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John Cage and Recording
Yasunao Tone
If
you
close
your
eyes,
you
lose the
power
of
abstraction.
-Michel Serres
How does one
encounterJohn
Cage?
It would be
problematic
to
say
that I encounter
John Cage
in his
music,
because I do not encounter
him,
as
FJJ.
Buy-
tendijk
in his
widely
known text
Phenomenology of
the Encounter
points
out,
in the
way
that I encounter a
thing
in a box. Was
it not
Cage
who forbade above all else the consideration of
music as an
object?
Even
so, we can still encounter him even
though
we are no
longer
able to see him. The idea of en-
countering
John
Cage
reminds me of
Jasper Johns's
remark
"The best criticism of a
painting
is to
put
another
painting
next to it." I
perhaps
encounter
Cage
when I am
composing
and
reaching
a
point
at which I am
trying
to
get beyond
his
music.
Cage
himself once said that he would
prefer
to
respond
to another's work
by writing
a new
piece
rather than
by
writ-
ing
a
critique.
In
fact,
he once created a
piece,
Not
Wanting
to
Say
Anything
about
Marcel,
in the form of a visual
poem
instead
of
writing
criticism of
Duchamp.
Nevertheless,
I have chosen
writing.
Needless to
say,
for
Cage categories
would not matter.
I have to admonish
myself
not to become Zarathustra's
ape by
mimicking Cage's
discourse,
so that I do not become the exact
opposite
of Cage.
CAGE AND RECORDS
Cage's antipathy
towards
recording
is
widely
known;
but it
seems to me that there has never been an
attempt
to discuss
this
phenomenon
as derived from his musical ideas.
People
assume that
Cage
was
against recordings
as substitutes for live
music,
in the sense that
recordings
are
copies,
with the live
performances
as the
originals.
This
assumption
would
perhaps
make him a
vulgar
media
theorist,
if not a
reactionary. Cage,
who admired Marshall McLuhan a
great
deal,
would not
agree
with this
assumption.
It is true that
Cage
was
against
record-
ing
as a
substitute,
but in a different sense. I will elaborate on
this
topic
below. If one
closely
examines
Cage's antipathy
to-
wards
recording,
one would find this
seemingly contradictory
attitude consistent with his
ideas; however,
many people
have
not
fully explored
his
antipathy
toward
recording.
For
instance,
music critic Mark Swed's article in the
1995-1996
John
Cage special
issue of Schwann
Opus
attracted
my
attention. In it Swed refers to remarks
Cage
made in a 1985
British television
documentary
directed
by
Peter
Greenaway:
"I don't
myself
use records,"
Cage says,
"and I
give
the
example
of someone who lives
happily
without records. But I notice that
nobody pays any
attention to me. Or
maybe
a few
pay
attention,
but most
people
use records.".. .
[O]ne
interviewer
innocently
asks the
question likely
to
pop
into most music lovers' heads at
that
point.
Isn't a
recording
at least useful for the
purpose
of hear-
ing
music from concerts or
performances you simply
can't
get
to?
"It's
really
not useful at
all,"
Cage
answers with a sudden and
surprising
impatience,
even
anger
....
"It
merely destroys
one's need for real
music. It substitutes artificial music
for real
music,
and it makes
people
think that
they're engaging
in a mu-
sical
activity
when
they're actually
not. And it has
completely
distorted
and turned
upside
down the function
of music in
anyone's experience."
...
We didn't
pay
any
attention to
Cage
on the
subject
of
recordings
then,
and
we
certainly
don't 10
years
later.... It
is almost taken for
granted by just
about
everyone
who uses
recordings
that
recordings,
whether or not
they
are the
experience
of
music,
have
something
very
important
to
offer.... And, remarkably,
three
years
after his
death,
Cage
himself has be-
come ... the most recorded of mod-
ern
composers....
[1]
ABSTRACT
There is
general agree-
ment that John
Cage's
attitude
toward records and
recording
was
ambiguous
and not neces-
sarily
coherent. However,
if one
closely analyzes
his work and
his evolution of the
concept
of
the art-that
is,
from his
pieces
for
prepared piano
to his use of
the I
Ching
for Music of
Changes
to 4'33" to his
prototype
of
Happenings
at Black Mountain
College
in 1952-one finds a
critique
of
something
that other
composers
take as self-evident.
Cage's critique
of
recording
relates to the
representation
as
re-presentation
of music. The
author aims in this article to
discover/uncover Cage's
critique
of the
metaphysics
of
presence through
his work and
utterances.
Swed dismissed
Cage's antipathy
to records as a musician's
typical
manner of
thinking, disregarding
the fact that re-
markably
few
compositions
are made
specifically
for the
medium:
Yet,
is there
anyone
devoted to music who isn't
stoppedjust
a lit-
tle bit short
by Cage's
remarks about
recordings?
