To John Cage Sr. and Lucretia Cage
August 16, 1949 | Paris
Dearest Mother + Dad:
Now it is quite hot and I hope that means that you are having cooler weather. My article about Aix appeared here + I send it to you for the scrap book. A Dutch composer I met in Aix is here now and may arrange a concert in Holland for me; I also ran into André Souris204 from Brussels who may arrange a public concert in Belgium. I am composing a little but not well. At least I have enough the feeling of what composing is so that I look forward to next year and imagine that music will come. Hope.
Maro arrives late this month + Geeta not until Sept. 15. It is hot + I am not very sensible. Tonight Maggie Dunham (friend of Virgil’s) comes to dinner. I am cooking an Arabian dish called cous-cous. And tomato salad with olives + celery in it + radishes. Beautiful wine which is dated but only 200 francs a bottle (which is about 60¢). And then ice cream which they put up in boxes without dry ice + it stays for 3 hours.
I’m hoping to get a coffee grinder to bring back to America. Gatti,205 the Italian poet (friend of Boulez), gave me some coffee but it needs to be ground.
To Maro Ajemian
[Postmarked August 20, 1949] | 31 rue St. Louis en l’Ile, Paris IVe
Dearest Maro:
Your lovely letter arrived and was a pleasure. I have many times thought of writing, especially around the concert time; I had visions even of sending flowers or some touch of Europe, but I didn’t, because everything gets involved here as it does everywhere else, except Nevada, and then it seemed to me that I remembered writing to you earlier and getting no response, but that is a rather unnecessary reason.
I’ll see about the Salle Gaveau dates very soon and let you know. It is without doubt the best place to play. Very soon I’ll know about the sound of the prepared piano there because Bob and Arthur are playing their concert on the 24th there (June); I rather think it will work very well there. It is such a beautiful hall; it reminds one of music.
I haven’t met Louise Dyer yet.
As you can see I’m methodically answering your letter: next point:
The program you mention is good: Riegger, Webern, Hovhaness, Leibowitz, and Bartok, except for the Leibowitz. He is even less liked here than in New York. I don’t see why you don’t do the Ives Sonata with Anahid. Another good idea would be to get me to write a piece for violin and prepared piano to give you as an arrival present.
My contract with the Contemporary Music people in Amsterdam was about the Sonatas, but I haven’t heard from them again and I don’t know about it anymore. I may spend August in Amsterdam.
Otherwise I shall stay in Paris. There are no special commitments yet in October, but they may develop.
I am playing the Sonatas in a home the day after tomorrow for a bunch of composers. Everybody is quite delighted with the prepared piano. I played for Messiaen’s class; and they’ve heard the records I brought along, and Merce danced in a painter’s studio before an audience that STOOD UP and was delighted afterward. 20 people stayed and wandered out to dinner together, it looks like a banquet, and then to a bar and stayed till midnight. The concert was at 5. My favorite composer here is Boulez; in Holland, Escher; in Belgium, Woronoff and Legley.
I have no particular desire for a public event, although if we figured out something special, it would be fun. In many ways, I should prefer to still be in America composing, and not to have come at all, and many times I have thought to write and warn you not to come. If you think of it as an investment in the future, I would perhaps [say] yes: although I should prefer going to the west of the USA. It is expensive, difficult to get into the life of, and rather alert to its own values rather than to the ones we know. Life has been so difficult for them, and is now getting better, that I doubt whether they like to be interrupted by outsiders. Edwin calls it the French National Honor. But Merce says Paris is pretty.
However, I suppose you’re determined to come over. And how much I should like to be home again right now! Merce says this is a depressing letter; I don’t mean it that way. It seems to me that we all have a very fine musical life going along in New York, and I want to get back in it.
Another day: I feel no differently so am going to send this rather than nothing. I played yesterday and it was a “great success.” But the real success lies in staying home and getting some work done quietly. How easily aimless everything becomes when one leaves “home.”
[handwritten] I am definitely all for staying in America. There is nothing to be gained here really. The whole thing is frightfully diverting + expensive in time money energy etc.
Forgive black emotion.
To John Cage Sr. and Lucretia Cage
August 20, 1949 | Paris
Dearest Mother and David:
You will be happy to know as I am that I’ve finished the first movement of the String Quartet.206 It is a little over 3½ minutes; the second movement will be a little over 4½; the third 10 minutes; + the last only about 1½. Without actually using silence, I should like to praise it.
This piece is like the opening of another door: the possibilities implied are unlimited and without the rhythmic structure I found by working with percussion and the newness, freshness of sound I found in the prepared piano it would be impossible. Now it seems easy, and I am grateful that it happened that I could write here—even if the whole work doesn’t get finished by the time I have to leave the apartment + piano. I still have it started which was, as I wrote to you, what I hoped for. That has acted too to start a clarification of my ideas out of which may come another article about the difference between Europe + America + the parallel needs to destroy and construct. Our ignorance which we protect is so that we can invent. Dad understands that, I am sure.
This pen-point is no good.
If they don’t publish the article on Aix, would you call Mr. Francis Perkins at the Tribune, explain that the article was published Aug. 13 in the Paris edition and that I would like to have a check in payment. And what should I do about it?
To John Cage Sr. and Lucretia Cage
August 27, 1949 | Paris
Dearest Mother and Dad:
The $100 arrived and thank you for sending it. Maro arrives today,—I was able to reserve rooms for her and her mother in a very beautiful hotel in the gardens of the Palais Royal. I shall try to meet her boat-train this afternoon.
I have run into problems with my new piece. I have not yet found the way for it to be a String Quartet. It is as though I had decided to write a Str Q. + then without realizing it had written something else that I don’t know about.
Since writing above much has happened. Maro + her mother arrived + at first were very disappointed with my choice of hotel which Mrs. Ajemian said was like a furnished room. Actually it is like a poem but I suppose it is difficult for some to sleep in poems. I have spent the last 2 days helping them in every conceivable way: trunks, the concert, changing money on the black market (Mrs. Ajemian is very “Cagey”) (having brought in a lot of dollars which she didn’t declare), and the funny thing is they let me pay for everything, taxis, etc.—which as you know I can’t afford to do. I am simply going to stop seeing them as much, much as I am fond of them. Today, Mrs. A. finally realized how beautiful the hotel is + decided to stay there.
And my music solved itself—is a quartet + I am happy about it + then your letter saying my Aix article was good + apparently it was because Minna Lederman207 wrote saying it was my