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EM113

John Cage Bird Cage In 1972, John Cage, accompanied by a film crew from Germany, went to upstate New York to work for 3 days in the State University of New York at Albany's electronic music studio. His goal was to compose a collage of sounds from tapes he had brought with him. He carried with him three piles of tapes: (1) sounds of birds in aviaries that he had made in the prior two weeks, (2) recordings of himself singing his 'Mureau', and (3) ambient sounds. While working in the studio and listening to tapes of himself singing Mureau, he commented, "It makes the birds seem less ridiculous." The result was 'Birdcage', a complex, exuberant, and joyful fabric of juxtapositions of all of the sounds, to be played back in a space in which, as Cage put it, people were free to move and birds to fly. Buy it!

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