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                                             February 11, 2009

                                                       CHAOTIC_SOUNDS

  An oft-quoted John Cage quote:

  "One day I asked what her [Gita Sarabhai's]
  teacher in India had thought the purpose
  of music.  She replied that he had said
  the function of music was 'to sober and
  quiet the mind, thus rendering it
  susceptible to divine influences,' I was
  tremendously struck by this.  And then
  something really extraordinary happened.
  Lou Harrison, who had been doing research
  on early English music, came across a
  statement by the sevententh-century
  English composer Thomas Mace expressing
  the same idea in almost exactly the same
  words. I decided then and there that this
  *was* the proper purpose of music.  In
  time, I also came to see that all art
  before the Renaissance, both Oriental and
  Western, had shared this same basis, that
  Oriental art had continued to do so right
  along, and that the Renaissance idea of               FALSE_CENTER
  self-expressive art was therefore
  heretical."

     From "The Bride and the
     Bachelors" (1962)
     by Calvin Tomkins, p.99


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