notations, as well as the point at which a particular These include Sabine Liebner’s John Cage: Solo for Piano (WERGO, WER 6768-​2, 2013), Thomas Schultz’s recording of the Solo for Piano on John Cage: The Works for Piano 10 (Mode, mode 304, 2018), and two recordings by Steffen Schleiermacher, the first on John Cage: Early Piano Works (ITM Media, 950008, 1993) and the second on John Cage: Complete Piano Music vol. 4 (Musikproduktion Dabringhaus und Grimm, MDG 613 0787-​2, 1999). 32 These include Joseph Kubera’s performance on John Cage (WERGO, WER 6216-​2, 1992), Hermann Danuser’s on John Cage (EMI Classics, 50999 2 34454 2 0, 2008 [1972]), Marianne Schroeder’s on The Barton Workshop plays John Cage (Etcetera, KTC 3002, 1992), and Fabrizio Ottaviuci’s on John Cage:  Dream (WERGO, WER 6713-​2,  2009). 31 

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notation might begin within the performance. Others fix timings for either or both elements in advance. In this sense, Tudor’s approach, for instance, lies at the extreme end of a spectrum of behaviours. One might imagine Tudor, then, as exemplary both in that what he did was sanctioned by Cage and is, in that way, an ideal model; and in that, because so extreme, his version might show the limits of what can be done, acting as some sort of deterrent from following his lead. The Solo for Piano is, regardless, a book, composed from beginning to end, left to right, in sequence, or at least as close to this as makes no odds. Similarly, it moves from Cage’s past to his future, from Music for Piano and Winter Music to Variations I and Fontana Mix, from the familiar to the unfamiliar, from relatively fixed notations to largely indeterminate ones, though the path is not entirely straight, and there are many glances cast back to see where the traveller has come from. These even include occasional pen portraits of others: Earle Brown in notation AP, Paul Williams and Marcel Duchamp in notations AR and AV, Morton Feldman in notation BG, perhaps even Cage himself in notation V. At all stages, the principles of repetition, variation, and innovation underpin the compositional method, but not only on the levels Cage himself described:  these modes of thought also impact upon the ways in which the individual elements of notation are treated: the notational vocabulary is limited and, in that way, exhibits a sort of unifying coherence of traditional hue. The diversity in many respects come from the imaginative combination of those elements, combinations which can be both compellingly original and perplexingly paradoxical. The maximum degree of diversity sought in the instrumental parts is pursued here too, but often through the way in which the truly new can be found in unexpected combinations of the already known, ‘pushing’, as Cage had it ‘some of Schoenberg’s ideas to their limit’.33 In performance, the Solo for Piano may be read through a quite different lens, in linear and non-​linear manner, dipping into pages without regard for any particular sequence, reading both score and notations partially or wholly, as a score or a means for producing a score, an activity requiring a combination of effort, imagination, fidelity, discipline, and confidence, as well, in many cases, as pen, ink, ruler, and the means to make auxiliary noises. There is little to no likelihood of any listener perceiving the sequential compositional method used to create the score, whether or not notations are performed in the order in which they appear or not, notations and combinations of notations often bearing little resemblance to the images of the page. The Solo for Piano is, in a way, the apogee of the ‘emancipation of the graphic from the acoustic’, to the 33 

Cage and Charles, For the Birds, 160.

Interpreting the Solo for Piano  :  401

extent that the score seems to promise a relationship between sound and sign that no performance can deliver: it is on the very cusp of a division between these two worlds, the heard and the seen. As Cage commented in reply to Jasper Johns’s query as to what a particular page might sound like: ‘You’re not listening to it, you’re looking at it’.34

34 Revill, The Roaring Silence, 100.

chapter 7

Understanding the Concert for Piano and Orchestra Liberation and catastrophe Although the piece’s immediate West German reception had been, at best, frosty and dismissive, repeating the old lines about slapstick and introducing a few new, tacitly homophobic criticisms, the Concert for Piano and Orchestra rapidly became, as Ian Pepper has argued, the touchstone piece for a substantial revision of European attitudes to Cage.1 If Cage’s visit to Darmstadt in September 1958 provided him with a certain sort of, albeit contested, legitimacy, the performance of the Concert in Cologne a month later provided a significant musical statement around which Cage’s European exegetes could marshal the defence of ‘their man’. The first substantial published commentary came from the pen of Heinz-​ Klaus Metzger, who had already established himself as West Germany’s most prominent Cage ‘apologist’, as Nils Kayser had it, during the 1958 Darmstadt courses, having translated Cage’s most polemic lecture, his third, and defended Cage stridently in the press in the days following the delivery of that lecture.2 Metzger’s ‘John Cage, or Liberated Music’ set the tone for the subsequent European reception of Cage as a composer who ought and deserved to be taken seriously. Indeed, though it is hard to imagine that Metzger’s text was much read in North America, the same issues that Metzger highlights are those which dominate questions of what the piece might have to do with theories of the musical work stateside, even if there largely shorn of the political dimension which was so important from Metzger’s perspective.

1  Ian

Pepper, ‘From the “Aesthetics of Indifference” to “Negative Aesthetics”: John Cage and Germany, 1958–​1972’, October, vol. 82 (Fall 1997), 37. 2  See Iddon, New Music at Darmstadt, 222–​23. John Cage’s Concert for Piano and Orchestra. Martin Iddon and Philip Thomas, Oxford University Press (2020). © Oxford University Press. DOI: 10.1093/oso/9780190938475.001.0001

Understanding the Concert for Piano and Orchestra  :  403

Metzger’s essay was recorded—​ and presumably written—​ for broadcast alongside the broadcast on WDR’s Nachtprogramm of the European premiere. That recording was made on 30 October 1958, not long after the performance itself, but the combined broadcast did not take place until the following year, on 30 July 1959, less than a month before that year’s new music courses began in Darmstadt. Though a single testimony hardly allows one to generalise about the reach of the broadcast, it is notable that Adorno stressed the medium via which he encountered the piece when he stated that he was ‘deeply moved by a single hearing of Cage’s Piano Concerto played on Cologne Radio, though I would be hard put to define the effect with any precision’.3 Almost simultaneously, the text was published in an Italian translation, undertaken by Sylvano Bussotti, in the third volume of Luciano Berio’s Incontri musicali, which also included Cage’s own ‘Lecture on Nothing’, evidently intended to speak to the interest which Cage’s time in Italy between 1958 and 1959 had enjoined.4 Metzger’s description of the piece is reasonably accurate: there is no score, only parts, which are not related to one another in performance save through the means of the conductor’s living clock, the parts are determined in large part through chance operations, and the Solo for Piano contains a large variety of overlaid elements, some of which are pieces in their own right. In this last context, Metzger unsurprisingly highlights notations B and C, which is to say Winter Music and Music for Piano. To be sure, Metzger sometimes oversteps or overinterprets: for example, given the commonalities of procedures in the instrumental parts, it is arguably misleading to claim that they ‘in no way correspond to each other’; equally, while it is surely licit to imagine a performance of the Solo for Piano in which some elements are pre-​recorded in order ‘to complete what [the pianist] cannot do all at once on the instrument with hands, feet, and mouth’ mentioning it at all seems to exaggerate the possibilities the Solo for Piano itself suggests.5 One might also wonder, without actually seeing the materials of the parts—​axiomatically impossible on the radio, but the print version of the essay did not contain musical examples either—​to what extent it would be possible really to follow the detail of Metzger’s description. Regardless, Metzger seems to have understood the score and to have been trying to explain it accurately. Moreover, some of his descriptions

Adorno, ‘Vers une musique informelle’, in Quasi una Fantasia: Essays on Modern Music, tr. Rodney Livingstone (London: Verso, 1998 [1961]), 270. 4  Heinz-​ Klaus Metzger, ‘John Cage o della liberazione’, tr. Sylvano Bussotti, Incontri musicali, vol. 3 (August 1959), 1–​31. 5  Heinz-​Klaus Metzger, ‘John Cage, or Liberated Music’, tr. Ian Pepper, October, vol. 82 (Fall 1997 [1959]), 50–​51. 3  Theodor W.

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are so evocative they deserve fuller quotation, even if Metzger makes some extravagant inferences regarding the compositional process in the same breath: At times, Cage’s proliferating graphic fantasy describes bizarre linear networks on the paper, something like tree structures, with the terminal points of the branches selected as notes that are then rendered legible by the superimposition of the five-​ line system. We encounter graphic notations that are reminiscent of grass in water; laid over them like aquariums are geometric display-​cases in which notes wafts up like bubbles among grass. In this notation time does not always appropriately run one-​way, from left to right, although the score is written in this manner. Sometimes it curves and twists back on itself, as though wanting, through the power of suggestion, to render time itself reversible.6

Metzger stresses that one of Cage’s fundamental manoeuvres is to replace the definition of composition as a ‘codification of musical representation’ with a definition which makes it ‘the physical act of writing’. What this means is the abolition of the ‘superstition’, as Metzger has it, that performance is an essentially neutral medium which communicates what is written on the page, that an expert musician ought to able to conjure up an imagined hearing of music on the basis of reading the notation which is the physical token of everything that is essential about the piece. As his principal example, Metzger details a single notation in the Solo for Piano, or, in truth, something of a confabulation of notations BB and BV, since he describes single points inscribed within a rectangle which must be translated into an equal number of musical events, as occurs in BB, but adds that the five straight lines—​from which perpendiculars must be dropped to determine duration, frequency, amplitude, timbre, and point of occurrence within a given time—​cut off the corners of the rectangle, which only happens in BV, in which different sizes of points mean that there will be more musical events than there are points, the three largest points demanding four or more sounds, for instance. The confusion matters little, though, since the way in which the succession of events is thus subverted is what Metzger sees as revolutionary. Recalling the stress Metzger laid on the reversibility of time in some notations—​which is to say in simple terms the ways in which, as in notation J, some of the indicated material is required to be performed earlier than its left-​to-​right position on the page would suggest, or to be reversed, or both—​he suggests that Cage overturns the idea that ‘all musical form is nothing but the treatment of relationships of priority in time’ or, to be more

6  Ibid.,

51. Metzger demonstrates here a reasonably intimate knowledge of the score: he appears to be referring, in turn, to notations BX, O, and AH.

Understanding the Concert for Piano and Orchestra  :  405

precise, he puts in place a notation which recognises that such a normative thought exists precisely in order to subvert it.7 The consequences for Metzger are more than musical, since Cage’s undermining of musical time has a social corollary: it would oppose a view of ‘temporal priority, invested in objects’, according to which, in Adorno’s words, ‘[h]‌istorically, the notion of time is itself formed on the basis of the order of ownership’. Though Metzger does not quote the remark which immediately follows this, it perhaps helps explain the way in which property and desire are intertwined in Adorno’s thinking, a sophistication which becomes somewhat flattened out in Metzger’s use of it: ‘the desire to possess reflects time as a fear of losing, of the irrecoverable’.8 The question of whether the music is ‘good’ or not becomes moribund in such a context: the idea that a performance indexes compositional intent, a composer’s aims, through the accuracy of its reflection of the score is practically meaningless, Metzger suggests, though, in becoming meaningless in such a way, it simultaneously rejects the economies of material production.9 Moreover, it is opposed to serial composition—​Metzger mentions only Schoenberg and Webern by name, but it is hard not to think that Stockhausen is already on his mind, especially given his later mention of Zeitmasse (1955–​56) and Klavierstück XI in the same essay—​with its ever-​increasing specification of detail, such that there is little space left for interpretive deviation, without the musical object becoming something different from what it ‘ought’ to be.10 By contrast, the Concert for Piano and Orchestra does not become—​cannot become—​such an object. This music cannot be, as Metzger describes it, evaluated: it falls outside the economy of values which insists on replicability and reproducibility of goods and music alike. What is left, Metzger argues in Adornian hue, is only the question of the truth-​content of what Cage has produced, which Metzger identifies as ‘a musical beginning that, according to its immanent perspective, dares to gravitate toward the precise political meaning of a future world that has been emancipated from the principle of domination’.11 It is the domination of leaders in general, then, that the specific example of Cage opposes in Metzger’s reading: until now, rather than calling attention to the tones, music always recalls the presence of the composer whose task should be to place the tones in a social situation

7 

Ibid., 52. Theodor W. Adorno, Minima Moralia: Reflections from Damaged Life, tr. E. F. N. Jephcott (London: Verso, 2005 [1951]), 79. 9  Metzger, ‘John Cage, or Liberated Music’, 57. 10  Ibid.,  58–​59. 11  Ibid., 58. 8 

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instead. Cage’s work proposes specific possibilities of action to the musician and, if one wants to define it at all, is nothing but a field of possibilities. 12

As late as 1974, Hans G. Helms—​the translator of Cage’s second Darmstadt lecture, with whom Cage lived for a time in Cologne during 1958 until Stockhausen found a separate residence for the remainder of his stay—​ continued to regard the relationship between players and conductor in the Concert in the light of this essentially social reading, even though, after 1968, Helms—​whose Fetish Revolution provides an excoriating analysis of the failures of 1968—​was notably less optimistic than he might have been around 1960 (and his still rosy view of Mao and Maoist China would have been certain to have blackened as Pierre Ryckmans’s work became better known):13 Neither for Cage nor anyone else is this musical model of freedom more than one of free communication within the narrow framework of a group of intelligent musicians. Although not a prefiguration of a liberated society, it allows us to imagine how Cage sees these beginnings of a development in the social sphere that might lead to a socialist society. Cage believes he glimpses such beginnings in China, which, still devastated until a few decades ago by floods, barrenness, invasions, and civil war, has now, thanks to Mao’s practical transformation, achieved pacification and satisfaction.14

Notably, for Helms as for many West German commentators, even into the 1970s, the Concert for Piano and Orchestra remained the primary point of reference. One commentator for whom Cage would essentially mean the Concert for Piano and Orchestra was Adorno. Although he would rapidly come to rethink, or at least significantly nuance, his conclusions, Adorno’s first published response to the Concert takes an essentially Metzgerian line, if for slightly different ends:  for Adorno the piece fails to cohere and it is precisely there where its strength lies, but not because it imagines a utopian future of free relationships between individuals. If anything, Adorno’s stress is on the repudiation of the logical relationships which already (seem to) exist in musical contexts. Its potency arises because the Concert speaks to the tragedy of the present, its rejection of the relationship between musical elements and, by extension, between those elements and the score which is expected to stand for them becoming the only way, from Adorno’s perspective, to recall the loss of relationality between subjects. The abnegation of decision-​making places it 12 

Ibid., 61. G. Helms, Fetisch Revolution:  Marxismus und Bundesrepublik (Neuwied: Luchterhand, 1969). 14  Hans G. Helms, ‘John Cage’, October, vol. 82 (Fall 1997 [1974]), 78. 13 Hans

Understanding the Concert for Piano and Orchestra  :  407

into the category of ‘the imageless image of dehumanization’ through which ‘this music retain[s]‌a hold on the image of humanity’. 15 Adorno stresses that it is the rejection of seductively logical orderings of material which is at stake: ‘Its gesture of menace is unmistakable when it discards its internal logic as a mere semblance [Schein] and throws itself on the mercy of chance. John Cage’s Piano Concerto, whose only meaning and internal coherence is to be found in its rejection of every notion of coherent meaning, presents us with catastrophe music at its most extreme.’16 A bare year after writing this, however, Adorno came to stress that the rejection was not absolute or, if it was, its unconditionality was one which happened entirely on the composer’s side: the removal of established musical relationalities does not lead to the liberation of ‘the music itself ’, which is at least part of what Adorno seems to take to be the meaning of ‘Cage’s bon mot, it will be not Webern speaking, but the music itself ’. That Adorno regards this as, at the very best, charmingly naïve should be clear from his contention that such a composer’s aim would necessarily be ‘to transform psychological ego weakness into aesthetic strength’, echoing, surely knowingly, Boulez’s damning assessment of chance operations.17 As Adorno insists, in what seems a rapid volte-​face, relationships arise between musical materials whether the composer places them there or no and to think otherwise is delusional: ‘the hypothesis that the note “exists” rather than “functions” is either ideological or else a misplaced positivism. Cage, for example, perhaps because of his involvement with Zen Buddhism, appears to ascribe metaphysical powers to the note once it has been liberated from all supposed superstructural baggage.’18 Even if one sort of Schein [semblance] is abandoned—​that a piece’s internal logic might equally well be abandoned in favour of relationships which are obtained by chance—​Adorno insists that another cannot be: ‘The aesthetic illusion [Schein] cannot be eradicated from art. Even art without illusion would not be directly identical with empirical reality. The illusion survives even when it no longer wishes to appear to be anything other than it is.’19 In a sense this is what Adorno means by the impossibility, in his terms, of hearing a note which simply ‘exists’: the gap between the ‘thing itself ’ and its representation remains present whatever manoeuvres the artist may effect, at least so far as something is or remains a work of art, Adorno being unwilling to go so far as Metzger in suggesting that, perhaps, what Cage had undertaken was Adorno, ‘Music and New Music’, in Quasi una Fantasia: Essays on Modern Music, tr. Rodney Livingstone (London: Verso, 1998 [1960]), 256. 16  Ibid., 257. 17  Adorno, ‘Vers une musique informelle’, 283. 18  Ibid., 286–​87. 19  Ibid., 317. 15  Theodor W.

