John Cage Concert at the Cage Symposium, University of New Hampshire, September 8, 2007 (review)

On September 8, 2007, a modest but not insignificant number of students, musicians, and enthusiasts convened at the University of New Hampshire for a symposium dedicated to an evaluation of John Cage’s life, work, and relevance to contemporary audiences. In the afternoon four papers were delivered, two of them now published in this journal. The final and all-important installment in the symposium was an evening concert. The programming choices and the quality of the performances combined to ensure that the concert was neither a throw-in nor an afterthought, but a satisfying parting gesture.

The Bratton Recital Hall is a simple, utilitarian space—something like an empty canvas on which, in fact, can be found numerous points of interest. One thinks of Cage’s response to Rauschenberg’s white paintings, seemingly blank, but actually collecting complex networks of dust and other interesting formations.¹ As the audience filed in, a soft but noticeable ringing sound resonated throughout the hall. Appropriately, its presence seemed to be greeted less as a nuisance and more as a fact of life (a place to focus one’s attention). One of the most memorable moments in the concert occurred partway through the first piece when the sound suddenly ceased, producing an effect of sonic hypersensitivity. Cage would have been pleased: “our ears are now in excellent condition.”²

Music for One (1984), the first piece on the program, is an enigmatic, challenging work for solo oboe. Margaret Herlehy’s performance was nuanced and assured. In addition to the clarity of her tone, one felt her experience quite deeply. This is a work full of absences. Not so much pregnant silences—more like spaces, openings, windows. It was, of course, not a problem that for most of the performance the primary effulgence at these moments was an indeterminate ring. One wonders if it were not planned all along: begin the concert with a subtle staging of intention versus nonintention. Ultimately, the sounds emanating from Herlehy’s oboe commanded attention—less because the disembodied ringing eventually departed, but largely due to physical placement (she was in the middle and in front—it seemed clear that she deserved our focus). As is often the case with Cage’s later works for soloist, the music itself seemed almost incredibly inauspicious. Here is Cage at his least ostentatious: like minimal, well-placed contributions to an afternoon conversation, the music floats, stutters, fails, asserts, but never insists.

In contrast to the spare environment of Music for One, the second piece, Four⁶ (1992), initially came off as a veritable circus of activity. Before long, however, this settled into a decidedly less frenetic and more open experience. The most striking aspect of this performance was the sheer variety of sound sources. Roughly a half-hour in duration, Four⁶ follows Cage’s usual practice in the late number pieces of organizing the music through the use of time brackets (where series of numerals flank a staff of musical events indicating the time spans within which those events should begin and end). Within the constraints of this notational approach—often, in fact, allowing for considerable overlap between the end of one musical system (i.e., line of music) and the beginning of the next—the events are to be executed in the order given, but with specific durational decisions left up to the performers. This loose structure is rendered more complicated by the employment of multiple players (four, in the case of Four⁶), and the assignment of more than one “part”—and, hence, more than one set of time brackets—to individual players. What is more, and perhaps most remarkable, Cage does not specify precisely what sounds should be used, indicating simply that the piece is “for any way of producing sounds (vocalizing, singing, playing of an instrument or instruments, electronics etc.).”³ The role of the performer in such a context is particularly significant. The process of realizing the score involves a number of...