John Cage

John Cage is a bad Composer. In fact, he is not at all a composer. He "writes" for such things as sinks, walls, birds, and, oh yeah....air. Of course you are all aware of the masterpiece 4'33 containing not a single note. The defenders of this peice state such things as "He is trying to express that the sounds around you can be music, and that in itself is the deep thought of a genius" BULLSH*T! MUSIC HAS NOTES!! GET OVER IT! IT HAS TONES! IT HAS BEAUTY! IT HAS PROGRESSIONS! IT HAS FORM! GET THE F*CK OVER IT! MUSIC TODAY IS ABSOLUTE CRAP. WITH PEOPLE WRITING FOR TAPE RECORDERS, AND A BUNCH OF GANGSTERS TALKING WITH DRUMS IN THE BACKGROUND!! WHY??? WHY DID MUSIC COME TO THIS?? IT'S DISGUSTING! IT'S PITIFUL! IF YOU HAVE NO DISLIKE FOR THIS YOU HAVE NO SOUL!! John Cage is the pinnacle of turd. He was a retard cloaked in an englishman. He was by no means a genius, or a composer, or even a normal person. He thought differenty, so what, so did Schumann? BUT WHEN YOU WRITE SOMETHING WITH SILENCE YOU HAVE TO BE SOMEWHAT INSANE!!

I'm sorry for my outrage. I'm sick, a failed my bio test, and my iPod has been stolen...all in one day.

Allow me to support N.S. Canzano:

No need to be mean to John Cage (though I have ripped him apart on this very website). You are right, he was not a composer (except of a handful of half baked new age works for prepared piano). He was a rather creative sound technician, and a comedian, but not a composer.

Why anyone thinks he is somehow profound for trying to say that weird sound effects are music is simply beyond me. That seems a rather cheap way to "challenge our thinking" or "push our limits." What does that mean?

John Cage will be remembered as the man who helped reaffirm conservative musical aesthetic in the Western world by showing us the fallacy of the idea of "progress" and "innovation" in music.

We now know that real originality lies not in 12 radios tuned to random stations, or 12 tone rows, but in the intuitive construction of tonal or at least semi tonal music.

To suggest that John Cage was a composer is to expand the meaning of the word "music" to be synonymous with other distinct forms of sound. That to me is a pointless activity, and not profound to even the remotest degree.

Well, to be the devil's advocate, you could also argue that the direction that Western music has taken to formalize the harmonic structures of music has perverted music as well, by making it into something compact and generally predictable, and John Cage has broken that.

That's right, I mean generally predictable. Do you know how many pieces of music have cadences like this:

I, VI, ii65, V7, I?

Almost EVERY SINGLE baroque violin concerto.

John Cage is a revolutionary, by coming up with brand new ways to create music. Go stick your head into the sand.

Well, to be the devil's advocate, you could also argue that the direction that Western music has taken to formalize the harmonic structures of music has perverted music as well, by making it into something compact and generally predictable, and John Cage has broken that.

That's right, I mean generally predictable. Do you know how many pieces of music have cadences like this:

I, VI, ii65, V7, I?

Almost EVERY SINGLE baroque violin concerto.

John Cage is a revolutionary, by coming up with brand new ways to create music. Go stick your head into the sand.

I already patiently explained why what John Cage does cannot be called music (except for the half baked new age works for prepared piano).

Here are some more examples, since some of you are a bit slow and need to be spoon fed the truth:

Schumann's piano concerto is music. Most normal people would at least find it pleasant.

John Cage's sound collages or 4'33" are not music. He is a sound technician, not a composer.

I must say, people who believe John Cage was revolutionary have an almost religious need to refuse to accept the truth that he is not a composer and is not by any stretch of the imagination profound. (Personally, I think it makes more sense to satisfy one's religious fervor with an actual religion, that way one's thinking about other things such as, oh, music, aren't clouded by "revolutionary" nonsense, which are in fact, not revolutionary at all.)

I kind of feel like I'm telling you that Santa Claus doesn't exist. John Cage was not a composer. He simply proved to us how stupid thousands of people can be to actually take his ideas at face value and hail him as a great revolutionary. So...I hail him as a great Scam Artist, Sound Technician, and Comedian. And, I suppose, sometime dabbler of half baked New Age works for mutilated piano. :P

LOL,

Rap is good. All you are doing is labeling the stereotype statements towards it.

You could do that with anything.

