John Cage (jan 1, 1912 – jan 1, 1992)

Description:

an American composer, music theorist, artist, and philosopher.

Americans
A. Interdeterminacy: John Cage and the “New York School”
1. The American counterpart to the European post-war avant-garde centered around Cage.
2. Like the Europeans, the American sought to eliminate the artist’s ego and personality from the product.
3. Cage’s ideas were an extension of the earlier American experimentalists.
4. He worked to counter the supremacy of traditional pitch organization as the basis for making music.
5. He sought to redefine music.

B. Music for Prepared Piano
1. Cage invented the “prepared piano.”
2. At a stage in his life when he decided to give up composition unless it did more than
communicate, Cage began to study Zen Buddhism.
3. Cage mixed Zen with I Ching. The predetermination of the I Ching yielded the musicproducing algorithm sought by the zero hour composers, but Cage then added chance instead of serial operations as the path of progression for a work.
4. The music of Cage and Boulez ultimately sounded similar but was reached by opposite
means.

C. Silence
1. One of Cage’s main contributions was to challenge the way people think about music.
2. He questioned the nature of the musical work.
3. His 4’33” is his ultimate experiment in indeterminacy.
4. In this work, Cage said he was trying to erase the boundary between art and life.

D. “Permission”: Cage’s Influence
1. Cage’s influence extended beyond musicians.
2. Following Cage’s ideas, Earle Brown began to challenge concepts of notation.
3. Cage influenced theater, most famously with “happenings.”

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