[silence] Evangelisti misconception?

[Josh Ronsen]

Sara Heimbecker wrote:

>We have to keep in mind that Cage in the 1930s is not the 
>same Cage in the 1960s nor in the 1980s.

Nor was jazz in the 1930s the same as it was in '60s or later! And that is one of the reasons why I broached the subject: what did Cage hear by 1937? For someone who grew up in the "Jazz Age," I don't recall him writing about going to clubs/dance halls to listen to swing bands, let's say. I've been looking for some link between Henry Cowell, Richard Buhlig and Schoenberg and jazz: would Cage have learned anything about jazz from them? It doesn't seem like it. In his studies of music from around the world, Cowell must have heard some of it. I get the feeling Schoenberg would have been hostile to it, but probably wasn't in America long enough when Cage took lessons from him to have heard much of it. I don't think its safe to assume that Cage or anyone was necessarily exposed to jazz during this time. That's all speculation on my part.

When Cage lived in NYC in 1933 (to study with Cowell and Adolph Weiss), he may have been too busy to soak up the jazz life there. I write this at work away from all of my books on Cage, so I have to quote Wikipedia: "Cage's routine during that period was apparently very tiring, with just four hours of sleep on most nights, and four hours of composition every morning starting at 4 AM." I assume had he ventured up to Harlem to see the Duke Ellington Orchestra, he would have mentioned it, whether it pleased him or not. I would expect that a 1933 Duke Ellington show at the Cotton Club would be memorably ferocious. 

I think the pieces Cage wrote in the '40s that allude to jazz (and let's assume Cage did compose "Jazz Study"), "Credo in US" and the melodic break in "And the Earth Shall Bear Again" (one of my favorite Cage pieces of this time), were composed to fulfill requirements from the dancers those pieces were written for. I think I deleted the email from the person who mentioned Syvilla Fort at the Cornish School in Seattle. Could Cage have been asked to perform jazz or jazz-influenced accompaniment for the modern dances there? Could this be the source of his dislike for jazz, being forced to play jazz (and perhaps being criticized for not "swinging") when his own ideas for modern dance music obviously lied elsewhere? That is pure speculation.

It is interesting to note in Cage's 1937 essay: "[group improvisations having] already taken place...in hot jazz." It is somewhat of a cliché that "serious" composers look down upon jazz because jazz musicians "make it up as they go along" (ignoring the improvisational abilities of Bach, Mozart, etc.) Cage seems to welcome those musical abilities, at least in 1937. 

As I wrote, this is mainly speculation on my part. Discussion, clarification and corrections are welcome.

-Josh Ronsen
in Austin, Texas