I'm a professional pianist, I played a Cage sonata during my last concert in Seoul. It is interesting because every note written by Cage is like a nail pointing in the air, and changing the air changes the composition. Hope someone agree
John Cage was a philosopher of sound, a bit like Einstein was a philosopher of energy. I didn't realise Cage made this so EARLY! 1946. Wow. This was so innovative, the idea of playing with the mechanics of a classical musical intrument. The expanded sonority and chiseled harmonics skate in a frozen landscape of poignant narrative rhythms. I had the great joy to meet John Cage when I was a teenager. We were both into writing haiku and my art tutor knew him and introduced us. I had not heard his music yet. It was at a gallery opening in NYC of his mushroom paintings. What a prolific dreamer!
There are some terrific clips uploaded to CZcams. I particularly like one where he talks about a haiku about mushrooms. You can learn a lot about him through that. It is called "Haiku About Mushrooms" and "At he Middle". I just read a wikipedia entry about musique concrete and learned that 2 composers who taught John Cage have laid a lot of the groundwork for his inventions. They are Henry Cowell and Arnold Schoenberg. Their works are also on CZcams. Enjoy your research!
If it was only for the music and not so much all that musical philosophical discourse like "Cage was the philosopher of sound and blablabla" you would never "enjoy" this music. This music was never meant to be enjoyable.
the fact is that I have enjoyed his music for a long time, if you enjoy other music, I have non problem with that, as they say, it's a matter of taste.
I met cage when I was a youngster. what a wonderful man. I gave him my collection of quotes and he was delighted. 🕉 zen John Cage. no right or left, no good or bad, the middle path is beyond the extremes of duality.
Surrealist Gal I think the "middle path" must mean he swung both ways. Man's dead now, guess he can't come out of the closet, cage, or his safety helmet.
John Cage never was in any closet and the idea of him 'swinging' literally or metaphorically shows an almost total ignorance of the man. Yes he was married to a woman for several years until he had fully accepted who he was - a much more difficult thing in the 40s and the 50s than now. If it has any bearing whatsoever on his music or thought I'd be interested to learn of it. But it won't be found here.
Soon after the start of my short but arduous career as a piano student I would, to the best of my ability, play notes and chords and notate the work. Man...it was tedious. I played block chords. I noted block chords. I undertook this work after listening to some John Coltrane albums my father's friend gifted him. I'd play the albums when alone in the apartment. When I was an ad sales rep at an not unknown university's radio station I recognized album cover photos. When I collected Hates Ives recording I was pleased to learn exactly what was a block chord. Man I was flush with vindication. You'd never hear Coltrane or Ives in the mass media mud hole. THIS IS MUSIC; to defend it is insulting but Mr. Cage suffered superbly that bullshit. It has rhythm, reminding one the piano is a percussive instrument. That's why I enjoyed composing my "avant garde" music. Can't beat, particularly pre-puberty, pounding gently or heavy handedly something that produces sound. Cage is a master at this practice. And it isn't child's play. My point is it isn't child's play at all. A child might attempt this expression but an adult knows better "how to play". And, as with Monk, the silences are notes here.
SOOO my thinking as a child and in puberty and in COLLEGE when I finally understood abstract reality and there is no going back .. THERE really isn't anything you can't imagine, there isn't anything you can't paint , there is nothing .
Timestamps for mobile users: Sonata I - 0:00 Sonata II - 2:45 Sonata III - 4:47 Sonata IV - 7:24 Interlude I - 9:33 Sonata V - 12:50 Sonata VI - 14:21 Sonata VII - 16:44 Sonata VIII - 19:14 Interlude II - 22:03 Interlude III - 26:08 Sonata IX - 28:42 Sonata X - 33:00 Sonata XI - 37:15 Sonata XII - 40:29 Interlude IV - 43:48 Sonata XIII - 47:01 Sonata XIV - 51:53 Sonata XV - 55:00 Sonata XVI - 58:20
I think that if you explore music basically as sound, you will find an infinite variety of sources including chance. This is Cage's simple proposal: nothing more and certainly nothing less.
