John Cage

John CageFrom Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Not to be confused with John Cale.John Milton Cage Jr. (September 5, 1912 August 12, 1992) was anAmerican composer, music theorist, writer, and artist. A pioneer ofindeterminacy in music, electroacoustic music, and non-standard use ofmusical instruments, Cage was one of the leading figures of the post-waravant-garde. Critics have lauded him as one of the most influentialAmerican composers of the 20th century.[1][2][3][4] He was alsoinstrumental in the development of modern dance, mostly through hisassociation with choreographer Merce Cunningham, who was also Cage'sromantic partner for most of their lives.[5][6]

Cage is perhaps best known for his 1952 composition 4!33", which isperformed in the absence of deliberate sound; musicians who present thework do nothing aside from being present for the duration specified by thetitle. The content of the composition is not "four minutes and 33 secondsof silence," as is sometimes assumed, but rather the sounds of theenvironment heard by the audience during performance.[7][8] The work'schallenge to assumed definitions about musicianship and musicalexperience made it a popular and controversial topic both in musicology and the broader aesthetics of art andperformance. Cage was also a pioneer of the prepared piano (a piano with its sound altered by objects placedbetween or on its strings or hammers), for which he wrote numerous dance-related works and a few concertpieces. The best known of these is Sonatas and Interludes (194648).[9]

His teachers included Henry Cowell (1933) and Arnold Schoenberg (193335), both known for their radicalinnovations in music, but Cage's major influences lay in various East and South Asian cultures. Through hisstudies of Indian philosophy and Zen Buddhism in the late 1940s, Cage came to the idea of aleatoric or chance-controlled music, which he started composing in 1951.[10] The I Ching, an ancient Chinese classic text onchanging events, became Cage's standard composition tool for the rest of his life. In a 1957 lecture, ExperimentalMusic, he described music as "a purposeless play" which is "an affirmation of life not an attempt to bring orderout of chaos nor to suggest improvements in creation, but simply a way of waking up to the very life we'reliving".[11]

Contents1 Life

1.1 191231: Early years1.2 193136: Apprenticeship1.3 193749: Modern dance and Eastern influences1.4 1950s: Discovering chance1.5 1960s: Fame1.6 196987: New departures1.7 198792: Final years and death

2 Music2.1 Early works, rhythmic structure, and new approaches to harmony

2.2 Chance2.3 Improvisation

3 Visual art, writings, and other activities4 Reception and influence

4.1 Centenary Commemoration5 Archives6 See also7 Notes8 References9 Sources10 External links

Life191231: Early yearsCage was born Sept. 5, 1912, at Good Samaritan Hospital in downtown Los Angeles.[12] His father, John MiltonCage, Sr. (18861964), was an inventor, and his mother, Lucretia ("Crete") Harvey (18851969), workedintermittently as a journalist for the Los Angeles Times.[13] The family's roots were deeply American: in a 1976interview, Cage mentioned that George Washington was assisted by an ancestor named John Cage in the task ofsurveying the Colony of Virginia.[14] Cage described his mother as a woman with "a sense of society" who was"never happy",[15] while his father is perhaps best characterized by his inventions: sometimes idealistic, such as adiesel-fueled submarine that gave off exhaust bubbles, the senior Cage being uninterested in an undetectablesubmarine,[13] others revolutionary and against the scientific norms, such as the "electrostatic field theory" of theuniverse.[n 1] John Milton Sr. taught his son that "if someone says 'can't' that shows you what to do." In 194445Cage wrote two small character pieces dedicated to his parents: Crete and Dad. The latter is a short lively piecethat ends abruptly, while "Crete" is a slightly longer, mostly melodic contrapuntal work.[16]

Cage's first experiences with music were from private piano teachers in the Greater Los Angeles area and severalrelatives, particularly his aunt Phoebe Harvey James who introduced him to the piano music of the 19th century.He received first piano lessons when he was in the fourth grade at school, but although he liked music, heexpressed more interest in sight reading than in developing virtuoso piano technique, and apparently was notthinking of composition.[17] During high school, one of his music teachers was Fannie Charles Dillon.[18] By1928, though, Cage was convinced that he wanted to be a writer. He graduated that year from Los Angeles HighSchool as a valedictorian,[19] having also in the spring given a prize-winning speech at the Hollywood Bowlproposing a day of quiet for all Americans. "By being hushed and silent, he said, 'we should have the opportunityto hear what other people think'," anticipating 4'33" by more than thirty years.

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 Jos Pijoan, of writer JamesJoyce via Don Sample, of philosopher Ananda Coomaraswamy and of Cowell.[18] In 1930 he dropped out, havingcome to believe that "college was of no use to a writer"[20] after an incident described in the 1991autobiographical statement:

I was shocked at college to see one hundred of my classmates in the library all reading copies of thesame book. Instead of doing as they did, I went into the stacks and read the first book written by anauthor 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.[15]

Cage persuaded his parents that a trip to Europe would be more beneficial to a future writer than collegestudies.[21] He subsequently hitchhiked to Galveston and sailed to Le Havre, where he took a train to Paris.[22]Cage stayed in Europe for some 18 months, trying his hand at various forms of art. First he studied Gothic andGreek architecture, but decided he was not interested enough in architecture to dedicate his life to it.[20] He thentook up painting, poetry and music. It was in Europe that, encouraged by his teacher Lazare Levy,[23] he firstheard the music of contemporary composers (such as Igor Stravinsky and Paul Hindemith) and finally got to knowthe music of Johann Sebastian Bach, which he had not experienced before.

After several months in Paris, Cage's enthusiasm for America was revived after he read Walt Whitman's Leaves ofGrass he wanted to return immediately, but his parents, with whom he regularly exchanged letters during theentire trip, persuaded him to stay in Europe for a little longer and explore the continent.[24] Cage started travelling,visited various places in France, Germany and Spain, as well as Capri and, most importantly, Majorca, where hestarted composing.[25] His first compositions were created using dense mathematical formulae, but Cage wasdispleased with the results and left the finished pieces behind when he left.[26] Cage's association with theatre alsostarted in Europe: during a walk in Seville he witnessed, in his own words, "the multiplicity of simultaneousvisual and audible events all going together in one's experience and producing enjoyment."[27]

193136: ApprenticeshipCage returned to the United States in 1931.[26] He went to Santa Monica, California, where he made a livingpartly by giving small, private lectures on contemporary art. He got to know various important figures of theSouthern California art world, such as pianist Richard Buhlig (who became his first teacher[28]) and arts patronGalka Scheyer.[20] By 1933 Cage decided to concentrate on music rather than painting. "The people who heardmy music had better things to say about it than the people who looked at my paintings had to say about mypaintings", Cage later explained.[20] In 1933 he sent some of his compositions to Henry Cowell; the reply was a"rather vague letter",[29] in which Cowell suggested that Cage study with Arnold SchoenbergCage's musicalideas at the time included composition based on a 25-tone row, somewhat similar to Schoenberg's twelve-tonetechnique.[30] Cowell also advised that, before approaching Schoenberg, Cage should take some preliminarylessons, and recommended Adolph Weiss, a former Schoenberg pupil.[31]

Following Cowell's advice, Cage travelled to New York City in 1933 and started studying with Weiss as well astaking lessons from Cowell himself at The New School.[28] He supported himself financially by taking up a jobwashing walls at a Brooklyn YWCA.[32] Cage's routine during that period was apparently very tiring, with justfour hours of sleep on most nights, and four hours of composition every day starting at 4 am.[32][33] Severalmonths later, still in 1933, Cage became sufficiently good at composition to approach Schoenberg.[n 2] He couldnot afford Schoenberg's price, and when he mentioned it, the older composer asked whether Cage would devotehis life to music. After Cage replied that he would, Schoenberg offered to tutor him free of charge.[34]

