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Published by Wesleyan University Press, Middletown, CT 06459 Copyright © 1939, 1944, 1949, 1952, 1955, 1957, 1958, 1959, 1961 by John Cage All rights reserved First printing, 1961. Wesleyan Paperback, 1973. Library of Congress Catalog Card Number 61–14238 Printed in the United States of America 20 19 ISBN–13: 978–0–8195–6028–5 ISBN–10: 0–8195–6028–6 Many of these lectures and articles were delivered or published elsewhere from 1939 to 1958. The headnote preceding each one makes grateful acknowledgment of its precise source.

About the Author His teacher, Arnold Schoenberg, said John Cage was “not a composer but an inventor of genius.” Composer, author, and philosopher, John Cage was born in Los Angeles in 1912 and by the age of 37 had been recognized by the American Academy of Arts and Letters for having extended the boundaries of music. He was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 1978, and in 1982, the French government awarded Cage its highest honor for distinguished contribution to cultural life, Commandeur de l'Ordre des Arts et des Lettres. Cage composed hundreds of musical works in his career, including the well-known “4'33"” and his pieces for prepared piano; many of his compositions depend on chance procedures for their structure and performance. Cage was also an author, and his book Silence was described by John Rockwell in the New York Times as “the most influential conduit of Oriental thought and religious ideas into the artistic vanguard—not just in music but in dance, art and poetry as well.” John Cage’s books published by Wesleyan are: Silence (1961), A Year from Monday (1967), M (1973), Empty Words (1979), which Cage also regarded as a performance piece, X (1983), MUSICAGE (1996), I–VI (1997), and Anarchy (2001). John Cage died in 1992 at the age of 79. Wesleyan University Press is a member of the Green Press Initiative. The paper used in this book meets their minimum requirement for recycled paper.

To Whom It May Concern

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Foreword / ix Manifesto / xii The Future of Music: Credo / 3 Experimental Music / 7 Experimental Music: Doctrine / 13 Composition as Process / 18


I. Changes / 18 II. Indeterminacy / 35 III. Communication / 41 Composition / 57 To Describe the Process of Composition Used in Music of Changes and Imaginary Landscape No.4 / 57 To Describe the Process of Composition Used in Music for Piano 21-52 / 60 Forerunners of Modern Music / 62 History of Experimental Music in the United States / 67 Erik Satie / 76 Edgard Varese / 83 Four Statements on the Dance / 86 Goal: New Music, New Dance / 87 Grace and Clarity / ~89 In This Day . â&#x20AC;˘. / 94 2 Pages, 122 Words on Music and Dance / 96 On Robert Rauschenberg, Artist, and His Work / 98 Lecture on Nothing / 109 Lecture on Something / 128 45' for a Speaker / 146 Where Are We Going? and What Are We Doing? / 194 Indeterminacy / 260 Music Lovers' Field Companion / 274

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For over twenty years I have been writing articles and giving lectures. Many of them have been unusual in form-this is especially true of the lectures-because I have employed in them means of composing analogous to my composing means in the field of music. My intention has been, often, to say what I had to say in a way that would exemplify it; that would, conceivably, permit the listener to experience what I had to say rather than just hear about it. This means that, being as I am engaged in a variety of activities, I attempt to introduce into each one of them aspects conventionally limited to one or more of the others. So it was that I gave about 1949 my Lecture on Nothing at the Artists' Club on Eighth Street in New York City (the artists' club started by Robert Motherwell, which predated the popular one associated with Philip Pavia, Bill de Kooning, et al.). This Lecture on Nothing was written in the same rhythmic structure I employed at the time in my musical compositions (Sonatas and Interludes, Three Dances, etc.). One of the structural divisions was the repetition, some fourteen times, of a single page in which occurred the refrain, "If anyone is sleepy let him go to sleep." Jeanne Reynal, I remember, stood up part way through, screamed, and then said, while I continued speaking, "John, I dearly love you, but I can't bear another minute." She then walked out. Later, during the question period, I gave one of six previously prepared answers regardless of the question asked. This was a reflection of my engagement in Zen. FOREWORD/Ix

At Black Mountain College in 1952, I organized an event that involved the paintings of Bob Rauschenberg, the dancing of Merce Cunningham, fihns, slides, phonograph records, radios, the poetries of Charles Olson and M. C. Richards recited from the tops of ladders, and the pianism of David Tudor, together with my /uilliard lecture, which ends: "A piece of string, a sunset, each acts." The audience was seated in the center of all this activity. Later that summer, vacationing in New England, I visited America's first synagogue, to discover that the congregation was there seated precisely the way I had arranged the audience at Black Mountain. As I look back, I realize that a concern with poetry was early with me. At Pomona College, in response to questions about the Lake poets, I wrote in the manner of Gertrude Stein, irrelevantly and repetitiously. I got an A. The second time I did it I was failed. Since the Lecture on Nothing there have been more than a dozen pieces that were unconventionally written, including some that were done by means of chance operations and one that was largely a series of questions left unanswered. When M. C. Richards asked me why I didn't one day give a conventional informative lecture, adding that that would be the most shocking thing I could do, I said, "I don't give these lectures to surprise people, but out of a need for poetry." As I see it, poetry is not prose simply because poetry is in one way or another formalized. It is not poetry by reason of its content or ambiguity but by reason of its allowing musical elements (time, sound") to be introduced into the world of words. Thus, traditionally, information no matter how stuffy (e. g., the sutras and shastras of India) was transmitted in poetry. It was easier to grasp that way. Karl Shapiro may have been thinking along these lines when he wrote his Essay on Rime in poetry. Committing these formalized lectures to print has presented certain problems, and some of the solutions reached are compromises between what would have been desirable and what was practicable. The lecture Where Are We Going? and What Are We Doing? is an example. In this and other cases, a headnote explains the means to be used in the event of oral delivery. Not all these pieces, of course, are unusual in form. Several were written to be printed-that is, to be seen rather than to be heard. Several others were composed and delivered as conventional informative lectures (without shocking their audiences for that reason, so far as I could determine). x/SILENCE

This collection does not include all that I have written; it does reHect what have been, and continue to be, my major concerns. Critics frequently cry "Dada" after attending one of my concerts or hearing one of my lectures. Others bemoan my interest in Zen. One of the liveliest lectures I ever heard was given by Nancy Wilson Ross at the Cornish School in Seattle. It was called Zen Buddhism and Dada. It is possible to make a connection between the two, but neither Dada nor Zen is a fixed tangible. They change; and in quite different ways in diHerent places and times, they invigorate action. What was Dada in the 1920's is now, with the exception of the work of Marcel Duchamp, just art. What I do, I do not wish blamed on Zen, though without my engagement with Zen (attendance at lectures by Alan Watts and D. T. Suzuki, reading of the literature) I doubt whether I would have done what I have done. I am told that Alan Watts has questioned the relation between my work and Zen. I mention this in order to free Zen of any responsibility for my actions. I shall continue making them, however. I often point out that Dada nowadays has in it a space, an emptiness, that it formerly lacked. What nowadays, America mid-twentieth century, is Zen?

I am grateful to Richard K. Winslow, composer, whose musical ways are different from mine, who seven years ago, as Professor of Music at Wesleyan University, engaged David Tudor and me for a concert and who, at the time as we were walking along, introduced me without warning to his habit of suddenly quietly singing. Since then, he has twice invited us back to Wesleyan, even though our programs were consistently percussive, noisy, and silent, and the views which I expressed were consistently antischolastic and anarchic. He helped obtain for me the Fellowship at the Wesleyan Center for Advanced Studies which, in spite of the air-conditioning, I have enjoyed during the last academic year. And he inspired the University Press to publish this book. The reader may argue the propriety of this support, but he must admire, as I do, Winslow's courage and unselfishness. -J.C. June 1961


The text below was written for Julian Beck and Judith Malina, directors of the Living Theatre, fOT use in their program booklet when they were performing at the Cherry Lane Theatre, Greenwich Village, New York.

written in response ) ~ to a request for instantaneous a manifesto on music, 1952


and unpredictable

our ears are nothing is accomplished by writing a piece of music } now " hearing" in excellent condition " playing"




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The following text was delivered as a talk at a meeting of a Seattle arts society organized by Bonnie Bird in 1937. It was printed in the brochure accompanying George Avakian's recording of my twenty-five-year retrospective concert at Town Hall, New York, in 1958.



If this word "music" is sacred and reserved for eighteenth- and nineteenth-century instruments, we can substitute a more meaningful term: organization of sound. Wll..L CONTINUE AND INCREASE UNTIL WE REACH A MUSIC PRODUCED THROUGH THE AID OF ELECTRICAL INSTRUMENTS

Most inventors of electrical musical instruments have attempted to imitate eighteenth- and nineteenth-century instruments, just as early automobile designers copied the carriage. The Novachord and the THE FUTURE OF MUSIC: CREDO/3

Solovox are examples of this desire to imitate the past rather than construct the future. When Theremin provided an instrument with genuinely new possibilities, Thereministes did their utmost to make the instrument sound like some old instrument, giving it a sickeningly sweet vibrato, and performing upon it, with difficulty, masterpieces from the past. Although the instrument is capable of a wide variety of sound qualities, obtained by the turning of a dial, Thereministes act as censors, giving the public those sounds they think the public will like. We are shielded from new sound experiences. The special function of electrical instruments will be to provide complete control of the overtone structure of tones (as opposed to noises) and to make these tones available in any frequency, amplitude, and duration. WHICH WILL MAKE AVAILABLE FOR MUSICAL PURPOSES ANY AND ALL SOUNDS THAT CAN BE HEARD. PHOTOELECTRIC, FILM, AND MECHANICAL MEDIUMS FOR THE SYNTHETIC PRODUCTION OF MUSIC

lt is now possible for composers to make music directly, without the assistance of intermediary performers. Any design repeated often enough on a sound track is audible. Two hundred and eighty circles per second on a sound track will produce one sound, whereas a portrait of Beethoven repeated fifty times per second on a sound track will have not only a different pitch but a different sound quality. WILL BE EXPLORED. WHEREAS, IN THE PAST, THE POINT OF DISAGREEMENT HAS BEEN BETWEEN DISSONANCE AND CONSONANCE, IT WILL BE, IN THE IMMEDIATE FUTURE, BE1WEEN NOISE AND SO-CALLED MUSICAL SOUNDS.



The composer (organizer of sound) will be faced not only with the entire field of sound but also with the entire field of time. The "frame" or fraction of a second, following established film technique, will probably be the basic unit in the measurement of time. No rhythm will be beyond the composer's reach. NEW METHODS WILL BE DISCOVERED, BEARING A DEFINITE RELATION TO SCHOENBrnc's TWELVE-TONE SYSTEM

Schoenberg's method assigns to each material, in a group of equal materials, its function with respect to the group. (Harmony assigned to each material, in a group of unequal materials, its function with respect to the fundamental or most important material in the group.) Schoenberg's method is analogous to a society in which the emphasis is on the group aDd the integration of the individual in the group. AND PRESENT METHODS OF WRITING PERCUSSION MUSIC

Percussion music is a contemporary transition from keyboard-influenced music to the all-sound music of the future. Any sound is acceptable to the composer of percussion music; he explores the academically forbidden "non-musical" field of sound insofar as is manually possible. Methods of writing percussion music have as their goal the rhythmic structure of a composition. As soon as these methods are crystallized into one or several widely accepted methods, the means will exist for group improvisations of unwritten but culturally important music. This has already taken place in Oriental cultures and in hot jazz. AND ANY OTHER METHODS WHICH ARE FREE FROM THE CONCEPT OF A FUNDAMENTAL TONE.




Before this happens, centers of experimental music must be established. In these centers, the new materials, oscillators, turntables, generators, means for amplifying small sounds, film phonographs, etc., available for use. Composers at work using twentiethcentury means for making music. Performances of results. Organization of sound for extra-musical purposes (theatre, dance, radio, film). THROUGH THE pmNCIPLE OF ORGANIZATION OR MAN'S COMMON ABILITY TO THINK.

It was a Wednesday. I was in the sixth grade. I overheard Dad saying to Mother, "Get ready: we're going to New Zealand Saturday." I got ready. I read everything I could Bnd in the school library about New Zealand. Saturday came. Nothing happened. The project was not even mentioned, that day or any succeeding day. M. C. Richards went to see the Bolshoi Ballet. She was delighted with the dancing. She said, "It's not what they do; it's the ardor with which they do it." I said, "Yes: composition, performance, and audition or observation are really diHerent things. They have next to nothing to do with one another." Once, I told her, I was at a house on Riverside Drive where people were invited to be present at a Zen service conducted by a Japanese Roshi. He did the ritual, rose petals and all. Afterwards tea was served with rice cookies. And then the hostess and her husband, employing an out-of-tune piano and a cracked voice, gave a wretched performance of an excerpt from a third-rate Italian opera. I was embarrassed and glanced towards the Roshi to see how he was taking it. The expression on his face was absolutely beatiflc. A young man in Japan arranged his circumstances so that he was able to travel to a distant island to study Zen with a certain Master for a three-year period. At the end of the three years, feeling no sense of accomplishment, he presented himself to the Master and announced his departure. The Master said, "You've been here three years. Why don't you stay three months more?" The student agreed, but at the end of the three months he still felt that he had made no advance. When he told the Master again that he was leaving, the Master said, "Look now, you've been here three years and three months. Stay three weeks longer." The student did, but with no success. When he told the Master that absolutely nothing had happened, the Master said, "You've been here three years, three months, and three weeks. Stay three more days, and if, at the end of that time, you have not attained enlightenment, commit suicide." Towards the end of the second day, the student was enlightened. 6/SILENCE

The following statement was given as an address to the convention of the Music Teachers National Association in Chicago in the winter of 1957. It was printed in the brochure accompanying George Avakian's recording of my twenty-five-year retrospective concert at Town Hall, New York, in 1958.

EXPERIMENTAL MUSIC Formerly, whenever anyone said the music I presented was experimental, I objected. It seemed to me that composers knew what they were dOing, and that the experiments that had been made had taken place prior to the finished works, just as sketches are made before paintings and rehearsals precede performances. But, giving the matter further thought, I realized that there is ordinarily an essential difference between making a piece of music and hearing one. A composer knows his work as a woodsman knows a path he has traced and retraced, while a listener is confronted by the same work as one is in the woods by a plant he has never seen before. Now, on the other hand, times have changed; music has changed; and I no longer object to the word "experimental." I use it in fact to describe all the music that especially interests me and to which I am devoted, whether someone else wrote it or I myself did. What has happened is that I have become a listener and the music has become something to hear. Many people, of course, have given up saying "experimental" about this new music. Instead, they either move to a halfway point and say "controversial" or depart to a greater distance and question whether this "music" is music at all. For in this new music nothing takes place but sounds: those that are notated and those that are not. Those that are not notated appear in the EXPERIMENTAL MUSIC./7

written music as silences, opening the doors of the music to the sounds that happen to be in the environme~t. This openness exists in the fields of modern sculpture and architecture. The glass houses of Mies van der Rohe reHect their environment, presenting to the eye images of clouds, trees, or grass, according to the situation. And while looking at the constructions in wire of the sculptor Richard Lippold, it is inevitable that one will see other things, and people too, if they happen to be there at the same time, through the network of wires. There is no such thing as an empty space or an empty time. There is always something to see, something to hear. In fact, try as we may to make a silence, we cannot. For certain engineering purposes, it is desirable to have as silent a situation as possible. Such a room is called an anechoic chamber, its six walls niade of special material, a room without echoes. I entered one at Harvard University several years ago and heard two sounds, one high and one low. When I described them to the engineer in charge, he informed me that the high one was my nervous system in operation, the low one my blood in circulation. Until I die there will be sounds. And they will continue following my death. One need not fear about the future of music. But this fearlessness only follows if. at the parting of the ways, where it is realized that sounds occur whether intended or not, one turns in the direction of those he does not intend. This turning is psychological and seems at first to be a giving up of everything that belongs to humanity-for a musician, the giving up of music. This psychological turning leads to the world of nature, where, gradually or suddenly, one sees that humanity and nature, not separate, are in this world together; that nothing was lost when everything was given away. In fact, everything is gained. In musical terms, any sounds may occur in any combination and in any continuity. And it is a striking coincidence that just now the technical means to produce such a free-ranging music are available. When the Allies entered Germany towards the end of World War II, it was discovered that improvements had been made in recording sounds magnetically such that tape had become suitable for the high-fidelity recording of music. First in France with the work of Pierre Schaeffer, later here, in Germany, in Italy, in Japan, and perhaps, without my knowing it, in other places, magnetic tape was 8/SILENCE

used not simply to record performances of music but to make a new music that was possible only because of it. Given a minimum of two tape recorders and a disk recorder, the following processes are possible: 1) a single recording of any sound may be made; 2) a rerecording may be made, in the course of which, by means of filters and circuits, any or all of the physical characteristics of a given recorded sound may be altered; 3) electronic mixing (combining on a third machine sounds issuing from two others) permits the presentation of any number of sounds in combination; 4) ordinary splicing permits the juxtaposition of any sounds, and when it includes unconventional cuts, it, like rerecording, brings about alterations of any or all of the original physical characteristics. The situation made available by these means is essentially a total sound-space, the limits of which are eardetermined only, the position of a particular sound in this space being the result of five determinants: frequency or pitch, amplitude or loudness, overtone structure or timbre, duration, and morphology (how the sound begins, goes on, and dies away). By th~ alteration of anyone of these determinants, the position of the sound in sound-space changes. Any sound at any point in this total sound-space can move to become a sound at any other point. But advantage can be taken of these possibilities only if one is willing to change one's musical habits radically. That is, one may take advantage of the appearance of images without visible transition in distant places, which is a way of saying "television," if one is willing to stay at home instead of going to a theatre. Or one may fly if one is willing to give up walking. Musical, habits include scales, modes, theories of counterpoint and harmony, and the study of the timbres, singly and in combination of a limited number of sound-producing mechanisms. In mathematical terms these all concern discrete steps. They resemble walking-in the case of pitches, on steppingstones twelve in number. This cautious stepping is not characteristic of the possibilities of magnetic tape, which is revealing to us that musical action or existence can occur at any point or along any line or curve or what have you in total sound-space; that we are, in fact, technically equipped to transform our contemporary awareness of nature's manner of operation into art. EXPERIMENTAL MUSIC/9

Again there is a parting of the ways. One has a choice. If he does not wish to give up his attempts to control sound, he may complicate his musical technique towards an approximation of the new possibilities and awareness. (I use the word "approximation" because a measuring mind can never finally measure nature.) Or, as before, one may give up the desire to control sound, clear his mind of music, and set about discovering means to let sounds be themselves rather than vehicles for man-made theories or expressions of human sentiments. This project will seem fearsome to many, but on examination it gives no cause for alarm. Hearing sounds which are just sounds immediately sets the theorizing mind to theorizing, and the emotions of hUIpan beings are continually aroused by encounters with nature. Does not a mountain unintentionally evoke in us a sense of wonder? otters along a stream a sense of mirth? night in the woods a sense of fear? Do not rain falling and mists rising up suggest the love binding heaven and earth? Is not decaying flesh loathsome? Does not the death of someone we love bring sorrow? And is there a greater hero than the least plant that grows? What is more angry than the flash of lightning and the sound of thunder? These responses to nature are mine and will not necessarily correspond with another's. Emotion takes place in the person who has it. And sounds, when allowed to be themselves, do not require that those who hear them do so unfeelingly. The opposite is what is meant by response ability. New music: new listening. Not an attempt to understand something that is being said, for, if something were being said, the sounds would be given the shapes of words. Just an attention to the activity of sounds. Those involved with the composition of experimental music find ways and means to remove themselves from the activities of the sounds they make. Some employ chance operations, derived from sources as ancient as the Chinese Book of Changes, or as modern as the tables of random numbers used also by physicists in research. Or, analogous to the Rorschach tests of psychology, the interpretation of imperfections in the paper upon which one is writing may provide a music free from one's memory and imagination. Geometrical means employing spatial superimpositions at IO/SILENCE

variance with the ultimate performance in time may be used. The total field of possibilities may be roughly divided and the actual sounds within these divisions may be indicat;ed as to number but left to the performer or to the splicer to choose. In this latter case, the composer resembles the maker of a camera who allows someone else to take the picture. Whether one uses tape or writes for conventional instruments, the present musical situation has changed from what it was before tape came into being. This also need not arouse alarm, for the coming into being of something new does not by that fact deprive what was of its proper place. Each thing has its own place, never takes the place of something else; and the more things there are, as is said, the merrier. But several effects of tape on experimental music may be mentioned. Since so many inches of tape equal so many seconds of time, it has become more and more usual that notation is in space rather than in symbols of quarter, half, and sixteenth notes and so on. Thus where on a page a note appears will correspond to when in a time it is to occur. A stop watch is used to facilitate a performance; and a rhythm results which is a far cry from horse's hoofs and other regular beats. Also it has been impossible with the playing of several separate tapes at once to achieve perfect synchronization. This fact has led some towards the manufacture of multiple-tracked tapes and machines with a corresponding number of heads; while others-those who have accepted the sounds they do not intend-now realize that the score, the requiring that many parts be played in a particular togetherness, is not an accurate representation of how things are. These now compose parts but not scores, and the parts may be combined in any unthought ways. This means that each performance of such a piece of music is unique, as interesting to its composer as to others listening. It is easy to see again the parallel with nature, for even with leaves of the same tree, no two are exactly alike. The parallel in art is the sculpture with moving parts, the mobile. It goes without saying that dissonances and noises are welcome in this new music. But so is the dominant seventh chord if it happens to put in an appearance. EXPERIMENTAL MUSlell1

Rehearsals have shown that this new music, whether for tape or for instruments, is more clearly heard when the several loud-speakers or performers are separated in space rather than-grouped closely together. For this music is not concerned with harmoniousness as generally understood, where the quality of harmony results from a blending of several elements. Here we are concerned with the coexistence of dissimilars, and the central points where fusion occurs are many: the ears of the listeners wherever they are. This disharmony, to paraphrase Bergson's statement about disorder, is simply a harmony to which many are unaccustomed. Where do we go from here? Towards theatre. That art more than music resembles nature. We have eyes as well as ears, and it is our business while we are alive to use them. And what is the purpose of writing music? One is, of course, not dealing with purposes but dealing with sounds. Or the answer must take the form of paradox: a purposeful purposelessness or a purposeless play. This play, however, is an affirmation of life-not an attempt to bring order out of chaos nor to suggest improvements in creation, but simply a way of waking up to the very life we're living, which is so excellent once one gets one's mind and one's desires out of its way and lets it act of its own accord.

When Xenia and I came to New York from Chicago, we arrived in the bus station with about twenty-five cents. We were expecting to stay for a while with Peggy Guggenheim and Max Ernst. Max Ernst had met us in Chicago and had said, "Whenever you come to New York, come and stay with us. We have a big house on the East River." I went to the phone booth in the bus station, put in a nickel, and dialed. Max Ernst answered. He didn't recognize my voice. Finally he said, "Are you thirsty?" I said, "Yes." He said, "Well, come over tomorrow for cocktails." I went back to Xenia and told her what had happened. She said, "Call him back. We have everything to gain and nothing to lose." I did. He said, "Ohl It's you. We've been waiting for you for weeks. Your room's ready. Come right over." Dad is an inventor. In 1912 his submarine had the world's record for staying under water. Running as it did by means of a gasoline engine, it left bubbles on the surface, so it was not employed during World War 1. Dad says he does his best work when he is sound asleep. I was explaining at the New School that the way to get ideas is to do something boring. For instance, composing in such a way that the process of composing is boring induces ideas. They fly into one's head like birds. Is that what Dad meant? 12/SILENCE

This article, there titled Experimental Music, first appeared in The Score and I. M. A. Magazine, London, issue of June 1955. The inclusion of a dialogue between an uncompromising teacher and an unenlightened student, and the addition of the word "doctrine" to the original title, are references to the Huang-Po Doctrine of Universal Mind.

EXPERIMENTAL MUSIC: DOCTRINE Objections are sometimes made by composers to the use of the term experimental as descriptive of their works, for it is claimed that ally experiments that are made precede the steps that are finally taken with determination, and that this determination is knowing, having, in fact, a particular, if unconventional, ordering of the elements used in view. These objections are clearly justifiable, but only where, as among contemporary evidences in serial music, it remains a question of making a thing upon the boundaries, structure, and expression of which attention is focused. Where, on the other hand, attention moves towards the observation and audition of many things at once, including those that are environmental-becomes, that is, inclusive rather than exclusive-no question of making, in the sense of forming understandable structures, can arise (one is tourist), and here the word "experimental" is apt, providing it is understood not as descriptive of an act to be later judged in terms of success and failure, but simply as of an act the outcome of which is unknown. What has been determined? For, when, after convincing oneself ignorantly that sound has, as its clearly defined opposite, silence, that since duration is the only characteristic of sound that is measurable in terms of silence, therefore any valid structure involving sounds and silences should be based, not as occidentally traditional, on frequency, but rightly on duration, one enters an anechoic chamber, as silent as technologically possible in 1951, to discover that one hears two sounds of one's own unintentional making ( nerve's systematic operation, blood's circulation), the situation one is clearly in is not objecEXPERIMENTAL MUSIC: DOCTRINE/13

tive (sound-silence), but rather subjective (sounds only), those intended and those others (so-called silence) not intended. If, at this point, one says, "Yesl I do not discriminate between intention and non-intention," the splits, subject-object, art-life, etc., disappear, an identification has been made with the material, and actions are then those relevant to its nature, i.e.: A sound does not view itself as thought, as ought, as needing another sound for its elucidation, as etc.; it has no time for any consideration-it is occupied with the performance of its characteristics: before it has died away it must have made perfectly exact its frequency, its loudness, its length, its overtone structure, the precise morphology of these and of itself. Urgent, unique, uninformed about history and theory, beyond the imagination, central to a sphere without surface, its becoming is unimpeded, energetically broadcast. There is no escape from its action. It does not exist as one of a series of discrete steps, but as transmission in all directions from the field's center. It is inextricably synchronous with all other, sounds, non-sounds, which latter, received by other sets than the ear, oper ate in the same manner. A sound accomplishes nothing; without it life would not last out the instant. Relevant action is theatrical (music [imaginary separation of hearing from the other senses] does not exist), inclusive and intentionally purposeless. Theatre is continually becoming that it is becoming; each human being is at the best point for reception. Relevant response (getting up in the morning and discovering oneself musician) (action, art) can be made with any number (including none [none and number, like silence and music, are unreal]) of sounds. The automatic minimum (see above) is two. Are you deaf (by nature, choice, desire) or can you hear (externals, tympani, labyrinths in whack)? Beyond them (ears) is the power of discrimination which, among other confused actions, weakly pulls apart (abstraction), ineffectually establishes as not to suffer alteration (the "work"), and unskillfully protects from interruption (museum, concert hall) what springs, elastic, spontaneous, back together again with a beyond that power which is fluent (it moves in or out), pregnant (it can appear when- where- as what-ever [rose, nail, constellation, 485.73482 cycles per second, piece of string]), related (it is you yourself in the form you have that instant 14/SILENCE

taken), obscure (you will never be able to give a satisfactory report even to yourself of just what happened). In view, then, of a totality of possibilities, no knowing action is commensurate, since the character of the knowledge acted upon prohibits all but some eventualities. From a realist position, such action, though cautious, hopeful, and generally entered into, is unsuitable. An experimental action, generated by a mind as empty as it was before it became one, thus in accord with the possibility of no matter what, is, on the other hand, practical. It does not move in terms of approximations and errors, as "informed" action by its nature must, for no mental images of what would happen were set up beforehand; it sees things directly as they are: impermanently involved in an infinite play of interpenetrations. Experimental musicQUESTION: -in the U.S.A., if you please. Be more specific. What do you have to say about rhythm? Let us agree it is no longer a question of pattern, repetition, and variation. ANSWER: There is no need for such agreement. Patterns, repetitions, and variations will arise and disappear. However, rhythm is durations of any length coexisting in any states of succession and synchronicity. The latter is liveliest, most unpredictably changing, when the parts are not fixed by a score but left independent of one another, no two performances yielding the same resultant durations. The former, succession, liveliest when (as in Morton Feldman's Intersections) it is not fixed but presented in situation-form, entrances being at any point within a given period of time.-Notation of durations is in space, read as corresponding to time, needing no reading in the case of magnetic tape. QUESTION: What about several players at once, an orchestra? ANSWER: You insist upon their being together? Then use, as Earle Brown suggests, a moving picture of the score, visible to all, a static vertical line as coordinator, past which the notations move. If you have no particular togetherness in mind, there are chronometers. Use them. QUESTION: I have noticed that you write durations that are beyond the possibility of performance. ANSWER: Composing's one thing, performing's another, listening's a third. What can they have to do with one another?





QUESTION: And about pitches? ANSWER: It is true. Music is continually going up and down, but no longer only on those stepping stones, five, seven, twelve in number, or the quarter tones. Pitches are not a matter of likes and dislikes ( I have told you about the diagram Schillinger had stretched across his wall near the ceiling: all the scales, Oriental and Occidental, that had been in general use, each in its own color plotted against, no one of them identical with, a black one, the latter the scale as it would have been had it been physically based on !he overtone series) except for musicians in ruts; in the face of habits, what to do? Magnetic tape opens the door providing one doesn't immediately shut it by inventing a phonogene, or otherwise use it to recall or extend known musical possibilities. It introduces the unknown with such sharp clarity that anyone has the opportunity of having his habits blown away like dust.--For this purpose the prepared piano is also useful, especially in its recent forms where, by alterations during a performance, an otherwise static gamut situation becomes changing. Stringed instruments (not string-players) are very instructive, voices too; and sitting still anywhere (the stereophonic, multiple-loud-speaker manner of operation in the everyday production of sounds and noises) listening ... QUESTION: I understand Feldman divides all pitches into high, middle, and low, and simply indicates how many in a given range are to be played, leaving the choice up to the performer. ANSWER: Correct. That is to say, he used sometimes to do so; I haven't seen him lately. It is also essential to remember his notation of super- and subsonic vibrations (Marginal Intersection No.1). QUESTION: That is, there are neither divisions of the "canvas" nor "frame" to be observed? ANSWER: On the contrary, you must give the closest attention to everything.




QUESTION: And timbre? ANSWER: No wondering what's next. Going lively on "through many a perilous situation." Did you ever listen to a symphony orchestra?




QUESTION: Dynamics? ANSWER: These result from what actively happens (physically, me16/SILENCE

chanically, electronically) in producing a sound. You won't find it in the books. Notate that. As far as too loud goes: "follow the general outlines of the Christian life." QUESTION: I have asked you about the various characteristics of a sound; how, now, can you make a continuity, as I take it your intention is, without intention? Do not memory, psychologyANSWER: "-never again." QUESTION: How? ANSWER: Christian Wolff introduced space actions in his compositional process at variance with the subsequently performed time actions. Earle Brown devised a composing procedure in which events, following tables of random numbers, are written out of sequence, possibly anywhere in a total time now and possibly anywhere else in the same total time next. I myself use chance operations, some derived from the I-Ching, others from the observation of imperfections in the paper upon which I happen to be writing. Your answer: by not giving it a thought. QUESTION: Is this athematic? ANSWER: Who said anything about themes? It is not a question of haVing something to say. QUESTION: Then what is the purpose of this "experimental" music? ANSWER: No purposes. Sounds. QUESTION: Why bother, since, as you have pointed out, sounds are continually happening whether you produce them or not? ANSWER: What did you say? I'm stillQUESTION: I mean- But is this music? ANSWER: Ah! you like sounds after all when they are made up of vowels and consonants. You are slow-witted, for you have never brought your mind to the location of urgency. Do you need me or someone else to hold you up? Why don't you realize as I do that nothing is accomplished by writing, playing, or listening to music? Otherwise, deaf as a doornail, you will never be able to hear anything, even what's well within earshot. QUESTION: But, seriously, if this is what music is, I could write it as well as you. ANSWER: Have I said anything that would lead you to think I thought you were stupid? EXPERIMENTAL MUSIC: DOCTRINE/17

The following three lectures were given at Darmstadt (Germany) in September 1958. The third one, with certain revisions, is a lecture given earlier that year at Rutgers University in New Jersey, an excerpt from which was published in the Village Voice, New York City, in April 1958.

COMPOSITION AS PROCESS I. Changes Having been asked by Dr. Wolfgang Steinecke, Director of the Internationale Ferienkurse fur Neue Musik at Darmstadt, to discuss in particular my Music of Changes, I decided to make a lecture within the time length of the Music of Changes (each line of the text whether speech or silence requiring one second for its performance), so that whenever I would stop speaking, the corresponding part of the Music of Changes itself would be played. The music is not superimposed on the speech but is heard only in the interruptions of the speech-which, like the lengths of the paragraphs themselves, were the result of chance operations.

This is a lec"material"ture on changes the sounds and sithat have taken lences of a composition) place in my composition means, with particular reference to what, a decwere, it seemed to ade ago, I termed "structure" and me then, the prop"method." By "strucer concern of the mind (as opture" was meant the posed to the heart) division of (one's ideas a whole into parts; by "method," of order as opposed to one's the note-to-note procedure. Both spontaneous actions); whereas structure and method (and also the two last IS/SILENCE

of these, namely method and materiaI, together with form ( the morphology of a continuity) were equally the proper concern of the heart. Composition, then, I viewed, ten years ago, as an activity integrating the opposites, the rational and the irrational, bringing about, i-

deally, a freely moving continuitywithina strict division of parts, the sounds, their combination and succession being either logicalIy related or arbitrarily chosen. ~The strict division of parts, the structure, was a function of the duration aspect of sound, since,

of all the aspects of sound ineluding frequency, amplitude, and timbre, duration, alone, was also a characteristic of silence. The structure, then, was a division of actual time by conventional metrical means, metertaken as simply the measurement of quantity. ~In the case of the Sonatas and I nterludes (which I finished in nineteen forty-eight), only structure was organized, quite roughly for the work as a whole, exactly, however, within each single piece. The method was that of considered improvisation (mainly at the pi-

ano, though ideas came to me at some moments away from the instrument.

Thematerials, the piano preparations, were chosen as one chooses shells while walking

along a beach. The fonn was as natural as my taste permitted: so that where, as in all of the Sonatas and two of the Interludes, parts were to be repeated, the formal concern was to make the progress from the end of a section to its beginning seem inevitable. ~he structure of one of the Sonatas, the fourth, was one hundred measures of two-two time, divided into ten units of ten me as-

ures each. These units were combined in the proportion three, three, two, two, to give the piece large parts, and they were subdividedin the same proportion to give small parts to each unit. In contrast to a structure based on the frequencyaspectof sound, tonality, that is, this rhythmic structure was as hospitable to nonmusical sounds, noises, as it was to those of the conventional scales and instruments. For nothing about the structure was detennined by the materials which were to occur in it; it was conceived, in fact, so that it could be as well expressed by the


absence of these materials as by their presence. rrIn terms of the opposition of freedom and law, a piece written ten years before the Sonatas and Interludes, Construction in M etaI, presents the same relationship, but reversed: structure, method, and materials were all of them subjected to organ ization. The morphologyof the continuity, form, alone was free. Drawing a straight line between this situation and that presented


by the later work, the deduction might be made that there is a tendency in my compos ition means away from ideas of order towards no ideas of order. And though when examined the history would probably not read as a straight line, recent works, beginning'with the Music of Changes, support the accuracy of

this deduction. rrFor, in the Music of Changes, the note-to-note procedure, the method, is the function of chance operations. And the structure, though planned precisely as those of the Sonatas and Interludes, and more thoroughly since it encompassed the whole span of the cornposition, was only a series of numbers, three, five, six and three quarters, six and three quarters, five, three and one eighth, which became, on the one hand, the number of units within each section, and, on the other, number of measures of four-four within each unit. At each small structural division in the

Music of Changes, at the beginning, for example, and a-

gain at the fourth and ninth measures and so on, chance operations determined stabilityor change of tempo. Thus, by introducing the action of method into the body of the structure, and these two opposed in terms of order and freedom, that structure became indeterminate: it was not possible to know the total time-length of the piece until the final chance operation, the last toss of coins affecting the rate of tempo, had been made. Being

indeterminate, though still present, it became apparent that structure was not necessary, even though it had certain uses. ~One of these uses was the determination of density, the determination, that is, of how many of the potentially present eight lines, each composed of sounds and silences, were actually to be present within a given small structural part. ~Anoth足 er use of the structure affected the charts of sounds and silences, amplitudes, durations, potentially active in the continuity. These twenty-four charts, eight for sounds

two, four, six, and eight, were mobile and which of the charts were immobile-not changing.

and silences, eight for amplitudes, eight for durations, were, throughout the course of a single structural unit, half of them mobile and half of them immobile. Mobile meant that once any of the elements in a chart was used

it disappeared to be replaced by anew one. Immobile meant that though an element in a chart had been used, it remained to be used again. At each unit structural point, a chance operation determined which of the charts, numbers one, three, five, and seven or numbers

~The structure, therefore, was in these respects useful. Furthermore, it determined the beginning and


ending of the compositional process. But this process, had it in the end brought about a division of parts the time-lengths of which were proportiona! to the original series of numbers, would have been extraordinary. And the presence of the mind as a ruling factor, even by such an extraordinaryeventuality, would not have been established. For what happened came about only through the tossing of coins. ~It became clear, therefore, I repeat, that structure was not necessary. And, in Musio for Piano, and subsequent pieces, indeed, 22/SILENCE

structure is no longer a part of the composition means. The view taken is not of an activity the purpose of which is to integrate the opposites, but rather of an activity characterized by process and essentially

purposeless. The

mind, though stripped of its right to control, is still present. What does it do, having nothing to do? And what happens to apiece of music when it is purposelessly made? ~hat happens, for instance, to silence? That is, how does the mind's perception of it change? Formerly, silence was the time lapse between sounds, useful towards a varietyof ends, among them that of tasteful arrangement, where by separating two sounds or two groups of sounds their differences orrelationships might receive emphasis; or that of expressivity, where silences in amusical discourse might

provide pause or punctuation; or again, that of architecture, where the introduction or interruption of silence might give definition either to a predetermined structure or to an organically developing one. Where none of these or other goals is present, silence becomes something else-not silence at all, but sounds, the ambient sounds. The nature of these is unpredictahIe and changing. These sounds (which are

called silence only because they do not form part of amusical intention) may be depended upon to exist. The world teems with them, and is, in fact, at no point free of them. He who has entered an anechoic chamber, a room made as silent as technologically possible, has heard there two sounds, one high, one low-the high the listener's nervous system in operation, the low his blood in circulation. There are, demonstrably, sounds to be heard and forever, given ears to hear. Where these ears are in connection

with a mind that has nothing to do, that mind is free to enter into the act of listening, hearing each sound just as it is, not as aphenomenon more or less approximating a preconception.

1fWhat's the history of the chan-

ges in my composition means with particular reference to sounds? I had in mind when I chose the sounds for Construction in Metal that they should be sixteen for each player. The number sixteen was also that of the number of measures

of four-four in each unit of the rhythmic structure. In the case of the structure this number was divided four, three, two, three, four; in the case of the materials the gamuts of sixteen sounds were divided into four groups of four. The plan, as preconceived, was to use four of the sounds in the first sixteen measures, introducing in each succeeding structural unit four more until the exposition involving all sixteen and lasting through the first four units was completed. The subsequent parts, three, two, three, four, were composed


as development of this initial situation. In actuality, this simple plan


was not realized, although it was only recently that I became fully aware that it was not. I had known all along that one of the players used three Japanese temple gongs rather than four, but the fact that only three of these relatively rare instruments were then available to me, together with the attachment I felt towards their sound, had convinced me of the rightness of this change in number. More serious, however. it seems to me now, was the effect of beaters: playing cowbells first with rubber and then with

metal multiplied by two the number of sounds actually used. Sirenlike piano trills which sound as one were counted as two. Various other deviations from the original plan could be discovered on analysis: for instance, the addition of metal thundersheets for background noise bringing the number sixteen, for those players who enjoyed it

to seventeen. One might conclude that in composing Construction in Metal the organization of sounds was imperfectly realized. Or he might conclude that the composer had not actually listened to the sounds he used. ~I have already compared the selection of the sounds

for the Sonalas and I nterludes to a selection of shells while walking along a beach. They are therefore a collection exhibiting taste. Their number was increased by use of the una corda, this pedal bringing about aIterations of timbre and frequency for many of the prepared keys. In terms of pitch, however, there is no change from the sounds of the Construction. In both cases a static gamut of sounds is presented, no two octaves repeating relations. However, one could hear interesting differences between eertain of these sounds. On depressing

a key, sometimes a single frequency was heard. In other cases depressing a key produced an interval; in still others an aggregate of pitches and timbres. Noticing the nature of this gamut led to selecting a comparable one for the String Quartet: the

inclusion there of rigidly scored conventional harmonies is a matter of taste, from which a conscious control was absent. Before writing the Music of Changes, two piec-

es were written which also used gamuts of sounds: single sounds, doubIe sounds and others more numerous, some to be played simultaneously, others successively in time. These pieces were Sixteen Dances and Concerto for Prepared Piano and Chamber Orchestra. The elements of the gamuts were arranged unsystematically in charts and the method of composition involved moves on these charts analagous to those used in constructing a magic square. Charts were also used for the Music of Changes, but in contrast to the method which involved chance opera-


tions, these charts were subjected to a rational control: ofthe sixty-four elements in a square chart eight times eight (made in this way in order to interpret as sounds the coin oracle of the Chinese Book of Changes) thirty-two were sounds, thirty-two silences. The thirty-two sounds were arranged in two squares one above the other, each four by four. Whether the charts were mobile or immobile, all twelve tones were presentin any four elements of a given chart, whether a line of the chart was read horizontallyor vertically. Once this dodecaphonic re26/SILENCE

quirement was satisfied, noises and repetitions of tones were used with freedom.

One may conclude from this that in the Music of Changes the effect of the chance operations on the structure

(making very apparent its anachronistic character)

was balanced by a control of the materials. Charts remain in thelmaginary Landscape Number IV, and in the Williams

Mix, but, due to the radios of the first piece and the library of recorded sounds of the second, and for no other reason, no twelve-tone control was used. The question "How do we need to cautiously proceed in dualistic terms?" was not consciously answered until the Music for Piano. In that piece notes were determined by imperfections in the paper upon which the music was written. The number of imperfections was determined by chance.

