[silence] More Atlas Eclipticalis

[Ingvar Loco Nordin]

There is a contradiction in here - and I also feel a lot of  
irritation, perhaps understandable, in view of the way Petr has  
experienced the dilletante interest in Cage's works - but this  
irritation, though perhaps understandable, gets in the way of the  
real issue, I feel.
I can't help making analogies with another great composer and  
philosopher - Karlheinz Stockhausen - whom I got to know pretty well  
during his last six years or so, writing about his music and  
photographing his courses in Germany, as well as corresponding with  
him, and even getting into an argument with him for a couple of  
years, which we luckily could leave behind, making  it possible for  
us to get om good terms again. He enjoyed, for once, to have someone  
write about his music that was very far off from the musicologists'  
way of expressing themselves, someone who considers himself just a  
listener.

One of Cage's dedications in Atlas Eclipticalis is for Stockhausen  
and his first wife Doris. Stockhausen was a very, very determined and  
ingenious man, who never wanted to repeat anything, which resulted in  
new ways of composing - new methods - almost each time he composed.  
He also talked about what would happen to his scores etcetera when he  
had passed on to his next life, and he was a lively and passionate  
teacher, for that matter - but he had a trust that his pupils would  
carry the essential part of his composing on to new generations, with  
the core teaching that everything is possible with hard work and  
great visions, and that everyone should seek something new. In his  
very last message to me, postmarked less than a month before his  
death, he said: "Yes, tell the world there is something NEW to  
experience!" He wasn't bitter at all; he was looking forward to his  
next life. Let's see what will happen to his music further on up the  
road. Will bitter collaborators shut their mouths and keep from  
handing down their knowledge of Stockhausen? I can hardly see Bryan  
Wolfe act that way, or Kathinka Pasveer or Suzee Stephens, or Antonio  
Perez-Abellan. Bitterness is a cold grave. Let's be joyous and  
celebrate what we still have, of Cage and of Stockhausen. Let's  
remember their spiritual influence and work in that ambience, that  
atmosphere.

Keep on keeping on!

Loco (Ingvar)


21 apr 2008 kl. 21.49 skrev Joseph Zitt:
The interesting challenge, then, is in the apparent contradiction
between being pointed "to a direction, where one can learn something
by oneself,"  and the sense of a personal tradition that can only be
learned, as it were, directly master-to-student.

The biggest issue, I think, is that while that worked well in small
societies, where everyone lived relatively close together, problems
arise in the desire of people to learn the music of other people from
across the planet. There's also the issue that matters being
communicated by word-of-mouth over the years inevitably lose
information and get corrupted. One need only look at the wide variety
of ideas about performing early music (or even what was meant by some
fairly recent masters of jazz) to see that not everything survives
even to a second generation of communication.

While I can understand and appreciate not wanting to teach (it's not
something that I'm particularly good at, either), I hope that the
current practice would be clearly documented by people who are around
now. In a few decades, few who worked directly with Cage will be
around to point us in useful directions, and I hope that doesn't mean
that what they see as the appropriate ways of understanding and
performing his work would be forever lost.

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