Begin Again: A Biography of John Cage

4. Music of Changes

4 · MUSIC OF CHANGES 1949–1952 Palermo and Milan; Paris; Pierre Boulez “NOTHING WORKS RIGHT,” Cage wrote to his parents from Brussels , “No soap, no toilet paper.” Perhaps little wonder. He and Cunningham were staying at an artists’ pensione that served as a meeting place for refugees from Communist-controlled countries. Spending ten days in Holland and Belgium, Cage performed some preparedpiano music, recorded and broadcast by a Brussels radio station and aired again from the Belgian Congo. He also got a look at the “amazing ” red-light district of Amsterdam. And the city’s lethal canal waters, into which the occupied Dutch tried to push German troops during the war. After spending a few days in Paris, but planning to return to settle down, Cage and Cunningham headed for Italy. Virgil Thomson had arranged for Cage to cover music festivals in Palermo and Milan as a correspondent for the International Herald Tribune. But the partners found the traveling unpleasant and “hated” the country, Cage said: “everybody took advantage of our not knowing the language & over charged us for everything and there are countless beggars and it is filthy.” They settled first in Palermo, Sicily, where Cage attended and reviewed the nine-day festival of the International Society for Contemporary Music. Here Cage began his first on-the-scene encounter with contemporary musical life in Europe. He found a few performers and pieces to praise. But generally he thought the music “rather horrible” and the festival so uninteresting that participants kept leaving. Some instruments required for the few experimental works turned out to be unavailable. And about a quarter of the compositions performed were by officers of the ISCM or their close relatives—although the society’s constitution expressly forbade such inbreeding. Often feeling sickish from the food as well, Cage wrote to Thomson that the society was incapable, “failing frightfully in organization of music-get-togethers.” Heading north to Milan, Cage also reviewed the four-day First Congress for Dodecaphonic Music—little more favorably. A strong presentation of Schoenberg’s Pierrot Lunaire left him trembling, and he noticed some listeners weeping. But he thought other performances underrehearsed. And programs were continually changed, canceled, or put on unannounced at strange hours, so that no one knew what to expect or when. Cage harshly summed up for readers his reaction to both festivals: “mediocrity reigned to such an extent,” he wrote, “that the simple entering of a concert hall became in itself a stupefying act.” Just the same, while in Italy he used his checks from the Tribune to have two suits custom-made for himself. After a stop in Rome, where he played some of his music at the American Academy, Cage returned in mid-May to Paris. The city seemed to him “out of this world beautiful.” The franc had been devalued, making Paris affordably attractive to tourists. A new group of Americans had arrived, writers such as James Baldwin and Truman Capote, soldiers studying on the GI Bill, diplomats and others working for the Marshall Plan. And Cage encountered many friends from the States—Sonja Sekula, Max Ernst, Gita Sarabhai (now married), Edwin Denby, Maro Ajemian—“it’s practically NYC.” But Cage also found Paris difficult to settle into. Most of the time he was nearly broke. As often before, his parents helped out by sending some money, in installments of a hundred dollars. By contrast, Ajemian ’s mother added to his problems; “unreasonable & money mad,” he 80 · BEGIN AGAIN felt, she took advantage of him, letting him pay for taxis and cover other expenses he could not afford. Since eating out was costly, he and Cunningham hoped to find a house to rent, where they could cook for themselves. Meanwhile they moved around. No place provided a piano, so Cage was unable to compose. Or even wash up properly. He searched for bathhouses, but when he located one often discovered that it did not supply towels. He wrote home, asking his parents to send some. From the States did come two pieces of welcome news, promising Cage financial help for the near future. The prestigious American Academy of Arts and Letters awarded him a grant of one thousand dollars, for “an originality of workmanship that has extended the expressive range of music.” He also received a grant from the Guggenheim Foundation, in part on the strength of a letter of recommendation from Thomson, praising him as “the...