CagePerc.html

= page 56 = [excerpt from future of music]

AND PRESENT METHODS OF WRITING PERCUSSION MUSIC

Percussion music is a contemporary transition from keyboard-influenced music to the all-sound music of the future. Any sound is acceptable to the composer of percussion music; he explores the academically forbidden "nonmusical" field of sound insofar as is manually possible.

Methods of writing percussion music have as their goal the rhythmic structure of a composition. As soon as these methods are crystallized into one or several widely accepted methods, the means will exist for group improvisations of unwritten but culturally important music. This has already taken place in Oriental cultures and in hot jazz.

= page 61, 62 =

People Call It Noise -- But He Calls It Music Pence James

Reprinted by permission of the Chicago Daily News

One of the earliest reviews of Cage's concerts, the following mixture of bemusement-outrage, puzzlement-interest was frequently echoed in subsequent newspaper criticism. This appeared in the Chicago Daily News (March 19, 1942); the author was then a staff reporter.

It wasn't mountain music. It wasn't red hot jazz. Nor was it boogie-woogie or swing. So what was it?

Intellectuals, including several members of the University of Chicago faculty, were trying to figure out the answer today. Last night they went to a symphonic concert in Mandel Hall. Charles Buckley's university orchestra played. Dr. Frederick Stock was guest conductor.

But, somewhere along the middle of the program, there was an invasion by a daring young man named John Cage and his "musicians," who play beer bottles, flower pots, cowbells, automobile brake drums, dinner bells, thundersheets, and in the words of Mr. Cage, "anything we can lay our hands on."

After a fairly sweet rendition by the symphony strings entitled St. Paul's Suite for String Orchestra, conductor Buckley retired and Mr. Cage and members of his "percussion group" set up for a number called Canticle, written by Lou Harrison of Oakland, Calif.

John's wife, Xenia, presided at the flower pots, Katherine Manning and Barbazon Lindsay took care of such things as wood blocks, cup gongs, rattles, and dragon mouths, and Marjorie Parking had her hands full with a huge tamtam, or Chinese gong, a thundersheet, tambourine, and wind glass. Stuart Lloyd beat the drums.

Cage raised his baton, and the business was on. A savage sort of rhythm poured off the stage that had the audience squirming in its seats.

At first, because of the serious mien of the performers and the fearful novelty of the percussion orchestra, nobody smiled. Finally the audience began to enjoy itself, applauding enthusiastically, to be rewarded with a pleased-as-pie grin from Mr. Cage.

"It's better than Benny Goodman," said one man in the audience, who had previously announced that "Bach bores me."

For this piece, they used a beer bottle, dinner bell, iron pipe, cymbals, drums, wood blocks, the piano, and a garbage can.

In this number, Mr. Cage handled the piano. He began by fingering the keys, but then started beating them with the flat of his hand, and then with his elbows. Finally he seized a board that stretched the length of the keyboard and pressed it up and down so every note on the piano thundered. Then he caressed the strings under the open top.

The fox trot ended when Miss Manning broke the beer bottle and dropped the pieces into the garbage can.

When Mr. Cage was told later that a girl in the audience had characterized his music as "perfectly terrifying," he said: "We have a lot more terrifying numbers than these. She should hear us when we have the electricity on -- buzzers and things like that."

Mr. Cage said he did not consider his percussion music an "end in itself, but we are trying to make all the field of audible sound available for music." He said this was his thirteenth concert. When he played his first percussion concert in 1938, there were only two pieces written for percussion groups. Now there are more than 100, he said, as he collected his gongs, flower pots, and brake drums.

= page 64, 65 =

For More New Sounds John Cage

For several years, a small but growing number of composers in America have been writing compositions for percussion instruments alone. Orchestras now exist, one in San Francisco, the other in Chicago, for the performance of these works. The instruments used are in many cases those found in the percussion section of the symphony orchestra, or in typical Oriental, Cuban, and hot jazz ensembles.

Many objects not originally intended for musical purposes, such as automobile parts, pipe lengths, and sheets of metal have been used. In some cases, the word percussion has become a misnomer, the sound being produced through other means than hitting. Shells and whistles are blown; dials turned and buttons pushed; needles are lowered to records.

