Pulitzer Prize winning author Kenneth Silverman turns his attention to one of the 20 century’s great visionaries: the legendary John Cage.  The Silent Ballet’s Richard Allen strikes down upon him with great vengeance and furious anger.

Kenneth Silverman, Begin Again (Knopf Doubleday, 2010)

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The tendrils of John Cage‘s influence exist today in the work of countless TSB artists: from the attention to the “wrong notes” in the work of Andrea Ferraris and Matteo Uggeri to the atonal work of Daníel Bjarnason; from the layered processing of Richard Skelton to the wild abandon of World’s End Girlfriend; from the revelatory juxtapositions of Ben Frost to the multi-media concerts of DJ Spooky; from the hauntology of Marcus Fjellström to the musical sleep-ins of the Slaapwel label.  Can all of these artists’ output be traced back to the work of one man?  That would be quite a stretch ~ but Cage’s work broke down barriers and preconceptions, and created the environment in which these modern artists could thrive.

“I try over and over to begin all over again”, said Cage in 1977.  This is one of the quotes that opens Kenneth Silverman’s new biography.  Silverman’s previous work includes biographies of Houdini, Poe, Samuel Morse and Cotton Mather, and his efforts have won him a Pulitzer.  But is he the right man to tackle a biography of Cage?  The answer will depend on one’s expectations.

Silverman traces Cage’s iconoclastic interests back to his genetics and upbringing.  The elder John Cage Sr. was a maverick inventor, and certainly some of his wild imagination sped through the younger Cage as well.  The young Cage also studied under Arnold Schoenberg, who was known for “freeing music from tonality.”  Cage would later break from Schoenberg by freeing music from harmony; and later composers would break from Cage by putting it back in.  In Cage’s 1936 essay, “Listening to Music”, Silverman finds an early indication of the man Cage would become: “Conventional forms have wrongly taught us to listen not to the sounds but to their organization – to automatically anticipate the repetition of a theme, the carrying of the subject through a different key”.  Cage would later adopt from Morton Feldman the idea of leaving pitches unspecified, and expand the idea to include compositions of unspecified instrumentation and duration. 

Many of today’s most experimental techniques find their origin – or at least their most popular application – in Cage’s early and mid-period works.  Cage’s experiments in prepared piano are today modified by Hauschka.  His use of everyday objects as percussion has been popularized by The Blue Man Group – although one might also argue that such an approach began with our cave-dwelling ancestors.  His experiments in magnetic tape splicing (inspired by music concrète) were an early form of sampling.  And his “Imaginary Landscape No. 1” (April 1939) is “perhaps the first electroacoustic music ever composed”.  His feverish, restless mind brought vibrant innovation to every cultural field he plowed.

Sadly, while Begin Again succeeds on some levels – specifically the gathering of information and putting in in order – it falls flat on many others.  Some may say, “sure, but that’s what a biography is supposed to do.”  But that’s not all it’s supposed to do.  A well-written biography brings its subject to life not by eulogizing, but by illuminating.  Silverman commits his first mistake right away – he gets right into it.  Instead of offering an introduction, a framework, even an anecdote, he starts by describing Cage’s family, then goes straight to Cage’s birth, and so on until his death.  A better book would have begun during one of the composer’s moments of triumph, gotten the reader’s attention and worked its way back. 

Another major problem is that while the author is clearly of high intellect, he dumbs down his language.  All too often, the sentences hum when they should be singing, or at least banging on a flower pot.  In addition, Silverman seems to assume that his readers have little or no short-term memory.  He insists on reminding readers that when Cage’s wife met Joseph Campbell, Campbell was naked and dripping wet – only 31 pages after first sharing the story.  Sexual escapades loom large in the biography, a troubling flaw that also mars the current Why Mahler? and soured the reception of Schulz a few years back.  Silverman finally goes off the rails in the last 150 pages by including way too many of Cage’s mesostics (a form similar to the acrostic, but with the key letters embedded in the middle of words).  We know that Cage fooled around, and we know that he liked clever little puzzles, but what about the music?

Silverman’s approach to Cage’s famous “Concert for Piano and Orchestra” is to apologize.  “A full description of this awesomely intricate compostion,” he writes, “demands a long essay”.  Why not?  The book is over 400 pages long.  Cage’s infamous “4:33” receives only 4 pages of space, an insult; a much better treatment was provided earlier this year by Kyle Gann’s No Such Thing As Silence.  

Silverman mentions Cage’s concert of 30 anecdotes in 30 minutes, followed by another featuring 90 anecdotes in 90 minutes, but he could have used more of the same in his book.  He includes a great section describing Cage’s triumph on a game show requiring mushroom identification, but only mentions in passing the Newsweek article that sat aside coverage of The Beatles’ introduction to America.  Had it been explored, this could have provided a great lesson in contrast.  Also missing is a conclusion that puts Cage’s work in perspective.  This section, had it been included, might have zeroed in on the contradictions of Cage’s career: his simultaneous fame and lack of popularity, his ability to inspire cheers and catcalls, and his impact on modern music. 

Many accused Cage of experimentalism for experimentalism’s sake, and the same mud is thrown at today’s practitioners.  When does experiment become vision?  Is time necessary to distinguish dilettantes and dabblers from innovators and imaginers?  Do Cage’s followers take his ideas too far?  Does modern music need to be freed from Cageisms?  Any of these ideas would have helped the book to florish, but none are addressed in detail.  Cage deserves a better biography, perhaps one whose contents are guided by the I Ching – one that plays with form, one that defies categorization, one that provokes applause or shredding.  In addressing the work of this innovator, Silverman needed to be innovative, and he insults Cage’s memory by staying staid and safe.

Richard Allen  

Written By: host
Date Posted: 11/4/2010
Number of Views: 242