The Selected Letters of John Cage. John Cage
who mentioned the Santa Barbara idea to Mr. Weiss, has given up her position and eloped with a painter to Spain?
Mother’s being on the newspaper makes it possible for her to get tickets for anything she wants to go to,14 so that I will be able to attend any concerts there are that I want to. I am going to go to the Philharmonic whether I like the programs or not, because I think it is very necessary to hear as much music as I can.
I am also enjoying the records Henry gave me. We have a phonograph, not a very good one, but it goes around. I find Mr. Weiss’s songs more and more beautiful.15
I know that you are probably very busy, but I should like to hear from you.
I have not tried to get in touch with the Schoenbergs but shall wait, as you asked me to, until Mr. Weiss arrives, unless, he is, by accident, at one of the concerts in Buhlig’s home.
To Pauline Schindler
January 11, 1935 | Los Angeles
Dearest Pauline:
Your letter came—your parenthesis—and I love it because I shall steer clear of all directions except a bee-line for you.
Life has been hectic and the sky beautifully cloud-filled, sunlight and then beautiful shower-baths. Palm-trees and acacias in bloom and all sorts of things I took for granted for too long. I feel bristling with spontaneity: I love you.
At last I heard some of the Kunst der Fuge. What can I say but that listening receives one into a new broad heaven, awakening and including, I feel where you have been. Nothing I have ever heard is at all similar. Oh, for a blindness to all else!
Buhlig is giving three recitals in his home Sundays: Jan. 20, 27 and Feb. 3. Beethoven, Bach, Modern (respectively). Subscriptions $2.50 or single admission $1.00. 8:30 p.m. He wanted me to tell you so that if people in Ojai coming down were interested they would know about it through you if you knew and told them. That keeps me from taking Weiss to Santa B. but I am coming to see you next week. The car has become a problem and I lose all spontaneity about asking for it, because it has to do with mother who needs it in her work.
I have been phoning people right and left and finally we have the returns of the concerts definitely up to $137.50. The idea was Calista’s in order to pay Buhlig’s railway fare.16 We won’t stop till we get to $240. It is exciting and I enjoy it because it is for Buhlig.
It is, of course, conclusively shown that I know nothing about modulation, but so much the better, because then I can go on working till I do. I hope very much that my work is not so bad that Weiss will give me up as a bad job.
I met Schoenberg and he is simplicity and genuineness itself. There was analysis of the Dance Suite hanging up on the wall like a mural.
Did I tell you that I met another teacher-to-be of mine tonight: Wendell Hoss,17 a friend of Weiss, who will teach me to play the French horn. I think it will be better than the flute. And I will stop smoking and join an orchestra.
I feel all the friction you have in reading this letter. What is an orchestra, you ask, or a French horn, or harmony, or collecting money for tickets? Nothing at all but a series of essential farces. Do they touch you? I think not.
To Pauline Schindler
January 18, 1935 | Location not indicated
Dearest,
There was a little open space the other day: I was walking and thinking of you in Ojai, an open space of country, and suddenly I knew what wildness was. I hissed and grunted and felt myself expanding with a big heart ’til for a moment I was out of my mind and only tremendously alive.
I did not know you were wild and intoxicating. And now I have only very present memories. Life has been short, has only begun. And I can see in the corner your eyes, never turned away. And your hair is some kind of a promise, I don’t know of what, perhaps that it will reach your shoulders and that I may bury myself in it.
Perhaps I am satisfied that you, whom I know are a fragment, you are entirely another’s. And yet, these days you are always with me.
It is late and I am tired and I love you and want to be with you.
I am sure there is something unexplainably and mysteriously sacred about the Valley, something including evil.
To Henry Cowell
[ca. 1935] | Location not indicated
Dear Henry,
Your card and you are too good to me. I cannot describe how much I feel towards you of warmth and love. I can feel myself losing all definition in sentimentality.
I have since writing to you before heard from Adolph and am in touch with him. I will be with him again as soon as he is settled.
I have a job now in scientific research which gives me $25.00 a week and takes my afternoons.18 It is very interesting work. I enjoy it. I have my horn lessons to pay for and a horn to buy.
I will also have a little money to begin operations and I shall begin more immediately the work for the Society.19 I am anxious to see Schönberg and get what cooperation he will give. Pro Musica is giving his III Quartett (Abas Quartett).20 Oh, Henry, my intentions are the best. I use all the time, there never is enough. I accomplish very little.
I will send you exercises soon and also will send you my subscription to the music and records.
I want to be married soon. I don’t know why I tell you but it’s very important to me.
To Pauline Schindler
February 22, 1935 | Los Angeles
Dearest Pauline:
STRAVINSKI! … The evening was pure joy—and I think that this music is natural. There are no “ideas” in it. It is, you know it, pagan, physical. It is seeing life close and loving it so. There are no whirring magical mystifications. It is all clear and precisely a dance. It is not “frozen architecture.”
I heard one person say afterward: “Henceforth I shall not take music seriously but shall enjoy it twice as much.” I was furious and turned to him and said, Take it twice as seriously and enjoy it four times as much!
Throughout the “Eight Pieces” the audience had an ostinato of ecstatic laughter. And irrepressible applause, which was not in the least unacceptable.
I spoke with Kurt Reher afterwards, a fine cellist in the orchestra. He brought me back to the “Germans.” He said, It’s nothing but The Firebird. That is real.
The Firebird, yes, and I had forgotten that it existed. It is the beautiful born from the evil. It is as though one decided to have wings and fly, and nothing else had power but that. Infernal demands are nothing to deter.
This is now music which we have and which is accepted, which does not provoke anger, hysteria or any vulgar objection. And it is a static music which is itself and which does not prophecy or go forward in an adventure. It is not a speculation. It is the worship of the Golden Calf. Moses and God are far away. And we say yes to cutting them off!
I love you. Oh that I were with you.
To Adolph Weiss
[March 30, 1935?] | Location not indicated
Dear Mr. Weiss:
You are probably now not touring any longer. Do you have definite plans for the future? I want very much to fit into them, if I may.
It seems to me like a maelstrom, here in Los Angeles. I am kept very busy, so that there is no rest. I have work for you to see. And I am anxious to go forward. The horn I love. I enjoy studying with Mr. Hoss very much. I fear that I am very slow but I am sure that he is teaching me excellently. It is the flexibility of the instrument that pleases me most.
Schoenberg is giving a class in analysis,