True, but most steriotypes could easily be proven wrong by the fans. Rap is not easy to understand, you have to look really hard to find good rap, given most of the popular raps are about a guy's money (even though he's supposed to be in the ghetto's). Its more then just acceptance.

When they trademarked the term rap, they made special care to put the trademark in the beginning.

holy crap can you actually indeed get a mr. clean figurine that kicks so much arse

Aren't all composers "sound technicians?"

Aren't all composers "sound technicians?"

Of course, but those who are only sound technicians are not composers.

All horses are mammals, but not all mammals are horses.

I don't have much of a soul, and I'm a little crazy these days, but you don't have to rub it in.

That to me is a pointless activity, and not profound to even the remotest degree.

What is profundity and how does it differ from pointlessness?

We now know that real originality lies not in 12 radios tuned to random stations, or 12 tone rows, but in the intuitive construction of tonal or at least semi tonal music.

To suggest that John Cage was a composer is to expand the meaning of the word "music" to be synonymous with other distinct forms of sound. That to me is a pointless activity, and not profound to even the remotest degree.

Again, I disagree! Real originality lies in the ability to innovate - and Cage certainly did that. 12-tone rows, while not "original," are certainly a viable compositional concept, especially if one has the mindset to tackle such a difficult concept. I don't think many people understand just how difficult serial music is to create. Alban Berg would write 12-tone compositions that sound tonal because of the way he orders his rows, yet his music is atonal.

I don't believe John Cage was attempting to be profound. I think he was trying to be experimental. I doubt very much that he believed his music to be some high-floating heavenly philosophical idea, but rather that he considered his music to be as hands-on and visceral as biology is. He was effectively performing a rather messy surgery on traditional ideas of music.

I also don't think he was trying to expand the meaning of the word "music" - I think he was trying to bring attention to the fact that it is expanded through the natural formation of cultures across the world. Different cultures have different ideas about what music is. To suggest that the narrow Western view of tonality/semitonality is the only way of defining music is not simply closed-minded, it is culturally elitist and fundamentally backward. In India, for example, the focus of music is not the notes, but rather how one arrives at the notes. Gypsy and klezmer music has long used microtonal techniques. Many tribal cultures' definition of music is fundamentally rhythmic, with no melodic material at all.

And finally, to address the concern with Cage's definition of sounds in nature, or indeterminacy music, I invite you to look at any poetry from any culture, from any age. Birds, brooks, lilies, forests, trees, the wind, refrigerators, sirens, engines, all are described in musical settings. Clearly these poets were hearing something that was so fundamentally outside the scope of music of the Western world that it could not be expressed musically, nor was there adequate recording technology to allow it to be recorded and played back. 12 radios tuned to different frequencies, while, yes, strange, follows the same principle. The radio is a sound-source that people treat as natural in our modern age. Does it not make sense that the interplay of sounds on different stations can be treated as a musical expression?

I invite you all to listen to an orchestra tune up the next time you are in such a position. See if you can feel the rhythm of it - the implicit heartbeat it has. The next time you are in a park, listen to the interplay of birdsong, and the rhythm and pitch of that.

To be perfectly frank, the world does not operate on a tonal system, and therefore, it is unreasonable to associate "music" with tonality. Atonality is just as structured as tonality, though it may be harder to hear right off the bat because it is layered within complexities that one does not find in tonal music. For example, this piece (http://www.lunanova.org/podcasts/ferneyhough.mp3) by Brian Ferneyhough is incredibly structured, and its pitch material is highly organized. However, just by listening to it, it sounds no more structured than birdsong.

Music is structured sound, in whatever incarnation it takes, be it as loose a structure as an audience sitting in a quiet hall for four and a half minutes or as strict a structure as Ferneyhough's three- and four-layer nested tuplets.

I already patiently explained why what John Cage does cannot be called music (except for the half baked new age works for prepared piano).

While I personally didn't (understand/see) (your/any) explanation at all I think I have sufficiently explained the opposite argument.

My worldview is so diametrically opposed to that which allows you to construct your arguments that I don't think debate can really occur.

Note that you made several assumptions about my argument which I never asserted, not once. I never said Western music was the only sort of music worthy of consideration. My position all along has been entirely that it is silly to hail John Cage as a revolutionary when he was JUST someone skilled with making funny noises. Or no sound at all.

This is a music discussion, after all, so it doesn't really matter. A bunch of naked crazy hippies can run around chanting about how innovative and awesome Cage is, and it won't hurt anybody.

It's just silly.

