[silence] More Atlas Eclipticalis
Joseph Zitt
jzitt@metatronpress.com
Mon Apr 21 15:49:43 EDT 2008
The interesting challenge, then, is in the apparent contradiction
between being pointed "to a direction, where one can learn something
by oneself," and the sense of a personal tradition that can only be
learned, as it were, directly master-to-student.
The biggest issue, I think, is that while that worked well in small
societies, where everyone lived relatively close together, problems
arise in the desire of people to learn the music of other people from
across the planet. There's also the issue that matters being
communicated by word-of-mouth over the years inevitably lose
information and get corrupted. One need only look at the wide variety
of ideas about performing early music (or even what was meant by some
fairly recent masters of jazz) to see that not everything survives
even to a second generation of communication.
While I can understand and appreciate not wanting to teach (it's not
something that I'm particularly good at, either), I hope that the
current practice would be clearly documented by people who are around
now. In a few decades, few who worked directly with Cage will be
around to point us in useful directions, and I hope that doesn't mean
that what they see as the appropriate ways of understanding and
performing his work would be forever lost.
On Mon, Apr 21, 2008 at 1:58 PM, Petr Kotik <pksem@semensemble.org> wrote:
> This is not a cop out, but cannot continue and this is my last contribution
> to this discussion.
>
> I don't like to teach.
>
> Rather than teaching I like to point to a direction, where one can learn
> something by oneself (in this I was quite close to Cage). Incidentally, this
> is how the Ostrava Days Institute is run.
>
> To answer you, I would give you a small example.
>
> Look at the music (the notation) by Mozart, Chopin and Wagner. They are
> identical (with few additional markings by each composer, which can sometime
> be disregarded). Yet, each composer is being performed so differently as if
> it would be different music altogether. It is unthinkable for us not to make
> such differences (performing Chopin the way you would play Mozart, for
> example). Exactly these differences are at the essence of music making. They
> are not possible to notate and, at the time when the music was composed, not
> necessary to notate -- it is tied to the music making of the period and the
> music making by the composer in the place of his residency (around 1800,
> music was performed differently in Paris and in Vienna). That is what I am
> referring to.
>
> PK
>
>
>
> On 4/21/08 1:08 PM, "Malty" <malty1@gmail.com> wrote:
>
> > Petr--
> >
> > As someone who mostly lurks on this list out of intellectual curiosity,
> > I've found this thread to be exceedingly intriguing. I'm curious,
> > though, at some of your statements here. For example:
>
> >
> > "Imagine that this would be the case with, say Chopin, Never done it
> > before, having a chance to listen only to few performances and reading
> > some instructions. The
> > performance would most probably be a pitiful caricature of what it
> > should be. "
> >
> > What, specifically, are the composers leaving out? I can understand
> > troubles with Cage's scores, due to their nontraditional nature, but
> > Chopin?
> >
> > Also, just wanted to say that I've been enjoying the "Continuum" disc
> > from Mutable. It's lovely. --DaveX
>
>
> >
> >
> > Petr Kotik wrote:
> >> I see that I got myself in trouble by reacting on the Atlas announcement.
> >> This is the worst time (as far as schedule goes) for me to engage myself in
> >> anything else than my never ending work and tasks here at SEM/ocnm.
> >>
> >> Mr. jdavid is absolutely right to point out the problem with Cages music
> >> "how might people know [such and such thing] in fifty years?" The problem is
> >> of course with the way Cage left things "in the air" so to speak.
> >>
> >> On the other side, every kind of notation is incomplete and lacks the
> >> essentials to turn it into music. This is true with Mozart, Chopin, Mahler,
> >> or Stravinsky. The reason why we perform their music with confidence and
> >> know what to pay attention to and what to disregard is a performance
> >> practice, which goes, uninterruptedly back to the composer himself. Once
> >> this chain is interrupted, it is very difficult to put the music back
> >> together – as it is apparent in the case of early music. The way we perform
> >> Chopin reflects a chain – one generation of performers teaching by
> >> experience the next generation how to do it. And that goes to Chopin
> >> himself. This is why music can only be learned by direct encounter with the
> >> "master" and not from reading instructions. There is no way instructions can
> >> relate to you, in a meaningful manner what to do with a score. And it takes
> >> years, and years of practice and being corrected, and practice and being
> >> corrected to attain a little bit of musical know-how. There is no way around
> >> it.
