Modern Composition John Cage

Originally Posted by robinjessome

Dig: La Monte Young's Piano Piece for David Tudor #1

Notice I've kept quiet through all this?

Anyways, I'm not going to bother to comment on the thread itself, but instead on La Monte Young there, only to say:

KICK. ASS.

I love that piece/idea/? Feeding the piano, hahaha! Oh wow. This is from the interview he gave, yea?

Originally Posted by SSC

Anyways, I'm not going to bother to comment on the thread itself, but instead on La Monte Young there, only to say:

KICK. ASS.

I love that piece/idea/? Feeding the piano, hahaha! Oh wow. This is from the interview he gave, yea?

I'm not sure - I have it in a collection of short conceptual pieces, required reading for a class I took years ago...

How about Young's Piano Piece for Terry Riley #1

Push the piano up to a wall and put the flat side against it. Then continue pushing into the wall. Push as hard as you can. If the piano goes through the wall, keep pushing in the same direction regardless of new obstacles and continue to push as hard as you can whether the piano is stopped against an obstacle or moving.

Brilliant. Just brilliant. What he said there though was part of this: NewMusicBox I think. Or at least he also mentioned the same piece in the interview.

Also, process music makes me smile.

PS: SPEAKING of things I love, you gotta listen to Rolf Liebermann's Concerto for Jazzband and Symphonic Orchestra. It's totally awesome, in a polystylistic kind of way~

Originally Posted by walkingwikipedia

Is art that makes us think about our world in a different way not some of the greatest art of all? By successfully making such a philosophical statement, Cage has created a work that makes us consider the role of sound in our world - those background noises that we don't consider. Making anyone experiencing this work consider the nature of background sound is certainly leading to a different line of thought about the everyday world! 4'33" achieves what great art sets out to achieve. I honestly don't see how this is "insincere"!

How else though would you present such an artwork, such a message in any other form than a piece of music? By leading the audience to consider it as a piece of music, more in depth consideration is given to these background noises. The audience is in the right frame of mind to listen, to consider, to absorb the message.

In terms of your second point, aleatoric music is about introducing a degree of randomness and chance to a piece of music. Taking this principle to the extreme is leaving everything up to background noise. Regardless of whether you consider this noise music or not, the technique is being applied to its extreme.

There is a danger in attributing nature to art. The sea is blue, the spiral of the nautilus shell is logarithmic, the sound of a thunder is powerful. They make you think. But it is unnecessary and in fact incorrect to regard them as art.

If background noises could speak, perhaps they themselves would object to being called art, just as a rhombus would being called a square, and a harpsichord would being called a piano.

I'm not interested in changing anyone's mind, and Cage himself must have anticipated rejection of his idea. But empty gestures like these are totally underwhelming.

To borrow an analogy from algebra: a polynomial can have trivial and non-trivial solutions. The trivial solutions are there, but they are .... trivial. The non-trivial solutions are much more interesting and important.

There are much more interesting and important things to consider in music. Swooning over trivialities is simply misguided.

Originally Posted by cygnusdei

...empty gestures like these are totally underwhelming.

There are much more interesting and important things to consider in music. Swooning over trivialities is simply misguided.

They're empty gestures to you. They're trivial only to you. You're naïve and foolish to dismiss something simply because you don't yet understand it. Ignorance breeds fear and intolerance...open your ears and stop being a musical bigot, all of you.

Originally Posted by robinjessome

They're empty gestures to you. They're trivial only to you. You're naïve and foolish to dismiss something simply because you don't yet understand it. Ignorance breeds fear and intolerance...open your ears and stop being a musical bigot, all of you.

If rejecting ridiculous trivialities is naïve, foolish, ignorant, and bigoted, I'm proud to be all that. Any other adjectives you care to tag on?

Originally Posted by robinjessome

They're empty gestures to you. They're trivial only to you. You're naïve and foolish to dismiss something simply because you don't yet understand it. Ignorance breeds fear and intolerance...open your ears and stop being a musical bigot, all of you.

I mean, people aren't ignorant simply because they draw the line between art and junk before you do, or because they do at all. It would be just as bad for me to call you a "retardedly open-minded assface who accepts any sound made by anything as music." I don't think that you are, and I don't think that people that don't find 4'33" anything other than amusing are close-minded.

As tolerant as you are of modern artistic expression, you're as intolerant of people that do not appreciate it.

So stop being so damn intolerant, or be more intolerant!

EDIT: By the way, fear leads to anger; anger leads to hate; hate leads to suffering.

Not everyone is supposed to "get" everything. Some things are harder than others to understand and appreciate. But objectively, Cage's piece is not only of historical relevance but of artistic relevance for anyone who really gives a damn about music. It's not about appreciating it as "music", whatever that may be, but as a proof-of-concept. It's a question more than an answer, a question which still has no real answer.

If you can't understand any of this, it may be a little too complex to grasp yet. The whole point of advancing the philosophical grounds and arguments behind music is building on what is already understood. Cage showed that almost nothing was understood, even after centuries of composers and music. It was all an illusion, systems and composition techniques, styles, etc, are all built upon fundamentals we don't really understand yet, or sometimes don't bother to try.

Otherwise, Cage would've gotten his answer, and not made the piece.

Even if one overlooks for awhile that this piece is a philosophical statement masquerading as 'music', focusing only on silence/sound is a deficient way to explore the nature of music. To me, music is as much the design as, or even more so than the execution. I'm not making this up - in colloquial setting (at least in my performing experience) when one says 'the music', it may refer to the sound of music, or the score/text.

If one sits down and pens an autograph quietly, away from any instruments (and away from Finale/Sibelius, LOL) isn't he making music? It is music even before any sound is ever executed! We of all people would understand the phrase 'hearing music in my head'. In fact, wouldn't it mean that music is independent from the auditory execution? Wouldn't it mean that the design is paramount, not the sound?

If one sits down and pens an autograph quietly, away from any instruments (and away from Finale/Sibelius, LOL) isn't he making music? It is music even before any sound is ever executed!

This matter is not clear cut at all.
There is a highly prevalent school of thought which holds that music is not music until it is played, or turned from notation into sound.
I actually think this may be the most common view.