On John Cage and Art pt II
Jul. 30th, 2006 11:43 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
acroyearexplaining Cage to my mom, who forgot who he was since, well, we don't have conversations like this very often anymore ;-)
Cage is the 20th century guy who started "avant-guard" music, trying to free music of all of the rules it had acquired, after he noticed that every rule up to that point was usually broken by the next generation of composers. So everything he did he did to an extreme. Where Shoenberg and Copland were experimenting with 12-tone (very much atonal) music, Cage started mucking about with quarter-tones (notes "between" the chromatic scale), only without the rules of jazz to give it some framework. In the same way as impressionist music reflected the philosophies behind french impressionist art, Cage was the first "Modern Art" composer.
And his stuff often just sounds like mud thrown on a wall.
He did correctly note that silence is technically impossible given the realities of the world. To demonstrate his view on silence (and to mock the trend of minimalism that was coming in which would eventually be repeated by "new age" composers in the '80s and '90s), his most famous work was 4'33", where the player would walk on stage up to the piano, sit down, lift the cover, and do nothing...for four minutes and thirty-three seconds. Then get up, bow, and walk off.
Needless to say, nobody has bothered to download an mp3 of that tune yet. :)
Cage definitely reflected and influenced modern art and "performance art", but musically his contributions were a dead end; nobody of any significance took what he did and built on it to make it something more. Is that a requirement for great art? I think so, though Cage fans disagree.
The issue with Cage is that in spite of his lack of influence in the music world today, music appreciation classes still treat him as the be-all effect of 20th century composition rather than the side trek to nowhere that I believe he is. The heart of 20th century music, now recognized in hindsight given that its over, are the synchopations and new harmonies of dissonance- in Europe, those brought into the canon by the neo-classicist Russians (Stravinski, Shostakovitch, Prokofiev), and in America the rhythms and harmonies brought into the tradition from Jazz in the works of Shumann and Copland. (yes, both sides brought it in from their local "folk" music). These works of the early 20th century were the most influential to the work of the late 20th century composers like Bernstein, and were incorporated into the neo-Romantic composers that dominated film music like Rogers (of R and Hammerstein), Jerry Goldsmith, and John Williams.
The other musical aspect of the 20th century, also started from Jazz, is Rock and Roll and all of its variations. Rock is, of course, just the folk music of our time. Sometimes very sophisticated folk music, but still folk music. :)
In my opinion, in 50 years time, Cage should just end up a footnote in a music history book, not the "be-all" of 20th century music that he was painted as when I took the class. Music of the 20th century was not "music without rules" which is how it was presented to me; it was the *selective* use of all of the rules up to that point to achieve the goal.
but that's just my opinion :)
Cage is the 20th century guy who started "avant-guard" music, trying to free music of all of the rules it had acquired, after he noticed that every rule up to that point was usually broken by the next generation of composers. So everything he did he did to an extreme. Where Shoenberg and Copland were experimenting with 12-tone (very much atonal) music, Cage started mucking about with quarter-tones (notes "between" the chromatic scale), only without the rules of jazz to give it some framework. In the same way as impressionist music reflected the philosophies behind french impressionist art, Cage was the first "Modern Art" composer.
And his stuff often just sounds like mud thrown on a wall.
He did correctly note that silence is technically impossible given the realities of the world. To demonstrate his view on silence (and to mock the trend of minimalism that was coming in which would eventually be repeated by "new age" composers in the '80s and '90s), his most famous work was 4'33", where the player would walk on stage up to the piano, sit down, lift the cover, and do nothing...for four minutes and thirty-three seconds. Then get up, bow, and walk off.
Needless to say, nobody has bothered to download an mp3 of that tune yet. :)
Cage definitely reflected and influenced modern art and "performance art", but musically his contributions were a dead end; nobody of any significance took what he did and built on it to make it something more. Is that a requirement for great art? I think so, though Cage fans disagree.
