Contemporary Music Review

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Point/Counterpoint: John Cage Studies with Arnold

Schoenberg

Severine Neff

To cite this article: Severine Neff (2014) Point/Counterpoint: John Cage Studies
with Arnold Schoenberg, Contemporary Music Review, 33:5-6, 451-482, DOI:
10.1080/07494467.2014.998414

To link to this article: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/07494467.2014.998414

Published online: 30 Jan 2015.

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Contemporary Music Review, 2014
Vol. 33, Nos. 5–6, 451–482, http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/07494467.2014.998414

Point/Counterpoint: John Cage Studies

with Arnold Schoenberg
Severine Neff

John Cage studied with Arnold Schoenberg for virtually two years, from 18 March 1935
until January 1937. However, Cage did not immediately dismiss Schoenberg’s ideas; as
he asserted decades later, ‘In all of my pieces between 1935 and 1940, I had
Schoenberg’s lessons in mind.’ This essay examines Schoenberg’s unique methods of
teaching counterpoint in the courses Cage attended: species focusing on one cantus,
polymorphous canon, pre-compositional manipulation of contrapuntal combinations,
and the analysis of a composition written specifically for teaching American students,
The suite in G (in old style) for string orchestra (1934). I argue that Schoenberg’s
notions of tonal counterpoint and the first movement of his Suite had a strong impact
on Cage’s handling of the fugue in his Second construction in metal, completed in
January 1940, which he ultimately described as a ‘poor piece’, too influenced by ‘theory
and education’.

Keywords: Cage; Contrapuntal Combination; Double Variation; Fugue; Polymorphous

Canon; Schoenberg; The suite in G (in old style) for string orchestra; Second
construction in metal

On 18 March 1935, John Cage joined a course on analysis Arnold Schoenberg was
giving at his home with an audience of 25 local music teachers and professors.1 He
found Schoenberg ‘marvelous, indescribable as a musician’.2 From March to June
1935, Cage would continue to share his ongoing thoughts about Schoenberg in two
correspondences: one with his lover at the time, the literary editor Pauline Schindler
(Figure 1),3 and the other with his former teacher and Schoenberg’s ex-student and
friend, the composer Adolph Weiss, who had played bassoon in the New York Philhar-
monic under Gustav Mahler (Figure 2).4 Cage’s letters are revealing in terms of his
relationship with Schoenberg and his own character alike.
He always wrote to Schindler in an informal, West-Coast style brimming with exci-
tement and spirituality:

© 2015 Taylor & Francis

452 S. Neff

Figure 1 Pauline Schindler, 1920. R. M. Schindler, Photographer. Esther McCoy Papers,

Archives of American Art, Smithsonian Institution.

[M]iraculous Schoenberg asked me to come see him … I am completely nervous

now, tingling and active in every direction, so that I am somewhat ineffective but
radiating.5

After hearing Schoenberg’s lecture analyzing the String Quartet No. 3, Op. 30, and
rehearsals and performances of the work by the Los Angeles-based Abas String
Quartet, he wrote:

About a week ago I had another unusual dream: I heard the entire III. String Quartet
in my sleep.6

By contrast, Cage’s letters to Weiss had an informative tone:

Schoenberg is giving a class in analysis, the fee for which is quite small; and since I
have a job now in a scientific research company my father started, I am able to attend
his class. We are analyzing the 4th Symphony of Brahms, the Art of Fugue, the Well-
Tempered Clavichord [sic], and the III String Quartet of Schoenberg.
Although I am really not prepared for this class, I manage to keep my ears open and
absorb what I can. … (George, 1971, pp. 308–309)
With Schoenberg I have remained apart. Although in each of the class sessions, I
have ‘gleaned’ something extremely valuable, I have felt disturbed fundamentally
by the mediocrity induced by the class members. Including myself, for it seems to
me I am dull at present. Last week after class Schoenberg asked me if I would
come to see him. Perhaps this will lead to working with him privately. (George,
1971, p. 311)
 Contemporary Music Review 453

Figure 2 Adolph Weiss, 1934. The Hans Moldenhauer Collection; Houghton Library,
Harvard University.

Throughout his life, Cage recounted this first meeting with the Austrian master (e.g.
see Silverman, 2010, p. 17); most likely, he first described it to Weiss:7

After making an appointment with [Schoenberg], I decided, since you considered it

best, to ask him point blank if I might in any way continue my studies with him. He
asked me many questions—about my work with you and before studying with you.
My answers showed him how very little I know—particularly with regard to the litera-
ture of string quartette [sic], symphonies, etc. He finally decided, however, to accept me
in a class in counterpoint which had already started, suggesting that, with the aid of a
George Tremblay, who is studying composition with him, I might ‘make-up’ what I
had missed.8 He felt that what I already know of Harmony, through you, would be suf-
ficient for the time being. His last words on this first occasion were: Now you must think
of nothing but music and must work from six to eight hours a day.
The result is that I work all the time.

In early December 1936,9 Cage resumed his correspondence with Weiss—his

studies with Schoenberg were now a source of depression and frustration. In Cage’s
454 S. Neff
eyes, that composer ‘he worshipped like a god’ (Cage, 1973, p. 1)10 had now become a
pedant demanding excellence in the study of Austro-German craft.11 Cage’s feelings
were intensified by the particular difficulty he had in writing chorale preludes (he lit-
erally termed them, ‘choral-school forms’, after Schoenberg);12 they consisted of
working out four-part, imitative settings of a chorale leading toward a variety of
cadences demanded by the given melody. Cage explains to Weiss:

For Schoenberg I am writing choral-school forms; our class will be today, but I am as
disappointed with my work as he will be, which is saying a great deal.13

By contrast, Schoenberg hoped to elicit many positive reactions to his teaching in the
USA. He wrote: ‘I intend to pass a portion of my life in this land—if I am wanted—and I
shall not grow false to my old habits there: I shall go on giving as before’ (Schoenberg,
1984, p. 176). He felt that he was being generous to serious students by allowing them the
privilege to study (in Cage’s case, for free) the basics of craft resulting in ‘an ear educated
by European music’ (Cage, 1965, p. 537), in the mastery of traditional techniques, and
with the goal of students finding their own compositional voice using those techniques.
Thus he believed his California students would then shower him with love and respect
like Alban Berg, who, after four years of study, would write:

Today I finished my studies in counterpoint with Schoenberg; and I am quite happy

to know … that my work merited his satisfaction. Next fall we shall begin ‘compo-
sition’. During the summer I am supposed to do some very concentrated work:
partly composition
… (right now I am doing a piano sonata just for myself) and partly contrapuntal
exercises (six- and eight-part choruses, and a fugue with three subjects for string
quintet with piano accompaniment). All this gives me great pleasure, and it is evi-
dently quite necessary, for I’d never get anywhere without it. Indeed, thanks to
Schoenberg’s tremendous knowledge, one gains a marvelous perspective of all
musical literature. (Leibowitz, 1949, p. 140)

