Cage's "Silence" and the su

[WillL at fieldschool.com]

Date	5/15/96
Subject	Cage's "Silence" and the su
>From	WillL
To	Pynchon List

Cage's "Silence" and the subversive violin

John M. correctly notes that Cage's 4'3*" isn't really silence at all, which is
a good point -- the coughs and objections and who know what all else of the
audience, listening to itself making up the "music" here.

Perhaps I should have said that Cage's "silence" is not the sound in our LA
theater AFTER the rocket hits but -- rather -- just after the film breaks and
BEFORE the rocket hits.

Nevertheless, having already confessed that I prefer Charlie Parker to John
Cage, I will make the argument that (conveniently) goes my way.  When, at the
end, our GR narrator contemplates this interval, he invites us to song.  While
the sound of an audience listening to itself is a conceptually interesting
thing, GR and Pynchon seem still to hold some belief in reach outward of song --
a performance, a show, an act of creation to take us outside of being Their
victim.  Charlie Parker, crying "Parker's Mood" is still, for me, the preterite
song that accepts death and embraces openness, while Cage's manipulation of the
audience for a kind of conceptual smartness seems more Force than Counterforce.

Oh, yeah, and on the violin (and its various stringed sisters) as an instrument
not tied to pure pitch:  good point.  On this one, I'm well aware that my
metaphor is pretty flawed.  (Like, the ukelele DOES have frets, right?, and I
don't think it's famous for having its notes bent away from "official"
frequencies.)  Still, all them symphony orchestra-type instruments are typically
deployed (at least in standard European classical music) with utter respect for
diatonic or at least twelve-tone chromatic structure.  'F course, in the hands
of others,the violin can let's its hair down in kazoo-like fashion -- check out
Stuff Smith or Billy Bang or any number of Indian violin virtuosos, not to
mention them Kronos Q-tet kids recording all that African music on Nonesuch
records.

Finally -- I expect to have my students' post in hand in the next day or so. 
Prepare yourselves for the excitement of 17/18 year-old minds confronting Oedipa
 . . .

-- Will Layman