De-Linearizing Musical Continuity: John Cage's Aesthetics of "Interpenetration without

Obstruction"
Author(s): Daniel Charles
Source: Discourse, Vol. 12, No. 1, A Special Issue on Music (Fall-Winter 1989-90), pp. 28-38
Published by: Wayne State University Press
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Musical

De-Linearizing
John

Cage's

"Interpntration

Continuity:
Aesthetics

of

without
Obstruction"

Daniel Charles

Among the main assumptions in which the idea of time in

traditionalWesternmusic seems to have been firmlyrooted, one
of the most genuine is continuity.
Even John Cage, who is autoin
considered
least
(at
matically
Europe) as the pope of disconhas
defined
musical
form
as "continuity,"and method as
tinuity,
"the means of controllingthe continuityfrom note to note."1
For a composer, Cage explained, two thingsare indispensable:
spontaneity,because it allows formto be itself(that is, unique in
itsexpressivecontinuity), and structuralcontrolover the musical
material. But since Cage's own interestin expressivity
was likely
to impose restrictionsand even exclusions among thismaterial,
he decided to give up his subjectivity
in such a wayas to save and
even reinforce continuity.Cage describes his Music of Changes
(1951) as a "composition the continuityof which is free of
individual tasteand memory (psychology)and also of the literature and 'traditions' of the art. . . . Value judgments are not in
the nature of this work as regards either composition, performance, or listening. The idea of relation (the idea: 2) being
absent, anything(the idea: 1) mayhappen. A 'mistake' is beside
the point, foronce anythinghappens it authenticallyis."2
Despite its somewhat provocativecharacter,Cage's rationale
is clear: even ifthe "continuity"of the Music ofChangesdoes not
relyon the composer's spontaneity,it has not disappeared and

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1989-90
Fall-Winter

29

to be experienced bythe listener.Similarly,

mayverywell continue
at least some kind of discontinuitymaybe experienced as well in
the listener's mind without existing in the work itself: "The
activityof movement,sound, and light,"Cage willwritein 1956,
"is expressive,but what it expresses is determined by each one
of you. . . ."3 Thus it would be misleading to interpretCage's
refusal of value judgments only in a negative way,as if value
judgments were not "often (and habitually) . . . used in ways
which are profoundlynegative" since theysummarize "the old
limitations
imposed on musical imagination";4ratherone should
listen to what Cage himselfsaid in 1957, that "nothing was lost
when everythingwas given away,"and thatit is onlyafterhaving
practiced such a renunciationthat"any sounds mayoccur in any
combination and in any continuity."5Now if "the coming into
being of something new does not by that fact deprive what was
of its proper place,"6 there can be no doubt that there will be
continuitywiththe past. Therefore,Cage's inclusion of noise in
the world of tones, and of silence in the world of sound, can be
understood as a development of Busoni's and Varse's "acceptance of all audible phenomena as material proper to music."7
In thisrespect,Cage's use of the word "field" is meaningful
in that it indicates the degree of faithfulnessof the composer
toward himself. As early as 1937, the young Cage had
prophesized thatthe creatorwould some day be "FACED WITH
THE ENTIRE FIELD OF SOUND."8 In 1948, he applied the
same concept to the temporal dimension: "In the field of structure,the field of the definitionof partsand theirrelation to the
whole, there has been only one new idea since Beethoven. . . .
There can be no rightmaking of music that does not structure
itselffrom the very roots of sound and silence - lengths of
time."9 In 1955, the notion of field is enlarged to include the
it has diedaway"
of time,i.e., space: a sound, " before
reversibility
" musthavemade
its
loudness
exact
its
, its
, itslength
frequency,
perfectly
it
does
these
and
structure
overtone
';
, theprecisemorphology
ofitself
of
in all
notexistas one ofa seriesofdiscrete
, but as transmission
steps
of
In
the
substitution
center."10
the
directions
1957,
from field's
"transmissionin all directions" for "discrete steps" is stillmore
dramaticallyevoked: "Anysound at anypoint in thistotalsoundspace can move to become a sound at any other point. . . .
[M]usical action or existence can occur at anypoint or along any
line or curve ... in total sound-space."11Finally,in the musical
notationsthemselvesthe "order of succession" becomes a determinant or a parameter of the sound as such,just as essential as

