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From: neoelitist
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  • K WTH, i gotta search a video for this "artist" for school, but wtf do i have to show them? this is bullshit...

  • lol @ people trying to figure things out. this dude chose this life before the Atomic bomb was even in existence ... like ... before your mom was even in exitence

  • ok, so he tries to tear down barriers in music... but not creating anything new, just bullshit

  • A 7 hours airplane journey next to a crying baby is more enjoyable than this...

  • This is not the work of a musician.. but maybe of a philosopher... I´m not with john cage, definitely... I prefer Lutoslawski... maybe these are organized sounds (music) BUT.. great music... not at all... just an experiment... valid, yes... great, to be inmortal.. no.

  • 2:44 what the heck?

  • I really dont know if they really feel the music,

  • Better than Justin Bieber anyday!

  • IDIOTS

    DEAFERS

    SHHHHIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIITTTTT­TT

  • i love the attitude, the iconoclasm, and the sounds of john cage. the problem is that some composers continued to make this kind of statement and eventually discredited it by overuse, as if one hundred years after duchamp, artists were still painting moustaches on famous works of art. Like Duchamp, Cage also produced work that will be appreciated alongside the works of van gough and beethoven. i don't think this will though.

  • This was very disturbing

  • hey just so yall know variations ii is 99.9% up to instrumentation, it can be performed with literally any noisemaker(s) you might imagine. aleatory music by definition invites the performer to take up one or more musical roles usually filled by the composer; these guys chose to wrap twine around their heads and mash a hacky sack around on the back of a violin, so of course it's going to sound and look like goofy bullshit. roll your eyes all you want but roll them at motion ensemble, not cage.

  • wait, I thought this was supposed to be a John Cage recording.....this is footage from a mental institution!

    : p

  • I rather listen to chick corea

  • This is how the beginning of every porno should start out.

  • Downers

  • triiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiip 

  • I would consider myself to be pretty open-minded, but, no. Just... No. I appreciate how fluxism challenges our definition of 'music' by, as ryanpburnett said, destroying creative barriers, but there is a reason those barriers exist in the first place; they WORK. Without barriers to give structure, you end up with a mess like what you see here in this video. If you like this, fine, that's cool. I just personally feel that Cage is trying to break out a system that doesn't need to be broken out of.

  • I do better and more interesting sounds while I'm in the bathroom.

  • @AlXV Doubtful

  • poor bastards....

  • sanos asi

  • You have to be on acid then it sounds just like Bachs greatmass in B minor, something transcendental...

  • I think this is meant to argue as if music is anything that an artist can define as music within their given paradigm. I disagree. I think music is something that accompanies: melodies and beats in perceptually understood fashion. Such that this is more of an intellectual exercise than music. I respect him for combating common conceptions, but I don't agree with what seems to be his argument.

  • ay dios que desastre

  • Never compared with Beethoven Chopin Mozart Bach Tchaikovsky !!!

  • What The Fuck? Is This music??? o_O

  • hahahahahahahahahahahaahhaahah­ahahaha

  • ....what...was that? Hardly what i consider listenable let alone...enjoyable.

  • Don't worry, plenty of people share your opinion. I suggest you go somewhere where they do share said opinion, however.

  • This is the third part where john cage's motion comes into "anything" with "any means", developed from variation I and II.

    You have to adjust to the video frame since it limits the ambient produced by any-motions they performed. This composition is intended to be experienced live.

  • 0:44 LOL! I have no idea what i just watched but it was.... interesting.

  • Hey? Is this music???

  • go to hear iron gayden then

  • @Thesagga At Least Maiden make real music not just some noise that the so called experts and because of that the snobs like you call music.

  • no its sound

  • fantastic !

  • 2:20  committed to his art! :p

  • HAhahaha! Should be committed FOR his art! :) haha

  • jesus christ of nazerith- flush that shit back down the toilet

  • I STRONGLY AGREE

  • It's the survivors of the Acid movement LOL

  • wooow

  • Suspiria...

  • wtf is this shit

  • I've listened to lots of very experimental music. But this tops them all...

  • thank you "chiselhead73" all this FUCKERS are DEFERS.This is a BIG BIG SHITTTTT i never see

  • beauty

  • all this "prepared" music is not music at all its a fucking noise made by coked up posh twats lol i can not beleive its even been accepted by anyone it sounds like a fuckin retarded monkey was given some shit to make sound with lol

  • Good call mate!

