Notes on the death of John Cage (1912-1992)
John Cage (1912-1992) died thirty-two years ago today, a few weeks before his eightieth birthday. Merce Cunningham, his life partner, came home from rehearsals on August 11 to find that Cage, lying on their kitchen floor, had had some kind of stroke. Cunningham called a friend with medical skills, who observed Cage’s eyes at the moment when matters became irreversible. They and others accompanied Cage to Saint Vincent’s Medical Center, where he died the next day. Cunningham, though he took some persuasion to do this, spent some time alone with Cage before his death.
Cunningham, always a worker (like all the men of his family), used some of the time to make notes for the dance he was then preparing (Enter). On the day after Cage’s death, he returned to work with his company, initially on rehearsing older choreography.
Various company legends sprang up, not least that he inserted into Enter (for the dancer Alan Good) the precise physical position on the floor in which Cunningham had found Cage on August 11 - but this is erroneous. The position that Cunningham gave to Good - before Cage’s death - was one observed in a Maillol sculpture (River) in the sculpture garden in the Museum of Modern Art.
It’s fair to say that, though Cage had not been active in the daily matters of the Merce Cunningham Dance Company for some years, his death had a profoundly destabilising effect on that company: within the next eighteen months, half the dancers left. The connection of his death to their departures is neither simple nor obvious: few (perhaps only two) had known him remotely well. But Cage was some kind of anchor. Without him, Cunningham - despite his immediate return to work - found it excessively hard to make certain high-level administrative decisions: a situation that was not resolved for several years.
Cage was a strong personality. I hope it is true, as has been said, that Cunningham said the following very Beckettian words about his death “I come home at the end of the day and John’s not there. On the other hand, I come home at the end of the day and John’s not there.”
Although the River pose in Enter for Alan Good was not the literal depiction of Cage’s post-stroke position into which some soon mythologised it, it did derive from Cunningham’s and Cage’s recent joint attendance at some Cage concerts in that sculpture courtyard at the Museum of Modern Art: a shared memory.
And Cunningham let it be known that one of his own two solos in Enter was a conscious reference to Cage’s famous 4’33” (1952), in which the pianist plays nothing but silence - in three sections. In this solo, Cunningham simply stood still - facing front, as I remember - for the same three time-lengths into which Cage divided his 4’33” of silence.
Discussion of Cage can - should - continue forever. Was he an artist and/or a prankster and/or a philosopher? Perhaps nobody now can fully understand him anyway, but I certainly do not think anyone can fully appreciate him who does not realise how deeply he loved not just Cunningham (their relationship was not simple; they only began to co-habit permanently for their last seventeen years, with separate bedrooms for part or all of that time) but Cunningham’s choreography, too.
Something too little known about Cage is that he was one of life’s enthusiasts (something he shared with Susan Sontag - of whom it’s also too seldom said). I met him twice, neither for any conversation of length; but on both occasions it was he who needed to praise me. The first was in summer 1980. He, Cunningham, others, and I had all been on a panel in London about aspects of how their music and dance did or didn’t exemplify collaboration; I had recently reviewed several programmes of the Cunningham company’s Sadler’s Wells season in The Guardian. As soon as the panel was over, these two legends made a bee-line for me.
Cage: “We like your writing.”
Cunningham: “Not about my work, I don’t mean that, I’ve liked your writing on other things.”
Cage: “We think you should move to America.”
Cunningham: “You could replace -“
Cage, with emphasis: “- Barnes.” (The legendary Clive Barnes, once pro -Cunningham but now far less so, was then the critic of the New York Post.)
