UbuWeb Sound :: John Cage

UbuWeb Sound

UbuWeb

John Cage (1912-1992)

Full Albums

Mureau (1972)

Obscure No. 5, John Cage & Jan Steele (1976)

Norton Lectures (1988-89)

A Dip in the Lake (2003)

Various Tracks

1. Mushroom Haiku, excerpt from Silence (1972/69)

2. excerpt from Silence (1969)

3. Writing for the Second Time Through Finnegans Wake, (1978)

4. Song, Derived from the Journal of Henry David Thoreau (1976)

5. Mureau (1975), 4:06

6. John Cage Meets Sun Ra, Side A

7. John Cage Meets Sun Ra, Side B

8. Lecture on Nothing Performed by Kaegan Sparks (2006)

Concept, voice, and recording by Kaegan Sparks. Edited by Steve McLaughlin.
John Cage's "Lecture on Nothing," published in his collection Silence in 1961, is scored to a rigorous regularity: 48 units of 12 lines and 48 measures each. The text itself is repetitive and at times excruciatingly boring, dwelling in Section IV on the tonic phrase "If anybody is sleepy, let him go to sleep." A reading for voice and metronome, this audio rendition intermingles with the ambient noises of Christian Marclay's sound work medley in the 2007 exhibition Ensemble at Philadelphia's Institute of Contemporary Art. The text is intoned in time, as per Cage's incongruous instructions: "[not] in an artificial manner...but with the rubato which one uses in everyday speech."

9. John Cage and Nam June Paik in Conversation
University of California San Diego, circa 1985

Part 1
Part 2

NOTES

1. From the LP Dial-A-Poem Poets (Giorno Poetry Systems, 1972)

2. From the LP Dial-A-Poem Poets: Disconnected (Giorno Poetry Systems, 1974)

3. From the LP Dial-A-Poem Poets: Nova Convention (Giorno Poetry Systems, 1978)

4. From the LP Dial-A-Poem Poets: Totally Corrupt (Giorno Poetry Systems, 1976)

5. From the LP Dial-A-Poem Poets: Biting off the Tongue of a Corpse (Giorno Poetry Systems, 1975)

6-7. From the album: John Cage Meets Sun Ra, Meltdown MPA-1 (1987). Alternates performances by Sun Ra-Yamaha DX-7; and John Cage-voc. Sideshows by the Sea, Coney Island, NY, 6/8/86. [Album jacket plus Andrejko]

Sideshows by the Sea was the last surviving freak show along the Coney Island boardwalk. Ra and Cage's appearance was duly announced by the barker outside. Other portions of this concert, which included Pharaoh Abdullah processing and dancing, and Ra and Cage performing together, may have been recorded but haven't been issued.

RELATED RESOURCES:

John Cage in UbuWeb Film

John Cage in UbuWeb Historical

"The Music of Verbal Space: John Cage's "What You Say"" Marjorie Perloff

"Postmodernism and the Music of John Cage" Nancy Perloff