John
Cage

John Cage (b. 1912 in Los Angeles; d. 1992 in New York) took part in the DAAD Artists-in-Berlin Program (BKP) fellowship as part of an extensive European tour with his partner, the choreographer and dancer Merce Cunningham, and the latter’s dance company in 1972. Cage was also traveling year round between the metropolises of America and Europe for various projects, and in September he was also invited to take part in the Shiraz Arts Festival in Iran. He stayed in Berlin only sporadically: In January, on the occasion of his sixtieth birthday, an extensive retrospective of Cage’s work was presented at Galerie Kleber, organized in cooperation with the BKP, along with a multi-day concert series of pieces for smaller ensembles. In July of the same year, Cage took part in Woche der Avantgardistischen Musik Berlin: Spiel, Klang, Elektronik, Licht, a week-long festival of avant-garde music in Berlin that was co-organized by Walter Bachauer, the Berliner Festspiele, and the BKP. Together with David Tudor, Cage performed Mureau for voice and tape (1970) at the Akademie der Künste (West) studio on July 11. He also appeared as a performer: together with Cornelius Cardew (fellow 1973), Morton Feldman (fellow 1971), Frederic Rzewski (fellow 1963), and David Tudor, Cage performed the world premiere of Feldman’s Five Pianos (Pianos and Voices) on July 16 in the large broadcasting hall of Radio Free Berlin. In addition, David Tudor, Frederic Rzewski, Cornelius Cardew, and Antoinette played the harpsichord parts for Cage’s multimedia work HPSCHD (1967–69) on July 18 at the Philharmonie Berlin.

In the early 1970s, the interdisciplinary and conceptual aspects of Cage’s aesthetics beyond purely sound took on increasing importance, expressed not least in the intensive production of experimental text (Mesostics), which makes use of playful abstraction to convey Cage’s world of ideas and is permeated in various ways by his professional passion for mycology. With the mindset that art and music can be part of revolutionary change in social conditions, questions of society and ecology became increasingly relevant for Cage and also left their mark on his conceptions of sound. Via tape, electronics, and happening-like performance-constellations, these increasingly reflected a reality beyond music as material.

Cage’s major 1972 work was the tape composition Birdcage (1972) for twelve tapes and performers, where audience members as well as birds were allowed to move freely around the performance space! During his preparations, Cage recorded bird calls in cages and aviaries; the tape recordings begin with a conversation with a parrot. Guided by random processes, score sequences coordinated birdsong, everyday noises, electronic sounds, and Cage’s vocal rendition of his piece Mureau,based on texts by Henry David Thoreau, whom he admired.

Hans G. Helms’s eponymous film, Birdcage – 73’20.958″ for a Composer (1972), presented in Donaueschingen on October 21, 1972, in the presence of the composer, documents the genesis of the work and provides an insight into the aesthetics and intellectual world of John Cage at that time.

Text: Dirk Wieschollek

Translation: Erik Smith