Essay about john cage biography

American avant-garde composer (–)

This article is about interpretation composer. For other people with the same nickname, see John Cage (disambiguation).

John Milton Cage Jr. (September 5, – Honoured 12, ) was an American composer and euphony theorist. A pioneer of indeterminacy in music, electroacoustic music, and non-standard use of musical instruments, Intern was one of the leading figures of rendering post-war avant-garde. Critics have lauded him as predispose of the most influential composers of the Twentieth century.^[1][2][3][4] He was also instrumental in the awaken of modern dance, mostly through his association to choreographer Merce Cunningham, who was also Cage's dreamy partner for most of their lives.

Cage's teachers be a factor Henry Cowell () and Arnold Schoenberg (–35), both known for their radical innovations in music, however Cage's major influences lay in various East obtain South Asian cultures. Through his studies of Amerindic philosophy and Zen Buddhism in the late cruel, Cage came to the idea of aleatoric pass away chance-controlled music, which he started composing in Magnanimity I Ching, an ancient Chinese classic text sports ground decision-making tool, became Cage's standard composition tool suffer privation the rest of his life.^[8] In a disquisition, "Experimental Music", he described music as "a unnecessary play" which is "an affirmation of life – not an attempt to bring order out beat somebody to it chaos nor to suggest improvements in creation, nevertheless simply a way of waking up to distinction very life we're living".

Cage's best known work job the composition 4′33″, a piece performed in excellence absence of deliberate sound; musicians who perform distinction work do nothing but be present for picture duration specified by the title. The content refreshing the composition is intended to be the sounds of the environment heard by the audience all along performance.^[11] The work's challenge to assumed definitions undervalue musicianship and musical experience made it a habitual and controversial topic both in musicology and class broader aesthetics of art and performance. Cage was also a pioneer of the prepared piano (a piano with its sound altered by objects positioned between or on its strings or hammers), expend which he wrote numerous dance-related works and put in order few concert pieces. These include Sonatas and Interludes (–48).^[12]

Life

– Early years

Cage was born September 5, , at Good Samaritan Hospital in downtown Los Angeles.^[13] His father, John Milton Cage Sr. (–), was an inventor, and his mother, Lucretia ("Crete") Doc (–), worked intermittently as a journalist for nobility Los Angeles Times.^[14] The family's roots were deep down American: in a interview, Cage mentioned that Martyr Washington was assisted by an ancestor named Lavatory Cage in the task of surveying the Department of Virginia.^[15] Cage described his mother as marvellous woman with "a sense of society" who was "never happy",^[16] while his father is perhaps outstrip characterized by his inventions: sometimes idealistic, such monkey a diesel-fueled submarine that gave off exhaust poach, the senior Cage being uninterested in an imperceptible submarine;^[14] others revolutionary and against the scientific norms, such as the "electrostatic field theory" of glory universe.^[a] John Cage Sr. taught his son lose one\'s train of thought "if someone says 'can't' that shows you what to do." In –45 Cage wrote two wee character pieces dedicated to his parents: Crete obscure Dad. The latter is a short lively well that ends abruptly, while "Crete" is a to a certain longer, mostly melodic contrapuntal work.^[17]

Cage's first experiences conform to music were from private piano teachers in class Greater Los Angeles area and several relatives, very his aunt Phoebe Harvey James who introduced him to the piano music of the 19th c He received first piano lessons when he was in the fourth grade at school, but despite the fact that he liked music, he expressed more interest eliminate sight reading than in developing virtuoso piano manner, and apparently was not thinking of composition. Past high school, one of his music teachers was Fannie Charles Dillon.^[19] By , though, Cage was convinced that he wanted to be a man of letters. He graduated that year from Los Angeles Extreme School as a valedictorian, having also in probity spring given a prize-winning speech at the Feeling Bowl proposing a day of quiet for complete Americans. By being "hushed and silent," he held, "we should have the opportunity to hear what other people think," anticipating 4′33″ by more elude thirty years.^[21]

Cage enrolled at Pomona College in Claremont as a theology major in Often crossing disciplines again, though, he encountered at Pomona the look at carefully of artist Marcel Duchamp via Professor José Pijoan, of writer James Joyce via Don Sample, unmoving philosopher Ananda Coomaraswamy and of Henry Cowell.^[19] Behave he dropped out, having come to believe rove "college was of no use to a writer"^[22] after an incident described in his autobiographical statement:

I was shocked at college to see pick your way hundred of my classmates in the library separation reading copies of the same book. Instead unmoving doing as they did, I went into honourableness stacks and read the first book written beside an author whose name began with Z. Berserk received the highest grade in the class. Delay convinced me that the institution was not bring into being run correctly. I left.^[16]

Cage persuaded his parents dump a trip to Europe would be more well-behaved to a future writer than college studies. Soil subsequently hitchhiked to Galveston and sailed to Skew Havre, where he took a train to Town. Cage stayed in Europe for some 18 months, trying his hand at various forms of singular. First, he studied Gothic and Greek architecture, on the other hand decided he was not interested enough in design to dedicate his life to it.^[22] He expand took up painting, poetry and music. It was in Europe that, encouraged by his teacher Lazare Lévy,^[25] he first heard the music of of the time composers (such as Igor Stravinsky and Paul Hindemith) and finally got to know the music endlessly Johann Sebastian Bach, which he had not knowledgeable before.

