Five (2nd version)

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John Cage, "Five (2nd version)" (download until 1/20/09), from "Cage: Music for Eight."

I have seen a very good documentary about John Cage and know about him as well from tangential references in texts about other subjects, but as I don't really follow the European tradition of composed music and I don't really go in for the biographical approach to music as a means to understand it—any biographical references in this or any other post reflect information I've stumbled across rather than sought out—not knowing too much, as I don't, about John Cage, I can't go into too much detail about his process in this piece or generally. Nor can I say I have a real understanding of his intent, because of course he had intent, we as humans function through intentionality, through any of Cage's actual words.

Increasingly over the course of his long career Cage came, it is axiomatic, to rely on chance operations in composition. That is to say, as a composer he delineated a set of variables rather than a series of notes. The precise notes musicians played, when, for how long, and in what order, varied according to chance. This piece is as good a brief example of the results as I've heard.

I am not sure that this is music that's meant to be described, and I'm really fairly sure it is mean to not be described. But I can describe my response. I've had this recording for years, and nearly every time I listen to it I feel sensations of real cold, though a cold that's not uncomfortable. Again, nearly always, I remember a lake my family used to go to in winter, in Montana, surrounded by trees and frozen solid, and white. It's very comforting to me. I've lived basically all my life in California with a couple of extra-continental interludes varying from six weeks to eight months, and not in the cold parts of California. Crocker-Amazon is as cold as it's been in any of my homes. But this image of that frozen lake, brought on by this piece, is more present to me when I hear this than my immediate surroundings.

I've read more than one biographical sketch or article about Brian Eno which made the claim that his accomplishment was to more or less bring Cage's ideas to a wider audience. This is unfair to both, though probably more unfair to Cage. In no way did Eno popularize Cage's ideas, because Cage's ideas were not fundamentally musical, but rather social. I am very sure that Cage inspired Eno, because Eno has said as much more than once and in particular in an interview I read in which Eno himself interviewed Cage. This was more than 20 years ago now and I have no recollection of the magazine. But one can be inspired by someone without actually understanding them.

Cage wanted to produce a social situation in which participants needed to set aside intentionality and simply experience the presence of sound. This is why we get Buddhism mentioned in the context of discussing Cage. Cage became furious with musicians who would improvise with his scores. Yes, it was not planned, but it was intended. Reliance on chance operations put musicians in positions of simply have to accept outcomes just as much as an audience, and was a form of letting go. This is good for people.


Above is a Youtube clip of a performance of the same piece. The actual music is not to my ear as lovely, and indeed on the album this is on there's a "(1st version)" which I find less beautiful than this. But this is the point of the piece. It exists in these different forms, it's none of the particular forms, it's neither in the form nor not in the form. Cage's music produces this existentially, and in that it isn't so much influenced by Buddhism but it's a Buddhist practice itself.

This is why Eno really didn't popularize Cage's ideas. Eno used machines where Cage used chance. The results of both are beautiful, but socially they're very different. Cage revises or more properly demolishes the identities of composer, musician, and audience, except, it has to be said, to the extent that he made money off composition. Eno makes (or made--haven't been as impressed lately, as I've noted) unique and spectacularly beautiful records, but ultimately conforms to the social roles of music he inherited. There's an artist that records a commodity, and a record-buying public.