  • (PSYCIATRIC HOSPITAL)

  • hahah xD

  • SHIIIIIIIIIIIITTTTTTTT

  • hmm

  • You FUCKING DEAFERS

  • The music have a stronger rules my friend and this its not a FUCKING music ist just a BIG NOIS.

  • Comment removed

  • there are no rules in music or creating sound. Cage thought outside the box of contemporary composition. truly innovative. if you dont like it, dont listen to it.

  • Hey Guys,What a FUCK is this!?.....For sure its not a music Yeah?FUCKING IDIOT'S.....

  • Hey Guys, What a FUCK is this!?.......For sure its not a music.Fucking Idiot's!!!!!

  • More like this! Love it!

  • Round Trip: One person's psychiatric ward is another person's sublime experience. And another person's fun, and another's variety, and another's "whatever." You might also have different responses on different days, and in different moods.

  • If this is anybody's 'sublime experience', they should really fuck off and deflate their overstuffed heads. It's revolting that thousands of years worth of composers' hard work and tortured artistry should be tossed off to let worthless bullshitting hippies like Cage take over people's fickle attentions. That despicable asshole never composed a single piece with decent melody, harmony, or rhythm, instead continually torturing us with garbage like this stupid display.

  • you obviously don't know what you're talking about. you have to know the rules if you want to break them in a meaningful way. and that's what composers like cage and stockhausen, etc. do. just like picasso or van gogh did with painting.

  • When I look at paintings by Van Gogh or Picasso, the work strikes me as extremely personal and bespeaks strong artistic sensibility. Cage's approach to music pretty much eschewed as much technique as possible and was more geared towards indulging a deconstructive fancy towards virtually everything about the craft. Van Gogh and Picasso never got away with modern gimmicks like presenting a blank canvas or, say, leaving a canvas outside to catch birdshit and tree sap. They actually did work.

  • That's not true he wrote things with more than decent melody harmony and rythm, hate walks with ignorance.

  • Spare me your cheap hippie aphorisms. I've heard Cage's 'traditional' pieces (many for piano) and they don't stack up to anything else that was going on with composers from that period. Some of the prepared-piano pieces bring out some very interesting sounds, but his compositions don't carry at all. It's painfully obvious that he rejected musical training way too early in his career because his music sounds like the noodling meanders of an intrepid high school musician who's too sure of himself

  • shiiiiiiit

  • My favorite part is definetly 2:39 - 2:48

  • I'd be scared if I were the Dbl Bass or that violin...

  • This is the worst excuse for music....it looks like a psychiatric ward

  • LOL. well said.

  • Atti di violenza verso dei poveri innocenti strumenti musicali che gridano aiuto per essere liberati dal tormento al quale sono sottoposti! CAZZATE IMMONDE!!!!!!!

  • This isn't music...but i am all for people doing stuff like this for fun.

  • Well, there is the idea that this is brilliant music and there is the idea that this is utter garbage. It is strange that so many resort to superlatives to praise or attack such music.

    Personally, I think this is alright music. Not great, not bad. The philosophy behind Cage's music is the brilliant part - his ruthless destruction of creative barriers. The end result is sometimes good and sometimes not so good.

  • finally. someone having something intelligent to say. and the manners to go with it. thank you.

  • @ryanpburnett or maybe always bad?, I'm sorry but this is not music,Beethoven Symphony No. 7 in A Major, Op. 92: II. Allegretto is music this is NOT music... this is something you see in a sanitarium, this is a jokde seriusly when John Cage dies he'll made a letter that will read: Got Ya! Suckers! I made you hear this shit and made you think I was a genius... well i was just lazy.

  • @AlXV He's already dead idiot. Please learn something or keep your ignorance to yourself.

  • @DarkZekeX that's what he made you think he's living on alaska as a fisherman, he knew that soon or later the people would realize that he didin't do music, he just made... sounds.. and noise..... and they would gonna be piss... but you'll see, when he really died we'll know that this letter really exist.

  • @AlXV and FYI, John Cage wrote alot more than his chance pieces like the Variations or 4'33. He also composed alot of beautiful instrumental music. For instance, his solo piano works "In a Landscape," and "Dream," and his many works for prepared piano, and his beautiful ballet "The Seasons." I can understand alot of people not really understanding music like his Variations, but don't make assumptions about a composer's entire artistic output when you have no idea.

  • @AlXV Music consists of the following elements:

    Sound, timbre, rhythm and silence. This "thing" has all of them.