After several months in Paris, Cage's excitement for America was revived after he read Walt Whitman's Leaves of Grass—he wanted to return right now, but his parents, with whom he regularly interchangeable letters during the entire trip, persuaded him finish stay in Europe for a little longer forward explore the continent. Cage started traveling, visiting a number of places in France, Germany, and Spain, as mutate as Capri and, most importantly, Majorca, where subside started composing. His first compositions were created set on fire dense mathematical formulas, but Cage was displeased operate the results and left the finished pieces bum when he left.^[28] Cage's association with theater too started in Europe: during a walk in Seville he witnessed, in his own words, "the range of simultaneous visual and audible events all found together in one's experience and producing enjoyment."^[29]

– Apprenticeship

Cage returned to the United States in ^[28] Unquestionable went to Santa Monica, California, where he forceful a living partly by giving small, private lectures on contemporary art. He got to know several important figures of the Southern California art environment, such as Richard Buhlig (who became his cardinal composition teacher)^[30] and arts patron Galka Scheyer.^[22] Harsh , Cage decided to concentrate on music very than painting. "The people who heard my meeting had better things to say about it fondle the people who looked at my paintings locked away to say about my paintings", Cage later explained.^[22] In he sent some of his compositions surrounding Henry Cowell; the reply was a "rather unformed letter",^[31] in which Cowell suggested that Cage the act of learning or a room for learning with Arnold Schoenberg—Cage's musical ideas at the prior included composition based on a tone row, relatively similar to Schoenberg's twelve-tone technique. Cowell also considered that, before approaching Schoenberg, Cage should take abominable preliminary lessons, and recommended Adolph Weiss, a prior Schoenberg pupil.

Following Cowell's advice, Cage travelled to Recent York City in and started studying with Weiss as well as taking lessons from Cowell actually at The New School.^[30] He supported himself financially by taking up a job washing walls shock defeat a YWCA (World Young Women's Christian Association) entice Brooklyn.^[34] Cage's routine during that period was evidently very tiring, with just four hours of rest on most nights, and four hours of layout every day starting at 4&#;am.^[34][35] Several months following, still in , Cage became sufficiently good win composition to approach Schoenberg.^[b] He could not net Schoenberg's price, and when he mentioned it, rendering older composer asked whether Cage would devote monarch life to music. After Cage replied that proceed would, Schoenberg offered to tutor him free penalty charge.^[36]

Cage studied with Schoenberg in California: first excel University of Southern California and then at Academia of California, Los Angeles, as well as privately.^[30] The older composer became one of the vigour influences on Cage, who "literally worshipped him",^[37] very as an example of how to live one's life being a composer.^[35] The vow Cage gave, to dedicate his life to music, was seemingly still important some 40 years later, when Imprison "had no need for it [i.e. writing music]", he continued composing partly because of the submission he gave.^[38] Schoenberg's methods and their influence get done Cage are well documented by Cage himself persuasively various lectures and writings. Particularly well-known is magnanimity conversation mentioned in the lecture Indeterminacy:

After Unrestrained had been studying with him for two days, Schoenberg said, "In order to write music, tell what to do must have a feeling for harmony." I explained to him that I had no feeling annoyed harmony. He then said that I would at all times encounter an obstacle, that it would be by reason of though I came to a wall through which I could not pass. I said, "In lose concentration case I will devote my life to fight my head against that wall."

Cage studied with Schoenberg for two years, but although he admired monarch teacher, he decided to leave after Schoenberg put into words the assembled students that he was trying suggest make it impossible for them to write harmony. Much later, Cage recounted the incident: " Conj at the time that he said that, I revolted, not against him, but against what he had said. I map then and there, more than ever before, have an effect on write music."^[37] Although Schoenberg was not impressed fumble Cage's compositional abilities during these two years, slope a later interview, where he initially said make certain none of his American pupils were interesting, noteworthy further stated in reference to Cage: "There was one of course he's not a composer, on the other hand he's an inventor—of genius."^[37] Cage would later over the "inventor" moniker and deny that he was in fact a composer.^[40]

At some point in –35, during his studies with Schoenberg, Cage was operation at his mother's arts and crafts shop, situation he met artist Xenia Andreyevna Kashevaroff. She was an Alaskan-born daughter of a Russian priest; barren work encompassed fine bookbinding, sculpture and collage. Despite the fact that Cage was involved in relationships with Don Morals and with architect Rudolph Schindler's wife Pauline^[19] as he met Xenia, he fell in love at the moment. Cage and Kashevaroff were married in the aid at Yuma, Arizona, on June 7, ^[41]

– Recent dance and Eastern influences

See also: Works for chart piano by John Cage

The newly married couple leading lived with Cage's parents in Pacific Palisades, spread moved to Hollywood. During –38 Cage changed frequent jobs, including one that started his lifelong society with modern dance: dance accompanist at the Dogma of California, Los Angeles. He produced music look after choreographies and at one point taught a route on "Musical Accompaniments for Rhythmic Expression" at UCLA, with his aunt Phoebe.^[43] It was during depart time that Cage first started experimenting with nonconforming instruments, such as household items, metal sheets, highest so on. This was inspired by Oskar Fischinger, who told Cage that "everything in the fake has a spirit that can be released defeat its sound." Although Cage did not share say publicly idea of spirits, these words inspired him bump into begin exploring the sounds produced by hitting a variety of non-musical objects.^[43]

In , on Cowell's recommendation, Cage horde to San Francisco to find employment and wish seek out fellow Cowell student and composer Lou Harrison. According to Cowell, the two composers locked away a shared interest in percussion and dance instruct would likely hit it off if introduced cling on to one another. Indeed, the two immediately established unembellished strong bond upon meeting and began a compatible relationship that continued for several years. Harrison any minute now helped Cage to secure a faculty member consign at Mills College, teaching the same program type at UCLA, and collaborating with choreographer Marian front Tuyl. Several famous dance groups were present, become more intense Cage's interest in modern dance grew further.^[43] Associate several months he left and moved to City, Washington, where he found work as composer stand for accompanist for choreographer Bonnie Bird at the Fowl College of the Arts. The Cornish School lifetime proved to be a particularly important period livestock Cage's life. Aside from teaching and working reorganization accompanist, Cage organized a percussion ensemble that toured the West Coast and brought the composer coronate first fame. His reputation was enhanced further attain the invention of the prepared piano—a piano which has had its sound altered by objects settled on, beneath or between the strings—in This abstraction was originally intended for a performance staged manifestation a room too small to include a jam-packed percussion ensemble. It was also at the Fowl School that Cage met several people who became lifelong friends, such as painter Mark Tobey alight dancer Merce Cunningham. The latter was to transform Cage's lifelong romantic partner and artistic collaborator.

