ihatemusic

At work I came across an interview in Counterpunch with the British composer Howard Blake, about the influence of the CIA and the M16 (British intelligence) on classical music in the Cold War. He claims they tried to swing American and British music toward more avant-garde/serialist/modernist tendencies to culturally combat the USSR and make its music seem backward-looking. He says the BBC and the Proms were only supporting atonal composers and he was excluded. (He's a film composer, so probably entirely tonal...) Then he drops this without backing it up at all:

Howard Blake wrote: The CIA, burdened by the American cultural inferiority complex of that period, seemed to fear that their culture was regarded as producing “hillbilly” stuff. Elvis Presley and so on. “We are losing points,” they said, “we have got to prove that the whole point of the capitalist system is that it is free and people can do whatever they like, and it takes the ideas of the mind forward, and we have got to prove that the communist bloc is actually looking backward and is not free.” This led to them awarding a hefty budget from the CIA to promote this view. For instance, composers would be sought who would exemplify this principle. They discovered that the composer, John Cage, had written a totally silent piano sonata. “He comes on and just sits there and looks at the music and just thinks about it. That is really interesting. So, we’ll push that.” I mean, somebody must have said, ‘‘but don’t you think that is nuts?” I mean, it would appear to anyone with a brain that that is nuts. But they said, “We like John Cage.” So, Cage became a major figure, all of a sudden.

The interview is print-only, but Blake has it on his website: http://www.howardblake.com/press.php

Is this just conspiracy theory and him being pissed that his "light" (cf. Wikipedia) music and Flash Gordon soundtracks weren't taken seriously? He never says that Cage received assistance or was implicit in anything, but he seems to purposefully leave that implication there for the picking.

Just thought it was an interesting tidbit and if it deserves to be discredited, it should be. The guy seems pretty lame. The publication that interviewed him is usually pretty good, though, so...

Anyway, Alex Ross's Cage piece in the new New Yorker is actually good, so go read that instead.

It is definitely the case that the CIA promoted modernist arts in the way that this guy describes, as part of the cold war propaganda. In some cases they directly supported the artists and in other cases they just manipulated institutions (I think who represented America at the Venice Biennial is one of these areas). There's a good essay or book about this somewhere but I can't quite recall what it is. On Cage specifically, I just read The Roaring Silence this year (which I have to say I felt was lacking as a bio in many ways, looking for other ones I was pleased to see that Begin Again: A Biography of John Cage by Kenneth Silverman is coming out this October and the various previewshave been positive) which made no mention of this. Furthermore the Cage was already pretty influence by the performance of 4'33" which certainly did increase his notoriety at least. But financially he struggled for a long time after that constantly working and living on the edge for quite some time. So if their was any CIA involvement it'd have been behind the scenes type of stuff such as influencing festivals and the like.

One thing that the gov't did do was they'd have avant-garde music concert at US embassies and Cage, Feldman, Tudor &c all took part in those. But I really think that these composers just took these opportunities and that they were not directly involved in current propaganda: the embassies have always promoted the arts, but didn't necessarily involve the artists in any thing beyond performing. So I'd say with this guy in particular it is a bit of truth but a lot of sour grapes.

Anyway that's about all I know about this, I'll see if I can't find that good essay on this subject - perhaps someone else knows what I'm talking about here?

This article covers most of what I remember reading: Modern art was CIA 'weapon'.

Ah and the Wikipedia page is good as well: The CIA and the Cultural Cold War:

However, the CCF failed to offer much support for classical music associated with the likes of Bach, Mozart, and Beethoven because it was deemed an “authoritarian” tool of Soviet communism and wartime German and Italian fascism. The CCF also distanced itself from experimental musical avant-garde artists such as Milton Babbit and John Cage, preferring to focus on earlier European works that had been banned or condemned as “formalist” by Soviet authorities.

(emphasis mine)

There's a good essay or book about this somewhere but I can't quite recall what it is

I wonder if the book might be Who Paid the Piper?: The CIA and the Cultural Cold War (1999), by Frances Stonor Saunders, the author of the article you link in your second post. There's also a lot of interesting material about the interference of the CIA in the arts in Europe after the Second World War, and the paranoiac climate it created, in Paris Interzone: Richard Wright, Lolita, O and Others on the Left Bank, 1946-60 by James Campbell, though the focus is more specifically on writers.

I agree with everything you said in your reply. It seems likely that Blake isn't justified in singling out Cage and merely does so for personal reasons. To qualify it slightly, It should be taken into account that information of this kind is obviously very difficult to come by, and that part that is released by governments under certain conditions is often restricted in ways that would prevent music biographers from doing original research.