Nine years later, at a vast dinner for two hundred people in the Victoria & Albert Museum in honour of Cage, Cunningham, and Jasper Johns, I was seated at the same table as Cage. His eyes gradually showed that I was the one guest at that table whom he could not identify. We weren’t able to speak until I was leaving. As we shook hands, I gave him my name. (In 1988, I had written about Cunningham in my debut piece in The New Yorker. In 1989, I wrote about Cunningham choreography more than once in the Financial Times.) At once, Cage registered what the name meant to him. “Oh,” he said in that soft, wry voice of his: “The marvellous critic.” As you can imagine, I now wish I had those words and that attribution in stone. Alas, I never met him again. Still, though these memories are good for my own ego, I tell them here because they show Cage’s need to enthuse and to praise: an aspect of his personality too seldom recorded.
Cunningham wrote annual letters to his two brothers, often in October or November, generally taking them through the events of his year. For 1992, he wrote to his elder brother Dorwin (“DJ”) and his wife Jo later than usual, in December. I quote from that letter:
“…July and August were classes, rehearsals, and then JC died. A huge stroke, I found him on the floor, still breathing, but with difficulty, He was taken to St. Vincent’s Emergency Ward, lasted over night aided by a great deal of apparatus, died the next afternoon, no pain, but he was gone. Shock was heard around the world, the phone calls came from as far away as Australia, Brazil, Alaska, he had touched an enormous number of people by his spirit. But it was, and is, harsh.
“Fortunately, I had my work to go back to, another new dance called ENTER (from the dance computer). It gave me something immediate to be attached to. And so many friends who have helped, the outpouring of letters, notes, gifts was overwhelming, & I managed with my work and the attention to matters at the studio, not to collapse too often. (DJ, your remembering about Dad when in court, deeply touching).
“JC’s affairs were huge, covering of course the music, but also his graphic work, his writings, and requests for his letters, for interviews about him has been enormous. But the executor, Bennet Grutman, said nothing could be done until probate has been taken care of; it left me free to work with the dancers, you will understand why, we’ve made three tours to Europe since September, the 1st to Luxembourg and Frankfurt (A month long Festival of JC’s work to be the celebration for the 80thbirthday, I think he quit so he wouldn’t have to go through it); the second, after one week in NYC, back to Germany (Dresden, Cottbus), France, two cities; Antwerp for a week, and then Northampton and London.
“Back here for two weeks, during which we gave our party for John. Many people had inquired about a Memorial, I knew JC wouldn’t want that, eulogies, he wouldn’t stay, thought about it, and decided the best thing to do was to give JC a party, invited all his friends, we decided Oct 31, Halloween, was a good date, we were in NYC, so we compiled lists (we is all the people in the CDFinc who were marvelously helpful), and over the 4 weeks of the second tour (Dresden- London) sent out 2500 invitations, many of which I hand wrote notes on (in airport terminals, hotel rooms, cafes, backstage). The party went from 3:00 in the afternoon till 10:00 that night in our large studio, the guards downstairs guiding people to the elevators, said they figured 1750-2000 people turned up over the hours. From Brazil, from Europe, from Canada, from the West Coast, I stood and sat the whole time, greeting everyone who came near me, if they looked gloomy I smiled and said, ‘Isn’t it a great party?’. We brought 3 Irish musicians from Dublin who had played in Roaratorio, JC’s large work out for Finnegans Wake, and they were a knockout, the singer Noreen particularly. The food was tamales, tabouli, olives from a 9th Avenue Deli, the best in NYC.”
One of those who attended this wake - though very few realised - was Cage’s ex-wife, Xenia. Her husband’s affair with Cunningham had been the chief cause of their marriage’s breakdown in 1944. She and Cage had found different ways to recover from the trauma: he by his discovery and study of Zen Buddhism, she by (probably Jungian) psychoanalysis. Her career as a surrealist sculptor (“sculptress” was the word more often used) seems to have faltered, and never seriously recovered. Long after the divorce, she once answered her telephone “Mrs John Cage”. Cage himself often found her acerbic - though he was once desperately upset to find that, when short of money, she had gone to other friends for help rather than to him. Too little is known of her in those years. But it is impressive that Cunningham invited her to Cage’s wake; and impressive that she came.
Monday 12 August