Dear John Cage,
Writer for the New Yorker, Alex Ross, muses on possible explanations why John Cage is still held in such disdain while so many of his contemporaries like Rauschenberg and Pollock are hailed as visionaries.
Perhaps the answer to his question rests in the nature of aleatoric music itself. Although Cage did experiment with other techniques, he is best known for his forays into chance. Despite its conceptual edginess, the musical performances, like much of our extraneous sensory stimuli, failed to make any profound or evocative statement.
But unlike the painters Ross compared Cage’s work to, the performances of Cage’s alleatoric music produced no enduring artifact. They are ephemeral, existing in the concert hall but making no lasting mark on those who share in the work. Which was perhaps Cage’s original intention.
“I have nothing to say, and I’m saying it.” –John Cage
