Galerie Davide Di Maggio

Inhaltsbereich

John Cage

October 11 - November 11, 2007

Milano

Fondazione Mudima Milan present the exhibition

"John Cage - a portrait"

opening: Thursday 11 October 2007

18.00 p.m.

The exhibition will move to Galerie Davide Di Maggio Berlin, next March 2008

John Milton Cage Jr. (September 5, 1912 – August 12, 1992) was an American composer. He was a pioneer of chance music, non-standard use of musical instruments, and electronic music. He is perhaps best known for his 1952 composition 4'33", whose three movements are performed without a single note being played. Though he remains a controversial figure, he is generally regarded as one of the most important composers of his era.

Cage was a long-term collaborator and romantic partner of choreographer Merce Cunningham. In addition to his composing, Cage was also a philosopher, writer, printmaker, and avid amateur mycologist and mushroom collector.

John Cage's 'Experimental Composition' classes from 1957 to 1959 at the New School for Social Research have become legendary as an American source of Fluxus, the international network of artists, composers, and designers. The majority of his students had little or no background in music, most of whom were artists. His students included Jackson Mac Low, Allan Kaprow, Al Hansen, George Brecht, Alice Denham and Dick Higgins, as well as the numerous artists he invited to attend his classes unofficially. Several famous pieces came from these classes: George Brecht's Time Table Music, and Alice Denham's 48 Seconds.

Conceived in 1952, Theater Piece No. 1 consisted of Cage collaborating with Merce Cunningham, David Tudor, Robert Rauschenberg, and Charles Olson at Black Mountain College where the performance took place amongst the audience. "Happenings", as set forth by Cage, are theatrical events that abandoned the traditional concept of stage-audience and occur without a sense of definite duration; instead, they are left to chance. They have a minimal script, with no plot. In fact, a "Happening" is so-named because it occurs in the present, attempting to arrest the concept of passing time. Cage believed that theater was the closest route to integrating art and (real) life. The term "Happenings" was coined by Allan Kaprow, one of his students, who was to define it as a genre in the late fifties. Cage met Kaprow while on a mushroom hunt with George Segal and invited him to join his class. In following these developments Cage was strongly influenced by Antonin Artaud’s seminal treatise The Theatre and Its Double, and the “Happenings” of this period can be viewed a forerunner to the ensuing Fluxus movement. In October of 1960, Mary Baumeister's Cologne studio hosted a joint concert by Cage and the video artist Nam June Paik, who in the course of his 'Etude for Piano' cut off Cage's tie and then washed his co-performer’s hair with shampoo.

Cage was also highly prolific as a writer, producing a series of increasingly experimental texts that were largely incorporated into several books published during his lifetime. These are Silence (1961), A Year From Monday (1968), M (1973), Empty Words (1979), X (1983) and Anarchy (1988). In these books, featuring writings ranging from straightforward essays to diary entries to wholly experimental writing. For example, he invented the mesostic, a type of poem in which Cage ‘wrote through’ texts such as Joyce’s Finnegans Wake. Cage employed chance methodologies to create texts which were often presented spatially on the page in a striking variety of font sizes, typefaces and layouts- an approach towards creating an increasingly visual dimension to text, perhaps inspired by the experimental poetry of E. E. Cummings and lettrism.

In addition a series of interviews between Cage and the critic Daniel Charles are collected in the book For the Birds (1981), published by Edizioni Multhipla/Di Maggio, Milan whose title is a reference to one of Cage's favorite sayings, which is typical of his often subtle, self-referential humor: "I am for the birds, not for the cages people put them in." Richard Kostelanetz assembled a collage of various interviews in Conversing with Cage (second ed., 2003), and a volume of conversations with Joan Retallack from the 1990s, Musicage, appeared in 1996.

From the late sixties Cage was also active as a visual artist, working on annual projects at Crown Point Press, from which he produced a series of drawings, prints and watercolours. Some of these were inspired by the drawings made by Thoreau in his Journal, and by the aesthetics of his earlier friend, and chess partner, artist Marcel Duchamp. One of his most striking visual pieces is the 1969 work Not Wanting to Say Anything About Marcel, which is comprised of a complex array of superimposed type encased within plexiglas panels. It seems at times as though Cage’s increasing interest in writing and visual art indicated a certain frustration with musical composition. However, as Cage pointed out, he aimed to remain faithful to his promise to Schoenberg to devote his life to music.