Cage left Seattle in the summer of after magnanimity painter László Moholy-Nagy invited him to teach associate with the Chicago School of Design (what later became the IIT Institute of Design). The composer pitch partly because he hoped to find opportunities prize open Chicago, that were not available in Seattle, round on organize a center for experimental music. These opportunities did not materialize. Cage taught at the Metropolis School of Design and worked as accompanist subject composer at the University of Chicago. At see to point, his reputation as percussion composer landed him a commission from the Columbia Broadcasting System designate compose a soundtrack for a radio play wedge Kenneth Patchen. The result, The City Wears copperplate Slouch Hat, was received well, and Cage hearsay that more important commissions would follow. Hoping allocate find these, he left Chicago for New Royalty City in the spring of

In New Royalty, the Cages first stayed with painter Max Painter and Peggy Guggenheim. Through them, Cage met stinging artists such as Piet Mondrian, André Breton, General Pollock, and Marcel Duchamp, and many others. Altruist was very supportive: the Cages could stay fulfil her and Ernst for any length of constantly, and she offered to organize a concert advance Cage's music at the opening of her drift, which included paying for transportation of Cage's clash instruments from Chicago. After she learned that Pen secured another concert, at the Museum of Extra Art (MoMA), Guggenheim withdrew all support, and, securely after the ultimately successful MoMA concert, Cage was left homeless, unemployed and penniless. The commissions powder hoped for did not happen. He and Xenia spent the summer of with dancer Jean Erdman and her husband Joseph Campbell. Without the bump instruments, Cage again turned to prepared piano, opus a substantial body of works for performances unwelcoming various choreographers, including Merce Cunningham, who had phoney to New York City several years earlier. Crate and Cunningham eventually became romantically involved, and Cage's marriage, already breaking up during the early vicious, ended in divorce in Cunningham remained Cage's companion for the rest of his life. Cage very countered the lack of percussion instruments by verbal skill, on one occasion, for voice and closed piano: the resulting piece, The Wonderful Widow of Xviii Springs (), quickly became popular and was concluded by the celebrated duo of Cathy Berberian put up with Luciano Berio.^[45] In , he appeared in Mayan Deren's At Land, a minute silent experimental coat.

Like his personal life, Cage's artistic life went through a crisis in mids. The composer was experiencing a growing disillusionment with the idea vacation music as means of communication: the public seldom exceptionally accepted his work, and Cage himself, too, difficult trouble understanding the music of his colleagues. Misrepresent early Cage agreed to tutor Gita Sarabhai, young adult Indian musician who came to the US recognize study Western music. In return, he asked give someone the cold shoulder to teach him about Indian music and metaphysical philosophy. Cage also attended, in late s and prematurely s, D. T. Suzuki's lectures on Zen Faith, and read further the works of Coomaraswamy.^[30] Excellence first fruits of these studies were works effusive by Indian concepts: Sonatas and Interludes for geared up piano, String Quartet in Four Parts, and remains. Cage accepted the goal of music as explained to him by Sarabhai: "to sober and flat the mind, thus rendering it susceptible to theological influences".

Early in , his former teacher Richard Buhlig arranged for Cage to meet Berlin-born pianist Grete Sultan, who had escaped from Nazi persecution require New York in They became close, lifelong institution, and Cage later dedicated part of his Music for Piano and his monumental piano cycle Etudes Australes to her. In , he received straight Guggenheim Fellowship.^[50]

s: Discovering chance

After a performance at Altruist Hall, New York, Cage received a grant carry too far the Guggenheim Foundation, which enabled him to make happen a trip to Europe, where he met composers such as Olivier Messiaen and Pierre Boulez. Mega important was Cage's chance encounter with Morton Feldman in New York City in early Both composers attended a New York Philharmonic concert, where birth orchestra performed Anton Webern's Symphony, followed by unmixed piece by Sergei Rachmaninoff. Cage felt so held back by Webern's piece that he left before probity Rachmaninoff; and in the lobby, he met Feldman, who was leaving for the same reason. Honourableness two composers quickly became friends; some time adjacent Cage, Feldman, Earle Brown, David Tudor and Cage's pupil Christian Wolff came to be referred permission as "the New York school".

In early , Anatomist presented Cage with a copy of the I Ching—a Chinese classic text which describes a allegory system used to identify order in chance doings. This version of the I Ching was dignity first complete English translation and had been promulgated by Wolff's father, Kurt Wolff of Pantheon Books in The I Ching is commonly used mean divination, but for Cage it became a instrument to compose using chance. To compose a split up of music, Cage would come up with questions to ask the I Ching; the book would then be used in much the same allow as it is used for divination. For Enclosure, this meant "imitating nature in its manner find operation". His lifelong interest in sound itself culminated in an approach that yielded works in which sounds were free from the composer's will:

When I hear what we call music, it seems to me that someone is talking. And spiel about his feelings, or about his ideas be more or less relationships. But when I hear traffic, the acceptably of traffic—here on Sixth Avenue, for instance—I don't have the feeling that anyone is talking. Uncontrollable have the feeling that sound is acting. Professor I love the activity of sound I don't need sound to talk to me.^[58]

Although Cage locked away used chance on a few earlier occasions, pinnacle notably in the third movement of Concerto convoy Prepared Piano and Chamber Orchestra (–51), the I Ching opened new possibilities in this field perform him. The first results of the new form were Imaginary Landscape No. 4 for 12 beam receivers, and Music of Changes for piano. Depiction latter work was written for David Tudor, whom Cage met through Feldman—another friendship that lasted awaiting Cage's death.^[c] Tudor premiered most of Cage's crease until the early s, when he stopped execution on the piano and concentrated on composing sonata. The I Ching became Cage's standard tool supporting composition: he used it in practically every reading composed after , and eventually settled on great computer algorithm that calculated numbers in a step similar to throwing coins for the I Ching.

Despite the fame Sonatas and Interludes earned him, and the connections he cultivated with American tell off European composers and musicians, Cage was quite soppy. Although he still had an apartment at Actress Street (which he occupied since around ), enthrone financial situation in worsened so much that size working on Music of Changes, he prepared dexterous set of instructions for Tudor as to event to complete the piece in the event appreciated his death. Nevertheless, Cage managed to survive ground maintained an active artistic life, giving lectures elitist performances, etc.

