Re: John Cage recordings

[Tim Nelson <tcn62@ici.net>]

Ah, equivocation. As Bill Clinton said (and which I of course sampled and
looped!) "It all depends on what the meaning of the word 'is' is." Or in
this case the word 'Classical'... To the Music Theorist, 'Classical' has a
rather narrow definition associated with (roughly) the late eighteenth and
early nineteenth centuries; to them Cage is definitely not "Classical", but
rather a "Twentieth-Century Composer" or something like that. But to the
unit-shifting demographic-minded folks who SELL recorded music, "Classical"
is the stuff in those bins over there... NOT jazz, NOT pop, NOT country,
NOT (you get the point); it's defined by what it ISN'T... To them, it's ALL
the stuff that gets written about in those Grove and Norton textbooks. A
broad generalization to be sure, but not too far from the truth.

At 09:33 AM 6/7/99 -0500, you wrote:
>After thinking about this a great deal (do I have too much time or what?) 
>I
>conclude it all depends on what you mean by classical music.