condition (book): M (sealed)

“Per gli uccelli” is a book, a dialogue and an event all at the same time. What had its origins in a simple but wide-ranging collection of conversations with Daniel Charles becomes under Cage's hands a work for many voices and many subjects. Cage's considerable wit and intelligence covers an astonishing range of subjects; his own explanations and ideas on his compositions and the place of music and sounds in our times. Also mushrooms, chess, James Joyce, Mao, Throeau, Satie, electronic music, Duchamp, the prepared piano, Zen, the environment, technology, politics, economics - all discussed here with an originality and a liveliness which belong to Cage alone. The Italian first edition of Pour les Oiseaux (Belfond, 1976), published as Per gli Uccelli by Multhipla - the Milan publishing house run by Gianni Sassi, the same Sassi who founded Cramps Records and was the central figure in the Italian experimental music scene of the 1970s. The translation is by Walter Marchetti, the Spanish-Italian composer and Fluxus associate; the cover design by Sassi himself. The book gathers a sustained series of conversations between John Cage and the French musicologist and composer Daniel Charles, recorded between Christmas and New Year 1970-71, prefaced by an earlier exchange ("Sixty Answers to Thirty-Three Questions") and documentation of a public debate at the Musée d'Art Moderne de Paris in October 1970. Cage and Charles discuss music, Zen, Thoreau, Joyce, Satie, mycology, politics, and economics - the conversation ranging across the full breadth of Cage's intellectual life with a fluency and candour that none of his solo writings quite match. The Multhipla edition appeared alongside Cage's Empty Words performance at the Teatro Lirico in Milan on December 2, 1977, and was presented at the press conference preceding the concert. A significant artifact of the Italian Cage moment - the moment when Cramps, Multhipla, and the network around Sassi constituted the most serious European engagement with Cage's work.
275 pages with many photos and illustrations.