In the televi-
sion and
computer age,
when the dubious value of virtual
experience
is
becoming increasingly
clear,
does
anyone really
be-
lieve that
recordings replace
music? [2]
Swed continues and
points
out
Cage's contradictory
atti-
tude towards
recording:
Indeed,
Cage
was involved in
recording,
in one way or
other,
all
his life.... He was
always
generous
about
allowing
his live
per-
formances to be recorded and broadcast.... And most
impor-
tant of
all,
he used
recordings....
Recordings,
or at least the
technology
of
them, were in
Cage's
blood ...
[3]
In the last
years
of his
life,
Cage
seemed to become more
open
to the idea of
recordings
and was
pleased
to make record-
ings.
He had written a new
piece
that was
composed
for the
CD
medium,
which his sudden death
prevented
him from lis-
tening
to. Swed then notes the
change
in
Cage
toward record-
ing
and concludes:
Did this mean that
Cage
... had in the end
lightened up
some-
what about
recordings?
Well,
Cage
confessed that he had
not,
and for the best and most
practical
of reasons....
Cage
chose to
live without music for his mental
well-being, just
as he chose a
Yasunao Tone (sound artist, theorist,
performance artist),
307 West Broadway, New York,
NY 10013, U.S.A.
This
essay
was written for a book
commemoratingJohn Cage,
entitled Rencontrer/Encounter-
ingJohn Cage,
edited
by
Daniel Charles and
Jean-Louis
Houchard. Publication of the book
has been
suspended
since 1997. Minor revisions were made for this
publication.
The text
was translated
intoJapanese by
Toshie Kakinuma and
published
in InterCommunication 35
(NTT Ptblishing division, Tokyo) (2001) pp.
116-125.
LEONARDO
MUSICJOURNAL,
Vol. 13,
pp.
11-15, 2003 11 O 2003 ISAST
macrobiotic diet for his
physical
well-
being
[4].
When I read this article I
empathized
with the irritation
Cage expressed
in this
interview. For I
myself
have
experienced
a similar
situation,
to which I will return
later.
THE USE OF RECORDS AND
CREATION WITH RECORDS
Cage's thoughts
on records are not sim-
ply
the
negation
of records. The fact that
he sometimes showed
apparently
incon-
sistent attitudes towards records was not
a
contradiction; likewise,
his attitude to-
wards records did not
change.
In
fact,
if
we
closely
examine his
work,
we find that
his
cooperation
with the
recording
of his
music
by
other
performers
is in fact in ac-
cordance with his
antipathy
towards
records. For
Cage,
records existed
only
as a
problem
of
preservation
and distri-
bution. He made this clear when he
said,
"[I am]
more interested in a mediocre
thing
that is
being
made now than I am
in the
performance
of a
great
master-
piece
of the
past.
The business of the
great things
from the
past
is a
question
of
preservation
and the use of
things
that
have been
preserved.
I don't
quarrel
with
that
activity"
[5].
Accordingly,
for him
records functioned as a sort of museum.
Cage
was
fully
aware of his future
place
in
history
as a
composer
who
single-
handedly pioneered
the liberation of the
conception
of music from
tradition,
and
he was not so naive as to believe that
pre-
serving
his work for the future was use-
less
[6]. Furthermore,
considering
the
notation of his indeterminate
works,
it is
quite
reasonable to assume that
Cage
needed to have
multiple recordings
of a
piece,
lest
only
one
example
become
canonical. That is
why
his
antipathy
to-
wards
recording
did not
prevent
him
from
making
himself available to
anyone
who wished to
publish
his
records,
which
served not
only
the need for
preservation
of his
work,
but also as his
obligation
to
the future. In
any
event,
I noticed that he
was
always pleased
to see
recording pub-
lishers. I remember that
once,
after a
young publisher
had
just
left his
studio,
Cage
told me that he did not like
records,
but
people
liked to
publish
his records.
I then noticed that he himself did not
possess any
sound
equipment.
As Swed
points
out,
Cage
did not ob-
ject
to the creation of music
using
records.
He
composed
a
piece
for the use of
records as instruments as
early
as 1939.
The
piece, Imaginary Landscape
No. 1, was
composed
for
cymbal, piano
and two
variable-speed
turntables with a fre-
quency
record. Credo in Us
(1942)
he ex-
plained
as follows: "Interviewer-So the
irony
is also
romantic,
classical music
bursting
out of the
speakers,
and that was
[the]
American idea of culture.
Cage-
And a
jazz
solo,
a
cowboy
solo and so
forth.... The
phonograph
is
playing
Tchaikovsky
and other classical music
and
[the]
radio
played
whatever
they put
on the air"
[7],
in addition to
percussion.
Cage
also used other
pre-recorded
sound
media
up
to his last
years.
