I don't think I'll ever understand why the academic music world is trying so hard to convince the rest of the world that Cage was something other than unremarkable.
No, nor will I, I fear; it's not the entire academic world, mind, but it' surely more than enough of it!
One argument that used frequently to be put forward is that Cage's work encouraged people not to take anything for granted in musical expression; whilst this, as a principle is, of course, laudable, I have never been able to extrapolate from it the notion that Cage actually played a rôle of any real significance in this regard. Cage once (apparently) famously criticised another composer by claiming that "he doesn't treat sounds as sounds - he treats them as Varèse"; well, the composer concerned WAS Varèse, so what else was he supposed to do and what was so wrong with doing what he did? One can only suspect that tere was no real intended meaning in this statement, as seems to be the case with many others that Cage made at one time or another. In some of Cage it appears that we are, amongst other things, supposed to see - and accept - some kind of abnegation of creative responsiblity, as though this were some kind of virtue. To me, however, it is, curiously, when considering some of Cage's less obviously controversial - and, dare I suggest it - more conventionally laid out - piece such as the Freeman Études and the Thirty Pieces for String Quartet that I become the most aware of his chief weaknesses as a composer seeming to come to the fore.
Cage's one-time teacher Schönberg famously considered to him to be not a composer at all but an inventor; a fair comment, perhaps, but one which was in part founded upon the fact that Schönberg considered that his pupil lacked any meaningful sense of harmony. Now, had Schönberg also taught Xenakis (which of course he never did - indeed, I'm almost certain that the two composers never even met), he might have felt it incumbent upon him to make a similar observation about his Greek pupil - but at least there seems often to be real substance, originality and individuality in Xenakis's inventions, whereas in the case of Cage there appears to me to be comparatively little to arrest the listener's attention. As it was, I think that Schönberg had only one distinguished Greek pupil (Skalkottas) - and he could hardly have been more different from Xenakis!
Best,
Alistair
Topic: John Cage - In a landscape