Silencing the Sounded Self: John Cage and the American Experimental Tradition

Notes

NOTES INTRODUCTION 1. Jonathan Brent, preface to Peter Gena and Jonathan Brent, eds., A John Cage Reader in Celebration of His 70th Birthday (New York: C. R Peters, 1982), p. xi. 2. Recent Ives scholarship may be outlining a similar distinction between American and European views. In Geoffrey Block and J. Peter Burkholder, eds., Charles Ives and the Classical Tradition (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1996), Burkholder, an American, writes: "Ives [127] sought not to overthrow the great European tradition but to join it as a continuing spirit. In fulfilling this aim, Ives placed himself in the mainstream of European art music in his time" (p. 8). The emphasis here is meant to diminish the view of Ives as "a quintessentially American composer, one who rejected the European tradition and struck out on a new path" (p. 1). On the other hand, David Nicholls, who is British, in a review of several American Ives publications (including Charles Ives and the Classical Tradition) asserts: "To establish Ives's compositional pedigree—both American and European—is important But there is a danger of going too far,- of appearing to wish to legitimize his work through association with European tradition What attracts us to Ives's music is its difference." David Nicholls, "The Great American Borrower," in Times Literary Supplement, October 18,1996, p. 19. My emphasis here concerns what constitutes the process of legitimacy in either Cage or Ives; in Europe, at least, it has always concerned their "American-ness." 3. John Cage with Daniel Charles, For the Birds (London: Marion Boyars, 1981), p. 93. 4. John Cage, "Two Statements on Ives," in A Year from Monday: New Lectures and Writings (Middletown, Conn.: Wesleyan University Press, 1967), p. 37. According to Stuart Feder, such was also likely the case with Ives, who "used Emerson and his ideas as a vehicle for integrating and organizing ideas of his own." Stuart Feder, Charles Ives: "My Father's Song": A Psychoanalytic Biography (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1992), p. 261. 5. Obviously, an interest in experiment is a basic concern of any artist working within the "experimental tradition," and, as such, could be regarded as what defines that tradition. Instead of attempting to initially fix such definitions, a difficult task in and of itself, this book will clarify certain distinctions within the experimental tradition (broadly defined). 6. Thomas DeLio's writings show process as central to experimental traditions in several artistic disciplines. Thomas DeLio, Circumscribing the Open Universe (New York: University Press of America, 1984), is but one example. His work has allowed me the latitude of assuming this emphasis on process, thus enabling me to concentrate on distinctions of self within the American experimental tradition. 7. John Cage, "Diary: How to Improve the World (You Will Only Make Matters Worse) Continued 1968 (Revised)," in M: Writings, '6772 (Middletown, Conn.: Wesleyan University Press, 1973), p. 7. 8. Richard Kostelanetz, Conversing with Cage (New York: Limelight Editions, 1988), p. 25. Because this book collects different interviews from several sources over many years, I will always include, fol- [128] NOTES TO PAGES xvi - xvii lowing the page number, the date of the interview (in this case, 1985). 9. John Cage, "Diary... Continued 1968 (Revised)," in M, p. 18. 10. John Cage, I-VI (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1990), pp. 95-96 (punctuation added). 11. Betty E. Ch'maj, "The Journey and the Mirror: Emerson and the American Arts," in Prospects, vol. 10 (1985), p. 396. 12. Henry Cowell and Sidney Cowell, Charles Ives and His Music (1955; reprint, New York: Da Capo Press, 1983), p. 4. 13. George J. Leonard has performed a similar task in his Into the Light of Things: The Art of the Commonplace from Wordsworth to John Cage (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1994). According to Leonard , "When Wordsworth declared art to be 'but a handmaid/ he already had in mind what he called 'the blissful hour' when the handmaid's work would be done, all commonplace life transfigured, and the audience lifted to a plane from which it could see all mere real things as miracles " (pp. 25-26). Leonard goes on to proclaim that "John Cage's famous 'silent piece,' 4'33", signaled the 'blissful hour's' arrival" (p. 26). I will show that Cage's intentions were opposed to such "transfigurations ," which present a dualistic separation between real things and their experience as "miracles." In fact, such dualistic...