The Selected Letters of John Cage. John Cage
Integrals or Hyperprism of Varese. Send any suggestions. He is marvelously ready to do it. I hope they play Webern while I’m here.
I have the awful feeling that I’m not answering your letter properly. Pause while I read it again. I’ll tell you all about Paul as soon as I know.182 Bob and Arthur are pretty sure he will arrive for the concert. Virgil wrote but didn’t say anything about the Tiger’s Eye.183 He said my Tribune articles were “lovely.” You can get all my ideas about the 12-tone congress and the festival from them. I can’t stand Leibowitz.184 Nobody I’ve met can. Nobody likes Nigg185 either. I wrote a longer article for M. America. I don’t share the enthusiasm for Rome and Italy. Utterly at home here. You can write to Hotel de Bourgogne, 31 Rue St. Louis en l’Ile, Paris IV. If I move it will only be a few doors, because I love this island. Also it turns out to be the quarter all the new French artists choose to live in. Boulez is 5 minutes away. A poet he admires on one of the Quais of the Island, etc. [Pierre] Souvtschinsky186 and Boulez are arranging a private playing of the Sonatas for the 17th of June. B. and A. play on the 24th. Merce probably dances in Helion’s studio on the 10th. And, oh, I’ve gathered many rare Satie items: Ogives, La Belle Excentrique, the orchestration of Le Piege de Meduse, Genevieve de Brabant, Croquis et Agaceries, Uspud. Also on the track of the score for Socrate which is right now in England. Boulez can’t understand interest in Satie. If I had any criticism of his thought, which I don’t, it would be that he is too wrapped up in method (what I call method),—controls. Minute controls. But they result in such beautiful music chez lui.
I have to talk French a great deal and struggle like a fish out of water.
I’m gradually getting a new musical idea: it isn’t very clear yet, but it has to do with the two and three dimensional extension of the sq[uare] r[oo]t idea.187 So that one could paint or sculpt instead of limn. Time as usual plus amplitude and, or, frequency.
Miss you.
To John Cage Sr. and Lucretia Cage
June 1, 1949 | Paris
Dearest Mother and Dad:
Things are progressing very well with the giving of concerts. Pierre Boulez, the composer I admire most here, introduces me to everyone, painters poets, critics, musicians, and arranges the private concerts which I am about to give. I play on the 7th at the Conservatoire in the Salle Gounod for the class of Messiaen, whose improvising I hear each Sunday morning at the Trinite. On the 10th Merce and I give a joint program in Helion’s study near the Jardins de Luxembourg. That will be an invited audience. On the 17th I play in the home of Mme. Tezenas,188 and that will again be an invited audience. Boulez is crazy about my music, and I about his. That is very pleasant. In fact everything is unbelievably delightful. Then on the 24th Bob and Arthur have their concert in the Salle Gaveau, and play one of my Dances. Merton Brown and Jack Heliker are here now from Italy, and this morning Merton and I go to Frederick Goldbeck’s to show him Merton’s new music. Goldbeck is an important critic whom I met in New York through Virgil. Last night we visited Alice B. Toklas189 and saw again all the paintings of Gertrude Stein and heard conversation about all the famous people she has known. I filled out the necessary blanks for sailing in October on the Ile de France. Yesterday I got a very pleasant letter from Musical America saying they were delighted with my article because of its “vitality and validity” and that took a load off my mind because I was afraid they wouldn’t like it. It is a very funny article. The days here are magnificent right now: no rain, and beautiful white billowy clouds over the buildings. Maggie Nogueira arrives from Amsterdam tomorrow and also tomorrow I play my large records for Boulez and some other composers at the radio station. Soon I will make arrangements for a radio broadcast, but everything is better here if one doesn’t hurry too much. Matta is arranging some performance in the home of Schiaparelli too. So you can imagine how busy everything is. The days pass by quickly and with little chance for tourist activity. Now and then when I have a moment I drop into a church or look into a courtyard and am delighted. But just being in Paris is enough. I am anxious to get to the Bibliotheque Nationale and see their Satie collection to see whether I really have gotten everything, because my collection is now so nearly complete that I am greedy to have it be really complete. I meet every now and then someone who knew Satie, and get many interesting stories about him. He was such a marvelous and strange person. I must have told you about visiting the house he lived in in Arcueil. I suggested to Musical America that I write another article about Pierre Boulez the way Peggy wrote one about me. There really isn’t much more to tell and now I have to hurry to Goldbeck’s.