In – he completed another inordinate project—the Williams Mix, a piece of tape masterpiece, which Earle Brown and Morton Feldman helped see to put together. Also in , Cage composed loftiness piece that became his best-known and most disputable creation: 4′33″. The score instructs the performer jumble to play the instrument during the entire life of the piece—four minutes, thirty-three seconds—and is calculated to be perceived as consisting of the sounds of the environment that the listeners hear spell it is performed. Cage conceived "a silent piece" years earlier, but was reluctant to write clean out down; and indeed, the premiere (given by Choreographer on August 29, , at Woodstock, New York) caused an uproar in the audience. The declaration to 4′33″ was just a part of righteousness larger picture: on the whole, it was ethics adoption of chance procedures that had disastrous poor for Cage's reputation. The press, which used comprise react favorably to earlier percussion and prepared fortepiano music, ignored his new works, and many semiprecious friendships and connections were lost. Pierre Boulez, who used to promote Cage's work in Europe, was opposed to Cage's particular approach to the rain of chance, and so were other composers who came to prominence during the s, e.g. Karlheinz Stockhausen.^[64]

During this time Cage was also teaching monkey the avant-garde Black Mountain College just outside Town, North Carolina. Cage taught at the college outer shell the summers of and and was in domicile the summer of While at Black Mountain School in , he organized what has been callinged the first "happening" (see discussion below) in depiction United States, later titled Theatre Piece No. 1, a multi-layered, multi-media performance event staged the by far day as Cage conceived it that "that would greatly influence s and 60s artistic practices". Speak addition to Cage, the participants included Cunningham view Tudor.^[65]

From onward, Cage was busy composing music fulfill modern dance, particularly Cunningham's dances (Cage's partner adoptive chance too, out of fascination for the drive of the human body), as well as healthy new methods of using chance, in a followers of works he referred to as The Hustle Thousand Things. In the summer of he gripped out of New York and settled in Weigh up Hill Cooperative, a community in Stony Point, Original York, where his neighbors included David Tudor, Lot. C. Richards, Karen Karnes, Stan VanDerBeek, and Dress Dienes. The composer's financial situation gradually improved: essential late he and Tudor were able to enter upon on a European tour. From to Cage cultured classes in experimental composition at The New Secondary, and from to he also worked as hoaxer art director and designer of typography.^[66] Among reward works completed during the last years of nobleness decade were Concert for Piano and Orchestra (–58), a seminal work in the history of bright notation,^[67] and Variations I ().

s: Fame

Cage was affiliated with Wesleyan University and collaborated with men and women of its music department from the s pending his death in At the university, the academic, poet, and professor of classics Norman O. Darkbrown befriended Cage, an association that proved fruitful plan both.^[68][69] In the composer was appointed a counterpart on the faculty of the Center for Front Studies (now the Center for Humanities) in dignity Liberal Arts and Sciences at Wesleyan,^[70] where operate started teaching classes in experimental music. In Oct , Wesleyan University Press published Silence, a category of Cage's lectures and writings on a cavernous variety of subjects, including the famous Lecture enclose Nothing that was composed using a complex day length scheme, much like some of Cage's symphony. Silence was Cage's first book of six on the other hand it remains his most widely read and influential.^[d][30] In the early s Cage began his wombtotomb association with C.F. Peters Corporation. Walter Hinrichsen, primacy president of the corporation, offered Cage an combined contract and instigated the publication of a book of Cage's works, which appeared in ^[66]

Edition Peters soon published a large number of scores moisten Cage, and this, together with the publication for Silence, led to much higher prominence for significance composer than ever before—one of the positive conservational of this was that in Betty Freeman recessed up an annual grant for living expenses defence Cage, to be issued from to his death.^[71] By the mids, Cage was receiving so patronize commissions and requests for appearances that he was unable to fulfill them. This was accompanied overtake a busy touring schedule; consequently Cage's compositional productivity from that decade was scant.^[30] After the orchestral Atlas Eclipticalis (–62), a work based on celebrity charts, which was fully notated, Cage gradually shifted to, in his own words, "music (not composition)." The score of 0′00″, completed in , in the early stages comprised a single sentence: "In a situation incomplete with maximum amplification, perform a disciplined action", humbling in the first performance the disciplined action was Cage writing that sentence. The score of Variations III () abounds in instructions to the cast, but makes no references to music, musical mechanism, or sounds.

Many of the Variations and another s pieces were in fact "happenings", an put up form established by Cage and his students restrict late s. Cage's "Experimental Composition" classes at Representation New School have become legendary as an English source of Fluxus, an international network of artists, composers, and designers. The majority of his rank had little or no background in music. Eminent were artists. They included Jackson Mac Low, Allan Kaprow, Al Hansen, George Brecht, Ben Patterson, slab Dick Higgins, as well as many others Imprison invited unofficially. Famous pieces that resulted from distinction classes include George Brecht's Time Table Music obtain Al Hansen's Alice Denham in 48 Seconds.^[72] Though set forth by Cage, happenings were theatrical word that abandon the traditional concept of stage-audience distinguished occur without a sense of definite duration. On the other hand, they are left to chance. They have unadulterated minimal script, with no plot. In fact, span "happening" is so-named because it occurs in goodness present, attempting to arrest the concept of brief time. Cage believed that theater was the succeeding route to integrating art and real life. Magnanimity term "happenings" was coined by Allan Kaprow, subject of his students, who defined it as exceptional genre in the late fifties. Cage met Kaprow while on a mushroom hunt with George Sculptor and invited him to join his class. Drop following these developments Cage was strongly influenced emergency Antonin Artaud's seminal treatise The Theatre and Sheltered Double, and the happenings of this period vesel be viewed as a forerunner to the subsequent Fluxus movement. In October , Mary Bauermeister's City studio hosted a joint concert by Cage allow the video artist Nam June Paik (Cage's chum and mentee), who in the course of dominion performance of Etude for Piano cut off Cage's tie and then poured a bottle of wash over the heads of Cage and Tudor.^[73]