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something which art, at least so far as art had been hitherto understood, was unable to compass. In broader terms, Adorno’s shift in opinion—​or, according to a more charitable reading, sharpening of his position—​actually allows him to double down on his central claim: ‘even negated meaning is still meaning’. Indeed, perhaps especially negated meaning is still meaning. Since ‘every work of art is always more than itself ’, every composed set of logical connections speaks in more ways than its inscriber could plausibly have intended or conceived. Adorno finds in Cage’s work a compelling example of this—​hitting perceptively in passing on the central importance of discipline to Cage’s method—​ in that ‘even works in which all interconnections have been as rigorously eliminated as in Cage’s Piano Concerto, nevertheless create new meanings by virtue of that very rigour’.20 Over time, Adorno seems to have rowed back a little upon his strong initial impressions of the Concert for Piano and Orchestra, although it continues to occupy for him an important place as the negative image of European approaches, productively negative in Adorno’s dialectic, and to have remained the one piece by Cage to which he repeatedly returned as the casus classicus. One should perhaps not be too sceptical that he was wholly sincere that he was ‘deeply moved’ by his first encounter with the piece. The gradual lessening of its significance in Adorno’s thinking would certainly be a plausible response to having had a strong emotional response to the piece on first hearing. By the middle of the 1960s, ‘Cage’s contribution’ had been pared back to having ‘sown doubts regarding the extremes of musical logic’, even if he continues to confess that Cage’s ‘best pieces, like the piano Concerto, still emit an extraordinary shock that stubbornly resists all neutralization’ and if he stresses that the scale of such a contribution ‘cannot be exaggerated’.21 In Adorno’s final mention of the piece, in his posthumous Aesthetic Theory—​which, though the volume was published in 1970 means that conceivably the discussion might have its origin at almost any point in the 1960s, though probably between 1966 and 1969—​he essays essentially the same cluster of thoughts, if with a further slight twist. Placing Cage into the orbit of Beckett, in a passage already referred to above in the context of Antic Meet, Adorno stresses that artworks in general—​though the context makes clear that the Concert for Piano and Orchestra is one of the key artworks he has in mind—​‘become nexuses of meaning, even against their will, to the extent that they negate meaning’. In a sense Adorno stresses the way in which the artwork as generic category is autonomised from

20 Ibid.

W. Adorno, ‘Difficulties’, tr. Susan Gillespie, in Essays on Music, ed. Richard Leppert (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 2002 [1965]) 658–​59. 21 Theodor

Understanding the Concert for Piano and Orchestra  :  409

the desires of artist-​creators tout court. Nevertheless, he seems to hint too, in a smart dialectical movement, that, where the artist-​creator has pre-​emptively, as it were, inoculated the specific artwork against readings which insist that the author’s view take precedence, this characteristic is heightened: this is to say that the most powerfully authorial readings of texts are ones in which authors disavow their authority to provide a privileged reading. The specific meaning which originates in ‘the law of inexorable aleatoriness’, as Adorno sees it, is ‘the expression of horror’. Given that Adorno had already described the Concert as ‘catastrophe music at its most extreme’, one might imagine that this horror relates directly to the way in which catastrophe is most often figured in the German context—​which is to say in response to the crimes of the Nazi era and, most particularly, to the Shoah—​ but Adorno juxtaposes this immediately with his description of Beckett, thinking surely most strongly of Endgame (1957), which figures ‘a catastrophe that consists solely in the fact that it never takes place’.22 Adorno’s warning with respect to Cage in 1965—​‘the most serious difficulty is that despite everything there is no going back [to the pre-​war world]’—​mirrors his assessment of Endgame, that it, in Stewart’s précis of Adorno’s position, ‘addresses a crisis in meaning and representation precipitated by the horrors of World War II and the failure of Existentialism. Metaphysical meaning is no longer possible, and so the dramatic form is itself undermined, and [ . . . ] all “that appears of history is its result: decline” ’.23 After the catastrophe, Adorno might be suggesting, not even the catastrophe can happen, and Endgame and the Concert for Piano and Orchestra are sited on this groundless ground, entertainments at the Grand Hotel Abyss. If Metzger views the Concert as a mirror of a utopian future which has not yet happened, Adorno finds in it no more (and no less) than a reflection of and on the crisis of meaning. Aesthetic Theory, 154. ‘The catastrophe’ for West German writers of the period is very often a metonym for the period of National Socialist rule and the actions of the Nazi state, initially expressed in the title of Friedrich Meinecke’s Die deutsche Katastrophe:  Betrachtungen und Erinnerungen (Wiesbaden:  Eberhard Brackhaus, 1946)—​a volume which did little to explain the events of the previous fifteen years, but managed to retain the more-​ or-​less orthodox antisemitism of Meinecke’s generation—​but rapidly also came, via Karl Jaspers’s Die Schuldfrage (Munich: Piper, 1974 [1946]), translated as The Question of German Guilt, to figure the Nazi genocide of European Jewry. 23  Paul Stewart, ‘But Why Shakespeare? The Muted Role of Dickens in Endgame’, in Mark S. Byron (ed.), Samuel Beckett’s Endgame (Amsterdam:  Rodopi, 2007), 220. Alastair Williams, too, has noted the proximity of Adorno’s description of the Concert for Piano and Orchestra to his reading of Endgame (see New Music and the Claims of Modernity (Aldershot: Ashgate, 1997), 71). 22 Adorno,

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Although the fact could hardly have been known to many at the time, Adorno had in fact made earlier comment on the Concert in his lectures on aesthetics at the Institut für Sozialforschung at the Johann Wolfgang Goethe University in Frankfurt during the winter semester of 1958–​59. These lectures were not published in German until 2009 and, as such, formed no direct part of the debate around the aesthetic meaning of the Concert, accessible as the thought was only to those who were physically present at his eighth lecture, held on 11 December 1958. That date is significant in a number of ways. First, it predates the composition of Metzger’s commentary on the piece and, as should become clear, it also arguably pre-​figures Metzger’s commentary, to the extent that one might well think that Metzger must at least have seen Adorno’s notes if he was not actually physically present for the lecture. Second, by extension, it means that Adorno must have had some access to the piece before and beyond its presentation on WDR: according to Eberhard Ortland, he was not only present at the European premiere, but he even endeavoured to organise a Cage event at the Amerika-​Haus in Frankfurt which would have included the Concert.24 A rather later letter, dated 26 February 1960, from Adorno to Erich Doflein states explicitly that he had listened to the Cologne recording—​the context suggests he had probably specifically visited Cologne for that purpose—​but this is so much later that it would be difficult to assert that it was this that was the origin of Adorno’s knowledge of the piece.25 Whatever the case, his knowledge seems to go beyond what such a recording would provide. It also makes surprising his stress on having encountered the piece precisely through its broadcast. He noted to Doflein that he had met ‘Cage and his circle’ in Düsseldorf and ‘had the impression of highly original and productive people’, which might suggest that it was on the occasion of the concert on 14 October 1958 at Jean Pierre Wilhelm’s Galerie 22 that Cage and Adorno met. That concert was, moreover, introduced by Heinz-​Klaus Metzger.26 Adorno’s earlier remarks also make sense of Cage’s comment to Peter Yates that Adorno had ‘changed his views about modern music due to hearing this music—​Concert for Pn. and Orch. He says that now Boulez and Stockhausen 24 

Ortland, ‘Editor’s Notes’, 302. W. Adorno to Erich Doflein, 26 February 1960, in Andreas Jacob (ed.), Theodor Adorno–​Erich Döflein: Briefwechsel (Hildesheim: Olms, 2006), 244. 26  Ibid. Doflein had expected Adorno to have been against Cage and his approach, but part of the purpose of Adorno’s letter is to disabuse him of that view: ‘I will distance myself neither from Cage nor from Tudor as you expect me to’. Of Tudor, he is particularly complimentary: ‘one of the most outstanding and inspired pianists I have ever encountered; you only have to listen to the recording of Boulez’s Flute Sonatina [ . . . ] to assure yourself of  that’. 25 Theodor

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are as easy for him as butter, and that this piece makes a radical change since Schoenberg’, especially if Cage is, more or less, reporting a personal conversation.27 On the basis of Adorno’s published commentary on the piece, Cage’s report would seem overblown. In the light of Adorno’s very first reactions, though, it may be less hyperbolic than it first appears: Adorno stated outright that his reason for mentioning the Concert was that ‘one must extrapolate theory from the most advanced tendencies of development, not vice versa’.28 At the end of 1958, then, the most advanced compositional practice was, in Adorno’s view, in the hands of Cage, even if Adorno did not pretend to have fully assimilated it (and even if, a little later, he may have felt the first flush of enthusiasm fade a little). In general, Adorno insisted that the nature of Cage’s work ‘is such that the question of aesthetic quality would truly be out of place and would miss the point entirely: in a sense, they do not aspire to be works of art’, precisely Metzger’s jumping-​off point. 29 He insisted here, too, as he would later, that chance—​the only principle ‘that still applies’—​supplants construction, though, in words which resonate strongly with Nelson Goodman’s description of the Solo for Piano, to be turned to presently, Adorno argues that the instrumental parts are ‘really only sketched’. ‘The only rule’, Adorno opined, is that ‘each note has the same chance to have its turn’. Erroneous though this view may be, it is Adorno’s aural impressions of the piece that strike most forcefully, not least because of how unguarded the reaction seems to be: If you listen to this peculiar thing, then you too—​and that is really something that gives much food for thought—​will certainly not have the impression of something meaningless but, rather, through this negative principle, have the impression of an extremely integrated quality, if you will, even a very strong necessity. And you will even perceive, through this complete surrender to chance, a form of expression—​a desperate utterance of wildly protesting expression—​that goes very far beyond what one knows from traditional expressive works of art. 30

Aside from the fact that, if Adorno had been present at the European premiere, Cage would surely have been grateful for this enthusiasm sooner, Adorno’s later commentary proceeding from this reaction, then, focussed on how it could possibly be that a way of working which, so his experience and instincts told him, ought not to produce anything meaningful, ought to produce a blank, levelled-​out chaos, which nevertheless in practice produced something not John Cage to Peter Yates, 19 May 1959, in Kuhn (ed.), Selected Letters, 205. W. Adorno, Aesthetics, ed. Eberhard Ortland, tr. Wieland Hoban (Cambridge: Polity, 2018 [1958]), 84. 29  Ibid.,  83–​84. 30  Ibid., 84. 27 

28 Theodor

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only meaningful, but compelling. That same contrast between the limitations of what seemed to be inscribed in the score and the realities of musical experience would later also be a central feature of debate on the other side of the Atlantic. One notes, too, of course, precisely the form of argument that Metzger deploys, if with rather different detailed specifics: this is not an art work and nevertheless something remarkable—​something which cannot be precisely determined, but which expresses itself forcefully—​happens in the encounter with it as an art work. Most other readings were undertaken on less apparently elevated terrain, but the Concert for Piano and Orchestra was no less important a focus for that. Just shy of a month after the broadcast of the piece on WDR, along with Metzger’s commentary, it formed one of the central illustrations in Stockhausen’s five ‘Musik und Graphik’ lectures at Darmstadt, alongside Cornelius Cardew’s February Piece I (1959), Sylvano Bussotti’s Five Piano Pieces for David Tudor (1959), Mauricio Kagel’s Transición II (1958–​59), and his own Zyklus (1959). Importantly, Stockhausen insisted that at least one of the implications of the gloss Adorno would later give to the piece—​and Boulez’s general stance towards Cage—​was, from his perspective, erroneous. Cage knew precisely what he wanted and what he did not: he did not want performers simply to act however they might desire at any moment; he wanted musicians like David Tudor to engage in a responsible, disciplined way with the multiple (but not unlimited) possibilities afforded by his notations. Naturally, this was the relationship Stockhausen hoped musicians, Tudor included, would have to his own music too, but his argument implicitly maintains that, whatever the appearances to the contrary, Cage remains perfectly recognisably a ‘proper’ composer with perfectly ‘proper’ compositional desires. Much of Stockhausen’s commentary seems to mirror Metzger’s, both in content and in tone, in ways which suggest that at least part of what Stockhausen had to say was drawn directly from Metzger’s insights (or, no less plausibly, both were reliant on descriptions Cage, or for that matter Tudor, had provided to them of the piece). At one telling point, Stockhausen more or less repeats Metzger’s mistake regarding the composition of the parts, though his version of it is not technically in error as Metzger’s is: ‘All the instrumental parts were written entirely independently of one another’. Other aspects of Stockhausen’s description are evidently directly drawn from Tudor’s description of how he performed the piece: Stockhausen describes two different possible ways of realising the Solo for Piano, the first of which persistently changes which type of material is being played, against an essentially static orchestral background, the second of which stretches out a group of notations to have a common duration, thus becoming itself essentially self-​similar and static. These two possibilities map on to Tudor’s first two realisations, a fact Stockhausen does not disguise, explicitly mentioning

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the second as an approach taken by Tudor. In his examinations of specific notations, Stockhausen is reliant upon precisely what Tudor did with them, tending to move quite rapidly over the detail of how one gets from notation to realisation. Similarly, Stockhausen seems to treat the Cologne version of the piece as paradigmatic of the whole in ways which at points misrepresent matters. For instance, he suggests that the time modified by the conductor is always ten minutes, as it was for the European premiere, and that that is the duration which an instrumentalist must allocate across the pages selected for a particular performance. Nonetheless, in broad terms his description is a reasonably accurate one, although he rather curiously takes the Solo for Piano to be the score of the piece (a contention which may speak further to the centrality of Tudor to Stockhausen’s understanding of the piece), claims that that score has sixty-​two rather than sixty-​three pages, and, having said that four notational types are carried over from other pieces (itself a mistake), then enumerates just three: two of these are, as would be expected, the Music for Piano and Winter Music; the third is a piece Stockhausen calls Whistle Piece. It is not entirely clear what piece he could be imagining: many whistles had been used in performances of Variations I at the previous year’s courses—​to much hilarity on behalf of the listeners—​and Variations I-​like notations had been a central focus for Metzger’s description; equally well known to Stockhausen would have been 34′46.776″ and 31′57.9864″, premiered in abbreviated form at Donaueschingen in 1954 (where the use of whistles, too, had been the trigger for the more raucous of the laughter) and then performed in Cologne in a different abbreviation a couple of days later. Like the Variations I-​like notations, a version of the notational style of the Ten Thousand Things is present in the Solo for Piano as notation V. If this is what Stockhausen meant, of course the function of these later notations within the piece is quite different, a distinction Stockhausen does not seem fully to have comprehended: he suggests that all the other notations in the piece were elaborated from these basic types, a characteristic which certainly does not apply to the Whistle Piece, whatever piece Stockhausen may mean. What Stockhausen emphasises in this is that to claim that the piece does not exhibit a structure is, on one level, fallacious: ‘There are,’ he says, ‘numerous structures which repeat in varied forms developed out of these four types, and provide a continuity to the reader when one first leaves through them in turn. And between them there are individual structures which fall entirely outside that continuity and never return.’ Simultaneously, he implicitly argues that this may be a structure which the reader can experience, as presumably can the performer, but the listener cannot. In performance, ‘everything exists for itself, unconnected’. Stockhausen’s underlying interest throughout the lecture series was in the ways in which notation might indicate more than singular results, the way

