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 note change. The diminutive modern pipe organ there sustains John Cages Organ2/ASLSP across generations, with each new pitch added at wide intervals. For Swedwho steps down as music critic at the Los Angeles Timesthe trip became a closing parenthesis to decades of writing with Cage as a constant companion.
ASLSP means As Slow(ly) and Soft(ly) as Possible, a phrase adapted from James Joyces Finnegans Wake ( Soft morning City! Lsp. ). 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 summers was advertised as From 7 to 8. 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 organair electronically blown through pipes day and nighthas 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.
Cages piece had a very different scale at its premiere in Metz, France, in 1987it lasted half an hourfive years before the composers death. Yet Cages thinking continues to guide Sweds listening. Its not what I dont know that scares me, its what I do know, 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 John Cage Organ Church.
L.A., heard through Cage
The draw that first brought Swed back to Los Angeles after years in New York was Walt Disney Concert Hall, with Frank Gehrys design transforming how Angelenos see and hear their city. Swed even tried to persuade the Music Center to adopt a Cage-ism Every seat is the best seat in the house a salute to a composer born at Good Samaritan Hospital about a mile away.
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 CageJohn Cages motherin a campaign that led, three decades on, to the Music Center.
Today, a wealth of new artistic leadership 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, Gehrys 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 Zumthors new LACMA building drew a remark from Swed about seeing John Cage all over the place. Zumthor replied, Chance is very important. MOCAs 1993 Cage celebration, Rolywholyover A Circus, embraced natural light and unpredictability, later traveling to the Guggenheim in 1994 under a young curator, Michael Govan, now LACMAs leader behind the Zumthor galleries. A new Metro D Line stop will directly connect LACMA and the Colburn Center, running almost under Good Samaritan Hospitalinspiring Sweds parting suggestion: call it the John Cage Express.
From a barely perceptible pitch in Halberstadt to a city remade by listening, Sweds farewell traces how opening the ears can open everything else.
Vía yahoo.com