    Anything with the proper frame is art. You don't get to use those words in manners that is most pleasing to you.

    If you don't like this piece, however, I can understand you completely.

  • @Hyardacil

    This is the reason why someone can call art this kind of crap. 

  • Hi , my name is Jonatan, I am 19 years old and i would like to be a great musician but i won´t make this kind of music.

    I imagine they are very good musicians and they like to make contemporary music, but alot of people can´t understand their mesagge.

    anyway, congratulations good job, I´m sorry I don´t speak english because I´m Mexican but i am treating do it.

  • Me now curious at score.

    Was this a good performence?

  • There is no way of knowing, the score does not indicate any sounds or actions at all. It consists of numerous 1 inch pieces of clear plastic, each with a circle on it. Each circle represents an action (any action). One drops all these circles in a pile at random. Where circles overlap this indicates where an action overlaps with someone else's action. Nothing more is determined by the score. The choice of action, its duration etc. etc. is up to the performer(s).

  • I LOL'd, that's all I gotta say!

  • Music is sound and silence in the time. So this is music!

    Loved the perfomance

  • ?????

  • what the fuck is this retard camp. is this bachtards 1st composition? what the fuck this really pisses me off. fuck them, i make more music out of my ass

  • I mean if you would know at least one thing about Cage, you'd know that Variations III was "composed" in 1962, when he was obsessed with avant-garde theater and happenings, which fact sheds a whole new light on this performance. but avant-garde theater and happenings are another story, one that is way beyond your limited comprehension of so called "professionalism".

  • Thank you for showing us the and abstruse informations by Cage about "the rendition" of this big mastercrap.

    But music is another thing.

    Music is something that Cage was never able to create.

  • In a dream

    In a Landscape

    Litany for the whale

    listen to these pieces by Cage, it seems you, who claim Cage was never able to write music, never seem to want to talk about these pieces. and there are many more. by the way, never for one moment did I say that this is music, that is why I mentioned avant-garde theater and happenings and that is why I put the word compose in "".

  • maybe your oh so holy "professionalism" is a bit narrowminded compared to that of Cage. have a nice and ignorant life.

  • The information derived includes the number of actions and the number of variables that characterize an action. Cage does not specify the performers' actions, but notes that these can include noticing or responding to "environmental changes". He also states that although some of the factors of a performance may be planned in advance, the peformers should "leave room for unforeseen eventualities"; and that "any other activities are going on at the same time" as the work is performed. '

  • Cage instructs the performers to cut the sheet with circles so that they end up with 42 small sheets, a full circle on each. These should then be dropped on a sheet of paper. Isolated circles are then removed, and the rest are interpreted according to complex rules explained in the score.

  • from wikipedia:

    ' * Variations III (1962) Intended "for one or any number of people performing any actions", this is the first entry in the series that does not make any references to music, musical instruments or sounds. The score consists of two sheets of transparent plastic: one is blank, the other has 42 identical circles on it.

  • The only thing I can say, is that others came along later and used some of the ideas here and did it far far better. But this actual piece is rubbish. Boards of Canada, Early Tangerine dream, and Seefeel all use experiment ideas , but they actually make music that touches you in some way. This is just random sounds with added pretentiousness.

  • John Cage was a disgrace to music. Music is about passion and feeling not just senseless noise. How can people accept this as music?

  • haha . . .

  • (Insert rant about why John Cage's music is just as legitimate as any other in the great tradition of classical composition here) . . . if you don't like it leave this video . . . why'd you have to leave your stain on this thread if you don't want to be a part of it?

  • someone sounds like a freshman in music school ;)

  • You're right music is about passion and feeling, but that can be found in "senseless noise" as well as a Hanna Montana song.

    Really, what is the difference between senseless noise and music. I'd really like to know.

  • Very interesting. "What.....I....am....calling..­.."

    Just what is that guy at 0:50 doing in the background, though.

  • Just sounds like street sounds to me... cool.

  • beautiful

  • :45

    lol

    sometimes I feel the guy just want to make them look stupid.

  • Cool song bro.

  • they seem a group of mad!! :D

  • maybe u can smile =D

    I thinks this "kid" of songs is for have fun! you an your friends =D

    If u dont smile, if u dont get fun of that, this thing is dead, isnt more that a lot of stupid things... but when this things do for fun, for loving art, complete his reason to be.