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30

Discourse12.1

pitch, loudness, timbre,duration, or "morphology" ("how the

sound begins, goes on, and dies away").12
As strange as it may seem, Cage's emphasis upon the possibilityof enlarging the concept of musical continuityhas persuaded the composer and theoristJames Tenney to base a new
theoryof "harmonic perception" on the multidimensionalcharacter of sound-space. In his essay"JohnCage and the Theory of
Harmony," Tenney states that "the work of John Cage, while
to any such efforts,yet
posing the greatestconceivable challenge
containsmanyfertileseeds fortheoreticaldevelopments- some
of them not only useful, but essential"1*For Cage, parameters
other than pitch have to be considered, and "each aspect of
sound ... is to be seen as a continuum";14thereforeTenney
suggeststhatpitchesbe represented"by points in a multidimensional space" and labeled according to a specific "frequency
ratio" measured withrespect to a referencepitch, but withina
certain "tolerance range." The distances between the various
points will allow the identificationof interferencesother than
''higher" or "lower." And since "tones represented by
proximate points in harmonic space tend to be heard as being
in a consonant relation to each other,while tones represented
by more widely separated points are heard as mutually dissonant,"15the "field of force" available in the harmonic space
will be taken into account for itself,i.e., withoutinvokingonly,
as Helmholtz did, the overtone series, or, as Rameau did, the
tonic-chord root phenomenon. Moreover, such an enlarged
conception of harmonywill involvenot only the "verticality"of
the Western musical writing but all the "pitch-relations
manifested in a purely melodic or monophonie situation" as
well. It willrecognize as itsfirstprinciple that"there is some (set
of) specificallyharmonic relation(s) betweenanytwosalientand
relativelystable pitches."16
Now ifone of the brightestachievementsof the application
of the Cagean model in the realm of harmony, i.e., in the
treatmentof musical spaces, is the conquest of the "horizontal"
dimension of melody or monody,one may wonder if a parallel
degree of emancipation is not entailed, in the realm of temporality,in what the metaphor of "verticalization" points to,
namelythe de-linearizationof musical continuity.When we draw
time, we use a line, and can measure what Hegel called the
successive "now-points" of the linearized time. Indeed, as the
musicologistF.JosephSmithhas shown,almostthe entirehistory
of musical notation "is one of uncritical acceptance of temporalityas linear,forwe literallyfollowthe notes like now-points

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1989-90
Fall-Winter

31

across a spatially extended printed page.'47 But this has not

always been the case. According to Smith, "the Greeks, even
though theymade use of a rudimentarytablature,played music
'byear,' and not byfollowinga visualwrittennotation." The word
tonos
, "which has perdured through medieval tonusup to and
including both tonalityand 'atonality,'has to do exclusivelywith
an audial experience" - thatof the tuningof the kitharawhich
"had to do with various degrees of tenseness of the strings,as
every string player knows in his fingers.Thus the tablature,
though mediated throughthe eye,was reallya contact between
thefingersand whatI would like to call a musical tensor.. . . [T]he
Greek tonos
, the building block of western music, was thus a
tensor firstand foremost.And a tensor,as a vibratingunit in the
experience
ofmusic, is meant forthe ear" (154-55) . Now
primordial
what is Cage's purpose when in his scores he blurs the order of
succession of musical events, if not to try to get rid of the
spatial-visualmeasuring device of the horizontal line? He thus
retrievesthe Greek "audial" symbolismofvibration,i.e., of tense,
tensilityor tension; and he even speaks Husserl's vocabulary
when he describes his own use of ChristianWolffs "zero time"
in terms of "going forward" or "backward" through time. Indeed Husserl's "pretentions" or "retentions" are but visual
metaphors;yettheyallude to musical gestures,so thatHusserl's
definitionof time as "a whole networkor tissue of experience
that thrustsahead or pro-tendsitselfand leaves a trailof aftershadows," or as an experience which "retains itself' so that
"each given new point stands not in isolation but in the pattern
of thrustand trail,in the manner of a comet"18"sounds" Cagean
avant la lettre.Moreover, Husserl is never reluctant to rely on
musical experience as such, as for instance when he describes
retention as a musical "tail," or as "a series of after-echoes
exemplified in the flightof a bird." "As the forwardthrustof
time builds a horizon," Smith explains, "it leaves in its wake a
whole series of tonal 'shadows' ( Abschattungen
) , that spread out
in ever-diminishingdiagonal 'lines' behind it. . . . This conception of time maybe called 'vertical' though it is obvious thatthe
flowis diagonal: and though it is graphed in one dimension, it
obviouslyis a circularflowout and "behind the thrustingedge of
musical tone as it makes its 'time' (158).
In spite of the resonance between Husserl's and Cage's
conceptions of musical time, Cage never quotes Husserl. His
sources and referencescome fromthe Orient. In 1945-46he first
became seriously aware of Oriental philosophy through the
writingsof Ananda Coomaraswamy,Aldous Huxley, and Sri