The original notation is in ink, and the actual st-eps that were taken in composition have been described in an article in Die Reihe. ~Though in the Music for Piano

I have affirmed the absence of the mind as a ruling agent from the structure and method of the composing means, its presence with regard to material is made clear on examining the sounds themselves: they are only single tones of the conventional grand pia-

no, played at the keyboard, plucked or muted on the strings, together with noises inside or outside the piano construction. The limited nature of this universe of possibilities makes the events themselves comparable to the first attempts at speech of a child or the fumblings about of a blind man. The mind reappears as the agent which established the boundaries within which this small play took place. Something more far-reaching is necessary: a composing of sounds within a universe predicated upon the sounds themselves


rather than upon the mind which can envisage their coming into being. ~Sounds, as we know, have frequency, amplitude, duration, timbre, and in a com pas ition, an order of succession. Five lines representing these five characteristics may be drawn

in India ink upon transparent plastic squares. Upon another such square a point may be inscribed. Placing the square with the lines over the square with the point, a determination may be made as to the physical nature of a sound 28/SILENCE

and its place within a determined program simply by dropping a perpendicular from the point to the line and measuring according to any method of measurement. Larger points will have the meaning of intervals and largest points that of aggregates. In order to make the several measurements necessary for intervals and aggregates, further squares having five lines are made and the meaning of any of the lines is left undetermined, so that a given one refers to any of the five characteristics. These squares are square so that they may be used in

any position with respect to one another. This describes the situ ation obtaining

in a recent composition, Variations, the composing means itself one of the eightyfour occurring in the part for piano of Concert for Pi-

ana and Orchestra. In this situation, the universe within which the action is to take place is not preconceived. Furthermore, as we know, sounds are events in a field of pas sibilities, not only at the discrete points conventions have favored. The notatiGn of Variations departs from music and imitates the physical reality. ~It is now my intention to relate the history of the changes with regard to duration of sounds in my composing means. Beyond the fact that in the Construc!ion in Metal there was a conttol of dura-

tion patterns paraile I to that of the number of sounds chosen, nothing un conventional took place. Quantities related through multiplication by two or addition of one-half together with grupettos of three, five, seven, and nine were present. The same holds for the Sonatas and Interludes, though no rhythmic patterns were rationally controlled. In the String Quartet the rhythmic interest drops, movements being nearly characterized by the predominance of a single quantity. Not until the Music of Changes do the quantities and their notation change. They

are there measured in space, a quarter note equalling two and onehalf centimeters. This made possible the notation of a fraction, for example one-third of an eighth, without the necessityofnotating the remainder of the fraction, the remaining two-thirds, following the same example. This possihility is directly analogous to the practice of cutting magnetic tape. In the duration charts of the Music of Changes there were sixty-four elements, all of them durations since they were both


to sound and silence (each of which had thirty-two elements). These were segmented ( for example one-half plus onethird of an eighth plus six-sevenths of a quarter) and were expressible wholly or in part. This segmentation was a practical measure taken to avoid the writing of an impossible situation which might arise during a high density structural area due to the chance oper-

ations. ~The same segmentation of durations took place in the Williams Mix, since a maximum of eight machines and loudspeakers had been pre-established. When the density rose from one to sixteen, it was often necessary to express durations by their smallest parts, there being no room left on the tape for the larger segments. 1Exact measurement and notation

of durations is in realitymental:

imaginaryexactitude. In the case of tape, many


thoven, Italian bel canto, jazz, and the vibraphone. I used Beethoven in the Williams Mix, jazz in the Imaginary Landscape Number V, bel canta in the recent part for voice in the Concert for Piano and Orchestra. It remains for me to come to terms with the vibraphone. In other words, I find my taste for timbre

lacking in necessity, and I discover that in the proportion I give it up, I find I hear more and more accurate-

ly. Beethoven now is a surprise, as acceptable to the ear as a cowbell. What are the orchestral timbres of the Concert for Piano and Orchestra? lt is impossible to predict, but this may be said: they invite the timbres of jazz, which more than serious music has explored the possibilities of instruments. 1fWith tape and music-synthesizers, action with the overtone structure of sounds can be less a matter of taste and more thoroughly an action in a field of possibilities. The notation I have described for Variations deals with it as such.

~The early works have beginnings, middles, and endings. The later ones do not. They begin anywhere, last any length of time, and involve more or fewer instruments and players. They are therefore not preconceived objects, and to approach them as objects is to utterly miss

the point. They are

occasions for experience, and this experience is not only received by the ears but by the eyes too. An ear alone is not a being. I have noticed listening to a record

that my attention moves to a moving object or a play of light, and at a rehearsal of the Williams Mix last May when all eight machines were in operation the attention of those present was engaged by a sixtyyear-old piano tuner who was busy tuning the instrument for the evening's concert. It becomes evident that music


itself is an ideal situation, not a real one. The mind may be used either to ignore ambient sounds, pitches other than the eighty-eight, durations which are not counted, timbres which are unmusicalor distasteful, and in general to control and understand an available experience. Or the mind may give up its desire to improve on creation and function as a faithful receiver of experience. ~I have not yet told any stories and yet when I give a talk I generally do. The subject certainly suggests my telling something 32/SILENCE


but my inclination is to tell something apt. That reminds me: Several years ago I was present at a lecture given by Dr. Daisetz Teitaro Suzuki. He spoke quietly when he spoke. Sometimes, as I was telling a friend yesterday evening, an airplane

Iway, he was explaining one day the meaning of a Chinese character-Yu, I believe it would pass overwas-spending the head. The lecture whole time explainwas at Columing it and yet bia Uniits meaning as versityand close as he could the campus is get to it in directly in English was "unline with the deexplainable." parture from La Finally he Guardia of laughed and then said, planes bound for the "Isn't it strange west. When the weathat having come ther was good, the all the way from windows were oJapan I spend pen: a plane passing above drowned my time explaining to you that out Dr. Daiwhich is not to setz Teitaro be explained?" ~That Suzuki. Nevwas not the storertheless, he y I was gonever raised his ing to tell when voice, never paused, I first thought I and never inwould tell one, but formed his listenit reminds me ers of what they of another. missed of the lecture, and no one ever asked him what he had said while the airplanes passed above. Any-

Years ago when I was studying with Arnold Schoenberg someone asked him to explain his technique of twelve-tone composition. His reply was immediate: "That is none of your business." ~Now I remember the story I was going to tell when I first got the idea to tell one. I hope I can tell it well. Several men, three as a matter of fact, were out walking one day, and as they were walking along and talking one of them noticed another man standing on a hill ahead of them. He turned to his friends and said, "Why do you think that man is standing up there on

that hill?" One said, "He must be up there because it's cooler there and he's enjoying the breeze." He turned to another and repeated his question, "Why do you think that man's standing up there on that hill?" The second said, "Since the hill is elevated above the rest oftheland,he must be up there in order to see something in the distance." And the third said, "He must have lost his friend and that is why he is standing there alone on that hill." After some time walking along, the men came up the hill and the one who had been standing there was still there: standing there.

They asked him to say which one was right concerning his reason for standing where he was standing. ~"What reasons do you have for my standing here?" he asked. "We have three," they answered. "First, you are standing up here because it's cooler here and you are enjoying the breeze. Second, since the hill is elevated above the rest of the land, you are up here in order to see something in the distance. Third, you have lost your friend and that is why you are standing here alone on this hill. We have walked this way; we never meant to climb this hill; now we want an


answer: Which one of us is right?" ~The man answered, "I just stand." ~hen I was studying with Schoenberg one day as he was writing some. counterpoint to show the way to do it, he used an eraser. And then while he was doing this

he said, "This end of the pencil is just as important as the other end." I have several times in the course of this lecture mentioned ink. Composing, if it is writing notes, is then actu34/SILENCE

ally writing, and the less one thinks it's thinking the more it becomes what it is: writing. Could music be composed (I do not mean improvised) not writing it in pencil or ink?

The answer is no doubt Yes and the changes in writing are prophetic. The Sonatas and I nterludes were composed by playing the piano, listening to differences, making a choice, roughly writing it in pencil; later this sketch

was copied, but again in penciL Finally an ink manuscript was made carefully. The Music of Changes was composed in almost the same way. With one change: the original pencil sketch was made exactly, an eraser used whenever necessary, eliminating the need for a neat pencil copy. In the case of the Imaginary Landscape Number IV, the first step of playing the instrument was eliminated. The others kept. Music for Piano was written directly in ink.

The excessively small type in the following pages is an attempt to emphasize the intentionally pontifical character of this lecture.

II. Indeterminacy This is a lecture on composition which is indetenninate with respect to its perfonnance. The Klavierstiick XI by Karlheinz Stockhausen is an example. The Art of the Fugue by Johann Sebastian Bach is an example. In The Art of the Fugue, structure, which is the division of the whole into parts; method, which is the note-to-note procedure; and fonn, which is the expressive content, the morphology of the continuity, are all detennined. Frequency and duration characteristics of the material are also detennined. Timbre and amplitude characteristics of the material, by not being given, are indetenninate. This indetenninacy brings about the possibility of a unique overtone structure and decibel range for each perfonnance of The Art of the Fugue. In the case of the Klavierstiick XI, all the characteristics of the material are detennined, and so too is the note-to-note procedure, the method. The division of the whole into parts, the structure, is detenninate. The sequence of these parts, however, is indetenninate, bringing about the possibility of a unique fonn, which is to say a unique morphology of the continuity, a unique expressive content, for each perfonnance. The function of the perfonner, in the case of The Art of the Fugue, is comparable to that of someone filling in color where outlines are given. He may do this in an organized way which may be subjected successfully to analysis. (Transcriptions by Arnold Schoenberg and Anton Webem give examples pertinent to this century.) Or he may perfonn his function of colorist in a way which is not consciously organized (and therefore not subject to analysis}-either arbitrarily, feeling his way, following the dictates of his ego; or more or less unknowingly, by going inwards with reference to the structure of his mind to a point in dreams, following, as in automatic writing, the dictates of his subconscious mind; or to a point in the collective unconscious of Jungian psychoanalysis, following the inclinations of the species and doing something of more or less universal interest to human beings; or to the "deep sleep" of Indian mental practice-the Ground of Meister Eckhart-identifying there with no matter what eventuality. Or he may perfonn his function of colorist arbitrarily, by going outwards with reference to the structure of his mind to the point of sense perception, following his taste; or more or less unknowingly by employing some operation exterior to his mind: tables of random numbers, following the scientific interest in probability; or chance operations, identifying there with no matter what eventuality. The function of the perfonner in the case of the Klavierstiick XI is not that of a colorist but that of giving fonn, providing, that is to say, the morphology of the continuity, the expressive content. This may not be done in an organized way: for fonn unvitalized by spontaneity brings about the death of all the other elements of the work. Examples are provided by academic studies which copy models with respect to all their compositional elements! structure, method, material, and fonn. On the other hand, no matter how rigorously controlled or conventional the structure, method, and materials of a composition are, that composition will come to life if the fonn is not controlled but free and original. One may cite as examples the sounets of Shakespeare and the haikus of Basho. How then in the case of the Klavierstuck XI may the perfonner fulfill his function of giving fonn to the music? He must perfonn his function of giving fonn to the music in a way which is not consciously organized (and therefore not subject to analysis), either arbitrarily, feeling his way, follOWing the dictates of his ego, or more or less unknowingly, by going inwards with reference to the structure of his mind to a point in dreams, following, as in automatic writing, the dictates of his subconscious mind; or to a point in the collective unconscious of Jungian psychoanalysis, follOWing the inclinations of the species and doing something of more or less universal interest to human beings; or to the "deep sleep" of Indian mental practice-the Ground of Meister Eckhart-identifying there with no matter what eventuality. Or he may perfonn his function of giving fonn to the music arbitrarily, by going


outwards with reference to the structure of his mind to the point of sense perception, following his taste; or more or less unknowingly by employing some operation exterior to his mind: tables of random numbers, following the scientific interest in probability; or chance operations, identifying there with no matter what eventuality. However, due to the presence in the Klavierstiick XI of the two most essentially conventional aspects of European music-that is to say, the twelve tones of the octave (the frequency characteristic of the material) and regularity of beat (affecting the element of method in the composing means), the performer-in those instances where his procedure follows any dictates at all (his feelings, his automatism, his sense of universality, his taste)will be led to give the form aspects essentially conventional to European music. These instances will predominate over those which are unknowing where the performer wishes to act in a way consistent with the composition as written. The form aspects essentially conventional to European music are, for instance, the presentation of a whole as an object in time having a beginning, a middle, and an ending, progressive rather than static in character, which is to say possessed of a climax or climaxes and in contrast a point or points of rest. The indeterminate aspects of the composition of the Klavierstiick XI do not remove the work in its performance from the body of European musical conventions. And yet the purpose of indeterminacy would seem to be to bring about an unforseen situation. In the case of Klavierstiick XI, the use of indeterminacy is in this sense unnecessary since it is ineffective. The work might as well have been written in all of its aspects determinately. It would lose, in this case, its single unconventional aspect: that of being printed on an unusually large sheet of paper which, together with an attachment that may be snapped on at several points enabling one to stretch it out flat and place it on the music rack of a piano, is put in a cardboard tube suitable for safekeeping or distribution through the mails. This is a lecture on composition which is indeterminate with respect to its performance. The Intersection 3 by Morton Feldman is an example. The Music of Changes is not an example. In the Music of Changes, structure, which is the division of the whole into parts; method, which is the note-to-note procedure; form, which is the expressive content, the morphology of the continuity; and materials, the sounds and silences of the composition, are all determined. Though no two performances of the Music of Changes will be identical (each act is virgin, even the repeated one, to refer to Rene Char's thought), two performances will resemble one another closely. Though chance operations brought about the determinations of the composition, these operations are not available in its performance. The function of the performer in the case of the Music of Changes is that of a contractor who, following an architect's blueprint, constructs a building. That the Music of Changes was composed by means of chance operations identifies the composer with no matter what eventuality. But that its notation is in all respects determinate does not permit the performer any such identification: his work is specifically laid out before him. He is therefore not able to perform from his own center but must identify himself insofar as possible with the center of the work as written. The Music of Changes is an object more inhuman than human, since chance operations brought it into being. The fact that these things that constitute it, though only sounds, have come together to control a human being, the performer, gives the work the alarming aspect of a Frankenstein monster. This situation is of course characteristic of Western music, the masterpieces of which are its most frightening examples, which when concerned with humane communication only move over from Frankenstein monster to Dictator. In the case of the Intersection 3 by Morton Feldman, structure may be viewed as determinate or as indeterminate; method is definitely indeterminate. Frequency and duration characteristics of the material are determinate only within broad limits (they are with respect to narrow limits indeterminate); the timbre characteristic of the material, being given by the instrument designated, the piano, is determinate; the amplitude characteristic of the material is indeterminate. Form conceived in terms of a continuity of various weights-that is, a continuity of numbers of sounds, the sounds themselves particularized only with respect to broad range limits (high, middle, and low) -is determinate, particularly so due to the composer's having specified boxes as time units. Though one might equally describe it as indeterminate for other reasons. The term "boxes" arises from the composer's use of graph paper for the notation of his composition. The function of the box is comparable to that of a green light in metropolitan thoroughfare control. The performer is free to play the given number of sounds in the range indicated at any time during the duration of the box, just as when driving an automobile one may cross an intersection at any time during the green light. With the exception of method, which is wholly indeterminate, the compositional means are characterized by being in certain respects determinate. in others indeterminate, and an interpenetration of these opposites obtains which is more characteristic than either. The situation is therefore essentially non-dualistic; a multiplicity of centers in a state of non-obstruction and interpenetration. The function of the performer in the case of the Intersection 3 is that of a photographer who on obtaining a camera uses it to take a picture. The composition permits an infinite number of these, and, not being mechanically constructed, it will not wear out. It can only suffer disuse or loss. How is the performer to perform the Intersection 3? He may do this in an organized way which may be subjected successfully to analysis. Or he may perform his function of photographer in a way which is not consciously organized (and therefore not subject to analysis)either arbitrarily, feeling his way, following the dictates of his ego; or more or less unknowingly, by going inwards with reference to the structure of his mind to a point in dreams, following, as in automatic writing, the dictates of his subconscious mind; or to a point in the collective unconsciousness of Jungian pyschoanalysis, following the inclinations of the species and doing something of more or less universal interest to human beings; or to the "deep 36/SILENCE

sleep" of Indian mental practice-the Ground of Meister Eckhart-identifying there with no matter what eventuality. Or he may perform his function of photographer arbitrarily, by going outwards with reference to the structure of his mind to the point of sense perception, following his taste; or more or less unknowingly by employing some operation exterior to his mind: tables of random numbers, following the scientific interest in probability; or chance operations, identifying there with no matter what eventuality. One evening Morton Feldman said that when he composed he was dead; this recalls to me the statement of my father, an inventor, who says he does his best work when he is sound asleep. The two suggest the "deep sleep" of Indian mental practice. The ego no longer blocks action. A fluency obtains which is characteristic of nature. The seasons make the round of spring, summer, fall, and winter, interpreted in Indian thought as creation, preservation, destruction, and quiescence. Deep sleep is comparable to quiescence. Each spring brings no matter what eventuality. The performer then will act in any way. Whether he does so in an organized way or in anyone of the not consciously organized ways cannot be answered until his action is a reality. The nature of the composition and the knowledge of the composer's own view of his action sugge8t, indeed, that the performer act sometimes consciously, sometimes not consciously and from the Ground of Meister Eckhart, identifying there with no matter what eventuality. This is a lecture on composition which is indeterminate with respect to its performance. Indices by Earle Brown is not an example. Where the performance involves a number of players, as it does in the case of Indices, the introduction of a score-that is, a fixed relation of the parts-removes the quality of indeterminacy from the performance. Though tables of random numbers (used in a way which introduces bias) brought about the determinations of the composition (structure, method, materials, and form are in the case of Indices all thus determined), those tables are not available in its performance. The function of the conductor is that of a contractor, who, following an architect's blueprint, constructs a building. The function of the instrumentalists is that of workmen who simply do as they are bid. That the Indices by Earle Brown was composed by means of tables of random numbers (used in a way which introduces bias) identifies the composer with no matter what eventuality, since by the introduction of bias he has removed himself from an association with the scientific interest in probability. But that the notation of the parts is in all respects determinate, and that, moreover, a score provides a fixed relation of these parts, does not permit the conductor or the players any such identification. Their work is laid out before them. The conductor is not able to conduct from his own center but must identify himself insofar as possible with the center of the work as written. The instrumentalists are not able to perform from their several centers but are employed to identify themselves insofar as possible with the directives given by the conductor. They identify with the work itself, if at all, by one remove. From that point of view from which each thing and each being is seen as moving out from its own center, this situation of the subservience of several to the directives of one who is himself controlled, not by another but by the work of another, is intolerable. (In this connection it may be remarked that certain Indian traditional practices prohibit ensemble, limiting performance to the solo circumstance. This solo, in traditional Indian practice, is not a performance of something written by another but an improvisation by the performer himself within certain limitations of structure, method, and material. Though he himself by the morphology of the continuity brings the form into being, the expressive content does not reside in this compositional element alone, but by the conventions of Indian tradition resides also in all the other compositional elements.) The intolerable situation described is, of course, not a peculiarity of Indices, but a characteristic of Western music, the masterpieces of which are its most imposing examples, which, when they are concerned not with tables of random numbers (used in a way which introduces bias) but rather with ideas of order, personal feelings, and the integration of these, simply suggest the presence of a man rather than the presence of sounds. The sounds of Indices are just sounds. Had bias not been introduced in the use of the tables of random numbers, the sounds would have been not just sounds but elements acting according to scientific theories of probability, elements acting in relationship due to the equal distribution of each one of those present-elements, that is to say, under the control of man. This is a lecture on composition which is indeterminate with respect to its performance. The 4 Systems by Earle Brown is an example. This piece may be performed by one or several players. There is IilO score, either for the solo circumstance or for that of ensemble. The quality of indeterminacy is for this reason not removed from the performance even where a number of players are involved, since no fixed relation of the parts exists. The original notation is a drawing of rectangles of various lengths and widths in ink on a single cardboard having four equal divisions (which are the systems). The vertical position of the rectangles refers to relative time. The width of the rectangles may be interpreted either as an interval where the drawing is read as two-dimensional, or as amplitude where the drawing is read as giving the illusion of a third dimension. Any of the interpretations of this material may be superimposed in any number and order and, with the addition or not of silences between them, may be used to produce a continuity of any time-length. In order to multiply the possible interpretations the composer gives a further permission-to read the cardboard in any of four positions: right side up, upside down, sideways, up and down. This further permission alters the situation radically. Without it, the composition was highly indeterminate


of its performance. The drawing was not consciously organized. Drawn unknowingly, from the Ground of Meister Eckhart, it identified the composer with no matter what eventuality. But with the. further permission-that ?f reading the cardboard right side up, upside down, sideways, up and down-the drawmg became 0at of ~o different situations or groups of situations and their inversions. Inversions are a hallmark of the conscIous mmd. The composer's identification (though not consciously so according to him) is therefore no longer with no matter what eventuality but rather with those events that are related by inversion. What might have been non-dualistic becomes dualistic. From a non-dualistic point of view, each thing and each being is seen at the center, and these centers are in a state of interpenetration and non-obstruction. From a dualistic point of view, on the other hand, each thing and each being is not seen: relationships are seen and interferences are seen. To avoid undesired interferences and to make one's intentions clear, a dualistic point of view requires a careful integration of the opposites. If this careful integration is lacking in the composition, and in the case of 4 Systems it is (due to the high degree of indeterminacy), it must be supplied in the performance. The function of the performer or of each performer in the case of 4 Systems is that of making something out of a store of raw materials. Structure, the division of the whole into parts, Is indeterminate. Form, the morphology of the continuity, is also indeterminate. In given interpretations of the original drawing (such as those made by David Tudor sufficient in num~er to provide a performance by four pianists lasting four minutes) method is determinate and so too are the amplitude, timbre, and frequency characteristics of the material. The duration characteristic of the material is both determinate and indeterminate, since lines extending from note-heads indicate exact length of time, but the total length of time of a system is indeterminate. The performer's function, in the case of 4 Systems, is dual: to give both structure and form; to provide, that is, the division of the whole into parts and the morphology of the continuity. Conscious only of his having made a composition indeterminate of its performance, the composer does not himself acknowledge the necessity of this dual function of the performer which I am describing. He does not agree with the view here expressed that the permission given to interpret the drawing right side up, upside down, and sideways, up and down obliges the integration of the opposites: conscious organization and its absence. The structural responsibility must be fulfilled in an organized way, such as might be subjected successfully to analysis. (The performers in each performance have, as a matter of record, given to each system lengths of time which are related as modules are in architecture: fifteen seconds and multiples thereof by two or four.) The formal responsibility must be fulfilled in one or several of the many ways which are not consciously organized. However, due to the identification with the conscious mind indicated in 4 Systems by the presence of inversions, though not acknowledged by the composer, those ways which are not consciously organized that are adjacent to the ego are apt to be used, particularly where the performer wishes to act in a way consistent with the composition as here viewed. He will in these cases perform arbitrarily, feeling his way, following the dictates of his ego; or he will perform arbitrarily, following his taste, in terms of sense perception. What might have given rise, by reason of the high degree of indeterminacy, to no matter what eventuality (to a process essentially purposeless) becomes productive of a time-object. This object, exceedingly complex due to the absence of a score, a fixed relation of the parts, is analagous to a futurist or cubist painting, perhaps, or to a moving picture where flicker makes seeing the object difficult. From the account which appears to b~ a history of a shift from non-dualism to dualism (not by intention, since the composer does not attach to the inversions the importance here given them, but as a by-product of the action taken to multiply possibilities) the following deduction may be made: To ensure indeterminacy with respect to its performance, a composition must be determinate of itself. If this indeterminacy is to have a non-dualistic nature, each element of the notation must have a single interpretation rather than a plurality of interpretations which, coming from a single source, fall into relation. Likewise-though this is not relevant to 4 Systems-one may deduce that a single operation within the act of composition itself must not give rise to more than a single notation. Where a single operation is applied to more than one notation, for example to those of both frequency and amplitude characteristics, the frequency and amplitude characteristics are by that operation common to both brought into relationship. These relationships make an object; and this object, in contrast to a process which is purposeless, must be viewed dualistically. Indeterminacy when present in the making of an object, and when therefore viewed dualistically, is a sign not of identification with no matter what eventuality but simply of carelessness with regard to the outcome. This is a lecture on composition which is indeterminate with respect to its performance. Duo II for Pianists by Christian Wolff is an example. In the case of Duo II for Pianists, structure, the division of the whole into parts, is indeterminate. (No provision is given by the composer for ending the performance.) Method, the note-to-note procedure, is also indeterminate. All the characteristics of the materials (frequency, amplitude, timbre, duration) are indeterminate within gamut limitations provided by the composer. The form, the morphology of the continuity, is unpredictable. One of the pianists begins the performance: the other, noticing a particular sound or silence which is one of a gamut of cues, responds with an action of his own determination from among given possibilities within a given time bracket. Following this beginning, each panist responds to cues provided by the other, letting no silence fall between responses, though these responses themselves include silences. Certain time brackets are in zero time. There is no score, no fixed relation of the parts. Duo II for Pianists is evidently not a time-object, but rather a process the beginning and ending of which are irrelevant to its nature. The ending, and 38/SILENCE

the beginning, will be determined in performance, not by exigencies interior to the action but by circumstances of the concert occasion. If the other pieces on the program take forty-five minutes of time and fifteen minutes more are required to bring the program to a proper length, Duo II for Pianists may be fifteen minutes long. Where only five minutes are available, it will be five minutes long. The function of ~ach performer in the case of Duo II for Pianists is comparable to that of a traveler who must constantly be catching trains the departures of which have not been announced but which are in the process of being announced. He must be continually ready to go, alert to the situation, and responsible. If he notices no cue, that fact itself is a cue calling for responses indeterminate within gamut limitations and time brackets. Thus he notices (or notices that he does not notice) a cue, adds time bracket to time bracket, determines his response to corne (meanwhile also giving a response), and, as the second hand of a chronometer approaches the end of one bracket and the beginning of the next, he prepares himself for the action to corne (meanwhile still making an action), and, precisely as the second hand of a chronometer begins the next time bracket, he makes the suitable action (meanwhile noticing or noticing that he does not notice the next cue), and so on. How is each performer to fulfill this function of being alert in an indeterminate situation? Does he need to proceed cautiously in dualistic terms? On the contrary, he needs his mind in one piece. His mind is too busy to spend time splitting itself into conscious and not-conscious parts. These parts, however, are still present. What has happened is simply a complete change of direction. Rather than making the not-conscious parts face the conscious part of the mind, the conscious part, by reason of the urgency and indeterminacy of the situation, turns towards the not-conscious parts. He is therefore able, as before, to add two to two to get four, or to act in organized ways which on being subjected to analysis successfully are found to be more complex. But rather than concentrating his attention here, in the realm of relationships, variations, approximations, repetitions, logarithms, his attention is given inwardly and outwardly with reference to the structure of his mind to no matter what eventuality. Turning away from himself and his ego-sense of separation from other beings and things, he faces the Ground of Meister Eckhart, from which all impermanencies flow and to which they return. "Thoughts arise not to be collected and cherished but to be dropped as though they were void. Thoughts arise not to be collected and cherished but to be dropped as though they were rotten wood. Thoughts arise not to be collected and cherished but to be dropped as though they were pieces of stone. Thoughts arise not to be collected and cherished but to be dropped as though they were the cold ashes of a fire long dead." Similarly, in the performance of Duo II for Pianists, each performer, when he performs in a way consistent with the composition as written, will let go of his feelings, his taste, his automatism, his sense of the universal, not attaching himself to this or to that, leaving by his performance no traces, providing by his actions no interruption to the fluency of nature. The performer therefore simply does what is to be done, not splitting his mind in two, not separating it from his body, which is kept ready for direct and instantaneoqs contact with his instrument. This is a lecture on composition which is indeterminate with respect to its performance. That composition is necessarily experimental. An experimental action is one the outcome of which is not forseen. Being unforseen, this action is not concerned with its excuse. Like the land, like the air, it needs none. A performance of a composition which is indeterminate of its performance is necessarily unique. It cannot be repeated. When performed for a second time, the outcome is other than it was. Nothing therefore is accomplished by such a performance, since that performance cannot be grasped as an object in time. A recording of such a work has no more value than a postcard; it provides a knowledge of something that happened, whereas the action was a non-knowledge of something that had not yet happened. There are certain practical matters to discuss that concern the performance of music the composition of which is indeterminate with respect to its performance. These matters concern the physical space of the performance. These matters also concern the physical time of the performance. In connection with the physical space of the performance, where that performance involves several players (two or more), it is advisable for several reasons to separate the performers one from the other, as much as is convenient and in accord with the action and the architectural situation. This separation allows the sounds to issue from their own centers and to interpenetrate in a way which is not obstructed by the conventions of European harmony and theory about relationships and interferences of sounds. In the case of the harmonious ensembles of European musical history, a fusion of sound was of the essence, and therefore players in an ensemble were brought as close together as possible, so that their actions, productive of an object in time, might be effective. In the case, however, of the performance of music the composition of which is indeterminate of its performance so that the action of the players is productive of a process, no harmonious fusion of sound is essential. A non-obstruction of sounds is of the essence. The separation of players in space when there is an ensemble is useful towards bringing about this non-obstruction and interpenetration, which are of the essence. Furthermore, this separation in space will facilitate the independent action of each performer, who, not constrained by the performance of a part which has been extracted from a score, has turned his mind in the direction of no matter what eventuality. There is the possibility when people are crowded together that they will act like sheep rather than nobly. That is why separation in space is spoken of as facilitating independent action on the part of each performer. Sounds will then arise from actions, which will then arise from their own centers rather than as motor or psychological effects of other actions and sounds in the environment. The musical recognition of the necessity of space is tardy with respect to the recognition of space on the part of


the other arts, not to mention scientific awareness. It is indeed astonishing that music as an art has kept performing musicians so consistently huddled together in a group. It is high time to separate the players one from another, in order to show a musical recognition of the necessity of space, which has already been recognized on the part of the other arts, not to mention scientific awareness. What is indicated, too, is a disposition of the rerformers, in the case of an ensemble in space, other than the conventional one of a huddled group at one end 0 a recital or symphonic hall. Certainly the performers in the case of an ensemble in space will be disposed about the room. The conventional architecture is often not suitable. What is required perhaps is an architecture like that of Mies van der Rohe's School of Architecture at the Illinois Institute of Technology. Some such architecture will be useful for the performance of composition which is indeterminate of its performance. Nor will the performers be huddled together in a group in the center of the audience. They must at least be disposed separately around the audience, if not, by approaching their disposition in the most radically realistic sense, actually disposed within the audience itself. In this latter case, the further separation of performer and audience will facilitate the independent action of each person, which will include mobility on the part of all. There are certain practical matters to discuss that concern the performance of music the composition of which is indeterminate with respect to its performance. These matters concern the physical space of the performance. These matters also concern the physical time of the performance. In connection with the physical time of the performance, where that performance involves several players (two or more), it is advisable for several reasons to give the conductor another function than that of beating time. The situation of sounds arising from actions which arise from their own centers will not be produced when a conductor beats time in order to unify the performance. Nor will the situation of sounds arising from actions which arise from their own centers be produced when several conductors beat different times in order to bring about a complex unity to the performance. Beating time is not necessary. All that is necessary is a slight suggestion of time, obtained either from glancing at a watch or at a conductor who, by his actions, represents a watch. Where an actual watch is used, it becomes possible to foresee the time, by reason of the steady progress from second to second of the second hand. Where, however, a conductor is present, who by his actions represents a watch which moves not mechanically but variably, it is not possible to foresee the time, by reason of the changing progress from second to second of the conductor's indications. Where this conductor, who by his actions represents a watch, does so in relation to a part rather than a score-to, in fact, his own part, not that of another-rus actions will interpenetrate with those of the players of the ensemble in a way which will not obstruct their actions. The musical recognition of the necessity of time is tardy with respect to the reco!:nition of time on the part of broadcast communications, radio, television, not to mention magnetic tape, not to mention travel by air, departures and arrivals from no matter what point at no matter what time, to no matter what point at no matter what time, not to mention telephony. It is indeed astonishing that music as an art has kept performing musicians so consistently beating time together like so many horseback riders huddled together on one horse. It is high time to let sounds issue in time independent of a beat in order to show a musical recognition of the necessity of time which has already been recognized on the part of broadcast communications, radio, television, not to mention magnetic tape, not to mention travel by air, departures and arrivals from no matter what point at no matter what time, to no matter what point at no matter what time, not to mention telephony.

An Indian lady invited me to dinner and said Dr. Suzuki would be there. He was. Before dinner I mentioned Gertrude Stein. Suzuki had never heard of her. I described aspects of her work, which he said sounded very interesting. Stimulated, I mentioned James Joyce, whose name was also new to him. At dinner he was unable to eat the curries that were offered, so a few uncooked vegetables and fruits were brought, which he enjoyed. After dinner the talk turned to metaphysical problems, and there were many questions, for the hostess was a follower of a certain Indian yogi and her guests were more or less equally divided between allegiance to Indian thought and to Japanese thought. About eleven o'clock we were out on the street walking along, and an American lady said, "How is it, Dr. Suzuki? We spend the evening asking you questions and nothing is decided." Dr. Suzuki smiled and said, "That's why I love philosophy: no one wins." 40/SILENCE

The following text is made up of questions and quotations. The quotations are some from the writings of others and some from my own writings. (That from Christian Wolff is from his article "New and Electronic Music," copyright 1958 by the Audience Press, and reprinted by permission from Audience, Volume V, Number 3, Summer 1958.) The order and quantity of the quotations were given by chance operations. No performance timing was composed. Nevertheless, I always prescribe one before delivering this lecture, sometimes adding by chance operations indications of when, in the course of the performance, I am obliged to light a cigarette.


What if I ask thirty-two questions? What if I stop asking now and then? Will that make things clear? Is communication something made clear? What is communication? Music, what does it communicate? Is what's clear to me clear to you? Is music just sounds? Then what does it communicate? Is a truck passing by music? If I can see it, do I have to hear it too? If I don't hear it, does it still communicate? If while I see it I can't hear it, but hear something else, sayan egg-beater, because I'm inside looking out, does the truck communicate or the egg-beater, which communicates? Which is more musical, a truck passing by a factory or a truck passing by a music school? Are the people inside the school musical and the ones outside unmusical? What if the ones inside can't hear very well, would that change my question? Do you know what I mean when I say inside the school? Are sounds just sounds or are they Beethoven? People aren't sounds, are they? COMPOSITION AS PROCESS/41

Is there such a thing as silence? Even if I get away from people, do I still have to listen to something? Say I'm off in the woods, do I have to listen to a stream babbling? Is there always something to hear, never any peace and quiet? If my head is full of harmony, melody, and rhythm, what happens to me when the telephone rings, to my piece and quiet, I mean? And if it was European harmony, melody, and rhythm in my head, what has happened to the history of, say, Javanese music, with respect, that is to say, to my head? Are we getting anywhere asking questions? Where are we going? Is this the twenty-eighth question? Are there any important questions? "How do you need to cautiously proceed in dualistic terms?" Do I have two more questions? And, now, do I have none? Now that I've asked thirty-two questions, can I ask forty-four more? I can, but may I? Why must I go on asking questions? Is there any reason in asking why? Would I ask why if questions were not words but were sounds? If words are sounds, are they musical or are they just noises? If sounds are noises but not words, are they meaningful? Are they musical? Say there are two sounds and two people and one of each is beautiful, is there between all four any communication? And if there are rules, who made them, I ask you? Does it begin somewhere, I mean, and if so, where does it stop? What will happen to me or to you if we have to be somewhere where beauty isn't? I ask you, sometime, too, sounds happening in time, what will happen to our experience of hearing, yours, mine, our ears, hearing, what will happen if sounds being beautiful stop sometime and the only sounds to hear are not beautiful to hear but are ugly, what will happen to us? Would we ever be able to get so that we thought the ugly sounds were beautiful? If we drop beauty, what have we got? Have we got truth? 42/SILENCE

Have we got religion? Do we have a mythology? Would we know what to do with one if we had one? Have we got a way to make money? And if money is made, will it be spent on music? If Russia spends sixty million for the Brussels Fair, lots of it for music and dance, and America spends one-tenth of that, six million about, does that mean that one out of ten Americans is as musical and kinesthetic as all the Russians put together? If we drop money, what have we got? Since we haven't yet dropped truth, where shall we go looking for it? Didn't we say we weren't going, or did we just ask where we were going? If we didn't say we weren't going, why didn't we? If we had any sense in our heads, wouldn't we know the truth instead of going around looking for it? How otherwise would we, as they say, be able to drink a glass of water? We know, don't we, everybody else's religion, mythology, and philosophy and metaphysics backwards and forwards, so what need would we have for one of our own if we had one, but we don't, do we? But music, do we have any music? Wouldn't it be better to just drop music too? Then what would we have? Jazz? What's left? Do you mean to say it's a purposeless play? Is that what it is when you get up and hear the nrst sound of each day? Is it possible that I could go on monotonously asking questions forever? Would I have to know how many questions I was going to ask? Would I have to know how to count in order to ask questions? Do I have to know when to stop? Is this the one chance we have to be alive and ask a question? How long will we be able to be alive? CONTEMPORARY MUSIC








Something remarkable has happened: 1 was asking questions; now I'm quoting from a lecture 1 gave years ago. Of course 1 will ask some more questions later on, but not now: 1 have quoting to do. THAT MOMENT IS ALWAYS CHANGING. SPEAKING. )








































Book of Changes:







































This is the second Tuesday in Sepember of 1958 and I still have quite a lot to say: I'm nowhere near the end. I have four questions I must ask.

If, as we have, we have dropped music, does that mean we have nothing to listen to? Don't you agree with Kafka when he wrote, "Psychology-never again?"

If you had to put on ten fingers the music you would take with you if you were going to the North Pole, what would you put? Is it true there are no questions that are really important?


What did I say? Where is the "should" when they say you should have something to say? Three. Actually when you drop something, it's still with you, wouldn't you say? Four. Where would you drop something to get it completely away? Five. Why do you not do as I do, letting go of each thought as though it were void? Six. Why do you not do as I do, letting go of each thought as though it were rotten wood? Why do you not do as I do, letting go of each thought as though it were a piece of stone? Why do you not do as I do, letting go of each thought as though it were the cold ashes of a fire long dead, or else just making the slight response suitable to the occasion? COMPOSITION AS PROCESS/47

Nine. Do you really think that the discovery that a measurable entity exists, namely, the energy which can measure mechanical, electrical, thermal, or any other kind of physical activity, and can measure potential as well as actual activity, greatly simplifies thinking about physical phenomena? Do you agree with Boulez when he says what he says? Are you getting hungry? Twelve. Why should you (you know more or less what you're going to get)? Will Boulez be there or did he go away when I wasn't looking? Why do you suppose the number 12 was given up but the idea of the series wasn't? Or was it? And if not, why not? In the meantime, would you like to hear the very first performance of Christian Wolff's For Piano with Preparations? What in heaven's name are they going to serve us for dinner, and what happens afterwards? More music? Living or dead, that's the big question. When you get sleepy, do you go to sleep? Or do you lie awake? Why do I have to go on asking questions? Is it the same reason I have to go on writing music? But it's clear, isn't it, I'm not writing music right now? Why do they call me a composer, then, if all I do is ask questions? If one of us says that all twelve tones should be in a row and another says they shouldn't, which one of us is right? What if a B flat, as they say, just comes to me? How can I get it to come to me of itself, not just pop up out of my memory, taste, and psychology? How? Do you know how? And if I did or somebody else did find a way to let a sound be itself, would everybody within earshot be able to listen to it? Why is it so difficult for so many people to listen? Why do they start talking when there is something to hear? Do they have their ears not on the sides of their heads but situated inside their mouths 48/SILENCE

so that when they hear something their first impulse is to start talking? The situation should be made more normal, don't you think? Why don't they keep their mouths shut and their ears open? Are they stupid? And, if so, why don't they try to hide their stupidity? Were bad manners acquired when knowledge of music was acquired? Does being musical make one automatically stupid and unable to listen? Then don't you think one should put a stop to studying music? Where are your thinking caps? WE'RE PASSING THROUGH TIME AND SPACE. OUR EARS ARE IN EXCELLENT CONDITION.


Is it high? Is it low? Is it in the middle? Is it soft? Is it loud? Are there two? Are there more than two? Is it a piano? Why isn't it? Was it an airplane? Is it a noise? Is it music? Is it softer than before? Is it supersonic? When will it stop? What's coming? Is it time? Is it very short? Very long? Just medium? If I had something to see, would it be theatre? COMPOSITION AS PROCESS/49

Is sound enough? What more do I need? Don't I get it whether I need it or not? Is it a sound? Then, again, is it music? Is music-the word, I mean-is that a sound? If it is, is music music? Is the word "music" music? Does it communicate anything? Must it? If it's high, does it? If it's low, does it? If it's in the middle, does it? If it's soft, does it? If it's loud, does it? If it's an interval, does it? What is an interval? Is an interval a chord? Is a chord an aggregate? Is an aggregate a constellation? What's a constellation? How many sounds are there altogether? One million? Ten thousand? Eighty-eight? Do I have to ask ten more? Dol? Why? Why do I? Did I decide to ask so many? Wasn't I taking a risk? Was I? Why was I? Will it never stop? Why won't it? SO/SILENCE



Would it be too much to ask if I asked thirty-three more? Who's asking? Is it I who ask? Don't I know my own mind? Then why do I ask if I don't know? Then it's not too much to ask? Right? Then, tell me, do you prefer Bach to Beethoven? And why? Would you like to hear Quantitaten by Bo Nilsson whether it's performed for the first time or not? Has anyone seen Meister Eckhart lately? Do you think serious music is serious enough? Is a seventh chord inappropriate in modem music? What about fifths and octaves? What if the seventh chord was not a seventh chord? Doesn't it seem silly to go on asking questions when there's so much to do that's really urgent? But we're halfway through, aren't we? Shall we buck up? Are we in agreement that the field of music needs to be enlivened? Do we disagree? On what? Communication? If I have two sounds, are t~ey related? If someone is nearer one of them than he is to the second, is he more related to the first one? What about sounds that are too far away for us to hear them? Sounds are just vibrations, isn't that true? Part of a vast range of vibrations including radio waves, light, cosmic rays, isn't that true? COMPOSITION AS PROCESS/51




It's getting late, isn't it? I still have two things to do, so what I want to know is : Would you like to hear Quantitiiten by Bo Nilsson whether it's performed for the first time or not? COMPOSITION AS PROCESS/53


Exercises de Piano AND STOCKHAUSEN'S Klavierstiick XI.


