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I. from the Folkways record,
Indeterminacy: New Aspect of Form in Instrumental and Electronic
Music
For over 20 years I have been giving lectures. Many of them have been
unusual as lectures, simply because I employed in them means of writing
analogous to my composing means in the field of music. My intention was,
often, to say what I had to say in a way which would exemplify it, which
would, conceivably, permit a listener to experience it rather than to just
hear about it. This means, essentially, that, being, as I am, engaged in a
variety of activities, I attempt to introduce into each one of them aspects
conventionally limited to the others. So it was that I gave about 1949 my
Lecture on Nothing at the Artists’ Club on 8th Street in New
York City (the artists’ club started by Robert Motherwell that
predated the popular one associated with Philip Pavia, Bill de Kooning, et.
al.). This Lecture on Nothing (recently published
in Incontri Musicali*) was
written in the same rhythmic structure I employed at the time in my musical
compositions (Sonatas and Interludes, Three Dances, etc.).
One of the structural divisions was a repetition of a single page in which
the refrain occurred “if anyone is sleepy let him go to sleep”
some 14 times. Jeanne Reynal, I remember, stood up part way through,
screamed, and then said, while I continued speaking, “John, I dearly
love you, but I can’t bear another minute.” She then walked
out. Later, during the question period, I gave 5 prepared answers
regardless of the questions. This was a reflection of my engagement in Zen.
At Black Mountain College, I organized an event which involved the
paintings of Bob Rauschenberg, the dancing of Merce Cunningham, films,
slides, phonograph records, radios, the poetries of Charles Olsen and
M. C. Richards recited from the tops of ladders, the pianism of David
Tudor, together with my lecture which ends: “A
piece of string, a sunset, each acts.”** The audience was seated in the center
of all this activity, and, later that summer, vacationing in New England, I
visited America’s first Synagogue to discover that the congregation
was there seated precisely the way I had arranged the audience at Black
Mountain. As I look back, I realize that this concern with poetry was early
with me. At Pomona College, in response to questions about the Lake Poets,
I wrote in the manner of Gertrude Stein, irrelevantly and repetitiously. I
got an A. The second time I did it I was failed. And between the Lecture
on Nothing and the one here recorded, there are at least a dozen which
are unconventionally written, notably the London
Lecture*** which was written
by means of chance operations, and the Rutgers
Lecture**** which is largely
a series of questions left unanswered. When M. C. Richards asked me
why I didn’t one day give a conventional informative lecture (adding
that that would be the most shocking thing I could do), I said, “I
don’t give these lectures to surprise people, but out of the need for
poetry.” As I see it, poetry is not prose, simply because poetry is
one way or another formalized. It is not poetry by reason of its content or
ambiguity, but by reason of its allowing musical elements (time, sound) to
be introduced into the world of words. Thus, traditionally, information, no
matter how stuffy (e.g. the sutras and shastras of India), was
conventionally transmitted by poetry. It was easier “to get”
that way. (Karl Shapiro may have been thinking along those lines when he
wrote his Essay on Rime in poetry.)
Late in September in 1958 I was in Stockholm in a hotel. I
set about writing the present lecture which I was obliged to give a week
later at the Brussels Fair.*****
I recalled a remark made years before by David Tudor that I should make a
talk that was nothing but stories. The idea was appealing when he gave it
to me but I had never acted on it. A few weeks before, in Darmstadt,
Karlheinz Stockhausen has said, “I’ll publish your Brussels
talk in Die Reihe.” I replied, “You’d better wait
and see what it is I write.” He said, “No matter what it is,
I’ll publish it.”
When the talk was given in Brussels, it was just the first 30 stories
and without musical accompaniment. A recital by David Tudor and myself of
music for two pianos followed the lecture. The title was Indeterminacy:
new aspect of form in instrumental and electronic music. Karlheinz
Stockhausen was in the audience. Later when I was in Milan making the
Fontana Mix at the Studio di Fonologia, I received a letter from
Karlheinz Stockhausen asking for a text for Die Reihe. I sent the
Brussels talk. He published it.
When I got back to America in March 1959, there was a
letter from Jack Arends asking me to lecture at Columbia Teachers College.
I decided to write 60 more stories and to ask David Tudor to make a
90-minute accompaniment for the occasion. He did this using material from
the Concert for Piano and Orchestra, employing several radios for
noise elements.******
A few days after the talk was given at Columbia, I went to see Emile de
Antonio. I gave him a copy of the stories. After he read them, he
telephoned to say they should be published. I mentioned this to David
Tudor. He said, “It should be published as a record.” The next
day I got a letter from Roger Maren. He wrote to say that he had just seen
Moe Asch who was interested in recording something of mine. I telephoned
Moe Asch and we made an appointment. The day was set for the recording so
that it could be made before David Tudor returned to Europe. David Tudor
said, “Instead of radios, I’d like to use tracks from the
Fontana Mix.” I said, “Fine.”
