The Put On of the Century, or the Cage Centenary

[North Star]

And even "big name...experts" can have blind spots. :)I wonder just how "negative" those judgments are, when taken in context.  And I submit that Boulez and Carter may not be the best judges of Cage's musical happenings, because both composers, as great as they are, tend to "micro-manage" their music.  Boulez, in particular, is an advocate of "total serialism" in which every aspect of the composition is strictly ordered--exactly the opposite of Cage's approach.

Boulez has said a lot in his younger days, about Stravinsky, Bartók, opera, etc. His negative views are probably among the ones I least concern myself with.

[Parsifal]

Yes big name composers are experts in the field. And Asia is not the only one, neither is Adams .. there are composers like Boulez, Carter and many others who have judged Cage negatively as well. Asia completely understands & hears Cage & his music .. and his judgements are well considered and steeped in first-hand experience with it. If you listen carefully & think about what he says in that video in this thread where he is debating with those guys you'll see he speaks a lot of truth on the matter.

The recipe seems to be that when you don't like someone, you line up as many famous people as you can find who have said nasty things about that someone and decide those famous are obviously very wise.  What do I care if Boulez or Carter ridicules Cage?  I can listen for myself.

[not edward]

Your response does have me wondering, just how many composers our Scarps has met, so that we understand the sampling upon which his conclusions are founded . . . .

I think a big factor in this is that the quotes from composers that get mythologized and anthologized tend to be soundbites. A 20-page analysis of the positives and negatives a composer finds in another's oeuvre isn't going to be read much outside the academic community; a snarky one-liner will be.  (Similarly with positive soundbites, which are often more memorable for their rhetoric than their intellectual content, if any.)

[CaughtintheGaze]

I enjoy Cage's music, but with that smirk I'm convinced he was trolling at least some of the time.

[Karl Henning]

Please, not every prankster is a troll.  The faculty of Distinction is a mark of intelligence.

[jochanaan]

This recipe is only in your own mind, and I only mentioned them in passing,  .. if the topic doesn't concern you, then don't worry about it.

No, James, I've also noticed your tendency to bring in "authoritative" quotes to make your point.  That was actually one of the points I tried to make with my earlier post, beginning with "You have heard it said"--a reference to Jesus' Sermon on the Mount (Matthew 5-7), in which several times He says "You have heard it said...But I say..."  That was how He taught "with authority, and not as the scribes" who were always quoting some "authoritative" rabbi.

Now, I make no pretense to "authority," being only an instrumentalist with some experience in orchestral playing and a few personal preferences--but I'd rather stand on my own opinions.  Anyone is always free to disagree with them.  After all, they're only my opinions. If an "authority" happens to agree with me, that's fine too--but it's basically irrelevant to my views.

[Parsifal]

I wanted to develop this idea a bit more -

What Boulez discovered after writing in the total serialism method, and after confronting John Cage's philosophy, was that both complete serialism and absolute chance leave the composer with little to no control over the composition process.  This, for Boulez was an untenable situation, and I think he has spent the rest of his career trying to reconcile the conflict between serialism and chance in his composing.

Too bad he couldn't escape from those false paradoxes and just write music.

[CRCulver]

Boulez, in particular, is an advocate of "total serialism" in which every aspect of the composition is strictly ordered--exactly the opposite of Cage's approach.

Boulez dabbled in "total serialism" for only a couple of pieces in the 1950s. After that, he adopted chance procedures for over a decade, and in his later works not only are durations not subject to a row, but he doesn't even write 12-tone serialism any more. Your understanding of Boulez's music is very off.

[jochanaan]

Boulez dabbled in "total serialism" for only a couple of pieces in the 1950s. After that, he adopted chance procedures for over a decade, and in his later works not only are durations not subject to a row, but he doesn't even write 12-tone serialism any more. Your understanding of Boulez's music is very off.

Correction noted and accepted.

[Silk]

I think people should be able to listen to absolutely anything they like and not have the apologize for it.  Trouble arises when they attempt to proselytize others and ram it down everybody's throats.  That is a disturbingly common tendency and is what really gets others' backs up, I think.

I don't like Cage;  never did, never will.  Frankly, I've often wondered if he wasn't just a cult figure people attached themselves to so that they could feel cool or trendy.  Whatever the reason for his popularity with some people, I'm glad they enjoy it all. 