And now I have to read a story from Kwang-Tse and then I'm finished: Yun Kiang, rambling to the East, having been borne along on a gentle breeze, suddenly encountered Hung Mung, who was rambling about, slapping his buttocks and hopping like a bird. Amazed at the sight, Yun Kiang stood reverentially and said to 54/ SILENCE

the other, "Venerable Sir, who are you? and why are you doing this?" Hung Mung went on slapping his buttocks and hopping like a bird, but replied, "I'm enjoying myself." Yun Kiang said, "I wish to ask you a question." Hung Mung lifted up his head, looked at the stranger, and said, "Pooh!" Yun Kiang, however, continued, "The breath of heaven is out of harmony; the breath of earth is bound up; the six elemental influences do not act in concord; the four seasons do not observe their proper times. N ow I wish to blend together the essential qualities of those six influences in order to nourish all living things. How shall I go about it?" Hung Mung slapped his buttocks, hopped about, and shook his head, saying, "I do not know; I do not know!" Yun Kiang could not pursue his question; but three years afterwards, when again rambling in the East, as he was passing by the wild of Sung, he happened to meet Hung Mung. Delighted with the rencontre, he hastened to him, and said, "Have you forgotten me, 0 Heaven? Have you forgotten me, 0 Heaven?" At the same time, he bowed twice with his head to the ground, wishing to receive his instructions. Hung Mung said, "Wandering listlessly about, I know not what I seek; carried on by a wild impulse, I know not where I am going. I wander about in the strange manner which you have seen, and see that nothing proceeds without method and order-what more should I know?" Yun Kiang replied, "I also seem carried on by an aimless influence, and yet people follow me wherever I go. I cannot help their doing so. But now as they thus imitate me, I wish to hear a word from you." The other said, "What disturbs the regular method of Heaven, comes into collision with the nature of things, prevents the accomplishment of the mysterious operation of Heaven, scatters the herds of animals, makes the birds sing at night, is calamitous to vegetation, and disastrous to all insects; all this is owing, I conceive, to the error of governing men." "What then," said Yun Kiang, "shall I do?" "Ah," said the other, "you will only injure them! I will leave you in my dancing way, and return to my place." Yun Kiang rejoined, "It has been difficult to get this meeting with you, 0 Heaven! I should like to hear from you a word more." Hung Mung said, "Ah! your mind needs to be nourished. Do you only take the position of doing nothing, and things will of themselves become transformed. Neglect your body; cast out from you your power of hearing and sight; forget what you have in common with things; cultivate a grand similarity with the chaos of the plastic ether; unloose your mind; set your spirit free; be stilI as if you had no soul. Of all the multitude of things, everyone returns to its root, and does not know that it is doing so. They all are as in the state of chaos, and during all their existence they do not leave it. If they knew that they were returning to their root, they would be consciously leaving it. They do not ask its name; they do not seek to spy out their nature; and thus it is that things come to life of themselves." COMPOSITION AS PROCESS/55

Yun Kiang said, "Heaven, you have conferred on me the knowledge of your operation and revealed to me the mystery of it. All my life I have been seeking for it, and now I have obtained it." He then bowed twice with his head to the ground, arose, took his leave, and walked away.

One day when I was across the hall visiting Sonya Sekula, I noticed that she was painting left-handed. I said, "Sonya, aren't you right-handed?" She said, "Yes, but I might lose the use of my right hand, and so I'm practicing using my left." I laughed and said, "What if you lose the use of both hands?" She was busy painting and didn't bother to reply. Next day when I visited her, she was sitting on the Hoor, painting with difficulty, for she was holding the brush between two toes of her left foot. Morris Graves introduced Xenia and me to a miniature island in Puget Sound at Deception Pass. To get there we traveled from Seattle about seventy-five miles north and west to Anacortes Island, then south to the Pass, where we parked. We walked along a rocky beach and then across a sandy stretch that was passable only at low tide to another island, continuing through some luxuriant woods up a hill where now and then we had views of the surrounding waters and distant islands, until finally we came to a small footbridge that led to our destination-an island no larger than, say, a modest home. This island was carpeted with Howers and was so situated that all of Deception Pass was visible from it, just as though we were in the best seats of an intimate theatre. While we were lying there on that bed of Howers, some other people came across the footbridge. One of them said to another, "You come all this way and then when you get here there's nothing to see." A composer friend of mine who spent some time in a mental rehabilitation center was encouraged to do a good deal of bridge playing. Mter one game, his partner was criticizing his play of an ace on a trick which had already been won. My friend stood up and said, "If you think I came to the loony bin to learn to play bridge, you're crazy." 56/SILENCE

The two articles which follow are technical. Information regarding other compositional means may be found in the brochure accompanying George Avakian's recording of my twenty-five-year retrospective concert at Town Hall in 1958. The first article was my part of Four Musicians at Work which was published in trans/fonnation, Volume 1, Number 3 (New York City, 1952).


My recent work (Imaginary Landscape No. N for twelve radios and the Music of Changes for piano) is structurally similar to my earlier work: based on a number of measures having a square root, so that the large lengths have the same relation within the whole that the small lengths have within a unit of it. Formerly, however, these lengths were time-lengths, whereas in the recent work the lengths exist only in space, the speed of travel through this space being unpredictable. What brings about this unpredictability is the use of the method established in the I-Ching (Book of Changes) for the obtaining of oracles, that of tossing three coins six times. Three coins tossed once yield four lines: three heads, broken with a circle; two tails and a head, straight; two heads and a tail, broken; three tails, straight with a circle. Three coins tossed thrice yield eight trigrams (written from the base up): chien, three straight; chen, straight, broken, broken; kan, broken, straight, broken; ken, broken, broken, straight; kun, three broken; sun, broken, straight, straight; li, straight, broken, straight; tui, straight, straight, broken. Three coins tossed six times yield sixty-four hexagrams (two trigrams, the second written above the first) read in reference to a chart of the numbers 1 to 64 in a traditional arrangement having eight divisions horizontally corresponding to the eight lower trigrams and eight divisions vertically corresponding to the eight upper trigrams. A hexagram having lines with circles is read twice, first as written, then as changed. Thus, chien-chien, straight lines with circles, is read first as 1, COMPOSITION/57

then as kun-kun, 2; whereas chien-chien, straight lines without circles, is read only as 1. Charts are made of an equal number of elements (sixty-four) which refer to Superpositions (one chart) (how many events are happening at once during a given structural space); Tempi (one chart); Durations (n, the number of possible superpositions, in these works, eight charts); Sounds ( eight charts); Dynamics ( eight charts). Where there are eight charts, four at any instant are mobile and four immobile (mobile means an element passes into history once used, giving place to a new one; immobile means an element, though used, remains to be used again). Which charts are which is determined by the Brst toss at a large unit structural point, an odd number bringing about a change, an even number m~ntaining the previous status. The Tempi and Superpositions charts, however, remain unchanged through the entire work. In the charts for sounds thirty-two of the elements (the even numbers) are silences. The sounds themselves are single, aggregates (d. the accord sometimes obtained on a prepared piano when only one key is depressed), or complex situations (constellations) in time (d. the Chinese characters made with several strokes). Sounds of indeBnite pitch (noises) are free to be used without any restriction. Those of deBnite pitch are taken as being twelve in number. In any chart for sounds (there being thirty-two sounds) two squares (four times four) exist, one above the other. Reading horizontally or vertically, one reads all twelve tones. In the case of the mobility of sounds (disappearance into history) four in succession also produce the twelve tones, with or without noises and repetitions. In the case of "interference" ( the appearance of a sound having characteristics in common with the characteristics of the previously sounded situation) the characteristics that produce the interference are omitted from the newly appearing sound or cut short in the situation that has previously sounded. In the radio piece, numbers on a tuning dial are written instead of sounds, whatever happens being acceptable ( station, static, silence). In the charts for dynamics only sixteen numbers produce changes ( one, Bve, nine, etc.); the others maintain the previous status. These are either dynamic levels or accents (in the piano piece); levels, diminuendi, and crescendi in the radio piece. In the piano piece, combinations of dynamic levels (e.g. fff>p) indicate accents; in the case of a sound complex in time 58/ SILENCE

this may become a diminuendo or (by retrograde interpretation) a crescendo, or derived complex. In the charts for durations there are sixty-four elements (since silence % %) measalso has length). Through use of fractions (e.g. Ya; Ya ured following a standard scale (2% cm. equals a crotchet), these durations are, for the purposes of musical composition, practically infinite in number. The note stem appears in space at a point corresponding to the appearance of the sound in time, that is if one reads at the tempo, or changing tempo indicated. Given fractions of a quarter, half, dotted half and whole note up to Ys, simple addition of fractions is the method employed for the generating of durations. Because addition is the generating means employed, the durations may be said to be "segmented." These segments may be permuted and/or divided by two or three (simple nodes). A sound may then express the duration by beginning at anyone of these several points. A way of relating durations to sounds has been thought of in the course of this work but not in it utilized: to let four durations equal a specified length ( on the chart, horizontally or vertically and in mobility four in succession) -this specified length being subject to change. The chart for Tempi has thirty-two elements, the blanks maintaining the previous tempo. Each one of the events one to eight is worked from the beginning to the end of the composition. For instance, the eighth one is present from beginning to end but may sound only during a structural space that has been defined by a toss (for Superpositions) of fifty-seven to sixty-four. It is then not only present but possibly audible. It becomes actually audible if a sound is tossed (rather than a silence) and if the duration tossed is of a length that does not carry the sound beyond the structural space open to it. It is thus possible to make a musical composition the continuity of which is free of individual taste and memory (psychology) and also of the literature and "traditions" of the art. The sounds enter the time-space centered within themselves, unimpeded by service to any abstraction, their 360 degrees of circumference free for an infinite play of interpenetration. Value judgments are not in the nature of this work as regards either composition, performance, or listening. The idea of relation (the idea: 2) being absent, anything (the idea: 1) may happen. A "mistake" is beside the point, for once anything happens it authentically is.

+ +



article, translated mto German by Christian Wolff, first appeared in

Die Reihe No.3 (Vienna, 1957). The English text was printed in the Universal Edition of Die Reihe No.3, copyright 1959 by Theodore Presser Co., Pennsylvania, by whose permission it is reprinted here.

To Describe the Process of Composition Used in Music for Piano 2 J-52 1. Given ink, pen, and sheets of transparent paper of detennined dimensions, a master page (without notations) is made, having four total systems. "Total" here means having enough space above and below each staff to permit its being either bass or treble. Thus, there being the conventional two staves (one for each hand), each has enough space above it to accommodate nine ledger lines (as equidistant as those of the staves) and below it to accommodate six ledger lines plus (leaving room for the extreme low piano key and string). Between the two there is a narrow space, bisected by a line, allowing for the notation of noises produced by hand or beater upon the interior (above the line) or exterior (below the line) piano construction. Measurements are such that the entire sheet (within margins) is potentially useful. 2. Laying the master page aside, chance operations derived from the I-Ching and channeled within certain limits (1-128 for 21-36; 1-32 for 37-52) (which are established in relation to relative difficulty of perfonnance) are employed to determine the number of sounds per page. 3. A blank sheet of transparent paper is then placed so that its pointal imperfections may readily be observed. That number of imperfections corresponding to the detennined number of sounds is intensified with pencil. 4. Placing the penciled sheet in a registered way upon the master page, first the staves and interline and then the ledger lines where necessary are inscribed in ink. Secondly, conventional whole notes are written in ink wherever a penciled point falls within the area of staves or ledger lines, inked-in notes (crotchets without stems) being written wherever such a point falls within the space between the two staves. This operation is done roughly, since, through the use of conventional lines and spaces, points falling in the latter are in the majority. Thus it is determined that a point, though not on a line, is actually more nearly so than it is at the center of the adjacent space. 5. Eight single coin tosses are made detennining the clefs, bass or treble, and inscribed in ink. 60/ SILENCE

6. The sixty-four possibilities of the I-Ching are divided by chance operations into three groups relative to three categories: normal (played on the keyboard); muted; and plucked (the two latter played on the strings). For example, having tossed numbers 6 and 44, a number 1 through 5 will produce a normal; 6 through 43 a muted; 44 through 64 a plucked piano tone. A certain weight of probability exists in favor of the second and third categories. Though this has not appeared to be of consequence, it indicates a possible change in "technique." The categories having been determined, notations (M and P) are conveniently placed in reference to the notes. A similar procedure is followed to determine whether a tone is natural, sharp, or flat, the procedure being altered, of course, for the two extreme keys where only two possibilities exist. 7. The notation of the composition is thus completed. Much that occurs in performance has not been determined. Therefore, the following note is fixed at the head of the manuscript: "These pieces constitute two groups of sixteen pieces (21-36; 37-52) which may be played alone or together and with or without Music for Piano 4-19. 1 Their length in time is free; there mayor may not be silence between them; they may be overlapped. Given a programed time length, the pianists may make a calculation such that their concert will fill it. Duration of individual tones and dynamics are free." COMMENTARY A performance is characterized by the programed time length calculated beforehand and adhered to through the use of a stop watch. This is primarily of use in relation to an entire page, secondarily of use in relation, to say, a system; for it is possible that, though the space of the page is here equal to time, the performance being realized by a human being rather than a machine, such space may be interpreted as moving, not only constantly, but faster or slower. Thus, finally, nothing has been determined by the notation as far as performance time is concerned. And, as concerns timbre (the noises, the three categories) next to nothing has been determined. This is especially the case where P is interpreted as meaning a plucked muted string or M a muted plucked string. Nor, indeed, have the points on the strings where these latter operations are to be made been indicated. And-and this may be considered a fundamental omission-nothing has been indicated regarding the architecture of the room in which the music is to be played and the placement (customarily distant one from another) of the instruments (how many?) therein. All these elements, evidently of paramount importance, point the question: What has been composed? 1 The composition of these pieces followed a different procedure and, furthermore, did not include interior and exterior construction noises.


This article first appeared in the March 1949 issue of The Tiger's Eye, a journal edited by Ruth and John Stephan from Bleecker Street in New York. It was translated into French by Frederick Goldbeck, who changed the t' to Raison d'etre de la musique modeme. This was published in Contrepc' (Paris) later in the same year.

FORERUNNERS OF MODERN MUSIC The purpose of music Music is edifying, for from time to time it sets the soul in operation. The soul is the gatherer-together of the disparate elements (Meister Eckhart), and its work fills one with peace and love.

Definiti0!'3 Structure in music is its divisibility into successive parts from phrases to long sections. Form is content, the continuity. Method is the means of controlling the continuity from note to note. The material of music is sound and silence. Integrating these is composing.

Strategy Structure is properly mind-controlled. Both delight in precision, clarity, and the observance of rules. VVhereas form wants only freedom to be. It belongs to the heart; and the law it observes, if indeed it submits to any, has never been and never will be written. 1 Method may be planned or improvised (it makes no difference: in one case, the emphasis shifts towards thinking, in the other towards feeling; a piece for radios as instruments would give up the matter of method to accident). Likewise, material may be controlled or not, as one chooses. Normally the choice of sounds is determined by what is pleasing and attractive to the ear: delight in the giving or receiving of pain being an indication of sickness. I Any attempt to exclude the "irrational" is irrational. Any composing strategy which is wholly "rational" is irrational in the extreme.


Refrain Activity involving in a single process the many, turning them, even though some seem to be opposites, towards oneness, contributes to a good way of life.

The plot thickens When asked why, God being good, the1'e was evil in the world, Sri Ramakrishna said: To thicken the plot.

The aspect of composition that can properly be discussed with the end in view of general agreement is structure, for it is devoid of mystery. Analysis is at home here. Schools teach the making of structures by means of classical harmony. Outside school, however (e.g., Satie and Webern), a different and correct 2 structural means reappears: one based on lengths of time. 3 • 4 In the Orient, harmonic structure is traditionally unknown, and unknown with us in our pre-Renaissance culture. Harmonic structure is a recent Occidental phenomenon, for the past century in a process of disintegration. 6

Atonality 6 has happened The diSintegration of harmonic structure is commonly known as atonality. All that is meant is that two necessary elements in harmonic structure-the cadence, and modulating means-have lost their edge. Increasingly, they have become ambiguous, whereas their very existence as structural elements demands clarity·( singleness of reference). Atonality is simply the maintenance of an ambiguous tonal state of affairs. It is the denial of harmony as a structural means. The problem of a composer in a musical world in this state is to supply another structural means,1 'Sound has four characteristics: pitch, timbre, loudness, and duration. The opposite and necessary coexistent of sound is silence. Of the four characteristics of sound, only duration involves both sound and silence. Therefore, a structure based on durations (rhythmic: phrase, time lengths) is correct (corresponds with the nature of the material), whereas harmonic structure is incorrect (derived from pitch, which has no being in silence). 'This never disappeared from jazz and folk music. On the other hand, it never developed in them, for they are not cultivated species, growing best when left wild. • Tala is based on pulsation, Western rhythmic structure on phraseology. • For an interesting, detailed proof of this, see Casella's book on the cadence. • The term "atonality" makes no sense. Schoenberg substitutes "pantonality," Lou Harrison (to my mind and experience the preferable term) "proto-tonality." This last term suggests what is actually the case: present even in a random multiplicity of tones (or, better, sounds [so as to include noises]), is a gravity, original and natural, "proto," to that particular situation. Elementary composition consists in discovering the ground of the sounds employed, and then letting life take place both on land and in the air. • Neither Schoenberg nor Stravinsky did this. The twelve-tone row does not offer a structural means; it is a method, a control, not of the parts, large and small, of a composition, but only of the minute, note-to-note procedure. It usurps the place of counterpoint, which, as Carl Ruggles, Lou Harrison, and Merton Brown have shown, is perfectly capable of functioning in a chromatic situation. Neo-classicism, in reverting to the past, avoids, by refusing to recognize, the contemporary need for another structure, gives a new look to structural harmony. This automatically deprives it of the sense of adventure, essential to creative action. FORERUNNERS OF MODERN MUSIC/63

just as in a bombed-out city the opportunity to build again exists.s This way one finds courage and a sense of necessity.

Interlude (Meister Eckhart) "But one must achieve this unselfconsciousness by means of transformed knowledge. This ignorance does not come from lack of knowledge hut rather it is from knowledge that one may achieve this ignorance. Then we shall be informed by the divine unconsciousness and in that our ignorance will be ennobled and adorned with supernatural knowledge. It is by reason of this fact that we are made perfect by what happens to us rather than by what we do."

At random Music means nothing as a thing. A Bnished work is exactly that, requires resurrection. The responsibility of the artist consists in perfecting his work so that it may become attractively disinteresting. It is better to make a piece of music than to perform one, better to perform one than to listen to one, better to listen to one than to misuse it as a means of distraction, entertainment, or acquisition of "culture." Use any means to keep from being a genius, all means to become one. Is counterpoint good? "The soul itself is so simple that it cannot have more than one idea at a time of anything...â&#x20AC;˘ A person cannot be more than single in attention." (Eckhart) Freed from structural responsibility, harmony becomes a formal element (serves expression). Imitating either oneself or others, care should be taken to imitate structure, not form (also structural materials and structural methods, not formal materials and formal methods), disciplines, not dreams; thus one remains "innocent and free to receive anew with each Now-moment a heavenly gift." (Eckhart) If the mind is disciplined, the heart turns quickly from fear towards love.

Before making a structure by means of rhythm, it is necessary to decide what rhythm is. This could be a difficult decision to make if the concern were formal (expressive) or to do with method (point to point procedure); but since the concern is structural (to do with divisibility of a composition into parts large and small), the decision is easily reached: rhythm in the structural instance is relationships of lengths of time. 9 Such matters, then, as accents on or off the beat, regularly recurring or not, pulsation with or without accent, steady or unsteady, durations motivically conceived (either static or to be varied), are matters for formal â&#x20AC;˘ The twelve-tone row offers bricks but no plan. The neo-classicists advise building it the way it was before, but surfaced fashionably. 'Measure is literally measure-nothing more, for example, than the inch of a ruler-thus permitting the existence of any durations, any amplitude relations (meter, accent), any silences. 64/SILENCE

( expressive) use, or, if thought about, to be considered as material (in its "textural" aspect) or as serving method. In the case of a year, rhythmic structure is a matter of seasons, months, weeks, and days. Other time lengths such as that taken by a fire or the playing of a piece of music occur accidentally or freely without explicit recognition of an all-embracing order, but nevertheless, necessarily within that order. Coincidences of free events with structural time points have a special luminous character, because the paradoxical nature of truth is at such moments made apparent. Caesurae on the other hand are expressive of the independence (accidental or willed) of freedom from law, law from freedom.

Claim Any sounds of any qualities and pitches (known or unknown, definite or indefinite ), any contexts of these, simple or multiple, are natural and conceivable within a rhythmic structure which equally embraces silence. Such a claim is remarkably like the claims to be found in patent specifications for and articles about technological musical means (see early issues of M odern Music and the Journal of the Acoustical Society of America). From differing beginning points, towards possibly different goals, technologists and artists (seemingly by accident) meet by intersection, becoming aware of the otherwise unknowable (conjunction of the in and the out), imagining brightly a common goal in the world and in the quietness within each human being. For instance:

Just as art as sand painting (art for the now-moment 10 rather than for posterity's museum civilization) becomes a held point of view, adventurous workers in the field of synthetic music (e.g. Norman McLaren) find that for practical and economic reasons work with magnetic wires (any music so made can quickly and easily be erased, rubbed off) is preferable to that with film.ll The use of technological means 12 requires the close anonymous collaboration of a number of workers. We are on the point of being in a cultural situation,t3 10 This is the very nature of the dance, of the perfonnance of music, or any other art requiring perfonnance (for this reason, the term "sand painting" is used: there is a tendency in painting (pennanent pigments), as in poetry (printing, binding), to be secure in the thingness of a work, and thus to overlook, and place nearly insurmountable obstacles in the path of, instantaneous ecstasy). 11 Twenty-four or n frames per second is the "canvas" upon which this music is written; thus, in a very obvious way, the material itself demonstrates the necessity for time (rhythmic) structure. With magnetic means, freedom from the frame of film means exists, but the principle of rhythmic structure should hold over as, in geometry, a more elementary theorem remains as a premise to make possible the obtaining of those more advanced. ""I want to be as though new-born, knowing nothing, absolutely nothing about Europe." (Paul Klee) 11 Replete with new concert halls: the movie houses (vacated by home television fans, and too numerous for a Hollywood whose only alternative is "seriousness"). FORERUNNERS OF MODERN MUSIC/65

without having made any special eHort to get into one 14 (if one can discount lamentation) . The in-the-heart path of music leads now to self-knowledge through selfdenial, and its in-the-world path leads likewise to selflessness.!5 The heights that now are reached by single individuals at special moments may soon be densely populated. " Painting in becoming literally (actually) realistic- (this is the twentieth century) seen !rom above, the earth, snow-covered, a composition of order superimposed on the "spontaneous" (Cummings) or of the latter letting order be (!roni above, so together, the opposites, they fuse) (one has only to fiy [highways and topography, Milarepa, Henry Ford] to know )-automatically will reach the same point (step by step) the soul leaped to. "The machine fathers mothers heroes saints of the mythological order, works only when it meets with acquiescence (d. The King and the Corpse, by Heinrich Zimmer, edited by Joseph Campbell).

Peggy Guggenheim, Santomaso, and I were in a Venetian restaurant. There were only two other people dining in the same room and they were not conversing. I got to expressing my changed views with regard to the French and the Italians. I said that I had years before preferred the French because of their intelligence and had found the Italians playful but intellectually not engaging; that recently, however, I found the French cold in spirit and lacking in freedom of the mind, whereas the Italians seemed warm and surprising. Then it occurred to me that the couple in the room were French. I called across to them and said, "Are you French?" The lady replied. "We are," she said, "but we agree with you completely." Richard Lippold called up and said, "Would you come to dinner and bring the I-Ching?" I said I would. It turned out he'd written a letter to the Metropolitan proposing that he be commissioned for a certain figure to do The Sun. This letter withheld nothing about the excellence of his art, and so he hesitated to send it, not wishing to seem presumptuous. Using the coin oracle, we consulted the I-Ching. It mentioned a letter. Advice to send it was given. Success was promised, but the need for patience was mentioned. A few weeks later, Richard Lippold called to say that his proposal had been answered but without commitment, and that that should make clear to me as it did to him what to think of the I-Ching. A year passed. The Metropolitan Museum finally commissioned The Sun. Richard Lippold still does not see eye to eye with me on the subject of chance operations. The question of leading tones came up in the class in experimental composition that I give at the New School. I said, "You surely aren't talking about ascending half-steps in diatonic music. Is it not true that anything leads to whatever follows?" But the situation is more complex, for things also lead backwards in time. This also does not give a picture that corresponds with reality. For, it is said, the Buddha's enlightenment penetrated in every direction to every point in space and time. 66/SILENCE

The following article was written at the request of Dr. Wolfgang Steinecke, Director of the 1nternationale Ferienkiirse fiir Neue Musik at Darmstadt. The German translation by Heinz Klaus Metzger was published in the 1959 issue of Darrnstadter Beitrage. The statement by Christian Wolff quoted herein is from his article "New and Electronic Music," copyright 1958 by the Audience Press, and reprinted by permission from Audience, Volume V, Number 3, Summer 1958.


Once when Daisetz Teitaro Suzuki was giving a talk at Columbia University he mentioned the name of a Chinese monk who had figured in the history of Chinese Buddhism. Suzuki said, "He lived in the ninth or the tenth century." He added, after a pause, "Or the eleventh century, or the twelfth or thirteenth century or the fourteenth." About the same time, Willem de Kooning, the New York painter, gave a talk at the Art Alliance in Philadelphia. Afterwards there was a discussion: questions and answers. Someone asked De Kooning who the painters of the past were who had influenced him the most. De Kooning said, "The past does not influence me; I influence it." A little over ten years ago I acted as music editor for a magazine called Possibilities. Only one issue of this magazine appeared. However: in it, four American composers (Virgil Thomson, Edgard Varese, Ben Weber, and Alexei Haieff) answered questions put to them by twenty other composers. My question to Varese concerned his views of the future of music. His answer was that neither the past nor the future interested him; that his concern was with the present. Sri Ramakrishna was once asked, "Why, if God is good, is there evil in the world?" He said, "In order to thicken the plot." Nowadays in the field of music, we often hear that everything is possible; (for instance) that with electronic means one may employ any sound (any frequency, any amplitude, any timbre, any duration); that there are no limits to possibility. This HISTORY OF EXPERIMENTAL MUSIC IN THE UNITED STATES/67

is technically, nowadays, theoretically possible and in practical terms is often felt to be impossible only because of the absence of mechanical aids which, nevertheless, could be provided if the society felt the urgency of musical advance. Debussy said quite some time ago, "Any sounds in any combination and in any succession are henceforth free to be used in a musical continuity." Paraphrasing the question put to Sri Ramakrishna and the answer he gave, I would ask this: "Why, if everything is possible, do we concern ourselves with history (in other words with a sense of what is necessary to be done at a particular time)?" And I would answer, "In order to thicken the plot." In this view, then, all those interpenetrations which seem at first glance to be hellish-history, for instance, if we are speaking of experimental music-are to be espoused. One does not then make just any experiment but does what must be done. By this I mean one does not seek by his actions to arrive at money but does what must be done; one does not seek by his actions to arrive at fame (success) but does what must be done; one does not seek by his actions to provide pleasure to the senses (beauty) but does what must be done; one does not seek by his actions to arrive at the establishing of a school (truth) but does what must be done. One does something else. What else? In an article called "New and Electronic Music," Christian Wolff says: 'What is, or seems to be, new in this music? ... One finds a concern for a kind of objectivity, almost anonymity-sound come into its own. The 'music' is a resultant existing simply in the sounds we hear, given no impulse by expressions of self or personality. It is indifferent in motive, originating in no psychology nor in dramatic intentions, nor in literary or pictorial purposes. For at least some of these composers, then, the final intention is to be free of artistry and taste. But this need not make their work 'abstract,' for nothing, in the end, is denied. It is simply that personal expression, drama, psychology, and the like are not part of the composer's initial calculation: they are at best gratuitous. "The procedure of composing tends to be radical, going directly to the sounds and their characteristics, to the way in which they are produced and how they are notated." "Sound come into its own." What does that mean? For one thing: it means that noises are as useful to new music as so-called musical tones, for the simple reason that they are sounds. This decision alters the view of 68jSILENCE

history, so that one is no longer concerned with tonality or atonality, Schoenberg or Stravinsky (the twelve tones or the twelve expressed as seven plus five), nor with consonance and dissonance, but rather with Edgard Varese who fathered forth noise into twentieth-century music. But it is clear that ways must be discovered that allow noises and tones to be just noises and tones, not exponents subservient to Varese's imagination. What else did Varese do that is relevant to present necessity? He was the first to write directly for instruments, giving up the practice of making a piano sketch and later orchestrating it. What is unnecessary in Varese (from a present point of view of necessity) are all his mannerisms, of which two stand out as signatures (the repeated note resembling a telegraphic transmission and the cadence of a tone held through a crescendo to maximum amplitude). These mannerisms do not establish sounds in their own right. They make it quite difficult to hear the sounds just as they are, for they draw attention to Varese and his imagination. What is the nature of an experimental action? It is simply an action the outcome of which is not foreseen. It is therefore very useful if one has decided that sounds are to come into their own, rather than being exploited to express sentiments or ideas of order. Among those actions the outcomes of which are not foreseen, actions resulting from chance operations are useful. However, more essential than composing by means of chance operations, it seems to me now, is composing in such a way that what one does is indeterminate of its performance. In such a case one can just work directly, for nothing one does gives rise to anything that is preconceived. This necessitates, of course, a rather great change in habits of notation. I take a sheet of paper and place points on it. Next I make parallel lines on a transparency, say five parallel lines. I establish five categories of sound for the five lines, but I do not say which line is which category. The transparency may be placed on the sheet with points in any position and readings of the points may be taken with regard to all the characteristics one wishes to distinguish. Another transparency may be used for further measurements, even altering the succession of sounds in time. In this situation no chance operations are necessary (for instance, no tossing of coins) for nothing is foreseen, though everything may be later minutely measured or simply taken as a vague suggestion. Implicit here, it seems to me, are principles familiar from modem HISTORY OF EXPERIMENTAL MUSIC IN THE UNITED STATES/69


tude, timbre, duration) is to be seen as a continuum, not as a series of discrete steps favored by conventions (Occidental or Oriental). (Clearly all the Americana aspects of Ives are in the way of sound coming into its own, since sounds by their nature are no more American than they are Egyptian. ) Carl Ruggles? He works and reworks a handful of compositions so that they better and better express his intentions, which perhaps ever so slightly are changing. His work is therefore not experimental at all but in a most sophisticated way attached to the past and to art. Henry Cowell was for many years the open sesame for new music in America. Most selHessly he published the New Music Edition and encouraged the young to discover new directions. From him, as from an efficient information booth, you could always get not only the address and telephone number of anyone working in a lively way in music, but you could also get an unbiased introduction from him as to what that anyone was doing. He was not attached (as Varese also was not attached) to what seemed to so many to be the important question: Whether to follow Schoenberg or Stravinsky. His early works for piano, long before Varese's Ionization (which, by the way, was published by Cowell), by their tone clusters and use of the piano strings, pointed towards noise and a continuum of timbre. Other works of his are indeterminate in ways analogous to those currently in use by Boulez and Stockhausen. For example: Cowell's Mosaic Quartet, where the performers, in any way they choose, produce a continuity from composed blocks provided by him. Or his Elastic Musics, the time lengths of which can be short or long through the use or omission of measures provided by him. These actions by Cowell are very close to current experimental compositions which have parts but no scores, and which are therefore not objects but processes providing experience not burdened by psychological intentions on the part of the composer. And in connection with musical continuity, Cowell remarked at the New School before a concert of works by Christian Wolff, Earle Brown, Morton Feldman, and myself, that here were four composers who were getting rid of glue. That is: Where people had felt the necessity to stick sounds together to make a continuity, we four felt the opposite necessity to get rid of the glue so that sounds would be themselves. Christian Wolff was the first to do this. He wrote some pieces vertically on the page but recommended their being played horizontally left to right, HISTORY OF EXPERIMENTAL MUSIC IN THE UNITED STATES/71


therefore, even today, twenty years after their composition, interesting to hear. He used string drums made from kerosene cans, washboards, out-oftune upright pianos; he cut a board such a length that it could be used to play all the eighty-eight piano keys at once. If one uses the word "experimental" (somewhat diHerently than I have been using it) to mean simply the introduction of novel elements into one's music, we find that America has a rich history: the clusters of Leo Ornstein, th-. resonances of Dane Rudhyar, the near-Eastern aspects of Alan Hovh ..,ness, the tack piano of Lou Harrison, my own prepared piano, the distribution in space of instrumental ensembles in works by Henry Brant, the sliding tones of Ruth Crawford and, more recently, Gunther Schuller, the microtones and novel instruments of Harry Partch, the athematic continuity of cliches of Virgil Thomson. These are not experimental composers in my terminology, but neither are they part of the stream of European music which though formerly divided into neo-classicism and dodecaphony has become one in America under Arthur Berger's term, consolidation: consolidation of the acquisitions of Schoenberg and Stravinsky. Actually America has an intellectual climate suitable for radical experimentation. We are, as Gertrude Stein said, the oldest country of the twentieth century. And I like to add: in our air way of knowing nowness. Buckminster Fuller, the dymaxion architect, in his three-hour lecture on the history of civilization, explains that men leaving Asia to go to Europe went against the wind and developed machines, ideas, and Occidental philosophies in accord with a struggle against nature; that, on the other hand, men leaving Asia to go to America went with the wind, put up a sail, and developed ideas and Oriental philosophies in accord with the acceptance of nature. These two tendencies met in America, prodUCing a movement into the air, not bound to the past, traditions, or whatever. Once in Amsterdam, a Dutch musician said to me, "It must be very difficult for you in America to write music, for you are so far away from the centers of tradition." I had to say, "It must be very difficult for you in Europe to write music, for you are so close to the centers of tradition." Why, since the climate for experimentation in America is so good, why is American experimental music so lacking in strength politically (I mean unsupported by those with money [individuals and foundations), unpublished, undiscussed, ignored), and why is there so little of it that is truly uncompromisHISTORY OF EXPERIMENTAL MUSIC IN THE UNITED STATES/73

ing? I think the answer is this: Until 1950 about all the energy for furthering music in America was concentrated either in the League of Composers or in the ISCM (another way of saying Boulanger and Stravinsky on the one hand and Schoenberg on the other). The New Music Society of Henry Cowell was independent and therefore not politically strong. Anything that was vividly experimental was discouraged by the League and the ISCM. So that a long period of contemporary music history in America was devoid of performances of works by Ives and Varese. Now the scene changes, but the last few years have been quiet. The League and the ISCM fused and, so doing, gflve no concerts at all. We may trust that new life will spring up, since society like nature abhors a vacuum. What about music for magnetic tape in America? Otto Luening and Vladimir Ussachevsky call themselves experimental because of their use of this new medium. However, they just continue conventional musical practices, at most extending the ranges of instruments electronically and so forth. The Barrons, Louis and Bebe, are also cautious, doing nothing that does not have an immediate popular acceptance. The Canadian Norman McLaren, working with film, is more adventurous than these-also the Whitney brothers in California. Henry Jacobs and those who surround him in the San Francisco area are as conventional as Luening, Ussachevsky, and the Barrons. These do not move in directions that are as experimental as those taken by the Europeans: Pousseur, Berio, Maderna, Boulez, Stockhausen, and so forth. For this reason one can complain that the society of musicians in America has neither recognized nor furthered its native musical resource (by "native" I mean that resource which distinguishes it from Europe and Asia-its capacity to easily break with tradition, to move easily into the air, its capacity for the unforeseen, its capacity for experimentation). The lIgures in the ISCM and the League, however, were not powerful aesthetically, but powerful only politically. The names of Stravinsky, Schoenberg, Webern are more golden than any of their American derivatives. These latter have therefore little musical influence, and now that they are becoming quiescent politically, one may expect a change in the musical society. The vitality that characterizes the current European musical scene follows from the activities of Boulez, Stockhausen, Nono, Maderna, Pousseur, Berio, etc. There is in all of this activity an element of tradition, con74/SILENCE

tinuity with the past, which is expressed in each work as an interest in continuity whether in terms of discourse or organization. By critics this activity is termed post-Wf3bernian. However, this term apparently means only music written after that of Webern, not music written because of that of Webern: there is no sign of klangfarbenmelodie, no concern for discontinuity-rather a surprising acceptance of even the most banal of continuity devices: ascending or descending linear passages, crescendi and diminuendi, passages from tape to orchestra that are made imperceptible. The skills that are required to bring such events about are taught in the academies. However, this scene will change. The silences of American experimental music and even its technical involvements with chance operations are being introduced into new European music. It will not be easy, however, for Europe to give up being Europe. It will, nevertheless, and must: for the world is one world now. History is the story of original actions. Once when Virgil Thomson was giving a talk at Town Hall in New York City, he spoke of the necessity of originality. The audience immediately hissed. Why are people opposed to originality? Some fear the loss of the status quo. Others realize, I suppose, the fact that they will not make it. Make what? Make history. There are kinds of originality: several that are involved with success, beauty, and ideas (of order, of expression: i.e., Bach, Beethoven); a single that is not involved, neuter, so to say. All of the several involved kinds are generally existent and only bring one sooner or later to a disgust with art. Such original artists appear, as Antonin Artaud said, as pigs: concerned with selfadvertisement. What is advertised? Finally, and at best, only something that is connected not with making history but with the past: Bach, Beethoven. If it's a new idea of order, it's Bach; if it's a heartfelt expression, it's Beethoven. That is not the single necessary originality that is not involved and that makes history. That one sees that the human race is one person (all of its members parts of the same body, brothers-not in competition any more than hand is in competition with eye) enables him to see that originality is necessary, for there is no need for eye to do what hand so well does. In this way, the past and the present are to be observed and each person makes what he alone must make, bringing for the whole of human society into existence a historical fact, and then, on and on, in continuum and discontinuum. HISTORY OF EXPERIMENTAL MUSIC IN THE UNITED STATES/1S

The text below first appeared in the 1958 Art News Annual. It is an imaginary conversation between Satie and myself. Because he died over thirty years before, neither of us hears what the other says. His remarks aTe ones he is reported to have made and excerpts from his writings.

ERIK SAllE There'll probably be some music, but we'll manage to find a quiet corner where we can talk.

A few days ago it rained. I should be out gathering mushrooms. But here I ?m, having to write about Satie. In an unguarded moment I said I would. Now I am pestered with a deadline. Why, in heaven's name, don't people read the books about him that are available, play the music that's published? Then I for one could go back to the woods and spend my time profitably. Nevertheless, we must bring about a music which is like furniture-a music, that is, which will be part of the noises of the environment, will take them into consideration. I think of it as melodious, softening the noises of the knives and forks, not dominating them, not imposing itself. It would fill up those heavy silences that sometimes fall between friends dining together. It would spare them the trouble of paying attention to their own banal remarks. And at the same time it would neutralize the street noises which so indiscretely enter into the play of conversation. To make such music would be to respond to a need.

Records, too, are available. But it would be an act of charity even to oneself to smash them whenever 76/SILENCE

they are discovered. They are useless except for that and for the royalties which the composer, dead now some thirty-odd years, can no longer pickup.

We cannot doubt that animals both love and practice music. That is evident. But it seems their musical system differs from ours. It is another school. . . . We are not familiar with their didactic works. Perhaps they don't have any. Who's interested in Satie nowadays anyway? Not Pierre Boulez: he has the twelve tones, governs La Domaine Musicale, whereas Satie had only the Group of Six and was called Le Maitre d'Arcueil. Nor Stockhausen: I imagine he has not yet given Satie a thought .... Current musical activities involve two problems: (1) applying the idea of the series inherent in the twelve-tone system to the organization of all the characteristics of sound, viz., frequency, duration, amplitude, timbre, producing a more controlled situation than before attempted (Stockhausen: "It makes me feel so good to know that I am on the right track."); and (2a) discovering and acting upon the new musical resources (all audible sounds in any combination and any continuity issuing from any points in space in any transformations) handed to us upon the magnetic plate of tape, or (2b) somehow arranging economical instrumental occasions (tape is expensive) so that the action which results presupposes a totality of possibility.... Is Satie relevant in mid-century? I am bored with dying of a broken heart. Everything I timidly start fails with a boldness before unknown. What can I do but turn towards God ERIK SATIE/77

and point my finger at him? I have come to the conclusion that the old man is even more stupid than he is weak. Taking the works of Satie chronologically (18861925), successive ones often appear as completely new departures. Two pieces will be so different as not to suggest that the same person wrote them. Now and then, on the other hand, works in succession are so alike, sometimes nearly identical, as to bring to mind the annual exhibitions of painters, and to allow musicologists to discern stylistic periods. Students busy themselves with generalized analyses of harmonic, melodic, and rhythmic matters with the object of showing that in Socrate all these formal principles are found, defined, and reunited in a homogeneous fashion (as befits a masterpiece). From this student point of view, Pierre Boulez is justified in rejecting Satie. Le bon Maitre's harmonies, melodies, and rhythms are no longer of interest. They provide pleasure for those who have no better use for their time. They've lost their power to irritate. True, one could not endure a performance of Vexations (lasting [my estimate] twenty-four hours; 840 repetitions of a fifty-two beat piece itself involving a repetitive structure: A,A"A,A" each A thirteen measures long), but why give it a thought? How white it is! no painting ornaments it; it is all of a piece. (Reverie on a plate)

An artist conscientiously moves in a direction which for some good reason he takes, putting one work in front of the other with the hope he'll arrive before death overtakes him. But Satie despised Art ("J'emmerde rArt"). He was going 78/SILENCE

nowhere. The artist counts: 7,8,9, etc. Satie appears at unpredictable points springing always from zero: 112,2,49, no etc. The absence of transition is characteristic not only between finished works, but at divisions, large and small, within a single one. It was in the same way that Satie made his living: he never took a regular (continuitygiving) job, plus raises and bonuses (climaxes). No one can say for sure anything about the String Quartet he was on the point of writing when he died. They will tell you I am not a musician. That's right . . . . Take the Fils des Etoiles or the Morceaux en forme de po ire, En habit de cheval or the Sarabandes, it is clear no musical idea presided at the creation of these works.

Curiously enough, the twelve-tone system has no zero in it. Given a series: 3,5,2,7,10,8,11,9,1,6, 4, 12 and the plan of obtaining its inversion by numbers which when added to the corresponding ones of the original series will give 12, one obtains 9,7,10,5,2,4,1,3,11,6,8 and 12. For in this system 12 plus 12 equals 12. There is not enough of nothing in it. It's a large stairway, very large. It has more than a thousand steps, all made of ivory. It is very handsome. Nobody dares use it For fear of spoiling it. The King himself never does. Leaving his room He jumps out the window. ERIK SATIE/79

So, he often says: I love this stairway so much I'm going to have it stuffed. Isn't the King right?

Is it not a question of the will, this one, I mean, of giving consideration to the sounds of the knives and forks, the street noises, letting them enter in? (Or call it magnetic tape, musique concrete, furniture music. It's the same thing: working in terms of totality, not just the discretely chosen conventions. ) Why is it necessary to give the sounds of knives and forks consideration? Satie says so. He is right. Otherwise the music will have to have walls to defend itself, walls which will not only constantly be in need of repair, but which, even to get a drink of water, one will have to pass beyond, inviting disaster. It is evidently a question of bringing one's intended actions into relation with the ambient unintended ones. The common denominator is zero, where the heart beats (no one means to circulate his blood). Show me something new; I'll begin all over again.

Of course "it is another school"-this moving out from zero. Flowers! But, dear lady, it is too soon!

To repeat: a sound has four characteristics: frequency, amplitude, timbre and duration. Silence (ambient noise) has only duration. A zero musical structure must be just an empty time. Satie made at least three kinds of empty time structures: SO/SILENCE





,-----'--- 5 4

3 (numbers are of measures). Symmetry, which itself suggests zero, is here horizontal, whereas in: 7


6 6 5 ----'----- 5 3 3

itis vertical; and in:

2 c:

2 2



it is geometric (the large numbers are groups of measures).

When I was young, people told me: You'll see when you're fifty. I'm fifty. I've seen nothing. A time that's just time will let sounds be just sounds and if they are folk tunes, unresolved ninth chords, or knives and forks, just folk tunes, unresolved ninth chords, or knives and forks. I am in complete agreement with our enemies. It's a shame that artists advertise. However, Beethoven was not clumsy in his publicity. That's how he became known, I believe. ERIK SATIE/81

It (L'Esprit Nouveau) teaches us to tend towards an absence (simplicite) of emotion and an inactivity (fermete) in the way of prescribing sonorities and rhythms which lets them affirm themselves clearly, in a straight line from their plan and pitch, conceived in a spirit of humility and renunciation.