Cage studied with Schoenberg in California: first at USC and then at UCLA, as well as privately.[28] The oldercomposer became one of the biggest influences on Cage, who "literally worshipped him",[35] particularly as anexample of how to live one's life being a composer.[33] The vow Cage gave, to dedicate his life to music, wasapparently still important some 40 years later, when Cage "had no need for it [i.e. writing music]", he continuedcomposing partly because of the promise he gave.[36] Schoenberg's methods and their influence on Cage are welldocumented by Cage himself in various lectures and writings. Particularly well-known is the conversationmentioned in the 1958 lecture Indeterminacy:

After I had been studying with him for two years, Schoenberg said, "In order to write music, youmust have a feeling for harmony." I explained to him that I had no feeling for harmony. He then saidthat I would always encounter an obstacle, that it would be as though I came to a wall through whichI could not pass. I said, 'In that case I will devote my life to beating my head against that wall.' "[37]

Cage studied with Schoenberg for two years, but although he admired his teacher, he decided to leave afterSchoenberg told the assembled students that he was trying to make it impossible for them to write music. Muchlater, Cage recounted the incident: "[...] When he said that, I revolted, not against him, but against what he hadsaid. I determined then and there, more than ever before, to write music."[35] Although Schoenberg was notimpressed with Cage's compositional abilities during these two years, in a later interview, where he initially saidthat none of his American pupils were interesting, he further stated in reference to Cage: "There was one...ofcourse he's not a composer, but he's an inventorof genius."[35] Schoenberg had intended this not as acompliment but as means to differentiate, disparagingly, between composers and inventors.[38] Cage would lateradopt the "inventor" moniker and deny that he was in fact a composer.[38]

At some point in 193435, during his studies with Schoenberg, Cage was working at his mother's arts and craftsshop, where he met artist Xenia Andreyevna Kashevaroff. She was an Alaskan-born daughter of a Russian priest;her work encompassed fine bookbinding, sculpture and collage. Although Cage was involved in relationships withDon Sample and with architect Rudolph Schindler's wife Pauline[18] when he met Xenia, he fell in loveimmediately. Cage and Kashevaroff were married in the desert at Yuma, Arizona, on June 7, 1935.[39]

193749: Modern dance and Eastern influencesSee also: Works for prepared piano by John Cage

The newly married couple first lived with Cage's parents in Pacific Palisades, then moved to Hollywood.[40]During 193638 Cage changed numerous jobs, including one that started his lifelong association with moderndance: dance accompanist at UCLA. He produced music for choreographies and at one point taught a course on"Musical Accompaniments for Rhythmic Expression" at UCLA, with his aunt Phoebe.[41] It was during that timethat Cage first started experimenting with unorthodox instruments, such as household items, metal sheets, and soon. This was inspired by Oskar Fischinger, who told Cage that "everything in the world has a spirit that can bereleased through its sound." Although Cage did not share the idea of spirits, these words inspired him to beginexploring the sounds produced by hitting various non-musical objects.[41][42]

In 1938, with help from a fellow Cowell student Lou Harrison, Cage became a faculty member at Mills College,teaching the same program as at UCLA, and collaborating with choreographer Marian van Tuyl. Several famousdance groups were present, and Cage's interest in modern dance grew further.[41] After several months he left andmoved to Seattle, Washington, where he found work as composer and accompanist for choreographer Bonnie Birdat the Cornish College of the Arts. The Cornish School years proved to be a particularly important period inCage's life. Aside from teaching and working as accompanist, Cage organized a percussion ensemble that touredthe West Coast and brought the composer his first fame. His reputation was enhanced further with the invention ofthe prepared pianoa piano which has had its sound altered by objects placed on, beneath or between the stringsin 1940. This concept was originally intended for a performance staged in a room too small to include a fullpercussion ensemble. It was also at the Cornish School that Cage met a number of people who became lifelongfriends, such as painter Mark Tobey and dancer Merce Cunningham. The latter was to become Cage's lifelongpartner and collaborator.

Excerpt from The Wonderful Widow ofEighteen Springs (1942)

Performed in 1958 by Arline Carmen(voice) and John Cage (closed piano).This is one of the rare recordings ofCage performing his own instrumentalmusic.

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Cage left Seattle in the summer of 1941 after the painter Lszl Moholy-Nagy invited him to teach at the ChicagoSchool of Design (what later became the IIT Institute of Design and finally the Illinois Institute of Technology).The composer accepted partly because he hoped to find opportunities in Chicago, that were not available inSeattle, to organize a center for experimental music. These opportunities did not materialize. Cage taught at theChicago School of Design and worked as accompanist and composer at the University of Chicago. At one point,his reputation as percussion composer landed him a commission from the Columbia Broadcasting System tocompose a soundtrack for a radio play by Kenneth Patchen. The result, The City Wears a Slouch Hat, wasreceived well, and Cage deduced that more important commissions would follow. Hoping to find these, he leftChicago for New York City in the spring of 1942.

In New York, the Cages first stayed with painter Max Ernstand Peggy Guggenheim. Through them, Cage met numerousimportant artists such as Piet Mondrian, Andr Breton,Jackson Pollock, Marcel Duchamp, and many others.Guggenheim was very supportive: the Cages could stay withher and Ernst for any length of time, and she offered toorganize a concert of Cage's music at the opening of hergallery, which included paying for transportation of Cage'spercussion instruments from Chicago. After she learned thatCage secured another concert, at the Museum of Modern Art,Guggenheim withdrew all support, and, even after theultimately successful MoMA concert, Cage was left homeless, unemployed and penniless. The commissions hehoped for did not happen. He and Xenia spent the summer of 1942 with dancer Jean Erdman and her husband.Without the percussion instruments, Cage again turned to prepared piano, producing a substantial body of worksfor performances by various choreographers, including Merce Cunningham, who moved to New York Cityseveral 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 forthe rest of his life. Cage also countered the lack of percussion instruments by writing, on one occasion, for voiceand closed piano: the resulting piece, The Wonderful Widow of Eighteen Springs (1942), quickly became popularand was performed by the celebrated duo of Cathy Berberian and Luciano Berio.[43]

Like his personal life, Cage's artistic life went through a crisis in mid-1940s. The composer was experiencing agrowing 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 tutorGita Sarabhai, an Indian musician who came to the US to study Western music. In return, he asked her to teachhim about Indian music and philosophy.[44] Cage also attended, in late 1940s and early 1950s, D. T. Suzuki'slectures on Zen Buddhism,[45] and read further the works of Coomaraswamy.[28] The first fruits of these studieswere works inspired by Indian concepts: Sonatas and Interludes for prepared piano, String Quartet in Four Parts,and others. Cage accepted the goal of music as explained to him by Sarabhai: "to sober and quiet the mind, thusrendering it susceptible to divine influences".[46]

Early in 1946, his former teacher Richard Buhlig arranged for Cage to meet Berlin-born pianist Grete Sultan, whohad escaped from Nazi persecution to New York in 1941.[47] They became close, lifelong friends, and Cage laterdedicated part of his Music for Piano (Cage) and his monumental piano cycle Etudes Australes to her.

1950s: Discovering chanceSonatas and Interludes were received well by the public. 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 hemet 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 Orchestraconcert, where the orchestra performed Anton Webern's Symphony, op. 21, followed by a piece by SergeiRachmaninoff. Cage felt so overwhelmed by Webern's piece that he left before the Rachmaninoff; and in thelobby, he met Feldman, who was leaving for the same reason.[48] The two composers quickly became friends;some time later Cage, Feldman, Earle Brown, David Tudor and Cage's pupil Christian Wolff came to be referredto as "the New York school."[49][50]

In early 1951, Wolff presented Cage with a copy of the I Ching[51]a Chinese classic text which describes asymbol system used to identify order in chance events. This version of the I Ching was the first complete Englishtranslation and had been published by Wolff's father, Kurt Wolff of Pantheon Books in 1950. The I Ching iscommonly used for divination, but for Cage it became a tool to compose using chance. To compose a piece ofmusic, Cage would come up with questions to ask the I Ching; the book would then be used in much the sameway as it is used for divination. For Cage, this meant "imitating nature in its manner of operation":[52][53] hislifelong interest in sound itself culminated in an approach that yielded works in which sounds were free from thecomposer's will:

When I hear what we call music, it seems to me that someone is talking. And talking about hisfeelings, or about his ideas of relationships. But when I hear traffic, the sound of traffichere onSixth Avenue, for instanceI don't have the feeling that anyone is talking. I have the feeling thatsound is acting. And I love the activity of sound [...] I don't need sound to talk to me.[54]

Although Cage had used chance on a few earlier occasions, most notably in the third movement of Concerto forPrepared Piano and Chamber Orchestra (195051),[55] 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 ofChanges for piano. The latter work was written for David Tudor,[56] whom Cage met through Feldmananotherfriendship that lasted until Cage's death.[n 3] Tudor premiered most of Cage's works until the early 1960s, when hestopped performing on the piano and concentrated on electronic music. The I Ching became Cage's standard toolfor composition: he used it in practically every work composed after 1951.

