John Cage
John Cage | |
---|---|
Born | John Milton Cage Jr. September 5, 1912 Los Angeles, California |
Died | August 12, 1992 New York City, U.S. | (aged 79)
Alma mater | Pomona College |
Occupations |
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Spouse |
Xenia Andreyevna Kashevaroff (m. 1935; div. 1945) |
Partner | Merce Cunningham |
Signature | |
John Milton Cage Jr. (September 5, 1912 – August 12, 1992) was an American composer and music theorist. A pioneer of indeterminacy in music, electroacoustic music, and non-standard use of musical instruments, Cage was one of the leading figures of the post-war avant-garde. Critics have lauded him as one of the most influential composers of the 20th century.[1][2][3][4] He was also instrumental in the development of modern dance, mostly through his association with choreographer Merce Cunningham, who was also Cage's romantic partner for most of their lives.[5][6]
Cage's teachers included
Cage's best known work is the 1952 composition 4′33″, a piece performed in the absence of deliberate sound; musicians who present the work do nothing but be present for the duration specified by the title. The content of the composition is intended to be the sounds of the environment heard by the audience during performance.[10][11] The work's challenge to assumed definitions about musicianship and musical experience made it a popular and controversial topic both in musicology and the broader aesthetics of art and performance. Cage was also a pioneer of the prepared piano (a piano with its sound altered by objects placed between or on its strings or hammers), for which he wrote numerous dance-related works and a few concert pieces. These include Sonatas and Interludes (1946–48).[12]
Life
1912–1931: early years
Cage was born September 5, 1912, at Good Samaritan Hospital in downtown Los Angeles.[13] His father, John Milton Cage Sr. (1886–1964), was an inventor, and his mother, Lucretia ("Crete") Harvey (1881–1968), worked intermittently as a journalist for the Los Angeles Times.[14] The family's roots were deeply American: in a 1976 interview, Cage mentioned that George Washington was assisted by an ancestor named John Cage in the task of surveying the Colony of Virginia.[15] Cage described his mother as a woman with "a sense of society" who was "never happy",[16] while his father is perhaps best characterized by his inventions: sometimes idealistic, such as a diesel-fueled submarine that gave off exhaust bubbles, the senior Cage being uninterested in an undetectable submarine;[14] others revolutionary and against the scientific norms, such as the "electrostatic field theory" of the universe.[a] John Cage Sr. taught his son that "if someone says 'can't' that shows you what to do." In 1944–45 Cage wrote two small character pieces dedicated to his parents: Crete and Dad. The latter is a short lively piece that ends abruptly, while "Crete" is a slightly longer, mostly melodic contrapuntal work.[17]
Cage's first experiences with music were from private piano teachers in the
Cage enrolled at Pomona College in Claremont as a theology major in 1928. Often crossing disciplines again, though, he encountered at Pomona the work of artist Marcel Duchamp via Professor José Pijoan, of writer James Joyce via Don Sample, of philosopher Ananda Coomaraswamy and of Henry Cowell.[19] In 1930 he dropped out, having come to believe that "college was of no use to a writer"[22] after an incident described in the 1991 autobiographical statement:
I was shocked at college to see one hundred of my classmates in the library all reading copies of the same book. Instead of doing as they did, I went into the stacks and read the first book written by an author whose name began with Z. I received the highest grade in the class. That convinced me that the institution was not being run correctly. I left.[16]
Cage persuaded his parents that a trip to Europe would be more beneficial to a future writer than college studies.
After several months in Paris, Cage's enthusiasm for America was revived after he read
1931–1936: apprenticeship
Cage returned to the United States in 1931.[28] He went to Santa Monica, California, where he made a living partly by giving small, private lectures on contemporary art. He got to know various important figures of the Southern California art world, such as Richard Buhlig (who became his first composition teacher)[30] and arts patron Galka Scheyer.[22] By 1933, Cage decided to concentrate on music rather than painting. "The people who heard my music had better things to say about it than the people who looked at my paintings had to say about my paintings", Cage later explained.[22] In 1933 he sent some of his compositions to Henry Cowell; the reply was a "rather vague letter",[31] in which Cowell suggested that Cage study with Arnold Schoenberg—Cage's musical ideas at the time included composition based on a 25-tone row, somewhat similar to Schoenberg's twelve-tone technique.[32] Cowell also advised that, before approaching Schoenberg, Cage should take some preliminary lessons, and recommended Adolph Weiss, a former Schoenberg pupil.[33]
Following Cowell's advice, Cage travelled to New York City in 1933 and started studying with Weiss as well as taking lessons from Cowell himself at The New School.[30] He supported himself financially by taking up a job washing walls at a YWCA (World Young Women's Christian Association) in Brooklyn.[34] Cage's routine during that period was apparently very tiring, with just four hours of sleep on most nights, and four hours of composition every day starting at 4 am.[34][35] Several months later, still in 1933, Cage became sufficiently good at composition to approach Schoenberg.[b] He could not afford Schoenberg's price, and when he mentioned it, the older composer asked whether Cage would devote his life to music. After Cage replied that he would, Schoenberg offered to tutor him free of charge.[36]
Cage studied with Schoenberg in California: first at University of Southern California and then at University of California, Los Angeles, as well as privately.[30] The older composer became one of the biggest influences on Cage, who "literally worshipped him",[37] particularly 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 apparently still important some 40 years later, when Cage "had no need for it [i.e. writing music]", he continued composing partly because of the promise he gave.[38] Schoenberg's methods and their influence on Cage are well documented by Cage himself in various lectures and writings. Particularly well-known is the conversation mentioned in the 1958 lecture Indeterminacy:
After I had been studying with him for two years, Schoenberg said, "In order to write music, you must have a feeling for harmony." I explained to him that I had no feeling for harmony. He then said that I would always encounter an obstacle, that it would be as though I came to a wall through which I could not pass. I said, "In that case I will devote my life to beating my head against that wall."[39]
Cage studied with Schoenberg for two years, but although he admired his teacher, he decided to leave after Schoenberg told the assembled students that he was trying to make it impossible for them to write music. Much later, Cage recounted the incident: "... When he said that, I revolted, not against him, but against what he had said. I determined then and there, more than ever before, to write music."[37] Although Schoenberg was not impressed with Cage's compositional abilities during these two years, in a later interview, where he initially said that none of his American pupils were interesting, he further stated in reference to Cage: "There was one ... of course he's not a composer, but he's an inventor—of genius."[37] Cage would later adopt the "inventor" moniker and deny that he was in fact a composer.[40]
