I-VI: MethodStructureIntentionDisciplineNotationIndeterminacy InterpenetrationImitationDevotionCircumstancesVariableStructure ... (Statistics for Industry and Technology) [Paperback]

John Cage (Author)

Book Description

Series: Statistics for Industry and Technology | Publication Date: October 15, 1997

Dazzling innovation in a work by one of America's most important and controversial composers.

"In the nature of the use of chance operations is the belief that all answers answer all questions," John Cage writes in this edition of his contribution to Harvard's prestigious Norton Lecture Series in 1988-89. More like performances than lectures, these six mesostics -- a complex horizontal arrangement of text to form vertical letter sequences that spell out key words -- illustrated for his audience the concept of "nonintention," a kind of meticulously choreographed anarchy in which choice and chance join to redefine the concepts of meaning and meaningfulness.

Drawing text from Thoreau, Wittgenstein, Joyce, McCluhan, and daily newspapers, Cage used a computer program to combine seemingly disparate lines into a whole that explored fifteen central aspects of his compositional credo. This edition includes the mesostics, transcriptions, and a CD recording of the question-and-answer sessions that followed and of Cage reading in a sonorous baritone that infuses the mesostic with life, depth, and musicality. The aesthetic integrity and artistic growth that have characterized Cage's half century of production are nowhere more clearly evident than in this tour de force.

Editorial Reviews

From Library Journal

This is a transcription of Cage's Charles Eliot Norton Lectures, delivered at Harvard University in 1989-90; it should be properly viewed as a performance rather than an informative monograph. The source material of these lectures consists largely of quotes from Buckminster Fuller, Thoreau, Wittgenstein, and others. These quotes are then subjected to a "mesostic" ordering using chance operations guided by the I Ching and a computer program, rendering the resulting prose fragmented and incomprehensible. In a lucid passage, Cage identifies 15 important parameters of his music, such as method, structure, intention, indeterminacy, etc., and spells these words in capital letters along the center spine of each page. The question-and-answer session preserved on one of the accompanying cassettes displays Cage's self-deprecating humor but is otherwise not particularly revealing. This is recommended for Cage enthusiasts only.
- Larry Lipkis, UCLA
Copyright 1990 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

Review

"Its multilayered structure makes I-VI Cage's most interesting textual creation since his first collection of essays, Silence . . . Especially when he reads them, in his frail but steadfast baritone, shaping the phrases and illuminating hidden meanings and poetic undercurrents in word jumbles that seem at first -- and may still be, on the less important level of explication -- meaningless, Mr. Cage attains a perfect synthesis of all that he is: soft-spoken backwoods storyteller, vanguard modernist, Zen master, kindly village preacher. Yet this is not mere accident: Mr. Cage is making art. And by any generous definition of what art is and can be, he is making beautiful music as well."--John Rockwell, New York Times Book Review

"This is essential Cage . . . a must for those interested in music, performance, philosophy, art, literature, and aesthetics, among other disciplines."--Umbrella

"I-VI is Cage's finest poem, a major work in a unique style, surely among the best American epic poems of the postwar period."--Richard Kostelanetz, The Journal of Art

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Product Details

• Paperback: 464 pages
• Publisher: Wesleyan (October 15, 1997)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0819563137
• ISBN-13: 978-0819563132
• Product Dimensions: 10 x 7 x 1.2 inches
• Shipping Weight: 2 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (1 customer review)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,360,934 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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6 of 7 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars peRformAnce coMbusTiOns of fragments,WoRdS, November 24, 2000

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scarecrow "scarecrow" (Chicago, Illinois United States) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: I-VI (The Charles Eliot Norton Lectures, 1988-89) (Hardcover)

The various books, collections of pieces, essays, mesostics, cooking recipes,concert reports and performance works Cage had published throughout his long life have for many been more important than his music. (Cage never claimed) to have written music only/merely creating a more intense/extense hearing situation. He (himself when queried said) he never listens to music,recordings,but the sounds (as we all know now) that are all around us.Marvelous textures./ We simply need the committment to listen,to be committed to unitentionality,purposelessness. It is where divine intwervention/ inspiration or something similar an import which may or may not occur/possibly.

This rather large work "I - VI" is the summary/documentation of the prestigious Norton Lectures Series from 1988-89 at Harvard University. Time was when Cage was considered a joke by many, But now he is an American icon,honored/revered at every established citadel of academia.

Mesostics(which is the primary pages here)(pages 9 to 420) is(are) a kind of writing(of poetry)(esSays)(performance), it is as close the (English language) can get to Japanese,reading verticaly as well as horizontally. And that is what you need to do here most of the time,for sometimes a key word will run like a spine down the center of the page making some(or not) coherence with the remaining fragments you may(or may not) encounter. These (six(VI) sections) are like a performance (work),read in any order and any amount of it/ I found myself reading the particles of and complete words aloud for pleasure, skipping, letting (my eye) wander freely across the page, for non-meaning, or simply a combination and admixtures,combustions and consonant explosions which I've never encountered before. Whether (that is the correct) way is beside the point, for if you are looking for discrete meanings, well you will find it in bleak,cold fragmentariness. There are passages on the very bottom of each page, the question and answer section, where you may learn particular ways of playing Cage's sometimes rather difficult music. You never (improvise in) Cage, actually there is very little performing freedom. Once you understand a performing corridor or process you cannot digress from it. I found myself instantly at the bottom of the page most of the time,for Cage is an interesting storyteller, and a way of highlighting (actual) experiences from life.

There is an (orange) CD that accompanies this book A reading of mesostic(by John Cage)number 4/ IV. Cage speaks/recites in a frail baritone/ rich voice/ committed to the cause.

WriTings drawn from WitTgenstein( a laTe interest),Thoreau,Joyce,McCluhan and daily newspapers are combined in fifteen compositional meThods/strucTurs/intenTion/discipline/noTation/indeTterminacy/interpeneTraion/imiTationT/all this comes at the end and can be read lefT to riGht.