From: mgresham@dscatl.UUCP (Mark Gresham)
Newsgroups: rec.music.classical
Subject: Re: JOHN CAGE
Date: 26 Aug 92 19:07:23 GMT
Article-I.D.: dscatl.46849
Organization: Digital Systems Co., Atlanta GA

In article <BtIJC8.MDL@quake.sylmar.ca.us> brian@quake.sylmar.ca.us (Brian K. Yoder) writes:
}In article <1992Aug21.015459.26014@Princeton.EDU> roger@phoenix.Princeton.EDU (Roger Lustig) writes:
}>In article <BtB4Hs.n47@quake.sylmar.ca.us> brian@quake.sylmar.ca.us (Brian K. Yoder) writes:
}Humility?  Humility before the great genius John Cage?  Don't make me laugh.
}I very much disagree that I should not be the yardstick by which I measure
}things.

Well ... measurement measures the measuring means.

}  If my thoughts and values and conclusions are Not what I use, then
}what is the alternative?  Becoming someone else's robot?

Cage would not have approved of anyone becoming anybody's "robot"
particularly not his.

}You seem very close
}to saying that I should ignore what I know and just humbly follow along with
}the collective.

Your Rand is showing.  And there is hardly any "collective" which
slavishly follows Cage.

} I am an independent thinker,

That is, perhaps, a debatable point.  Perhaps you are a slave to
your assumptions?

}>you'd learn that music is VERY MUCH
}>something in particular: it's a form of paying attention, a form of
}>listening, a form of doing things with sounds.  
}
}In other words, the musician and the composer are irrelevant to the production
}of music, right?

No, and neither are the listeners or the person who tuned the
piano, the person who built the piano, etc.  For Cage, they are
all *very* relevant to the production of music.  However, *how*
each is relevant to the music may be quite different from
what we expect from a "traditional" role.

}If all music consists of is a way of listening (as opposed to sounds of a 
}certain kind one might listen to) then what is the value of music?  Why
}bother with it?  Your perspective seems to trivialize music to the point 
}that we might as well just dispense with the whole field, and just have
}people take drugs that improve their hearing.

In Cage's perspective, music does involve of sounds (and their
absence).  But not as an abstraction of the relationships of the
sounds to one another, but sounds *as themselves* which require
disciplined listening to become music.

}Look, Cage had to choose whether to put beautiful melodies in his "music".
}For SOME reason he didn't seem to think that was of any value to achieving
}his goals in writing the music.  Why is that?  Or do you think that such
}questions cannot be alanyzed?

Q: You have said that the function of composers is to hide beauty.

CAGE:  That has to do with opening our minds, because the notion
of beauty is just what we accept.  If we hide beauty by means of
our music, we have enlarged the field of the mind.

Q: I don't quite understand that.

CAGE:  It seems clear to me!  If I just made everything
"beautiful," then I wouldn't help either myself or anyone else.
No change would take place.

Q:  So you *do* think about people when you write.

CAGE:  Not particularly, no.  I don't know what my music sounds
like until I hear it.  I don't know how I would compose if I were
thinking about what someone else would be hearing.  I try to do my
work as well as I can.  That's the best I can do.  If I thought
about the listeners, I wouldn't know which ones to think about.

[--Arnold Jay Smith (1977)]

CAGE:  I think the history of art is simply a history of getting
rid of the ugly by entering into it, and using it.  After all, the
notion of something outside of us being ugly is not outside us but
inside us.  And that's why I  keep reiterating that we're working
with our minds.  What we're trying to do is to get them open so
that we don't see things as being ugly, or beautiful, but we see
them just as they are.

[--Stanley Kauffmann (1966)]

}>You seem to believe that there are some eternal, universally valid
}>standards of beauty out there, that beauty can be measured empirically.
}
}Indeed, I do.  Apparently you do not.  If there is nothing in art which
}makes it good, then why even bother with the concept in the first place?
}What differentiates art from other things?

