Sources of Originality

Unless I mistake my readership, most of you will recognize the following excerpts from John Cage's "Experimental Music: Doctrine" (1955), one of the first essays in Silence:


QUESTION: I have noticed that you write durations that are beyond the possibility of performance.
ANSWER: Composing's one thing, performing's another, listening's a third. What can they have to do with one another?...
QUESTION: And timbre?
ANSWER: No wondering what's next. Going lively on "through many a perilous situation." Did you ever listen to a symphony orchestra?...
QUESTION: Then what is the purpose of this experimental music?
ANSWER: No purposes. Sounds.
QUESTION: Why bother, since, as you have pointed out, sounds are continually happening whether you produce them or not?
ANSWER: What did you say? I'm still - 
QUESTION: I mean - but is this music?
ANSWER: Ah! You like sounds after all when they are made up of vowels and consonants. You are slow-witted, for you have never brought your mind to the location of urgency. Do you need me or someone else to hold you up? Why don't you realize as I do that nothing is accomplished by writing, playing, or listening to music? Otherwise, deaf as a doornail, you will never be able to hear anything, even what's well within earshot.
QUESTION: But seriously, if this is what music is, I could write it as well as you.
ASNWER: Have I said anything that would lead you to think I thought you were stupid?


Compare with Chapter 27 from Huang-Po's Doctrine on the Transmission of Mind, in John Blofeld's translation:


Q: What is the Way and how must it be followed?
A: What sort of thing do you suppose the way to be, that you should wish to follow it?
Q: What instructions have the Masters everywhere given for dhyana-practice and the study of the Dharma?
A: Words used to attract the dull of wit are not to be relied on....
Q: If that is so, should we not seek for anything at all?
A: By conceding this, you would save yourself a lot of effort.
Q: But in this way everything would be eliminated. There cannot be just nothing.
A: Who called it nothing? Who was this fellow? But you wanted to seek for something. 
Q: Since there is no need to seek, why do you also say that not everything is eliminated?
A: Not to seek is to rest tranquil. Who told you to eliminate anything? Look at the void in front of your eyes. How can you produce it or eliminate it?...
Q: Why do you speak as though I was mistaken in all the questions I have asked Your Reverence?
A: You are a man who doesn't understand what is said to him. What is all this about being mistaken?


Cage mentions Huang-Po in the introduction, and includes the Doctrine on the Transmission of Mind in a 1960 list of ten books that most influenced him. But not having read it before, I didn't realize how much of the tone in his '50s writings Cage took from Huang-Po.


August 18, 2008 11:01 AM | | Comments (1)

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1 Comments

Could you post the other books on that 1960 list?

KG replies: They're in Richard Kostelanetz's book:

Gertrude Stein: any title
Alfredo Casella: Evolution of Music Throughout the Perfect Cadence
Luigi Russolo: The Art of Noise
Sri Ramakrishna: Gospel
Ananda K. Coomaraswamy: The Transformation of Nature in Art (I prefer The Chistian and Oriental Philosophy of Art)
Huang-Po: Doctrine of Universal Mind (translations of the title differ)
Kwang-Tse (these days, Chuang Tsu): Writings
Meister Eckhart: Meister Eckhart
Buckminster Fuller: any book
C.H. Kauffman: The Agaricaceae of Michigan

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American Mavericks - the Minnesota Public radio program about American music (scripted by Kyle Gann with Tom Voegeli)

Kalvos & Damian's New Music Bazaar - a cornucopia of music, interviews, information by, with, and on hundreds of intriguing composers who are not the Usual Suspects

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New Music Box - the premiere site for keeping up with what American composers are doing and thinking

The Rest Is Noise - The fine blog of critic Alex Ross

William Duckworth's Cathedral - the first interactive web composition and home page of a great postminimalist composer

Mikel Rouse's Home Page - the greatest opera composer of my generation

Eve Beglarian's Home Page - great Downtown composer

Just Intonation Network - a meeting place for people interested in alternative tunings

Erling Wold's Web Site - a fine San Francisco composer of deceptively simple-seeming music, and a model web site

The Dane Rudhyar Archive - the complete site for the music, poetry, painting, and ideas of a greatly underrated composer who became America's greatest astrologer

Utopian Turtletop, John Shaw's thoughtful blog about new music and other issues

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This page contains a single entry by PostClassic published on August 18, 2008 11:01 AM.

Upstaged by My Progeny Again was the previous entry in this blog.

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