Day 344: John Cage, avant-garde festival
36yearsago.com
Vienna 1971—A Student Journal
A year of music, study, travel, sightseeing &
friends.
Day
344 — John Cage, avant-garde festival
11-Jul-1972
(Tue.)
TRANSCRIPT
Avant-garde music festival at the Akadamie der
Kunste
BERLIN
Spending money like crazy. Don’t know how to stop it.
But I better find a way. Today, spent mostly
sightseeing.
Berlin is a modern, clean, busy, and fast moving
town. Once the aggravation of settling down is past
and you know your way around, then things are seen in
a better light.
I like the city.
Took a long walk towards the Academy of Art, where
the festival will take place. (The city is big and
the walks are long.)
Climbed the monument in the Tiergarten. Tired.
Tiergarten—a very large area of wooded-area-type
parks. Very natural. Sort of a nice idea.
Bought tickets for most of the festival.
Zoological Garden. A really fantastic zoo. A large,
park zoo with many animals, and laid out
imaginatively. Sort of modern. And kept very well.
Clean. Even the animals seem happy. For an inhumane
type of institution (I feel sorry for the animals),
this one at least seems more humane.
First
concert
John cage and David Tudor—“An Event”
I like the concepts behind Cage’s ideas
(everything/chance is music), but I don’t like the
results.
Got here late. Bunch of kids crashed the gate and so
I sat on the floor.
The work, “An Event,”
is based on chance operations involving”mu(sic) and
(thor)eau” ideas. Text written by Cage.
Involves voice chanting with chance electronic
background (from previous works).
Result: “chance” makes it theoretically different but
it sounds all the same. The “chance” element does not
provide enough “perceptual” variation for the
listener.
Audience involvement: Being that it was John Cage,
some of the audience felt that they should become
stimulated enough to become involved in the music and
thus participate.
Result: a group of people making random, stupid
sounds but without any connection to the music.
Again, theoretical participation, great. Actual
result, crap. If he thought that it was good, he must
be crazy. Afterwards, in casual talking, their ideas
had good “theoretical” possibilities. In actuality
though…
I didn’t like it. A disappointment.
Afterwards. Riverboat. A fantastic place to dance. A
classy place. Fantastic band. Several rooms. Enough
people for a slow night. Didn’t meet anyone, though.
Hope to go again.
REFLECTIONS
Ich
bin ein Berliner. Ok, I’m
not John Kennedy but I like Berlin a lot. After
getting settled in and complaining about how fast the
money goes, I do a bit of sightseeing.
Berlin photos. I have a
lot of photos from Berlin (see below). The opening
photo is of the Akadamie der Kunst (Academy of Art)
where the avant-garde festival took place.
Unfortunately, I lost my documentation of what each
photo is but I will try to use Google, Flickr, (and
Bing?), to attach names to the photos. If you see a
mistake, send me an email.
Sightseeing.
I have a
lot of photos of West Berlin and will split them out
over the week long visit here. Though, I think of
Berlin as being a modern, New-York-style,
contemporary city (minus the skyscrapers), the photos
show a beautiful and varied city. Today, I see the
Tiergarten, Zoological Garden, and Academy of
Art—where the music festival is held.
Why
did I go to Berlin? Why am I
in Berlin?—I wanted to see a week-long avant-garde
music festival primarily centered around the famous
and sometimes-notorious composer, John Cage. That was
the primary reason. Secondary was the history and
importance of Berlin and the Berlin Wall to the cold
war. Third—I heard Berlin was a hip and young city.
John
Cage. I followed
John Cage’s writings, books, and philosophies while
at Montclair. Cage was perhaps an equal philosopher
and writer as well as a composer. I was intrigued by
his ideas that basically “everything” could be music,
including the “prepared piano” and silence (
4’33”
), and
that “chance” (aleatoric) music was a viable genre.
You can generally catalog Cage in the 20th-century
avant-garde school of composition. Certainly, you’ve
noticed my own personal interest in “sound” as music
with my taking the sound of a breaking glass and
turning into a programmatic and anecdotal
piece, Fantasy
on Broken Glass.
I found an interesting version of 4’33”
on YouTube
for orchestra that was televised over the BBC. (See
below.)
First
concert—“An Event.” I must
have had my journal with me at the concert because I
am writing some detailed notes on the concert. I
bring up some of my traditional objections to
avant-garde and electronic music—that it often sounds
the same; and that there is not the traditional
musical constructs—motives, rhythms, harmony,
structure—to follow along. I can still appreciate
interesting textures, atmospheres, moods, emotion,
tension/non-tension and such in new music. Did I like
it—I say no, but I’m certain I liked the concept and
some of the music. I “do” remember walking around in
the “space” and being fascinated by the variety of
sounds and sound-space coming from all directions and
the “environment” they created. What turned me
off—the
audience was basically goofing
off, thus
ruining my experience of the piece. If this piece
were done in a university with interested students
and composers, it would probably have been totally
different.
In those days, an event like this was sometimes
referred to as “a happening.”
Here are some links:
John Cage in
Wikipedia
4’33” – the orchestral
version on
YouTube
Here are
some Berlin art and music festival photos. Other
Berlin photos will be spread out among my stay in
Berlin.
Modern art in the Academy of Art
Chance
improvisation at the music
festival
Another concert venue for the
concert
Performing
Cage’s music onstage
John
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