"Even if you're improvising, the fact that beforehand you know certain things will work helps you to make those improvisations successful most of the time."John Cale
Fear Is A Man's Best Friend (Est. 1999) is the ultimate unofficial John Cale website
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.
Roberto Gerhard
Cale invites Roberto Gerhard to a conference on modern music. Gerhard wrote the score for Richard Harris' first film, This Sporting Life. Also present is Dr. Paul Steinitz, the Bach conductor.
Correspondence with John Cage and Aaron Copland
Starts corresponding with these 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."
» Fresh Cale
Order the remastered and expanded Paris 1919 album (2LP, CD) via Domino Records
Order the remastered and expanded The Academy in Peril album (LP, CD) via Domino Records
