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The best guide is probably Cage's book, "Silence". Contains a lot of Cage's interaction with Zen, random change procedures, silence, form and time in music, and
by Bud 4y ago
The best guide is probably Cage's book, "Silence". Contains a lot of Cage's interaction with Zen, random change procedures, silence, form and time in music, and all the ideas that are contained within his various experiments.
It would be hard to explain in an easy sentence or two on here. If I thought I could do it, I'd try. It might end up looking like a Zen koan. :)
- dahart 4y agoThat ignores the fact that this Halberstadt project wasn’t designed by Cage, and the timing is for reasons specific to Halberstadt. Do you feel like Cage’s ideas call for a piece to last hundreds of years? It seems like all the ideas you just mentioned are thrown out the window when a single note lasts for years at a time, and zero people are present to witness the full performance, or even the full playing of a single note. This isn’t being done for music reasons, it’s being done explicitly for spectacle reasons, as described by the project page.
- Bud 4y agoI think Cage might ask why you are so very certain why a "spectacle" can't be art, too. Especially one like this.
- dahart 4y agoOh that’s totally fair. A spectacle absolutely can be art. This is a bit of a different goal post than above though, isn’t it? And while we can speculate that Cage might say this, it’s (speculating) also possible that he wouldn’t approve of his music being used as a town attraction, or that he wouldn’t approve of music that can’t physically be experienced by humans, right? Either way, isn’t it equally fair to question whether a spectacle is musically and culturally relevant, like @TheOtherHobbes did?