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in which it might move from Eindeutigkeit (unambiguousness, which is to say a notation would have a singular, unique way of being read) to Vieldeutigkeit (ambiguity, which is to say notations amenable to being read in multiple, distinct ways): the pieces examined ranged from ones where the distance between score and possible performance was quite narrow, as in the case of Cardew, and really rather wide, as with Cage and, perhaps even more so, Bussotti, with Kagel and Stockhausen both adopting what must have seemed in context like a more moderate, balanced approach. The ideal solution, from Stockhausen’s perspective, was unsurprisingly his own, in which a single score might move seamlessly between elements which were eindeutig and which were vieldeutig. Since he was also keen to stress that a certain degree of play between sound and sign was, as it were, the natural state of notation—​with the idea of an isomorphism between the two in any case a relatively recent historical phenomenon—​he was surely suggesting from the outset that even the more extreme score materials still fell well within the boundaries of the tradition and that, just as Cage was still a composer, so the Concert for Piano and Orchestra was still a musical work.31 It was precisely this aspect of what Stockhausen said that the critic of the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung latched onto. That critic was the already influential Ernst Thomas, who would, just a few years later, become the second director of the new music courses at Darmstadt. The title of his review of Stockhausen’s lecture series—​‘Sounds for the Eye? Dangerous Doctrines at the Darmstadt Ferienkurse’—​gives the flavour of his position. Perhaps Thomas was, though he did not name him, responding at least as much to Metzger’s assertion that the idea that the isomorphic relationship between sound and sign was mere superstition as he was to Stockhausen’s outline of the opportunities that might arise through decoupling the two. Certainly he was not opposed to open form—​he regarded Stockhausen’s Klavierstück XI and Boulez’s Third Piano Sonata (1955–​57) as wholly acceptable—​but simply to indeterminacy, which is to say musics where an educated musical listener could not imagine a performance, more or less approximately, from the materials provided to performers without the need to do something with those materials. ‘The “notes” become pictures’, he complained, ‘such that the inner ear, with which one is accustomed to read a score becomes redundant’. What is evident is that at least part of what Thomas was worried about was related to his more general worries that unscrupulous composers might thus take advantage of audiences or, perhaps more accurately, that he might

31 

Karlheinz Stockhausen, ‘Musik und Graphik’, five lectures, 26–​29 & 31 August, Kongreßsaal Mathildenhöhe, Darmstadt (source: IMD). For more general commentary on the lecture series see Iddon, New Music at Darmstadt, 236–​45.

Understanding the Concert for Piano and Orchestra  :  415

himself be, as it were, taken for a ride: the score was the ur-​guarantee for him against composerly fraudulence and against the possibility that he would be personally embarrassed. It may also be that Thomas was unconvinced that what such a score demanded of a performer was not at all the sorts of discipline which Tudor, who provided musical examples throughout Stockhausen’s presentations, brought, but instead improvisation, a hardly uncommon misprision. In any case, even if the description was provided by Stockhausen, Thomas was perfectly clear who was to blame: ‘It is for these things that John Cage’s primitive philosophy stands [ . . . ]. If the oppositions between spirit and nature, between construction and “what happens” in the process of writing are neutralised, composition becomes trivial. Cage believes it, the imitators revel in it. There is a word for this, as ambiguous [vieldeutig] as it is unequivocal [eindeutig]: dilettantism.’32 Regardless of whom Thomas took to be the nemesis of right-​thinking composers, it is clear that, again, the central themes of the debate repeatedly gravitate toward one question: does the fact that this notation produces results which are radically different from performance to performance and which could neither be predicted from the notation nor traced back to it mean that the piece as a whole should be ejected from the proper sphere of art? There remains an important corollary, too, signalled from the outset by Metzger: if it should be expelled, might this be a good thing?

Open form Perhaps unsurprisingly, conversations about Cagean indeterminacy and open form bled into one another. If one were to read the following quotation from Eco’s classic text on the latter entirely in isolation, it would be perfectly possible to imagine that Cage’s music, or music much like it, formed an important part of the discussion: [I]‌t is obvious that works like those of Berio and Stockhausen are ‘open’ in a far more tangible sense. In primitive terms we can say that they are quite literally ‘unfinished’: the author seems to hand them on to the performer more or less like the components of a construction kit. He seems to be unconcerned about the manner of their eventual deployment.33

32 Ernst

Thomas, ‘Klänge für das Auge? Gefährliche Doktrinen auf den Darmstädter Ferienkursen’, Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, 1 September 1959. 33  Umberto Eco, The Open Work, tr. Anna Cancogni (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1989 [1962]), 4.

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Yet the named composers here, as well as Pousseur and Boulez who are the other two central examples for Eco, were doing something quite different from Cage. The specific pieces highlighted by Eco—​Berio’s Sequenza I (1958), Boulez’s Third Piano Sonata, Pousseur’s Scambi (1958), and Stockhausen’s Klavierstück XI—​are ‘unfinished’ on the level of structure (if in the most minor of ways, in the case of the Berio), but the musical elements which are to be structured are finished, rather than, as in the case of the Solo for Piano, requiring significant determinative work on behalf of the performer as well as decisions regarding the sequence of elements. Sequenza I and Scambi could doubtless have been added to Thomas’s list of pieces deploying chance in ‘acceptable’ ways without demur. Cage’s name does not appear at any point within Eco’s text (and nor do those of Bussotti or Feldman or Kagel or Wolff ); his reference points are unproblematic representatives of European high modernism. Although the absence of Cage’s name should not necessarily be taken to mean that the text is not concerned with him, just as the presence of Cage’s name does not always mean that a text is—​ambiguities of just these kinds recur on no small number of occasions in the below—​in the case of Eco’s reading of the open work, the organizing rules which govern the possible formal relationships between elements may be complex, flexible, or, indeed, confusing, but the musical identity of such a piece is coherent and inheres in those elements: such pieces ‘will never be gratuitously different’.34 As such, Eco could hardly be discussing Cage. However, by implication, Eco reinforces the idea that the degree to which performances of Cage might be different, even gratuitously so, means that they must constitute a problem for any definition of an art work worth its salt. Eco signals early on in his text the limits of the work of art itself and that his concern even in the case of open works is still with objects which can be so conceived, stressing both that art works are, on the level of interpretation, always already open, and that that openness is strictly (de)limited: A work of art, therefore, is a complete and closed form in its uniqueness as a balanced organic whole, while at the same time constituting an open product on account of its susceptibility to countless different interpretations which do not impinge on its unadulterable specificity. Hence, every reception of a work of art is both an interpretation and a performance of it, because in every reception the work takes on a fresh perspective for itself.35

34  35 

Ibid., 19. Ibid., 4.

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In many ways, then, the sort of open forms that Eco is concerned with are ones where what a performer undertakes does not, cannot, ‘impinge on its unadulterable specificity’, which is to say that openness cannot fundamentally trump identity. The variability of what a performer might do with the Solo for Piano in particular necessarily means that, on the level of sonic identity from performance to performance, its specificity is, or certainly can be, profoundly adulterated, recalling the features regarded as positive facets by Metzger and negative ones by Thomas. One would have to presume that the Concert for Piano and Orchestra simply could not be examined directly as an open work by Eco because it does not constitute a work from the outset. A related thought, though here raised (at least apparently) directly in connection with Cage is put forward by Konrad Boehmer, in the chapter ‘Zufall als Ideologie’ (‘Chance as Ideology’) in his Zur Theorie der Offenen Form in der Musik (On the Theory of Open Form in Music). The text was, initially, written as Boehmer’s doctoral thesis, completed in 1966. As such, in theory Eco’s Italian-​ language version of The Open Work would have been available to him, published as it was in 1962. A German-​language version would not be published until the 1970s, but elements of the musical aspects of Eco’s text were published rather earlier in the 1959 edition of Berio’s Incontri musicali, which is to say alongside Metzger’s writing on Cage.36 Nonetheless—​and despite the fact that large portions of its musical frame of reference are the same, even if Boehmer unsurprisingly has a much wider musical range than Eco—​it does not seem as if Eco’s thought was known to him. Given that, it is intriguing that the sorts of openness that the two consider more or less include and exclude the same elements, if to rather different ends. Boehmer offers little in the way of distinctions between music composed according to chance operations as in Music of Changes, the use of structural open form such that local details are fixed but broader organisations determined by performers either live or in advance, as in Stockhausen’s Klavierstück XI or Boulez’s Third Sonata, or uses of indeterminacy like Cage’s where both local and global detail require performative determination. To be more precise, Boehmer more or less elides the first two categories and ignores the third. Though he describes, for instance, Cage’s use of paper imperfections—​and implicitly contrasts that with the ‘good’ sort of chance Boulez describes in ‘Alea’, where the composer may undertake extensive pre-​compositional work, but nevertheless reserves the right to alter and adapt any of these essentially calculated decisions on the page—​the fundamental misunderstanding is made clear in the closing moments of his discussion of Cage’s work, where Umberto Eco, ‘L’opera in movimento e la coscienza dell’epoca’, Incontri musicali, vol. 3 (August 1959), 32–​54. 36 

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he states that ‘[i]‌t would be necessary to free chance from its confinement to macrotemporal processes, where it merely arranges sound-​objects, to bring it into a realm of effectiveness in which, to the contrary, it can be used to determine complex forms’.37 This could plausibly be a criticism of, say, the Music of Changes, even if it would ignore the fact that chance operates on multiple levels within that piece and not only the macrotemporal; it could certainly describe Klavierstück XI, since chance there does, precisely, organise pre-​determined objects, even if filtering those objects in terms of dynamic, tempo, and attack. It could not, however, describe the Concert for Piano and Orchestra nor, for that matter, any other piece in which the notations of the piece are, themselves, indeterminate: there, there is certainly no sense of ‘confinement’ to the arrangement of (pre-​existing) sound objects. Boehmer’s understanding, in this sense, matches Eco’s, even if what Boehmer says that he wants is for such a limited version of openness to be transcended. Nonetheless, recalling Metzger, in his analysis of Cage’s use of paper imperfections, in particular considering Cage’s suggestion that in working in that way a composer might become like a camera maker who hands the device over to someone else to take pictures, Boehmer demonstrates that at least part of his underlying animus is to do with questions of the reproducibility of the musical work, through a fixed score, in performance: By means of a thoroughly dubious comparison, the musical composition is degraded to the level of the mere instrument of its own presentation. This is neither dialectical nor paradoxical, but simply incompetent thinking, since the relationship between camera, photograph, and the world of objects cannot be compared to that between a work and its various realizations in performance.38

One notes, then, that the question returns to the problem of what a musical work is or might be, and what that might have to do with the relative diversity of a work’s possible immanent presentations. Despite this, Wolff, if very gently, stressed that what Cage was doing might be related to the debate around open form, but that, really, his interests were distinct when, in 1987, he described open form as ‘a subject that concerned many of us some twenty-​five and more years ago (for instance, Earle Brown, Henri Pousseur, Pierre Boulez, Heinz-​Klaus Metzger, Konrad Boehmer, Umberto Eco, and of course, though in fact more obliquely, John Cage)’.39 Boehmer’s later writing takes a rather more sophisticated view of Cage’s Konrad Boehmer, ‘Chance as Ideology’, tr. Ian Pepper, October, vol. 82 (Fall 1997 [ca. 1965]),  75–​76. 38  Ibid., 72. 39  Christian Wolff, ‘Open to Whom and to What’, in Occasional Pieces: Writings and Interviews, 1952–​2013 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2017 [1987]), 87. 37 

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approach, where he suggests that chance ‘has contributed to the sense that music is aesthetically a matrix, a field, since Cage’s works are unconcerned about the beginning, development, or end of musical processes: the work as process becomes a musical soundscape’.40 Such ideas recur, as outlined below, in more recent attempts to recapture indeterminate pieces as works.

Notation Ostensibly, Carl Dahlhaus was writing about the 1965 Darmstadt Ferienkurse seminar on ‘Form’—​one of a sequence of three important, if dry, conferences which formed the intellectual centrepiece of the courses in the mid-​ 1960s—​when he opined that ‘[t]‌he influence of John Cage, whose appearance in Darmstadt in 1958 swept across the European avant-​garde like a natural disaster, was still undiminished in 1965’.41 The statement was no less true of the previous year’s conference, which considered ‘Notation’. Nevertheless, even though the very question of notation as a compositional problem was one which was posed above all by Cage and above all in the European context in the Concert for Piano and Orchestra, Cage seems conspicuously absent from discussion. In his own contribution to the 1964 notation symposium, the only composers Dahlhaus mentions by name are Roman Haubenstock-​Ramati, Kagel, György Ligeti, Pousseur, and Stockhausen; Ligeti’s own contribution likewise includes no mention of Cage, but does rather dance around him, including examples from composers whom an educated audience could hardly avoid associating with Cage:  Earle Brown, Franco Evangelisti, Kagel, and Bussotti, the latter in the form of the third of his Five Piano Pieces for David Tudor, which had already been presented within Stockhausen’s ‘Musik und Graphik’ some six years earlier. Ligeti’s assessment of the Bussotti—​that the score was not really a means of communication, but rather a means of association: ‘The vestiges of traditional notation have here an associative function’—​echoes Ernst Thomas’s criticism, seemingly of Cage, but surely no less of Bussotti: the same score presented by Ligeti stood at the head of Thomas’s piece in the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung discussed above. Again, this is a way of noting that there is a key distinction to made between pieces which, in short, sound the way they look and pieces which do not, though Ligeti simply draws

Boehmer, ‘Das verteufelte Serielle’, in Burkhardt Söll (ed.), Das böse Ohr: Texte zur Musik, 1961–​1991 (Cologne: DuMont, 1993 [1989]), 215. 41  Carl Dahlhaus, ‘Form: Introduction’, in Ruth Katz and Carl Dahlhaus (eds.), Contemplating Music: Source Readings in the Aesthetics of Music, vol. III: Essence (New York, NY: Pendragon, 1992 [1965]), 777. 40  Konrad

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a line between such approaches, rather than demanding that a composer stand on one or the other side of it. Two of those composers discussed by Ligeti were themselves present, Kagel and Brown, the former of whom had also been mentioned by Dahlhaus. Kagel’s presentation, however, was really about his own music; Boulez was the only other composer mentioned in it, and that simply to observe that open form as in Boulez’s Third Sonata was not what Kagel had in mind. Brown did mention Cage but only in passing and only to describe the dissociation between sound and sign in his music for prepared piano: Brown insisted that, being no musicologist, he felt qualified only really to comment on his own music.42 Whether intended to stress any prior claim to the use of indeterminate notations or not, Brown was, in general terms, keen to look at his own indeterminate notations, as in the Folio (1954) pieces.43 The published version of Brown’s text, however, contained an appendix, the content of which had not featured in the presentation Brown delivered at Darmstadt. The appendix is striking, not only because it explicitly deals with Cage (and Feldman)—​ the composers responsible in Brown’s opinion, along with Brown himself, for the ‘first and most extreme’ examples of what Brown terms ‘aleatoric music’, which includes fixed, but chance-​generated scores, open form pieces, and pieces where a performance of a piece is indeterminate of its score, a different sort of elision of approaches from that made by Boehmer—​but also because of a sort of potential misconception on Brown’s part regarding Cage. Brown notes that he is restricting the time period under examination to 1951 to 1953, a period which would naturally give primacy to the Americans, but also, if less obviously, to Brown himself. He would later select more or less the same period to make more or less the same point to Varga some twenty years later: ‘Cage was not doing open-​form or improvisational works in 1952 or 1953. He himself says that his first “indeterminate” work was in 1957 or 1958.’44 According to Brown’s account in the mid-​1960s, ‘Cage used—​and still uses, so far as I am aware—​chance as a compositional technique, which is to say as a rational, regulated, disciplined system, in order to bring sonic materials together in an objective way. The controversial point in this is that while composing he exercises no subjective control over the succession of events.’ Certainly this accurately describes the picture in the period given by Brown—​ more or less from Music of Changes up to and including Music for Piano—​but the parenthetical ‘still uses’ is telling: if Brown is taken at his word, the sorts Earle Brown, ‘Notation und Ausführung Neuer Musik’, Darmstädter Beiträge zur Neuen Musik, vol. 9 (1965), 67. 43  Ibid., 71 & 75–​78. 44 Earle Brown in Bálint András Varga, Three Questions for Sixty-​ five Composers (Rochester, NY: University of Rochester Press, 2011 [1984]), 34. 42 

