Records Ruin the Landscape: John Cage, the Sixties, and Sound Recording

Abstract

Records Ruin the Landscape: John Cage, the Sixties, and Sound Recording. By David Grubbs. Durham, NC: DU.K.e University Press, 2014. xxvi +220pp (paperback). Illustrations, Discography, Bibliography, Index. ISBN 978-8223-5590-8. $23.95. In the decade of the 1960s, John Cage turned his attention to exploring the limits of indeterminacy in composition and performance. Works such as Variations 111 (1963) are so open that they include the performer's note that any activities can be considered part of the piece; Richard Kostelanetz recalls a remark by Cage that reveals the implications of this instruction: "We could be performing [Variations III] right now, if we decided to do so" (John Cage: An Anthology, pp. 195-196). Cage also expressed his disdain for recordings during the period, precisely because indeterminate compositions could sound completely different each time the work was performed. As David Grubbs argues in this well-written monograph, Cage was one of (and perhaps influenced some members of a number of musicians, composers, and sound artists who were equally dismissive of recordings as artistic documents. Nevertheless, many of these unrepeatable performances were recorded--some released commercially, some held by private individuals or institutions --and their increased accessibility today presents the opportunity to consider the changing listening practices and assumptions from then and now. This he does, selectively but effectively in five chapters. The first examines the avant-garde underdog Henry Flynt, who stopped making music decades ago but whose work was widely released only after 2001 and is perhaps better known now than ever. Chapter 2 concerns Cage's ideas about recordings and their reception (especially through a close look at Luc Ferrari's tape piece Presque rien ou le lever du jour au bord de la mer (Almost Nothing, or Daybreak at the Seaside, 1967-1970), a 20-minute work that artfully assembles a number of different recordings of an outside environment to give the impression it is nothing but a sonic photograph of that environment. In the next chapter, Grubbs considers Cage as performer, particularly on the recording Indeterminacy made with David Tudor. Chapter 4 investigates various figures associated with the free improvisation movement including Derek Bailey and AMM. The final chapter brings the investigation unambiguously into the present by discussing the advent of online free repositories such as ubuweb and the ubiquitous mp3, through which the ontological status of recordings and the nature of listening practices have been decisively transformed. Scholars of experimental music--and especially of Cage--will no doubt find themselves, as I did, feeling like the choir to whom Preacher Grubbs is delivering an obvious sermon, as when he cites Benjamin Piekut's video Henry Flynt in New York (2008), wherein Flynt reveals that he and Tony Conrad talked about rock and listened to Phil Spector, James Brown, and others in Conrad's apartment. …