From: steyn@cs.rochester.edu (Gavin Steyn)
Newsgroups: rec.music.classical
Subject: Re: John Cage is Dead
Date: 29 Aug 92 02:01:31 GMT
Organization: Computer Science Department University of Rochester

In article <1992Aug28.235711.27393@nuscc.nus.sg> smoliar@iss.nus.sg (stephen smoliar) writes:
<In article <1992Aug28.124510.4944@cs.rochester.edu> steyn@cs.rochester.edu
<(Gavin Steyn) writes:

<<  Which leads us to the second point, that what music makes you feel is
<<often not expressible in words, and even when they are, the words will be
<<different for every person.  (For example, I ran across one description
<<of the Bach Tocatta and Fuge in D minor as "playful," but if I ask
<<someone who's just seen _Phantom of the Opera_, that's not the first
<<term they'd think of).

<  However, there is another angle of approach I would like to explore
<for the calmer minds here.  I think that, at some level, it DOES make sense
<to talk about dispositional mental states which are induced by a musical
<experience.  I certainly do not believe that such states are, in any way,
<universal across all listeners;  but sometimes it probably DOES make sense
<to ask if the induced state shares anything with the mental state of the
<composer.  Let me try to explore this point with an anecdote.
<
<The only time I formally studied under Cage was when I took a class he offered
<one summer when the Cunningham company was in residence at the University of
<Colorado.  The course was entitled "Music and Mushrooms" (and I turned out to
<be half of his student body).  The course consisted of driving into the country
<around Boulder to hunt for mushrooms and talking . . . about anything we wanted
<to talk about.  (In other words we talked about music when we wanted to;  but
<none of us--including Cage--ever felt obliged to do so.)
<
<The one thing I remember about these little excursions with Cage was that he
<could take almost ANYTHING, point at it, and say, "Isn't that marvelous?"
<(This was in 1968, long before Billy Crystal had trivialized that word.)
<As is often the case in child development, that is the sort of habit one
<picks up;  and I realized that much of his music was similarly disposed
<(to return to the word with which I started this argument).  A great example
<of this is "Inlets," his conch shell piece.  Ultimately, performer and listener
<come to share Cage's sense of wonder and the sounds made by water in the shell;
<so I think it DOES make sense to talk about a sharing of mental state in the
<experiencing of Cage's music.

Actually, on thinking about it, I realize that you've got a good point.  To
some extent, most people tend to react to a lot of music in pretty similar
ways (assuming they come from similar cultural backgrounds <-- Yoder bait).
They're almost never really the same, but I don't think most listeners
would classify the last movement of Beethoven's fifth symphony as being
sad.
  I think the similarity is necessary, because if there were no overlaps, 
the composer wouldn't really have any points of contact with the listener.
On the other hand, the "similar ways" are pretty broad in scope.  For
example, I might feel a piece is joyous, while you may feel it is triumphant,
while a third person may feel that it's just plain energetic.
  My turn for a semi-anecdote:  I'm really not sure how much overlap there
really is between different people's images of music.  Personally, most music
really doesn't put a picture in my head.  But whenever I talk to friends about
what music makes them think of, they always say that it makes them think of
a specific image (my guitar teacher and I clash pretty frequently on this
point--he asks me what a piece makes me picture, and I can only say,
"nothing."  It makes me feel something, but I never get a picture).  And
so there's just no contact on that level.

Gavin Steyn
steyn@cs.rochester.edu
"So he's had the lifelong ambition of reversing the polarity of the earth?"