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of decisions which were handed over to performers in, for instance, his own December 1952 (if almost immediately also taken back in Brown’s case) had not, to his knowledge, entered Cage’s music by 1964, and even in his much later account, wherein he recognises the correct timing of the move to indeterminacy, he does not distinguish it from improvisation. In part the confusion evidently reflects a relative lack of knowledge of Cage’s music after the move to Stony Point in 1954, since the too-​easy conflation of improvisation and indeterminacy suggests an albeit surprising lack of understanding of how Tudor, at least, performed Cage’s music, even though Tudor had treated Brown’s Folio pieces in near enough the same way. In Aloys Kontarsky’s presentation, too, Cage made a fleeting appearance, in Kontarsky’s note that time-​space notation was developed by Cage and Brown, a comment made seemingly only in order to demonstrate the quality of Stockhausen’s later usage of the same resource.45 In truth, the most telling comment surely came from Dahlhaus precisely because it is so obviously about Cage, but without his being mentioned by name. Indeed, Dahlhaus doubly distances Cage from the field of discourse by ensuring that the observation is one he is reporting second hand: ‘The pianist David Tudor, reports Karlheinz Stockhausen in “Musik und Graphik” (Darmstädter Beiträge 1960), “imagines a qualitative writing in the manner of a Chinese ideogram, according to which the player can unmediatedly experience a complex sound event.” ’46 Dahlhaus explicitly, then, draws the link between the 1964 notation symposium and Stockhausen’s 1959 lecture series, a link, as already noted, made implicitly by Ligeti. More, though, this describes precisely the notational means which Tudor would deploy to realise Cage’s Variations II.47 Since Variations II had not been composed even by the time Stockhausen was redrafting elements of his 1959 presentation for publication the following year, one can only imagine that Tudor was conceiving a more generalised solution, one which would have been particularly appropriate for, for instance, Variations I and for notations BB, BJ, and BV within the Concert for Piano and Orchestra. Indeed, it almost certainly must have been these notational means which were on Tudor’s mind, since in 1959 the only other piece that could come into the frame would be Music Walk, the physical theatre of which—​the walking from station to station which characterised Tudor’s own versions—​makes it unlikely that such a notation would be especially useful for that piece.

Aloys Kontarsky, ‘Notationen für Klavier’, Darmstädter Beiträge zur Neuen Musik, vol. 9 (1965), 100–​01. 46  Carl Dahlhaus, ‘Notenschrift heute’, Darmstädter Beiträge zur Neuen Musik, vol. 9 (1965), 28. 47  See Iddon, John Cage and David Tudor, 175–​87. 45 

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Limits An ocean away, Cage’s approaches found themselves posited as a limit case for questions of what music might be capable of doing or being, recalling both Metzger’s and Adorno’s initial readings of the Concert, with Stanley Cavell and Nelson Goodman coming close to reproducing the respective positions of the two Europeans, although Cavell makes of Cage a philosopher rather than the social theorist Metzger turns him into. Indeed, by 1967, Cavell, having long abandoned his youthful plans of becoming a composer, if not his interest in contemporary music, became the first philosopher in the Anglo-​American tradition to take up Peter Yates’s insistence, in his review of the Indeterminacy and Twenty-​Five Year Retrospective recordings, that Cage might not be a composer ‘proper’ at all, but rather what Yates termed a ‘philosopher of esthetic instances’ and to treat the claim seriously.48 Nonetheless, if Cavell is the first philosopher to attempt to translate the concerns of the post-​war generation of composers, Cage included, into the Anglo-​American context, it is not insignificant that he undertakes this rendering exactly in the context of the writings those composers themselves had inscribed in Die Reihe, which, along with Perspectives of New Music, forms Cavell’s core primary source material. For Cavell, Cage’s music—​precisely because it is not quite straightforward for his critics simply to say that it does not constitute music at all, the very act of critical quibbling about it demonstrating that merely ejecting it from the orderly world of art is not really an option—​implicitly asks questions about the ontology of music and of art in general: if rejection is not so easily achieved as to say that anyone who encountered Cage’s output must instinctively know that this is not music, which is to say if this music troubles music’s boundaries, then it poses questions about where those boundaries lie and what, then, is within them and what without. It demonstrates, amongst other things, that certainties about what art is are fragile.49 When such clear demarcation of what counts and what does not are placed in doubt in this way, a corollary question for Cavell is to ask how one assesses, then, which candidates for art status are fraudulent and which genuine, given that the ‘real thing’ is by definition absent from this fringe territory.50 In this Yates, ‘Two Albums by John Cage—​Part  1’, Arts & Architecture (March 1960), 32. 49 Stanley Cavell, ‘A Matter of Meaning It’, in Must We Mean What We Say? (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1976 [1967]), 219. 50  Stanley Cavell, ‘Music Discomposed’, in Must We Mean What We Say? (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1976 [1967]), 189. 48  Peter

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context, Cavell argues, composerly discourse regarding composerly activity takes on a special status: in short, the things composers say about their musics become of fundamental importance for judging the success of those musics, the authenticity, sincerity, and trustworthiness of their authors (whether they really mean it), and, indeed, whether music has taken place at all. As Amy Bauer summarises the position Cavell adopts, [t]‌aken as a whole, the discourse surrounding contemporary music reveals that the risks of fraudulence and trust are endemic to the experience of contemporary music and, by extension, art in general. Cavell asks us to accept fraudulence as not only a possibility but also a necessary part of our experience of the modern. Rather than unmask imposters, he invites the critic to present something about the object itself, to convey a kind of experiential knowledge based not on empirical certitude but on conviction.51

Cavell insists then that a central facet of contemporary art is precisely an openness to the sort of risk of fraudulence which Thomas so vehemently rejected. To an extent, Cage falls outside even this contestable territory, since in Cavell’s view for Cage ‘chance is explicitly meant to replace traditional notions of art and composition’ while ‘[i]‌n the defense of “total organization,” on the contrary, chance and improvisation are meant to preserve the concepts of art and composition for music’.52 What Cage is undertaking, then, from Cavell’s perspective is not—​or may not be or is not simply—​the production of  music: Cage’s theorizing, which I find often quite charming, is exempt from such strictures, because he clearly believes that the work it produces is no more important than the theory is, and that it is not justified by the theory, but, as it were, illustrates the theory. That his work is performed as music—​rather than a kind of paratheater or parareligious exercise—​is only another sign of the confusions of the age.53

As Dmitri Tymoczko glosses the passage, ‘philosophy cannot be used to justify musical works, except in the case of Cage’.54 This is to say: Cage’s music represents a special case with regard to philosophy, in that philosophical arguments are valid for it in a way they are not for other musics. In Tymoczko’s view, even if Cavell is not quite saying that Cage’s music undertakes 51 

Amy Bauer, ‘Philosophy Recomposed: Stanley Cavell and the Critique of New Music’, Journal of Music Theory, vol. 54, no. 1 (Spring 2010), 78. 52  Cavell, ‘Music Discomposed’, 194. 53  Ibid., 196. 54  Dmitri Tymoczko, ‘Dear Stanley’, Journal of Music Theory, vol. 54, no. 1 (Spring 2010), 11.

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philosophical investigation by other means, he is coming very close to it. Yet within a few years, by 1971, Van Meter Ames would find himself proposing almost exactly that, that Cage’s music and thought represent both an extension of and a corrective to the aesthetics of Ames’s sometime-​mentor John Dewey, of whose thought Ames had been a significant exegete in the late 1940s and early 1950s.55 ‘For Cage’, Ames suggested, the effort to be free of previous restrictions in art is all of a piece with his opposition to rigid social arrangements. He wants to change the world as much as Dewey did. Dewey, despite his virtual acceptance of museum art, wrote that ‘all art is a process of making the world a different place to live, and involves . . . protest’.56

The reason why Cage succeeds where Dewey fails, in Ames’s view, is that he ‘has the intimate knowledge of arts and artists that Dewey lacked. Perhaps because Dewey was not enough at home in art to trust his own thinking, conventional ideas appear in his aesthetics, at variance with his main position which was open to new departures.’57 Between Cavell and Ames, Nelson Goodman would deploy a part of the Concert for Piano and Orchestra as a key example of the edgelands of the musical work. Although, in the longer view, it is not really in question that 4′33″ (1952) has proved to be the more durable object of aesthetic enquiry from the standpoint of mainstream philosophical thought, especially with regard to questions of ontology, it was, in the first case, notation BB from the Solo for Piano which brought a specific piece by Cage into a properly philosophical frame and indirectly afforded Cage the opportunity to ask questions directly of philosophy’s work theories, even if Goodman would ultimately find himself forced to agree with Cavell that what Cage produced was something other than an artwork. As well as noting the similarity here between the core questions which were at stake either side of the Atlantic, it is worth noting too that it is even the same notation which provides the core example. Goodman’s objections are repeated more or less verbatim in R. A. Sharpe’s Philosophy of Music: An Introduction, if here applied to 4′33″, the problem having become, by the twenty-​first century, textbook: Each ‘performance’ would probably sound very different from the previous one, so that whereas I can easily recognize two different performances at different tempi of

See, in particular, ‘Expression and Aesthetic Expression’, Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism, vol. 6, no. 2 (1947), 172–​79 and ‘John Dewey as Aesthetician’, Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism, vol. 12, no. 2 (1953), 145–​68. 56  Van Meter Ames, ‘Is it Art?’, Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism, vol. 30, no. 1 (Autumn 1971), 46. 57  Ibid., 40. 55 

Understanding the Concert for Piano and Orchestra  :  425 Beethoven’s ‘Eroica’ Symphony as performances of the same work and not of Beethoven’s Fourth Symphony, I certainly would not be able to distinguish a performance of 4′33″ from the performance of another piece of silent music that lasts 4 minutes 34 seconds unless I knew when it started and stopped and was equipped with an accurate chronometer. (Could the performer of silent music opt for a slower tempo?)58

One might imagine that Metzger, not least, would have been dispirited to discover that almost fifty years later the fundamental objection to Cage’s music would have been that it fails to sound the same as it looks while Thomas would surely have felt vindicated. Nevertheless, as Noël Carroll puts it, ‘[w]‌ithout bold conjectures like Cage’s that his sounds said nothing, it would have been less likely that philosophers would have struggled with questions of how such artworks manage to have meanings, to be about things, to speak to us’.59 Having established that, from the perspective of his own framework, ‘complete compliance with the score is the only requirement for a genuine instance of a work’, Goodman proceeds to examine notation BB as a limit case.60 After a reasonably accurate description of the notation in which Goodman explains that the parameters of single sounds (indicated by points) are determined by perpendiculars being dropped to five intersecting lines which determine frequency, duration, timbre, amplitude, and order of succession—​with the version which appears on page 53 of the Solo for Piano reproduced fairly accurately, a single dot seemingly slightly misplaced—​Goodman outlines the point of contention: This system is not notational; for without some stipulation of minimal significant units of angle and distance, syntactic differentiation is wanting. So long as no limit is set upon the smallness of the difference in position that makes a difference in character, no measurement can ever determine that any mark belongs to one character rather than to any number of others. Similarly, under this system, no measurement can ever determine that a performance complies with one mark rather than the others. [ . . . ] Under the proposed system there are no disjoint and differentiated characters or compliance-​classes, no notation, no language, no scores. [ . . . ] [T]‌he system in question furnishes no means of identifying a work from performance to performance or even of a character from mark to mark. Nothing can be

A. Sharpe, Philosophy of Music:  An Introduction (London:  Routledge, 2014 [2004]), 32. 59  Noël Carroll, ‘Cage and Philosophy’, Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism, vol. 52, no. 1 (Winter 1994), 97. 60  Nelson Goodman, Languages of Art: An Approach to a Theory of Symbols (Indianapolis, IN: Bobbs-​Merrill, 1968), 186. 58 R.

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determined to be a true copy of Cage’s autograph diagram or to be a performance of it.61

As Goodman sees it, what Cage has provided stands in the same relationship to a musical work as a sketch does to a painting.62 It should probably go without saying that Goodman immediately breaches his own regulations, since he adds an additional criterion: he demands not ‘only’ complete compliance with the score, but also that that compliance be identifiable from performance to performance. In short, Goodman’s model requires an auditor to make this judgement, even if that auditor might have to be an expert aesthetician. Inadvertently, Benjamin Boretz suggested, Goodman had undertaken not really—​or at least not only—​a discussion of musical aesthetics, but rather—​or also—​a piece of music criticism. What Goodman says ‘about the limits of determinability of compliance-​classes for John Cage’s notations is pure music criticism’, Boretz insisted, ‘since it really tells us what the limits of music-​structural determinacy in Cage’s compositions are likely to be, with predictable consequences for the particularity those compositions are likely to be able to exhibit as musical structures’.63 Put differently, what Boretz reads in Goodman is nothing much more than a statement of the obvious fact that the notation is indeterminate, although the grounds of the disagreement are, if unstated, that Goodman regards that as a problem and Boretz does not. Indeed, one might posit, not without some justification, that the issue is a philosophical problem, but not a musical one. In order to realise the notation, it is necessary that some form of scale be set up for the various parameters (even if it be a floating one or one in some other way less precisely delineated than the one David Tudor deployed). Goodman is right, then, in the sense that a limit needs to be set, but he seems to sideline the fact that the notation demands the setting of limits too. Goodman’s claim, then, is more precise than he at first seems to make it: in order for a work to have the possibility of existing at all, the composer must determine such a scale—​that cannot become the role of a performer—​and such determinations must have been fully complete before a performer has anything to do with reading notation. Composing’s one thing, performing’s another, listening’s a third: for Goodman, there is very little they can have to do with one another. If anything, Goodman allows even less wriggle room in his later re-​spelling of his thinking, though in other respects his clarification appears to soften 61 

Ibid., 188–​90. Ibid., 190. 63  Benjamin Boretz, ‘Nelson Goodman’s Languages of Art from a Musical Point of View’, Journal of Philosophy, vol. 67, no. 16 (August 1970), 545. 62 

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his stance. Part of the reason why Goodman found himself in such seemingly counter-​intuitive territory in the first place was the result of his attempt to answer the question as to why it is possible to forge a painting, but not a musical work. The solution for Goodman lies in the way in which a painting speaks to itself, as it were, as authentic—​it autographs itself, or one might even simply say: it autographs—​while a form of notation (an allograph, literally (an)other writing) acts as the guarantor for musical works. In allographic arts the distinctive factor from Goodman’s point of view is not as such the multiplicity of instances, of tokens of the type, but that ‘identification of the or an instance of a work be independent of the history of production; a notation as much codifies as creates such an independent criterion’.64 ‘Sometimes’, Goodman says, ‘as in some of Cage’s music that uses non-​notational sketches in place of scores, we have no definitive criterion [for the identity of a work] and so in effect no works and no distinction between autographic and allographic, or even between singular and multiple works’. Goodman does not, however, suggest that what Cage has produced does not constitute music but, rather, only that the notations used for the Concert for Piano and Orchestra fall outside the regime of musical works. The statement just quoted is immediately juxtaposed with another which clarifies more or less this point: ‘I do not at all maintain that whether a given art is autographic or allographic arises from anything more than a tradition that might have been different and may change.’65 Indeed, Goodman goes so far as to stress that the fundamental question might be to ask when, rather than what, art is. 66 Naturally, what Goodman proposes is, finally, a false binary, since the options are hardly only a score which suggests certain general kinds of activity or one which demands, or seems to demand, rigid conformity. Goodman’s model seems to require, even though he does not say so explicitly, that the only characteristics which truly ‘count’ be just those which conventional scoring notates, and to that degree which conventional scoring amenably notates them: pitch, rhythm, and onset, then, with a reasonably high degree of accuracy; attack, dynamic, and timbre with rather less; and many other musical characteristics not at all. Implicitly, Goodman insists that the sound of a performance should be more-​or-​less predictable from the score and it is this compliance, and no other, that counts. It is precisely in this context that Lydia Goehr states that ‘from the fact that two performances do not sound the same it does not follow that they are excluded from being, in other respects,

64  Nelson

Goodman, ‘Comments on Wollheim’s Paper’, in Catherine Z. Elgin (ed.), Nelson Goodman’s Philosophy of Art (New York, NY: Garland, 1997 [1976]), 93. 65 Ibid. 66  Ibid., 95.

