Imagine a dimly lit, vault-like ancient cellar, obscured paintings on the masonry. At a small table, illuminated by a single lamp, sits a lone man, calmly intoning vocal sounds, and silences. The changing and sometimes longish pauses between sounds seem to alter the pace of time itself. It goes on and on, and after 2 1/2 hours, a listener might notice that he/her's hearing the world with new ears.
"Empty Words" (1974/75), Cage's four-part poem of epic proportions (a complete performance of all four parts would take about 10 hours), is a beautiful exercise in de-militarizing and atomizing language.
Using H.D. Thoreau's "Journals" as source material, Cage derived his text through computer-aided chance procedures. The process of de-militarization progresses from part to part. While Part I features phrases, words, syllables, and letters (but no complete sentences), all that remain in Part IV are letters and silences. The published text features a great number of illustrations from Thoreau's "Journal", selected and inserted by using the "I Ching".
"A transition from Language to music (a language already without sentences, and not confined to any subject) ... Language becoming musics, musics becoming theatres; performances; metamorphoses (stills from what are actually movies). At first face to face; finally sitting with one's back to the audience (sitting with the audience), everyone facing the same vision. Sideways, sideways." - John Cage, introductory text to "Empty Words, Part IV"
Edition Michael Frauenlob Bauer MFB 003-004 (double LP released in 1987). This remarkable recording of highest artistic and technical qualities won the "Award of the Deutsche Schallplatten-Kritik".
Thanks to Gebrueder Hartmann for digital transfer and cover pics.
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Thanks!
ReplyDeletethis is MARVELOUS! so great to see this shared here in the closet! can't wait to sit & listen when appropriate quietness presents itself to me in this strange new place i'm in.. .
ReplyDeleteHOWEVER, writing now -- there is another splendid recording of cage performing this work! -- i once spent an entire four hours or so of early morning airtime playing it at WPRB radio! not to mention untold hours listening at home -- perhaps my favorite of his poems.. .
ANYHOW -- the recording of the other reading was at a college i believe, in italy, of all places -- the incredible thing about that recording is that it was a live performance & the crowd was somehow entirely unprepared for the length & character of the piece &so began to riot under over the continuing patience murmur mutter of cage plucking thru the words.. .
it's beautiful.
i've always thot of it as the last real avant-garde performance riot! ;-)
or perhaps those are the words of a professor friend of mine that introduced me to the piece.
ANYHOW -- long comment, I KNO, but i'll be uploading what i can find of the recording on my blog for you sometime later tonight!
&so it goes.. .
xoxo
j.h c
I've been trying to find this for years. Thanks!
ReplyDeletePart 2 will not download in Megaupload. Can you please fix this? The other three parts appear to work just fine, but you can't open the zip file without having all four parts, apparently. And I've learned that all the parts have to come from the same source in order to be compatible with each other... Thanks.
ReplyDeleteAnonymouses; you're welcome.
ReplyDeleteJ. Henry, arigato for the comment.
Very interesting blogs you're having there! The Italian recording with the rioting students is of "Empty Words, Part III". The amazing thing about that one is how Cage didn't let himself be stopped by these barbarians...
Anonymous #3, these files NEED NOT to be downloaded from one source. Feel free to use any of the links given.
Absolutely fantastic. This blog is strength to strength. So many thanks!
ReplyDeleteThis is Mr. No 3 again. Mr. Earwicker, if you try to open the Megaupload file No 1, it says that you must have No. 2 in order to proceed. The program WILL NOT decode the first file unless you have all of them. Now, I skipped No. 2 because it's not available, and have downloaded Nos. 1, 3, and 4, but I have no way to unzip any of them without file No. 2. Am I supposed to now go to something like Badongo and redo all 4 files? As far as Rapidshare goes, for free file downloads you have to wait at least 4 hours now between downloads - and I'm not trying to be a cheapskate, but I'm not about to give some anonymous company my credit card number for ongoing monthly deductions over the internet - I've learned my lesson in that regard already, I'm afraid. So you see, what's the point of making so many links if some of them don't work? Just pointing this out.
ReplyDeleteIs this the recording in Milan where the audience sounds like they're going to kill Cage? If so I have it already on cd, so maybe that's a simple answer to all this. It's unlistenable, as far as I'm concerned.
And by the way, I have a partial recording of Cage doing this piece live in 1975, in the sunny southland of the USA, Part III, in a very quiet and tranquil setting, if anybody's interested.
I believe I was at that performance in 1975. Was it at Broward Community College? He also performed some prepared piano pieces for Marcel Duchamp that made my night.
DeleteNo. 3 - this is not the Milan recording of EW Part III. It's the Cologne recording of EW Part IV. The photo with JC at the table is from that performance. No rampaging students in sight...
ReplyDeleteRe your DL problems: using Sharebee, I upload each file just ONCE. Sharebee passes the files on to the other sites (RS, Megaup, Z-Share, ...). I just saw that the file named "Part 2" is still being upped to Megaupload. So you either wait for RS or Megaupload, or use Z-Share (which is a little on the slow side, but works fine, otherwise). Nothing else I can do about it.
When un-raring the files, make sure that all files are named identically, except for the part-indicating number (1 - 4), of course.
Nichi nichi kore ko nichi ...
Nice to hear this again after many years.
ReplyDeleteSomeday, I should find my eight 90 minute tapes of the complete 12 hours of Empty Words that John did with Maryanne Amacher's Close Up in September of '81. It was quite a wonderful overnight experience.
thanks again!
Rod
Just a heads up... v2 is not available for download (v1 CramItIn link is good).
ReplyDelete