John Cage

starrynight · 05-07-2011, 01:12 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Skaligojurah

he inspired the creation of Krautrock. A genre which is indispensable, and pretty much the sole spawn of all electronic music whether it be dance music, new wave, ambient electronic, industrial, etc.

He created liberalism in music, in my eyes. A guide to TRULY combat the preachy, overknowing, aging conservative in music.

a visionary who modern music would just not be possible without.

OK I'll accept he has importance but I wonder if in your enthusiasm you go a bit over the top and neglect the importance of others.

Ska Lagos Jew Sun Ra · 05-07-2011, 03:48 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by starrynight

OK I'll accept he has importance but I wonder if in your enthusiasm you go a bit over the top and neglect the importance of others.

No, I wouldn't say so at all. I'm not claiming he's the sole creator of anything. Just stating areas in which he inspired. Kraut was, according to a documentary I've seen, inspired directly by his showcases. Whether or not it would have surfaced without him, is arguable. I mean, I suppose Stockhausen would be just as important, if not more. But there's no mistake that he was one of the figures that a lot of these things were inspired by, and molded off of.

Maybe these things molded off of technology, but Cage is basically one that inspired a lot of people to actually explore new technology without fear of being 'improper'. So, He essentially allowed people to explore something new while it was just out, and gave an academic legitimacy to it.

Gregor XIII · 05-07-2011, 07:32 PM

Avant-garde means 'in front of the garde'. It means, that you show the way to which the rest of the people will follow. So dankrsta, saying: What Cage was doing will always be avant-garde whether you compare it to what was happening before him or after him is kinda oxymoronic (I don't know the less pretentious term... English is not my first language...). If he is always considered in front, it's because no one has followed him, and therefore he wasn't in front to begin with, but off to his own side... Being avant-garde means that you transform your own tradition, point out the way of the future. And yes, John Cage is probably one of the best examples of a classical avantgardist - perhaps only Schoenberg compares - but he is still a classical avantgardist. Moving him away from classical is senseless, and betrays a misunderstanding of what the term even means. IMHO.

And Skaligojurah, I mentioned Battles, because Battles is also in the avant-garde forum. To be honest, it's the fact that there even is an avant-garde / experimental subsection that is a bit ridiculous, because there is always experiments and people in front of others in each and every subgenre. I think The-Dream experiments a lot, but I wouldn't move him away from the R'n'B-subsection. I see the point of having stuff like the album club - actually I think that is a great idea - but removing stuff from their proper context and into this silly place is... silly.

BTW: You can't speak of avant-garde without speaking about politics. Judging whether stuff is avant solely on their musical contents is truly betraying the spirit of avant. IMHO.

Now, about Kraut. I think most of it would have surfaced without him. A lot of it was a response to a historical situation in Germany, which also made an explosion in the art of cinema. And, you know, explosions in the literal sense, with terorist groups running around. A lot of it was trying to create new ways of doing things, as a response to a world which a lot of people thought of as morally bankrupts - the Germany of their parents generation, who had never really satisfyingly settled the score with the horific deeds of the past. So the music would probably have been quite different without Cage and Stockhousen, and James Brown, and Reich, etc, etc - but I think something or other would have happened.

But Cage is really, really important. If you read French Philosophy from the sixties and seventies, they too quote Cage all the time. He was an avant-garde genius. But in the realm of the clasical.

MoonlitSunshine · 05-08-2011, 03:11 AM

Does it really matter that much what forum it's in? It's the same thread regardless.

**Frownland** · 02-23-2016, 01:38 PM

I intend on doing a performance of 4'33" with a ****load of energy at my next performance.

