World's Longest Concert?

Subject: World's Longest Concert?
From: *daylia*
Date: 01 Mar 03 - 10:52 AM

Can any of you 9-lived Catters top this? Apparently American composer John Cage (king of the weird?) wrote an piece than takes 639 years to play, and now those die-hard Germans have risen to the challenge of performing it - and creating an organ up to the task.

Sheesh, and I always thought Dylan was too longwinded!

I see a glimmer of optimism here in that some folk must have no doubt the species will still be around in 639 years to hear the final notes!

And I'm wondering - in 639 years will the piece be old enough to be considered 'traditional folk music' even though it was only played once??

daylia

Subject: RE: World's Longest Concert?
From: Bill D
Date: 01 Mar 03 - 11:21 AM

what, no encore planned?

ranks right up there with draping islands with blue cloth and setting millions of monkeys at typewriter! (couldn't a computer program simulate the typrwriter thing?)

I think I'll start the worlds larget painting.....lessee, now, maybe starting with doing the Eiffel Tower in shades of pink....

Subject: RE: World's Longest Concert?
From: Hrothgar
Date: 01 Mar 03 - 08:56 PM

I've been to concerts that only lasted two hours, and they seemed to go on forever.

Was it Wagner someone was talking about when they said "The sort of concert that starts at eight, and after two hours you look at your watch and it's only half past eight?"

Subject: RE: World's Longest Concert?
From: minnesinger5
Date: 01 Mar 03 - 11:15 PM

Dear Newly initiated, curious and partially informed: I met John Cage a number of times. While it is true that he remauins one of the top authoritites on matters mycological (mushrooms etc.) It is NOT true that he was weird or "King of the Weird" That sobriquet belongs to a lad who once fronted a little band called "The Jackson 5" Who knows what the little pervert is doing , now.   No, Mr. Cage endured study with the absolute strictest of contrapuctalists, Arnold Schoenberg, then went on to the Brussels Exposition in 1958 from which springboard , the late century's late greatness bounced.   Not since the day of Cage, Sessions, Parch,Cunningham etc. has there been an Avante Garde this side of the busy ocean. Possible leeway in that ststement for the likes of Kronos, M.Monk or Laurie Anderson. If you want weird, look up "L's G-A (Gas Mask" (then tell me where to get another copy. A theatre cabaret-sounding "Brecht" is far out. Almost everybody else is trampling eachother to disprove any link to a thinking persons' music (thus, nonweird). Weird is a bad, bad musical term. It implies taste, which any musician worth his own appogiaturra does well to avoid. Try the term: origional, or real when describing our old mushroom-hunting, pomposity-pinching Saint John. Yours in cacophony, minnesinger5

Subject: RE: World's Longest Concert?
From: Bill D
Date: 01 Mar 03 - 11:17 PM

we had an Indonesian Gamalan and shadowpuppet performance at our little festival once...it lasted 5 hours (they cut out ¾ of it..*grin*)

Subject: RE: World's Longest Concert?
From: *daylia*
Date: 02 Mar 03 - 01:54 PM

Minnesinger5, thanks so much for the personal look at John Cage. A mushroom-hunter you say? Hmmmm, that might explain his attraction to the weird, um - definitely different in musical expression.

I always thought that John Cage is to music what Andy Warhol is to visual art. When I studied music history, he was presented as an advocate of 'The Art of Nothingness' - a rather bleak, pessimistic outlook artists of all genres developed in response to the threat of global nuclear annihilation after WWII. Being a lover of aesthetic 'beauty' in music and art, somehow his musical escapes into 'non-music' always left me cold as a youngster. (Sorry about the wording there - I was thinking of his piece 4'33", which involved setting an alarm clock for 4 minutes and 33 seconds atop the concert piano and then sitting there in relative silence till it went off, while the audience was to appreciate the nature of coughing, shuffling and traffic noises outside as 'music').

Now that I'm old and wise (ahem!) I do appreciate his musical messages a bit more! And I think it's wonderful that Germans feel his work worthy of 'immortalization' - (well, almost immortalization). This isn't the first time North American artists have received greater acknowledgement from across the pond than at home. I've heard that Native American art and culture has been a VERY hot commodity in Europe for quite a while now, for example.

How's the pink Eiffel Tower comin along Bill? I think that's a wonderful choice of hue!

daylia

Subject: RE: World's Longest Concert?
From: black walnut
Date: 03 Mar 03 - 09:00 AM

I performed 4'33" many years ago for my music history class at university. Even though everyone in the room knew what I was doing and why, they couldn't keep from making comments throughout. That was Cage's intention, wasn't it, to get a reaction from the audience, and even to redefine the meaning of audience? I think that Cage happened along at a time when the boundaries of musical composition and listening were being pushed and pulled and challenged to the limit, and it is only understandable that someone would want to push the musical aspects of silence and time.

I heard Cage lecture at our university, too. A lot of the students were thrilled, but I was bored and unmoved. Perhaps it had something to do with his slide show of mushrooms.

