Stony Point (1954) and "Lascia O Raddoppia" (1959)
John Cage's residence at the Gate Hill Cooperative. Photo Taken by Mark Davenport 2015. [3]
Cage collected texts on the subject and met the mycologist Guy Nearing who became a life mentor to help him understand these readings and his mycological findings in the upstate New York region. [4] Although Cage became more connected with the mycological community, around 1954 his enthusiasm for foraging landed him in a dangerous situation. He cooked the poisonous Hellebore plant for his friends, mistaking it for skunk cabbage:
I ate more than the others did in an attempt to convey my enthusiasm over edible wild plants. After a while she came back and whispered in my ear, “Do you feel all right?” I said, “No. I don't. My throat is burning and I can hardly breathe.”… I went outside and retched. Vomiting with diarrhea continued for about two hours. Before I lost my will, I told M. C. Richards to call Mother and Dad and tell them not to eat the skunk cabbage. I asked her how the others were. She said, “They're not as bad off as you are.” Later, when friends lifted me off the ground to put a blanket under me, I just said, “Leave me alone.” Someone called Dr. Zukor. He prescribed milk and salt. I couldn't take it. He said, “Get him here immediately.” They did. He pumped my stomach and gave adrenalin to keep my heart beating. Among other things, he said, “Fifteen minutes more and he would have been dead.” [5]
As an amateur naturalist, Cage gained a better understanding of the subject through a variety of foraging experiences and his literature. He later read “about the need to distinguish between skunk cabbage and the poisonous hellebore.” [6] Cage’s sponge-like absorption of botanical knowledge proved to be useful. That same year, he was asked to contribute an essay to the United States Lines Paris Review; this propagandist entertainment magazine featured articles on American art and culture for passengers during their transatlantic crossing on the S.S. United States and the S.S. America. Cage’s snappy title, “Music Lovers’ Field Companion,” is a somewhat humorous reflection of his forward-looking ideas about mushrooms and how they are related to music. “I have come to the conclusion that much can be learned about music by devoting oneself to the mushroom. For this purpose I have recently moved to the country. Much of my time is spent poring over ‘field companions’ on fungi,” Cage declared at the beginning of his essay. [7] He thought about how mushroom growth could be stimulated by music and postulated what they sound like :
To begin with, I propose that it should be determined which sounds further the growth of which mushrooms; whether these latter, indeed, make sounds of their own; whether the gills of certain mushrooms are employed by appropriately small-winged insects for the production of pizzicati and the tubes of the Boleti by minute burrowing ones as wind instruments; whether the spores, which in size and shape are extraordinarily various, and in number countless, do not on dropping to the earth produce gamelan-like sonorities. [8]
In one of his passages Cage unabashedly teased concert hall music and production culture. He wrote, “What a boon it would be for the recording industry (now part of America's sixth largest) if it could be shown that the performance, while at table, of an LP of Beethoven's Quartet Opus Such-and-Such so alters the chemical nature of Amanita muscaria as to render it both digestible and delicious!” [9] Cage’s mixing of mushrooms and music or in his own words, “the agaric with Euterpe,” is a common theme throughout his life. He noted that music and mushrooms were two words close together in many dictionaries. [10] Probably one of his most direct associations between these topics is related to his ideas on foraging. He recalled, “you can stay with music while you're hunting mushrooms. It's a curious idea perhaps, but a mushroom grows for such a short time and if you happen to come across it when it's fresh it's like coming upon a sound which also lives a short time.” [11] The idea of foraging and sound will be revisited in the next section with the New York Mycological Society.
