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The Spirit inside Each Object: John Cage, Oskar Fischinger, and “The Future of Music”

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  20 February 2012

RICHARD H. BROWN
RICHARD H. BROWN*
Affiliation:
[email protected]
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Abstract

Late in his career, John Cage often recalled his brief interaction with German abstract animator Oskar Fischinger in 1937 as the primary impetus for his early percussion works. Further examination of this connection reveals an important technological foundation to Cage's call for the expansion of musical resources. Fischinger's experiments with film phonography (the manipulation of the optical portion of sound film to synthesize sounds) mirrored contemporaneous refinements in recording and synthesis technology of electron beam tubes for film and television. New documentation on Cage's early career in Los Angeles, including research Cage conducted for his father John Cage, Sr.'s patents, explain his interest in these technologies. Finally, an examination of the sources of Cage's 1940 essay “The Future of Music: Credo” reveals the extent of Cage's knowledge of early sound synthesis and recording technologies and presents a more nuanced understanding of the historical relevance and origins of this document.

Type
Research Article
Information
Journal of the Society for American Music , Volume 6 , Issue 1 , February 2012 , pp. 83 - 113
Copyright
Copyright © The Society for American Music 2012

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References

References

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Cage, John M., Sr. “Electron Beam Tube.” U.S. Patent No. 2,225,330 (Schenectady, NY, assigned to General Electric Co.), filed 22 April 1939, issued 17 December 1940.Google Scholar
Cage, John M., Sr. “Invisible Ray Vision System.” U.S. Patent No. 2,395,099, filed July 6, 1935, issued 19 February 1946.Google Scholar
Cage, John M., Sr. “Ultra Short Wave System.” U.S. Patent No. 2,190,511 (Schenectady, NY, assigned to General Electric Co.), filed 1 March 1938, issued 13 February 1940.Google Scholar
Chávez, Carlos. Toward a New Music. New York: Da Capo Press, 1937.Google Scholar
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Hicks, Michael. “John Cage's Studies with Schoenberg.” American Music 8/2 (Summer 1990): 125–40.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
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“HP Timeline—1930s.” http://www.hp.com/hpinfo/abouthp/histnfacts/timeline/hist_30s.html.Google Scholar
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Joseph, Branden. “‘A Therapeutic Value for City Dwellers’: The Development of John Cage's Early Avant-Garde Aesthetic Position.” In John Cage: Music, Philosophy, and Intention, 1933–1950, ed. Patterson, David W., 135–76. New York: Routledge, 2002.Google Scholar
Katz, Mark. Capturing Sound: How Technology Has Changed Music. Revised ed. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2010.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Keefer, Cindy. “‘Raumlichtmusik’ - Early 20th Century Abstract Cinema Immersive Environments,” Leonardo Electronic Almanac 16/6–7 (October 2009): 1–5.Google Scholar
“Lecture Series to Be Given.” Santa Monica Evening Outlook, 27 February 1937, 4.Google Scholar
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Mattis, Olivia. “Varèse's Multimedia Conception of ‘Deserts.’” Musical Quarterly 76/1 (Winter 1992): 557–83.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
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Miller, Leta E. “John Cage and Henry Cowell: Intersections and Influences, 1933–1941.” Journal of the American Musicological Society 59/1 (Spring 2006): 47–112.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Mills, John. A Fugue in Cycles and Bels. New York: D. Van Nostrand Co., 1935.Google Scholar
