| Category: | Musical composition |
| Dated: | January-Febraury, 1939 |
| Instrumentation: | 2 Pianos (partially four-hands), various toy-whistles and sirens |
| Duration: | ? |
| Premiere and performer(s): | March 24, 1939 at the Cornish School in Seattle at the "Hilarious Dance Concert", with additional music by Henry Cowell and George Frederick McKay. Performed with the choreography of Bonnie Bird, danced by Bonnie Bird, Merce Cunningham and others |
| Dedicated to: | --- |
| Choreography: | Bonnie Bird |
| Published: | --- |
| Manuscript: | Cage's Score and some parts (holograph, signed, in pencil and ink - 50 p.); Fragment for percussion, uncertain, may be related to this composition (holograph in pencil - 4 p.), both at the New York Public Library. The manuscripts of Cowell and McKay are located in the music archive at Northwestern University, Evanston, Illinois. |
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Composed in collaboration with Henry Cowell, George Frederick McKay, Silvestre Revueltas, and Amadeo Roldán;
libretto Jean Cocteau: Les mariés de la Tour Eiffel. Contents of the composition: You are on the 1st platform of the Eiffel Tower (Cowell) - Wedding march: Rubbish music - Everybody is deeply moved - Bravo (after Trouville Bathing Beauty) - Massacre - Photographer's case - After child - Radio grams - Radiograms (cont.) pt.2 - Lion - Help it's biting me! - Dirge, funeral march & eulogy - 3 o'clock and that ostrich isn't back yet - Quadrille - Oof, what a dance! - Return of the ostrich - But who are these two gentlemen who have just come in time to upset the photographer again? - Just in time - The dealer and collector leave the Eiffel Tower - Wedding march (exit) - Closing time! (after exit) - Toccata. Various sections of the music were written by Cage, Henry Cowell and George McKay. Libretto by Jean Cocteau. Bonnie Bird: "So we developed what we eventually called "music by portfolio". He wrote (...) the pieces that I would like him to write, and actually what he did was to write the opening and the closing, the train music. He sent us, then, about twenty little themes by mail with a San Quentin stamp (...). So John, then, would play on piano the themes, and then we would select one--or two or three that we thought were really close to what we wanted and send it back. And then he'd write another section, you know, and send it off to us. Two or three times we had this, because he was very fast, and he wrote music this way, and it was played on the piano, because we didn't have anything else. John wrote the speech for the General, and I cast Merce as the General. (...) Syvilla Fort was an ostrich and she was a Trouville bathing beauty." (from: "BONNIE BIRD GUNDLACH: DANCER AND DANCE EDUCATOR. Interviews Conducted by William Riess and Heidi Gundlach- Smith July to November 1994". The Bancroft Library. University of California, Berkeley.) Sources: New York Public Library online catalog; Paul van Emmerik: Thema's en Variaties; William Fetterman: John Cage's theatre pieces: Notations and performances; Paul van Emmerik's A John Cage Compendium; William Riess and Heidi Gundlach-Smith: Bonnie Bird Gundlach: Dancer and Dance Educator. |