[silence] silence Digest, Vol 79, Issue 10

[Clemens Gresser]

2008/12/13 Glenn Freeman <glenn@ogreogress.com>:
> ok, so perhaps cage might have enjoyed hearing all 6 of his final
> symphonies performed by the chicago symphony, berlin philharmonic,
> etc. ... someday it will happen.

Erm... being eltist doesn't just manifest itself by writing symphonies
and being performed by famous orchestras, does it? I mean a lot of
Philip Glass and John Adams symphonies get performed by famous
ensembles, and yet - to me - this music is often too "approachable to
bear"...

But more seriously:
I think that there is an interesting tension between a lot of Cage's
music _being perceived_ as elitist and esoteric, and a lot of his
aesthetics and music being all-encompassing, i.e. if the "silent"
piece or 0'00" 'just' contain non-elitists sounds, and these can be
heard and "analyised" by anyone (one does not need to have studied
harmony to understand them), and Cage seems to have stated that these
sounds are what they are, then this is, to me at least, very
egalitarian.

Clemens

-- 
cgresser@gmail.com
*****
Stephen Leacock  - "I detest life-insurance agents: they always argue
that I shall some day die, which is not so."