Talk:Works for prepared piano by John Cage

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Bacchanale

The footnote to the composition year for this piece states,

"There is some controversy as to when the piece was composed: 1940 is given in Nicholls p. 77, and in Pritchett's catalogue in New Grove; but 1938 is given by Cage himself in a 1982 interview cited in Kostelanetz, 62. This article will assume 1940 is the correct date."

I fail to see the logic of this choice. If the composer himself states that he composed the piece in 1938, it seems that this is more likely to be the correct date than either of the secondary sources. Cage has given the 1938 composition date for this piece multiple times.

• In the forward fro Richard Bunger's "The Well-Prepared Piano", he notes that he working with Bonnie Bird of the Cornish School in Seattle, Washington (one of her dancers for whom he composed Bacchanale) "in the thirties". 1940 is not "the thirties".

http://johncage.org/preparedPiano/howThePiano.html

• In Richard Kostelanetz's biography, John Cage, Cage informs Kostelanetz, "In Fall of 1938, I composed music for Bacchanale..." (pg. 39), and "...in 1938 when the Negro Dancer, Syvilla Fort, asked me to write for her Bacchanale." (pg. 129)

Kostelanetz, Richard; John Cage; Allen Lane; University of California, 1974. ISBN:0713907622

• The above Kostelanetz reference is cited in the same paragraph of this article as a source for the information "the whole piece was finished in just three days". That information comes from the same Cage statement to Kostelanetz in which he gives the year of composition as 1938. If we are going to trust the accuracy of Cage's recollection as to how long it took to write the piece, why not trust it as to when he wrote the piece?

• In a lecture by Cage in 1978, at Union College in Schenectady, NY, which I attended, Cage spoke of his invention ("discovery", he termed it) of the prepared piano "in 1938".

• Bacchanale is widely acknowledged to be Cage's first piece for prepared piano. His piece Second Construction includes a prepared piano, and was composed in 1939. If Bacchanale was his first piece for prepared piano, it must have been written in or before 1939, prior to Second Construction. (See this Wikipedia article, and the full list of John Cage's compositions.)

It is true that there exists a manuscript copy of the score to Bacchanale with the annotation "Seattle, 1940". However, the date of a score is not synonymous with the data of composition. In fact, this was almost never the case in the days before computers and photocopies, when final scores were typically hand-copied in India-ink; a final copy wouldn't have been made until after the composition had been finished, either in a notebook pencil sketch, or in the composer's head. Also, if a copy of the piece were needed, a less-than-well-to-do composer (as Cage was in 1940) would have had to make the copy by hand, in ink. Such copies were often dated with the date of copy.

Really, I think John Cage knew John Cage better than either Pritchett or Nicholls.

Hmm. I'm responsible for both the remark and the choice, being pretty much the sole author of this article (a fact which saddens me very much, might I add). My reasons were quite simple: every major source I could lay my hands on specified 1940: New Grove, Pritchett, Revill, Nicholls, and of course the score as published by Edition Peters (which was, hopefully, supervised by Cage at least to some degree?) I did find Cage's remark in the interview mentioned in the footnote, and it is precisely out of respect for the composer's own words that I have included the footnote in the first place. Now that you cite another late interview in which Cage specifies 1938, perhaps it is time to convert the footnote into actual text. I don't think it would be wise to simply state "1938" and reference Cage - surely you don't think Pritchett, Revill, Nicholls et al. are all such sloppy researchers as to never check their information, or not be aware of how a date on a manuscript may not be the date of composition? Assuming good faith, they must have had their reasons.

As for Second Construction, a quick look at New Grove and Pritchett shows that 1940, and not 1939 is the accepted date of composition (please feel free to cite anything that testifies to the contrary). And in fact, Pritchett mentions it being composed two months before Bacchanale. The latter is widely known as Cage's first piece for prepared piano solo, not Cage's first piece to use prepared piano. So that part of the argument does not hold. --Jashiin (talk) 00:02, 9 October 2015 (UTC)

"[S]urely you don't think Pritchett, Revill, Nicholls et al. are all such sloppy researchers as to never check their information, or not be aware of how a date on a manuscript may not be the date of composition?"

Why believe secondary sources over Cage, a primary source? For all you know these secondary sources relied of second hand information. Publishers are notorious for screwing up dates; moreover, there is no direct relation between date of composition and date of publication. When a composer completed a work it can sit in a drawer for years unpublished and without a copyright. Finally, did anyone bother to check the archives of Cornish Institute to see if there is a record of Sylvia Forte's dance concert? If Cage prepared the piano for that concert, the date of performance might support his recollection of the year the piece was composed. 2601:647:100:A9BA:B1BA:3574:579:597E (talk) 06:39, 27 January 2024 (UTC)

Correction:Syvilla Forte. In her online biography it states that she entered Cornish Institute in 1932 and moved to LA to dance for Katherine Dunham in 1937. It also states she met Cage there and he wrote music for her. See https://www.blackpast.org/african-american-history/fort-syvilla-1917-1975/

The problem this approach is the the online sources contradict each other. One can see the same phrases repeated. The Cornish Institute archives should have some record of the dates and programs for the dance performances 1937-1940. That would offer a fairly definitive date and resolve this question. 2601:647:100:A9BA:B1BA:3574:579:597E (talk) 07:01, 27 January 2024 (UTC)