At some point in 1934–35, during his studies with Schoenberg, Cage was working at his mother's arts and crafts shop, where he met artist
1937–1949: modern dance and Eastern influences
The newly married couple first lived with Cage's parents in Pacific Palisades, then moved to Hollywood.[42] During 1936–38 Cage changed numerous jobs, including one that started his lifelong association with modern dance: dance accompanist at the University of California, Los Angeles. He produced music for choreographies and at one point taught a course on "Musical Accompaniments for Rhythmic Expression" at UCLA, with his aunt Phoebe.[43] It was during that time that Cage first started experimenting with unorthodox instruments, such as household items, metal sheets, and so on. This was inspired by Oskar Fischinger, who told Cage that "everything in the world has a spirit that can be released through its sound." Although Cage did not share the idea of spirits, these words inspired him to begin exploring the sounds produced by hitting various non-musical objects.[43][44]
In 1938, on Cowell's recommendation, Cage drove to San Francisco to find employment and to seek out fellow Cowell student and composer
Cage left Seattle in the summer of 1941 after the painter
In New York, the Cages first stayed with painter Max Ernst and Peggy Guggenheim. Through them, Cage met important artists such as Piet Mondrian, André Breton, Jackson Pollock, and Marcel Duchamp, and many others. Guggenheim was very supportive: the Cages could stay with her and Ernst for any length of time, and she offered to organize a concert of Cage's music at the opening of her gallery, which included paying for transportation of Cage's percussion instruments from Chicago. After she learned that Cage secured another concert, at the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA), Guggenheim withdrew all support, and, even after the ultimately successful MoMA concert, Cage was left homeless, unemployed and penniless. The commissions he hoped for did not happen. He and Xenia spent the summer of 1942 with dancer Jean Erdman and her husband Joseph Campbell. Without the percussion instruments, Cage again turned to prepared piano, producing a substantial body of works for performances by various choreographers, including Merce Cunningham, who had moved to New York City several years earlier. Cage and Cunningham eventually became romantically involved, and Cage's marriage, already breaking up during the early 1940s, ended in divorce in 1945. Cunningham remained Cage's partner for the rest of his life. Cage also countered the lack of percussion instruments by writing, on one occasion, for voice and closed piano: the resulting piece, The Wonderful Widow of Eighteen Springs (1942), quickly became popular and was performed by the celebrated duo of Cathy Berberian and Luciano Berio.[45] In 1944, he appeared in Maya Deren's At Land, a 15-minute silent experimental film.
Like his personal life, Cage's artistic life went through a crisis in mid-1940s. The composer was experiencing a growing disillusionment with the idea of music as means of communication: the public rarely accepted his work, and Cage himself, too, had trouble understanding the music of his colleagues. In early 1946 Cage agreed to tutor
Early in 1946, his former teacher Richard Buhlig arranged for Cage to meet Berlin-born pianist Grete Sultan, who had escaped from Nazi persecution to New York in 1941.[49] They became close, lifelong friends, and Cage later dedicated part of his Music for Piano and his monumental piano cycle Etudes Australes to her. In 1949, he received a Guggenheim Fellowship.[50]
1950s: discovering chance
After a 1949 performance at Carnegie Hall, New York, Cage received a grant from the Guggenheim Foundation, which enabled him to make a trip to Europe, where he met composers such as Olivier Messiaen and Pierre Boulez. More important was Cage's chance encounter with Morton Feldman in New York City in early 1950. Both composers attended a New York Philharmonic concert, where the orchestra performed Anton Webern's Symphony, op. 21, followed by a piece by Sergei Rachmaninoff. Cage felt so overwhelmed by Webern's piece that he left before the Rachmaninoff; and in the lobby, he met Feldman, who was leaving for the same reason.[51] The two composers quickly became friends; some time later Cage, Feldman, Earle Brown, David Tudor and Cage's pupil Christian Wolff came to be referred to as "the New York school".[52][53]
In early 1951, Wolff presented Cage with a copy of the
When I hear what we call music, it seems to me that someone is talking. And talking about his feelings, or about his ideas of relationships. But when I hear traffic, the sound of traffic—here on Sixth Avenue, for instance—I don't have the feeling that anyone is talking. I have the feeling that sound is acting. And I love the activity of sound ... I don't need sound to talk to me.[58]
Although Cage had used chance on a few earlier occasions, most notably in the third movement of Concerto for Prepared Piano and Chamber Orchestra (1950–51),[59] the I Ching opened new possibilities in this field for him. The first results of the new approach were Imaginary Landscape No. 4 for 12 radio receivers, and Music of Changes for piano. The latter work was written for David Tudor,[60] whom Cage met through Feldman—another friendship that lasted until Cage's death.[c] Tudor premiered most of Cage's works until the early 1960s, when he stopped performing on the piano and concentrated on composing music. The I Ching became Cage's standard tool for composition: he used it in practically every work composed after 1951, and eventually settled on a computer algorithm that calculated numbers in a manner similar to throwing coins for the I Ching.
Despite the fame Sonatas and Interludes earned him, and the connections he cultivated with American and European composers and musicians, Cage was quite poor. Although he still had an apartment at 326
In 1952–1953 he completed another mammoth project—the
During this time Cage was also teaching at the avant-garde Black Mountain College just outside Asheville, North Carolina. Cage taught at the college in the summers of 1948 and 1952 and was in residence the summer of 1953. While at Black Mountain College in 1952, he organized what has been called the first "happening" (see discussion below) in the United States, later titled Theatre Piece No. 1, a multi-layered, multi-media performance event staged the same day as Cage conceived it that "that would greatly influence 1950s and 60s artistic practices". In addition to Cage, the participants included Cunningham and Tudor.[65]
From 1953 onward, Cage was busy composing music for modern dance, particularly Cunningham's dances (Cage's partner adopted chance too, out of fascination for the movement of the human body), as well as developing new methods of using chance, in a series of works he referred to as The Ten Thousand Things. In the summer of 1954 he moved out of New York and settled in
1960s: fame
