Peter Hatch presents Lecture on Nothing, by John Cage, with special guests Gregory Oh and Richard Burrows

One of the 20th century’s most important composers, John Cage is renowned as the composer of the piece 4’33”, which consisted only of silence. Cage was a constant explorer and invented such things as the prepared piano, multi-media ‘happenings’ and “chance” elements applied to his work. He was a frequent lecturer and published several books around his lectures. The 1949 ‘Lecture on Nothing’ visits favorite topics of his: noise vs music, tonality vs atonality, the twelve tone technique of composing. Cage was one of the first artists to embrace the Zen Buddhism that was introduced into North America in the 1940s. The ideas of mindfulness, emptiness, and nothingness attracted him greatly and began to influence his work. The Lecture on Nothing “is a composed talk, for I am making it just as I make a piece of music.” The lecture is meant to be read in a ‘musical’ manner -rhythmically, “but with the rubato which one uses in everyday speech.”

During the 1940s Cage was preoccupied with musical form or structure. Cage refers to the rhythmic structure in this piece as ‘micro-macrocosmic’. Its five large parts are divided into 48 units, using the proportions 7 6 14 14 7. Each of these units is divided into 48 ‘small’ parts using the same proportions. My interpretation makes use of visual dials to highlight the structural layers as they unfold and to draw attention to our experience of the passing of time while this happens. In the spirit of Cage, this performance includes extra sonic material, drawing from sounds and music mentioned in the text. This performance includes simultaneous performances of other works, a practice Cage developed in his own work starting shortly after writing his lecture. The appearance and disappearance of visual and sonic elements were determined by chance techniques, a practice Cage used in almost all of his mature work.

– Peter Hatch