For The Birds, by John Cage and Daniel Charles & Silence, Lectures and Writings, by John Cage

The critic Daniel Charles talks with and questions John Cage in the book For The Birds (Cage & Charles 1995) first published in 1976. Cage’s immersion in Zen Buddhism is evident in the title of this book and throughout. The reader is reminded of the Zen Mondo by the decision to separate chapters into interviews, discussions, dialogues and answers to questions. The chapter Sixty Answers To Thirty Questions introduces us to a frame of thought, it is a philosophical statement that references music as much as it does Cage’s fascination with silence. During the following chapters, Charles interviews Cage on particular works and compositional methods. There are many references to sonority found in Indian classical music and Balinese and Javanese music. He refers to his teacher Schoenberg many times and discusses the equal weight given to each note in the twelve-tone scale. Cage also describes how Webern and Satie demonstrated confidence when handling silence within composition. He defines his use of chance in composition with particular reference to the I Ching.

An element that has nothing to do with either repetition or variation; something which does not enter into the battle of those two terms, and which rebels against being placed or replaced… (Cage & Charles 1995 p.45)

The subject of the dialogue turns to computers via technology and the prepared piano. Cage critiques many compositional techniques in terms of his methods and explains how he came to compose experimental music that allowed the performer and audience similar status.

Cage’s collection of texts, Silence; Lectures and Writings (Cage 1999) elaborate further on his compositional method. Indeterminacy is illustrated by his work in comparison to J. S. Bach’s The Art of Fugue and pieces by K. Stockhausen. Bach is described as composing completely determined patterned melodic cells and Stockhausen as composing pattern that allows the performer a system of choice regarding the sequence of the cells. In other lectures Cage explains the techniques of Edgar Varèse and his unique imagination that seems to slice through technology as if there were no difference between the tape player and the string section. Other published writings including the Lecture On Nothing have the appearance of concrete poetry and can be said to echo Cage’s written performance instructions.

CAGE, J. (1999). Silence; Lectures and Writings. London, Boyars.
CAGE, J., & CHARLES, D. (1995). For The Birds. London, Boyars.