Timeline 1961

School Days at Goldsmiths' College

He plays viola in the first movement of the Trout Quintet by Franz Schubert at the Christmas showcase. Also performed are two poems by Laurie Lee. Cale has composed the settings for unaccompanied voice.

He is part of the finale, a new cantate by Welsh composer Daniel Jones. Tim Mitchell writes in his Cale biography Sedition and Alchemy:

The cantata by Daniel Jones was so new that the music had not yet been published and the orchestra had to perform from handwritten parts. Cale had to persuade the Head of the Muisc Department to depart from convention in performing such a new work and also had to track down the score himself.

Inviting Roberto Gerhard

Cale invites Spanish-British composer and musical scholar Roberto Gerhard to a conference on modern music held at the college. Gerhard wrote the score for Lindsay Anderson's film, the kitchen sink drama This Sporting Life. Also present is Dr. Paul Steinitz, the Bach organist.

"During my second year at Goldsmiths' the Spanish-born composer Roberto Gerhard wrote the score for Richard Harris's first film, This Sporting Life, and I invited him to a conference on modern music at Goldsmiths' attended by the faculty and Dr Paul Steinitz, the Bach conductor. The diminutive doctor was in great form, but the faculty members were incensed by the doctrinaire dryness of Mr Gerhard. I was berated publicly by the department head for spending energies on the avant-garde that should have b been better devoted to my studies."

Correspondence with John Cage and Aaron Copland

Starts corresponding with John Cage and Aaron Copland, two leading American composers.

"I was fascinated by what they were doing and wanted to know everything so that I could learn how to play my music. Copland was to me the quintessential figure in American music, whose style encompassed the haunting majesty of the open Midwestern plains."