Scholarly discussion of the music of John Cage.

[Semih Firincioglu <>]

I personally haven't seen any "interpretation" of the Wake by Cage at the
content level. What fascinated him the most was how Joyce had balanced his
text between being language (as coded units of sounds: meaning) and being
just sounds. I understand that he immediately decided that the Wake needed a
different type of "reading" (actually, not to be read but heard, not to be
understood but experienced) which fell in Cage's territory (the fact that it
was tediously written in 17 years may also have been an attraction). I think
he felt that this gave him the licence to use this text mechanically in his
four "writing through"s and Muoyce. Indeed, when we look at what he has done
with it, we can say the source could be any text. It is quite different from
his relationship with Thoreau's writings.

Best,
Semih
  

On 4/15/12 11:42 AM, "Carl Heppenstall" 
<>
 wrote:

> I also wonder whether or not the interest is simply related to artists
> needing to be informed of all of the current movements in the other arts
> regardless of any true appreciation for what is interesting.
> 
> Regards,
> Carl
> 
> 
> -----Original Message-----
> From: Ed Crooks 
> [mailto:]
> Sent: Sunday, April 15, 2012 5:12 AM
> To: 
> 
> Subject: [silence] Re: Fwd: Finnegans Wake
> 
> 
> Another thing to bear in mind is that Cage frequently found ways to like
> materials that appealed to him, even if that meant ignoring some aspects of
> that material or creatively reimagining it. Cage's interpretations of
> Duchamp or Satie, Thoreau or Suzuki, are not the only ones that are possible
> but are among a range of interpretations. Just as Stanley Cavell's
> interpretation of Thoreau differs considerably from Cage's interpretation,
> Norman O. Brown's interpretation of Joyce differs from Cage's. Brown's
> interest in the Wake, like Joseph Campbell's, was motivated in part by
> different concerns to those that drove Cage (see Christopher Shultis's paper
> 'A Living Oxymoron: Norman O.
> Brown's Criticism of John Cage', Perspectives of New Music 44(2), 66-87).
> With a work as fecund with possible interpretations as Finnegans Wake it
> isn't surprising that are many paths through the work and many possible
> destinations!
> It's also worth remembering that Cage's interest in Joyce and Finnegans Wake
> predated his friendship with Brown by several decades.
> 
> best,
> Ed Crooks
>