Scholarly discussion of the music of John Cage.

[Rod Stasick <>]

Which ones do you consider the "syntactic, 

freely composed" mesostics that have no rules?

Rod

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http://stasick.org

On apr 13, 2556 BE, at 12:15, Marc Thorman wrote:

Cage produced both syntactic, freely composed, mesostics (which don't need to follow any rules) as well as writing-through mesostics (0%, 50%, and 100%), and mesostics composed from multiple sources through chance operations. A "generator" already exists (right Andrew?). Unfortunately not online. I suppose the form can be modified further by other rules or whatever regardless of mesostic Nazis.

On Fri, Apr 12, 2013 at 8:01 AM, Stefano Pocci <> wrote:

On 04/11/2013 11:12 PM, Rod Stasick wrote:

My thought is that if one decides to change the rules
to fit some preconceived idea of beauty, then not only
is the point lost, but the opportunity to change yourself
disappears as well - which, frankly, is a shame. Plus, you
run the risk of producing a text that's like marching feet.
Coming across a word in a series of words that doesn't "fit"
creates an opportunity for its placement within a kind of
free-form listener-based interpretation which could create
all kinds of mental playfulness - often involving extrapolation.

R

I understand your point Rod. It is more interesting to comply with the 50% or 100% rules trying to find a workaround, in other words a term that respects them, than relaxing the rules at one's convenience. For beauty purposes or whatever.

I believe that the Meister Eckhart mesostic I pointed at in my previous email is a kind of 'intelligible' text that kind of 'obeys to syntactical rules'. Or maybe it is just a coincidence (let's forget of John's error for a sec) that the mesostic has a clear sense. If I'm not mistaken, the upper part is taken from Sculptures Musicales by Marcel Duchamp whereas the lower one is extracted from a Coomaraswamy text (quoting Eckhart himself maybe, don't remember).

In case of extended "writing through-s" instead, the 50% and 100% rules make this self-modification you speak of quite evident, since the majority of the mesostics so created would wash syntax away and convey this playfulness within the listener, who could make his own connections/associations, that John was aiming at.

--

Stefano


In Italy for thirty years under the Borgias they had warfare, terror, murder, bloodshed —but they produced Michelangelo, Leonardo da Vinci, and the Renaissance. In Switzerland they had brotherly love, 500 years of democracy and peace, and what did that produce? The cuckoo clock.

- Harry Lime (Orson Welles) in the "The Third Man" -