To be interested in Satie one must be disinterested to begin with, accept that a sound is a sound and a man is a man, give up illusions about ideas of order, expressions of sentiment, and all the rest of our inherited aesthetic claptrap. If I fail, so much the worse for me. It's because I had nothing in me to begin with. It's not a question of Satie's relevance. He's indispensable. No longer anything to be done in that direction, I must search for something else or I am lost. This subject is entertaining ("What's necessary is to be uncompromising to the end") but it is getting nowhere, and more than ever there are things to be done. Listen, my friends, when I leave you like this and must go home on foot, it is towards dawn I come near Arcueil. When I pass through the woods, the birds beginning to sing, I see an old tree, its leaves rustling, I go near, I put my arms around it and think, What a good character, never to have harmed anyone. -and, on another occasion, Personally, I am neither good nor bad. I oscillate, if I may say so. Also I've never really done anyone any harm-nor any good, to boot. 82/SILENCE

The Fall 1958 issue of Nutida Musik (Stockholm) was devoted to the work of Edgard Varese. I contributed the following article.

EDGARD VARESE Changes which are characteristic of a living organism (and twentiethcentury music is one) have become recently more marked and occur in more rapid succession. In the history Varese appears sometimes as a figure of the past; and, again, as one active according to present necessities. Facts about his life and work are difficult to obtain. He considers interest in them to be a form of necrophilia; he prefers to leave no traces. Analytical studies of his work are somehow not relevant to one s experience of it. Though Varese has defined music as "organized sound," it is unclear how he brings about the organization of his works. He has often insisted upon imagination as a sine qua non, and the presence of his imagination is strong as handwriting in each of his works. The characteristic flourish is a tone sustained through a crescendo to the maximum amplitude. For those who are interested in sounds just as they are, apart from psychology about them, one must look further for Varese's present relevance. This is not found in the character of his imagination, which has to do with him-not with sound itself. Nor is his use of tape relevant, for in Deserts he attempts to make tape sound like the orchestra and vice versa, showing again a lack of interest in the natural differences of sounds, preferring to give them all his unifying signature. In this respect his need for continuity does not correspond to the present need for discontinuity (discontinuity has the effect of divorcing sounds from the burden of psychological intentions). Though Varese was the first to write directly for instrumental ensembles (giving up the piano sketch and its orchestral coloration), his way EDGARD VARESE/83

of doing this was controlled by his imagination to the point of exploiting the sounds for his own purposes. Recently (1957-1958) he has found a notation for jazz improvisation of a form controlled by himself. Though the specific notes are not determined by him, the amplitudes are; they are characteristic of his imagination, and the improvisations, though somewhat indeterminate, sound like his other works. In these respects Varese is an artist of the past. Rather than dealing with sounds as sounds, he deals with them as Varese. However, more clearly and actively than anyone else of his generation, he established the present nature of music. This nature does not arise from pitch relations (consonance-dissonance) nor from twelve tones nor seven plus five (Schoenberg-Stravinsky), but arises from an acceptance of all audible phenomena as material proper to music. While others were still discriminating "musical" tones from noises, Varese moved into the field of sound itself, not splitting it in two by introducing into the perception of it a mental prejudice. That he fathered forth noise-that is to say, into twentiethcentury music-makes him more relative to present musical necessity than even the Viennese masters, whose notion of the number 12 was some time ago dropped and shortly, surely, their notion of the series will be seen as no longer urgently necessary.


One day I asked Schoenberg what he thought about the international situation. He said, "The important thing to do is to develop foreign trade." Earle Brown and I spent several months splicing magnetic tape together. We sat on opposite sides of the same table. Each of us had a pattern of the splicing to be done, the measurements to be made, etc. Since we were working on tapes that were later to be synchronized, we checked our measurements every now and then against each other. We invariably discovered errors in each other's measurements. At first each of us thought the other was being careless. When the whole situation became somewhat exasperating, we took a single ruler and a single tape and each one marked where he thought an inch was. The two marks were at different points. It turned out that Earle Brown closed one eye when he made his measurements, whereas I kept both eyes open. We then tried closing one of my eyes, and later opening bot.h of his. There still was disagreement as to the length of an inch. Finally we decided that one person should do all the final synchronizing splices. But then errors crept in due to changes in weather. In spite of these obstacles, we went on doing what we were doing for about five more months, twelve hours a day, until the work was finished. Dorothy Norman invited me to dinner in New York. There was a lady there from Philadelphia who was an authority on Buddhist art. When she found out I was interested in mushrooms, she said, "Have you an explanation of the symbolism involved in the death of the Buddha by his eating a mushroom?" I explained that I'd never been interested in symbolism; that I preferred just taking things as themselves, not as standing for other things. But then a few days later while rambling in the woods I got to thinking. I recalled the Indian concept of the relation of life and the seasons. Spring is Creation. Summer is Preservation. Fall is Destruction. Winter is Quiescence. Mushrooms grow most vigorously in the fall, the period of destruction, and the function of many of them is to bring about the final decay of rotting material. In fact, as I read somewhere, the world would be an impassible heap of old rubbish were it not for mushrooms and their capacity to get rid of it. So I wrote to the lady in Philadelphia. I said, "The function of mushrooms is to rid the world of old rubbish. The Buddha died a natural death." Once. I was visiting my Aunt Marge. She was doing her laundry. She turned to me and said, "You know? I love this machine much more than I do your Uncle Walter." One Sunday morning, Mother said to Dad, "Let's go to church." Dad said, "O.K." When they drove up in front, Dad showed no sign of getting out of the car. Mother said, "Aren't you coming in?" Dad said, "No, I'll wait for you here." After a long and arduous journey a young Japanese man arrived deep in a forest where the teacher of his choice was living in a small house he had made. When the student arrived, the teacher was sweeping up fallen leaves. Greeting his master, the young man received no greeting in return. And to all his questions, there were no replies. Realizing there was nothing he could do to get the teacher's attention, the student went to another part of the same forest and built himself a house. Years later, when he was sweeping up fallen leaves, he was enlightened. He then dropped everything, ran through the forest to his teacher, and said, "Thank you." EDGARD VARESE/85

While I was studying with Adolph Weiss in the early 1930's, I became aware of his unhappiness in face of the fact that his music was rarely performed. 1 too had experienced difficulty in arranging performances of my compositions, so I determined to consider a piece of music only half done when I completed a manuscript. It was my responsibility to finish it by getting it played. It was evident that musicians interested in new music were rare. It was equally evident that modem dancers were grateful for any sounds or noises that could be produced for their recitals. My first commission was from the Physical Education Department of U.C.L.A. An accompaniment for an aquatic ballet was needed. Using drums and gongs, I found that the swimmers beneath the surface of the water, not being able to hear the sounds, lost their places. Dipping the gongs into the water while still playing them solved the problems of synchronization and brought the sliding tones of the "water gong" into the percussion orchestra.

FOUR STATEMENTS ON THE DANCE Very soon 1 was earning a livelihood accompanying dance classes and occasionally writing music for performances. In 1937 I was at the Cornish School in Seattle, associated with Bonnie Bird, who had danced with Martha Graham. Merce Cunningham was a student, so remarkable that he soon left Seattle for New York, where he became a soloist in the Graham company. Four or five years later I went to New York and encouraged Cunningham to give programs of his own dances. We have worked together since 1943.


This article was part of a series, Percussion Music and Its Relation to the Modern Dance, that appeared in Dance Observer in 1939. It was written in Seattle where I had organized a concert-giving percussion ensemble.

Goal: New Music, New Dance Percussion music is revolution. Sound and rhythm have too long been submissive to the restrictions of nineteenth-century music. Today we are fIghting for their emancipation. Tomorrow, with electronic music in our ears, we will hear freedom. Instead of giving us new sounds, the nineteenth-century composers have given us endless arrangements of the old sounds. We have turned on radios and always known when we were tuned to a symphony. The sound has always been the same, and there has not been even a hint of curiosity as to the possibilities of rhythm. For interesting rhythms we have listened to jazz. At the present stage of revolution, a healthy lawlessness is warranted. Experiment must necessarily be carried on by hitting anything-tin pans, rice bowls, iron pipes-anything we can lay our hands on. Not only hitting, but rubbing, smashing, making sound in every possible way. In short, we must explore the materials of music. What we can't do ourselves will be done by machines and electrical instruments which we will invent. The conscientious objectors to modern music will, of course, attempt everything in the way of counterrevolution. Musicians will not admit that we are making music; they will say that we are interested in superfIcial effects, or, at most, are imitating Oriental or primitive music. New and original sounds will be labeled as "noise." But our common answer to every criticism must be to continue working and listening, making music with its materials, sound and rhythm, disregarding the cumbersome, top-heavy structure of musical prohibitions. FOUR STATEMENTS ON THE DANCE/87

These prohibitions removed, the choreographer will be quick to realize a great advantage to the modem dance: the simultaneous composition of both dance and music. The materials of dance, already including rhythm, require only the addition of sound to become a rich, complete vocabulary. The dancer should be better equipped than the musician to use this vocabulary, for more of the materials are already at his command. Some dancers have made steps in this direction by making simple percussion accompaniments. Their use of percussion, unfortunately, has not been constructive. They have followed the rhythm of their own dance movement, accentuated it and punctuated it with percussion, but they have not given the sound its own and special part in the whole composition. They have made the music identical with the dance but not cooperative with it. Whatever method is used in composing the materials of the dance can be extended to the organization of the musical materials. The form of the music-dance composition should be a necessary working together of all materials used. The music will then be more than an accompaniment; it will be an integral part of the dance.

When I was growing up in California there were two things that everyone assumed were good for you. There were, of course, others-spinach and oatmeal, for instance-but right now I'm thinking of sunshine and orange juice. When we lived at Ocean Park, I was sent out every morning to the beach where I spent the day building rolly-coasters in the sand, complicated downhill tracks with tunnels and inclines upon which I rolled a small hard rubber ball. Every day toward noon I fainted because the sun was too much for me. When I fainted I didn't fall down, but I couldn't see; there were Hocks of black spots wherever I looked. I soon learned to find my way in that blindness to a hamburger stand where I'd ask for something to eat. Sitting in the shade, I'd corne to. It took me much longer, about thirty-five years in fact, to learn that orange juice was not good for me either. Before studying Zen, men are men and mountains are mountains. While studying Zen, things become confused. After studying Zen, men are men and mountains are mountains. After telling this, Dr. Suzuki was asked, "What is the difference between before and after?" He said, "No difference, only the feet are a little bit off the ground." BS/SIlENCE

The following piece WC/3 printed in Dance Observer in 1944.

Grace and Clarity The strength that comes from Brmly established art practices is not present in the modem dance today. Insecure, not having any clear direction, the modem dancer is willing to compromise and to accept influences from other more rooted art manners, enabling one to remark that certain dancers are either borrowing from or selling themselves to Broadway, others are learning from folk and Oriental arts, and many are either introducing into their work elements of the ballet, or, in an all-out effort, devoting themselves to it. Confronted with its history, its former power, its present insecurity, the realization is unavoidable that the strength the modem dance once had was not impersonal but was intimately connected with and ultimately dependent on the personalities and even the actual physical bodies of the individuals who imparted it. The techniques of the modem dance were once orthodox. It did not enter a dancer's mind that they might be altered. To add to them was the sole privilege of the originators. Intensive summer courses were the scenes of the new dispensations, reverently transmitted by the master-students. When the fanatically followed leaders began, and when they continued, to desert their own teachings (adapting chiefly balletish movements to their own rapidlygrowing-less-rigorous techniques), a general and profound insecurity fell over the modem dance. Where any strength now exists in the modem dance, it is, as before, in isolated personalities and physiques. In the case of the young, this is unfortunate; for, no matter how impressive and revelatory their expressed FOUR STATEMENTS ON THE DANCE/89

outlooks on life are, they are overshadowed, in the minds of audiences, and often, understandably, in the dancers' own minds, by the more familiar, more respected, and more mature older personalities. Personality is a flimsy thing on which to build an art. (This does not mean that it should not enter into an art, for, indeed, that is what is meant by the word style.) And the ballet is obviously not built on such an ephemeron, for, if it were, it would not at present thrive as it does, almost devoid of interesting personalities and certainly without the contribution of any individual's message or attitude toward life. That the ballet has something seems reasonable to assume. That what it has is what tqe modem dance needs is here expressed as an opinion. It is seriously to be doubted whether tour jete, entrechat six, or sur les pointes (in general) are needed in the modem dance. Even the prettiness and fanciness of these movements would not seem to be requisite. Also, it is not true that the basis of the ballet lies in glittering costumes and sets, for many of the better ballets appear year after year in drab, weather-beaten accoutrements. Ballets like Les Sylphides, Swan Lake, almost any Pas de Deux or Quatre, and currently, the exceptional Danses Concertantes have a stren~th and validity quite beyond and separate from the movements involved, whether or not they are done with style (expressed personality), the ornamented condition of the stage, quality of costumery, sound of the music, or any other particularities, including those of content. Nor does the secret lie in that mysterious quantity, form. (The forms of the ballet are mostly dull; symmetry is maintained practically without question.) Good or bad, with or without meaning, well dressed or not, the ballet is always clear in its rhythmic structure. Phrases begin and end in such a way that anyone in the audience knows when they begin and end, and breathes accordingly. It may seem at first thought that rhythmic structure is not of primary importance. However, a dance, a poem, a piece of music ( any of the time arts) occupies a length of time, and the manner in which this length of time is divided first into large parts and then into phrases ( or built up from phrases to form eventual larger parts) is the work's very life structure. The ballet is in possession of a tradition of clarity of its rhythmic structure. Essential devices for bringing this about have been handed down generation after generation. These particular devices, again, are not 90/SILENCE

to be borrowed from the ballet: they are private to it. But the function they fulfill is not private; it is, on the contrary, universal. Oriental dancing, for instance, is clear in its phraseology. It has its own devices for obtaining it. Hot jazz is never unclear rhythmically. The poems of Gerard Manley Hopkins, with all their departure from tradition, enable the reader to breathe with them. The modern dance, on the other hand, is rarely clear. When a modern dancer has followed music that was clear in its phrase structure, the dance has had a tendency to be clear. The widespread habit of choreographing the dance first, and obtaining music for it later, is not in itself here criticized. But the fact that modern choreographers have been concerned with things other than clarity of rhythmic structure has made the appearance of it, when the dance-first-music-Iater method was used, both accidental and isolated. This has led to a disregard of rhythmic structure even in the case of dancing to music already written, for, in a work like Martha Graham's Deaths and Entrances, an audience can know where iUs in relation to the action only through repeated seeings and the belying action of memory. On the other hand, Martha Graham and Louis Horst together were able to make magnificently clear and moving works like their Frontier, which works, however, stand alarmingly alone in the history of the modern dance. The will to compromise, mentioned above, and the admirable humility implied in the willingness to learn from other art manners is adolescent, but it is much closer to maturity than the childish blind following of leaders that was characteristic of the modern dance several years ago. If, in receiving influences from the outside, the modern dance is satisfied with copying, or adapting to itself, surface particularities (techniques, movements, devices of any kind), it will die before it reaches maturity; if, on the other hand, the common denominator of the completely developed time arts, the secret of art life, is discovered by the modern dance, Terpsichore will have a new and rich source of worshippers. With clarity of rhythmiC structure, grace forms a duality. Together they have a relation like that of body and soul. Clarity is cold, mathematical, inhuman, but basic and earthy. Grace is warm, incalculable, human, opposed to clarity, and like the air. Grace is not here used to mean prettiness; it is used to mean the play with and against the clarity of the FOUR STATEMENTS ON THE DANCE/91

rhythmic structure. The two are always present together in the best works of the time arts, endlessly, and life-givingly, opposed to each other. "In the finest specimens of versification, there seems to be a perpetual conflict between the law of the verse and the freedom of the language, and each is incessantly, though insignificantly, violated for the purpose of giving eHect to the other. The best poet is not he whose verses are the most easily scanned, and whose phraseology is the commonest in its materials, and the most direct in its arrangement; but rather he whose language combines the greatest imaginative accuracy with the most elaborate and sensible metrical organisation, and who, in his verse, preserves everywhere the living sense of the metre, not so much by unvarying obedience to, as by innumerable small departures from, its modulus." (Coventry Patmore, Prefatory Study on English Metrical Law, 1879, pp.12-13) The "perpetual conflict" between clarity and grace is what makes hot jazz hot. The best performers continually anticipate or delay the phrase beginnings and endings. They also, in their performances, treat the beat or pulse, and indeed, the measure, with grace: putting more or fewer icti within the measure's limits than are expected (similar alterations of pitch and timbre are also customary), contracting or extending the duration of the unit. This, not syncopation, is what pleases the hep-cats. Hindu music and dancing are replete with grace. This is possible because the rhythmic structure in Hindu time arts is highly systematized, has been so for many ages, and every Hindu who enjoys listening to music or looking at the dance is familiar with the laws of tala. Players, dancers, and audience enjoy hearing and seeing the laws of the rhythmic structure now observed and now ignored. This is what occurs in a beautifully performed classic or neo-classic ballet. And it is what enables one to experience pleasure in such a performance, despite the fact that such works are relatively meaningless in our modern society. That one should, today, have to see Swan Lake or something equally empty of contemporary meaning in order to experience the pleasure of observing clarity and grace in the dance, is, on its face, lamentable. Modern society needs, as usual, and now desperately needs, a strong modern dance. The opinion expressed here is that clarity of rhythmic structure with grace are essential to the time arts, that together they constitute an aes92/SILENCE

thetie (that is, they lie under and beneath, over and above, physical and personal particularities), and that they rarely occur in the modern dance; that the latter has no aesthetic (its strength having been and being the personal property of its originators and best exponents), that, in order for it to become strong and useful in society, mature in itself, the modern dance must clarify its rhythmic structure, then enliven it with grace, and so get itself a theory, the common, universal one about what is beautiful in a time art.

In Zen they say: If something is boring after two minutes, try it for four. If still boring, try it for eight, sixteen, thirty-two, and so on. Eventually one discovers that it's not boring at all but very interesting. At the New School once I was substituting for Henry Cowell, teaching a class in Oriental music. I had told him I didn't know anything about the subject. He said, "That's all right. Just go where the records are. Take one out. Play it and then discuss it with the class." Well, I took out the first record. It was an LP of a Buddhist service. It began with a short rnicrotonal chant with sliding tones, then soon settled into a single loud reiterated percussive beat. This noise continued relentlessly for about fifteen minutes with no perceptible variation. A lady got up and screamed, and then yelled, "Take it off. I can't bear it any longer." I took it off. A man in the class then said angrily, "Why'd you take it off? I was just getting interested." During a counterpoint class at U.C.L.A., Schoenberg sent everybody to the blackboard. We were to solve a particular problem he had given and to turn around when finished so that he could check on the correctness of the solution. I did as directed. He said, "That's good. Now find another solution." I did. He said, "Another." Again I found one. Again he said, "Another." And so on. Finally, I said, "There are no more solutions." He said, "What is the principle underlying all of the solutions?" I went to a concert upstairs in Town Hall. The composer whose works were being performed had provided program notes. One of these notes was to the effect that there is too much pain in the world. After the concert I was walking along with the composer and he was telling me how the performances had not been quite up to snuff. So I said, "Well, I enjoyed the music, but I didn't agree with that program note about there being too much pain in the world." He said, "What? Don't you think there's enough?" I said, "I think there's just the right amount." FOUR STATEMENTS ON THE DANCE/93

Many of my performances with Merce Cunningham and Dance Company are given in academic situations. Now and then the director of the concert series asks for an introductory talk. The following remarks were written for audiences in St. Louis and at Principia College in the autumn of 1956. Then a few months later, in January 1957, they appeared in Dance Observer.

In This Day . .. In this day of TV-darkened homes, a live performance has become something of a rarity, so much so that Aaron Copland recently said a concert is a thing of the past. Nevertheless, I would like to say a few words regarding the new direction taken by our company of dancers and musicians. Though some of the dances and music are easily enjoyed, others are perplexing to certain people, for they do not unfold along conventional lines. For one thing, there is an independence of the music and dance, which, if one closely observes, is present also in the seemingly usual works. This independence follows from Mr. Cunningham's faith, which I share, that the support of the dance is not to be found in the music but in the dancer himself, on his own two legs, that is, and occasionally on a single one. Likewise the music sometimes consists of single sounds or groups of sounds which are not supported by harmonies but resound within a space of silence. From this independence of music and dance a rhythm results which is not that of horses' hoofs or other regular beats but which reminds us of a multiplicity of events in time and space-stars, for instance, in the sky, or activities on earth viewed from the air. We are not, in these dances and music, saying something. We are simple-minded enough to think that if we were saying something we would use words. We are rather doing something. The meaning of what we do is determined by each one who sees and hears it. At a recent performance of ours at ,Cornell College in Iowa, a student turned to a teacher and said, "What does it mean?" The teacher's reply was, "Relax, there are no symbols here to confuse you. Enjoy yourselfl" I may add there are no stories and no 94/SILENCE

psychological problems. There is simply an activity of movement, sound, and light. The costumes are all simple in order that you may see the movement. The movement is the movement of the body. It is here that Mr. Cunningham focuses his choreographic attention, not on the facial muscles. In daily life people customarily observe faces and hand gestures, translating what they see into psychological terms. Here, however, we are in the presence of a dance which utilizes the entire body, requiring for its enjoyment the use of your faculty of kinesthetic sympathy. It is this faculty we employ when, seeing the Hight of hirds, we ourselves, by identification, Hy up, glide, and soar. The activity of movement, sound, and light, we believe, is expressive, but what it expresses is determined by each one of you-who is right, as Pirandello's title has it, if he thinks he is. The novelty of our work derives therefore from our having moved away from simply private human concerns towards the world of nature and society of which all of us are a part. Our intention is to affirm this life, not to bring order out of chaos nor to suggest improvements in creation, but simply to wake up to the very life we're living, which is so excellent once one gets one's mind and one's desires out of its way and lets it act of its own accord.

When Vera Williams first noticed that I was interested in wild mushrooms, she told her children not to touch any of them because they were all deadly poisonous. A few days later she bought a steak at Martino's and decided to serve it smothered with mushrooms. When she started to cook the mushrooms, the children all stopped whatever they were doing and watched her attentively. When she served dinner, they all burst into tears. One day I went to the dentist. Over the radio they said it was the hottest day of the year. However, I was wearing a jacket, because going to a doctor has always struck me as a somewhat formal occasion. In the midst of his work, Dr. Heyman stopped and said, "Why don't you take your jacket off?" I said, "I have a hole in my shirt and that's why I have my jacket on." He said, "Well, I have a hole in my sock, and, if you like, I'll take my shoes off." FOUR STATEMENTS ON THE DANCE/95

This piece appeared in Dance Magazine, November 19.57. The two pages were given me in dummy form by the editors. The number of words was given by chance operations. Imperfections in the sheets of paper upon which I worked gave the position in space of the fragments of text. That position is different in this printing, for it is the reStllt of working on two other sheets of paper, of another size and having their own differently placed imperfections.

2 Pages, 122 Words on Music and Dance

To obtain the value of a sound, a movement, measure from zero. (Pay attention to what it is, just as it is.)

A bird flies.

Slavery is abolished.

the woods A sound has no legs to stand on.

The world is teeming: anything can happen.




Points in time,in space

The emotions

love mirth the heroic wonder tranquillity fear anger sorrow disgust

Activities which are different happen in a time which is a space: are each central, original.

are in the audience.

Is there a glass of water?

The telephone rings. Each person is in the best seat. War begins at any moment.

Each now is the time, the space. lights inaction? Are eyes open?

Where the bird flies, fly.



This article, completed in February of 1961, was published in Metro (Milan) in May. It may be read in whole or in part; any sections of it may be skipped, what remains may be read in any order. The style of printing here employed is not essential. Any of the sections may be printed directly over any of the others, and the spaces between paragraphs may be varied in any manner. The words in italics are either quotations from Rauschenberg or titles of his works. To Whom It May Concern: The white paintings came first; my silent piece came later. -J.C.

ON ROBERT RAUSCH EN BERG, ARTIST, AND H IS WORK Conversation was difficult and correspondence virtually ceased. (Not because of the mails, which continued.) People spoke of messages, perhaps because they'd not heard from one another for a long time. Art flourished. The goat. No weeds. Virtuosity with ease. Does his head have a bed in it? Beauty. His hands and his feet, fingers and toes long-jointed, are astonishing. They certify his work. And the signature is nowhere to be seen. The paintings were thrown into the river after the exhibition. What is the nature of Art when it reaches the Sea? Beauty is now underfoot wherever we take the trouble to look. (This is an American discovery.) Is when Rauschenberg looks an idea? Rather it is an entertainment in which to celebrate unfixity. Why did he make black paintings, then white ones (coming up out of the South), red, gold ones (the gold ones were Christmas presents), ones of many colors, ones with objects attached? Why did he make sculptures with rocks suspended? Talented? I know he put the paint on the tires. And he unrolled the paper on the city street. But which one of us drove the car?


As the paintings changed the printed material became as much of a subject as the paint (I began using newsprint in my work) causing changes of focus: A third palette. There is no poor subiect (Any incentive to paint is as good as any other. ). Dante is an incentive, providing multiplicity, as路useful as a chicken or an old shirt. The atmosphere is such that everything is seen clearly, even in the dark night or when thumbing through an out-of-date newspaper or poem. This subject is unavoidable (A canvas is never empty. ); it fills an empty canvas. And if, to continue history, newspapers are pasted onto the canvas and on one another and black paints are applied, the subject looms up in several different places at once like magic to produce the painting. If you don't see it, you probably need a pair of glasses. But there is a vast difference between one oculist and another, and when it is a question of losing eyesight the best thing to do is to go to the best oculist (i.e., the best painter: he'll fix you up). Ideas are not necessary. It is more useful to avoid having one, certainly avoid having several (leads to inactivity). Is Gloria V. a subject or an idea? Then, tell us: How many times was she married and what do you do when she divorces you?

There are three panels taller than they are wide fixed together to make a single rectangle wider than it is tall. Across the whole thing is a series of colored photos, some wider than tall, some taller than wide, fragments of posters, some of them obscured by paint. Underneath these, cutting the total in half, is a series of rectangular color swatches, all taller than wide. Above, bridging two of the panels, is a dark blue rectangle. Below and slightly out of line with the blue one, since it is on one panel only, is a gray rectangle with a drawing on it about halfway up. There are other things, but mostly attached to these two "roads" which cross: off to the left and below the swatches is a drawing on a rectangle on a rectangle on a rectangle (its situation is that of a farm on the outskirts of a mainstreet town). This is not a composition. It is a place where things are, as on a table or on a town seen from the air: anyone of them could be removed and another come into its place through circumstances analogous to birth and death, travel, housecleaning, or cluttering. He is not saying; he is painting. (What is Rauschenberg saying?) The message is conveyed by dirt which, mixed with an adhesive, sticks to itself and to the canvas ON ROBERT RAUSCHENBERG, ARTIST, AND HIS WORK/99

upon which he places it. Crumbling and responding to changes in weather, the dirt unceasingly does my thinking. He regrets we do not see the paint while it's dripping.

Rauschenberg is continually being offered scraps of this and that, odds and ends his friends run across, since it strikes them: This is something he could use in a painting. Nine times out of ten it turns out he has no use for it. Say it's something close to something he once found useful, and so could be recognized as his. Well, then, as a matter of course, his poetry has moved without one's knowing where it's gone to. He changes what goes on, on a canvas, but he does not change how canvas is used for paintings-that is, stretched fiat to make rectangular surfaces which may be hung on a wall. These he uses singly, joined together, or placed in a symmetry so obvious as not to aUract interest (nothing special). We know two ways to unfocus attention: symmetry is one of them; the other is the over-all where each small part is a sample of what you find elsewhere. In either case, there is at least the possibility of looking anywhere, not just where someone arranged you should. You are then free to deal with your freedom just as the artist dealt with his, not in the same way but, nevertheless, originally. This thing, he says, duplication of images, that is symmetry. All it means is that, looking closely, we see as it was everything is in chaos still.

To change the subject: "Art is the imitation of nature in her manner of operation." Or a net.


So somebody has talent? So what? Dime a dozen. And we're overpopulated. Actually we have more food than we have people and more art. We've gotten to the point of burning food. When will we begin to burn our art? The door is never locked. Rauschenberg walks in. No one home. He paints a new painting over the old one. Is there a talent then to keep the two, the one above, the one below? What a plight (it's no more serious than that) we're inl It's a joy in fact to begin over again. In preparation he erases the De Kooning. Is the door locked? No, it's open as usual. Certainly Rauschenberg has techniques. But the ones he has he disuses, using those he hasn't. I must say he never forces a situation. He is like that butcher whose knife never became dull simply because he cut with it in such a way that it never encountered an obstacle. Modern art has no need for technique. (We are in the glory of not knowing what we're doing.) So technique, not having to do with the painting, has to do with who's looking and who painted. People. Technique is: how are the people? Not how well did they do it, but, as they were saying, frailty. (He says-and is he speaking of technique?-"What do you want, a declaration of love? I take responsibility for competence and hope to have made something hazardous with which we may try ourselves.") It is a question, then, of seeing in the dark, not slipping over things Visually. Now that Rauschenberg has made a painting with radios in it, does that mean that even without radios, I must go on listening even while I'm looking, everything at once, in order not to be run over?

Would we have preferred a pig with an apple in its mouth? That too, on occasion, is a message and requires a blessing. These are the feelings Rauschenberg gives us: love, wonder, laughter, heroism (I accept), fear, sorrow, anger, disgust, tranquillity. There is no more subject in a combine than there is in a page from a newspaper. Each thing that is there is a subject. It is a situation involving multiplicity. ON ROBERT RAUSCHENBERG, ARTIST, AND HIS WORK/101

(It is no reflection on the weather that such-and-such a government sent a note to another.) (And the three radios of the radio combine, turned on, which provides the subject?) Say there was a message. How would it be received? And what if it wasn't? Over and over again I've found it impossible to memorize Rauschenberg's paintings. I keep asking, "Have you changed it?" And then noticing while I'm looking it changes. I look out the window and see the icicles. There, dripping water is frozen into object. The icicles all go down. Winter more than the others is the season of quiescence. There is no dripping when the paint is squeezed from a tube. But there is the same acceptance of what happens and no tendency towards gesture or arrangement. This changes the notion of what is beautiful. By fixing papers to canvas and then painting with black paint, black became infinite and previously unnoticed.

Hallelujah! The blind can see again. Blind to what he has seen so that seeing this time is as though first seeing. How is it that one experiences this, for example, with the two Eisenhower pictures which for all intents and purposes are the same? (A duplication containing duplications.) Everything is so much the same, one becomes acutely aware of the differences, and quickly. And where, as here, the intention is unchanging, it is clear that the differences are unintentional, as unintended as they were in the white paintings where nothing was done. Out of seeing, do I move into poetry? And is this a poetry in which Eisenhower could have disappeared and the Mona Lisa taken his place? I think so but I do not see so. There is no doubt about which way is up. In any case our feet are on the ground. Painting's place is on the wall-painting's place, that is, in process. When I showed him a photograph of one of Rauschenberg's paintings, he said, "If I had a painting, I'd want to be sure it would stay the way it is; this one is a collage and would change." But Rauschenberg is practical. He goes along with things just as they are. Just as he knows it goes on a wall and not any which way, but right side up, so he knows, as he is, it is changing (which one more quickly? and the pyramids change). When possible, and by various means, he gives it a push: holes through which one sees behind the canvas the wall to which it is committed; the reflective surfaces changing what is seen by means of what is happening; lights going on and off; and the radios. The white paintings were airports for the lights, shadows, and particles. 102/SILENCE

Now in a metal box attached by a rope, the history, kept by means of drawings of what was taken away and put in its place, of a painting constantly changing.

There is in Rauschenberg, between him and what he picks up to use, the quality of encounter. For the first time. If, as happens, there is a series of paintings containing such and such a material, it is as though the encounter was extended into a visit on the part of the stranger (who is divine). (In this way societies uninformed by artists coagulate their experiences into modes of communication in order to make mistakes.) Shortly the stranger leaves, leaving the door open.

Having made the empty canvases (A canvas is never empty.), Rauschenberg became the giver of gifts. Gifts, unexpected and unnecessary, are ways of saying Yes to how it is, a holiday. The gifts he gives are not picked up in distant lands but are things we already have (with exceptions, of course: I needed a goat and the other stuffed birds, since I don't have any, and I needed an attic in order to go through the family things [since we moved away, the relatives write to say: Do you still want them?]), and so we are converted to the enjoyment of our possessions. Converted from what? From wanting what we don't have, art as pained struggle. Setting out one day for a birthday party, I noticed the streets were full of presents. Were he saying something in particular, he would have to focus the painting; as it is he simply focuses himself, and everything, a pair of socks, is appropriate, appropriate to poetry, a poetry of infinite possibilities. It did not occur to me to ask him why he chose Dante as a project for illustration. Perhaps it is because we've had it around so long so close to us without bothering to put it to use, which becomes its meaning. It involved a stay in Florida and at night, looking for help, a walk through land infested with rattlesnakes. Also slipping on a pier, gashing his shin, hanging, his foot caught, not calling for help. The technique consists in having a plan: Lay ON ROBERT RAUSCHENBERG, ARTIST, AND HIS WORK/103

out stretcher on floor match markings and join. Three stretchers with the canvas on them no doubt already stretched. Fulfilling this plan put the canvas in direct contact with the Hoar, the ground thereby activated. This is pure conjecture on my part but would work. More important is to know exactly the size of the door and techniques for getting a canvas out of the studio. (Combines don't roll up.) Anything beyond that size must be suitably segmented.

I remember the show of the black paintings in North Carolina. Quicklyl They have become masterpieces.

Is it true that anything can be changed, seen in any light, and is not destroyed by the action of shadows? Then you won't mind when I interrupt you while you're working?


The message changes in the combine-drawings, made with pencil, water color, and photographic transfer: (a) the work is done on a table, not on a wall; (b) there is no oil paint; (c) because of a b, no dripping holds the surface in one plane; ( d) there is not always the joining of rectangles since when there is, it acts as reminiscence of stretchers; (e) the outlines appear vague as in water or air (our feet are off the ground); (f) I imagine being upside down; (g) the pencil lines scan the images transferred from photographs; (h) it seems like many television sets working simultaneously all tuned differently. How to respond to this message? (And I remember the one in Dante with the outline of the toes of his foot above, the changed position and another message, the paper absorbing the color and spreading it through its wet tissues.) He has removed the why of asking why and you can read it at home or in a library. (These others are poems too.) Perhaps because of the change in gravity (Monument 1958), the project arose of illustrating a book. (A book can be read at a table; did it fall on the floor?) As for me, I'm not so inclined to read poetry as I am one way or another to get myself a television set, sitting up nights looking.


Perhaps after all there is no message. In that case one is saved the trouble of having to reply. As the lady said, "Well, if it isn't art, then I like it." Some (a) were made to hang on a wall, others (b ) to be in a room, still others (a b ) .


By now we must have gotten the message. It couldn't have been more explicit. Do you understand this idea?: Painting relates to both art and life. Neither can be made. (1 try to act in that gap between the two.) The nothingness in between is where for no reason at all every practical thing that one actually takes the time to do so stirs up the dregs that they're no longer sitting as we thought on the bottom. All you need do is stretch canvas, make markings, and join. You have then turned on ON ROBERT RAUSCHENBERG, ARTIST, AND HIS WORK/10S

the switch that distinguishes man, his ability to change his mind: If you do not change your mind about something when you confront a picture you have not seen before, you are either a stubborn fool or the painting is not very good. Is there any need before we go to bed to recite the history of the changes and will we in that bed be murdered? And how will our dreams, if we manage to go to sleep, suggest the next practical step? Which would you say it was: wild, or elegant, and why? Now as I come to the end of my rope, I notice the color is incredibly beautiful. And that embossed box.


(I cannot remember the name of the device made of glass which has inside it a delicately balanced mechanism which revolves in response to infrared rays.) Rauschenberg made a painting combining in it two of these devices. The painting was excited when anybody came near it. Belonging to friends in the country, it was destroyed by a cat. If he takes a subject, what does he take? And what does he combine with it, once he's put it in place? It's like looking out a window. (But our windows have become electronic: everything moves through the point where our vision is focused; wait long enough and you'll get the Asiatic panoply.) Poetry is free-wheeling. You get its impact by thumbing through any of the mass media. The last time I saw him, Rauschenberg showed me a combine-drawinf!. and while I was l06/SILENCE

looking he was speaking and instead of hearing (I was looking) I just got the general idea that this was an autobiographical drawing. A self-portrait with multiplicity and the largest unobstructed area given to the white painting, the one made of four stretchers, two above, two below, all four of equal size. Into this, structure and all, anything goes. The structure was not the point. But it was practical: you could actually see that everything was happening without anything's being done. Before such emptiness, you just wait to see what you will see. Is Rauschenberg's mind then empty, the way the white canvases are? Does that mean whatever enters it has room? (In, of course, the gap between art and life.) And since rus eyes are corlnected to his mind, he can see what he looks at because his head is clear, uncluttered? That must be the case, for only in a mind (twentieth) that had room for it could Dante (thirteenth-fourteenth) have come in and gone out. What next? The one with the box changed by the people who look at it.

What do images do? Do they illustrate? (It was a New Year's Eve party in the country and one of them had written a philosophical book and was searching for a picture that would illustrate a particular point but was having difficulty. Another was knitting, following the rules from a book she had in front of her. The rest were talking, trying to be helpful. The suggestion was made that the picture in the knitting book would illustrate the point. On examination it was found that everything on the page was relevant, including the number.) But do we not already have too much to look at? (Generosity.) Left to myself, I would be perfectly contented with black pictures, providing Rauschenberg had painted them. (I had one, but unfortunately the new room has a slanting ceiling and besides the wall isn't long enough for it. These are the problems that have no solution, such as the suit wearing out.) But going along, I see I'm changing: color's not so bad after all. (I must have been annoyed by the games of balance and what-not they played with it.) One of the simplest ideas we get is the one we get when someone is weeping .. Duchamp was in a rocking chair. I was weeping. Years later but in the same part of town and for more or less the same reason, Rauschenberg was weeping.


(The white paintings caught whatever fell on them; why did I not look at them with my magnifying glass? Only because I didn't yet have one? Do you agree with the statement: After all, nature is better than art?) Where does beauty begin and where does it end? Where it ends is where the artist begins. In this way we get our navigation done for us. If you hear that Rauschenberg has painted a new painting, the wisest thing to do is to drop everything and manage one way or another to see it. That's how to learn the way to use your eyes, sunup the next day. If I were teaching, would I say Caution Watch Your Step or Throw yourself in where the fish are thickest? Of course, there are objects. Who said there weren't? The thing is, we get the point more quickly when we realize it is we looking rather than that we may not be seeing it. (Why do all the people who are not artists seem to be more intelligent?) And object is fact, not symbol. If any thinking is going to take place, it has to come out from inside the Mason jar which is suspended in Talisman, or from the center of the rose (is it red?) or the eyes of the pitcher (looks like something out of a movie) or-the farther one goes in this direction the more one sees nothing is in the foreground: each minute point is at the center. Did this happen by means of rectangles (the picture is "cut" through the middle)? Or would it happen given this point of view? Not ideas but facts.

M. C. Richards and David Tudor invited several friends to dinner. 1 was there and it was a pleasure. After dinner we were sitting around talking. David Tudor began doing some paper work in a comer, perhaps something to do with music, though I'm not sure. After a while there was a pause in the conversation, and someone said to David Tudor, "Why don't you join the party?" He said, "I haven't left it. This is how 1 keep you entertained." 1 DB/SILENCE

This lecture was printed in Incontri Musicali, August 1959. There are four measures in each line and twelve lines in each unit of the rhythmic structure. There are forty-eight such units, each having forty-eight measures. The whole is divided into five large parts, in the proportion 7, 6, 14, 14, 7. The forty-eight measures of each unit are likewise so divided. The text is printed in four columns to facilitate a rhythmic reading. Each line is to be read across the page from left to right, not down the columns in sequence. This should not be done in an artificial manner (which might result from an attempt to be too strictly faithful to the position of the words on the page), but with the rubato which one uses in everyday speech.

LECTURE ON NOTHING and there is nothing to say

I am here

If among you are let them leave at What we re-quire is but what silence requires that I go on talking Give anyone thought it falls down easily a push and the pushed pro-duce that enterbut the pusher called a dis-cussion Shall we have one later ?

those who wish to get any moment silence is




Or cussion now words silences

we could simply de-cide


What ever you like. there are silences help make

I have nothing to say and that is

and I am saying it poetry

not to have a disBut and the the

as I need it This space of time

is organized We need not fear these

silences, -


we may love them This is a composed

for I am making it a piece of music. We need the


just as I make of milk and we need the milk empty glass anything moment As we go along an i-dea may occur in this

It is like a glass

glass it is like an

Or again

into which

at any may be poured (who knows?)


whether one will let it.

I have no idea or not.

If one does,



gard it as something seen though from a window If across Kansas Arizona almost too interesting in spite of himself being interested needs the Kansas in him nothing on earth It is like an empty glass, is it com

momentarily while traveling then, of course,

Kansas is more interesting,

especially in everything.

for a New-Yorker who is Now he knows he Kansas is like and for a New Yorker very refreshing. nothing but wheat or Does it matter which at any instant,




has this about it:

? one may leave it,

and whenever one wishes one may return to it TO'

Or you may leave it


for we pos-sess nothing is the reali-zation (since we do not at any moment, owned it, 110/ SILENCE

and never return to it that we possess therefore

Anything pos-sess it) and thus We need not destroy the past: it might reappear and seem to be Would it be a repetition? but since we don't, it is free

Our poetry now nothing is a delight need not fear its loss it is gone; and be the present Only if we thought we and so are we

Most anybody knows a-bout the future and how un-certain it is l'Q'

What I am calling poetry is often called I myself have called it form nuity of a piece of music. Continuity when it is necessary is a demonstration interestedness. That is, it is a proof pos-sessing anything lies in not presents what happens from that which is this form sense is memory: and secondary themes; themes their development; the climax; the recapitulation that one may own one's own home) But we carry our homes unlike the snail

content. It is the contitoday, of disthat our delight Each moment How different bound up with their struggle; (which is the belief actually, within us,


to fly

which enables us that which is come down in a or a sunset each acts Hearing

to enjoy breathtakingly the telephone vacant lot

possessing neither and the continuity Nothing more than nothing is not or making this in music only simpler than living this way Simpler, that is for me, that I write music l'Q'

That music is cept simple measured accepted, rare moments train us

or to stay But beware of for at any moment or the airplane A piece of string

each. beautiful, may ring

happens can be said. different because it happens


simple to make comes from one's willingness to acthe limitations of structure. Structure is it can be thought out, be-cause figured out, It is a discipline which, in return accepts whatever even those of ecstasy, which, as sugar loaves train horses, to make what we make How could I LECTURE ON NOTHING/111

better tell tell contained forty minutes

what structure about this, within long

is this talk a space of time ?

than simply to which is approximately


That forty minutes has been divided into five large parts, and each unit is divided likewise. Subdivision involving a square root is the only possible subdivision which permits this micro-macrocosmic rhythmic structure which I find so acceptable and accepting As you see, I can say anything It makes very little difference what I say or even how I say it. At this par-ticular moment, we are passing through the fourth part of a unit which is the second unit in the second large part of this talk It is a little bit like passing through Kansas This, now, is the end of that second unit T1l'

Now begins the

third unit

of the second part Now the

second part of that

part length

third unit Now its third part

(which, by the way,

Now its fourth is just the same

as the third part) Now the fifth

and last part T1l'

You have just microcosmic point of view large part. nothing 112/SIlENCE

ex-perienced the structure of this point of view From a we are just passing the halfway point The first part was a rather rambling of form, and

talk macrocosmic in the second discussion of continuity

from a

need it. is about structure: and why we should be what it is Most speeches are its limitations. doesn't have to have This one But at any moment an idea Then we may enjoy it

when it is the way we part

accept ideas.


