Amsterdam, Friday April 13 - 20:30
LECTURES ON
Musical lectures by John Cage and Tom Johnson
with:
Tom Johnson * Joep Dorren
Stichting Perdu
kloveniersburgwal 86, Amsterdam
(020) 422 0542 * EUR 6 / EUR 5
In 1949 John Cage wrote his Lecture on Nothing. In this lecture, Cage introduced his rhythmical techniques. But he doesn't do so by explaining them, but by composing them - only, using words as his material instead of notes.
This was the first work of a new type, the composed lecture: a spoken text that has the properties of a musical composition. A special and perfect fusion of form and content. Some decades after, the minimalist composer Tom Johnson wrote pieces in which text, music and didacticism form a complete unity, among which the Lecture With Repetition (1975) - a lecture on and with repetition, in which the audience is invited to participate.
Tonight, Tom Johnson will present his own work and the actor and musician Joep Dorren will read Cage.
3 comments:
it would be great to have some mp3 of this reading !
Sounds wonderful. Yet another reason why I would love to live in Amsterdam. I agree with Marco.
Hi Marco, hi Jamba, thanks for the nice words!
Unfortunately, we didn't record the reading. Interestingly though, there are passages in the Cage lecture which take position against recording. on top of that, Tom Johnson pointed out that recordings of these particular lectures of his tend not to work.
Tom did his "question with repetition" where every single sentence is read three times, possibly more or less though depending on whether the audience shouts "more!" or "enough!", leading in fact to surprising musical results. He also did a "Lecture with question period" which has the lecturer suggest a huge list of questions people may ask the lecturer after the lecture, followed by a question period where the audience and the lecturer discuss questions.
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