The five masterpieces that changed the course of musical history

[Mr Pee]

its as significant a piece as the Eroica

And the jokes just keep coming!! Well done, Mr GG, I'm so glad you have a sense of humour about the whole thing!!

[Mr Pee]

http://genetics.biozentrum.uni-wuerz...ing/pavlov.gif

You are the master of the obscure link, Mr. Skelton. Still, as long as it makes sense to you.....

[ahinton]

No. I was referring to Mr Pee prefacing the word "masterpiece" with "towering" -

I don't have an opinion about The Dream of Gerontius because I've never heard it.

OK, fair comment. Prefacing the word "masterpiece" with the word "towering" is rather like a certain critic who has a habit of peppering his notices with adjectives; nothing, for example, can ever be merely "impressive" - it has always to be "hugely impressive".

I certainly commend Gerontius to you, however!

[ahinton]

From Indeterminacy.

Now what's to argue with here? The rural French would probably have approved, given that any local pharmacy displays a large chart of mushroom varieties showing which are edible, which will make you ill and which will kill you - and the pharmacist must be trained to identify and advise on all for customers who ask. I'm not convinced, however, that Cage really had to "write" 4 morels 33 ceps to prove his point, but a point he certainly had nevertheless.

[amateur51]

From Indeterminacy.

This is brilliant - many thanks Bryn

I live with tinnitus 24/7, as do several other Board members to my knowledge. Mine started around age 5 when I had bad middle ear infections which led to loss of balance and deafness. The treatment (early 1950s) was extensive intramuscular penicillin injections and then the removal of my tonsils & adenoids. The infections cleared up, I picked up my hearing life again, but now with an everpresent noise in my head. I can ignore it, for sure, but it never goes away. Someone on here has likened it to the sound of a jet plane taxiing on the runway and that's as close as I can get. It is not a single musical note.

So, taking Cage's piece, I never hear silence. In total silence I hear my tinnitus, so even the single quietest sound is a welcome distraction from my daily torturer. It transforms my reality for that moment. I can focus on that. It is wonderful.

Apologies for the extended personal detail but for me silence is a very important part of my life. Loud sudden noises make my head shrink down onto my neck, they hurt, they make me jump in unpleasant surprise. But it's all part of being human - that is, the human that is me. Cage's words make complete sense to me and discussing his 4'33" with friends has been tremendously illuminating.

[Bryn]

a51m and any others interested, the treated texts of all the Indeterminacy stories may be found here. However, if you are not already familiar with it you would be well advised to get hold of the Folkways recording of Cage reading them while David Tudor plays Solo for Piano (the piano part of Concert for Piano and Orchestra) along with snippets of the tape work, Fontana Mix.

The best price I can find at the moment is here.

[amateur51]

a51m and any others interested, the treated texts of all the Indeterminacy stories may be found here. However, if you are not already familiar with it you would be well advised to get hold of the Folkways recording of Cage reading them while David Tudor plays Solo for Piano (the piano part of Concert for Piano and Orchestra) along with snippets of the tape work, Fontana Mix.

The best price I can find at the moment is here.

Many thanks for this, Bryn & for finding the cheapest option - you are a gent!

[Mr Pee]

a51m and any others interested, the treated texts of all the Indeterminacy stories may be found here. However, if you are not already familiar with it you would be well advised to get hold of the Folkways recording of Cage reading them while David Tudor plays Solo for Piano (the piano part of Concert for Piano and Orchestra) along with snippets of the tape work, Fontana Mix.

The best price I can find at the moment is here.

Well, I've dipped in and out of those Indeterminacy stories via the link, and they're about as pointless and gimmicky as Cage's music.

The only one that made sense to me was one in which he said orchestral players became childish and unprofessional when they were performing one of his compositions. By which I take it he means they weren't taking it seriously, and quite probably couldn't stop laughing.

Who can blame them?

[Bryn]

hui-sze said to kwang-sze: "i have a large tree which men called ailantus glandulosa, or 'the fetid tree'. Its trunk swells out to a large size, but is not fit for a carpenter to apply his line to it. When he looks up at its smaller branches they are so twisted and crooked that they cannot be made into rafters and beams, when he looks down to its root, its trunk is divided into so many rounded portions that neither coffin nor shelf could be made from it. Lick one of its leaves and your mouth feels torn and wounded. The mere smell of them makes a man frantic, as if intoxicated, for more than three whole days on end. Though it were planted in the most convenient spot besides the road no builder would turn his head to look at it. Now your words, sir, are great, but of no use: All unite in putting time away from them."

kwang-sze replied: "can it be that you have never seen the pole cat, how is crouches waiting for the mouse, ready to leap this way or that, high or low, till one day it lands plump on a spring of a trap and dies in the snare? And what about the yak, so large that it is like a cloud hanging in the sky? It maintains this vast bulk but would be quite incapable of catching a mouse. You, sir, have a large tree and are troubled because it is of no use; why do you not plant it in the realm of nothing whatever, or in the wilds of the unpastured desert? There you might saunter idly by its side, or in the enjoyment of untroubled ease sleep and dream beneath it. Neither bill nor axe would shorten its existence; there would be nothing to injure it. What is there in its uselessness to cause you distress?"

(kwang-sze 1&1v)

[Parry1912]

It's on Spotify - and since there are only a couple of tracks the ads shouldn't be a problem for those that object to them.

The ads are the best part!

its as significant a piece as the Eroica

'as significant' possibly.

Displaying anything like the same level of musical genius? Definitely not!

[Serial_Apologist]

I think it would have to be a Schoenberg serial piece - whichever one in which the value of serial technique is most convincingly demonstrated. As one to whom his serial music means very little, I am not the person to choose.

Thanks, rauschwerk

For me it would have to be the two serial works Schoenberg composed in 1936: the Fourth String Quartet and the Violin Concerto.

[Pianorak]

May I nominate Erik Satie's Gymnopedies and Gnossiennes as having influenced later composers, although not sure to what extent they "changed the course of musical history".

[3rd Viennese School]

Mine are

3VS. Now thats what I call serialism! Part 1
3VS. Now thats what I call serialism! Part 2
3VS. Now thats what I call serialism! Part 3
3VS. Now thats what I call serialism! Part 4
3VS. Now thats what I call serialism! Part 5

Changed my world I can tell you.

3VS (Richard Someone)

[gurnemanz]

May I nominate Erik Satie's Gymnopedies and Gnossiennes as having influenced later composers, although not sure to what extent they "changed the course of musical history".

In about 1971 we went to a John Cage evening at York University. He talked, told jokes, read from his diary and then acknowledged his debt to Satie for the piano piece he was about to perform, telling us that not only was it an imitation of Satie, but also that the title was an imitation of Satie's titles. The piece in question was, of course, "Cheap Imitation".

[Serial_Apologist]

May I nominate Erik Satie's Gymnopedies and Gnossiennes as having influenced later composers, although not sure to what extent they "changed the course of musical history".

The earlier "Sarabandes", with their exhaustive use of unresolving sevenths and ninths, were probably a greater influence: we hear them throughout the music of Debussy and Ravel, as well as commonly in jazz.