Klarinet Archive - Posting 000793.txt from 2001/09

From: Virginia Anderson <assembly1@-----.com>
Subj: RE: [kl] Cage knocks
Date: Tue, 25 Sep 2001 09:52:31 -0400

on 24/9/01 9:15 pm, Bilwright@-----.net (William Wright) wrote:

> <><> Ian Black wrote:
>> Unless, of course, it happened during a "silent" passage...
>
> <groan!> What if the 'mistake' is the audience's? What if they
> breathe or scrape their feet wrong, or something? Do the performers
> share in the blame since the audience is part of 'their music'?

Whatever the audience does (such as the wiseacre who counted the seconds, or
a noisy baby which unfortunately adorns the recording of a landmark recital
of more determinate music I have of the Promenade Theatre Orchestra), or
does not do, is part of the piece. One can trace this loss of control (as
in all of Cage's chance composition) to his studies in Zen. And it isn't
really a total loss of control: because there is no such thing as a totally
determinate piece, Cage has allowed the factors which he wanted to vary from
performance to performance to remain indeterminate while fixing those
factors he wanted to be invariable.

On 4'33", I let the audience do what it needs to do: usually a couple
students will ignore me and gossip when I've played it for a first-year
performance-studies course. As this is a learning situation, I usually
discuss 4'33" with the students, noting that the gossipping students have
added to the piece, and then we discuss the aesthetics of such environmental
contributions. On a practical level, this usually forces the students - who
usually, having grown up with television and radio, think of musical sound
as the wallpaper of their lives - into keeping quiet and paying attention in
live musical performances without my having to play heavy authority figure
(which I would do if I had to tell them to shut up during a recorded piece).
On an educational level, this can act as a springboard for a discussion
about performance responsibility and the role of the audience as intertwined
with the performer and composer: we can start answering, in other words,
Cage's question (which I try to replicate from memory): "Composition's one
thing, performance another, listening's a third; what can they have to do
with each other?"

Cheers,

Virginia
--
Virginia Anderson
Leicester, UK
<vanderson@-----.uk>
Experimental Music Catalogue: <http://www.experimentalmusic.co.uk>
...experimental music since 1969....

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