A John Cage Compendium

A John Cage Compendium

Paul van Emmerik

In collaboration with Herbert Henck and András Wilheim

Last modified January 6, 2010

John Cage (1912-1992) has been one of the major figures in avant garde music and arts for several decades. He pursued a multifaceted career as a composer, performer, lecturer, author, and visual artist. Throughout his career Cage has performed and lectured all over the world. This resulted in an immense number of writings about him; even many of Cage’s own writings are published around the world. The vast accumulation of manuscripts, letters, and general materials relating to John Cage place him among the most comprehensively documented composers of the twentieth century.

The aim of this site is to offer access to information on Cage’s life and work. It provides several entries to serve this purpose: a chronology of Cage’s life, divided into two parts, 1912-1971 and 1972-1992 (the latter part including several posthumously relevant entries); catalogues of music, text, and art by Cage; a bibliography, divided into five parts: a-b, c, d-j, k-p, and q-z; and lists of sources, recordings and films.

The chronology of Cage’s life contains information on performances and lectures given by him, dates of composition and first performances, and exhibitions of his work. Writings in which a particular date’s event is mentioned or discussed are listed in parentheses concluding the entry. Entries without such attributions derive from scores, original programs, newspaper announcements or previews, or general works of reference.

Even though in several cases Cage’s oeuvre cannot be clearly divided into categories, there are, for practical reasons, individual worklists for music, text, and visual art.

The catalogue of Cage’s music includes musical compositions, music theatre, incidental music, sound installations, theatrical events, and arrangements by Cage of compositions by others. In the catalogue, choreographers, directors or playwrights are given only for compositions originally conceived as music for the dance, film, or as incidental music. For music in conventional notation, the extent is given in number of measures (anacrusis and prima volta not counted); in other cases, the number of systems, pages or sentences (in the case of verbal notation) is given.

The catalogue of Cage’s texts includes essays, lectures, theoretical writings, radio plays, poetry (much of it written for vocal performance), and reviews.

The catalogue of Cage’s visual art includes drawings, etchings, objects, installations, films, and designs made or conceived by him. Dimensions of artworks are given in centimeters, height by breadth, rounded up to the to the next integer.

The bibliography of writings by and about Cage and his work is arranged alphabetically. References cited in the various sections of this site to the bibliography are made by author’s surname or initials and year of publication. Ephemeral writing (such as pamphlets, concert program booklets, liner notes) as a rule is not included. Alphabetization of entries is international, ignoring alphabetization conventions of the languages concerned (Danish and Norwegian ‘ø’, for instance, are listed as ‘o’, not following z; the Spanish ‘ch’ is not listed as a separate letter). Names and titles in non-roman script are transliterated. Entries of the form ‘Boulez, Pierre/Cage, John’ denote interviews or responses to questionnaires, conversations or two-way correspondence published under a single title. Publications entirely based upon interviews with Cage are listed as such, whereas publications quoting excerpts of off-hand conversations with him, or taken from press conferences are not. Conversations involving more than two persons with diffuse authorship have been listed as if they were jointly authored entries. Multiple works by the same author or authors are arranged chronologically by year of publication and alphabetically by title within years (disregarding initial articles), with suffixed letters distinguishing titles published in a single year. Items produced under editorial direction or collections of essays by different authors have been listed under the names of the editors, or, if no editors are mentioned, under the first word of the title. For some citations of articles obtained from secondary sources, only the initial page number is given, followed by a plus-sign (+), indicating that the article is continued on later (but unknown) pages. Page numbers in square brackets indicate items originally unpaginated. Writings that have appeared in several editions are listed in a single entry under the earliest publication date. Volumes carrying no publication date are listed as ‘s.a.’ (sine anno [without date]); an approximate or conjectural date is added in square brackets. Writings in which a particular bibliographical entry is reviewed or discussed are listed in parentheses concluding the entry.

Sources (mainly manuscripts) are arranged alphabetically according to location (city), library or archive (when public collection) or (if known) name of present owner or owners (when private collection), and call number or accession number. Dimensions of sources are given in centimeters, height preceding width, rounded up to the next integer. Unless otherwise noted, all items listed are Cage’s autograph (holograph).

The rubric Recordings, listing mainly publicly distributed recordings containing compositions or texts by Cage, of music performed by him, and of interviews with him, is arranged alphabetically according to the name of the label. Writings in which a particular recording is mentioned or discussed are listed in parentheses concluding the entry.

The rubric Films lists films and videotapes by Cage or in which he appears as a performer, that contain music by Cage or interviews with him. Arrangement is alphabetical by director. Writings in which a particular film is mentioned or discussed are listed in parentheses concluding the entry.

