# John Cage's birthday



## rrudolph (Sep 15, 2011)

How could I have forgotten. I'm ashamed of myself.









He would be 101 today.


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## Manxfeeder (Oct 19, 2010)

In his honor, I'm having a moment of silence. Then I'll down a mushroom.


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## KenOC (Mar 7, 2011)

"..............................................."


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## Kleinzeit (May 15, 2013)

KenOC said:


> "..............................................."











" "


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## arpeggio (Oct 4, 2012)

*Cage is OK*

I hope that the anti-Cage crowd stays away. I am really tired of hearing their same old snide remarks over and over and over... When people question their rhetoric they proclaim that they have a right to their opinion implying that the pro-Cage people do not have a right to theirs. Then the insults start, things get our of hand and the thread is closed down. I suspect that some anti-Cage members do this intentionally.

In another forum an anti-Cage person started a Cage bashing thread. The Pro-Cage veterans did not take the bait and ignored their jabs. As a result the thread died naturally within a few days when the anti-Cage crowd saw none of the pro-Cage people were reacting to their taunts.

My recommendation to the Pro-Cage members who want to carry on a discussion, ignore the anti-Cage entries.


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## Guest (Sep 5, 2013)

Happy birthday to John Cage (JC). Did any of you ever read the published correspondence between JC and Pierre Boulez (PB)? The early letters show how badly JC spoke French and how poorly PB spoke English. When you see PB giving his relatively recent conducting masterclasses (available on YouTube and other sources) you hear the linguistic advances PB made. If only the _Anglos_ made similar efforts...


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## ComposerOfAvantGarde (Dec 2, 2011)

Happy birthday John Cage! 
I do love his music, some of it is very beautiful I have no idea why people wouldn't like it!


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## Guest (Sep 5, 2013)

ComposerOfAvantGarde said:


> Happy birthday John Cage! I do love his music, some of it is very beautiful I have no idea why people wouldn't like it!


Quite right, CoAG (sorry for the acronym).
JC's birthday reminds me that both he and *Boulez* spent some summers at the *Darmstadt* 'new school of music' seminars/workshops. What heady times those must have been, and with *Adorno* lurking just behind!


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## Manxfeeder (Oct 19, 2010)

arpeggio said:


> My recommendation to the Pro-Cage members who want to carry on a discussion, ignore the anti-Cage entries.


I hope my remark wasn't interpreted as anti-Cage. I just meant, since his best known work is 4'33", and he was a mycologist (he even won on an Italian game show on the subject of mycology), silence and mushrooms are a fitting remembrance.


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## Guest (Sep 5, 2013)

Manxfeeder said:


> I hope my remark wasn't interpreted as anti-Cage. I just meant, since his best known work is 4'33", and he was a mycologist (he even won on an Italian game show on the subject of mycology), silence and mushrooms are a fitting remembrance.


That's how I understood your post, Manxie. I sure understand why JC liked mushrooms : one day there's nothing, and the next day you look they're everywhere!


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## Guest (Sep 5, 2013)

@ Manxfeeder (in remembrance of JC) : right now where I live the markets are full of _girolles_ (chanterelles), my fave mushroom.


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## Manxfeeder (Oct 19, 2010)

This is my favorite Cage quote: “I have nothing to say and I am saying it and that is poetry.”

I've also shared his love of Erik Satie's music and appreciate how he promoted and defended him. I've appreciated also his analysis of Satie's Choses vues à droite et à gauche.

I also think it was cool that at the Brussels World's Fair in 1958, there is at last an American composer (with Earle Brown) pictured alongside cutting-edge avant garde European composers like Berio and Stockhausen as an equal and not a wanna-be.


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## Manxfeeder (Oct 19, 2010)

TalkingHead said:


> @ Manxfeeder (in remembrance of JC) : right now where I live the markets are full of _girolles_ (chanterelles), my fave mushroom.


I've never had one of those. But after poking around on the internet about them, it sounds like I'm missing something.


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## Guest (Sep 5, 2013)

Manxfeeder said:


> *I've never had one of those*. But after poking around on the internet about them, it sounds like I'm missing something.


_Allah akbar_! _Girolles_ with pan-fried wild hare ... come to my house one day when you're in (eastern) France and I'll make that dish for you.


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## GiulioCesare (Apr 9, 2013)

The father of postmodernism.


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## Guest (Sep 5, 2013)

GiulioCesare said:


> The father of postmodernism.


Good Lord, that was quick, Julius! You want mushrooms too? Hang on a 'mo whilst I get out another cast-iron pan...
Nah, Cage was the man, let's celebrate him.


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## Weston (Jul 11, 2008)

I celebrated with this very nicely edited video set to his Sonata No. 1 for prepared piano.


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## aleazk (Sep 30, 2011)

Some of my favorite pieces by Cage:

-Sonatas and Interludes for prepared piano: 



-Six Melodies: 



-Second Construction: 



-Third Construction: 



-Number Pieces: 



 (this is just one of them, there are many)


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