I forgot to give the next reading assignment in class. I’ve scanned in these two excerpts (assuming that not all of you have the book yet) so that you can also read the introductions that provide important context for the articles. Tuesday I will give you some questions to answer at home.
(These files are on my iLocker account again. You will need your BSU login and password to download them.)
John Cage: “The Future of Music: Credo”
Edgard Varèse: “The Liberation of Sound”
Take note of the years that these two articles were written in. The Varèse is compiled over a span of years, but the Cage was written all at one time. Try to understand the historical significance of what he was proposing.
Also with the Cage, note the formatting of the text. The single article can be read three different ways: reading only the ALL-CAPITALIZED text, reading only the regularly formatted text, or reading the text from start to finish and incorporating both the capitalized and regular text as one stream. Cage wrote his texts to be read aloud, as performances. Consider how the formatting of the text might have affected his performance, and how different performances might affect the way one understands the text.
Leave a Reply