1948: John Cage on Satie and Beethoven
From a recent review of the book The First Four Notes:Beethoven's Fifth and the Human Imagination:
"In 1948, his first year of teaching at Black Mountain College, John Cage gave a lecture on Erik Satie, at the time a little-known French composer. To make his point about Satie’s significance, Cage weighed him against a composer who needed no introduction. “Beethoven was in error,” he said, “and his influence, which has been as extensive as it is lamentable, has been deadening to the art of music.”
In 1948 traditional music was being challenged along the same lines as art, and driven by the acceleration of modernity post World War II. Beethoven was becoming more anachronistic, much in the same way as the architecture of Frank Lloyd Wright was becoming old-hat in context with the work of Mies van der Rohe.
"In 1948, his first year of teaching at Black Mountain College, John Cage gave a lecture on Erik Satie, at the time a little-known French composer. To make his point about Satie’s significance, Cage weighed him against a composer who needed no introduction. “Beethoven was in error,” he said, “and his influence, which has been as extensive as it is lamentable, has been deadening to the art of music.”
In 1948 traditional music was being challenged along the same lines as art, and driven by the acceleration of modernity post World War II. Beethoven was becoming more anachronistic, much in the same way as the architecture of Frank Lloyd Wright was becoming old-hat in context with the work of Mies van der Rohe.
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