TeledyN

Only last night on Twitter, Batt revealed that the whole thing was a joke to stir debate about copyright issues.

The Planets album had spent three months at number one in the classical charts when Batt received a claim for royalties from the MCPS on behalf of Cage’s publisher. However, well aware of how copyright works, Batt had cannily registered the writing pseudonym Clint Cage with the PRS, so was able to assert that the Batt/Cage credit just meant he had written this particular sixty seconds of silence himself.

Batt claims they then agreed to disagree publicly, in order to educate people about copyright. The subsequent debate involved a musical duel between The Planets and a clarinettist from Cage’s publishers, with simultaneous performances of the Batt and Cage silences. “Mine is a much better silent piece,” asserted Batt.  “I have been able to say in one minute what Cage could only say in four minutes and 33 seconds.”

The story was brought to a close when Batt made a £1,000 donation to the John Cage Trust, which supports young artists. Batt proposed that it should be an undisclosed amount paid in a sealed envelope on the steps of the high court, giving the impression it was a settlement. Batt claims journalists were shouting out sums, and when they reached six figures, Riddle nodded, either out of mischief or nervousness. Thus a music industry myth was born.

Brilliant, brilliant, brill score Mr Womble (I've always loved Wombles) and might I add it worked beautifully to the intent and purpose, and now we can get on with today's 5pm EST performance of the Global Silent Orchestra.

There's been a heated thread of exchange over on rec.music.classical.contemporary on the music of John Cage; so good to see that John can still stir them up after so many years! Along with the admissions of incredulity also came the betrayals of the same, especially in answer to "which Cage recordings should I buy first?" at the base of long threads about which audio products the neophyte should buy. Since my blog subtitle [was] a Cage quote, since John was the second most influential collaborator in my own career (next to Udo Kasemets), I felt compelled to throw my hat into the Cage Pundit ring ...

I would not start with his recordings. I would start with his books. Without understanding the man from his own words, his recordings may bewilder and disorient. When John said you might like the sounds of your everyday world more, he was serious: He hated recordings because they were dead, stale, passed, past. He did not want you to listen to his sounds, he wanted so for us to listen to the sounds we hear right now.

That computer fan, for example, do you hear it?

that fan plays the music of John Cage. John asked us to do only one thing:

... without expectation, without anticipation, without judgement of correct or incorrect (which he proved a fallacy) or for sense from sound (another fallacy) or intonation (another fallacy) or even of silence (the big fallacy). We all live perpetually in a teaming sea of endless unrepeating, ever novel, ever new John Cage scores.

Cage builds on Varese, Schoenberg, on Satie, on so, so many names that may not be totally familiar to new audiences, and what is more, what he takes from each of these influences is only the subtle core; he is just as much a protoge of Joyce, Pound, McLuhan, of Rauchenberg and Marcel Duchamp, of Merce Cunningham and Martha Graham, a one man roaratorio tour of twentieth century art and literature, gentle and persistent as a sea breeze that can knock you flat out but only if you stand just so and listen just so.

If you asked me (and you didn't) I'd start you off on your Cage primer with "A Year from Monday" or his landmark "Silence", just to get your bearings, and then I'd invite you to join Silence, the John Cage discussion list.

Submitted by mrG on Mon, 2002-08-05 05:00