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Listening Report: John Cage

 

John Cage’s work is definitely what I imagined as Avantgarde music. Especially the piece “Water Walk”, which was initially really ridiculous to me. It reminded me of that one time I went to the Museum of Modern Art in Frankfurt and I saw a bunch of people standing around a box full of junk trying so hard to interpret something of it. Now, don't get me wrong. I love art and I have an appreciation for modern art as well, but I rather enjoy the creativity and weird ideas the artists have than to try and wrack my brain about what it could mean. Because sometimes people are just having fun. I think that goes hand in hand with the quote from John cage about not necessarily calling his music ‘music’.

 

After our session on John Cage, I went home and showed the clip of Water Walk to my parents and they made so much fun of it. It made me a little sad, to be honest. And I know that Cage himself said his pieces are meant to be funny in a way (I have to admit, the first time I saw it, I laughed too). I guess what made me so upset was that after the initial laugh, I went back and appreciated that someone is brave enough to think out of the box. My dad, for example, was not open to that idea. He wouldn’t categorize it as music – and frankly, Cage said it doesn’t necessarily have to be done, but it just made me realize again how different generations view different things differently.

 

This again made me think about the time Cage performed his music for the first time. And the video of “Water Walk” we watched in class shows the audience laughing as well. I don’t know if they saw it as anything different than a comedy show – which, in a way, it was – and that upsets me a little.

 

Anyway, I really like the way John Cage talks about music/not music, and in a way, it motivated me to appreciate the world around me a little more… or differently. I think everyone needs a fraction of John Cage in their life to experience it in a different way. I know I'll be thinking about his work again and again.

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