Reading Reactions - Week 3
Last week, Peter assigned us readings from John Cage and Luigi Rossolo.
Cage's thoughts on the need for new instruments in "the future of music: credo" parallel Rossolo's in "The Art of Noise." Both men anticipated the development of flexible synthesis techniques by which sounds of any character might be constructed. I'm not sure when Russolo wrote "The Art of Noise," but I imagine it was in the late 1800s. While he didn't have the technological vocabulary to describe some of the concepts Cage was promoting, he described synthesis in his own way.
I'm personally in favor of a hybrid of these techiques, where recorded sound combines with generated sound.
Cage's writing style intrigued me. I found I could read his section headings by themselves as a coherent statement or read them as introductions to the body paragraphs. I don't believe I've seen written composition like that before.
I didn't agree with Russolo's dismissal of all musical sound as banal. While his interests lay in moving farther and farther away from traditional music and into the complete freedom of pure sound, I continue to be moved by the live performance of music by a human person.