Silence isn’t
as generally upsetting as it used to be.
Today
I am reading through Cage’s summit statement on “The Future of Music,” a
rhetorical trope begun with his influential and often misdated ca. 1940 essay, “The
Future of Music: Credo.” Noticeably, this is the last essay from Cage’s
published collections that is entirely in essay format, devoid of any
precompositional limiting or randomization procedures. It is a direct statement
on the state of contemporary music, similar in effect to “History
of Experimental Music in The United States” (1958), but written in a less
emphatic tone of ethical necessity.
Cage
was 62 years old when he wrote this essay, and in many ways I consider it a
summit statement on the range and influence of his life and work, at least in
the traditional sense. Certainly there are later essays that, through many
levels of coding, assert some form of ideological Cagean discourse, but this
essay in particular comes at a critical juncture in which the Cage aesthetic had,
as Cage himself notes, more or less been adopted by a new cadre of artists—the
first of many “post-Cage” generations. And, once again, it is his last
published essay in the Wesleyan series that follows a linear narrative
structure.
Thus
the initial shock of experimental music, as Cage notes in the first few
paragraphs, has waned as more and more people adopt and absorb the new
intellectual and creative license granted by the neo-avant-garde generation and
beyond. “Almost anyone who listens to
sound now listens easily no matter what overtone structures the sounds have,”
Cage observes, and thus, “we no longer discriminate against noises.”
Cage
makes many allusions to racial and social justice in conjunction with this
newfound musical and artistic plurality: the ultimate goal of liberal politics,
and the summit achievement of Cagean discourse. Out of tune sounds are now identified
as microtones, and the notion of “world” music in the early post-colonialist stance
has lead to a homogenization of international styles and tastes. Silence,
rhythm, harmony and the general notion of process have been absorbed by a
diverse range of artists, including La Monte Young, Ben Johnston, Elliot Carter
and Conlon Nancarrow (although these two are admittedly from Cage’s generation,
yet he seems to want to categorize them in the new expansionism of post-Cagean
discourse).
Everywhere
Cage seems to situate artists and performers in and around his own social and
artistic milieu, as he had done in many past essays. This is certainly not a
fault, the essay is meant to summarize the state of contemporary music and
possible future directions, and Cage was particularly adept at formulating a
specific historical narrative that outlines methods, attitudes, and
philosophies within the general trajectory of the neo-avant-garde in America.
On
the third page of the essay Cage demurely describes the current state of
acceptance as a general attitude of conviviality; minimalist composers in
particular, such as Philip Glass, Terry Riley, and Steve Reich, are lumped into
a category that Cage seems to want to push away from, although his formulation
for a stance in opposition to the minimalist aesthetic is somewhat convoluted:
The difference
between closed-mindedness and open-mindedness resembles the difference between
the critical and creative faculties, or the difference between information
about something (or knowledge even) and that something itself.
This
seems to be a formulation similar to the minimalist goal of eradicating
illusionism and a priori systems by
creating an anti-gestalt object. This, however, overlooks the difference
between minimalist aesthetics in sculpture and those in music, particularly
Reich’s thesis of music as a “gradual process,” and it seems that Cage was attempting to equate his own notion
of “sounds as sounds” with minimalism. This is something that is worth looking
into, as several scholars are now realizing, but in the context of this project
such an essay would be beyond the project of reading through.
Instead
of following through with this inquiry, Cage, as usual, jumps to something
entirely different, equating the minimalist aesthetic and open-mindedness with
a new cultural plurality that would have many post-colonialists shudder. But,
as I have mentioned before, this continues to be a difficult aspect of Cage’s
high modernist liberalism for cultural theorists and critical musicologists to
parse. Noticeably, on the following page Cage equates cultural plurality with technocratic
idealism; it is through advancements in communication and recording
technologies that we are given a global sense of musical identity. This again
is an academic notion that quickly fell out of favor, although there is a
resurgence of global cultural identity in the post web 2.0 millennial age, but
it’s too soon to really give this any theoretical grounds.
By
the fifth page Cage returns to a familiar notion of what Benjamin Piekut has
described as his “hegemonic liberalism,” which
I have discussed in the past. Cage’s “freedom of choice” ideology was
brought about by advancements in communications, recording, and synthesis
technologies, and yet this expansion of opportunity in many circles resulted in
a formulation of a new discourse meant to promote a singular version of
liberalism, one endorsed by those sympathetic to the fundamental tenants of
liberalism in America, and one that continued to exclude many racial and ethnic
minorities. Again, it would be difficult and perhaps irrelevant to directly
implicate Cage in this complex web of societal change that America went through
during the depression of the 1970s, especially when considering the ideological
backlash of 1980s conservatism that was soon to come forth after the
publication of Cage’s final Wesleyan monograph in the early 80s.
Overall
I would consider this one of the most intriguing essays of the “late-Cage”
period, primarily for its many contradictions and overt political references.
As a cultural artifact it represents the state of Cagean discourse in the 1970s
and the gradual adoption of Cagean notions of liberalism in the academy and
beyond, creating a platform for subsequent generations to forge their own
notions of just what it means to be “post-Cage.” Cage was always elusive and often
contradictory, as this essay proves, and it would take more than a blog post
like this to truly give the essay justice. To date I have yet to see an
in-depth investigation of the post-Cage influence, or of the concept of “late
Cage” in general, and in my mind this essay would be an excellent starting
point.
In
the conclusion Cage cites the infamous anecdote when Henry David Thoreau
accidentally set fire to the woods near Walden pond. The fire soon spread to nearby
Concord, causing $2,000 in damage ($50,000 in 2010 dollars). Thoreau was for
years known as the “woods burner,” an early fumble that could have permanently
set his place in history as an eccentric lost in the woods. But as Cage notes,
Thoreau embraced the accident, citing the wealth it brought to the forest
through rejuvenation of the natural effect of “nature’s broom” on the natural
cycles of the forest. In the penultimate paragraph, Cage places a rather stark
observation that he very well could have considered similar to his own legacy.
Emerson said
that Thoreau could have been a great leader of men, but that he ended up simply
as the captain of huckleberry-picking-parties for children. But Thoreau’s
writing determined the actions of Martin Luther King, Jr., and Gandhi, and the
Danes in their light-hearted resistance to Hitler’s invasion. India.
Nonviolence…The change is not disruptive. It Is cheerful.
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