I love Indian music. I hear nothing weird there. It sounds tonal to me. Perhaps not in the start on I, modulate around, end on I Western sense, but in a more general sense it is tonal. It pleases my ears. it IS music. John Cage IS NOT music. (except, again, for his vaccuous new age works for mutilated piano )

I admire your cherishing those who pretend to be innovators, but I believe it is people like the composers on this website who are true innovators. Yes, they may use familiar chords and rhythms and melodic fragments, but they each have a personal stamp. The people on this site are real composers, with something real and human to say.

John Cage is not a composer (again with the above exception), and has nothing real or human to say. In fact, he even said: "I have nothing to say, and I am saying it." How can anyone take that seriously?

I consider my above posts irrefutable fact, but here is an opinion to add to the discussion:

12-tone rows, incidentally, constitute a compositional process which is at least to a large degree removed from the intuitive because it is so rule based. This is the precise reason why, I think, that I personally find Schoenberg boring, but I love late scriabin, Stravinsky, Keith Jarrett's atonal improvisation, and other modern works. All the works not strictly based in 12 tone serialism give way to human intuition, and profound musical ideas arise when human intuition is allowed to run free.

Here's a stupid quote from an article about John Cage from Wesleyan University's Alumni magazine:

"Seeking a music tape to touch my grief, I put on the Brahms Requiem. In minutes I was bored. Bored? Then I tried a Cage piece, a really crazy one, all screeches and pops---and wept for an hour. How had that jumble of noise moved me when the West's most sublime outcry of loss had not? The answer was Cage's truth: freedom to be oneself. The Brahms was like a friend you try to tell your grief to, and the friend tells you about his, blocking yours. The Cage gave me myself, as if it were listening to me."

It seems to me you'd have to be rather closed minded to not be able to be yourself unless you're listening to a jumble of noise. A beautiful classical piece BLOCKING emotion? Oh well. I suppose whether or not someone enjoys Cage's "compositions" more than Brahms is subjective...

But what is NOT subjective is:

WHETHER OR NOT Cage's work is music. (again excepting the weird and mildly pleasant new age works for mutilated piano)

It isn't.

Sorry guys.

Santa Claus DOES NOT EXIST.

Chris, I bow before you. You are my idol ;)

It occurred to me lately that for artists, many of you have a decidedly post-enlightenment, scientific worldview.

You probably don't realize it, but the way you see music and aesthetics is something akin to how a scientist sees the world. Allow me to illustrate:

And as a postscript, I never asserted the superiority of Western music once. I love Indian sitar music, Indian veena music, other Eastern musics, African music, Australian Aborigine music...I could go on.

I cannot believe how there are people supporting Cage when Derek summs it up in such an intelligent way. I cannot believe the amount of people that speak of Cage without being a music philosopher, sound technician or just comediant.

And you, Derek, seem to have a very fundamentalist musical world view.

And yes, I am a post-modernist thinker. Scientific, not at all. I suck at science. Humanist, absolutely.

Personally, I don't understand 12 tone music composition, and therefore I don't enjoy listening to it, though I respect it as a new approach to music. I may not like to listen to it, but that's personal taste, and I like it.

It's the same with my take on religions. I'm Jewish, but that doesn't necessarily mean that I believe Judaism is the only legitimate religion in the world. To me, all religions are Mans attempts at grasping the spiritual world, just as all styles of music, no matter how outlandish they are, are all Mans attempts at grasping the artistic world.

Music is art. Art is anything that is organised to give an emotional response, whether it is beauty, sadness, happiness, or even anger.

Everything is art, as long as the creator's work intentionally gives off an emotional response.

When you look at a brand new house for example, it is art, because you emotionally respond by saying, "That's an ugly house," or "That's a nice house."

When you look at a beautiful woman, she is God's work of art, as well as the woman's sense of personal beauty - fashion etc. :(

Look at Dadaism. That's fine art. It's crazy scraggy. But it's still art, because it gives you the emotional response, "This is crazy scraggy!".

Even a history essay can be concidered art. If you write one using brilliant words, excellent form, and a proven thesis, then the marker will enjoy it - your essay will be a work of art.

And that argument you made about inateness. I remember banging on pots and pans when I was little. It was innate. Learning Common Practice Harmonies is just as complicated and takes just as much effort as learning French.

