L'UNIVERS LEONARDO / CALL FOR PAPERS

In his infamous 1972 essay, "John Cage -- Ghost or Monster", Cornelius Cardew took Cage to task on issues of political correctness. Inspired by Mao Tse-tung's "Talks at the Yunan Forum on Literature and Art" (1942), Cardew surveys the state of new music, and Cage's work in particular, for signs of what Mao called "ghosts" ("myth, madness, magic and mysticism," which Cardew associates with political anarchy) and "monsters" ("anti-people ideas" having to do with technological futurism and political fascism). The avant-garde does not fare well under Cardew's hand, but if his histrionics seem quaintly dated in 1997/98, those twin pillars--slightly adjusted--still have relevance. In the realm of both technology and aesthetics, ghosts and monsters play critical--if often covert--roles in the creation of an individual composition, in the evolution of the body of a composer's work, and in the development of musical "schools" and scenes.

Leonardo Music Journal invites composers of many nations, styles, temperaments and technologies to address the influence of ghosts and monsters in their own work and (where appropriate) that of their peers. In the realm of technology, the questions might seem obvious:

• Are you a Luddite or a Utopian (or other)?
• Do you crave tubes or Crays?
• How does music rooted in technology adapt to technological change ?

In the aesthetic realm the issues are perhaps murkier:

• Did Cage ruin your life or open up fruitful vistas?
• What did Stockhausen or Boulez mean for a composer coming of age in Europe in he 1970s?
• What happens after Minimalism?

Interested authors should contact Leonardo Music Journal Editor-in-Chief Nicolas Collins with proposals: e-mail <TallmanCollins@compuserve.com> or send proposals to the journal's editorial office:

LEONARDO MUSIC JOURNAL
Cathryn Hrudicka, Coordinating Editor
425 Market Street, 2nd Floor
San Francisco, CA 94105