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isomorphic or replicas of one another’. Goehr’s claim then is that ‘[a]‌musical work [ . . . ] is a class of performances in which all the appropriate rules are followed’.67 One notes, though, the sleight of hand which has allowed Goehr to move the musical work into being ‘a class of performances’, rather than a recipe for such performances, or, for that matter, an assemblage which incorporates both the appropriate rules and performers to follow them (and perhaps more besides). Yet, on Goodman’s own terms, the way in which any performance of the Concert for Piano and Orchestra cannot be a performance of a work, a work-​type which might bear the same name as its performed tokens, slips rapidly into the near-​impossibility of the performance of musical works at all, at least on the terms Goodman demands, since almost all performances—​and surely all good performances, at any rate—​deviate from exact compliance with the score. Indeed, it would not go too far to suggest that in a great many cases, precisely what makes a performance a good, or a great, one rests in the precise ways in which it deviates from exact compliance. To be slightly more precise, though Goodman is insisting that a performance of a Chopin polonaise with a single wrong note would not be a performance of that work, he stresses that he means this more or less from a technical perspective only: it would not be erroneous, in everyday speech, to refer to such a performance as, precisely, a performance of a Chopin polonaise. For Anthony Ralls, this concession undermines his stance both in general and also with particular reference to Cage, since ‘ordinary discourse reflects ordinary practice, and ordinary practice successfully preserves work-​identity through wrong notes’.68 Ralls implicitly identifies the slippage in Goodman’s thinking which allows listeners in (and performers too, if only to repudiate their agency) when he says that the ‘empirical answer’ to ‘the extraordinary conclusion [ . . . ] that we cannot decide what is a performance of, e.g., Cage’s score of Concert for Piano and Orchestra, Solo for Piano’ is that musicians can and do perform, and audiences enjoy, such works over and over again on different occasions; their identity is accordingly preserved, albeit not by Goodmaneseque notationality, but by the use of the score as a recipe for the production of the kind of sounds, or range of sounds, the composer had in mind. Fortunately Cage, and Gerhard, and Stockhausen, can look after themselves; but

Goehr, The Imaginary Museum of Musical Works: An Essay in the Philosophy of Music (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1992), 33. 68  Anthony Ralls, ‘The Uniqueness and Reproducibility of a Work of Art: A Critique of Goodman’s Theory’, The Philosophical Quarterly, vol. 22, no. 86 (January 1972), 9. 67  Lydia

Understanding the Concert for Piano and Orchestra  :  429 aestheticians ought not to tell musicians, or the musical public, that they can’t do what they manifestly do.69

Networks, processes More recently, several important approaches to Cage have attempted, sometimes obliquely, to generate a predominantly Deleuzian version of the work concept appropriate to Cage’s output, both insisting on the way in which his music necessarily models (potential) social relations and providing a sort of description of the territory in which the isomorphism between instances of a work which do not sound similar proposed by Goehr might lie. The Concert for Piano and Orchestra is specifically discussed only a little and only in passing, but these ways of thinking are no less relevant to it than to any other of Cage’s indeterminate pieces and, moreover, they clearly speak back, in some cases explicitly, to the debates outlined above. Nonetheless, Panzner sets himself explicitly against what he describes as Goodman’s ‘anxiety about the propagation of unidentifiable performance that could surge from’ a notation like BB, performances which would be ‘odd, parentless [ . . . ] without the unity of concept between themselves and their work-​father’.70 By contrast, Panzner insists that the musical work ‘is no longer a transcendent essence hovering above and beyond any of its lesser material incarnations, but an immanent operator within a busy world of processes always-​already underway’, though it is worth stressing here, and throughout, that Panzner insists too that the Concert for Piano and Orchestra assuredly is a musical work. Nevertheless, by extension this means that the work is not an object, rather it becomes ‘a diagram of a mode of intervention—​an intervention whose unfolding can never be fully predicted’.71 The Concert is a musical work, yes, but a musical work is not what Goodman took it to be. Recalling Deleuze and Guattari’s distinction between a map and a tracing, Panzner amplifies the character of this diagram through Daniel Charles’s description of the score as a ‘vehicle for musical process’, which is to say that the composer ‘delimits a field of potentials from which a form can be individuated’. Importantly, such a field is ‘broader than a mere collection of foreseeable, traceable possibilities, but not so broad as to constitute an undifferentiated field from which anything can emerge’. There is an important corollary to this description: Panzner insists that the ‘field of potentials’ is 69 

Ibid., 8. Panzner, The Process That Is the World:  Cage/​Deleuze/​Events/​Performances (London: Bloomsbury, 2015), 42–​43. 71  Ibid., 43. 70 Joe

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palpable, which is to say that the user of the score understands or at least senses the shape and the force of that which the notations enable in advance.72 In this sense, Panzner—​significantly, a practitioner of experimental music before and alongside being a theoretician of it—​ensures that, if without naming him, he integrates Ralls’s concern that what actually happens to and for performers in the encounter with Cage’s notations inform any reading of what those notations are capable of doing. Panzner demands that the score—​and perhaps the work too—​be regarded as ‘completely determinate as potential [ . . . ] but operating on a different plane, a plane of immanent potential rather than a plane of transcendent form’.73 This is to say that, evoking Cage’s description of the ‘emergence of continuous variation with the mushrooms sharing similar genetic materials’—​an analogy with more than a little applicability to the ways in which notations are derived from one another within the Concert—​in which ‘each mushroom is an expression of a genetic field of potential which it does not resemble but which structures the potentials of its formation’,74 this plane of fully determined potential is itself the sort of isomorphy which Goehr describes. In rather simpler, musical terms, if a realisation follows the process that is described, another realisation is isomorphic with it on precisely this level of having followed that same process. Some of the wider implications of this approach—​or parallel, complementary ones—​are captured in Benjamin Piekut’s discussion of Cage’s conception of the natural, the note ‘itself ’ that might be found to be speaking, which, in truth, Adorno had already stressed could not escape being part of a network of relationalities, even if the composer chose not to put that network in place. Piekut insists that Cage does put the network in place, although that network is not quite one he might have imagined it to be: as Piekut says ‘his compositional process was indeed uncertain, but not in the way that he thought it was’.75 Drawing on Bruno Latour’s claim that ‘Nature is not a thing, a domain, a realm, an ontological territory. It is [ . . . ] a way of organizing the division [ . . . ] between appearances and reality, subjectivity and objectivity, history and immutability’,76 Piekut goes on to describe the Cagean universe: Cage imagined a cosmos cleaved in two by a great divide. On one side were noises, sounds-​in-​themselves, chance, chaos, non-​intention, nonorder, and multiplicity. 72 

Ibid., 44.

73 Ibid. 74 

Ibid., 36. Piekut, ‘Chance and Certainty’, 135. 76  See Bruno Latour, Politics of Nature:  How to Bring the Sciences into Democracy, tr. Catherine Porter (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2004 [1999]), 276. 75 

Understanding the Concert for Piano and Orchestra  :  431 This nonhuman reality is the way things truly are; it is objective, static though ever changing, and not expressive of anything other than itself. On the other side were the human laws of order, intention, hierarchy, desire, judgment, and history. This second side of Cage’s cosmos is marked by disagreement, reductionism, and domination. Humans are suspended across this great divide; we are surely part of the first side, according to Cage: ‘Humanity and nature, not separate, are in this world together’. At the same time, however, we constantly need to be pulled out of our habits and histories, which keep up mired on the second side, behind the veil of Maya.77

Some of this, too, seems implicitly to proceed from Roland Barthes’s remark that what is listened to here and there (chiefly in the field of art, whose function is often utopian) is not the advent of a signified, object of a recognition or of a deciphering, but the very dispersion, the shimmering of signifiers, ceaselessly restored to a listening which ceaselessly produces new ones from them without ever arresting their meaning: [ . . . ] ‘listening’ to a composition (taking the word here in its etymological sense) by John Cage, it is each sound one after the next that I listen to, not in its syntagmatic extension, but in its raw and as though vertical signifying [ . . . ].78

It is this that Piekut draws directly into the frame of the prevailing discussion of the Concert, through his précis that ‘such a proliferation of signifiers set Cage’s scores apart from more conventional—​and, of course, modernist—​ scores, because there was no requirement for a listener to make sense of the construction of the piece from its encoding’.79 Branden Joseph surely means something similar when he argues that ‘[f]‌or the audience of one of Cage’s pieces, the performance is a virtuality, it is a virtual multiplicity, and the same is true of the composition with relation to the performance and of sound or ontology with relation to the composition’.80 What Joseph means by this invocation of Deleuzian multiplicity is quite simply that the performances he describes do not, for an audience, refer, implicitly or otherwise, back to some pre-​existing unity of which they are somehow an expression. It is a virtual multiplicity because there is no real prior artwork, of which all performances are reflections, rather all possible 77 

Piekut, ‘Chance and Certainty’, 144. Barthes and Roland Havas, ‘Listening’, in Roland Barthes, The Responsibility of Forms, tr. Richard Howard (New  York, NY:  Hill and Wang, 1985 [1977]), 259. 79  Benjamin Piekut, ‘Sound’s Modest Witness: Notes on Cage and Modernism’, Contemporary Music Review, vol. 31, no. 1 (2012), 4–​5. 80 Joseph, Experimentations, 154–​55. 78 Roland

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performances are already real, though virtual. In Panzner’s terms, they are that unified field of potentials. What happens in performance is that one (or more) of those multiplicitous possibilities is actualized. Such a reading is unsurprisingly congruent with Panzner’s description of the limits of the multiple: ‘Playing music such as Variations III feels like being asked to assemble a table from the contents of a construction site dumpster. [ . . . ] It’s even more complicated than that. It’s like being asked to build a table from a description of how a table should be built—​and you have never seen a table. [ . . . ] If you’re sensitive, you can feel when it is going wrong, when you stop working in accordance with this abstract diagram.’81 One might think that Panzner is perilously close to folding Deleuze into a sort of Platonism, though he is sure to stress that this is, first, analogy rather than ontology; second, that there is no pre-​existing table, only a diagram of how to put things together, not a set of instructions outlining how to build a table; third, the wood itself has what seem like desires: ‘you are only partially in control of what happens. The grain of wood has its own say, and you have to track it carefully to get something like the results you want.’82 As Joseph puts it, more broadly, ‘[f]‌or Cage, sound ontologically is a virtual multiplicity, and in this state it is unified, it is one (a total sound-​space), although heterogeneous and unbounded’.83 This corresponds to the non-​ human space of one side of the divide Piekut describes. Just as one performance actualises a single instance of the real multiplicity, so a particular score might be conceived of as an actualisation of a single instance of the virtual multiplicity of possible scores. Similarly, Panzner insists that, for him in the case of 4′33″, the point is not that all sounds can potentially be heard musically and as music, but rather that ‘every situation is tinged with something more, something not yet accounted for: not quantitatively, but qualitatively. The excess over actual experience is virtuality.’84 Part of the value of the indeterminate score viewed from this perspective is not what it enables, but how much more might have been possible than could be instantiated in any particular performance: this is necessarily true for all scores, but is both a particularly tangible feature of indeterminate scores and the excess is so much greater than in the case of those where a relatively strong sound-​sign relationship is presumed. In this way, Joseph makes sense of the way in which so many of Cage’s scores of the period ‘take the form of compositional puzzles for which the

81 Panzner, The Process That Is the World, 100. 82 

Ibid., 98.

83 Joseph, Experimentations, 152.

84 Panzner, The Process That Is the World, 134.

Understanding the Concert for Piano and Orchestra  :  433

“answers”—​that is, the actual notes to be played—​are variable or even unlimited in scope and, at the outset, unknown to either composer or performer’.85 This multiplicity is redoubled in a sense in the score of the Solo for Piano wherein the notations exhibit just this character but are, themselves, multiple, a possibility magnified yet further by Cage’s acceptance of other pieces simultaneously being performed alongside the Concert, many of which themselves exhibit the same multiplicitous character. Again, Panzner provides a complementary reading of the same underlying idea, insisting on the way in which the multiple which is already multiple is not an undifferentiated chaotic soup, but still a sort of network: ‘In place of individual responsibility and intention, we are asked to think about the distributed agency of process or events. Cage speaks of performances as events within this process-​world, drawing together multiple process lines to yield a single, unpredictable event.’86 Throughout this debate, Goodman’s objections are implicitly and explicitly forcefully dispatched as, indeed, is almost all of the debate which insists that it somehow matters whether or not the relationship between the materials Cage provides and the actions of a performer on stage can be related to one another directly by an auditor. Nonetheless, an implicit part of Joseph’s (and to a lesser extent Panzner’s) claim, in accepting the Deleuzian world of things, must be that Cage’s music is not particularly special, that this is the condition of all performed music, and much more besides. As suggested above, if Cage’s music is unusual in such a world it is only because of what a clear, transparent paradigmatic case it is: it is Cage’s music, surely, that makes it possible to ponder whether Chopin’s B Minor Sonata ought better to be regarded as a virtual multiplicity than as a musical work wherein a type-​token distinction might hold. This would provide at least one answer to Ingarden’s famous question demanding to know where that sonata might be found:

As for the musical work that is neither physical nor mental (surely not a conscious experience or any part of it) as the above naïve view proclaims, how can it ‘await’ our perceptions and manifest itself to us as exactly the same? Where is that B Minor Sonata ‘lying in wait’? In the space of the real world there are certainly no musical works when there is no one to perform or hear them.87

Brilliant and compelling though many of these approaches are, something is lost in the process. In such re-​thinkings of the work, Cage’s music 85 Joseph, Experimentations, 153.

