The Western percussion ensemble began about seventy years ago and although John Cage did not invent it, “it was already in the air ” he said, Cage was the first person to form an ensemble that rehearsed regularly. Its raison d’être was to explore through percussion, Cage’s ideas about music. This ensemble and the music Cage wrote for it was the beginning of a new world for percussionists. The ensemble consisted of Cage and his friends bookbinders, dancers, and artists, whoever was available at the time. None of them were trained percussionists so they couldn’t play rolls, a fundamental percussion technique for sustaining a sound with two sticks. Therefore Cage’s music consisted of single strokes only, thus making it accessible to anyone with a fair degree of manual dexterity and an ability to read music. It is ironic that from this ensemble came the most important percussion music of the 20th century. Because Cage was financially strapped at the time, his instrumentations were affordable, small, and portable. Cage accepted the sound of anything as musical, as long as it was not a cliché. In Trio for Seven Wood Blocks, Not Chinese, Cage turned the negative – not Chinese – into a positive by condoning the use of any other blocks of wood whilst simultaneously suggesting a comprehensive exploration of wood sounds.Cage’s music is about exploration. One cannot examine a score by Cage without reassessing one’s musical craft and concepts. A percussionist’s technique honed on instruments built for war with exercises developed centuries ago, are helpful in Cage’s music, but not entirely necessary and anyway, his music is not a technical display for performers. It is music for virtuosos, but virtuosos of sound.John Cage understood the fact that percussion sounds were ambiguous, that no two instruments sound alike. Therefore, a successful performance depends upon the orchestration skills of the performers more than their technical abilities.

Cage took simple, tuneless instruments and with imagination and some elaboration, achieved for percussion an important independent position in western art music. Of course Cage was not alone. Berlioz, Ravel, Debussy, Stravinsky, Milhaud and Varèse also played important roles in our awakening, but Cage and Takemitsu, who wrote important works for percussion, say to us in a very special way, “Listen, to everything”.

In my opinion, John Cage’s percussion music and the ideas that shaped it helped transform percussionists from utilitarian time “ keepers into artists. To be old enough to have known him and to have experienced that transformation is one of the most gratifying aspects of my musical career.

In 1972 there were three professional percussion ensembles in the western world, one each in Canada the United States and France. Today (2004) there are approximately forty worldwide.

Cage commissioned Carlos Chavez to write what became a classic of percussion ensemble repertoire, Toccata for Percussion. When the work arrived, Cage’s ensemble could not play it because it relied heavily on rolls. Cage had to premiere the work with professional percussionists.

 In 1982 The Percussive Arts Society, an international organization of performers, educators and students, elected John Cage to their Hall of Fame. He was the third composer, after Harry Partch (1974) and Edgard Varèse (1980) to be so honored. Subsequent inductees were Lou Harrison (1985) Michael Colgrass (1987) William Kraft (1990) and Warren Benson (2003)

Sources:

The information in the preceding texts is based on the author’s conversations and experiences with John Cage and from the following publications.

> American Pioneers: Ives to Cage and Beyond, 20th Century Composers, Rich, Alan, Phaidon Press Ltd. London, 1995.

> A Year From Monday, New Lectures and Writings by John Cage, Wesleyan University Press, Connecticut, 1969.

> Conversations with Cage, Kostelanetz, Richard, Limelight Editions, New York, 1988.

> The Early Percussion Music of John Cage, 1935-1943, Williams, Barry Michael, Ph.D. Michigan State University, 1990.

> For The Birds, John Cage in Conversation with Daniel Charles, Marion Boyars Ltd., Salem, New Hampshire, 1981.

> John Cage Writer, Previously Uncollected Pieces, Kostelanetz, Richard, John Cage, Limelight Editions, 1993.

> Musicage, Cage Muses on Words, Art and Music, Retallack, Joan, Wesleyan University Press, 1996.

> The Music of John Cage, Pritchett, James, Cambridge University Press, 1993.

> Silence, lectures and writings by John Cage, The M.I.T. Press, Massachusetts, 1966.

> A Special John Cage Issue, articles by Swed, Arditti and La Barbara, Schwann Opus, New Mexico, winter 1995/96

I. > 0′ 00″ – John Cage visited Japan in 1962 at the invitation of composer Toshi Ichiyanagi, (1933-). While in Japan, Cage wrote 0′ 00″ and dedicated it to Ichiyanagi and his wife Yoko Ono. Unlike 4′ 33″, which involved one or more musicians who made no sound, 0′ 00″ stipulates an obligation towards others must be fulfilled, in a partial or complete manner, by a single person.

II. > Cage published Diary: Emma Lake Music Workshop 1965 in his book A Year From Monday (1969) and I think in relation to this art exhibit, his immediate daily impressions will be of interest.

III. > Some historians date Cage’s debut as an experimental composer with Trio, (1936) although Quartet for Percussion, Instruments Unspecified written a year earlier would seem a more logical choice because Cage wrote that work for instruments he had not yet heard.

In 1943 Cage included Trio for Seven Wood Blocks, Not Chinese from Trio in Amores, a work for prepared piano and percussion. Amores is an important work because, as suggested by the title and stated by Cage, “it is the quietness between lovers”; an idea not often associated with Cage’s music. Gentle and thoroughly unlike the powerful and mathematically conceived Constructions I, II, and III that preceded it, Amores is also the first concert work to include prepared piano, an instrument invented by Cage that ‘released him from the sonic predictability of traditional notation’.

IV. > Cage said, “A Flower for Voice and Closed Piano (1950) is in the rhythmic structure of the dance by Louise Lippold for whom it was written. The dance being suggestive of Flora, an attempt was made to suggest Fauna”.

V. > In 1951 the French born composer Christian Wolff introduced Cage to I Ching or Book of Changes, the ancient Chinese oracle which his father had just published in English. Like the Oracle of Delphi, I Ching communicates through indirection and purposive obfuscation, leading the questioner to seek out inner resources for dealing with specific problems: for example, ‘Grace has success. /In small matters/It is favorable to undertake something.’ Soon after being presented with this book, Cage began writing Music of Changes for Piano and Imaginary Landscape #4 for Twelve Radios.
Mandy Lau will demonstrate the techniques of I Ching and discuss Cage’s instructions on preparing a performance of Child of Tree.

VI. > (In Child of Tree)(1975)” Cage gives directions for improvisation because; “the improvisation can’t be based on taste and memory since one doesn’t know the instruments. The pitch relations between the spines of a single piece of cactus often will be very interesting; microtonal. It’s an improvisation within a structure determined by chance operations.” Each performer consults I Ching to determine when and what they play.

VII. > Robert Rauchenberg’s White Paintings that reacted to changing light and people coming and going in the rooms where they were hung inspired 4′ 33″. Cage thought of 4′ 33″ as a piece of music constantly in flux, subject to the ambient sounds surrounding each performance. Many people thought it ironic or a game. It was neither to Cage. Cage said, “Our inflexible attitude towards change must cease. My own experience proved to me that all I need to do is to listen to the sounds around me. They change. I always and everywhere listen to the sounds surrounding me, but if I were to feel that one of them didn’t please me or wasn’t suitable for me “ if I would have preferred that it didn’t exist or hadn’t happened “ then you could immediately see why such a notion of preference is in a way illegitimate, since in fact the sound did occur”. Cage was forty years old when 4′ 33″ was premiered in Woodstock, New York. ‘Good people of Woodstock’, an artist in the audience stood and proclaimed, ‘let’s drive these people out of town’.