Despite the fame Sonatas and Interludes earned him, and the connections he cultivated with American andEuropean composers and musicians, Cage was quite poor. Although he still had an apartment, at 326 MonroeStreet (which he occupied since around 1946) his financial situation in 1951 worsened so much that, whileworking on Music of Changes, he prepared a set of instructions for Tudor as to how to complete the piece in theevent of his death.[57] Nevertheless, Cage managed to survive and maintained an active artistic life, givinglectures, performances, etc. In 195253 he completed another mammoth projectthe Williams Mix, a piece oftape music, which Earle Brown helped to put together.[58] Also in 1952, Cage composed the piece that became hisbest-known and most controversial creation: 4!33". The score instructs the performer not to play the instrumentduring the entire duration of the piecefour minutes, thirty-three secondsand is meant to be perceived asconsisting of the sounds of the environment that the listeners hear while it is performed. Cage conceived "a silentpiece" years earlier, but was reluctant to write it down; and indeed, the premiere (given by Tudor on August 29,1952 at Woodstock, New York) caused an uproar in the audience.[59] The reaction to 4!33" was just a part of thelarger picture: on the whole, it was the adoption of chance procedures that had disastrous consequences for Cage'sreputation. The press, which used to react favorably to earlier percussion and prepared piano music, ignored hisnew works, and many valuable friendships and connections were lost. Pierre Boulez, who used to promote Cage'swork in Europe, was opposed to Cage's use of chance, and so were other composers who came to prominenceduring the 1950s, e.g. Karlheinz Stockhausen and Iannis Xenakis.[60]

During this time John Cage was also teaching at the avant-garde Black Mountain College just outside ofAsheville, NC. Cage taught at the college in the summers of 1948 and 1952 and was in residence the summer of1953. While at Black Mountain College in 1952, he staged the first "Happening" in the United States, called"Theatre Piece No. 1", a multi-layered performative event that changed modern theater completely. Cagecollaborated with many of the other artists who were also at the college, including Merce Cunningham and fellowmusician David Tudor.

From 1953 onwards, 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 asdeveloping new methods of using chance, in a series of works he referred to as The Ten Thousand Things. InSummer 1954 he moved out of New York and settled in a cooperative community in Stony Point, New York,where his neighbors included David Tudor, M. C. Richards, Karen Karnes, Stan VanDerBeek, and Sari Dienes.The composer's financial situation gradually improved: in late 1954 he and Tudor were able to embark on aEuropean tour. From 1956 to 1961 Cage taught classes in experimental composition at The New School, andduring 195658 he also worked as an art director and designer of typography.[61] Among the works completedduring the last years of the decade were Concert for Piano and Orchestra (195758), a seminal work in thehistory of graphic notation, and Variations I (1958).

1960s: FameCage was affiliated with Wesleyan University and collaborated with members of its Music Department from the1950s 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 wasappointed a Fellow on the faculty of the Center for Advanced Studies (now the Center for Humanities) in theLiberal Arts and Sciences at Wesleyan,[62] where he started teaching classes in experimental music. In October1961, Wesleyan University Press published Silence, a collection of Cage's lectures and writings on a wide varietyof 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.[n 4] He went on to publish five more. Silenceremained his most widely read and influential book.[28] In the early 1960s Cage began his lifelong associationwith C.F. Peters Corporation. Walter Hinrichsen, the president of the corporation, offered Cage an exclusivecontract and instigated the publication of a catalogue of Cage's works, which appeared in 1962.[61]

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 beforeone of the positive consequences of this wasthat in 1965 Betty Freeman set up an annual grant for living expenses for Cage, to be issued from 1965 to hisdeath.[63] By the mid-1960s, Cage was receiving so many commissions and requests for appearances that he wasunable to fulfill them. This was accompanied by a busy touring schedule; subsequently Cage's compositionaloutput from that decade was scant.[28] After the orchestral Atlas Eclipticalis (196162), a work based on starcharts, which was fully notated, Cage gradually shifted to, in his own words, "music (not composition)." Thescore of 0!00", completed in 1962, originally comprised a single sentence: "In a situation provided with maximumamplification, perform a disciplined action", and in the first performance the disciplined action was Cage writingthat sentence. The score of Variations III (1962) abounds in instructions to the performers, but makes noreferences to music, musical instruments or sounds.

Many of the Variations and other 1960s pieces were in fact "happenings", an art form established by Cage and hisstudents in late 1950s. Cage's "Experimental Composition" classes at The New School have become legendary asan American source of Fluxus, an international network of artists, composers, and designers. The majority of hisstudents had little or no background in music. Most were artists. They included Jackson Mac Low, Allan Kaprow,Al Hansen, George Brecht, and Dick Higgins, as well as many others Cage invited unofficially. Famous pieces

John Cage (right) with DavidTudor at Shiraz Arts Festival 1971

Opening bars of Cheap Imitation(1969)

Performed by the composer in 1976,

that resulted from the classes include George Brecht's Time Table Music and Al Hansen's Alice Denham in 48Seconds.[64] 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 minimalscript, with no plot. In fact, a "happening" is so-named because it occurs in the present, attempting to arrest theconcept 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. Cagemet Kaprow while on a mushroom hunt with George Segal and invited him to join his class. In following thesedevelopments Cage was strongly influenced by Antonin Artaud's seminal treatise The Theatre and Its Double, andthe 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, who inthe course of his Etude for Piano cut off Cage's tie and then washed his co-performers hair withshampoo.[citation needed]

In 1967, Cage's A Year from Monday was first published by Wesleyan University Press. Cage's parents diedduring the decade: his father in 1964,[65] and his mother in 1969. Cage had their ashes scattered in RamapoMountains, near Stony Point, and asked for the same to be done to him after his death.[66]

196987: New departuresCage'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 alsohis absorption of the writings of both Marshall McLuhan, on the effects ofnew media, and R. Buckminster Fuller, on the power of technology topromote social change. HPSCHD (1969), a gargantuan and long-runningmultimedia work made in collaboration with Lejaren Hiller, incorporated themass superimposition of seven harpsichords playing chance-determinedexcerpts from the works of Cage, Hiller, and a potted history of canonicalclassics, with fifty-two tapes of computer-generated sounds, 6,400 slides ofdesigns, many supplied by NASA, and shown from sixty-four slideprojectors, with forty motion-picture films. The piece was initially rendered ina five-hour performance at the University of Illinois in 1969, in which theaudience arrived after the piece had begun and left before it ended, wandering

freely around the auditorium in the time for which they were there.[citation needed]

Also in 1969, Cage produced the first fully notated work in years: Cheap Imitation for piano. The piece is achance-controlled reworking of Erik Satie's Socrate, and, as both listeners and Cage himself noted, openlysympathetic to its source. Although Cage's affection for Satie's music was well-known, it was highly unusual forhim to compose a personal work, one in which the composer is present. When asked about this apparentcontradiction, Cage replied: "Obviously, Cheap Imitation lies outside of what may seem necessary in my work ingeneral, and that's disturbing. I'm the first to be disturbed by it."[67] Cage's fondness for the piece resulted in arecordinga rare occurrence, since Cage disliked making recordings of his musicmade in 1976. Overall,Cheap Imitation marked a major change in Cage's music: he turned again to writing fully notated works fortraditional instruments, and tried out several new approaches, such as improvisation, which he previouslydiscouraged, but was able to use in works from the 1970s, such as Child of Tree (1975).