After having studied a year of harmony and form and analysis with Richard Buhlig,
another year of dissonant counterpoint and modern harmony with Henry Cowell,
more counterpoint and mainly Schoenbergian harmony with Weiss, and nearly two
years of counterpoint and form and analysis with Schoenberg himself, Cage felt that
he was ‘ready to study composition’ and wanted Schoenberg to agree to private
lessons for him—but to no avail.14 Long before he could fulfill Schoenberg’s technical
demands—I argue in January 193715—and after he completed the difficult course in
counterpoint culminating in retrograde and inverted polymorphous canons, plus a
troubled class in beginning harmony as well,16 Cage decided to end his studies.
On 23 March 1937, Cage’s mentor, teacher, and friend, Henry Cowell, wrote to him
from San Quentin State Prison:17

I am sure that the value of study with Schoenberg is now past for you. It has a great
value—I know the whole business well, having been in his Berlin class. He would
 Contemporary Music Review 455
never, never permit you to create, ever. Now is the time for you to do so. But of
course, in your own chosen field of creation, principles of fine-wrought construction
must also apply. And not while necessarily adopting those of S., the way of building
up such things is shown through contact with him. I know how natural it is to react
against the retrogrades, etc. of polyphonic form-devices; but the best is to remain
balanced, not prejudiced against them because they were too vigorously crammed
down your throat! (Miller, 2006, p. 103)

In the essay ‘Teaching and Modern Trends in Music’, completed on 30 June 1938,
over a year after Cage departed, Schoenberg publically reasserted his thoughts on
teaching composition:

Often a young man who wants to study with me expects to be taught in musical
modernism. But he experiences a disappointment. Because, in his compositions, I
usually at once recognize the absence of an adequate background. Specifically inves-
tigating, I unveil the cause: the student’s knowledge of musical literature offers the
aspects of a Swiss cheese—more holes than cheese. Then I ask the following ques-
tion: ‘If you want to build an aeroplane, would you venture to invent and construct
every detail of which it is composed, or would you better at first try to acknowledge
what all the men did who designed aeroplanes before you’? (1984, p. 377)

However, at some point, Schoenberg also realized that Cage’s musical sensibilities and
values were not necessarily centered on being a composer working in the European
canon—for Schoenberg, they were simply not the sensibilities of a composer. Schoen-
berg told Cowell, who was a lifelong friend and his occasional tennis partner, that
‘Cage was more interested in his philosophy than in acquiring his techniques’
(Higgins, 2002, p. 132).
Despite ending his studies with Schoenberg in 1937, Cage did not completely
dismiss the composer’s ideas and technical training. As he asserted decades later, ‘In
all of my pieces between 1935 and 1940, I had Schoenberg’s lessons in mind’ (cf. Bern-
stein, 2002b, pp. 18–19). And indeed, over the last two decades, scholars such as David
Bernstein, Michael Hicks, and Brenda Ravenscroft have done important, pioneering
research on various aspects of the student–teacher relationship between Cage and
Schoenberg (see Bernstein, 2002a, 2002b, 2002c; Hicks, 2002; Ravenscroft, 2006).
Bernstein in particular has examined the relation of Cage’s early pieces to Schoenberg’s
theories in analysis and composition. However, no one has focused on the question of
what Cage could have and did learn from Schoenberg’s counterpoint courses—those
courses in which Cage’s presence is clearly documented and which contain the subject
matter he valued most among the traditional sub-disciplines of craft (Figure 3).18
It is not surprising that when the composer Gerald Strang needed to miss a counter-
point class, he sought out Cage’s notes, for Cage seems to have been conscientious in
attending Schoenberg’s courses on the subject (Figure 4) (compare Bernstein, 2002b,
pp. 18–19).
This essay will describe and reflect upon the Cage–Schoenberg relationship in light
of the study of counterpoint. Subsequently I will comment analytically on the fugal
456 S. Neff

Figure 3 Schoenberg’s Classes in Los Angeles from March 1935 to January 1937.

Figure 4 Detail of Note to Himself; Composer Gerald Strang, January 1936.

movement of Schoenberg’s school composition written for American students, The

suite in G (in old style) for string orchestra (1934). My argument is that Cage’s proficien-
cies in counterpoint and his documented fondness for Schoenberg’s Suite had an
impact on the presentation of the fugue in his Second construction in metal, completed
in Seattle in January 1940—one of Cage’s most played and well-received compositions.
By contrast, Cage himself has described the work as a ‘poor piece’ too negatively influ-
enced by ‘carry-overs from theory and education’ (Gagne & Caras, 1982, p. 19).
 Contemporary Music Review 457
Schoenbergian Methods of Teaching Counterpoint
At the end of his life in 1949, Schoenberg wrote, ‘I never make a point which is not
composition. This is perhaps my greatest merit as a teacher’ (Langlie, 1960, p. 94)—
and this comment could have applied to his lifelong activities as a pedagogue. Cage
understood that Schoenberg viewed composition as a consummate Idealist, and he
explained Schoenberg’s compositional philosophy as follows: ‘Music’s not something
we [as composers] experience, but rather an idea we can have, the expression of which
can never be perfect, though we ought—for artistic and moral reasons—to bring it as
close to perfection as possible … ’ (Cage, 1965, p. 538). Schoenberg believed that the
composer’s ‘musical idea’—for him a profound message about Truth—could ‘not be
imitated, nor [could] it be taught’ (Schoenberg, 1963, p. 223). Thus his notion of
teaching composition was a paradox.
Unlike other renowned, early twentieth-century pedagogues (including Nadia Bou-
langer, Paul Hindemith, and Roger Sessions), Schoenberg was largely self-taught,
though he studied informally for a brief time both with his future brother-in-law,
the composer Alexander Zemlinsky, and his childhood friend, the violinist Oskar
Adler. And indeed, in his review of Schoenberg’s Harmonielehre, the German theorist,
Max Loewengard (Schoenberg’s colleague at Stern Conservatory in Berlin), describes
the composer’s teaching philosophy as follows: ‘He wants everyone to be an autodidact
—including everyone who reads his book–and his pupils as well’ (Krämer, 1996,
p. 147). Using his own experience as a guide, Schoenberg viewed the teaching of com-
position as a means of arousing his students’ own sense of expression, of training them
to present their own thoughts within the techniques of the European tradition; they
would both learn to communicate their own ‘ideas’ in ways that ‘fittingly expresses
a personality’ and conversely, they could also learn to ‘extract the logic’ and ideas of
others’ work ‘from the sound of it only’ (Schoenberg, 1984, p. 366). Thus by intensely
studying technique and presentation, a student’s personal development was linked by
definition not only to time-honored European training but also to an evolving, histori-
cal sense of the ever-changing needs and requirements of a contemporary European
art. In Schoenberg’s words:

It is said of many an author that he may have technique but no invention. That is
wrong; he has no technique either, or he has invention, too. You don’t have tech-
nique when you can neatly imitate something; technique has you. Other people’s
technique. Technique never exists devoid of invention; what does exist is invention,
which still has to create its technique. (1984, p. 366)

