The Future of Music?

[Ballaw de Quincewold]

Originally Posted by Thorolf

I have no need to devoid the concept of art of its meaning, and hence I assert that merely describing 4:33 mins of not playing is not art: It requires no skills. It is nonsense. Turning the audience to performers? Yes, anytime. But no skills involved? No art.
Regards

This is exactly what I think. However, I believe that it is possible for enjoyment and interest to be derived out of Cage's music and works of like composers, but they simply do not belong in the world of art. It is greatly distressing to me how people like Philip Glass and John Cage are considered great composers and ranked alongside Stravinsky when there is little or no craftsmanship present in their work.

[reith]

1) I don't think that anyone has asserted that 4'33" is Art or that it should make sense. Why should it make sense? What is 'making sense'?

2) I don't think either Cage or any of his appreciators ever claimed he was a "great" composer. He composed. As for the statement that <<there is little or no craftsmanship present in their work>> of Cage in particular, that brings us back to the more basic question of what we expect music to be.

I'm mindful of Karlheinz Stockhausen: "I expect two things of a composer - that he's inventive and that he astonishes me," and feel that such a viewpoint is more supportive of a future music than negation of Cage et al's contribution. One might think Cage's work a blind alley now closed. It might well be, but at least we know. (Though I don't personally dismiss his work so easily, believing as I do that he had a lot to say. At least he showed us, as did several other 20 C composers, that you don't have to tread the well-worn paths to create. Whether those creations fall on stony ground is a different matter.)

[MisterEnt]

I love when people can have differing opinions and maintain a conversation with a level-head. Thank you everyone for being awesome, you've all made my day!

Now... John Cage. It's love/hate with me and Mr. Cage. See... as a music philosopher, he's an amazing man. His concepts are wonderful and innovative, but what he did with them... Eeee I can't stand listening to it. Plinking around on instruments aimlessly... indeterminant piano madness...

And as much as I love 4'33'' as an idea (I actually even loved watching it performed because it was just so bizarre), I don't know if I could call it music. Perhaps art... performance art of a sort. However, the fact that he "composed a song" that subtracted the music from the performance so that the audience would be forced to take note of the aural canvas a composer begins with... it's really a neat idea. The audience is the canvas. Every shuffle, every cough is what a composer begins with in his work.

So I guess I respect him as a philosopher, but not so much as a composer.

[reith]

Originally Posted by MisterEnt

I love when people can have differing opinions and maintain a conversation with a level-head. Thank you everyone for being awesome, you've all made my day!

This seems to be the ethos of this board...respecting that everyone's opinion is valuable and, disagree we might from time to time, we can all learn from each other and broaden our musical horizons (if you'll pardon the cliché!). I am as appreciative as you, I guess.

Thank you.

[some guy]

Yeah, I think the whole skill thing is going to be a tough one deal with with this group. But that is one thing Cage, and Fluxus, and Baschet, and Senn, and a host of others have contributed to the discussion, that you can take away skill from where you're used to seeing it and still have art. (This started in painting, I think.) Recognize that it's a matter of philosophy, though, and thus not so easily dismissed with a simple "nonsense" or "no skill, no art." Cage, practically single-handedly, changed the rules (though I've heard him deny that it was anything but "what we were all thinking"). For through-composed music, saying the things you all say about skill and purpose make sense. For experimental music, they don't. That's something I think we need to learn to stop doing, applying standards to experimental music that don't apply to it, and then saying it's failed. That would be like criticizing a novel for not rhyming.

4'33" is indeed a tough thing for people, even fairly receptive, knowledgeable people. It seems to attack ideas that are very deeply held. I don't see it, myself, but I know it's true. One thing it certainly does is shift responsibility to the audience. I'm not sure why that's a bad thing. To listen, and listen actively? Doesn't sound bad, on the face of it. But that's only part of it. 4'33" posits that the sounds all around us are worth paying attention to--many of his pieces do that. If we don't listen to it, or if we want it to stop, then it's noise to us. But if we do start listening, then a fascinating world opens up to us. You could say that Luc Ferrari's Presque Rien pieces are all realizations of 4'33".

Is it art, or is it music, are questions that are almost (almost) impertinent in this new world. In a way, it doesn't matter if 4'33" is called music or not. It's provocative, and what it provokes (at best) is active listening. Paying attention. No longer accepting the passive role of receptor, consumer, someone who has to be fed works of skill, who needs for someone else to have done all the hard work first.

There's been a distinct sense in some posts so far that Cage's "art" is negative. It's not. It's distinctly positive. It finds value in places heretofore overlooked. I hope you all realize that to ask of 4'33" that it feed you like, say, Bach's St. Matthew Passion does, is to miss the point, but I will say this: that something like the Freeman Etudes or Four(4) is wildly pretty, almost in the old-fashioned sense!

It is true, as Reith said, that Cage would not have considered himself a great composer. But no fair using his enormous personal modesty against him like that.:-) An many (most) of his appreciators do indeed claim that he was a great composer, certainly the greatest of the twentieth century... (We don't have to be modest about other people!)

