PURIFICATION AND ITS DISCONTENTS
That excluded music was the utilitarian music that accompanies our everyday lives and that does not require special temples for its contemplation, including all popular music. Cage's attitude in 4′33″ was just as purified of the popular as any other kind of midcentury sacralized art (say, a Beethoven symphony recorded by Toscanini), and it was an especially poignant purification in Cage's case since his early percussion and prepared-piano music had been so full of popular-music resonances. Once Cage became a prophet of purity, a “Beethoven,” his earlier life was rewritten as myth, a myth that no longer contained any reference to the Asian or Afro-Cuban musics that had inspired Cage in his West Coast youth, although it did anachronistically prefigure his discovery of nonintention and chance.
- Citation (MLA):
- Richard Taruskin. "Chapter 2 Indeterminacy." The Oxford History of Western Music. Oxford University Press. New York, USA. n.d. Web. 21 May. 2025. <https://www.oxfordwesternmusic.com/view/Volume5/actrade-9780195384857-div1-002004.xml>.
- Citation (APA):
- Taruskin, R. (n.d.). Chapter 2 Indeterminacy. In Oxford University Press, Music in the Late Twentieth Century. New York, USA. Retrieved 21 May. 2025, from https://www.oxfordwesternmusic.com/view/Volume5/actrade-9780195384857-div1-002004.xml
- Citation (Chicago):
- Richard Taruskin. "Chapter 2 Indeterminacy." In Music in the Late Twentieth Century, Oxford University Press. (New York, USA, n.d.). Retrieved 21 May. 2025, from https://www.oxfordwesternmusic.com/view/Volume5/actrade-9780195384857-div1-002004.xml
