June in Buffalo 25th Anniversary Exhibit

The First June in Buffalo, 1975

June in Buffalo program, 1975

The first June in Buffalo concert took place on June 2, 1975 in the old Baird Recital Hall on the south campus of the University at Buffalo. Morton Feldman immediately implemented his plan to present concerts that focused on the works of single composers. For his first festival, it was natural for Feldman to invite three composers with whom he had been friends since 1950: John Cage, Earle Brown, and Christian Wolff. Together, the four composers, along with pianist David Tudor, have often been referred to as the New York School.

Christian Wolff, Earle Brown, John Cage, and Morton Feldman, Capitol Records Studio, New York City, ca. 1962

According to Art Lange, in the essay Notes Toward a New York School written to accompany the Hat Hut Records CD recording, The New York School:

Cage, Brown, Feldman, and Wolff each sought individual ways of "opening the field," freeing sounds from their traditional roles, engaging performers in more meaningful aspects of the creative act, questioning the aesthetic of composition itself. Each developed diverse techniques and notational devices in order to provoke the performer to make music.

Feldman had, in effect, turned his first June in Buffalo into a reunion. The first three concerts were devoted to the compositions of John Cage, the fifth concert was a program of music by Earle Brown, and the eighth and ninth concerts were devoted to the music of Christian Wolff. Only two compositions by Feldman were programmed, as were two works by fellow University at Buffalo faculty member Lejaren Hiller, and the two piano sonatas of Charles Ives.

Photograph by Irene Haupt.

Feldman and Cage, 1975

Morton Feldman first met John Cage during the intermission of a New York Philharmonic concert in 1950. The program included Webern's Symphonie, op. 21. Feldman had the following comments on the meeting:

No piece before or since had the impact of that Webern on me. ... At intermission I went out to the inner lobby by the staircase, and there was John Cage. ... Cage asked what I thought of the Webern. I said I'd never heard anything so thrilling. He practically jumped up and down in agreement and asked my name. When he found out I was a composer he brought me in, introduced me to his friends, invited me to a gathering later in the week.

Feldman spoke with Samuel Beckett about what he had gained from his association with Cage.

You know, it was extraordinary meeting him. Let us say this was my last interview, that I'll be leaving this world soon and someone would say to me, "Well, what debt do you owe John Cage?" I think I would say that I owe him everything and I owe him nothing, that was to what degree he liberated me in terms of self permission to go on where I had decided I was going to go.

After playing one of the piano parts in the première performance of Feldman's Piano and Voices in Berlin, Cage angrily accused Feldman of being a "poetic extremist." Feldman later said he did not understand what Cage meant, but he treasured the remark, coming as it did, from John Cage.

A total of thirteen compositions by John Cage were performed at the first June in Buffalo festival in 1975. Of those works, five were performed simultaneously. One of those works was 27' 10.554" for a percussionist.

Page ten from the score marked by percussionist Jan Williams for the performance can be seen by clicking on the image of the title page.

Two works by Morton Feldman were performed at the first June in Buffalo: Piece for Four Pianos (1957) and Three Pieces for String Quartet (1954-55). Click on the image of the score to see an excerpt from Piece for Four Pianos (1957). One of the interesting aspects of the work is that the four pianists are free to choose their own tempi. This results in an elaborate canonic effect with the four performers playing the same music out of phase with one another.

Earle Brown, ca. 1985

John Cage and Earle Brown first met in Denver in 1950. Cage was persuasive enough that Brown and his wife, dancer Carolyn Brown, moved to New York City in 1952. Carolyn Brown became a member of the Merce Cunningham Dance Company and Earle Brown joined Cage and David Tudor to work on the Project for Music for Magnetic Tape. It was through his contact with Cage that Earle Brown became friends with Morton Feldman and Christian Wolff.

Morton Feldman wrote a brief essay about Earle Brown for the June 1966 issue of BMI's The Many Worlds of Music. Among his comments about Earle Brown is the following, succinct comparison between the compositional processes of John Cage and Earle Brown.

Both Cage and Brown dramatize the structural aspect of process. Brown differs from Cage in that while his initial material is pre-established, he achieves maximum possibilities through allowing the form of the music to be improvisatory. With Cage it is the other way around. Here the structure is fixed, while the material is only suggested.

In the prefatory notes that Brown wrote for the publication of his Folio and Four Systems in 1961 he stated some of the rationale for his musical experimentation.

Time is the actual dimension in which music exists when performed and is by nature an infinitely divisible continuum. No metric system or notation based on metrics is able to indicate all of the possible points in the continuum, yet sound may begin or end anywhere along this dimension.

Similarly, all of the other characteristics of a sound - frequency, intensity, timbre, modes of attack-continuation-decay - are infinitely divisible continua and unmeasurable. ... An ambiguous but implicitly inclusive graphic "notation", and alert, sympathetic performers, are conceivable catalysts for activating this "process" within continua.

Eight compositions by Earle Brown were performed at the 1975 June in Buffalo concerts. December 1952 was among the works played. Along with November 1952, it was the first of Brown's compositions in which he used graphic notation. The work is for one or more instruments and/or sound- producing media. The following quotation is from his prefatory note to the score: ...to have elements exist in space ... space as an infinitude of directions from an infinitude of points in space ... to work (in compositionally and in performance) to right, left, back, forward, up, down, and all points between ... the score [being] a picture of this space at any one instant, which must always be considered as unreal and/or transitory ... a performer must set this all in motion (time), which is to say, realize that it is in motion and step into it ... either sit and let it move or move through it at all speeds.

Art Lange emphasizes the role of the performer in performing indeterminate music in his comments about December 1952 in the program notes he wrote to accompany the Hat Hut Records CD recording, The New York School.

Indeterminate scores likewise became an invitation to an event. Brown called his December 1952 an "activity" rather than a piece of music because the content was supplied by the performer. Such scores carried musical implications, but did not pretend to represent musical expression in and of themselves. Success, then, was not to be based upon a precise re-creation of the composer's intent, but on the level of involvement of the performer and the listener.

Photograph by Rebecca Beguin.

Christian Wolff, Royalton, Vermont, 1992

Christian Wolff was only sixteen years old when he began studying composition with John Cage in 1950. He quickly progressed from student to become the youngest member of what would later become known as the New York School.

Wolff discussed some of his early musical interests in an interview with Geoff Smith and Nicola Walker Smith.

The earlier work is more concerned with indeterminacy. What I was particularly interested in, more than either Cage or Feldman were, was the question of how performers relate to each other, not necessarily in the psychological or social sense, but more in the sound that resulted when people had to co-ordinate with each other in certain unpredictable ways.

Wolff has stated four principles that provide for freedom in his music.

A composition must make possible the freedom and dignity of the performer.
It should allow both concentration and release.
No sound or noise is preferable to any other sound or noise.
Listeners should be as free as the players.

Three compositions by Christian Wolff were performed at the 1975 June in Buffalo festival: Snowdrop (1970), Changing the System (1972-73), and Exercises and Songs (1973-74). The score of Changing the System consists of fourteen loose pages. The performance instructions by Wolff are three pages long. The piece is for eight or more players, any instruments, of which some are melody and some have a low range. The text is by Tom Hayden. Excerpts from the score can be seen by clicking on the image.

May 2000 Music Library Staff musique@acsu.buffalo.edu http://ublib.buffalo.edu/libraries/units/music/exhibits/june/first.html