---------- Forwarded message ----------
Date: Wed, 25 Apr 2001 16:21:56 -0400 (EDT)
From: Lama Kunga Gyaltsen <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
To: Ralph Lichtensteiger <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>,
"[EMAIL PROTECTED]" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Cc: Storrs Barrett Booch-Williams <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Sixty-Four (64) Answers Re: John Cage,
RE: [silence] 101 Questions (re John Cage)
Sixty-Four (64) Answers Re: John Cage
#1: If you had only been to the seminar a year ago Monday, you would have
been able to pick up a copy of the 101 Questions (re John Cage). Well, here
they are again ... [see below]
#2: Nothing is accomplished ...
#3: It is nice to be able to listen, when you get the chance.
#4: [next]
[Storrs Barrett Booch-Williams, Composer]
------Original Message------
From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] (Ralph Lichtensteiger)
To: "[EMAIL PROTECTED]" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Sent: April 23, 2001 4:54:00 PM GMT
Subject: [silence] 101 Questions (re John Cage)
101 Questions (re John Cage)
"Human nature is not a machine to be built after a model, and set to do
exactly the work prescribed for it, but a tree, which requires to grow and
develop itself on all sides, according to the tendency of the inward forces
which make it a living thing."
(John Stuart Mill, On Liberty)
Upon our travels along the alleys and byways of the Cage Road, it has
sometimes occured to us, that it is not all gold which glitters there, and
that some interesting points worth querying have still been left open by our
contemporaries. To bring flexibility into this (sometimes too academic
scene) we developed the 101 questions.
Call for answer/response !
We invite you to send us answers (or new questions) concerning this list of
101 questions. We will process (using chance operations) this material in a
second version of the 101 Questions project. This second version will be the
basis of a live performance simultaneously with a work of approx. the same
length.
All questions are also available on CD as lecture-concert version: 101
Questions performed simultaneously with 2nd, 4th, 5th and 8th Quartet for
one (or up to three) speaker, piano,
electronics, glockenspiel, toy piano and percussion or performed
simultaneously with Do You Think Cage part 1, 2 and part 3 for speaker,
piano, electronics and percussion You can order this unique recordings by
e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] or by fax:
+49 69 1337 4110
http://www.geocities.com/lichtcage/musique_trouve.html
1) Do you think John Cage's view of the east is profound?
2) Did you ever listen to the piece Atlas Eclipticalis for piano solo in
full length?
3) Are sounds just sounds or are they Beethoven?
4) Do you think that we live in an anarchic society since the information
technology revolution?
5) Did you enjoy reading the text Empty Words by John Cage?
6) Would you agree that nothingness in art is not nothingness?
7) Do you think John Cage read the Leviathan by Thomas Hobbes?
8) Do you think Leviathan would have had an influence on Cage's ideas about
society and anarchy?
9) Why did John Cage dislike recordings of his work?
10) It is true, and at the same time not true, that John Cage wrote the
composition 4'33''. Do you agree that the piece 4'33'' would not exist
without the work of Anton Webern and Erik Satie?
11) Despite embracing a certain universality towards all tones (as implied
in his "there is no noise, only sound" concept), Cage seems to have
practiced a very strict distinction between inventiveness and
open-mindedness (i.e. tolerance or intolerance of certain principles for his
work), for whenever we see him confronted with music forms bearing any
elements of a forseeable kind, or let us say, predictable nature, his
open-mindedness drew the line exactly there (as opposed to composers like
John Zorn, who help themselves to slices of whatever tickle their fancy) -
this adherence to unpredictability seems, in part, to have propelled him
towards aleatoric principles. View, in particular, his scathing comments on
jazz and its clinging to a rythmic base (as also found in all variations of
folkloric influences worldwide, by the way)... Perhaps Cage rejected any
relationship with any form of music that leads towards any kind of trance
state for his own body of work?
12) Just because he enjoyed Riley and Reich, did not mean he had to create
in similiar vein. Did Cage, in general, dislike perpetrating music forms
that others had already invented? As in, "it's already been done by others,
no need for me to do it as well"?
13) Will new vegetarian dance be as energetic as meat-eating dance has been?
14) If we drop beauty, what have we got?
15) Do you think John Cage is a word-laundromat?
16) Would John Cage have liked to be more famous or popular?
17) Did John Cage like the fine arts more than sex?
18) Why does sex play no role in his work?
19) Is John Cage's work really important?
20) Did John Cage enjoy his guru status?
21) Is it true that John Cage tested mushrooms by feeding them to dogs?
22) Does music need ears?
23) Do ears need music?
24) Do you think good things generate good people?
25) Is a happy twelve tone music possible?
26) Which are John Cage's favorite sounds?
27) Are systems in contemporary music still tolerable?
28) The future of music: John Cage's hobby?
29) If sounds are noise but not words, are they meaningful?
30) Did John Cage like company more than mushrooms?
31) Did John Cage like music more than company?
32) Did John Cage like science more than tape recorders?
33) Did John Cage like Thoreau more than absurdity?
34) Did John Cage like toxic clouds more than collapsed potatoes?
35) Did John Cage like microminiaturization more than a carnival-like
atmosphere?
36) Did John Cage like the sounds of spectacular car crashes more than
muffled dialogues?
37) Did John Cage like married men more than multilingual menus?
38) Would John Cage rather have looked at a de Kooning painting, than eaten?
39) Did John Cage like Dada more than dada?
40) Do you listen to classical music only when you have company?
41) What is happening to us when we are experiencing music? What defines a
musical experience?
