Indeterminacy 51

About ten years ago down at Black Mountain College
during a summer session, I arranged an
amateur festival of the works of Erik Satie.
There were altogether twenty-five concerts,
most of them about thirty minutes long.
A few were longer. For each one I prepared
a talk about the music which was to be heard.
This was necessary because most of the people
there had a German point of view and the music I
was presenting was French. Satie had
little fondness for German music. He told
Debussy, for instance, that what was needed
was a music without any sauerkraut in it, and
he remarked that the reason Beethoven was so well
known was that he had a good publicity manager.
So after about ten of the concerts and
talks, I gave a good-sized talk about music
in which I denounced Beethoven. A few
days later, Patsy Lynch (now Patsy
Davenport) knocked on my door and said,
“I think I understand what you said about
Beethoven and I think I agree.
But I have a very serious question to ask
you: How do you feel about Bach?”

- John Cage