Downloading. Maybe you’ve heard of it? Few music-related subjects have generated as much discussion in recent years. Most of that discussion has been about two things: declining CD sales, and thorny questions of intellectual property rights and ownership. There are lots of smaller story lines, too: the growing ubiquity of ear buds in public spaces, the increasing commoditization of music as it is leveraged to sell gadgets and services, the triumph of the “little guy,” who can now afford to distribute his/her/their music online for little or no cost, etc.

But there is less discussion about the actual use of downloaded music, or the role it plays in the lives of those who access it, largely because those things haven’t changed very much — at least not yet. Music has been portable for several generations now (someone out there still has a Sony Walkman™ or a boom box in the closet…admit it); changes on that front are largely of degree. Young people have been trading pirated, copied, mixed, and altered recordings since the advent of the tape deck (don’t tell me I’m the only one who copied his best friend’s older brother’s copy of Doug E. Fresh’s “The Show/La-di-da-di” back in the day…); and regardless of format, mainstream music consumers are still hungry primarily for the newest releases by the most popular artists — the very things served up readily by download services.

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(Uncle Dave’s interview with Margaret Leng Tan was inspired by the release of her new Mode Records DVD, John Cage: Works for Piano, Volume 7 which contains Cage’s Sonatas and Interludes for Prepared Piano and his never-before-recorded work, Chess Pieces.)

(Photos: ©mode records, used by permission)

AMG: John Cage certainly seems to have benefited from the digital age in terms of recordings. While he didn’t fare too badly in the age of vinyl, at least compared to other contemporary composers, the whole field seems to have exploded since his death in 1992.

Margaret Leng Tan: Yes, Cage’s discography has grown so much in the last decade it is now mind-bogglingly huge! You do know that John was very much against the idea of recordings. He once told me, “Margaret - I will always come to your concerts but I won’t listen to your recordings.” He resisted getting a CD player because he felt very strongly that recordings were fossilized or petrified performances.

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Why “style,” anyway?

We experience classical music today in a polystylistic environment, unshaped by any single musical orthodoxy, unhampered by academic rules, and, regrettably, unexplored by many who find the situation too confusing to even begin listening. Yet it is important for all who care about classical music to understand that the present profusion of genres, methods, and theories is not impossible to sort out, and that the subject of style — perhaps the central issue of contemporary music, and a key to understanding it — is not really overwhelming. However, it is important to grasp that as bewildering as our cultural crises may be, they are the result of changes wrought in the previous century, and that we are heirs of 100 years of wonderfully varied, if sometimes vexatious, creativity.

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