Cage was affiliated with Wesleyan University and collaborated with members of its music department from the 1950s until his death in 1992. At the university, the philosopher, poet, and professor of classics Norman O. Brown befriended Cage, an association that proved fruitful to both.[citation needed] In 1960 the composer was appointed a fellow on the faculty of the Center for Advanced Studies (now the Center for Humanities) in the Liberal Arts and Sciences at Wesleyan,[68] where he started teaching classes in experimental music. In October 1961, Wesleyan University Press published Silence, a collection of Cage's lectures and writings on a wide variety of subjects, including the famous Lecture on Nothing that was composed using a complex time length scheme, much like some of Cage's music. Silence was Cage's first book of six but it remains his most widely read and influential.[d][30] In the early 1960s Cage began his lifelong association with C.F. Peters Corporation. Walter Hinrichsen, the president of the corporation, offered Cage an exclusive contract and instigated the publication of a catalog of Cage's works, which appeared in 1962.[66]
Edition Peters soon published a large number of scores by Cage, and this, together with the publication of Silence, led to much higher prominence for the composer than ever before—one of the positive consequences of this was that in 1965
Many of the Variations and other 1960s pieces were in fact "happenings", an art form established by Cage and his students in late 1950s. Cage's "Experimental Composition" classes at The New School have become legendary as an American source of Fluxus, an international network of artists, composers, and designers. The majority of his students had little or no background in music. Most were artists. They included Jackson Mac Low, Allan Kaprow, Al Hansen, George Brecht, Ben Patterson, and Dick Higgins, as well as many others Cage invited unofficially. Famous pieces that resulted from the classes include George Brecht's Time Table Music and Al Hansen's Alice Denham in 48 Seconds.[70] As set forth by Cage, happenings were theatrical events that abandon the traditional concept of stage-audience and occur without a sense of definite duration. Instead, they are left to chance. They have a minimal script, with no plot. In fact, a "happening" is so-named because it occurs in the present, attempting to arrest the concept of passing time. Cage believed that theater was the closest route to integrating art and real life. The term "happenings" was coined by Allan Kaprow, one of his students, who defined it as a genre in the late fifties. Cage met Kaprow while on a mushroom hunt with George Segal and invited him to join his class. In following these developments Cage was strongly influenced by Antonin Artaud's seminal treatise The Theatre and Its Double, and the happenings of this period can be viewed as a forerunner to the ensuing Fluxus movement. In October 1960, Mary Bauermeister's Cologne studio hosted a joint concert by Cage and the video artist Nam June Paik (Cage's friend and mentee), who in the course of his performance of Etude for Piano cut off Cage's tie and then poured a bottle of shampoo over the heads of Cage and Tudor.[71]
In 1967, Cage's book A Year from Monday was first published by Wesleyan University Press. Cage's parents died during the decade: his father in 1964,[72] and his mother in 1969. Cage had their ashes scattered in Ramapo Mountains, near Stony Point, and asked for the same to be done to him after his death.[73]
1969–1987: new departures
Cage's work from the sixties features some of his largest and most ambitious, not to mention socially utopian pieces, reflecting the mood of the era yet also his absorption of the writings of both
Also in 1969, Cage produced 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 to its source. Although Cage's affection for Satie's music was well-known, it was highly unusual for him to compose a personal work, one in which the composer is present. When asked about this apparent contradiction, Cage replied: "Obviously, Cheap Imitation lies outside of what may seem necessary in my work in general, and that's disturbing. I'm the first to be disturbed by it."[75] Cage's fondness for the piece resulted in a recording—a rare occurrence, since Cage disliked making recordings of his music—made in 1976.[76] Overall, Cheap Imitation marked a major change in Cage's music: he turned again to writing fully notated works for traditional instruments, and tried out several new approaches, such as improvisation, which he previously discouraged, but was able to use in works from the 1970s, such as Child of Tree (1975).[77]
Cheap Imitation became the last work Cage performed in public himself.
1987–1992: final years and death
In 1987, Cage completed a piece called Two, for flute and piano, dedicated to performers Roberto Fabbriciani and Carlo Neri. The title referred to the number of performers needed; the music consisted of short notated fragments to be played at any tempo within the indicated time constraints. Cage went on to write some forty such Number Pieces, as they came to be known, one of the last being Eighty (1992, premiered in Munich on October 28, 2011), usually employing a variant of the same technique. The process of composition, in many of the later Number Pieces, was simple selection of pitch range and pitches from that range, using chance procedures;[30] the music has been linked to Cage's anarchic leanings.[80] One11 (i.e., the eleventh piece for a single performer), completed in early 1992, was Cage's first and only foray into film. Cage conceived his last musical work with Michael Bach Bachtischa: "ONE13" for violoncello with curved bow and three loudspeakers, which was published years later.
Another new direction, also taken in 1987, was opera: Cage produced five operas, all sharing the same title Europera, in 1987–91. Europeras I and II require greater forces than III, IV and V, which are on a chamber scale. They were commissioned by the Frankfurt Opera to celebrate his seventy-fifth birthday, and according to music critic Mark Swed, they took "an enormous effort on the composer's part–requiring two full-time assistants and two computers humming day and night."[81] These pieces caused quite a stir in the world of opera at the time with their unconventional methods for staging and sequencing. Many standard pieces of operatic repertoire were used, but not in any preset order; rather, they were selected by chance, meaning no two performances were exactly alike. Many of those who were to be a part of these performances refused to participate, citing the impossibility of the requests Cage was making. Days before Europas 1 & 2 were to be premiered, Frankfurt's opera house burned down, setting into motion a series of setbacks leading to a theatrical run met with mixed reactions, including a performance so bad that Cage penned a letter to his musicians criticizing their interpretation of his composition.[81]
In the course of the 1980s, Cage's health worsened progressively. He suffered not only from arthritis, but also from
According to his wishes, Cage's body was cremated and his ashes scattered in the Ramapo Mountains, near Stony Point, New York, at the same place where he had scattered the ashes of his parents.[73] The composer's death occurred only weeks before a celebration of his 80th birthday organized in Frankfurt by composer Walter Zimmermann and musicologist Stefan Schaedler.[2] The event went ahead as planned, including a performance of the Concert for Piano and Orchestra by David Tudor and Ensemble Modern. Merce Cunningham died of natural causes in July 2009.[84]
Music
Early works, rhythmic structure, and new approaches to harmony
Cage's first completed pieces are currently lost. According to the composer, the earliest works were very short pieces for piano, composed using complex mathematical procedures and lacking in "sensual appeal and expressive power."
