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Concert Program

MUSIC (NOT COMPOSITION): A JOHN CAGE RETROSPECTIVE
THE COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY COLLEGIUM MUSICUM
With special guests
Earl hall auditorium
January 30, 2004 at 8:00 p.m.
All works by John Cage (1912–1992)

ear for Ear (Antiphonies) (1983)
soloist: Alanna Kelly

"Story" from Living Room Music (1940)
speech quartet: Jaime Leifer, Sarah Cohen, Joshua Schwartz, Jason Rios

Radio Music (1956)
radios: Sarah Gallogly, Christopher Harwood, Marget Macleod-Silberstein, Dana Peterson, Matthew Reynolds, Jason Rios, Joshua Schwartz

Works for Voice and Piano (1950–1984)
The Year Begins to Be Ripe - Sonja Rakowski
A Flower - Leah Master
The Wonderful Widow of Eighteen Springs - Sarah Gallogly
Nowth Upon Nacht - Marget Macleod-Silberstein
Ryan W. Dohoney, piano

Aria with Fontana Mix (1958)
Ryan W. Dohoney, voice

In a Landscape (1948)
Erika Dunham, harp Rebecca Katz harwood, dance improvisation

Songbooks with four Solos for voice 93–96 (1970, 1988)
(The audience is invited to move about the concert hall to experience individual performances)

Four2 (1990)


Music (not composition): The Vocal music of John Cage
I was tempted to write program notes that consisted of a single quotation from John Cage's Lecture on Nothing: "I am here and there is nothing to say." Ultimately Cage's music will speak for itself (or sing, scream, and howl as some pieces do tonight) in all of its diversity. Tonight's program, focused mainly on the vocal music of Cage, spans fifty years of the composer's creative activity, and is a testament to the continuing vitality and relevancy of his music and thought.

The Early Works for voice: 1940–1950
"Story" from living Room Music (1940)—Many of Cage's early experiments with musical sound in the 1930's and 40's consisted of percussion pieces that used non-traditional instruments. Living room music calls for any household objects or architectural elements to be employed in its performance. The speech quartet "story" is the second movement and uses a text by Gertrude Stein. The Wonderful Widow of eighteen springs (1942) is the earliest of Cage's songs for voice and closed piano. The melody is limited to three notes and is to be sung simply as in folk singing. The text is from James Joyce's Finnegans Wake. Both In a landscape (1948) and A flower (1950) were pieces written for choreographer Louise Lippold, whom Cage was associated with while in residence at Black Mountain College in North Carolina in the early 1950's. In a landscape is reminiscent of the music of Erik Satie, whose music retained a central place in Cage's aesthetic throughout his life. Tonight In a landscape is performed with improvised choreography. A flower is the second of Cage's songs for voice and closed piano. Cage described it as representing "fauna" to contrast with the "flora" of Lippold's original dance.

Chance and indeterminacy: 1950-1970

After his early experiments of the 1940's, Cage began to incorporate ideas drawn from his studies of eastern philosophy (especially Zen Buddhism) into his compositions. Cage became increasingly concerned with the creation of "open form" works that are substantially different from performance to performance and also remove or limit the composer's control of the work. To realize this, Cage turned to the I Ching (an ancient Chinese oracle) as a means of opening up his compositional process to chance. His Music of changes for piano (a play on the English translation of the I Ching, The Book of Changes) was composed with aid of the I Ching and resulted in a notated and fixed score for the work. Dissatisfied with the results of this approach, Cage then set out to create works composed with chance and open to indeterminacy in their performance.

Radio Music (1956), Aria (1958), and Fontana Mix (1958) all date from Cage's first decade of indeterminate composition. Radio Music calls for one to eight performers (tonight it is performed by seven) to tune radios to notated frequencies in the span of six minutes. The results vary according to location (which stations are received), time of day (what programming is broadcast), and the number of parts the performer chooses to perform (each performer has the choice of playing one to four parts of their score). Both Fontana mix and Aria are the result of an elaborate compositional process of layering graphs and images printed on transparencies. The lines and dots formed by the transparencies are interpreted as series of sonic events to be spliced together on magnetic tape (in the case of fonatana mix) or sung (as in Aria). Both works were written while Cage was living in Italy and composing at the studio of Milan radio. Aria was written for the mezzo-soprano Cathy Berbarian and was first performed with Fontana mix. The score of aria consists of curved lines (representing approximate pitch) each colored in one of ten colors. Each color is interpreted as a different singing style. The styles chosen for tonight's performance are British punk rock, Arabic, Italian tenor, sprechstimme, coloratura soprano, vocal fry, American folk singing, Broadway, jazz, and nasal. It should be noted that Cage's use of chance is never "random." The structure of the I Ching oracle demands that questions be formulated for answers to be received. Whenever Cage was unhappy with the musical answer he received from the I Ching, he reformulated the question until he was satisfied with the sounds the answer prescribed.