Sergio Podadera Moya the more you get into various kinds of music from all around the world, you realize that harmony isn’t necessarily one set thing, and is way more complex than the idea of consonance and dissonance. even more some music is inherently much more reliant on rhythm, and the only definition of music as a whole that i’ve become satisfied with is the “expressive manipulation of space and time” time being rhythm and space being harmony.
I have yet to hear a bad recording of these wonderful pieces. Anyone willing to play them plays them with lyricism and keen attention to the subtle nuances they encapsulate. And they of course have the patience and care to prepare the piano, an operation that can take up to two hours to effect.
Thanks for playing, uploading and sharing, Mr. Nicholson! I also like very much your compositions. Always dissapointing to see the comments though. I never manage to ignore them.
Actually, natural breathing is very easy. If you just let yourself breath. Which was kind of Cage's point, I think. The question of him being a great composer or a con man is almost meaningless. His work is his work. His goal was non-intention, not harmonious music which he himself said he had no feeling for whatsoever. It is music written more to disturb the thinking of the listener (though he also claims that his goal is to calm the senses because that is what he learned from studying music in India). He was very successful at disturbing the definition of what music is.
He had a real aversion to emotionally manipulative music, either triumphal or melancholy. I think separation of the emotional life of the composer from music and endowing it with the rhythms and harmonies of chance and nature were much more important to the world. He pointed out that our attempts to improve the world only made it worse. He brought the same sensibility to his music.
A full hour of atonal lullaby songs. I absolutely love it, but it was not a good idea to procrastinate to the point where I have to pull an all-nighter for an uni project about prepared piano, and listening to the this at 2am
oh, to be fair, most of the comments are positive. and, oddly, the negative ones seem to be identical to ones i have seen on other cage videos. i think there is a small but virulent anti-cage group going around. listening to his wonderfully imaginative music makes it easy to ignore them.
From what I've read, Cage didn't refer to himself as a composer, but as an inventor. In any case, I have argued against Cage's music on various occasions, but I must confess that I am finding his music more and more interesting as I get more familiar with it, especially these prepared piano pieces, which I think are stunning. I still think that 4' 33" has gotten way more attention than it deserves (I figure it deserved about 4' 33" of attention, rather than the 64 years it has gotten).
I can understand your feelings about 4'33" but it is at least part of an important moment when a number of artists at Black Mountain College were trying to find a way back from the horrors that came out at the end of WWII. Going to zero was an effort to find a new starting place, I think. Charles Olson's little essay "The Resistance" somewhat sets the stage, and those "blank" works by Rauschenberg also come out of this moment. These artists also helped open art to wider environments than was customary in the past. Cage's piece introduces an idea about what's going on in a recital that must have seemed new at the time, and I have to admit that I almost never go to a concert or public lecture without paying new attention to all the environmental sounds going on around the main event. That's owing to Cage's piece from those many decades ago.
It's not even 4'33" that I have a problem with. It's all those who use it as an excuse for their own lazy attempts at being artistic without putting in any effort.
I don't understand this differentiation between good and bad composer. U mean that good composers are those who are more classic on the form? (then maybe Bartók is a bad composer) Or maybe the ones who are more subjective? (then maybe Stravinsky is a bad composer) Or maybe the ones that are more nice to hear (then Beethoven's Grösse Fugue it's just Scheisse). I don't know which are you arguments to say that Cage is a bad composer but if ur arguments are that it sound strange, just ask the people in Paris with The Rite of Spring or even Beethoven last piano sonatas
+Martí Costa (Músic) generally bad and good are subjective of course, but if I scream randomly and call it music, everybody will say it is bad, so bad in general when great number of people do not like it, now, some may found John Cage's music interesting, yet if purpose of music is to listen and enjoy it, I doubt that big number of people enjoy it...
