by Rob Haskins
In conversation with Daniel Charles, John Cage expressed some bewilderment over his Song Books (1970): "But at the present time to consider the Song Books as a work of art is nearly impossible. Who would dare? It resembles a brothel, doesn’t it?" (Cage and Charles 1981, 59) Nevertheless, the work's ninety solos demonstrated every compositional technique Cage had employed up to that point and introduced new ones that would become increasingly important: in this respect it resembles a summa similar to the one he produced in the Concert for Piano and Orchestra (1958). Song Books is central, too, as a significant example of his ongoing interest in theater music, one which continued in such works as Roaratorio (1979) and the Europeras cycle (1987-1991). Unlike the later works, however, Song Books makes extraordinary demands on performers who would bring it to the stage: each participant selects and orders the specific solos he/she will perform (to last for an agreed-upon total duration); an ideal blocking of all theatrical actions generally creates the sensation of equal importance among all performers and does not impose a single dramatic trajectory upon the whole; and only minimal information is provided to allow for the design of such other elements as décor or lighting.
These demands have invited a diverse number of responses from performers over the years. The composer/performer Julius Eastman performed one solo, in which Cage calls for the enactment of a disciplined action that fulfils an obligation to others, by undressing his partner on stage. The next day, Cage expressed his disapproval in the strongest possible way: by pounding his fist on a desk and shouting, "I’m tired of people who think that they could do whatever they want with my music!" (Gena 1997) Other performances by the American Music/Theatre Group, the Alliance for American Song, and Ossia all end the work with Solo 89, in which a performer makes a gift of an apple or cranberries to an audience member chosen by a chance operation--the simplicity and poignancy of the gesture make the choice an effective one for theater, but raise questions concerning the validity of Song Books's dramaturgical indeterminacy.
This paper addresses performance practice problems in Song Books by briefly documenting fundamental dramaturgical choices in several presentations from the last three decades and by offering close readings of particularly problematic instructions and notation for some of the solos. My conclusions suggest that the ambiguity of Song Books led the ever-practical Cage to devise new ways to create in advance an unambiguous but indeterminate dramaturgy for his later theatrical works and clearer performance instructions for the benefit of performers who were less familiar with his work. Nevertheless, he maintained a strong confidence in performers who were close to him, and for such performers he continued to provide significantly more open-ended performance instructions and notation. An optimal performance practice for Song Books probably should take account of both traditions while this is still possible, but the assessment of new interpretative possibilities remains a problematic issue.
[To be presented at the study day "John Cage, Performer-Thinker," Manchester, United Kingdom, April 15, 2005.]
Cage, John and Daniel Charles. 1981. For the Birds: John Cage in Conversation with Daniel Charles. Boston and London: Marion Boyars.
Gena, Peter. 1997. "Re: John Cage and Song Books in Buffalo," online posting to Silence: The John Cage Discussion List, 7 December 1997. <http://www.newalbion.com/artists/cagej/silence/html/1997q4/0292.html (accessed 15 June 2002).