Soon after Cage started writing percussion music and music for modern dance, he started using a technique that placed the rhythmic structure of the piece into the foreground. In Imaginary Landscape No. 1 (1939) there are four large sections of 16, 17, 18, and 19 bars, and each section is divided into four subsections, the first three of which were all 5 bars long. First Construction (in Metal) (1939) 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. Finally, the musical content of the piece is based on sixteen motives.[87] Such "nested proportions", as Cage called them, became a regular feature of his music throughout the 1940s. The technique was elevated to great complexity in later pieces such as Sonatas and Interludes for prepared piano (1946–48), in which many proportions used non-integer numbers (1¼, ¾, 1¼, ¾, 1½, and 1½ for Sonata I, for example),[88] or A Flower, a song for voice and closed piano, in which two sets of proportions are used simultaneously.[89]
In late 1940s, Cage started developing further methods of breaking away with traditional harmony. For instance, in String Quartet in Four Parts (1950) Cage first composed a number of gamuts: chords with fixed instrumentation. The piece progresses from one gamut to another. In each instance the gamut was selected only based on whether it contains the note necessary for the melody, and so the rest of the notes do not form any directional harmony.[30] Concerto for prepared piano (1950–51) used a system of charts of durations, dynamics, melodies, etc., from which Cage would choose using simple geometric patterns.[30] The last movement of the concerto was a step towards using chance procedures, which Cage adopted soon afterwards.[90]
Chance
A chart system was also used (along with nested proportions) for the large piano work Music of Changes (1951), only here material would be selected from the charts by using the I Ching. All of Cage's music since 1951 was composed using chance procedures, most commonly using the I Ching. For example, works from Music for Piano were based on paper imperfections: the imperfections themselves provided pitches, coin tosses and I Ching hexagram numbers were used to determine the accidentals, clefs, and playing techniques.[91] A whole series of works was created by applying chance operations, i.e. the I Ching, to star charts: Atlas Eclipticalis (1961–62), and a series of etudes: Etudes Australes (1974–75), Freeman Etudes (1977–90), and Etudes Boreales (1978).[92] Cage's etudes are all extremely difficult to perform, a characteristic dictated by Cage's social and political views: the difficulty would ensure that "a performance would show that the impossible is not impossible"[93]—this being Cage's answer to the notion that solving the world's political and social problems is impossible.[94] Cage described himself as an anarchist, and was influenced by Henry David Thoreau.[e]
Another series of works applied chance procedures to pre-existing music by other composers: Cheap Imitation (1969; based on Erik Satie), Some of "The Harmony of Maine" (1978; based on Belcher), and Hymns and Variations (1979). In these works, Cage would borrow the rhythmic structure of the originals and fill it with pitches determined through chance procedures, or just replace some of the originals' pitches.[96] Yet another series of works, the so-called Number Pieces, all completed during the last five years of the composer's life, make use of time brackets: the score consists of short fragments with indications of when to start and to end them (e.g. from anywhere between 1′15" and 1′45", and to anywhere from 2′00" to 2′30").[97]
Cage's method of using the I Ching was far from simple randomization. The procedures varied from composition to composition, and were usually complex. For example, in the case of Cheap Imitation, the exact questions asked to the I Ching were these:
- Which of the seven modes, if we take as modes the seven scales beginning on white notes and remaining on white notes, which of those am I using?
- Which of the twelve possible chromatic transpositions am I using?
- For this phrase for which this transposition of this mode will apply, which note am I using of the seven to imitate the note that Satie wrote?[98]
In another example of late music by Cage, Etudes Australes, the compositional procedure involved placing a transparent strip on the star chart, identifying the pitches from the chart, transferring them to paper, then asking the I Ching which of these pitches were to remain single, and which should become parts of aggregates (chords), and the aggregates were selected from a table of some 550 possible aggregates, compiled beforehand.[92][99]
Finally, some of Cage's works, particularly those completed during the 1960s, feature instructions to the performer, rather than fully notated music. The score of Variations I (1958) presents the performer with six transparent squares, one with points of various sizes, five with five intersecting lines. The performer combines the squares and uses lines and points as a coordinate system, in which the lines are axes of various characteristics of the sounds, such as lowest frequency, simplest overtone structure, etc.[100] Some of Cage's graphic scores (e.g. Concert for Piano and Orchestra, Fontana Mix (both 1958)) present the performer with similar difficulties. Still other works from the same period consist just of text instructions. The score of 0′00″ (1962; also known as 4′33″ No. 2) consists of a single sentence: "In a situation provided with maximum amplification, perform a disciplined action." The first performance had Cage write that sentence.[101]
Musicircus (1967) simply invites the performers to assemble and play together. The first Musicircus featured multiple performers and groups in a large space who were all to commence and stop playing at two particular time periods, with instructions on when to play individually or in groups within these two periods. The result was a mass superimposition of many different musics on top of one another as determined by chance distribution, producing an event with a specifically theatric feel. Many Musicircuses have subsequently been held, and continue to occur even after Cage's death. The English National Opera (ENO) became the first opera company to hold a Cage Musicircus on March 3, 2012, at the London Coliseum.[102][103] The ENO's Musicircus featured artists including Led Zeppelin bassist John Paul Jones and composer Michael Finnissy alongside ENO music director Edward Gardner, the ENO Community Choir, ENO Opera Works singers, and a collective of professional and amateur talents performing in the bars and front of house at London's Coliseum Opera House.[104]
This concept of circus was to remain important to Cage throughout his life and featured strongly in such pieces as Roaratorio, an Irish circus on Finnegans Wake (1979), a many-tiered rendering in sound of both his text Writing for the Second Time Through Finnegans Wake, and traditional musical and 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, and one from which he derived texts for several more of his works.
Improvisation
Since chance procedures were used by Cage to eliminate the composer's and the performer's likes and dislikes from music, Cage disliked the concept of improvisation, which is inevitably linked to the performer's preferences. In a number of works beginning in the 1970s, he found ways to incorporate improvisation. In Child of Tree (1975) and Branches (1976) the performers are asked to use certain species of plants as instruments, for example the
Visual art, writings, and other activities
Although Cage started painting in his youth, he gave it up to concentrate on music instead. His first mature visual project, Not Wanting to Say Anything About Marcel, dates from 1969. The work comprises two
From 1978 to his death Cage worked at Crown Point Press, producing series of prints every year. The earliest project completed there was the etching Score Without Parts (1978), created from fully notated instructions, and based on various combinations of drawings by Henry David Thoreau. This was followed, the same year, by Seven Day Diary, which Cage drew with his eyes closed, but which conformed to a strict structure developed using chance operations. Finally, Thoreau's drawings informed the last works produced in 1978, Signals.[107]
Between 1979 and 1982 Cage produced a number of large series of prints: Changes and Disappearances (1979–80), On the Surface (1980–82), and Déreau (1982). These were the last works in which he used engraving.[108] In 1983 he started using various unconventional materials such as cotton batting, foam, etc., and then used stones and fire (Eninka, Variations, Ryoanji, etc.) to create his visual works.[109] In 1988–1990 he produced watercolors at the Mountain Lake Workshop.
The only film Cage produced was one of the Number Pieces, One11, commissioned by composer and film director Henning Lohner who worked with Cage to produce and direct the 90-minute monochrome film. It was completed only weeks before his death in 1992. One11 consists entirely of images of chance-determined play of electric light. It premiered in Cologne, Germany, on September 19, 1992, accompanied by the live performance of the orchestra piece 103.
Throughout his adult life, Cage was also active as lecturer and writer. Some of his lectures were included in several books he published, the first of which was Silence: Lectures and Writings (1961). Silence included not only simple lectures, but also texts executed in experimental layouts, and works such as Lecture on Nothing (1949), 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 also an avid amateur mycologist.[110] In the fall of 1969, he gave a lecture on the subject of edible mushrooms at the University of California, Davis as part of his "Music in Dialogue" course.[111] He co-founded the New York Mycological Society with four friends,[66] and his mycology collection is presently housed by the Special Collections department of the McHenry Library at the University of California, Santa Cruz.
