John Cage’s Gift to Us
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Given the increase in the average pace of life since Cage's time, and the increase in the number and variety of distractions and intertainment accessible to modern humans in the developed world, it would seem that opportunities to "detach" in a socially acceptable way are becoming more and more scarce, and thus more and more valuable.
Was John Cage just ahead of his time?
I think it's interesting to engage in Cage's work with the view of Cage as a technologist. Today, our means of synthesizing sound, imagery and even intelligble content I think dwarf those to which Cage was ever exposed. Cage's urgency, however, is as relevant as ever.
I think Cage would've been totally unimpressed with our technologic "mastery" of the control of sound. His work revealed that the control of the structure of sound was approaching a cul-de-sac (hence his boredom with Tschaikowsky/Bruckner/Stravinsky) and therefore a very limiting perspective on what is beautiful/emotive or even what it means to be "music".
On top of that we now have "on demand" almost everything, from knowledge and info, to stuff (e.g. one day delivery, etc).
Plus, the pace of stuff like new music, video, etc releases is far greater than back in the day (back in the day not everyone could release their own music to the other end of the world either).
And people now do 2-3 things at the same time, all the time -- work, listen to music on headphones, surf the web and check their FB etc -- back then even listening to music on headphones while working was a novelty (not to mention rare and frowned upon). Or go out for a coffee with friends and check their smartphone all the time, etc.
Ever tried spending a day in the 70s or 80s? Most of that time it was sitting around doing nothing -- at all.
Maybe because it was your childhood/youth + nostalgia? Just speculating.
In any case, you can always slow down and take less things.
Also, hasn't technology made life easier? No need to send mail, you can send email. No need to go to a shop, just buy online. Doesn't that give us more time to relax?
For example, most traditionally notated music is timed by meter and tempo. Music is divided into bars of a certain number of beats, and played at a certain number of beats per minute. I saw a Cage piece performed that used a timer rather than meter/tempo. Music was performed as written during intervals specified by the timer. Some sections offered barely enough time to play what was written. Other sections might have three notes in thirty seconds, giving the performer a lot of say in the feel just by when the notes were played. So using Frank Zappa's formula that "Music is a way of decorating time", Cage was playing with the necessary relationship of time and music.
His prepared piano pieces questioned the nature of the instrument. First, question how it is played. Why do you have to play the keys? Can't you reach in and touch the strings directly? What does that sound like? Next, it questioned tone. Pianos are designed to be tonally consistent across the range - in a well-tuned piano, all the notes sound similar except for pitch. By placing objects on the strings, he could make different sections of the piano sound different, opening up new realms for composition.
Cage found many ways to inject randomness (as opposed to improvisation) into his compositions. The works for radios, mentioned in the article, are a good example. The composition is precise, but the results of performance are wildly unpredictable, and not reproducible.
So despite the fame of 4'33", and its intent of making the audience listen to their surroundings, Cage explored the nature of music a great deal more than just that one thing.