From: roger@phoenix.Princeton.EDU (Roger Lustig)
Newsgroups: rec.music.classical
Subject: Re: Manners, children please...
Date: 22 Aug 92 22:12:58 GMT
Organization: Princeton University
Originator: news@nimaster

In article <1992Aug22.035147.5171@uniwa.uwa.edu.au> diarmuid@uniwa.uwa.edu.au (Diarmuid Pigott) writes:
>Mr Lustig, you are a rude man. 

Perhaps.  My friends disagree.

>You are skilled in cross-examination and issue-dodging, in name-calling,
>and you do not respect the right of others not to like Cage.

I have only called one person in this group a name, and that was after
he insulted many, many people by rejoicing in someone's death and
announcing the fact, even as they mourned.

THAT is rude, and I responded to just that rudeness.

As for not respecting others' rights to like Cage or not, this is a
preposterous claim, as I'm sure you'll find if you review any or all of
the postings I've made here over the past six years.  

The only thing I object to is people telling lies about John Cage, and
attacking him on those grounds, or on grounds irrelevant to music.

>You say you are a consultant - in what, invective?

I do write for hire, yes.  Invective costs extra, though.  And I'd have
to agree with what was being said...

>The fact that I like his Sonatas for Samueal Marchbank's Fairy Piano is
>neither here nor there. While he was poncing about a music studio trying

Gay-bashing, eh?  And *I'm* rude...

>to get rid of the noise of his pulse rate, 

Did he do that?  Composers have done stranger things.

>people like Havergal Brian
>were in desparate straights because Cage-ism and anti-Cage-ism were
>messing up the bandwidth.

I find that hard to believe.  Even if it's true, it sounds like envy;
but I doubt that the vast majority of listeners who have never engaged
in either side of the debate around Cage would have rushed out to buy
more Brian records or tickets if the debate had not been going on.  

Of course, Cage's music and ideas influenced hundreds of other
composers, too, even Benjamin Britten.  Shall we excoriate *them*, too,
for "messing up the bandwidth"?  

The vast majority of musical discourse in the last 60 years or so (since
Cage began composing) has been taken up by things utterly unrelated to
John Cage.  I bet John, Paul, George, and Ringo had about as much to do
with Havergal Brian's situation as John Cage did.

(And the Gustav Mahler revival ten times as much...)

>I am frustrated because I can see the worth of Cage, but you cannot
>understand why others can't see the worth. 

On the contrary!  I can understand it perfectly easily.  

What I *don't* understand is the simultaneous ignorance of what Cage
did, and vicious hatred for the man based on a fantasy of what he did
and stood for.

>Why don't you engage brain before punching deck? Just leave it alone, OK?

Leave *what* alone?  My sense of outrage at the lying slander of a great
man?  Sory, I'm currently too upset about his death to smile and nod at
Big Liars.  That people don't care about his music, in the main, is just
fine with me; that's true of every composer on the planet.  But most of
them don't receive these outpourings of nasty, twisted hatred.

Roger