“TApE, vOICE, FEEDBACK…”
How John Cage and his cohorts shaped the avant-garde
I T was American composer and philosopher John Cage, in his classic essay The Future Of
Music, who stated, “The use of noise to make music will continue and increase until we reach a music produced through the use of electrical instruments which will make available for musical purposes any and all sounds that can be heard.” A singular spirit whose research extended to Zen Buddhism and mycology (the study of fungi), Cage also realised, as early as the 1930s, that noise was the future.
At their best, Cage’s ‘noisiest’ compositions are compelling constructions that mutate according to both players and climate: Imaginary Landscape
No 1 (1939), for example, is written for two variable-speed turntables; later, he’d draw on tapes, amplified plants, conch shells, fire and other natural objects to make delicately noisy pieces. in his wake came composers like David Behrman, whose early piece Wolfman (1964) uses tape, voice and feedback to build an overwhelming avalanche of sound deemed, at one point, threatening to the listener’s health.
By the time of Cage collaborator David Tudor’s Rainforest (19681973), the noise had become sculptural, its gorgeous panorama of brittle chirps and buzzes one part of an entire experiential environment. The field was wide open, and avant-garde composition was exploring noise as just one of many potential materials in its experimental armoury. JD