~b.w.

Subject: RE: World's Longest Concert?
From: Mr Red
Date: 03 Mar 03 - 09:35 AM

One has to ask: Why?

***HULL ALERT***
I remeber they tried to do the longest line dance across the longest bridge before Japan topped the Humber in the long wobbly stakes. The local radio played the tunes and they got halfway but did not break the record. I could have helped but asked the same question.
***HULL ALL CLEAR***

Subject: RE: World's Longest Concert?
From: Willie-O
Date: 03 Mar 03 - 11:22 AM

The Grateful Dead played for five hours straight at Watkins Glen NY in 73. I was there. I stayed awake through it all, but as soon as the next band, the Allman Brothers, started playing, I fell asleep. I blame the Dead not the Brothers. Well, also that I'd been up all night walking in to the festival site.

Wouldn't mind 4 min 33 sec of a John Cage composition, but 639 years would be a little much.

W-O
life too short

Subject: RE: World's Longest Concert?
From: Grab
Date: 03 Mar 03 - 12:40 PM

Not sure about "redefining the meaning of audience". Redefining the meaning of pretentious, possibly.

Since no-one alive will be doing it, it's easy to say "we're going to do this". Nice bit of self-publicity, at no cost to yourselves. Just so long as no-one spends the tax money I'm paying on it, I'll be happy.

Graham.

Subject: RE: World's Longest Concert?
From: *daylia*
Date: 03 Mar 03 - 01:00 PM

On the lighter side, maybe this is how any mushroom loving audience could get enthusiastic about a piece that takes 639 ears - oops, that years - to play!

(No offense to Saint John - he doesn't strike me as a hookah-smoker by any means).

As to WHY he wrote the piece, maybe it has something to do with the number 639 itself? Numerologically speaking, being a multiple of the 'sacred' number 3, and the mystical transformative 9, it's a pretty creative and powerful number. Wonder if John was into the metaphysical side of life at all - does anyone know if he was that type?

Just wondering - daylia

Subject: RE: World's Longest Concert?
From: *daylia*
Date: 04 Mar 03 - 11:25 AM

I just did some John Cage research, and was delighted at how easy it was to find answers to the questions about him above!

At this link I found some wonderful Cage quotes, including this one which explains why he wrote a piece that takes 639 years to play:

"If something is boring after two minutes, try it for four. If still boring, then eight. Then sixteen. Then thirty-two. Eventually one discovers that it is not boring at all." --John Cage.

And why did he write music which left lovers of aesthetic beauty like myself cold (like the famous 4'33" of silent notes)?

"The first question I ask myself when something doesn't seem to be beautiful is why do I think it's not beautiful. And very shortly you discover that there is no reason." --John Cage.

"Which is more musical: a truck passing by a factory or a truck passing by a music school?" --John Cage

Was he interested in numerology or metaphysics? YES!! Seems he really DID like those 3's and multiples of 3's, and used the mechanisms of the I Ching to inspire his art:

"It was at Harvard not quite forty years ago that I went into an anechoic [totally silent] chamber not expecting in that silent room to hear two sounds: one high, my nervous system in operation, one low, my blood in circulation. The reason I did not expect to hear those two sounds was that they were set into vibration without any intention on my part. That experience gave my life direction, the exploration of nonintention. No one else was doing that. I would do it for us. I did not know immediately what I was doing, nor, after all these years, have I found out much. I compose music. Yes, but how? I gave up making choices. In their place I put the asking of questions. The answers come from the mechanism, not the wisdom of the I Ching, the most ancient of all books: tossing three coins six times yielding numbers between 1 and 64." --John Cage, 1990

And at this link, I found some most interesting John Cage paintings and poetry, including one which proves that although he was into mushrooms, he was not into 'getting high'. He liked smoking though, (although probably NOT from a hookah)!

"Life is changing. One of the ways I'm
trying to change mine is to get rid of my desires so I won't be
deaf and dumb and blind to the world around me. When I mention
my interest in mushrooms, most people immediately ask whether
I've had any visions. I have to tell them that I'm very
old-fashioned, practically puritanical, that all I do is smoke
like a furnace -- now with two filters and a coupon in every pack
-- and that I drink coffee morning, noon, and night. I would also
drink alcohol but I made the mistake of going to a doctor who
doesn't permit it. The visions I hear about don't interest me."

Sheesh, Cage must've brought out the artist in me for the first time in my life! Look at all those pretty colours!

There's LOTS more interesting 'Cage-isms' and 'Cageology' at these sites, including a listing of upcoming Cage concerts worldwide (but none near me, *sniff sniff*). So enjoy, all you Cage-lovers!

daylia

Subject: RE: World's Longest Concert?
From: *daylia*
Date: 04 Mar 03 - 11:52 AM

For the selection of Cage's art, poetry and music click here.

And this page is the list of forthcoming performances.

Sorry bout that - daylia