Too Many Notes
That's how I feel. I'm probably being annoyingly obsessive-compulsive, but there are just too many notes already. Two notes seem to be just about right; one note aspires toward the condition of 4'33", which hangs over my head as an impossible ideal. That's how I view 4'33": oppressively perfect. It is also the only example of a literal silence, despite Cage's protestations that it's simply an absence of intention rather than an absence of sound. Every act of silence post-4'33" can only be metaphorical now. And even then, it's still too much. But back to two-note music. Feldman's (Madame Press) is the Platonic ideal. Crane's (Sparling) is the shadow dancing on the cave wall. Both are impossibly beautiful. Can there be a third? Or has the two-note ideal been used up, exhausted? Our hands are now forced to write with three notes. And three notes seem to be three notes too many.
Sparling -