For
example,
Sculpture
Musicale
(1989)
is a
piece
for
four
tape
recorders with recorded sound.
Now,
I would like to
report
on
my
own
experience using recordings
with
Cage
as
my
audience. In March
1986,
a
year
after
Cage's
interview for
Greenaway's
documentary,
I
gave
a concert at the Ex-
perimental
Inteimedia Foundation in
New
York,
during
which I
premiered
a
piece
called Music
for
2 CD
Players. Cage
sat in the front
row,
and several minutes
after the
beginning
of the
performance
he
laughed loudly,
over and
over,
until
the end. I had no sooner finished the
per-
formance than he rushed
up
to me and
shook
my
hand. I think he
approved
of
my
way
of
using
the CD. The
piece
I
composed
was for
prepared
classical and
popular
CDs on which I had stuck a num-
ber of bits of Scotch
Tape
on the surface
where the laser beam hits the discs in
order to
change
the
digital signals.
This
not
only produced totally unexpected
sound
by distorting
information but also
disrupted
the CD
player's
control func-
tion so that the
progression
of the CDs
was
unpredictable. Cage
hated
repeating
the
known;
as he
said,
"I write in order to
hear
something
I haven't
yet
heard"
[8].
RECORDS AS A SUBSTITUTE
FOR LIVE PERFORMANCE
How are records
perceived by
the
gen-
eral audience? I was invited to
give
a talk
to the students of
my
friend Peter
Zummo,
a
composer.
These students
were
mainly
media
majors
who were in-
terning
for radio and TV
stations,
record-
ing companies
and the film
industry.
The
topic
was
my
CD Musica
Iconologos
[9].
I
explained
to the students that the
piece
had not existed before the CD it-
self was
mastered,
because I had
designed
the
piece specifically
for the medium. In
other
words,
the entire
production pro-
cess of the CD was a seamless
part
of
my
composition.
The result was noise in all
senses of the word. I
explained
the
pro-
cess: The
original
source material of the
piece
was a
poetic
text from ancient
China. I converted the text's Chinese
characters into
appropriate photo-
graphic images,
from which the Chinese
characters were derived
by studying
their
ancient
pictographic
forms,
which are
closer to
images
than are their modern
forms. I scanned the
images
into the
computer
and
digitized
them,
convert-
ing
them to
binary
code
(simple
Os and
Is).
I then obtained
histograms
from the
binary
code and had the
computer
read
the
histograms
as sound
waves;
thus I ob-
tained sound from the
images.
There-
fore,
I used visualized text
(images)
as the
source-that
is,
the
message-which
after
encoding
was recorded on a CD.
Now,
when
playing
the
CD,
what is re-
ceived are not
images
as
message,
but
sound that is
simply
an excess. Accord-
ing
to information
theory
the resultant
sound is
nothing
other than noise. As the
French word for
(static) noise,
parasite,
indicates,
noise is
parasitic
on its
host,
that
is,
the
message.
But in this case there
is no
host,
only
a
parasite
on the CD.
Therefore,
this CD is
pure
noise. Tech-
nically speaking,
the sound of the CD is
digital
noise.
What did I intend
by
this means of
composition?
I told the students that I
had received an offer to
publish
a
CD;
however,
none of
my pieces
were suitable
for
recording.
Certain formal elements
of the
pieces-spatial
movement of
sound,
contrasting
acoustic sound with
amplified
sound,
and the use of visuals-
made the
pieces simply
unrecordable. So
I had to create
something totally
devoid
of live
performance, something
that
only
the CD as a medium could
produce.
In
addition,
I told the students that the
reason
Cage
did not like records was that
the
spatial
element of a
performance
was
lost and the recorded sound was the en-
gineers' re-interpretation
of the
per-
formers'
interpretation
of the music.
However,
the students
thought
I was
just
being grumpy
about the lack of
accuracy
in
recording.
They
presumed
I was com-
plaining
about the sound
engineers'
re-
vision of the
performers' misplays
and
their removal of noise. That
is,
they
thought
I was
criticizing recording
as me-
chanical
reproduction
in
general
be-
cause it is unfaithful to the
original.
Such
an idea is not
uncommon;
their notion
of
recording
is,
in
short,
that it is
merely
a means of communication. This notion
implies
that if a
recording
is
copied
ex-
actly,
then it is a
perfect
substitute for live
performance.
Regardless
of
Cage's
critical view to-
wards
records,
I believe he also
thought
of
recordings
in the
positive
sense as ma-
terial for
study.
He mentioned that in
India,
notation is considered as docu-
mentation for scholars and not for the
12
l7bne, John
Cage and
Recording
creation of
music;
so he
probably
thought
the same of
recording.