CAGE: I was with [William] de Kooning once in a restaurant and he
said,  If I put a frame around these bread crumbs, that isn't
art."  And what I'm saying is that it is.  he wass trying to say
that it wasn't because he connects art with his activity--he
connects himself as an artist wheras I would want art to slip out
of us into the world in which we live.
  I think modern art has turned life into art, and now I think it's
time for life (and by life I mean such things as government, the
social rules and all those things) to turn the environment and
everything into art.  In other words, to take care of it, and to
change it from being just a mess into being something which
facilitates our living, instead of making us all miserable.
[...]
  Left to itself, art would have to be something very
simple--it would be sufficient for it to be beautiful.  But when
it's useful it should spill out of just being beautiful and move
over to other aspects of life so that when we're not with the art
it has nevertheless influenced our actions or our responses to the
environment.

[--Robin White (1978)]

}But I HAVE read books on art history, and I have had some classes in
}music.  They DID express some of the ideas you are promoting here, but
}I still disagree with them.  You seem upset at the fact that the "programming"

Programming???

}didn't work and that I don't defer my artistic judgement to historical
}trends or contemporary experts.  By analogy, there have been a lot of 
}conflicting scientific theories over the course of history, but this doesn't
}mean that there are no such things as scientific truths, nor does it
}mean that flat-earthers were right in their time just as much as we are
}in ours.  They were wrong, we are right, do you disagree?

We are "right" only by dent of our experiences.  We may find
tomorrow that we (in a particular scientific thought) are not as
"right" as we thought we were.

It's very interesting that you mention the "flat earth" analogy.
  One could easily compare the difference between classical physics
and quantum physics as being analogous to the difference between
the music of Haydn and that of Cage.  In each case we still have the
former (and it hasn't suffered tremendously because of the latter) yet
the latter has opened us to a larger world than we had formerly
anticipated...
  I think of a story told to me by a linguist studying the
dialects of north Georgia.  One fellow he was talking to said,
"Well, the earth is flat because the Bible said to take the Word
to the four corners of the earth."  "What about airplanes that fly
around the world?" said the linguist.  After a moment the fellow
replied, "I never look up."
  Look up, Brian.  (Galileo did.)

}>Of course, there's no point in your doing any of this, because you lack
}>something fundamental that John Cage had: a sense of decency.  
}
}Ahhhh, so only the decent people can appreciate the emperor's fine robes!

Look! Ayn Rand's running around naked! :-)

Elsewhere, brian@quake.sylmar.ca.us (Brian K. Yoder) writes:
}>>In article <1992Aug17.060119.26503@Princeton.EDU> roger@phoenix.Princeton.EDU (Roger Lustig) writes:
}That was not my argument, and you know it!  The question that started this
}was about my comment that Cage had done a lot to "destroy music" and 
}people asked "What did he do?  Burn manuscripts?  Perform badly?  Or what?"
}My answer was that he destroyed music the same way the above "doctors"
}would be destroying medicine if they acted that way.  You may disagree about
}whether Cage's "music" was actually something bad, but you must be able
}to grasp from my analogy how it can be that taking activities contradictory
}to the purpose of a given field (medicine, art, or whatever) and calling
}them by that name "destroys" that field of study.  

The demise of "blood-letting" did not destroy the field of
medicine, nor did the introduction of vaccinations or antibiotics.

Neither did the propositions of Copernicus or Galileo "destroy"
astronomy and cosmology, though they were both persecuted in their
time for suggesting we look at the world in a different way than
was traditionally acceptable.

Medicine, BTW, is not as objective a field as you would wish to
imagine.

}Why is it that you so consistently have trouble interpreting simple
}analogies?  Let me illustrate your usual mistake with another analogy.
}If I said "He's as nervous as a cat in a room full of rocking chairs.",
}the response I would expect from would be something like "That's absurd!
}He has neither whiskers nor fur, and there's not a rocking chair in sight!".
}Analogies don't try to be identical to what they are conveying in every way.
}They abstract just one aspect which is the same, and make it clear for the 
}listener.

Nor are analyses of music identical to the music they attempt to
describe.

}We certainly don't agree on that point, but I think it is for a deeper reason.
}I think that "good" and "bad" are matters of objective fact, while you
}seem to think that they are subjective choices unrelated to facts.  Am I right?
}If so, then perhaps the basis of that disagreement is based on differences in
}our conception of what "truth" is and what a "value" is.  What do you think?