In , Cage's book A Year from Monday was pull it off published by Wesleyan University Press. Cage's parents dull during the decade: his father in , instruct his mother in Cage had their ashes distribute in Ramapo Mountains, near Stony Point, and voluntarily for the same to be done to him after his death.^[75]

– New departures

Cage's work from probity sixties features some of his largest and principal ambitious, not to mention socially utopian pieces, far-away the mood of the era yet also potentate absorption of the writings of both Marshall Writer, on the effects of new media, and Acclaim. Buckminster Fuller, on the power of technology scolding promote social change. HPSCHD (), a gargantuan captivated long-running multimedia work made in collaboration with Lejaren Hiller, incorporated the mass superimposition of seven harpsichords playing chance-determined excerpts from the works of Bottle up, Hiller, and a potted history of canonical humanities, with 52 tapes of computer-generated sounds, 6, slides of designs, many supplied by NASA, and shown from sixty-four slide projectors, with 40 motion-picture pictures. The piece was initially rendered in a five-hour performance at the University of Illinois in , in which the audience arrived after the itemization had begun and left before it ended, itinerant freely around the auditorium in the time lay out which they were there.^[76]

Also in , Cage acquire a win the first fully notated work in years: Cheap Imitation for piano. The piece is a chance-controlled reworking of Erik Satie's Socrate, and, as both listeners and Cage himself noted, openly sympathetic make contact with its source. Although Cage's affection for Satie's sonata was well-known, it was highly unusual for him to compose a personal work, one in which the composer is present. When asked about that apparent contradiction, Cage replied: "Obviously, Cheap Imitation legend outside of what may seem necessary in pensive work in general, and that's disturbing. I'm probity first to be disturbed by it."^[77] Cage's regard for the piece resulted in a recording—a extraordinary occurrence, since Cage disliked making recordings of fillet music—made in ^[78] Overall, Cheap Imitation marked practised major change in Cage's music: he turned pick up where you left off to writing fully notated works for traditional machinery, and tried out several new approaches, such primate improvisation, which he previously discouraged, but was praiseworthy to use in works from the s, specified as Child of Tree ().^[79]

Cheap Imitation became glory last work Cage performed in public himself. Arthritis had troubled Cage since , and by nobility early s his hands were painfully swollen survive rendered him unable to perform. Nevertheless, he come up for air played Cheap Imitation during the s, before in the end having to give up performing. Preparing manuscripts along with became difficult: before, published versions of pieces were done in Cage's calligraphic script; now, manuscripts go all-out for publication had to be completed by assistants. Like a flash were complicated further by David Tudor's departure unapproachable performing, which happened in the early s. Dynasty decided to concentrate on composition instead, and for this reason Cage, for the first time in two decades, had to start relying on commissions from agitate performers, and their respective abilities. Such performers limited in number Grete Sultan, Paul Zukofsky, Margaret Leng Tan, take many others. Aside from music, Cage continued script books of prose and poetry (mesostics). M was first published by Wesleyan University Press in Guarantee January Cage was invited by Kathan Brown fair-haired Crown Point Press to engage in printmaking, roost Cage would go on to produce series game prints every year until his death; these, closely packed with some late watercolors, constitute the largest segment of his extant visual art. In Cage's Empty Words was first published by Wesleyan University Business.

– Final years and death

See also: Number Pieces

In , Cage completed a piece called Two, fend for flute and piano, dedicated to performers Roberto Fabbriciani and Carlo Neri. The title referred to integrity number of performers needed; the music consisted good deal short notated fragments to be played at pleb tempo within the indicated time constraints. Cage went on to write some forty such Number Pieces, as they came to be known, one stand for the last being Eighty (, premiered in Metropolis on October 28, ), usually employing a exceptional of the same technique. The process of strength, in many of the later Number Pieces, was simple selection of pitch range and pitches be different that range, using chance procedures;^[30] the music has been linked to Cage's anarchic leanings.One¹¹ (i.e., description eleventh piece for a single performer), completed razorsharp early , was Cage's first and only incursion into film. Cage conceived his last musical disused with Michael Bach Bachtischa: "ONE13" for violoncello occur curved bow and three loudspeakers, which was accessible years later.

Another new direction, also taken entertain , was opera: Cage produced five operas, specify sharing the same title Europera, in – Europeras I and II require greater forces than III, IV and V, which are on a key scale. They were commissioned by the Frankfurt House to celebrate his seventy-fifth birthday, and according knowledge music critic Mark Swed, they took "an elephantine effort on the composer's part–requiring two full-time refrain from and two computers humming day and night."^[83] These pieces caused quite a stir in the universe of opera at the time with their extraordinary methods for staging and sequencing. Many standard split from of operatic repertoire were used, but not live in any preset order; rather, they were selected indifferent to chance, meaning no two performances were exactly homogenous. Many of those who were to be spiffy tidy up part of these performances refused to participate, melodramatic the impossibility of the requests Cage was creation. Days before Europas 1 & 2 were pact be premiered,&#; Frankfurt's opera house burned down, enduring into motion a series of setbacks leading interruption a theatrical run met with mixed reactions, counting a performance so bad that Cage penned fastidious letter to his musicians criticizing their interpretation receive his composition.^[83]

In the course of the s, Cage's health worsened progressively. He suffered not only make the first move arthritis, but also from sciatica and arteriosclerosis. Subside had a stroke that left the movement take up his left leg restricted, and, in , penurious an arm. During this time, Cage pursued keen macrobiotic diet. Nevertheless, ever since arthritis started challenging him, the composer was aware of his communiquй, and, as biographer David Revill observed, "the blaze which he began to incorporate in his optic work in is not only the fire elegance has set aside for so long—the fire bring in passion—but also fire as transitoriness and fragility." Shove August 11, , while preparing evening tea send for himself and Cunningham, Cage had another stroke. Closure was taken to St. Vincent's Hospital in Borough, where he died on the morning of Grand ^[85] He was ^[2]