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32

Discourse12.1

Ramakrishna; he devoted his Sonatas and Interludes

forPrepared
Piano to the expression of the "permanent emotions" of Indian
thought. He was the only composer to attend Daisetz Suzuki
Teitaro's lectures on Kegon (Chinese: Hua-yen) Buddhist
19
philosophy at Columbia Universityfrom 1951 onwards: no
wonder the notions centralto his aestheticsare deeply rooted in
his understanding of Suzuki's explanations of Buddhism and
Zen. One mayfind,forinstance,expressed as ifin a nutshell,the
essence of Cage's doctrine of de-linearized continuityin the
well-knownformula "interpntrationwithoutobstruction"; as
"
"
"
wrote in 1956 to Paul Henry Lang, 'art' and 'music,'
Cage
" "when
anthropocentric (involved in self-expression),seem
trivialand lacking in urgencyto me. We live in a world where
thereare thingsas well as people. Trees, stones,water,everything
is expressive.I see thissituationin whichI impermanentlylive as
a complex interpntrationof centers moving out in all directions without impasse."20It would seem that we are not so far
fromLeibniz's "expressionism." "Every individual substance,"
Leibniz writesin hisDiscourseonMetaphysics,
"expresses thewhole
universe in its own manner. . . . Each substance is like an entire
world and like a living mirror... of the whole world which it
portrays,each one in its own fashion. . . . Thus the universe is
multipliedin some sortas manytimesas thereare substances
It can indeed be said thateverysubstance . . . expresses,although
confusedly,all that happens in the universe,past, present, and
And we mayalso, as SteveOdin has suggested,describe
future."21
"such a microcosmic-macrocosmicuniverse of simultaneousin terms of the contemporary
mutual reflections ...
as
a
three-dimensional multi-coloured
'holographic' model,
laser projection,brightand vividyetwhollytransparent,wherein
each part is an image of the whole."22However,the most striking
of the similesthroughwhichthe doctrineof interpntrationand
intercausationhas been articulatedare doubtlesslyto be found
in the veryHua-yen textsSuzuki commented upon, namely the
SanskritAvatamsakaSutra (of which he translatedthe last chapter, the GandavyUhaSutra),23together with the writingsof Fatsang.24As Odin has written, the Avatamsaka Sutra, which
concerns "the acquisition of astounding spiritual powers
states . . . describes
throughout an ascending series of fifty-two
an infinitelyvast and open crystallineuniverse composed of
iridescentand transparentphenomena and all interpenetrated
and harmonized togetherin the non-obstructeddharmadhtu
of
, or field of all the
all-mergingsuchness" (18). The dharmadhtu

