Scholarly discussion of the music of John Cage.

[Louis Coppersmith <>]

Hi Dave,

It's been a while since I researched into mesostics, and my notes aren't as thoroughly cited as I wish they were, so please take my findings with a grain of salt.  I was looking specifically at I-VI, and from what I gather:

mesolist found all possible words that would fit a given spine from a collection of source texts, following the 50% rule, and pointed to where the words could be located in the source text.  Cage then used Andrew Culver's ic program to decide which of the possible words selected by mesolist to use.  The chosen word was then located in a hardcopy printout of the source material, and wing words were added by hand.  Wing words are limited by 50% mesostic rule and extend up to 45 characters away from the mesostic spine in either direction.  Finally, Cage would "prune" the wings fairly extensively, deleting unwanted words.

I spent some time comparing each line of one stanza of I-VI to the words as found in the source texts to check out what sort of pruning Cage actually did.  Send me a note off-list if you'd be interested to see what I came up with.

I searched for mesolist online a few years ago, and didn't find it. I'd be thrilled if a version of it turns up somewhere!

Best,

Louis

On Mon, Jan 14, 2019 at 2:21 AM David Bellows <> wrote:

Hey Stefano

I had forgotten all about that thread -- things got pretty toxic after a while. Nonetheless, I will go through it and see what I can find.

I've been doing more research and after playing around with my software am discovering that adding options for some things isn't so difficult after all. I've got one more significant thing to change then I think I'll be covering most possibilities.

I'll create a separate thread with those results to see what people think.

In the meantime, hopefully other people will come by and have some answers to my initial questions.

And I would enjoy seeing your version. I am doing mine in Lua (since the rest of my project is in Lua).

Dave

On Sun, Jan 13, 2019 at 10:06 PM Stefano Pocci <> wrote:

Hi David,

I remember a 2013 thread on this list named "mesostic generator" which triggered all kinds of nice responses to the topic you are tackling. Look for it in the list archives (https://lists.virginia.edu/sympa/arc/silence/2013-04/thrd2.html#00074).

I ended up writing my own mesostic generator, but probably in the most uncomfortable language of all, Java, instead of using Python, as I was suggested afterwards.

Andrew Culver is in this list, so he is a good candidate to answer some of your questions. 

I don't recall all the details, but when I wrote my generator I had to face choices which could be similar to what the developer of such software had to face when he started to fiddle with the generator for Cage in the first place.

One day I will attach it to my website www.johncage.it :)

Good luck,

Stefano

Il giorno lun 14 gen 2019 alle ore 07:03 David Bellows <> ha scritto:

Thanks for the link. Contacting Andrew Culver is a good idea. It might be tricky but there are bread crumbs around online so I'll give those a shot.

I can't help but think that when Cage needed to generate a large amount of mesostics he would let the software choose the wing words and not take the time to do so himself. But that's speculation.

On Sun, Jan 13, 2019 at 8:57 PM Herb Levy <> wrote:

And, yes, I wrote that wrong - Andrew Culver did write most of the software on the list I linked to, but he clearly identifies the listed programs that Jim Rosenberg wrote for Cage. I apologize for my lack of clarity.

On Sunday, January 13, 2019, 10:28:02 PM CST, Herb Levy <> wrote:

Here's Andrew Culver's list of software he developed for John Cage: Culver - John Cage Computer Programs

It's my understanding that most of these programs are not available. I don't know if Andrew Culver is on this list, but from this web page you should be able find your way to a link from which you may be able to ask him questions.

Culver - John Cage Computer Programs Anarchic Harmony: John Cage Computer Programs

On Sunday, January 13, 2019, 9:41:15 PM CST, David Bellows <> wrote:

Hello all,

I'm finishing up a mesostic generating program that I'm using for a

larger project. While researching for it, I came across a number of

claims about how Cage generated them.

I get that the process evolved over time. But what I'm most interested

is in the software he used to generate mesostics.

If I'm reading everything correctly, it looks like Jim Rosenberg wrote

the program MESOLIST for this purpose. I am having a difficult time

finding details about the program and hoping some people here can

help.

1. Is it available anywhere for downloading or studying?

2. Did the program generate the wing words?

3. Did the program follow only the 100% rule or allow for the 50% rule also?

4. I've read that Cage chose to leave out some wing words. Is this

true for how he used the program or was that just something he did on

the mesostics he generated by hand?

5. Right now my program chooses up to seven words on either side of

the spine word following the 100% rule for all the words. Next I will

have it limit the number of words randomly but they will still be in

order (ie, anywhere from 0 to 7 of the preceding/following words). A

mesostic generator I see online

(http://vyh.pythonanywhere.com/psmeso/) chooses randomly from all the

words between spine words following the 100% rule. My approach will

generate fragments that make sense since it can potentially string up

to 15 words in a row from the source text while the online one won't

do so. Which approach more closely matches Rosenberg's program?

I'm really a terrible programmer (I'm a composer and not a

programmer), so the fact that I've gotten this much working probably

means I won't change how it works on a fundamental level but I would

like to have an idea about how closely my approach matches the

software Cage used.

Thanks everyone,

Dave Bellows