John Cage and Electronics

Let’s talk about John Cage some more.

In addition to being one of the most famous modernist composers of his time, he was also a promoter of technology and electronic music. He was doing research on electronic music before the technology finally caught up with him during the late 60s. This subject apparently caught his attention because John Cage always believed in a disconnect between the audience and the music they’re hearing. In a diary entry about audiences (which to be fair, is more about his philosophy on nature as music), Cage said that “What we need is a computer that isn't labor-saving but which increases the work for us to do, that puns...as well as Joyce revealing bridges...where we thought there wasn't any, turns us...not ‘on’ but into artists”. In other words, Cage’s philosophy on electronic music is that we as an audience must search really hard to find and cohesive meaning in it. And that’s exactly what Cage set out to do.

Now, to be clear, my thoughts this post aren't as long for this subject as they may be in subjects past. That’s mostly because there’s only one piece given to us that really fits the mechanized subject seen here. The other piece, One5, feels more like a study on the overtone series than anything else. It’d be pointless to talk about that work because doing so would be diverging too much from the original topic. That, and I had to catch up on some other work this week. I’m only human!

One need only to take a passing listen to Cage’s Music of Changes (Book 1 in this case) to understand that this piece isn't like other pieces for solo piano. That’s mostly because it’s a complete mess from start to finish!

Much like Conlon Nancarrow’s Studies for Player Piano, it too is a mishmash of everything but the kitch-

You know what, I already used that joke, let’s just move on.

Unlike Studies for Player Piano, however, there’s no technological advancement. It’s simply a player sitting at a piano, pounding out the keys in a seemingly random order as though it was a actual computer.

And I think that may have been the intent for this piece. For a man as interested in technology as he was, John Cage must’ve been familiar with those old IBM-type computers that were the size of refrigerators.

Especially those which double as powerful explosive devices.

And there are models that blink, if they don’t “sound”, in seemingly random orders at seemingly random frequencies. Take the old IBM System/360 for instance:

I am not certain whether or not Cage was familiar with this specific type of machine, but it still contains the same random pattern so anything is possible.

That’s pretty much all I have to say about that piece, but that was a piece written for piano. In order to get a better understanding about Cage’s interest in electronic music is to listen to some actual electronic music he composed. For the sake of example, I’ll be focusing on Radio Music:

This piece is fascinating. In essence, it is a composition for three radios: its performers tune to random stations, most of the time ending up on static, before settling on something serine. This particular performance sounds like machinery on top of Spanish Soap-Operas. It distinctively does sound like a conversation between two different computers, both working for the same means.

Granted, much like 4’33”, no two performances are ever alike; it changes with the musical taste of the Mainstream public. But that’s what makes it so unique. More importantly, though, that’s what makes it so mechanical. The static does give the piece a mechanical sorority, and also a hypnotic one. It doesn’t so much emote anything (though the same is true with all computer music) as it does invite: invite the listener back to days gone by, days where the only music source was a radio.

But maybe I’m looking too deeply into this. Still, that may be what John Cage wanted. He invited us (in my mind, at least) to pay attention to the music being presented to us, to listen beyond what we hear. And who knows: The symphony of a thousand hours begins with a single binary number.