Scholarly discussion of the music of John Cage.

[Rod Stasick <>]

Sorry, I'm just now coming across this...and Joseph has provided the quote
(with a minor difference "...If, as with a composition of Beethoven..."), but 
the
whole discussion in this Waddington book has always been a source of joy
for me. The paragraph that this quote comes from is quite long, but just 
before
the quote, he speaks about his previous "manifesto" on shadows falling on 
paintings
with modern paintings not being ruined by them. His final words on the 
subject follow
the requested quote:

"...I think that the present way of deciding whether something is useful as 
art is to ask
whether it is interrupted by the actions of others, or whether it is fluent 
with the actions of others.
What I have been saying is an extension of these notions out of the field of 
the material of the arts
into what you might call the material of society. If, for instance, you made 
a structure of society which 
would be interrupted by the actions of people who were not in it, then it 
would not be the proper structure."

I like this segment because it really ties the elements of art/action/society 
together in a thoughtful way.
Waddington goes on to use the word he coined, "chreod" (a system that 
continues on a steady course),
to describe such a system "which can absorb potentially disturbing elements" 
as a reflection of Cage's work.
He continues the discussion into modern art movements mentioning Pollock, de 
Kooning, Rauschenberg, a.o.
and the enlightening analysis continues...

Rod


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Now playing: Mort Garson - Plantasia