The issue with Cage is that in spite of his lack of influence in the music world today, music appreciation classes still treat him as the be-all effect of 20th century composition rather than the side trek to nowhere that I believe he is. The heart of 20th century music, now recognized in hindsight given that its over, are the synchopations and new harmonies of dissonance- in Europe, those brought into the canon by the neo-classicist Russians (Stravinski, Shostakovitch, Prokofiev), and in America the rhythms and harmonies brought into the tradition from Jazz in the works of Shumann and Copland. (yes, both sides brought it in from their local "folk" music). These works of the early 20th century were the most influential to the work of the late 20th century composers like Bernstein, and were incorporated into the neo-Romantic composers that dominated film music like Rogers (of R and Hammerstein), Jerry Goldsmith, and John Williams.
The other musical aspect of the 20th century, also started from Jazz, is Rock and Roll and all of its variations. Rock is, of course, just the folk music of our time. Sometimes very sophisticated folk music, but still folk music. :)
In my opinion, in 50 years time, Cage should just end up a footnote in a music history book, not the "be-all" of 20th century music that he was painted as when I took the class. Music of the 20th century was not "music without rules" which is how it was presented to me; it was the *selective* use of all of the rules up to that point to achieve the goal.
but that's just my opinion :)
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no subject
Date: 2006-07-30 04:45 pm (UTC)The Cage thing was simply part of the accepted appreciation curriculum at the time. We didn't do much in 20th century in that class, really just a 1-hour survey with that summary line of "no rules" that in hindsight i've decided isn't an accurate description anymore. But that's with 15 years experience since then including a personal exploration of my own.
Survey classes for non-majors, especially in humanities, are always the most fickle. Fasions and trends come and go, even when describing which parts of the past are worth talking about. With the success and familiarity of Star Wars trilogy 2 and Lord of the Rings since I took that class in 1991, I wouldn't be surprised if the appreciation classes today spend more time on Romantic era work like Wagner than they did at the time when Rock and Electronica were slowing becoming the trend for film music (i.e, Vangelis had a year around that time where he did more scores than John Williams).
no subject
Date: 2006-07-30 10:51 pm (UTC)BOLLOCKS!
http://musicmavericks.publicradio.org/
I hope it is still there (I cant currently find it). They did a large chunk of their series on John Cage and they have (had) a recording of 4m33s.
I will do a short comparison of 2 musical geniuses.
The problem with Cage was that while he certainly was amazing, you need years and years of training to understand how amazing he was. Compare that to Mozart, whom EVERYONE can immediately see is amazing. I think you will find your answer there. So, I think that while Cage WAS extremely influential on the musicians of his time, no one else cared. And you will see, that that part of music was very short lived and has no real bearing now.
Cage is a musician's musician. Mozart is a people's musician. One is popular, one is not.
One is PhD thesis material, one has many books in the library about them.
You know, it must be an american thing, because I had never heard of Cage until very recently. But then, American composers of great note ... until recently with the popularity of the movie score, there are not that many of them. So I guess, people try to find greatness where they can.
I mean, what is American music? Historically speaking? (im not talking about hip hop here ;^)
I think of gershwin, who was influenced by this Cage dude. I think of Ragtime, and Scott Joplin. Who else do I think of? no one off the top of my head. But pre 1900? I cant really think of anyone (feel free to remind me, I am sure I do know more ;^)
no subject
Date: 2006-07-30 11:57 pm (UTC)To summarize, American didn't really have a national "artistic" movement in and of itself. The fact that culturally we were such a conglomerate meant that any individual voice usually reflected the culture the voice's heritage started from, mostly English, Scottish/Irish/Welsh, French, German, or Spanish.
most american composers and conductors in the late 19th century were trained in Europe and were still acknowledged by Americans as being from the European tradition, while at the same time being treated by Europeans as 2nd-hand citizens.
Dvorak tried to inspire a sense of nationalism by creating his "From the New World" symphony, which in spite of all its pretenses, still ends up as Czech as he was. By 1900, there still was no "American" voice. Music halls were playing french dance tunes and English Gilbert and Sullivan and Wagnerian opera, while out in the rural regions, folk music still easily recognized as "celtic" by today's standards was the dance music of the day, when not the polkas and scottishes of the continent.