  • I like the prepared piano so I checked this out, but man this is funny! My personal favorite moment of hilarity is 0:50 with the lady blowing into the straw and the guy in the background standing with his face against the wall

  • Maybe we should be more humble...? Of course, You don't have to like and understand his music, but try to think awhile, before You write that he is bad composer, particularly in so vulgar words...

  • Comment removed

  • why is it so bad?

    if you guys wouldn't get so hostile and defensive and looked behind this man's theory, maybe you could give this man some respect. Cage may not seem to be very traditional, and his end product is not, but this was not composed without thought. It would be nice if you guys would take time to understand or just take it for what it is. sound liberation

    so go crawl under a rock and die you insecure fucking fags

  • what the fuck is this faggotry?

  • this my friend is modern man's desperate search for meaning in an existence far removed from any source of true understandingsoak it in

  • No, this is a bunch of hipsters with enough time to waste on mindless monotony and believe their making something remotely resembling "art".

    It's an exercise in delusion if anything.

  • anything created as music whether you like it or not is still art not something resembling art. If this only resembles art that what is true art?

  • Is that how hipsters work? Fuck A for effort, just *attempting* something means it's acceptable?

    I'd love to see that apply to any other aspect in life.

  • im saying that the quality of art varies to different people. You might think something sucks and is shitty art but it is still art. If you confine the concept of art than you are probably missing out on the finer aspects of it.

  • Barbaro

  • My dog is a better composer!!

  • To say that this draws its inspiration from Eastern music is a terrible insult to all the great musical traditions of the East. Real Eastern music comes straight from the heart--stuff like this comes from self-righteous concepts.

  • not "eastern music" but eastern philosophy. that makes a difference.

  • it is obvious that no one posting knows what John Cage was trying to do.

    this is revolutionary.

  • What exactly was he trying to do?

  • one word... weird

  • what a bunch of morons

  • whats with the dude staring at the wall.

  • I was laughing all the way through, lets market music as insanity, good idea cage

  • Wow. Psychotic.

  • I love John Cage but this is strange. The car horn and Clarinet part does me in! I find that glass is used to a better effect with Luigi Nono and blowing into woodwind/brass better preformed when it is for Messiaens music (to replicate birdsong-see Des Canyons aux etioles). I dont mind the prepared piano. This sense to look to the orient for inspiration is wonderful (also done by Messiaen with ancient Indian/ Greek rhythms). The players here do look strange so that does not help this piece. :)

  • I love strange but this is John Cage.

  • itz geting noise fella not to fucka for thenvexc or u ma dont for how make sure t oigz for tz master r fico kon gain or not gaine????

  • hahahahahahaha

    How to rip off ppl using their own vanity and fear.

    This works like a sect

  • Like idiots in an asylum! :D:D really funny

  • i don't care what anyone says. that was AWESOME!

    going to see cage's work on sunday at the huddersfield contemporary music festival. i am EXCITED! it's not every day a 13 year old gets to watch it live. go cage!

  • This is artistic political correctness. Sane people realize it's nonsense but refrain from saying so for fear of appearing crude or uneducated or unsophisticated. Cage deals in childish tones, randomness and chance but music (as we know it) is the very opposite.  It's based on patterns of either melody or tempo or meter. I'll say it - this is second class BS that only the yahoos take seriously.

  • try to listen with your ears instead of with your prejudices, maybe you overgrow your fears

  • you're probably the type who can understand calculus, but doesn't understand anything about arts. There are different kinds of intelligence. My best friend is a biochemist and he hasnt the slightest clue about anything art related. Just because YOU don't get it...doesnt mean "only the yahoos" take it seriously. That asinine statement shows how much of an idiot you really are. People always tend to criticize what they cannot comprehend.

  • People also defend things they do not comprehend.

  • It's an idea.

    Not sheer idiocy.

    No harm in testing ideas.

  • i agree. I just went through a series of John Cage's music through youtube (quick view, not in depth) and I must say I appreciate his work in experimenting new sound. if everyone were to be doing the same thing, then there wouldn't be any music or new sound per se.

  • shut the fuck up you stupid shit

  • Rather than felling at peace after listening to music, I now have a headache (although that's probably either the entire point OR I can't appreciate true art).

  • Was zum---

    -----

    Also da fällt mir nichts mehr ein. Worte reichen dafür nicht aus.

  • It's like an elaborate practical joke played out at the expense of the well-intentioned-yet-artistica­lly-simple performers.

  • If Bach heard this, he would have never dared compose the Goldberg Variations.

  • What do you mean?

  • I was being sarcastic.

  • This way of doing is an easy loophole to avoid the true difficulties of composition.