+Martí Costa (Músic) Good music stimulates the pleasure centers of the brain. Bad music fails to stimulate the pleasure centers of the brain. This is the general rule, but it requires some elaboration. Since people's brains are wired differently, good music stimulates the pleasure centers of most people's brains, while bad music fails to stimulate the pleasure centers of most people's brains. Great music stimulates the pleasure centers of most people's brains and also stimulates the intellect. For example, Bach and Beethoven
+Roland Buck What a bullshit ... Then Webern, schnittke, Messiaen, Stockhausen, Berio, Takemitsu are bad composers ? Good music is not only the tonal music. I can think that a music is very ugly but interesting at the same time and take pleasure to listen it. Good musics are not limited to every periods before the 20th century ... If you can't understand it, you are an idiot.
Bad, Good, Average are personal criteria - it´s silly falling within such discussion. As a spectator or audiophoner subject, all it´s asked of you is doing a fair effort to understdand the music piece - its source, age, style and so forth. Then - only then - you may like it or not. Desliking without understanding it´s the same as if you buy a new car and like or dislike before, and you like or dislie it without testing the driving, energy,. capacity features, etc.
+abu ghraib Thank you. I just expressed a minimum of common sense - 1st, learn, understand. Then, only then, comment, criticize, eloges-spraying, do whatever goes in your mind. But plkease let´s not waste more time in silly rushing comments.Cheers
nothing..., at your leisure. But this is assumed to be a "free speech and opinion" latitude. And Music is (maybe) the most "vivid" art expression. In such way that "understand" it lead to "like" it or not with full reason and spirit. Try for ex. Maessien and le Quattour pour La Fin di Temps. A masterpiece and yet difficult to understand and "listen" at first - but there was "something" in it . It took me a wile but now I understand and like it as a whole piece and not just by a bar or two. Lux artis ad universum hominem, right? Greetings from Portugal.
Good, bad, average are all subjective. There is no such thing as objectively bad music. Therefore I will listen to the bass boosted sound of two necrophiles taking turns sodomizing a dead baby while moaning in animalistic ecstasy, and if anyone calls me out on it or claims that it is not music at all, I need only look to your well crafted argument above for reference. Thanks dude.
As George Orwell once said, “There are some ideas so absurd that only an intellectual could believe them.” I think that quote fits nicely into this comment section and in particular to John Cage and his cultists.
The only real criteria for judging whether music is good or bad is whether it is pleasing to the ear. this means that musical appraisal is entirely subjective. there's no such thing as veritably "good" or " "bad" music. in my opinion, though, this sounds like shit.
John Cage was a clever con man. He lacked the talent to compose real great music and made up for it by using all kinds of clever tricks to draw a lot of attention to himself that he did not deserve.
+Roland Buck I've met a lot of people who share this opinion, including my stepfather, whose musical taste I respected. I studied with Cage for a quarter in 1970 at the University of California at Davis, so I'm biased, and yes, he was an entertainer as well as a composer, but his struggles against hardened thinking put him in a new kind of category - comic political revolutionary. I observed a panel discussion in Washington D.C. a couple of years ago as part of a celebration of Cage's 100th birthday. In an odd context, a question was posed - what are the greatest threats facing the world? A women in the audience who had also studied with Cage had an answer that Cage had crafted before he died - 'Nations.' Airy and naive, perhaps, but thought provoking, especially in the Nation's capital. I laughed. Few others did. Once when Cage was told by a therapist that the therapist could help him compose more, Cage said 'But I compose too much already!'
+Bela Horvat You, sir, are an offensive, foul-mouthed, filthy scoundrel, and have no place spreading this kind of vitriol. I was inspired by the insight and intelligence of this man's words, an intelligence that pales in comparison to the primitive bluntness you have just displayed. Show some respect.
You've made my day, Bela. I'm going to use this in a song, and spread it around in other ways. I hung with an experimental group of folks in college. As the class went on, we asked Cage to have dinner with us, and he accepted! We got him high, and listened to the Dead and some other San Francisco group. Maybe the Airplane. We asked him which he preferred, and he said the Dead, but we could all tell that it was out of kindness. He was a very kind man.
