Eine Kleine Nichtmusik

[Elmer Elevator <bobmer@javanet.com>]

When I was a deejay at Smith College, one night I put on Steve Reich's
"Four
Organs" (it lasts the whole side of a 33 1/3 LP, what's that, a
half-hour?) and
said I'd stop it whenever people phoned the station and asked me to.
Three
minutes into the piece the phones started lighting up. My show was late
at night
and WOZQ has a VERY short listening radius, maybe at most 20 miles. (I
just turned the turntable motor off and let the noise just slow and
stop.)

Anybody who thinks this is music thinks that piece of Cage's where he
closes the
cover on the keyboard and sits there for 4:33 minutes is music.

Varese, on the other hand, is a very different matter. He was one of
Frank
Zappa's major musical inspirations. I admire composers who try to take
music
into the future -- all those we admire and Gould so admired were doing
just that
in their day -- but Cage and Glass in particular aren't doing that. One
hundred
profound liner notes later, and I still have no idea what the hell they
think
they're doing. I think they're trying to tell us that boredom is art,
that there
is art and music for organs other than the heart, mind and genitalia.
Music for
the spleen, perhaps, or the kidneys. Music for the hair and fingernails,
for the
sweat glands.

Bob

Dominic Lesnar wrote:

> I don't believe Gould ever commented on these particular composers. I'm sure
> he was somewhat aware of them. Remember, he did write disparagingly about
> Terry Riley's "In C", and once a friend did suggest, albeit tongue-in-cheek,
> that Gould announce his return to the stage and subsequently perform John
> Cage's "4:33" (a piece for piano where the pianist sits at the keyboard in
> silence for four minutes and thirty-three seconds), an idea that he rejected
> flat out. So he was aware of contemporary composers per se, but their
> aleatory style would certainly not have held much interest for him.
>

<snip>