[silence] More Atlas Eclipticalis

[Joseph Zitt]

This leads me to wonder, once again, what is being done to capture
what appears to be a huge oral tradition regarding the appropriate
performance of Cage's works. Petr, for example, appears to have
collected and experienced essential events and information in the
performance of these works. If, indeed, for example, the Conductor
Score is not appropriate for performance, how might people know this
in fifty years?

I suspect that the Cage Trust is doing work behind the scenes to
collect this information, and hope that Petr and others are fully
documenting what they have learned to prevent the tradition being
lost. Is this so?

For that matter, the question of why David Tudor stopped playing the
piano has been of continuing interest. I hope (if the answer is not
something so private that Tudor wished that it not be known to future
historians) that this information might enter the record of
information about Cage and his associates.

On Sun, Apr 20, 2008 at 4:04 PM, Ingvar Loco Nordin
<loco.nordin@mbox200.swipnet.se> wrote:
>  Petr Kotik sent me his response on the brewing Atlas E discussion
> privately, but also told me it was ok to post it anywhere, so I'll post it
> to the Silence list:
>
>
> I really don't have the time (or wish) to go into lecturing on Atlas. The so
> called CONDUCTOR SCORE Peters No. 6782 is not a score, it is a set of
> instruction for the conductor, which – to my knowledge – was never used,
> certainly not by Cage, or everyone working with him. Bear in mind that Cages
> ideas in that time (1956 – 1961) were so new, so untested and and they
> include few aspects, which were later abolished as impractical or
> unnecessary, as praxis continued leading to more familiarity with the
> material through performance experiences. I met Cage in 1964 to perform
> Atlas – a 3-hour version with David Tudor, Cage, Cerha, and two more people
> in Vienna. That was for the Cunningham's Event #1 at the Modern Art Museum
> there. Cage and I worked together for the next 28 years and – by a
> coincidence – our last project was the first complete 2-hour version of
> Atlas at Carnegie Hall in 1992 (our last meeting regarding this project was
> one week before he died).
>
> I am sick and tired (I am not alone, Christian Wolff feels the same way) of
> encountering presentations of Cage done in almost total ignorance of the
> work.
>
> There are two recordings I have done – one is on Wergo WER 6215-2. This is a
> "composite" recording, where we only had one third of the orchestra and
> recorded the whole material 3 times (It was done in March 1992 and Cage was
> there – he had to be practically dragged over as he hated recorded music and
> recordings in general). After I mixed the three recordings into one complete
> 86-piece orchestra performance and heard it for the first time -- the sound
> with 3 harps, 3 tubas, 3 sets of timpani (!) 5 horns, etc., I was so taken,
> that it gave me the impetus to organize a real 86-piece orchestra for a
> Carnegie Hall performance next October as a 80th birthday gift to Cage (this
> was the start of the SEM Orchestra). Fortunately, I had a financial backing
> here in New York to make it possible. When Cage died in August, I called
> David Tudor to ask him to perform the Carnegie Hall concert with us and
> expected him to say "Petr – I didn't play the piano in public for 20 years I
> cannot do it." To my big surprise, David said immediately yes! [why did
> Tudor stopped performing on the piano is another matter, which I discovered
> in the course of our collaborations in the last years of his life]. So we
> did it and an invitation from Berlin came right afterwards to do it also
> there in May, 1993. That performance (also with Tudor, this time 2-and-half
> hour version) at the Konzerthaus in Berlin was recorded and released at
> Aphodel (4-Cds together with 103).
>
> Greetings,
> PK
>
>
> /Ingvar Loco Nordin
>
>
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