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February 03, 2009
Rozart, Rose Art, Ade!
Lisa Hirsch reports that Brandeis University has decided to close the Rose Art Museum. Above and beyond its importance for the visual arts, the Rose was the site for the premiere of John Cage's Rozart Mix (1965), one of the most exuberant of Cage's happening-like works, requested from Cage while Alvin Lucier was on the Brandeis faculty and premiered on an evening concert which also included the first performance of Lucier's Music for Solo Performer, a work involving enormously amplified brainwaves.Cage's verbal score requires a large number of tape loops (Cage suggests 88 loops — the same number of keys on a standard piano), each composed of thousands of small pieces spliced together in all possible physical orientations, using any sound sources, but largely speech, played back on a large number of tape machines. Whenever a loop breaks during a performance, Cage instructs that it be repaired and then stored away, not to be reused, a bit of discipline with a zen-like flavor. Anticipating the Rose performance, Cage imagined the possibility of loops stretching over the water fountains, and perhaps requiring some amount of wading.
I had a small part in the preparations for one performance of Rozart Mix, at Wesleyan in 1987, under the supervision of Lucier, Chris Schiff and with the participation of Cage in both some of the splicing and the performance, where he sat cheerfully in the middle of 12 tape machines, each of which was run by pairs of young people with good haircuts. As is too often the case, this electronic music event was largely the labor of males, but the evening splicing and pasta sessions at Lucier's house redeemed themselves somewhat in that they took on some of the spirit and character of a quilting bee. I like to think of this as our Dr. Chicago-meets-Judy-Chicago moment.
Originally from Renewable Music, ReBlogged by newmusicrebloggers on Feb 3, 2009 at 08:10 AM