Moholy-Nagy, László. “The Future of the Photographic Process.” transition 15 (February 1929): 289–93.Google Scholar
Moholy-Nagy, László. The New Vision: Fundamentals of Bauhaus Design, Painting, Sculpture, and Architecture. New York: Norton, 1938.Google Scholar
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Müller, Maria. “‘It Is a Long, Long Road’: John Cage and Galka Scheyer.” In The Blue Four: Feininger, Jawlensky, Kandinsky, and Klee in the New World, ed. Barnett, Vivian Endicott and Helfenstein, Josef, 273–78. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1997.Google Scholar
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Noll, Michael. Television Technology: Fundamentals and Future Prospects. Norwood, MA: Artech House, 1988.Google Scholar
Paul, Elliot and Sage, Robert. “Artistic Improvements of the Cinema.” transition 10 (January 1928): 127–34.Google Scholar
Putnam, Samuel. “Leopold Survage, Colored Rhythm, and the Cinema.” transition 7 (September 1927): 180–84.Google Scholar
Reidy, Brent. “Our Memory of What Happened Is Not What Happened: Cage, Metaphor, and Myth.” American Music 28/2 (Summer 2010): 211–27.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Silverman, Kenneth. Begin Again: A Biography of John Cage. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2010.Google Scholar
Sitney, P. Adams, ed. The Avant-Garde Film: A Reader of Theory and Criticism. New York: New York University Press, 1978.Google Scholar
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Tompkins, Calvin. The Bride and the Bachelors: The Heretical Courtship in Modern Art. New York: Viking Press, 1965.Google Scholar
Ussher, Bruno David. “Music in the Films.” LA Daily News, 16 September 1940.Google Scholar
Varèse, Edgard. “Organized Sound for the Sound Film.” The Commonweal, 13 December 1940, 204–5.Google Scholar
Vertov, Dziga. “The Writings of Dziga Vertov.” In Film Culture Reader, ed. Sitney, P. Adams, 353–75. New York: Cooper Square Press, 2000.Google Scholar
Webb, Richard C.Tele-Visionaries: The People behind the Invention of Television. Hoboken, N.J.: John Wiley and Sons, 2005.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Weiler, Clemens, ed. Alexej Jawlensky: Köpfe, Gesichte, Meditationen. Cologne: H. Peters, 1959.Google Scholar
Weis, Elisabeth, and Belton, John, eds. Film Sound: Theory and Practice. New York: Columbia University Press, 1985.Google Scholar
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Cage, John. Annotated postcard invitation to Oskar Fischinger, 1937. William Moritz Collection at the Center for Visual Music, Los Angeles.Google Scholar
Cage, John. “Brief History of this Field of Music,” schematic diagram, ca. 1935; “Guggenheim Application and Bibliography”; “Bibliography of Articles etc., on Percussion Music, Electrical Music, Synthetic Music, or Composers Thereof.” Series V, “Ephemera,” folder “Experimental Music and Percussion,” John Cage Collection, Northwestern University Music Library, Evanston, IL.Google Scholar
Cage, John. “The Future of Music: Credo,” 1961, corrected typescript. Series 1, box 5, folder 13, John Cage Papers, Wesleyan University Special Collections and Archives, Middletown, CT.Google Scholar
Cage, John. Interview with Thomas Hines, 21 and 23 May 1992. Getty Research Institute, 2002. M.40.Google Scholar
Cage, John. Letters to Henry Cowell, 16 August and 27 September 1940. Box 2, folder 5, New York Public Library, Cowell Collection.Google Scholar
Cage, John. Interview with Irving Sandler, 1967. Box 4, folder 12, Irving Sandler Papers, Getty Research Institute, 2000.M.43.Google Scholar
Cage, John. Letter to Alexej von Jawlensky, n.d. (1935). Alexej von Jawlensky-Archiv, Lorcano. Facsimile and translation in Müller, “It Is a Long, Long Road,” 273–74.Google Scholar
Cage, John. Letters to Pauline Schindler, 3 June 1935, 24 May 1935, 3 June 1935. Getty Research Institute Special Collections, Los Angeles.Google Scholar
Cage, John. Letters to Adolph Weiss, March 1935. Transcribed in William Bernard George, Adolph Weiss, Ph.D. diss., University of Iowa, 1971.Google Scholar
