John Cage

Includes lectures, essays, diaries and other writings, including "How to Improve the World (You Will Only Make Matters Worse)" and "Juilliard Lecture."

"This book illustrates a collection of music manuscripts which was made in recent years to benefit the Foundation for Contemporary Performance Arts... The text for the book is the result of a process employing I-Ching chance operations. These determined how many words regarding his work were to be written by or about which of two hundred and sixty-nine composers. Where these passages (never more than sixty-four words, sometimes only one) have been especially written for this book, they are preceded by a paragraph sign and followed by the author's name. Other remarks were chosen or written by the editors--John Cage and Alison Knowles. Not only the number of words and the author, but the typography too--letter size, intensity, and typeface--were all determined by chance operations. This process was followed in order to lessen the difference between text and illustrations." --preface.

One of the twentieth century's most influential and iconoclastic protagonists, John Cage (1912-1992) may be described not so much as a composer, artist and author, as a thinker who applied his ideas equivalently to sound, visual art and writing. As with his music, the use of chance operations--in particular via the Chinese Book of Changes, or I Ching--was central to Cage's approach to visual art, determining technique, the placement of forms and even tonal values. Every Day is a Good Day provides the first broad assessment of Cage's art, and is fully illustrated with plates of his drawings, watercolors and prints, including series such as Where R=Ryoanji (1983-92). Cage's working methods and philosophies are brought to light in new interviews with key collaborators: printmaker and writer Kathan Brown, founder of Crown Point Press; Laura Kuhn, Director of the John Cage Trust; artist Ray Kass; and Julie Lazar, curator of Cage's composition for a museum, Rolywholyover: A Circus. Extracts from a 1966 interview between John Cage and critic Irving Sandler are also reproduced. At the heart of the book is a "Companion to John Cage," a selection of quotes by Cage and notes on key themes and influences, all of which make it essential reading on this important figure of the twentieth-century avant garde.

"Between 1983 and 1992 John Cage created some 170 pencil drawings, an intensive exploration of Japan's most famous Zen garden of the Ryoanji Temple in Kyoto. The Ryoanji drawings can be seen as the opus magnum of Cage's visual work, illustrating aethetic and conceptual reflections relevant to his entire oeuvre. In cooperation with Pinakothek der Moderne in Munich, which owns an extensive selection of Ryoanji drawings, and the John Cage Trust in New York, Schirmer/Mosel is publishing John Cage - Ryoanji, which for the first time presents the complete series of drawings 'Where R = Ryoanji.'"--Publisher description.

These early letters from John Cage to Merce Cunningham will be revelatory, for while the two are widely known as a dynamic, collaborative duo, the story of how and when they came together has never been fully revealed. In the 39 letters of this collection, spanning 1942-46, Cage shows himself to be a man falling deeply in love. When they first met at the Cornish School in Seattle in the 1930s, Cage was 26 to Cunningham's 19. Their relationship was purely that of teacher and student, and Cage was also very much married. It was in Chicago that their romantic relationship would begin. Cage was teaching at Moholy-Nagy's School of Design when Cunningham passed through town as a dancer with the Martha Graham Company, appearing on stage on March 14, 1942. Cage's letters, which begin in earnest a week later, are increasingly passionate, distraught, romantic and confused, and occasionally contain snippets of poetry and song. They are also more than love letters, as we see intimations that resonate with our experience of the later John Cage. 'Love, Icebox' takes its shape from these letters--transcribed, chronologically ordered, and in some instances reproduced in facsimile. Laura Kuhn, Cage's assistant from 1986 to 1992 and now longtime director of the John Cage Trust, adds a foreword, afterword and running commentary. Photographic illustrations of their final 18th Street loft in New York City, as well as personal and household objects left behind, remind us of the substance and rituals of their long-shared life.

John Cage: A Mycological Foray' draws readers across the idiosyncratic, mushroom-suffused, innermost landscape of celebrated American composer John Cage. Upon the remarkable journey with Cage, one encounters assorted photographs, compositions, and contemplations; all in the very same unexpected fashion one encounters various flora and fungi species while mushroom foraging. Volume I encompasses Cage's mycological-oriented indeterminacy stories, diary excerpts, and essays; and the complete transcript of Cage's 1983 performance, 'Mushrooms et Variationes'. Volume II offers the inaugural reproduction of Cage's 1972 portfolio, 'Mushroom Book'; authored in collaboration with illustrator Lois Long and botanist Alexander H. Smith.

Part artist's book, part cookbook, and part children's book, Mud Book is a spirited, if not satirical, take on almost every child's first attempt at cooking and making. Through the humble mud pie--add dirt and water! Size of book is 5 inches by 5 inches.