Grateful acknowledgement is made to the following individuals and institutions in different ways: the late John Cage; Dr. Deborah Campana, Don L. Roberts and the staff of Northwestern University Music Library (Patti Black, Ken Calkins, Jennifer Jenkins, Joan Schuitema, Roberta Senatore, Keith Swanson, Ruth E. Young, Margie Wood); Dr. Don Gillespie and Stephen Fisher (C.F. Peters Corporation, New York); George Boziwick and Dr. Bob Kosovsky and the staff of New York Public Library for the Performing Arts, and Dr. J. Rigbie Turner, Curator of the music manuscripts, and the staff of Pierpont Morgan Library in New York. Acknowledgements are made to those who have contributed or shared material or information in one form or another: Kees Aarts, Mitchell Arnold, Piet de Bakker, Michael F. Bauer, David Bernstein, Gerrit de Blaauw, Dr. Konrad Boehmer, Anneriek van Bommel, Gabriele Bonomo, Greet Boomgaard-van der Mark, Suzanne de Bruin-ten Hagen, André Chaudron, Seiji Chôki, Alcedo Coenen, Stefan Conradi, Andrew Culver, the late Merce Cunningham, Dr. Joke Dame, Eric De Visscher, Vincent Deane, René Delbar, Henk van Drunen, Elena Dubinets, Dr. Willem Elders, the late Anny van Emmerik-Truschel, Ivo van Emmerik, Dr. Martin Erdmann, Dr. Sabine Feißt, Anthony Fiumara, Fiona Flower (C.F. Peters Ltd., London), Ron Ford, Dr. Aleks Frosztega, Vincent Gasseling, Geesche Geddert, the late Linde Geddert, Peter Geddert, Wolf Geddert, Ernie van Geenen, Wim Gelok, Gisela Gronemeyer, Bennet Grutman, Jessica de Heer, Willem Hering, Lars Hermesdorf, Henk Heuvelmans, Dr. Tom Hijmans, Silke Hilger, Pay-uun Hiu, Klaas Hoek, Luuk Hoekstra, Margriet Hoenderdos, Dr. Friedrich Hommel, Marion Hübscher, Dr. Eric Jas, Tineke Jong, Henriette Kindt, László Király, Harry Klaassen, Dr. Sieglinde van de Klundert, Bart Koekoek (Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam), Johan Kolsteeg, Antoine de Kom, Taco Kooistra, Klaus Martin Kopitz, Jeannette van der Kruijff, Dr. Laura Kuhn (The John Cage Trust), Katrijn Kuijpers, Dr. Leigh Landy, Petra van Langen, Ariane de Leeuw, Dr. Taru Leppänen, Constance M. Lewallen, Dr. Sabine Lichtenstein, Dr. Aldo Lieffering, the late Tera de Marez Oyens, Frank Meijer, Juro Mětšk, Henk van der Meulen, Rev. Burkhard Meyer, Karen Margrethe Mønsted (Statsbiblioteket, Statens Mediensamling, Aarhus, Denmark), Raoul Mörchen, Michael Nieuwenhuizen, Harry Oberendorf, Reinhard Oehlschlägel, Dr. Paul Op de Coul, Dr. David W. Patterson, Rosângela Pereira, Dr. Leo Plenckers (University of Amsterdam), Dr. James Pritchett, Dave Quail, Dr. Rudolf Rasch, Dr. Ulrike Rausch, Deborah Richards, Ulrike Richter, Josef Anton Riedl, Sophie de Rijk, Richard Rijnvos, Dr. Johanne Rivest, Jane Robinson (Scottish National Orchestra), Margarete Roeder (Margarete Roeder Gallery), Els Rollé, Tip de Roon Hertoge, Frans van Rossum, the late Rie Rottier-van Emmerik, Frank Scheffer, Elmer Schönberger, Klaus Schöning, Frits Selie, Ol’ga Smetanová, John Snijders, Friedrich Spangemacher, Jaroslav Št’astný, Sylvia Stoetzer, Henriette Straub, Karin Sträubig-Zepp, Mark Swed, Ted Szántó, Margaret Leng Tan, Bruce J. Taub, the late David Tudor, David Vaughan, Ad van ’t Veer, the late Dr. Kees Vellekoop, Dr. Eddie Vetter, Beatrijs Vissers, Carol Lyn Ward-Bamford (Library of Congress), Dr. Benedict Weisser, Dr. Frans Wiering, Liz Williamson (C.F. Peters Ltd., London), Barbara Woof, Gayle Young, Ruth Young, Jos van der Zanden, and Sergey Zhukov; to the Westdeutscher Rundfunk (Köln), the documentation departments of the Darmstädter Echo (Darmstadt), Donaueschinger Musiktage, Tagespost (Speyer), and Die Welt (Bonn). Financial support from the Netherlands Organization for Scientific Research, the Faculty of Letters of the University of Amsterdam, as well as from the Research Institute for History and Culture of Utrecht University has made research for this site possible.