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1989-90
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33

phenomena ( dharma) , as "a cosmic web of interrelationshipsor

universal matrix of intercausation,is analogous to the vast net
covering Celestial Lord Indra's Palace, which stretches
throughout the entire universe. At each intersection of the
latticeworkis situated a brilliantjewel reflectingall otherjewels
fromitsown perspectivein the net" (17). Since "each dharmais
fullypresent ... in everyother dharma, there is a perfectsameness . . . between all thingsof the universe,negativelyexpressed
as snyator emptiness,and positivelyexpressed as amaladttaor
purity"(18). As Odin puts it,Cage's renunciation of subjectivity
obviously takes into account the fact that, "since everything
dissolvesinto everythingelse at the ontological level of snyat"
"all events are whollydevoid of svabhava or unique selfhood"
(18).
But does not this "sameness" entail indifferentiation,and
thisinterfusionlead to a confusion?Before tryingto answerthis
question, let us clarify,as Tenney did, the problem of the
relationshipbetween Cage the composer and Cage the thinker.
According to Tenney, "it is primarilybecauseofhis music his
- thatwe are drawninto
a
as
substantial
very
credibility
composer
a consideration of [Cage's] philosophical and theoreticalideas.
To imagine otherwise is to 'put the cart before the horse.' "25
And one has to agree withoutreservationto Tenney's suggestion
that we apply to Cage what he himselfonce wrote concerning
Satie: "relegating Satie to the position of having been very
influentialbut in his own work finallyunimportant is refusing
to accept the challenge he so bravelygave us."26Now our question about the musical "results" of Cage's denial of subjectivity
or selfhood may be transformed: far from deciding to
"translate" or "express" Hua-yen's "interpntrationwithout
obstruction" into the musical realm, Cage found in such a
doctrine the confirmationof his own musicalquest. As Tenney
has shown, the "method" does not cease to allow Cage the
composer to controlthe continuityonce he has givenup his own
spontaneity(that is, after1951), but it helps him to elaborate a
new formal type, the "ergodic" one, in which "any 2- or 3minute segment of the piece is essentiallythe same as any other
segmentof corresponding duration,even though the details are
quite different in the two cases."27 In other terms, the
"sameness" which is present in the dharmadhtuand may be
defined either as "emptiness" (snyat)or as "purity,"represents
which is likelyto
at a conceptual level the statisticalhomogeneity
be worked out bythe composer since, as Tenney puts it,"certain

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34

Discourse12.1

are in fact'the same' - or so nearlyidentical

statistical
properties
that no distinctioncan be made in perception" (9-10).
Tenney's analysis allows us to assess critically the
"refutations" of Cage's "orientalism." George Rochberg, for
instance, interpretsboth existentialismand Zen Buddhism as
holding that "the present moment is the nodal point of existence." "It is not at all strange therefore,"he adds, "that comare drawnto Zen and imply
posers of chance music,particularly,
in their attitude towardsmusic an existentialtendency; that is,
see music as the occurrence of unpredictable events,each moment of sound or silence freed of formal connection with the
moment beforeor after,audible onlyas a presentsensation." "In
this form of existential music," Rochberg adds, "the present
erases the past by allowing no recall or return;and promises no
futuresince the present happening is sufficientto itself,requirAll the listenercan
ing no futureeventforitsunderstanding
to
do
is
at
each
as
occurrence,
hope
grasp
just he grasps at life's
formlesssuccession of events,hoping to derivesome meaningful
order.In the case of chance music thisis hardlylikely;and, from
the point of view of the composers of such music, highlyundesirable."28 And nearly as misleading is this statement by
Leonard B. Meyer: "When . . . attentionis directed only to the
uniqueness of things,then each and everyattributeof an object
or event is equally significantand necessary.There can be no
degree of connectedness withinor between events."29To such
arguments,or caricaturesofarguments,Cage's music has already
answered. But at the theoreticallevel, it maybe fruitfulto recall
Tenney's analysis:"The relation between the ergodic formand
Cage's later methods involvingchance and/or indeterminacyis
this:an ergodic formwillalwaysand inevitablybe the resultwhen
the range of possibilities(withrespect to the sound elements in
a piece, and their characteristics)is given at the outset of the
compositional process, and remains unchanged during the
realization of the work."30In thisperspective,Thomas DeLio has
//,how
recentlyshown in his brilliantanalysisof Cage's Variations
an ergodic piece, though involvingboth totalindeterminacyand
total foreseeable procedure, is to be considered as self-generating; and stillmore clearly,in his studyof Morton Feldman 's third
section of DurationsIII , how "the act of creatingthe piece, note
afternote, becomes progressivelythe piece itself' so that "this
is a music born at itsconclusion ratherthan (at) itsinception."31
As early as 1961, ChristianWolffhad described a quasi-ergodic situation where the limitsof a piece "ARE EXPRESSED,
NOT AT MOMENTS OF TIME WHICH MARKA SUCCESSION,

