JOHN CAGE was born in Los Angeles in 1912. He studied music with Adolph Weiss, Arnold Schoenberg, and others, later collaborating with artists such as Merce Cunningham, Robert Rauschenberg, and Jasper Johns. He died in 1992. JOAN RETALLACK is the author of eight books of poetry including Afterrimages (also published by Wesleyan) as well as numerous essays on John Cage, four of which appear in her critical volume, The Poethical Wager. MUSICAGE was chosen for the America Award in Belles-Lettres in the year of its publication. Retallack is the John D. & Catherine T. MacArthur Professor of Humanities at Bard College.
"As glimpses of Cage near his career's end, MUSICAGE is invaluable
. . . To people familiar only with Cage's music, the interviews
devoted to his writing and visual art will be most revealing . . .
The longest interview is devoted to music, and it has an absorbing
addendum in which cellist Michael Bach joins the conversation.
These parts of the discussion are the most explicit and technical
and provide some of the most detailed insights available into
Cage's thinking about the bearing of traditional instruments'
acoustic capacities on the possibilities of composition. No less
useful, though, are passing remarks that seem to illuminate the
whole terrain of Cage's work."--San Francisco Chronicle
"This compendium of Cagean thought . . . will baffle those unversed
in his unique mixture of Zen Buddhism, American pragmatism, and
Utopian anarchism . . . Cage, as always, is good company, a master
aphorist who has an endless supply of pithy sayings . . . [his]
thoughts that will surely knot your brow."--Kirkus Reviews
"The two friends plumb some fascinating depths that reveal the
unbuttoned landscape of Cage's mind . . . The intellectual level is
quite high, and even Cage's detractors will find themselves
stimulated by many of the ideas presented on these pages."--Library
Journal
"As glimpses of Cage near his career's end, MUSICAGE is invaluable
. . . To people familiar only with Cage's music, the interviews
devoted to his writing and visual art will be most revealing . . .
The longest interview is devoted to music, and it has an absorbing
addendum in which cellist Michael Bach joins the conversation.
These parts of the discussion are the most explicit and technical
and provide some of the most detailed insights available into
Cage's thinking about the bearing of traditional instruments'
acoustic capacities on the possibilities of composition. No less
useful, though, are passing remarks that seem to illuminate the
whole terrain of Cage's work."--San Francisco Chronicle
"Cage's constant amusement, his endless curiosity, his insistence
on seeing life and art always in a new way, emerge vividly. The
result is in effect a study of his thought in motion as he
sometimes playfully but always seriously responds to Retallack's
informed and sympathetic questioning . . . A highly accessible and
personal introduction to a remarkable if elusive
artist."--Publishers Weekly
"Joan Retallack's conversations with John Cage are a pleasure to
read -- two interesting minds at work and play. Cage enjoyed
talking, but also listening. An exchange of ideas was one of his
life-streams."--Merce Cunningham
"Of all the books on John Cage that have appeared since his death
in 1992, this is without doubt the most informative, offering its
readers a rich and thought-provoking profile of one of this
century's greatest artists in the last years of his life. Cage on
words, on art, on music. The intelligent inquisitiveness of both
interviewer and interviewee is refreshingly evident at every turn,
giving further evidence (if any is needed) of the truth in Cage's
life-long insistence that the world is an interesting place not for
the answers it provides, but for the questions we ask.""--Laura
Kuhn, Executive Director, The John Cage Trust
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