[silence] Cage's calligraphic scores

[kkrka kr]

Hello,

I'm looking for information on Cage's calligraphic scores. More
specifically, I'd like to know when and why did he start doing these, and
when and why did he stop. So far, I found absolutely no information on this
in any of the books I checked. These include the following -

- James Pritchett's "The Music of John Cage"
- Richard Kostelanetz's "Conversing with Cage"
- David Nicholls' "The Cambridge Companion to Cage"
and Cage's own "Silence".

>From the scores I have, I can surmize that he probably started doing
calligraphic ones in 1940s, perhaps as early as 1942 (the "The Wonderful
Widow of Eighteen Springs" score I have is calligraphic, although the ones
for early prepared piano works are not). The 1969 Cheap Imitation score
seems to be calligraphic (I don't have it, but there's a scan on the Net -
see http://www.ubu.com/concept/images/cage_cheap_02.jpg ), as are the 1970
Song Books, but the bits I saw from the scores of Etudes Australes (1974),
Freeman Etudes (1977), Cheap Imitation violin transcription (1977) and time
bracket pieces are not calligraphic.

I'll be very grateful for any details on this topic, as well as any sources
(page numbers in books, dissertations, articles..) that have them. The only
possible clue I could find (accidentally, while searching books.google.com)
is in a little biographical article on Mark Tobey in "The Saints of Modern
Art: The Ascetic Ideal in Contemporary Painting" by Charles A. Riley. It
mentions a Chinese student, Teng Kuei, who studied at the Cornish School
when Cage was there, and introduced Tobey to Chinese calligraphy - could he
do the same for Cage?
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