This second how simple it is willing full any may come along

to of


without But Life Pure life within and through structure is absolute, alive and siga rise from a field making be-yond com-pare I heard them the limitations of an arts because I ac-cepted girls' finishing school, which limitations conference in a Virginia quite by accident to hear the blackbirds allowed me as they flew up and overhead There was a social and hours for breakfast but one day I saw a calendar

Structure without life structure is un-seen expresses itself Each moment Blackbirds nificant. de-licious sound

is dead.


and the same day heard a woodpecker. America's youngest college president she has resigned, and people say she is going into politics Let her. I also had the Why shouldn't she? of hearing an eminent music critic ex-claim pleasure that he hoped he would live long e-nough to see the end of this craze for Bach. A pupil once said to me: I what you say about and I think understand Beethoven I agree but I have a very serious to question feel ask you: How do you about Bach of the Now we have come to the end ? about structure part

cardinal I also met However,


However, now at

it oc-curs Specifically the be-ginning


to me to say more this: of the third part

about structure Weare and that part LECTURE ON NOTHING/113

is not the part about material. clear from that as we have seen, ginning to get

all I have

devoted to structure. But I'm still talking about structure. that structure has form has no point either. nowhere

Unless some other i-dea crops up to say about structure

It's the part It must be no point, and, Clearly we are be-

a-bout it that is


Now about It is and it certain.

is it interesting ? material: isn't But one thing is If one is making which is to be nothing something the one making must and be patient with love the material he chooses. Otherwise he calls attention to the which is precisely something material, whereas it was nothing that was being made; or he calls attention to himself, nothing is anonymous whereas The technique of handling materials is, on the sense level what structure as a discipline is on the rational level a means of experiencing nothing l\J'

I remember loving

sound took a music lesson before 1 ever And so we make our lives by what we love (Last year when 1 talked here 1 made a short talk. That was because I was talking but about something this year 1 am talking about nothing and of course will go on talking .) for a long time The other day a pupil said, after trying to compose a melody using only three tones, "I felt limited " Had she her materials

with the three tones con-cerned herself she would not have felt limited l\J'

there would not have 114/ SILENCE

and been

since materials

are without feeling, any limitation. It was all in her

mind materials by not being something

whereas it be-Ionged nothing;

materials characteristic Now there's a question I shall answer it

it would have been

of one's time that ought to get us It is an intelslowly

in the It became something nothing by being Should one use the ? somewhere lectual question and

autobiographically TIl'

I remember especially full of beauty gradually liked

loving as a child even the unprepared ones. when there was one at a time A five-finger exercise

all the sounds I liked them for one hand was Later on I

all the intervals

that I be-gan liking the octave I realize major and minor thirds. I liked these thirds least Grieg, I became passionately

Perhaps, fond

As I look back I accepted the of all the intervals, Through the music of of the fifth


Or perhaps you could call it puppy-doglove for the fifth did not make me want to write music: it made me want to devote my life to playing the works of Grieg When later I heard modem music, to water, to all the modem intervals: the sevenths, I took, like a duck the seconds, the tritone, and the fourth I liked Bach too a-bout this time but I didn't like the sound of the thirds and sixths. What I admired in Bach was the way many things went together As I keep on re-membering, I see that I never really liked the thirds, and this explains why I never really liked Brahms LECTURE ON NOTHIN0/115

Modem music sevenths, always,

fascinated me the seconds, the every now and then, Sometimes there were all, and that was a detervals in modem music that it fascinated fascinated by it I de-cided to first is difficult: takes the ear off it that a I was free to hear low sound even when both are called by the working alone

with all its modem intervals: the tritone, and the fourth and there was a fifth, and that pleased me single tones, not intervals at light. There were so many inme rather than that I loved it, and being write it. Writing it at that is, putting the mind on it However, doing it alone, from a high sound is different After several years of same letter. I began to feel lonely.


Studying with a meaning; in their progressions

teacher, they are not just a sound Tonality.

I learned that the sounds not actually I never liked tonality I worked at it Studied it. feeling for it for instance: gressions called de-ceptive cadences. The idea is this: as to imply the presence of a tone not actually fool everyone by not landing on it land somewhere else. Not the ear fooled ? The whole question is very intellectual modem music still fascinated me However with all its modem intervals have them void having pro-gressions that would not actually present to the ear

the mind had fixed it make one think of

did not ap-peal to me that the separation of mind and ear had spoiled that a clean slate was necessary. not only contemporary , but "avant-garde." They had not been in-tellectualized; directly and didn't have to go through any abstraction 116/SILENCE

have intervals but they imply present to the ear But I never had any prothere are some progress in such a way present; then What is being but the mind

But in order to so that one had to asounds that were Avoiding I began to see

the sounds This made me I used noises the ear could hear them a-bout them

liked intervals.

1 found that I I liked noises

liked noises just as much as I had

even more than I liked single sounds


Noises, too and being American, for noises. I liked being

had been dis-criminated against having been trained to be sentimental, I fought underdog on the side of the I got police to play sirens. The most amazing noise per-mIssIOn was that produced by means of a coil of wire attached to the I ever found pickup arm of a phonograph and then amplified. It was shocking, really shocking, and thunderous Half intellectually and , when the war came a-long, half sentimentally I decided to use only quiet sounds There seemed to me in anything big no good, to be no truth, in society. TU'

But quiet sounds love Life, Time and I still feel this way

were like loneliness or friendship values, Coca-Cola


but something else is I begin to hear the ones I had thought worn out, intellectualizationI begin to hear the old sounds though they are not worn out not worn out They are just as new sounds. Thinking had worn them out And if one stops thinking about them,

or Permanent, I thought at least from I must say happening the old sounds worn out by as Obviously, they are audible as the suddenly they are


fresh you will become a worn out where we were: if you like

and new. ghost wore them out this question nowhere

"If you think

you are a ghost Thinking the sounds So you see brings us back or,


where we are I have a story:

"There was once a man


standing on a high elevation. A company of several men who happened to be walking on the road noticed from the distance the man standing on the high place and talked among themselves about this man. One of them said: He must have lost his favorite animal. Another man said No, it must be his friend whom he is looking for. A third one said: He is just enjoying the cool air up there. The three could not a-gree and the discussion place where the man asked: lost your pet animal ? either the fresh breeze I am not


111' (Shall we have one later?) went on until was 0, friend standing up there No, sir, ? The second man asked Have you not No, sir I have The third man asked: up there? No, sir

they reached the high One of the three have you not I have not lost any lost your friend not lost my friend Are you not enjoying What, then

are you standing up there if you say no ?


to all our The man on high said 111'

I just stand there are no answers then, of course, makes the final answer whereas the questions, than the answers how he wrote bussy there are, I take all the tones use all the others When I was young, people told me: Now I'm fifty no questions,

there are answers questions up until then, music. leave out the ones I Satie said You'll see when I've seen nothing 111'

Here we are now of the fourth large part More and more nowhere. 118/SILENCE

Slowly we are getting

If there are If there are questions but the seem absurd seem more intelligent Somebody asked DeHe said: don't want, and you're fifty years old


at the beginning of this talk. I have the feeling that we are getting as the talk goes on nowhere and that is a pleasure

only irritating fourth large part

It is not irritating to be where one is to think one would like to be somewhere else. beginning a little bit after the of this talk More and more we have the feeling that I am getting nowhere Slowly

It is

Here we are now of the

as the talk goes on



of being is sleepy

slowly we are getting which will continue it is not a pleasure if one is irritated it is a pleasure it is not irritating and slowly we were nowhere we are having slowly

we have the feeling That is a pleasure If we are irritated Nothing is not a but suddenly and then more and more (and then more and more Originally and now, again



the pleasure nowhere. let him go to sleep

If anybody


at the beginning Here we are now of the third unit of the fourth large part of this talk. More and more I have the feeling that we are getting Slowly as the talk goes on nowhere. nowhere we are getting and that is a pleasure It is not irritating to be where one is It is to think one would like only irritating to be somewhere else. Here we are now a little bit after the beginning of the third unit of the fourth large part of this talk More and more we have the feeling that I am getting nowhere Slowly as the talk goes on slowly we are getting

we have the feeling nowhere.

That is a pleasure LECTURE ON NOTHING/119


of being is sleepy



the pleasure nowhere. let him go to sleep



at the beginning Here we are now of the of this talk. fifth unit of the fourth large part that we are getting I have the feeling More and more Slowly as the talk goes on nowhere. nowhere and that is a pleasure we are getting It is not irritating to be where one is It is to think one would like to be somewhere else. Here we are now only irritating of the fifth unit of the beginning a little bit after the fourth large part of this talk More and more we have the feeling that I am getting nowhere Slowly as the talk goes on


of being is sleepy




the pleasure nowhere. let him go to sleep TIl'



If anybody

at the middle of this talk. of the fourth large part I have the feeling that we are getting More and more as the talk goes on Slowly nowhere. and that is a pleasure we are getting nowhere It is not irritating to be where one is It is Here we are now only irritating to think one would like to be somewhere else. a little bit after the oftha middle of this talk fourth large part we have the feeling More and more nowhere that I am getting as the talk goes on Slowly Here we are now



of being is sleepy





the pleasure nowhere. let him go to sleep

If anybody


at the beginning oftha Here we are now ninth unit of the fourth large part of this talk. More and more I have the feeling that we are getting nowhere. as the talk goes on Slowly nowhere we are getting and that is a pleasure It is It is not irritating to be where one is to be somewhere else. Here we are now only irritating to think one would like of the beginning of the ninth unit a little bit after the fourth large part of this talk More and more we have the feeling LECTURE ON NOTHING/121

that I am getting Slowly

nowhere as the talk goes on lll'


of being is sleepy




the pleasure nowhere. let him go to sleep



Here we are now at the beginning of the eleventh unit of the fourth large part of this talk. that we are getting More and more I have the feeling nowhere. Slowly as the talk goes on and that is a pleasure we are getting nowhere It is It is not irritating to be where one is only irritating to think one would like to be somewhere else. Here we are now of the beginning of the eleventh unit a little bit after the fourth large part of this talk More and more we have the feeling nowhere that I am getting Slowly as the talk goes on lll'






of being is sleepy

and slowly we were nowhere we are having slowly

Originally and now, again


the pleasure nowhere. let him go to sleep

If anybody


Here we are now at the beginning of the thirteenth unit of the fourth large part of this talk. More and more I have the feeling that we are getting nowhere. Slowly as the talk goes on nowhere and that is a pleasure we are getting It is not irritating to be where one is It is only irritating to think one would like to be somewhere else. Here we are now of the a little bit after the beginning of the thir-teenth unit fourth large part of this talk More and more we have the feeling that I am getting nowhere Slowly as the talk goes on


of being is sleepy





the pleasure nowhere. let him go to sleep T1l'

If anybody




now. It was a pleasure And now "Read me that part a-gain where I disin-herit everybody The twelve-tone row method is a control of each note. There is too much there there There is not enough of nothing in it like a bridge from nowhere to anyone may go on it corn or wheat ? I thought there were eighty-eight tones You can quarter them too That is finished

this is a pleasure. is a method; single

A structure is and nowhere noises or tones Does it matter which


If it were feet ? 124/SILENCE

Or can we fly from here


would it be a two-tone row to where

? I have nothing but it is a method, We really do need a structure we are nowhere row uses the twelve-tone love it. I love it I love it (My own music does that And it seems to me to Japanese shakuhachi music Yeibitchai stand

against the twelve-tone row; not a structure so we can see Much of the music I love but that is not why I for no reason for suddenly I am nowhere quickly for me .) listen forever I could or the Navajo Or I could sit or

near Richard Lippold's any length of time Chinese bronzes

I possess

any piece of music and even

how I love them But those beauties tend to stir up and I know

which others have made, the need to possess nothing Record collections that is not music

The phonograph is a thing, A thing leads to other things, leads to nothing Would you like to join ? (Just so no one would Anyone joining automatically To join you must show records or, in the case of

There is no point a long-playing

Full Moon

not a musical whereas a

instrument musical instrument

a society called think we were becomes president you've destroyed tape, To imagine you is to miss or the point record

Capitalists Inc. Communists.) at least one hundred one sound mirror own the whole point is nothing; is a thing.


I live in Texas The reason they've no in Texas. they have recordings music in Texas is because in Texas. Remove the records from Texas and someone will learn to sing Everybody has a song which is song at all : no it is a process of singing and when you sing you are where you are All I know about method is that when I am not working I sometimes think I know something, but when I am working, it is quite clear that I know nothing.

A lady

from Texas said: We have no music




In keeping with the thought expressed above that a discussion is nothing more than an entertainment, I prepared six answers for the first six questions asked, regardless of what they were. In 1949 or '50, when the lecture was first delivered (at the Artists' Club as described in the Foreword), there were six questions. In 1960, however, when the speech was delivered for the second time, the audience got the point after two questions and, not wishing to be entertained, refrained from asking anything more. The answers are:



That is a very good question. I should not want to spoil it with an answer.


My head wants to ache.


Had you heard Marya Freund last April in Palermo singing Arnold Schoenberg's Pierrot Lunaire, I doubt whether you would ask that question.


According to the Farmers' Almanac this is False Spring.


Please repeat the question . .. And again .. . And again .. .


I have no more answers.

Now giving lecture on Japanese poetry. First giving very old Japanese poem, very classical: Oh willow tree, Why are you so sad, willow tree? Maybe baby? Now giving nineteenth-century romantic Japanese poem: Oh bird, sitting on willow tree, Why are you so sad, bird? Maybe baby? Now giving up-to-the-minute twentieth-century Japanese poem, very modem: Oh stream, flowing past willow tree, Why are you so sad, stream? Baby? I was never psychoanalyzed. I'Il teIl you how it happened. I always had a chip on my shoulder about psychoanalysis. I knew the remark of Rilke to a friend of his who wanted him to be psychoanalyzed. Rilke said, ''I'm sure they would remove my devils, but I fear they would offend my angels." When I went to the analyst for a kind of preliminary meeting, he said, 'TIl be able to fix you so that you'Il write much more music than you do now." I said, "Good heavens I I already write too much, it seems to me." That promise of his put me off. And then in the nick of time, Gita Sarabhai came from India. She was concerned about the influence Western music was having on traditional Indian music, and she'd decided to study Western music for six months with several teachers and then return to India to do what she could to preserve the Indian traditions. She studied contemporary music and counterpoint with me. She said, "How much do you charge?" I said, "It'Il be free if you'Il also teach me about Indian music." We were almost every day together. At the end



I was on an English boat going from Siracusa in Sicily to Tunis in North Africa. I had taken the cheapest passage and it was a voyage of two nights and one day. We were no sooner out of the harbor than I found that in my class no food was served. I sent a note to the captain saying I'd like to change to another class. He sent a note back saying I could not change and, further, asking whether I had been vaccinated. I wrote back that I had not been vaccinated and that I didn't intend to be. He wrote back that unless I was vaccinated I would not be permitted to disembark at Tunis. We had meanwhile gotten into a terrific storm. The waves were higher than the boat. It was impossible to walk on the deck. The correspondence between the captain and myself continued in deadlock. In my last note to him, I stated my firm intention to get off his boat at the earliest opportunity and without being vaccinated. He then wrote back that I had been vaccinated, and to prove it he sent along a certificate with his signature. David Tudor and I went to Hilversum in Holland to make a recording for the Dutch radio. We arrived at the studio early and there was some delay. To pass the time, we chatted with the engineer who was to work with us. He asked me what kind of music he was about to record. Since he was a Dutchman I said, "It may remind you of the work of Mondrian." When the session was finished and the three of us were leaving the studio, I asked the engineer what he thought of the music we had played. He said, "It reminded me of the work of Mondrian."


Although it had been prepared some years earlier, this lecture was not printed until 1959, when it appeared in It Is, edited by Philip Pavia, with the following introduction: In the general moving around and talking that followed my Lecture on Something (ten years ago at the Club), somebody asked Morton Feldman whether he agreed with what I had said about him. He replied, "That's not me; that's John." When Pavia recently asked me for a text on the occasion of Columbia's issuing a record devoted to Feldman's music, I said, "I already have one. Why don't you print it?" [In this connection, it may be noted that the empty spaces, omitted in the It Is printing but to be encountered below, are representative of silences that were a part of the Lecture.}

LECTURE ON SOMETHING To bring things up to date, let me say that I am as ever changing, while Feldman's music seems more to continue than to change. There never was and there is not now in my mind any doubt about its beauty. It is, in fact, sometimes too beautiful. The {!twor of that beauty, which formerly seemed to me to be heroic, strikes me now as erotic (an equal, by no means a lesser, flavor). This impression is due, I believe, to Feldman's tendency towards tenderness, a tenderness only briefly, and sometimes not at all, interrupted by violence. On paper, of course, the graph pieces are as heroic as ever; but in rehearsal Feldman does not permit the freedoms he writes to become the occasion for license. He insists upon an action within the gamut of love, and this produces (to mention only the extreme effects) a sensuousness of sound or an atmosphere of devotion. As ever, I prefer concerts to records of instrumental music. Let no one imagine that in owning a recording he has the music. The very practice of music, and Feldman's eminently, is a celebration that we own nothing.


This is a talk about something and naturally also a talk about nothing. About how something and nothing are not opposed to each other but need each other to keep on going It is difficult to talk when you have something to say precisely because of the words which keep making us say in the way which the words need to stick to and not in the Way which we need for living. For instance: "Art should come from within; then it is profound." someone said, Art goes within, and I don't see the need for "should" or But it seems to me "then" or "it" or "pro-found." When Art comes from within which is what it was for so long doing, it be-came a thing which seemed to elevate the man who made it a-bove those who ob-served it or heard it and the artist was or given a rating: First, Second, No Good, until considered a genius riding in a bus or subway: so proudly he signs his finally like a manufacturer work But since everything's changing, art's now going utmost importance not to make a thing but rather to make in and it is of the nothing. And how is this done? Done by making something in and reminds us of nothing. It is im-portant that this which then goes be just something, finitely something; then very something it goes in and becomes infinitely nothing simply living. Understanding of what is nourishing It seems we are is Of course, it is always changing, but changing now it is very clearly changing, so that the people either agree or they don't and the differences of o-pinion are clearer Just a year or so ago everything seemed to be an individual matter. But now there are two sides. On one side it is that individual matter going on, and on the other side it is more not an individual but everyone which is not to say it's all the same, on the contrary there are more differences. That is: starting finitely everything's different but in going in it all becomes the same H.C.E. Which is what Morton Feldman had in mind

when he called

the music he's now writing Feldman speaks of


within broad limits

the first ones

that come along.

the responsibility of

the composer

from making To accept re--gardless

no sounds,

and takes

He has changed to accepting whatever comes of the consequences


unafraid or to be full of that love which with whatever a sense of at-one-ness comes from This goes to explain what Feldman means when he says that he is associated with all of the sounds, and so can foresee what will happen even though he has not written the particular as other composers do notes down When a com-poser feels a responsibility to make, rather than accept, he e-liminates from the area of possibility all those events that do not suggest the at that point in time vogue of profund-ity. For he takes himself seriously, wishes to be considered great, and he thereby diminishes and in-creases his fear and concern about his love what people will think There are many serious problems confronting such an individual He must do it better, more impressively, more beautifully, etc. than anybody else And what, precisely, does this, this beautiful profound object, this masterpiece, have to do with Life? It has this to do with Life that it is and now we don't. separate from it. Now we see it When we see it we feel better, and when we are away from it, we don't feel so good Life seems shabby and chaotic, disordered, ugly in contrast. Let me read a passage from the I-Ching which discusses this point. "In human affairs aesthetic form comes into being when traditions exist that strong and abiding like mountains are made pleasing by a lucid beauty. By contemplating the ex-isting in the heavens we come to understand forms and its changing demands time Through contemplation of the is to be

existing in human society



it be-comes possible

And the footnote goes on:

quiet without contemplation.

This is the

clarity within, tran--quillity of pure

and the will comes to rest

When desire is silenced

the world as i-dea becomes manifest

to shape the world

"Tranquil beauty:

In this aspect the world is beautiful

and re-moved from the struggle for existence.

Art. 130/SILENCE


contemplation alone

This is the world of

will not put the

will to rest abso-Iutely. It will a-waken again and then only a brief all the beauty of form will appear to have been not the true way of of exaltation. Hence this is still moment whose light illuminates the mountain The fire redemption. In the same way and makes it pleasing, does not shine far. upon mat-ters of lesser moment beautiful form suffices to brighten and throw light But important questions cannot be decided

in this way

They require

greater earnestness Perhaps Blythe responsibility of the for a moment


a statement made by understandable this will make "The highest Haiku: in his book is to hide beauty." Now artist what are the important questions let's consider and what is that greater earnestness that is required The just beautiful important question is what is it that is not but also not just true, ugly, not just good, but also evil but also an ilspoke of shadows. I remember now that Feldman lusion. the sounds were not sounds but shadows. They are obviously He said that that's why they are shadows. Every something is an echo of nothing. sounds; very much like a piece by Morty Feldman. Life goes on may ob-ject that the sounds that happened were not interesting. Someone Next time he hears the piece, it will be different, Let him. perhaps less interesting, perhaps suddenly exciting Perhaps A disaster for whom? For him, not for Feldman. disastrous. the same: always different, sometimes And life citing, sometimes boring, sometimes gently pleasing and so on; what other important questions are there? Than that we live how to do it in a state of accord with Life. Some people may now be indignant and insist on saying that they control Life. They are the same ones who insist on controlling and judging art

Or we can say:

Why judge? Judge

"Judge not and r&--gardless

lest ye be judged." of the consequences What

exand and


meant by Judge and r&--gardless of the conse-quences? Simply this: A modern Judge in a state of disinterest as to the effects of the judging Cuban composer, earned his living as a judge. A Caturla, LECTURE ON SOMETHING/131

man he sentenced to life imprisonment es---eaped from prison and In that penultimate now-moment murdered Caturla. before being killed was Caturla in hell or in heaven? Make judgments but accept the consequences. Otherwise no life: Hamlet, fear, guilt, concern, responsibility. The i-dea, consequences, suggests the musical term continuity and that produced a discussion last week for Feldman spoke of no---eontinuity, whereas it was argued from a rational point of view that no matter what there is continuity. This is again a matter of disinterest and acceptance. No---eontinuity continuity that happens. simply means accepting that Continuity means the opposite: making that particular continuity that excludes all others. This is, of course, possible but not any longer nourishing for we have found that by excluding even though we may have an enormous bank account we grow thin inside outside. For somethings one needs critics, connoisseurs, judgments, authoritative ones, otherwise one gets gypped; but for nothing one can dispense with all that fol-de-rol no one loses nothing be---eause nothing is se---eurely possessed When nothing is se---eurely possessed one is free to accept any of the somethings. How many are there? They roll up at your feet. How many doors and windows are there in it? There is no end to the number of somethings and all of them (without exception) are ac---eeptable. If one gets suddenly proud and says for one reason or a-nother: I cannot accept this; then the whole freedom to accept any of the others vanishes. But if one maintains secure possession of nothing (what has been called poverty of spirit), then there is no limit freely enjoy. en-joyment there is no to what one may In this free possession of things. There is only enjoyment. What is possessed is nothing. This is what is meant when one says No---eontinuity. No sounds. No harmony. No melody. No counterpoint. No rhythm. That is to say there is not one of the somethings that is not acceptable. When this is meant one is in accord with life, and paradoxically free to pick and choose again as at any moment Feldman does, will or may. New picking and choosing is just like the old picking and choosing except that one takes as just another of one of the somethings any consequence 132/SILENCE

having picked and chosen. When in the state of nothing, one diminished the something in one: Character. At any moment one is free to take on character again, but then it is without fear, full of life and love. For one's been at the point of the nourishment that sustains in no matter what one of the something situations. enter any time within the duration notated; High, middle, low; this particular timbre. These are the somethings Feldman has chosen. They give him and his art character. It is quite useless in this situation for anyone to say Feldman's work is good or not good. Because we are in the direct it is. If you don't like it you may choose to situation: avoid it. But if you avoid it that's a pity, because it resembles life very closely, and life and it are essentially a cause for joy. People say, sometimes , timidly: I know nothing about music but I know what I like. But the important questions are answered by not liking only but disliking and accepting equally what one likes and dislikes. Otherwise there is no access to the dark night of the soul. At the present time, a twelve-tone time, it is not popular to allow the more common garden variety of tonal relations These latter are dis-criminated against. Feldman allows them to be if they happen to come along. And to ex-plain again, the only reason for his being able to allow them is by his acting on the as-sumption that no tonal relations ex-ist, all tonal relations meaning are acceptable. Let us say in life: No earthquakes are permissible. What happens then ?

world begin to sense their at-one-ness when nothing

way the music so that its all of the things

All the somethings in the something happens that reminds them of

And in this of Morton Feldman may actively remind us of nothing no-{!ontinuity will let us allow our lives with that happen in them to be simply what they are and not separate LECTURE ON SOMETHING/133

It is perfectly clear that walking a-long the river is from one another. and writing music is another and being interrupted one thing while writing music is still an-other and a backache too. They that is being all go together and it's a continuity that is not a continuity The moment it be-comes a clung to or in-sisted upon. then the special continuity of I am composing and nothing else should happen, is nothing but a series of interruptions, pleasant or rest of life The truth, however, is that it is catastrophic as the case may be. Feldman's music anything may happen and it all does more like go together. There is no rest of life. Life is one. Without beThe concept: beginning ginning, without middle, without ending comes from a Sense of self which separates itself middle and meaning from what it considers to be the rest of life. But this attitude is untenable unless That one insists on stopping life and bringing it to an end thought is in itself an attempt to stop life, for life goes on, indifferent to the that are part of its no beginning, no middle, no meaning deaths How much better to simply get behind and push! To do the opposite is clownish, that is: clinging or trying to force The abi-dea of it, of what it should be, is on-Iy absurd. life into one's own surdity comes from the artificiality of it, of not living, but of having to have first an idea about how one should do it and then stumblingly is what we trying. Falling down on some one of the various banana peels have been calling tragedy. Ideas of separateness artificially elevated. The mythological and Oriental view of the hero is the one who accepts life And so if one should object to calling Feldman a composer, one could call him a hero. But we are all heroes, if we accept what comes, our inner cheerfulness undis-turbed. If we ac--<:ept what comes, that (again) is what Feldman means by Intersection. Anyone may cross it. Here Comes Everybody. The light has turned. Walk on. The water is fine. Jump in. Some will refuse, for they see that the water is thick with monsters ready to devour them. What they have in mind is self-preservation. And what is that self-preservation but only a preservation from life? Whereas life without death is no longer life but only self-preservation. (This by the way is another reason why recordings are not music .) Which do we prefer is, practically speaking, an irrelevant question. for conclusively by exercising death settles the matter since life 134/SILENCE

but without conclusion for nothing. It is nothing that something goes on and on without beginning middle or meaning or ending. Something is always starting and stopping, rising and failing. The nothing that Feldman speaks of when he speaks of being subgoes on is what is the merged in The ac-ceptance of death silence. one So that listening to this source of all life. music spring-board the first sound that comes along ; the first takes as a something springs us into nothing and out of that nothing a-rises the next something; etc. like an al-ternating current. Not one sound fears the silence that ex-tinguishes it. And no silence exists that is not pregnant with sound. Someone said the other day, in to the performance of Feldman's music at Merce Cunningham's reference "That kind of music if you call it music should not be recent recital: played in a public hall, because many people do not understand it and they start talking or tittering and the result is that you can't hear the music be-cause of all these extraneous sounds." Going on, that "The music could be played and possibly appreciated , someone said, where, not having paid to be entertained, those listening in a home or having it might listen and not have the impulse to titter squelch it out of decorum and be-sides in a home it is to hear it more comfortable and quiet: there would be a better chance Now what that someone said de-scribes the de" sire for special cut-off-from-life conditions: an ivory tower. But no ivory tower ex-ists, for there is no possibility of keeping the Prince forever within the Palace WaIls. He will, willy nilly, one day get out and seeing that there are sickness and death (tittering and talking) become the Buddha. Be-sides at my house, you hear the boat sounds, the traffic sounds, the neighbors quarreling, the children playing and screaming in the hall, and on top of it all the pedals of the piano squeak There is no getting a-way from life by Now, going on going back to what that someone said: "That kind of music, if you call it music." Actually Words are only noises . Which noise what difference? Essentially the question is makes little difference or do you in--sist do you live, on words? If before you live you go through a word then there is an indirection. but not go around the barn Whereas we need LECTURE ON SOMETHING/135

may go directly in And then to go on "Paid to be entertained ." This brings us again to Life. If at any moment we approach that moment with a pre-conceived idea of what that moment will provide, and if, furthermore, we pre--sume that having paid for it makes us safe about it, we simply start off on the wrong foot. Let's say for ten years everything turns out as we imagined it would and ought. Sooner or later the table turns and it doesn't work out as we wish it would We buy something to keep and it is stolen. We bake a cake and it turns out that the sugar was not sugar but salt I no sooner than the telephone rings . But to continue: start to work what is is being entertained? entertainment? And who entertained and their nature is that of nature: Heroes are being the accepting without preconceived ideas of of what comes what will happen This is, by the way, consequences. and re-gardless of the we are familiar why it is so difficult to listen to music of what will happen with; memory has acted to keep us a-ware next, in the and so it is almost im-possible to remain a-live presence of a well-known masterpiece. Now and then it happens, and when it does, it par-takes of the miraculous Going on about what someone said: at the root of the desire a piece of music, to appreciate to call it this rather that that, to hear it without the unavoidable extraneous soundsthat this is the idea at the root of all this work is a thing is not the case separate from the rest of life, which with Feldman's music in the presence not of a work Weare which is implicitly of art which is a thing but of an action nothing Nothing has been said Nothing is communicated. And there is no use of symbols or intellectual references. No thing in life requires a symbol since it is clearly a visible manifestation what it is: of an invisible nothing. All somethings equally life-giving nothing. par-take of that But to go on again about someone said: "What?" And I forgot to mention it before. He said, "What about all those silences ?" How do I know when 136/SILENCE


We never know other ways than infinite number 138/SILENCE

when but being cheerful helps Feldman's? Naturally; something-speaking there are of ways. How many doors and windows?

Are there an

I forgot to say this isn't a talk about Morton Feldman's music. It's a talk within a rhythmic structure and that is why every now and then it is possible to have absolutely nothing; the possibility of nothing

middles meanings and endings? beginnings middles and meanings

If you let it Each something When we it doesn't drop.

And what is the And what is the


it supports itself. You don't have to is a celebration of the nothing that supports it. re-move the world from our shoulders we notice Where is the responsibility ?

oneself; Responsibility is to irresponsibility to oneself which is to say responsibility to others and things comes a-long

If one adopts station living one is living, something the art;

be-ginning of no ending of no

and the highest form of it is the calm acceptance of whatever

this attitude is a sort of experimental art in which one tries out living; one doesn't stop when one is occupied making the art, and that is, for example, now reading a lecture and nothing, one doesn't stop being occupied making should I be writing that

when on


piano concerto? Of course, I am - and going to the movies or explaining about nothing or eating an apple: concerto piano. No "should" and no blame. The continuity that is no continuity for-e\1er; is going on and there is no problem a-bout accepting whatever. With this exception: there is great difficulty those things a profound in accepting that come from inner feeling and full of pride and self-glory assert as separate from and finer themselves than anything else on earth. But, actually, where is the difficulty? It is the simplest thing in the world to directly see: this is an oran .. ~; that is a frog; this is a man being proud; this is a man thinking another man is proud; etc It all goes to-gether and doesn't require that we try to improve it or feel our inferiority or superiority to it. Progress is out of the question. But inactivity is not what happens. There is always activity but it is free from com-pulsion, done from disinterest. And we are free to stop brooding and to observe the effects of our actions. (When we are proud, that pride keeps us from ob-serving very clearly.) And what do we observe: the effects of our actions on or on ourselves? others On ourselves; for if the effects on us are con-ducive to less separateness, less fear, more love, we may walk on then regardless of the others. Out of that lack of regard for the others we will not feel the need to be those silences that competitive, for as in occur when two people are confident of each other's friendship, there is no nervousness, onJy a sense of at--one-ness




towards something, going from nothing we have all When we remember the European history of music and art is well done and there we can see that this but the other is not. So-and-so contributed this and that and criteria. But now we are towards nothing, going from something and there is no way have equally their of saying success or failure since all things of that fact is the only obstacle to Being ignorant Buddha nature. And being enlightened is not enlightenment. some spooky unearthly condition. Before studying Zen men are men and mountains are mountains. While studying Zen, things get confused. After studying Zen men are men and mountains are mountains. No except that one is no longer attached; now difference I have found and then in dis-cussing that these ideas some people say, "That is all very well, but it won't for it's Oriental." work for us, there is no longer a (Actually of Orient All of that is rapidly question and Occident. disappearing; as Bucky Fuller pointing out: is fond of the movement with the wind of the Orient and the movement against the wind of the Occident and meet in America produce a movement upwards into the air the space, the silence, the nothing that supports us .) And then if any of you again are troubled still about Orient and Occident, you can read Eckhart, or Blythe's book on Zen in English literature, or Joe Campbell's books on mythology and philosophy, or the books by Alan Watts. And there are naturally many others. There are books to read, pictures to look at, poetry LECTURE ON SOMETHING/143

to read (cummings for instance), sculpture, architecture, even theatre and dance, and now some music too. Mostly, right now, there is painting and sculpture, and just as formerly when starting to be ab-stract, artists referred to musical practices to show that what they were doing was valid, so nowadays, musicians, to explain what they are doing, say, "See, the painters and sculptors have been doing it for quite some time." But we are still at the point where most musicians are clinging to the complicated torn-up competitive remnants of tradition, and, furthermore, a tradition that was always a tradition of breaking with tradition, and further-more, a tradition that in its ideas of counterpoint and harmony was out of step not only with its own but with all other traditions 1 had thought of leaving this last section silent, but then it turns out 1 have something to say . 1 am after all talking about Morton Feldman's music and whether that is right or wrong is not to the point. 1 am doing it. Going on doing it. And that is the way. This morning 1 thought of an image that might make clear to some of you the natural usefulness of Feldman's music. It was this: in myth, do you remember, the hero's encounter with the shape-shifting monster? The way the sounds betwo per-formances shift tween their somethingness suggests this. Now what does the hero do? (You and 1 and incidentally Morty too.) are the heroes He doesn't but simply get frightened accepts what the sound-shifting performer happens to do. Eventually the whole mirage disappears. And the prize or sought-for something (that is nothing) is obtained. And that something- generating nothing that is obtained is something that each is really what it is and so Live happily what happens? ever after. And do we a celebration? We cannot a-void it need each thing in life is continually since just that Now what if I'm wrong? Shall 1 telephone Joe Campbell and ask him the meaning of shape-shifters (I can't do it for a nickel any more.) ? He would know the However, that is not the point. The point is answer. 144jSILENCE

This is a situation which is no more and no less serious than any this. other life-and-death situation. What is needed is irresponsibility. God made the poor for the rich, Out of Meister Eckhart's sermon, I take the following "If, going to some place, we had first to settle how to put the front foot down, we should never get there. If the painter had to plan out every brush-mark before he made his he would not paint at all. Follow your principles and keep first straight on; you will come to the right place, that is the way." The other day from Pierre Boulez. I had a letter we live He said, "We try not to think too much of the war; as possible pushing our in-vestigations from day to day, as far


Coming back to Eckhart, for the sake brilliant conclusion, ofa a tonic emphatic conclusion to this talk they need and nothing and how keep on going, says, "Earth" as Eckhart any something) "has no escape from heaven:" nothing) "flee she up or flee she down her, energizing her, fructifying still invades whether for her weal or for her woe."

by the way and dominant about something each other (that is (that is heaven her,



Before writing this piece, I composed 34' 46.776" for Two Pianists. These piano parts shared the same numerical rhythmic structure but were not fixed together by means of a score. They were mobile with respect to one another. In each case the structural units became different in actual time-length by use of a factor obtained by chance operations. Having been asked to speak at the Composers' Concourse in London (October 1954), I decided to prepare for that occasion a lecture using the same structure, thus permitting the playing of music during the delivery of the speech. The second pianist's part had turned out to be 31' 57.9864". When I applied the chance factor to the numerical rhythmic structure in the case of the speech, I obtained 39' 16.95". However, when the text was completed, I found I was unable to perform it within that time-length. I needed more time. I made experiments, reading long lines as rapidly as I could. The result was two seconds for each line, 45' for the entire piece. Not all the text can be read comfortably even at this speed, but one can still try.

45' FOR A SPEAKER The piano parts had included noises and whistles in addition to piano and prepared piano tones. For the speaker, I made a list of noises and gestures. By means of chance operations, determining which noise or gesture and when it was to be made, I added these to the text. Similarly, the relative loudness of delivery was varied: soft, normal, loud. (These volumes are indicated in the text below by typographical means: italics for soft, roman for normal, and boldface italics for loud.) The text itself was composed using previously written lectures together with new material. Answers to the following questions were all obtained by chance operations: 1. 2. 3. 4. 5.


Is there speech or silence? And for how long? If speech, is it old material or new? If old, from which lecture and what part of it? If new, on which of the following 32 subiects? Structure (emptiness) (in general no structure) Quotations Time (and rhythm) Sound (and noises) Silence Chance Technique in general (no technique) Other arts (shadows, etc.: incidental sounds)

Relationship (synchronicity) Music (work of art) Magnetic tape Prepared piano Form Theatre (music work of life) Listening as ignorance Focus Square root and flexibility Asymmetry of probability Imperfections technique Coins technique Mobility-immobility Multiple loud-speakers Non-dualism Error Psychology (expressivity) (inspiration) Vertical (forced) relations Horizontal (forced) relations Mobility of parts (this work) The string pieces The carillon music Activity of performance Purpose 6. Is the material, new or old, to be measured in terms of words or syllables? And how many? The piece for two pianists hall been commissioned for performance at Donaueschingen in September 1954. I finished it fust in time to catch the boat for Rotterdam with David Tudor. My plan was to write the speech while crossing the Atlantic. The boat, however, met with a collision twelve hours after leaVing Manhattan. We slowly returned to New York. With the help of other passengers having obligations abroad, we organized the flight of all the ship's passengers to Amsterdam. 45' for a Speaker was written on trains and in hotels and restaurants during the course of a European tour. Returning to America later that fall, I composed 26' 1.1499" for a String Player (incorporating in it short pieces written two years before) and, later, 27'10.554" for a Percussionist. All these compositions, including the speech, may be performed alone or together in any combination.


0'00" "Lo and behold the horse turns into a prince, who, except for the acquiescence of the hero would have had to remain a miserable shaggy nag." 10" I have noticed something else about Christian Wolff's music. All you can do is suddenly listen in the same way that, when you catch cold, 20" all you can do is suddenly sneeze. Unfortunately European harmony.




Whereitis: within us but like an empty glass into which


1'00" at any moment anything may be poured just something finitely something or even to be able to drink 10" a glass of water. Unless some other idea crops up about it, that is all I have to say about structure. My present way 20" of composing's involved with the observation of imperfections in the paper on which I happen to be 30" writing. '( Snore) About the prepared piano: each prepared piano is prepared differently. Objects are placed between the strings and the piano sound, to all of these various characteristics, he 40" is transformed with respect to all of its characteristics. Music is an oversimplification of the situation we actually are in. An ear alone is not a being; music is one part of theatre. "Focus" is what aspects one's noticing, Theatre is all the various things 50" going on at the same time. I have noticed that music is liveliest for me when listening for instance doesn't distract me from seeing. One should take music very naturally. No technique

at all: 45' FOR A SPEAKER/149

2'00" only technique worth having. I remember being asked what! thought about 10" technique. And at first I had nothing to say. 20" Several days later I realized I have no time for technique because 30" I must always be making one: any technique can be discovered after any technique 40" is forgotten. Another technique I've devised is derived from the I -Ching method 50" of obtaining oracles. And a principle (also I-Ching) which interested me lSD/SILENCE

(Lean on Elbow)


( not at all any more) is that which is called



10" (Hiss)

Time, which is the title of this piece, ( so many minutes 20" so many seconds), is what we and sounds happen in. Whether early or late: in it. It is not a question of counting. 30" Our poetry now is the realization that we possess nothing. Anything therefore is a delight ( since we do not possess it) 40" and thus need not fear. This composition involves a flexible use of the number 10,000: that is to say 100 x 100 (sq. rt.).

( Slap table)


The actual time-lengths This 50" are changing. work has no score. It should be abolished. ÂŤA statement concerning the arts is no statement concerning the arts." It consists of single parts. Any of them may be played together or eliminated and at any time. "To me teaching is an expedient, but I do 45' FOR A SPEAKER/151

4'00" not teach external signs." Like a long book if a long book is like a mobile. "The ignorant because of their attachment to existence seize on signified or signifying." No beginning no ending. Harmony, so-called, is a forced abstract vertical relation which blots out the spontaneous transmitting nature of each of the sounds forced into it. It is 10" artificial and unrealistic. Form, then, is not something off in the distance in solitary confinement: It is right here right now. Since it is something we say about past actions, it is wise to drop it. 20" This, too, giving himself & his quest up to the aimless rolling of a metal ball, the hero, unquestioningly does. They proceed thus, by chance, by no will of their own passing safely 30" through many perilous situations. I begin to hear the old sounds, the ones I had thought worn out, worn out by intellectualization, I begin to hear the old sounds as though they are not worn out. Silence, like music, is non40" existent. There always are sounds. That is to say if one is alive to hear them. Obviously they are not. Whether I make them or not there are always sounds to be heard and all of them are excellent. ( Brush Hair ) We bake a cake

50" and it turns out that the sugar was not sugar but salt. 152/SILENCE



10" By no means.


(Blow nose) 30"

The twelve-tone row is a method. A method is a control of each single note. Their development, the climax, the recapitulation which is the belief one may own one's own home.

40" "There is too much there there." There is not enough of nothing in it. So far, I have written two parts for a pianist. 50" Either part can be played alone or they can both be played together. Each piano is prepared differently although, as a matter of focus, the parts could be played without bothering to prepare the piano or pianos. If prepared, then, generally, the preparations will be altered in 45' FOR A SPEAKER/153

6'00" the course of the perfonnance.