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35

BUT AS MARGINS OF A SPATIAL PROJECTION OF THE

TOTAL SOUND STRUCTURE."32 The importance of such a
reversalfrom(linear) timeto space is worthbeing outlined here,
since it explains the actual workingof "interpntrationwithout
obstruction" in the compositions themselves.Let us note first
that ifCage's renunciation of subjectivitymeant the "dissolving
of everythinginto everything" at the level of emptiness or
sunyata, it could mean as well access to "purity"or amalacitta.In
otherwords,we can agree withTenney: "Cage's inclusion of 'all
audible phenomena as materialproper to music' did not mean
thatdistinctionswere no longer to be made. On the contrary,it
now became possible to distinguish many more varieties of
elementary sounds" (10), in particular the "aggregates of
pitches and timbres" made available by the use of the prepared
, or the gamut of stringed
piano in Cage's Sonatas and Interludes
Wolffs suggestion that
sounds selected for the StringQuartet.
we define a piece as resultingfromthe projection on a specific
space of a "total sound structure" actually extended this principle of differentiation."Moves intersectingand voices overlapping," Wolffwill add in 1965, "can obscure structuraloutlines
and produce meetingsor eventsthatare disengaged fromthem
to become simply themselves. Then, a structure that seems
closed by a square of time-lengthsmay also be dissolved by
including a zero in the sequencing of the time-lengths'proportions (e.g., 2 1/4, 1, 0, 2 ... ). The zero I take to mean no time
at all, thatis,no measurable time,thatis,anytimeat all."34Indeed
the introductionof the zero, farfrommeaning onlythe creation
of a gap in the continuous stream of linear time, questions the
basic validityof the entire hourglass concept of time and breaks
down Rochberg's and Meyer's misleading metaphor of an
unidimensional "present," "freed offormalconnection withthe
moment before or after." Or, more exactly,it undermines its
polemical force.
Wolffs conception of "Zen time" is in fact deeply akin to
Heidegger's idea of a "primordial granting of time," which
"keeps open the having-beenbydenyingititscoming as present,
just as it keeps open the coming (future) by withholding the
present in this coming, that is, by denying it its being present.
Thus, the proximitywhich brings near has the character of a
denial and withholding.. . . Furthermore,the present is not at
all thatwhich is constant; rather,the authentic comes to pass in
each case ifand when having-been-nessand futureplaytogether
and mesh."35Hence it seems pertinentto apply here the well-

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Discourse12.1

36

known thesison the "stillness" of time in Heidegger's Unterwegs

zurSprache."Time timessimultaneouslythe has-been, presence,
and the presentthatis waitingforour encounter and is normally
called the future.Time in its timingremoves us in its threefold
simultaneity.. . . But time itself,in the wholeness of its nature,
does not move; it restsin stillness."36
It is clear indeed fromthis
definition that "the Simultaneity'referredto here cannot be
thoughtof as the 'in itself of time."37
Silence or stillness,absence or emptiness,all these Heidegtimefrombeing taken as
gerian-Cagean-Hua-yennotionsprevent
Time is not- time has to
something alreadypresentoralreadythere.
But
in
so
, it disappearsintoitsownwithdrawal.
spring.
far as itsprings
And because of this withdrawal,we are prevented from taking
into account any featureother than its evanescence, fromshoring up our understanding of the significationof music on any
notion of "presence" in the sense of a "now moment" separated
from the others. So that, by a kind of paradox, Meyer and
Rochberg are right:music cannot relyon the isolated dimension
of the present. But unfortunatelyfor them, the Cagean - or
Heideggerian, or Zen - conception of "interpntration
withoutobstruction" is theonlyone whichseriously
, radically
, supports this idea' thus it confirms what the musicologist Victor
Zuckerkandl had already concluded during the fiftiesfromhis
analysis of Beethoven and Schubert: "To a great extent the
problems posed by the old concept of time arise from the fact
thatit distinguishedthree mutuallyexclusive elements,whereas
only the picture of a constant interactionand intertwiningof
these elements is adequate to the real process."38

