All language subtitles for American Masters - John Cage I Have Nothing to Say and I Am Saying It (1990) US

- I have come through my music to enjoy the sounds

that are in my environment wherever I am.

(sloshing(

I wouldn't say that I understand the environment.

I simply experience it.

(laughing)

The first question I asked myself

when something doesn't seem to be beautiful,

the first question I ask is,

why do I think it's not beautiful?

And very shortly you discover that there's no reason.

(discordant banging)

If we can conquer that dislike,

I'll begin to like what we did dislike,

then the world is more open.

(discordant, rhythmic banging)

That path of increasing one's enjoyment of life

is the path I think we'd all best take.

Some views are not as self-expression

but is self alteration,

to become more open.

- [Narrator] composer John Cage, one of the most influential

creative figures of the 20th century.

Musician, philosopher, visual artist and writer,

Cage has been and continues to be

at the very center of the avant-garde.

- I think Cage will always be recognized

as one of the most important American composers

slash musical figures.

You could still say that he was one of those

important composers,

even if I remain fairly guarded about the music.

But the ideas are seminal.

- He's become the true international artist of our time,

which is to say the man who seems to be

revered in nearly all the Western,

all the countries of the world.

- [Narrator] Cage is innovative, experimental

and controversial.

He was the originator of the multimedia happening,

a pioneer in electronic music and the leading figure

in indeterminacy in music through chance operations.

As we come to know John Cage better it becomes clear

that he is perhaps the most influential

in a long line of artists who's challenged

the way we perceive experience,

has reshaped aesthetic thought in this century.

- Even the people were writing different kinds of music

from Cage, I'm sure in some ways are either influenced

or either went against it or whatever, but still

the fact that Cage's music is here

is something in everybody's subconscious.

(experimental music)

- I've never felt that Cage has ever had any interest

in shocking people or upsetting people.

I think he's a missionary.

I think he would like to really

make everybody become an artist

and make everybody capable of responding intensely

to the life that they're living every day.

- There was an international conference of philosophers

in Hawaii

on the subject of reality.

(audience laughing)

For three days, Daisetsu Teitaro Suzuki said nothing.

(audience laughing)

Finally the chairman turned to him and asked,

"Dr. Suzuki,

"would you say this table

"around which we are sitting is real?"

(audience laughing)

Suzuki raised his head and said yes.

The Chairman asked in what sense

Suzuki thought the table was real.

Suzuki said,

"In every sense."

(audience laughing)

Why do I have to go on asking questions?

Why do they call me a composer then,

if all I do is ask questions?

I have nothing to say and I am saying it.

(piano music)

- People probably first hear of Cage

more from the perspective of the

musical conceptualist who's setting off

little sort of brain time bombs

in one's way of thinking about music and indeed about life,

but

in terms of the actual music

that I derived traditional pleasure from,

it was the prepared piano pieces.

(piano music)

- [Narrator] In 1938, Cage went to teach

at the Cornish School in Seattle.

There he met dancer Merce Cunningham, then a young student,

and soon Cage began writing music for Cunningham's dances,

including this piece, In the Name of the Holocaust.

- I first prepared the piano there in Seattle,

but this piece was written here in New York, I wrote it

for a dance of Merce Cunningham.

At the time

when I wrote for the piano,

which I had to do it in this case because the theater

was small and had no wings for musical instruments.

It simply had a piano in front of the stage.

It was kind of built into the seats of the audience

so that the only instrument that could be used

conveniently was the piano.

I had the experience earlier

of

studying with Henry Cowell,

so that I knew

that he had obtained sounds

on the strings of the piano by plucking them

or by muting them or by stroking them.

This kind of sound.

(piano strings resonate)

Or this kind of sound.

And so

I extended the idea to putting objects between the strings.

The first object I put

not between the strings but on the strings was a pie plate,

and that jangled

and moved about.

So then I knew it had to be something that was fixed.

And first I put a nail and it slipped.

Finally I put in a wood screw

and because of the grooves in the screw

it stayed sufficiently long in position

to give a sound that could be repeated.

- [Margaret] I love these.

My jungle nuts.

- [John] Yes these bolts are very good

because the grooves are very close together.

And there's very little possibility,

through the vibration of strings,

of there being any movement.

- Now one last preparation.

(strings resonating)

There, that's it. - Good.