10" The principle called mobility-immobility is this: every thing is changing but while some things are changing others are not.

20" Eventually those that were not 30"

changing begin suddenly to change 40"

et vice versa ad infinitum. A technique to be useful (skillful, that is) must be such that it fails 50" to control the elements subjected to it. Otherwise it is apt to become unclear. And listening is best in a state of mental emptiness. 154/SILENCE

7'00" Composers are spoken of as having ears for music which generally means that nothing presented to their ears can be heard by them. Their ears are walled in with sounds 10" of their own imagination.

Of five aspects observe 20" two. The highest purpose is to have no purpose at all. This puts one in accord with nature in her manner of operation. If someone comes along and asks why?, there are answers. 30" However there is a story I have found very helpful. What's so interesting about technique anyway? What if there are twelve tones in a row? What row? This seeing of cause and effect is not emphasized but instead one makes an identification with what is here and now. He 40" then spoke of two qualities. Unimpededness and Interpenetration. The relationship of things happening at the same time is spontaneous and irrepressible. 50" It is you yourself in the form you have that instant taken. To stop and figure it out takes time. 45' FOR A SPEAKER/155

8'00" The only thing, pardon me, that I do not find.

10" The preparation of the pianos is also determined by chance. The various materials 20" that exist are placed in the following categories: P meaning plastics, bone, glass, etc., M meaning metal, C meaning cloth, fibre, rubber, 30" W meaning wood, paper, X meaning other materials, special circumstances, free choices etc.

Coins are then tossed.

40" Form's not the same twice:

50" Sonatas

Fugues That two or 156/SILENCE

9'00" more things happen at the same time is their relation. The beginning of this work in progress was not a 10" part for a pianist, but, curiously enough, six short parts no one of them lasting much more than a minute, 20" for a string-player, that is, a four-strings-player.

Surely things happening at different times are also 30" related. If it needed to be clear, magnetic tape makes it perfectly so, that we are not in a twelve-tone or any other discrete situation. The reason I am presently working 40" with imperfections in paper is this: I am thus able to designate certain aspects of sound as though they were in a field, which 50" of course they are. The sounds that had accidentally occurred while it was being played were in 45' FOR A SPEAKER/l57

10'00" no sense an interruption. More and more I have the feeling that we are getting nowhere.

10" "Not wondering am I right or doing something wrong." The preparation changes that occur during a performance are a) simple change of position 20" b) total or partial addition of objects c) total or partial subtraction.

Nothing has been said about Bach or Beethoven. 30" We are the oldest (it makes the silence) at having our air-way of knowing nowness. Years ago I asked myself ''Why do I write music?" 40" An Indian musician told me the traditional answer in India was "To sober the mind and thus make it susceptible to divine influences." Same answer is given by some old English composer. Consider this non-dualistically.

SO" "He goes by me; I see him not. He passes on; but I perceive him not." These pieces take into consideration the physical action of playing an instrument. ISS/SILENCE

11'00" You won't find this in the books. "Why do you not do as I do? Letting go of your thoughts as though they were the cold ashes of a 10" long dead fire?" What has taken the place of the mobility-immobility principle now that I am no longer interested in it? Three coins tossed six times yield a hexagram of which there are sixty-four. In this way one can establish 20" which of sixty-four possibilities obtains. And changes. What better technique than to leave no traces? To determine the number of imperfections in a given space, coins are tossed. That number of spots is then potentially active. Subsequent tosses determine which are actually active. 30" Tables are arranged referring to tempi, the number of superimpositions, that is to say number of things that can go on at once, sounds & silences, durations, loudnesses, accents. Sounds together (suffice it to say), Structure is of no importance, however, I go on having it by chance 40" to determine first the relative probability of the three, and then to determine which of the three happens in the world for studying music. It doesn't seem to me to affect anything that happens in it. I am speaking, of course, 50" about a time structure. It simply allows anything to happen in it. What I am calling poetry is often called content. I myself have called it form. 45' FOR A SPEAKER/159

12'00" It is the continuity of a piece of music. Continuity today when it is necessary. A fugue is a more complicated game; but 10" it can be broken up by a single sound, say, from a fire engine.

(Cough) 20"

Now (Laugh)


getting sleepy & so on. Very frequently no one knows that contemporary music is or could be art. He simply thinks it was irritating. (Clap) Irritating one way or another 40" that is to say keeping us from ossifying. It may be objected that from this point of view anything goes. Actually anything does go,--but only when nothing is taken as the basis. In an utter emptiness 50" anything can take place.

The feeling we are getting nowhere 160/SILENCE

13'00" that is a pleasure Why? which will continue. The way to test a modern painting is this: If it is not destroyed by the action of shadows it is genuine oil painting. 10" A cough or a baby crying will not ruin a good piece of modern music. This is --'s Truth. As cont~mporary music goes on changing in the way I am changing it what will be done is to more & more completely liberate sounds. Of course you do know structure is the division 20" of whatever into parts. Last year when I talked here I made a short talk. That was because I was talking about something; but this year I am talking about nothing and of course will go on. Magnetic tape music makes it clear we are in 30" totality actively


40" Let your ears send a message of surprise or perplexity. That's the Way. Was asked: "Dr. Suzuki, what is the difference between men are men & mountains are mountains before studying Zen & men are men & mountains are mountains after studying Zen?" It is not a question of 50" going in to oneself or out to the world. It is rather a condition of fluency that's in and out. Need I quote Blake? Certainly not. Spots are spots and skill's needed to turn them to the point of practicality.


14'00" Tape music requires multiple loud-speakers. And it seems to me I could listen forever to Japanese shakuhachi music or the Navajo Yeibitchai or I could sit or stand near Richard Lippold's "Full Moon" 10" any length of time. But those beautiesFormerly for me time-length was a con~tant. Now it, too, 20" like everything else, changes.

Beginning of the thtrdunit

30" of the fourth

large part. 40"

Yes it is. Masterpieces & geniuses go together and when, by running from one to the other, we make life safer than it actually is, we're apt never to know the dangers of contemporary music. When I wrote the Imaginary Landscape 50" for twelve radios, it was not for the purpose of shock or as a joke but rather to increase the unpredictability already inherent in the situation Chance, through the tossing of coins. to be precise, is a leap, provides a leap out of reach of one's own grasp of oneself. Once 162/SILENCE

15'00" done, forgotten. One thing to do with time is this: Measure it. "Cultivate in yourself a grand similarity with the chaos of the surrounding ether; unloose your mind, set your spirit free. Be still as if you had no soul. Every one returns 10" to its root, & does not know. If they knew, they would be leaving it." Structure. Given a number of actually active points, they are an aggregate, a constellation, they can move about among themselves and it becomes necessary to classify the kinds of aggregates, say constant and again intermittent.

(Slap table)

20" (Cough) One can hear a sound.

30" I wrote some music for carillon for Mary Carolyn Richards using differently shaped scrap! of paper folded and small holes cut in them at the points of folding. Then used these as stencils at points in time-space I-Ching determined.

40" If you are interested you can read a detailed description of it that will appear in the forthcoming issue of trans/formation.


When I first tossed coins I sometimes thought: I hope such & such will turn up. 45' FOR A SPEAKER/163


"Earth's no escape from Heaven."

10" How can we speak of error when it is understood "psychology never again"? It should be clear from what I am saying that one's one. Counterpoint is the same proposition as harmony 20" except that it is more insidious. I noticed in 1938 that some young people were still interested in it. "Greater earnestness is required if one is going to solve the really important problems." My point is this: 30" various techniques can go together all at the same time. Therefore this work, I am using the word progress with which in connection, has no organizing technique supporting it.

Giving up counterpoint

40" one gets superimposition and, of course, a little counterpoint comes in of its own 50" accord. How I wouldn't know.


17'00" The best thing to do about counterpoint is what Schoenberg did: Teach it.

(Hold up hand, gargle) I am still really thoroughly puzzled by this way of composing 10" by observing imperfections in paper. It is this being thoroughly puzzled that makes it possible for me to work. I am puzzled by hearing music well played too. If I'm not puzzled it wasn't well played. Hopelessly incompre20" hensible. While studying music things get a little confused. Sounds are no longer ;ust sounds, but are letters: ABC D E F C.



At the end of the journey when success is almost in view:

50" I know nothing. All I can do is say what strikes me as especially changing 45' FOR A SPEAKER/165



contemporary music. Unfortunately, European thinking has brought it about that actual things that happen such as suddenly 10" listening or suddenly sneezing are not considered profound. Not just tones, noises tool What is the physical action 20" involved in playing an instrument? Yes--





For instance, now, my focus involves very little: a lecture on music: my music. But it is not a lecture, nor is it music; it is, of necessity, theatre: What else? If I choose, as I do, music, I get theatre, that, that is, I get that too. Not just this, the two.

Art as art is order or expression or integration of these. It is a light, the Chinese say, but there is darkness. What is now unheard-of is an eight-loud-speaker situation: to be in the center of transmission. Sounds coming from every direction. Mter eight give me sixteen.

19'00" Where is the best position for audition? The comer where you are! It is understood that everything is clean: there is no dirt. "Then why are you always taking baths?" "Just a dip: No why!" For me it is a matter of getting up and daily, unless commitments.

10" That is finished now it was a pleasure And now

20" Just the same only somewhat as though you had your feet a little off the ground. Now, at the beginning, before studying music, men are men & sounds 30" are sounds; this causes some hesitation on the hero's part but he finally acquiesces. One of them said: He must have lost his favorite animal. Another man said: No, it must be his friend. "Do you only take the position 40" of doing nothing, & things will of themselves become trans/ormed." Think for a moment about sound how it has pitch, 50" loudness, timbre and duration and how silence which is its nonexistent opposite has only duration. Duration structure. Error is drawing a straight line between anticipation of what should happen and 45' FOR A SPEAKER/167


what actually happens. What actually happens is however in a total not linear situation and is responsible generally. Therefore error is a fiction, has no reality 10" in fact. Errorless music is written by not giving a thought to cause and effect. Any other kind of music always has mistakes in it. In other words there is no 20" split between spirit and matter. And to realize this one has only suddenly to awake to the fact.

This makes possible the writing of such durations as 1/7 1/3 3/5, all fractions of a quarter. This brings about an emphasis on uniqueness so that two nearly the same durations can each be uniquely itself 40" just as two leaves, however much of the same tree are not identical. If there is time I will tell about my visit to the anechoic chamber 50" at Harvard. It was not silent. Two sounds: one high, one low. The privileged tones that remain are arranged in modes or scales or nowadays rows & an abstract process begins called 30"




( Cough) (Lean on elbow)



composition. Express an idea. The only structure which permits of natural activity is one so flexible as not to be a structure; I write in order to hear; never do I hear and then write what I hear. Inspiration is not a special occasion. After studying


music men are men and sounds are sounds. And subtract: That is to say, at the beginning one can hear a sound and tell


40" In the direct situation: it is


If you don't like it you may choose to avoid it but what silence requires isn't it.




What I think & what I feel can be my inspiration but it is then also my pair of blinders. To see one must go beyond the imagination and for that one must stand absolutely still as though in the center of a leap.



Several stories occur to me that I should like to interpolate (in the same way, by the way, that while I am talking the telephone keeps ringing and then contemporary conversation takes place instead of this particular way of preparing a lecture). 40" It is high or low

has a certain timbre 50"


and loudness. I will not disturb by my concern the structure of anything that is going to be acting; to act is miracle and needs everything and every me out of the way. An error is simply a

23'00" failure to adjust immediately from a preconception to an actuality.


However, it occurs to me to say more about structure. Specifically this: We are now at the beginning.

( Blow nose, rub eyes) 20"

Or not And it isn't a human being or something


to look at; it is high or lowhas a certain timbre & loudness, lasts a certain length of time.


End. It is necessary to see that there is not only a sharp distinction to be made between composing and listening but that although all things are different it is not their differences which are to be our concern but rather their uniquenesses and their infinite 50" play of interpenetration with themselves and with us.

There are three categories of noises 45' FOR A SPEAKER/171



in the two parts for two pianists: those produced inside the piano construction, outside the same and accessory noises, whistles, percussions, etc. Reading music is for musicologists. There is no straight line to be drawn between notes and sounds.

20" Vertically in the same space any range 30" will appear.

It was originally for me a matter of flexibility by means of changing and not changing tempi. The matter reduces itself however 40" to time which is short or long. And that to a process of multiplication using a variety of multiplicands. Communication if it is required is a way of calling attention to one's own psychology. 50" If permitted, it takes place of its own

accord, is for all the world inevitable. 172/SILENCE


If it were the same purpose as when it has to do with another leaf it would be a coincidence, imitation of nature from which each leaf should hold on to the complete rule which would be free because it 10" adds "in her manner of operation." Then it will not be of its own unique position in space uniqueness, plagiarism of result, having a particular suchness, but active from "before operations begin." (Is extremely 20"

close to being here and now.)


So that listening one takes as a spring30" board the first sound that comes along; the first something springs us into nothing and out of that nothing arises the next something; etc. like an alternating current. Not one sound fears the silence that extinguishes it. But if you avoid it, that's a pity, because 40" it resembles life very closely & life and it are essentially a cause for joy. People say, sometimes, timidly.


Organized ways of predicting the weather say for instance it is in all of its acoustical details. For a calculated theatrical activity I would say offhand that the minimum number of necessary actions going on at once is five. Bright people can dear up rather quickly perplexity arising from lower numbers. 45' FOR A SPEAKER/173


Modem intervals: but in order to have them the mind had fixed it so that one had to avoid having progressions that would make one think of sounds that were not actually present to the ear.




He is most utterly indebted, not one who struggles to force his idea? and who would have had to remain, I have noticed. Calculated actions that are to go on together need not have been composed in the same way. One runs the risk of falling into a marasm of idea if one goes on composing without discovering. Tum on several radios at once. There again one has a multiple loud-speaker system. Besides actually being in space, the mind no longer can function as ABC.




Theatre takes place all the time wherever one is and art simply facilitates persuading one this is the case. So that this ignorance I speak of is not losing sensitivic responsiveness, on the contrary. It is a question of when: now. "Flee she up or flee she down." It acts in sucha way that one can "hear through" a piece of music just as one can "see through." Echoes, breaking, varying its speed, and synchronized. Skillful means has a good

27'00" deal to do with multiple division of process. And here for instance we begin to be in a state of immobility. Anyone can see the desirability of mobility. Had I had nothing to say, it would have been different. All it is now is what it is: faster and slower. W llis~ space between the loud-speakers that is to be considered: From a desire for clarity, great.

We carry our homes

20" within us

which enables us to fly

30" Each moment presents what happens. I derived the method I use for writing music 40"

by tossing coins from the method used in the Book of Changes. II may be objected that from this point of view anything goes.


Actually, anything does go but only when nothing is taken as the basis. In an utter emptiness anything can take place. And needless to say, 45' FOR A SPEAKER/175

each sound is unique (had accidentally occurred while it was being played) and is not informed about European history and theory: Keeping one's mind on the emptiness, on the space 10" one can see anything can be in it, is, as a matter of fact, in it.



Were in no sense an interruption. I have noticed I needed a way Something else This causes some hesitation

hero would have had to remain 30" now knows he is most asks the hero to kill him. Three kinds of them. It was by means of words we became subservient. The central point is everywhere receiving and transmitting. What is passivity? Only one monk in the monastery the oldest one wrote a poem 40" but he stayed up night and day deliberating on it. The other monks didn't try because they were certain the oldest one would win. When his poem finally came out, it said: Continuity takes place of its own accord and things do go on at the same time. All of this is correct and true: there is no concern necessary for, say, intonation, counterpoint, 50" scales, going to and coming from; and, then, when? An abstract process begins called composition. That is: a composer uses the sounds to express an idea: What then are you standing up there for, if you 176/SILENCE

29'00" say No to all of our questions? The man on high said, I just stand

10" If there are no questions.

This means for me knowing more and 20" more not what I. If it is on paper, it is graphic: calligraphy; if you can hear and see it, it is. There are no answers. Then, of course, there are answers but the final 30" answer makes the questions seem absurd whereas the questions up until then seem more intelligent than the answers. Somebody asked Debussy Have you not lost your friend?

40" No, sir, I have not lost my friend either. Is it interesting? It is and it isn't. But one thing is certain. They are with 50" respect to counterpoint melody harmony rhythm and any other musical methods, pointless.



All that is necessary is an empty space of time and letting it act in its magnetic way. Eventually there will be so much in it that whistles. In order to apply it to all of these various characteristics he necessarily reduces it to numbers. He has also found a math10" ematical way of making a correspondence between rows. I remember as a child loving all the sounds even the unprepared ones; I liked them especially when itself in the jaws cheeks and tongue and the commentary says "The most superficial way of trying to influence others is through talk that has nothing real behind it. The 20" influence produced by such mere tonguewagging must necessarily remain insignificant."

"1 believe that one can arrive

30" at directing the phenomenon of the automatism of Chance which I mistrust as a facility which is not absolutely necessary. For, in the end, in interpolations and interferences between different rows (when one of them passes from time-lengths to pitches, at the 40" same time that another passes from intensities to attacks, etc.) there is already a sufficiency of the unknown."


(Diminishes his love and increases his fear and concern about what people will think. )

(Bang fist on table) 178/SILENCE

31'00" There is all the

time in the world for studying music, 10"

but for living there is scarcely any time at all.

20" For living takes place each instant. 30"




50" There are two great dangers for magnetic tape: one is music (all the history and thinking about it); and the other is feeling obliged to have an instrument. 45' FOR A SPEAKER/179

32'00" One is Pacific 231 1954 and the other: organ music. If you are interested you can read a detailed description of it.

10" If there are ten things to do and I only do two of them, focus have changed. In his ear, where he will fInd a metal ball, to toss it on the road, in front of them, so that 20" as the horse goes on to say, we may be led by it. This too giving himself. Is there anything else to say about structure? Yes, it goes on 30" supporting everything: its only difficulty lies where struggle to support is already (Touch nose and ears; click) in process. Fearing what?

40" Any kind of paper will do for seeing spots in it. When one gets around to copying on a second sheet what was given by a fIrst it becomes clear.

50" What?



Magnetic tape as being all-interesting can disappear. There are rumors of machines and cards Let us move however for unpredictability

10" A structure is like a bridge from nowhere (Lean on elbow)

20" If something with respect to something else happens sooner or later everything is different but essentially nothing of any permanent importance has happened. I am talking 30" & contemporary music is changing. Like life it changes. If it were not changing it would be dead.


That is why chance enters for me so largely into my means which are skillful. It is at the point of potentiality. (Yawn)

I am working now to work without charts, without any support in total space. I see now by many slow transitions, one of which 50" is tempo like streams (varying & not varying) that as long as one discriminates as I formerly did problems remain. Each one of us is thinking his own thoughts his own experience & each experience is changing & while we 45' FOR A SPEAKER/181


are thinking (to get yourself in such a state of confusion that you think that a sound is not something to hear but rather something to look at) I am happy about all the experiences I have had with the prepared piano; for one thing it showed me how different two pianos are from one another 10" and music (so-called) makes us think two pianos are the same. It isn't true.


(Hold up watch [to mike])


It is

tossed out.


50" It just happened that the series of numbers which are at the basis of this work add up to 100 x 100 which is 10,000. This is pleasing, momentarily: The world, 182/SILENCE


the 10,000 things. But the title is simply minutes and seconds. Question to ask you: How do you need to cautiously proceed in dualistic terms? AB Just as going from 10" here to Egypt is a single trip but a more or less complex series of experiences or just as Chinese characters are some written with one stroke but others with two or several or many And not 20" in the way we need for living. For instance: someone said Art should come from overhead. There was a social calendar and hours for breakfast but one day I saw a cardinal and the same 30" day heard a woodpecker. I also met Meister Eckhart. Of course Kansas. Arizona is more interesting. I

40" have nothing to say and I am saying it and that is poetry.

It is no longer a case of moving along

50" stepping stones (scales of any degree, series of no matter what), but one can move or just appear to, at any point in this total space, long enough 45' FOR A SPEAKER/183


to see the end of this craze for Bach. A pupil once said to me: I understand what you say about Beethoven & I think I agree but I have a very serious question to ask you: How do you feel about Bach?

10" Now we have come to the end of the part about structure.

That'two or more 20" things happen at the same time is It is entirely possible for something to their relationship: Synchronicity. That Break for instance means at the center moving out in all

30" directions and then time is clearly Should one stop and mend it? luminous. It could not be easily otherwise.


go wrong. And machines are never synchronous not even the synchronous ones. If you need several things at once, use one as the basis, and one motor. (Lean, cough) Tobe& be the present. Would it be a

SO" repetition? Only if we thought we owned it, but since we don't, it is free &so are we. Most anybody knows about the future and 184/SILENCE

("No" of hand in air, kiss sound)

37'00" how uncertain it is. A sound is a sound. To realize this: one has to put a stop to studying music. 10"

The most enlivening thing about magnetic tape is this: whether we actually do it or not, everything we do do, say what we're doing, is affected, radically, by it. Rhythm is not arithmetic. And so is this unfinished work: so far for two pianists, 20" string-players, lecturer Lines of demarcation are O.K. when they have to do with potentiality. It must be clearly understood they have nothing. A sound accomplishes nothing: without it life would not last out the 30" instant. It is only irritating to think one would like to be somewhere else. Here we are now.

It becomes gradually clear to us dull-witted musicians that interpenetration means that each one of these most honored ones of all is moving out in all directions. SO" Penetrating & being penetrated no 40"

matter what the time.

Research would 45' FOR A SPEAKER/185

38'00" then take place in the field of music as it takes place normally in other fields. Energizing, whether for her weal or for her woe.


Testing pictures: can they support

action of shadows?

20" I have been satisfied for some time with one to sixty-four; there is no way of telling how long this will continue. I could go back 30" to two or:

One loud-speaker is insufficient and so are two or three orfour: five is 40" when it seems to me to begin. What begins is our inability to comprehend, "that on the contrary chance ought to be very controlled. In using tables in general, or a series of tables, I believe one can 50" arrive at direct" Form is what interests everyone and fortunately it is wherever you are and there is no place where it isn't. Highest truth, that is. 186/SILENCE


Eventually everything will be happening at once: nothing behind a screen unless a screen happens to be in front. It will increasingly be a thump instead of 10" a bang. The thing to do is to gather up one's ability to respond and go on at varying speeds. Following, of course, the general outlines of the Christian life. I myself tend to think of catching trains more than Christianity.

20" Insisting on stimulating activity, though

Without a multiple loud-speaker system, all becomes music and submissiveness. But, 30" fortunately the piano is there and one can always prepare it in a diHerent way. Otherwise it would become an instrument. It is like, as Artaud said, a disease. No avoiding. And not having an idea about it.

40" The thing to do is to keep the head alert but empty. Things come to pass, arising and disappearing. There can then be no consideration of error. Things are always going SO" wrong. (Lean on elbow)

( Whistle three times) 45' FOR A SPEAKER/187

40'()()" We're apt never to know

but something else is

10" happening: I am getting nowhere slowly as the talk goes on slowly we have the feeling we're getting nowhere; that is a pleasure which will continue if we are irritated with whatever. This goes 20" to explain what he means when he says that he is associated with all of the sounds & so can foresee what will happen even though he has not written the particular notes down at room temperature as other composers do.

30" And I have noticed something else about most anyone's music, that can be accomplished to increase the unpredictability already inherent in the situation: The control must be at one point only and so placed that it has no effect on anything that happens: A technique which results in no technique, etc. Of course the answer is time and since we have them, chronometers, I mean, use them; or you may leave it forever & never 50" return. Play my piece for bells. Whether I hear it or not is of no consequence: but until someone does, music is at a standstill. Before I die, I shall leave a will, because if you want something done, sentimentality is effective. I 40"




haven't the slightest idea of what is good in the world, but instead quite passively, & often against what might be considered a better judgment, accepts what happens. I find that it is important to take a multiplicity of steps. A story is told about an Irish hero that

he is required by a jealous mother-in-law to go to some distant island. At all costs inspiration 20" must be avoided which is to say act in such a way that inspiration doesn't come up as an alternative but exists eternally. Then of course it is theatre and music disappears entirely into the realm of art where 30" it knows it belongs. Art silence is not real silence and the difference is continuity versus interpenetration. This is also.

(Light match)

(Hold up hand)

40" Music is simply trying things out in school fashion to see what happens. Etudes. Making it easier but not real. Theatre is the only thing that comes near what it is.

50" This means for me knowing more & more not what I think a sound is, but


42'00" what it actually is, in all of its acoustical details & then letting the sound exist, itself changing in a changing sonorous environment.

10" The way it does it is by the intimacy of multiplicity and emptiness. The mind has nothing in it but everything else is busy and there is not an instant lost in doing what must be done. Later on, if you wish, you can read about mobility 20" and immobility. To repeat: I am no longer interested in it. I am interested in asymmetry.

If one feels 30" protective about the word "music," protect it and find another word for all the rest that enters through the ears. It's a waste of time to trouble oneself with words, noises. What it is is theatre and we are in it and 40" like it, making it.


But bewarel Here we are now at the middle of the fourth large part


43'00" of this talk


There is no

20" such thing as silence. Something is always happening that makes a sound. No one can have an idea 30" once he starts really listening.

It is very simple but extra-urgent The Lord knows whether or not 40" the next

50" (Bang fist)






(Blow nose)

Hearing or making this in 20"

music is not different

only simpler

30" Simpler than living this way. that is,-for me, because it happens. No error. And no wondering about what's next. 40" Going lively on "thru many a perilous situation." (Was it later he was discovered?) And what is your purpose in writing music? I do not deal in purposes; I deal with sounds. What 50" sounds are those? I make them just as well by sitting quite still looking for mushrooms.

Growing fast in sawdust. 192/SILENCE


Sonya Sekula said, "Why don't you come with me to the Reises'? They're giving a party." I said I wasn't invited. Sonya said, "Come anyway; they won't mind." As we walked in, Mrs. Reis was extremely friendly in her greeting, and even asked what I'd like to drink. I said, "Rum." She said, "Oh, I'm so sorry. I don't have any at the bar, but I'll go down to the basement and get some." I asked her not to bother, but she insisted. While she was gone, I made my way over to the bar and discovered Bushmills Irish whisky, of which I am very fond. I asked for some and began drinking it. When Mrs. Reis came back with the rum, naturally I drank some of that. As the time passed, I drank rum when Mrs. Reis was looking and Irish whisky when she wasn't, After a while Sonya Sekula said, "Let's go. You take one of the bottles of Irish and I'll get my coat and meet you downstairs." I said, "You take the bottle; 111 get your coat." She said, "O.K." I went downstairs, picked up a fur coat; Sonya came running down with the Irish; we went out into the snow. I said, "Do you want your coat on?" She said, "No. The car's right here. Just throw it in the back seat." A few blocks along, Sonya said, "That's not my coat." I said, "How do you know?" She said, "The perfume." We drove on to Grand Street, went upstairs, and killed the Irish. We talked all the time about selling the coat in some distant city. Sonya said she knew a fence in St. Louis. About midnight I called the Reises and spoke to Mr. Reis. I said, "I have the coat." He said, "Thank Godl" We made arrangements for my bringing it to his office in the morning. When I got there I explained it had all been a mistake. Before we said good-by, he whispered, "No one will ever hear a word about this." I went to the elevator. He came running down the hall and said, "What about Mrs. Reis's coat?" I said. "I don't know anything about her coat; I didn't take it." Two wooden boxes containing Oriental spices and foodstuffs arrived from India. One was for David Tudor, the other for me. Each of us found, on opening his box, that the contents were all mixed up. The lids of containers of spices had somehow come off. Plastic bags of dried beans and palm sugar had ripped open. The tin lids of cans of chili powder had come off. All of these things were mixed with each other and with the excelsior which had been put in the box to keep the containers in position. I put my box in a corner and simply tried to forget about it. David Tudor, on the other hand, set to work. Assembling bowls of various sizes, sieves of about eleven various-sized screens, a pair of tweezers, and a small knife, he began a process which lasted three days, at the end of which time each spice was separated from each other, each kind of bean from each other, and the palm sugar lumps had been scraped free of spice and excavations in them had removed embedded beans. He then called me up to say, "Whenever you want to get at that box of spices you have, let me know. I'll help you." One of Suzuki's books ends with the poetic text of a Japanese monk describing his attainment of enlightenment. The final poem says, "Now that I'm enlightened, I'm just as miserable as ever." While Meister Eckhart was alive, several attempts were made to excommunicate him. (He had, in his sermons, said such things as "Dear God, I beg you to rid me of God.") None of the trials against him was successful, for on each occasion he defended himself brilliantly. However, after his death, the attack was continued. Mute, Meister Eckhart was excommunicated. 45' FOR A SPEAKER/193

When I was invited to speak in January 1961 at the Evening School of Pratt Institute in Brooklyn, I was told that the burning questions among the students there were: Where are we going? and What are we doing? I took these questions as my subjects and, in order to compose the texts, made use of my Cartridge Music. The texts were written to be heard as four simultaneous lectures. But to print four lines of type simultaneously-that is, superimposed on one anotherwas a project unattractive in the present instance. The presentation here used has the effect of making the words legible-a dubious advantage, for I had wanted to say that our experiences, gotten as they are all at once, pass beyond our understanding. A part. of this lecture has been printed, in a different typographical arrangement, in Ring des Arts, Paris, summer 1961. The entire lecture has been

WHERE ARE WE GOING? AND WHAT ARE WE DOING? recorded by C. F. Peters, New York, in the form of four single-track tapes (7~ ips, forty-five minutes each). The following is a set of directions: Four independent lectures to be used in whole or in part-horizontally and vertically. The typed relation is not necessarily that of a performance. Twenty-five lines may be read in 1 minute, 1~ minutes, 1~ minutes, giving lectures roughly 37, 47, 57 minutes long respectively. Any other speech speed may be used. A performance must be given by a single lecturer. He may read "live" any one of the lectures. The "live" reading may be superimposed on the recorded readings. Or the whole may be recorded and delivered mechanically. Variations in amplitude may be made; for this purpose, use the score of my composition WBAI (also published by C. F. Peters). I was driving out to the country once with Carolyn and Earle Brown. We got to talking about Coomaraswamy's statement that the traditional function of the artist is to imitate nature in her manner of operation. This led me to the opinion that art changes because science changes-that is, changes in science give artists different understandings of how nature works. A Phi Beta Kappa ran in the other day and said, "Your view is that art follows science, whereas Blake's view is that art is ahead of science." Right here you have it: Is man in control of nature or is he, as part of it, going along with it? To be perfectly honest with you, let me say I find nature far more interesting than any of man's controls of nature. This does not imply that I dislike humanity. I think that people are wonderful, and I think this because there are instances of people changing their minds. (I refer to individuals and to myself. ) 194jSILENCE

Not all of our past, but the parts of it we are taught, lead us to believe that we are in the driver's seat. With respect to nature. And that if we are not, life is meaningless. Well, the grand thing about the human mind is that it can tum its own tables and see meaninglessness as ultimate meaning. I have therefore made a lecture in the course of which, by various means, meaning is not easy to come by even though lucidity has been my constant will-of-the-wisp. I have permitted myself to do this not out of disdain of !Iou who are present. But out of regard for the way in which I understand nature operates. This view makes us all equals-even if among us are some unfortunates: whether lame, blind, stupid, schizoid, or poverty-stricken. Here we are. Let us say Yes to our presence together in Chaos.

If we set out to catalogue things

way around, after the fashion of He took the apartment without being able to

today, we find ourselves rather

some obscure second-hand bookstore? pay for it. They danced on a concrete floor.

endlessly involved in cross-

The candles at the Candlelight Concert are

referencing. Would it not be Those of us who don't agree are going

less efficient to start the other around together. The string Duchamp dropped.

One New Year's Eve I had too electric. It was found dangerous

many invitations. I decided to for them to be wax. It has not yet


go to all the parties, ending up been found dangerous for them to

could 8carcely put it down. It is ab80lutely

at the most interesting one. I be electric-and this in spite of

charming. I'm going to write to the author. How can we go over there when

arrived early at the one I was the air-conditioning. If I were

we haven't the least idea of

sure would be dull. I stayed there able to open my window8, I think

what we will :6.nd when we

the whole evening-never got to the others. I would do it often, and for no reason at all.

get there? Also we don't

Three birds and a telephone ringing. Doe8 I would have written 800ner but

know how to land, and we

that relate to where we are going? Does I picked up the book and

have no way of trying it

it tell us the direction to take: out 196/SILENCE

out beforehand. Perhaps we

In a sense we are going to extremes. the window and down the hall? will sink into a huge mileYou want to know what we're doing? That is what we are doing. In fact I take a sword and cut off my

thick pile of dust. What then? We're breaking the rules, even our we don't need to go to bring that

head and it rolls to where we

own rules. And how do we do that? into our action. We tend to rush

are going. The question is: Do they

mean it when they say No Trespassing?

By leaving plenty of room for X quantities. to what we think are the limits The house had been so well built that

only to discover how tamed our even though it burned, it did not Mter we have been going for some

ambitions were. Will we ever learn burn down. The fire gutted it. time, dowe mellow? (They used to WHERE ARE WE GOING? AND WHAT ARE WE DOING?/197

that it is endless? What then We're not going to become less say we would.) Mellowing is sof-

is an extreme? The very low sounds,

scientific, but more scientific. We tening. Left to ourselves, if the

stay with us, we've got to Snd that there was going to be a low coming back again. Eventually we But since the windows won't ways to entertain them. If we don't, and loud sound, I imagine will go and not come back at all. open, we could scarcely be exthey'll explode, but as for going, we're quite a number of us would

extremely low, are so little available do not include probability in science. birds didn't get us, we'd putrefy. We're putting art in museums, getting it out to us and yet we rush to them Do I thank you or the one who's Of course, our air-conditioning of our lives. We're bringing machines and dont get them. We find opening and closing the door? On days when is such that if we just managed home to live with us. Now that them too soft. We want them nobody amwers, we stop telephoning. We are to die under its influence we'd the machines are here so to say to extremely loud. If you announced going and then coming back and going and not putrefy: we'd dry up.

pected to blow away. I've always going out. Did we just notice the moon rush to hear it. What about an had my heart set on cremation or was it there always? Where we're extremely loud high sound? Hear! but now I see the reason for earth, going is not only to the moon but out into Anxiety enters. Some of us would stay it frees the air from dead influences. space. Home is discrete points. Space is an put and say, "Tell me about it." The house is built around a large

inGnite Geld without boundaries. We are 198/SILENCE

Once someone's done something, chimney, so large that on a good

conventionally accepted ones-but capable to one another, and we leave behind

leaving the machines home to play the it's no longer his responsibility. day when the flue is open, the sun

we draw are not straight. bird which she cannot because of appearance at any point in the field. in particular the ways we learned to

old games of relationships, addition and It's someone else's. It could of shines on the hearth. We're getting into

they're being housed by friends when This brings about a change in our heads. communicate. Later on

who wins. (We're going out.) A teen-agercourse be his again, but what our heads that existence, the existence of

she and her family go away. I

served custard that had wheyed-said, "My would he do? I asked the three girls a sound, for instance, is a field At the beginning of our going, it seems

pointed this out: "Since you can't

we won't bother about any of that.

We'lI be one happy anarchistic family.

mother bakes custard too, but she what they would take with them phenomenon, not one limited to that we are going our separate ways,

take the bird and the fish, what

doesn't put water in it." Let us admit, to the Caribbean. The third was known discrete points in that field-the that we have nothing further to say

will you take? Your sisters

once and for all, that the lines going to take some /ish and a

We haven't any time left to stay: we

must go now. Though his ears are

have said what they'll take."


extraordinarily sensitive and he's a Quaker,

There was no answer. Shortly, he recommended a restaurant with Muzak.

but after her sisters, she ran up-

stairs to bed. "Tuck me in."

Small telephones for those near the

central telephone and large telephones She drives rapidly; her life is shorter.

Everything is ready for tomorrow morning.

for those farther away following

I must remember to turn out the lights.

what one calls a law of nature.


there you have it: If I go over

there and stop, could I not have

The trouble with Denver is its past. gone slightly to the left? As I

San Francisco used to have the same go, direction changes. It is not If there are as many ways as

problem. But how are we going to know measurable. But it is precise there are of looking, there must

where to go when it doesn't make going. One moved off to the south, be at least three ways of going-not

the least diHerence to us where we and when I measured he was going so much ways as wheres. Well,

go? The problem is simple: You north. Or I crossed the stream at the WHERE ARE WE GOING? AND WHAT ARE WE DOING?/201

"Powdered eggs are good enough for me."

( and the furtherance of the national

either stay put until you get point where the water was going both It's not the air.conditioning; it's the

economy) but for the games of

an invitation or you make yourways. They say how fast and there radiant heating in the ceiling: it makes

children. Even if we sense I wander out in the hail expecting

self an invitation written in such is no way to answer. Tempo is out me think someone's up on the roof.

a way that you couldn't know, but comes back in. You might add: They played a game in which she At the present time it seems when you wrote it, what you There was no need for us to have gone. was the sun. One man was the reasonable not to go. The weather were writing, and where it would

a certain obligation to go we to see someone. It turns out it wasn't Do you remember the story of his may very likely not be able to. anybody: it was a machine. I'm as hanging his shoes out of his own Whether or not we want it, we

crazy as a loon: I'm invited out to reach, so that rather than taking are insured. And we say it is a

earth and the other was the moon: a is not made for adult affairs be sending you going. And other ways.

choreography. Now what shall we do? 202/SILENCE

dinner. I keep telling myself: Before the trouble of getting them down, good thing. The thing to do is not to

you go to bed, be sure to close the he would simply go on doing what have one policy but many and then

it's changed. Did it slip-out are ideas that are confined useful is going to give place to What we do is not utterly different from

bathroom door; if you don't, you'll he was doing and not go outP From there is the possibility that the central

from under us? The day in the to systems, each to a single one, some other means, some other what we used to do. That is: we

just have to get up and close it what I hear, there are ideas that office will get confused. (It happens.)

woods I took a compass was the which means there would be useful means. Its awkwardness led us used to get an idea and do it and

later. We are going stupidly to places we have not yet had simply beWe are going to realize that our

day I got lost for sure. Two years times when it would be reasonwilly-nilly into a certain sloppiness. then someone else had to do more

we have never been. Going away from cause we don't yet have the language analytic method of approaching

later when I was throwing it out, able to say Yes and other times (That was not without its hilarious or less what he was told to do.

home, sometimes lost, we come by to have them. But even in our the material we are working with

a child to whom I'd given a bass when it would be absurd to say effects which we in our deadliness Now we get an idea and present

circle, home again. We're surprised: own language, it seems, there (sound, I mean) which was so

drum asked whether he might also have that same word. Ideas take on did not notice.) There is a lingering it in such a way that it can the compass. The first thing she said


a kind of material reality confusion, paying heed to results be used by him who is going to

want to do is keep it a secret. But The composer also has ears on his head.

was: "Everyone's confused; there isn't but essentially they are intangible. rather than actions (the only solution do it. Someone once raised the

one thing at a time. But we the truth is we don't know what

anyone now who isn't confused." My question is: Why do we, as is to stay where you are: it's you acting). question who gets the credit. The

used to admire those artists of we're doing and that is how we

Or was that the first thing she said? it were, imprison them? Of

vaudeville who did several manage to do it when it's lively.

listener gives it to himself when

all things, they are best equipped,

at once. To their three, say, I believe, of course, that what we're

he gets it. All the people have

wouldn't you say, to fly in and People always want to know what become active and enjoy what you

out of the most unlikely places? we're doing and the last thing we might call individual security.

Off hand, for instance, we can do 204jSILENCE

we could add our one. But at doing is exploring a field, that the

a circus, three rings, though field is limitless and without

high up, I remember I qualitative differentiation but with

could only look at one ring multiplicity of differences,

in temperature, take as perfectly amplification of small sounds of traffic proceeding, to be sure,

at a time. I kept missing or that our business has changed

natural the discovery of geasters and work with the voice, it slowly, but getting, one assumed,

thinking I was missing somefrom judgment to awareness-

growing underneath the surface doesn't tell you what the others eventually where they were going.

thing. On the other hand, if I believe all this and it makes Travel was not only possible.

what r m doing is digging the me speechless, for there is nothing It was widely engaged in. On

hog peanut, then it actually happens to say. For if I say I am both sides of the streets, the two-

that I can converse, notice changes especially active in the way ones, there were long lines

of the earth when I knew (who are also us) are doing. Would People also were walking and a

It's very curious. I remember recording perfectly well the books don't menit be accurate to say then that very large crowd attended the machines with dials and clutches. tion they do or can. Perhaps a live we are all off in separate corners Candlelight Concert. Was it because Then later there were push buttons. Now ghost might have made an apengaged in our special concerns? it was a tradition? It must


one has the feeling we're going to parition and I would have No. It is more to the point to talk be that that is the case: the lady

birds in connection with modern architecture. to make this clear. Suzuki Daisetz sat down in the reverse relation Instead of living and learning, don't we

have dials again. We need found it perfectly unremarkable. about the field itself, which beyond the one sitting next to me

laughed many times quietly: once to me that I have just described live by learning we're not learning?

desperately when it comes to a Is this the effect of concentration? is that it is and enables us whispered to my neighbor that

it was when he was discussing so that the one who was later For instance: When I moved to the

machine to be able to go at any speed. If only, she said, I have a all to be doing the same thing the program this year was not

thread, I can then take the differently. And about this as entirely appreciated by her


rest, hanging on as it were. field, nothing can be said. And as the one last year. And

We also discussed the mortality of yet one goes on talking, in order when they first came in, they

the quality of not being explicable my neighbor was then at the country I no sooner found myself They have curious regulations for and pointing out that he had beginning beyond my neighbor. insatiably involved in tramping pedestrians. After the light turns come from Japan with the intenShe whispered her approval of through the woods than summer red, there is a white one and tion of making explicit this the wreaths and ropes of greenery passed through fall into an then the people walk wherever


quality which was of not being clear. which decorated the chapel

icy winter. I made some they wish, crossing the intersection (My word3, it goes without saying, along with the electric lights and inquiries and finally got to even diagonally. One begins to think are not the ones he used.) We electric candles. She found them a municipal office where I it's better when we're going not don't any more take vacations. Or more beautiful than last year. filled out blanks that led to to pay attention to the signs. if through special circumstances we Very rarely do people any more my getting a license for hunting It is as though we were looking are obliged to take a vacation, we flock to a public occasion. and fishing. Then I bought some with other eyes than our own. I mean take what we're doing with us. Apparently if you keep someingenious paraphernalia for fishing the way we are going is transformThere is, in fact, no way to get away.

thing traditional they'll still qo on an ice-covered body of water. ing our vision. And the profoundit, providing the weather permits. Dressed as warmly as possible, est changes take place in the One thing I found a bit jarring I drove up to the lake, chopped things we thought the most was the switching on of the electric lights that holes in the ice, fixed hooks familiar. On the first trip when suddenly gave the effect of sunand lines and waited for the cat was taken up to that light streaming through the little red flags, popping up, town near Boston (because they were going stained glass windows high above to signal success. I heard away) it got sick; they nursed it back. the chorus and orchestra. I glanced


I nearly froze, I collected all the sounds that travel through On the second trip, the cat died. along the sides of the chapel. The my traps, no fish. I made a the ice as it freezes; I was

What we do, we do without purpose. windows there were not illuminated. mental note not to go ice-fishing astonished. Later, I was on the

We are simply invited The tradition of focusing one's again without a bottle of cognac. ice as the sun, setting, colored

to do it, by someone else attention was being observed. The On the other hand, there are certain . both it and the sky. I was or by ourselves. And so we do this or that.

electric candles were some white and amazed. I remember I shrank

things I am taught (and I do want The day before yesterday towards the

some a sort of highway brownish yellow. in my own estimation. Before

to learn them); for instance: if middle of the afternoon I noticed

I will remember not just to touch 20B/SILENCE

I was running out of matches.

up another. We are, you might

wood but to rub my hand on

before turning a doorknob or stairs to the kitchen, found

I went through pockets, under

say, concentrated inside and idiotic out.

it before I touch metal, then I papers on tables and finally

won't get a shock. I had prefound a single match. Having

viously thought that if I picked lit a cigarette, I decided to

a light switch that I nothing, but picked up an

wouldn't get a shock. That article by the man at the

doesn't work. The wood-rubbing other end of the hall that happened

We are not doing very much up my feet as I walked keep one lit constantly whether

does work. The crux of the to catch my eye. I read it,

of anyone thing. We are continually across the carpet or if I even I was smoking or not. Oppressed

matter is: will I remember cooked dinner, went on working,

dropping one thing and picking hopped through the room by this obligation, I went down-

to rub wood first and, even and managed through all of this


so, just in case I sometime to light another cigarette be-

find myself in a situation fore the burning one burned out.

where there isn't any wood I determined to go to the movies

to rub, shouldn't I just in order to get some matches.

