Films For The Earth

The way I would put it is that the river is in delta, there are many possibilities, and that we may even have left the river and gone into the ocean.John Cage

In his statement John Cage is referring to the development of the modern Western musical tradition. From the moment when modernism was born, around the turn of the 19th to the 20th century, until the present day.

Spiritually Mahler was the beginning of modern music. Luciano Berio

The river at the beginning of the 20th century is the music of Gustav Mahler. Then the river split in two with Schonberg and Strawinsky. After that the river came into a delta of possibilties with the music of Edgard Varese, Pierre Boulez, KarlHeinz Stockhausen, John Cage, Elliott Carter, Luciano Berio a.o. Now we are in an ‘ocean’ of possibilties where three things determine our actions: the huge amount of people living on the planet, the amazing changes through the development of technologie and the interpenetration of the cultures in our ‘global village’.

I might say that the purpose of music is, as it always was, is to bring about an enjoyment of the life that we're living. And that life now, I think more than any other time in history, involves ‘mind’. Our technology has extended, what I call ‘the central nervous system’. So, the whole of creation is like a single mind. And that mind needs to come to terms with itself, so that it’s not split against itself. And so that that can be the enjoyment of being alive with all the other people on the same planet.

John Cage