Christopher Riggs, New World Symphony Percussion Fellow, playing an amplified cactus for the John Cage celebration. 

New World Symphony recently launched a video-based exploration of the work of composer John Cage, which grew from a 2013 celebration of his work. Below, percussionist Christopher Riggs, who performed at that event, writes about the experience.

When I first heard that we would be performing a festival dedicated to the works of John Cage, it was both exciting and daunting.  I didn’t know what to expect other than the fact that the percussion section would be very busy.  We even brought in two extra percussionists to help us with the workload.  I felt excited because it is incredibly rare that one (audience member or performer) gets to experience such a Cage-immersion.  Often times you might see a piece or two on a program, but rarely are there three programs with only the music of John Cage.  The result is a much more profound and deep experience, because you begin to look at Cage’s music as it is, by itself, not in the context of other music or genres.  This unveils a side and character of Cage that I feel may often go overlooked in a mere passing of Cage’s music.

Some of Cage’s work seems to want to imitate rhythms of everyday life.  For example, if you were to walk down a busy street and dictate every sound you hear – dog bark, car horn, closed door, wind in the trees, etc. – you find that it is quite difficult to put those sounds on a page in the parameters of common notation.  As musicians, and especially percussionists, we like to be incredibly detailed and accurate when trying to perform what’s on the page.  Therefore, if something is lost in the dictation of an experience, is it the duty of the performer to present this music as written, or should the performer look deeper at what Cage is conveying and present the material in a natural way more than a scientific way?  Arguably this is a question you could ask of any composer.  But with Cage, the answer to this question can affect the experience of the performance to a greater degree.

Throughout the process of preparing for these concerts, it was helpful to hear from Michael Tilson Thomas, the symphony’s founder and artistic director, and he had plenty of insight and stories regarding Cage’s music.  One of my favorite analogies that he gave was during a rehearsal for “Cheap Imitation.”  In this piece, there is only one melody and no harmony.  Each note, however, is passed around the orchestra from player to player.  So imagine a group of actors reciting a monologue from Shakespeare, where each actor only has one or two words per phrase, and these words may or may not overlap with another actor.  Trying to make these phrases flow naturally is incredibly difficult.  So Tilson Thomas likened this to a village song, in the sense that everyone in the village knew it so well, if one person missed a beat, the neighbor would be there and ready to pick up where the melody left off. 

In Living Room Music, we had the luxury (or perhaps curse) of choosing all the sounds in the piece.  Cage simply notates a right hand and left hand, but does not indicate anything beyond that.  The idea is that the sounds should be “found,” or sounds that you might hear in your living room.  As a result, performances of this piece vary greatly.  The difficulty in this, however, is finding “found” sounds that are somewhat balanced, clear and practical.  Flipping on and off a light switch could be neat, but perhaps not possible with the fast rhythms notated.  Tapping on a pillow might be a nice sound, but it probably won’t be heard over seven other sounds in the room.  Here again, the question becomes, “How much like a common living room should this be?  Or is this a musical performance which takes place in a living room with living room objects?”

The greatest thing I took away from the festival was Cage’s philosophical view of sound.  Cage seemed to like all sounds, both intended and unintended.  His famous “silent” work, 4’33”, is essentially a statement that one cannot give a performance without extraneous sounds.  There is no live performance of 4’33” that achieves absolute silence.  So Cage embraced what was happening in the moment.  It was very zen of him, but I think he truly wanted to live in the present and take things as they come. 

First and foremost, the John Cage website is a great research tool for both musicians and scholars.  One can watch the performance videos to experience the works, but there is a great deal of extra material one can explore as well.  If you truly want to immerse yourself, turn off the lights, turn up the sound, and bathe in the performances of Cage’s music one after the other.  It won’t quite match the experience of being at the festival, but it’s a step in the right direction.