(discordant piano music)

(fluid piano music)

(discordant piano music)

(soft music)

(piano music)

(discordant piano music)

(static crackling)

- [Narrator] Cage's closest collaboration has been

with one of America's most important dancers

and choreographers, Merce Cunningham.

(crackling)

As music director of the Merce Cunningham Dance Company

and as a close friend of Cunningham for over 40 years,

John Cage has played an important collaborative role

in the development of dance in this century.

(crackling)

From the beginning of their association,

Cunningham and Cage shared the idea

of allowing music and dance to proceed independently

of one another, each at its own pace

and in its own unfolding patterns.

- I think a thing that we agreed

to so many years ago actually, was that the music

didn't have to support the dance

nor the dance illustrate the music.

But they could be two things going on at the same time.

It's just two things happening,

not necessarily connected or disconnected,

but two separate things going on at the same moment.

- [John] Which is characteristic of life.

- Yes, you have that every day in your lives.

We start together with the music and the dance

and all kinds of different things going on in the two.

With the music doing one thing and the dance doing another.

There's a lilt.

- Oh.

Are you alright?

- Yeah, I'm fine, it's fine.

- Have you finished?

- use that one on the floor.

- If I don't find anything...

Oh, this is... (chuckling)

(tapping)

Yeah.

(tapping)

(speaking faintly)

- [Merce] It's as though you simply continue doing

what you're doing

as you would when you're doing something in the street.

You continue it.

- [John] Sound come into its own.

What does that mean?

For one thing it means that noises are as useful

to new music as so-called musical tones,

for the simple reason that they are songs.

(rattling)

(coughing)

- [Narrator] John Milton Cage was born in Los Angeles

on September 5th, 1912.

His mother was a writer for a local newspaper.

His father was a successful and imaginative inventor.

- I frequently say, and it's true,

that my father was an inventor

and that if I have anything to give in my work

it derives from,

From its having some discovery in it

or something with which we're not familiar.

(piano music)

- [Narrator] Cage studied music at an early age

and attended Los Angeles High School.

He dropped out of Pomona College after two years

to travel and study in Europe.

After another year in New York,

Cage returned to California,

took courses in music theory at UCLA and began studying

under the great composer Arnold Schoenberg.

But he soon realized that he had little feeling for harmony,

one of the basic elements of musical composition.

- Well I guess I did have an aversion.

I certainly had no feeling for harmony.

Schoenberg thought that that

would make it impossible for me to write music.

But I'd already promised him to devote my life to music,

so I simply said well then I'll be, he said what,

I asked him why I wouldn't be able to write music,

and he said you'll come to a wall.

You won't be able to get through.

And so I said I'll beat my head against that wall.

(trippy percussion music)

Percussion music is a contemporary transition

from keyboard influence to music,

to the all-sound music of the future.

Any sound is acceptable to the composer of percussion music.

(energetic percussion music)

(soft percussion music)

Is a truck passing by?

Music.

Which is more musical,

a truck passing by a factory

or a truck passing by a music school?

(energetic percussion music)

(conch shell blowing) (percussion music)

(soft music)

- [Narrator] As an accomplished visual artist,

Cage has extended his impact to this medium.

Cage also has many interests outside the arts.

He is an imaginative cook, an avid horticulturist

and as a recognized authority on mushrooms

he was a founder of the New York Mycological Society.

- This is another kind which is also good.

Olivia riley-cata.

(sizzling)

- I sent

John and a macrobiotic cookbook.

Because I knew that he was a very, very

incredible cook actually.

And so that was a way that I thought maybe he might

want to get into macrobiotic and he did.

And it was amazing.

I just respect his attitude

of always being open to new things.

- And it doesn't seem so much about originality

as just encouraging others to

just

tweak up their sensibility a little bit

and to see what's right in front of them.

(sloshing)

- [Man] Cage did feel and say that any sound

could take its place in a piece of music.

There was no sound that per se was not musical.

That anything, that any sound,

could be part of a piece of music.

(vuvuzela wailing)

(fart-like vibrating)

(audience laughing)

Cage was asked at one time about that.

Did he mean to be funny?

And he said no, he didn't mean to be funny,

but if something funny happened that was acceptable to him.

And he said, on the whole I prefer laughter to tears.

- I suppose that's what I like a lot about Cage.

He's pretty funny, makes me laugh, I trust that.

I trust laughter more than most things.

(warbling)

- He recognized very early that the danger

in this sort of thing he was doing was being foolish.