I would argue that "truth" and "value" are epistomologically
different.  "Truth" has to do with concepts, is in the domain of
"intellect," is "objective" and "general" in nature, and has to do
with relationships within or between objects (even how we identify
something as an "object" for that matter).  "Value" has to do with
experience, is in the domain of "feeling," is "non-objective" and
"general" in nature, and has to do with the relationship of the
observer to the object.
  The difference (if you care for an analogy) is like the
difference between "velocity" and "acceleration."  (I'll leave
that one for you to figure out.)
  (BTW, I deliberately used the term "non-objective" instead of
"subjective.")

}[...on Cage having been a nihilist...]

Q: The concept of "zero" is an imporatant one to understanding
both what you say and what you compose.  It is, very honestly, a
very difficult problem for me to imagine a zero to start with, no
less to begin there in my composition.  What techniques does one
acquire to achieve this?  Even more imporatant, how do you renew that
zero after a new discovery is made?

CAGE:  It's a good question.  It's exactly the problem that I face
all the time, and it's very difficult, because we have a memory.
There's no doubt of it.  And we'e not stupid.  We would be stupid
if we didn't have memory.  And yet it's that memory that one has
to become free of, at the same time that you have to take advantage of
it.  It's very paradoxical.  Right now, I'm refreshed and brought,
so to speak, to zero, I think, through my work with [the writings
of James] Joyce.

[--David Cope (1980)]


}>Similarly, if all you want is pretty tunes, then Cage is not for you.
}
}At least, a point of agreement!

Perhaps, then, you would find Muzak not only acceptable, but of
high value?  (re "pretty tunes" and "usefulness")

[Roger says: For new listening insights he is...]
}>not going to go hear the Tchaikovsky Fifth for the 60th time.
}
}OK, tell me a few of the incredibly important insights about music that 
}listening to Cage has given you.  I'm sure they'll be of earth-shaking
}importance.  I can hardly wait. ;-) 

What incredibly important insights has the 60th listening of the
Tchaikovsky Fifth given you?

}>Tell us the bad things that John
}>Cage did, and tell us how you know he did them.
}
}He wrote lots of aweful "music" [...]
                  ^^^^^^
Some people have experienced "awe" when listening to Cage's music.
Cage would not have said that the music was "full of awe," however.

}Do you think that moderns like Cage 
}have not had an effect on the musical world?  On people's way of thinking
}about art?

Certainly they have; but many people would say that the effect
was not bad.

} I am concerned with what his "art" said more than what he said in his 
}writings.  I think that my conclusions about the meaning of his "art"
}are inescapable, no matter what he said about them.

We escaped them long ago.

}>Tell me, Brian, why *isn't* 4'33" music?  We've been waiting
}>months for an answer.
}
}I told you months ago.  It's not music because it isn't art.  it isn't art 
}because it doesn't fit the definition of art.  Pretty simple eh?

See again the Cage/deKooning story.

In <BtIpL8.Mqp@quake.sylmar.ca.us> Brian Yoder writes:
}In article <1992Aug22.231626.2025@Princeton.EDU> roger@phoenix.Princeton.EDU (Roger Lustig) writes:
}>Only because his work was evil.  
}
}So was Cage's!  He wasn't AS evil as Stalin, but evil none the less.

Evil?  He did play the role of the Devil in Stavinsky's
_The Soldier's Tale_ once.  But evil?

}Changes in the theory of art have much wider
}implications, and thus the increased potential for mischief.

But then, so do retentions in theories of art.

}>>[Cage's] effect on the music world makes his overall impact on the
}>>world (and me in particular) quite negative.

Why you in particular?

}>But you can ignore it without even trying.  Nobody holds a gun to your
}>head and forces you to listen to Cage.  
}
}On the contrary, I went to a compulsory-attendance school and had a teacher
}force me to listen.  If I had skipped class, I would have been breaking the
}law.  I had no choice.

Cage would not have liked that and would have rebuked the teacher
for not leaving the doors open and letting students come and go as
they pleased.
  And the effect would have been the same had you been forced to
listen to Handel.
  (Frankly, if Cage had been forced to listen to a recording of
*anything* he most likely would have gotten up and left, law or no law.)