It took about an hour and a half for the recording engineer, Mel Kaiser,
to set up the studio. Finally he asked me to speak a little to get the
level. Then he did the same for the piano, the whistles, the tape machines
and the amplified slinky. Then he said, “We’re ready.”
However, I no sooner started speaking than he stopped me. I said,
“What’s the trouble?” He said, “You shouldn’t
pause the way you do between words; you should just speak naturally.”
I said, “But this is what I have to do. I tell one story a minute,
and, when it’s a short one, I have to spread it out. Later on when I
come to a long one, I have to speak as rapidly as I can.” He said,
“O.K. I’ll just keep my mouth shut.” After the first side
was made, he said, “I’m beginning to get the idea. I think
we’d better do it over again.” What had happened was that he
had tried to get some kind of balance, rather than just letting the loud
sounds occasionally drown out my voice. I explained that a comparable
visual experience is that of seeing someone across the street, and then not
being able to see him because a truck passes between. We then made the
first record over again, and continued with the other three. At the end of
the session, David Tudor said, “You may want to cut that last sound I
made at the piano. It’s an ugly one.” Editing, which took place
the following week, was minimal. I lowered the level on my voice at one
point near the end, and took out an echo that had developed on the tape
before one sound somewhere in the middle. I didn’t cut out the last
sound as David Tudor had suggested, for to my ear it sounded perfectly
acceptable. All this time, Moe Asch was out of town. When he returned, he
listened to the record, and then called to say he was delighted. I said,
“I’m glad you are, because I am too.” He said,
“When you write the album notes, write as much as you wish.
Don’t stint. And technical information too.”
Most of the stories are things that happened that stuck in my mind.
Others I read in books and remembered, those, for instance, from Kwang-tse
and Sri Ramakrishna. The 2nd, 15th, 16th, 46th and 75th stories are to be
found somewhere in the literature surrounding Zen. The statement,
“Split the stick and there is Jesus,” (19th
story) comes, perhaps, from Huxley’s Perrenial Philosophy,
which I read when it first came out. The 29th story
I read in one of Martin Buber’s books. The 61st
story is told in Joseph Campbell’s Hero with 1000 Faces.
Xenia (stories 72 and 73) is
Xenia Cage. She was Xenia Andreyevna Kashevaroff whom I married in 1935; we
were divorced 10 years later. Malcolm Roberts first delivered the lecture
on Japanese Poetry (78th story). We (he, Xenia and
I) were sitting, quite drunk, in a Seattle gutter; it was a full moon. He
claimed that it had been given at the University of Washington by a
Japanese scholar. Virgil Thomson told me the story about Chabrier,
“the dirty” composer (story number 58).
Henry Cowell told me the story about the Eskimo lady (the 25th). Merce Cunningham picked up, I don’t
know where, the one about the Japanese Abbott (the
13th). It may be discovered that I remembered some of these stories
inaccurately. However, this is the way they are now as far as I am
concerned.
The continuity of the 90 stories was not planned. I simply made a list
of all the stories I could think of and checked them off as I wrote them.
Some that I remembered I was not able to write to my satisfaction, and so
they do not appear. Whenever I have given the talk, someone comes up
afterwards and insists that the continuity was a planned one, in spite of
the ideas that are expressed regarding purposelessness, emptiness, chaos,
etc. One lady, at Columbia, asked, during the discussion following the
talk, “What, then, is your final goal?” I remarked that her
question was that of the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation to
applicants for fellowships, and that it had irritated artists for decades.
Then I said that I did not see that we were going to a goal, but that we
were living in process, and that that process is external. My intention in
putting 90 stories together in an unplanned way is to suggest that all
things, sounds, stories (and, by extension, beings) are related, and
that this complexity is more evident when it is not over-simplified by an
idea of relationship in one person’s mind.
David Tudor plays material from his part of the Concert for Piano and
Orchestra (1957-58), using tracks from the Fontana Mix (1958-59)
as noise elements where these are notated in the Concert. (Manuscript pages of the Concert, together with notes and
analytical statements, appear in the recording of my 25-year Retrospective
Concert at Town Hall, issued by George Avakian, 10 W. 33rd St., N.Y.C.
Other manuscript pages, originals, are available at the Stable Gallery,
58th and 7th Ave., N.Y.C.*******)
David Tudor was free to make any continuity of his choice. There was no
rehearsal beforehand involving both the reading and the music, for in all
my recent music (since Music for Piano) there are parts but no
score. Each one of us rehearsed alone and employed a stopwatch during the
actual recording session. Each did what he had to do, bringing about a
situation which neither had foreseen.
The manuscript of the Fontana Mix is on transparent plastics
which may be superimposed in any number of ways. There are ten sheets
having points, and ten having differentiated curved lines. There is also a
single straight line and a graph having 100 units horizontally and 20
vertically. By placing one of the sheets with points over one with curves
and then superimposing the graph, it is possible to connect a point within
the graph with one outside by means of the single straight line, and to
make measurements which define the production of the sound in a studio for
making tape music, specifically, the choice of sound source, alterations of
frequency, amplitude, timbre, duration, mixtures, loops, and splicing. More
detailed information regarding my methods of producing tape music with
special reference to the Williams Mix appear in the Avakian album
referred to above.