The teaching of counterpoint, the oldest of the theoretical disciplines engaging

compositional craft, posed a particular challenge in light of its meaning for teaching
contemporary composition; but for Schoenberg, historical knowledge always had to
serve the living. This stance mirrored that of the philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche,
whom Schoenberg revered and whose treatise on history he owned and read.19
Nietzsche explained a sense of history in the context of three perspectives: the
458 S. Neff
antiquarian (i.e. ‘the pious and reverent consolidation of our knowledge of the past
considered as an object of respect because of its age’), the monumental (i.e. ‘concen-
tration on heroes of the past in an effort to derive comfort and inspiration from the
fact that humans are capable of greatness, contemporary mediocrity notwithstand-
ing’), and the critical (i.e. viewing history as ‘a judge who passes sentence on the
course of past events, without illusion or mercy’).20 And indeed, these three
stances are valuable in understanding the philosophical underpinning of Schoen-
berg’s pedagogy of counterpoint.
Schoenberg refused to conceive or teach counterpoint as a historical phenomenon
reduced to and only regarded as an artifact in the Nietzschian sense of ‘antiquarian’
knowledge. He writes, ‘[R]espect for the contrapuntal erudition of the elder compo-
sers … is probably the origin of the wrong judgment on the value or worthlessness
of contrapuntal skill’.21 As a result, Schoenberg questioned the teaching of counter-
point as exclusively modal species.22 Like Johann Albrechtsberger, Luigi Cherubini,
and Siegfried Dehn—but for his own reasons23—Schoenberg believed that species
should be taught tonally instead; thus he required students not to replicate an anti-
quated style but to ‘think polyphonically’ in a more contemporary fashion also incor-
porating principles of variation.
For example, in Europe and at least during his first several years in the USA, Schoen-
berg idiosyncratically taught species counterpoint largely based around a single cantus
firmus.24 In 1904–1907, Alban Berg wrote an enormous number of contrapuntal exer-
cises on the cantus firmus, C, D, F, E, D, C (see Figure 5). Cage explained to the
German composer Dieter Schnebel in 1973, ‘[W]hen a cantus firmus was required
[in our counterpoint class], only one was permitted: C, D, F, E, D, C’ (Cage, 1973).
The surviving class notes and homework of Cage’s fellow student, pianist Bernice
Abrams, corroborate his statement (Geiringer, 1930–2001).25
Schoenberg required the class to write as many alternative solutions to the given
cantus in all forms of species in three and four parts (see Figure 6 for prototypical exer-
cises). Cage was impressed that this method allowed him to think compositionally—
particularly in terms of variation. Cage wrote to Weiss: ‘[I] examine the possibilities as
completely as I can. It is amazing what can be done with a single cantus firmus’
(George, 1971, p. 314).
The cantus used by Schoenberg is also the subject of Johann Sebastian Bach’s E
Major Fugue, Book II, in the Well-Tempered Clavier; it is also related to the subject
of the fugato in the finale of Mozart’s ‘Jupiter’ Symphony, No. 41.26 In evoking a
subject steeped in tradition, Schoenberg allowed his students to learn about and
take their inspiration from the European classical legacy—in principle, Nietzsche’s
notion of engaging the ‘monumental’ in history. For Nietzsche, however, such study
would have fulfilled a second purpose. The philosopher writes:

History is necessary above all to the man of action and power who fights the great
fight and needs examples, teachers, and comforters; he cannot find them among his
contemporaries. (Cage, 1965, p. 539)
 Contemporary Music Review 459

Figure 5 Species Exercises on C-D-F-E-D-C Cantus by Alban Berg (Austrian National

Library, Vienna, F 21 Berg, 32/VI, 7). Transcription and Clef Conversion.

Schoenberg, the solitary, revolutionary figure who—to paraphrase the title of his 1937
California essay—‘becomes lonely’ (Schoenberg, 1984, pp. 30–53), indeed sought
‘examples, teachers, and comforters’ from the past. Cage’s remembrances about
Schoenberg resonate with Nietzsche’s view and show that Cage and other students
were always subliminally aware of this fact. Cage writes: ‘[Schoenberg’s] pupils did
not find him arrogant when, as often, he said, “With this material Bach did so-and-
so; Beethoven did so-and-so; Schoenberg did so-and-so.” His musical mind, that is,
was blindingly brilliant’ (1965, p. 539).
Over the course of three years of study with Schoenberg (1904–1907), Alban Berg
filled numerous workbooks of exercises in species counterpoint, imitation, cadence,
modulation, double counterpoint, chorale prelude, canon, and fugue.27 Abrams,
Tremblay, and Cage were encouraged to become acquainted with all of these topics
in over a year, both in their summer classes and the subsequent year-long courses
such as ‘Advanced Counterpoint’ at University of Southern California (compare the
appendix). Perhaps because of the speed at which topics were covered, Cage also
took the semester of advanced counterpoint offered at the University of California
at Los Angeles in the fall semester of 1936, though its subject matter clearly repeated
that of the fall and spring semester at University of Southern California (compare
topics of classes in the appendix).
460 S. Neff

Figure 6 (a) Species Exercises on C-D-F-E-D-C Cantus (The Bernice Geiringer Papers, ca.
1930–2001, PA Mss 40, Performing Arts Collections, University of California at Santa
Barbara Library). (b) Transcription and Clef Conversion of Figure 6(a).
 Contemporary Music Review 461
Schoenberg described all of the aforementioned exercises as ‘preliminary’ to the study
of contrapuntal form based on his notion of ‘contrapuntal combination’. He described a
‘contrapuntal combination’ as a three-dimensional musical space: a configuration heard
vertically (i.e. harmonically), horizontally (i.e. linearly), and as a composite of the ver-
tical and horizontal—a Gestalt.28 The manipulation and variation of such a ‘contrapun-
tal combination’ or Grundgestalt (Schoenberg, 1984, p. 290) of two or more lines served
as the basic material for a contrapuntal work (e.g. the combination of a subject and
countersubject). Schoenberg used a metaphor to describe it—he said that the basic com-
bination was like the frame of a film (1984, p. 290). In varying such a frame through a
rhythmic shifting of parts or through so-called polymorphous canons in inversion, ret-
rograde, retrograde inversion, or other pitch-based variations, a student could generate
materials for a contrapuntal work or analyze an existing one.29
Schoenberg required his advanced students—such as Cage—to compose a particu-
lar type of contrapuntal combination, the so-called polymorphous canon.30 Schoen-
berg describes such a structure as follows:

[A] canon is a voice which can serve as its own accompaniment.

