Because staring at you for 4'33" seems like a bad way to instigate....

Just from glancing at a few other people's posts on Cage's book so far, I think it's pretty clear to all of us that Silence is chock full of contradictions. So that's what's I really want to focus on in my instigation. I don't entirely expect that we'll reconcile any of these (and I most certainly don't have much in the way of concrete answers here), because on a certain level, I think Cage was well aware of the problem. He even comes right out and admits that his own academic approach doesn't match up with his philosophy: “How can we possibly tell what contemporary music is, since now we're not listening to it, we're listening to a lecture about it. And that isn't it” (44).

So here we go.

Question 1: What's the difference between experimental, contemporary, and avant-garde music? Cage seems to use all three simultaneously.

I'd like for the sake of this post to assume that they're synonymous. This is, of course, entirely up for debate.

Question 2: This is kind of a side point and is partially based in the fact that I didn't enjoy the book, but I think it really gets to the heart of the issue to begin with. How can we spend a class session analyzing John Cage's philosophy and music, when the act of analyzing itself turns his work into art, the very thing it purports to break down? Cage says, “When we separate music from life what we get is art (a compendium of masterpieces). With contemporary music, when it is actually contemporary, we have no time to make that separation (which protects us from living), and so contemporary music is not so much art as it is life and any one making it no sooner finishes one of it than he begins making another just as people keep on washing dishes, brushing their teeth, getting sleepy, and so on” (44). In other words, contemporary music, as Cage defines it, simply cannot be analyzed and academized (to completely invent a word) because it moves at the speed of life until it reaches the point of ritual. So really, contemporary music is moving too fast to be cannonized

BUT, he then goes on to say, “Very frequently no one knows that contemporary music is or could be art” (44). And later, when discussing the difference between American and European avant-garde music, he mentions that “such a continuum...[of audience experience during American avant-garde performance] dissolves the difference between 'art' and 'life.' (53). So, contemporary/avante-garde music works against both art and life...but contemporary music IS life...but it occasionally IS art. When is it one or the other? When is it all three?

Furthermore, what does the fact that we ARE, in fact, spending a class session discussing and analyzing Cage's work say about its standing as “art” or “life”? Is Cage's philosophy past its prime? And can we truly have music that IS life when it lives in the realm of avant-garde or experimental, while most of us now live in the realm of pop/mass mediated culture?

And now for some purposeless videos.

John Cage performs "Water Walk" on a 1960 television show (the audience's and host's reactions to Cage seem appropriate for my discussion here, and the performance is interesting)
http://youtube.com/watch?v=SSulycqZH-U

This second one is James Tenney playing a portion of Cage's "Sonatas and Interludes." The really awesome part is right at the beginning, when you can clearly see what exactly makes a "prepared piano" so prepared.
http://youtube.com/watch?v=1ve-M4Wbs0c