Cheap Imitation became the last work Cage performed inpublic himself. Arthritis had troubled Cage since 1960, and bythe early 1970s his hands were painfully swollen and renderedhim unable to perform.[68] Nevertheless, he still played Cheap

shortly before he had to retire fromperforming.

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John Cage and Michael Bach inAssisi, Italy, 1992

Imitation during the 1970s,[69] before finally having to giveup performing. Preparing manuscripts also became difficult:before, published versions of pieces were done in Cage'scalligraphic script; now, manuscripts for publication had to becompleted by assistants. Matters were complicated further byDavid Tudor's departure from performing, which happened in early 1970s. Tudor decided to concentrate oncomposition instead, and so Cage, for the first time in two decades, had to start relying on commissions fromother performers, and their respective abilities. Such performers included Grete Sultan, Paul Zukofsky, MargaretLeng Tan, and many others. Aside from music, Cage continued writing books of prose and poetry (mesostics). Mwas first published by Wesleyan University Press in 1973. In January 1978 Cage was invited by Kathan Brown ofCrown Point Press to engage in printmaking, and Cage would go on to produce series of prints every year until hisdeath; these, together with some late watercolors, constitute the largest portion of his extant visual art. In 1979Cage's Empty Words was first published by Wesleyan University Press.

198792: Final years and deathSee also: Number Pieces

In 1987, Cage completed a piece called Two, for flute and piano, dedicated to performers Roberto Fabbriciani andCarlo Neri. The title referred to the number of performers needed; the music consisted of short notated fragmentsto be played at any tempo within the indicated time constraints. Cage went on to write some forty such pieces, oneof the last being Eighty (1992, premiered in Munich on 28 October 2011), usually employing a variant of the sametechnique; together, these works are known as Number Pieces. The process of composition, in many of the laterNumber Pieces, was simple selection of pitch range and pitches from that range, using chance procedures;[28] themusic has been linked to Cage's anarchic leanings.[70] One11 (i.e. the eleventh piece for a single performer),completed in early 1992, was Cage's first and only foray into film.

Another new direction, also taken in 1987, was opera: Cage produced five operas, all sharing the same titleEuropera, in 198791. Europeras I and II require greater forces than III, IV and V, which are on a chamber scale.

Already in the course of the eighties, Cage's health worsenedprogressively: he suffered not only from arthritis, but also from sciaticaand arteriosclerosis. He suffered a stroke that left the movement of his leftleg restricted, and, in 1985, broke an arm. During this time, Cage pursueda macrobiotic diet.[71] Nevertheless, ever since arthritis started plaguinghim, the composer was aware of his age, and, as biographer David Revillobserved, "the fire which he began to incorporate in his visual work in1985 is not only the fire he has set aside for so longthe fire of passionbut also fire as transitoriness and fragility." On August 11, 1992, whilepreparing evening tea for himself and Cunningham, Cage suffered anotherstroke. He was taken to the nearest hospital, where he died on the morningof August 12.[72]

According to his wishes, Cage's body was cremated, and the ashesscattered in the Ramapo Mountains, near Stony Point, New York,[73] thesame place where Cage scattered the ashes of his parents, years before.[66]The composer's death occurred only weeks before a celebration of his 80thbirthday organized in Frankfurt by the composer Walter Zimmermann andthe musicologist Stefan Schaedler was due to take place. The event went ahead as planned, including a

Rhythmic proportions in Sonata III of Sonatas andInterludes for prepared piano

performance of the Concert for Piano and Orchestra by David Tudor and Ensemble Modern.[2] MerceCunningham lived another 17 years, dying of natural causes in July 2009.[74]

MusicSee also: List of compositions by John Cage

Early works, rhythmic structure, and new approaches to harmonyCage's first completed pieces are currently lost. According to the composer, the earliest works were very shortpieces for piano, composed using complex mathematical procedures and lacking in "sensual appeal and expressivepower."[75] Cage then started producing pieces by improvising and writing down the results, until Richard Buhligstressed to him the importance of structure. Most works from the early 1930s, such as Sonata for Clarinet (1933)and Composition for 3 Voices (1934), are highly chromatic and betray Cage's interest in counterpoint. Around thesame time, the composer also developed a type of a tone row technique with 25-note rows.[76] After studies withSchoenberg, who never taught dodecaphony to his students, Cage developed another tone row technique, in whichthe row was split into short motives, which would then be repeated and transposed according to a set of rules. Thisapproach was first used in Two Pieces for Piano (c. 1935), and then, with modifications, in larger works such asMetamorphosis and Five Songs (both 1938).

Soon after Cage started writing percussion music and musicfor modern dance, he started using a technique that placed therhythmic structure of the piece into the foreground. InImaginary Landscape No. 1 (1939) there are four largesections of 16, 17, 18, and 19 bars, and each section is dividedinto four subsections, the first three of which were all 5 barslong. First Construction (in Metal) (1939) expands on theconcept: there are five sections of 4, 3, 2, 3, and 4 unitsrespectively. Each unit contains 16 bars, and is divided thesame way: 4 bars, 3 bars, 2 bars, etc. Finally, the musicalcontent of the piece is based on sixteen motives.[77] Such"nested proportions", as Cage called them, became a regularfeature of his music throughout the 1940s. The technique waselevated to great complexity in later pieces such as Sonatasand Interludes for prepared piano (194648), in which manyproportions used non-integer numbers (1, , 1, , 1, and1 for Sonata I, for example),[78] or A Flower, a song forvoice and closed piano, in which two sets of proportions are used simultaneously.[79]

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 fixedinstrumentation. The piece progresses from one gamut to another. In each instance the gamut was selected onlybased on whether it contains the note necessary for the melody, and so the rest of the notes do not form anydirectional harmony.[28] Concerto for prepared piano (195051) used a system of charts of durations, dynamics,melodies, etc., from which Cage would choose using simple geometric patterns.[28] The last movement of theconcerto was a step towards using chance procedures, which Cage adopted soon afterwards.[80]

Chance

I Ching divination involves obtaining ahexagram by random generation (such astossing coins), then reading the chapterassociated with that hexagram.

A chart system was also used (along with nested proportions) for thelarge piano work Music of Changes (1951), only here material wouldbe selected from the charts by using the I Ching. All of Cage's musicsince 1951 was composed using chance procedures, most commonlyusing the I Ching. For example, works from Music for Piano werebased on paper imperfections: the imperfections themselves providedpitches, and the I Ching was used to determine the methods of soundproduction, or the rhythms, etc.[81] A whole series of works wascreated by applying chance operations, i.e. the I Ching, to star charts:Atlas Eclipticalis (196162), and a series of etudes: Etudes Australes(197475), Freeman Etudes (197790), and Etudes Boreales(1978).[82] Cage's etudes are all extremely difficult to perform, acharacteristic dictated by Cage's social and political views: thedifficulty would ensure that "a performance would show that theimpossible is not impossible"[83]this being Cage's answer to thenotion that solving the world's political and social problems isimpossible.[84] Cage described himself as an anarchist, and wasinfluenced by Henry David Thoreau.[n 5]

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 andVariations (1979). In these works, Cage would borrow the rhythmic structure of the originals and fill it withpitches determined through chance procedures, or just replace some of the originals' pitches.[85] Yet another seriesof works, the so-called Number Pieces, all completed during the last five years of the composer's life, make use oftime brackets: the score consists of short fragments with indications of when to start and to end them (e.g. fromanywhere between 1!15" and 1!45", and to anywhere from 2!00" to 2!30").[86]

Cage's method of using the I Ching was far from simple randomization. The procedures varied from compositionto composition, and were usually complex. For example, in the case of Cheap Imitation, the exact questions askedto the I Ching were these:

1. Which of the seven modes, if we take as modes the seven scales beginning on white notes and remaining onwhite notes, which of those am I using?

