source file: mills2.txt Date: Fri, 29 Nov 1996 08:52:28 -0800 Subject: An open letter to John Chalmers From: Daniel Wolf <106232.3266@compuserve.com> John: Since MacLaren - evidently in possession of a computer - will not lower himself to keep abreast of current discourse in the tuning list by subscribing himself, why don`t you just post his articles to an archive someplace and save the list members the bother of getting his month-delayed commentaries? The latest diatribe against Cage and others illustrates that he is simply unable to read a text. Nearly all of his comments to citations show that he has never aquired the ability to read a text for its overt semantic content, let alone is he in possession of the critical reading or writing skills that might allow him to form cogent opinions of more complicated tropes and put them down on paper or disk. His incapacity to read and argue within an aesthetic context is a fine advertisement for the poverty of his own education. And his continued attacks upon educational institutions simply illustrate his total lack of familiarity with the variety of what may go on within them. Do him a favor: file his columns away someplace and save him from further public self-demolition and us from further embarrassing display of such wasted potential. John Cage´s music and texts deserve serious critical attention, but it is certainly not to be found in MacLaren´s rantings. I recommend highly the writings of William Brooks (in the John Cage Reader, Peters Edition), Stefan Schaedler (in the _MusikKonzepte_ second volume on Cage), and by Schaedler, Eric de Visscher, and Walter Zimmermann (in John Cage: Anarchic Harmony, from Schott). My own articles in _MusikTexte_ on the Cage*s late view of _Harmony_, and in the Schott volume, may also be of some interest. Daniel Wolf, Frankfurt Received: from ns.ezh.nl [137.174.112.59] by vbv40.ezh.nl with SMTP-OpenVMS via TCP/IP; Fri, 29 Nov 1996 19:50 +0100 Received: by ns.ezh.nl; (5.65v3.2/1.3/10May95) id AA11951; Fri, 29 Nov 1996 19:51:42 +0100 Received: from eartha.mills.edu by ns (smtpxd); id XA12033 Received: from by eartha.mills.edu via SMTP (940816.SGI.8.6.9/930416.SGI) for id KAA13519; Fri, 29 Nov 1996 10:51:40 -0800 Date: Fri, 29 Nov 1996 10:51:40 -0800 Message-Id: <3.0.32.19961129104616.00688fa8@adnc.com> Errors-To: madole@ella.mills.edu Reply-To: tuning@eartha.mills.edu Originator: tuning@eartha.mills.edu Sender: tuning@eartha.mills.edu