John Cage's Letters to Erik Satie

By Marc Thorman

Publication of John Cage's Letters to Erik Satie by C. F. Peters Corporation establishes the compositional status of these scores and, for the first time since their composition in 1978, makes them widely available for study and performance. The two scores have until now been largely unknown despite their significance to Cage's writings, music, and performance history. A facsimile of Cage's manuscript copy of the scores was included as a contribution to the all-Cage special edition of Revue d'Esthétique on the occasion of his seventy-fifth birthday. But the limited distribution of this tome, the format of the scores, and the difficulty of understanding Cage's terse directives contributed to the works being overlooked as musical compositions. The main textual material in each Letter is a visual poem, but the texts also function as musical scores. Cage's marginalia allow us to reconstruct his own performance of one of the Letters. These two miniatures also condense Cage's long and complex relationship with Satie.