Mondo Bungle · 02-23-2016, 05:17 PM

I did a cover but accidentally fell asleep during and the audience couldn't handle it

cumulous_two · 03-12-2016, 01:33 AM

I'm a serious composer, and John Cages approach is monumentally important to me and others. 1) his words to the effect, " I want the music to come from the sound itself, so I'm just a listener too." That's very prescient. JS Bach, his music is so much from the craftsmanship laws of counterpoint and tonality, that it seems to originate closer to the sound itself, than the "artist'. I've always been intrigued by that connection. You could say that with atonality and 12 tone, that classical music got even farther away from the raw sound source, since it on longer used scales and chords which, in their harmonic series simplicity, seem closer to the raw sound.. 1b) acoustics and hearing are described similarly. There is a vibration, the source of the sound, which then travels through some medium, usually air, as a pressure vs. time wave (it's still not music); the ear then transducer the mechanical energy to sound waves, where an elastic basilar membrane will then register frequency. The brain then processes the sound further. ....2) Cage also made a great quote about hugely relevant to computer music. I need to look it up, but it was to the effect that, whereas in earlier times, musical ideas, and the tools and resources of composition, were much rarer, whereas now, in computer aided composition, there is so much generated, that there is waste. it's like 'data' where you have to pick out the results.

**Frownland** · 11-13-2016, 10:53 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Frank Zappa

Everything on this planet has something to do with music. Music functions in the realm of sculptured air. Polluted as our atmosphere might be, air is the thing that makes music work. Since all other things that occur in the sound domain are transmitted to the ear through that swirling mass, depending on how wide you want to make your definition, you could perceive quite a bit of human experience in terms of music. You could listen to a traffic jam and figure out if it was a good composition. There’s the other extreme. Music on paper is the same as food when it’s a recipe. A score for a symphony is a recipe for a sound sculpture. Conversely, you could look at a piece of a score and see organizations of notes on the page. You can look at any other piece of visual material, and if you squint at it a little, you could see a score there. Like this wallpaper could be a score, maybe – for a disco beat.

From this interview
1979-04 A Conversation With Frank Zappa

OccultHawk · 03-23-2020, 04:00 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by TockTockTock

He is possibly my favorite musician. I don't think I've ever admired a musician as much as I have with him, and while his philosophy on musical composition is a bit different than my own, I find his to be really interesting and unique. It obvious he draws a lot of this from Zen Buddhism which is great in my book.

I have a few random pieces by him not in any particular album, but I do have Sonatas and Interludes for Prepared Piano (1946-48) which was released in 1965. If you want to get into any of his music, then I would strongly suggest you download this album. While it may not be his best work, it's definitely fun to listen to.

He was a modern day Renaissance Man. He did a little bit of everything.

Great post

The Ten Thousand Things

Just listened to this one. Deals with Schoenberg, eastern philosophical concepts, the absurdities of time and space (nothing being filled with nothingness and going nowhere) - spokenword that works really well - it’s wild to hear him talk about Schoenberg in a musical setting. All of this is stuff you can really meditate on.

Quote:

“The Ten Thousand Things” is a common phrase found in Taoist and Buddhist writings to connote the material diversity of the universe. Lao Tzu, for example, writes in the Tao Te Ching:

Tao produced the One.
The One produced the two.
The two produced the three.
And the three produced the ten thousand things

Like a virus!

