M - Writings, 1967-72 (Paperback, New edition)

Cage subjected the 26 letters of the alphabet to the I-Ching and came up with the letter "M," as the title for his latest writings which follow Mao Tse-tung's dictum: "It is right to rebel." Cage rebels through a musical, non-syntactical, freely-associative autobiographical cascade of words that express - indeed, celebrate - the anarchic self as they gracefully flow down the center of the printed page in over 700 different type faces and sizes. They cover the years 1962-72, and are interspersed with quotations from other soul-revolutionaries, e.g., Thoreau, Norman O. Brown, Gandhi, Buckminster Fuller - the latter being Cage's other chief influence along with Mao. As an anarchic composer, Cage believes in "music that requires no rehearsal," in short, a revolutionary music "made by everyone. . . based on noise, on noise's lawlessness." By the same token, he believes that words, like sounds, should emerge free of rigid relations or pre-fixed rules. Hence his attempt to demilitarize language through his inventive form, mesostics. The result can be intellectually simplistic, politically naive, ecologically obvious, philosophically self-contradictory to the point of the ridiculous, but it is always quintessentially Cage, for Cage is as always sui generis. (Kirkus Reviews)

General

Imprint:	Marion Boyars Publishers Ltd
Country of origin:	United Kingdom
Release date:	October 2000
Authors:	John Cage
Dimensions:	240 x 200 x 19mm (L x W x T)
Format:	Paperback
Pages:	217
Edition:	New edition
ISBN-13:	978-0-7145-1135-1
Categories:	Books > Arts & Architecture > Music > Western music, periods & styles > 20th century music Books > Music > Western music, periods & styles > 20th century music
LSN:	0-7145-1135-8
Barcode:	9780714511351

Is the information for this product incomplete, wrong or inappropriate? Let us know about it.

Does this product have an incorrect or missing image? Send us a new image.

Is this product missing categories? Add more categories.

Review This Product

No reviews yet - be the first to create one!