+Carmen Vanderveken - Thanks, Carmen. I'm wondering if Bela is an automated hate spewer. Seems that way, since he says 'wrong video' which is confusing. What was the right one? The reason his back and forth, and your comment (thank you) made my day is that it's the kind of thing Cage would appreciate. Whatever happens is the piece. So, these Sonatas and Interludes continue to live, beyond Thomas Nicholson's fine interpretation, into the rooms of all of us who comment and reflect, whether we knew Cage or don't have a clue.
I'm a professional pianist, I played a Cage sonata during my last concert in Seoul. It is interesting because every note written by Cage is like a nail pointing in the air, and changing the air changes the composition. Hope someone agree
John Cage was a philosopher of sound, a bit like Einstein was a philosopher of energy. I didn't realise Cage made this so EARLY! 1946. Wow. This was so innovative, the idea of playing with the mechanics of a classical musical intrument. The expanded sonority and chiseled harmonics skate in a frozen landscape of poignant narrative rhythms.
I had the great joy to meet John Cage when I was a teenager. We were both into writing haiku and my art tutor knew him and introduced us. I had not heard his music yet. It was at a gallery opening in NYC of his mushroom paintings. What a prolific dreamer!
I pursue a thesis on him. I wish you tell more about him.
There are some terrific clips uploaded to CZcams. I particularly like
one where he talks about a haiku about mushrooms. You can learn a lot about him through that. It is called "Haiku About Mushrooms" and "At he Middle". I just read a wikipedia entry about musique concrete and learned that 2 composers who taught John Cage have laid a lot of the groundwork for his inventions. They are Henry Cowell and Arnold Schoenberg. Their works are also on CZcams. Enjoy your research!
Thanks VJ.
If it was only for the music and not so much all that musical philosophical discourse like "Cage was the philosopher of sound and blablabla" you would never "enjoy" this music. This music was never meant to be enjoyable.
the fact is that I have enjoyed his music for a long time, if you enjoy other music, I have non problem with that, as they say, it's a matter of taste.
I met cage when I was a youngster. what a wonderful man. I gave him my collection of quotes and he was delighted. 🕉 zen John Cage. no right or left, no good or bad, the middle path is beyond the extremes of duality.
Om Sadasiva If you mean he's not politically left or right, I disagree as, he mentioned numerous Imes and wrote poetry on Anarchism.
Surrealist Gal not politically. just the middle path between the extremes of duality.
Surrealist Gal
I think the "middle path" must mean he swung both ways. Man's dead now, guess he can't come out of the closet, cage, or his safety helmet.
John Cage never was in any closet and the idea of him 'swinging' literally or metaphorically shows an almost total ignorance of the man. Yes he was married to a woman for several years until he had fully accepted who he was - a much more difficult thing in the 40s and the 50s than now. If it has any bearing whatsoever on his music or thought I'd be interested to learn of it. But it won't be found here.
Soon after the start of my short but arduous career as a piano student I would, to the best of my ability, play notes and chords and notate the work. Man...it was tedious. I played block chords. I noted block chords.
I undertook this work after listening to some John Coltrane albums my father's friend gifted him. I'd play the albums when alone in the apartment. When I was an ad sales rep at an not unknown university's radio station I recognized album cover photos. When I collected Hates Ives recording I was pleased to learn exactly what was a block chord. Man I was flush with vindication. You'd never hear Coltrane or Ives in the mass media mud hole.
THIS IS MUSIC; to defend it is insulting but Mr. Cage suffered superbly that bullshit. It has rhythm, reminding one the piano is a percussive instrument. That's why I enjoyed composing my "avant garde" music. Can't beat, particularly pre-puberty, pounding gently or heavy handedly something that produces sound. Cage is a master at this practice. And it isn't child's play. My point is it isn't child's play at all. A child might attempt this expression but an adult knows better "how to play".
And, as with Monk, the silences are notes here.
SOOO my thinking as a child and in puberty and in COLLEGE when I finally understood abstract reality and there is no going back .. THERE really isn't anything you can't imagine, there isn't anything you can't paint , there is nothing .