Cage had a lifelong interest in mushrooms. He co-founded the New York Mycological Society with three friends and his mycology collection is presently housed by the Special Collections department of the University Library at the University of California, Santa Cruz.

John Cage died in New York City on August 12, 1992, only weeks before a celebration of his 80th birthday organized in Frankfurt by the composer Walter Zimmermann and the musicologist Stefan Schaedler was due to take place; however the event went ahead as planned, including a performance of the Concert for Piano and Orchestra by David Tudor and Ensemble Modern.

German version

Neben Arnold Schönberg gibt es nur wenige Komponisten mit einer ähnlichen Bedeutung für das Komponieren im 20. Jahrhundert wie den 1913 in Los Angeles geborenen John Cage. Kaum ein anderer Komponist hat so viele und so unterschiedliche Schlüsselwerke der Neuen Musik geschaffen - sein Werk umfasst etwa 250 Kompositionen. Hinzu kommen musik- und kompositionstheoretische Arbeiten von grundsätzlicher Bedeutung. Außerdem gilt Cage als Schlüsselfigur für die Ende der 1950er Jahre entstehende Happeningkunst und als wichtiger Anreger für die Fluxusbewegung und die Neue Improvisationsmusik. Das malerische Werk von John Cage sollte im Übrigen ebenfalls nicht unterschätzt werden.

Cage studierte zunächst Literatur, ging 1930 nach Europa und unternahm erste Versuche im Malen und Komponieren. Zurückgekehrt nach Amerika, heiratete er Anfang der 1930er Jahre Xenia Kashevaroff und begann sein Kompositionsstudium u.a. bei Arnold Schönberg. 1938 zog Cage nach Seattle und baute sein erstes Schlagzeugensemble auf. Kurze Zeit später entstand als Begleitung für eine Choreografie seine erste Komposition für das von ihm erfundene Präparierte Klavier, auf dessen Saiten und Hämmern er Radiergummis, Nägel und andere kleine Teile montierte, die dem Klavier eine besondere Klangfarbe verleihen.

In Seattle begegnete Cage erstmals dem Tänzer Merce Cunningham. In New York City baute sich Cage ab 1942 eine Existenz als Komponist auf und trennte sich von seiner Frau. Er reiste weiterhin quer durch die USA, Europa und Asien, um Kurse und Vorträge zu halten und Aufführungen seiner Werke zu begleiten. Mit Merce Cunningham und dem Maler, Grafiker und Happening-Künstler Robert Rauschenberg begann Cage zusammenzuarbeiten und zusammenzuleben. Dieses Trio wohnte im gleichen Haus in einer Art Dreier-Beziehung.

Die Beschäftigung mit der Musik von Erik Satie und den Schriften von Henry David Thoreau und James Joyce führte John Cage zur Entwicklung einer eigenen Form von Musik über Musik und von Text über Text, einer in dieser Weise neuen Tätigkeit. Seine Musik soll dazu verhelfen, Gegenwart zu erfahren, ohne sich um das Vergangene zu kümmern oder Zukünftiges zu erwarten.

Die letzte Phase seines Schaffens, die 1987 begann, umfasst ca. 50 Stücke für diverse kammermusikalische Besetzungen, Orchester, Soloinstrumente, Chor, Performer, die so genannten "Nummernstücke" (Number pieces). Hier gibt Cage seinen Musikstücken keinen Titel mehr, sondern benennt sie nach der Zahl der Aufführenden und nummeriert sie in der Reihenfolge ihrer Entstehung durch. So z.B. das für vier Stimmen geschriebene FOUR² von 1990, welches für den Madrigal-Chor der Hood River Valley High School komponiert wurde. Die Nummernstücke sind in so genannten "Time brackets" notiert. Es handelt sich weder um die traditionelle Form der Musiknotation, noch um eine grafische Notationsform. Vielmehr hat der Interpret die Möglichkeit, das Klangereignis während eines definierten Zeitraums einzuführen und während eines Zeitraumes wieder herauszunehmen.

John Cage war seit seinen jungen Jahren leidenschaftlicher Pilzforscher und -sammler.

Cage starb 1992 in New York City kurz vor seinem 80. Geburtstag an den Folgen eines Schlaganfalls.