What I'm trying to get to is, by having such a closed view of what constitutes as art, you are ignorant to the world. The whole world is art! And I'm not just talking about the beautiful parts, like Banff National Park, New York at sunset, a flock of Canada Geese, or anything like that, but even the apparently negative parts of the world, like wars, poverty, and even famine have artistic merits. I mean, look at Picasso's "Guernica," hanging in the United Nations. It's depecting the first slaughter of the Nazi Blitz during the Spanish Civil War, so its not supposed to be pretty, but it evokes an emotional response.

I don't know if other animals have a sense of what is and what isn't art, but for humans, everything we do, everything we live for, is art. The sciences are art. Politics is an art. Music is an art.

George Bush, like it or not, is an artist at what he does. Beethoven is an artist in what he does. John Cage is what he does.

Anything, looked at from a certain point of view - the post-modernist view - can be seen as art.

The history of the human race is a great canvas of unbelievable color. And John Cage is just one of its painters, and he is no fraud because he has created an emotional response from you - that of disgust. An emotional response nonetheless.

You see, Derek, and those of your mind, I just am so opposed to your single minded, "Tonal music is the only music", because it just reminds me so much of those Fundamentalists who believe - nay, know - that their religion is the only possible religion. There are just so many different styles of music out there, and new ones are being created every day it seems, and as long as you have such an arrogant look at the world, then that's perhaps the greatest insult to any true artist.

And this goes for you to, N.Z. Canzano. You're a good guy, probably, but this is a response to one of your questions earlier. You really are brutishly arrogant. Just look at life with a new pair of aviators or something.

Why can't the lot of you guys just love music for what it is? Why must it be scrutinized because it doesn't follow your way of doing things? Why can't you just listen to it and instead of critiquing it for what it isn't, why not critique it for what it is? It's disgusting, really. You'll get nowhere in the real world as artists if you are ignorant to the rest of music. If I were to just sit at the piano, bang down on some keys, that would be art. Why? Because I'd be expressing my rage at stupid hoity-toity snobs like you.

Classical music is wonderful. I like it. I like how it's very textureful, and playable, and beautiful. I love romantic era music, because of the passions involved. Just so you get that straight.

When you look at rap music, give it a chance. I mean, the rhythms are music, beating down on those techno talking drums. They're lyrics are about the same kind of themes that people have always been singing about - cars, girls, and money - or at least their historical equivalents. Jazz music is insanely complicated. Nowhere in the classical world ill you find such wild crazy harmonies as in bebop. Yet you accuse of being free and formless. Bebop's form IS freedom. Sure, you have the head - the main melody - but after that the jam session just goes on and on. Jazz music is perhaps more akin to oral communication than any other Western style - saxes playing a purely improvised solo, interrupted by the trumpet, with the drums doing something crazy and avante-garde. 12 Tone Music took art music to a whole new level, with the theory that mathematics is beautiful. Mathematics is beautiful. Not to me, mind you, but to others. Now look at funk and heavy metal. Crazy music, crazy lifestyles, yet they all express the artist in their own ways. Harsh distorsions might turn you off, but they are still music. Yours are not the only set of legitimate ears.

Pardon my bluntness, but Jesus H. Christ.

And what the hell's up with Santa Clause? To you he doesn't exist. To me, he doesn't exist. But to little kids, he does, and to them that's all that matters. :)

The reason why baroque music is considered "predictable" by the laws of music theory is that it operates in a system founded on itself. Modern music theory is undeniably based in late renaissance/early baroque theory. This predictability is what some people consider the emotional "block" in earlier classical music - that it is more about the rules than the emotion behind it. The sound of baroque theory continues in form up until the impressionists, really, with very few break-away groups. If you listen to a Beethoven piece, it is fundamentally the same theory as a Mozart piece, as a Bach piece. If you listen to a Brahms piece, it is fundamentally the same theory as the Beethoven piece, and if you listen to a Chopin piece, it is fundamentally the same as the Brahms piece.

The issue that you take with theory as harmonic consideration is valid, but also limited. This is because traditional music theory, by focusing on the pieces of its origin (baroque and classical music) commits a lie of omission about rhythm and melody, because such things are exceptionally idiomatic in these periods. I defy you to find significant instances in baroque and classical music where tuplet values exceed 2 or 4 in triple meter, and 3 in duple meter. Note values rarely exceed the quarter-beat. Melodic lines move mostly by step. It is not surprising that in modern music, where melodic and rhythmic rules are so far removed from those involved in traditional music theory, that theory becomes useful only for harmony.