When I was in Salzburg in 2011 they were preparing a concert of Cage's music for the Festival and there were images of Cage around the city.  Somebody thinks he's OK, that's for sure.  He just doesn't float my boat.  I think the writer of the original article which inspired this thread is entitled to his opinion.  We should play the ball and not the man.

[some guy]

Trouble arises when they attempt to proselytize others and ram it down everybody's throats.  That is a disturbingly common tendency and is what really gets others' backs up, I think.

I disagree. In my experience, this is not what happens at all. In my experience, "others" back are already up before the conversation even starts.

I also don't see a lot of proselytizing. I think that's a chimera. What I do see is very strong reactions to anyone who enjoys, appreciates, understands Cage's music. One only has to express a liking for it for a half a dozen people to instantly jump in with the "you're trying to ram it down our throats" cry. I ain't buyin' it. People who like Cage are, by and large, just not the ramming type. I think there's a lot of ramming, but it ain't from the Cage fans by any means.

What I do see from that group is reactions to people who dismiss Cage without cause (yeah, yeah, I know, they think they have a lot of cause--they don't), who use their personal dislike to perpetrate all sorts of rudenesses against Cage, against twentieth and twenty-first music generally, and against anyone who's crazy enough to report as actually liking the crap. That's what I see, and it ain't pretty. Nope.

[Karl Henning]

I don't like Cage;  never did, never will.

Only two of those statements are fact.  The last, is a tendentious determination.

That is all.

(No . . . not quite all.  The last being of its nature non-fact, it is apt to cast the very first statement as tendentious determination, as well, n'est-ce pas?)

[some guy]

...far more knowledge & experience than you could ever realize to come to the conclusions that they do....

Is that so? And do any of us get to see what that knowledge and experience consists of? Not a chance. All we deserve is the bare assertion. Balls to that, I say. Besides, even if you did know, and were able to articulate, what that knowledge and experience is, I would still want to see some evidence for the "more...than you could ever realize" part of things.

That implies a far more intimate knowledge of me and my ideas than you have ever shown any evidence of having.

Just more empty assertions.

And, just for your information, support for an assertion consists of something other than another empty assertion. Even dozens of empty assertions by other people still does not constitute support.

Dead coyote meat is great. A thousand flies can't be wrong!!

[Karl Henning]

And, we'll repeat for the benefit of the folks at home:  Let's take as an example Glenn Gould's disdain for Mozart.  Even the fact that Gould is an artist himself does not make his disdain somehow equivalent to another artist's enthusiasm for Mozart.

No doubt, Cage was no Mozart. Or, more accurately, Cage's work is probably not on quite the plane of Mozart's.  But the principle holds true.  No one's scorn for Cage's work is at all "equivalent" ("equal but opposite") to, say, Michael's enthusiasm and admiration for Cage.

[Karl Henning]

Much less the ad infinitum bla-bla-blah empty assertions.

[Florestan]

And, we'll repeat for the benefit of the folks at home:  Let's take as an example Glenn Gould's disdain for Mozart.  Even the fact that Gould is an artist himself does not make his disdain somehow equivalent to another artist's enthusiasm for Mozart.

I wonder how much of that disdain was genuine and how much of it just a marketing strategy. After all, Gould's rendition of Mozart's Piano Sonatas are among the most idiomatic and intense. 

[Karl Henning]

I wonder how much of that disdain was genuine and how much of it just a marketing strategy.

Excellent point. I've had similar thouhts more than once about Stravinsky's bons mots.

[Florestan]

Excellent point. I've had similar thouhts more than once about Stravinsky's bons mots.

He, he... precisamente. 

[Parsifal]

I wonder how much of that disdain was genuine and how much of it just a marketing strategy. After all, Gould's rendition of Mozart's Piano Sonatas are among the most idiomatic and intense. 

Gould also expressed distain for the preludes in Bach's WTC. 

Gould had astonishing keyboard virtuosity but I don't hear an artistic 'vision' in his playing (except that every note must be separated from every other note and played with utterly unvarying dynamics and legato).  There are few things I find less interesting than Glen Gould's views on music.

[Karl Henning]

FWIW, I have yet to dig properly into the collection of Gould's essays.