Later vocal works: 1970-1992
The last decades of John Cage's vocal works are marked by the sheer diversity of styles employed in their composition. The bounty of this music is nowhere more evident than in Songbooks from 1970. Dedicated to Cathy Berberian and Simone Rist, the songbooks are comprised of ninety "solos for voice" that range in style from Wonderful widow (as in The Year begins to be ripe, tonight performed as a separate song) to Aria to heavy breathing. Cage also shows his familiarity with the Fluxus performance art tradition by his inclusion of a number of theater pieces within songbooks. The singers tonight perform a number of actions not normally associated with a choir. Solo for voice 55, for example, instructs the singer to "Leave the stage and return by means of wheels."

A unifying thread of songbooks is the phrase "we connect Satie with Thoreau" taken from Cage's diaries. Interested not only in the music of Satie, but also in the radical individualism of Henry David Thoreau, Cage used his composition of these solos as a way to explore the meaning of this phrase. Numerous texts of Thoreau and Satie are employed in the course of the solos as are elements of their lives and music. On another level, Cage was deeply involved with anarchic political philosophy at this stage in his life and the songbooks can be thought of as a musical realization of his beliefs. Tonight the singers have prepared their own program of solos and by their performance assert their individuality while the layering musical events create a dense musical texture. The four solos for voice from 1988 (an extension of the songbooks series) are performed along with selections from the original series.

Opening the program tonight is ear for ear (1983). Commissioned by Ear magazine, it consists of antiphonal responses between a soloist and chorus. The pitches are precisely notated, but the durations are free. The final note of the soloist is indicated to be sung "as long as breath holds, if possible, longer."

Tonight's program closes with four2 for chorus from 1990. It is one of the series of "number pieces" that Cage composed in the final years of his life. Pitches are precisely notated within flexible time brackets that indicate starting and ending times for each sound. The result is a more controlled indeterminacy within temporal parameters. The title refers to the number of parts (soprano, alto, tenor, and bass) and the superscript "2" indicates that it is second time that Cage has composed a four part piece in this way.

Tonight's program is a bit of a departure for the Collegium Musicum. Normally we concern ourselves with the repertories of the Middle Ages and Renaissance polyphony, or what is commonly known as "Early Music." Last Fall I was approached by the organizers of the first Graduate Student Conference in Music Scholarship (Karen Hiles, Josh Walden, and Chris Doll) and asked to organize a concert with the Collegium as a kick-off event for a weekend of exciting music scholarship. Since the theme of the conference is "music since 1945," I decided to plunge the Collegium into unfamiliar territory.

The members of the Collegium have been brave in the face of music that is extremely challenging, often beautiful, and always interesting. They have committed all of their talent and musicianship to the realization of these works with a dedication and enthusiasm that has been inspiring. I thank each of them for following me on what would have been a fool's errand had it been attempted with lesser musicians.

Program notes by Ryan W. Dohoney

The Collegium musicum is:
Soprano: Musetta Durkee, Sarah Gallogly, Jaime Leifer, Marget Macleod-Silberstein, Sonja Rakowski.
Alto: Sarah Cohen, Rachel Kiwi, Leah Master, Dana Peterson, Catherine Spence, Leslie Wright.
Tenor: Christopher Harwood, Alanna Kelly, Gabriel Miller-Phillips, Matthew Reynolds, Joshua Schwartz.
Bass: David Caldwell, James Chou, Karl Huth, Jason W. Rios, Eugene Sit.
Director: Ryan W. Dohoney

The Collegium would like to thank:
Erika Dunham     
Rebecca Katz Harwood      
Rebecca Kim      
Suzanne Wong      
The staff of Earl Hall and St. Paul's Chapel      
Cathy Cox      
Paul Hogan      
The Columbia University Computer Music Center      
Karen Hiles     
Josh Walden      
Chris Doll     
Prof. Susan Boynton     
Prof. Walter Frisch
André Chaudron at the John Cage Database (www.johncage.info)
P22 software, designers of the font "P22 Cage Text" derived from John Cage's handwriting.