CORY REYNOLDS | DATE 7/5/2020

'John Cage: A Mycological Foray—Variations on Mushrooms' is here at last!

Featured spreads are reproduced from the undisputed bookseller favorite of Spring 2020, John Cage: A Mycological Foray—Variations on Mushrooms, releasing today from Atelier Éditions. "I have come to the conclusion that much can be learned about music by devoting oneself to the mushroom," Cage writes in Music Lovers' Field Companion, reproduced in the book alongside other writings and a wealth of mushroom-themed compositions by Cage, photographs, illustrations, ephemera and a second volume reproducing Cage’s 1972 portfolio, Mushroom Book. "For this purpose, I have recently moved to the country," Cage continues. "Much of my time is spent poring over 'field companions' on fungi. These I obtain at half price in second-hand bookshops, which later are in some rare cases next door to shops selling dog-eared sheets of music, such an occurrence being greeted by me as irrefutable evidence that I am on the right track. The winter for mushrooms, as for music, is a most sorry season. Only in caves and houses where matters of temperature and humidity, and in concert halls where matters of trusteeship and box office are under constant surveillance, do the vulgar and accepted forms thrive. American commercialism has brought about a grand deterioration of the Psalliota campestris, affecting through exports even the European market. As a demanding gourmet sees but does not purchase the marketed mushroom, so a lively musician reads from time to time the announcements of concerts and stays quietly at home…"