To John Cage Sr. and Lucretia Cage
[June 22, 1949] | Paris
Dear Mother and Dad:
Finally I have a piano to work on, and it’s a Steinway. It was rented by a girl I know in N.Y. and she will work in the morning, and I in the afternoons, and we will share the rent. I start this afternoon. Makes everything much better. This Friday Bob and Arthur play. This evening I go to meet Boris de Schloezer and Marina Scriabine.190 With Boulez. Also arranged yesterday to do some pieces on a program in July. I rather hope that I might get a job to write for a movie, but that’s just in my mind. It’s because life is so expensive here. I think I’ll write for strings and prepared piano. Maybe a harp too, because the street the piano is on is called rue de la Harpe. I’m enclosing a slip about registered mail that John Goodwin sent me.191 Can you do anything about it? A new music magazine here is interested in my article that was published in Tiger’s Eye. Maybe will translate. I also have in mind slightly to make a trip to Switzerland following the Aix en Provence festival; I’ll do it if the radios there engage me to play. I’d love to see the collections of Paul Klee’s work there. There isn’t much more to say. My life is just plain music talk and hearing music and now writing music, collecting the Satie works, etc. And then eating most of the time in the little restaurant on the rue Mabillon, and walking home along the Quais. It is very, very beautiful here and the weather is delightfully cool.
To John Cage Sr. and Lucretia Cage
June 27, 1949 | Paris
Dearest Mother and Dad:
Well, Bob and Arthur’s concert is over with; they didn’t play very well: they’ve gone down hill since their first two concerts in NY. They don’t play together, they always play loudly, and on top of that they don’t seem to believe what they play. The whole concert was rather dreary. I think they had to give away all the tickets to get an audience besides. One critic came up to me afterwards and said he wanted to thank me for my music, that I was the only one he was thanking. The whole thing is rather strange because I’ve gotten to like Arthur much more than I ever did before. I think it’s sad, because they were very fine musicians.
There have been lots of parties, and here everybody drinks champagne. It flows like water and is quite marvelous. Sometimes there are martinis, but mostly champagne, and people serve beautiful pastries and canapes and breast of chicken and ham and salads and consomme, all at just a party, not a dinner. I visited one of the Baronesses of Rothschild in an amazing house on the Avenue Foch, full of works of art. Even the chairs were museum pieces. And on the walls Goya, Memling and Hals. And such a display of food for a tea as one can scarcely imagine. Then the same day B and A’s concert and a party afterwards in a beautifully faded home on the Rue des Saints Peres. Also full of paintings and food. The same evening at midnight, but I didn’t go to it. Merce did some choreography for a ball that was held in Mme. Pompadour’s home, now owned by an Englishman, where the Duke and Duchess of Windsor were present. And next week I go with Mme. Tezenas to a private performance of Satie’s Socrate. In tails, and dinner with Mme. Tezenas before at 8:30. Fantastic life. There have been a number of stories and will be more, including one now. I have a piano to work on but my mind isn’t clear enough yet. To get anywhere. Last night a bunch of us went to the Circque Medrane, a beautiful single-ring circus in Montmartre. The most marvelous show, you would have loved it: ponies and horses and acrobats and dancers and clowns. And in the afternoon yesterday visited the oriental museum and saw magnificent Chinese bronzes from 14 centuries