The Music of the Spheres, or the Metaphysics of Music

Meaning lies in the logical world, not the artistic world

This view is what creates egotism in art. It is also where the term "abstract" comes into play. It is abstract from the order we all live in. Meaning may be a term that is used in other fields, but the less an art world relates to the world we live in, the less meaningful it becomes. It may be that the work of art has a high degree of self-referential complexity, but its significance is unnecessary. This also is part of the dehumanization of art.

Sorry, typo: Renaissance, with one n.

Probably, if I spent 10 years on Hamlet I'd manage to figure it out. But since I'd much rather do a thousand zillion other things, I want someone who has spent 10 years on it to explain it to me. Then I can get it in a reasonably rapid run-through.

It's true that some things are deliberately obsure, or private, or elitist, and they probably wouldn't interest you or me anyway, since this probably means an inferior mind created them.

But fine art probably can't be paraphrased. I don't think Falkner or Wagner or Van Gogh could have said it any other way. Wagner tried--and he failed miserably (his poetry, e.g.). What the Victory of Samothrace says cannot be described--or said in any other way.

It may not be true that hard work is required for all good things. I don't think it is. "The moon belongs to everyone! The best things in life" etc. And love can come to everyone.... You know what I mean.

Some fabulous things are easy. Thucydides for example. The ceiling of The Sistine Chapel. Leontyne Price singing Deep River (though I guess Leontyne and whoever composed Deep River worked pretty hard, huh? Michelangelo too? Thucydides?)(Maybe I'm wrong.)

And if I can con somebody into explaining to me what James Joyce is all about, or what to look for in Picasso or Mahler, I might be able to get it without much hard work.

The world is so full of wonderfulness! It's enough to make you dizzy. Just think of all the fun and all the wonderful people we meet and all we learn here at FR! And that doesn't take any hard work at all!

(I'm like lightening: I'll take the path of least resistance. I'm afraid the analogy ends there though.)

the less an art world relates to the world we live in, the less meaningful it becomes

There are two worlds. One is the world we see and hear through our senses. The other is the legal world. Which is the real world?
Or, there are two worlds. One is the world of the inner, higher self. The other is the world of disconnected, random events around us. Which is the real world?
Or, there are two worlds. One is the world of thought, logic, and order, of attempted communication of meaning through language. The other is the world of feelings, emotions, reactions, communication through psychological responses. Which is the real world?

We could memorize baseball statistics and study cosmology and opera lyrics. Or we could play ball, go stargazing, and go see Les Mis. Which is art? Both?

Couldn't you just give me a ring?

I guess I could, but wouldn't a Cage ring last about 16 months?

Having read Faulkner's Sanctuary twice and portions of the work numerous times, I don't think I want it explained. From time to time a light bulb comes on in my brain and a revelation comes to me about some passage. This keeps the literary work alive for me. I think S & F has the same quality. I havn't yet given the attention to it that I plan to. Ulysses , forget it. I.m not ready for madness.

Some fabulous things are easy. Thucydides for example

LOL, translated into Ebonic?

But you're right again, not all things come through hard work, as long as we are agreed that this holds from the viewpoint of a passive observer. It seems that the sense perception is amazingly passive. Ancient arts of expression, especially what has remained because of its significance, was not devoted to them as today. The generalization that all things come through hard work can be quickly forgotten, especially with such spell-binding phrases from Mozart or Schubert.

Thanks for the praise, but I believe it's Orwell's.

Well I did see a documentary about Cage once, and I remember him saying that one note has no more importance than another. I think he believed in the theory of the blank slate or tabula rasa . In other words he didn't seem to believe in the idea of any inherent hard-wired music system in humans. I believe otherwise.

Some people are musically highly gifted and can imagine sounds not played on instruments. Or sounds for which current instruments don't yet exist. Cage may have been a transition between traditional instruments and newly invented instruments. Now highly evolved soundscapes and interactive instruments are available to the musician. But don't mistake, they are highly dependent on mathematics and don't make a leap away from nature. (No abuse of reason!)

As music develops into areas of specialty and areas requiring training or great musical intelligence, it doesn't lose its musicality or art.

Interesting article by Dmitri Tymoczko in Boston Review: The Sound of Philosophy-- The musical ideas of Milton Babbitt and John Cage

"Schoenberg, and others like them are musical frauds and dead-ends like (c)rap "music".

Don't listen to much Schoenberg do you?