Scholarly discussion of the music of John Cage.

[Josh Ronsen <>]

Pwyll ap Sion (senior lecturer at Bangor University) is looking for the 
source of this quote by Cage:

'What interests me are not the Americana aspects, the tunes and all that, but 
what I call the mud, the complexity of many things going on at once, in which 
I am not able to know where I am, or what's happening. Invariably in this 
mystery, something begins to happen to my mind, to change it, because of what 
I'm hearing. But in my experience, that 
change of my mind is interrupted by the emergency from the mud of some 
well-known tune, generally some Protestant church tune, and I find myself in 
a place familiar to others, but carefully avoided by me, in the land so to 
speak of melodies and accompaniments or, I suppose Ives would prefer it if 
he's listening, if I would say melodies and 
precedents."

Michael Nyman used this quote in a paper at the First American Music 
Conference, Keele University, in 1975, and mentions the this viewpoint of 
Cage is more developed from Cage's "Two Statements on Ives" in A Year from 
Monday, so we figure it must come in between 1967 and 1975. A few times Cage 
mentions Ives and mud in the same breath, but not "Protestant church tune" 
that I can find. I am guessing his mention of church tunes comes from his 
work on Apartment House/Renga, but that is just my guess.


Thanks for any help,

-Josh Ronsen
http://ronsen.org