[Thorolf]

Originally Posted by some guy

Yeah, I think the whole skill thing is going to be a tough one deal with with this group.

I can only speak for myself.

Originally Posted by some guy

But that is one thing Cage, and Fluxus, and Baschet, and Senn, and a host of others have contributed to the discussion, that you can take away skill from where you're used to seeing it and still have art. (This started in painting, I think.)

Yes, it started in, if not painting especially, in the visual arts. Marcel Duchamps exhibiting a pissoire (unmodified) as a sculpture at the museums, was a turning point here. From that moment on, it would be only a matter of time (!) till someone “composed” something like 4'33".

Originally Posted by some guy

Recognize that it's a matter of philosophy, though, and thus not so easily dismissed with a simple "nonsense" or "no skill, no art."

Here we simply disagree. It looks not much as “philosophy” to me, but more like “religion”. I would like to quote P. Z. Myers on what happens when in your regular “debate” between believers and infidels:

[i]t is the nature of religion that everyone who believes will automatically state that their god isn't the complicated caricature of the Bible or the Torah or the Koran and will retreat to the safety of the Ineffable (but Simple) Pantheistic/Deistic God until the challenge from the atheist subsides. Once the critic is safely out of earshot, though, then they will pray to the fickle deity for the new raise or that their favorite football team will win, and they will wonder if the cruel Old Testament God will torture them for eternity for transgressions against antique laws of propriety. Until that atheist glances their way again ... then once more, they will describe God as an abstraction, as Love, as something so nebulous that it is safely removed from any specific attack. It's familiar territory. Get into an argument with someone over Christianity or Islam or any of the dominant monotheistic faiths, and you'll see them flicker back and forth between the abstract and the real god of their religion — their only defense is to present a moving target.

http://www.edge.org/discourse/dennett_orr.html

I feel this is very much what happens right here: By pressed on the point about whether 4'33" is “art”, the defender suddenly shifts, drops the word “philosophy”, and simply asserts that:

Originally Posted by some guy

Recognize that it's a matter of philosophy, though, and thus not so easily dismissed with a simple "nonsense" or "no skill, no art."

And then shifts again, asserting that

Originally Posted by some guy

In a way, it doesn't matter if 4'33" is called music or not.

I have no patience with such nonsense. I repeat that: Describing 4'33" of not playing, is not art, as it conveys no skills whatsoever. As a corollary, it follows that it’s not music, either.

Originally Posted by some guy

Cage, practically single-handedly, changed the rules (though I've heard him deny that it was anything but "what we were all thinking").

No, he didn’t. You asserting he did, doesn’t mean he did in a general sense. This is only true to a sect of modernists. What is true, of course, is that he experimented. The experiment in itself is not necessarily art, but art may come from experiments. Nothing new here.

Originally Posted by some guy

For through-composed music, saying the things you all say about skill and purpose make sense. For experimental music, they don't. That's something I think we need to learn to stop doing, applying standards to experimental music that don't apply to it, and then saying it's failed. That would be like criticizing a novel for not rhyming.

I hear this a lot. I think it misses the point totally. Being aquainted with all kinds of experimental undergrounds, I know that I have the ability to read musical ideas out of all kinds of far-out contexts. It’s only when you turn to “philosophy” as a resort, when the product isn’t up to standard, and start dreaming about a “no skills, but still art” (free lunch), I just assert that there is no such thing.



Regards

[reith]

Originally Posted by Thorolf

I hear this a lot. I think it misses the point totally. Being aquainted with all kinds of experimental undergrounds, I know that I have the ability to read musical ideas out of all kinds of far-out contexts. It’s only when you turn to “philosophy” as a resort, when the product isn’t up to standard, and start dreaming about a “no skills, but still art” (free lunch), I just assert that there is no such thing.



Regards

Skuze me not agreeing there. I think we turn to philosophy when there is neither answer in the material world nor ever likely to be one. Nothing to do with something being "up to standard" in fact the term "standard" implies a measure for comparison which, as Some Guy says, isn't applicable. About "Art" the dictionary defines it as "skill" which is not helpful.

Creativity seems to divide into two components - i) inspiration, inventiveness, intuition, the need to express something (in music, that cannot easily be intellectualized), and ii) the secretarial/craftsman side: the tools and their use to realise the result of i) (which might be a process or product, or conceivably both). Of course, there is diffusion at the borders and the discussion so far suggests (to me) that a "good" composer has both in balance.

One can depend entirely on craftsmanship - using the tools to fill in an existing template. It isn't necessarily easy to imitate Mozart but the template is there. The good theoretician can "fill in" the blanks. I'll stretch my own credulity to say that this happened with Proko's Classical Symphony.
Equally, one can work at the intuitive, inventive, inspirational level. When the necessary tools aren't there, what does one do? The tools may also need to be invented or extended from something only loosely connected with the project in hand - like the tape recorder and its digital equivalent.

Existing templates are still available but some composers want to break from them. Observers could claim the composer is experimenting. I'd say he was creating all right and hampered by having to create new tools, new ways of scoring, presentation, constructing the composition etc. It'll probably entail experiment but it's no less "work" for that.