Reception and influence
Cage's pre-chance works, particularly pieces from the late 1940s such as Sonatas and Interludes, earned critical acclaim: the Sonatas were performed at Carnegie Hall in 1949. Cage's adoption of chance operations in 1951 cost him a number of friendships and led to numerous criticisms from fellow composers. Adherents of serialism such as Pierre Boulez and Karlheinz Stockhausen dismissed indeterminate music; Boulez, who was once on friendly terms with Cage, criticized him for "adoption of a philosophy tinged with Orientalism that masks a basic weakness in compositional technique."[112] Prominent critics of serialism, such as the Greek composer Iannis Xenakis, were similarly hostile towards Cage: for Xenakis, the adoption of chance in music was "an abuse of language and ... an abrogation of a composer's function."[113]
An article by teacher and critic Michael Steinberg, Tradition and Responsibility, criticized avant-garde music in general:
The rise of music that is totally without social commitment also increases the separation between composer and public, and represents still another form of departure from tradition. The cynicism with which this particular departure seems to have been made is perfectly symbolized in John Cage's account of a public lecture he had given: "Later, during the question period, I gave one of six previously prepared answers regardless of the question asked. This was a reflection of my engagement in Zen." While Mr. Cage's famous silent piece [i.e. 4′33″], or his Landscapes for a dozen radio receivers may be of little interest as music, they are of enormous importance historically as representing the complete abdication of the artist's power.[114]
Cage's aesthetic position was criticized by, among others, prominent writer and critic Douglas Kahn. In his 1999 book Noise, Water, Meat: A History of Sound in the Arts, Kahn acknowledged the influence Cage had on culture, but noted that "one of the central effects of Cage's battery of silencing techniques was a silencing of the social."[115]
While much of Cage's work remains controversial,[116][117] his influence on countless composers, artists, and writers is notable.[118] After Cage introduced chance procedures to his works, Boulez, Stockhausen, and Xenakis remained critical, yet all adopted chance procedures in some of their works (although in a much more restricted manner); and Stockhausen's piano writing in his later Klavierstücke was influenced by Cage's Music of Changes and David Tudor.[119] Other composers who adopted chance procedures in their works included Witold Lutosławski,[120] Mauricio Kagel,[121] and many others. Music in which some of the composition and/or performance is left to chance was labelled aleatoric music—a term popularized by Pierre Boulez. Helmut Lachenmann's work was influenced by Cage's work with extended techniques.[122]
Cage's rhythmic structure experiments and his interest in sound influenced a number of composers, starting at first with his close American associates Earle Brown, Morton Feldman, and Christian Wolff (and other American composers, such as La Monte Young, Terry Riley, Steve Reich, and Philip Glass), and then spreading to Europe.[123][124][125] For example, many composers of the English experimental school acknowledge his influence:[126] Michael Parsons, Christopher Hobbs, John White,[127] Gavin Bryars, who studied under Cage briefly,[128] and Howard Skempton.[129] The Japanese composer Tōru Takemitsu has also cited Cage's influence.[130] In 1986, he received an honorary doctorate from the California Institute of the Arts.[131] Cage is a 1989 Kyoto Prize Laureate; the prize was established by Kazuo Inamori.[132] The John Cage Award was endowed and established in 1992 by Foundation for Contemporary Arts in honor of the late composer, with recipients including Meredith Monk, Robert Ashley, and Toshi Ichiyanagi.[133]
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 contained in the title, in the order they appear: C, A, G, E, D, E, A and D.[134]
Cage's influence was also acknowledged by rock acts such as
Centenary commemoration
In 2012, among a wide range of American and international centennial celebrations,
A 2012 project was curated by Juraj Kojs to celebrate the centenary of Cage's birth, titled On Silence: Homage to Cage. It consisted of 13 commissioned works created by composers from around the globe such as Kasia Glowicka, Adrian Knight and Henry Vega, each being 4 minutes and 33 seconds long in honor of Cage's famous 1952 opus, 4′33″. The program was supported by the Foundation for Emerging Technologies and Arts, Laura Kuhn and the John Cage Trust.[152]
In a homage to Cage's dance work, the Bill T. Jones/Arnie Zane Dance Company in July 2012 "performed an engrossing piece called 'Story/Time'. It was modeled on Cage's 1958 work 'Indeterminacy', in which [Cage and then Jones, respectively,] sat alone onstage, reading aloud ... series of one-minute stories [they]'d written. Dancers from Jones's company performed as [Jones] read."[144]
Archives
- The archive of the John Cage Trust is held at Bard College in upstate New York.[153]
- The John Cage Music Manuscript Collection held by the Music Division of the New York Public Library for the Performing Arts contains most of the composer's musical manuscripts, including sketches, worksheets, realizations, and unfinished works.
- The John Cage Papers are held in the 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 of Cage's books and serials, posters, objects, exhibition and literary announcement postcards, and brochures from conferences and other organizations
- The John Cage Collection at Northwestern University in Illinois contains the composer's correspondence, ephemera, and the Notations collection.[154]
- The John Cage Materials are held within the Oral History of American Music (OHAM) collection of the Irving S. Gilmore Library at Yale University.[155]
See also
- An Anthology of Chance Operations
- List of compositions by John Cage
- The Organ2/ASLSP (a.k.a. As Slow as Possible) project, the longest concert ever created.
- The Revenge of the Dead Indians, a 1993 documentary about Cage by Henning Lohner.
- Works for prepared piano by John Cage
Notes, references, sources
Notes
- ^ Cage quoted in Kostelanetz 2003, 1–2. Cage mentions a working model of the universe that his father had built, and that the scientists who saw it could not explain how it worked and refused to believe it.
- ^ Different sources give different details of their first meeting. Pritchett, Kuhn & Garrett 2012, in Grove, imply that Cage met Schoenberg in New York City: "Cage followed Schoenberg to Los Angeles in 1934". In a 1976 interview quoted in Kostelanetz 2003, 5, Cage mentions that he "went to see him [Schoenberg] in Los Angeles."
- ^ Recent research has shown that Cage may have met Tudor almost a decade earlier, in 1942, through Jean Erdman: Gann, Kyle (2008). "Cleaning Up a Life". artsjournal.com. Retrieved August 4, 2009.
- ^ Technically, it was his second, for Cage previously collaborated with Kathleen Hoover on a biographical volume on Virgil Thomson which was published in 1959.
- ^ Cage self-identified as an anarchist in a 1985 interview: "I'm an anarchist. I don't know whether the adjective is pure and simple, or philosophical, or what, but I don't like government! And I don't like institutions! And I don't have any confidence in even good institutions."[95]
Citations
- ^ Pritchett, Kuhn & Garrett 2012 "He has had a greater impact on music in the 20th century than any other American composer."
- ^ a b c Kozinn, Allan (August 13, 1992). "John Cage, 79, a Minimalist Enchanted With Sound, Dies". The New York Times. Retrieved July 21, 2007.