Although we speak about going, The next afternoon, the secretary

I notice that we spend a lot came in and asked for a

of time waiting; that is, I wait. match. I still had a few

And when I tell others about it, left from those I'd found in the He was afraid all along that he

decide, here and now, no However, in the car, I found

they say they wait too. car. I realized the situation might lose his mind. He had no

matter where I go, to carry some partly used folders of them

was growing ticklish. I left and fear of the cancer which killed him.

a piece of wood with me? and just went to the movies uselessly.


with the single purpose of getting He gave rise to two schools, and repudiated

I remembered the matches. That

matches. I came back with an them both. That is partly true. Weare

Talking about death, we began artichoke, a sweet potato, an onion not iust going: we are being swept away.

laughing. There had even been an

gotten up. I decided to evening the possibility of lighting

cancel everything. Instead a cigarette on an electric stove

I didn't need (for I already How was it she managed to teach me

attempted suicide. Which are had one), three limes, two perthat the play of her emotions needn't involve

you supposed to read: the simmons, six cans of ale, a box me? Christmas is here and then

article or the advertisements? of cranberries and an orange, eggs, shortly we'll be filling out the income tax.

I went out in the woods and was mentioned, an action

revived. Going into the unknown with which I am fully familiar. Yau remember the seed8? Well, today,

we have no use for value It is fairly clear that we have it was rubber band8 (not flying

I felt so miserable I went to milk, and cream, and fortunately

judgments. We are only greedy: changed our direction, but it through the air, but littering the There are those who go part way

sleep even though I'd just

is not so clear when we

we want more and more while WHERE ARE WE GOING? AND WHAT ARE WE DOING?/211

sidewalk). It would be so much but can't go any farther. And there's still time. We're getting did it. Was it in 1913 when simpler if we were expressing there is a great interest in going around to the usefulness of science Duchamp wrote his piece of music? ourselves. In that case all you'd and staying at the same time: (I don't mean probability) (I mean And since he didn't tell us, how need for an understanding of naturally not in the physical seeing things just as they are in did we know? Is what we're what we're doing would be a world, but in the world of art. their state of chaos). And so, if doing in the air or on the land? large collection of city directories. These people want somehow to you were writing a song, would When did competition cease? keep alive the traditions and you write music, or would you Looking back, it all seems to 212jSILENCE

yet push them forward. It gets write for a singer? "I can't even have been done the way we are rather superhuman as a try," she said, "I can't whistle." doing it. Even the old bridges. project. The others don't care

so much about tradition, but hang on anyway.

We sometimes leave before we said

we would, and then by things beyond

our control arrive ahead of time . We

then imagine that it will be the same

coming back, and it is. They were in

Why didn't I bring my boots? I

an automobile together on the way to

have several pairs but I left

Oxford. It is remarkable what we are

them all where they are. I could


doing: even though we give the appearance of

throw the boots, but this time say that I knew where I was We're not confined to a path won't you: we are inevitably going. idiots, we are clearing things up considerably.

the boots are where they are; and going but didn't know what it and so we don't have to follow Both the turnips and the sweet potatoes

yet I could have put them to would lie like when I got there. in someone's footsteps even though appeared to have been left to rot.

use. Often the reverse situation I would have brought some boots that's what we're taught to do. We One of the noticeable things about our So I took some of each without arises: we get into a position had I thought there was a chance can go anywhere, and if we going is that we're all going asking. It turned out I should have with our art where we have of going mushrooming. I did can't, we concentrate on finding in diHerent directions. That's asked whether or not I might have the a need for something which bring the basket in which I often a way to get exactly there because there's plenty of room. turnips. No question of will you or 214/SILENCE

we have never had and of others go. That was Schoenberg's business. ( if we know where there is ) .

we do not tremble) and in our happened to the field of music the existence of which we have There's so much to do, it's a

foolishness, we make connections eleven or twelve years ago. no knowledge. We then go to waste of time to run around

where there had been separateness. And that concomitant going a store that might carry the house writing twelve-tone

We take things that were together makes us sometimes say that such things and discover to music. And that's the only musical

and pull them apart. We remove things are in the air. Or our delight that the tool was way to go now if one's going

We go foolishly where angels fear just invented and is in stock.

the glue but build invisible bridges. the Lord is working or some

to go in the same direction

to tread (which is not to say that That was more or less what

For the field is not not a field such statement. The less we


Had a musician to choose between

both for the same time. In certain ly, impermanently, on

of music, and the acceptance is hold onto our going, the more

death, deafness, and blindness,

Beethoven. The lake up above cases, I could speed up, as it were, and this limitless occasion.

not just of the sounds that this mysterious stream of gifts

which would he choose?

where we live used to be a town. accept both, spending less time with

had been considered useless, ugly, surrounds us or comes our

Death's inevitable, does not

When the people who lived there each. In another case, it would be

and wrong, but it is a field way. Say then that we are

sting, and time shows it's good

were told to leave because the physically impossible to go to both, in which

of human awareness, and the generally active but not specifically

for music. Blindness would cer-

waters were being let in, they, case a choice would have to be made. Shall I give up mushrooms and

acceptance ultimately is doing just this but able to employ

tainly sharpen his sense of Say 1've accepted two invitations and they're of oneself as present mysteriousfor no purpose whatever comes our way. hearing. Deafness ... well ... 216/SILENCE

most of them, did leave. A fl!w One obligation is then dropped and everystudy the trees? By all means. They Weare inclined to think that insisted on staying and had thing goes smoothly. How, however,

go together almost alarmingly things are done better when they're

However, when our eyes get do say so, good grape jelly

to be rescued from the roofs do we regain the sense of duty? I told clearly. What dogged determination done the first time. That, for

The reason we waste our time so used to the dark, we see that from thuse grapes. Next year

of their homes by policemen her several times l'd bring her mushmade my mind shuttle back and instance, as we go on doing

willingly is that our ideas about it's not so bad after all. I gathered a greater quantity

in rowboats. On the north rooms; why is it I never have? forth on one track? We oflly the same thing, it gets worse

usefulness were so limited. We enjoy hearing about nightalthough I was told by an

side of this lake there were here

make choices when it's absolutely rather than better. So many

W!Jen someone with his nose to the mares but we feel we are inspector that it was against

and there grapevines, not wild,

necessary. If we have something things in history exemplify

grindstone tells us we needn't bother going along in sunlight doing regulations. Anyway, while cooking,

but wildly growing, excellent for

to do, we don't question whether this deterioration in going. jelly. One year I made, if I

it is worth while; we iust do it.

to do such and such, we get the the things we do. He said, I got something else on my We will not go unless we have no alterimpression that's something might when I explained that formerly


mind and the jelly bumednative. They were the wrong ages and related. interest us. We study how not to I had to keep my house and not with the sugar in it The doctor who gave the adjustment butchered stick to our work. Of course, if desk in order and that my but before, when I was the deer. It was an invention? The we have too much to do, first work each day consisted expressing the juice. Now, of telegram arrived but never departed. studying being interrupted, we try first in copying over neatly the course, all the vines are gone. The picture on the front page has no caption. to do everything, and if we work of the previous day-

so that two thousand people can and showed me one; I think he we'll do as, regretfully, what sweeping gesture around swim at once. We do not said they were from the tulip treewe won't. But this choice is the room suggesting the determine where we go by and in the wind, he said, they go great not made on any basis such embrace of the chaos that one where we'd like to go. We are distances. I looked out the window as "What would please us the most?" could see there. The housetoo aware of everywhere. just now. They suggest an innovation in toys. There again, what we find most keeper does nothing about That is, woods, for instance,

They're putting in a parking

can't, then, as a last resort, he said, "That's the way I do

pleasing is that our tastes are it because he is instructed any woods will do for my

lot and a beach for swimming He told me about the seeds that whirl we choose, not so much what it now." But I made a

not limited the way they were. not to touch any papers. wandering in them, and


They're getting catholic, we might There are advantages and

by. We suspect, rather we know, call living in chaos an sounds, people,, protests.

nothing could be more

say. Naturally, we don't want disadvantages. It takes time

there are pleasures beyond our exteriorization of the mind.

frustrating than our necessary

cautious past experience. If they to kill ourselves. At the same to find something you're

. It is as though the things in

long trips that take us quickly

time, we realize we're on a sinking thinking of, but in the course

say, for instance, "That music hurt the room, in the world, in the

over large territories, each

ship. We come up with a version of looking for it all sorts of

my ears," we immediately think it woods, were the means of thinking.

square foot of which would

probably didn't, that what were hurt of the Golden Rule, but we're not things come up that one was In a grand sense, I do what you be suitable for exploration.

were mental attitudes and feelings, and these certain how we'd like to be done not looking for. You might do and you do what I do. Need I say?-Not only woods, but

make us rampant. Traffic continues. WHERE ARE WE GOING? AND WHAT ARE WE DOING?/219

oneself. After all, we're all Thus it is economical for each emptiness with just a few the same species and we live on the one of us to be original. We get things arising in it. What we same planet. And I am not who I was. more done by not doing what had there in mind was not

someone else is doing. This

Weare trying to go fast enough

so much ours (but we thought

way we can speed up history-

to catch up with ourselves. This

it was) as it was something Originally we had in mind what the one we're making. No need

We were artisans; now we're helps to keep us ignorant of like those Japanese gardens

you might call an imaginary for competition, even with

the observers of miracle. All you knOWing where we are going. with a few stones in them.

beauty, a process of basic 220/SILENCE

have to do is go straight on, Things come in and we send then? Do we turn around? And then when we actually leaving the path at any moment, answers. By slow and fast mail, Go back to the beginning and set to work, a kind of and to the right or to the left, telegram, and telephone. Now and change everything? Or do avalanche came about which coming back or never, coming then we appear in person to one we continue and give up corresponded not at all in, of course, out of the rain. another. An announcement arrived. what had seemed to be with that beauty which had

There she was with her back to me painting where we were going? Well, seemed to appear to us as an Those signs that are misplacedwith a stick as long as that of a broom. what we do is go straight objective. Where do we go the ones on the street over to the WHERE ARE WE GOING? AND WHAT ARE WE DOING?/221

point again space between on; that way lies, no doubt,

be led by children? I asked left-the one-way street (there things is useful. But we a revelation. I had no idea

the man at the toll booth are two signs, each saying "One wa "



are not going into retirement.

this was going to happen. I

what would be my best bet: and they point towards one If we are islands, we are did have an idea something

he said just go straight ahead. another-that is, they are at cross glass ones with no blinds else would happen. Ideas I noted that the road shortly

:urposes): were they misplaced by but plenty of old shoes are one thing and what

became very confusing. He said, children? and is that what was lying around. Also these happens another. At this

"Why should it?" A car behind meant by the Scripture, that we would



islands are not cubes but

made me proceed against my

a work of art, say, we have to we've touched bottom-an imperin food. If I hadn't been told, situation. One way or another,

are spheres: we go out

better judgment. We purposefully

see it as something happening, manent bottom, he hastened to add, but I would have surmised that he we are obliged to be able to go in all directions.

from them in any direction, The weather's changing. We are do what is unnecessary. And

not as it did to him who made it, then added that we truly have was a gourmet. Not at all. It

not just north, east, south, busy doing what we do. We take we have the brass to say that

but as it does while we see it. touched bottom as far as our appears that he preferred food to

and west. Field therefore is time, now and then, not to see what that is exactly what had to be

We don't have to go anywhere: knowledge and tools are concerned). be the same (providing he found

not explicit as a term of someone's doing but what he did. done. We have come (or are we I must say I was surprised description. And thus a piece We see that to look at an object, still going?) (someone wrote that to read that he had no interest of paper also falsifies the

it comes to us. It's a bright As I was saying: we have come some he enjoyed), the same each day.

sunny day, but that man's (or are we still going?) to a

windshield-wipers are working. WHERE ARE WE GOING? AND WHAT ARE WE DOING?/223

point where it is necessary to We who speak English were so

It looks as though I will one day

speak at cross purposes with what certain of our language and that

he ahle to look at a tree and speak its we are saying. It is because whatwe could use it to communicate Weare still going and we are name, and if that happens, going ever we were saying so failed to that we have nearly destroyed certain that we will never get there.

of consonants and the natural way danger of not being able to

rid of leaves makes trees visible. a Hollywood set. Perhaps it would in which they produce discontinuity. do what we have to do. And

be better to be silent, but a) someone

so, to put it bluntly, what

else would be speaking; and b) it

will we do if we cannot

along with it will be a change hit the mark. Now at last we know that its potential for poetry. The It is just as I thought: the

wouldn't keep us from going and we

of attitude towards winter, just saying one thing requires saying thing in it that's going to save children are out playing and

would continue doing what we

as fungi have given me a the opposite in order to keep the the situation is the high percentage the rest of us are running the

are doing. I remember once his What do we like? We do not like had the good sense to put the car in a garage.

change of attitude towards' rain. Getting whole statement from being like

saying: "But this opens up to be pushed around emotionally or to


go on with what we are doing?

I congratulate myself that I

an entirely untouched field have impressive constructions of reo

of poetry." And to this day lationships push us. We can

neither one of us has budged manage to do something with

to move into that untouched such situations (if we have to


tinue: "Persons who threaten to or ambient to it but irrelevant

take their lives and are picked to its intention. I was asked about

up by the police here will the music for the Candlelight Concert

not be jailed any more, but and I remarked that it would


open field. I put it away. be present) such as pinning our

will be taken to the hospital instead." be a pleasure to hear the

Today in the newspaper they attention to some natural event

motets and the Christmas carols

bring up the subject, but conwhich is either in the work

but that excerpts from the


who had not asked the question. oratorio were too much. The pockets; and then again that if I quoted: "The purpose of music

reply was, "But don't you enjoy you didn't actually take something is to sober and quiet the mind,

being moved?" (I enjoy being along, that something stuck to

thus making it susceptible to divine interrupted but not pushed.) you that you failed to notice.

influences." Shortly three of us left Other people came and some left One might say, "Well, let it, since Dropping everything and going is not

and were out in the sharp and in the conversation my

as simple as it sounds. You find

everything goes and there is no Weare doing only what is necessary. clear winter night. We walked

answer was given to a person

you forgot to go through your 226/SILENCE

question of value, etc." But Once when I thought I was going east, I

along and then into the apartment brings up the subject of anonymity. here is a rub: that is only went west. Do I assume the microscope will be (not the air-conditioned one) and

makes, up at the top of the I was absolutely amazed to hear But it can be dropped. Here I am.

the case when somehow you've ruined? Poison ivy this time but not the other. I asked whether they had music

ridge and down by the stream and him describing to me the beauties My work is something else.

managed to drop everything. Do The appointment is for 9:00 A.M. Friday. in their Quaker meetings and of

in different trees. He hears them all of the long line in music, and

we do it and then go? Are our

course they don't. And yet his

together and distinguishes them. He' lamenting its absence in the

means suitable for this objective?

ears are marvelously open when

told me about the suit he was wear路 pulverized, fragmented modern We are losing our sense of values

Examine them carefully with accuracy.

we walk in the woods. He hears

ing, a hand-woven tweed, and the music. And I was amazed and we are getting increased awareness.

Repeat the examination daily. This

the different sounds the wind

difficulties attached to finding a too that when the nature


young junipers, dampness, and some We are giving up pride and shame and

tie that had the rust color of the pulverization was pointed

fact said there is nothing more other one, she who came sun, how do you explain that to·

getting interested in whatever comes

of one of the threads in the out, that he continued to

to be done to save it. Before I left, from India, was grateful day in a more or less open field

our way or to which we get. Who knows?

material. His daughter sent say something was missing,

they brought out a dress from Guatemala. for silence. She could see we were stepping on them? To be

If, after thought, I come to the con·

him a tie recently, and since namely the long line.

easily the possibility of the sure there was moss, but it was a sit·

elusion that Cantherellus umbonatus grows

she has a fine sense of color, it ( She too had said, "Give me a

omission of a constant uation like ones in which I'd only met

most plentifully where there is not

matches perfectly, but the suit line and I'll be able to hang

connective. Nothing needs with failure. While we're on the sub·

only the hair·capped moss but also

is wearing out. The cleaner in anything on it.") But the

to be connected to anything ject, how is it I lost interest in the


a long line. They have only else since they are not Greeks? Now they interest me

leaving the notes of the maior and minor a short attention span. And

separated irrevocably to begin very much. It seems they weren't

scales and the modes, for they are the mass media-they take it

with. Past appearances are so devoted to the gods after all. Tragedy?

in the field we're going into. The for granted that we, like

to some blinding and to others same holds true for the field of children, need to have everyclarifying. Right now perhaps amplitude, the field of timbre, the thing constantly changing. I again the children are teaching field of duration, the field of space. Weare going into the field of frequency can find no example now us. They have no conception of Though we are not leaving anyand that doesn't mean that we are WHERE ARE WE GOING? AND WHAT ARE WE DOING?/229

in our consciousness of

noticeable wrong notes, but that the thing, our notations are changing

lined with art. Do you suppose the necessity in us for a long whole kit and caboodle was a misand sometimes even disappearing.

that eventually they will clear line outside of us. (She called take. The Cuban boy is partly German. Usefulness is uppermost in our

everything up? Enough so that it the uncommitted void.) If

minds. We begin to be certain

the children will have to stop we were really prepared we would

that we never were where we

playing? There is a fear too need not only boots but roller Our sense of whether or not we did thought we were, that not only

there that an idea which is skates too. Then we could visit what we said we would do is slipping. were mistakes made on occasion,

not in line will somehow the museums with the long halls 230/SILENCE

What will we do now? I noticed, magnificent of the original intention. cause one to lose the thread.

as he is, that he cmit tell where he's going. What results is work without

interruption, apologies for

absence of quality, and shortness

of quantity and complaints

that they did something to

We will change direction constantly. it which was not part


People have arrived from out of town. I moved around a good deal.

We are having two or three gatherings at once. I got the impression that I

It was before dawn: llooked out

never stayed any place more

the window and there he was

There is a story that is to the than a year. I was full of

walking down the street in the dark.

point. A man was born in purpose. Ask me what it was

It turned out he was not in town at

Austria. When he came into and I couldn't really tell you.

all.l had seen someone else. We celebrate.

his inheritance, he gave all Jobs. Actually, I still have

Between 1930 or say 1929 and 1942

We don't have to make special arrangements. 232/SILENCE

his money away. He engaged

a big, beautiful Center for Exthe same goal in mind. What more or less the same countries in a wide variety of activities perimental Music, replete with I've always wanted and still want and, as I say elsewhere, he one after the other. When Festivals of Contemporary Music is a Center for Experimental Music. started at different times the War came along, he went that'll make America look as Perhaps, some day, maybe when I different schools and repudiated into it. He continued his wide awake as Europe. Make can just barely whisper in acceptboth of them which is only activity during the War and any sounds you like: loud-speakers, ance, they'll say, "Why! of course partly true. He moved around even his correspondence. Later tape machines; that's nothing, you can have it. Here it is, a good deal and even came he moved back and forth between you can have a super syntheWHERE ARE WE GOING? AND WHAT ARE WE DOING?/233

I know that if I managed to tell you

a rare mushroom and since to America and then he went sizer. What more do you where we are going, it wouldn't

way I threw away all my we see more and more connections." it was in a dry season he

back; he had been at one want? You can have it." Well, interest you, and it shouldn't except

earliest work. There used to But we are doing something else: built a protection for it

time in Ireland and he every time I moved, I used to as conversation. (But I am going

be, for instance, some settings we are putting separations between and provided it with water.

began to more and more look through my papers, letters, alone; in the Martian anal-

to choruses from The Persians by each thing and its other. And why is it, when Fulfilling other commitments

include it in the places music, and so forth, and I threw aysis we are all one happy

Aeschylos and an Allemande. But we have no silence, they say, "Why didn't youP" and yet studying the growth

to which he went and he before that there were some way whatever I thought I could family.) I mentione~ that nothing of the fungus, he involved included Norway. He found short, very short, pieces composed just to lighten the travel. That seemed irrelevant and he said, "Yes, 234/SILENCE

himself in many trips of 250 miles up a tree, cutting nearly through his by means of mathematical fonnulae. we do right now. It is not each. Is that what we are doing? wrist; lately in a back yard a What do you think, moving off in the nature of doing to thorn pierced the flesh of his ankle. as we might, all of us, to the It is interesting when we hear improve but rather to come

It's been a year and a half going on two years. moon, might we not all of us look through that someone has traveled to a into being, to continue, to

our papers? Father's foot: twice he foreign country, one he was never go out of being and to

went out to pick flowers for Mother

in before. It is also interesting be still, not doing. That We will never have a better and wounded himself seriously, once when we hear that someone has still not-doing is a idea of what we're doing than WHERE ARE WE GOING? AND WHAT ARE WE DOING?/235

homes in various places all preparation. It is not

have not gone to Finland, and we continue doing and changing. blow. We are not bound hand

What are we doing about technique?

over the world. And if we hear just static: it is a quiet

what will be interesting is news Do we have, if not ideas and foot even if we were never

We can use it or leave it alone.

that someone does not travel readiness for whatever and

that someone's actually gone there_ about what we're doing, taught to sing or to play an in-

We can remember the old ones and

at all, or very little, that too is interthe multiplicities are already

In our own experience, we Bomefeelings about our actions, stroment. We can be silent and

invent new ones. If you are 0-

esting. We heard that they might have there in the making. We watch

times have the impression that what we've made? We're so forth. In fact, technically speaking,

bliged to whistle and can't, there

gone to Finland but didn't; that for signs and accept omens.

we are the first ones to ever losing them because we're we are in possession of a vast

remains the possibility of buying

was not interesting. We, too, Everything is an omen, so

be in a particular place, but no longer making objects repertoire of ways of producing

a whistle which you can surely 236/SILENCE

we do not trust this impression. but processes and it is easy

making our consciousness. We ever possible, except when loneliness

sound. What is it that makes

We feel it rising up like an to see that we are not separate

we will have two good bets: are glad to see that we are sets in. Sixty people all singing

anyone say, "1 can't"? Busy doing

atmosphere around us and we from processes but are in them,

areas environmental to highly noticing what happens. Asked in chorus like angels only make

something else? Shall we then

find it a kind of hallucination so that our feelings are not

attractive points which are what happened, we have to us pray that once in Heaven,

all gather at the River? Stick

which does not let us see clearly about but in them. Criticism

exceedingly difficult to get to, say we don't know, or we God lets us anarchistic be! Why

together? We have multiplied

where we are. If we want to go vanishes. Awareness and use

and areas which are unattractive, could say we see more did we go in our arts to order and

ourselves geometrically and our

where no one else has ever gone and curiosity enter into

period. It is these latter that are clearly but we can't tell you what we see. many people doing the same thing

inclination is to be alone when-

so useful: a) because they're all (and still not go out into space), WHERE ARE WE GOING? AND WHAT ARE WE DOING?/237

they're marching, and we along together, when, given an opportunity to have a Center for Experimental Music. around us ( Americans); b) because we can

for a vacation, we look for a spot

with them. We see, to put it We can tell very easily whether

actually go to them instead of just

where we know (statistically) no

coldly, diHerences between two things something we're doing is con-

talking about going ( as we might

one we know will be? We go

that are the same. This enables temporarily necessary. The way

have to do in the other case);

into a crowd with a sharp

us to go anywhere alone or with we do it is this: if something

c) because the experience erodes our

awareness of the idiosyncrasies

others and any ordinarily too else happens that ordinarily would Will we ever again really bother

preconceptions about what attracts

of each person in it, even if

large number of others. We could be thought to interrupt it to describe in words or notation

us. Nevertheless we would still like

take a vacation in a hotel on 238/SILENCE

doesn't alter it, then it's workthe details of something that

Times Square. But what we do ing the way it now must. This statehas not then yet happened? Many

see is that we have to give up ment is in line and can be illustrated will do this and the changes in sol-

our ideas about where we are by former statements I have fege that will soon take place in

going since if we don't, we made about painting and music the achools are alarming just to

we spend waiting-waiting for

I'd like to live in an airshadows; and (about music): machines to do what we planned

conditioned suite where I if the work is not destroyed for them to do, and then discovering

wouldn't be able to open the by ambient sounds. And so a mistake was made or the

windows, I would have given you a Hat No. the doing not destroyed by circuits were out, and finally

won't get anywhere. If you'd but here extend to doing: that imagine. There will be an

simultaneous simisituated getting an acceptable approximation.

asked me a few years ago is (about painting): if the increase in the amount of time

action. It must then have no This is not unrelated to thinking

or even just last year whether work is not destroyed by

objective, no goal. Time must be of the recording, say, of the sound


little-l was going to say of a gong is the sound

no-consequence. (1 pray one of the gong when it isn't recorded.

day 1 may.) But other It is at this crossroads that

prayers would be: Dear Lord, we must change direction, if,

let me not run out of ink that is, we are going where we

(1 have committed myself to are going. (1 know perfectly

quantity); and Dear Lord, do well I'm wandering but 1 try to 240/SILENCE

If we really did change, we wouldn't let me catch up, otherwise see what there is to see and

have to bother about practicing. Of 1 will have to become not my eyes are not as good as

course, we'd gradually slip out of doing contemporary (in my terms) they were but they're improving.)

all the things we practiced. And then when but ancient (in my terms) We make then what we do

we started going, it would be in a working like a monk in virtually unnoticeable, so that

state of not knowing. We would be a tower with a princess you could even have missed

as interested as anybody else. Have of his own imagination. the point of its beginning and

painters always been looking?

I sneezed). I am not obliged

I refuse art if that is what

not be certain about the events

out in search of something time, probably not enough to

Musicians, mirabile dictu, are just it is but unless I am cautious (whether they were "in" or "out" of it) to

going. By what bleak chain to tell you all of this: I am interesting"; and, "Beware of doing finish what I'm doing but

beginning to listen. (It was somethat is precisely what it will say nothing of its ending. Nothing

of events did we exchange the obliged to speak to you and special things to make two time. It is extremely unpredictable

thing else to say it's a good thing the become (mine, I mean: He came special. Nothing predetermined. Just

chain store for the market place? that is what we (you and I) are things more different than they what will happen next and

children, aged nve and seven, are being in and warned me; and then something useful to set the I have just ascertained that taught solfege.) Are we on foot another and thanked me for thing going. We could say to the clock is twenty-nve minutes fast.

Conversation, the food itself, these and doing. And now I've just heard are"; "Beware in fact of the that, of course, is largely how much else down the drain? about Marchetti. They've made tendency to stop and start." "But due to the weather. We made

or in the air? That's an important Mallarme and job; and then ourselves: "Beware of setting That means that I still have

a mistake. I do hope it isn't we must have something to do!" our arrangements very early

question when it's a question of

a mistake. Hidalgo's gone to


thing done that I have in in advance and they even leave it? What is wrong with Spain? Paris and Marchetti's gone to mind to do. This is our include dinner (I have no

Milan and Spain is left without immediate and permanent idea what we'll eat or

anyone. What we need now is not condition and we just fail indeed whether I'll get there

disarmament and people marching in continually to notice it even and whether the plans still

the streets but someone, someone when we think we agree. hold and whether if they do

active active in Spain interested

If, for instance, as may well hold I'll be able to get everyWhat's doing? (Never a dull moment.) in modern art. Why do they all have been the case, if someone 242/SILENCE

doggedly as it did yesterday. Are It's snowing. It began in the night.

ears? They are not as good procrastinated, then what? What we need are machines that will people the way "their land and air The roofs and eaves of the houses

as they were and also the The obstacles I foresee to the enable us to do all the things we could is"? If so, should they not have are white and the natural

metabolism and perhaps they're fulfillment of my obligation do before we had them plus all the four or five purposes (instead of one) tendency of the ends of the

getting worse. We are now which is what we are doing new things we don't yet know we and let those interpenetrate with branches of the hemlocks to

told we'll be able to get so are only a few. Why don't

droop has been encouraged. The

can do. Perhaps you would say we one another in some interesting So often we think that something far but no further and a

I see the others? Don't I

traffic continues more or less as

are going..mad. We are certainly natural way? For instance: this needs to be devious, so that we day ago we were told it would

have eyes and a head and aimless or you might say that is WHERE ARE WE GOING? AND WHAT ARE WE DOING?/243

snow is not a proper winter go to no end of trouble to do be impossible to go in that our aim. We are needlessly finicky snow. It seems more like the something that could be done direction because there was no when it comes to our notice that last one does ;ust before spring straightforwardly. (In this particular money. There was money for somebody else did it before we arrives. But the caretaker who case I am obliged to do four the eyes but no money for did it. And generally speaking, it swept the sidewalk is already times as much work as I would the ears. They're going to do does come to our notice. A little thinking of the ice to come. in a conventional fulfillment of the it anyway and just let the bit of the scientific attitude, however, "Those stones are mighty slippery! same duty.) (Furthermore, I've committed ears go along with the eyes and you soon see that what was There'll be more than one person 244/SILENCE

myself to thoughts about relevancy in a kind of slapdash way. just done was not at all what falls down this winter!" Bird and irrelevancy in addition to Where is their sense of urgency? was done before except as regards maddened by the length of its stories and subjects and where

the general situation. There was, by own winter. But now (as I are we going and what are we doing.)

way of example, a discontinuity of say elsewhere) the trees are changing I thought, for instance, when I

particles, then there was emptiness me-my attitude towards winter first saw the book that it was

( which now seems like a melody). is changing because of the way probably out of print even

Just now there was raw material. Repetition? one can see the trees in the winter. though they told me it wasn't.

What I assumed took place I looked for it in bookstores

Is there a story in the fact that we in spring has already and never wrote to the publisher.

call someone to discover that there taken place: the buds are Nor did I ask anyone to write

is no answer? And would you say there on the trees already. With for me. However, when I met

such a story would be relevant our eyes and our ears, we do someone who lived in the town

or irrelevant to our subject: Where more by doing nothing and just where the book is published

are we going? Now we have the giving attention to the natural I asked him if he'd mind

example of a young composer busyness. Was what I did going to the publisher's office

going into the army at a point interrupted by what happened? and finding out whether the

in his life when going seemed If so, it was not contemporary book was available. I did say,

really unfortunate. And yet it doing. And equally, it works "Don't take the trouble until you

has worked out extraordinarily equally the other way: Does hear from me." Before writing

well: a great deal of music what I do interrupt the to this person, I finally wrote

has been written, lectures given, changes in weather? This is directly to the publisher and


and article written and performa corollary to Satie's statement a week or so later the book

ances, live and broadcast, given. about the necessity for a music finally arrived. Now the question

And a raise, which involved which would not interrupt the arises (which I find more and

carrying a gun which however sounds of knives and forks and more ridiculous, because the

is never used and rarely, for the conversation of friends at table. answer could be this or that and

that reason, requires cleaning. Put the two together and you it could be refused or accepted

He had done what he could to keep have an American Picnic. by something no more solid than

You know what this absence of a whim): the question arises:

going along as usual with boredom does? It turns each What can be said to be

changes, very interesting changes. waking hour musical ;ust as irrelevant and what can be

We are going in such a way that for years now (on the street), in said to be relevant and what

even if we do what we would the woods, wherever (I remember keeps a story from becoming a

if we liked (as though entranced), pavement waiting for a bus), each subject and indeed vice versa?

our activity meets with alterplace is an active exhibition.

ation. It is entirely possible that I from getting in it. But once in, 246jSILENCE

ing them? (They will tell us cross the room to burst a balloon whether shortly there's going

in that case that it is not which when I was not looking to be an interruption, after

music but some kind of choreowas removed. In such a case, which we will pick up where

graphy.) However, it is music would it not have been more we left oD. We have a way

the way it's apt to be going. realistic of me to have gone of knowing but we are conscientious-

We're not going to go on playing across the room with nothing in ly not using it. Weare We cannot know now

games, even if the rules are mind about balloons and burstcultivating disorder in ourselves. whether we are continuing or WHERE ARE WE GOING? AND WHAT ARE WE DOING?/247

downright fascinating. We re-

Perhaps this seems ridiculous

We are learning to say, "1 don't whether we could verify our

quire a situation more like

hut it seems sensible when we

know." Another way to say is: statement. We know perfectly

it really is-no rules at all.

see that the order we cultivated

"We don't need a release because well now that this has

Only when we make them

was also of our own making. So "This has nothing to do with it,"

we are in release." We noticed something very much to do

do it in our labs do crystals

in a sense we are simply doing we say, but it is descriptive

in foreign countries a vast with everything else. That

win our games. Do they then? I wonder.

what we left undone, but we of what we are doing and where

are not extending our knowledge. we are going that we doubt 248/SILENCE

difference between occasions, between that seems gray, undifferentiated,

strictness and freedom, and we inarticulate to us only

are smoothing out that difference repeats what nineteenth-century

mostly by making things which criticism had to say for

seem to be boring. ("They are not the musics of India and

boring but very interesting.") China. Everything is articulated.

I think the knowledge as it

into books that will be read temptations for us to stop

not by us but by machines, because what we're doing and make

there will by that time be too many. a connection that will

As it is now, there is only one be overwhelming. Well, perhaps

secretary. When the phone it is. I haven't seen yet.

We don't have to do it. In fact,

gets extended ( and you see that the sharpness increases as we

I mean information) will get lay hands off. There are

rings, she has to run down I've seen some. But I'm

the hall to discover whether losing my ability to make

so and so is in or out, and WHERE ARE WE GOING? AND WHAT ARE WE DOING?/249

connections because the ones where they are in each one of us. One of then come back alone or I do make so belittle the

she's not English-speaking

us is not trying to put his emoaccompanied as the case may natural complexity. Now

by birth-that is, her own

tion into someone else. That way be. That is a kind of inefficiency. and then I'll file things

alphabet was different from

you "rouse rabbles"; it seems on The other kind is connected with away (there is a file and

ours-she's got some of

the surface humane, but it Another thing we're doing is the fact that the windows I can use the alphabet, even

the letters in the file upside

animalizes, and we're not doing leaving the things that are in us cannot be opened. Perhaps telephones though the secretary only

down. I can use them, though,

it. The cool other thing we

in us. We are leaving our emotions in graduated sizes would solve the problem.

went as far as S and since 250/SILENCE

right side up or upside down.

without saying, see things from his are also not doing: that is,

remark to the tree will do but When I get everything put own point of view which is making constructions of relation-

I am not certain anyone away, then the housekeeper different from another's. We ships that are observed by us.

of us remembers it. Something can come in and dust. can of course converse (and do) That faculty of observing relation-

about never having done any By that time I trust the and we can say: "Stand where ships we are also leaving in

harm or any good either bulbs will have started I stand and look over there and

us, not putting the observation

to anyone. It was while sprouting. Now they are in see what I see." This is called of one into the other who, it goes

he was on one of his return the dark where we are. Satie's lordly entertainment, but we do WHERE ARE WE GOING? AND WHAT ARE WE DOING?/251

nocturnal walks home. Last year 1 gave a concert and answered not thereby pull ourselves up

questions afterwards. This year someby our bootstraps nor do we see.

one said, "I was present at your lecture Thus in his teaching, he makes

and hope to have the chance sometime to presents silently, and it is only

hear your music." How can you tell because I am slow-witted that,

whether someone's going or staying? in impatience, he gives hints,

If he says, speaking of three things, suggestions. We are all 252/SILENCE

"Put this in the foreground and the others so busy, we have no time for

in the background," you know he's one another. By keeping things

staying. If, however, he says, in that are in and letting those

"I can't find any place to divide things that are out stay out, a

it; in fact, 1 don't know how big paradox takes place: it becomes

it is and as a matter of fact I'm a simple matter to make an

just using the word 'it' as a identification with someone or

convenience because I don't know something. But this is virtually

on our heads the arm of the front row, which gave him the

anything about it," you know he's goimpossible in terms of ideas and

law (it was such employment feeling of a shower bath. OUT

ing. In the field and where he feelings. Purposeless play there is un-

of feelings and ideas letting family doctor brought himself back

goes, there go we. There are times Bodhisattvic and only leads to a conflagra-

them go out that brings about from blindness by sitting in the

when I get out of the house tion, a more or less catastrophic That he enjoyed going to the

naturally the consequence of front row at movies (together

with the jacket on that belongs social situation, public or movies is interesting. (She doesn't.)

police and don't do this and the with staring at the sun).

to the pants that are still hanging in the closet. private, that has brought down And that he liked to sit in the

entire web of rules). But what Some people are coming out


we are doing is in our ways of art of church and others are on their

to breathe again in our lives anarchistically. way in. Apparently it's continuous.


can do is this or that at the

drop of a hat. Actually what

we do is drop one hat and pick

up another. It is as though When they wanted to photograph

we were painting on silk her, they asked her what she could

and could not erase. And do. She said she could put on

yet erasing quite completely her hat or take it off. What we WHERE ARE WE GOING? AND WHAT ARE WE DOING?/255

would we go if we abandoned is one of the easiest things now business is our daily life. To draw

something? We only have to for us to do. Are we then lines straight or curved anywhere It is not a question of decisions and

change our means of measuring erasing as though it were on does not alter the situation, only the willingness or fear to make them. to see how close we are to what silk? And do we just abandon affirms 1't- 1'f'In deed the lines are It is that we are impennanently

we were doing. It is not an rather than fInish a work? drawn, I mean materially. If part and parcel of all. We are object; it is a process and it It sounds as though that were

not, they were drawn in a mind involved in a life that passes will go on probably for some what we are doing but where to which there is no entry. Let understanding and our highest 256/SILENCE

what it is, going on consuming time. It is difficult to know drawing lines, by keeping the mysteries remain. Even in desperation and generously giving and whether we will ever forget doors open, by some Huent we fail to convey our thoughts, finding time to find our access all the things that objects made disclosure, and then there is no our feelings. It is because a to revelation. Now of course us memorize. However, let us desperation. Another way of line-drawing mind is one bent everything is canceled, not canceled be optimistic and giddy with saying it is: "Do not be on closure whereas the only but postponed, not on silk the possibility-the possibility satisfied with approximations means of getting out (above or and not erased. There is of having everything clearly ( or just: Do not be satisfied) but insist below) to another is by not still the question of time and WHERE ARE WE GOING? AND WHAT ARE WE DOING?/257

( as you need not) on what comes

new and which the oculist said ventative therapy. And now the here, in the South) but we're

the old and the new and to you." This morning, up neither

wouldn't be useful after three question of structure, the division of a going in different directions. Do

whether we'll all get there early nor late, aware that what-

years; at any rate I did get whole into parts. We no longer you suppose anything will get worked out?

where we're going but we'll ever it is is still with me-a Therefore, perhaps, we make things

up and was told the telephone make that and I have given our

never be sure who was coming feeling that the flesh around my that are irritatingly worse than

had been ringing and then that reasons elsewhere (here too). What

in the first place. There'll a friend was ready and waiting eyes is swollen-perhaps a we would want them to be in our

it is is a situation in which

probably be some new faces. We cold-or the glasses which are lives, if therapy, a kind of pre-

to go mushrooming. The night grandeur can rub shoulders with

want to get together (if not before r d scheduled my time for 2S8jSILENCE

frivolity. (Now I am speak-

in a few weeks they'd be in not just today but the week ing to the man at the

the Caribbean with all the and realized clearly that if I'd other end of the hall.) At any

children. In my mind's eye just stick to it I'd get it donerate, now structure is not put

I was hunting for tropical fungi. this lecture I mean-however, into a work, but comes up in

Now I'm back working. There I called and said, "An egg and the person who perceives it in

was also a biological puzzle and a disthen I'm with you." Presently himself. There is therefore no problem of

cussion of the proper use of knives and forks. in the woods and she said understanding but the possibility of awareness. WHERE ARE WE GOING? AND WHAT ARE WE DOING?/259

Late in September of 1958, in a hotel in Stockholm, I set about writing this lecture for delivery a week later at the Brussels Fair. I recalled a remark made years earlier by David Tudor that I should give a talk that was nothing but stories. The idea was appealing, but I had never acted on it, and I decided to do so now. When the talk was given in Brussels, it consisted of only thirty stories, without musical accompaniment. A recital by David Tudor and myself of music for two pianos followed the lecture. The full title was IndetClminacy: New Aspect of Fonn in Instrumental and Electronic Music. Karlheinz Stockhausen was in the audience. Later, when I was in Milan making the Fontana Mix at the Studio di Fonologia, I received a letter from him asking for a text that could be printed in Die Reihe No.5. I sent the Brussels talk, and it was published.