This is certainly one of the higher forms of unity … The highest of such combi-
nations is called a polymorphous canon. It admits imitating repetitions of the
basic voice in a great number of ways: at various intervals, at different times, in
inversions, retrogrades, augmentations, diminutions, and combinations thereof,
and it might even admit the simultaneousness of several imitations, or very close
successions.
Evidently, the more such formations can be derived from a polymorphous canon,
the more artful the composition derived from it. The multiplicity of forms
unified by their common origin, different in sound and often even in shape, will
be considered as variations of an idea, as its elaboration which unveils the richness
of its contexts, hidden secretly in the beginning. (Schoenberg, 1947, pp. 2–3)

Although over a thousand canons appear in Schoenberg’s extant published and

unpublished works, none of his surviving papers include a detailed description of a
polymorphous canon. As a result, Ebenezer Prout’s explanation is valuable.31 In his
Double Counterpoint and Canon, Prout addresses the topic of polymorphous canons
in light of the main theoretical treatise on this subject, Practischer Beweiß (1725) by
Gottfried Heinrich Stölzel, an organist, composer, and contemporary of Johann Sebas-
tian Bach (Stölzel, 1725/1995).32 Prout shows that a melody devised by Stölzel may be
accompanied by itself at different transpositions. Next, both inverted and retrograded,
and rotated forms of the same melody are also treated canonically (Figure 7). Prout
notes that Johann Marpurg, Bach’s student, who also was familiar with this particular
canon of Stölzel, claimed it could be realized in 392 different ways (Prout, 1891/1969,
pp. 249–253).33
Like Prout before him, Schoenberg understood that the writing of polymorphous
canons would serve as an excellent preliminary study for the handling of stretti in
fugues. Specifically, Schoenberg required his students to make pre-compositional
462 S. Neff

Figure 7 Gottfried Heinrich Stölzel’s Polymorphous Canon. (a) Levels of Canon of a Given
Melody. (b) Canons to Inverted Fragments Derived from the Given Melody but with
Altered Rhythm. (c) Canons to Rhythmic Displacement and Permutation of Melody.
(d) Canons to a Rhythmically Altered, Permuted, and Ornamented Form of the Given
Melody. (e) Canons to a Rhythmically Altered, Permuted, Ornamented, and Inverted
Form of the Given Melody.

studies of a fugal subject both by determining its canonic potentials and those for
invertible counterpoint; he mandated analogous scrutiny of combinations of subjects
and countersubjects. For example, Figure 8 shows Berg’s pre-compositional explora-
tions of a given fugue subject.34
Strang’s notes for Schoenberg’s course in advanced counterpoint at University of
Southern California (attended by Cage) show that students analogously calculated a
fugal combination’s canonic and invertible possibilities. From these materials, they uti-
lized those combinations appropriate for the three sections of a textbook fugue.
Schoenberg required that the basic combination and an episode be stated in approxi-
mately the first six measures and that modulatory variations and rearrangements of the
opening materials appear in the next six. He saw the final development section as
leading to the extended use of stretti moving toward the penultimate cadence
(Figure 9).35 Thus in Schoenberg’s words (as relayed by Strang), the result would
present a form analogous to the organic form of ‘beginning—body—conclusion’.36
Taken as a whole, Schoenberg’s recommendations for pre-compositional activity of
strict canonic, invertible, and fugal procedures forced a student to consider all aspects
 Contemporary Music Review 463

Figure 8 Pre-compositional Combinations for a School Fugue by Alban Berg (Austrian

National Library, Vienna, F 21 Berg 34:53). Transcription and Clef Conversion.

Figure 9 Layout of Equal Parts (i.e. 3-Bar Subjects, Answers, and Episodes) of the 3-part
Fugue (The Gerald Strang Satellite Collection, Arnold Schönberg Center).
464 S. Neff
of a given contrapuntal combination: the rhythmical interactions of its parts, the
degree of dissonance between the lines and its effect on the definition of a key, and
the implication of repeating the combination in a variety of versions to generate a
large-scale form. Schoenberg believed that such thought engaged the students’ abilities
to make such procedures serve their own needs in creative composition. Thus they
would enact a ‘critical’ judgment (in a Nietzschian sense) on such historical techniques
directly and ‘without illusion’, using their pedagogical experiences to serve the presen-
tation of their musical ideas within the European compositional legacy. As we shall see,
Cage found ways to translate his knowledge of the pitched relations of fugue into the
non-pitched percussion of Second construction in metal.

‘Carry-overs from Theory and Education’: Cage’s Second construction in metal

Upon arriving in the USA, when his ability to express his thoughts in English was
limited, Schoenberg turned to a pedagogical aspect he had never explored in
Europe; he termed it a ‘school piece’, composed for the New York University
student orchestra. The suite in old style, as Schoenberg initially titled it, was his first
major tonal piece since the Second String Quartet, Op. 10, written 34 years earlier;
it was designed to introduce American students to his work and to teach them
about the capabilities of string instruments and the complexities of contrapuntal com-
position (compare Schoenberg, 1934).37 Milton Babbitt, who was at that time a student
at New York University, described the piece as an ‘exacting vade mecum of what every
composer should know, even must know’ (Babbitt, 1999, p. 36).
In composing his ‘school piece’, Schoenberg wished the education of young Amer-
ican students to mirror his own. As a 23-year-old, Schoenberg had learned much about
counterpoint by composing an early Gavotte and Musette for String Orchestra (in the
Old Style) as a part of his informal study with Zemlinsky. This work became Schoen-
berg’s first extant composition using sophisticated combinations of canon and double
counterpoint (Sichardt, 1992, p. 25). Analogously, the first movement of his 1934 Suite
employs a variety of complex contrapuntal combinations for his students to analyze
and emulate; its main themes are contrapuntally combined with themselves (e.g.
mm. 10, 24, 41), each other, and their respective inversions (e.g. mm. 48, 87), and
are stated in diminution (e.g. m. 109) and augmentation (e.g. m. 101).
Schoenberg was also aware that Johannes Brahms as a 21-year-old was deeply
involved in contrapuntal studies—rather like himself in 1897. In 1854, the young
Brahms had composed a Bach-inspired Sarabande and Gavotte, the themes of
which would later appear in the second movement of his String Quintet in F Major,
Op. 88 (compare Pascall, 1976)—a work juxtaposing largo and allegro sections in a
double-variation form. Schoenberg revered the Quintet (Neff, 2011, fn. p. 17,
p. 207); and indeed, he composed his Suite’s first movement (titled ‘Overture’) in a
double-variation form articulated by shifts of tempo from largo to allegro.
However, unlike Brahms, Schoenberg also chose to embed a fugue within the design
of his double variation (see Figure 10). Consequently, the first largo unit functions
 Contemporary Music Review 465

Figure 10 Schoenberg’s Dual Form of Double Variation/Fugue.

both as the initial section of the double variations and as a prelude to the fugue. Sub-
sequent tempo shifts from allegro to largo highlight the double-variation form as well
as the entrance of fugal episodes built around the prelude’s theme. Meanwhile, the
subject is continually varied throughout the work, its inverted form most often signal-
ing the return of allegro sections (e.g. m. 48). Thus in virtually every way, the Suite’s
first movement is a hybrid form.
After Cage heard Otto Klemperer’s premiere performance of the Suite with the Los
Angeles Symphony Orchestra, he praised the work to Schindler—in words which
would indirectly complement the musical ideas of Brahms because of the history of
Schoenberg’ work:

[The] ‘Suite in Old Style’ was played Saturday and is a marvel.

