[silence] silence Digest, Vol 67, Issue 17

[Daniel Wolf]

The Cage Font set is a curious one; the characters chosen appear to have  
been chosen more for their individual features than for their suitability  
for use as a font, thus an entered text will not have the balance  
characteristic of Cage's own hand. And this, too: the "Cage Extras" set  
includes, without attribution, a number of drawing fragments that Cage  
took from the Thoreau Journals.

Regarding Feldman and Cage and manuscripts, I believe that several of the  
Feldman graph scores were actually published with Cage's own clean copy.  
Feldman said in San Diego that he owed Cage for introducing him to the  
Rapidograph pen.

There are composers who care about the look of their manuscripts, and  
composers for whom the manuscript is simply a means to an end. There are  
composers with gifted hand, patience, and a graphic imagination, and there  
are composers lacking in these qualities.  Cage, like Harrison, had this,  
and the layout of his scores may or may not have had some debts to  
contemporary graphic arts.  Kostelanetz, at Wesleyan in '88, put forward a  
reasonable argument for the influence of Moholy-Nagy (who Cage encountered  
in Chicago) and used a number of Cage graphic examples to back this up  
with not only some scores but, most memorably, a series of concert  
programs designed by the composer. My impression was that Cage himself  
acknowledged this influence after Kostelanetz's presentation, but I am not  
certain.

Daniel Wofl


On Mon, 17 Dec 2007 18:04:18 +0100,  
<silence-request@list.mail.virginia.edu> wrote:

>
> Then there is this:  this is a font that's been around for a while - it
> suggests that the importance of Cage's "hand" goes in many directions:
> http://www.p22.com/products/cage.html
> Paul Beaudoin, PhD