The Seasons
The Seasons is a 1947 one-act ballet score by John Cage, made for choreography by Merce Cunningham and commissioned by Lincoln Kirstein's Ballet Society. It sits in the catalogue chiefly as a music-dance collaboration between two of the twentieth century's most consequential experimentalists, at the point where both were still working inside an institutional ballet frame (Kirstein's Ballet Society, soon to become New York City Ballet) rather than the independent modern-dance world Cunningham would shortly make his own.
What is danced
The article does not describe the choreography itself: it states plainly that Cunningham's original choreography is now lost, and gives no synopsis, no named variations, and no account of steps, holds, or technique used by the eight dancers at the premiere. What survives on the record is the musical architecture Cage built for the piece — a one-act structure of nine sections (Prelude I, Winter; Prelude II, Spring; Prelude III, Summer; Prelude IV, Fall; Finale, a reprise of Prelude I) governed by a fixed proportional scheme (2,2,1,3,2,4,1,3,1) and by Cage's early 'gamut technique' of predefined sonorities. That proportional scheme would have shaped the ballet's phrasing and timing even if the steps are gone, but nothing in the article lets us reconstruct what movement vocabulary Cunningham set to it.
Given the loss of the choreography, no dance-vocabulary claims can be responsibly coded from this article. A reader wanting movement detail should look to archival sources on the 1947 Ballet Society production or later reconstructions, not to this entry.
Context
1947 finds Cage and Cunningham working together inside the ballet establishment rather than against it: the commission came from Lincoln Kirstein's Ballet Society, the organization that would become New York City Ballet, and the piece was Cage's first work for orchestra. It also marks an early instance of the score-construction methods — fixed proportional schemes and gamuts of predefined sonorities — that Cage would carry forward into String Quartet in Four Parts and the Concerto for Prepared Piano, making The Seasons a way-station in his compositional development as much as a ballet.
Staging history
The article records only the 1947 premiere by the Ballet Society at the Ziegfeld Theatre in New York, with designs by Isamu Noguchi and a cast including Gisela Caccialanza, Fred Danieli, Dorothy Dushock, Gerard Leavitt, Tanaquil LeClercq, Job Sanders, Beatrice Tompkins and Cunningham himself. It gives no information on any subsequent staging, revival, or reconstruction of Cunningham's choreography, which it states is now lost.
How to watch it
As staged, nothing of Cunningham's original steps survives to guide a viewer, so attention naturally falls on Cage's score: listen for how the fixed proportional sequence (2,2,1,3,2,4,1,3,1) paces the nine sections and for the recurring Finale that mirrors the opening Prelude, marking the cyclical Winter-Spring-Summer-Fall structure drawn from Indian aesthetic categories of quiescence, creation, preservation and destruction.
Structure
- Prelude IAssociated with Winter and, per Indian aesthetic categories referenced by Cage, with quiescence; reprised as the Finale.
- Prelude IIAssociated with Spring and with creation.
- Prelude IIIAssociated with Summer and with preservation.
- Prelude IVAssociated with Fall and with destruction.
- Finale (Prelude I)A reprise of the first Prelude, symbolizing the cyclical nature of seasons.
Structure read from an encyclopaedia article, not from a libretto or score we hold. Confirm against a programme before treating the numbering as authoritative.
Credits
- composer: John Cage