Second Reading Response.

John Cage, in his article, "The Future of Music: Credo," had a brilliant vision of what's to come in the evolution of music. I took particular interest in the article because I found it fascinating to see Cage's 1937 prediction of the future of music. Has this vision come true? I couldn't say (after all, there's still a future ahead of us). But before I try to analyze Cage's prediction, it would be helpful to know what he said.

First, Cage points out that people are constantly taking an interest in the sounds that they hear. In fact, he seems to be saying that we can't help it - we are bothered when we cannot hear something. His main point, then, is that music will continue to incorporate new and interesting sounds until the point where musicians will utilize every possible tone. Generally, in producing music, a musician will write a combination of notes, and each note will have a specific tone, according to a specific scale. So there are a finite number of notes to choose from. This idea is much like the diagram of an atom - the electrons in their energy levels being analogous to notes in music. The electrons must stay on one of the designated paths in an atom - they cannot rest in between one of those paths. Similarly, musical notes must fall on a very specific frequency... Or so it was thought. But Cage argues that musical notes and tones can and will explore the space between the normal frequencies. And he says that musicians will begin to use electronic instruments to do this. Cage says that the fundamental idea of tones will differ greatly in future, but we will still look to the past to gather our ideas about form and structure.

As a musician, I think that many of the predictions that John Cage made in 1937 have come true. Music is evolving. But I question the effect that new forms of music are having on people. The most evolved forms of music (that is, the forms of music that have changed the most from the forms of the past) are not very popular. This is the age of soundbytes. Most people listen to music on portable MP3 players, and when I am listening to music with a group of friends, I rarely hear an entire song played through. Interesting music is being made, but for the most part, I fear it's not being heard.