[silence] Cage's calligraphic scores

[kraiggrady@anaphoria.com]

Lou Harrison was quite into Calligraphy ( i understand there wasparticular mexican turn of the century font he attempted to emulate)that i would imagine might be the source of this. but i am guessing,9but there has to be room for guessing somewhere in the world)

-----Original Message-----
From: kkrka kr [mailto:haajg5@gmail.com]
Sent: Sunday, December 16, 2007 06:54 AM
To: silence@list.mail.virginia.edu
Subject: [silence] Cage's calligraphic scores

Hello,

I'mlooking for information on Cage's calligraphic scores. Morespecifically, 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 informationon 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 starteddoing calligraphic ones in 1940s, perhaps as early as 1942 (the "TheWonderful Widow of Eighteen Springs" score I have is calligraphic,although the ones for early prepared piano works are not). The 1969Cheap Imitation score seems to be calligraphic (I don't have it, butthere'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 ofEtudes Australes (1974), Freeman Etudes (1977), Cheap Imitation violintranscription (1977) and time bracket pieces are not calligraphic.

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

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