The CIA did involve itself particualrly with music in post-war Europe, but this was largely a matter of "the battle of the orchestras," centering on traditional classical music and the Berlin Philharmonic, and of the fast-tracking of the denazification of classical musicians who could be enlisted quickly on the "right" side. As for modernism and experimentalism, there is a passage in the Saunders book about the Darmstadt school (which Cage would later be involved with, but not for some years). The school is described as "a bold initiative of the American military government," but the official report about the first concerts by the Office of the Military Government US was that "it was generally conceded that much of this music was worthless and had better been left unplayed. The over-emphasis on twelve-tone music was regretted . . . It was generally felt that next year's course should follow a different, more catholic pattern." Saunders concludes: "Darmstadt, of course, was to become the citadel of progressive experimentation in music within a few years."

Another example of CIA involvement is the International Conference of Twentieth Century Music in Rome in the early 1950s, at which the Congress for Cultural Freedom (that is, the CIA) "announced their commitment to the promotion of avant-garde composition." The programmes included music by Berg, Elliott Carter, Luigi Nono, and other "new" composers, including Lou Harrison.

Thanks. I thought the Cage thing seemed a bit odd, but also didn't know a lot of that about the cultural side of the cold war.

is that stonor saunders book worth reading?

the other thing about cage is that even if he got some secret CIA backing, it's not like he was a nobody - look at his body of work, his writings, talks, etc. also, i get the sense reading interviews with the new york school composers or talking to people that knew cage that he really was a friendly, hustling, busy, social mentor who really was in the middle of a lot of things. (here's something i just read in an interview with kenneth silverman: "Cage worked harder than any other person I've ever known anything about.")

anyway, i came on this thread to say that the alex ross article really is quite good, with some surprising details and good insights. i appreciated the part about cage's income, because i always do wonder how people like him made it work (partially by selling mushrooms to the four seasons?). the main sources seem to be silverman's book and the gann 4'33" book. did we already talk about the latter? anyone read it?

-jesse

Someone sniped at me for saying I was unhappy with the Gann writing about zen and Cage [why did he go there with such an academic and unfamiliar perspective?]. The Roaring Silence was o.k. [some pretty rich anecdotal stuff].
I don't think [Hatta knows better than me] whether a solid Cage bio has been written to date. If I consider the collective books I've read about Cage, I have encountered some insightful writing. Nothing integrative yet, though-tying his work ethic, zen sensibility, the *zeitgeist*, the compositions, etc all together.

The Stonor Saunders book definitely is worth reading, though there isn't very much in it that's specifically about music. I think David Revill's The Roaring Silence is the nearest thing to a Cage biography that's come out to date. James Pritchett's The Music of John Cage is the most complete view of the music that I've read. I'd be surprised if there weren't plenty more in the pipeline.

It's clear from Saunders and other things I've read around the subject that while some of the interests of the CIA and of avant-garde artists like Cage might have run in parallel for a while, each was exploiting the other without any sympathy for their deeper aims. Cage's approving references to Mao in the 1970s would hardly seem to mark him out as a CIA stooge.

the Gann book is pretty thin (in both senses), probably best for neophytes and not IHMers. I don't know Silverman's work, but being on Knopf is very promising and I'll probably pick that one up when it's out in a week or so.

The Roaring Silence was an enjoyable read but IMO it suffers in three ways: First off its about Cage the man, the myth the legend moreso than Cage the composer - ie it isn't really about the music per se. Secondly it is incomplete - it ends a couple of years before Cage died and has strangely not had a second edition with an extra chapter or afterward or whathave you. Thirdly I think that the author as a musician was a bit too inside, that is a better perspective would be an outsider who knows a lot of principles, understands the music issues and so on. This is why I think that the Calvin Tomkins essay, while obviously even more incomplete is better - his perspective is simply more interesting (he's a better writer too, but there you go). The Pritchett book is definitely where to go for insight into the music. Reading those two, plus Cage's books I think gives one a pretty well rounded picture, but I look forward to the new bio, which looks a bit more exhaustive and hope that it is a better synthesis of the man and music, because both are frankly interesting.

I haven't read Gann's book though I hear it has a few interesting anecdotes of its own. But that series that its in (forget what it is) is always supposed to lean more toward a "dummies guide to..." anyway. So I don't really fault Gann. What I do fault Gann for is that his way insider knowledge seems to have ended in the early 90s. I heard a good in depth interview with him w/r/t this book and while he likes and laud's Cage he thinks his compositional ideas haven't really had much influence. Well I think he is correct about that for the composers in the Post-Minimalist tradition that is his primary area of interest (plus of course the academic last bastion of serialism). However I think, especially in the years post Cage's death, that his ideas have really gained traction. The Wandelweiser composers (and of course Gann is only going to talk composers here) would be a good example of a number of composers exploring his ideas. And not just silence which has always had a bit more currency, there is plenty of use of indeterminacy which Gann particularly thinks wasn't used much by anyone else. I dig Gann for the most part, even if I'm not as into the music he champions, but I think he really blew it making these sort of claims without really investigating the scenes beyond his own.