[silence] Messiaen & Cage

[Graham Urquhart]

I'm much more in tune with Ralph's original comment. I like and 
appreciate the 'sounds' that both Cage and Messiaen arrived at.  Whilst 
i can appreciate it will be of interest to musicologists, how they 
achieved it is of secondary concern for me.  As an audience Cageians 
could arguably be equally 'impressed' by 4.33...perhaps.

Graham

Mark Kolmar wrote:
> Analogies stretch quickly into the ridiculous, so I would not read into 
> it beyond a basic illustration.
>
> You can make a pleasant "harmony" of flavor out of table sugar and lemon 
> juice in water.  Together, it is lemonade, like an Am7 chord.  It is 
> pleasant and easy to absorb, mixed easily from elemental ingredients 
> that don't have a lot of appeal alone.  Large drums of high-fructose 
> corn syrup and citric acid are even cheaper.  Put it in plastic bottles 
> and sell for US$1.25 each.
>
> In the quotation about Messiaen, Cage said harmony would "enlarge sound" 
> and "impress an audience".  Maybe an angel food cake would be a better 
> analogy.
>
> In late Cage, and late Feldman, I do not hear it as built up from 
> elements that way.  Rather, it seems to grow from combinations and 
> inter-relationships of components, in which each is to be perceived as a 
>   thing-in-itself -- rather than, say, a point of reference to measure 
> distance between moving lines.
>
> Even in "Music of Changes", the component parts are gestures or cells, 
> not pitches.  Then even in the late number pieces, the purpose of a 
> single tone, when it appears, is not for its role in a functional 
> harmony, but rather for its own qualities.  So the effect is not so much 
> to "enlarge sound", but rather to present each sound in its own size in 
> relation to others.
>
> To return to Messiaen -- take _Catalogue d'Oiseaux_ as an example.  That 
> is somewhat of an imitation of nature in its manner of operation, but as 
> a fantasy about birdsong.  The manner of operation is to map the pitches 
> of birdsong onto special scales that allow some interesting ways to deal 
> with relationships between pitches.  Cage preferred to deal with sounds 
> and relationships between sounds, more than between pitches.
>
> --Mark
>
> john saylor wrote:
>   
>> hi
>>
>> On 3/30/07, Mark Kolmar <mark@burningrome.com> wrote:
>>     
>>> 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.
>>>       
>> i sense you are half-joking here, but i think your analysis is flawed
>> nonetheless. nothing personal, it's just interesting to me to try and
>> combine economics and music in this way [as opposed to the 'pop music
>> machine' way we are all too familiar with ...]
>>
>> harmony is cheaper? maybe. there's a lot of 'prior art' to compare it
>> against for valuation. on the other hand, it requires more
>> coordination between musicians to pull off- more top-down control
>> [where is the beat?] than what happens in the majority of cage's
>> music.
>>
>> how do we measure the 'value' of complex sonorities? [an interesting
>> question outside of any economic manifestations that we are discussing
>> here] if the goal is to persuade someone to spend money, than the
>> sounds that get people to think less are better than sounds that
>> encourage the listener to contemplate.
>>
>> and, of course, how do we measure the 'profit' of sound combinations?
>> it seems to be related to the effort of the musicians to produce them
>> in your analysis.
>>
>> i don't really have an answer, but i'd think some marketing whitepaper
>> [beautifully formatted] is sitting in a file cabinet somewhere that
>> might tell us something about this question.
>>
>> i think looking at this issue in terms of 'supply and demand' may be
>> more ... um ... *profitable*
>>
>> [ouch!]
>>
>>     
>
> --
> To join or leave the Silence mailing list, please go to https://list.mail.virginia.edu/mailman/listinfo/silence.
> You can find searchable list archives at http://list.mail.virginia.edu/pipermail/silence/
>
>
>