He said,

"I want to be free without being foolish."

I think what you have to remember is that in everything

that Cage does there is a structure.

That Cage is very conscious of the need for structure

in any work of art.

(kazoo tooting)

(strings resonating)

(pop music)

(feedback shrieks)

(strings resonating)

- Yes the whole thing is very determined,

but those determinations were all arrived at

by two different

chance operations.

One involved imperfections in the paper

that I was writing on.

I was writing on very large rolls

of graph paper

and I

would make

tosses of

three coins, six times,

getting numbers from 1 to 64.

Then I made

multiples of 64 because I was writing a virtuoso piece.

And then within a given structural area

on this graph paper,

which had also been determined by chance operations,

I observed and intensified the number of imperfections

in the paper that I had received

through the chance operations.

I got involved in that in the middle and late 40s.

And it took the place of psychoanalysis

because I was not only in

a troubled state, personally,

but I was concerned about why one would write music

at this time, in this society.

And then it became clear

that the function of art

is not to communicate one's personal ideas or feelings

but rather to

imitate nature in her manner of operation.

In the mushrooms it's absolutely necessary, you see,

if you're going to eat them as I do,

not to eat one which is deadly.

Hmm?

Whereas I take the attitude in music

that

no sounds are deadly.

It's like a Zen statement, every day is a beautiful day,

everything is pleasing,

provided you haven't got the notion

of pleasing and displeasing in you.

Hmm? (laughing)

And it's actually very difficult to get free of one's

notions of order

and one's tastes.

(strings resonating)

(clattering)

- He's not putting you on,

he's not he's not trying to one-up you,

trying to be superior to you.

He's trying to demonstrate something

you haven't heard before.

- In a sense it's that everything

in the world is blessed.

- The giving up of

the ego and the self as a composer

and turning it over to something else,

be it chance or destiny or God or whatever it might be,

he'll throw the I Ching to ascertain

certain specific choices within which he can operate.

But once those choices have been made,

then everything, from the calligraphy used in working it out

to his insistence that the performers do it as he specifies,

is extremely ordered, rigid even.

- Of course one of Cage's main influences has been

as a conduit for the ideas of Duchamp.

- [Narrator] Marcel Duchamp, the great French painter

who died in New York in 1968,

had a tremendous impact on avant-garde art

and ideas in this country, and especially on John Cage.

In his famous Nude Descending a Staircase of 1912

and works he called ready-mades,

found objects which he signed and submitted

as finished works of art,

Duchamp challenged every traditional notion

that the creative artist was endowed

with special expressive power and insight.

- The concept had been that man was the center of things

and that the center of the center

was his feelings and his emotions.

Duchamp broke with that completely and decisively.

Basically I think what he was getting at

was a philosophical point of view

which was centered on doubt.

He doubted everything.

- And unfortunately people today,

especially the layman or the public,

wants something that pleases him and that's taste.

And there's all kinds, there are three forms of it:

bad, good, and indifferent taste.

So I'm on the indifferent tastes,

boat.

- Well in Cage's case I think it was purely because he felt

that his own personal biases and feelings and emotions

were not as interesting as what could be gotten at

by other means.

He wanted to imitate nature in its manner of operation.

How nature actually works.

And in his mind and in the mind

of many modern physicists,

that is a random, playful

form of activity, purposeless.

But as he said, the highest purpose is to have no purpose.

(light music)

- [Narrator] Cage is a frequent visitor at the home

in the French countryside of Teeny Duchamp, widow of Marcel.

- [John] When was this taken?

- [Narrator] From the time of Cage's association

with Duchamp, a master chess player,

the game has been an important part of Cage's life.

- [John] Beautiful picture.

- [Narrator] In 1986, Cage created Chess Piece,

a chance-determined film of the chess match

between the two friends.

- What I need to know are the various things you can change

on camera. - Okay.

There are three things you can change.

The first thing is

here, the opening

from 2.2 to 22.

- Between 2.2 and 2.8, I can move slowly?

- Yes of course.

If you put 2.2 and 2.3,

you will not see a difference on the film.

- I'm not I'm not concerned with what we see.

- No.

- I'm concerned with what we, why we can move this.

- Yes, but you have to move this.

If you don't see any difference...

- No, no, I'm not concerned about that.

- Okay.

- I'm concerned about being able to tell you

where to put it.

- Yes, if you want to look, the difference--

- No. - No?

