(1947), ballet in one act for orchestra, originally used as music for the eponymous choreographic work by Cunningham, with stage decor by Isamu Noguchi, first performed in New York, May 18, 1947. This is a sweet, lyrical composition, like the Sonatas and Interludes (1946–1948) and String Quartet in Four Parts (1949–1950) indicative of Cage’s interest in Indian aesthetics. The orchestral version, the orchestration of which was assisted by Lou Harrison and Virgil Thomson, was preceded the same year by a version for solo piano.
146. Eckhart von Hochheim (c.1260–c1327), commonly known as Meister Eckhart, German theologian, philosopher, and mystic.
147. Peggy Bate (1912–1990), better known as Peggy Glanville-Hicks, Australian composer who served from 1949 to 1958 as a critic for the New York Herald Tribune, overlapping for a time with Thomson. In an article for Vogue (Nov. 15, 1950), she would include Cage in her list of “Musical Explorers: Six Americans Who Are Changing the Musical Vocabulary” (others were Hovhaness, McPhee, Bowles, Harrison, and Varèse).
148. Geeta (or Gita) Sarabhai, important Indian musician, one of the first female pakhavaj players in the world, and a member of the Ahmedabad Sarabhai textile family. She and Cage first met in 1946 when she traveled to the United States for study, concerned about the influence of Western music on the traditional music of her country. Cage taught her counterpoint, while she informed him on the subjects of Indian music and philosophy. It was from Sarabhai that Cage learned that in Indian thought the purpose of music is “to sober and quiet the mind, thus making it susceptible to divine influences,” an idea he noted often. While Cage would in time befriend many in the Sarabhai family, he remained especially close to Gita and her sister, Gira.
149. Kenneth Klein, booking agent for Carnegie Hall from 1948 to 1955. Cage refers here to concerts that took place on January 12 and 13, 1949, of his recently completed Sonatas and Interludes for prepared piano (1946–1948), performed by Maro Ajemian. The piano preparations were apparently removed or tampered with after the first concert, so that the preparations for the second concert had to be hastily replaced and thus were inadequate. Cage’s complaint in item 7 is particularly interesting, given his later insistence on accommodating the sounds of the environment in the concert experience. It may be that experiences like this one at Carnegie Hall led him to change his mind.
150. Properly, Margareda Guedos de Nogueira, a wealthy Brazilian woman employed in the diplomatic service of the Brazilian Department of Foreign Affairs. She was close to Peggy Glanville-Hicks’s troubled English-born composer/husband, Stanley Bate (1911–1959); in April 1950, upon the heels of his divorce from Peggy, he and Nogueira would be married in Rio de Janeiro. Maggie and Peggy remained close friends long after Stanley’s suicide in 1959.
151. Maro Ajemian (1921–1978), American pianist who specialized in contemporary music. Cage dedicated his Sonatas and Interludes to her, a work she would record for the first time in 1950.
152. Properly, the International Society for Contemporary Music (ISCM), founded in Salzburg in 1922, an important network of members from about fifty countries devoted to the promotion and presentation of contemporary music.
153. Cage received two unexpected honors in 1949: a prestigious National Institute of Arts and Letters award of $1,000 for “an originality of workmanship that has extended the expressive range of music,” and a grant from the Guggenheim Foundation, in part on the strength of a letter of recommendation from Virgil Thomson, praising Cage as “the most original composer in America, if not in the world.”
154. Likely the home of Winnaretta Singer, Princesse Edmond de Polignac (1865–1943), American patron whose music salons continued after her death under the aegis of the Singer-Polignac Foundation, which she had established with private funds in 1928. Singer was an amateur musician who commissioned many works by important French composers of her time, including Erik Satie (Socrate).
155. Virgil Thomson had arranged for Cage to cover music festivals while in Europe as a correspondent for the International Herald Tribune, thus Cage and Cunningham were in Palermo to attend the ISCM Festival, April 22–30, 1949. This was Cage’s first real experience of contemporary musical life while abroad.
156. Andrzej Panufnik (1914–1991), Polish composer. As a conductor he re-established the Warsaw Philharmonic after the end of World War II. He would defect to the United Kingdom in 1954, serving for a time as chief conductor of the City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra.
157. Marya Freund (1876–1966), Polish (naturalized French) soprano, a champion of contemporary music. In addition to works by Schoenberg, whose Pierrot Lunaire she premiered in 1922, she performed works by Claude Debussy, Gustav Mahler, and Stravinsky.
158. Wladimir Woronoff (1903–1980), Russian-born Belgian composer. From 1946 to 1948 he concentrated on twelve-tone technique, which likely piqued Cage’s interest; otherwise his compositions were mostly modal.
159. The First Congress for Dodecaphonic Music, organized by Richard Malipiero in Milan in May 1949, was also attended by, among others, Bruno Maderna, Camillo Togni, René Leibowitz, and Hans Erich Apostel.
160. Properly, Vic Legley (1915–1994), French-born Belgian violist and composer.
161. Musical America, the oldest magazine in the United States reporting on classical music, founded in 1898 by John Christian Freund. Cage’s “Contemporary Music Festivals Are Held in Italy” appeared in its June 1949 issue, reprinted in John Cage: Writer, ed. Richard Kostelanetz (New York: Limelight Editions, 1993).
162. Jean Mollet (1877–1964), French writer and pataphysician, dubbed “Baron” by Apollinaire, with whom he founded, in early 1903, the periodical Aesop’s Feast.
163. Properly, Sonia (or Sonja) Sekula (1918–1963), Swiss-born American artist closely linked with the abstract expressionist movement whose works were shown at the Betty Parsons Gallery. She was a resident in the Monroe St. apartment where Cage lived.
164. John Cage, “Raison d’être de la musique modern,” Contrepoints, une revue de musique, no. 6 (Paris: Richard Masse Éditeurs, 1949): 55–61.
165. Roberto (Sebastián Antonio) Matta (Echaurren) (1911–2002), one of Chile’s best-known painters and a seminal figure in twentieth-century abstract expressionist and surrealist art.
166. Andor Foldes (originally Földes) (1913–1992), Hungarian pianist.
167. (Edwin) Olin Downes (1886–1955), American music critic for the Boston Post (1906–1924) and the New York Times (1924–1955). His disparaging opinions of some of the finest composers of his time (not only Cage, but also Edward Elgar, Anton Webern, and Alban Berg) later weakened his credibility.
168. Maurice Roche (1924–1997), French novelist, composer, and musicologist.
169. Francis (Jean Marcel) Poulenc (1899–1963), French composer, member of Les Six; and Pierre Fournier (1906–1986), French cellist.
170. Olivier Messiaen (1908–1992), French composer, organist, and ornithologist.
171. Jean Hélion (1904–1987), French painter of modernist art whose midcareer rejection of abstraction resulted in some five decades of figurative work. Hélion’s third wife was Pegeen Vail Guggenheim, daughter of Peggy Guggenheim (see note 175).
172. By “the 12-tone business,” Cage refers to his coverage in May 1949 of the First Congress for Dodecaphonic Music.
173. Pierre Boulez (1925–2016), French composer, conductor, and pianist, a philosophical leader
