Excerpt from a letter to Dorothy Crisafulli

December 4, 2000

"I agree with you very much about John Cage. I’ve listened to much of his music, and performed a number of pieces of his, and I still don’t feel that I understand him. At the same time, I am suspicious of those who claim to fully understand Beethoven’s late string quartets.

"You said ‘I was brought up on classical [music] and what got to me the most was the beauty and harmony of sound’. I very much agree with you there. The window of understanding I have of John Cage also opens on beauty. It’s only this last concert Music for Ten (performed November 27, 2000 at the Kunstraum, Düsseldorf) that I have begun to hear it. He has 10 players playing their own parts, not to be coordinated. When I was playing, I had some rests, and was able to sit back and enjoy the sounds. I also enjoy sitting and listening to the interstate, or a busy intersection, or birds singing. The sounds just are. The beauty is in the sounds themselves, as opposed to their relation to each other (melody, harmony). I understand much classical music in terms of a story, or a journey. Tension, resolution. A melody ‘rises’ and ‘falls’. It moves and invites the listener along. I think with Cage, and with much of the music of my group, the Wandelweiser Composers Ensemble, that the music doesn’t move. It’s just there. It opens up the possibility of listeners finding their own way through the sounds. There is no specific journey.

"I’m reminded of a chinese story:

‘Three monks watch a kite flying.

‘One monk says "the kite is moving".

‘Another says "no, wind is moving".

‘The third says "no, mind is moving".’"