Re: Source of Cage quote about Ives...

No, you're right, and I realized as soon as I replied. (It's been a long
semester.) Could it be that Nyman derived the quote from something like a
radio interview that he transcribed (and forgot he transcribed)? For years
I've tried to identify a Cage quote that appears in Experimental Music and
have NEVER found it; Nyman told me he was sure it was a print source when I
asked him about it, but perhaps the print source was some sort of
transcript of an interview that was never published or published in a very
obscure location. This Ives quote, because it is a somewhat embellished
version of something in print, is like the quote I was looking for, which
made me start thinking that perhaps it might have originated in an
interview.

On Thu, Dec 1, 2011 at 11:07 PM, Josh Ronsen <[email protected]> wrote:

> No, the passage in A Year from Monday (at least in the second printing of
> 1970 in front of me) reads (as much as I can decipher his handwriting):
>
> "There are two other things I would like to point out that interest me [.]
> One is what I would like to call the mud of Ives [.] It's all the part that
> is not referential [.] Oout [?] of this mud are complex superimposition
> lines that makes a web in which we cannot clearly perceive anything that's
> what I mean by the mud come rising up as it were these American tunes hymns
> tunes and what not that don't interest me [.]" -pg. 42
>
> Is there another passage I'm missing?
>
> -Josh
>
>   ------------------------------
> *From:* Rob Haskins <[email protected]>
> *To:* Josh Ronsen <[email protected]>; Silence <
> [email protected]>
> *Sent:* Thursday, December 1, 2011 5:25 PM
> *Subject:* Re: [silence] Source of Cage quote about Ives...
>
> It's in A Year from Monday, in the "Two Statements on Ives."
>
> On Thu, Dec 1, 2011 at 4:20 PM, Josh Ronsen <[email protected]> wrote:
>
> Pwyll ap Sion (senior lecturer at Bangor University) is looking for the
> source of this quote by Cage:
>
> 'What interests me are not the Americana aspects, the tunes and all that,
> but what I call the mud, the complexity of many things going on at once, in
> which I am not able to know where I am, or what's happening. Invariably in
> this mystery, something begins to happen to my mind, to change it, because
> of what I'm hearing. But in my experience, that
> change of my mind is interrupted by the emergency from the mud of some
> well-known tune, generally some Protestant church tune, and I find myself
> in a place familiar to others, but carefully avoided by me, in the land so
> to speak of melodies and accompaniments or, I suppose Ives would prefer it
> if he's listening, if I would say melodies and
> precedents."
>
> Michael Nyman used this quote in a paper at the First American Music
> Conference, Keele University, in 1975, and mentions the this viewpoint of
> Cage is more developed from Cage's "Two Statements on Ives" in A Year from
> Monday, so we figure it must come in between 1967 and 1975. A few times
> Cage mentions Ives and mud in the same breath, but not "Protestant church
> tune" that I can find. I am guessing his mention of church tunes comes from
> his work on Apartment House/Renga, but that is just my guess.
>
>
> Thanks for any help,
>
> -Josh Ronsen
> http://ronsen.org
>
>
>
>
> --
> 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/>
>
>
>


-- 
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/>