John Cage

Summer 2023 marked 40 years since John Cage visited the Time of Music festival in Viitasaari. There are clichéd narratives still circulating about the snapping of twigs, the picking of mushrooms and the sloshing of milk in pails, but what did the guru really say during his masterclass? Composer Juhani Nuorvala participated in the 1983 composition course and has now unearthed his tape recordings of the event. These previously unpublished excerpts offer valuable insights into Cage’s philosophy.

Viitasaari, in central Finland 350 km north of Helsinki, is the home of the Time of Music festival. Founded in 1982, it is Finland’s oldest annual festival of contemporary music. But that is not all: it is also a continuing education event with a legendary reputation. Today, the courses given at the festival attract more top-notch foreign participants than the town can accommodate. Is this Finland’s Darmstadt – or something even better than that?

The cultural cold war between the superpowers that began after the Second World War played a major role in shaping the international arts and culture scene as we know it today. This series of articles discusses the impacts of cultural diplomacy, particularly that of the USA, on Finnish music from the days of the Cold War to the present. This third part examines how American avant-garde came to Finland in the 1960s and what impacts it had.