"Experimentalists and independents are favored": John Edmunds in conversation with Peter Yates and John Cage, 1959-61

Notes, June, 2008 by Amy C. Beal

Cage and Yates had corresponded as early as 1948. By early 1953 Yates had become acquainted with Cage's music but knew little about his "present ideas" other than what he learned from Henry and Sidney Cowell, and from David Tudor, who visited Los Angeles around that time. (16) In August 1953, while Yates was in the early stages of trying to pinpoint a valid characterization of the "experimental tradition," Cage clarified to Yates how his music and Harry Partch's music differed. Cage pointed out that his prepared piano had little to do with concerns about pitch or frequency, but rather with attack and decay, timbre, duration, amplitude, etc. (17) Furthermore, he explained: "The path we are on is not a path, not linear, but a space extending in all directions." He added: "Because it is no longer a question of moving along stepping stones, 12 or 43 or what have you, but one can move (or just appear) to or at any point in this total space." (18) In response, the practical-thinking Yates remarked:

The chief difficulty with, your work as with Partch's, from my point of
view, is that 1 can't do anything about, it. Yon are out of reach of
any performer not specialty (rained, and I can') afford to bring you or
a trained protagonist out here to overcome this lag. Sound in space may
need no excuse, but one has to know bow to get there. (19)

Just a few years later, in May 1959, Cage complimented Yates's growing tenacity: "I am of the opinion you are clearly the One in America who writes about music (20) {In December of that year, Yates announced to Cage: 'John Edmunds has become your newest devotee." (21) Yates was particularly struck by the recording of Cage's Twenty-Five-Year-Retrospective Concert, which became available soon after the 1958 event. (22) In December 1959 Cage wrote to Yates in response to Yates's focusing his attention on Lou Harrison, Harry Partch, and Cage himself. Cage advocated the music of other composers, including Morton Feld-man, Earle Brown, Christian Wolff, Richard Maxfield, Conlon Nan-carrow, Gunther Schuller, Henry Brant--but also "Europeans who imbibe American actions": the British Cornelius Cardew, the Italian Sylvano Bussotti, and the Korean Nam June Paik (23) In general, though they corresponded at length, Cage was uncomfortable with Yates's outspoken chauvinism. (24)

As Cage became involved with Edmunds and Yates and their various publishing and recording projects, he was also busy pursuing a permanent publisher (he first approached Hans W. Heinsheimer at Schirmer but was rejected; later he established a connection to Walter Hinrichsen at C. F. Peters). At the same time he was putting the finishing touches on his debut prose collection Silence: Lectures and Writings, which was being prepared for publication by Wesleyan University Press. It would be hard to overestimate the impact of these two events for the next few decades, since the nearly simultaneous availability of Cage's scores and his writings-to-date suddenly made a wider reception of his work more possible than ever before. In his disgruntled search for a publisher--he said he was angry not because "my work is unpublished, unperformed, etc." but because "these facts are part and parcel of the general lack of an intellectual life in the field of American music--he also corresponded with Edmunds about the role public libraries might play in this dilemma. (25) Cage outlined four possible "paths" toward the publication of music by living American composers: (1) a composers' cooperative; (2) publication outside the United States; (3) publication by an American university (Cage mentioned Wesleyan, Dartmouth, or the University of Illinois); or (4) "The free publication (or distribution) of music by the Public Libraries of this country." (26) While Cage felt "very strongly the obligation to get my own music out of my hands," he also felt that the public library option was the best solution because "this means of publication should be made known as available to any composer, regardless of his fame or quality (just as the libraries contain all the novels, good, bad, and indifferent)." (27) Cage's speculations suggest how libraries might have stepped up to more -vigorously support living American composers; Edmunds, for a few short years, tried to provide that support.