  • It's always silly in art to present something like it is.

    The moon is beautiful? Of course. But it's not eonugh to say it to make me a poet.

  • Thank god for the impressionists of the 19th century who took a step out and changed western aesthetics beyond realism.

  • I said it.

    For example, if I think the noise of sea waves is beautiful (and all people know it), it's stupid to record that noise and say "Here my composition. It' an avantgarde- experimental composition".

  • YOu didn't answer my question. what do you mean by folkloristic?

    In addition, the recording of teh waves and claiming its advant-garde..you are referring to ready made art, proposed by Marcel Duchamp; a Dadaist and Surrealist.

    Art is more than physical craft. It is conceptual and philosophical eqnuriy as well.

    Before the 20th century, western art was largely based on how realistic one could paint a portrait or scene.

  • It is conceptual and philosophical enquiry** as well.

  • I mean that deeds like this can be provocative, bizarre, can even to be a way to give a message, but it is not music and its author is not a composer of music.

  • Well,

    Music is not a universal language, for buddhist chants won't speak spiritually to those who haven't studied buddhism, nor what may sound sad to us, may in fact be happy sounds in another culture.

    Music is recognition;

    What may be music for you, may not be music for someone else. The aborigines may disregard our classical music (because they are not familiar), ugandan's don't believe their own postal whistling is music, a dog doesn't recognize beethoven...so to the dog, it isn't music.

  • universally speaking music is universal. It's peoples minds that are small and cant understand music, not due to what they are used to, but to what their minds are open to.

    and the dog might not recognize that what is being played is Beethoven, but he does however, recognize that what is being said is raw emotion, words without speaking you could say, but then again there might be words, im not sure yet.

  • universally speaking music is universal. It's peoples minds that are small and cant understand music, not due to what they are used to, but to what their minds are open to.

    and the dog might not recognize that what is being played is beethoven, but he does however, recognize that what is being said is raw emotion, words without speaking you could say, but then again there might be words, im not sure yet.

  • I agree. Music is a universal medium...but it still is not a universal language. In some cultures, emotion is not even contributed to music. It is purely entertainment, or ritual.

    the "raw emotion" that you contribute to music is largely a western idea.

  • I well know Cage tried to usw ordinary sounds and noises to demonstrate that even they can become music. But his approach is wrong and coarse. He misinterpreted the philosophic message.

    We can appreciate all and therefore even noises throught an innner attitudine of awareness.

    But it does mean you need to make noise to develop that attitude and even less you need to use that noise or sounds to make music.

    It is a silly and folkloristic way to demonstrate it. Sounds and noises already exist.

  • Well, I suppose when we come down to it, that's all there is. You consider his approach unnecessary while others do not.

    But consider this, without Cage and the various other "noise" composers, how would we find the state of modern and experimental music today? Circuit bending, tape loops, noise generators and their ilk all grew out of the efforts of Cage and his contemporaries. Ever looked into Alvin Lucier? It was a fascinating time, and the creative world is certainly more diverse for it.

  • Thank you!

    You have been able to say what I have been trying to express for peers

  • I think cage had his own message in mind.

    And what do you mean by folkloristic?

  • Dear, Karifalcon, these concepts, that maybe you ascribe to an original Cage's thought, are very very ancient. Heraclitus of Ephesus, 2.500 years ago, said "Panta rhei, all beings going and remaining not at all"...

    But the concept is surely more ancient than Heraclitus himself.

  • Artist enchants for what he can say or for the way he can say.

  • And what does Cage say in this era of his work? Surely that even ordinary sounds can be shaped and gathered and organized (as much as they tend to be in his work) in order to create an experience as profound as a Wagnerian epic.

    Cage intimately understood the classical Japanese notion of "aware" [ah-wah-ray]; that is, truly beautiful things (a sunset, a flower) are beautiful because they do not last - they are transitory - and therefore must be understood and enjoyed in the here and now.

  • The same can be said of hearing a piece of music or viewing a physical work. You will never experience a piece of art the same way twice. To do so would lessen its value.

  • Cage looked at the world and saw so much that we take for granted. He said his favorite past time was to sit and listen to traffic. Why? Because traffic never sounded the same twice.

    That was the impetus behind his most famous works: the world is constantly changing and we must learn to appreciate it as it is, for we will never have the same world again.

  • Reproducing simply a piece of ordinary life precisely like it is - to say: "Life is extraordinary" - means nothing in an artistic sense.