Still,
it is
important
to
question Cage's
records as
his music. I would like to discuss here in
concrete terms how
recording
is disad-
vantageous
to one's
understanding
of
Cage's
work.
RECORDS AND
SIGNS,
REPRESENTATIONS AS
SUBSTITUTES
Recording
is a
process
of
registering
(a
technique
of
inscribing)
vibration of the
air on a disk or a
tape
and
making
the re-
sult
multipliable;
then,
by approximate
reversal of the
process producing
stable
sound. The idea of
recording presup-
poses
that each
reproduction
of the
orig-
inal is
identical,
no matter how
many
copies
are made and how
many
times
they
are listened to. At first
glance,
this
appears
to be a
quite objective, physical
process.
However,
this is not the case if
we examine the
phenomenon closely.
A
recording
is a cultural
object
that cannot
be
separated
from its historical
meaning
and the date of its
origin. Throughout
the entire
process
of
recording-from
beginning
to
end,
from
recording
to lis-
tening-we
can find traces of the West-
ern
history
of music
[10].
Most of
Cage's pieces
would suffer
from the
practice
of
recording
if the lis-
tener takes for
granted
that the records
are
simply repetitive
and are
always
iden-
tical to the
original.
His
work,
in
partic-
ular,
that written for
indeterminacy,
would be marred
by
such a
way
of listen-
ing.
For
Cage,
a
recording
of a certain
piece represents just
one fixed version
out of
many
different
possible
versions of
the
piece.
Even the word "version" would
be
misleading.
The
respective
versions
(recordings)
of Beethoven's
Symphony
No. 5
by Furtwangler
and
by Karajan
are
the same to a certain
degree,
but David
Tudor's version
(or Cage's
own,
for that
matter)
of
Cartridge
Music varied consid-
erably
with each
performance. Cage's
no-
tations are written in such a
way
that the
performers play
the
composition
differ-
ently
each time.
Sometimes,
as is often
the case for
many
modern
composers,
the release of one
recording
of a
given
piece
is common. In such cases the au-
dience
may
receive the mistaken im-
pression
that the
piece always
sounded
this
way.
Therefore,
even if a
specific
recordingf
rfrmnc
of a
performance
of a score
was the best
among many
others,
this
recording
cannot
represent
all other
per-
formances. This means that in the case
of
Cage's
music,
representation
as sub-
stitution (in
place of) [11]
cannot be es-
tablished between his notation and one
performance
of a
piece.
Such is the re-
lationship
between a live
performance
and its
recording.
Now,
it should be un-
derstood that the nature of
recording-
its
representative
(in
place of)
function
and the idea that it is a
repetition
of the
identical-and
Cage's
music are incom-
patible.
Indeed,
this is what
Cage
meant
when he said that a
recording
of an in-
determinate work has "no more value
than a
postcard"
[12].
This
point
becomes obvious when one
compares
a
recording
of 4'33" and its
performance.
I am aware of four record-
ings
of this
piece,
but none of them can
be considered
artistically
"correct";
in
other
words,
they
are of "no more value
than a
postcard."
To
produce
a record-
ing
of a silent
piece
without
destroying
the
concept,
one must create some other
piece
of music
[13].
Recording
as
representation,
as sub-
stitute (in
place
of),
is
recording
as a
sign.
In the
beginning
of the
chapter
"Essen-
tial Distinction" in
Logical Investigations,
Husserl
writes,
"Every sign
is a
sign
for
something."
A
sign
is about
something (fur
etwas);
it is "in
place
of"
[14].
As I men-
tioned
above,
a
recording
is assumed to
be a
representation
of live
performance
and a
repetition
of the
identical; so,
in
Husserlian
terms,
recording
is a
sign
in
general.
What
Cage
was
opposed
to was
recording
as
sign;
however,
it is not
recording per
se but
Cage's
music of in-
determinacy
that raised
questions
about
signs.
It is
only
natural that he introduced
the
problem
of
signs,
for it was he who
developed graphic
notations that were
written as a
logical
extension of the
pre-
pared piano.
In
any
event,
the
questions posited by
Cage
on the
topic
of
recording, through
indeterminate and
graphic
notations and
prepared piano,
are
uniquely
of the
1960s.
(Cage
started
working
with
pre-
pared piano
in the late
1930s.)
PREPARED PIANO AND
REPRESENTATION
The
qualitative
change
brought
about
by
the
prepared piano
has often been over-
looked. Michael
Nyman,
for
instance,
calls it cannibalization
(machines being
dismantled to allow their
parts
to be used
in other
machines),
and he describes
it,
only
in
passing,
in one short
paragraph
in his
Experimental
Music.
Nyman
consid-
ers
Cage's rhythmic
structure
(the pro-
portionally temporal
distribution of
sound and
silence)
most
important
in the
revolution
against
traditional Western
music
[15].
