The wonders of the internet listen to John Cage and Morton

Feldman in conversation
Spend an afternoon with Cage and Feldman. You’ll see the world through different eyes

Tom Service
Mon 17 Aug 2015 12.53 BST

This is surely what the internet is for: among the most truly wonderful four hours, 13 minutes and 28 seconds
there are in the world, is this: apparently unedited conversations between John Cage and Morton Feldman.

It’s a compilation of four open-ended conversations between the two at the studios of radio station WBAI in
New York, produced between July 1966 and January 1967 (they were also published as a book). The effect is
of eavesdropping on two of the most brilliant minds and personalities of the 20th century talking about the
ideas, music, people, philosophy, art – and much, much more – that matter to them.

It’s also a record of a deep friendship that began (as you can hear about 1hr 50mins in), as Cage says, with
Webern, when “we both walked out of a Philharmonic concert in which Webern had just been played, and we
shared the desire not to hear anything else because we had been so deeply moved”.

Listening to them, the effect is of spending precious hours in the unmediated company of people who just
happen to be two of the most probing minds in musical history. As well as meditations on “intrusion” – Cage
wants Feldman to accept unintended sounds in his music and in his life, or how to approach composition for
the harpsichord, or whether Varèse is as equivalently or differently influential as Webern, you also hear the
pauses, tics, and mannerisms in the way both of them talk. Listen to Feldman’s New York drawl, and his
striking of match after match for the cigarettes he chain-smokes, or Cage’s gently but firmly interrogative
“mmm?” at the end of many of his sentences, and their infectious laughter.
‘I never heard anybody boo a transistor radio’ … Morton Feldman.

Unlike the more formal records of Feldman or Cage speaking or writing, you’re privy in these conversations
to the two men working ideas out rather than presenting finely worked philosophies or arguments. It’s like
being given access to their combined creative process at a key moment in both of their musical lives. Both
were on the cusp of some of their most important creative periods (Cage was in his mid-50s, Feldman in his
early 40s). It’s one of those rare things where you feel you’re actually in the company of the speakers, and the
half-century between us and them disappears when you’re listening. I urge you to play it and spend an
afternoon with John and Morty. It’s an experience that will change you.
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Topics
Classical music
Tom Service on classical music
John Cage
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