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John Cage

Silence lectures and writings

`Though no two performances of the 'Music of Changes' will be identical ... two performances will resemble one another closely. Though chance operations brought about the determination of the composition, these operations are not available in its performance ... [it] is an object more inhuman than human, since chance operations brought it into being ... [which] gives the work the alarming aspect of a Frankenstein monster. This situation is of course characteristic of Western music, the masterpieces of which are its most frightening examples, which when concerned with humane communication only move over from Frankestein monster to Dictator.'
(p/36/44)

I am surprised by this quotation from one of John Cage's early lectures. In my first reading of 'Silence' (and of his later books 'A year from Monday', 'M', 'Empty words', 'X', 'I-IV') I saw chance composition as a liberation, not a threat - a model of how we may hope to live by freeing ourselves of our 'likes and dislikes' and of central control. Now I must read the lecture again. Not so easy, as it is set in 'excessively small type ... to emphasize the intentionally pontifical character' of the lecture.

C Thomas Mitchell

George Sturt

Gertrude Stein

Hannah Arendt

Edwin Schlossberg