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I'll take plaudits where I can get them, Peter - thanks for the plug for State of Independence. > In real life it may not be like that. Some of us, for instance, > without considering that we have gone reactionary in middle-age, consider > that most of the "great experimenters" of this century (Joyce, Pound, > Stein, Olson, Zukofsky, Burroughs, Stockhausen, Cage, Picasso, Duchamp....) > led their own work into horrific barren wastelands which do nothing but > threaten current creative enterprise with death. > Well, broadly speaking, I agree that just about all of them ended up in a mess. That however does not invalidate the good things they achieved at earlier stages in their careers, viz: Joyce - Ulysses Pound - Mauberley, first 30 cantos and (maybe) the Pisan Cantos Stein - er can't read her, so I give in here Olson - Kingfishers Zukofsky - some wonderful short poems Burroughs - Naked Lunch Stockhausen - ok as long as it's before 1955, but I might make an exception for the piano works Cage - only the piano music, and maybe percussion pieces (the methods he used fall apart when used by an orchestra). I'm not sure about the writings ... Picasso - a disaster after about 1935 Duchamp - I suspect he's the odd one out. I'll keep him, if I may. The problem surely is (based on my own very subjective responses listed above) that once you've started experimenting / pushing back the boundaries the idolaters and powers-that-be and critics want you to keep going. If you don't you're toast in critical terms: XX is just repeating his old groove etc. This is true whether you're a poet, a jazz musician, a 12-tone composer, painter, whatever. Thus Picasso gets all the plaudits and Braque is forgotten, although the latter produced good, if repetitive, work up until the 50s at least. I happen to think Picasso's genuine achievement is probably greater than Braque's but Braque should still remembered and his work after 1916 should be appreciated on its own merits and not on a scale of innovation - itself immeasurable and very hard to see straight when it's happening anyway. You see, Peter, I don't mind that Finnegans Wake is an unreadable game, that the last 30 years of the Cantos were a waste of time, or that the last 3 volumes of Maximus are chewed up bits of undigested library reading. I don't mind, because I assume that everyone - even Beethoven, Michelangelo and Shakespeare - produces the odd bummer. If you're restlessly pushing the boundaries, the chances are you'll produce more than the odd one. If you get a severe case of messianic fervor and self-belief, a la Pound, you'll produce a hell of a lot more. I'm still happy with the Cage keyboard works (and have 30-odd CDs of it to prove it), with Pound from Cathay to a Draft of XXX Cantos, with Olson pre-Maximus, with Picasso from blue & rose up to early neo-classical. You left out Schoenberg, I notice, and he's a classic case. The rot sets in after the wonderful Gurrelieder, and is alleviated in only brief flashes thereafter. I still reckon Gurrelieder and Pelleas & Melisande make him a Significant Creator, and that's fine with me. I'd like more of it, but I'll make do with what I've got. I shall now avoid all dedecaphonic barbs heaved in my direction. (As an aside to the above, I recall with some amusement going to the second performance of Penderecki's opera Das Verlorene Paradies (i.e. Paradise Lost) back in 1979, in Munich. I thoroughly enjoyed my evening: good singing, good orchestra, excellent production, even if the opera itself was not the composer's masterpiece and he himself was confused at that time about the direction his work should go. The next morning's Sueddeutsche Zeitung, trashed the opera - not the performance - on the grounds that it did not quote "challenge the audience sufficiently" unquote. I've wondered ever since what empirical measure the critic would have used to assess the sufficiency of the challenge .....) In some quarters the above opinions would make me very reactionary indeed. I'm always happy to be persuaded that I'm mistaken, but I'd rather not have to accept too much pain along with the persuasion, please. And I'm going to listen to some early prepared piano pieces by Cage tonight, followed by Ligeti chamber work for wind instruments, all of which presses the pleasure buttons. Tony %%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%