But this structure is
simply
derived from
Cage's
determination that
"the
opposite
and
necessary
coexistent
of sound is silence." If
Cage
had a better
idea,
such as the use of the I
Ching,
then
he would not have used this
rhythmic
structure. That was the reason he
gave
it
up
after he wrote Music
of Changes.
I think the
prepared piano
was an im-
portant breakthrough
due to its role in
the
development
of indeterminate nota-
tions and event music.
Following
the first
piece,
Bacchanale
(1938), Cage
wrote 15
prepared piano pieces.
In
1951,
after
composing
the last of these
pieces,
he
wrote Music
of Changes,
an
epoch-making
piano piece
that utilized the I
Ching.
The
following year,
Music
of Changes
was suc-
ceeded
by
even more
revolutionary
pieces,
4'33" and
Happening
at Black
Mountain
College. By
this time
Cage
had
abandoned
rhythmic
structure because
he came to see its critical
element,
tem-
poral
measurement,
as unnatural.
If we
closely
examine the
prepared
piano,
which threw music into a
totally
new
perspective,
we will find it far from
being
cannibalization-that
is,
merely
a
reform. It was a
turning point
that sub-
jected
the entire traditional musical
sys-
tem to deconstruction.
As is
widely
known,
the
prepared
piano
consists of the
placement
of
many
objects-screws
and bolts in various
sizes, wood, rubber,
etc.-between the
strings
of a
piano
at certain distances
from the
damper, producing
a
range
of
unprecedented
timbers and sonorities.
It was
reported
that the actual tone
pro-
duced
by
a
prepared piano playing
"mid-
dle B" on the
keyboard
sounded a
pitch
three octaves
higher
with unknown
sonority.
Characteristics of the
original
note are
transformed,
and a
single key-
stroke
produces multiple
sounds;
so we
find here a loss of the univocal relation
between the
tone/timbre
expected
from
the
keyboard
and the sound
actually pro-
duced.
Accordingly, Cage's
"invention" of the
prepared piano,
which at first
glance ap-
pears
to be a mere technical
innovation,
caused a
rupture
between notes
(the
con-
cept
of
pitches
on sheet
music)
and ac-
tual
auditory images (the
pitches'
representation),
which is also a
rupture
between
signifier (note)
and
signified
(played pitch).
Thus,
a written note as
writing (ecriture)
and as the
concept
of a
note-signified (signifie)-by
this chain
of events, called the entire tonal
system
into
question.
Saussure
wrote,
"Language (langue)
and
writing (ecriture)
are two distinct
sys-
tems of
signs;
the second exists for the
sole
purpose
of
representing
the first"
7one, John Cage
and
Recording
13
[16].
This is
surely
true when a
pianist
plays
traditional sheet
music,
which
pre-
supposes
that a written
note,
as
writing
(&criture),
is reduced to a
sound,
one
step
at a
time,
until the entire chain of
signi-
fiers is reduced to the
ideality
of music.
Such a
representationistic system
cannot
be
applied
to the
prepared piano.
Cage's prepared piano appeared
to be
a
problem
of
signs,
and this was a 1960s
problem par
excellence. A
strong
bond
between the tonal
system
and the
piano
keyboard
was
broken;
and
ultimately,
Cage's
sheet music for
prepared piano
transformed itself into indications for ac-
tion. In other
words,
although
a note on
the sheet music indicated a certain
pitch,
the sound
played
was a far
cry
from a
rep-
resentation of the
note,
which meant that
in
reality
it did not
require
the
pianist
to
play
a sound but to act
by depressing
a
certain
key
on the
keyboard.
As a
result,
sound is
merely
ex
post
facto,
with the
performance only
a few
steps away
from
event music or a
happening
[17].
Cage
once talked about
"Giving up
control so that sounds can be sounds
(they
are not men:
they
are
sounds)"
[18].
Simply,
he intended to liberate
music from the tonal
system
because he
was
against
the humanization of sound
due to the
"representationistic
con-
sciousness."
Cage's graphic
notations not
only disrupt
the univocal relation be-
tween written notes and
pitches
but
also are more
open
to sound
itself,
that
is,
noise. His
suggestion
to students
who wished to write an indeterminate
score was to observe the
imperfections
of
a sheet of white
paper.
Not
only
should
the
signs
written on the
paper
be taken
into
account,
so should the stains or
smudges
on the
paper,
which are also
noise.
Now,
is it
possible
for a record
(not
only
as
reception
but as an
instrument)
to be
analogous
to that of the
prepared
piano
and indeterminate notation? That
depends
on the audience. It is
impossi-
ble if the audience uses records in the
way
that the manufacturer and
recording
companies persuade
them
to,
which
pre-
supposes
an exact
reproduction
of
sounds that a live
performance pro-
duced. But as we have
seen,
sound re-
produced by playing
a record cannot be
reduced to the mere sound that was
recorded on it. We
already
use records as
anything
but
representations
of
original
performances,
because we are still able
to
identify
a record we are
listening
to
even when the volume is turned
up
ex-
tremely
loud and the scratch noises are
numerous.