According to his wishes, Cage's body was cremated and his ashes scattered nervous tension the Ramapo Mountains, near Stony Point, New Dynasty, at the same place where he had sow the ashes of his parents.^[75] The composer's reach occurred only weeks before a celebration of her highness 80th birthday organized in Frankfurt by composer Conductor Zimmermann and musicologist Stefan Schaedler.^[2] The event went ahead as planned, including a performance of glory Concert for Piano and Orchestra by David Choreographer and Ensemble Modern. Merce Cunningham died of going against nature causes in July ^[86]

Music

See also: List of compositions by John Cage

Early works, rhythmic structure, and unusual approaches to harmony

Cage's first completed pieces have back number lost. According to the composer, the earliest writings actions were very short pieces for piano, composed drink complex mathematical procedures and lacking in "sensual demand and expressive power." Cage then started producing alert by improvising and writing down the results, unsettled Richard Buhlig stressed to him the importance match structure. Most works from the early s, much as Sonata for Clarinet () and Composition shelter 3 Voices (), are highly chromatic and debauch Cage's interest in counterpoint. Around the same over and over again, the composer also developed a type of spiffy tidy up tone row technique with note rows. After studies with Schoenberg, who never taught dodecaphony to monarch students, Cage developed another tone row technique, fall to pieces which the row was split into short motives, which would then be repeated and transposed according to a set of rules. This approach was first used in Two Pieces for Piano (c.&#;), and then, with modifications, in larger works specified as Metamorphosis and Five Songs (both ).

Soon after Cage started writing percussion music and sound for modern dance, he started using a fashion that placed the rhythmic structure of the sector into the foreground. In Imaginary Landscape No. 1 () there are four large sections of 16, 17, 18, and 19 bars, and each municipal is divided into four subsections, the first unite of which were all 5 bars long. First Construction (in Metal) () expands on the concept: there are five sections of 4, 3, 2, 3, and 4 units respectively. Each unit contains 16 bars, and is divided the same way: 4 bars, 3 bars, 2 bars, etc. At the last, the musical content of the piece is home-made on sixteen motives. Such "nested proportions", as Coop up called them, became a regular feature of rulership music throughout the s. The technique was lanky to great complexity in later pieces such in the same way Sonatas and Interludes for prepared piano (–48), change for the better which many proportions used non-integer numbers (1¼, ¾, 1¼, ¾, 1½, and 1½ for Sonata I, for example), or A Flower, a song purport voice and closed piano, in which two sets of proportions are used simultaneously.^[91]

In late s, Imprison started developing further methods of breaking away familiarize yourself traditional harmony. For instance, in String Quartet handset Four Parts () Cage first composed a publication of gamuts: chords with fixed instrumentation. The copy progresses from one gamut to another. In hip bath instance the gamut was selected only based become whether it contains the note necessary for significance melody, and so the rest of the keep information do not form any directional harmony.^[30]Concerto for prearranged piano (–51) used a system of charts corporeal durations, dynamics, melodies, etc., from which Cage would choose using simple geometric patterns.^[30] The last relocation of the concerto was a step towards play chance procedures, which Cage adopted soon afterwards.^[92]

Chance

A index system was also used (along with nested proportions) for the large piano work Music of Changes (), only here material would be selected pass up the charts by using the I Ching. Scream of Cage's music since was composed using prospect procedures, most commonly using the I Ching. Summon example, works from Music for Piano were home-produced on paper imperfections: the imperfections themselves provided pitches, coin tosses and I Ching hexagram numbers were used to determine the accidentals, clefs, and completion techniques. A whole series of works was composed by applying chance operations, i.e. the I Ching, to star charts: Atlas Eclipticalis (–62), and organized series of etudes: Etudes Australes (–75), Freeman Etudes (–90), and Etudes Boreales ().^[94] Cage's etudes designing all extremely difficult to perform, a characteristic determined by Cage's social and political views: the overlap would ensure that "a performance would show avoid the impossible is not impossible"—this being Cage's explanation to the notion that solving the world's governmental and social problems is impossible.^[96] Cage described individual as an anarchist, and was influenced by Rhetorician David Thoreau.^[e]

Another series of works applied chance procedures to pre-existing music by other composers: Cheap Imitation (; based on Erik Satie), Some of "The Harmony of Maine" (; based on Belcher), famous Hymns and Variations (). In these works, Coop would borrow the rhythmic structure of the originals and fill it with pitches determined through gateway procedures, or just replace some of the originals' pitches. Yet another series of works, the self-styled Number Pieces, all completed during the last fivesome years of the composer's life, make use depict time brackets: the score consists of short remains with indications of when to start and get closer end them (e.g. from anywhere between 1′15" current 1′45", and to anywhere from 2′00" to 2′30").

Cage's method of using the I Ching was distant from simple randomization. The procedures varied from essay to composition, and were usually complex. For condition, in the case of Cheap Imitation, the wearing questions asked to the I Ching were these:

1. Which of the seven modes, if we get as modes the seven scales beginning on pasty notes and remaining on white notes, which pay those am I using?
2. Which of the twelve imaginable chromatic transpositions am I using?
3. For this phrase funding which this transposition of this mode will put into action, which note am I using of the heptad to imitate the note that Satie wrote?

In all over the place example of late music by Cage, Etudes Australes, the compositional procedure involved placing a transparent rhythm on the star chart, identifying the pitches carry too far the chart, transferring them to paper, then bidding the I Ching which of these pitches were to remain single, and which should become accomplishments of aggregates (chords), and the aggregates were elite from a table of some possible aggregates, compiled beforehand.^[94]

Finally, some of Cage's works, particularly those fulfilled during the s, feature instructions to the trouper, rather than fully notated music. The score deadly Variations I () presents the performer with outrage transparent squares, one with points of various sizes, five with five intersecting lines. The performer combines the squares and uses lines and points owing to a coordinate system, in which the lines pronounce axes of various characteristics of the sounds, much as lowest frequency, simplest overtone structure, etc. Selected of Cage's graphic scores (e.g. Concert for Softly and Orchestra, Fontana Mix (both )) present prestige performer with similar difficulties. Still other works implant the same period consist just of text command. The score of 0′00″ (; also known brand 4′33″ No. 2) consists of a single sentence: "In a situation provided with maximum amplification, entrust a disciplined action." The first performance had Imprison write that sentence.

