Begin Again: A Biography of John Cage PDF
Preview Begin Again: A Biography of John Cage
ALSO BY KENNETH SILVERMAN Lightning Man: The Accursed Life of Samuel F. B. Morse Houdini!!! The Career of Ehrich Weiss Edgar A. Poe: Mournful and Never-ending Remembrance The Life and Times of Cotton Mather A Cultural History of the American Revolution THIS IS A BORZOI BOOK PUBLISHED BY ALFRED A. KNOPF Copyright © 2010 by Kenneth Silverman All rights reserved. Published in the United States by Alfred A. Knopf, a division of Random House, Inc., New York, and in Canada by Random House of Canada Limited, Toronto. www.aaknopf.com Knopf, Borzoi Books, and the colophon are registered trademarks of Random House, Inc. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Silverman, Kenneth. Begin again : a biography of John Cage / by Kenneth Silverman.—1st ed. p. cm. eISBN: 978-0-307-59457-0 1. Cage, John. 2. Composers—United States—Biography. I. Title. ML410.C24S64 2010 780.92—dc22 [B] 2010009525 v3.1 In memory of my friend Stuart Feder (1930–2005) The American is a new man, who acts upon new principles. —J. HECTOR ST. JOHN CRÈVECOEUR Letters from an American Farmer (1782) … it is a country of beginnings … —RALPH WALDO EMERSON The Young American (1844) Beginning was all of living with him, in a beginning he was always as big in his feeling as all the world around him. —GERTRUDE STEIN The Making of Americans (1925) I try over and over to begin all over again. —JOHN CAGE MESSAGEGRAM OF 18 SEPTEMBER 1977 CONTENTS Cover Other Books by This Author Title Page Copyright Dedication Epigraphs 1. COMES UP FAMOUS 2. THE ART OF NOISE 3. EAST AND WEST 4. MUSIC OF CHANGES 5. THE TEN THOUSAND THINGS 6. INDETERMINACY 7. FRACTURES 8. HPSCHD 9. EMPTY WORDS 10. APARTMENT HOUSE 11. CHANGES AND DISAPPEARANCES 12. TIME BRACKETS 13. EUROPERAS 14. ANARCHIC HARMONY 15. 1992 DOCUMENTATION ACKNOWLEDGMENTS ILLUSTRATION CREDITS TRACK CREDITS About the Author 1. COMES UP FAMOUS —headline, Los Angeles Times 1912–1937 The Cage Family; Los Angeles High School; Pomona College JOHN CAGE’S achievement, the Times observed, was “a matter of pride to the people of California.” A front-page photo showed Cage waving to ten thousand spectators who had gathered to cheer him, including the mayor of Los Angeles. Telegrams announcing his triumph had been sent to President Woodrow Wilson. Coming up famous on June 11, 1913, John Milton Cage and his crew of five had stayed underwater more than twenty-four hours, doubling the world record for submergence. The seventy-five-foot-long vessel—named Peace Keeper— had been built under his patents, as general manager of the Los Angeles Submarine Boat Company. When tested six months earlier, the Peace Keeper sank due to shifting ballast and an open hatchway. It had to be raised off the bottom of Los Angeles Harbor and dragged through mud back to its slip, to be pumped out. The Times assessed the launching of “the Cage submarine” as “one of the most important events that has ever occurred in California or the entire country.” It was believed in Washington that submarines would be key weapons in future wars (such perhaps as World War I, to break out one year later). And Cage had invented novel devices to keep his sub level, increase its speed, and greatly improve its safety by running the engines on gasoline rather than potentially explosive storage batteries. A rear admiral of the U.S. Navy predicted that it would replace all other submarines in use. Not to mention, as John Cage boasted, that his Peace Keeper was the only sub in which the underwater crew could smoke. About twenty-seven years old at the time, John Milton Cage had been born in Los Angeles, the son of a Methodist minister. His formal education ended with graduation from a high school in Denver. As he later wrote, he remained concerned with “radical advances in thinking,” with overthrowing “traditional patterns … we have acquired through years of hard work at school.” At a church in Denver he had met his wife, Lucretia, known as Crete. A diminutive, dark- haired woman, a few months older than her husband, she had been married once before, possibly twice. Much concerned with genealogy, she traced his ancestry to pre-Revolutionary Virginia, and her own Iowa family to Daniel Boone. The couple had had a child, whom they named John Milton Cage. But he survived only two weeks. Then on September 5, 1912—about nine months before the triumph of Peace Keeper—Lucretia gave birth in Los Angeles to another son. The couple again named him John Milton Cage, Jr. John Cage, Sr. (photo credit 1.1)
The list of books you might like