John Cage: The ten thousand things -- James Pritchett

OccultHawk · 04-22-2020, 10:28 AM

This is a good listen for those inclined

John Cage / Joëlle Léandre ‎– The Wonderful Widow Of Eighteen Springs

05-07-2011, 07:32 PM	#43 (permalink)
Gregor XIII Music Addict Join Date: Apr 2011 Location: San Diego Posts: 57	Avant-garde means 'in front of the garde'. It means, that you show the way to which the rest of the people will follow. So dankrsta, saying: What Cage was doing will always be avant-garde whether you compare it to what was happening before him or after him is kinda oxymoronic (I don't know the less pretentious term... English is not my first language...). If he is always considered in front, it's because no one has followed him, and therefore he wasn't in front to begin with, but off to his own side... Being avant-garde means that you transform your own tradition, point out the way of the future. And yes, John Cage is probably one of the best examples of a classical avantgardist - perhaps only Schoenberg compares - but he is still a classical avantgardist. Moving him away from classical is senseless, and betrays a misunderstanding of what the term even means. IMHO. And Skaligojurah, I mentioned Battles, because Battles is also in the avant-garde forum. To be honest, it's the fact that there even is an avant-garde / experimental subsection that is a bit ridiculous, because there is always experiments and people in front of others in each and every subgenre. I think The-Dream experiments a lot, but I wouldn't move him away from the R'n'B-subsection. I see the point of having stuff like the album club - actually I think that is a great idea - but removing stuff from their proper context and into this silly place is... silly. BTW: You can't speak of avant-garde without speaking about politics. Judging whether stuff is avant solely on their musical contents is truly betraying the spirit of avant. IMHO. Now, about Kraut. I think most of it would have surfaced without him. A lot of it was a response to a historical situation in Germany, which also made an explosion in the art of cinema. And, you know, explosions in the literal sense, with terorist groups running around. A lot of it was trying to create new ways of doing things, as a response to a world which a lot of people thought of as morally bankrupts - the Germany of their parents generation, who had never really satisfyingly settled the score with the horific deeds of the past. So the music would probably have been quite different without Cage and Stockhousen, and James Brown, and Reich, etc, etc - but I think something or other would have happened. But Cage is really, really important. If you read French Philosophy from the sixties and seventies, they too quote Cage all the time. He was an avant-garde genius. But in the realm of the clasical. __________________ Agnes Varda's Le Bonheur + thoughts on women in Akhmatova and Mizuguchi: The Centrifugue

05-08-2011, 03:11 AM	#44 (permalink)
MoonlitSunshine Dat's Der Bunny! Join Date: Jul 2006 Location: Ireland Posts: 1,088	Does it really matter that much what forum it's in? It's the same thread regardless. __________________ "I found it eventually, at the bottom of a locker in a disused laboratory, with a sign on the door saying "Beware of the Leopard". Ever thought of going into Advertising?" - Arthur Dent

02-23-2016, 01:38 PM	#45 (permalink)
Frownland SOPHIE FOREVER Join Date: Aug 2011 Location: East of the Southern North American West Posts: 35,548	I intend on doing a performance of 4'33" with a ***load of energy at my next performance. __________________ Studies show that when a given norm is changed in the face of the unchanging, the remaining contradictions will parallel the truth.* d e a f b o x

04-22-2020, 10:28 AM	#50 (permalink)
OccultHawk one-balled nipple jockey Join Date: Dec 2010 Location: Dirty Souf Biatch Posts: 22,033	This is a good listen for those inclined John Cage / Joëlle Léandre ‎– The Wonderful Widow Of Eighteen Springs __________________ 2016 2017 2018 2019 2020 Member of the Year & Journal of the Year Champion Behold the Writing of THE LEGEND: https://www.musicbanter.com/members-...p-lighter.html

03-12-2016, 01:33 AM	#47 (permalink)
cumulous_two Groupie Join Date: Mar 2016 Posts: 11	I'm a serious composer, and John Cages approach is monumentally important to me and others. 1) his words to the effect, " I want the music to come from the sound itself, so I'm just a listener too." That's very prescient. JS Bach, his music is so much from the craftsmanship laws of counterpoint and tonality, that it seems to originate closer to the sound itself, than the "artist'. I've always been intrigued by that connection. You could say that with atonality and 12 tone, that classical music got even farther away from the raw sound source, since it on longer used scales and chords which, in their harmonic series simplicity, seem closer to the raw sound.. 1b) acoustics and hearing are described similarly. There is a vibration, the source of the sound, which then travels through some medium, usually air, as a pressure vs. time wave (it's still not music); the ear then transducer the mechanical energy to sound waves, where an elastic basilar membrane will then register frequency. The brain then processes the sound further. ....2) Cage also made a great quote about hugely relevant to computer music. I need to look it up, but it was to the effect that, whereas in earlier times, musical ideas, and the tools and resources of composition, were much rarer, whereas now, in computer aided composition, there is so much generated, that there is waste. it's like 'data' where you have to pick out the results.