From: steve@fid.morgan.com (Steve Apter)
Subject: Re: John Cage is Dead
Organization: Morgan Stanley & Co., New York, NY
Date: Tue, 25 Aug 1992 21:59:02 GMT

In article <1992Aug25.110225.1@camins.camosun.bc.ca> dbarker@camins.camosun.bc.ca writes:
>In article <1992Aug25.074603.7557@fid.morgan.com>, steve@fid.morgan.com (Steve Apter) writes:
>> In article <1992Aug25.013839.21419@spang.Camosun.BC.CA> dbarker@spang.Camosun.BC.CA (Deryk Barker) writes:
>>>In article <1992Aug24.153614.4915@fid.morgan.com> steve@fid.morgan.com (Steve Apter) writes:
>>>[...]
>>>>If you're looking for a "composer" who deserves your invective,
>>>>might I suggest Cornelius Cardew.  Now *there's* a dangerous clown.
>>>>Those who doubt, please see his chapter on musical notation in the
>>>>anthology _Breaking the Sound Barrier_, ed. Babcock (citation from
>>>>memory), in which he castigates Cage and others as tools of the
>>>>bourgeoisie.  Presumably, he belives they should be executed, or
>>>>subjected to thought-reform.
>>>>
>>>>A foul and ugly human being.
>>>
>>>How dare you! Did you ever meet him? I knew Cornelius quite well
>>>during the early 70s, and a more kind and generous man you could not
>>>hope to meet. His Maoist politics may have led him to a certain amount
>>>of loopy statements, but I'm sure he didn't believe anybody should be
>>>executed or subject to thought-reform. Many of the members of his
>>>Scratch Orchestra (myself among them) disagreed profoundly with his
>>>politics. He never once even attempted to persuade me with argument
>>>to his point of view. You are way out of line on this one, my friend.
>>>
>> 
>> Tell me what you think of Paul de Mann, by all accounts a warm and
>> charming human being.  Never mind the anti-Judaic trash he penned
>> for the Nazis.
>
>Never heard of the guy, so I don't prepare to get bogged down in
>specific cases.

Try Lehman, _Signs of the Times_, publisher forgotten, for an account
of the de Mann affair.

>> Then tell me why you think Mr. Cardew's Maoist activities deserve
>> kinder treatment.
>
>Did I say this? I said I disagreed with his politics, and pointed out
>that he *never* in the several years that I knew him, attempted to ram
>politics down anyone's throat. I don't think he believed in coercion. He
>certainly didn't believe in genocide.

Did I say he "believed in genocide"?  I said he was a maoist, and you
agreed.  Please point me to a version of this vicious doctrine which 
does not advocate mass murder and thought-reform.  As practiced by Pol 
Pot, perhaps?

You appear willing to write off Cardew's left-wing totalitarianism as
merely consisting of occasional "loopy statements", and praise him for
never attempting to "ram his politics down anyone's throat" (as though
your average maoist actually cared about what people believe).

We routinely excoriate intellectuals who collaborated with, or lent
their services to, despotic regimes on the right -- Pound, Celine, 
Heidegger, to name only three -- but feel that it is somehow ... in
*bad taste* to condemn those who, like Cardew, Goddard, and Vanessa
Redgrave, enthusiastically support equally repulsive authoritarian
states of the left.

But even apart from this, it is not difficult to find instances
of Cardew inveighing against "bourgeois" composers in language
that would make Brian Yoder blush.  Oh of course, that's just 
*polemic*:

	"And seated over everything, the mythic heroes on
	their thrones:  Schonberg, Stravinsky, Ives, Webern,
	Stockhausen, and Cage, who have given their lives
	(and souls) in the struggle to find, for the bourgeoisie,
	a way out of the stifling moribundity of bourgeois
	music."

	"It's possible in fact that the struggle for new music
	that serves the people is not actually fought in the
	field of music at all, but somewhere else (and I don't
	mean in heaven)."     [From "Wiggly Lines and Wobbly Music"]

Is further decoding required?

>> I'd say it to his face were he alive.  Never doubt it.
>> 
>> My intention was not to cause pain to friends or family.  But this
>> is what happens when you make yourself famous.
>
>So why did you say what you said? You described him as a "foul and ugly
>human being" without knowing *anything* about the man other than a
>handful of his writings.

Point me in the direction of writings which contradict my claim that
he was a maoist, and hence an advocate of suppression, thought-reform,
and ideological control of free creative activity.  But don't tell
me that I'm "way out of line" to attack the man because throughout 
your friendship with him he didn't try to convert you to his political 
beliefs.

Have I told any lies about Mr. Cardew?  Have I gotten any of the facts
wrong?  Instead of dropping hints about dark forces responsible for his
death, why not spell out what you (think you) know.

> 				He was *not* a mass murderer, he did *not*
>"destroy music" and he did not advocate exterminating anyone or thought
>control.

I never accused him of mass-murder.  I never accused him of "destroying
music".  I *did* claim that remarks like the ones quoted above, adjoined
to any extant version of maoism, practically entails certain (how shall 
I say) "methods of treatment", including execution and thought-reform.

>	 Your beef with him appears to be that you disagree with his
>politics.

Maoism is not politics.  It is bestiality rationalized. 

>-- 
>===============================================================
>|Deryk Barker Computer Science Dept.  | Without music life    |
>|Camosun College, Victoria, BC	      | would be a mistake    |
>|Canada 			      | (Friedrich Nietsche). |
>===============================================================


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