John Cage | Autograph note signed, c. 1950

John Cage

Autograph note signed ("Please do not play or open the piano. J.C.")

written in pencil on a single small notebook leaf, framed and glazed, printed label to back of frame (“Note left by John Cage at Princeton, c. 1950”)

1 page, overall size c. 238 x 182 mm, no place [Princeton], c. 1950, some discoloration of the paper

This suggestive note cannot help being read in the context of John Cage’s most significant and notorious piece, 4’ 33’’, not only an icon of twentieth-century postwar avant-garde music, but also the epitome of Cage’s aesthetic of silence. This work, which was apparently conceived of in the late 1940s, involved the performer or performers (of any instrument or instruments, but most often a pianist) sitting in silence for the duration of the piece’s three movements. The score itself, marked "tacet", only instructs the performer to be silent, though, as premiered by pianist David Tudor at Woodstock, NY, on 29 August, 1952, the opening and shutting of the keyboard lid served to demarcate the individual movements.