Search - John Cage, John Kennedy, Judith Gordon :: John Cage: Lost Works: The City Wears a Slouch Hat/Fads & Fancies in the Academy/A Chant with Claps

The appropriately titled Lost Works rescues three Cage works from obscurity. The City Wears a Slouch Hat dates from 1942 but has its premiere commercial release here some 54 years after completion and four years after Cage's death. A radio play broadcast in Chicago by Columbia Broadcast System, its text was written by writer/poet Kenneth Patchen (1911-1972). As the aptly described sound orchestra drifts between recognizably urban sounds that set mood and place for the characters, it also liberally proffers percussion passages that shift from background to foreground--the kind of non- programmatic accompaniment that more traditional radio plays shun. The original broadcast recording, which surfaced on a bootleg LP in Germany, was shelved and the score for Slouch Hat was thought to be lost until 1990, when the finished manuscript was found among a collection of radio play scores donated by CBS to the New York Public Library of the Performing Arts. Essential Music has reinstated and expanded musical passages as Cage's score intended. Fads and Fancies in the Academy, for piano and small percussion orchestra, was written for a Maria van Tuyl dance at Mills College (Oakland, California) in 1940, but was unknown until Cage presented it to his publisher shortly before his death. Those who think Cage's music is too far out will be surprised by these melodic pieces, rapturous and delightful--and tuneful! A Chant with Claps, the undated final work in this terrific disc, is a brief, whimsical piece for Sidney Cowell on the occasion of her and Henry's anniversary. --Tom Welsh