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Yes, of course I am aware of it. There is another version published by Jaume Torrent, and I personally performed that one with at least 5 different people.
My version is very different and technically more challenging for the left hand, but captures a lot of the details the other arrangers omitted.
These were composed for voice and piano. The video I made yesterday is the accompaniment part. I resisted my urge to sing... thank me for that!
Listen to Victoria de Los Angeles singing these. What a voice! Too bad the accompanist did not capture the spirit, but it's my opinion.
Also the Yepes and Berganza recording is good, he had a great arrangement. Really used those extra strings and was not prejudiced against rasgueado use.
Lesser intelligent fractions like of conservative minds tend to confuse accumulation of cluttered items as conceptual thinking. And as missing logical and coherent basics they like to skip crafts altogether and vent into pseudo intellectual scraps that are supposed to present a meaning; which the `ordinary´ among the pedestrians are supposed to "just not understand" as they are having no clue of brain farts.
Ricardo with whome I seldomly agreed as wholeheartedly like in this thread, pointed to the monkey drawings very justifiedly, for such are what you can most obviously expose wannabe intellectuals and hollow blurb with.
Pseudo intellectuals are not driven by contens, but by their manical desire to differ from the common. And it is therefore why they irrespectively of subject-related quality set their priorities on the unconventional or new. It is partially also why they often times can not appreciate widely perceived beauty, as it would be asking for mingle with the "ordinary".
The hysterical focus on fleeing the "ordinary" leads the pseudo intellectual to finally dismiss an actual subject as a whole, for any subjects definitions with desribing its common factors will present the disdained "predicatbility" that equals ordinary status to the wannabe thinker. ( In the same time you will find that pseudo intellectuals at the bottom of their heart do usually love schlager and alike undemanding products, as an actual cognitive level that they will disguise as ironic affection for kitsch.)
As Grisha mentioned, there as a fact will be initially kakophonic appearing compositions that reveal systematics only to the informed ear, yet, simply talent-free trash like around Warhol rather obviously does not count to any conceptual creation, other than a sneering at actual metiers and the fact that these are not being pampered for reasons entirely unrelated to the actual subject.
And to point to the typical contradiction with the given example of ignorance of the beauty on behalf of pretended sophistication:
To out of all prior `composing with no rational constraint´ in a subject like music that actually lives of symmetry is like requesting grog in the sauna. Complete **** only to distance from what´s there in the realm of harmony and rhythm, heading for nonesense for a trivial background of minority complex.
Seeking for sense by all means in awkward realms of modern art as a superficially deemed refugee of out of all sophistication. Slipping on buttered bathtubs while telling passerbys how they weren´t knowing how to walk.
I guess, in an upside-down world, when you have no slightest practical clue of a craft, first thing you gotta do is skipping it all and seek for holy grails among the clumsy and incapable. - And don´t forget the right insignia on your way to the Guggenheim: A long scarf and long coat, these days preferably with a bold hair cut!
If you actually want to be informed, check out a craft, not a fashion.
Also the Yepes and Berganza recording is good, he had a great arrangement. Really used those extra strings and was not prejudiced against rasgueado use.
Yes, Yepes adds energy and atmosphere to the performance.
Ah yeah, but his painting of a green car which was thought to sell for 35 mil. went for 70 mil. a few years ago. Obviously there is something else at work here that may not be taken into account by your philosophy.
A few years ago some dealer (I forget who) said that he would rather pay more for a famous work of art than less, because the resale value would go up correspondingly more and thus his nett profit would be greater.
An arresting enough remark for me to have remembered it, while forgetting the speaker.
My take on 4'33' is that Cage is not saying that ambient noise is music. He is showing that there is not such thing as noise and that noise is construct. Noise are sounds that we don't have favorable aesthectic judgment of.
If a gardener is in your back yard and you ask them to pull the weeds the gardener could say what is a weed to you? Which pants do you consider weeds? Weeds are plants, they are plants that you don't want in your garden, but they still have a botanical classification, they photosynthesize, they grow, they live in dirt, they are just pants you don't want.
Music is made of sounds that we have constructed into formats, we think of noise as the weeds of sound. Cage was asking the same question as the gardener asked, which sounds are weeds? The result of asking that question or the byproduct is that it makes you aware of the nature of music as a duration of time. The other part is that in order to be with the piece you have to let go of your ego.
Cage was afraid that this piece would not work for Western audiences who were not comfortable or familiar with the ideas in Buddhism; emptyness is not really empty.
I think he was right, you're not ready for it. You ridicule things you can't get your rational mind to understand. Therefor those things must be wrong.
And the monkey thing you guys bring up over and over, uhh this is not the Scopes trial. Your kids and your monkeys can't paint like Jackson Pollock, they can't paint like De Kooning and they can't compose like Phillip Glass. Please bring an intelligent argument to table.
I think liking something and appreciating something are two different things, for me at least. I don't really like a lot of Cage's stuff but I can appreciate the concept of it and what thought went into it.
Stephen, you, I and other musicians on this forum hear the music a little bit differently from the average Joe. I don't think a regular guy on the street would appreciate these atonal masterpieces as much as any tonal work. But perhaps, would change his opinion once he's learned about the style and method.
Regular people hate music that makes them think, they just want it to make them move their arse. Anything unexpected, complicated or interesting is right over their heads...........
Regular people hate music that makes them think, they just want it to make them move their arse. Anything unexpected, complicated or interesting is right over their heads...........
You couldn't hear music like a regular guy if you tried, Stephen. Too late for you.
Give that regular guy a few drinks to unlock honesty, provoke him by attacking some of his favorite songs, and listen to his true opinion of the 12 tone music. Better be a good fighter too, and drink canned beer. Just warning...
There is art and then there is the stupid crap people talk about on internet forums. Better to keep things light and sarcastic and keep lofty, thoughtful ideas for speaking with the ladies. By the way... how can I get a speedy picado without practicing for years? How long before I can play in a restaurant?