- ISBN 978-0-226-47253-9.
... when Harvard University Press called him, in a 1990 book advertisement, 'without a doubt the most influential composer of the last half-century', amazingly, that was too modest.
- ISBN 978-0-385-14278-6.
... John Cage is probably the most influential ... of all American composers to date.
- ^ Perloff & Junkerman 1994, 93.
- ^ Bernstein & Hatch 2001, 43–45.
- ^ Lejeunne 2012, 185–189.
- ^ John Cage – Music of Changes. By David Ryan, taniachen.com
- ^ Cage 1973, 12.
- ^ Kostelanetz 2003, 69–70.
- ^ Reviews cited in Fetterman 1996, 69
- ^ Nicholls 2002, 80: "Most critics agree that Sonatas and Interludes (1946–48) is the finest composition of Cage's early period."
- ^ Mark Swed (August 31, 2012), John Cage's genius an L.A. story Los Angeles Times.
- ^ a b Nicholls 2002, 4
- ^ Cage quoted in Kostelanetz 2003, 1. For details on Cage's ancestry, see, for example, Nicholls 2002, 4–6.
- ^ a b Cage, John (1991). "An Autobiographical Statement". Southwest Review. Archived from the original on February 26, 2007. Retrieved March 14, 2007.
- ^ Recording and notes: John Cage – Complete Piano Music Vol. 7: Pieces 1933–1950. Steffen Schleiermacher (piano). MDG 613 0789-2.
- ^ Kostelanetz 2003, 2.
- ^ a b c d Swed, Mark, "John Cage's genius an L.A. story", Los Angeles Times, August 31, 2012. Retrieved September 2, 2012.
- ^ Nicholls 2002, 21.
- ^ Ross, Alex (September 27, 2010). "Searching for Silence: John Cage's art of noise". The New Yorker. Retrieved July 21, 2020.
- ^ a b c d Kostelanetz 2003, 4
- ^ Nicholls 2002, 8.
- ^ Perloff & Junkerman 1994, 79.
- ^ John Cage, National Inter-Collegiate Arts Conference, Vassar College, Poughkeepsie (New York), February 28, 1948.
- ^ Perloff & Junkerman 1994, 80.
- ^ Nicholls 2002, 22.
- ^ a b Perloff & Junkerman 1994, 81
- ^ Cage quoted in Perloff & Junkerman 1994, 81.
- ^ a b c d e f g h i Pritchett, Kuhn & Garrett 2012
- ^ Cage quoted in Nicholls 2002, 24.
- ^ Kostelanetz 2003, 61.
- ^ Nicholls 2002, 24.
- ^ a b Kostelanetz 2003, 7
- ^ a b Pritchett 1993, 9
- ^ This conversation was recounted many times by Cage himself: see Silence, p. 261; A Year from Monday, p. 44; interviews quoted in Kostelanetz 2003, 5, 105; etc..
- ^ a b c Kostelanetz 2003, 6
- ^ Cage interview quoted in Kostelanetz 2003, 105.
- ^ Cage 1973, 260.
- ^ Broyles M. (2004).Mavericks and Other Traditions in American Music, Yale University Press, New Haven & London, (p. 177).
- ^ For details on Cage's first meeting with Xenia, see Kostelanetz 2003, 7–8; for details on Cage's homosexual relationship with Don Sample, an American he met in Europe, as well as details on the Cage-Kashevaroff marriage, see Perloff & Junkerman 1994, 81, 86.
- ^ Perloff & Junkerman 1994, 86.
- ^ a b c Revill 1993, 55
- ^ Kostelanetz 2003, 43.
- ^ Reinhardt, Lauriejean. John Cage's "The Wonderful Widow of Eighteen Springs", 7. Available online.
- ^ Cage 1973, 127.
- ^ Revill 1993, 108.
- ^ Cage 1973, 158.
- ^ Bredow 2012.
- ^ "John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation: John Cage". Guggenheim Fellowship. Retrieved March 21, 2024.
- ^ Revill 1993, 101.
- ^ Pritchett 1993, 105.
- ^ Nicholls 2002, 101.
- ^ Kostelanetz 2003, 68.
- ^ Cage 1973, 60.
- ^ Pritchett 1993, 97.
- ^ Revill 1993, 91.
- ^ John Cage, in an interview with Miroslav Sebestik, 1991. From: Listen, documentary by Miroslav Sebestik. ARTE France Développement, 2003.
- ^ Pritchett 1993, 71.
- ^ Pritchett 1993, 78.
- ^ Revill 1993, 142.
- ^ Revill 1993, 143–149.
- ^ Revill 1993, 166.
- ^ Revill 1993, 174
- ^ Welch, J.D. (2008). "The Other Fab Four: Collaboration and Neo-dada: a plan for an exhibition weblog" (PDF). pp. 5–8. Retrieved May 31, 2014.
- ^ a b c Emmerik, Paul van (2009). "A John Cage Compendium". Paul van Emmerik. Retrieved August 6, 2009.
- ISBN 978-0-19-093847-5.
- ^ "Guide to the Center for Advanced Studies Records, 1958–1969". Wesleyan University. Archived from the original on March 14, 2017. Retrieved September 4, 2010.
- ^ "The Many Views of Betty Freeman: Betty Freeman's Commissions". NewMusicBox. 2000. Archived from the original on June 4, 2011. Retrieved August 8, 2009.
- ^ Ross, Alex (December 4, 1992). "S.E.M. Evokes John Cage as Teacher". The New York Times. Retrieved October 6, 2010.
- ^ Silverman, Kenneth (2010). Begin Again: A Biography of John Cage. Alfred A. Knopf. p. 198.
- ^ Revill 1993, 208.
- ^ a b Revill 1993, 228
- ^ Silverman, Kenneth (2010). Begin Again: A Biography of John Cage. Alfred A. Knopf. pp. 242–243.
- ^ Pritchett, James. 2004. "John Cage: Imitations/Transformations". In James Pritchett, Writings on John Cage (and others). (Online resource. Retrieved June 5, 2008)
- ^ Tone, Yasunao (2003). "John Cage and Recording". Leonardo Music Journal. 13: 11–15 – via JSTOR.
- ^ "John Cage". pas.org. Retrieved April 20, 2024.
- ^ Revill 1993, 247.
- ^ Fetterman 1996, 191.
- ^ Haskins 2004.
- ^ JSTOR 742497.
- ^ Revill 1993, 295.
- ISBN 978-0-8154-1034-8
- ^ "Dance great Cunningham dies at 90". BBC News. July 28, 2009. Retrieved September 3, 2009.
- ^ Pritchett 1993, 6.
- ^ Pritchett 1993, 7.
- ^ Nicholls 2002, 71–74.
- ^ Pritchett 1993, 29–33.
