I guess I am more impressed by the general indifference (and when I say general, I do not mean the people in the street, but the ones who really love music and are curious about it) than by the few signs about a possible raising interest in Cage. I can't remember any of my friends deeply in love with experimental music ever saying anything positive about Cage's music (with exceptions for his early pieces). It's all about anecdotes (the silent piece), the scandals (WILLIAM MIX), the weird ideas (CARTRIDGE MUSIC, use of chance methods), etc. This is in fact a constant with Cage: people who are in his music rarely say a word about the music itself and mainly talk about his motives, or ideas/philosophy. With Cage, the wrapping is the message. The music is almost an obscene appendix that always fails to meet the level of expectations raised by the argumentation. I wonder sometimes why Cage ended up musician; he could have applied his technique to practically any form of art since it conveys nothing truly musical. And this is for me the problem: there is little (or no) music in Cage's collection of sounds. His motives go against 99.999% of the music ever produced on Earth.
I made many Cage tapes over the years. They were asked by friends who were concerned that they might have missed something (and these are people not affraid of getting their music on the spicy side). The result was polite indifference and puzzlement at all the fuss that was made about that music. But his books keep on being entertaining.
It is ironic that two of the icons of XXth century music (Cage and Boulez) might be mainly remembered for anything but their music :-).
I look at it in almost exactly the opposite way. If there are classical musicians and listeners to classical music who dig some works of Cage now, then it doesn't matter what people who are "deeply in love with experimental music" think. There are pieces by Cage that are entering the classical repertoire, being performed by classically trained musicians because they like the music, musicians who never met Cage and aren't carrying on some kind of crusade to continue or resuscitate the career of a dead friend. None of the Cage pieces I've heard performed around here were played by new music specialists or music school rebels. These are concerts by string quartets who mainly play the standard repertoire, piano students of Cliburn gold medalists in training for classical concert careers. They liked the works they played and plan on continuing to play them (the string quartet was on tour of mid-sized cities of the US & they did the same program everywhere). It's certainly possible that Cage won't be thought as a central figure in classical composition of the late 20th century, there's no way to really predict that one way or the other, but it sure seems as if there will be works that survive. & for most classical composers having a few works that still get played is all there is. Boulez I'm less sure about, at this point at least, it seems like his music rarely gets played when he's not involved. -- Herb Levy P O Box 9369 Fort Worth, TX 76147 herb@eskimo.com