42) Do you agree that John Cage was the father of re-decontamination of
neo-surreal-dada-ism and neo-artless-art-tao-ism?
43) Is there any exact correspondence between the world outside, and that in
our minds?
44) Do you listen to mushrooms in daily life?
45) Do you think that the absence of competition would change the music
industry?
46) To which sounds do you listen mostly in your daily life?
47) Did John Cage like questions more then answers?
48) Did John Cage dislike digital jukeboxes more than 18th century painting?
49) Was the Bible a symbol of oppression for John Cage?
50) Do you say sorry to your pumpkin, before you cook it?
51) How many passports did John Cage have in reality?
52) Why did John Cage never finish writing the Emma Goldman opera?
53) Did John Cage actually live his own life?
54) Did John Cage like Zen more then chess?
55) The absence of eroticism in Cage's body of work, suggests he viewed
sexuality as something to profane to admit to. Do you agree?
56) If there is no noise, only sound, why did John Cage never write a piece
of music, utilising sounds caused by armed warfare (machine guns, mortar
fire, explosions)?
57) Do you think Cage's expression "I welcome what ever happens next", is an
appropriate way to deal with mortality?
58) What kind of piece would John Cage have constructed out of the material
supplied by Sporting Girls, by Faye Rossignol?
59) Was John Cage a Zen-junkie, and therefore not available for
re-interpreting such philosophies as those of a Hegel?
60) Is Cage's 4'33" a piece only for piano or for any instrument?
61) Do you think bad experiences generate good presidents?
62) If silence can be seen as a structural element, what does that mean for
a philharmonic orchestra?
63) Do you think John Cage lead people into a spiritual supermarket?
64) Do you agree that egoless art is a contradiction, and for most artists
impossible to practice?
65) Was John Cage a spiritual burglar, and therefore not available for
reinterpreting such philosophies as those of a Derrida?
66) Was John Cage just a product of western Zen misunderstandings, and
therefore not available for reinterpreting such philosophies as those of a
Merleau-Ponty?
67) Did John Cage dislike Stravinsky more than Bach?
68) Did John Cage dislike nasty sex games more than closed windows?
69) Do you agree that John Cage was the father of
all-things-flow-neo-romanticism and the re-Byzantinization of asymmetry?
70) Is it true that John Cage had no records and CD's in his appartment?
71) Do you think experimental music will survive the year 2012?
72) Did John Cage read Marcel Proust's A LA RECHERCHE DU TEMPS PERDU ?
73) Did John Cage like playing foreign-language tapes in his car?
74) Do you think a composer of modern music should have a monthly income?
75) What happend to the idea of error in John Cage's music?
76) Did John Cage like the re-de-schematization of spontaneity and variety
more than day-in-day-out balancing?
77) Would John Cage have enjoyed Martin Heidegger's book Sein und Zeit?
78) Which list would you prefer: a list of things that make us happy or a
list of things that make us unhappy?
79) Do you agree that John Cage was the father of re-undoing the
non-objectification of subject and object?
80) Do you regularly listen to your John Cage CD's simultaneously with CD's
of other composers (first CD player loaded with John Cage's Imaginary
Landscape no. 3, the second CD player loaded with Pierre Boulez's Anthémes
2)?
81) Did John Cage know the laws of beauty?
82) Do you listen to oriental music only when you have company?
83) Can a piece of music be a metaphor for society?
84) Which are John Cage's favorite mushrooms?
85) If you hear two sounds at the same time, are they really related?
86) Do you listen to your John Cage CD's simultaneously (first CD player
loaded with Music of Changes, the second CD player loaded with Cartridge
Music)?
87) Did John Cage dislike an answer which questions, or a question which
answers?
88) Do you think ecoligical interconnectedness and economy are
contradictional concepts?
89) Did John Cage dislike smal orchestras playing for example (near Boston)
for a poolside buffet at noon?
90) If politics affect daily life, why did Cage refuse politics or political
statments in his work?
91) Do you think Thomas Edison's inventions like waxed paper, mimeograph,
electric light, motionpicture camera, dictating machine, electric vote
recorder, storage battery, phonograph record, electric pen, electric railway
car, stock ticker, electric railroad signal, light socket, and light switch,
changed the way we listen to modern music?
92) Did John Cage have a sense for disharmony?
93) Would you listen to a 52-hour piece of experimental music in full length
without any break?
94) If words are sounds, are they musical or are they just noises?
95) Did John Cage like low-level-consciousness more than semi-darkness and
imagelessness?
96) Do you enjoy listening to MP3-files?
97) If Mozart would be alive, do you think he would buy a John Cage-CD?
98) Do you think a composer of computer music should pay taxes?
99) If John Cage lived in the 18th century, what kind of music would he be
escaping from?
100) Is there a copyright for silence?
101) Why is it so difficult for so many people to listen?
Yours sincerely,
ralph lichtensteiger, composer
--
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.......
======================================
SAMSARA Meditation Ensemble of Seattle
======================================
* Lama Kunga Gyaltsen
* Composer-Conductor & Music Director
* Linda Schieber, Principal & Co-Conductor
======================================
CONTACTS: Lama Kunga Gyaltsen 206-440-0499
* aka, Storrs Barrett Booch-Williams
* Main Email: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
* <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> /L.S.: 206-367-6998
* Linda Schieber <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
======================================
* http://home.earthlink.net/~kungagyaltsen
======================================
* SAMSARA Meditation Ensemble of Seattle [SMEOS]
* c/o Vajrayana Pathways Institute Without Walls
* P.O. Box 85362, Seattle, WA 98145-1362
*****************************************************
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