Sonatas and Interludes is one of his many gorgeous pieces of pristine beauty and influenced by Indian music!
in the piano works instead i can feel Bach....
Love the comments! You guys are rocking...Cage is as immense as Bach. Deal with it.
Love the simplicity and playfulness
Timestamps for mobile users:
Sonata I - 0:00
Sonata II - 2:45
Sonata III - 4:47
Sonata IV - 7:24
Interlude I - 9:33
Sonata V - 12:50
Sonata VI - 14:21
Sonata VII - 16:44
Sonata VIII - 19:14
Interlude II - 22:03
Interlude III - 26:08
Sonata IX - 28:42
Sonata X - 33:00
Sonata XI - 37:15
Sonata XII - 40:29
Interlude IV - 43:48
Sonata XIII - 47:01
Sonata XIV - 51:53
Sonata XV - 55:00
Sonata XVI - 58:20
I think that if you explore music basically as sound, you will find an infinite variety of sources including chance.
This is Cage's simple proposal: nothing more and certainly nothing less.
"I have nothing to say and I am saying it." - John Cage
But music is not only sound. It's HARMONIZED sound. If music is only sound, why we call it "music"? Why we distinguish it from noise?
But it sounds to me like he's also purposefully not using any harmony.
Sergio Podadera Moya the more you get into various kinds of music from all around the world, you realize that harmony isn’t necessarily one set thing, and is way more complex than the idea of consonance and dissonance. even more some music is inherently much more reliant on rhythm, and the only definition of music as a whole that i’ve become satisfied with is the “expressive manipulation of space and time” time being rhythm and space being harmony.
I have yet to hear a bad recording of these wonderful pieces. Anyone willing to play them plays them with lyricism and keen attention to the subtle nuances they encapsulate. And they of course have the patience and care to prepare the piano, an operation that can take up to two hours to effect.
I suppose you can have good recordings of bad compositions.
good shit dont listen to the haters john
if he did listen to them he would have only made music out of their whining complaints.
painting: vir heroicus sublimis, barnett newman, finished 1951. on view at the museum of modern art in new york
Thanks for playing, uploading and sharing, Mr. Nicholson! I also like very much your compositions. Always dissapointing to see the comments though. I never manage to ignore them.
Heiko Arntz thanks for listening!
Thank you, well done! 👏👏👏👏👏
-- Une douceur pour nos oreilles. --
Thing is the natural breathing in his music. Natural breathing. It is not easy.
Actually, natural breathing is very easy. If you just let yourself breath. Which was kind of Cage's point, I think. The question of him being a great composer or a con man is almost meaningless. His work is his work. His goal was non-intention, not harmonious music which he himself said he had no feeling for whatsoever. It is music written more to disturb the thinking of the listener (though he also claims that his goal is to calm the senses because that is what he learned from studying music in India). He was very successful at disturbing the definition of what music is.
My Name YOU JUST GOT CONNED HOMIE
He had a real aversion to emotionally manipulative music, either triumphal or melancholy. I think separation of the emotional life of the composer from music and endowing it with the rhythms and harmonies of chance and nature were much more important to the world. He pointed out that our attempts to improve the world only made it worse. He brought the same sensibility to his music.
...When the musicians of the past do the hard work
A full hour of atonal lullaby songs. I absolutely love it, but it was not a good idea to procrastinate to the point where I have to pull an all-nighter for an uni project about prepared piano, and listening to the this at 2am
same here hahaha
I have nothing to say/ and I am saying it/ and that is poetry/ as I need it
Love Newman too!!
i love this music so much !
same, it's beautiful
Now I know how , Elton, got he’s idea, for the Intro part of Bennie and the Jets.
Indispensável
Beautiful.
Simply marvellous!!!!!
Happy memories!
beautiful work
Great!!!
すばらしい
This is sooo cool
Obra prima de Cage.
Note to self: Never read comments.
oh, to be fair, most of the comments are positive. and, oddly, the negative ones seem to be identical to ones i have seen on other cage videos. i think there is a small but virulent anti-cage group going around. listening to his wonderfully imaginative music makes it easy to ignore them.
