Volume 14, Number 8 · April 23, 1970
Cage and the Collage of Noises
By Virgil Thomson
Notations
by John Cage
Something Else, 320 pp., $4.50 (paper)
A Year from Monday: New Lectures and Writings
by John Cage
Wesleyan, 167 pp., $1.95 (paper)
Silence: Lectures and Writings
by John Cage
MIT, 267 pp., $2.95 (paper)
Virgil Thomson: His Life and Music
by Kathleen Hoover, by John Cage
Buchet-Chastel, 341 pp., 18 francs
In 1967 John Cage, working at the University of Illinois in Urbana with the engineer-composer Lejaren Hiller, began to plan, design, and move toward the final realization in sound (with visual admixtures) of a work lasting four and a half hours and involving a very large number of mechanical devices controlled by engineers, along with seven harpsichords played by hand. Nearly two years later this work, entitled HPSCHD (a six-letter version, suited to computer programming, of the word harpsichord) was produced on May 16, 1969 in the university's Assembly Hall, seating 18,000 people.
Review, 5591 words
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