86 Panzner, The Process That Is the World, 68.

Ingarden, The Work of Music and the Problem of its Identity, tr. Adam Czerniawski, ed. Jean G. Harrell (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1986 [1966]), 3. See too Richard Taruskin, ‘The New Antiquity’, in Text and Act: Essays on Music and Performance (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1995 [1987]), 206–​209. 87 Roman

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is recaptured into the orbit of the properly musical. They deliver fully, in short, on Pritchett’s demands that Cage be thought of as a composer and his output as first and foremost a musical one.88 In this sense, they theorise ‘what musicians already know and do’. As Ralls implies, there is no need for aestheticians or musicologists to recover Cage the composer, in the sense that musicians already (‘manifestly’) play his music as the music, the musical work(s), of a composer. As such, what such theories achieve is a sophisticated and persuasive description of what musicians do and have done, rather than being any prescription for what they ought to do (or, for that matter, think). Some of what has been presented above clearly represents aspects of the case against which Pritchett was railing, perhaps most especially views such as those of Metzger, who makes of Cage a social theorist and class warrior, or Cavell and Ames, who turn Cage into at least a sort of philosopher, even if they would agree that Cage’s music certainly does model certain social processes or reveal certain truths about the world. In doing this, however—​in making Cage so unambiguously a ‘proper’ composer and re-​figuring the musical work such that a piece like the Concert for Piano and Orchestra becomes close to paradigmatic of what musical works do in general, reversing Goodman’s implicit insistence that actual performances of musical works must be vanishingly rare and, as such, seeming much more truthful to the experience of encountering musical works—​by necessity the radical potential of what Cage does is to some degree lost.89 Perhaps the Concert for Piano and Orchestra is a musical work, no more and no less; perhaps it has become, over the sixty years since its premiere, as much one of Cage’s masterpieces as might Le Sacre du printemps be one of Stravinsky’s or Pierrot lunaire one of Schoenberg’s. Recalling Cage’s note that ‘masterpieces and geniuses go together and when by running from one to the other we make life safer than it actually is we’re apt never to know the dangers of contemporary music’, similarly this stance strays close to making the piece (and Cage) rather safer than, at least, it (and he) once was.90 Of course, Piekut is absolutely right to stress that part of the reason for this is a consequence of 88  ‘Of

course John Cage was a composer’, Pritchett avers, ‘everything in his life points to this inescapable fact’. Nonetheless, Pritchett was certainly not mistaken that, at the point he wrote The Music of John Cage, it was necessary to begin ‘by defending the obvious’ (Pritchett, The Music of John Cage, 1). 89  In fairness to Goodman, he does not say that what Cage wrote is not music, only that it falls outside the regime of musical works, a comment which in this respect reiterates Metzger’s much more expansive reading of the consequences of such a positioning of the piece. 90  John Cage, ‘Communication’, in idem, Silence (London:  Marion Boyars, 1968 [1958]), 46.

Understanding the Concert for Piano and Orchestra  :  435

the decisions Cage made about performance of his music, especially in the 1960s: ‘The successful performance of Cagean indeterminacy in the 1960s’, he rightly observes, ‘depended upon a performer who had already internalized the expectations of the composer, significantly undermining Cage’s well-​ known goal of accepting the unforeseen’.91 Outlining the difficulty, Piekut says that [t]‌he perfect example is Cage’s score for Variations V, which was created after its performance in 1965. [ . . . ] A few years after he wrote this work, Cage asked Richard Kostelanetz, ‘Do you see the implications of this? . . . [It] changes our idea of what a score is.’ But it hasn’t done so at all. Cage still expected someone else to perform his work: ‘These are remarks that would enable one to perform Variations V’, he told Kostelanetz. His scores were still analysed by musicologists who placed them into a style history. [ . . . ] Indeed, Cage folded his output very easily into the conventional concert-​music tradition, where it was later taken up by willing performers.92

Who is to ‘blame’ for this is, finally, beside the point, though Piekut is doubtless absolutely right to stress that as the 1960s wore on, Cage became increasingly an institutionalised composer of recognisable hue, even if one who had had, and had taken, the opportunity carefully to curate that identity in ways which integrated the playful, the oppositional, the anarchic, and the maverick. Perhaps, just as Cage becomes inexorably and unmistakably a composer, and a major one at that, so it behoves thinkers who are concerned with what musical works are and do to explain why and how the music he produced constitutes an oeuvre of musical works. That may even be to the good, especially if musical practice not only forces aesthetics and ontology alike to flex and to find better answers to the question ‘what is a musical work?’ which help explain the music which always fell within that category in new, unanticipated ways, but also, in so doing, to account for pieces which once seemed to fall outside any defensible answer to that question. Yet, in the 1950s, Cage was still, arguably, not (quite) yet Cage. As Piekut notes, ‘[f]‌or the young Henry Flynt [ . . . ], Cage’s music was dangerous’. 93 So, too, it was, in different ways, for Nelson Goodman—​whose anxiety about the way in which it might produce a proliferation of musical orphans has been discussed above—​or Adorno, Metzger, or Ernst Thomas, whose description of Cage’s music was just that: dangerous. The very grounds of that danger were, for the detractors, that maybe this really was music, and for the partisans that maybe it wasn’t, or not really proper music, even where, as in Metzger’s case, the anxiousness that the Concert simply wasn’t a musical work at all became a central plank of the argument: this 91 Piekut, Experimentalism Otherwise, 25. 92 

Ibid., 17.

93 Ibid.

436 : 

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does work in the world, Metzger argued, precisely because it is impossible to pin it down, safely, as a ‘work’. Part of the history of the Concert for Piano and Orchestra revolves around the threat it represented to the existing musical order in the dying days of the 1950s. Though it may be a long-​standing manoeuvre that the once outré becomes rehabilitated as the world is reshaped to fit it—​ no shortage of other musical works have moved from pan to paean—​the journey taken by the Concert from beyond the margins to centrality is a long one, even in that context. The most radical version of the piece may still be Metzger’s and, as such, his questions are still worth considering. It remains worth being mindful of, alert to the threat Cage’s music seemed to presage before the middle of the 1960s. In the ways in which the piece even now troubles the boundaries of what a musical work might or ought to be—​in the ways in which it asks questions about where those boundaries lie and how they are formed—​precisely there is where it continues to speak, to produce the unanticipated, the unexpected, the new.

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Index

Adorno, Theodor W., 54, 175n167, 259, 264–​ 265, 264n67, 403, 405–​412, 409n23, 410n26, 422, 430, 435 aesthetics, 153, 407–​411, 423–​429, 434–​435 compositional, 244 visual, 78, 126 Aitcheson, Anne Speer, 271 Ajemian, Anahid, 106, 121, 141, 159, 320 Ajemian, Maro, 125, 129, 141, 164 Allen, Gene, 119 American Music Edition, 192–​193 Ames, Van Peter, 424, 434 Andersson, Magnus, 317 Aquinas, St. Thomas, 7 Aristotle, 7–​8, 260 Armstrong, Louis, 49, 121, 316 Arp, Hans, 57 Asch, Moses, 234–​235 Ashley, Robert, 271 Ashton, Dore, 125–​126, 126n17 Avakian, Aram, 166 Avakian, George, 9, 121, 121n26, 124n11, 128, 134, 135n37, 136, 138, 140–​151, 156, 158–​166, 166n135, 179, 182, 235, 268, 274, 301n50 Bach, Johann Sebastien, 52, 52n82 Barthes, Roland, 431 Barton Workshop, the, 273, 282 Bauer, Amy, 423 Bauermeister, Mary, 161, 196, 271 Beal, Amy C., 309 Beckett, Samuel, 259, 263–​265, 408–​409 Endgame (1957), 409 Film (1965), 259 Beckwith, John, 150 Beethoven, Ludwig van, 50, 52, 155, 186, 361, 425 Symphony No. 9 in D Minor, op. 125 (1822–​24),  73 Beiderbecke, Bix The Bix Beiderbecke Memorial Album (1936), 146

Belgrad, Daniel, 51n80 Berberian, Cathy, 197, 270–​271 Berger, Friedrich, 184 Berio, Luciano, 127, 159, 197, 403, 415–​417 Sequenza I (1958), 416 Sequenza V (1966), 276 Bernstein, David W., 40–​42, 44 Bernstein, Leonard, 159 Biancoll, Louis, 139 Biel, Michael von, 271 Blake, Robert, 142 Blum, Eberhard, 275, 281 Blumenberg, Hans, 7 Boehmer, Konrad, 417–​420 Boosey & Hawkes, 71n6, 193 Boretz, Benjamin, 426 Boulez, Pierre, 26, 155, 168, 182, 188, 195, 226, 407, 410, 410n26, 412, 414, 416–​418,  420 Second Piano Sonata (1948), 226 Sonatine (1946), 171 Third Piano Sonata (1955–​57), 414, 416–​417,  420 Brakhage, Stan, 159 Braxton, Anthony, 51 Brecht, George, 309 Brigham Young University, 159 Broiles, Melvyn, 130, 130n27, 132–​133, 137 Brookmeyer, Bob, 172 Brooks, William, 17–​18, 25, 305, 393 Brown, Carolyn, 135, 148, 181–​182, 255, 258, 263, 265–​266, 286n31, 293 Brown, Earle, 47, 121, 123, 135, 205, 234, 276, 309, 381, 400, 418–​421 December 1952, 420 Folio (1954), 420 Indices (1954), 123 Music for Cello and Piano (1955), 381 Brown, Steve, 334 Brubeck, Dave, 121, 140 Brücher, Ernst, 193

448 :  Index Brussels World’s Fair, 170n150, 225 Busoni, Ferruccio, 360–​361 Bussotti, Sylvano, 403, 414, 416, 419 Five Piano Pieces for David Tudor (1959), 412 Butterfield, Don, 118–​119, 121n26, 130–​131, 131n28, 133–​134, 137, 137n44, 159, 313 Cage, John 0’00” (4’33” No.2) (1962), 271 A Flower (1950), 138 A Valentine out of Season (1944), 138 Amores (1943), 188, 196, 199, 235 Aria (1958), 2, 197, 246, 270, 272 Atlas Eclipticalis (1961–​62), 54–​55, 254, 256, 271, 275, 306, 308, 329, 371 Cartridge Music (1960), 247n33, 271 Concert for Piano and Orchestra (1957–​58) commissioning of, 1, 3, 124, 166 compositional process for the, 100–​109, 115–​118, 282, 308–​311, 314–​336 conducting the, 1–​2, 8, 108, 114, 135–​137, 150, 155, 173–​179, 182, 185, 200, 221n8, 237, 256, 268–​269, 284–​308, 301n50, 301n51, 304n52, 306n64, 403, 406, 413 first performance of, 1, 9, 100, 102n19, 118, 122–​137, 139–​140, 142, 166, 170, 180, 207, 221, 225, 269, 274, 284, 293, 301, 309, 313 first recording of, 128–​137, 140–​166, 274, 301n50 (see also Avakian, George) instructions for instrumental parts of, 54, 103, 130–​134, 174–​175, 179–​180, 269–​ 270, 275–​285, 287–​289, 309, 311–​312, 314, 316–​317, 323–​336 manuscripts of the, 100–​116, 125–​127, 207 performances of, 1, 9, 223, 227, 237, 245–​ 246, 253, 270–​276, 284n28, 301, 313 at the Village Vanguard (see Village Vanguard) at Westdeutscher Rundfunk, Cologne, 166–​187, 301, 309, 400 plans for, 4, 8, 100–​121, 166–​168, 170–​171, 310–​311, 317–​318 publication of, 196–​206 recordings of, 179–​181, 273–​275, 281–​282,  399 reviews of, 127, 137–​141, 143, 150–​158, 183–​ 187, 275, 414

sketches of additional parts for, 100–​115, 172, 320, 330 Solo for Bass, 108, 115, 278–​280, 282, 315, 320–​ 321, 324–​325, 327–​328, 331, 334–​335 Solo for Bassoon and Baryton Saxophone, 100, 108, 114, 119, 172, 275n13, 275–​277, 280–​281, 311–​312, 315–​316, 315n83, 318, 321, 324–​327, 326n96, 329–​331, 333, 335n102 Solo for Clarinet, 103–​104, 108–​109, 116, 175, 180–​181, 185, 275, 278n20, 283n26, 312, 314–​316, 315n83, 318, 321–​323, 325–​ 329, 331–​332, 334–​336 Solo for Flute, 3, 100, 101n17, 104, 106, 116, 118, 131–​133, 271, 273, 275, 278n19, 280–​ 283, 311–​312, 315–​316, 315n83, 318, 321, 325–​328, 330–​331,  336 Solo for Piano. See Solo for Piano Solo for Sliding Trombone, 54, 100, 107, 117, 120, 146, 158, 172, 273, 275, 278n18, 280, 282, 283n26, 301n50, 311–​313, 315–​316, 318–​321, 325–​326, 329–​333,  330n98 solos for violins, 105, 278, 312, 314, 318–​319 Solo for Trumpet, 108, 130, 133, 173, 275, 282, 283n26, 311, 315–​316, 318, 321–​322, 325–​ 326, 325n95, 328–​332, 330n98 Solo for Tuba, 100–​101, 106–​108, 118, 131, 134, 135n37, 178, 272, 275, 280, 282, 311, 314, 315n83, 316, 318, 321–​322, 325–​326, 328–​332 Solo for Viola 1, 280, 282, 318–​319, 322, 324, 330–​331,  334 Solo for Viola 2, 281–​282, 305, 315n83, 318–​320, 322, 328 Solo for Violin 1, 100, 269, 280–​282, 320, 322, 328, 330n98 Solo for Violin 2, 322, 325n94, 328, 334 Solo for Violin 3, 178, 282, 315n83, 319n89, 320, 322, 331 Solo for Violoncello, 107, 275, 277–​278, 280, 282, 311, 318–​319, 322, 324, 330–​331, 334 Concerto for Prepared Piano and Orchestra (1950–​51), 108, 167–​169, 255, 267, 285 Credo in Us (1942), 48 Etudes Australes (1974–​75), 385n19 First Construction in Metal (1939), 125, 128–​ 129, 144, 169

Index  :  449 Fontana Mix (1958), 2, 27, 29–​30, 92, 151, 153, 190, 196–​199, 202, 233, 236, 236n24, 244–​248, 247n33, 251–​254, 270–​272, 270n4, 272n7, 282, 317n86, 400 For Paul Taylor and Anita Dencks (1957), 2, 93n13, 359 HPSCHD (1967–​69), 72, 203 Imaginary Landscape No.1 (1939), 125, 128, 144 Imaginary Landscape No.5 (1952), 49–​51 In the Name of the Holocaust (1942), 390 Jazz Study (1951), 48 Metamorphosis (1938), 41 Music for Carillon (1952), 125, 128–​129, 138, 144–​145, 187, 253 Music for Piano (1952–​56), 2, 4–​5, 8, 11–​19, 22–​27, 30–​31, 34–​36, 39–​40, 42–​43, 45, 47, 58–​59, 64, 76, 80, 82, 92, 104, 107, 125, 167, 187–​188, 228, 238, 254, 279, 281, 284–​286, 286n31, 287n34, 309, 314, 318, 337–​340, 357–​359, 363, 374, 381, 390–​392, 400, 403, 413, 420 Music for Piano 1 (1952), 17, 19–​22, 24, 188 Music for Piano 2 (1953), 17, 24 Music for Piano 3 (1953), 17, 24 Music for Piano 4–​19 (1953), 13n1, 17–​18, 22–​24, 123, 188 Music for Piano 20 (1953), 17 Music for Piano 21 (1955), 12 Music for Piano 21–​36 (1955), 12n2, 17–​18 Music for Piano 37–​52 (1955), 12n2, 17–​18 Music for Piano 53–​68 (1956), 17 Music for Piano 54 (1956), 23n12 Music for Piano 69–​84 (1956), 17 Music for Piano 85 (1962), 17 Music for ‘The Marrying Maiden’ (1960), 194–​195 Music of Changes (1951), 9, 47, 49, 98, 125, 167, 189–​192, 198–​200, 226, 285–​286, 290–​291, 295, 379n18, 390–​391, 417–​418,  420 Music Walk (1958), 2, 313, 421 Renga (1974–​75), 27, 29 Reunion (1968), 387 Rolywholyover: A Circus, 28 Rozart Mix (1965), 1, 271 Ryoanji (1974), 366n13 Score (40 Drawings by Thoreau) and 23 Parts (1974), 366n13 Seasons, The (1947), 206, 285, 382