Another 30 years would pass before a truly unique american Sound was heard: Jazz. Jazz slowly but surely changed everything. Where Stravinski and Sibelius had reached the peak of European syncopations by incorporating the folk traditions of their native countries, Jazz defined a new harmony and a new syncopation and rhythm uniquely our own. Gershwin *partially* got there but what resulted was still an orchestra playing Jazz, or an orchestra playing european to a jazz pianist, which isn't quite where it needed to go.
Aaron Copland was the next step. Copland was the one who first really merged old and new into a distinctively American orchestral sound, through jazz rhythm and syncopation, through american folk music in all its Celtic-derivative glory (Rodeo is, at its heart, an Irish reel and always will be even though the tune is Copland's own), and through a new harmonic sound produced as these rhythms clashed, inspired partly by the 12-tone experiments. Copland paved the way for showing that the American sound was the combination of all that came before, personalized in the composer. When Bernstein began his compositions in the 1940s, his works, particularly his 3 symphonies, reflected his Jewish heritage extremely strongly. Ives introduced "patriotism" into the repotoire, drawing on american patriotic songs and the kinds of marches that Sousa had made an American standard.
Here, Bernstein's presentation stops because in 1959 when that was broadcast, that was as far as it had gotten.
Cage and the avant-guard scene was there all along, and critically anybody who didn't try to adhere to it was derided as being retro and "derivative" and fuddy-duddy. This attitude disturbed Bernstein greatly. By 1967, during a sabatical from the NYPO, he wrote reams and reams of avant-guard music, and finally threw it all away and wrote instead the minimalist and extremely tonal Chichester Psalms. Bernstein, for all his Americanness, couldn't give up the old rules - they were too much ingrained in everything he did and everything he was teaching his young people. This act, however, did start to reverse the trend against Cage - if the most popular conductor in the world couldn't or wouldn't compose in that style, maybe there's not that much going for it after all...
no subject
Date: 2006-07-30 11:57 pm (UTC)Composers still have to make money, and film music was the only world where an orchestral composer could find real work (if he wasn't conducting to pay the bills, and many did anyways).
If you listen to Copland and listen to early John Williams (Jaws or the first Star Wars), the connection, the sequence is extremely tight. Williams took Copland and added Wagnerian motif, which had already been a strong component of film scoring up to that point through contemporaries like Jerry Goldsmith (Patton, Planet of the Apes). Goldsmith probably was the closest in kin to Cage, tempered by the needs of the popular audience. He utilized 12-tone and avant-guard composition as just another tool, used when it was needed. In the kinds of sci-fi he was doing, it was essential to help present this twisted view of reality. In the sci-fi that Williams was doing, tonal music was more the requirement to keep the audience attached to the characters in this strange and uncomfortable environment.
The real heart Williams, and his true Americanness, comes out when he has to compose his battle or action scenes. Yes the first Star Wars is extremely derivative of Holst and others, mostly because Lucas had become too attached to the classical music themes he used as temp music during pre-production demos to the studio. But by Empire and Raiders, Williams unique voice shines. The Battle of Hoth sequence is astounding in its scoring and arrangement, using tough, biting rhythms never before heard but would in themselves become inspirational to the next generation of action-film composers such as the late Michael Kamen.
I've never understood while film music composers are always criticised because of how their music has to support "someone else's story". Is writing the music for an existing opera libretto not the same thing? Or scoring a ballet for a well-known fairy tale like Sleeping Beauty?
no subject
Date: 2006-07-31 03:42 am (UTC)as an fyi
Date: 2006-08-01 03:08 am (UTC)not entirely successful given that 1) they didn't get the rhythms right in the first place, and 2) native americans weren't exactly considered part of America at the time.
no subject
Date: 2006-08-01 03:10 am (UTC)Re: as an fyi
Date: 2006-08-01 04:35 am (UTC)I am just surprised that there is such a gaping hole in American music. Whether it be adopted music or blended stuff, there just seems to be this massive gap in american composers (as opposed to an american style) until the 1900's