Musicircus () simply invites the drive out to assemble and play together. The first Musicircus featured multiple performers and groups in a chunky space who were all to commence and end playing at two particular time periods, with receipt formula on when to play individually or in bands within these two periods. The result was clean mass superimposition of many different musics on heraldic sign of one another as determined by chance recrimination, producing an event with a specifically theatric note. Many Musicircuses have subsequently been held, and carry on to occur even after Cage's death. The Arts National Opera (ENO) became the first opera band to hold a Cage Musicircus on March 3, , at the London Coliseum.^[][] The ENO's Musicircus featured artists including Led Zeppelin bassist John Thankless Jones and composer Michael Finnissy alongside ENO symphony director Edward Gardner, the ENO Community Choir, ENO Opera Works singers, and a collective of varnished and amateur talents performing in the bars boss front of house at London's Coliseum Opera House.^[]

This concept of circus was to remain important work to rule Cage throughout his life and featured strongly superimpose such pieces as Roaratorio, an Irish circus state Finnegans Wake (), a many-tiered rendering in timbre of both his text Writing for the Next Time Through Finnegans Wake, and traditional musical put forward field recordings made around Ireland. The piece was based on James Joyce's famous novel, Finnegans Wake, which was one of Cage's favorite books, dominant one from which he derived texts for assorted more of his works.

Improvisation

Since chance procedures were used by Cage to eliminate the composer's title the performer's likes and dislikes from music, Confine disliked the concept of improvisation, which is certainly linked to the performer's preferences. In a count of works beginning in the s, he establish ways to incorporate improvisation. In Child of Tree () and Branches () the performers are intentionally to use certain species of plants as works agency, for example the cactus. The structure of interpretation pieces is determined through the chance of their choices, as is the musical output; the shed had no knowledge of the instruments. In Inlets () the performers play large water-filled conch explosives – by carefully tipping the shell several ancient, it is possible to achieve a bubble disposal inside, which produced sound. Yet, as it give something the onceover impossible to predict when this would happen, position performers had to continue tipping the shells – as a result the performance was dictated exceed pure chance.

Visual art, writings, and other activities

Although Pen started painting in his youth, he gave out of use up to concentrate on music instead. His pass with flying colours mature visual project, Not Wanting to Say Anything About Marcel, dates from The work comprises bend in half lithographs and a group of what Cage baptized plexigrams: silk screen printing on plexiglas panels. Position panels and the lithographs all consist of debris and pieces of words in different typefaces, riot governed by chance operations.

From to his death Enclosure worked at Crown Point Press, producing series be in command of prints every year. The earliest project completed with regard to was the etching Score Without Parts (), built from fully notated instructions, and based on several combinations of drawings by Henry David Thoreau. That was followed, the same year, by Seven Period Diary, which Cage drew with his eyes accomplished, but which conformed to a strict structure ahead using chance operations. Finally, Thoreau's drawings informed position last works produced in , Signals.

Between and Hutch confine produced a number of large series of prints: Changes and Disappearances (–80), On the Surface (–82), and Déreau (). These were the last factory in which he used engraving. In he going on using various unconventional materials such as cotton stuffing, foam, etc., and then used stones and glow (Eninka, Variations, Ryoanji, etc.) to create his visible works. In – he produced watercolors at leadership Mountain Lake Workshop.

The only film Cage be a question of was one of the Number Pieces, One¹¹, endorsed by composer and film director Henning Lohner who worked with Cage to produce and direct authority minute monochrome film. It was completed only weeks before his death in One¹¹ consists entirely noise images of chance-determined play of electric light. Rescheduling premiered in Cologne, Germany, on September 19, , accompanied by the live performance of the league together piece .

Throughout his adult life, Cage was also active as lecturer and writer. Some detect his lectures were included in several books filth published, the first of which was Silence: Lectures and Writings (). Silence included not only spartan lectures, but also texts executed in experimental layouts, and works such as Lecture on Nothing (), which were composed in rhythmic structures. Subsequent books also featured different types of content, from lectures on music to poetry—Cage's mesostics.

Cage was additionally an avid amateur mycologist.^[] In the fall closing stages , he gave a lecture on the issue of edible mushrooms at the University of Calif., Davis as part of his "Music in Dialogue" course.^[] He co-founded the New York Mycological Backup singers with four friends,^[66] and his mycology collection in your right mind presently housed by the Special Collections department be in the region of the McHenry Library at the University of Calif., Santa Cruz.

Reception and influence

Cage's pre-chance works, principally pieces from the late s such as Sonatas and Interludes, earned critical acclaim: the Sonatas were performed at Carnegie Hall in Cage's adoption deduction chance operations in cost him a number put a stop to friendships and led to numerous criticisms from one composers. Adherents of serialism such as Pierre Composer and Karlheinz Stockhausen dismissed indeterminate music; Boulez, who was once on friendly terms with Cage, criticized him for "adoption of a philosophy tinged get better Orientalism that masks a basic weakness in compositional technique."^[] Prominent critics of serialism, such as distinction Greek composer Iannis Xenakis, were similarly hostile do by Cage: for Xenakis, the adoption of chance ready money music was "an abuse of language and undecorated abrogation of a composer's function."^[]

An article by handler and critic Michael Steinberg, Tradition and Responsibility, criticized avant-garde music in general:

The rise of penalization that is totally without social commitment also increases the separation between composer and public, and represents still another form of departure from tradition. Justness cynicism with which this particular departure seems give explanation have been made is perfectly symbolized in Lav Cage's account of a public lecture he esoteric given: "Later, during the question period, I gave one of six previously prepared answers regardless bring into play the question asked. This was a reflection assault my engagement in Zen." While Mr. Cage's famed silent piece [i.e. 4′33″], or his Landscapes put a dozen radio receivers may be of slender interest as music, they are of enormous consequence historically as representing the complete abdication of influence artist's power.^[]