2. Which of the twelve possible chromatic transpositions am I using?3. 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?[87]

In another example of late music by Cage, Etudes Australes, the compositional procedure involved placing atransparent strip on the star chart, identifying the pitches from the chart, transferring them to paper, then askingthe 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.[82][88]

Finally, some of Cage's works, particularly those completed during the 1960s, feature instructions to theperformer, rather than fully notated music. The score of Variations I (1958) presents the performer with sixtransparent squares, one with points of various sizes, five with five intersecting lines. The performer combines thesquares and uses lines and points as a coordinate system, in which the lines are axes of various characteristics ofthe sounds, such as lowest frequency, simplest overtone structure, etc.[89] Some of Cage's graphic scores (e.g.Concert for Piano and Orchestra, Fontana Mix (both 1958)) present the performer with similar difficulties. Still

Variations III, No. 14, a 1992 print by Cagefrom a series of 57.

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 disciplinedaction." The first performance had Cage write that sentence.[90]

Musicircus (1967) simply invites the performers to assemble and play together. The first Musicircus featuredmultiple performers and groups in a large space who were all to commence and stop playing at two particular timeperiods, with instructions on when to play individually or in groups within these two periods. The result was amass 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, andcontinue to occur even after Cage's death. The English National Opera became the first opera company to hold aCage Musicircus on 3 March 2012 at the London Colliseum.[91] The ENO's Musicircus featured artists includingLed Zeppelin bassist John Paul Jones and composer Michael Finnissy alongside ENO Music Director EdwardGardner, the ENO Community Choir, ENO Opera Works singers, and a collective of professional and amateurtalents performing in the bars and front of house at London's Coliseum Opera House.[92]

This concept of circus was to remain important to Cage throughout his life and featured strongly in such pieces asRoaratorio, an Irish circus on Finnegans Wake (1979), a many-tiered rendering in sound of both his text Writingfor 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.

ImprovisationSince chance procedures were used by Cage to eliminate the composer's and the performer's likes and dislikesfrom 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 thecactus. The structure of the pieces is determined through the chance of their choices, as is the musical output; theperformers had no knowledge of the instruments. In Inlets (1977) the performers play large water-filled conchshells by carefully tipping the shell several times, it is possible to achieve a bubble forming inside, whichproduced sound. Yet, as it is impossible to predict when this would happen, the performers had to continue tippingthe shells as a result the performance was dictated by pure chance.[93]

Visual art, writings, and other activitiesAlthough Cage started painting in his youth, he gave it up in order toconcentrate on music instead. His first mature visual project, NotWanting to Say Anything About Marcel, dates from 1969. The workcomprises two lithographs and a group of what Cage calledplexigrams: silk screen printing on plexiglas panels. The panels andthe lithographs all consist of bits and pieces of words in differenttypefaces, all governed by chance operations.[94]

From 1978 to his death Cage worked at Crown Point Press,producing series of prints every year. The earliest project completedthere was the etching Score Without Parts (1978), created from fullynotated instructions, and based on various combinations of drawingsby Henry David Thoreau. This was followed, the same year, bySeven 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 lastworks produced in 1978, Signals.[95]

Between 1979 and 1982 Cage produced a number of large series of prints: Changes and Disappearances (197980), On the Surface (198082), and Dreau (1982). These were the last works in which he used engraving.[96] In1983 he started using various unconventional materials such as cotton batting, foam, etc., and then used stonesand fire (Eninka, Variations, Ryoanji, etc.) to create his visual works.[97] In 19881990 he produced watercolorsat the Mountain Lake Workshop.

The only film Cage produced was one of the Number Pieces, One11, commissioned by composer and film directorHenning Lohner who worked with Cage to produce and direct the 90-minute monochrome film. It was completedonly 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 orchestrapiece 103.

Throughout his adult life, Cage was also active as lecturer and writer. Some of his lectures were included inseveral books he published, the first of which was Silence: Lectures and Writings (1961). Silence included notonly 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 poetryCage's mesostics.

Cage was also an avid amateur mycologist: he co-founded the New York Mycological Society with fourfriends,[61] and his mycology collection is presently housed by the Special Collections department of theMcHenry Library at the University of California, Santa Cruz.

Reception and influenceCage's pre-chance works, particularly pieces from the late 1940s such as Sonatas and Interludes, earned criticalacclaim: the Sonatas were performed at Carnegie Hall in 1949. Cage's adoption of chance operations in 1951 costhim a number of friendships and led to numerous criticisms from fellow composers. Adherents of serialism suchas Pierre Boulez and Karlheinz Stockhausen dismissed indeterminate music; Boulez, who was once on friendlyterms with Cage, criticized him for "adoption of a philosophy tinged with Orientalism that masks a basicweakness in compositional technique."[98] Prominent critics of serialism, such as the Greek composer IannisXenakis, were similarly hostile towards Cage: for Xenakis, the adoption of chance in music was "an abuse oflanguage and [...] an abrogation of a composer's function."[99]

An article by teacher and critic Michael Steinberg, Tradition and Responsibility, criticized avant-garde music ingeneral:

The rise of music that is totally without social commitment also increases the separation betweencomposer and public, and represents still another form of departure from tradition. The cynicism withwhich this particular departure seems to have been made is perfectly symbolized in John Cage'saccount of a public lecture he had given: "Later, during the question period, I gave one of sixpreviously prepared answers regardless of the question asked. This was a reflection of myengagement in Zen." While Mr. Cage's famous silent piece [i.e. 4!33"], or his Landscapes for a dozenradio receivers may be of little interest as music, they are of enormous importance historically asrepresenting the complete abdication of the artist's power.[100]

Cage's aesthetic position was criticized by, among others, prominent writer and critic Douglas Kahn. In his 1999book 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 thesocial."[101]

While much of Cage's work remains controversial,[citation needed] his influence on countless composers, artists, andwriters is notable.[citation needed] After Cage introduced chance, Boulez, Stockhausen, and Xenakis remainedcritical, 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 Klavierstcke was influenced by Cage's Music of Changes and DavidTudor.[102] Other composers who adopted chance procedures in their works included Witold Lutosawski,Mauricio Kagel, and many others.[citation needed] Music in which some of the composition and/or performance isleft to chance was labelled aleatoric musica term popularized by Pierre Boulez.[citation needed] HelmutLachenmann's work was influenced by Cage's work with extended techniques.[103]

Cage's rhythmic structure experiments and his interest in sound influenced a number of composers, starting at firstwith his close American associates Earle Brown, Morton Feldman, and Christian Wolff (and other Americancomposers, such as La Monte Young, Terry Riley, Steve Reich, and Philip Glass), and then spreading toEurope.[citation needed] For example, almost all composers of the English experimental school acknowledge hisinfluence:[citation needed] Michael Parsons, Christopher Hobbs, John White,[104] Gavin Bryars, who studied underCage briefly,[105] and Howard Skempton.[106] The Japanese composer Tru Takemitsu has also cited Cage'sinfluence.[107]

Cage's influence was also acknowledged by rock acts such as Sonic Youth (who performed some of the NumberPieces[108]) and Stereolab (who named a song after Cage[109]), composer and rock and jazz guitarist FrankZappa,[110] and various noise music artists and bands: indeed, one writer traced the origin of noise music to4!33".[111] The development of electronic music was also influenced by Cage: in the mid-1970s Brian Eno's labelObscure Records released works by Cage.[112] Prepared piano, which Cage popularized, is featured heavily onAphex Twin's 2001 album Drukqs.[113] Cage's work as musicologist helped popularize Erik Satie'smusic,[114][115] and his friendship with Abstract expressionist artists such as Robert Rauschenberg helpedintroduce his ideas into visual art. Cage's ideas also found their way into sound design: for example, AcademyAward-winning sound designer Gary Rydstrom cited Cage's work as a major influence.[116] Radiohead undertooka composing and performing collaboration with Cunningham's dance troupe in 2003 because the music-group'sleader Thom Yorke considered Cage one of his all-time art heroes.[117]

Centenary CommemorationIn 2012, amongst a wide range of American and international centennial celebrations,[118][119] an 8-day festivalwas held in Washington DC, with venues found notably more amongst the city's art museums and universitiesthan performance spaces. Earlier in the centennial year, conductor Michael Tilson Thomas presented CagesSong Books with the San Francisco Symphony at Carnegie Hall in New York.[120][121] Another celebrationcame, for instance, in Darmstadt, Germany, which in July 2012 renamed its central station the John Cage RailwayStation during the term of its annual new-music courses.[18] Jacaranda has four concerts planned in Santa Monica,CA for the centennial week.[122][123] John Cage Day was the name given to several events held during 2012 tomark the centenary of his birth.

