Eavesdropping Eternity: An Idea and a Question for Beethoven to Ask Cage

Dr. Langguth posited what Beethoven and John Cage might talk about in the Afterlife - how would they agree or disagree, for example.  Would they reach a harmonious conclusion?  Well, I found some quotes about the significance of music for Beethoven (the source is brainyquote.com) :

"Music is the higher revelation than all wisdom and philosophy."

"Music is the mediator between spiritual and sensual life."

"Music is the one incorporeal entrance into the higher world of knowlege which comprehends mankind but which men cannot comprehend."

"Music is the wine which inspires one to new generative processes, and I am Bacchus who presses out this glorious wine for mankind and makes them spiritually drunken."

"Tones sound, and roar and storm about me until I have set them down in notes."

"Music should strike fire from the heart of man, and tears from the eyes of woman."

Actually, this is very similar to Bugbee and Cage at least in the purpose of music.  For Beethoven, music is a spiritual experience which allows the communication of emotions and the senses, capturing them and translating them into the spirit - or, maybe the opposite, where the formal rhythms create sensations.  Maybe both.  Beethoven captures music's "immediacy" which makes it a "mediator" without any conceptual "go-betweens."  Bugbee says music first awakened him to the need for reflection - particularly, reflection on experiences from which his philosophy flowed.  For Beethoven, music also serves this function.  Music hijacks the soul in that it strikes us at the most vulnerable cord in our hearts, that hidden level without thoughts or concepts.  Music is presentation.

So where is the difference?  The difference, according to a blog called "Sympathies Enlarged," is Cage's revolt against harmony as the fundamental unit/principle in music as opposed to duration.  Thinking about some of Cage's work, this makes sense as the PBS video showed sheet music with notes lasting for different lengths of time - that is, the intervals create pattern.  However, I do wonder what makes that in itself any more or less "artificial" Beethoven?

<< Dr. Langguth, I have one question:  I stumbled on a blog called "Sympathies Enlarged" with a URL that says "for the birds tmc."  What class was that for? >>

(Blog 12)