"You won't hear a thing; you'll hear everything."

--John Cage on the Musicircus, 1969

"I have not made detailed directions for Musicircus. You simply bring together under one roof as much music (as many musical groups and soloists) as practical under the circumstances. It should last longer than ordinary concerts, starting at 7 or 8 in the evening, and continuing, say, to midnight. Arrange performers on platforms or within roped-off areas. There must be plenty of space for the audience to walk around. If you have more groups than places, make a schedule: Group 1 in Place A from 7-9:30; Group 23 in Place A from 9:45-midnight. Etc. There should be food on sale and drinks (as at a circus). Dancers and acrobats."

--John Cage, letter dated June 6, 1973

"One very important element is that there should at all times be many people performing simultaneously. The next is that, since none of the musicians are being paid, there being too many of them, the entire event must be free to the public. ... In harmony with the separation of this work from conventional economics, I have not made a score nor have I published one of course."

--John Cage, letter dated December 23, 1979

"Some years ago ... we gave a Musicircus ... in a large gymnasium. We simply had as much going on at a single time as we could muster. And we exercised no aesthetic bias. ... You should let each thing that happens happen from its own center, whether it is music or dance. Don't go in the direction of one thing 'using' another. Then they will all go together beautifully (as birds, airplanes, trucks, radios, etc. do)."

--John Cage, letter dated February 17, 1979

John Cage first brought the idea of the Musicircus to fruition in 1967 at the University of Illinois, where its first performance included jazz bands, pianists, dancers, mimes, vocalists, films, slides, black lights, balloons, cider and popcorn. A fusion of the words "music" and "circus," the musicircus is the expression of several of Cage's fundamental ideas about artistic creation and execution. It insists, for example, on a "multiplicity of centers" -- the insistence on autonomy for every individual component within the work, each a legitimate focus of one's attention at any time. It merges diverse art forms into a single, large-scale event that celebrates all of these forms at once. Most important, perhaps, it expresses Cage's burgeoning fascination with anarchic theory and social philosophy, as the result is not "dictated" by the composer, nor calls for the performers to yield their activities in deference to other performers (which would suggest an internal power structure among them). Instead, in anarchic fashion, each performer or ensemble responsibly contributes to what becomes a larger melange of sound and vision. The underlying idea for this piece (and it is certainly an "idea" for a piece rather than being any kind of notated composition) was also the basis for other works in Cage's output, each highlighting concurrent yet independent multi-media events. But it was the original Musicircus that is often recognized as the cornerstone of works in this genre.

To the audience attending this kind of event, the point is not the clear discernment of any individual musical event from beginning to end - an orchestra might be momentarily obscured by a passing barbershop quartet, or a harmonica player at one end of a room may well be playing simultaneously with but independent of any of a number of other musicians who are engaged in their own musical activities. Indeed, no single person can experience any Musicircus in its entirety. Instead, audience members ultimately create their own individual versions of the piece, determined not only by where in the area they might be situated at any given time, but by the events on which they choose to focus from moment to moment.

--David Patterson