[silence] Varese quote

[klaus schmirler]

Guy De Bievre wrote:
> it is not the exact same phrase but it says more or less the same:
> "There is no such thing as an avant-garde artist. It's an idea made 
> up by a lazy audience and the critics holding it on a leash. The 
> artist always is a part of his time, because his mission is to create 
> that time. It's the audience that lags behind, forming the 
> 'arriere-garde'." (my translation from the french, though the 
> original was in english) comes from an interview with A. Rich "Varese 
> is waiting for the audience" in the NY Herald Tribune of March 28 1965
> it is a recurring topic in Varese's writings and interviews.


Is there anybody else who is reminded, even more than in the original 
question, of Stein's "Composition as Explanation"?

"No one is ahead of his time, it is only that the particular variety of 
creating this time is the the one that his contemporaries who are also 
creating their own time refuse to accept. And they refuse to accept it 
for a very simple reason and that is that they do not have to accept it 
for any reason."

She is more condoning than Varese and doesn't blame critics nor anybody 
else in particular, just everybody's natural indolence for this time lag 
among contemporaries:

"For this reason as in quoting Lord Grey it is quite certain that 
nations not actively threatened are at least several generations behind 
themselves militarily so aesthetically they are more than several 
generations behind themselves and it is very much too bad, it is so very 
much more exciting and satisfactory for everybody if one can have 
contemporaries, if all one's contemporaries could be one's contemporaries."

  And I had thought it was Cage who copped so much from Stein.

klaus








> 
> At 09:57 PM 7/10/2006, Cory P. Mathews wrote:
>> [Just feeling lazy, folks.  Please respond only if you don't mind
>> indulging me.]
>>
>> Anyone know what the source is for this quote by Varese:
>> "The modern artist is not 50 years ahead of his time, the modern
>> audience is 50 years behind."
>>
>> ????????????
>>
>> Thanks,
>> Cory
>>
>> --
>> cory mathews
>> PhD candidate, musicology
>> university of california, santa barbara
>> cmathews@umail.ucsb.edu
>>
>> Music gives us alternative imaginative geographies for the places we inhabit.
>>                                                 Simon Critchley
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>> --
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