For most of his career, American composer John Cage did not much care for the thirds and sixths that form the building blocks of the majority of Western music. Yet Cage stood for the very idea that all sounds were acceptable in music -- what did he have against good, old-fashioned traditional harmony? Arnold Schoenberg once warned Cage that if he didn't get a grip on harmony, he would always be "butting his head against the wall," a condition that, in 1934, Cage was happy to accept. However, by 1969 either the wall, or his ...
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For most of his career, American composer John Cage did not much care for the thirds and sixths that form the building blocks of the majority of Western music. Yet Cage stood for the very idea that all sounds were acceptable in music -- what did he have against good, old-fashioned traditional harmony? Arnold Schoenberg once warned Cage that if he didn't get a grip on harmony, he would always be "butting his head against the wall," a condition that, in 1934, Cage was happy to accept. However, by 1969 either the wall, or his head, was getting too a bit hard, as Cage realized he was going to a lot of trouble creating works that were enormously complex, impractical and had little lasting value. With Cheap Imitation (1969) for solo violin, Cage made a breakthrough, merely through "decomposing" parts of a work he'd long loved -- Erik Satie's cantata Socrate. Irvine Arditti and the Arditti Quartet's two-disc set Cage: 44 Harmonies from Apartment House 1776; Cheap Imitation on Mode Records is an expertly...
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