You don't want to look?

- So, all I want to know are the possible changes.

- Okay.

- I worked from chance operations.

- You never look in the camera?

- No, and I don't hear music before I write it.

- Oh, okay. (laughing)

- Well I've always used the I Ching or ee-king

chance operations.

I use it as a discipline,

in order to free my work from my memory

and from my likes and dislikes.

Oh I see.

It's very nice.

I don't mind the floor.

You don't mind? - No, it's good.

- You don't think....

We can be

wider.

But you see the floor.

I show you, I show you.

- Actually I like what I saw.

- Yes? - Yes.

- Okay.

But if we use the two numbers,

12 and 15,

the frame will be a wider,

so-- - No, I like it

the way it is.

- [Assistant] Okay.

- I think if we get it too exact

on the table

in fact I found the gray of the floor

good to see.

- Mm.

So we go...

Okay.

That thing is...

Voila.

- Check.

Shall we start another one?

Right away?

- Ready.

(speaking faintly)

Is it still running? - Mm hmm.

(speaking faintly)

What are they doing?

- I think they're making a movie. (laughing)

- Let's see the show.

(laughing)

- All right.

And the cut we want is from 1:33 to 1:53.

Unless they become overconfident, you know.

(chuckling)

(film reel clatters)

This is not one of the shots, this is in between, isn't it?

- [Assistant] This is the next shot.

- What? - This is the next shot.

- Oh really? - Mm hmm.

- Each shot is being cut at least once,

and some are cut twice and some are cut three times.

That's all the result of chance operations.

(speaking faintly)

Taken.

- [Man] Is it on?

- [John] In Zen they say

if something is boring after two minutes, try it for four.

If still boring,

try it for eight.

16.

32.

And so on.

Eventually one discovers that it's not boring at all

but very interesting.

I think-- - What are they doing?

- [John] I think they're making a movie. (laughing)

Damn.

- In 1948,

Cage and Cunningham made their first of several visits

to the Summer Institute of Black Mountain College

in North Carolina, known for its lively atmosphere

and experimental curriculum.

Many creative people were on the faculty at that time,

among them Josef Albers and Buckminster Fuller.

Faculty and students often performed together

in numerous experimental productions.

It was at Black Mountain College that Cage and Cunningham

first met painter Robert Rauschenberg.

- Maturing

artistically,

working with

John and Merce,

actually gave me license to do anything.

- They had permission, thanks to Cage's influence

as a person and as an artist, to do what they liked.

To paint, in the case of Johns, an American flag

or a target the case of Rauschenberg,

used stuffed animals in his paintings.

They looked at the world again and not at themselves.

And tried to convey what the work was about.

So he was a liberating influence, he was always there

and one trusted him to do the right thing, you know.

He has immense authority.

He is after all a guru.

In fact, just the fact that he was there,

with his fantastic assurance, was important to us all.

- [Narrator] The first work in which Cage, Cunningham

and Rauschenberg joined forces was

the Dance Minutiae in 1954.

With Cunningham's choreography, Cage's music,

and sets and costumes by Rauschenberg.

- I was trying to, I even tried

helium balloons

because there was nothing to hang it from.

He wanted to jump over it, pass through it,

crawl under it, (laughing)

and it shouldn't weigh anything for traveling.

- Yeah, that's right. (laughing)

Very simple restrictions.

- Just like in costume,

he didn't want to know that he's wearing anything.

But he had to be covered.

(laughing)

Wasn't that, wasn't that that's where John, I envied John.

'Cause he could could throw any kind of sound

on top of anything, you know?

Everybody would either ignore it or admire it or hate it.

(percussive music)

(rock music)

- [Narrator] In 1982 Cage prepares

for an upcoming performance of Speech.

Written in 1955 for five radios and readers.

- [DJ] Blast shuttle traffic for a 10-ton win.

- [Announcer] Where can you get $500 dollars off?

(speaking faintly) of the making

Does that refer to frequencies on the dial?

- No. - That's horribly confusing.

- It's time.

Don't search around for something.

During your silences turn to,

turn to some point that you don't know what it is, you see?

Then you get what you fished, so to speak.

You'll have a lot to do, now when it says expressivo,

- What is-- - That means you

can turn the volume up and down, up and down in volume.

Constant volume means go to some constant thing

and stay there .

- [Woman] Okay wait a minute, what about crescendo?

- That means what it says,

get gradually louder and louder.