INDETERMINACY The following spring, back in America, I delivered the talk again, at Teachers College, Columbia. For this occasion I wrote sixty more stories, and there was a musical accompaniment by David Tudor-material from the Concert for Piano and Orchestra, employing several radios as noise elements. Soon thereafter these ninety stories were brought out as a Folkways recording, but for this the noise elements in the Concert were tracks from the Fontana Mix. In oral delivery of this lecture, I tell one story a minute. If it's a short one, I have to spread it out; when I come to a long one, I have to speak as rapidly as I can. The continuity of the stories as recorded was not planned. I simply made a list of all the stories I could think of and checked them of] as I wrote them. Some that I remembered I was not able to write to my satisfaction, and so they were not used. My intention in putting the stories together in an unplanned way was to suggest that all things-stories, incidental sounds from the environment, and, by extension, beings-are related, and that this complexity is more evident when it is not oversimplified by an idea of relationship in one person's mind. Since that recording, I have continued to write down stories as I have found them, so that the number is now far more than ninety. Most concern things that happened that stuck in my mind. Others I read in books and remembered-those, for instance, from Sri Ramakrishna and the literature surrounding Zen. Still others have been told me by friends-Merce Cunningham, Virgil Thomson, Betty Isaacs, and many more. Xenia, who figures in several of them, is Xenia Andreyevna Kashevarof], to whom I was married for some ten years. 260/SILENCE

Some stories have been omitted since their substance forms part of other writings in this volume. Many of those that remain are to be found below. Others are scattered through the book, playing the function that odd bits of information play at the ends of columns in a small-town newspaper. I suggest that they be read in the manner and in the situations that one reads newspapers-even the metropolitan ones-when he does so purposelessly: that is, iumping here and there and responding at the same time to environmental events and sounds. When I first went to Paris, I did so instead of returning to Pomona College for my junior year. As I looked around, it was Gothic architecture that impressed me most. And of that architecture I preferred the flamboyant style of the fifteenth century. In this style my interest was attracted by balustrades. These I studied for six weeks in the Bibliotheque Mazarin, getting to the library when the doors were opened and not leaving until they were closed. Professor Pijoan, whom I had known at Pomona, arrived in Paris and asked me what I was doing. (We were standing in one of the railway stations there.) I told him. He gave me literally a swift kick in the pants and then said, "Go tomorrow to Goldfinger. I'll arrange for you to work with him. He's a modem architect." After a month of working with Goldfinger, measuring the dimensions of rooms which he was to modernize, answering the telephone, and drawing Greek columns, I overheard Goldfinger saying, "To be an architect, one must devote one's life solely to architecture." I then left him, for, as I explained, there were other things that interested me, music and painting for instance. Five years later, when Schoenberg asked me whether I would devote my life to music, I said, "Of course." After I had been studying with him for two years, Schoenberg said, "In order to write music, you must have a feeling for harmony." I explained to him that I had no feeling for harmony. He then said that I would always encounter an obstacle, that it would be as though I came to a wall through which I could not pass. I

said, "In that case I will devote my life to beating my head against that wall." When I first moved to the country, David Tudor, M. C. Richards, the Weinribs, and I all lived in the same small farmhouse. In order to get some privacy I started taking walks in the woods. It was August. I began collecting the mushrooms which were growing more or less everywhere. Then I bought some books and tried to find out which mushroom was which. Realizing I needed to get to know someone who knew something about mushrooms, I called the 4-H Club in New City. I spoke to a secretary. She said they'd call me back. They never did. The following spring, after reading about the edibility of skunk cabbage in Medsger's book on wild plants, I gathered a mess of what I took to be skunk cabbage, gave some to my mother and father (who were visiting) to take home, cooked the rest in three waters with a pinch of soda as Medsger advises, and served it to six people, one of whom, I remember, was from the Museum of Modem Art. I ate more than the others did in an attempt to convey my enthusiasm over edible wild plants. After coffee, poker was proposed. I began winning heavily. M. C. Richards left the table. After a while she came back and whispered in my ear, "Do you feel all right?" I said, "No. I don't. My throat is burning and I can hardly breathe." I told the others to divide my winnings, that I was folding. I went outside and retched. Vomiting with diarrhea continued for about two hours. BeINDETERMINACY /261

fore I lost my will, I told M. C. Richards to call Mother and Dad and tell them not to eat the skunk cabbage. I asked her how the others were. She said, "They're not as bad off as you are." Later, when friends lifted me off the ground to put a blanket under me, I just said, "Leave me alone." Someone called Dr. Zukor. He prescribed milk and salt. I couldn't take it. He said, "Get him here immediately." They did. He pumped my stomach and gave adrenalin to keep my heart beating. Among other things, he said, "Fifteen minutes more and he would have been dead." I was removed to the Spring Valley hospital. There during the night I was kept supplied with adrenalin and I was thoroughly cleaned out. In the moming I felt like a million dollars. I rang the bell for the nurse to tell her I was ready to go. Noone came. I read a notice on the wall which said that unless one left by noon he would be charged for an extra day. When I saw one of the nurses passing by I yelled something to the effect that she should get me out since I had no money for a second day. Shortly the room was filled with doctors and nurses and in no time at all I was hustled out. I called up the 4-H Club and told them what had happened. I emphasized my determination to go on with wild mushrooms. They said, "Call Mrs. Clark on South Mountain Drive." She said, "I can't help you. Call Mr. So-and-so." I called him. He said, "I can't help you, but call So-andso who works in the A&P in Suffern. He knows someone in Ramsey who knows the mushrooms." Eventually, I got the name and telephone number of Guy G. Nearing. When I called him, he said, "Come over any time you like. I'm almost always here, and I'll name your mushrooms for you." I wrote a letter to Medsger telling him skunk cabbage was poisonous. He never replied. Some time later I read about the need to distinguish between skunk cabbage and the poisonous helle262/SILENCE

bore. They grow at the same time in the same places. Hellebore has pleated leaves. Skunk cabbage does not. During recent years Daisetz Teitaro Suzuki has done a great deal of lecturing at Columbia University. First he was in the Department of Religion, then somewhere else. Finally he settled down on the seventh Hoor of Philosophy Hall. The room had windows on two sides, a large table in the middle with ash trays. There were chairs around the table and next to the walls. These were always filled with people listening, and there were generally a few people standing near the door. The two or three people who took the class for credit sat in chairs around the table. The time was four to seven. During this period most people now and then took a little nap. Suzuki never spoke loudly. When the weather was good the windows were open, and the airplanes leaving La Guardia Hew directly overhead from time to time, drowning out whatever he had to say. He never repeated what had been said during the passage of the airplane. Three lectures I remember in particular. While he was giving them I couldn't for the life of me figure out what he was saying. It was a week or so later, while I was walking in the woods looking for mushrooms, that it all dawned on me. Patsy Davenport heard my Folkways record. She said, "When the story came about my asking you how you felt about Bach, I could remember everything perfectly clearly, sharply, as though I were living through it again. Tell me, what did you answer? How do you feel about Bach?" I said I didn't remember what I'd said - that I'd been nonplused. Then, as usual, when the next day came, I got to thinking. Giving up Beethoven, the emotional climaxes and all, is fairly simple for an American. But giving up Bach is more difficult. Bach's music suggests order and glorifies for those

who hear it their regard for order, which in their lives is expressed by daily jobs nine to five and the appliances with which they surround themselves and which, when plugged in, God willing, work. Some people say that art should be an instance of order so that it will save them momentarily from the chaos that they know is just around the comer. Jazz is equivalent to Bach (steady beat, dependable motor), and the love of Bach is generally coupled with the love of jazz. Jazz is more seductive, less moralistic than Bach. It popularizes the pleasures and pains of the physical life, whereas Bach is close to church and all that. Knowing as we do that so many jazz musicians stay up to all hours and even take dope, we permit ourselves to become, sympathetically at least, junkies and night owls ourselves: by participation mystique. Giving up Bach, jazz, and order is difficult. Patsy Davenport is right. It's a very serious question. For if we do it - give them up, that is - what do we have left? Once when I was a child iii Los Angeles I went downtown on the streetcar. It was such a hot day that, when I got out of the streetcar, the tar on the pavement stuck to my feet. (I was barefoot.) Getting to the sidewalk, I found it so hot that I had to run to keep from blistering my feet. I went into a five and dime to get a root beer. When I came to the counter where it was sold from a large barrel and asked for some, a man standing on the counter high above me said, "Wait. I'm putting in the syrup and it'll be a few minutes." As he was putting in the last can, he missed and spilled the sticky syrup all over me. To make me feel better, he offered a free root beer. I said, "No, thank you." Betty Isaacs told me that when she was in New Zealand she was informed that none of the mushrooms growing wild there was poisonous. So one day when she noticed a hillside covered with

fungi, she gathered a lot and made catsup. When she finished the catsup, she tasted it and it was awful. Nevertheless she bottled it and put it up on a high shelf. A year later she was housecleaning and discovered the catsup, which she had forgotten about. She was on the point of throwing it away. But before doing this she tasted it. It had changed color. Originally a dirty gray, it had become black, and, as she told me, it was divine, improving the flavor of whatever it touched. George Mantor had an iris garden, which he improved each year by throwing out the commoner varieties. One day his attention was called to another very fine iris garden. Jealously he made some inquiries. The garden, it turned out, belonged to the man who collected his garbage. Staying in India and finding the sun unbearable, Mrs. Coomaraswamy decided to shop for a parasol. She found two in the town nearby. One was in the window of a store dealing in American goods. It was reasonably priced but unattractive. The other was in an Indian store. It was Indianmade, desirable, but outlandishly expensive. Mrs. Coomaraswamy went back home without buying anything. But the weather continued dry and hot, so that a few days later she went again into town determined to make a purchase. Passing by the American shop, she noticed their parasol was still in the window, still reasonably priced. Going into the Indian shop, she asked to see the one she had admired a few days before. While she was looking at it, the price was mentioned. This time it was absurdly low. Surprised, Mrs. Coomaraswamy said, "How can I trust you? One day your prices are up; the next day they're down. Perhaps your goods are equally undependable." "Madame," the storekeeper replied, "the people across the street are new in business. They are intent on profit. Their prices are stable. We, however, have been in business for generations. The best things we


have we keep in the family, for we are reluctant to part with them. As for our prices, we change them continually. That's the only way we've found in business to keep ourselves interested." There's a street in Stony Point in a lowland near the river where a number of species of mushrooms grow abundantly. I visit this street often. A few years ago in May I found the morel there, a choice mushroom which is rare around Rockland County. I was delighted. None of the people living on this street ever talk to me while I'm collecting mushrooms. Sometimes children come over and kick at them before I get to them. Well, the year after I found the morel, I went back in May expecting to find it again, only to discover that a cinder-block house had been put up where the mushroom had been growing. As I looked at the changed land, all the people in the neighborhood came out on their porches. One of them said, "Ha, hal Your mushrooms are gone." We are all part and parcel of a way of life that puts trust in the almighty dollar-so much so that we feel ourselves slipping when we hear that on the international market the West German mark inspires more confidence. Food, one assumes, provides nourishment; but Americans eat it fully aware that small amounts of poison have been added to improve its appearance and delay its putrefaction. None of us wants cancer or skin diseases, but there are those who tell us that's how we get them. It's hard to tell, come December, whether we're celebrating the birth of Christ or whether American business has simply pulled the wool over our eyes. When I hear that an artist whose work I admire gets $7000 for a painting whereas another whose work I don't admire gets twice as much, do I then change my mind? Ten years ago the New York painters were for the most part poor as church mice. Did they then or do they now have a place in American society? 264/SILENCE

Coming back from an all-Ives concert we'd attended in Connecticut, Minna Lederman said that by separating his insurance business from his composition of music (as completely as day is separated from night), Ives paid full respect to the American assumption that the artist has no place in society. (When Mother first heard my percussion quartet years ago in Santa Monica, she said, "I enjoyed it, but where are you going to put it?") But music is, or was at one time, America's sixth-largest industry-above or below steel, I don't remember which. Schoenberg used to say that the movie composers knew their business very well. Once he asked those in the class who intended to become professional musicians to put up their hands. No one did. (Uncle Walter insisted when he married her that Aunt Marge, who was a contralto, should give up her career.) My bet is that the phenomenal prices paid for paintings in New York at the present time have less to do with art than with business. The lady who lived next door in Santa Monica told me the painting she had in her dining room was worth lots of money. She mentioned an astronomical sum. I said, '1iow do you know?" She said she'd seen a small painting worth a certain amount, measured it, measured hers (which was much larger), multiplied, and that was that. Mrs. Coomaraswamy told another story about business methods in India. It seems that early one morning she was at a kind of craftsmen's bazaar. There were fewer shops available than there were craftsmen. So a poetry contest was arranged. The one who made up the best poem got tpe shop. The losers were going away quite contented reciting the winning poem. She asked them why they were so pleased since they were actually unfortunate. They said, "Oh, it's no matter. When his goods are sold he'll have no use for the shop. Then one more of us will get a chance to sell what he has, and so on."

Lois Long (the Lois Long who designs textiles), Christian Wolff, and I climbed Slide Mountain along with Guy Nearing and the Flemings, including Willie. All the way up and down the mountain we found nothing but Collybia platyphylla, so that I began to itch to visit a cemetery in Millerton, New York, where, in my mind's eye, Pluteus cervinus was growing. By the time we got back to the cars, our knees were shaking with fatigue and the sun had gone down. Nevertheless, I managed to persuade Lois Long and Christian Wolff to drive over to Millerton. It meant an extra hundred miles. We arrived at the cemetery at midnight. I took a flashlight out of the glove compartment, got out, and first hastily and then carefully examined all the stumps and the ground around them. There wasn't a single mushroom growing. Going back to the car, I fully expected Lois Long and Christian Wolff to be exasperated. However, they were entranced. The aurora borealis, which neither of them had ever seen before, was playing in the northern sky. I dug up some hog peanuts and boiled them with butter, salt, and pepper for Bob Rauschenberg and Jasper Johns. I was anxious to know what Jasper Johns would think of them because I knew he liked boiled peanuts. I was curious to know whether he would find a similarity between boiled peanuts and hog peanuts. Most people in the North have no experience at all of boiled peanuts. People who've had hog peanuts speak afterwards of the taste of chestnuts and beans. Anyway, Jasper Johns said they were very good but that they didn't taste particularly like boiled peanuts. Then he went down to South Carolina for a few weeks in November. When I saw him after he got back, he said he'd had boiled peanuts again and that they tasted very much like hog peanuts. Artists talk a lot about freedom. So, recalling the expression "free as a bird," Morton Feldman

went to a park one day and spent some time watching our feathered friends. When he came back, he said, "You know? They're not free: they're fighting over bits of food." I was asked to play my Sonatas and Interludes in the home of an elderly lady in Burnsville, North Carolina, the only person thereabouts who owned a grand piano. I explained that the piano preparation would take at least three hours and that I would need a few additional hours for practicing before the performance. It was arranged for me to start work directly after lunch. After about an hour, I decided to take a breather. I lit a cigarette and went out on the veranda, where I found my hostess sitting in a rocking chair. We began chatting. She asked me where I came from. I told her that I'd been born in Los Angeles but that as a child I was raised both there and in Michigan; that after two years of college in Claremont, California, I had spent eighteen months in Europe and North Africa; that, after returning to California, I had moved first from Santa Monica to Carmel, then to New York, then back to Los Angeles, then to Seattle, San Francisco, and Chicago, successively; that, at the moment, I was living in New York in an apartment on the East River. Then I said, "And where do you come from?" She said, pointing to a gas station across the street, "From over there." She went on to say that one of her sons had tried to persuade her to make a second move, for now she lived alone except for the servants, and to come and live with him and his family. She said she refused because she wouldn't feel at home in a strange place. When I asked where he lived, she said, "A few blocks down the street." On one occasion, Schoenberg asked a girl in his class to go to the piano and play the first movement of a Beethoven sonata, which was afterwards to be analyzed. She said, "It is too difficult. INDETERMINACY /265

I can't play it." Schoenberg said, "You're a pianist, aren't you?" She said, "Yes." He said, "Then go to the piano." She did. She had no sooner begun playing than he stopped her to say that she was not playing at the proper tempo. She said that if she played at the proper tempo, she would make mistakes. He said, "Play at the proper tempo and do not make mistakes." She began again, and he stopped her immediately to say that she was making mistakes. She then burst into tears and between sobs explained that she had gone to the dentist earlier that day and that she'd had a tooth pulled out. He said, "Do you have to have a tooth pulled out in order to make mistakes?"

sels a year or so ago for programs at the World's Fair, we found out that Earle Brown's Indices was not going to be played since the orchestra found it too difficult. So, putting two and two together, we proposed that Merce Cunningham and Carolyn Brown dance solos and duets from Merce Cunningham's Springweather and People (which is his title for Earle Brown's Indices) and that David Tudor play the piano transcription as accompaniment. With great difficulty, arrangements were made to realize this proposal. At the last minute the authorities agreed. However, just before the performance, the Pope died and everything was canceled.

There was a lady in Suzuki's class who said once, "I have great difficulty reading the sermons of Meister Eckhart, because of all the Christian imagery." Dr. Suzuki said, "That difficulty will disappear."

One day down at Black Mountain College, David Tudor was eating his lunch. A student came over to his table and began asking him questions. David Tudor went on eating his lunch. The student kept on asking questions. Finally David Tudor looked at him and said, "IT you don't know, why do you ask?"

Betty Isaacs went shopping at Altman's. She spent all her money except her last dime, which she kept in her hand so that she'd have it ready when she got on the bus to go home and wouldn't have to fumble around in her purse since her arms were full of parcels and she was also carrying a shopping bag. Waiting for the bus, she decided to make sure she still had the coin. When she opened her hand, there was nothing there. She mentally retraced her steps trying to figure out where she'd lost the dime. Her mind made up, she went straight to the glove department, and sure enough there it was on the Hoor where she'd been standing. As she stooped to pick it up, another shopper said, "I wish I knew where to go to pick money up off the Hoor." Relieved, Betty Isaacs took the bus home to the Village. Unpacking her parcels, she discovered the dime in the bottom of the shopping bag. When David Tudor, Merce Cunningham, Carolyn and Earle Brown, and I arrived in Brus266jSILENCE

When David Tudor and I walked into the hotel where we were invited to stay in Brussels, there were large envelopes for each of us at the desk; they were full of programs, tickets, invitations, special passes to the Fair, and general information. One of the invitations I had was to a luncheon at the royal palace adjacent to the Fair Grounds. I was to reply, but I didn't because I was busy with rehearsals, performances, and the writing of thirty of these stories, which I was to deliver as a lecture in the course of the week devoted to experimental music. So one day when I was coming into the hotel, the desk attendant asked me whether I expected to go to the palace for lunch the following day. I said, "Yes." Over the phone, he said, "He's coming." And then he checked my name off a list in front of him. He asked whether I knew the plans of others on the list, which by that time I was reading upside

down. 1 helped him as best 1 could. The next morning when 1 came down for breakfast there was a man from Paris associated as physicist with Schaeffer's studio for musique concrete. 1 said, "Well, I'll be seeing you at luncheon today." He said, "What luncheon?" I said, "At the palace." He said, "I haven't been invited." I said, ''I'm sure you are invited. I saw your name on the list. You'd better call them up; they're anxious to know who's coming." An hour later the phone rang for me. It was the director of the week's events. He said, "I've just found out that you've invited Dr. Soand-So to the luncheon." I said I'd seen his name on the list. The director said, "You've made a mistake and I am able to correct it, but what I'd like to know is: How many others have you also invited?" An Indian woman who lived in the islands was required to come to Juneau to testify in a trial. After she had solemnly sworn to tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth, she was asked whether she had been subpoenaed. She said, "Yes. Once on the boat coming over, and once in the hotel here in Juneau." I took a number of mushrooms to Guy Nearing, and asked him to name them for me. He did. On my way home, I began to doubt whether one particular mushroom was what he had called it. When 1 got home 1 got out my books and came to the conclusion that Guy Nearing had made a mistake. The next time I saw him I told him all about this and he said, "There are so many Latin names rolling around in my head that sometimes the wrong one comes out." A depressed young man came to see Hazel Dreis, the bookbinder. He said, ''I've decided to commit suicide." She said, "I think it's a good idea. Why don't you do it?"

David Tudor and I went up to New Haven to do a television class for the New Haven State Teachers College. That college specializes in teaching by means of television. What they do is to make a tape, audio and visual, and then broadcast it at a later date early in the morning. In the course of my talking, I said something about the purpose of purposelessness. Afterwards, one of the teachers said to the head of the Music Department, "How are you going to explain that to the class next Tuesday?" Anyway, we finished the TV business, drove back to the school, and I asked the teachers to recommend some second-hand bookstores in New Haven for David Tudor and me to visit. They did. A half-hour later when we walked into one of them, the book dealer said, "Mr. Tudor? Mr. Cage?" I said, "Yes?" He said, "You're to call the State Teachers College." I did. They said the television class we had recorded had not been recorded at all. Apparently someone forgot to turn something on. On the way back from New Haven we were driving along the Housatonic. It was a beautiful day. We stopped to have dinner but the restaurants at the river's edge turned out not to be restaurants at all but dark, run-down bars with, curiously, no views of the river. So we drove on to Newtown, wheJ;e we saw many cars parked around a restaurant that appeared to have a Colonial atmosphere. I said, "All those cars are a good sign. Let's eat there." When we got in, we were in a large dining room with very few other people eating. The waitress seemed slightly giddy. David Tudor ordered some ginger ale, and after quite a long time was served some Coca-Cola, which he refused. Later we both ordered parfaits; mine was to be chocolate, his to be strawberry. As the waitress entered the kitchen, she shouted, "Two chocolate parfaits." When David Tudor explained to her later that he had ordered strawberry, she said, "They made some mistake in the kitchen." I said, INDETERMINACY /267

"There must be another dining room in this building with a lot of people eating in it." The waitress said, "Yes. It's downstairs and there are only two of us for each Hoor and we keep running back and forth." Then we had to go back to New Haven to do the TV class over again. This time on the way back it was a very hot and humid day. We stopped again in Newtown, but at a different place, for some ice. There was a choice: raspberry, grape, lemon, orange, and pineapple. I took grape. It was refreshing. I asked the lady who served it whether she had made it. She said, "Yes." I said, "Is it fresh fruit?" She said, "It's not fresh, but it's fruit." Mr. Ralph Ferrara drives a Studebaker Lark which is mashed at both ends. Sometimes the car requires to be pushed in order to run. One Sunday when the mushroom class met at 10:00 A.M. at Suffern, Mr. Ferrara didn't arrive. Next week he told me he'd arrived late, gone to Sloatsburg, gathered a few mushrooms, gone home, cooked dinner, and two of his guests were immediately ill but not seriously. At the last mushroom field trip, November 1, 1959, we ended at my house, drank some stone fences, and ate some Cortinarius alboviolaceous that Lois Long cooked. She said to Ralph Ferrara, "Mr. Cage says that there's nothing like a little mushroom poisoning to make people be on time." He said, "Oh, yes. I'm always first in the parking lot." While I was studying the frozen food department of Gristede's one day, Mrs. Elliott Carter came up and said, "Hello, John. I thought you touched only fresh foods." I said, "All you have to do is look at them and then you come over here." She said, "ElIiott and I have just gotten back from Europe. We'd sublet to some intellectuals whose names I won't mention. They had been eating 268/SILENCE

those platters with all sorts of food on them." I said, "Not TV dinners?" She said, "Yes, I found them stuffed around everywhere." When I came to New York to study with Adolph Weiss and Henry Cowell, I took a job in the Brooklyn YWCA washing walls. There was one other waIl-washer. He was more experienced than 1. He told me how many walls to wash per day. In this way he checked my original enthusiasm, with the result that I spent a great deal of time simply reading the old newspapers which I used to protect the Hoors. Thus I had always to be, so to speak, on my toes, ready to resume scrubbing the moment I heard the housekeeper approaching. One room finished, I was to go to the next, but before entering any room I was to look in the keyhole to see whether the occupant's key was in it on the inside. If I saw no key, I was to assume the room empty, go in, and set to work. One morning, called to the office, I was told I had been accused of peeking through the keyholes. I no sooner began to defend myself than I was interrupted. The housekeeper said that each year the wall-washer, no matter who he was, was so accused, always by the same lady. Standing in line, Max Jacob said, gives one the opportunity to practice patience. Mr. Romanoff is in the mushroom class. He is a pharmacist and takes color slides of the fungi we find. It was he who picked up a mushroom I brought to the first meeting of the class at the New School, smelIed it, and said, "Has anyone perfumed this mushroom?" Lois Long said, "I don't think so." With each plant Mr. Romanoff's pleasure is, as one might say, like that of a child. (However, now and then children come on the field trips and they don't show particular delight over what is found. They try to attract attention to themselves.) Mr. Romanoff said the other day,

"Life is the sum total of all the little things that happen." Mr. Nearing smiled. Tucker Madawick is seventeen years old. He is Lois Long's son by her first husband. It was dinnertime. He came home from his job in the Good Samaritan Hospital in Suffern and said to his mother, "Well, dear, I won't be seeing you for a couple of days." Lois Long said, "What's up?" Tucker said, "Tomorrow night after work, I'm driving to Albany with Danny Sherwood for a cup of coffee, and I'll be back for work the following day." Lois Long said, "For heaven's sake, you can have a cup of coffee here at home." Tucker Madawick replied, "Don't be a square. Read Kerouac." Merce Cunningham's parents were going to Seattle to see their other son, Jack. Mrs. Cunningham was driving. Mr. Cunningham said, "Don't you think you should go a little slower? You'll get caught." He gave this warning several times. Finally, on the outskirts of Seattle, they were stopped by a policeman. He asked to see Mrs. Cunningham's license. She rummaged around in her bag and said, "I just don't seem to be able to find it." He then asked to see the registration. She looked for it but unsuccessfully. The officer then said, "Well, what are we going to do with you?" Mrs. Cunningham started the engine. Before she drove off, she said, "I just don't have any more time to waste talking with you. Good-by." I went to hear Krishnamurti speak. He was lecturing on how to hear a lecture. He said, "You must pay fuII attention to what is being said and you can't do that if you take notes." The lady on my right was taking notes. The man on her right nudged her and said, "Don't you hear what he's sa~ng? You're not supposed to take notes." She then read what she had written and said, "That's right. I have it written down right here in my notes."

Virgil Thomson and Maurice Grosser were driving across the United States. When they came to Kansas, Virgil Thomson said, "Drive as fast as possible, in no case stop. Keep on going until we get out of it." Maurice Grosser got hungry and insisted on stopping for lunch. Seeing something at the end of the counter, he asked what it was, and the waitress replied, "Peanut butter pie." Virgil Thomson said, "You see what I mean?" One of Mies van der Rohe's pupils, a girl, came to him and said, "I have difficulty studying with you because you don't leave any room for self-expression." He asked her whether she had a pen with her. She did. He said, "Sign your name." She did. He said, "That's what I calI self-expression." Just before I moved to the country, I calIed up the Museum of Natural History and asked a man there what poisonous snakes were to be found in Rockland County. Unhesitatingly he replied, "The copperhead and the rattlesnake." Going through the woods, I never see either (now and then a blacksnake or some other harmless reptile down near the stream or even up in the hills). The children across the road warned me that in our woods snakes hang from the trees. A man who works for the Interstate Park and who lives just north of us on Gate Hill told me he'd never seen any poisonous snakes on our land. On a mushroom walk near Mianus Gorge in Connecticut we came across thirty copperheads basking in the sun. Mr. Fleming put one in a paper bag and carried it home attached to his belt. He is, of course, a specialist with snakes, works for the Bronx Zoo, and makes hunting expeditions in South America. However, he told me once of another snake specialist who worked for the Park his whole life without ever having any trouble, and then, after getting his penSion, went INDETERMINACY /269

out tramping in the woods, was bitten by a copperhead, didn't take the bite seriously, and died of it. Among those thirty copperheads at Mianus Gorge I noticed three different colorations, so that I have lost faith in the pictures in the books as far as snake identification goes. What you have to do, it seems, is notice whether or not there is a pitlike indentation in each of the snake's cheeks, between the eye and the nostril, in order to be certain whether it's poisonous or not. This is, of course, difficult unless one is already dangerously close. Over in New Jersey on Bare Fort Mountain and once up at Sam's Point we ran into rattlesnakes. They were larger and more noble in action and appearance than the copperheads. There was only one on each occasion, and each went through the business of coiling, rattling, and spitting. Neither struck. My new room is one step up from myoid kitchen. One fall evening before the gap between the two rooms was closed up, I was shaving at the sink and happened to notice what seemed to be a copperhead making its way into the house five feet away from where I was standing. Never having killed a snake and feeling the urgency of that's being done, I called, "Paull A copperhead's in the housel" Paul Williams came running over from his house and killed the snake with a bread board. Mter he left, the snake was still writhing. I cut off its head with a carving knife. With a pair of tongs, I picked up both parts and Hushed them down the toilet. When I told Daniel DeWees what had happened, he said, "That's what I thought. When I was working in the dark under the house the other day putting in the insulation, I had the feeling there was a snake there near me." I said, "Was it just a feeling? Did you imagine it? Or was there something made you certain?" He said, "Well, I thought I heard some hissing." 270/SILENCE

In 1949 Merce Cunningham and I went to Europe on a Dutch boat. As we were approaching Rotterdam, the fog became so thick that landing was delayed. To expedite matters, the customs officials came aboard the boat. Passengers formed into lines and one by one were questioned. Merce Cunningham was in one line, I was in another. I smoke a great deal, whereas he doesn't smoke at all. However, he was taking five cartons of cigarettes into Europe for me and I had that number myself. We were both traveling through Holland to Belgium and then France, and the customs regulations of all those countries varied with regard to cigarettes. For instance, you could at that time take five cartons per person into France but only two per person into Holland. When I got to my customs officer, all of this was clear to both of us. Out of the goodness of his heart, he was reluctant to deprive me of my three extra cartons or to charge duty on them, but he found it difficult to find an excuse for letting me off. Finally he said, "Are you going to go out of Holland backwards?" I said, "Yes." He was overjoyed. Then he said, "You can keep all the cigarettes. Have a good trip." I left the line and noticed that Merce Cunningham had just reached his customs officer and was having some trouble about the extra cartons. So I went over and told the official that Merce Cunningham was going to go out of Holland backwards. He was delighted. "Oh," he said, "in that case there's no problem at all." One day when I was studying with Schoenberg, he pointed out the eraser on his pencil and said, "This end is more important than the other." Mter twenty years I learned to write directly in ink. Recently, when David Tudor returned from Europe, he brought me a German pencil of modem make. It can carry any size of lead. Pressure on a shaft at the end of the holder frees the lead so that it can be retracted or extended or removed

and another put in its place. A sharpener came with the pencil. This sharpener offers not one but several possibilities. That is, one may choose the kind of point he wishes. There is no eraser. During my last year in high school, I found out about the Liberal Catholic Church. It was in a beautiful spot in the Hollywood hills. The ceremony was an anthology of the most theatrical bits and pieces found in the principal rituals, Occidental and Oriental. There were clouds of incense, candles galore, processions in and around the church. I was fascinated, and though I had been raised in the Methodist Episcopal Church and had had thoughts of going into the ministry, I decided to join the Liberal Catholics. Mother and Dad objected strenuously. Ultimately, when 1 told them of my intention to become an acolyte active in the Mass, they said, "Well, make up your mind. It's us or the church." Thinking along the lines of "Leave your father and mother and follow Me," I went to the priest, told him what had happened, and said I'd decided in favor of the Liberal Catholics. He said, "Don't be a fool. Go home. There are many religions. You have only one mother and father." Schoenberg always complained that his American pupils didn't do enough work. There was one girl in the class in particular who, it is true, did almost no work at all. He asked her one day why she didn't accomplish more. She said, "I don't have any time." He said, "How many hours are there in the day?" She said, "Twenty-four." He said, "Nonsense: there are as many hours in a day as you put into it." A crowded bus on the point of leaving Manchester for Stockport was found by its conductress to have one too many standees. She therefore asked, "Who was the last person to get on the bus?" No one said a word. Declaring that the bus

would not leave until the extra passenger was put off, she went and fetched the driver, who also asked, "All right, who was the last person to get on the bus?" Again there was a public silence. So the two went to find an inspector. He asked, "Who was the last person to get on the bus?" No one spoke. He then announced that he would fetch a policeman. While the conductress, driver, and inspector were away looking for a policeman, a little man came up to the bus stop and asked, "Is this the bus to Stockport?" Hearing that it was, he got on. A few minutes later the three returned accompanied by a policeman. He asked, "What seems to be the trouble? Who was the last person to get on the bus?" The little man said, "I was." The policeman said, "All right, get off." All the people on the bus burst into laughter. The conductress, thinking they were laughing at her, burst into tears and said she refused to make the trip to Stockport. The inspector then arranged for another conductress to take over. She, seeing the little man standing at the bus stop, said, "What are you doing there?" He said, ''I'm waiting to go to Stockport." She said, "Well, this is the bus to Stockport. Are you getting on or not?" Alex and Gretchen Corazzo gave a great deal of thought to whether or not they would attend the funeral of a close friend. At the last minute they decided they would go. Hurriedly they dressed, rushed out of the house, arrived late; the services had begun. They took seats at the back of the chapel. When the invitation came to view the body, they again deliberated, finally deciding to do so. Coming to the casket, they discovered they were at the wrong funeral. Xenia told me once that when she was a child in Alaska, she and her friends had a club and there was only one rule: No silliness. Xenia never wanted a party to end. Once, in Seattle, when the party we were at was folding, INDETERMINACY /271

she invited those who were still awake, some of whom we'd only met that evening, to come over to our house. Thus it was that about 3:00 A.M. an Irish tenor was singing loudly in our living room. Morris Graves, who had a suite down the hall, entered ours without knocking, wearing an oldfashioned nightshirt and carrying an elaborately made wooden birdcage, the bottom of which had been removed. Making straight for the tenor, Graves placed the birdcage over his head, said nothing, and left the room. The effect was that of snuffing out a candle. Shortly, Xenia and I were alone. I enrolled in a class in mushroom identification. The teacher was a Ph.D. and the editor of a publication on mycology. One day he picked up a mushroom, gave a good deal of information about it, mainly historical, and finally named the plant as Pluteus cervinus, edible. I was certain that that plant was not Pluteus cervinus. Due to the attachment of its gills to the stem, it seemed to me to be an Entoloma, and therefore possibly seriously poisonous. I thought: What shall I do? Point out the teacher's error? Or, following school etiquette, saying nothing, let other members of the class possibly poison themselves? I decided to speak. I said, "I doubt whether that mushroom is Pluteus cervinus. I think it's an Entoloma." The teacher said, "Well, well key it out." This was done, and it turned out I was right. The plant was Entoloma grayanum, a poisonous mushroom. The teacher came over to me and said, "If you know so much about mushrooms, why do you take this class?" I said, "I take this class because there's so much about mushrooms I don't know." Then I said, "By the way, how is it that you didn't recognize that plant?" He said, "Well, I specialize in the jelly fungi; I just give the fleshy fungi a whirl." Merce Cunningham's father delights in gardening. Each year he has had to move the shrubs 272/SILENCE

back from the driveway to protect them from being run over when Mrs. Cunningham backs out. One day Mrs. Cunningham in backing out knocked down but did not hurt an elderly gentleman who had been taking a stroll. Getting out of her car and seeing him lying on the sidewalk, Mrs. Cunningham said, "What are you doing there?" Generally speaking, suicide is considered a sin. So all the disciples were very interested to hear what Ramakrishna would say about the fact that a four-year-old child had just then committed suicide. Ramakrishna said that the child had not sinned, he had simply corrected an error; he had been born by mistake. One day while I was composing, the telephone rang. A lady's voice said, "Is this John Cage, the percussion composer?" I said, "Yes." She said, "This is the J. Walter Thompson Company." I didn't know what that was, but she explained that their business was advertising. She said, "Hold on. One of our directors wants to speak to you." During a pause my mind went back to my composition. Then suddenly a man's voice said, "Mr. Cage, are you willing to prostitute your art?" I said, "Yes." He said, "Well, bring us some samples Friday at two." I did. After hearing a few recordings, one of the directors said to me, "Wait a minute." Then seven directors formed what looked like a football huddle. From this one of them flnally emerged, came over to me, and said, "You're too good for us. We're going to save you for Robinson Crusoe." In the poetry contest in China by which the Sixth Patriarch of Zen Buddhism was chosen, there were two poems. One said: "The mind is like a mirror. It collects dust. The problem is to remove the dust." The other and winning poem was actually a reply to the first. It said, "Where is the mirror and where is the dust?"

Some centuries later in a Japanese monastery, there was a monk who was always taking baths. A younger monk came up to him and said, "Why, if there is no dust, are you always taking baths?" The older monk replied, "Just a dip. No why." While we were sitting on top of Slide Mountain looking out towards Cornell and Wittenberg and the Ashokan Reservoir beyond, Guy Nearing said he had known two women who were bitten by copperheads. "They were just the same after as before," he said, "except they were a little more cranky." On Christmas Day, Mother said, ''I've listened to your record several times. After hearing all those stories about your childhood, I keep asking myself, 'Where was it that I failed?' " One spring morning I knocked on Sonya Sekula's door. She lived across the hall. Presently the door was opened just a crack and she said quickly, "I know you're very busy: I won't take a minute of your time." When the depression began, I was in Europe. After a while I came back and lived with my family in the Pacific Palisades. I had read somewhere that Richard Buhlig, the pianist, had years before in Berlin given the first performance of Schoenberg's Opus 11. I thought to myself: He probably lives right here in Los Angeles. So I looked in the phone book and, sure enough, there was his name. I called him up and said, ''I'd like to hear you play the Schoenberg pieces." He said he wasn't contemplating giving a recital. I said, "Well, surely, you play at home. Couldn't I come over one day and hear the Opus 11?" He said, "Certainly not." He hung up. About a year later, the family had to give up the house in the Palisades. Mother and Dad went to an apartment in Los Angeles. I found an auto

court in Santa Monica where, in exchange for doing the gardening, I got an apartment to live in and a large room back of the court over the garages, which I used as a lecture hall. I was nineteen years old and enthusiastic about modern music and painting. I went from house to house in Santa Monica explaining this to the housewives. I offered ten lectures for $2.50. I said, "I will learn each week something about the subject that I will then lecture on." Well, the week came for my lecture on Schoenberg. Except for a minuet, Opus 25, his music was too difficult for me to play. No recordings were then available. I thought of Richard Buhlig. I decided not to telephone him but to go directly to his house and visit him. I hitchhiked into Los Angeles, arriving at his house at noon. He wasn't home. I took a pepper bough off a tree and, pulling off the leaves one by one, recited, "He'll come home; he won't; he'll come home ..." It always turned out He'll come home. He did. At midnight. I explained I'd been waiting to see him for twelve hours. He invited me into the house. When I asked him to illustrate my lecture on Schoenberg, he said, "Certainly not." However, he said he'd like to see some of my compositions, and we made an appointment for the following week. Somehow I got through the lecture, and the day came to show my work to Buhlig. Again I hitchhiked into L.A., arriving somewhat ahead of time. I rang the doorbell. Buhlig opened it and said, "You're half an hour early. Come back at the proper time." I had library books with me and decided to kill two birds with one stone. So I went to the library to return the books, found some new ones, and then came back to Buhlig's house and again rang the doorbell. He was furious when he opened the door. He said, "Now you're half an hour late." He took me into the house and lectured me for two hours on the importance of time, especially for one who proposed devoting his life to the art of music. INDETERMINACY /273

In 1954 an issue of the United States Lines Paris Review devoted to humor was being prepared. I was invited to write on the subject of music. I contributed the following article.

MUSIC LOVERS' FIELD COMPANION I have come to the conclusion that much can be learned about music by devoting oneself to the mushroom. For this purpose I have recently moved to the country. Much of my time is spent poring over "ÂŁleld companions" on fungi. These I obtain at half price in second-hand bookshops, which latter are in some rare cases next door to shops selling dog-eared sheets of music, such an occurrence being greeted by me as irrefutable evidence that I am on the right track. The winter for mushrooms, as for music, is a most sorry season. Only in caves and houses where matters of temperature and humidity, and in concert halls where matters of trusteeship and box office are under constant surveillance, do the vulgar and accepted forms thrive. American commercialism has brought about a grand deterioration of the Psalliota campestris, affecting through exports even the European market. As a demanding gourmet sees but does not purchase the marketed mushroom, so a lively musician reads from time to time the announcements of concerts and stays quietly at home. If, energetically, Collybia velutipes should fruit in January, it is a rare event, and happening on it while stalking in a forest is almost beyond one's dearest expectations, just as it is exciting in New York to note that the number of people attending a winter concert requiring the use of one's faculties is on the upswing (1954: 129 out of 12,000,000; 1955: 136 out of 12,000,000). In the summer, matters are different. Some three thousand different 274/SILENCE

mushrooms are thriving in abundance, and right and left there are Festivals of Contemporary Music. It is to be regretted, however, that the consolidation of the acquisitions of Schoenberg and Stravinsky, currently in vogue, has not produced a single new mushroom. Mycologists are aware that in the present fungous abundance, such as it is, the dangerous Amanitas play an extraordinarily large part. Should not program chairmen, and musiclovers in general, come the warm months, display some prudence? I was delighted last fall (for the effects of summer linger on, viz. Donaueschingen, C. D. M. I., etc.) not only to revisit in Paris my friend the composer Pierre Boulez, rue Beautreillis, but also to attend the Exposition du Champignon, rue de Buffon. A week later in Cologne, from my vantage point in a glass-encased control booth, I noticed an audience dozing off, throwing, as it were, caution to the winds, though present at a loud-speakeremitted program of Elektronische Musik. I could not help recalling the riveted attention accorded another loud-speaker, rue de Buffon, which delivered on the hour a lecture describing mortally poisonous mushrooms and means for their identification. But enough of the contemporary musical scene; it is well known. More important is to determine what are the problems confronting the contemporary mushroom. To begin with, I propose that it should be determined which sounds further the growth of which mushrooms; whether these latter, indeed, make sounds of their own; whether the gills of certain mushrooms are employed by appropriately small-winged insects for the production of pizzicati and the tubes of the Boleti by minute burrowing ones as wind instruments; whether the spores, which in size and shape are extraordinarily various, and in number countless, do not on dropping to the earth produce gamelan-like sonorities; and finally, whether all this enterprising activity which I suspect delicately exists, could not, through technological means, be brought, amplified and magnified, into our theatres with the net result of making our entertainments more interesting. What a boon it would be for the recording industry (now part of America's sixth largest) if it could be shown that the performance, while at table, of an LP of Beethoven's Quartet Opus Such-and-Such so alters the chemical nature of Amanita muscaria as to render it both digestible and delicious I Lest I be found frivolous and light-headed and, worse, an "impurist" MUSIC LOVERS' FIELD COMPANION/275

for having brought about the marriage of the agaric with Euterpe, observe that composers are continually mixing up music with something else. Karlheinz Stockhausen is clearly interested in music and juggling, constructing as he does "global structures," which can be of service only when tossed in the air; while my friend Pierre Boulez, as he revealed in a recent article (Nouvelle Revue Fran{:aise, November 1954), is interested in music and parentheses and italicsl This combination of interests seems to me excessive in number. I prefer my own choice of the mushroom. Furthermore it is avant-garde. I have spent many pleasant hours in the woods conducting performances of my silent piece, transcriptions, that is, for an audience of myself, since they were much longer than the popular length which I have had published. At one performance, I passed the first movement by attempting the identification of a mushroom which remained successfully unidentified. The second movement was extremely dramatic, beginning with the sounds of a buck and a doe leaping up to within ten feet of my rocky podium. The expressivity of this movement was not only dramatic but unusually sad from my point of view, for the animals were frightened simply because I was a human being. However, they left hesitatingly and fittingly within the structure of the work. The third movement was a return to the theme of the first, but with all those profound, so-well-known alterations of world feeling associated by German tradition with the A-B-A. In the space that remains, I would like to emphasize that I am not interested in the relationships between sounds and mushrooms any more than I am in those between sounds and other sounds. These would involve an introduction of logic that is not only out of place in the world, but timeconsuming. We exist in a situation demanding greater earnestness, as I can testify, since recently I was hospitalized after having cooked and eaten experimentally some Spathyema foetida, commonly known as skunk cabbage. My blood pressure went down to fifty, stomach was pumped, etc. It behooves us therefore to see each thing directly as it is, be it the sound of a tin whistle or the elegant Lepiota procera.


Silence - John Cage