John Cage: Journeys in Sound Blu-ray Review
A Cage espousing freedom.
Reviewed by Jeffrey Kauffman, October 24, 2012
At least a few of us were in on the joke our college Composition and Theory professor was playing on his class, but
none of us dared to blow the punch line for those not in the know. This particular professor had graduated from
Juilliard at some absurdly young age (I want to say 14 or 15) and had gone on to an illustrious concert piano and
conducting career. He was still quite young even as a professor, and while he was "hip and happening", at least within
the somewhat staid confines of the classical music world, he also had an "old world" quality about him that did not
suffer musical fools gladly, and in fact one of his favorite phrases was informing his students that various things should
be "intuitively obvious", shorthand for asking "how stupid are you
really?" But on this particular day, our
teacher had brought in an album (yes, that's how long ago I was in college) of what he claimed was one of the
masterpieces of twentieth century classical music, putting the record on the turntable, affixing the stylus to the disc and
then settling back as we all listened to: nothing. About thirty seconds into this enterprise, a few kids started giggling a
little, at which point our professor scolded, "Shhh! This is the best part!", something that sent the entire class into
gales of laughter. Of course what we were being "entertained" by was a
faux "recording" of one of the most
famous experiments in contemporary musical literature, John Cage's
4'33", a "composition" that consists of
nothing but the "performer" showing up at his instrument and sitting there for the appointed four minutes and thirty
three seconds. Cage's intent was not
just ironic (though there's no denying that aspect to the piece), and
indeed many think that the piece is about silence, when it is in fact a listening exercise to see what happens sonically
during that brief time period, even in the absence of instrumental music.
John Cage had the intuitive brilliance to ask a question that perhaps had never really even been thought of before,
namely just what exactly
is music? Is it only organized tonal sounds produced by instruments? Cage's
assertion
was that it most definitely was not, and one of his most daring innovations was the introduction of "mere" noise into his
compositions. This fascinating documentary by Allan Miller and Paul Smaczny actually starts with a wild and rather funny
clip from a 1960 episode of
I've Got a Secret, the old CBS game show hosted by the squarer than square Garry
Moore. Moore introduces Cage as one of the most controversial figures in modern music and then asks aloud if Cage
considers what he does to be music. Cage answers in the affirmative, and then Moore asks a follow up question: will
Cage mind if some of the "nice" (in Moore's verbiage) audience breaks out into laughter once Cage starts performing?
In
typically self-effacing manner, Cage responds, "I much prefer laughter to tears," at which point the curtain opens to
reveal
a stage full of a rather unlikely assortment of "instruments", including a bathtub, watering pail a prepared piano and
various other accoutrements through which Cage strolls, making his own indelible form of music.
Those of you who either read music or are at least conversant enough with notation to recognize staves and notes
know that for centuries music was written in a linear fashion that sought to visually approximate the passage of time as
each bar was played (and/or looked at). Even some twentieth century scores that incorporated the then trendy
"indeterminate" elements, like Terry Riley's
In C, still notated things traditionally, albeit in little snippets of a bar
or two that each player could add to the orchestral assemblage more or less whenever they wanted to. But looking at
Cage's score is almost like going to an art exhibition, as
John Cage: Journeys in Sound makes clear with several
startling examples. A representative of Cage's long time publishing house Peters who talks about the rather surprising
strength of Cage's catalog in the marketplace takes us on a tour of some of his scores, admitting up front even he
doesn't understand how some of the graphical interfaces work. A pianist performing Cage's
Water Music is a bit
more assured in pointing out how Cage's placard sized score works and how precise it actually is.
There's something undeniably funny in watching some of these pieces being performed, but that whimsy was part of
Cage's very real contributions to musical thought. Some more cynical types may feel themselves tipping over into a sort
of Luis Buńuel-esque surrealism at times, though, seeing a decidedly middle class audience raptly listening to grown
men blow duck whistles into tubs filled with gurgling water. But there was a serious intent behind the whimsy, as
several archival interviews with Cage (who died in 1992 make quite clear. Cage was fascinated with questions of
chance and indeterminism and those ideas inform most, if not all, of his pieces. That still doesn't preclude some of
these clips from verging awfully close to self-indulgence, as in one hilarious clip of Cage with John Lennon and Yoko
Ono. Cage begins growling and mewing, making frankly indescribable sounds with his voice, which Yoko and John both
greet enthusiastically as an artistic triumph.
The often hoity toity world of classical music didn't know quite what to think of anachronistic characters like John Cage
(or others like Harry Partch, a fellow traveler in spirit if not technique). The fact that Cage managed to be as successful
as he was is testament not only to his vision but all his perseverance in proclaiming that everyday sounds could be and
were in fact music. The lasting influence of Cage's thinking in any number of genres of music prove just how "intuitively
obvious" Cage's basic thesis really was.
John Cage: Journeys in Sound Blu-ray, Video Quality
John Cage: Journeys in Sound is presented on Blu-ray courtesy of Accentus Music with an AVC encoded 1080p
transfer in 1.78:1 (with a
few archival elements in 1.33:1). The contemporary interview segments fare best in this documentary, as should be
expected, with good detail
and clarity, and fairly robust and well saturated color. The documentary does make use of a great deal of archival footage,
and some of that is
pretty ragged looking by comparison, with fuzziness and ghosting in some of the older videotape segments. Surprisingly,
the
I've Got a
Secret snippet looks pretty decent, perhaps because it's delivered in a small scale form, inserted into an old cabinet
television. The
documentary does have some visual ingenuity, including a great sequence toward the end where a bunch of performers
and talking heads are
interpolated into the noisy neon circus of Times Square.
