In early August, a regional train bound for a small town in Germany delivered Mark Swed to Halberstadt, where a packed late-Romanesque St. Burchardi Church gathered for a ritual known simply as the \u001cnote change.\u001d The diminutive modern pipe organ there sustains John Cage\u0019s \u001cOrgan2\/ASLSP\u001d across generations, with each new pitch added at wide intervals. For Swed\u0014who steps down as music critic at the Los Angeles Times\u0014the trip became a closing parenthesis to decades of writing with Cage as a constant companion.<\/p>\n
\u001cASLSP\u001d means \u001cAs Slow(ly) and Soft(ly) as Possible,\u001d a phrase adapted from James Joyce\u0019s \u001cFinnegans Wake\u001d (\u001cSoft morning City! Lsp.\u001d). Cage composed the eight-part score with open duration; in Halberstadt, the timeline stretches to 639 years. The performance began in 2001 with the intent that each change would be an event, and this summer\u0019s was advertised as \u001cFrom 7 to 8.\u001d Inside the church were 200-euro ticket holders; outside, hundreds sat on complimentary folding chairs under the sun, watching large video screens and listening through a well-tuned amplification system. The organ\u0014air electronically blown through pipes day and night\u0014has become a constant presence. Four years after Times columnist Nicolas Goldberg framed the project as a meditation on time, Swed conceded that Goldberg had been right for him, too.<\/p>\n
Cage\u0019s piece had a very different scale at its premiere in Metz, France, in 1987\u0014it lasted half an hour\u0014five years before the composer\u0019s death. Yet Cage\u0019s thinking continues to guide Swed\u0019s listening. \u001cIt\u0019s not what I don\u0019t know that scares me, it\u0019s what I do know,\u001d said Cage, a line Swed has carried from newsroom to concert hall. On the same path, a visit to the Salzburg Festival preceded his seven-hour ride to Saxony-Anhalt and the St. Burchardi \u001cJohn Cage Organ\u001d Church.<\/p>\n
The draw that first brought Swed back to Los Angeles after years in New York was Walt Disney Concert Hall, with Frank Gehry\u0019s design transforming how Angelenos see and hear their city. Swed even tried to persuade the Music Center to adopt a Cage-ism\u0014\u001cEvery seat is the best seat in the house\u001d\u0014a salute to a composer born at Good Samaritan Hospital about a mile away.<\/p>\n
Looking backward, he situates himself in a thin but potent lineage at The Times: since 1925 there have been only four classical music critics. He found roots in Isabel Morse Jones, a violinist who covered music from 1925 to 1947, championed new work (from Stravinsky and Schoenberg to avant-garde and world music), helped put the Hollywood Bowl on the map, and later founded the Music Academy of the West in Santa Barbara, originally modeled after the Salzburg Festival. Jones partnered with society page editor Crete Cage\u0014John Cage\u0019s mother\u0014in a campaign that led, three decades on, to the Music Center.<\/p>\n
Today, a \u001cwealth of new artistic leadership\u001d is on the way at the L.A. Phil, L.A. Opera, L.A. Chamber Orchestra and Pacific Symphony, with new management at the L.A. Master Chorale, the Wallis and Long Beach Opera. One block from Disney Hall, Gehry\u0019s Colburn Center is taking shape on 2nd Street; after a hard-hat tour, Swed calls its opening next year a game changer. Across town, Peter Zumthor\u0019s new LACMA building drew a remark from Swed about seeing John Cage \u001call over the place.\u001d Zumthor replied, \u001cChance is very important.\u001d MOCA\u0019s 1993 Cage celebration, \u001cRolywholyover A Circus,\u001d embraced natural light and unpredictability, later traveling to the Guggenheim in 1994 under a young curator, Michael Govan, now LACMA\u0019s leader behind the Zumthor galleries. A new Metro D Line stop will directly connect LACMA and the Colburn Center, running almost under Good Samaritan Hospital\u0014inspiring Swed\u0019s parting suggestion: call it the John Cage Express.<\/p>\n
From a barely perceptible pitch in Halberstadt to a city remade by listening, Swed\u0019s farewell traces how opening the ears can open everything else.<\/p>\n