There is nothing old about it. Although it begins with an Overture (Prelude and
Fugue), the whole ‘idea’ is basically a new concept of fugue. There are, i.e., no
too [sic] relationships of subject and answer identical … the episodes … are here
the development of the prelude. It is fascinating because the [prelude’s material]
is largo and is forever interrupting the fugue’s allegro.38

The Suite’s stop-and-go form warrants Schoenberg’s handling of the transition from
the prelude into fugue in an analogous manner—he literally ‘interrupts’ the presen-
tation of his subject by introducing the cadence of the prelude (articulated by a
silence) as the beginning of the fugue (see Figure 11). In light of the strict, Austro–
German pedagogical standard of clear subject entrance, Schoenberg breaks a ‘rule’.
However, as Schoenberg’s student, the early percussion and jazz composer William
Russell points out that his teacher strongly believed that ‘rules can only tell what to
avoid, not what is right’. In Russell’s words, Schoenberg did not seek ‘to draw out
parrot-like answers, but to develop a searching attitude and to stimulate self-criticism’
(see Gillespie, 1998, p. 49; referenced in Feisst, 2011, p. 222).39
466 S. Neff

Figure 11 The Subject Entry as End and Beginning. Arnold Schoenberg, Suite in G (in old
style) for string orchestra, mm. 16–25. Used with the kind permission of Lawrence
Schoenberg.

On 9 December 1939, four years after hearing the Suite and almost two years after
ending his study with Schoenberg, Cage and his percussion ensemble would present
Russell’s pioneering Fugue for Eight Percussion Instruments (1931–1932), one of the
earliest American works for percussion and the only one in fugal form. During the
fall of 1939, when Cage was preparing for the concert, Russell was studying with
Schoenberg. Most likely, he told Cage about his lessons and possibly mentioned that
Schoenberg had seen the score to his fugue published in Cowell’s New Music Edition
(1933) and ‘had a few kind things to say about it … ’ (Gillespie, 1998, pp. 40–41,
47–49).
Sometime that fall, Cage also began composing a ‘fugue … of a novel order’.40 Like
Schoenberg, Cage embedded his fugue in a larger layout—the square-root form of the
Second construction in metal scored for 4 players, 12 instruments of metal and skin, and
a ‘string piano’.41 Since the first section of Second Construction has 16 measures, the
piece has sixteen 16-measure units; the textural, rhythmic, and timbral events of the
first unit are clearly delimited into phrases of 4, 3, 4, and 5 measures, respectively—
this is the work’s so-called microstructure (see Figure 12).
 Contemporary Music Review 467

Figure 12 The Microstructure of Second Construction. Copyright © 1978 by Henmar Press

Inc. Sole Selling Agents: C.F. Peters Corp. Used by kind permission. All rights reserved.

In accordance with Cage’s tenets on square-root form, the 16-measure units in the
work’s overall structure should then be grouped into 4, 3, 4, and 5 units on a macro-
level. And indeed, the first four units consist of the reworkings of a first theme (see
mm. 1–5); the next three regard a second theme (rehearsal no. 4, mm. 1–4); and a
third theme enters in the eighth unit (rehearsal no. 8, 12–16). These presentations
produce the first two sections (4, 3) of the macrostructure. If the piece followed a
468 S. Neff
prototypical square-root form, the next major formal articulation would occur at the
onset of the twelfth 16-measure unit. However, this is not the case. The ninth unit ends
with a ritardando and fermata followed by silence, halting the work’s momentum
instead (see Figure 13).42
This general pause acts as a harbinger of a special event, viz. the reentrance the
work’s opening theme succeeded by a variety of instruments presenting this theme’s
rhythm in imitation (see Figure 14). The points of imitations enter at 4 and 3
measures, respectively—proportionally the same as the work’s micro- and macro-
structure. Only retrospectively does the listener realize that these lines are indeed
fugal subjects and answers. Thus, like Schoenberg, Cage presents the first statement
of his fugue subject unexpectedly, similarly varying his subjects and answers continu-
ously—one and the same surface rhythm is consistently performed on different
instruments.
Again in Schoenberg’s manner, Cage is careful to accentuate the episodes more than
subjects via dynamics and as changes in tempo (e.g. the last two measures of the ele-
venth 16-measure unit, see Figure 15)—the feature of Schoenberg’s fugue that he men-
tioned in the letter to Schindler.
Cage continually writes ‘episode’ on the fair copy of his score (see Figure 16),
showing as a result, strong interest in translating Schoenberg’s treatment of fugal

Figure 13 Cage’s Dual/Form of Square Root/Fugue.

 Contemporary Music Review 469

Figure 14 The Entrance of the Fugue Subject. Copyright © 1978 by Henmar Press Inc. Sole
Selling Agents: C.F. Peters Corp. Used by kind permission. All rights reserved.

Figure 15 Rehearsal No. 11, Bars 13–16. Copyright © 1978 by Henmar Press Inc. Sole
Selling Agents: C.F. Peters Corp. Used by kind permission. All rights reserved.

pitch materials (i.e. subjects and episodes and the large-scale fugal design) into the
medium of non-pitched percussion—a compositional factor to which he refers in
his early writings.43
470 S. Neff

Figure 16 Example of Cage’s Analytic Annotations on Rotation 13 with Episode Marked in

Last Two Bars. The John Cage Music Manuscript Collection, Collection, New York Public
Library, JPB 94–24 Folder 57. Used with the kind permission of John Cage Trust.

Cage divides his fugue into three parts—exposition and development followed by
stretti identical in function to Schoenberg’s 3-part school form he had studied at
University of Southern California. The subject and answer introduced in the tenth
 Contemporary Music Review 471

Figure 17 Last Two Entries of Fugue Subject Moving Back a Measure. Copyright © 1978 by
Henmar Press Inc. Sole Selling Agents: C.F. Peters Corp. Used by kind permission. All
rights reserved.

16-measure unit are followed by an entrance of the subject overlapping the answer by
one measure. Rotations 11–12 serve as variations of these materials. However, in the
12th and 13th units, Cage presents his stretti so that the subjects consecutively enter
one measure earlier with each appearance until they cannot enter again without
becoming one with the subject (compare Figure 17)—and indeed, at that point, in
the 14th unit, the fugue ends (compare Bernstein, 2002a, p. 74). Thus in the manipu-
lation of such contrapuntal combinations, we can imagine that Cage ‘had Schoenberg’s
lessons in mind’, but he both incorporated and interpreted them (to paraphrase
Schoenberg’s words) in a manner dictated by his own personality.

Epilog
In a 1980 interview, the 68-year-old Cage judged Second Construction a failure:

[N]ow so many people are beginning to play the old music, and they invite me to
concerts, so I hear it a good deal. Some of the pieces are quite good and some are
not. … I think that Second Construction is a poor piece though I wasn’t quite
aware that it was that poor when I wrote it; I thought it was interesting. But it
has carry-overs from education and theory [italics mine]; it is really a fugue, but of
a novel order. In this day I think fugues are not interesting (because of the repetition
of the subject).44 (Gagne & Caras, 1982, p. 19)
472 S. Neff
Cage’s rejection of fugal repetition as a viable musical process shows his impatience
with the predictability of subject entrance and possible embarrassment that he could
have betrayed ‘that European weakness for tradition’ (Cage, 1965, p. 538). Yet
throughout his life, Cage privately and personally renewed himself by rereading
Schoenberg’s literary and theoretical works—but not, to anyone’s knowledge, by
studying his scores with equal fervor. It appears that Schoenberg was correct in
telling Cowell that Cage was only interested in ‘his philosophizing’.
At the end of his life, Cage was rereading both Style and idea and the Theory of
harmony.45 Perhaps we can say that the older Cage’s interaction with Schoenberg’s writ-
ings is analogous to that of Schoenberg with the works of Bach, Beethoven, Mozart, and
Brahms. In this light, Cage assumed his teacher’s role of a fighter having few peers and
engaging in dialog with a ‘monumental’ figure of history. In Nietzsche’s Teutonic, nine-
teenth-century imagination:

The great moments in the individual battle form a chain, a high road of
humanity through the ages, and the highest points of those vanished moments
are yet great and living for men; and this is the fundamental idea of the belief in
humanity … 46

Even John Cage had a past.

