The Selected Letters of John Cage. John Cage

anything. had dinner one night with denby;¹¹⁸ i think he’s a sad little man who’s frightened of something. read his poetry which has some good qualities, but is by no means off this earth. i keep reading marvelous myths in joe’s book, but joe, too, is not really fine fine writer. of course, this is first draft i have and he will probably improve it. would you like me to send copy of finnegan book which is out now or would you rather save that for home-reading?¹¹⁹

      need you deliciously.

      gas bill came but is nothing; do not worry about it.

      prestissimo will be complex at first, then simple then complex and then faster yet to end entire piece which should be finished in two weeks, because have more things to write; i am so happy with this music that i shall be sad when it is all written. each sound has gotten to be friendly and something i know and have pleasure with; they are so well trained, too.

      send me some little twig or a hair from near enigma or a piece of grass you touched and sunbathed with, mon prince.

      To Merce Cunningham

       [Undated, postmarked Aug. 17, 1944] | 12 E. 17th St., New York

      Monsieur:

      Curious problem I have with words (I was not born an Irishman as you): tonight I wd. love to write an essay about music—it seems to me I know some things tonight—but good God! For hours with pencil in hand + only one stupid sentence. Who tied my tongue + stopped the spirit for words?

      Maybe I can tell you what vision I have: rhythm is like the air or water or the ether that the planets move in,—it is in fact like space, and the whole problem in writing notes or making movements, etc., is to not destroy it. It has not the slightest thing to do with anything that is put into it: an accent or a metre or what else; it only begs to be free to be.

      Does that mean anything?

      The other thing I have idea about is tones (pitches): they least kill the spirit when they arrange themselves for the most part in scales or scale-like structures. So used they evoke + are magic. If jumps in the scale are used, one must soon reestablish scale or magic is gone, + petty sentiment rules. Proofs by way of example from graved-past. Debussy, Schoenberg, Bach, Mozart, Palestrina, Hindus. I will have to talk about this because I can’t sitting alone see all the angles.

      I am resting from composing by doing copying (of which have great deal to do); still have 7 minutes to write. I bought a beautiful copy of Kenyon Review (Summer issue) which has many articles about G. M. Hopkins¹²⁰ in it and a beautiful article about economics + Adams’ Law of Civilization + Decay.¹²¹

      Great lightning + thunder + rain tried to remove horror-heat but failed. When are we going to be together?

      The Nameless One

      To Mrs. Rue Shaw

       [Undated, ca. Feb. 22, 1945] | Location not indicated

      I am sending Virgil’s review.¹²² The concert is very beautiful and I hope that it can be done at the Arts Club. Five Steinway grands (Style M or L) are required, and I think it would be exciting to have them down the center of the room,—with the audience seated as at prize fights. Phone me or write if you need more documentation. It is a kind of concert which is very exciting and although we had a small audience here, Virgil says it had to be that way because large numbers are not present at really new things.

      Let me know as soon as you can if there’s any chance and what money details would be like.

      Will be in New Yorker Talk of the Town this week.¹²³

      To Ruth Page¹²⁴

       May 26, 1945 | 12 E. 17th St., New York

      After talking with Noguchi,¹²⁵ I decided that, if you still desire it, I will compose the music you requested.

      In this connection please send me what ideas you have at present in connection with it; it is a pity that I did not see you when you were here.

      I will be particularly interested in the large time divisions you plan, if any. My present intention is to compose for two pianos transformed with mutes; this will provide a larger and more flexible medium than percussion.

      My fee would be on the basis of $30.00 per performance minute; and the requirement for its payment would be: one-half of the total amount on signing of a contract and the other half after completion of the score and before its first performance. The payment of this fee would entitle you to sole performance rights for the period of a year from the time of the completion of the score, not including broadcasts or recordings or use in connection with films. For each performance following the first one, I would require a fee of $25.00. I understand from Noguchi that the ballet will be approximately 15 minutes long; my fee has been estimated with this length in mind.

      I would recommend that Arthur Gold and Robert Fitzdale,¹²⁶ duo-pianists familiar with my music, be engaged for the first performance.

      These are my conditions. I would also like a contract to include the fact that the music may not be altered or changed in any way except by me.

      If these conditions are acceptable to you, I shall be glad to receive a contract which expresses them, and a letter which presents your thoughts with regard to the work.

      To Thomas Hart Fisher¹²⁷

       June 24, 1945 | 12 East 17th St., New York

      Dear Mr. Fisher:

      Thank you for your letter, and Miss Page for hers; this in reply to both.

      I do not receive the freedom you offer me to experiment with much enthusiasm. The use of electrical keyboard instruments, either those which might be found or some which might be invented and constructed, seems to me impractical: impractical both from your point of view and from my own. You would be faced with transportation and pit problems which would be nearly insurmountable: I would be faced with new instrumental problems which would not allow me the benefit of the technique I have developed with those instruments with which I am familiar. This same problem faces me in composition for a regular symphony orchestra; and, although I wrote in the letter before this that I would be willing to write for orchestra, I am by no means enthusiastic about doing it. It is impossible to experiment with an orchestra since one generally hears his work for the first time at a nearly final rehearsal. The addition of many percussion or other novel instruments to a symphony orchestra will merely make it impractical for you. I have a further objection: serious and aesthetically basic. I do not like the idea of writing “percussion” music for a ballet based on a subject related to percussion per se. The music then becomes literally percussion music, and is empty of what suggestiveness or expressiveness it might otherwise have. Here, of course, we could come to agreement through following the moods of the poem, but not publicizing the derivation of the ballet and music from Poe or from bells.

      It seems to me that there are two ways of working: one which is intellectual and, in America, necessarily seemingly amateurish and only semi-professional (in this way one does one’s best work regardless of money, practicality or popularity); the other way of working which is geared to meet the demands of mass-American-distribution systems (in this way of working one meets with a multiplicity of obstacles to the free imagination which can only be solved through a multiplicity of compromises).

      I am in a curious position. I realize that your offer to give me this commission is an honor and an opportunity, but I doubt whether it will be to our mutual advantage. Your offer is based on your liking of my prepared piano music, and yet my writing such music for you will merely create problems for you. And unless I so write, I will have to make compromises which I am not willing to make. (If I wrote for symphony orchestra, it would not be for the purpose of imitating my compositions for percussion or prepared piano.)

      If this letter has not discouraged you, I suggest that conversations will help us far more than