Ecouté en lisant Kyle Gann, c'est recommandé par lui à la page 64 de son No Silence paru en trad. chez Allia.
this is awesome !!!!!
quite good...
Let's hear it for Barnett Newman.
Cage is just very different
+Charlotte Whyte Bad composers are very different from great composers.
From what I've read, Cage didn't refer to himself as a composer, but as an inventor.
In any case, I have argued against Cage's music on various occasions, but I must confess that I am finding his music more and more interesting as I get more familiar with it, especially these prepared piano pieces, which I think are stunning. I still think that 4' 33" has gotten way more attention than it deserves (I figure it deserved about 4' 33" of attention, rather than the 64 years it has gotten).
I can understand your feelings about 4'33" but it is at least part of an important moment when a number of artists at Black Mountain College were trying to find a way back from the horrors that came out at the end of WWII. Going to zero was an effort to find a new starting place, I think. Charles Olson's little essay "The Resistance" somewhat sets the stage, and those "blank" works by Rauschenberg also come out of this moment. These artists also helped open art to wider environments than was customary in the past. Cage's piece introduces an idea about what's going on in a recital that must have seemed new at the time, and I have to admit that I almost never go to a concert or public lecture without paying new attention to all the environmental sounds going on around the main event. That's owing to Cage's piece from those many decades ago.
It's not even 4'33" that I have a problem with. It's all those who use it as an excuse for their own lazy attempts at being artistic without putting in any effort.
I would like to hear more about Cage. Specially I wonder that essay you mentioned up "The Resistance".
mon album préferer
I don't understand this differentiation between good and bad composer. U mean that good composers are those who are more classic on the form? (then maybe Bartók is a bad composer) Or maybe the ones who are more subjective? (then maybe Stravinsky is a bad composer) Or maybe the ones that are more nice to hear (then Beethoven's Grösse Fugue it's just Scheisse). I don't know which are you arguments to say that Cage is a bad composer but if ur arguments are that it sound strange, just ask the people in Paris with The Rite of Spring or even Beethoven last piano sonatas
+Martí Costa (Músic) generally bad and good are subjective of course, but if I scream randomly and call it music, everybody will say it is bad, so bad in general when great number of people do not like it, now, some may found John Cage's music interesting, yet if purpose of music is to listen and enjoy it, I doubt that big number of people enjoy it...
+Martí Costa (Músic) Good music stimulates the pleasure centers of the brain. Bad music fails to stimulate the pleasure centers of the brain. This is the general rule, but it requires some elaboration.
Since people's brains are wired differently, good music stimulates the pleasure centers of most people's brains, while bad music fails to stimulate the pleasure centers of most people's brains. Great music stimulates the pleasure centers of most people's brains and also stimulates the intellect. For example, Bach and Beethoven
+ Roland Buck Did God tell you that?
+Roland Buck What a bullshit ... Then Webern, schnittke, Messiaen, Stockhausen, Berio, Takemitsu are bad composers ?
Good music is not only the tonal music. I can think that a music is very ugly but interesting at the same time and take pleasure to listen it.
Good musics are not limited to every periods before the 20th century ... If you can't understand it, you are an idiot.
Cage is a GREAT composer
All the things includes the music. There is also uncertainty and doubtful
another of richard d james' joke monikers
"5 fat Scarlet zips for my friend Adolf Reinhardt"
In the description Interlude II beginning is noted at 20:03, but in the video it starts at 22:03. Good job otherwise
💛🥀😉💜💞
Bad, Good, Average are personal criteria - it´s silly falling within such discussion. As a spectator or audiophoner subject, all it´s asked of you is doing a fair effort to understdand the music piece - its source, age, style and so forth.
Then - only then - you may like it or not.
Desliking without understanding it´s the same as if you buy a new car and like or dislike before, and you like or dislie it without testing the driving, energy,. capacity features, etc.