Cage, John. Letters to Peter Yates, 24 December 1940 and 13 January 1941. MSS 14, box 3, folder 1, Peter Yates Papers, Mandeville Special Collections, University of California at San Diego.Google Scholar
Cage, John. Manuscript, n.d. MSS 14, box 3, folder 2, Peter Yates Papers, Mandeville Special Collections, University of California at San Diego.Google Scholar
Cage, John. “Mesostic for Elfriede Fischinger,” 8 May 1980. Center for Visual Music, Elfriede Fischinger Collection, Los Angeles.Google Scholar
Cage, John. Transcription of “Organized Sound for the Sound Film”; manuscript and typescript drafts “Credo.” Series V: Ephemera, folder: “1940,” John Cage Collection, Northwestern University Music Library, Evanston, IL.Google Scholar
Cage, John M. Sr. Letter to Dr. John P Hagen, Naval Research Laboratory, Washington, D.C., 6 October 1956. Series IV, Correspondence, box 2, folder 3, item 13, John Cage Collection, Northwestern University Music Library, Evanston, IL.Google Scholar
Cage, John M. Sr. “The Rape of Common Sense,” ca. 1930. Private publication, manuscript held by the John Cage Trust.Google Scholar
Cage, Xenia. Note Card to John Cage, 22 November 1976. John Cage Trust.Google Scholar
Fischinger, Oskar. Contract with Solomon R. Guggenheim, 18 June 1943. Account no. 786445, folder 10. Hilla Rebay Non-Objective Film Collection, Guggenheim Museum Archives, New York City.Google Scholar
Fischinger, Oskar. Letter to John Cage, 20 May 1943. Fischinger Collection, Center for Visual Music, Los Angeles.Google Scholar
Fischinger, Oskar. Undated score. Fischinger Collection at the Center for Visual Music, Los Angeles.Google Scholar
Garve, Renata. Letter to John and Xenia Cage, 25 August 1941. Box 62, folder 1, David Tudor Papers, Getty Research Institute.Google Scholar
Scheyer, Galka. Letter to Alexej von Jawlensky, 8 February 1935. Galka Scheyer Papers, Norton Simon Museum, Pasadena, CA, J1935–2.Google Scholar
Schoenberg, Arnold. Signed and annotated course announcement sent to Galka Scheyer. Folder “Arnold Schoenberg,” doc. 6. Galka Scheyer Papers, Norton Simon Museum, Pasadena, CA.Google Scholar
Sturdy, Herbert. “Articles of Incorporation of Sturdy Cage Projects, Inc.,” 2 March 1935, Corporation No. 162010; “Certificate of Election to Wind Up and Dissolve Sturdy-Cage Projects Inc.,” filed 29 December 1964. California Secretary of State, Business Programs Division, Certification and Records, Sacramento.Google Scholar
Sturdy, Herbert. Letter to General Quesada, 23 November 1957. Series I, box 2, folder 3, item 16. John Cage Collection, Northwestern University Music Library, Evanston, IL.Google Scholar
Antheil, George. “Music Tomorrow.” transition 10 (January 1928): 123–26.Google Scholar
Brinkman, Christine Noll. “Collective Movements and Solitary Thrusts: German Experimental Film, 1920–1930.” Millennium Film Journal 30/31 (Fall 1997). http://mfj-online.org/journalPages/MFJ30,31/NBrinckmannCollective.html.Google Scholar
Brougher, Kerry, Strick, Jeremy, Wiseman, Ari, and Zilczer, Judith, eds. Visual Music: Synaesthesia in Art and Music since 1900. New York: Thames and Hudson, 2005.Google Scholar
Cage, John. “A Composer's Confessions.” Reprinted in John Cage: Writer, ed. Kostelanetz, Richard, 37. New York: Limelight, 1993.Google Scholar
Cage, John. For the Birds: John Cage in Conversation with Daniel Charles. Ed.Gora, Tom and Cage, John. Boston: Marion Boyars, 1981.Google Scholar
Cage, John. John Cage: An Anthology. Ed. Kostelanetz, Richard. New York: Da Capo, 1970.Google Scholar
Cage, John. John Cage Selected Correspondence. Ed.Kuhn, Laura and Silverman, Kenneth. Middletown, CT: Wesleyan University Press, Forthcoming.Google Scholar
Cage, John. John Cage: Writer. Ed.Kostelanetz, Richard. New York: Limelight, 1993.Google Scholar
Cage, John. Silence: Lectures and Writings. Middletown, CT: Wesleyan University Press, 1961.Google Scholar