Acknowledgements
I thank David Bernstein, Grant Chorley, and Joel Feigin for their comments on this essay. Gordon
Root and Áine Heneghan generously offered me their information about Schoenberg’s courses
taught at University of Southern California and University of California at Los Angeles. I would
like to thank Lawrence Schoenberg, Nuria Schoenberg Nono, and Ronald Schoenberg for allowing
me to publish materials from their father’s estate. Archivist Therese Muxender of the Arnold
Schönberg Center, Vienna, Austria, and Assistant Archivist Eike Fess were helpful in obtaining
materials from both the Schoenberg and Alban Berg archives. I wish to acknowledge Laura
Kuhn, Executive Director of the John Cage Trust, and Jonathan Hiam, Director of the American
Music Collection at New York Public Library (Performing Arts Division), for affording me the
opportunity to study the fair copy of Cage’s Second construction in metal, and Nancy Perloff,
Curator of Modern and Contemporary Collections, Getty Research Institute, for alerting me to
the John Cage–Pauline Schindler Correspondence.

Disclosure Statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes
[1] Cage met Schoenberg on 11 January 1935 and began taking his class on 18 March: see letters to
Pauline Schindler, 11 January 1935 and 19 March 1935 (Cage, 1934–1935); also compare tran-
scription of the correspondence in Mary (1996). For a description of the classes, see Alderman
(1981, 206). Compare Hicks (1990, p. 127). Cage mentions the course in his unpublished
letter to the German composer Dieter Schnebel dated 11 December 1973.
 Contemporary Music Review 473
[2] Cage to Schindler, 18 March 1935 (Cage, 1934–1935).
[3] In 1934–1935 Pauline Schindler was an Associate Editor of the arts journal Dune Forum in
which Cage published an article on counterpoint (Cage, 1933). She was the estranged wife
of Viennese architect Rudolph Schindler, a disciple of Frank Lloyd Wright, and (in his
native Austria) a friend of Adolf Loos and his Viennese circle, including Arnold Schoenberg
and Anton Webern. Pauline had met Schoenberg through her husband. For biographical
remarks about Pauline Schindler, see Crosse (2010), Mary (1996, p. 1), and Silverman
(2010, pp. 18–19).
[4] Cage studied composition in New York with Adolph Weiss in 1933–1934. Composer Henry
Cowell facilitated his work under Weiss as a step toward Cage’s studies with Schoenberg
himself: see George (1971, pp. 267–269); see also Hicks (1990, p. 126). Weiss was well
versed in Schoenbergian training; he had taken private lessons with Schoenberg at his
home in Mödling, Austria, in 1925. Subsequently, he became the first American student
admitted to Schoenberg’s composition seminar at The Prussian Academy of the Arts in
Berlin (1926–1927); in 1934, he was the composer’s teaching assistant in New York.
[5] Cage to Schindler, 2 March 1935 (Cage, 1934–1935).
[6] Cage to Schindler, 15 April 1935 (Cage, 1934–1935). Professor Pauline Alderman, a classmate
of Cage, has written that the Abas String Quartet played excerpts of the Third String Quartet in
class and a complete rendition at the students’ final gathering (Alderman, 1981, pp. 206–207).
A public performance of the Quartet sponsored by Pro Musica took place on 26 March 1935 in
Los Angeles (Miller, 2006, fn. 53, 60).
[7] Cage to Weiss, undated, possibly ca. mid-to-late May 1935 (George, 1971, pp. 313–315);
compare Hicks (1990, pp. 136).
[8] Schoenberg told Adolph Weiss that he chose his students by this criterion: ‘I don’t judge
people by what they do, I judge them by their faces, and if the face is sympathetic, I can
work with them, and if the face is not sympathetic, I’ll have nothing to do with them’
(George, 1971, p. 17).
There were three persons enrolled in the counterpoint class: Cage, Tremblay, and the
pianist Bernice Abrams. Canadian composer George Tremblay (1911–1982), son of
Amédée Tremblay, composer and organist of St. Vincent de Paul Church in Los Angeles,
was a serial composer, jazz musician, and ultimately the author of the treatise The definitive
cycle of the twelve-tone row (1974). He studied privately with Schoenberg from 1935 to
1951. Bernice Abrams Geiringer (1918–2001) was a concert pianist and the second wife of
musicologist Karl Geiringer.
[9] The letter is undated; however, its content makes reference to the study of chorale prelude in
Schoenberg’s class (George, 1971, p. 317). Leonard Stein’s class notes from Music 122A at the
University of California at Los Angeles in The Leonard Stein Collection at Arnold Schönberg
Center, Vienna, show that the topic was discussed on 11–30–36 and 12–4–36 (compare the
appendix, p. 32).
[10] Cage repeated this sentiment throughout his life: for example, quoted in Kostelanetz (1988,
pp. 8–9) and Revill (1992, p. 48).
[11] On 14 March 1939, Henry Cowell wrote to composer John Becker (see Miller, 2006, p. 91): ‘I
am now doing a work for percussion for John Cage—do you know him? He worked with
Schoenberg for some time and then reacted against his pedantry.’
[12] The recent immigrant, Schoenberg, thinking ‘Choralsatz’ in German, translated the term into
English as ‘choral-school form’. (It is more accurately ‘chorale setting’ or ‘chorale writing’).
[13] In 1965, in his review of a volume of Schoenberg’s correspondence, Cage further described the
psychological difficulties he had in one of the counterpoint classes:
474 S. Neff
In counterpoint classes, the laws he gave were no sooner followed than he demanded
they be taken less seriously. Liberties taken, he’d ask, ‘Why don’t you follow the rules’?
He kept his students in a constant state of failure. (1965, p. 538)

[14] For a variety of descriptions of Cage’s formal education in composition, see Bernstein (2002b,
pp. 15–23), Nicholls (2002, pp. 13–14), Pritchett (1993, pp. 5–9) and Tompkins (1965,
pp. 81–88).
[15] Scholars have offered beginning-to-ending dates for Cage’s study from 1934 to 1938: see Bern-
stein (2002b, pp. 18–19), Nicholls (2002, p. 25), Pritchett (1993, p. 9), and Tompkins (1965,
pp. 84, 88). However, the letter to Schindler dated 19 March 1935 and Cowell’s 23 March 1937
letter to Cage quoted later in this essay (Miller, 2006. p. 103), respectively, document the
beginning of Cage’s study as 18 March 1935 and its conclusion before mid-March, most
likely in January of 1937 at the end of the fall semester at University of California at Los
Angeles.
[16] The harmony course in the 1936 fall semester, mentioned in passing in Cage’s (1973) letter to
Dieter Schnebel (Cage, 1973), was a class of 56 undergraduates trying to learn basic harmony;
it is described in the organist Alexander Schreiner’s book, Alexander Schreiner reminiscences
(Hicks, 2002, fn. pp. 130, 139). Schreiner believed that the course was overall an unsuccessful
one because its required text; Schoenberg’s Harmonielehre of 1922 was in German, thus
remaining largely unintelligible to Cage and his fellow students. Schoenberg had tried to cir-
cumvent this problem by asking Weiss to make a translation of this text by the fall of 1935, but
he did not complete it (George, 1971, p. 467). However, Cage based his aversion to harmonic
studies less on the course than on his association of counterpoint with contemporary music
and harmony with the past (compare Hicks, 2002, p. 130).
[17] Cowell responds to a letter of Cage that is not extant. Perhaps, as a prisoner, Cowell was not
allowed to keep all of his correspondence.
[18] Weiss said that Cage was already quite proficient in counterpoint when he came to him
(George, 1971, p. 46), perhaps because Cage saw the worth of counterpoint as a subject
strongly related to contemporary composition. He wrote in 1934:

I personally see as a ‘general tendency’, an interest away from harmony (verticality:

Richard Wagner) and towards counterpoint, or, better, linearity (horizontality: Bach, Hin-
demith, Toch, Honegger, Brant, Riegger), with the resulting interest in Fugues, Canons,
and in new allied forms which will, possibly, take the title Invention. Harmony puts an
emphasis upon a given moment, which counterpoint transfers to an emphasis upon move-
ment. This tendency is specifically shown in the development of Schoenberg: from the
immense harmonic structure-texture of the Gurrelieder to the relatively thin but structu-
rally strong-like-wire Trio of the Minuet, Suite Op. 25. (Cage, 1933, p. 44)

[19] Schoenberg owned the volume containing On the use and abuse of history for living [Vom
Nutzen und Nachteil der Historie für das Leben], BOOK N12, Vol. 1, Arnold Schönberg
Center. He also had set Nietzsche’s poem, Der Wanderer, as song number eight in Acht
Lieder, Op. 6.
[20] Summarized in the classic text, Kaufmann (1965/1975, p. 144).
[21] Schoenberg (1923), translation by Grant Chorley.
[22] Schoenberg (1923).
[23] For example, unlike his predecessors, Schoenberg included modulatory exercises to remote
key areas (e.g. The Alban Berg Collection, F/21, 32/IV, 40/II at The Austrian National
Library). Such subject matter forced students to wed the study of counterpoint not only to
common-practice tonality but also to the extended-tonal, harmonic practices of the
 Contemporary Music Review 475
late-nineteenth and early-twentieth centuries. Schoenberg’s modulatory techniques in coun-
terpoint were in part based on the harmonic, voice-leading rules involving the process of ‘neu-
tralization’ (i.e. ‘neutralizing’ or resolving of cross-related pitches and controlling the order of
their introduction); see Schoenberg (1963, pp. 61, 63). Cage vividly remembered the practice
of ‘neutralization’; he writes:

When an exercise involved going from tonality to another, any cross-related tones had to
resolved in each voice (all Fs to E before the appearance of an F sharp; all the Bs to C
before the appearance of any B flat) without the writing of parallel octaves. (Cage,
1973, p. 1)

[24] Schoenberg altered his method and used multiple cantus firmi in the text Preliminary exercises
in counterpoint although he used the cantus C–D–F–E–D–C to introduce each new species
topic. His method changed with his teaching environment—that is, the introduction of
large classes of approximately 60 or more individuals at University of California at Los
Angeles after 1936.
[25] Abrams notes that two other canti were suggested but were used rarely, if at all (compare
topics of courses in the appendix to this essay).
[26] The melody also appears in Johann Jakob Froberger’s Fantasia No. 2 and the Ricercar No. 4,
and in the E Major Ricercar of Johann Kaspar Fischer’s Ariadne Musica.
[27] The notebooks and workbooks are housed in Berg, F/21 at the Austrian National Library.
Compare list in Krämer (1996, pp. 160–161).
[28] Schoenberg’s notion of the ‘spatial combination’ distinguishes his thought from other nine-
teenth- and twentieth-century theories of contrapuntal practice. For example, Schoenberg dis-
misses the work of the Swiss theorist Ernst Kurth because his notion of ‘linear counterpoint’ is
one-dimensional. Schoenberg explains, ‘If, then, a contrapuntal idea is based on a combi-
nations of several parts, what can there be about it that is linear?’ (1984, p. 295). He
further describes Hugo Riemann’s counterpoint as spatially limited: the ‘adding [of] “orna-
ments”—passing notes and suspensions—to harmonic textures’ (Ibid., p. 297).
[29] In Schoenberg’s words:

[A] basic configuration … taken asunder and reassembled in a different order contains
everything which will later produce a different sound than that of the original formu-
lation. Thus, a canon of two or more voices can be written in one single line, yet fur-
nishes various sounds. If multiple counterpoints are applied, a combination of three
voices, invertible in the octave, tenth, and twelfth, offers so many combinations that
even longer pieces can be derived from it. (1984, p. 397)

[30] Cage clearly wrote such exercises. For example, Cowell’s letter quoted earlier mentions that
Cage was ‘react[ing] against the retrogrades, etc. of polyphonic form-devices’.
Schoenberg’s devotion to canonic study grew out of the tradition of Brahms, who wrote
complex puzzle canons when he was not composing. Schoenberg writes:

[Having] been educated in the sphere of Brahms’s influence (I was only a little over
twenty-two when Brahms died), like many others I followed his example: ‘When I do
not feel like composing, I write some counterpoint.’ … We know that it was
[Brahms’s] habit on his Sunday excursions in the Wienerwald to prepare enigmatic
canons whose solutions occupied his companions for several hours. (Style and idea, p. 67)
476 S. Neff
[31] He is also an author whom young Cage had read and could have consulted on the subject;
Cage’s early teacher, the pianist Richard Buhlig, recommended that he read Prout’s texts on
harmony and form: see Tompkins (1965, p. 81).
[32] For a brief history of polymorphous canon, see Collins (1992, pp. 215–224); for the first use of
the term, see Kircher (1650/1999, pp. 402–403); for an early history of such canons in Italy, see
Gerbino (1995, pp. 57–59); for Stölzel’s relation to Bach, see Crean (2008, pp. 80–82).
[33] For another pedagogical approach, see Dehn (1859), section entitled ‘Polymorphous
Counterpoint’.
[34] See Berg, The Alban Berg Collection, F 21, 34: 53.
[35] Strang, The Gerald Strang Satellite Collection, class notes to Music 122b, University of
Southern California, 3–18–36.
[36] Strang, The Gerald Strang Satellite Collection, class notes to Music 122b, University of
Southern California, 6–1–36.
[37] For a history of the piece, see Bernstein (1988, pp. 158–162).
In action, Schoenberg seems to follow in the footsteps of his mentor Gustav Mahler,
whose earliest compositional activity in America included the conflation of two, abbreviated
Bach Suites for Orchestra into a single composition, Mahler-Bach Suite for String Orchestra
BVW 1067 and BVW 1068 arranged, in his words, for ‘the education of the lovers of classical
music, for the education of my orchestra, and for students’; see Zoltan (1989, p. 289).
However, Schoenberg, who had thoroughly studied and conducted the Mahler arrangement
in 1912–1913, found the piece ‘not altogether successful. One senses it was not conceived
as a whole. The logic is lacking, the inner relationship’ (1985, p. 27).
[38] Cage to Schindler, 24 May 1924 (Cage, 1934–1935).
[39] Compare Schoenberg (1978, p. 31):

[Instruction] leads the pupil through all those errors that the [historical] struggle for
knowledge has brought with it; it leads through; it leads past errors, perhaps past truths
as well. Nevertheless, it teaches him to know how the search was carried on, the
methods of thinking, the kinds of errors, the way little truths of locally limited prob-
ability became, by being stretched out into a system, absolutely untrue. In a word, he is
taught all that which makes up the way we think.