+abu ghraib Thank you. I just expressed a minimum of common sense - 1st, learn, understand. Then, only then, comment, criticize, eloges-spraying, do whatever goes in your mind. But plkease let´s not waste more time in silly rushing comments.Cheers
nothing..., at your leisure. But this is assumed to be a "free speech and opinion" latitude. And Music is (maybe) the most "vivid" art expression. In such way that "understand" it lead to "like" it or not with full reason and spirit. Try for ex. Maessien and le Quattour pour La Fin di Temps. A masterpiece and yet difficult to understand and "listen" at first - but there was "something" in it . It took me a wile but now I understand and like it as a whole piece and not just by a bar or two. Lux artis ad universum hominem, right? Greetings from Portugal.
Adam, if you loved it then you understand it.
Good, bad, average are all subjective. There is no such thing as objectively bad music. Therefore I will listen to the bass boosted sound of two necrophiles taking turns sodomizing a dead baby while moaning in animalistic ecstasy, and if anyone calls me out on it or claims that it is not music at all, I need only look to your well crafted argument above for reference. Thanks dude.
@@basedmod2139 ur fucking weird dude
Pena q estamos vivendo um período em q a cultura está cada vez menos valorizada!!
As George Orwell once said, “There are some ideas so absurd that only an intellectual could believe them.”
I think that quote fits nicely into this comment section and in particular to John Cage and his cultists.
His music is beautiful, like the emperor's clothes were beautiful in the old fable, The Emperor's New Clothes.
His music isn't as bad as it sounds.
The only real criteria for judging whether music is good or bad is whether it is pleasing to the ear. this means that musical appraisal is entirely subjective. there's no such thing as veritably "good" or " "bad" music. in my opinion, though, this sounds like shit.
Jean D 😅
Seriously get over 4'33, Sonatas and interludes is beautiful
this sounds amazing, I don't know what you're on about
If you have to rely on being unconventional for people to see worth in your music, your music isn't really worth anything at all.
hahahahah
John Cage was a clever con man. He lacked the talent to compose real great music and made up for it by using all kinds of clever tricks to draw a lot of attention to himself that he did not deserve.
+Roland Buck I've met a lot of people who share this opinion, including my stepfather, whose musical taste I respected. I studied with Cage for a quarter in 1970 at the University of California at Davis, so I'm biased, and yes, he was an entertainer as well as a composer, but his struggles against hardened thinking put him in a new kind of category - comic political revolutionary.
I observed a panel discussion in Washington D.C. a couple of years ago as part of a celebration of Cage's 100th birthday. In an odd context, a question was posed - what are the greatest threats facing the world? A women in the audience who had also studied with Cage had an answer that Cage had crafted before he died - 'Nations.' Airy and naive, perhaps, but thought provoking, especially in the Nation's capital. I laughed. Few others did. Once when Cage was told by a therapist that the therapist could help him compose more, Cage said 'But I compose too much already!'
+Bela Horvat You, sir, are an offensive, foul-mouthed, filthy scoundrel, and have no place spreading this kind of vitriol. I was inspired by the insight and intelligence of this man's words, an intelligence that pales in comparison to the primitive bluntness you have just displayed. Show some respect.
Carmen Vanderveken sorry, wrong video
You've made my day, Bela. I'm going to use this in a song, and spread it around in other ways.
I hung with an experimental group of folks in college. As the class went on, we asked Cage to have dinner with us, and he accepted! We got him high, and listened to the Dead and some other San Francisco group. Maybe the Airplane. We asked him which he preferred, and he said the Dead, but we could all tell that it was out of kindness. He was a very kind man.
+Carmen Vanderveken - Thanks, Carmen. I'm wondering if Bela is an automated hate spewer. Seems that way, since he says 'wrong video' which is confusing. What was the right one? The reason his back and forth, and your comment (thank you) made my day is that it's the kind of thing Cage would appreciate. Whatever happens is the piece. So, these Sonatas and Interludes continue to live, beyond Thomas Nicholson's fine interpretation, into the rooms of all of us who comment and reflect, whether we knew Cage or don't have a clue.
This is garbage. I find virtually nothing about it to be appealing.
MrJ567 I find nothing to be quite appealing myself