- ^ Notes in the score: A Flower. Edition Peters 6711 (1960)
- JSTOR 833316.
- ^ Pritchett 1993, 94.
- ^ a b Nicholls 2002, 139
- ^ Perloff & Junkerman 1994, 140.
- ^ Pritchett, James. 1994. "John Cage: Freeman Etudes", CD liner notes to: John Cage, Freeman Etudes (Books 1 and 2) (Irvine Arditti, violin), Mode 32. (Accessed August 14, 2008)
- American Music, Summer 1985. Via UbuWeb. Retrieved May 24, 2007.
- ^ Pritchett 1993, 197.
- ^ Pritchett 1993, 200.
- ^ Kostelanetz 2003, 84.
- ^ Kostelanetz 2003, 92.
- ^ Pritchett 1993, 136.
- ^ Pritchett 1993, 144–146.
- ^ Tchil, Doundou (January 20, 2012). "ENO presents John Cage Musicircus". Classical-iconoclast.blogspot.com. Retrieved December 5, 2013.
- ^ Lewis, John (March 4, 2012). "John Cage's Musicircus – review". The Guardian. Retrieved September 5, 2014.
- ^ "eno.org". Archived from the original on May 10, 2013.
- ^ Kostelanetz 2003, 92–96.
- ^ Nicholls 2002, 112–113.
- ^ Nicholls 2002, 113–115.
- ^ Nicholls 2002, 115–118.
- ^ Nicholls 2002, 118–122.
- ^ Gottesman, Sarah (January 3, 2017). "Why Experimental Artist John Cage Was Obsessed with Mushrooms". Artsy.net. Retrieved March 10, 2020.
- ^ "Source: Program No. 7: John Cage on Mushrooms". Other Minds Archives. Retrieved February 12, 2024.
- ^ Boulez, Pierre. 1964. "Alea". Perspectives of New Music, vol. 3, no. 1 (Autumn–Winter 1964), 42–53
- ^ Bois, Mario, and Xenakis, Iannis. 1980. The Man and his Music: A Conversation with the Composer and a Description of his Works, 12. Greenwood Press Reprint.
- ^ Steinberg, Michael. 1962. "Tradition and Responsibility". Perspectives of New Music 1, 154–159.
- ^ Kahn, Douglas. 1999. Noise, Water, Meat: A History of Sound in the Arts, 165. Cambridge, Massachusetts: The MIT Press.
- ^ "4′33″ | Experimental Music, Avant-Garde, Silence | Britannica". Encyclopædia Britannica. Retrieved December 30, 2023.
- ^ Keats, Jonathon. "Famous For Composing The Most Controversial Music Of The 20th Century, John Cage Was Even More Subversive With Mushrooms". Forbes. Retrieved December 30, 2023.
- ISBN 978-0-226-75342-3.
- ISBN 978-0-19-315429-2
- ISSN 0362-4331. Retrieved December 30, 2023.
- JSTOR 24615812.
- ^ Ryan, David. 1999. Interview with Helmut Lachenmann, p. 21. Tempo, New Series, no. 210. (October 1999), pp. 20–24.
- .
- ^ Ross, Alex (September 27, 2010). "John Cage's Art of Noise". The New Yorker.
- ^ "John Cage | American Composer & Avant-Garde Innovator | Britannica". Encyclopædia Britannica. December 21, 2023. Retrieved December 30, 2023.
- ^ "John Cage's Music of Chance and Change". A R T L▼R K. September 4, 2022. Retrieved December 30, 2023.
- ^ Michael Parsons. 1976. "Systems in Art and Music". The Musical Times, vol. 17, no. 1604. (October 1976), 815–818.
- ^ "Gavin Bryars biography etc". Gavin Bryars' Official Web-site. Archived from the original on May 31, 2009. Retrieved September 12, 2009.
- ISBN 978-1-56159-239-5.
- ISBN 978-0-521-78220-3.
- ^ "CalArts to Honor Composer John Cage With Doctorate". Los Angeles Times. April 11, 1986. Retrieved March 21, 2024.
- ^ "1989 Kyoto Prize Laureate". Inamori Foundation. November 12, 1989. Retrieved March 21, 2024.
- ^ "John Cage Award". Foundation for Contemporary Arts. November 12, 1992. Retrieved March 21, 2024.
- ^ Lopez, Antonio (December 1999 – January 2000). "Sonic Youth's Thurston Moore: On punk music, staying fresh, and the strange bridge between art and rock". Thirsty Ear Magazine. Archived from the original on July 17, 2011. Retrieved August 26, 2010.
- ^ Morris, Chris (August 17, 1997). "Hold The Ketchup On That Stereolab". Yahoo! Music. Archived from the original on July 6, 2011. Retrieved August 26, 2010.
- ISBN 978-0-275-98779-4.
- ^ Paul Hegarty, Full With Noise: Theory and Japanese Noise Music, pp. 86–98 in Life in the Wires (2004) eds. Arthur Kroker & Marilouise Kroker, NWP Ctheory Books, Victoria, Canada
- ^ Jack, Adrian (1975). ""I Want to be a Magnet for Tapes" (interview with Brian Eno)". Time Out. Retrieved August 26, 2010.
- ^ Worby, Robert (October 23, 2002). "Richard Aphex, John Cage and the Prepared Piano". Warp Records. Retrieved August 26, 2010.
- ISBN 978-0-521-35037-2.
- ^ Shlomowitz, Matthew. 1999. Cage's Place in the Reception of Satie. Part of the PhD at the University of California at San Diego, USA. Available online Archived April 12, 2011, at the Wayback Machine.
- ISBN 978-0-275-94443-8.
- ^ a b Kaufman, Sarah, "John Cage, with Merce Cunningham, revolutionized dance, too", The Washington Post, August 30, 2012. Retrieved September 2, 2012.
- ^ "Events honoring John Cage at 100", Los Angeles Times, September 2, 2012. Retrieved September 2, 2012.
- ^ Events, John Cage Foundation webpage. Retrieved September 2, 2012.
- ^ Midgette, Anne, "John Cage Centennial Festival: Will it silence critics in Washington?", The Washington Post, August 31, 2012. Retrieved September 2, 2012.
- ^ Official Festival web site. Retrieved September 2, 2012.
- ^ Swed, Mark (September 3, 2012). "In Germany, John Cage rings out". Los Angeles Times. Retrieved October 8, 2017.
- ^ "Cage 100 Festival", Jacaranda webpage. Retrieved September 5, 2012. Archived September 10, 2012, at the Wayback Machine
- ^ Ross, Alex, "The John Cage Century", The New Yorker, September 4, 2012. Retrieved September 5, 2012.
- ^ Kojs, Juraj. "On Silence: Hommage to Cage". kojs.net. Retrieved January 8, 2013.
- ^ "Bard College | Press Releases". Bard.edu. August 12, 1992. Retrieved December 5, 2013.
