Cage Talk: Dialogues With And About John Cage

Description:
John Cage was one of America's most renowned composers from the 1940s until his death in 1992. But he was also a much-admired writer and artist, and a uniquely attractive personality able to present his ideas engagingly wherever he went. As an interview subject he was a consummate professional. The main source of 'CageTalk: Dialogues with and about John Cage' is a panoply of vivid and compulsively readable interviews given to Peter Dickinson in the late 1980s for a BBC Radio 3 documentary. The original BBC program lasted an hour but the full discussions with Cage and many of the main figures connected with him have remained unpublished until now. 'CageTalk' also includes earlier BBC interviews with Cage, including ones by the renowned literary critic Frank Kermode and art critic David Sylvester. And the editor Peter Dickinson contributes little-known source material about Cage's Musicircus and Roaratorio as well as a substantial introduction exploring the multiple roles that Cage's varied and challenging output played during much of the twentieth century and continues to play in the early twenty-first. Apart from the long interview with Cage himself, there are discussions with, Bonnie Bird, Earle Brown, Merce Cunningham, Minna Lederman, Otto Luening, Jackson Mac Low, Peadar Mercier, Pauline Oliveros, John Rockwell, Kurt Schwertsik, Karlheinz Stockhausen, Virgil Thomson, David Tudor, La Monte Young, and Paul Zukovsky. Most of the interviews were given to Peter Dickinson but there are others involving Rebecca Boyle, Anthony Cheevers, Michael Oliver, and Roger Smalley. Peter Dickinson, British composer and pianist, is emeritus professor, University of Keele and University of London, and has written or edited several books about twentieth-century music, including 'Copland Connotations' (Boydell Press, 2002) and 'The Music of Lennox Berkeley' (Boydell Press, 2003).

Review:
ForeWord Magazine selected this title as one of its top music books from University Presses for 2006. Ideal introduction to Cage. --TIMES LITERARY SUPPLEMENT We hear Cage in his own words, in conversations conducted between 1966 and 1988, and put in the context of interviews with close colleagues such as pianist David Tudor, choreographer Merce Cunningham and fellow composers including Earle Brown and Virgil Thomson... Dickinson's approach to collecting these interviews is methodical and fastidious... (His) introductory chapter is ... cogent. --Philip Clark, Gramophone The 'Cage and Friends' interviews are outstanding. In particular David Tudor, the performing musician closest to and most crucial for Cage, is exceptionally forthcoming. --composer Christian Wolff This book is no eulogy compendium. Instead, the interviewees simply give us what we would all prefer to have, which is a diverse set of instructive, good-humoured accounts of their dealings with the book's subject... Informative and entertaining--often amusing: Stockhausen's thinly-veiled tetchiness makes for a diverting subtext, while Virgil Thomson refers to Cage's former wife Xenia as 'the Eskimo.' Technically, too, this book is a success, with its comprehensive references, its proper indexing and, joy of joys, footnotes ... on the page you're actually on. A valuable and enjoyable read which I unreservedly recommend. Five stars (out of five).--Roger Thomas, BBC MUSIC MAGAZINE (A) lively compilation of dialogues with and about Cage ... (opening with Dickinson's) useful introductory overview... (Cage's) influence burns brighter than ever. --Fiona Maddocks, in The Spectator Essential reading for anyone interested in the music of our time. WHOLENOTE Cage's engaging manner radiates from these pages... CageTalk is excellent, leaving one with feelings of affection toward its subject. -- John Robert Brown, CLASSICAL MUSIC A real treasure house of fascinating exchanges... An entertaining perspective on (Cage's) inventive and imaginative world of sound, visual imagery and movement.' -- Patrick Standford, MUSIC AND VISION DAILY