That aside, John Cage was having these ideas when they weren't as obvious as they are today and we have the benefit of hindsight. Dismissing that is also a pretty ignorant mistake.
We must be in different Western cultures because I definitely don't see a lot of skill and virtuosity in most popular music.
I think it depends on the lens you use. If you're looking through a "Tom Scholz" lens, that kind of skill and instrumental virtuosity may not exist today (although artists like St. Vincent are an argument that they do). But tech has completely changed music making, production, and distribution since that time, so today's Toms are people like Finneas O'Connell, and making music today is more akin to software design and engineering.
John Cage didn’t intend this piece to last 639 years, right? What ideas of his are you referring to? This long running organ piece was conceived by someone in Germany and is intended to highlight the history of Halberstadt, right?
The question @TheOtherHobbes is raising seems relevant: how does this performance contribute to musical culture, or even to Cage’s work? It can’t be enjoyed as music, it’s more of a logistical piece intended to create a mythology. In that sense, this performance is, in a way, very much lauding a sort of skill over most other things about the music - the skill of pure perseverance. Like other conceptual art, it’s the story of this work that is interesting, but not really the work itself. You seem to suggest otherwise, would you mind coloring that in for me, so I can appreciate it more?
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. :)
Why is that a bad thing?
Fuck me, you say? No, fuck YOU.
Feel free to mute me (edit: assuming HN has that feature) if you're unwilling to engage in an exchange of opinions and perspectives like a reasonable adult.
It was my understanding that everyone had heard.