- ^ The John Cage Collection, Northwestern University
- ^ The John Cage Materials at Yale, Yale University
Sources
- Bernstein, David W.; Hatch, Christopher, eds. (2001). Writings through John Cage's Music, Poetry, and Art. University of Chicago Press. ISBN 978-0-226-04407-1.
- Bredow, Moritz von (2012). Rebellische Pianistin. Das Leben der ISBN 978-3-7957-0800-9.
- Cage, John (1973) [1961]. ISBN 978-0-8195-6028-5.
- Fetterman, William (1996). John Cage's Theatre Pieces: Notations and Performances. Routledge. ISBN 978-3-7186-5643-1.
- Haskins, Rob (2004). "An Anarchic Society of Sounds": The Number Pieces of John Cage (PhD dissertation, Musicology). Eastman School of Music, University of Rochester.
- ISBN 978-0-415-93792-4.
- Lejeunne, Denis (2012). The Radical Use of Chance in 20th Century Art. Amsterdam: Rodopi Press. ISBN 9789401207263.
- ISBN 978-0-521-78968-4.
- ISBN 978-0-226-66057-8.
- Pritchett, James (1993). The Music of John Cage. Cambridge University Press. ISBN 978-0-521-56544-8.
- Pritchett, James; Kuhn, Laura; Garrett, Charles Hiroshi (2012). "Cage, John". ISBN 978-1-56159-263-0.
- Revill, David (1993). The Roaring Silence: John Cage – a Life. Arcade Publishing. ISBN 978-1-55970-220-1.
Further reading
- ISBN 978-88-5751-138-2
- Arena, Leonardo Vittorio. 2014. Il Tao del non-suono, ebook.
- ISBN 978-0-521-48558-6
- ISBN 978-1-891300-16-5
- Davidović, Dalibor (June 17, 2015). "Branches". Musicological Annual. 51 (2): 9–25. .
- Eldred, Michael. 1995/2006. Heidegger's Hölderlin and John Cage, www.arte-fact.org
- Eldred, Michael. 2010. The Quivering of Propriation: A Parallel Way to Music, Section II.3 New Music is the Other Music (Cage) www.arte-fact.org
- Haskins, Rob. 2012. John Cage. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. ISBN 978-1-86189-905-7
- Cage, John (2010). Jeremy Miller (ed.). Every Day is a Good Day – The Visual Art of John Cage. Hayward Publishing. ISBN 978-1-85332-283-9.
- Kuhn, Laura (ed). 2016. Selected Letters of John Cage. Wesleyan University Press. ISBN 978-0-819-57591-3.
- Larson, Kay. 2012. Where the Heart Beats – John Cage, Zen Buddhism, and the Inner Life of Artists. Penguin Books USA. ISBN 978-1-594-20340-4
- ISBN 978-0-252-03215-8
- Patterson, David W. (ed.). John Cage: Music, Philosophy, and Intention, 1933–1950. Routledge, 2002. ISBN 978-0-8153-2995-4
- Smith, Geoff; Nicola Walker (April 1993). "20th Century Americans: John Cage". Music Technology. p. 62. OCLC 24835173.
- JSTOR 742432.
- ISBN 978-0-19-516979-9
- Ward, Phil (October 1992). "The Rest Is Silence: An Appreciation | John Cage". Music Technology. p. 42. OCLC 24835173.
- Zimmerman, Walter. Desert Plants – Conversations with 23 American Musicians, Berlin: Beginner Press in cooperation with Mode Records, 2020 ISBN 978-0-88985-009-5).
External links
This section's use of external links may not follow Wikipedia's policies or guidelines. (March 2020) |
General information and catalogues
- Official website
- A John Cage Compendium, website by Cage scholar Paul van Emmerik, in collaboration with performer Herbert Henck and András Wilheim. Includes exhaustive catalogues and bibliography, chronology of Cage's life, etc.
- Larry Solomon's John Cage Pages, a complete catalogue of Cage's music and a filmography, as well as other materials.
- Edition Peters: John Cage Biography and Works, Cage's principal publisher since 1961.
- Guide to the John Cage Mycology Collection
- John Cage oral histories at Oral History of American Music
- Silence/Stories: related texts and poems by, among others, Lowell Cross, AP Crumlish, Karlheinz Essl, Raymond Federman, August Highland, George Koehler, Richard Kostelanetz, Ian S. Macdonald, Beat Streuli, Dan Waber, Sigi Waters and John Whiting
- "John Cage (biography, works, resources)" (in French and English). IRCAM.
- John Cage at IMDb
- Artist Biography and a list of video works by and about John Cage at Electronic Arts Intermix eai.org.
- Interview with John Cage, June 21, 1987
- An interview with John Cage conducted 1974 May 2, by Paul Cummings, for the Archives of American Art.
Link collections
- John Cage Online
- Photographs of John Cage from the UC Santa Cruz Library's Digital Collections Archived April 30, 2019, at the Wayback Machine
Specific topics
- "Silence and Change / Five Hanau Silence": Articles and documents on a project of John Cage, Claus Sterneck and Wolfgang Sterneck in benefit of a squatted culture center in Hanau (Germany) in 1991, (English / German).
- Garten, Joel, "Interview With MoMA Curator David Platzker About the New Exhibition on John Cage", The Huffington Post, February 20, 2014.
Listening
- In Conversation with Morton Feldman, 1966, Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4, and Part 5
- 1989 radio interview on the CBC program Brave New Waves.
Media
- John Cage at UbuWeb: historical, sound, film.
- Indeterminacy, Cage's short stories taken from various publications and accessed in random order.
- FontanaMixer: computer program by Karlheinz Essl that generates a realtime version of John Cage's "Fontana Mix" (1958)
- Other Minds Archive: John Cage interviewed by Jonathan Cott, streaming audio
- Other Minds Archive: John Cage and David Tudor Concert at The San Francisco Museum of Art (January 16, 1965), streaming audio
- 27, 2002 Suite for Toy Piano (1948) performed by Margaret Leng Tan at the Other Minds Music Festival in 1999 at the Cowell Theater in San Francisco.
- Notes towards a re-reading of the "Roaratorio" – the work of John Cage and his special relationship to radio at Ràdio Web MACBA
- The Rest isn't Silence... it doesn't exist! – Analytical material and recordings going back to the first rehearsal and performance of Imaginary Landscape No. 4 in 1951.
- Fluxradio (podcast) – An exploration of some of the concepts and ideas behind the music and performance practice of Fluxus.
- John Cage – Journeys in Sound, documentary, Germany, 2012, 60 min., director: Allan Miller & Paul Smaczny, written by Anne-Kathrin Peitz; production: Accentus Music in co-production with Westdeutscher Rundfunk. "Czech Crystal Award" (Best Documentary) at Golden Prague Festival 2012.