Wednesday, January 23, 2013

Williams Mix (Blog post 1)


Williams Mix by John Cage

The sound at the beginning starts with what appears to be a tuning radio. It flickers in and out for a while and then presents blurbs of other things, the most apparent being frog croaks and human voices. There is an inherent distortion over every noise, muddling the ability to discern individual sounds or their sources. Now accompanying the initial noises are other miscellaneous noises. There appears to be a technological and organic theme. All noises are either produced by a living thing or a piece of technology. Things are becoming quite cacophonous. Now they’ve backed off and are coming in irregular intervals. The radio overtone is still present and remains unfixed, always in flux. The voices of people continue to blurt out at random, almost as if they are trying to have a dysfunctional conversation with one another. Creaks, croaks, static and voices now continue to permeate the radio. It’s clear that this is the comfortable pattern that this composition aims to take. Now the sounds have ceased and have been replaced with enthusiastic applause. Passionate “bravos” can be heard. The applause appears to decompose into what is now an opposite reaction. Boos and hollering have replaced the joyous applause of before, but the applause quickly returns to create a confused and mixed reaction. I do wonder… how does Cage feel about this composition of his? Does that chaotic combination of applause and booing imply anything about how he feels regarding his work?

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