[Smt-talk] John Cage

[CARSON FARLEY]

As a composer interested in new directions in composition, John Cage is an important influence for two reasons - he introduced micro- tonal ity into the language of Western music with his prepared piano works as well as defining the concept of Indeterminacy (although Ives and Cowell are credited with introducing it into music first) in the 1950s.  Although composers like Varese and the Italian futurists introduced noise and extensive use of extended percussion into orchestrat ion and electronic music (Poem Electronique), and Harry Partch (a music school dropout) deserves primary credit perhaps not recognized for micro-tonality, Cage exploited the concepts in numerous writings and compositions such as the Sonatas and Interludes for Prepared Piano which to my mind are masterpieces of contemporary music as well as invention. .   I would like to refer to indetermina cy however not in the musical meaning, but in terms of physics, namely Quantum Mechanics.  If art and science are influenced by one another as they surely are in the Western tradition, then our understanding of modern physics as related to sound as energy form can be informed in that regard, at least in the   Pythagorean sense that sound and music are related in the natural world.  Multiplicity while not new in music and indirectly related to indetermina cy is a possible direction for new post Post Tonal music in the regard that multiple dimensions of reality as in String Theory are now conceivable.  The idea that music must have a starting point, a middle, and an end in linear fashion is no longer essentially relevant. 

Carson Farley 
Composer/cellist/theorist 
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://lists.societymusictheory.org/pipermail/smt-talk-societymusictheory.org/attachments/20140507/a20df4d4/attachment-0002.htm>