[40] The structure and form of Russell’s fugue has no direct relation to Cage’s.
[41] ‘String piano’ was a term Henry Cowell used to indicate performance on the strings of a grand
piano. For a detailed discussion concerning the relation of string-piano techniques in Second
Construction to Cowell’s early works for string piano, see (Miller, 2006, p. 81). The siren-like
sounds of the string piano in Second Construction are an obvious allusion to Edgard Varèse’s
Ionisation (1931), a work Cage admired.
[42] For further comment on the insertion of the fugue into the square-root form, see Kostelanetz
(2000, 7) and Pritchett (1993, p. 19). Because of the fugal section, Nicholls argues that the
macrostructure of the Second Construction operates according to a 4, 3, 3, 6 microstructure;
see Nicholls (1990, pp. 209–211). Shultis maintains that the macrostructure is 4, 3, 5, 4; see
Shultis (2002, p. 95). Both say the microstructure conforms to 4, 3, 4, 5. Also, compare
Miller (2006, p. 80).
[43] His most renowned example of such thought is in ‘The Future of Music: Credo’, where he
writes that concepts of the pitch-based 12-tone method will translate into percussion
music: ‘New methods will be discovered, bearing a definite relation to Schoenberg’s twelve-
tone system … and present methods of writing percussion music’ (Cage, 1961, p. 5).
[44] The fugal repetitions clearly offend Cage because of their predictability.
 Contemporary Music Review 477
[45] As recounted by Laura Kuhn, Director of The John Cage Trust, in a conversation with the
author on 30 March, 2006 in Chapel Hill, North Carolina.
[46] Translated by Grant Chorley:

Dass die grossen Momente im Kampf der Einzelnen eine Kette bilden, dass in ihnen
ein der Höhenzug der Menschheit durch Jahrtausend hin sich verbinde, dass für
mich das Höchste eines solchen längst, vergangenen Momentes noch lebendig, hell
und gross sei—das ist der Grundgedanke im Glauben an die Humanität …
(Nietzsche, 1972, Section 2, para. 2)

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480 S. Neff
Appendix. Topics of counterpoint courses

Private class in counterpoint at Schoenberg’s home attended by Bernice Abrams, John Cage, and
George Tremblay

Classnotes of Bernice Abrams: May–August 1935

6.?.35 Discussion of clefs
range of voices
examples illustrating species
illustrations of two-part first, second, third, fourth, and fifth species on cantus
C-D-F-E-D-C
6-30-35 cadences and modulations
suggested second cantus firmus Bb-F-D-G-C-F-D-E-C-D-C-Bb
7-6-35 first and mixed three-part species in minor
modulation in minor: C-a, a-E, C-e, A-e
7-20-35 second and mixed four-part species
8-3-35 mixed four-part species in triple rhythm
interrupted resolution
8-10-35 fifth species in four parts
8-24-35 mixed species in four parts
8-31-35 modulation in four parts
modulation: C-F, a-f, C-d, a-d
University of Southern California, Music 240A–B , ‘The Art of Contrapuntal Composition’ (October
1935–June 1936)

Classnotes of composer Gerald Strang:

First semester
10-7-35 cadence
harmony in counterpoint
examples of double counterpoint
10-14-35 rules of three-part species
crossing of parts
possible suspensions
10-21-35 leaps of the sixth/danger of hidden fifths and octaves
interrupted resolution: cambiata
10-28-35 modulation as preparation for writing large contrapuntal forms
prepared and interrupted resolution
details of cambiata
deceptive cadence
suspension and cambiata
11-18-35 writing in three parts: full triads
11-25-35 close modulation up and down circles: (up) C-a, C-G, C-e, (down) C-F, C-d; (up) a-C,
a-e, (down) a-G, a-F, a-d
suppression of characteristic tones
neutral zone
neutral zone and natural scale
modulatory zone
12-2-35 writing in minor
neutralization
harmonic origin of scale
extended tonality and modes
avoidance of motives
12-9-35 neutralization
characteristic and uncharacteristic zones of a key
 Contemporary Music Review 481

neutral triad
1-6-36 modulation: C-e
triads in II, III, and VI as artificial dominants
1-13-36 difficulties of modulation to intervening keys: C-a-G, C-e-G, C-a-e, C-a-G-e; a-C-G, a-
e-G, a-C-e, A-G-e, A-C-e-G, a-C-G-e
1-20-36 [STRANG MISSED CLASS. SEEKS NOTES FROM CAGE, ET AL.]
1-27-36 imitations (2–4 parts)
Second semester
2-17-36 imperfect imitation
imitation at the octave
2-24-36 imitation at the fifth
leap of the fourth in bass
parts with continued imitation
3-2-36 canon: normal, inverted (augmentation and diminution), eternal
3-9-36 modulation toward flat keys: C-F
addition of two parts to canon
3-16-36 modulation: C-d
changing tones
3-23-36 three-part canon
the church modes
major- and minor-like modes
three-part canon and difficulty
4-20-36 step-by-step writing chorale preludes
4-27-36 example of chorale prelude
5-11-36 fugue and etymology of word
fugue as single musical idea
5-18-36 invention of fugue theme as canon (stretto)
tonal answer
5-25-36 writing a fugue subject in canon
6-1-36 three-part fugue form
6-8-36 directions for writing a three-part fugue
cadences to all degrees
University of California at Los Angeles: Music 122A, ‘Advanced Counterpoint’ (September 1936–
January 1937)

Classnotes of pianist Leonard Stein:

9.14.36 mixed-species modulations
9.21.36 rhythm in cadences
9-25-36 double counterpoint in cadences
9-28-36 three-part imitative passage and octaves on downbeat
10-2-36 counterpoint and parallel motion on downbeats
10-9-36 description of contrapuntal composition
description of polymorphic canon
effect of added parts on double counterpoint
10-12-36 4th and 5th in double counterpoint
double counterpoint and modulatory cadences
10-16-36 consonance and dissonance in cambiata
10-19-36 cambiata in double counterpoint
major and minor modes
10-23-36 turning points and neutralization
11-2-36 turning points and neutralization
11-6-36 imitation as basis of musical structure
11-9-36 neutralization and cadences to every degree
482 S. Neff
the tritone in imitations
Phrygian cadence
11-30-36 instructions writing a chorale prelude
12-4-36 cadences to all degrees
chorale cadences
12-11-37 imitation in four parts
1-4-37 instructions for writing a simple fugue
reference to California Native-American music of Karuk tribe
tonal answer