Re: Questions about Cage's mesostics

Hi Rob, Björn and others,

I checked Mark Thorman's dissertation again (great work Mark!), but it
doesn't give any information specifically on Solo 91. There is some info on
the Song Books in general though.
My guess would be Fetterman's 'John Cage's Theatre Pieces' which has a lot
of detailed info on many Solos for Voice, but nr.91 is not there. To my
knowledge there is no currently available material dealing with this solo
(except for Pritchett's).
I would be interested to know more details on all of the solos. Some of us
on the list might provide us with excellent information, I guess. One of the
main performers is Neely Bruce and his group. Maybe he can help you/us
concerning nr.91.

André Chaudron
Amsterdam, the Netherlands
http://www.johncage.info


----- Original Message ----- 
From: Rob Haskins
To: bjorn@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx ; silence@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
Sent: Tuesday, May 25, 2004 5:02 PM
Subject: Re: Questions about Cage's mesostics


I believe I can answer some of your questions.

I know Solo 91 from Song Books and I know that they are settings of the 36
Mesostics as published in _M.  So I think it's safe to say that the
Pritchett citation is a typo.  The four pitches for the settings are A, D,
G, and occasionally C.  (The one that begins, "You must hang your paintings
on the wall" [I might be misremembering] uses the note C, but many of them
use only the three pitches.)

I think Cage discusses the visual element of the mesostics with Joan
Retallack in _Musicage,_ but I don't have page numbers handy to give you.
Retallack has discussed the mesostics in several essays (one in John Cage:
Composed in America) and I think one in her new book, The Poethical Wager
(which collects four Cage essays previously published elseswhere with, I
think, new material).

Marc Thorman's dissertation on the verbal pieces should be helpful for your
work with the Cunningham mesostics; I haven't read it all, but I think it
would be very important to your study generally as well.  Marc contributes
to the list regularly but you could find the dissertation and purchase it as
.pdf at http://www.umi.com/hp/Products/Dissertations.html.

All best,
Rob

Björn Magnusson <yxrock@xxxxxxxx> wrote:
Hello there,

I'm at the moment writing about a couple of John
Cage's mesostics, and a bunch of questions have
surfaced.

In the booklet that comes with the CD "Litany for the
Whale", it says about "36 Mesostics Re and Not Re
Marcel Duchamp" that Cage gave 15 of them melodies "in
the same three-note style as 'The Wonderful Widow of
Eighteen Springs,'" and also that these "were
published in 'Songbooks' as 'Solo for Voice 91, Song
with Electronics-Irrelevant'."

And on page 179 in James Pritchett's "The Music of
John Cage", the following is written: "In Solo 91,
fifteen of the '26 Mesostics Re and not Re Marcel
Duchamp' are set using a simple four-note collection
of pitches, the result being quite similar to 'The
Wonderful Widow of Eighteen Springs'." (It says "26
Mesostics ..." in the Index as well.)

There are t wo questions here: The mesostics printed in
the booklet of "Litany for the Whale" are identical to
the ones printed in "M: Writings '67-'72", and there
are clearly 36 of them. Has a small mistake been made
in "The Music of John Cage", or is there another set
of Duchamp mesostics, with 26 poems? And have the
mesostics been "musicalized" with three- or four-note
pitch collections? (I wish I could determine this with
my own ears, but I don't really trust them.)

The other questions are about the visual structure of
the mesostics:

Did Cage ever explicitly talk about or mention the
fact that the visual element of his mesostics
disappeared when they were presented orally (by speech
or song)? In the foreword to "I-VI", he writes that
the mesostics were "written to be read aloud", yet
they were written and published without abandoning the
horizontal/vertical relationship between the letters,
a relationship that is nowhere to be found when the
text is read aloud. Cage doesn't come across as one
who would fail to notice an issue such as this one, so
I'm sure that he was aware of the "potential problem"
- but was he concerned about it? I mean, the visual
element appears to have been very important to him, or
else, "I-VI" would not have had to be published in the
shape it was... do you think that the answer might be
found in his statement that "composing's one thing,
performing's another, listening's a third. What can
they have to do with one another?"

In the case of the "62 Mesostics Re Merce Cunningham",
a couple of the letters are designed in such a way
that they float into one another and create new shapes
that no longer resemble letters. Occasionally, one
letter has a design which covers other letters, making
them invisible. Here, I think that the visual element
is so dominant that the verbal element is diminished
(or at least altered). I'm sure Cage also noticed
this, but was he concerned about it? What was his
feelings? Is there in his use of chance operations an
immanent acceptance of the results, even if a part of
the work gets overshadowed in the process? (Perhaps a
relevant parallel can be drawn to musical works such
as "Thirteen", in which Cage's permitting some sounds
to be loud at the same time permits them to, if not
totally drown out, then at least diminish the presence
of sounds of a smaller amplitude.)

In short, what I wonder is if Cage ever wrote or
talked about these issues, or if one, in order to find
out what he felt about them, rather should search in
his thoughts about his music (and perhaps his visual
art). I would also be grateful if it could be pointed
out to me which books or essays or articles it would
be useful to read.

One last question: did Cage ever refer to his work
(the writings with visual elements) as "visual
poetry"? Or did he use another term?

I am sure that any and all comments on these questions
will be of interest to me, and I will be thankful for
everything you write. Also, if anything is unclear
about what I ask about, then please let me know. And I
apologize if some of the above has the tone of a
completely clueless beginner trying to say something
smart; while it in many ways is correct, I must point
out that it is not my goal.

Thank you so much in advance.
-- 
Björn Magnusson

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Rob Haskins
Eastman School of Music
rob_haskins@xxxxxxxxx
http://robhaskins.net< /A>
"Heroism doesn't consist in brilliantly combatting someone else. . . .  What
is heroic is to accept the situation in which you find yourself."  -- John
Cage