In Friday’s (8/31) Washington Post, Anne Midgette writes, “To many artists, he was one of the most inspiring figures of the 20th century. To some musicians, he is underrated: branded, unfairly, more important as a thinker than a composer. And to a large segment of the public, he’s a charlatan: a man who convinced some people that sitting onstage in silence for four minutes and 33 seconds could be construed as performing a work of music. John Cage—composer, philosopher, visual artist, mushroom enthusiast—would have been 100 years old on Wednesday. This week Washington, usually somewhat conservative in its musical tastes, is challenging its own image with an eight-day celebration, opening Tuesday and spread throughout some of the city’s flagship arts institutions, that may be the largest Cage centennial in the country. … In short: the art world has no problem accepting and celebrating the work of John Cage. But in the classical music establishment, Cage the composer remains suspect, too modern—and one of the most underperformed figures of any major composer. … Cage was in the vanguard of a way of thinking about art that became central to many artists after him, testing its mores and meanings and definitions. Where does the ‘real world’ end and ‘art’ begin; what makes one object ‘art’ and not another; what defines a performance?”
Posted September 4, 2012
