The John Cageblog

Tonight, something I was not much looking forward to.  There are some Cage works that anybody can enjoy, and then there’s the rest ;-)

Bird Cage
“Twelve tapes, to be distributed by a single performer in a space where people are free to move and birds to fly” reads the 1972 score.  I guess in that respect, the performance is pretty straightforward.  I’m not sure if it was ever realized after the recording I have was made.  At any rate, what we end up is a sound collage of tapes, with speed, repetition and duration varied by chance operations, overlaid with the sound of birds.  I’m not sure what to say precisely here, other than that the sounds of the birds mix in well with the various sounds from the tapes (machine noises, electronics, talking) and I am left with the impression that there is less of a difference between the sounds of nature and the sounds of machines and people than you might expect.  Maybe one day you’ll be able to go to the record store and see “bathtub noises” and “cars engines” next to all the “nature sound” collections.  

Since there’s not much else to say, maybe it would be entertaining to make a list of some of the sounds I heard.

• The most recognizable sound was Cage talking to a parrot, which would ask his name, and he would say “My name is John.”  Since I can imagine him staring at a bird and saying that, I laughed whenever I heard it.


• There were a lot of water-based noises.  Splashing, gushing, gurgling, tinkling...


• I think Cage wore a contact microphone somewhere around his mouth and recorded the results, because I got to enjoy hearing someone brush his teeth on several occasions.  I think some of the strange crunching, cracking noises might have been the sounds of someone eating.  


• On several occasions, I heard such mundane sounds as a car start, a telephone being dialed, and a typewriter being used.  It occurred to me that in a few years a lot of people wouldn’t recognize the latter two!


• Almost all of the work featured a recording of Cage mumbling.  Actually, he probably wasn’t mumbling, but he was reading some text or another, possibly Mureau or Empty Words.  Either of them would have vocal sounds that resemble human speech without actually being human speech, I think.


• Electronic noises: feedback, whooshes, and so on.  There was a giant wave of these the forced me turn the volume down about halfway through.


• Sounds of the city.  I heard hallway-walking, traffic-idling, and church bell-ringing.  Or maybe these were all separate.  

That’s only seven, I suppose.  Probably these were separated up into different groupings.  Additionally, I’m pretty sure some or all of the birds were recorded, because the chirping would suddenly cut out at certain points, not a very probable event in a real group of birds.