Following the performance of “Lets Experiment!” from November 19 at the Music Forum Festival, the lecture-workshop taking place on November 20, 14.30–16.00, will focus on the composition Song Books by John Cage. Being experimental on many levels, this lecture will introduce the piece, a turning point not only in Cage’s work, and its esthetic and cultural contexts. Consecutively it will be possible for the participants to create their own practical encounters with this composition.
Commissioned by Festival d’Automne à Paris in 1970 for Cathy Berberian and Simone Rist, this mile stone in music history is an encompassing compilation of musical material, arranged in 90 solos for voice and/or theater, in eight types of notation. Directing towards multi-layered multi-media experimental theatre performances, Song Books contains and structures a wide range of references to historic and current cultural life from the arts over politics to everyday actions, and to two of Cage’s favorite iconic artists: the French composer Erik Satie and the American author Henry David Thoreau. The wealth of material in Song Books– chosen by extensive I Ching operations – truly qualifies as “Weltanschaungsmusik”, while many solos and their overall formal development need such actions by the performers, which make them almost composers themselves.