Cage, John. Silence: Lectures and Writings, 50th Anniversary Edition. Middletown, CT: Wesleyan University Press, 2011.Google Scholar
Cage, John M., Sr. “Electron Beam Tube.” U.S. Patent No. 2,225,330 (Schenectady, NY, assigned to General Electric Co.), filed 22 April 1939, issued 17 December 1940.Google Scholar
Cage, John M., Sr. “Invisible Ray Vision System.” U.S. Patent No. 2,395,099, filed July 6, 1935, issued 19 February 1946.Google Scholar
Cage, John M., Sr. “Ultra Short Wave System.” U.S. Patent No. 2,190,511 (Schenectady, NY, assigned to General Electric Co.), filed 1 March 1938, issued 13 February 1940.Google Scholar
Chávez, Carlos. Toward a New Music. New York: Da Capo Press, 1937.Google Scholar
Fischinger, Oskar. “Sounding Ornaments.” Deutsche Allgemeine Zeitung, 8 July 1932. Reprinted and translated in William Moritz, Optical Poetry: The Life and Work of Oskar Fischinger, 179–80. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2004.Google Scholar
George, William Bernard. Adolph Weiss. Ph.D. diss., University of Iowa, 1971.Google Scholar
Hewlett, William R. “Variable Frequency Oscillator.” U.S. Patent No. 2,268,872, filed 11 July, 1939, issued 6 January 1942.Google Scholar
Hewlett, William R., and Cage, John M.. “Direct Current Amplifier and Modulator Therefor.” U.S. Patent No. 3,014,135 (assigned to Hewlett-Packard Co.), filed 4 March 1957, issued 19 December 1961.Google Scholar
Hicks, Michael. “John Cage's Letter to Peter Yates, December 24, 1940.” American Music 25/4 (Winter 2007): 507–15.Google Scholar
Hicks, Michael. “John Cage's Studies with Schoenberg.” American Music 8/2 (Summer 1990): 125–40.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hines, Thomas. “‘Then Not Yet ‘Cage’: The Los Angeles Years, 1912–1938.” In John Cage: Composed in America, ed. Perloff, Marjorie and Junkerman, Charles, 65–99. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1994.Google Scholar
“HP Timeline—1930s.” http://www.hp.com/hpinfo/abouthp/histnfacts/timeline/hist_30s.html.Google Scholar
James, Richard. “Avant-Garde Sound-on-Film Techniques and Their Relationship to Electro- Acoustic Music.” Musical Quarterly 72/1 (1986): 74–89.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Joseph, Branden. “‘A Therapeutic Value for City Dwellers’: The Development of John Cage's Early Avant-Garde Aesthetic Position.” In John Cage: Music, Philosophy, and Intention, 1933–1950, ed. Patterson, David W., 135–76. New York: Routledge, 2002.Google Scholar
Katz, Mark. Capturing Sound: How Technology Has Changed Music. Revised ed. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2010.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Keefer, Cindy. “‘Raumlichtmusik’ - Early 20th Century Abstract Cinema Immersive Environments,” Leonardo Electronic Almanac 16/6–7 (October 2009): 1–5.Google Scholar
“Lecture Series to Be Given.” Santa Monica Evening Outlook, 27 February 1937, 4.Google Scholar
Levin, Thomas, Y. “Tones From Out of Nowhere: Rudolph Pfenninger and the Archeology of Synthetic Sound.” Grey Room 12 (Fall 2003): 32–79.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Magoun, Alexander B.Television: The Life Story of a Technology. Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 2007.Google Scholar
Mary, Maureen. “Letters: The Brief Love of John Cage for Pauline Schindler, 1934–35.” ex tempore 7/1 (Summer 1996). http://www.ex-tempore.org/ExTempore96/cage96.htm.Google Scholar
Mattis, Olivia. “Varèse's Multimedia Conception of ‘Deserts.’” Musical Quarterly 76/1 (Winter 1992): 557–83.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Miller, Leta E. “The Art of Noise: John Cage, Lou Harrison, and the West Coast Percussion Ensemble.” In Perspectives on American Music, 1900–1950, ed. Saffle, Michael, 215–63. New York: Garland, 2000.Google Scholar
Miller, Leta E. “Cultural Intersections: John Cage in Seattle (1938–1940).” In John Cage: Music, Philosophy, and Intention, 1933–1950, ed. Patterson, David W., 47–82. New York: Routledge, 2002.Google Scholar
