Writings through John Cage's Music, Poetry, and Art

Bernstein, David W.; Hatch, Christopher

doi:10.7208/chicago/9780226044873.001.0001

Cited by 15 publications

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Understanding Indeterminate Music through Performance: Cage's Solo for Piano

Thomas¹

2013

Twentieth-Century Music

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This article demonstrates how performance may further understanding of -and offer new perspectives onindeterminate music, and in particular the ways in which performers realize the indeterminate aspects of the scores. Cage's Solo for Piano (1957-8), one of the most celebrated indeterminate scores, is used as the model for such an approach. The close involvement that performers have with the score and the music over what is often a prolonged period of time leads to a particular kind of understanding, different from that of nonperformers, which, when articulated, can offer valuable insights. After a brief outline of the score, the article begins by discussing the performances of other pianists, notably David Tudor. It then examines in detail the author's own approach to making a realization, discussing the implications of such an approach from both practical and aesthetic perspectives.

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Understanding Indeterminate Music through Performance: Cage's Solo for Piano

Thomas¹

2013

Twentieth-Century Music

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Defining Twentieth- and Twenty-First-Century Music

Clarke¹

2017

Twentieth-Century Music

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What do we mean by ‘twentieth-century music’? And how are we to square this with the musics of a twenty-first century that is now nearing the end of its second decade? These and other questions are salient for a journal that identifies the former century in its title yet regards the latter as equally within its remit. Just how are we to think the two centuries together? Should we consider the music of the twenty-first century as a continuation of tendencies from the late twentieth? Or are there tendencies within musical production and consumption that have a definitively twenty-first-century character and so mark out the beginning of a new era? If so, when and with what, iconically speaking, did the twenty-first century begin and the twentieth end? Or do these historiographic categories even continue to have currency?

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John Cage and George Herbert Mead: The Unknown Influence of Van Meter Ames

Yang¹

2017

J Soc American Mus

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As John Cage wrote in his bookA Year from Monday, the “current use for art [is] giving instances of society suitable for social imitation—suitable because they show ways . . . people can do things without being told or telling others what to do.” Cage's ideal anarchic music emphasizes not only renouncing compositional control, but also the process of self-discovery happening to everyone, a process that leads participants to discover their creative abilities. This paper argues that Cage's penchant for self-discovery came from his understanding of George Herbert Mead's theories of the process of individuation (the “me” and the “I”). Cage discovered Mead through readingZen and American Thought(1962) by his friend Van Meter Ames, a professor of philosophy at the University of Cincinnati, who saw the compatibility between Zen and Mead's concept of self in the capacity of the “I,” a phase of self whose unpredictable steps contribute to human innovation. Cage found the possibility of overthrowing the thought of the world through triggering a self-discovery of the “I” in everyone. He realized this idea in his happenings, such as0’00”, by requiring performers to respond to the simple descriptions without specifying sound or duration.

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Writings through John Cage's Music, Poetry, and Art

Cited by 15 publications

References 0 publications

Understanding Indeterminate Music through Performance: Cage's Solo for Piano

Understanding Indeterminate Music through Performance: Cage's Solo for Piano

Defining Twentieth- and Twenty-First-Century Music

John Cage and George Herbert Mead: The Unknown Influence of Van Meter Ames

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