}There are many more people in the world today, and there are many more 
}of them with the material well-being necessary to pursue a career in 
}writing music.  One would expect a number of great composers to have
}arisen in this century (there have been a few in each of the previous
}centuries), and all we have is a hold-over from the last century (Rachmaninoff)
}and a few so-so ones from the early part of this century (such as Gershwin).
}Where have the composers of beautiful, ordered, meaningful music been since
}the turn of the century?  Where have they been since 1950?  They have been
}dead!  What a shame!

They've been here, all along.  You just have demonstrated you have
no earthly idea of where music has gone in the last century.

}[Composers like Beethoven...] I didn't mean "Beethoven in all his details", 
}I didn't say that either.  I said someone of that caliber, like Mozart,
}Bach, Dvorak, Tchaikovsky, or Rachmaninoff.

Leaving aside a direct comparison to Beethoven and particulars, I
can certainly name composers who have written music with all the
considerations of harmony, melody, counterpoint, structure...etc.
of a calibre in league with *certainly* Dvorak, Tchaikovsky, or
Rachmanninoff -- although not in details like them.
  Benjamin Britten comes immediately to mind.  As for living
composers, I can cite Stephen Paulus, Ned Rorem and Dominick
Argento.  I could go on for some time.

}[Roger writes:]
}>Huh?  The ACADEMIC world? Whom could you *possibly* have in mind? 
}
}What I mean is the music world not associated with profit-making business.
}The music professors, the art critics, the folks living on NEA grants, and the
}like.  I have talked to a great many of them, and had to suffer through classes
}being "taught" by them.  Who else could I mean?

"Profit-making business," eh?
And what, may I ask, makes the "marketplace" the arbeiter of
musical wisdom and taste?  If the "marketplace" had its way, we
wouldn't HAVE any Bach, Beethoven or Mozart.  Period.

}Medicine is medicine, and it's definition does not change over time.  At
}one time doctors thought that bleeding by leeches was good, but that doesn't
}mean that they were right about their ideas.

At one time, music theorists thought that only "correct" classical
harmony was good, but that does not mean they were right about their
ideas.  (Even Chopin and Gershwin were evidence of that.)

}>The
}>definition of music is *constantly* changing, and has been changing for
}>centuries and centuries.  For a thousand years it has been true that
}>listeners at one time would not recognize the music of 100 years after
}>their time as music -- at all.  Occasionally they would go so far as to
}>call it very bad, dissonant, harsh, incorrect, etc.  Often, people have
}>written treatises on how the new music is destroying music, too.  They
}>have always been wrong to date; their prophecies have had the same
}>accuracy as Messianic ones.  And they are about as frequent.
}
}The same can be said of scientific theories.  Are you willing to extend
}your conclusions to science too?

Certainly I would.  I expect Cage would have also.
But neither do Ithink that science is 100% objective either,
in spite of the principles of empirical discovery.
Discovery can lead to a change of mind or a change of values.

}If I invented a computer that could compose fugues, and people listened to
}it, would it be music? (Since no people are playing it.)

Turing test, please.  How would you be able to differentiate
between a fugue written by a human and one written by a computer
with a modest randomization feature involved, assuming both the
human's training and the computer's algorithm were sufficient for
the results to meet the criteria of any given set of standards for
fugal counterpoint?  (One possibility: the human would be more
likely to break the rules.)

}I have indeed been "near" a composition class.  I lived in a dorm full of
}music majors in college for a while, and I discussed music with them often.
}I also know some others who studied music who are my friends now (and they 
}are in agreement with my views too, unlike my college neighbors).

Um, when was your college experience, and where (which could be a
major factor in your kind of experience and the resulting
positions you have taken)?

}Mengele was *bad* in one way.  Cage was *bad* in another way.  I don't
}like *bad* people no matter how they perpetrate their *bad*ness.  Get it?

So why don't you like yourself, Brian? :-)
(That's merely an analogy, BTW.)


Cheers,

--Mark Gresham

dscatl!mgresham@gatech.edu

[P.S.: This system often eats news before I have had a chance to
read it, so I may not see a reply posting.]

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Newsgroups: rec.music.classical