was exciting, but I never thought of playing.”
John Cale was born on December 5, 1940 in Crynant, South Wales where he went to school until he was seventeen. According to Nico, Cale’s “father is totally deaf and his mother is totally mute”.
John studied at London University Goldsmiths’ College from 1960–1963. “When I was studying composition I was completely oblivious to the fact that The Rolling Stones were playing in some nearby club.” At Goldsmiths he spent his time ostensibly working on a musicological dissertation, but was not oblivious to the latest trends in avant-garde classical music and performance art. He got involved with electronic music and performances with the British composer Humphrey Searle. One of his teachers, Cornelius Cardew, was an important booster of John Cage, LaMonte Young and other avant-garde American composers. John Cage was the first major influence on John Cale.
CALE: “Most classical musicians are really insecure about self-expression. The conductor always tells you how to play a piece. Then Cage comes along and gives you a sheet with dots and diagrams, and gives you the freedom to play whatyou’d like and most people goof off.
“Cage’s music can sound like anything – Mozart, Beethoven, Bach – anyone. It can sound like what any one individual wants it to sound like. You can find your own riff and do exactly what you want. Classical musicians however are not given this freedom in the system they play.”
LaMonte Young, the second major influence on Cale, is an important American composer whose work has been infrequently heard by his own choice. His 1958 ‘Trio For Strings’, which inspired composers like Philip Glass and Steve Reich has, for example, never been recorded.
In 1963, under the aegis of Aaron Copland, Cale was awarded a Leonard Bernstein scholarship to study Modern Composition with the Franco-Greek composer, Iannis Xenakis in the Eastman Conservatory at Tanglewood, in Lenox, Massachusetts. According to Copland they originally met in England where he saw Cale perform and subsequently made possible his arrival in the States for that summer of study at Tanglewood. However, Copland later decided Cale couldn’t play his work at Tanglewood because it was too destructive. “He didn’t want his pianos destroyed.” So John went to New York City and found LaMonte Young, who was writing pieces in which the musician talked to the piano or, in one memorable incident, screamed at a plant until it died.
CALE: “LaMonte was perhaps the best part of my education and my introduction to musical discipline.
“We formed The Dream Syndicate, which consisted of two amplified voices, an amplified violin and my amplified viola. The concept of the group was to sustain notes for two hours at a time. LaMonte would hold the lowest notes, I would hold the next three on my viola, his wife Marion would hold the next note and this fellow Tony Conrad would hold the top note. That was my first group experience and what an experience it was!
“It was so different. I mean the tapes are art objects. Somepeople who came to our concerts know what it was like, but it is the only example of that kind of music in the world. The Indians use the drone also, but they use a totally different tuning system and though they attempt a scientific approach, they don’t really have it buttoned down like we did.”
The members of The Dream Syndicate, motivated by a scientific and mystical fascination with sound, spent long hours in rehearsals learning to provide sustained meditative drones and chants. Their rigorous style served to discipline John and developed his knowledge of the just intonation system. He also learned to use his viola in a new amplified way which would lead to the powerful droning effect that is so strong in the first two Velvet Underground records.
CALE: “When we formed The Dream Syndicate I needed to have a strong sound. I decided to try using guitar strings on my
John Cale was born on December 5, 1940 in Crynant, South Wales where he went to school until he was seventeen. According to Nico, Cale’s “father is totally deaf and his mother is totally mute”.
John studied at London University Goldsmiths’ College from 1960–1963. “When I was studying composition I was completely oblivious to the fact that The Rolling Stones were playing in some nearby club.” At Goldsmiths he spent his time ostensibly working on a musicological dissertation, but was not oblivious to the latest trends in avant-garde classical music and performance art. He got involved with electronic music and performances with the British composer Humphrey Searle. One of his teachers, Cornelius Cardew, was an important booster of John Cage, LaMonte Young and other avant-garde American composers. John Cage was the first major influence on John Cale.
CALE: “Most classical musicians are really insecure about self-expression. The conductor always tells you how to play a piece. Then Cage comes along and gives you a sheet with dots and diagrams, and gives you the freedom to play whatyou’d like and most people goof off.
“Cage’s music can sound like anything – Mozart, Beethoven, Bach – anyone. It can sound like what any one individual wants it to sound like. You can find your own riff and do exactly what you want. Classical musicians however are not given this freedom in the system they play.”
LaMonte Young, the second major influence on Cale, is an important American composer whose work has been infrequently heard by his own choice. His 1958 ‘Trio For Strings’, which inspired composers like Philip Glass and Steve Reich has, for example, never been recorded.
In 1963, under the aegis of Aaron Copland, Cale was awarded a Leonard Bernstein scholarship to study Modern Composition with the Franco-Greek composer, Iannis Xenakis in the Eastman Conservatory at Tanglewood, in Lenox, Massachusetts. According to Copland they originally met in England where he saw Cale perform and subsequently made possible his arrival in the States for that summer of study at Tanglewood. However, Copland later decided Cale couldn’t play his work at Tanglewood because it was too destructive. “He didn’t want his pianos destroyed.” So John went to New York City and found LaMonte Young, who was writing pieces in which the musician talked to the piano or, in one memorable incident, screamed at a plant until it died.
CALE: “LaMonte was perhaps the best part of my education and my introduction to musical discipline.
“We formed The Dream Syndicate, which consisted of two amplified voices, an amplified violin and my amplified viola. The concept of the group was to sustain notes for two hours at a time. LaMonte would hold the lowest notes, I would hold the next three on my viola, his wife Marion would hold the next note and this fellow Tony Conrad would hold the top note. That was my first group experience and what an experience it was!
“It was so different. I mean the tapes are art objects. Somepeople who came to our concerts know what it was like, but it is the only example of that kind of music in the world. The Indians use the drone also, but they use a totally different tuning system and though they attempt a scientific approach, they don’t really have it buttoned down like we did.”
The members of The Dream Syndicate, motivated by a scientific and mystical fascination with sound, spent long hours in rehearsals learning to provide sustained meditative drones and chants. Their rigorous style served to discipline John and developed his knowledge of the just intonation system. He also learned to use his viola in a new amplified way which would lead to the powerful droning effect that is so strong in the first two Velvet Underground records.
CALE: “When we formed The Dream Syndicate I needed to have a strong sound. I decided to try using guitar strings on my
Similar Books
To Love and to Cherish
Leigh Greenwood
The White Spell
Lynn Kurland
The Night Tourist
Katherine Marsh
Immortalis - Book 1 (The Keeper's Immortals)
Marisa DeMaris
The Lotus Still Blooms
Joan Gattuso
The Underdogs
Mariano Azuela
What's His Is Mine
Daaimah S. Poole
Questions of Travel
Michelle de Kretser
New Beginnings
Lori Maguire
Naked Cruelty
Colleen McCullough