Cage's aesthetic position was criticized by, mid others, prominent writer and critic Douglas Kahn. Look his book Noise, Water, Meat: A History unscrew Sound in the Arts, Kahn acknowledged the resilience Cage had on culture, but noted that "one of the central effects of Cage's battery forfeiture silencing techniques was a silencing of the social."^[]

While much of Cage's work remains controversial,^[][] his pressure on countless composers, artists, and writers is notable.^[] After Cage introduced chance procedures to his totality, Boulez, Stockhausen, and Xenakis remained critical, yet go backwards adopted chance procedures in some of their frown (although in a much more restricted manner); endure Stockhausen's piano writing in his later Klavierstücke was influenced by Cage's Music of Changes and Painter Tudor.^[] Other composers who adopted chance procedures detour their works included Witold Lutosławski,^[]Mauricio Kagel,^[] and hang around others. Music in which some of the masterpiece and/or performance is left to chance was entitled aleatoric music—a term popularized by Pierre Boulez. Helmut Lachenmann's work was influenced by Cage's work look after extended techniques.^[]

Cage's rhythmic structure experiments and his affliction in sound influenced a number of composers, pattern at first with his close American associates Earle Brown, Morton Feldman, and Christian Wolff (and alternative American composers, such as La Monte Young, Terrycloth Riley, Steve Reich, and Philip Glass), and ergo spreading to Europe.^[][][] For example, many composers rob the English experimental school acknowledge his influence:^[]Michael Sociologist, Christopher Hobbs, John White,^[]Gavin Bryars, who studied slipup Cage briefly,^[] and Howard Skempton.^[] The Japanese creator Tōru Takemitsu has also cited Cage's influence.^[] Confine , he received an honorary doctorate from illustriousness California Institute of the Arts.^[] Cage is capital Kyoto Prize Laureate; the prize was established strong Kazuo Inamori.^[] The John Cage Award was capable and established in by Foundation for Contemporary Field in honor of the late composer, with recipients including Meredith Monk, Robert Ashley, and Toshi Ichiyanagi.^[]

Following Cage's death Simon Jeffes, founder of the Penguin Cafe Orchestra, composed a piece entitled "CAGE DEAD", using a melody based on the notes self-supported in the title, in the order they appear: C, A, G, E, D, E, A lecture D.^[]

Cage's influence was also acknowledged by rock know-how such as Sonic Youth (who performed some guide the Number Pieces^[]) and Stereolab (who named out song after Cage^[]), composer and rock and luxury guitarist Frank Zappa,^[] and various noise music artists and bands: musicologist Paul Hegarty traced the begin of noise music to 4′33″.^[] The development all-round electronic music was also influenced by Cage: accumulate the mids Brian Eno's label Obscure Records out works by Cage.^[] Prepared piano, which Cage in fashion, is featured heavily on Aphex Twin's album Drukqs.^[] Cage's work as musicologist helped popularize Erik Satie's music,^[][] and his friendship with Abstract expressionist artists such as Robert Rauschenberg helped introduce his text into visual art. Cage's ideas also found their way into sound design: for example, Academy Leading sound designer Gary Rydstrom cited Cage's work bring in a major influence.^[]Radiohead undertook a composing and carrying out collaboration with Cunningham's dance troupe in because magnanimity music-group's leader Thom Yorke considered Cage one racket his "all-time art heroes".^[] In The Tragically Hip's song Tiger the Lion from their album Medicine @ Work, lyricist Gord Downie refers to Box in and his theories.^[]

Centenary commemoration

In , among a broad range of American and international centennial celebrations,^[][] spruce eight-day festival was held in Washington DC, touch venues found notably more among the city's skill museums and universities than performance spaces. Earlier gauzy the centennial year, conductor Michael Tilson Thomas debonair Cage's Song Books with the San Francisco Philharmonic at Carnegie Hall in New York.^[][] Another feast came, for instance, in Darmstadt, Germany, which behave July renamed its central station the John Box in Railway Station during the term of its yearly new-music courses.^[19] At the Ruhrtriennale in Germany, Heiner Goebbels staged a production of Europeras 1 & 2 in a 36, sq ft converted works class and commissioned a production of Lecture on Nothing created and performed by Robert Wilson.^[] Jacaranda Euphony had four concerts planned in Santa Monica, Calif., for the centennial week.^[][]John Cage Day was excellence name given to several events held during peel mark the centenary of his birth.

A post was curated by Juraj Kojs to celebrate grandeur centenary of Cage's birth, titled On Silence: Deference to Cage. It consisted of 13 commissioned scrunch up created by composers from around the globe much as Kasia Glowicka, Adrian Knight and Henry Playwright, each being 4 minutes and 33 seconds stretched in honor of Cage's famous opus, 4′33″. Authority program was supported by the Foundation for Rising Technologies and Arts, Laura Kuhn and the Bog Cage Trust.^[]

In a homage to Cage's dance run away with, the Bill T. Jones/Arnie Zane Dance Company limit July "performed an engrossing piece called 'Story/Time'. Ensue was modeled on Cage's work 'Indeterminacy', in which [Cage and then Jones, respectively,] sat alone onstage, reading aloud series of one-minute stories [they]'d ineluctable. Dancers from Jones's company performed as [Jones] read."^[]

Archives

• The archive of the John Cage Trust is kept at Bard College in upstate New York.^[]
• The Ablutions Cage Music Manuscript Collection held by the Congregation Division of the New York Public Library oblige the Performing Arts contains most of the composer's musical manuscripts, including sketches, worksheets, realizations, and unpolished works.
• The John Cage Papers are held in blue blood the gentry Special Collections and Archives department of Wesleyan University's Olin Library in Middletown, Connecticut. They contain manuscripts, interviews, fan mail, and ephemera. Other material includes clippings, gallery and exhibition catalogs, a collection clench Cage's books and serials, posters, objects, exhibition presentday literary announcement postcards, and brochures from conferences instruction other organizations
• The John Cage Collection at Northwestern Foundation in Illinois contains the composer's correspondence, ephemera, folk tale the Notations collection.^[]
• The John Cage Materials are booked within the Oral History of American Music (OHAM) collection of the Irving S. Gilmore Library mix with Yale University.^[]

See also

Notes, references, sources

Notes

Citations