ERASURE OF NOISE
AND RE-PRESENTATION
For
Cage,
just
as the
signs
of an indeter-
minate score and a
prepared piano key-
board could not be indicated
by
a
piece
of sheet
music,
records need not be a
neutral
reproducing
device. Neverthe-
less,
many
of us want to avoid noise in the
situations of
recording
and
listening.
Era-
sure of noise in
reproduction
is similar
to the reduction of
writing (ecriture)
to
meanings,
as we
just
noted in the last sec-
tion. The reason
why
the reduction of a
sound-reproducing system
to a neutral
means is
necessary
is that the existence
of noise
always
reminds us that we are lis-
tening through
a
reproductive
device
that is external to the music. What is
marred
by
the noise is the
immediacy
of the music
being played
and the lis-
tener's
illusory proximity
to the
original
music. We then come to see
reproduc-
tion as
repetition
of the
presence,
or
re-presentation.
To consider the record
as such is a
pretty ordinary
view;
and at
least it
appeals
to common sense. But for
Cage
the record as
performing
device
(creative use)
is one
thing,
and the
record as a device for
representation
(re-presentation)
is another-he ob-
jected
to the latter. I find it hard to un-
derstand
why many
in the musical
profession
do not
question recording
as
an alternative to live
performance.
Far from
doing
so,
Theodor Adorno
declared:
Shorn of
phony hoopla,
the LP simulta-
neously
free[s]
itself from the
capri-
ciousness of a fake
opera
festival. It allows
for the
optimal presentation
of
music,
enabling
it to
recapture
some of the
force and
intensity
that had been worn
threadbare in the
opera
house.
Objecti-
fication,
that
is,
a concentration on music
as the true
object
of
opera, may
be linked
to a
perception
that is
comparable
to
reading,
to the immersion in a text
[19].
He also mentioned that "it is obvious
that Mozart's
opera
cannot be
per-
formed in oratorio fashion without an
unintentionally
comic effect."
Therefore,
it is clear that Adorno
found that the LP would make it
possible
for one to be absorbed in the
auditory
sense,
in
listening,
without
any spatial
perception-similar
to
theorique
immer-
sion in the text. This is an inversion of
Walter
Benjamin. Benjamin
saw
photog-
raphy
as "the
image-writing
and hiero-
glyphs
that cast their
spell
over the
modern
age."
His
insightful study
of me-
chanical
reproduction argues
that,
by
use
of the
camera,
"distance of the
perspec-
tivistic
relationship
to the world
gives
way
to
objective
closeness"
[20]. Likewise,
a
loss of
spatiality
occurs in the record
when used to
reproduce
sound;
and
here, too,
the
reproduction
causes the
loss of the aura. Whereas Adorno found
it
possible
to
argue
for the
objectification
of sound as it is
reproduced
on LP
records-similar to the
experience
of an
immersion in books (in his own anal-
ogy)-Benjamin pointed
out,
according
to Bolz and van
Reijen,
that the closeness
that
photography brings
us to a
subject
means the end of
criticism,
"for criticism
requires
a sense of
perspective
and the
proper
distance." In the face of cinematic
reality,
"The
standpoint
of critics'
taking
and the
enjoyment
of the
impartially
in-
dependent
observer no
longer
existed.
And
tactility
and closeness
replace
a
good
eye
for distances and critical awareness"
[21].
"Cinema for
Benjamin
was not an
object
for the criticism
by
the
bourgeois
but a realistic tool for a
practice"
[22].
Benjamin's
media aesthetics started from
the mechanical
reproduction
of the
image
and the liberation of
writing,
the
printed
text of the book.
Contrary
to
Benjamin,
Adorno's
theorique
"immersion
in the
text,"
the
printed
book,
almost
seemed to treat the book as "a
totality
of
transcendental
signified" (Derrida).
Ac-
cordingly,
his vision of the LP could not
escape representation;
so he shut his
eyes,
and his devotion focused
only
on
the
auditory
sense,
thus
giving up
all
other
senses,
which
only
ensured the il-
lusion of the
presence
of sound. This is
nothing
other than
re-presentation.
Such an audience
perfectly
fit the work
of the
European avant-garde composers,
Boulez and
Stockhausen,
to name
two,
from whom
Cage
and the
experimental
composers
differentiated themselves.