- And then-- (overlapping voices)

- It is. - If you have your watch,

you'll know then where to pick up.

- Yeah, okay.

Try not to-- - So the watch is going

to be...

- Try not to miss.

On the other hand you'll be the only one who knows

what the tune is.

- [Announcer] The message they won't forget.

(static buzzes)

And then we start moving around,

the way people do with radio.

(laughing)

- [Blonde] With all of our stuff under our arms.

- We'll start here with our radios,

and we'll move out anywhere you like

into the space.

And you can either stay still or you can move.

So I'm not putting on my glasses.

(singing in foreign language) (loud music)

♫ You, your wounded heart

(static drowns out singing)

- [Announcer] Obviously, New York City weather,

check this out.

- [Announcer] Why Benson is cautious--

- Expressivo. - Does not change,

it's just this?

(orchestral music)

- This is what you should change.

- Okay, in between. - In between.

- In the one second between...

- Right. (laughing)

Is that about what you have?

- Yeah.

Many times I have one a second, I just hit can't change it.

- Yeah.

(overlapping voices) - Is that good?

(static buzzes) - I've rehearsed.

- [Man] here we go again.

- [Interviewer] So are you enjoying what you're hearing?

(percussion music) (crowd talking)

overlapping voices)

- [John] Buffalo hotels done (speaking faintly).

(orchestral music) ♫ Oh

- How you doin'? ♫ Baby it's my life

♫ Ooh

- For FEMA. (staticky music)

(percussion music)

- [Man] Past tense, you see, is nothing quote improper.

While contributing to public fishing trout.

- What are you doing, he's doing his thing!

He's doing his thing!

(overlapping voices and music)

(pop music)

(crowd talking and laughing)

(overlapping voices and music)

(funky music) (static drowns out lyrics)

♫ He would have to show me a little bit

♫ So they calm the music down

(audience applauding)

- [Audience Member] Bravo, bravo!

(audience applauding) Brava!

- [Narrator] In all the variety of Cage's prolific output,

one work remains central.

In 1952, after seeing an all-white painting

by Robert Rauschenberg,

Cage was encouraged to make the same point in sound,

an entire composition based on chance operations

in which the performer did nothing.

(clock ticking rapidly)

- [Man] The purest example of John's ideas,

of letting sounds be themselves.

It's a musical composition in which

the pianist sits at a piano,

and the music is the ambient sounds in the room

during those four minutes and 33 seconds.

- But in this particular case, what Cage has done

is simply

presented them a formal setting for them to perceive

reality as art.

Perceive life is art.

- You won't believe this, probably,

but I wrote 4'33" note by note.

And all of the notes were silent,

but they all had different lengths

and when I added them all up they came to 4'33".

- I have a question for you.

How would you feel if someone made some rude bodily noise

in the middle of your piece, 4'33"?

- I

I would simply listen.

I think that sounds are continually taking place.

One of the things that's been noticed

from a musical point of view,

the many coughs that take place at concerts.

And for most for most of our musical literature,

coughing is a kind of interruption or a flaw.

It has nothing to do with music.

Whereas if we have,

if we have an interest in sound

rather than...

That is to say the experience of listening,

a cough is this

is as audible

and finally as interesting as any other sound.

The material of music is sound and silence.

Integrating these is composing.

I have nothing to say and I am saying it.

(watch ticking rapidly)

(camera clicking)

(watch ticking rapidly)

- There were a lot of artists

even at that time in Woodstock,

and they were incensed,

they were in an uproar over the performance.

And afterwards John opened the floor to questions.

And one of the artists got up and said,

"Good people of Woodstock,

"I think we should run these people out of town."

That was the reaction. (laughing)

- Have you learned anything through the great debate

over this piece, silence?

- I'm not so interested in learning as in

changing,

as in

changing my mind.

And that has changed.

And I think our...

All of us have changed

in the time since 4'33" was first made in the early 50s.

We have less confidence

now in the

time

as it goes into the future.

We wonder for instance,

how long the future will be.

We don't take for granted

that it will be forever.

We wonder whether we've,

you might say we wonder whether we have ruined the silence.

Our intention is to affirm this life.

Not to bring order out of chaos,

nor to suggest improvements in creation,

but simply to wake up to the very life we're living,

which is so excellent once one gets one's mind

and one's desires out of its way

and lets it act of its own accord.

(discordant bell-like music)