Experimental music, such as Cage's, lives in trying to break the bonds of an antiquated theoretical system which, in many ways, is the scientific thought process behind music. Experimental music, by expanding the boundaries of musical expression, does the opposite of what you accuse. The last time I checked, musical innovation is seen not as a scientific revolution, to make things better, but rather as a new way of thinking, to make things freer.

And: 12-tone music is hardly rule-based. There are only a few basic guidelines to follow, and from that point on, it's free and easy sailing. This is why twelve-tone music doesn't all sound the same, surprise surprise.

I'm very impressed by the commentary in the last few pages of this thread especially. You folks have really made me think about both sides of this issue.

I don't usually like to weigh in on this argument anymore - especially since my own sensibilities about what music is and what I appreciate are changing constantly - but I'm closer to Derek's reasoning even now. I have long believed that John Cage was a charlatan. I'm now more inclined to be less pejorative, but I still think everything he did was with tongue firmly in cheek, a twinkle in his eye and an imperceptible wink. The idea that he was more a sound technician than a composer sounds reasonable to me. That doesn't make him any less an artist in the broader sense; and while I disagree with his concepts of what constitutes music, I support his freedom to do what he does and call it whatever he likes. I just don't have to agree.

Something else: I tend to most appreciate music in which it is clear that the composer has made an attempt to organise sound in such a way that some form or structure is fairly discernable to me. Unbridled freedom in music is what often bores me. I find unregulated self-expression pointless.

Something else: I tend to most appreciate music in which it is clear that the composer has made an attempt to organise sound in such a way that some form or structure is fairly discernable to me. Unbridled freedom in music is what often bores me. I find unregulated self-expression pointless.

Monkeysinfezzes, very well said.

I admire John Cage's ability to completed rethink the concept of music. That is a great accomplishment. I agree that in the traditional sense of the word, he is not a composer/musician. However, whether you believe he is a composer/musician or not it completely subjective and doesn't matter: the fact that he did what he did has caused great amounts of ink to be spilled on the topic of "what is music," and THAT is truly an amazing accomplishment. I wish the world had more people like John Cage.

I find unregulated self-expression pointless.

Without it, music would remain static through the ages, never progressing, never attempting to rethink itself. I am sorry to say, but I very strongly disagree with this statement (although i also very strong respect your opinion and option to believe it :().

Funny story.

Ever heard the song by Benny Goodman, "Sing, Sing, Sing", which basically defined an era?

He was doing a concert with his band of prepared jazz standards, fast and slow, but the audience wasn't to excited - mostly young guys and girls, students. I forget the exact date, I think 1937 or thereabouts. Anyway, the current diet of the big band performance was mild pop tunes, which were held to be what audiences favored. But faced with a listless, indifferent crowd, Goodman turned to the band and said something like,

Has anybody read the article? :(

http://www.newalbion.com/artists/cagej/autobiog.html

Music is different, infinite maybe. John's music is post-modern. I think you guys are putting 18th century ideals into 21st century times. Of course that isn't going to work, John wanted a different route in music.

Hodge podge!

Without [unregulated self expression], music would remain static through the ages, never progressing, never attempting to rethink itself. I am sorry to say, but I very strongly disagree with this statement (although i also very strong respect your opinion and option to believe it ).

While this has not always been so (Beethoven, for one, certainly stirred things up without it), perhaps it is so of our times. But then, I am of the mind that music has rethought itself as much as it can and still be music. I believe it is time for us to rethink what has already been done and build upon it in kind. I believe you can only rethink music as a concept so much before it breaks down and turns into something else.

Has anybody read the article?

Yes. Sounds like he was an interesting man.

Music is different, infinite maybe. John's music is post-modern. I think you guys are putting 18th century ideals into 21st century times. Of course that isn't going to work, John wanted a different route in music.

I do have a habit of putting 18th Century ideals into 21st Century times. But not in this case. There is plenty of modern and post-modern music out there that doesn't seek to distort basic perceptions of what music is, and I appreciate a lot of it...more and more every day. But I have to draw a line somewhere.

While this has not always been so (Beethoven, for one, certainly stirred things up without it), perhaps it is so of our times. But then, I am of the mind that music has rethought itself as much as it can and still be music. I believe it is time for us to rethink what has already been done and build upon it in kind. I believe you can only rethink music as a concept so much before it breaks down and turns into something else.

John Cage may have taken it to extremes, and I'm not saying that it makes for great "music" - I'm just saying that we need people who are willing to push the boundaries of the commonly accepted musical practices.

And in many ways that's what Beethoven did in his time, as did Schoenberg. It's just a matter of degree.