"Boulez
emphasized
the need to
purge
his music of
any
remnants of a tradition
he considered dead"
[23]; however,
the
avant-garde composers represented by
him and his
European colleagues
con-
sidered concert halls and
recording
stu-
dios as exterior to music. For
them,
exclusion of the unintentional
through
strict construction of
music,
exclusion of
chances
except
those intended
through
the exactness of
performances,
exclusion
of
anything
that
might impede pure
mu-
sical
experience
in concert halls
(au-
tonomous
space)
and
lastly,
exclusion of
noise from music are essential necessi-
ties. Their intention was to create music
as a
purely
autonomous
object;
and,
in
fact,
their music is ensured
by
the insti-
tutional framework mentioned above.
They
cannot endure the invasion of mu-
sical
space
and time
by
real
space
and
14 Tone,
John Cage
and
Recording
time,
which are external to music.
Cage's
attitude,
which
emphasized
the continu-
ity
between the environment and his
work,
was in remarkable contrast with
that of the
European avant-garde. Cage
was also
opposed
to
Schaeffer,
who in-
corporated
noise into the tonal
system,
because
Cage thought
this was no better
than
excluding
noise;
both
practices
cre-
ate a
boundary
between music and non-
music.
Let us return to records and noise
again. Reproduction
devices are not ex-
terior to
music; furthermore,
environ-
mental sound can be
part
of music. It is
a fact that
Cage
did not make an envi-
ronmentally
inclusive
record,
such as a
Marclay-Paik-type
record
[24].
Even
though Cage's
live
performances,
such
as 4'33" and his realization of
Vexation,
pointed
in that
direction,
he never
reached a
fully
environmental record
[25]. Therefore,
people
continue to mis-
understand
Cage's antipathy
toward the
record as
merely
a reaction to the di-
chotomy
between live music and its
copy,
with live music
being
more
important.
Both live
performance
and recorded
per-
formance are
re-presentation-as
Der-
rida
put
it in
Speech
and
Phenomena,
'The
presence
of the
present
is derived from
repetition
not the reverse"
[26].
Jazz,
which is so
proud
of
being
an art of the
present,
is no
exception. Cage
was
against
jazz improvisations
because
many
im-
provisational performers
in succession
tend to
play
a tune in
response
to a
pre-
vious
performer.
If the
previous per-
former determines the next
performer's
tune,
then the
present performer
is al-
ready
a
part
of the
past.
This is
nothing
but
re-presentation
of the
past,
which
ap-
pears
in the
presence
of the
present
sound.
In the 1960s
many
artists besides
Cage,
such as LaMonte
Young, Andy
Warhol
and Daniel
Buren,
were concerned with
repetition. Cage,
in
particular,
was am-
biguous
about
repetition,
as in his atti-
tude toward records.
First,
he was
against
repetition
of the
past
that
appears
as the
present;
but he
accepted repetition
under the condition that
"[E]ach
repe-
tition must authorize an
entirely
new ex-
perience"
[27]. Thus,
he led
people
in
performances
of
Vexation,
and he
appre-
ciated
Young's piano piece
for
repetition,
such as
566forHenryFlynt (c. 1961). Rep-
etition itself becomes a
critique
of
rep-
resentation,
as Daniel Buren's
repetitive
stripe
has been a
plain
criticism of the
metaphysics
of
representation. Cage,
who
was interested in Asian
philosophy
as
early
as
shortly
after World War
II,
was
critical of Western
metaphysics;
this crit-
icality
had
grown
in the
process
of his
artistic
development,
as we have seen
through examining
his work.
TOWARDS ACTIVE LISTENING
John Cage
left us a voluminous
body
of
work,
including many
records. We-I
mean each of us-now have to decide
how to handle his records. One of the
characteristics of
records,
multiplicity,
al-
lows one to choose countless
ways
of lis-
tening-or,
in
Cage's
term, of
using
records-as
praxis
(as
opposed
to
theorique
listening).
Use these records as
you
wish.
You can
destroy
them or
you may play
dif-
ferent records
simultaneously;
it's
up
to
you.
At least
you
should think twice be-
fore
you
start
listening
to
Cage.
He did
not instruct us about how to do it. Now
it is
your
turn. Remember
Duchamp's
saying,
"Use a Rembrandt as an
ironing
board."
References and Notes
1. Mark
Swed,
"The
Cage Records," Schwann
Opus
(Winter 1995-1996) p.
8A. The
documentary
film
that Swed refers to is Peter
Greenaway, director,
4
American
Composers:John Cage (1985).
2. Swed
[1]
p.
8A.
3. Swed
[1] p.
8A-11A.
4. Swed
[1] p.
21A.
5. Richard Kostelanetz, ed.,
Conversing
with
Cage (New
York:
Limelight
Editions, 1988) p.
207.
6. See Kostelanetz
[5] p.
67:
"Rauschenberg's white
painting
I referred to earlier: when I saw those, I said,
'I must: otherwise I'm
lagging,
otherwise music is
lagging.'"