> >>
> >> Cage came up with am entirely new concept of music making and brought in a
> >> lot of ideas previously unheard of. It is naïve to think that by being a
> >> good musician with a solid classical education, one can simply read
> >> instructions and proceed in performing the music well. Imagine that this
> >> would be the case with, say Chopin, Never done it before, having a chance to
> >> listen only to few performances and reading some instructions. The
> >> performance would most probably be a pitiful caricature of what it should
> >> be. Why does any one think that it is different with Cage is beyond me.
> >>
> >> There are problems with Cage's instructions (all of them up to the early 70s
> >> were written either directly for David Tudor, or with Tudor in mind). Tudor
> >> loved puzzles and that's why they are so cryptic. I never forget a session
> >> with Cage in the later 1980s. Ben Neill and myself were going with Cage over
> >> VARIATIONS IV. Ben (who was at that time member of SEM) wanted to do few
> >> things that I was not sure about and so I called Cage and we went to his
> >> place to look at the piece. As it turned out, the score is quite exact and
> >> one has just few possibilities to make choices. What was so interesting was
> >> Cage's answers to Ben when he would say „but in the instructions, it is this
> >> and that" and Cage would answer – "disregard it. It is another level and you
> >> are not there yet." What he meant was – if you would be doing the music for
> >> 10 or 20 years, then you can take these liberties. You will then exactly
> >> know the limits. Right now disregard it.
> >>
> >> If Tudor would have switched from the piano to live electronics (and he
> >> started to work with live electronics in the late 1950s), he would have
> >> never accepted to perform Winter Music at Carnegie Hall in '92. The story is
> >> not so simple. But it is too soon to go into it and he certainly would have
> >> never liked to discuss it in public.
> >>
> >> PK
> >>
> >>
> >>
> >>
> >> On 4/21/08 10:23 AM, "john david" <john@magicboxesco.com> wrote:
> >>
> >>
> >>> Joseph
> >>> Good point.
> >>> Maybe the Cage Trust can chime in here.
> >>>
> >>> About DT and the piano, my personal opinion is that he went off looking
> >>> for more challenging things to play.
> >>>
> >>> See an interview where David talks about the transition from piano to
> >>> new instruments:
> >>> http://www.emf.org/tudor/Articles/hultberg.html
> >>> there are more interviews out there.
> >>>
> >>> -jdavid
> >>>
> >>>
> >>> Joseph Zitt wrote:
> >>>
> >>>> 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
> >>>>>
> >>>>>
> >>>>> ---------------------------------------------------
> >>>>> All places are here! All times are now!
> >>>>>
> >>>>> Sonoloco Record Reviews:
> >>>>> http://www.sonoloco.just.nu
> >>>>>
> >>>>> Ingvar Loco Nordin's hompage:
> >>>>> http://home.swipnet.se/sonoloco
> >>>>>
> >>>>> Loco's MySpace:
> >>>>> http://myspace.com/ingvarloconordin
> >>>>>
> >>>>> Loco on LastFM:
> >>>>> http://www.lastfm.se/music/Ingvar+Loco+Nordin
> >>>>>
> >>>>> Loco's albums on lastFM:
> >>>>> http://www.lastfm.se/music/Ingvar+Loco+Nordin/+albums
> >>>>>
> >>>>>
> >>>>> Sonoloco Records on lastFM:
> >>>>> http://www.lastfm.se/label/Sonoloco+Records/
> >>>>>
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> >>>>>
> >>>>>
> >>>>>
> >>>>>
> >>>>> --
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