ALS on the composer’s personal Note-o-Gram with original written sheet and pink copy. One page, dated January 4, 1977. Cage writes in full: "Thank you for the letter and for sending the tape. Unfortunately I do not have a cassette or tape machine + my circumstances keep me either over committed here or traveling. I go the day after tomorrow to LA + then back here for a week + then to Paris for 2 wks. Perhaps in Feb. I may have an occasion to search out a machine, etc. I am also busy writing a longish book and 24 Qts - actually 8 for 3 different sized orchestras. With best wishes, John Cage”. An interesting letter from the composer who experimented with the nature of sound and devised new systems of musical notation. His innovative ideas on composition and performance influenced musicians, painters, and choreographers.
Cage's Quartets I - VIII (for orchestra of 24), premiered August, 1977, is entitled Quartets because at any given time, only four instruments play simultaneously. Other versions of this work were made for 41 and 93 instruments. All 8 quartets are derived (via subtractive method) from existing compositions. The "longish book" referenced, is presumably Empty Words, published in 1978.
By 1982, it's safe to assume Cage had acquired a cassette machine. His work Instances of Silence, originally used as music for the choreographed piece by Merce Cunningham Trails, consists of musicians distributing a collection of different cassette tapes, each a recording of sounds of the environment, and playing these tapes in a pre-determined order, but with an improvised starting point. Once a cassette begins playing, dynamics and tape speed are not altered.
ALS on the composer’s personal Note-o-Gram with original written sheet and pink copy. One page, dated January 4, 1977. Cage writes in full: "Thank you for the letter and for sending the tape. Unfortunately I do not have a cassette or tape machine + my circumstances keep me either over committed here or traveling. I go the day after tomorrow to LA + then back here for a week + then to Paris for 2 wks. Perhaps in Feb. I may have an occasion to search out a machine, etc. I am also busy writing a longish book and 24 Qts - actually 8 for 3 different sized orchestras. With best wishes, John Cage”. An interesting letter from the composer who experimented with the nature of sound and devised new systems of musical notation. His innovative ideas on composition and performance influenced musicians, painters, and choreographers.
Cage's Quartets I - VIII (for orchestra of 24), premiered August, 1977, is entitled Quartets because at any given time, only four instruments play simultaneously. Other versions of this work were made for 41 and 93 instruments. All 8 quartets are derived (via subtractive method) from existing compositions. The "longish book" referenced, is presumably Empty Words, published in 1978.
By 1982, it's safe to assume Cage had acquired a cassette machine. His work Instances of Silence, originally used as music for the choreographed piece by Merce Cunningham Trails, consists of musicians distributing a collection of different cassette tapes, each a recording of sounds of the environment, and playing these tapes in a pre-determined order, but with an improvised starting point. Once a cassette begins playing, dynamics and tape speed are not altered.