7. Kostelanetz [5] p.
63.
8. Kostelanetz
[5] p.
63.
9. Yasunao Tone, Musica
Iconologos, Lovely
Music
LCD3041
(1993).
10. See Friedrich Kittler,
Gramophone, Film, Typewriter
(Berlin:
Brinkmann & Bose, 1986),
in
particular,
pp.
2-19
("Introduction")
and
pp.
21-114 ("Gramo-
phone").
11. The
proper
word for
representation
in this sense
would be
"appresentation."
On the Husserlian
usage
of
present, represent
and
representation
that
follows, refer
to
paragraph
50 in Edmund
Husserl, Cartesian Med-
itations,
Dorian
Cain, trans.
(Den Haag,
the Nether-
lands: Martinus
Nijhoff, 1950).
12.
John Cage, "Composition
as Process,"
in Silence
(New Haven, CT:
Wesleyan
Univ. Press, 1961) p.
39.
13. Christian
Marclay's
Record without Cover
(1985)
exemplifies
this
type
of record. One side of the
record contains
Marclay's multiple-turntable per-
formance, which includes
extremely long
silences.
The other side serves as a
label, bearing
an
inscrip-
tion of the title and
credits,
with an instruction: "Do
not store with
protective package."
The record with-
out
package
is
always subject
to
being
scratched and
collecting
and
attracting
dust; so, whenever the
record is
played
it adds to itself new noises. It is made
almost like a recorded version of 4'33". I can add one
more
example,
if not limited the
category
of music:
ZenforFilm (1963) by
NamJune Paik. The film
pro-
jects
an
empty loop
on a screen
lasting
for
hours;
new
scratches and dust are
always
added;
the screen never
shows the same
images
as a result of its accumulation
of subtle
figures.
The
concept
of 4'33" is the
accep-
tance of
things
exterior to traditional Western
music,
such as ambient noise and incidents from the
per-
formance situation.
14. Edmund Husserl,
Logische Untersuchungen,
Vol.
2,
Tsuneo
Hosoya,
trans.
(Tokyo:
Misuzu
Shoten, 1970)
p.
33.
15. Michael
Nyman, Experimental
Music
(London:
Stu-
dio
Vista, 1974) pp.
27-28.
16. Ferdinand de Saussure, Course in General Lin-
guistics,
Wade Buskin, trans.
(New
York: McGraw
Hill,
1966) p.
23.
17. I made
basically
the same
argument
about the
prepared piano quite
a
long
time
ago;
see Yasunao
Tone, "On
John Cage,"
Monthly SD
(August 1969),
included in the collection of
essays
Gendai
geijutsu
no
Iso
(Tokyo:
Tabata Shoten, 1970) pp.
92-110.
18.
Cage [12], "History
of
Experimental
Music in the
United States," p.
72.
19. Theodor Adorno,
"Opera
and the
Long-Playing
Record,"
Thomas Y. Levin, trans., October55
(1990)
pp.
62-66.
20. Norbert Bolz and Willem van
Reijen,
Walter Ben-
jamin,
Laimdota
Mazzarings,
trans.
(Atlantic High-
lands, Humanity Press, 1996) p.
72.
21. Bolz and van
Reijen [20]
p.
75.
22. Bolz and van
Reijen [20] p.
71.
23.
Nyman [15]
p.
51.
24. See
[13].
25.
Cage actually
tried to make such a record: His
HPSCHDwith
Lejaren Hiller, Nonesuch LP H-71224
(1969). Unfortunately,
the fact that he did not
pos-
sess audio
equipment prevented
him from succeed-
ing.
His instructions are
merely perfunctory
applications
of his idea of
indeterminacy
to the or-
dinary
use of
phonographic
functions. He never
made such an
attempt again.
26.Jacques
Derrida, Speech
and Phenomena
(Evanston,
IL: Northwestern Univ.
Press, 1973) p.
52.
27.John Cage
and Daniel
Charles,
For the Birds
(Lon-
don: Marion
Boyars, 1981) p.
80.
Manuscript
received 16 October 2002.
Yasunao
Tone,
afounding
member
ofFluxus
and
Group Ongaku,
was born in
Tokyo
in
1935 and has lived in New York since 1972.
He is a sound
artist,
theorist and
performance
artist,
whose recent activities include
group
ex-
hibitions-Bitstream at the
Whitney
in New
York; Yokohama Triennale 2001 in
Japan;
I
Moderni in the Casselo Museum in Turin-
and
musicfestivals-All
Tomorrow's
Parties,
London;
Sonic
Light,
Amsterdam, 2003; and
Spectacle
Vivante at the Centre
Pompidou,
Paris, 2002. Tone was a
recipient
of the Ars
Electronica Golden Nica
prize
in 2002.
Tone, John Cage
and
Recording
15