Re: cage and gould

[Tim Conway <timcon@COMSWEST.NET.AU>]

Jim M wrote:

>I'm sorry guys, but I just can't let Tim's rant go without some kind of
>tangential comment.
>
>Gould and Cage are not so very tenuously related as Tim claims.

[snip]

My rant was solely about the piece called 4' 33". I ended by saying that
there was only a tenuous GG connection [with Cage], now fully explored,
but I didn't say that there weren't any similarities between the two men.
Of course there are similarities between them, but who cares?

To extend 2 of Jim's arguments, Brigitte Bardot is mad keen on animal
rights but that doesn't make her a proper subject for discussion on this
List. Duke Ellington hardly ever improvised but that doesn't mean he had
anything in common with GG except an ability to play the piano (and
compose the odd piece of music). Should he appear regularly in the List?

Jim's factual postings are always interesting, especially those connected
with his detective work, but I do feel that his support of Cage in this
instance is...well, not so interesting.

GG never recorded any Cage music, and never met the man; practically all
talk about GG and Cage is therefore pure hypothesis. Not that all
hypothesis should be banned from the List, but I'm far more interested in
what hypothetical similarities and differences there are between GG and
the composers he _did_ record. For example, if GG had been able to speak
German and if he had lived from 1685 to 1750 in the same parts of Germany
as Bach (but in all other respects remained the character he actually
was), how well would he have got on with JSB?

How well does any bachelor get on with a man who has seemingly dozens of
children? JSB himself was also no slouch at the keyboard -- would he have
been impressed by GG's ability, or jealous of it (and vice versa)? Etc,
etc. IMO, that's a proper subject for discussion on the List. Cage,
whatever his good points, isn't. Other good/proper subjects along the
lines of Gould-vis-a-vis-XXX would be Stokowski (why did they get on so
well?), and L Bernstein (what exactly was it that persuaded LB to do the
very slow Brahms concerto and yet 'forced' him to cover his behind by
prefacing it with an explanation to the audience?), but most have been
discussed before...I think.


Tim Conway
Broome, WA, Oz