Seven Haiku (1952), 126, 389 She is Asleep (1943), 125, 128–​129, 144–​145 Six Melodies (1950), 320 Six Short Inventions (1934–​58), 100, 125, 144, 198 Sixteen Dances (1951), 108, 285 Solo for Piano (1957–​58) compositional process for the, 11, 41–​ 47, 56–​68, 75–​100, 338–​377 manuscript of, 4, 30n30, 56, 58, 61, 65, 67–​100, 102, 126–​127, 150, 189, 201 notation A, 5, 56, 58, 65, 67, 75–​79, 83–​84, 91, 210, 212, 219–​221, 228–​230, 242, 340, 342–​343, 346–​347, 350–​355, 359, 360n11, 363, 365, 370–​372, 380, 385, 397 notation B, 3, 5, 44, 56, 58–​68, 78–​82, 84–​85, 89, 92, 96, 228–​230, 232, 238, 240, 243, 338, 340–​343, 350, 353, 359–​ 360, 360n11, 363–​364, 368, 385, 390, 403 notation C, 5, 44, 56, 59, 65–​67, 76, 81–​ 82, 90, 92, 213, 228, 238, 243, 340, 343, 357–​360, 360n11, 363, 368, 391, 393, 403 notation D, 5, 44, 64, 67, 83–​85, 340–​ 342, 353, 359, 363, 370, 379–​380, 398 notation E, 5, 84–​85, 94, 350–​353, 359, 360n11, 362–​363, 371–​372, 378, 384–​385,  394 notation F, 5, 44, 70, 84–​85, 349, 357–​ 359, 360n11, 378, 393 notation G, 3, 72n, 89–​90, 94, 351–​354, 359, 360n11, 363, 370–​372, 380, 383, 387, 391 notation H, 97, 210, 213–​216, 220–​221, 223, 229n15, 231, 242–​243, 359, 364, 384, 391 notation I, 243, 343, 357, 359, 360n11, 363, 381–​382, 388, 390–​391, 397 notation J, 97, 223, 355, 359, 360n11, 367, 370, 379, 381–​382, 394, 398, 404 notation K, 70, 86, 229n15, 243, 352–​353, 359, 359–​360, 360n11, 362, 367, 372, 380, 389 notation L, 353, 355, 359, 363–​364, 378, 385 notation M, 90, 344, 346, 349, 359, 360n11, 368, 376, 378, 380, 384–​386 notation N, 243, 343, 359, 382, 385–​386, 388, 390–​391

450 :  Index Cage, John (cont.) notation O, 70, 94, 359, 369, 376, 385, 404n6 notation P, 229n15, 347, 350, 354, 356–​ 357, 359, 360n11, 362, 374–​376, 392 notation Q , 344–​346, 349, 359, 360n11, 364, 368, 378, 380, 384 notation R, 359, 360n11, 365, 369–​370, 378, 394 notation S, 68, 86, 95–​96, 352, 355, 359, 363, 374, 391, 393 notation T, 223, 241–​243, 352–​355, 359, 360n11, 363, 367, 371, 374, 387 notation U, 223, 229n15, 355, 359, 360n11, 367, 374, 376, 378, 382, 394 notation V, 2, 358–​359, 360n11, 363, 367–​ 368, 374, 392, 400, 413 notation W , 72, 97, 349, 359, 360n11, 371–​372, 388, 393 notation X, 87, 359, 380–​381, 386, 388–​390 notation Y, 87–​89, 95–​96, 349, 356, 359, 360n11, 362, 376, 379, 383, 387 notation Z, 87, 97, 345–​346, 349, 359, 360n11, 371–​372, 387–​388, 390, 393 notation AA, 87, 89, 96, 359, 365, 367, 369, 389 notation AB, 88–​89, 243, 345–​346, 349, 359, 371–​372, 387–​388, 390, 393 notation AC, 90, 93n13, 216–​218, 229n15, 231–​232, 356, 359, 362, 374, 376, 383, 387, 392 notation AD, 95, 97, 349, 359, 360n11, 394 notation AE, 210, 216–​218, 229n15, 231–​232, 243, 349, 359, 360n11, 369, 378, 382 notation AF, 88–​90, 346, 359, 360n11, 368, 374, 385 notation AG, 243, 359, 360n11, 383 notation AH, 346, 359, 364, 368, 370, 385, 404n6 notation AI, 229, 229n15, 352–​354, 359–​ 360, 362, 371, 378 notation AJ, 359, 364, 367, 370, 382 notation AK, 218–​220, 229n15, 242–​ 243, 359, 362, 368, 383, 387 notation AL, 356, 359, 362, 377–​378, 382, 388–​390 notation AM, 358–​359, 360n11, 379, 393

notation AN, 359, 365, 369, 378, 385 notation AO, 356–​357, 359, 362, 368, 375, 381–​382, 389–​390 notation AP, 95, 358–​359, 368, 381, 389, 393, 400 notation AQ , 349, 359, 362, 379, 383, 387 notation AR, 229n15, 349, 359, 360n11, 367, 372, 374, 394, 400 notation AS, 229n15, 243, 358–​359, 362 notation AT, 229n15, 349, 359, 369, 378, 382 notation AU, 90, 349, 359, 365, 368, 378, 384 notation AV, 229n15, 349, 359, 367, 372, 387, 394, 400 notation AW , 90, 349, 359, 394 notation AX, 90, 229n15, 359, 369, 392 notation AY, 92, 357, 359, 364–​365, 367, 372, 374, 382 notation AZ, 378, 390, 393 notation BA, 229n15, 359, 374, 387, 392 notation BB, 2, 68, 92, 93n13, 218–​219, 229n15, 240, 242–​243, 347, 350, 357, 359, 360n11, 362, 368, 375, 380–​381, 387, 394, 404, 421, 424–​425 notation BC, 91, 359, 367, 376, 382 notation BD, 242–​243, 359, 360n11, 362, 376–​377 notation BE, 359, 360n11, 362, 377, 383, 385, 390 notation BF, 349, 359, 372, 388, 393 notation BG, 91, 93, 359, 360n11, 367, 372, 381–​382, 389, 400 notation BH, 346, 353, 359, 365, 370 notation BI, 242–​243, 359, 373, 381, 394 notation BJ, 218–​220, 229n15, 242, 347, 350, 359, 360n11, 362, 368, 375, 380–​381,  421 notation BK, 87, 243, 346, 353, 359, 370, 392 notation BM, 96, 219–​220, 359, 364, 368 notation BN, 346, 353, 359, 363, 370, 385 notation BO, 349, 359, 371, 378, 388, 393 notation BP, 229n15, 359, 376, 382, 385, 394 notation BQ , 359, 367–​368, 371, 374, 378, 387 notation BR, 223, 229n15, 359, 390 notation BS, 243, 359, 362, 385

Index  :  451 notation BT, 92, 229n15, 350, 359, 362, 367, 372–​373, 392, 394 notation BU, 71, 359, 378, 382, 392 notation BV, 92, 243, 347, 359, 362, 367–​ 368, 375, 380–​381, 394, 404, 421 notation BW , 91, 229n15, 347, 359, 368, 375, 380–​381 notation BX, 359, 361, 368, 381, 394, 404n6 notation BY, 229n15, 233, 347, 359, 362, 374–​375,  392 notation BZ, 229n15, 243, 359, 360n11, 362, 367–​368, 386, 394 notation CA, 229n15, 347, 359, 368, 391–​392 notation CB, 355, 359, 371, 382 notation CC, 2, 92, 223, 229n15, 272, 359, 362, 367–​368, 370, 394 notation CD, 223, 229n15, 359, 364, 391 notation CE, 223, 229n15, 237, 359 notation CF, 96, 221, 223, 243, 359, 362, 367–​368, 374, 386 Solo for Voice 1 (1958), 2, 138, 270, 274, 313, 396 Solo for Voice 2 (1960), 2, 270–​271 Sonata for Clarinet (1933), 188 Sonatas and Interludes (1946–​48), 49, 125, 129, 141, 144, 164 Song Books (1970), 1–​2, 270–​272, 366n13 Sounds of Venice (1959), 197, 246, 272 String Quartet in Four Parts (1950), 320, 382 Ten Thousand Things, the, 2, 4, 25, 36, 47, 99, 168, 189, 255, 272, 286–​287, 287n32, 341, 358–​359, 366n13, 391, 413 1’5½” (1953), 188 21’1.1499” for a string player (1953–​55), 13–​15, 98, 123, 187–​188, 286, 287n32, 384 27’10.554” for a percussionist (1956), 36, 286 31’57.9864” for a pianist (1954), 2, 98–​99, 123, 189–​190, 286, 358, 413 34’46.776” for a pianist (1954), 2, 98–​99, 123, 187, 189–​190, 286, 358, 363, 413 45’ for a speaker (1954), 286 Theatre Piece (1960), 137, 197, 246, 248, 272, 313 Three Dances (1945), 141, 235 TV Köln (1958), 176n167 Two Pastorales (1952), 98

Variations I (1958), 2, 22, 92–​93, 167, 218, 225, 228, 230n16, 347, 357, 359, 400, 413, 421 Variations II (1961), 2, 218, 421 Variations III (1962), 366n13, 432 Variations V (1965), 435 Variations VIII (1967), 357 Water Music (1952), 126, 313, 366n13 Water Walk (1959), 197, 246, 272, 313 WBAI (1960), 2, 197, 240, 246–​254, 271–​272 Williams Mix (1951–​53), 50, 98–​99, 125, 129, 132, 144–​146, 155, 157, 253, 255 Winter Music (1957), 2–​5, 11, 15, 23n12, 25–​ 40, 42–​43, 45, 60–​61, 64, 69, 78–​80, 82, 85, 92, 99, 125, 167–​168, 196–​197, 199, 228–​230, 238, 254, 271–​272, 279, 281, 287, 287n34, 289, 337–​340, 355, 358–​359, 381, 390, 396, 400, 403, 413 Wonderful Widow of Eighteen Springs, The (1942), 125, 128, 138, 144–​145, 154 Canby, Edward Tetnall, 151 Carawan, Guy, 235 Cardew, Cornelius, 175–​177, 176n168, 414 February Piece I (1959), 412 Memories of You (1964), 350 Third Piano Sonata (1958–​58), 187 Cardini, Giancarlo, 28 Carmen, Arline, 128, 138, 274, 313 Carroll, Noël, 425 Castelli, Leo, 159 Leo Castelli Gallery, 122 Cato, Bob, 146 Cavell, Stanley, 422–​424, 434 Cerha, Friedrich, 178, 284, 284n28, 288–​289 chance processes and use of biomorphic shapes, 57–​58, 75–​76, 84–​85, 87, 90–​91, 94, 241, 342–​343, 346, 350–​351, 353–​355, 364, 367, 370–​372, 385 and use of coin tosses, 4, 13, 16, 18, 25–​26, 35, 56–​58, 60, 63, 116, 283, 295, 318, 327, 334, 343, 367 and use of paper imperfections, 11–​27, 29–​ 40, 30n30, 59–​61, 82–​83, 86, 92, 104–​ 107, 280, 318–​319, 336, 343, 417–​418 and use of the I Ching, 12–​16, 19, 31–​33, 36, 40, 58–​66, 76, 88, 94, 99–​100, 106, 116, 280, 282, 295–​297, 320, 326, 340, 346, 376, 387–​388

452 :  Index Chaplin, Charlie, 258–​260, 263, 264n67 Limelight (1952), 259 Charles, Daniel, 19, 271, 305–​306, 338–​339, 429 Charlip, Remy, 146, 255, 263 Chiarito, Gertrude, 150, 160 Chopin, Frédéric, 428, 433 Coleman, Ornette, 51n80, 138 Coletta, Harold, 123 Columbia (Records), 121, 140, 142, 149 Columbia University, 226, 226n11, 234 Composers Facsimile Edition, 21–​23, 188–​189,  194 Composers Slide Quartet, 275 Coomaraswamy, Ananda, 7 Coombs, Daniel R., 34n31, 35 Cooper, Al, 49 Copeland, Roger, 259, 293 Copland, Aaron, 41, 148 copyright of musical works, 21–​23, 29, 188, 196–​197,  200 of recordings, 149, 164 of texts, 149 Corbett, John, 45 Cornell University, 159 correction fluid, use of, 69, 86–​89 Count Basie, 49 Cowell, Henry, 49, 159, 188, 191, 196, 390–​391 Cox, Paul, 48–​49 Crooks, Edward James, 134, 393 Cummings, Alex, 52 Cunningham, Carl, 275 Cunningham, Merce, 27, 121, 146, 229, 234–​ 235, 238, 286, 286n31 Aeon (1961), 254 Antic Meet (1958), 10, 223, 223–​225, 227, 229, 236–​241, 244–​245, 247, 250–​266, 268, 293, 300–​301, 305, 408 Canfield (1969), 237 Changeling (1957), 254 and conducting the Concert, 136–​137, 145, 173, 292–​293, 301, 301n50, 305 Merce Cunningham Dance Company, 123, 135, 146, 237, 245, 248n36, 252, 254 Minutiae (1954), 123, 286n31 Night Wandering (1958) Rainforest (1968) Rune (1959), 254

Scramble (1967) Solo Suite in Space and Time (1953), 123, 286, 286n31 Springweather and People (1955), 123 Suite for Five (1956), 238, 254, 286n31 Summerspace (1958), 254, 266 Dachs, David, 127, 137, 143 Dahl, Jim, 119 Dahlhaus, Carl, 419–​421 Darmstadt Ferienkurse, 74, 166, 170, 173, 192, 226, 234n21, 402–​403, 406, 412, 414, 419–​420 Dave Brubeck Quartet. See Brubeck, Dave Davis, Miles, 49, 140 Miles Ahead (1957), 121 Sketches of Spain (1960), 121 de Antonio, Emile, 122–​128, 124n11, 132, 134, 148, 234, 274 de Kooning, Elaine, 1, 10, 123 de Kooning, Willem, 123 de la Motte, Diether, 183 Deleuze, Gilles, 10, 429, 431–​433 Dempster, Stuart, 272, 275–​276, 316n84, 316n85 Dewey, John, 424 DiCecco, Enrico, 308 Dickinson, Peter, 293 Die Reihe, 26, 192, 422 Dienes, Sari, 170n150 d’Indy, Vincent, 361 Discurio, 161–​162 Doflein, Erich, 410, 410n26 Donaueschinger Musiktage, 167, 189, 189n199, 413 Dostoyevsky, Fyodor, 257, 262, 265 The Brothers Karamazov (1879–​80), 257, 260–​263,  265 Drew, David, 161–​162 Driesch, Kurt, 183, 185–​186 Drury, Stephen, 393 Duchamp, Marcel, 400 Dunn, Robert, 36, 352 Dylan, Bob Greatest Hits (1968), 146 Eckstein, Billy, 49 Eco, Umberto, 415–​418 Edition Peters, 162, 190, 195, 202n250, 205–​206

Index  :  453 catalogue, 3, 199, 199n240, 352 editions of scores, 21–​23, 23n12, 29–​30, 72, 189, 198–​199 Henmar Press imprint of, 9, 23, 29, 74, 196 offices of, 162, 194–​197, 200–​201, 203, 205 Éditions Amphion, 188 Éditions Heugel, 188–​189 Éditions Salabert, 188 Edmunds, John, 193–​194 Eimert, Herbert, 166, 182 Electrola, 162 Ellington, Duke, 268, 323 Elton, Bill, 119 etymology, 256–​257, 260, 263, 267, 306–​308, 306n64, 431 Evangelisti, Franco, 419 Evans, Gil, 8, 119, 121, 121n26 Farber, Viola, 255, 259 Feisst, Sabine, 47–​48 Feldman, Morton, 42, 92, 157, 271, 272n7, 276, 340, 394, 400, 416, 420 Ixion (1958), 254 Festa, Kay, 134 Fetterman, William,  293 Five Spot Café, 138 Floyd Jr, Samuel A., 53 Flynt, Henry, 159, 435 Folkways (Recordings), 151, 235–​236 Foothill Digital, 165 Foster, Pops, 334 Foucault, Michel, 307 Foundation for Contemporary Arts, 205–​206 Franck, Fance, 233, 234n20 Frankenstein, Alfred, 41, 141, 151, 157–​158 Fredericks, Tina, 122, 159 Freeman, Betty, 27–​29, 30n30 Fulkerson, James, 282 G. Schirmer (publishers), 148, 193 Gallope, Michael, 69n4 Garcia, Mario, 126, 126n17 Gauwerky, Friedrich, 304n52 Gazzelloni, Severino, 171 Gemini Graphic Editions, 206 Gessler, Clifford, 150 Giessen, Theo,  175 Gillespie, Dizzy, 49

