{"id":590,"date":"2009-05-29T11:51:33","date_gmt":"2009-05-29T15:51:33","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/opensourcemusic.org\/?p=590"},"modified":"2009-05-29T11:51:33","modified_gmt":"2009-05-29T15:51:33","slug":"post-modernism-in-music-and-highlighting-convention","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/opensourcemusic.org\/?p=590","title":{"rendered":"Post-Modernism in Music and Highlighting Convention"},"content":{"rendered":"

One of the important facets of post-modernism over the last 50 years is our art’s focus on bringing the audience’s attention to what they are doing, the setting they are in<\/a>, what they ate for lunch or what they wear<\/a>.\u00a0 This is an important goal to achieve, as it de-limits what can be done.\u00a0 The problem with this is the works that are most effective as an idea are not necessarily the most communicative to a non-educated audience.\u00a0 There is nothing fundamentally wrong with that either, but to create the cultural changes needed to break down a convention, an idea needs to be easily communicable as well as well-founded and thought out.<\/p>\n

Take John Cage’s ideas on unorganized sound:<\/p>\n

But when I hear the sound of traffic, here on sixth avenue for instance. I don’t have the feeling that anyone is talking*.\u00a0 I have the feeling that sound is acting, and I love the activity of sound.\u00a0 What it does is it gets louder and quieter, it gets higher and lower, and it gets longer and shorter.\u00a0 It does all those things, I’m completely satisfied with that.\u00a0 I don’t need sound to talk to me.<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

*He stated earlier that listening to organized sound (music) is like hearing a conversation or relationship.<\/p>\n

Mr. Cage’s idea that sound is beautiful is all fine and good (and so very true), but that doesn’t make the sounds we interact with in our daily lives, or even speech, art.\u00a0 Cage is reacting to these sounds (traffic) as aesthetic objects, like most people would react to the beauty of the Giant Sequoias.\u00a0 This does not make his traffic noise art work.\u00a0 Not until he creates the sound space for these random sounds in 4:33 do they take on the intentionality required for something the be “art”.\u00a0 The million dollar question is whether this is effective art.\u00a0 Take a listen:<\/p>\n

<\/object><\/p>\n

After the first performance of the work, Mr. Cage had this to say about the reaction of the audience:<\/p>\n

They missed the point. There\u2019s no such thing as silence. What they thought was silence, because they didn\u2019t know how to listen, was full of accidental sounds. You could hear the wind stirring outside during the first movement. During the second, raindrops began patterning the roof, and during the third the people themselves made all kinds of interesting sounds as they talked or walked out.<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

\"We

We view these trees as beautiful aesthetic objects, not art.<\/p><\/div>\n

I believe this is the absolute worst thing any artist can say. Laying the blame on the audience for their ignorance is not the answer for the composer’s inability to communicate an idea.\u00a0 It is not that the audience didn’t know how to listen, but rather that Cage didn’t know how to tell so that the audience would<\/em> listen.\u00a0 Maybe this is the best way that the idea of “listen to your surroundings” can be conveyed, but if that is the best we can do, the late explanation does not help his case (I personally believe Cage was trying hard to press buttons, and the philosophical underpinnings of the work are only half the inspiration).\u00a0 It’s like the famous psychology white shirt experiment<\/a> with the guy in the gorilla suit walking through unbeknown to the viewer.<\/p>\n

This is an issue of misdirected attention on the part of the cultural institution.\u00a0 The audience arrives expecting to hear traditional European art music, but instead gets a guy with a time piece opening and closing the piano lid intermittently.\u00a0 No one is going to “get it” the first time around because they haven’t been told what to look for.\u00a0 In reflection, but only in the context of reflection, does 4:33 become a master stroke.\u00a0 This is not because it highlights what would normally be viewed as aesthetic objects by John Cage in his loft on 6th Ave, but because it highlights our focus on the institution of concert music.\u00a0 Great art music? Maybe…\u00a0 Something I’d like to listen to? No.\u00a0 A work that deserves to be talked about? Well, I just did.<\/p>\n