On performance liberties

Re: On performance liberties

An interesting question--what role should Cage's verbal 
and written instructions and/or opinions about his work, 
often after his having composed the piece, play in a 
performer's interpretation. In the case of Speech it may 
be a little simpler than in other places. In the Symphony 
Space concert Cage himself is "interpreting" his own 
score. As you point out this instruction is nowhere to be 
found in the score. Composed in 1955, transistor radios 
had been invented but it is unlikely that these would have 
been what Cage was thinking of when he wrote the piece. 
Meaning that when it was written the radios would have 
probably been plugged into electrical outlets determined 
by their location (or by extension cords) in the 
performance space.  Cage's application of more modern 
technological possibilities to his interpretation of a 
piece written in the 50s shows (I think)  the flexibility 
of what is possible interpretively from his perspective at 
the time of the concert. But that doesn't necessarily make 
it something to apply to a performance of Speech if one 
wants to be true to the original intent of what was put in 
the score in 1955. That's another story altogether, 
connected to the subject of performance practice, and I 
might add in a very traditional way. I'm thinking here (as 
but one example) of differences between what Beethoven 
piano sonatas sound like on original  versus modern 
instruments. Not a question of what might be right or 
wrong but I do find it useful to know the options 
concerning what a piece would have sounded like on 
"original" instruments and deciding whether or not it 
makes sense to go for that rather than just accept the 
conditions of what is currently available. I address this 
related to his percussion pieces (where I think getting 
the "historical" sounds is in some sense a question of 
right and wrong) in the chapter I contributed to the 
collection of essays on Cage edited by David Patterson 
(John Cage: Music, Philosophy and Intention 1933-1950). 
And concerning the spatial dimension, this I think points 
to something sonically important. Did Cage want the sounds 
of Speech to be heard in their entirely and at the same 
time? As a collage of radio sounds in combination with the 
reading of text? My educated guess is that this was what 
he had in mind as a composer in 1955. And if you listen to 
what's happening in the Symphony Space performance, by 
moving freely in that relatively large concert space you 
don't really get that sonic experience. As an interpreter 
I'm not sure I would follow Cage's directions concerning 
Speech as I'm not convinced it would be faithful to the 
score when he wrote it. In any case, there is a big 
difference (in my opinion) between what Cage says (or 
does) with one of his pieces as a performer or what he 
says about his compositions in his role as the composer. 
And, of course, also noting the time period of when he 
said or wrote something and then comparing that to the 
dates when the pieces themselves were written.

Chris Shultis

On Tue, 1 Nov 2011 17:00:08 +0200
  Dionisis Boukouvalas <paistinpotamia <at> hotmail.com> wrote:
> 
> Excluding indeterminate works, I always thought that one 
>has to perform Cage's music as accurately as possible.
> Nevertheless, there is an example from the marvelous 
>"American masters" documentary where Cage and co are 
>performing "Speech" and where Cage instructs the others 
>to move freely in the space "as people with radios do". I 
>have performed the piece and I recall that the score does 
>not mention something like that. It's really a pity that 
>I didn't know before the performance because I would have 
>loved to do it that way too. So, what it is?
> a) Was the idea dropped when the music came to be 
>printed?
> b) Are such liberties concerning the space/scene and not 
>the music itself allowed by Cage? But in that case, 
>doesn't the movement in space radically change the music 
>itself?
> 		 	   		  

Christopher Shultis, Ph.D.
Distinguished Professor
Regents' Professor of Music
University of New Mexico
MSC04 2570 Center for the Arts
Albuquerque, NM 87131
PH:(505) 264-3078
email: cshultis <at> unm.edu
website: www.chrisshultis.com

Note: Please use chris.shultis <at> gmail.com address for all 
non-UNM business related matters as well as  for any 
correspondence regarded as private rather than public. 
Thanks! cs

John Cage Online

Each week we've been featuring a different album via our Facebook page. The full album streams online.

This week's album is John Cage: One4, Four, Twenty-Nine and a link to our featured album is below.

http://www.facebook.com/ogreogress?sk=app_155326481208883

You do not need to be a member of Facebook in order to listen online.

Enjoy.

OgreOgress productions
http://ogreogress.com

A House Full of Music (Musicircus for Children) 1982

Hello,
As the score of A House Full of Music (Musicircus for Children) seems to be only a rental material at Editions
Peters, I would like to know if some of the Silence mailing list subscribers knew it and could describe how
it looks like. 
Is it a text of instructions ?
Is there any graphics ?
Is there any duration indication ?

Thanks !

Ninh

------------------------------------------
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La Blanchette
F-23140 Saint-Silvain-sous-Toulx
T : +33 (0)5 55 62 49 55
http://www.lequanninh.net
http://www.ryoanji.asso.fr

Looking for original text of Musicircus

Hello list

While looking into another project our group stumbled upon a German 
translation of what seem to be parts of a composition called 
"Musicircus". Would anybody happen to know perchance where I can 
retrieve/study/purchase the original text of that piece?

Thanks

peter h. ruegg
daswirdas

Source of Cage quote about Ives...

Pwyll ap Sion (senior lecturer at Bangor University) is looking for the source of this quote by Cage:

'What interests me are not the Americana aspects, the tunes and all that, but what I call the mud, the
complexity of many things going on at once, in which I am not able to know where I am, or what's happening.
Invariably in this mystery, something begins to happen to my mind, to change it, because of what I'm
hearing. But in my experience, that 
change of my mind is interrupted by the emergency from the mud of some well-known tune, generally some
Protestant church tune, and I find myself in a place familiar to others, but carefully avoided by me, in the
land so to speak of melodies and accompaniments or, I suppose Ives would prefer it if he's listening, if I
would say melodies and 
precedents."

Michael Nyman used this quote in a paper at the First American Music Conference, Keele University, in 1975,
and mentions the this viewpoint of Cage is more developed from Cage's "Two Statements on Ives" in A Year
from Monday, so we figure it must come in between 1967 and 1975. A few times Cage mentions Ives and mud in the
same breath, but not "Protestant church tune" that I can find. I am guessing his mention of church tunes
comes from his work on Apartment House/Renga, but that is just my guess.

Thanks for any help,

-Josh Ronsen
http://ronsen.org

Re: Source of Cage quote about Ives...