Elements of sound and rhythm have been used that may, with good results, be combined with the resources of the symphony orchestra. On the other hand, the similarity between the instruments of the percussion orchestra and the sound effects of the radio and film studios suggests the development of what might be called a radio or film orchestra.

....

Many musicians, the writer included, have dreamed of compact technological boxes, inside which all audible sounds, including noise, would be ready to come forth at the command of the composer. Such boxes are still located somewhere in the future. At present the choice is either to wait and lament the fact that they aren't available now for experimental and musical purposes, or to continue to work with what "axes and buckets" can be found or made.

= illustrations 6, 7 =

6. Program of percussion music concert (Cage's New York debut), Museum of Modern Art, February 7, 1943

Museum of Modern Art 11 West 53rd Street

Sunday Evening February 7th, 1943 8:45 p.m.

A PROGRAM OF PERCUSSION MUSIC Directed by JOHN CAGE Presented by THE LEAGUE OF COMPOSERS In association with THE MUSEUM OF MODERN ART

Assisting Artist Ruth Stuber Jeanne, Marimba

Ensemble Mary Anthony Xenia Cage David Campbell Jean Campbell Arthur Christie Merce Cunningham Renata Garve Molly Howe Helen Lanfer Edward McLean Joan Palmer

PROGRAM

Construction in Metal .... John Cage thundersheets, orchestral bells, string piano, oxen bells, cowbells, temple gongs, automobile brake drums, cymbals, anvils gongs, automobile brake drums, cymbals, anvils, gongs, tam tam

Counterdance in the Spring .... Lou Harrison drums, dragon's mouths, gongs, cymbals, woodblocks, brakedrum

Ostinato Pianissimo ..... Henry Cowell (first performance) string piano, rice bowls, marimba, Niger drum, hand drum, guiro, bongos, drums, button gongs

Canticle ..... Lou Harrison tambourine, woodblocks, bells, rattles, dragon's mouths, temple gongs, flower pots, cowbells, guiro, wind glass, triangle, cymbals, brake drum, tam tam, thundersheets, drum, gongs

Imaginary Landscape No. 3 .... John Cage audio frequency oscillator, recorded sounds, tin cans, buzzer, gongs, marimbula, thunder sheet

INTERMISSION

Preludio a 11 .... Jose Ardevol (first performance) claves, guiro, maracas, triangle, anvil, cymbal, bongos, African drum, snare drum, bass drum, piano

Amores .... John Cage (first performance) string piano, drums, rattle, woodblocks

Ritmicas V & VI .... Amadeo Roldan claves, cowbells, quijadas, guiro, maracas, bongos, drums, marimbula

Sound equipment furnished by the Sound Effects Department of the Columbia Broadcasting System. The co-ordination of the visual elements has been effected by Schuyler Watts

Office of the League of Composers, 113 West 57th St. Arthur Judson, Recital Management Steinway Piano

PERCUSSION ORCHESTRA SITS ON THE STAGE WAITING TO PLAY, AT FULL STRENGTH, ORCHESTRA INCLUDES ELEVEN PLAYERS, ALL OF WHOM DRESS FORMALLY FOR CONCERTS.

PERCUSSION CONCERT Band bangs things to make music

At the Museum of Modern Art in New York City a few Sundays ago, an orchestra of earnest, dressed-up musicians sat on the stage and began to hit things with sticks and hands. They whacked gongs, cymbals, gourds, bells, sheets of metal, ox bells, Chinese dishes, tin cans, auto brake drums, the jawbone of an ass and other objects. Sometimes instead of hitting, they rattled or rubbed. The audience, which was very high-brow, listened intently without seeming to be disturbed at the noisy results.

The occasion was a percussion concert, sponsored by the League of Composers and conducted by a patient, humorous, 30-year-old Californian named John Cage, who is the most active percussion musician in the U.S. Cage not only conducts percussion orchestras but also composes percussion music, as do other modern experimental composers. Percussion music goes back to man's primitive days when untutored savages took aesthetic delight in hitting crude drums or hollow logs. Cage believes that when people today get to understand and like his music, which is produced by banging one object with another, they will find new beauty in everyday modern life, which is full of noises made by objects hanging against each other.

Typed by Cheryl Vega 7-25-95

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