. . . I was in Paris for an
extended period of time,
and I went to those collections at the Conservatoire. I did everything
I could to find pieces of Satie that I was unfamiliar with, and I came
across at the Conservatoire notebooks in which there were just numbers
written by Satie; and I myself write such lists of numbers—or did at the
time—in relation to my own musical compositions. So I immediately saw
these as rhythmic structures for pieces that he had either written or was
about to write. I was very excited about them because they gave me confirmation
to a rhythmic analysis of Satie’s works that I had been making which
I’ve
written about in Silence—you may have seen that article—and
they have to do with symmetry, either, as I expressed it, horizontally
conceived or vertically conceived. . . .
John Cage
|