Critics frequently cry, “Dada,” after attending one of my
concerts or hearing a lecture. Others bemoan the interest in Zen. One of
the liveliest lectures I ever heard was given by Nancy Wilson Ross about
1937 at the Cornish School in Seattle. It was called Zen Buddhism and
Dada. There is a connection possible between the two, but neither Dada
nor Zen are fixed tangibles. They change; and in quite different ways in
different places and times, they invigorate actions. What was Dada in the
twenties is now, with the exception of the work of Marcel Duchamp, just
art. What I do, I do not wish blamed on Zen, though without my engagement
with Zen (attendance at lectures by Alan Watts, D. T. Suzuki, reading
of the literature) I doubt whether I would have done what I have. Recently,
I am told, Alan Watts has questioned the relation between my work and Zen.
I mention this in order to free Zen from any responsibility for my actions.
I shall continue making them, however. I often point out that Dada nowadays
has a space, an emptiness, in it that Dada formerly lacked. What, nowadays,
New York-mid 20th century, is Zen?
II. from Silence, pages
260-1
Late in September of 1958, in a hotel in Stockholm, I set about writing
this lecture for delivery a week later at the Brussels Fair. I recalled a
remark made years earlier by David Tudor that I should give a talk that was
nothing but stories. The idea was appealing, but I had never acted on it,
and I decided to do so now.
When the talk was given in Brussels, it consisted of only thirty
stories, without musical accompaniment. A recital by David Tudor and myself
of music for two pianos followed the lecture. The full title was
Indeterminacy: New Aspect of Form in Instrumental and Electronic
Music. Karlheinz Stockhausen was in the audience. Later, when I was in
Milan making the Fontana Mix at the Studio di Fonologia, I received
a letter from him asking for a text that could be printed in Die
Reihe No. 5. I sent the Brussels talk, and it was published.
The following spring, back in America, I delivered the talk again, at
Teachers College, Columbia. For this occasion I wrote sixty more stories,
and there was a musical accompaniment by David Tudor – material from the
Concert for Piano and Orchestra, employing several radios as noise
elements. Soon thereafter these ninety stories were brought out as a
Folkways recording but for this the noise elements in the Concert
were tracks from the Fontana Mix.
In oral delivery of this lecture, I tell one story a minute. If
it’s a short one, I have to spread it out; when I come to a long one,
I have to speak as rapidly as I can. The continuity of the stories as
recorded was not planned. I simply made a list of all the stories I could
think of and checked them off as I wrote them. Some that I remembered I was
not able to write to my satisfaction, and so they were not used. My
intention in putting the stories together in an unplanned way was to
suggest that all things – stories, incidental sounds from the environment,
and, by extension, beings – are related, and that this complexity is more
evident when it is not oversimplified by an idea of relationship in one
person’s mind.
Since that recording, I have continued to write down stories as I have
found them, so that the number is now far more than ninety. Most concern
things that happened that stuck in my mind. Others I read in books and
remembered – those, for instance, from Sri Ramakrishna and the literature
surrounding Zen. Still others have been told me by friends – Merce
Cunningham, Virgil Thomson, Betty Isaacs, and many more. Xenia, who figures
in several of them, is Xenia Andreyevna Kashevaroff, to whom I was married
for some ten years.
Some stories have been omitted since their substance forms part of other
writings in this volume. Many of those that remain are to be found below.
Others are scattered through the book, playing the function that odd bits
of information play at the ends of columns in a small-town newspaper. I
suggest that they be read in the manner and in the situations that one
reads newspapers – even the metropolitan ones – when he does so
purposelessly: that is, jumping here and there and responding at the same
time to environmental events and sounds.
III. from A Year from Monday, page
133
Since the fall of 1965, I have been using eighteen or nineteen stories
(their selection varying from one performance to another) as the irrelevant
accompaniment for Merce Cunningham’s cheerful dance, How to Pass,
Kick, Fall, and Run. Sitting downstage to one side at a table with
microphone, ashtray, my texts, and a bottle of wine, I tell one story a
minute, letting some minutes pass with no stories in them at all. Some
critics say that I steal the show. But this is not possible, for stealing
is no longer something one does. Many things, wherever one is, whatever
one’s doing, happen at once. They are in the air; they belong to all
of us. Life is abundant. People are polyattentive. The dancers prove this:
they tell me later backstage which stories they particularly enjoyed.
Most of the stories that are in this book are to be found below. (The
first thirty formed the text of a lecture titled Indeterminacy: New
Aspect of Form in Instrumental and Electronic Music, which I delivered
at the Brussels Fair in 1958. They were printed under that title in Die
Reihe No. 5 [German edition copyright © 1959 by Universal Edition
A.G., English edition copyright © 1961 by Theodore Presser Company] and are here reprinted by permission.********) Other stories appear
elsewhere, giving, it is hoped, what adjacent articles in newspapers
sometimes give: an occasion for changing one’s mind.
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