AccessMyLibrary provides FREE access to over 30 million articles from top publications available through your library.
Create a link to this page
Copy and paste this link tag into your Web page or blog:
Bird Cage.(Review)
John Cage: Bird Cage
Compact disc, 2000, EMF CD 013; available from Electronic Music Foundation, 116 North Lake Avenue, Albany, New York 12206, USA; telephone (518) 434-4110; fax (518) 434-0308; electronic mail emf@emf.org; World Wide Web www.cdemusic.org
One day in 1972, John Cage was en route to the Walnut Street Bookstore in downtown Philadelphia when he discovered a bar called The Bird Cage. From this establishment, he procured a beer coaster that featured an attractive design of the name of the bar in the shape of a bird cage. What would for most composers seem a rather pedestrian situation became for Mr. Cage inspiration for a new piece.
Constructed over the course of less than a week in Albany, New York, with the aid of Joel Chadabe, Bird Cage, for twelve tapes, is a work intended as an installation for "a space in which people are free to move and birds to fly." The work was constructed from a number of source tapes, which fell under three categories: bird sounds that Mr. Cage "had recorded in aviaries during the previous two weeks;" a recording of Mr. Cage singing his work Mureau (which is based on the writings of Henry David Thoreau); and recordings of environmental sounds, including the brushing of teeth, someone blowing their nose, typing, water sounds, etc. The composer reported that he included the recording of himself singing Mureau to make "the birds seem less ridiculous." By and large, the quality of these source recordings is not very good, which makes for some distorted moments in the completed piece.
Mr. Cage used chance procedures to instruct the assemblage of these source recordings into twelve "submasters." He then applied chance 1procedures to determine the manner in which these submasters would be processed, using filters, ring modulation, and other equipment. As Mr. Chadabe reports, "Sometimes John would say something like, `that's absurd.' Sometimes we would all laugh. Sometimes we were delighted."
In performance, Mr. Cage used an 8-input/8-output mixer built for him by Pete Linder in Basil, Switzerland to route the sound to one of eight loudspeakers. The Bird Cage disc released by Electronic Music Foundation is a two-channel mixdown version (by William Blakeney) ...
- John Cage As....(Review)
- Magazine article from: Notes Shultis, Christopher December 1, 1998 700+ words
...perspective on their shared subject, John Cage. Richards, according to the book jacket of John Cage As ..., is a "composer, pianist...review here, though to different degrees. John Cage As ... openly maintains a personal perspective...
- The sounds of silence. (Ragtag).(legal battle between recordings of silence by...
- Magazine article from: Sing Out! Deitz, Roger June 22, 2003 700+ words
...1952 the avant-garde American composer John Cage wrote a memorable, if not hum-able...Cage's estate might not have noticed (John Cage died in 1992). Batt stumbled when he...Silence" to Batt/Cage. That made John Cage a co-writer ... of nothing now worth...
- Regretting John Cage and Kenneth Gaburo: a gathering of texts. (In Memoriam...
- Magazine article from: Perspectives of New Music Boretz, Benjamin June 22, 1993 700+ words
AN EPIGRAPH FOR JOHN CAGE What John Cage is about is not Zen; it is experimental existentialism. It...what is it, precisely, you are escaping? Nice is not what John Cage is about; what John Cage is about is more like the real-life...
- Generosity of John Cage recalled.(Final)
- Newspaper article from: Albuquerque Journal (Albuquerque, NM) November 9, 2003 700+ words
...20th-century experimental composer John Cage. Kennedy spent time with Cage in New...called Essential Music. I would invite John Cage to the performances, whether or not...further from the truth, says Kennedy. "John Cage composed a tremendous variety of music...
- Writings Through John Cage's Music, Poetry, and Art. (Book Reviews:...
- Magazine article from: Notes Beal, Amy C. December 1, 2002 700+ words
Writings Through John Cage's Music, Poetry, and Art. Edited...Christopher Hatch's book on composer John Cage (1912-1992) features proceedings...Everybody: The Music, Poetry, and Art of John Cage," a five-day "interdisciplinary...
- John Cage.(Book review)
- Magazine article from: Notes Perry, Mark E. September 1, 2008 700+ words
John Cage. By David Nicholls. (American Composers...discography. The larger-than-life John Cage challenged the rudimental tenets of Western...editor of The Cambridge Companion to John Cage (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press...
- John Cage: Composed in America.(Review)
- Magazine article from: American Music Patterson, David September 22, 1999 700+ words
John Cage: Composed in America. Edited by Marjorie...compilation volumes on the subject of John Cage has appeared in print. The earliest...colleagues. (See, for example, A John Cage Reader [New York: C. F. Peters...
- John Cage and Merce Cunningham at Margarete Roeder.
- Magazine article from: Art in America Wei, Lilly September 1, 2003 700+ words
This exhibition of John Cage's celebrated "Ryoanji Drawings...work. As Cunningham remarked, "John Cage and I are involved in a process of...From 1983 until his death in 1992, John Cage made approximately 150 drawings inspired...
- The Music of John Cage.
- Magazine article from: American Music Brooks, William L. June 22, 1997 700+ words
...and when he is as gifted at speaking as John Cage was, the temptation is well-nigh irresistible...and discussions between the author and John Cage or his associates are not credited here...assertion: "The focus of this book is on John Cage's life as a composer, with what it...
- Silencing the Sounded Self: John Cage and the American Experimental...
- Magazine article from: Notes EMMERIK, PAUL VAN March 1, 2000 700+ words
Silencing the Sounded Self: John Cage and the American Experimental Tradition...permeates some of the recent research on John Cage. Silencing the Sounded Self by Christopher...article "Silencing the Sounded Self: John Cage and the Intentionality of Nonintention...