John Cage

Music, Philosophy, and Intention, 1933-1950

David W. Patterson, David Patterson

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2013
• ISBN:
  9781136527913
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Médias et arts de la scène
• Subtopic: Musique

John Cage seeks to explore the early part of the composer's life and career, concentrating on the pre-chance period between 1933 and 1950 that is crucial to understanding his later work. The essays consider Cage's influences, his evolving aesthetic, and his movement toward ideology that would later shape his work.

1. John Cage, Arnold Schoenberg, and the Musical Idea

David W. Bernstein

In memory of Patricia Carpenter

Throughout his life, John Cage was fond of telling stories about his studies with Arnold Schoenberg. One well-known anecdote dates back to 1934 when Schoenberg was teaching in Hollywood and Cage approached him regarding the possibility of composition lessons. As Cage recounted, Schoenberg asked if he had enough money to pay his fee:

I told him that there wasn't any question of affording it, because I couldn't pay him anything at all. He then asked me whether I was willing to devote my life to music, and I said I was. “In that case, I will teach you free of charge.”¹

Similar references to Cage's studies with Schoenberg appear throughout Cage's writings. Cage held Schoenberg in high esteem, considering him “an extraordinary musical mind, one that was greater and more perceptive than the others, ”² and this estimation of his former teacher continued to the last years of his life.³ He was even studying Schoenberg's Harmonielehre just before his death; its principles for harmonic connection may well have inspired the “anarchic harmony” of Cage's late works.⁴

Cage's interactions with Schoenberg are now well documented.⁵ But to what extent did Cage's classes with Schoenberg affect his development as a composer? The two figures seem to represent diverging paths in the history of twentieth-century music, especially in light of Cage's work after 1950. Indeed, in many ways, Cage turned his back on the past, rejecting compositional choice through his use of chance operations, seeking instead a musical continuity that avoided relationships between sounds. Schoenberg's music and theories draw upon nineteenth-century traditions, expressing a quintessential organicism articulated by “relationships between tones,” which seems to be in direct opposition to Cage's aesthetic goals. Given this basic aesthetic incompatibility and the two composers' obviously disparate musical styles, it is not surprising that many scholars have downplayed Schoenberg's impact upon Cage.⁶ James Pritchett, for example, states that while Schoenberg did not influence the development of Cage's actual compositional style, his dedication to music was a more abstract and meaningful model for Cage.⁷ Michael Hicks suggests that Cage self-consciously referred to his ties with Schoenberg in order to “legitimize” his own work by demonstrating its roots in the past, just as Schoenberg had done for himself with the music of the previous century.⁸ Catherine Parsons Smith takes a far harsher stance, cynically maintaining that Cage skillfully “constructed” his relationship with Schoenberg in order to further his own career.⁹

This essay examines the extent of Schoenberg's compositional influence on Cage. Beginning with Cage's earliest exposure to Schoenberg's work, it reconstructs the contents of Schoenberg's courses at USC and UCLA, in part through the recollections and extant class notes of several of his students. It also takes into account Schoenberg's theoretical writings from this period, which provide particular insight into the nature of his teachings, since what is arguably his most important theoretical writing occurred while he was teaching in Los Angeles. The essay then examines how Schoenberg influenced Cage's early compositional techniques both directly and indirectly through the work of the American “ultramodernist” school. Finally, it proposes that the two composers' approaches to musical form are not as far apart as one might expect, and that Cage's early studies with Schoenberg had a profound impact on the development of his compositional thinking that lasted his entire career.

I

Cage's youthful encounters with modern art and music in Paris included works by Schoenberg. In 1930 he met pianist John Kirkpatrick, who gave a concert of works by Stravinsky and Scriabin, and subsequently Cage was inspired to purchase a collection entitled Das neue Klavierbuch that included short, easy pieces by Schoenberg, Stravinsky, Satie, and others.¹⁰ Upon his return to Los Angeles in 1931, Cage saw the musical landscape in terms of two camps: followers of Schoenberg were on the one hand and disciples of Stravinsky were on the other. It is at this point that his interest in Schoenberg took root:

I came to think that it was fairly clear from a survey of contemporary music that the important figures then were Schoenberg and Stravinsky, and that you could go in one direction or the other. I myself preferred Schoenberg.¹¹

Undoubtedly, Cage was also influenced by Henry Cowell, who numbered among Schoenberg's most loyal American supporters. Under the auspices of the New Music Society, Cowell organized concerts featuring Schoenberg's music and also published Schoenberg's Klavierstück, Op. 33b in the New Music Quarterly.¹²

While Cage's own recollections are unreliable and there are no official records of his studies with Schoenberg, Michael Hicks has reconstructed the details of these studies through correspondence between Cage and Adolph Weiss and recollections of students who attended Schoenberg's classes. On the advice of Henry Cowell, Cage began composition studies with Weiss in New York in 1934. Weiss, who had studied with Schoenberg, was an acknowledged expert on his music and theories.¹³ Cage also continued his studies with Cowell, attending his classes in contemporary and world music at the New School for Social Research.¹⁴

Cage returned to Los Angeles in December 1934.¹⁵ Schoenberg, who had arrived in California in the fall, had begun teaching a private class consisting of theory instructors from local high schools and the University of Southern California. Members of the class included Julia Howell and Pauline Alderman, both of whom were members of the advisory committee for the Alchin Chair of Composition at USC.¹⁶ The class was a success, and Schoenberg was asked to teach during USC's summer session in 1935.

Meanwhile, Schoenberg's private classes continued. In the spring of 1935 he attracted twenty-five students among whom, according to Alderman, was John Cage.¹⁷ The course that Cage attended was essentially an analysis class in which the students studied eighteenth-and nineteenth-century works. As an instructor, Schoenberg emphasized the expression of musical ideas and not any particular compositional style. This is a constant theme in both his classroom pedagogy and his writings. As he explained several years later, “please do not expect modernistic music. If students tell me they want me to teach them to write modern music I always answer, I teach only music.”¹⁸ Composer Gerald Strang, who was among Schoenberg's students at both USC and UCLA, reinforced this notion, stating:

Schoenberg didn't care much what the style was; he was concerned with the technique, the integrity, the expressiveness, and the meaningfulness, and things of this kind. He was concerned with the compositional organization. But he never attempted to influence people with respect to style, or to convert them or persuade them to write in the twelve-tone manner.¹⁹

Analysis also helped Schoenberg's students to understand universal compositional principles applicable to their own music. To this end, as Alderman recalls, Schoenberg constantly focused on “the musical logic of every motivic usage.”²⁰ Many of Schoenberg's students had enrolled hoping to study his twelve-tone system, and at their request his class did include lectures on his Third String Quartet. There were also several open rehearsals and a performance by the Abas String Quartet who were visiting USC at that time.²¹ These lectures and performances must have piqued Cage's curiosity, fueling what was his own marked interest in twelve-tone techniques.

Schoenberg taught two composition classes during the 1935 USC summer session. The first was essentially an analysis course focusing on the Beethoven piano sonatas; the second was a more traditional composition class in which each student wrote a movement of a string quartet. He continued to teach part-time at USC through the summer of 1936, offering such courses as “The Art of Contrapuntal Instruction” and “Thematic Construction.” He also presented two public lectures titled, “The Elements of Musical Forms as Discovered by Means of Analysis” and “The Evaluation of Musical Works.”²² The faculty at USC wanted Schoenberg to continue teaching in the fall semester of 1936, but he left for a full-time position at UCLA where he remained until February 1944.²³

Despite Cage's claims ...