[silence] Messiaen & Cage

[Ralph Lichtensteiger]

dear Rob,

you are absolutely right, "anti-organization" is a misleading  
characterization.
What I mean is that Cage's music after 1940 (his non-intentional,  
chance operation technique orientated music)
refused a particular "approach" or "philosophy of organization of the  
sonorous material. The still traditional "form" of organisation of  
sound, even in serialism and/or dodecaphony, handled the material  
basically in a comparable way as Wagner or Alexander Scriabin did -  
the composer tried to more or less anticipate the music in his head  
during the process of composition/writing. I think Cage's "approach"  
was to integrate the sounding, the performance into the process of  
composition/writing - in order to destroy the autonomy of the  
"result" as an arefact.

Another aspect came to my mind today:

Cage:
the ordinary, the profane, the raw, the beauty of the profane

Messiaen:
the sacral, the holy (saint), the beauty of the sublimated

Messiaen's music is more like a Mark Rothko painting (ampleness,  
depth, opulence, earnestness, aristocratic, festivity)
Cage's music is more like a Joseph Beuys object (rawboned,  
provisorily, humor - J. Joyce, unspectacular, "street smart")

Pardon for the weird english.

Kind regards,
ralph lichtensteiger
http://time4time.blogspot.com/
http://www.lichtensteiger.de/


On Apr 2, 2007, at 3:52 PM, Rob Haskins wrote:

> I think that the idea of "anti-organization" in Cage is very  
> misleading.  It makes people assume that there is no organization  
> at all, whereas I think what Cage was after was to produce a kind  
> of organization that wouldn't lead listeners to experience one and  
> the same organization, but instead discover many possible  
> organizations worthy of their attention.
>
> Rob
>
> Rob Haskins
> Assistant Professor of Music
> University of New Hampshire
> rob_haskins@yahoo.com
> http://robhaskins.net
>
> "Heroism doesn't consist in brilliantly combatting someone  
> else. . . .  What is heroic is to accept the situation in which you  
> find yourself."  -- John Cage
>
>
>
> ----- Original Message ----
> From: Carl Heppenstall <Heppenstall_at_KC@msn.com>
> To: silence@list.mail.virginia.edu
> Sent: Monday, April 2, 2007 1:12:14 AM
> Subject: Re: [silence] Messiaen & Cage
>
> Ralph, Very interesting.
>
> Generally, the organization and nature of the organization probably  
> interests me more than a purposeful lack of organization, but in  
> the end, however the music is created, it must reflect our chaotic  
> or "un-conscious" interaction with the natural stillness of the  
> universe for me to enjoy it.  Often we get so caught up in the  
> technical mastery of what is getting created and we lose one of the  
> purposes of art - creating music that can reach the soul.
>
> Cage did his work at getting us to listen to the natural stillness  
> and the space and things interacting with and underlying our  
> consciousness, but once that mission was accomplished, why do we  
> need to continue to create similar art that merely points to the  
> thing but is not reflective of the thing?
>
> Best Regards,
> Carl
>
> ----- Original Message -----
> From: Ralph Lichtensteiger
> To: silence@list.mail.virginiaedu
> Sent: Sunday, April 01, 2007 11:54 PM
> Subject: [silence] Messiaen & Cage
>
> Dear silencers,
> thank you all for your great comments about Messiaen & Cage.
> They are very helpful and inciting for me. Thanks a lot !
> The antagonism (antithesis) Cage / Messiaen opens a wide range of  
> interesting thoughts.
>
> "Natural sounds suggest music to us, but are not yet themselves  
> music… Tonal elements become music only by virtue of their being  
> organized, and that such organization presupposes a conscious human  
> act." — Igor Stravinsky: Poetics of Music, Harvard University  
> Press, 1942, S. 23
>
> in opposition to Cage's "anti-organization" of sound.
>
> Kind regards,
> ralph lichtensteiger
> http://del.icio.us/lichtconlon
> http://time4time.blogspot.com/
> http://www.lichtensteiger.de/
>
>
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