on 4/23/03 12:07 PM, Patrice L. Roussel at proussel@ichips.intel.com wrote:
Even after 50 years, you might still be considered as taking risk by playing Cage (that should alarm the creative audiences, but does not seem to), and where would be "high-brow" music without a little bit of sponsored risk taking :-).
It should alarm anybody that anything 50 years old and taught by the academe is considered daring. Esecpially in the US, where it serves to prove we're a bunch of third-rate chickenshit consumers who have none of the pioneer spirit upon which this country was founded. Whether or not the audience is considered "creative" (and no audience has the right to point themselves up as being more creative than any other) should have no bearing. The fact that we have to look on the pioneering acts of a half century ago for a confirmation of our collective brevity is truly sickening.
Skip's certainly right that it's absurd to think of Cage's early music as experimental & that's why I don't think Patrice's measure of a fading rabid fandom for Cage is appropriate. But you can't argue both sides of this against Cage. If these works are no longer experimental, and they're now being performed by musicians who aren't avant garde specialists for audiences that aren't avant garde fans, well, that's exactly how things enter the classical repertoire. Those audiences are accepting some of the works, just like they accept some of Ives, and some of Copland, Crawford, etc, for that matter. Yes these audiences think they're hearing something different from, say, Mozart or Brahms, but they know what they're hearing isn't brand new experimental stuff. They know it's fifty years old. Nobody's fooling them into thinking that it was improvised yesterday by some kid with a bunch of tattoos & a laptop using MAX/MSP; it's just some of the music from the 20th century that's working its way into the always conservative classical music culture. These audiences (and most of the performers) don't care about music theory for the most part, they just care about whether they like the sound of what they're hearing. That's why I discount all of Patrice's arguments about how shallow Cage's theories may have been. The audience for these works doesn't give a shit how the notes were selected if they like the sound of the notes. &, for better or worse, some of these pieces are quite appealing for those kinds of listeners. There won't be a lot of performances of, say Atlas Eclipticalis or Cartridge Music for this audience, but as more pianists start playing selections from the Sonatas and Interludes, and some of the earlier works, and more quartets start playing Cage's first quartet, the less those pieces have any need for the kind of fans that Patrice is saying aren't there for Cage in general. That's what happens with the avant garde: some of it enters the mainstream, some of it stays within the realm of avant garde fandom and much of it virtually disappears. But, as much as we may wish it were otherwise, it's never the avant garde fans who get to decide what enters the mainstream. There are early Cage pieces being played for straight classical audiences and they're not walking out in droves when they hear it. That's a sign that, no matter what Cage's standing within the avant garde may be, some of his music may have a life in the classical concert repertoire. I think too, that as there are more performances and recordings of a wider range of Cage's work that some other later works will get heard more as well. A lot of it may not get far (I'd certainly be surprised if much from say the mid-fifties into the early seventies ever gets over for non-specialists) but some pieces from Cage's last 15 years or so may have more audience appeal than y'all might expect, given the right kind of players. (&, Ellery, I'm on digest too, & I'm not sure why some of my responses haven't been marking quotes properly. While I've been home sick much of this last week I've made a couple of changes to my computer, I'll look around a little and try to fix it.) -- Herb Levy P O Box 9369 Fort Worth, TX 76147 herb@eskimo.com