John Cage, or Liberated Music
John Cage, or Liberated Music
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约翰·凯奇，或解放音乐
作者：
Heinz;I. Pepper
在第一次世界大战前后，对新音乐的第一批激进作品的指责偶尔会出于无知而形成，这些指责归结为说，在这样的音乐中，音调是任意组合的，仅仅是根据机会。例如，在这种不和谐的声音中，人们无法区分什么是正确的，什么是错误的，甚至无法区分合奏团的音乐家们是否根据一个更大的计划一起演奏，或者他们是否可以自由地独自演奏，或多或少地在没有外部控制的情况下表演。20世纪20年代的那些轶事就属于这一范畴，至今仍在流传，根据这些轶事，这个或那个著名的现代作曲家在排练自己的一部作品时，没有注意到第二位单簧管演奏者自始至终都采用了不正确的移调，或者第三长号一度用错误的谱号演奏。这样的故事是管弦乐队音乐家的最爱，对他们来说，这种失职是司空见惯的。在整个音乐史上，几乎从来没有这样未经指导的论点，反对作曲的最合理的后果，甚至没有最粗略地看一眼乐谱或最起码的聆听经验。然而，这样的意见似乎已经强烈地塑造了公共形势的特征，足以决定（作为对比）对新音乐进行更严肃的理论处理的条件。无论是技术分析问题，还是美学评论问题，当有意辩解时，这些都无可避免地汇集成一种单一的倾向;这种音乐的可感知的混乱被认为是一种更高的组织，作为一种更困难的音乐发音（通常，顺便说一句，好像这些是相同的），简而言之，作为传统。这实际上甚至不是错误的，而是类似于席勒的反问句中的骡子
Both before and after World War I, reproaches against the first radical works of the New Music were occasionally formulated out of ignorance, reproaches that came down to saying that in such music the tones are combined arbitrarily, simply according to chance. Within this cacophony, for instance, it becomes impossible to distinguish what is correct from what is wrong and even whether the musicians of the ensemble play together according to a larger plan at all, or whether they are free to strike out on their own instead, performing more or less in the absence of external control. Those anecdotes from the 1920s belong in this connection, anecdotes still peddled today, according to which this or that famous modern composer failed, during a rehearsal of one of his own works, to notice that the second clarinetist had played in an incorrect transposition throughout or that the third trombone had at one point played in the wrong clef. Such tales were favorites among orchestral musicians for whom this type of dereliction would have been common practice. Hardly ever in its entire history have such uninstructed arguments against the most legitimate consequence of composing been formulated-without even the benefit of the most cursory glance at the score or the most minimal listening experience. Nevertheless, such opinion seems to have shaped the character of the public situation strongly enough to have dictated, as in counterpoint, the terms of the more serious theoretical treatments of New Music. Whether it is a question of technical analysis or of aesthetic commentary, these-when intended apologetically-flow together indistinguishably into a single tendency; the perceptible chaos of this music is identified as a kind of higher organization, as a more difficult musical articulation (often, incidentally, as though these were identical), in short, as conventional. This is not even actually false, but rather resembles the mule in Schiller's rhetorical question