In his book, “John Cage: music, philosophy, and intention,” historian David Wayne Patterson relates a somewhat comical account of a concert that took place in the winter of 1940, on the campus of the University of Montana. The account, cited only to “a reviewer at the University of Montana,” described a concert by Cage and his Cage Percussion Players:
“Believing that music as it is commonly known is in the tottering stage,” Patterson quotes from the review, “the group played compositions comparable in spirit to surrealism…Should this movement gain precedence over the present form[s of music]…the whole development of musical history, its emotional and intellectual meanings, vocabulary and form would be valuable to the world of the future only as an historical fact, John Cage, the leader of the group, said.”
The review – the original of which I’ve not been able to turn up myself (it definitely wasn’t in the Missoulian, which appears to have ignored the concert completely) – went on to describe the audience’s reaction at the concert: “skepticism with an admixture of amusement and slight hysteria.”
Chances are, few in the audience on that cold night guessed that John Cage, then a 27-year old professor in the dance department at Seattle’s Cornish College, would someday be known as one of the most influential composers and musical philosophers of the 20th century; or that the music that he and his ensemble performed that night would one day, more than 70 years later, be deemed worthy of a do-over by some of the finest musicians of the Pacific Northwest. [Read More...]
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