IN RE
Meanwhile, Cardew continued to promote Young’s aesthetic. In 1962 he wrote an article on the composer in the magazine New Departures, for which he was the music editor. That article, titled “In re La Monte Young,” presented Young’s Compositions 1960 #1, 3, 6, 7, and 10 in the form of several lines of instructions to be given to the performer (see sidebar 1). He thus offered the first illustration of Young’s works.
The article gave a glowing report on a series of works by Young: Poem (1960) was his most interesting piece, “a long and technical instruction manual”;5 while he saw X for Henry Flynt (1960) as an “ill-intentioned but salutory insult.”6 Young’s work was in no way an exhibitionistic act, Cardew wrote; it demanded all the performer’s resources (Cardew 1962, 75). In addition to the music’s emphasis on the human aspects of notation and its Cageian roots, Cardew introduced a new term relevant to the assessment of Young’s music: the performer’s competence. From Tempo to New Departures, Cardew solidified Young’s place in the musical landscape, while also laying the foundations for his own musical discourse.
He soon moved from theory to practice, expanding his campaign to promote Young’s music by actively participating in the organization of concerts that celebrated the music of the American composer as well as his own. Two announcements appeared in the Musical Times in 1963 and 1964: Young’s works were to be performed at the University of London and at the theater of the American embassy.7 For both concerts Cardew was one of the performers, and he presented his own works as well. But at that time it appears that Cardew was not yet satisfied with the fruit of his efforts. In September 1964, he devoted an article to the works of Cage and Merce Cunningham. Here again he brought up Young, reproaching the “more powerful pundits of musical taste” for “unwaveringly” rejecting or ignoring the New Yorker’s work. It was nonetheless enjoyed by audiences, he wrote (1964, 659), thus endowing a future ally with authority.
ONE SOUND
Two years after this remonstrance in 1964, Cardew was named a Fellow of the Royal Academy of Music. No longer was he an unknown in the eyes of the British music establishment. Besides his columns in the Musical Times and Tempo, his name—as an author, a translator of musicological works, and especially a composer—had appeared in Music & Letters, the Musical Quarterly, and Notes. In 1966 he published “One Sound: La Monte Young” in the Musical Times, including a biographical sketch of the composer and an analytical overview of his music. In this article Cardew sought to enshrine new facts: Young was indeed a great figure in music, of the same caliber as Stockhausen, as guaranteed by a recognized musicologist and composer addressing the music world through an eminent journal that aimed to cover the most recent developments in music. Since 1960, thanks especially to Cardew, his pronouncements, and his concerts, Young’s music was indeed part of the contemporary musical landscape.
The status that Cardew accorded to Young in 1966 was further bolstered by new arguments. Even the inevitable influence of serial music was summoned: Young had studied with Leonard Stein (Cardew 1966, 959). In addition to being taught by the well-known former assistant to Schoenberg (Morgan 2001), he benefited from Stockhausen’s teachings in Darmstadt in 1959. Moreover, although “it was difficult for the two composers—both ‘giants’ of new music as it has turned out—to find a level of communication,” Cardew asserted, “there must have been some important interchange of a non-verbal kind” (959). Thus, Cardew wrote, “Stockhausen’s Piano Piece IX [is] a weak, aesthetic version of the piece For Henry Flynt—and conversely the complex manipulations of random number tables that constitute the groundwork of La Monte’s early pieces surely owe something to the ‘statistical field’ theory that Stockhausen was elaborating at the time” (959). Vision by Young (1959), Cardew continued, was based on the use of a “random number book” (959), while Poem relied on an evolution of the same methods: the work now included any type of activity, whether it involved sound or not. Indeed, according to Cardew, that was what accounted for the connection between the “complex early compositions” and the “utter simplicity” of subsequent works by Young (959).8
Through Cardew’s analysis, the works became the fruit of mutual exchanges: Stockhausen borrowed repetitions from Young, while Young borrowed the manipulations of number tables from Stockhausen. Although Cardew did not make it explicit, he seemed to justify Young’s passage from the complex to the simple by the fact that Young, partly thanks to Stockhausen and his statistical fields, concentrated on a complex form of numerical randomness; this randomness led him to include any activity, so that “all being and happening” finally came down to “a single performance,” and thus to simplicity (959). And if Young was impressed by Stockhausen, he impressed the German composer as well, Cardew asserted. That declaration, coming from someone who associated with both composers in Darmstadt, is hardly insignificant, which is perhaps why Cardew did not need to explain how this exchange between the “giants” took place. Against the new support from serialists (Stein and Stockhausen), Cardew ultimately pitted Cage, who, “in a humorous moment,” denied Young’s authorship of a series of works (959). The anecdote highlights the importance of Young, who was also followed by composers such as George Brecht and Toshi Ichiyanagi and then published a “great Anthology” (959; see also Young and Mac Low 1963). Young was on his way to becoming a leading figure in modern music.
Since then, however, Cardew continued, Young wrote almost nothing: “The Henry Flynt piece and a Death Chant on the death of a friend’s child are the only compositions known to me. Instead of composing he took to improvising long concerts with various associates,” namely his wife, Marian Zazeela; Tony Conrad; and “a Welsh musician who was responsible for introducing the tape [of a performance by Young] into this country,” John Cale (960). With amplified instruments and voice, these musicians produced “variations of timbre and texture . . . by tuning and intensity of the various partials of a single fundamental tone” (960). And if for some these sounds were the most horrible that one could imagine, they moved us (or “should” move us, he added) more than “any merely artistic or intelligent attempt to shake the foundations of our complacent normality” (960).
LILLIPUTIAN
Roger Smalley’s response to Cardew’s convergent rereading of the aesthetics of Young and Stockhausen was not long in coming: his letter to the editor appeared in the Musical Times at the beginning of 1967 (1967a). Like Cardew, Smalley was a well-known figure in the British music establishment. He was one of the pianists most active in performing contemporary music, particularly that of Stockhausen, with whom he had studied composition two years earlier.9 In his letter, Smalley addressed not so much the influence of X for Henry Flynt on Piano Piece IX as Cardew’s reading of it. Unlike Young, Smalley asserted, Stockhausen made music; one need only listen to what followed the 227 repetitions of the same chord in the German composer’s piece. But in Young’s piece, “nothing else happens.” Stockhausen, Smalley added, “is certainly a giant—probably the tallest; La Monte Young is, by comparison, a Lilliputian.” The former’s conceptions “are expressed in a musical language of sovereign assurance and power.” For their part, Young’s later compositions “have no interest whatsoever as far as musical construction, development or form are concerned,” and in fact some of his works could not even “be expressed in musical notation”; indeed, Smalley added, “I