In January of 1959, Cage was touring in Milan and was asked to be on the popular Italian TV game show “Lascia O Raddoppia” (Leave or Double). Although it is not exactly clear how he was invited, it is speculated that the composer Luciano Berio was involved. Cage admitted to his friend David Tudor, “I'm not supposed to let any body know about it… because there's been a lot of gossip about how the quiz is run irregularly.” [12] Cage appeared on the show once a week for five weeks and performed some of his compositions including prepared piano selections from his Amores (1943) and his new theatrical works Water Walk (1959) and Sounds of Venice (1959) which the audience found amusing perhaps because of the composition's use of instrumentation and the busy actions the composer performed. [13] Cage’s last two appearances on the show offered defining moments in his mushroom studies. He used his flourishing intellectual prowess and enthusiasm for mycology to answer specific questions about fungi. On the fourth week of Cage's appearance, the show's host Mike Bongiorno explained, “we give you an envelope containing seven color photographs of mushrooms.” You have to tell us: which of them represents the mushroom ‘poliporus frondosus’? is it edible or not? does it grow on the ground or on trees?" Cage responded, “It's photo number seven. It's an edible mushroom and it grows on wood.” [14] Without hesitation he answered correctly thus qualifying for the final segment of the game show. His last appearance was more impressive than any other week.
John Cage's membership card from The Gruppo Micologico in Trento. The John Cage Mycology Collection. MS 74. Special Collections and Archives, University Library, University of California, Santa Cruz. Box-folder 1:1 Membership cards 1963-1990.
During the fifth and final week as a contestant on the show, Cage was asked again to look at pictures and define species of mushrooms in which he again answered with incredible accuracy. His final question was to recite from memory the names of twenty-four kinds of white-spore mushrooms listed in George Francis Atkinson’s Studies of American Fungi: Mushrooms Edible, Poisonous, Etc. (a famous mycological text from 1900). Cage answered with laser sharp precision and impressively listed the mushroom types in alphabetical order. The crowd cheered loudly and Bongiorno exclaimed, “Bravissimo, bravo bravo bravo bravo. Bravo bravissimo, bravo Cage.” [15] Cage walked away with eight thousand dollars (around seventy–two thousand dollars in 2021). With his winnings, he bought a Steinway piano and donated money towards a Volkswagen minibus for the Merce Cunningham Dance Company.
A letter from the Mycology Group "G Bresadola" of Trento to John Cage. Translation by Monica Ambalal. The John Cage Mycology Collection. MS 74. Special Collections and Archives, University Library, University of California, Santa Cruz. Box-folder 1:1–2. Biographical material 1951-2003.
A letter from Fellini's Assistant to John Cage. Translation by Monica Ambalal. The John Cage Mycology Collection. MS 74. Special Collections and Archives, University Library, University of California, Santa Cruz. Box-folder 1:1–2. Biographical material 1951-2003.
Cage gained a lot of notoriety from the Italian public with his appearances in Milan and awe–inspiring performances on “Lascia O Raddoppia.” The Gruppo Micologo in Trento awarded him his first honorary mycological membership. Further, an assistant on behalf of the Italian film director Federico Fellini sent Cage a letter asking for him for headshots. They were considering Cage for a possible role in the 1960 comedy drama, La Dolce Vita.
References:
Cage, John. “Happy New Ears,” In A Year from Monday 30–35. Middletown, CT: Wesleyan
University Press, 1967.
———. “Indeterminacy.” In Silence: Lectures and Writings, 261–262. Middletown: Wesleyan University Press, 1961.
———. “Music Lovers’ Field Companion.” In Silence, 274–276. Cambridge, MA: The MIT
Press, 1961.
Emmerik, Paul van, Herert Henck, and András Wilheim. A John Cage Compendium: 2003–2021.
Kostelanetz, Richard ed. Conversing with Cage, second edition. New York: Routledge, 2003.
Nicholls, David. John Cage. Urbana, IL: University of Illinois Press, 2007.
Pritchett, James. The Music of John Cage. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1993.
Revill, David. The Roaring Silence: John Cage: A Life. New York: Arcade, 1992.
Silverman, Kenneth. Begin Again: A Biography of John Cage. New York: Knopf, 2010.
Sutton, Gloria. "Communitas... After Black Mountain College." In Bauhaus Imaginista Journal. March 10, 2019.