Re: Re: Re: Re: Perloff on Cage/Cunningham

Rob, is your book available to readers in the US?

On Sun, Jun 19, 2011 at 3:27 PM, Rob Haskins <[email protected]> wrote:

> Hi Stefano,
> Thanks for your comments. I should hasten to add that I think Cage is full
> of paradoxes! it's just that the paradox that you mention, and that many
> mention, is probably not one of them.
>
> My dissertation was finished in 2004 and I recently published it (with a
> revised bibliography and much better layout) in VDM Verlag as *Anarchic
> Societies of Sounds: The Number Pieces of John Cage*. I also address some
> of these points (more modestly) in my book *John Cage*, part of Reaktion
> Books's Critical Lives series, which will be published in the spring or
> summer of 2012.
>
> The use of the term "symbolic investiture" in Julia Robinson's essay is
> right on the money, I think. I might assign a portion of that essay to my
> students in the Cage seminar I'm teaching in the spring. Don't miss Branden
> Joseph's essay (in the same collection), which I think is really fine.
>
> Cheers,
> Rob
>
>
> On Sun, Jun 19, 2011 at 2:40 PM, Stefano Pocci <[email protected]>wrote:
>
>> **
>> On 06/19/2011 05:30 PM, Rob Haskins wrote:
>>
>>  I'm also coming late to this discussion, and I haven't read Perloff's
>> article thoroughly myself--but one remark Stefano makes struck a chord with
>> me and I thought I'd address it  briefly. I might have more to say about
>> Perloff's article later.
>>
>> Stefano writes,
>>
>>
>>  What's interesting about that piece is its theme, the "constructed
>>> anarchy" issue. I might sound a bit naive on this but one of the things that
>>> keeps me hooked on Cage's works and writings is the apparent paradox of the
>>> rules he followed to practice anarchy.
>>
>>
>>  I studied Cage's interest in anarchism in my dissertation, and haven't
>> yet written up the results in a proper article, but I hope to do this.
>> Briefly, anarchism for Cage does not, I think, mean a state of total chaos,
>> but rather a political affiliation in which the individuals involved
>> mutually work out how they will live together in an action of continual
>> negotiation and renegotiation. There  is, then, no paradox between rules
>> rigorously followed and a resulting constructed anarchism. What Cage aimed
>> to do in his music was to allow all the instruments and voices (the sounds)
>> the opportunity to seem equally important, and (for the audience) the
>> possibility that all those various sounds could be heard in a multiplicity
>> of ways. Cage's music is indeed a model of anarchistic communities, and the
>> act of listening to them a kind of participation within those communities.
>> (Joan Retallack makes this point brilliantly in, I think, "Poethics of a
>> Complex Realism.")
>> To this I would add that Cage's discipline and rigor relate not so much to
>> his anarchistic beliefs as they do to his peculiar appropriation of Zen
>> principles into his work. I believe it's very difficult (and probably
>> unproductive) to try completely to disentangle the various strands that make
>> up his aesthetic practice but rather, to maintain a more synthetic approach
>> when thinking critically about his ideas. (As indeed Cage himself did in his
>> vast appropriations of disparate thinkers.)
>>
>>
>>  All best,
>>
>> Rob
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>> Thanks for your very informative reply Rob. I haven't thought of anarchy
>> the way you put it (as you say Cage actually put it:-). If so, then there's
>> no need to speak of a "paradox" since my use of that word descends from the
>> usual notion of anarchy that is "total chaos", more or less. Cage implied
>> the use of smartness for his anarchic world, something that man wasn't
>> possessing at all, like he used to say.
>>
>> Your words also reminded me of the creativeness left to the audience which
>> is a real peer of the executor (as well as of the composer) in his music, if
>> we could only open our ears! That is the anarchy is was aiming to I suspect.
>> Of course his rigidness could be related to his embrace of the Zen
>> principles but I cannot go much further than agreeing with you as I haven't
>> vetted this aspect too deeply yet.
>>
>> One more thing though. While reading Julia Robinson's extended essay in
>> "The Anarchy of Silence" catalog, a very crucial point is made. She calls it
>> "symbolic investiture" which, if I got it right, consists in the way Cage
>> absorbed and made his own use of other thinkers' opinions and theories. Cage
>> might be the very first one to creatively appropriate of someone else's
>> work, not just a mere quoting process.
>>
>> That said, it would be nice to read your dissertation on Cage's anarchy
>> whenever you write it.
>>
>> --
>>
>> Stefano
>>
>> "When we separate music from
>>  life what we get is art
>>  (a compendium of masterpieces)" - John Cage
>>
>>
>
>
> --
> Rob Haskins, Ph.D.
> Associate Professor and
>      Coordinator, Graduate Studies
> Department of Music, College of Liberal Arts
> University of New Hampshire
> M-105, Paul Creative Arts Center
> 30 Academic Way
> Durham, NH 03824
> 603-862-3987 (office)
> 603-862-3155 (fax)
> <http://unh.edu/music/>
> <http://robhaskins.net>
> <http://musicandmiscellaneous.blogspot.com/>
>



-- 
Joseph Zitt ::http://www.josephzitt.com