Glenn Branca- So Each Person is In Charge of Himself
 

I never listened to Indeterminite Activity of Resultant Matches.

Is there a transcript of it anywhere?

It really makes John Cage sound pretty dumb.

john cage can never sound dumb.

I've been wanting to hear this for a while, but whenever I see I don't feel like dishing out fifteen bucks at the time.

i still think the ascension is branca's best. the theoretical girls record is amazing too.

The track is just audio of an interview with John Cage regarding Branca. In the background noises start to build up.

John Cage just keeps saying negative things about Branca like Branca's music isn't progressive, it is a return to the middle ages, that it is the reflection of a fascist society, that Branca is just a troubador who stays as close to his music as possible, that music that is only performed by Branca whereas his own music can be performed by others, that Branca is like Wagner and is obsessed with climaxes and works to extend the climax

Haha. I think this "feud" or hatred Cage had with Glenn Branca is great. He was such a teddy bear of a man and so open minded on a great number of things, it's amazing that he found Branca's music so offensive.

That's what is so funny about it.

What I don't understand is how this all transpired. It's 30 minutes or so of him talking about Branca to... somebody.. at a restaraunt or something. Did someone call up Cage, "Hey man, um, want to talk about that Branca show you saw?" Or was it part of a SUPER LONG interview with him? Also, Branca attained permission to release it -- that's cool, but I also have to wonder why he even bothered. The whole thing is kinda odd.

Cage is a fucking asshole. Keep in mind that he also thinks Harry Partch isn't "real music". Over the course of that whole track of him bitching, he makes not a single good point yet continually tries to reinforce the fact that Branca's music shouldn't exist. My favorite part of it was Cage going, "Yeah, I saw these musicians and everything was made up." and the interviewer goes, "No, they had stands and sheet music, they were playing off the sheet music." And Cage is like, "I didn't see that.. I dunno.. Is that so?" or something like that. Idiot.

Thinking about it now, John Cage is one of the most overrated musicians in history. He has some interesting works, but it's proof that you don't have to make good art -- as long as you have a good IDEA about art.

I really honestly do enjoy a lot of his work but this proves he's a dick.

Yeah, it's kind of interesting that he talks shit about Branca....you'd think he'd be down.

Branca is Wagernian. Cage is opposed to the Wagnerian narrative. Cage is not an over-rated musician, he's barely rated as a musician at all (he was an above-average musician, but I've never heard or read anyone say he was massively talented). Cage was a composer, and that's what he did.

The idea that Cage is a 'let everything be' sort is strange - his works never aspire to fascism, but he frequently yarks on in his writings about indeterminacy, not absolute freedom.

I expect Cage saw Branca as lazy, and I'd have to agree, to a degree - there's very little that's compositionally new in Branca. It's all about transposing Wagnerian pomp with a smattering of borrowings from other modernists (very little Schoenberg, I'd note).

I don't personally think Branca is bad, but I wouldn't say he was a genius of composition. An innovator of rock, certainly.

These are important distinctions if you care about composition; if you don't, please disregard.

I agree with all of these criticisms, whilst still not disliking Branca. Not sure about the middle-ages thing - probably a rhetorical rather than a descriptive device. But yes, this describe Branca fairly well.

I like extended climaxes. That's the part that gets me excited about music in the first place.

Open minded? In a sense, yes, but he was also quick to call other's music crap without really giving it a chance. He might have been a nice guy in real life, I don't know, and I'm not saying he was a jerk or anything, but he was a bit eccentric and had his own definate ideas of what music is and should be, and he didn't leave much room for other's opinions.

THANK YOU!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! john cage is soooooo fucking overrated. he is more reknowned for his ideas than his actual music. i mean, four minutes of no sound, anybody could think that up, annd everybody knows music is all around us, of course that pretentious old fuck does it and everyvody bows dow to brilliance.

John Cage got to the "top" like a lot of people like him did, by talking about themselves a lot. If you insist you are right no matter what, eventually people will start to assume it's true. The worst of his ideas to me is that music should have no emotion. WHAT?!? Music should be full of emotion! Music conveys emotion, and to try to take emotion out of the equation, in my opinion, is defeating the purpose of music all together.

Bumping this because Ubuweb has finally put the infamous audio clip of the interview up.

http://ubuweb.tumblr.com/post/107305...s-glenn-branca

Of Branca's music, Cage says - "No intelligence is suggested. Only power and energy. We would more quickly by those means end ourselves even in the 20th century than get to the 21st. That's the sort of thing we're doing, actually...I think we need a calmer use of our faculties...One of the things I dislike most about European music is the climaxes, and what I see in Branca as in Wagner is a sustained climax. It also suggests that what is not 'it' is not climactic."

you know that he had other compositions, right?
i think that there are very few people that could have composed the music for prepared piano

yeah, he has alot more than 4 minutes of work, of course anyone could have done 4:33 of silence,but cage is the guy who did it. whether or not it has any value it does at least bring attention to his other work.
and i don't think he's renowned more for his ideas than music, people who bring up 4'33 usually trash it, and the only reason it's his most famous work is because it allows people to talk shit about him without having to make the effort to just listen to some music

listening to the interview "it's made up, they weren't reading music" was the most interesting part, becuase as far as i'm aware cage was always saying that traffic and the like is music, and surely traffic noises are not read off sheet music, so i think he should like that kind of thing?


http://old.thing.net/ttreview/marrev.12.html

in the comments on this site someone says cage changed his mind about branca,any truth to that?

I think the distinction was that Cage liked indeterminacy - that things should proceed in a analogous fashion to nature. So he leaves parts in his music where the outcome is uncertain - it is not entirely open.

I obviously can't speak for a dead man, but I'd imagine that Cage didn't realise the piece was scored was because it sounded improvised - that is, down to the will of the player, or conductor. This is not the same as 'totally random' because a player instinctively brings his/her playing pecadilloes to bear upon the music. It's the dead-end logic that sometimes gets thrown at free-improv, falsely to my mind (but that's another subject)

batreleaser's opinion further edifies my impression that he's a fuckwit with shit-for-brains.

Having said that, I wouldn't say Cage was beyond criticism. I think it's important to remember that a lot of Cage's music comes from the wrong side of the Atlantic, and the wrong side of the war. What I said earlier in this thread remains true - Cage saw Branca as a fascist, in line with Wagner. This isn't to do with Wagner or Branca's political beliefs, but to do with the desire to hyper-organise the concert situation to the submission of the audience. Cage lived through the time when 'there can be no poetry after auschwitz' embodies precisely why Cage hates Wagner. The individual enforcing their will upon society was the artistic anathema - hence Cage's Buddhist turn, if you will.

I'll say one thing - if there is such a thing as avant-garde, Cage is very close to it. But the avant-garde has strong Nietzschian ties, so I suspect I'd best abandon that line.

EDIT: sorry, to clarify the point about traffic - traffic doesn't impart a will, it is the will of the listener (or sound auter) to appreciate the sound traffic makes; indeterminate music (such as Cage's number pieces) require that sound-actions (or stage-actions) are begun by an operator, and the outcome is yet-to-be determined; improvisation is always a musician saying 'who am I? What do I do?' which isn't 'unnatural' per se but it is determinate.

While, over a year ago, I did make it sound as though I prefer Branca over Cage, that was not and is not true. I was simply defending one point. (Not that anybody brought that into question; I'm just saying.)

I'n reality, I do prefer Cage over Branca, simply because he seemed to have more things he wanted to achieve, and the things he strove for didn't seem, to me at least, for recognition as the person who did it, but instead for personal satisfaction of it being done.