A 2012 project was curated by Juraj Kojs to celebrate the centenary of Cage's birth, titled On Silence: Homage toCage. It consisted of 13 commissioned works created by composers from around the global such as KasiaGlowicka, Adrian Knight and Henry Vega, each being 4 minutes and 33 seconds long in honor of Cagesinfamous 1952 opus, 4'33". The program was supported by the Foundation for Emerging Technologies and Arts,Laura Kuhn and the John Cage Trust.[124]

In an homage to Cage's dance work, the Bill T. Jones/Arnie Zane Dance Company in July 2012 "performed anengrossing piece called 'Story/Time'. It was modeled on Cages 1958 work 'Indeterminacy', in which [Cage andthen Jones, respectively,] sat alone onstage, reading aloud ... series of one-minute stories [they]d written. Dancersfrom Joness company performed as [Jones] read."[117]

ArchivesThe archive of the John Cage Trust is held at Bard College in upstate New York.[125]

The John Cage Music Manuscript Collection held by the Music Division (http://www.nypl.org/musicdiv) ofThe New York Public Library for the Performing Arts (http://www.nypl.org/research/lpa/lpa.html) containsmost of the composer's musical manuscripts, including sketches, worksheets, realizations, and unfinishedworks.The John Cage Papers (http://www.wesleyan.edu/libr/schome/FAs/ca1000-72.html) are held in the SpecialCollections and Archives department of Wesleyan University's Olin Library in Middletown, Connecticut.They contain manuscripts, interviews, fan mail, and ephemera. Other material includes clippings, galleryand exhibition catalogs, a collection of Cage's books and serials, posters, objects, exhibition and literaryannouncement postcards, and brochures from conferences and other organizationsThe John Cage Collection (http://www.library.northwestern.edu/libraries-collections/evanston-campus/music-library/collections/special-collections/john-cage) at Northwestern University in Illinoiscontains the composer's correspondence, ephemera, and the Notations collection.

See alsoWorks for prepared piano by John CageList of compositions by John CageNumber PiecesAn Anthology of Chance Operations

Notes1. ^ Cage quoted in Kostelanetz 2003, 12. 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.2. ^ Different sources give different details of their first meeting. Pritchett, in Grove, implies 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."

3. ^ 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" (http://www.artsjournal.com/postclassic/2008/09/cleaning_up_a_life.html). anARTSJOURNAL weblog. Retrieved August 4, 2009.

4. ^ Technically, it was his second, for Cage previously collaborated with Kathleen Hoover on a biographical volume onVirgil Thomson, which was published in 1959.

5. ^ Cage self-identified as an anarchist in a 1985 interview: "I'm an anarchist. I don't know whether the adjective is pure andsimple, or philosophical, or what, but I don't like government! And I don't like institutions! And I don't have anyconfidence in even good institutions." John Cage at Seventy: An Interview(http://www.ubu.com/papers/cage_montague_interview.html) by Stephen Montague. American Music, Summer 1985.

Ubu.com. Accessed May 24, 2007.

References1. ^ Pritchett and Kuhn, Grove Online: "He has had a greater impact on music in the 20th century than any other American

composer."2. ^ a b "John Cage, 79, a Minimalist Enchanted With Sound, Dies"

(http://www.nytimes.com/learning/general/onthisday/bday/0905.html). New York Times. August 13, 1992. Retrieved July21, 2007. "John Cage, the prolific and influential composer whose Minimalist works have long been a driving force in theworld of music, dance and art, died yesterday at St. Vincent's Hospital in Manhattan. He was 79 years old and lived inManhattan."

3. ^ Leonard, George J. (1995). Into the Light of Things: The Art of the Commonplace from Wordsworth to John Cage.University of Chicago Press. p. 120 ("...when Harvard University Press called him, in a 1990 book advertisement, "withouta doubt the most influential composer of the last half-century," amazingly, that was too modest."). ISBN 978-0-226-47253-9.

4. ^ Greene, David Mason (2007). Greene's Biographical Encyclopedia of Composers. Reproducing Piano Roll Fnd. p. 1407("[...] John Cage is probably the most influential ... of all American composers to date."). ISBN 978-0-385-14278-6.

5. ^ Perloff, Junkerman, 1994, 93.6. ^ Bernstein, Hatch, 2001, 4345.7. ^ Kostelanetz 2003, 69708. ^ Reviews cited in Fetterman 1996, 699. ^ Nicholls 2002, 80: "Most critics agree that Sonatas and Interludes (194648) is the finest composition of Cage's early

period."10. ^ Lejeunne, Denis. 2012. The Radical Use of Chance in 20th Century Art, pp. 185-18911. ^ Cage 1973, 12.12. ^ Mark Swed (August 31, 2012), John Cage's genius an L.A. story (http://www.latimes.com/entertainment/arts/culture/la-

et-cm-john-cage,0,3501401.htmlstory) Los Angeles Times.13. ^ a b Nicholls 2002, 4.14. ^ Cage quoted in Kostelanetz 2003, 1. For details on Cage's ancestry, see, for example, Nicholls 2002, 46.15. ^ a b Cage, John (1991). "An Autobiographical Statement" (http://www.newalbion.com/artists/cagej/autobiog.html).

Southwest Review. Retrieved March 14, 2007.16. ^ Recording and notes: John Cage Complete Piano Music Vol.7: Pieces 19331950. Steffen Schleiermacher (piano).

MDG 613 0789-2.17. ^ Kostelanetz 2003, 2.18. ^ a b c d Swed, Mark, "John Cage's genius an L.A. story" (http://www.latimes.com/entertainment/arts/culture/la-et-cm-

john-cage,0,3501401.htmlstory), Los Angeles Times, August 31, 2012. Retrieved 2012-09-02.19. ^ Nicholls 2002, 21.20. ^ a b c d Kostelanetz 2003, 4.21. ^ Nicholls 2002, 8.22. ^ Perloff, Junkerman, 1994, 79.23. ^ John Cage, National Inter-Collegiate Arts Conference, Vassar College, Poughkeepsie (N. Y), Feb. 28, 1948.24. ^ Perloff, Junkerman 1994, 80.25. ^ Nicholls 2002, 22.26. ^ a b Perloff, Junkerman, 1994, 81.27. ^ Cage quoted in Perloff, Junkerman, 1994, 81.28. ^ a b c d e f g h i Pritchett and Kuhn, Grove Onine.29. ^ Cage quoted in Nicholls 2002, 24.30. ^ Kostelanetz 2003, 61.31. ^ Nicholls 2002, 24.32. ^ a b Kostelanetz 2003, 7.33. ^ a b Pritchett 2003, 9.34. ^ This conversation was recounted many times by Cage himself: see Silence, p. 261; A Year from Monday, p. 44;

interviews quoted in Kostelanetz 2003, pp. 5, 105; etc.35. ^ a b c Kostelanetz 2003, 6.36. ^ Cage interview quoted in Kostelanetz 2003, 105.

36. ^ Cage interview quoted in Kostelanetz 2003, 105.37. ^ Cage 1973, 260.38. ^ a b Broyles M. (2004).Mavericks and Other Traditions in American Music,Yale Universiy Press, New Haven & London,

(p. 177).39. ^ For details on Cage's first meeting with Xenia, see Kostelanetz 2003, 78; 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.

