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Paul Williams: The Cage Mix
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 24 April 2020
Abstract
Demystifying a largely misunderstood chapter in John Cage's biographical narrative, this article explores the pivotal role architect and philanthropist Paul Williams played in Cage's life, and for whom Cage named his famous magnetic tape composition Williams Mix (1952–53). Retracing the activities of both men, beginning with their earliest encounter at the experimental Black Mountain College in North Carolina in 1948, this investigation documents for the first time the extent of their mutually devoted relationship. Newly uncovered source material and photographs also reveal the valuable contributions Williams made as primary benefactor and mastermind of the intentional community called the Gatehill Cooperative (a.k.a. “Stony Point”), a place Cage called home for seventeen years (1954–71). There Cage developed a “hunger for nature,” wrote his widely read and influential book Silence (1961), and undertook some of his most significant musical projects.
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- Research Article
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- Copyright © The Society for American Music 2020
Footnotes
I would like to thank Merce Williams (Paul Williams's son) for generously allowing access to his family papers, including photographs and material related to his father's architecture. Special thanks to Vera B. Williams, David Weinrib, Patsy Wood, Richard Hora, Naomi Rosenblum, and Betsy Williams for their personal recollections (and photographs); to Mies Hora and Sean Folley, and to more current members of the Gatehill Cooperative at whose sixtieth–anniversary celebration an early version of this article was initially presented (June 27, 2015). I would also like to thank Thomas L. Riis for his editorial comments and feedback on a more recent draft presented at the Annual Conference of the Society for American Music, Kansas City, MO, March 3, 2018. This article draws on my larger history of the Gatehill Cooperative (forthcoming) with support by the John Cage Research Grant, Northwestern University, the Western Regional Archives in Asheville, NC (archivist Heather South, in particular), and multiple travel and research grants from Regis University, Denver.
References
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John Cage Correspondence. The Northwestern University Library. Evanston, IL.Google Scholar
Lou Harrison Papers. Special Collections and Archives, University Library, University of California, Santa Cruz. Santa Cruz, CA.Google Scholar
Martin Duberman Collection. State Archives of North Carolina, Western Regional Archives. Asheville, NC.Google Scholar
Merce Cunningham Dance Foundation Inc. Records. Jerome Robbins Dance Division, New York Public Library for the Performing Arts. New York, NY.Google Scholar
Williams, Paul F. Jr. Harvard University College Transcripts. Harvard University, Harvard School of Design. Cambridge, MA.Google Scholar
Artaud, Antonin. The Theater and Its Double. Translated by Richards, Mary Caroline. New York: Grove Press, 1958.Google Scholar
Beck, Julian. “Storming the Barricades.” In The Brig: A Concept for Theatre or Film by Kenneth H. Brown. With ann Essay on the Living Theatre by Julian Beck and Director's Notes by Judith Malina, 3–35. New York: Hill and Wang, 1965.Google Scholar
Brown, Carolyn. Chance and Circumstance: Twenty Years with Cage and Cunningham. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2007.Google Scholar
Cage, John. Silence: Lectures and Writings. Middletown, CT: Wesleyan University Press, 1961.Google Scholar
Cage, John. The Selected Letters of John Cage. Edited by Laura Kuhn. Middletown, CT: Wesleyan University Press, 2016.Google Scholar
Chadabe, Joel. Electric Sound: The Past and Promise of Electronic Music. Upper Saddle River, NJ: Prentice Hall, 1997.Google Scholar
Craven, Jackie. “Modern Architecture and Its Variations: Timeline of 20th Century Modernism,” https://www.thoughtco.com/modernism-picture-dictionary-4065245.Google Scholar
Davenport, Mark. “Variations on a Ground: Patsy Lynch at Black Mountain College.” Appalachian Journal 44–45, nos. 3/4–1/2 (2017/2018). Black Mountain College Special Edition: 416–29.Google Scholar
Duberman, Martin. Black Mountain: An Exploration in Community. Evanston, IL: Northwestern University Press, 1972.Google Scholar
Gerard, Alice. Where Have All the Flowers Gone? Alice Gerard, 2010.Google Scholar
Goodman, Percival, and Goodman, Paul. Communitas: Means of Livelihood and Ways of Life. New York: Vintage Books, 1960.Google Scholar
Iddon, Martin, Cage, John, and Tudor, David. John Cage and David Tudor: Correspondence on Interpretation and Performance. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2013.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Joseph, Branden W. “John Cage and the Architecture of Silence.” October 81 (Summer 1997): 80–104.10.2307/779020CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kentgens-Craig, Margret. The Bauhaus and America: First Contacts, 1919–1936. Cambridge: MIT Press, 1999.Google Scholar
Lane, Mervin, ed. Black Mountain College Sprouted Seeds: An Anthology of Personal Accounts. Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press, 1990.Google Scholar
Richards, M. C. “Paul Hultberg: The Enamel as Mural.” Craft Horizons 20 (March/April 1960): 29–32.Google Scholar
Richards, M. C.The Crossing Point Selected Talks and Writings. Middletown, CT: Wesleyan University Press, 1973.Google Scholar
Richards, M. C.Centering: in Pottery, Poetry, and the Person. Middletown, CT: Wesleyan University Press, 1989.Google Scholar
Richards, M. C. “To Take Stock of Our First Decade.” Landkidzink 5 (Winter, 2003/04): 3–8.Google Scholar
Shapiro, Mark, ed. A Chosen Path: The Ceramic Art of Karen Karnes. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2010.Google Scholar
Silverman, Kenneth. Begin Again: A Biography of John Cage. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2010.Google Scholar
Taruskin, Richard, and Gibbs, Christopher. The Oxford History of Western Music. College Edition. New York: Oxford University Press, 2013.Google Scholar
Tytell, John. The Living Theatre: Art, Exile, and Outrage. New York: Grove Press, 1995.Google Scholar
Wood, Patsy Lynch. “Impressions of Music at BMC in the 1940s.” In Black Mountain College Sprouted Seeds: An Anthology of Personal Accounts, edited by Lane, Mervin, 106–109. Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press, 1990.Google Scholar
Cage, John. Interview by Martin Duberman. April 26, 1969. Martin Duberman Collection. State Archives of North Carolina, Western Regional Archives, Asheville, NC.Google Scholar
Weinrib, David. Interview by author. New York City, October 15, 2014.Google Scholar
Williams, Vera B. Interview by author. Narrowsburg, NY, October 13–14, 2014.Google Scholar