Notes
1
ofModernMusic" ( 1949), Silence
JohnCage, "Forerunners
(Middletown:WesleyanUP, 1961) 62.
2
John Cage, "To Describethe Processof CompositionUsed in
and Imaginary
59.
Musico/Changes
LandscapeNo. 4" (1952), Silence
"
3
95.
JohnCage, "In This Day . . . (1956), Silence
4
JamesTenney,"JohnCage and theTheoryofHarmony"(1983),
13 (1984). I quote froma copyof themanuscript,
6.
Soundings
5
8.
JohnCage, "ExperimentalMusic" (1957), Silence
6
Cage, "ExperimentalMusic" 11.
7
84.
JohnCage, "EdgardVarse" (1958), Silence

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1989-90
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37

A.
JohnCage, "The FutureofMusic:Credo" (1937), Silence
9
John Cage, "Defense of Satie" (1948), JohnCage, ed. Richard
Kostelanetz(NewYork:Praeger,1971) 81-82.
10
JohnCage, "ExperimentalMusic:Doctrine"(1955), Silence14.
11
9.
Cage, "ExperimentalMusic,"Silence
12
John Cage, see "Compositionas Process:I. Changes" (1958),
Silence18-34.
13
Tenney3.
14
John Cage, "Historyof ExperimentalMusic in the United
States"(1959), Silence70-71.
15
Tenney22-23.
16
Tenney24.
17F.
JosephSmith,TheExperiencing
ofMusicalSound(New York:
Gordon,1979) 154.
18Smith158.
19Abe Masao, ed., A Zen
(New York,
Life:D. T. SuzukiRemembered
1986) 223.
Tokyo:Weatherhill,
20
John Cage, "Letterto Paul HenryLang" (1956), qtd. in Kostelanetz116.
21Gottfried
WilhelmLeibniz,"Discourseon Metaphysics,"
Leibniz
:
Basic Writings
, trans.G. R. Montgomery(La Salle, IL: Open Court,
and Hua-yen
1968) 14-15.Qtd. in Steve Odin, ProcessofMetaphysics
Buddhism
(Albany:StateU ofNewYorkP, 1982) 16.
22Odin 16.
23H. Idzumi and D. T. Suzuki,eds., The
Sutra(Four
Gandavyuha
Parts) (Kyoto:SanskritBuddhistTextPublishingSoc., 1934) 6.
24

Fa-tasang,et al., "Hundred Gates to the Sea of Ideas of the

A Source
BookinChinese
trans.
Flowery
SplendourScripture,"
Philosophy,
Chan
Princeton
414-20.
UP,
(Princeton:
1963)
Wing-tsit
25
Tenney4.
26
(1951), qtd. in Kostelanetz90.
JohnCage, "Satie Controversy"
27
Tenney9.
28
George Rochberg,"Durationin Music," TheModernComposer
and His World
, ed. JohnBeckwithand Udo Kasemets(Toronto:U of
TorontoP, 1961) 60-62.
29Leonard B.
, and Ideas (Chicago: Chicago
Meyer,Music, theArts
UP, 1967) 164-65.
30
Tenney10.

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38

Discourse12.1

31ThomasDeLio,
theOpenUniverse
(Lanham: UP of
Circumscribing
America,1984) 46.
32ChristianWolff,
qtd. in Cage, "Compositionas Process: III.
54.
Communication"(1958), Silence
33See
Cage, "Compositionas Process:I. Changes,"Silence18-34.
34ChristianWolff,
"On Form,"DieReihel (1965): 29.
35
JosephJ. Kockelmans,On theTruthofBeing(Bloomington:Indiana UP, 1984) 70, 100.
36MartinHeidegger,OntheWaytoLanguage,
trans.PeterHtz (New
York:Harper,1971) 106.
37Kockelmans100.
38VictorZuckerkandl,
SoundandSymbol,
trans.WillardR.Traskand
NobertGulerman(Princeton:PrincetonUP, 1956) 224.

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