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(http://memory.loc.gov/ammem/collections/moldenhauer/moldtoc.html).44. ^ Cage 1973, 127.45. ^ Revill 1993, 108.46. ^ Cage 1973, 158.47. ^ Bredow 2012.48. ^ Revill 1993, 101.49. ^ Pritchett 1993, 105.50. ^ Nicholls 2002, 101.51. ^ Kostelanetz 2003, 68.52. ^ Pritchett 1993, 97.53. ^ Revill 1993, 91.54. ^ John Cage, in an interview with Miroslav Sebestik, 1991. From: Listen, documentary by Miroslav Sebestik. ARTE

France Dveloppement, 2003.55. ^ Pritchett 1993, 71.56. ^ Pritchett 1993, 78.57. ^ Revill 1993, 142.58. ^ Revill 1993, 143149.59. ^ Revill 1993, 166.60. ^ Revill 1993, 17461. ^ a b c Emmerik, Paul van (2009). "A John Cage Compendium" (http://www.xs4all.nl/~cagecomp/). Paul van Emmerik.

Retrieved August 6, 2009.62. ^ "Guide to the Center for Advanced Studies Records, 1958 1969" (http://www.wesleyan.edu/libr/schome/FAs/ce1000-

137.html). Wesleyan University. Retrieved September 4, 2010.63. ^ "The Many Views of Betty Freeman: Betty Freeman's Commissions" (http://www.newmusicbox.org/article.nmbx?

id=846). NewMusicBox. 2000. Retrieved August 8, 2009.64. ^ Ross, Alex (December 4, 1992). "S.E.M. Evokes John Cage as Teacher"

(http://www.nytimes.com/1992/12/24/arts/review-music-sem-evokes-john-cage-as-teacher.html). The New York Times.Retrieved October 6, 2010.

65. ^ Revill 1993, 208.66. ^ a b Revill 1993, 228.67. ^ Pritchett, James. 2004. "John Cage: Imitations/Transformations

(http://www.rosewhitemusic.com/cage/texts/CageImitationsTransformations.html)". In James Pritchett, Writings on JohnCage (and others) (http://www.rosewhitemusic.com/cage/index.html). (Online resource, accessed June 5, 2008)

68. ^ Revill 1993, 247.69. ^ Fetterman 1996, 191.70. ^ Haskins 2004.71. ^ Revill 1993, 295.72. ^ Kostelanetz, Richard. 2000. John Cage: Writer: Selected Texts, xvii. Cooper Square Press, 2nd edition. ISBN 978-0-

8154-1034-873. ^ "John Cage (19121992) Find A Grave Memorial" (http://www.findagrave.com/cgi-bin/fg.cgi?page=gr&GRid=1461).

January 1, 2000. Retrieved August 3, 2009.74. ^ "Dance great Cunningham dies at 90" (http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/entertainment/arts_and_culture/8171036.stm). BBC

News. July 28, 2009. Retrieved September 3, 2009.75. ^ Pritchett 1993, 6.76. ^ Pritchett 1993, 7.77. ^ Nicholls 2002, 7174.

77. ^ Nicholls 2002, 7174.78. ^ Pritchett 1993, 2933.79. ^ Notes in the score: A Flower. Edition Peters 6711. Copyright 1960 by Henmar Press.80. ^ Pritchett, James. 1988. "From Choice to Chance: John Cage's Concerto for Prepared Piano." Perspectives of New Music

26, no. 1 (Fall): 5081.81. ^ Pritchett 1993, 94.82. ^ a b Nicholls 2002, 139.83. ^ Perloff, Junkerman 1994, 140.84. ^ Pritchett, James. 1994a. "John Cage: Freeman Etudes (http://www.rosewhitemusic.com/cage/texts/freeman.html)", CD

liner notes to: John Cage, Freeman Etudes (Books 1 and 2) (Irvine Arditti, violin), Mode 32. (Accessed August 14, 2008)85. ^ Pritchett 1993, 197.86. ^ Pritchett 1993, 200.87. ^ Kostelanetz 2003, 84.88. ^ Kostelanetz 2003, 92.89. ^ Pritchett 1993, 136.90. ^ Pritchett 1993, 144146.91. ^ Doundou Tchil (2012-01-20). "CLASSICAL ICONOCLAST: ENO presents John Cage Musicircus" (http://classical-

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92. ^ http://www.eno.org/see-whats-on/productions/production-page.php?&itemid=2007. Missing or empty |title= (help)93. ^ Kostelanetz 2004, 9296.94. ^ Nicholls 2002, 112113.95. ^ Nicholls 2002, 113115.96. ^ Nicholls 2002, 115118.97. ^ Nicholls 2002, 118122.98. ^ Boulez, Pierre. 1964. Alea. Perspectives of New Music, Vol. 3, No. 1 (Autumn Winter, 1964), 425399. ^ Bois, Mario, and Xenakis, Iannis. 1980. The Man and his Music: A Conversation with the Composer and a Description

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(http://www.grovemusic.com/) (subscription access).107. ^ Burt, Peter. 2001. The Music of Toru Takemitsu, 94. Cambridge University Press. ISBN 0-521-78220-1.108. ^ Lopez, Antonio (December 1999 / January 2000). "Sonic Youth's Thurston Moore: On punk music, staying fresh, and the

strange bridge between art and rock" (http://www.thirstyearfestival.com/interviews/sonic.html). Thirsty Ear Magazine.Retrieved August 26, 2010.

109. ^ Morris, Chris (August 17, 1997). "Hold The Ketchup On That Stereolab"(http://www.music.yahoo.ca/read/interview/12052849). Yahoo! Music. Retrieved August 26, 2010.

110. ^ Lowe, Kelly Fisher (2006). The Words and Music of Frank Zappa. Praeger Publishers. p. 57. ISBN 0-275-98779-5.111. ^ Paul Hegarty, Full With Noise: Theory and Japanese Noise Music, pp. 8698 in Life in the Wires (2004) eds. Arthur

Kroker & Marilouise Kroker, NWP Ctheory Books, Victoria, Canada112. ^ Jack, Adrian (1975). " "I Want to be a Magnet for Tapes" (interview with Brian Eno)"

(http://music.hyperreal.org/artists/brian_eno/interviews/timeo75a.html). Time Out. Retrieved August 26, 2010.113. ^ Worby, Robert (October 23, 2002). "Richard Aphex, John Cage and the Prepared Piano" (http://warp.net/records/aphex-

twin/richard-aphex-john-cage-and-the-prepared-piano). Warp Records. Retrieved August 26, 2010.114. ^ Orledge, Robert (1990). Satie the Composer. Cambridge University Press. p. 259. ISBN 978-0-521-35037-2.115. ^ 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 (http://www.satie-archives.com/web/article8.html).116. ^ LoBrutto, Vincent (1994). Sound-on-Film: Interviews With Creators of Film Sound. Greenwood Publishing Group.

pp. 24142. ISBN 978-0-275-94443-8.117. ^ a b Kaufman, Sarah, "John Cage, with Merce Cunningham, revolutionized dance, too"

117. ^ a b Kaufman, Sarah, "John Cage, with Merce Cunningham, revolutionized dance, too"(http://www.washingtonpost.com/entertainment/theater_dance/john-cage-with-merce-cunningham-revolutionized-music-too/2012/08/30/a3edbaf8-f177-11e1-892d-bc92fee603a7_story_1.html), criticism, Washington Post, August 30, 2012.Retrieved 2012-09-02.

118. ^ "Events honoring John Cage at 100" (http://www.latimes.com/entertainment/arts/culture/la-et-cm-cage-list-20120902,0,4919846,full.story), Los Angeles Times, September 2, 2012. Retrieved 2012-09-02.

119. ^ Events (http://johncage.org/2012/events.html), John Cage Foundation webpage. Retrieved 2012-09-02.120. ^ Midgette, Anne, "John Cage Centennial Festival: Will it silence critics in Washington?"

