After reading Sara Haefeli’s stimulating and insightful article “HPSCHD, Gesamtkunstwerk, and Utopia,” I hardly know where to begin my discussion about the anarchist politics behind John Cage’s music. First, her comparisons between John Cage’s philosophy to Wagner’s “total art” seem apparent when examining the poster for the premiere of HPSCHD at the University of Illinois Assembly Hall. The poster depicts John Cage as a sort of mythic demi-god that is half Greek deity crossed with a modern American astronaut. The halo, winged helmet, and winged sandals seem to suggest a 1960s Hermes destined to serve as messenger between the old and new: the portraits of Beethoven, Mozart, and Schumann seem to hover above his left shoulder just inches from the wielded sword that ushers in the “technology of the future” lying to the right of Cage’s feet. Beethoven, Mozart, and Schumann’s heads sprout from a dragon’s body like snakes from Medusa’s head or the multiple-headed Lernaean Hydra famously slain by Hercules.
It is striking to depict a new work in mythic proportions. To immediately draw this parallel implies both the self-assurance and egoism of the composer. This image of dragon-slaying hero seems to boldly contrast the interview of a gentle, soft-spoken elderly John Cage discussing his philosophical views about the role of silence as music. The goal of HPSCHD was to reach a sports-arena sized audience with a combination of multimedia devices including seven harpsichords, 208 computer-generated tapes, 64 slide projectors projecting 6,400 slides, and eight film projectors playing 40 films. Mahler wrote his symphony for a thousand; John Cage writes a piece for an arena that seats 18,000.
Cage conceived this piece on both micro and macro levels. Computer music played tones from the octave, divided in a range of 2 to 56 microtones, as a representation for the “microscopic” level, while the visual images of outer space were meant to convey a “telescopic” level. I love the first-hand account provided by University of Illinois musicology professor Nicholas Temperley who writes that the “area was full of (mostly) young people sitting or lounging. Rising from them was a fog of smoke, and the smell of pot was beginning to reach the outer spaces.” This atmosphere so characteristic of the 1960s seems suggestive of Cage’s ideal that a performance ought to be experienced on an individual level, meaning that each person who enters the arena will hear and process the experience in a different, unique way. Furthermore, this individualized way of hearing and experiencing music correlates to John Cage’s political views of a pluralistic anarchy “in wish he wished to live: a world that allowed for personal freedom; a world of abundance; a world in which each perspective differed and all perspectives fared the same” (Heimbecker 478).
However, in the same way that Wagner’s anti-Semitism became a vehicle for the evils of the Third Reich and the Holocaust, John Cage scholars today are examining his lack of commentary on the civil rights movement that was actively unfolding on college campuses during this time. That he writes often about his political views on poverty, anarchy, and technology but neglects to really reflect on the protest that occurred on the University of Illinois campus in 1968-1969 over the increased admission of African-American students seems suspicious and somewhat surprising. In a 1970 interview, Cage comments, “Now the exciting thing about the blacks is, that they are going to be free of the laws [regarding harmony and composition], which were made by whites to protect them from the blacks, among other things, and to keep the blacks in slavery and to keep the white people more powerful. Now, it won’t be good for the blacks to become powerful like the whites […] anymore than it would be good for the noises to become as harmonious and as devoted to counterpoint as the musical sounds.” Although I cannot accuse John Cage of being hateful or spiteful in his words, I agree with Dr. Haefeli's assessment that Cage and others were involved in an "abstract kind of social revolution that could serve as an umbrella for all sorts of sub-issues." For Cage in the 1960s, issues of poverty and the distribution of resources trumped racial equality as the paramount societal ills of the time.
No comments:
Post a Comment