The Selected Letters of John Cage ed. by Laura Kuhn (review)

To the uninitiated, this volume of The Selected Letters of John Cage might be puzzling: if these 651 pages are the selected letters of the composer who died in 1992, one might wonder how many more he wrote? I don't think anyone has ever given a ballpark figure to answer this question, but the John Cage Collection at Northwestern University Libraries is listed as containing 121 boxes filled with correspondence (see https://findingaids.library.northwestern.edu/repositories/3/resources/1237 [accessed 1 May 2017]), so the editorial work of selecting these letters is very significant. Having Laura Kuhn weed through and edit this correspondence was not a surprising choice, as Kuhn worked with Cage from 1986 to 1992; after Cage's death she helped to establish the John Cage Trust and has been its Director ever since. She is therefore the most knowledgeable person one can imagine for this project. Thanks to Kuhn's hard work and energy, we now have many more writings by Cage available, in easy-to-access book (and e-book) form.

Cynics might wonder whether the composer who was notorious for his quip "I have nothing to say, and I'm saying it" (from his 1949 "Lecture on Nothing" published in Silence [Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1961], 109), needs any more of his words to be published. To be even more to the point: what could be discovered in his correspondence that is not in one of his many books, articles or interviews? Actually, we have already had at least two books devoted to selections of Cage correspondence: a volume edited by Jean-Jacques Nattiez, covering the exchanges between Pierre Boulez and Cage (Pierre Boulez, John Cage, correspondance et documents, ed. Jean-Jacques Nattiez [Veröffentlichungen der Paul Sacher Stiftung, vol. 1 (Winterthur: Amadeus, 1990)], published in various editions since 1990), as well as a book focusing on Cage and David Tudor (John Cage and David Tudor: Correspondence on Interpretation and Performance, ed. Martin Iddon [Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2013]). Whereas the volume edited by Nattiez reveals a (likely) competitive streak between Boulez and Cage in the early days of their friendship—which brought out misunderstandings and aesthetic differences between the two composers—the more-recently-edited exchanges between Cage and Tudor, a pianist who premiered many of the piano works, offers less rich pickings.

In general, a lot of Cage's written communications seem to have focused more on practical issues and the logistics of life (organising artistic projects and touring or work opportunities) than on discussing his aesthetics or issues of performing his works. Kuhn's selections contain a few notable exceptions that throw (at least to this reviewer) new light on Cage's interactions and personality. Many provide examples of Cage's generosity towards others (in the fact that he replied to, it seems, all letters or requests he received, which are also documented in much of the correspondence published in this volume), but in at least one case Cage clearly draws a line of demarcation even though it would have made sense for him to be more diplomatic for his own gains. On p. 363, Kuhn publishes two letters to Yoko Ono, both written on March 10, 1967. The first one relates to Cage's fundraising project for publishing music manuscripts by other composers (p. 260), a collection that culminated in Notations (New York: Something Else Press, 1969). Cage's letter expresses his gratitude for receiving manuscript pages from the Beatles to include in the publication, but he also asks Ono to help with obtaining copyright clearances for publication. The second letter seems to be a response to Ono regarding her No. 4 (Fluxus, 1966), described by Kuhn as "a 5 1⁄2-minute film consisting of a series of close-ups of human buttocks as subjects walk on a treadmill" (p. 363,n. 686). In this very short letter, relatively...