Kaprow composed this score while he was attending John Cage’s experimental composition course at the New School for Social Research. By taxonomizing and then scoring behavior that is ordinarily involuntary (coughing, clearing one’s throat), Kaprow explores Cage’s ideal of non-intentionality in a comic mode. Cage himself could sometimes be a subtly comic performer, making use of puns and deadpan in some of his performance lectures.
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Tape Score (1957)
John Cage leading his experimental composition
class, New School for Social Research, New York,
New York (summer 1958)
Students in John Cage’s experimental composition
class, New School for Social Research, New York,
New York (summer 1958)
Students in John Cage’s experimental composition
class, New School for Social Research, New York,
NY (summer 1958)
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| Title | Throat and Cough Piece |
| Maker | Allan Kaprow (American, 1927–2006) |
| Date | 1957–58 |
| Type | score |
| Location | Getty Research Institute, Allan Kaprow Papers, 980063, box 4, folder 13 |
Related
Cite
Kaprow, Allan. Throat and Cough Piece,
1957–58. Getty Research Institute, Allan Kaprow
Papers, 980063, box 4, folder 13. In
The Scores Project: Experimental Notation in Music,
Art, Poetry, and Dance, 1950–1975, ed. Michael Gallope, Natilee Harren, and John
Hicks. Los Angeles: Getty Research Institute, 2025.
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