Response to John Cage, and rejoinder to the response

Adam Korengold wrote:

This piece is similar to Cage's music: noisy, interesting, and pleasant. A collection of sounds, but not a concerto or a sonnet.

Al Filreis replied:

1. Well, with your use of the word "pleasant" we are getting somewhere (into the realm of the *contingency* or changeable-ness of what in art is deemed pleasant; remember that to the ears of most of its first listeners, the 9th symphony of Beethoven was deemed unpleasant).

2. "Sonnet" is an invented formal category. It's about as rigid a set of arbitrary rules as there can be. Far more rigid than Cage's mesostic.