Gillespie, Don, 199n240, 201 Globokar, Vinko,  276 Goehr, Lydia, 427–​430 Goldberg, Albert, 266 Goodman, Benny, 140, 268 The Famous 1938 Carnegie Hall Jazz Concert (1950), 140 Goodman, Nelson, 10, 411, 422, 424–​429, 433–​435,  434n89 Gordon, Max, 138–​139 Goss, Clint, 336 Graham, Martha, 192, 258–​260, 264–​265 Green, Ray, 192–​193 American Document (1938), 192 Greer, Nina, 20 Griffiths, Paul, 3, 33, 393 Gross, Mike, 150 Grubbs, David, 132 Grunfeld, Fred, 151 Guggenheim, Peggy, 199 Guthrie, Woody,  235n22 Haas, Berthold, 173–​177 Hafer, Dick, 119 Hammond, William, 146 Hampton, Lionel, 49 Hanser-​Strecker, Peter, 163–​164 Harren, Natalie, 126n17 Harrison, Jay S., 140 Harrison, Lou, 141, 156, 159 Härtwig, Martin, 180–​182, 185 Harvard University, 71n6, 161 Haubenstock-​Ramati, Roman, 419 Hawkins, Coleman, 49 Heinsheimer, Hans W., 193 Helms, Hans G., 176n168, 307n67, 406 Heugel, Philippe. See Éditions Heugel Hicks, Michael, 40–​41, 46 Hines, Thomas,  40 Hinrichsen, Evelyn, 196, 198 Hinrichsen, Max, 201 Hinrichsen, Walter, 194–​206, 234 Hoban, Wieland when the panting STARTS (2002–​04), 382 Holzaepfel, John, 34n31, 138, 208n2, 227, 227n13, 230n16, 231, 233, 237n26, 393 Horovitz, Michael, 161, 197 New Departures and, 197 hot jazz. See jazz

454 :  Index Hovhaness, Alan, 141, 159 Howe, Richard Herbert, 72, 203–​204, 204n262 Hurley Woods Summer Music Festival, 273 I Ching. See chance processes Iacona, Nina, 163 Ichiyanagi, Toshi, 199 improvisation, 47–​48, 51–​52, 51n80, 121, 127, 157, 184, 186, 219, 235, 301n51, 303, 316, 330, 337, 339, 399, 415, 420–​421, 423 Indeterminacy lecture, 10, 151–​154, 173–​174, 225–​230, 227n13, 233n18, 234–​236, 244–​246, 271, 422 jazz, 8–​9, 47–​55, 50n72, 51n80, 52n82, 103, 119–​121, 127, 130, 130n27, 132–​133, 133n32, 138, 140–​141, 143, 146, 148–​ 149, 172, 186, 253, 264, 268, 278n21, 309–​311, 323, 336 Jepson, Warner,  273 Johns, Jasper, 123–​126, 205, 234, 234n20, 401 Johnson, William Manuel, 334 Johnston, Jill, 258 Joseph, Branden, 366, 431–​433 Joyce, Carol, 28 Kagel, Mauricio, 72, 169–​171, 182, 237, 293, 412, 414, 416, 419–​420 Sexto de cuerdas (1953/​57), 170 Transición II (1958–​59), 412 Kaiser, Mel, 235–​236 Science Fiction Sound Effects (1953), 235 Kastendieck, Miles, 139 Kaufman, Albert, 137, 323 Kayser, Nils, 400 Keaton, Buster, 258–​259, 264 Kierkegaard, Søren, 260 Kim, Rebecca, 49, 50n72 Kirby, Michael, 313–​314 Kline, Franz, 123 Kobayashi, Kenji, 187 Koch, Karl O., 173 Kolodin, Irving, 140 Kossoy Sisters, the, 235 Kostelanetz, Richard, 164, 435 Kotik, Petr, 273–​274, 301n51, 304–​305 Krenek, Ernst, 171, 182

Hexaeder (1958), 170 Krieger, Ulrich, 275n13 Kruttge, Eigel, 166–​168, 171, 173 Kuhn, Laura, 202n250, 278n19 Kuivila, Ron, 8, 393, 396 Kupferberg, Herbert, 150 Lampley, Cal, 121 Lang, Paul Henry, 226n11 Larsen, Jack Lenor, 366 Latour, Bruno, 430 Lauhus, Haro, 161 Lazar, Julie, 28 le Berge, Anne, 273–​274 Leedy, Douglas, 272 Lerman, Leo, 151, 156 Lew, Harry, 160 Lewis, George, 50n72, 51, 51n80 Lewis, Meade ‘Lux’, 52–​54 ‘Bass on Top’ (1940), 52 ‘Honky Tonk Train Blues’ (1937), 53 ‘Six Wheel Chaser’ (1940), 53 Lieberman, Fredric, 132 Ligeti, Györgi, 419–​421 Lindlar, Heinrich, 186 Lippold, Richard, 159 Living Theatre, the, 159, 245–​246 Lofton, Cripple Clarence, 52–​53 ‘I Don’t Know’ (1939). 53 Logan, Wendell,  53 Lolya, Andrew, 118, 131–​133, 317n87, 336 Long, Lois, 122, 234 Macero, Ted,  121 Mac Low, Jackson, 6, 194–​195, 339 Mackler, Robert, 272 Maderna, Bruno Piano Concerto (1958–​59), 187 Manchester, P.W. (Bill), 266 Maoism, 307n67, 406 Mapleson, 202–​203, 202n250 Maren, Roger, 234, 235n23 Mariétan, Pierre, 271, 279–​280, 286 Marsicano, Merle, 159 Martin, Al, 118 Masselos, Williams, 141, 159 Mathis, Johnny, 121n26 Maxfield, Richard, 195

Index  :  455 McGovern, Patty, 119n21 McGovern, Patty and Thomas Talbert Wednesday’s Child (1956), 119 Meehan, Rob, 163 Meldonian, Dick, 119, 119n22 Melsher (or Melcher), Jo Ann, 20 Merce Cunningham Dance Company. See Cunningham, Merce Metzger, Heinz-​Klaus, 305, 402–​407, 409–​ 415, 417–​418, 422, 425, 434–​436 Meyer-​Denkman, Gertrud, 271 Millstein, Gilbert, 138–​139 Mingus, Charles, 119, 121, 138 Modern Jazz Quartet, 47, 138 Moffett, George, 146 Monk, Thelonius, 121, 138 Motherwell, Robert, 123 Mulligan, Gerry, 8, 119, 172 Mumma, Gordon, 247, 251–​252, 271 Museum of Contemporary Art (MOCA),  28–​29 mushrooms, 122, 430 Music Biennale, Zagreb, 237, 293 Musica Viva Pragensis, 237, 273 Nagel, Ernst, 175 Nattiez, Jean-​Jacques, 188 Nearing, Guy, 122 Neff, Severine, 40, 46 Nelson, Mark, 211 New Music Edition. See Cowell, Henry New York Town Hall, 141 See also Concert for Piano and Orchestra, first performance of Nicholls, David, 2 Nietzsche, Friedrich, 257, 260 Nilsson, Bo, 218–​220, 232 Bewegungen (1956), 219n7 Quantitäten (1958), 219n7, 226 Schlagfiguren (1956), 167, 219n7 Northwestern University, 28–​29, 68, 70, 191, 227n13 Nyman, Michael, 2–​3 O’Donnell, May, 192 Oliveros, Pauline, 272 ONCE Festival, 271 Ono, Yoko, 270

Ortland, Eberhard, 410 Owen, Mark, 43 Ozalid (process), 80n11, 190, 199, 201 Panzner, Joe, 429–​430, 432–​433 paper, types of corrasable bond, 81n11, 106–​107, 204n262 holograph, 18, 20–​22, 24, 27, 70, 72n7, 74, 81n11, 127, 190, 192, 203 Morilla Cameo, 30n30, 69, 80n11, 204, 204n262 onionskin, 21–​22, 24–​25, 29–​30, 104, 107, 190, 192 Photostat, 10, 29–​30, 37, 40, 71–​73, 190, 199–​206,  276n18 vellum, 29–​30, 69, 80n11, 104, 107, 190, 204 Parker, Charlie, 130 Parmenter, Ross, 139 Partch, Harry Seventeen Lyrics by Li Po (1930–​33), 362 Pepper, Ian, 402 Petschull, Johannes, 201. See also Edition Peters Pharris, Elizabeth, 128 philosophy, 153, 423–​428 of Cage, 135, 415 Piekut, Benjamin, 25, 51n80, 55, 131n28, 301n51, 308, 337, 430–​432, 434–​435 Pisaro, Michael, 2, 337 Pischner, Hans, 185 Pousseur, Henri, 221n8, 228, 304, 397, 416, 418–​419 Scambi (1958), 416 Variations I (1956), 167 Presser, Theodore,  196 Pritchett, James, 3, 98–​99, 99n15, 153, 434, 434n88 Quill, Gene Three Bones and a Quill (1958), 119 Quinichette, Paul, 119, 119n22 Ralls, Anthony, 428–​429 Randle, Bill, 142–​143 Ranger, Richard H., 142 Rauschenberg, Robert, 123–​126, 146, 205–​ 206, 234, 255, 258–​259, 262–​263 Charlene (1954), 310

456 :  Index Rebhahn, Michael, 393 Rehak, Frank, 119–​121, 120n23, 131–​132, 137, 309–​310, 313, 321, 321n19 Reidy, Brent, 41 Reinschild, Carl, 147 Retallack, Joan, 6, 8, 45–​46, 339–​340, 362, 395 Revill, David, 125, 134, 189 Ribbelink, Johanna, 199n240, 352 Richards, M.C., 54, 135, 138, 146, 170n150, 174, 193n216, 234, 234n20 Rist, Simone, 271 Rivest, Johanne, 120n23, 395 Robertson, Leroy, 46 Robinson, Julia, 305 Robinson, Suzanne, 137 Roeder, Margarete, 27–​28, 30n30 Rolantz, Bob, 158 Ruditz, George R., 148 Ruggles, Carl, 192–​193 Rush, Loren, 317n85 Russell, William, 48–​49,  52–​54 Ruzicska, Pál, 197 Ryckmans, Pierre, 307n67, 406 Rzewski, Frederic, 271, 390 Salzman, Eric, 150 Samuel, Harold E., 159 San Francisco Tape Music Center, 237, 272 Satie, Erik, 45, 154, 202 Schlee, Alfred, 188–​191, 194–​195, 198 Schneider, Urs Peter, 271 Schoenberg, Arnold, 6–​7, 9, 40–​47, 55, 65, 155, 338–​339, 360–​361, 395, 400, 405, 411 Pierrot Lunaire (1912), 434 Wind Quintet, op.26 (1924), 318n87 Scholl, Warren,  146 Schöning, Klaus, 187 Schröer, Paul, 173 Schubertiade Music & Arts, 188 Schultz, Herbert, 183 Schwartz, Tony,  235 New York 19 (1954), 235 Schwartzberg, Sy, 119, 119n21, 311 Schwertsik, Kurt, 271 Seeger, Pete, 235 Shankar, Ravi, 143 Sharpe, R.A., 424 Sheff, Robert, 271

Shim, Kunsu 12 Intermezzi (2002), 384 Siegel, Marcia, 259 Smith, Bessie Bessie Smith Memorial Album (1938), 146 Sondheim, Stephen, 159 Stable Gallery, 70, 73–​74, 125–​126, 193, 262 Stanley-​Lewis Record Distributors. See Lew, Harry Stella, Frank, 122 Stevenson Jr., Louis A., Stockhausen, Karlheinz, 3, 26, 34n31, 74n10, 167–​169, 173, 182, 189, 192, 201, 226, 289, 390, 405–​406, 410, 412–​417, 419, 421, 428 Klavierstück X (1961), 390 Klavierstück XI (1956), 171, 226, 405, 414, 416–​418 Kreuzspiel (1951), 187 Refrain (1959), 187 Zeitmasse (1955–​56), 405 Zyklus (1959), 412 Stone, Cynthia, 255 Stoos, Toni,  28 Stravinsky, Igor, 53, 134–​135, 137, 151, 434 Le Scare du printemps (1913), 9, 53, 130, 133–​135, 151, 159, 434 Streisand, Barbra People (1964), 146 Strobel, Heinrich, 189, 191, 195 Suvini Zerboni, 197 Svoboda, Mike, 275 Sypher, Wylie, 260–​262 Takahashi, Yū ji, 308 Talbert, Thomas,  119n21 Tanglewood Festival, 270 Taruskin, Richard, 275 Teagarden, Jack, 54, 310 Thomas, Ernst, 414–​417, 419, 423, 425, 435 Thomson, Virgil, 41, 151, 156–​158, 314 Thornhill, Claude, 8, 119, 119n21, 121n26, 172 Tomek, Otto, 4, 70, 70n5, 75, 92, 102, 102n19, 166, 168–​175, 186–​187, 192, 278n21, 292 Tomkins, Calvin, 128, 132, 134 Trimble, Lester, 140 Truyens, Hugo, 149

Index  :  457 Tudor, David, 3, 8, 33, 34n, 79, 92–​93, 98–​ 99, 106n20, 120, 123, 161, 189, 192, 193n216, 195–​196, 198, 202, 259, 270, 270n3, 272–​273, 276, 284, 284n28, 286–​287, 289, 291, 293, 295, 304, 308, 313, 320, 410n26, 412, 415, 421 and the European premiere, 166–​171, 170n150, 173–​176, 175n167, 180, 183, 185, 187 manuscript copies of, 21–​24, 29–​30, 36–​ 40, 70–​74, 74n10, 93, 98, 188–​189, 198–​199, 201, 340 and the premiere performance, 3, 124–​125, 130, 133, 136–​138, 137n44, 146, 157, 207–​222 and realisations of the Solo for Piano, 9, 207–​254, 290, 301, 337–​338, 360, 390, 392, 395, 397, 399–​400, 412–​413, 426 and the recording of Indeterminacy, 151, 153, 225–​236 Tudorfest, 237, 272–​273, 316n85 Turetzky, Bertram, 321 Tymoczko, Dmitri, 423 Ullrich, Hermann, 313 Universal Edition, 161, 168, 189–​195, 201 Varèse, Edgard, 121, 157 Vaughan, David, 257, 260, 262–​264 Village Vanguard, the, 136–​8, 223, 225, 268, 270, 301, 313 Wallman, Harriet, 20 Walters, Ethel, 49 Warhol, Andy, 123

Warner Bros. Recordings, 121, 149, 160 Warsaw Autumn, 237 Weatherly, Albert, 118, 336 Webern, Anton, 154, 405, 407 Weiss, Adolph, 366 WERGO, 9, 159, 164–​166 Wesleyan University, 148–​149, 194, 202, 245, 252 Westdeutscher Rundfunk (WDR), 166–​168, 170, 173, 175, 176n167, 179, 186–​187, 271, 403, 410, 412 Whiteman, Paul, 268 Willauer, Marguerite, 270, 270n3 Williams, Paul, 256, 308, 372, 400 Williams, Vera, 234 Windsor Records, 163 Winkler, Harold, 160 Wittgenstein, Ludwig, 308 Wolff, Christian, 11n1, 195, 234, 254, 276, 379, 384, 416, 418 Duo for Pianists I (1957), 254 Duo for Pianists II (1958), 225–​226, 254 For 6 or 7 Players (1959), 254 For Piano with Preparations (1957), 379 Pianist: Pieces (2001), 384 Suite (1954), 254 Wood, Jennings, 149 Wood, Marilyn, 255 Yancey, Jimmy, 54 Yates, Peter, 3, 9, 26, 54, 148, 150–​156, 245, 245n, 248, 254, 304, 410, 422 Zwaanenburg, Jos, 273–​274 Zwerin, Michael, 51n80