Miller, Leta E. “John Cage and Henry Cowell: Intersections and Influences, 1933–1941.” Journal of the American Musicological Society 59/1 (Spring 2006): 47–112.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Mills, John. A Fugue in Cycles and Bels. New York: D. Van Nostrand Co., 1935.Google Scholar
Moholy-Nagy, László. “The Future of the Photographic Process.” transition 15 (February 1929): 289–93.Google Scholar
Moholy-Nagy, László. The New Vision: Fundamentals of Bauhaus Design, Painting, Sculpture, and Architecture. New York: Norton, 1938.Google Scholar
Moholy-Nagy, László. “Problems of the Modern Film.” In Moholy-Nagy, An Anthology, ed. Kostelanetz, Richard, 131–38. New York: Da Capo Press, 1970.Google Scholar
Moritz, William. “The Films of Oscar Fischinger.” Film Culture 5860– (1974–75): 37–188.Google Scholar
Moritz, William. Optical Poetry: The Life and Work of Oskar Fischinger. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2004.Google Scholar
Müller, Maria. “‘It Is a Long, Long Road’: John Cage and Galka Scheyer.” In The Blue Four: Feininger, Jawlensky, Kandinsky, and Klee in the New World, ed. Barnett, Vivian Endicott and Helfenstein, Josef, 273–78. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1997.Google Scholar
Nicholls, David. American Experimental Music. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1990.Google Scholar
Nicholls, David. “Cage and the Ultramodernists.” American Music 28/4 (Winter 2010): 492–500.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Nicholls, David. John Cage. Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2007.Google Scholar
Nitske, W. Robert. The Life of Wilhelm Conrad Röntgen, Discoverer of the X Ray. Tucson: University of Arizona Press, 1971.Google Scholar
Noll, Michael. Television Technology: Fundamentals and Future Prospects. Norwood, MA: Artech House, 1988.Google Scholar
Paul, Elliot and Sage, Robert. “Artistic Improvements of the Cinema.” transition 10 (January 1928): 127–34.Google Scholar
Putnam, Samuel. “Leopold Survage, Colored Rhythm, and the Cinema.” transition 7 (September 1927): 180–84.Google Scholar
Reidy, Brent. “Our Memory of What Happened Is Not What Happened: Cage, Metaphor, and Myth.” American Music 28/2 (Summer 2010): 211–27.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Silverman, Kenneth. Begin Again: A Biography of John Cage. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2010.Google Scholar
Sitney, P. Adams, ed. The Avant-Garde Film: A Reader of Theory and Criticism. New York: New York University Press, 1978.Google Scholar
Smith, Catherine Parsons. “Athena at the Manuscript Club: John Cage and Mary Carr Moore.” Musical Quarterly 79/2 (Summer 1995): 351–67.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Stevenson, Robert M. “John Cage on His 70th Birthday: West Coast Background.” Inter-American Music Review 5/1 (Fall 1982): 3–17.Google Scholar
Thoben, Jan. “Technical Sound-Image Transformations.” In See This Sound: Audiovisiology Compendium: An Interdisciplinary Survey of Audiovisual Culture, ed. Daniels, Dieter and Naumann, Sandra with Thoben, Jan, 425–26. Cologne: Verlag der Buchhandlung Walter König, 2010.Google Scholar
Tompkins, Calvin. The Bride and the Bachelors: The Heretical Courtship in Modern Art. New York: Viking Press, 1965.Google Scholar
Ussher, Bruno David. “Music in the Films.” LA Daily News, 16 September 1940.Google Scholar
Varèse, Edgard. “Organized Sound for the Sound Film.” The Commonweal, 13 December 1940, 204–5.Google Scholar
Vertov, Dziga. “The Writings of Dziga Vertov.” In Film Culture Reader, ed. Sitney, P. Adams, 353–75. New York: Cooper Square Press, 2000.Google Scholar
Webb, Richard C.Tele-Visionaries: The People behind the Invention of Television. Hoboken, N.J.: John Wiley and Sons, 2005.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Weiler, Clemens, ed. Alexej Jawlensky: Köpfe, Gesichte, Meditationen. Cologne: H. Peters, 1959.Google Scholar
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