Kenneth Silverman - Begin Again: A Biography of John Cage

I could not have begun or continued writing this biography without the steady, generous, essential help and encouragement of Laura Kuhn, executive director of the John Cage Trust at Bard College.

I feel privileged to have also had the hospitable support of a great American artist now greatly missed, Merce Cunningham.

I received assistance of one kind or another from Stephen Addiss, Jennifer Bahng, Kevin Bazzana, Amy Beal, Cristina Berio, Jay Cantor, Gene Caprioglio, Jeanette L. Casey, Tim Clifford, James Crouch, Viktoria Dalborg, Jaime Davidovich, Elaine Dee, Peter Dickinson, Douglas Dunn, Sabine Feisst, Paul Franklin, Phil Gentry, William Bernard George, Pia Gilbert, Grace Glueck, Charles Hanson, Thomas Hines, D. J. Hoek, Leslie Kellam, Philip Krumm, Rebecca Y. Kym, Julie Lazar, Jeffrey Makala, Kiki Mallin, Bunita Marcus, Yvonne Mattevi, Thomas McGeary, Victoria Miguel, Leta Miller, Hal Moma, Nuria Schoenberg Nono, Carol Oja, Brent Reidy, Micah Silver, Marcello Toledo. My thanks to all of them.

I am especially grateful to those who allowed me to interview them about their relation to John Cage: William Anastasi, John Ashbery, Charles Atlas, George Avakian, Dove Bradshaw, Brian Brandt, Isaac Chocron, Roy Close, Andrew Culver, Merce Cunningham, Gwen Deely, Douglas Dunn, Monique Fong, Don Gillespie, Joanna Gewertz Harris, Jasper Johns, Ray Kass, Alison Knowles, Mary Ann (Spencer) Koontz, Richard Kostelanetz, Petr Kotik, Laura Kuhn, Joan La Barbara, Chris Mann, Geeta Mayor (by mail), Jacqueline Matisse Monnier, Raphael Mostel, Yoko Ono (by e-mail), Mary Purvis (by phone), Valda Setterfield, Susan Sollins, Margaret Leng Tan, Blue Gene Tyranny, David Vaughan, Christian Wolff.

If I have neglected to name someone I consulted, I earnestly beg his or her forgiveness.

Some thanks are continuing: to Ann Close, my helpful editor at Knopf; her painstaking associates Caroline Zancan and Victoria Pearson; and Hugh Rawson, my caring agent. Some thanks trivialize thanking: to my dear children Willa and Ethan, my dear daughter-in-law Ronit, my dear grandchildren Benjamin, Eve, and Isaac Gus, and my dear loving mate Jane Mallison (gbq? rft?).

KENNETH SILVERMAN
Washington Square Village and Highland Lake

Lightning Man: The Accursed Life of Samuel F. B. Morse

Houdini!!! The Career of Ehrich Weiss

Edgar A. Poe: Mournful and Never-ending Remembrance

The Life and Times of Cotton Mather

A Cultural History of the American Revolution

A NOTE ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Kenneth Silvermans previous books include A Cultural History of the American Revolution; The Life and Times of Cotton Mather; Edgar A. Poe: Mournful and Never-ending Remembrance; Houdini!!!; and Lightning Man: The Accursed Life of Samuel F. B. Morse. A fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, he has received the Bancroft Prize in American History, the Pulitzer Prize for Biography, the Edgar Award of the Mystery Writers of America, and the Christopher Literary Award of the Society of American Magicians. A professor emeritus of English at New York University, he lives in New York City.

The following notes use several space-saving abbreviations. Four archives that hold major collections of Cages papers are identified in abbreviated form:

Getty: Research Library, Getty Research Institute, Los Angeles

LC: Music Division, New York Public Library for the Performing Arts, New York

NWU: Music Library, Northwestern University Library, Evanston, IL

UCSD: Mandeville Special Collections Library, University of California, San Diego

Titles of editions of John Cages writings are similarly condensed:

A:anarchy. Middletown, CT: Wesleyan University Press, 1988.

AYM:A Year from Monday: New Lectures and Writings. Middletown, CT: Wesleyan University Press, 1969.

CIR:composition in retrospect. Cambridge, MA: Exact Change, 1993.

EW:Empty Words: Writings 73-78. Middletown, CT: Wesleyan University Press, 1979.

J:James Joyce, Marcel Duchamp, Erik Satie: An Alphabet. John Cage Trust, 2001.

M:M: Writings 67-72. Middletown, CT: Wesleyan University Press, 1973.

N:Notations. New York: Something Else Press, 1969.

O:I-VI. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1990.

S:Silence: Lectures and Writings. Middletown, CT: Wesleyan University Press, 1961.

T:Themes & Variations. Barrytown, NY: Station Hill Press, 1982.

X:X: Writings 79-82. Middletown, CT: Wesleyan University Press, 1982.

The following secondary works are cited in the notes simply by author or title. The list does not include brief items such as newspaper reviews, whose sources the notes cite in full.

Abe, Masao, ed. A Zen Life: D. T. Suzuki Remembered. New York: Weatherhill, 1986.

Adams, John D. S. Giant Oscillations: The Birth of Toneburst. Musicworks 69 (Dec 1997), 1417.

Altshuler, Bruce. The Cage Class. In FluxAttitudes, pp. 1723. New York: New Museum of Contemporary Art, 1992.

Art & Design. Vol. 8, nos. 12 (1993).

Art Performs Life: Merce Cunningham/Meredith Monk/Bill T. Jones. Minneapolis: Walker Art Center, 1998.

Austin, Larry. John Cages Williams Mix (19513): the restoration and new realisations of and variations on the first octophonic, surround-sound tape composition. In A Handbook to Twentieth Century Musical Sketches, edited by Patricia Hall and Friedmann Sallis, pp. 189213. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2004.

Barnard, Geoffrey, and John Cage. Conversation Without Feldman. N.p.: Black Ram Books, 1980.

Beal, Amy C. The Army, the Airwaves, and the Avant-Garde: American Classical Music in Postwar West Germany. American Music 21, no. 4 (Winter 2003); pp. 474513.

. Patronage and Reception History of American Experimental Music in West Germany, 19451986. Ph.D. diss., University of Michigan, 1999.

Bernstein, David W., and Christopher Hatch, eds. Writings Through John Cages Music, Poetry, + Art. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2001.

Bischoff, Ulrich, ed. Kunst als Grenzbeschreitung: John Cage und die Modern. Munich: Neue Pinakothek, 1991.

Bois, Yve-Alain, et al. Ellsworth Kelly: The Years in France, 19481954. Washington, DC: National Gallery of Art, 1992.

Boulez, Pierre. The Boulez-Cage Correspondence. Edited by Jean-Jacques Nattiez. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1993.

Breur, Karin, et al., eds. Thirty-Five Years at Crown Point Press: Making Prints, Doing Art. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1997.

Brown, Carolyn. Chance and Circumstance: Twenty Years with Cage and Cunningham. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2007.

Brown, Kathan. ink, paper, metal, wood. San Francisco: Chronicle Books, 1996.

. John Cage Visual Art: To Sober and Quiet the Mind. San Francisco: Crown Point Press, 2000.

Browne, Ellen Von Volkenburg, and Edward Nordhoff Beck, eds. Miss Aunt Nellie: The Autobiography of Nellie C. Cornish. Seattle: University of Washington Press, 1964.

Cabanne, Pierre. Dialogues with Marcel Duchamp. N.p.: Da Capo Press, 1987.

Cameron, Catherine M.