But the emphasis is on inspiration, invention and the intuitive. To me, that makes it no less valid a work than say, a well constructed symphony. I don't know if the result is art, then I don't know if Beethoven's work was art on the same basis.

So I'd say that using the term "art" is questionable - another philosophical issue, the answer depending just on the perceiver.

(By the way, I don't particularly support or like much of the music under discussion here but I do think it had its place in time and spinoffs have affected us all in various ways.)

[some guy]

I have no patience with such nonsense.

But Thorolf, repeating this is really no substitute for discussion.

Discussions of this sort are certainly philosophical ones; I don't see that that's a matter of debate, really. It's not a resort, it's just a description. Dismissiveness is a resort.

"4' 33" is a piece of music."
"Nonsense."
"Cage is an artist."
"Nonsense."

As for shifting ground, if you think that's what I've done, then you say it, to me. Don't hide behind some quote. Besides, that's part of what arguing (as distinct from quarrelling) does, makes points, concedes points, tries one tack, tries another; it's a social thing, like dancing, it moves. If that doesn't please you, I don't know what to say. It's like saying "you can talk to me, but you can't move your lips." Well, for most of us, moving our lips is simply part of talking; it's not some form of evasion.

So here. For you: Cage was an artist. An important and influential artist, who changed how we listen, how we perceive sounds, just as Duchamp changed how we look at "ordinary" objects. Maybe it doesn't take skill in the artisan sense (see Reith's contribution for the value of skill) to simply hang a urinal on the wall or to write "Tacet" three times on a piece of paper, but it takes a certain degree of thought and imagination to come up with things like that. I think thought and imagination are important for art, more important than skill. No free lunch about it.

There, I hope that's stationary enough for you!;-)

("I hear this [applying inappropriate standards] a lot. I think it misses the point totally." Ah. So you DO criticize novels for not rhyming.)

[Thorolf]

Originally Posted by some guy

So here. For you: Cage was an artist. An important and influential artist, who changed how we listen, how we perceive sounds, just as Duchamp changed how we look at "ordinary" objects. Maybe it doesn't take skill in the artisan sense (see Reith's contribution for the value of skill) to simply hang a urinal on the wall or to write "Tacet" three times on a piece of paper, but it takes a certain degree of thought and imagination to come up with things like that. I think thought and imagination are important for art, more important than skill. No free lunch about it.

Thank you for making your stance clear.

I agree that Cage was an artist, and I sincerely do believe that both him and Duchamp has opened some eyes, minds and ears. Unfortunately, they also has served as major role models for a huge league of jesters, claiming that their lack of displaying traditional skills is more than compensated through

Originally Posted by some guy

thought and imagination

which isn’t really there.

I agree that

Originally Posted by some guy

thought and imagination are important for art, […]

It’s just that I fail to see any genius in Duchamp’s pissoire and Cage’s silence, as these are nothing but basic implementations of the modernistic idea: “You shall make something that has not been done before”. To me, it’s a simple cop-out to just say, fine, calling explicit non-art art hasn’t been done before, I’ll just assert that something that isn’t art is art, and hey presto, I’m a modernist! This requires no more thought and imagination than a kid refusing to eat his vegetables…

As for the assertion

Originally Posted by some guy

I think thought and imagination are important for art, more important than skill. No free lunch about it.

I would turn it upside down and say that “Thought and imagination are basic skills for making art, more basic than refined technique.” I can’t tell anyone exactly what technical skills you need to convey any particular artistic idea, so that the idea can be perceived, as opposed to perceiving randomness. But I know that lack of traditional tech skills never stopped anyone from trying to express themselves. And if the observations and ideas are original enough, and the person trying to express something is persistent enough, new kinds of skills emerge, and a soulmate will indeed recognise art.

You find my dismissal of 4'33" as art repetitive. Very well. By my definition of art, it simply isn’t:

Originally Posted by Thorolf

To make art, you need skills. Art, as opposed to nature, is generally never interresting, unless the person(s) behind it has skills. Also, that the composer has skills, has to be communicated through the work of art, otherwize, it’s nothing more than randomness, which can be obtained everywhere, and which inclusion in the concept of art leaves the concept empty.

Hence, to counter my dismissal, you have to point out what’s wrong with my definition of art: What did I leave out, that makes 4'33" a work of art, after all?

Regards

[some guy]

This is very nicely put:

I would turn it upside down and say that “Thought and imagination are basic skills for making art, more basic than refined technique.” I can’t tell anyone exactly what technical skills you need to convey any particular artistic idea, so that the idea can be perceived, as opposed to perceiving randomness. But I know that lack of traditional tech skills never stopped anyone from trying to express themselves. And if the observations and ideas are original enough, and the person trying to express something is persistent enough, new kinds of skills emerge, and a soulmate will indeed recognise art.

I can't think of a better way of putting it. It sounds really as if you and I and Reich agree about what art is, and only disagree about which pieces qualify. I'm good with that.

I also think what you just said justifies 4'33" as well as anything I've said about it. With your kind permission, I'll make that my answer to your last question!