[silence] Messiaen & Cage

[Mark Kolmar]

Rob Haskins wrote:
> I don't think anyone has brought up this written Cage criticism of 
> Messiaen:
> 
> It is, incidentally, the emphasis on harmony in Messiaen’s music which 
> accounts for its occasional bad taste.  This element, harmony, is not 
> medieval nor Oriental but baroque.  Because of its ability to enlarge 
> sound and thus to impress an audience, it has become in our time the 
> tool of Western commercialism.
> 
> from “The East in the West,” in John Cage: Writer, ed. Richard 
> Kostelanetz, p. 24–25.  The original article was published in /Modern 
> Music/ 23, no. 2 (April 1946): 111–15.
> 
> I've often wondered what piece Cage had in mind when he made this remark.

If I might take a stab at this -- Harmony draws interest from the 
interactions of two or more sounds, not merely coincidence or 
superimposition.  Harmony also tends toward a perception of the 
resulting combination rather than individual tones.  In this way, 
harmony is a form of sonic multiplication rather than sonic addition.

Any connection to Western commercialism is less clear.  To extend the 
analogy, I might submit that harmony uses "cheaper" materials to produce 
complex sonorities with greater "added value", therefore more "profit" 
than other types of sound combinations.

--Mark