Reading Responce 2

In John Cage's credo on music in the future, he talks about what he thinks music will look like in the times ahead. I think he makes some intelligent guesses on how music will change, especially since it was written (or given in a speech, I should say) in 1937, without anymore knowledge of the future then anyone else has. Having the advantage of looking back on his future though, lets us see the development of music over 70 years and we can decide for ourselves whether his predictions have come true or not. The biggest change over Cage writes about is the incorporation of "noises" or "tones" into what we call songs or fugues. I think this incorporation is something that hasn't happened to the fullest extent like Cage thought it would be, but I think that music is still heading in that direction. In many modern pieces of "classical" music that I've heard, they use electronic noises and other sounds that you normally would associate as sounds and not music. This is what Cage was talking about when he spoke about this new music and said, "Before this happens, centers of experimental music must be established." I think sounds in music are still being established and we are still in the establishing phase. Whether we'll get to the phase where sounds are always and completely incorporated like Cage thought, I don't know, but all we can do is wait and see.