Re: Re: Re: Cage's prejudices

Lewis' article (available online: http://jazzstudiesonline.org/?q=node/427) isn't directly about Cage's dislike for jazz. It's primarily about influences from improvised music practice in the 1950s and '60s on the practice of indeterminate & open form musics.

--- On Mon, 6/20/11, Ian Pace <[email protected]> wrote:

From: Ian Pace <[email protected]>
Subject: [silence] Re: Re: Cage's prejudices
To: "Rob Haskins" <[email protected]>, [email protected]
Cc: [email protected]
Date: Monday, June 20, 2011, 6:10 PM


 


I’d be quite interested to know how anyone feels about how Cage’s (sort-of) 
defence of Mozart fits into this picture as well – haven’t got my texts to hand 
at the moment, but I remember at least one occasion on which he made a case for 
Mozart as against Beethoven, mostly on account of the Musikalisches 
Würfelspiel but also concerning wider aspects of Mozart’s approach. 
 
When writing my own piece critiquing Cage’s anarchism around 5 years ago I 
put together some material (not all used) on his relationship to various key 
anarchist thinkers, which I’ll dig out and have a look at. I recall that whilst 
he cites Mikhail Bakunin and Emma Goldman in the context of the mesostic 
Anarchy and in the preference to that work, nonetheless he doesn’t 
appear to have engaged with either figure in any serious depth (unlike his 
relationship with Thoreau), and Goldman’s actions in terms of inciting 
unemployed workers or distributing birth control literature would be pretty hard 
to reconcile with Cage’s rather blanket disdain for serious political activism. 
The term ‘anarchism’ is often used rather loosely in the context of discussing 
Cage’s work, whereas I do believe he, at least some of the time, was quite 
serious about situating himself within one particular strand (not, to my mind, 
one of the more progressive varieties) of a theorised political tradition.
 
Should Cage’s dislike for jazz be treated separately from his wider dislike 
of improvisation (of any type)? I haven’t yet read Lewis’s article (but thanks 
for the pointer) – does he bring a racial dimension to the argument, and is this 
justified?
 
best,
Ian Pace


 

From: Rob Haskins 
Sent: Sunday, June 19, 2011 10:57 PM
To: [email protected] 
Cc: [email protected] 

Subject: [silence] Re: Cage's prejudices
 
The 
arguments in the Defense of Satie are less arguments against Beethoven so much 
as they are Cage's own carving out a place for himself by appealing to other 
composer-forbears whose approach was more amenable to his own. (And not a little 
of the anti-Beethoven posturing had to do with the circumstances surrounding its 
presentation at Black Mountain, then dominated by lots of people with pro-German 
musical sentiments including Albers and Erwin Bodky.)  
 
My general feeling is that Satie's harmony is interesting and often plays 
at least a quasi structural role in his music (albeit that structure is much 
different from Beethoven's). Likewise, I'm not sure that Cage's description of 
Webern is very satisfying other than as a(n admittedly interesting) report of a 
surface impression.  
 
Cage's dislike of jazz is very well known and, in its way, about as off the 
mark as Adorno's view is. A good starting point for a nuanced critique would be 
George Lewis's article,  “Improvised Music After 1950: Afrological 
and Eurological Perspectives.” Black Music Research Journal 16 (1996): 
91–122.




 
 
 

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All 
best,


Rob
On Fri, Jun 17, 2011 at 4:20 PM, <[email protected]> wrote:


  Cage 
  often spoke of his lack of likes and dislikes when given the chance, but as we 
  all know there certainly existed a gulf between his point of view and things 
  such as jazz musics and Beethoven. I'd like to hear any of the Silence 
  members' takes on these musical stances. For instance, he'd speak of jazz 
  musicians as disparate members of a panel concurrently discussing topics 
  oblivious to what each other might be saying, or referred to it as a political 
  noise, and he held Beethoven and Beethoven's music with equal criticism. I've 
  never read his Defense of Satie, but could any of you that have read the essay 
  outline any of the more 
  convincing points Cage made that stood pejoratively against Beethoven's music 
  and positively for Satie's (other than Satie's music superficially organized 
  with time unit as opposed to Beethoven's frequency)? And how do Cage 
  enthusiasts interpret his views on jazz music? 


  


-- 
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/>