(http://www.washingtonpost.com/entertainment/music/john-cage-centennial-festival-will-it-silence-crtics-in-washington/2012/08/30/f9ce9f3a-f0f7-11e1-adc6-87dfa8eff430_story.html?hpid=z9), Washington Post, August 31, 2012.Retrieved 2012-09-02.

121. ^ Official Festival web site (http://www.johncage2012.com). Retrieved 2012-09-02.122. ^ "Cage 100 Festival" (http://jacarandamusic.org/0906.php), Jacaranda webpage. Retrieved 2012-09-05.123. ^ Ross, Alex, "The John Cage Century" (http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/culture/2012/09/john-cage-at-100.html),

The New Yorker, September 4, 2012. Retrieved 2012-09-05.124. ^ Kojs, Juraj. "On Silence: Hommage to Cage" (http://kojs.net/On_Silence/index.html). http://kojs.net. Retrieved 8 January

2013.125. ^ "Bard College | Press Releases" (http://www.bard.edu/news/releases/pr/fstory.php?id=1181). Bard.edu. 1992-08-12.

Retrieved 2013-12-05.

SourcesArena, Leonardo Vittorio. 2013. L'infinita durata del non suono. Mimesis, Milan ISBN 978-88-5751-138-2Bernstein, David W., and Hatch, Christopher, eds. 2001. Writings through John Cage's Music, Poetry, andArt. University of Chicago Press. ISBN 0-226-04407-6Boulez, Pierre, and Cage, John. 1995. The Boulez-Cage Correspondence. Edited by Robert Samuels andJean-Jacques Nattiez, translated by Robert Samuels. Cambridge University Press. ISBN 0-521-48558-4Bredow, Moritz von. 2012. "Rebellische Pianistin. Das Leben der Grete Sultan zwischen Berlin und NewYork." (Biography). Schott Music, Mainz, Germany. ISBN 978-3-7957-0800-9Brown, Kathan. 2001. John Cage Visual Art: To Sober and Quiet the Mind. Crown Point Press. ISBN 1-891300-16-4, ISBN 978-1-891300-16-5Cage, John. 1973. Silence: Lectures and Writings, Wesleyan University Press Paperback (first edition1961). ISBN 0-8195-6028-6Eldred, Michael. 1995/2006. Heidegger's Hlderlin and John Cage (http://www.arte-fact.org/heicagen.html) www.arte-fact.orgEldred, Michael. 2010. The Quivering of Propriation: A Parallel Way to Music (http://www.arte-fact.org/qvrpropn.html), Section II.3 New Music is the Other Music (Cage) (http://www.arte-fact.org/qvrpropn.html#II.3) www.arte-fact.orgFetterman, William. 1996. John Cage's Theatre Pieces: Notations and Performances. Routledge. ISBN 3-7186-5643-4Haskins, Rob. 2004. "An Anarchic Society of Sounds": The Number Pieces of John Cage. PhD dissertation,Musicology, Eastman School of Music, University of Rochester.Kostelanetz, Richard. 2003. Conversing with John Cage, Routledge. ISBN 0-415-93792-2Larson, Kay. 2012. Where the Heart Beats - John Cage, Zen Buddhism, and the Inner Life of Artists.Penguin Books USA. ISBN 978-1-594-20340-4Lejeunne, Denis. 2012. The Radical Use of Chance in 20th Century Art, Rodopi Press, Amsterdam.Nicholls, David (ed.). 2002. The Cambridge Companion to John Cage. Cambridge University Press, 2002.ISBN 0-521-78968-0Nicholls, David. 2007. John Cage. University of Illinois Press. ISBN 0-252-03215-2Patterson, David W. (ed.). John Cage: Music, Philosophy, and Intention, 19331950. Routledge, 2002.ISBN 0-8153-2995-4Perloff, Marjorie, and Junkerman, Charles. 1994. John Cage: Composed in America. University of ChicagoPress, 1994. ISBN 0-226-66057-5

Pritchett, James. 1993. The Music of John Cage. Cambridge University Press. ISBN 0-521-56544-8Pritchett, James, and Laura Kuhn. "John Cage", Grove Music Online, ed. L. Macy (accessed February 42013), grovemusic.com (http://www.grovemusic.com/) (subscription access). [Edited not by L. Macy, butby Deane Root.]Revill, David. 1993. The Roaring Silence: John Cage a Life. Arcade Publishing. ISBN 1-55970-220-6,ISBN 978-1-55970-220-1Taruskin, Richard. 2005. Oxford History of Western Music, The. Vol. 5. Oxford: Oxford UP, Inc.Indeterminacy pp. 55101. ISBN 978-0-19-516979-9

External linksGeneral information and catalogues

Official Website (http://johncage.org/)A John Cage Compendium (http://www.xs4all.nl/~cagecomp/), website by Cage scholar Paul van Emmerik,in collaboration with performer Herbert Henck and Andrs Wilheim. Includes exhaustive catalogues andbibliography, chronology of Cage's life, etc.Larry Solomon's John Cage Pages (http://solomonsmusic.net/Cage.htm), a complete catalogue of Cage'smusic and a filmography, as well as other materials.James Pritchett: Writings (http://www.music.princeton.edu/~jwp/), articles on Cage's music in HTML andPDF form by Cage scholar James Pritchett.Edition Peters: John Cage Biography and Works (http://www.edition-peters.com/composer/Cage-John),Cage's principal publisher since 1961.Guide to the John Cage Mycology Collection (http://www.oac.cdlib.org/findaid/ark:/13030/kt4w10133d)Silence/Stories: (http://www.lichtensteiger.de/stories.html) 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 WhitingA Project by John Cage called ORGAN2/ASLSP (http://oddstrument.com/2008/08/12/the-longest-concert-ever-has-reached-its-6th-note/) is the longest concert ever created.Works by or about John Cage (http://worldcat.org/identities/lccn-n50-32828) in libraries (WorldCatcatalog)(French) A biography (http://brahms.ircam.fr/composers/composer/679/) of John Cage, from IRCAM'swebsite.Artist Biography (http://www.eai.org/artistTitles.htm?id=421) and a list of video works by and about JohnCage at Electronic Arts Intermix eai.org (http://www.eai.org/index.htm).Interview with John Cage (http://www.bruceduffie.com/cage.html) by Bruce Duffie, June 21, 1987Ross, Alex, "Searching for Silence: John Cages art of noise"(http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2010/10/04/101004fa_fact_ross?currentPage=all), The New Yorker,October 4, 2010.Previously unpublished interview with John Cage by Charles Hayes in March-April 2014 issue ofRagazine.CC. (http://ragazine.cc/2014/03/look-back-john-cage/)

Link collectionsJohn Cage Online (http://ronsen.org/cagelinks.html)

Specific topicsGligo, Nika: Was fr ein Werk stellt "A Collection of Rocks" von John Cage dar? Ein Beitrag zurWerkdetermination in der experimentellen Musik, in: Otto Kolleritsch (ed.), "Entgrenzungen in der Musik"(= Studien zur Wertungsforschung, Nr. 18.), Wien - Graz: Universal Edition, 1989, pp. 83103.Kasper, Ulrike. "Sounds Visions, The Work of Jacques Pourcher, Perspectives on John Cage"(http://filebox.vt.edu/users/apecorar/Design_Portfolio/02)%20Brochure%20-

%20John%20Cage%20Exhibition.pdf), essay on the exhibition "John Cage and Jacques Pourcher, Workson Paper", Virginia Tech, Blacksburg, USA.The Music of Chance (http://www.guardian.co.uk/arts/fridayreview/story/0,12102,1123639,00.html), articlefrom the UK Guardian newspaper, quotes from various people who knew Cage.ORGAN2/ASLSP: As Slow as Possible John-Cage-Orgelprojekt Halberstadt (http://www.john-cage.halberstadt.de/), Web site about a current ongoing performance of As Slow As Possible, which beganin 2001 and is scheduled to have a duration of 639 years'Silence and Change / