I have been asked again to make a few comments on performance practice and music by John Cage. Since as far back as I can remember, Cage’s music has been placed on the outside, and always, the issues of performance practice were tied with “special considerations.” I’ve never felt comfortable about that. Let’s try a different approach.

John Cage is one of the composers whose works have had a defining influence on music history. I would compare him to Jean-Philippe Rameau and Richard Wagner, two composers who had a similar impact. It was not just their music that was significant; their writings were equally important. The combination of the music and the writings of Rameau, Wagner, and Cage shaped the music world of their respective time periods. When Rameau published his Treatise on Harmony in the early 18^th century, it influenced several generations of composers. The writings of Wagner not only redefined opera, they also helped establish the concept of a modern orchestra and the role of the conductor. Cage’s writing made a definitive break with the musical thinking of the past, specifically with the aesthetics of late Romanticism. (Cage’s rejection of the persistent residue of the 19^th century might be the source of the often virulent hostility towards him.)

The Wagner-Cage comparison is quite fascinating. Both Wagner (b. 1813) and Cage (b. 1912) created their milestone compositions at the midpoint of the centuries in which they lived — Tristan and Isolde in 1856, the Concert for Piano and Orchestra in 1957 — and both works still remained controversial half a century after their creation. Tristan was performed for the first time without cuts by Gustav Mahler in the early 20^th century. Wagner didn’t live to see it. Performances of the Concert for Piano and Orchestra with a musically engaged and knowledgeable orchestra started only in the mid-1980s. The one truly great performance at Lincoln Center by David Tudor and Joseph Kubera was in 1993, and the first complete Atlas Eclipticalis was performed at Carnegie Hall in late 1992 — performances that the composer didn’t live to attend.

Comparing Cage to Rameau and Wagner, I would like to it suggest that we think about Cage the same way as we look at any other composer from the past or present. What should be then the path for a would-be interpreter of Cage’s music. Should he or she follow a tradition, or use an entirely new experience? What is there to say?

Music is specific, not universal, and the ability to “understand” or “interpret” a score requires education—learning, and often breaking old habits. To do justice to the music of Cage, one needs to know as much about him as one knows, say, about Mozart. To be educated on how to play the music of Brahms and other 19^th century composers does not make one automatically capable of playing Cage, since Cage’s music often requires a different way of reading the score and following the instructions. The most important information about how to perform any music, be it by Cage or any other composer, does not come from the score; it comes from a thorough understanding of the style! And style is impossible to write into the score. The knowledge of a style is the most important aspect for a successful performance (taking the technical ability for granted, of course). Because every style is traced back to the composer, either through the composer’s own performances or through the performances of close collaborators and interpreters. The way we perform Chopin goes directly to Chopin’s performances and was established by observing, listening, performing, and passing this knowledge from one generation to the next. When this chain is interrupted, as it happened with early music, it is almost impossible to figure out how to perform it again, although all the written material is available. Chopin’s scores do not look different from Bach’s of Mozart’s, but they surely are played differently. Ninety-nine percent of those differences are not written anywhere. How, then, should a would-be interpreter learn to perform Cage? He or she should associate with someone who worked with Cage and/or who has worked with musicians associated with Cage, listen to recordings, and read his writings. Playing the notes and reading the instructions is not enough (even some of the instructions need an interpretation). A direct experience, performing the music in a knowledgeable environment — this is the only way to play it properly.

Do we need to “honor Cage’s legacy”? I don’t think so. The legacy of Cage exists on its own, regardless of us honoring it or not. One simply performs the music as best as one can. The legacy of anyone’s work happens through performances (exhibits, publications, etc.). Presenting the work in the best possible way creates its legacy, not arranged “celebrations.”

I first encountered Cage’s ideas in 1960, when I read the Darmstädter Beiträge zur neuen Musik 1959 which contained some texts by him. Encounters with his music followed, and when we met in 1964 and performed together (first in Vienna and then a few months later in Prague, also traveling to Warsaw), I was ready to perform his music with a degree of understanding that helped forge a close musical relationship. These early experiences were very important for me and influenced the way I have been looking at his music to this day. I became convinced already then that, generally, Cage’s music is not all that different from Mozart’s. Both composers’ scores offer elements of freedom as well as elements that are precisely determined. The difference between a score by Cage and Mozart is in the nature of these elements. While the concept is similar—we are making sounds within a set of time-constrains—the details diametrically differ. This was my conclusion after performing Atlas Eclipticalis with Cage and Tudor in 1964. In fact, I believe that Atlas is a masterpiece that perfectly balances the relationship between what is given and what is open to interpretation. I have been performing this piece ever since.

When Cage started to use a stopwatch instead of counting beats, he referred to the rhythm of getting from one place to another. (Isn’t this what happens during a performance?) In the past, you traveled by horse—clap, clap, clap, clap; today, you take an airplane. It is not so simple, of course, but I like this remark very much. Since the early 20^th century, we can universally observe the need to weaken–or remove entirely–the sense of the beat, especially the sense of the downbeat. You can find such ideas already in the music of Richard Strauss. In their compositions from the ’50s, Cage, Earle Brown, Christian Wolff, and Morton Feldman completely abandoned any sense, or even any indication of the beat. Feldman later returned to using bar lines, but his complex and changing time signatures completely confuse any sense of ongoing periodicities. Atlas Eclipticalis uses proportional time-organization that depends on the conductor’s signs. In this sense, it is no different from a piece by Mozart, except for the mechanics of the execution. As in a Mozart’s score, you will find pitches exactly notated, to be exactly performed. The difference is that Cage is giving the choice of the pitch sequence (or sounds in percussion parts), but the notes are written as exactly as Mozart’s. In Atlas Eclipticalis, the notes have to be played without the slightest deviation regarding phrasing, crescendos, etc. Mozart, on the other hand, gives you many choices to interpret the notes, create phrases and make small deviations here and there (within the confines of the style, of course).

The last issue I would like to briefly mention is the business of chance operations in music. If you go to a grocery store and pick up a box of cereal you happen to be standing nearest to, it’s up to chance what you end up buying. This is one kind of chance operation. When Cage (and other composers) decide to use chance in the compositional process (and perhaps in the performance as well), this is an entirely different kind of chance. Here, it is not about chance per se! These chance operations serve only as means to arrive at an unpredictable situation. One step does not predict the next step, and still the result fulfills the vision of the composer (or musician). And in order for these musical processes to remain unpredictable, the results (the actual music composed and performed) have to be executed with precision. The musician must be focused and execute the score with exactness (you must not “let go” the way you would when performing Chopin—if you learned the style). Playing Cage requires focus on the music and a state of utter devotion to the performance, the same as with any other composer. The horrors we so often encounter with performances of Cage’s music occur when the musicians believe that, because of chance operations, it makes no difference what they do. It can be this or that—like picking up a box of cereal.

Let us leave the conventional, entrenched conservatism behind. This attitude presupposes that the knowledge of performing Brahms (or beyond Brahms–composers coming out of his tradition) is a norm that can universally be applied to every other music. This attitude lacks intelligence, musicality, and liveliness and often turns music into a dead corpse. Lately, I feel optimistic as I see rapid changes around, not just among musicians, but audiences as well. What a difference rehearsing Atlas Eclipticalis now compared to 1992! The John Cage centennial couldn’t have come at a better moment.

—Petr Kotik, New York, August 20, 2012

Kyle Gann asked me to comment on the influence of John Cage on myself.

Lately, I have been thinking about influence, what is it and how it happens. The answer is not simple. A child does not regard his parents as having influenced his speech, but he speaks exactly the way they do. This is what I mean.

The trouble in music is with the common belief that imitation is influence. But influence is not an imitation. At best, it is an influence “on the surface,” it is a second rate reference to the original – and goes not only for music.

Jackson Pollock was influenced by Michalangelo’s drawings; Mark Rothko was influenced by the paintings of Rembrandt. Morton Feldman and Earle Brown were influenced by Cage, and so was I, but you will not find any trace of Cage’s music in my own compositions (or in Feldman’s or Brown’s). You will find none of Michalangelo in Pollock’s work and Rembrandt’s in Rothko’s.

There aren’t any composers whose music is close to Cage’s and the reason is simple – Cage is impossible to imitate. Although Cage certainly influenced my work, the absence of any reference to Cage in my music is often puzzling to some people.

The common practice among composers to demonstrate an influence by another composer is to proceed in a way of a “creative imitation,” in hope that it will end up being an influenced original. This is what most professors of composition demand from their students and it is the reason one should avoid studying composition at most music schools. A “creative imitation” is what the world of conventional music rewards most.

Cage’s lack of imitators is not surprising. There are imitators of Bartok, Richard Strauss or Webern, but there are none of Varèse, Mahler, or Bruckner. There are no imitators of Bach, Mozart, or Wagner, but plenty of composers have imitated Haydn, Rossini, or Bizet.

To create a musical composition that is free from imitating other composers is difficult. The difficulty is not in creating something independent – that cannot be arranged, that either happens, or not. It is the solitude, the lack of support, and all the insecurities that come with it – that is the difficult state one has to come to terms with. One needs the support of others, because nothing is possible to do alone. It is this kind of support that I regard as a real influence. It usually is apparent only in retrospect, after the fact, when one is already on the way. When encountering someone’s work or ideas which confirm the direction that one has already started in, one may find some similar aspects, similar concepts – an approach, an idea – something one has in common. That becomes a confirmation of one’s own work and gives one the energy and encouragement to develop and continue.

If I were to list all those who influenced me, it would probably fill one full page. Lately, one of my influences has been Samuel Beckett. Not his writings, but his personality. I am reading Beckett’s biography and find references to his own influences, for example the early 19^th century German painter Caspar David Friedrich and Pieter Bruegel the Elder. They inspired and influenced Beckett to write Waiting for Godot.

I was 19 when I composed my first large ensemble score Etude 4. When my mentor, the composer Vladimír Šrámek, saw my method of composing the piece, he became angry. He looked at the piece and said, “This is not the way to compose music!” His agitated tone was a shock to me. What was I to do? Fortunately, I had no technique to change the way I was composing; in fact, the only technique I had was the one Šrámek rejected. The best I could do was to continue despite Sramek’s objections. (Recently, when I composed Music in Two Movements, I often thought, “Is this not the way to compose music?!”).      

At the time of the incident with Šrámek, I was reading the writings of Cage and it was like coming home. Was that an influence? Sure it was! God knows what I would end up doing without it! In the early 1960s this support (and influence on myself) came not only from Cage, but also from my older composes who later became my friends: Cornelius Cardew, Frederic Rzewski, Kurt Schwertsik and Rudolf Komorous. It was a group of like-minded people and the support I drew from these associations was the essential influence that helped me to carry on.

None of us ever tried to imitate each other.

One might ask then, what makes a composer actually imitate another one? There is more than one reason, but I believe that the most compelling one is the desire to compose music one likes, and do it well. (This is exactly what everyone encourages us to do, isn’t it?) For myself, such a motive is a delusion and I never saw any reason to pay attention to it.

A serious work is not a pursuit of something “one likes,” but something which needs to be done, and what needs to be done is often painful and difficult and very hard to explain or justify. An artist cannot really answer the question of what needs to be done. One is left alone with one’s intuition and the desire to do one’s best under the circumstances.

Doing one’s best under the circumstance assures the work’s quality. The often asked question – “OK, but is it any good?” – this question has no meaning.

A shoemaker knows what it takes to make good shoes. So does the car manufacturer, or a homemaker vacuuming a rug. They have standards to go by. One recognizes precisely a good pair of shoes, or a well-manufactured car, or a clean rug. Not in the arts. An artist’s work is a step into the unknown; its nature is exploratory although not experimental. (I am not aware of anyone making experiments.) It is often confusing and its meaning is ambiguous. Artists doing “good work” would have to know precisely what they are doing. They would have to follow standards, and use referential measurements. This kind of work, in my opinion, is not worth pursuing.

—Petr Kotik, May 13, 2001

Visual contact with the score constitutes a very important part of making a composition. At least, it has been so for myself. I am sure that John Cage would agree.

Another important aspect of composition is an element of surprise. This may be why I look at composition as if playing a game. The musical material, the structure of the piece, reacting on its own to what steps I am taking. There is of course a limit of the unpredictability of such a reaction. It is never “out of line”; it must follow the general direction of the musical determination.

In 1971, I had exhausted the possibilities of my method of composing, which I had been using for the last ten years. I was in a sort of “limbo,” continuously thinking about what to do next, how to organize my music writing. Looking back, I have to admit that this “limbo” was the exhaustion of the current method. The exhaustion being the result of the increased predictability of what and how I was working. The increase in predictability decreased my interest in continuing. I also felt, entirely by intuition, the need to change the sound material, reducing the use of the instrumental playing to its minimum, thus arriving at a somewhat melodic state.

—Petr Kotik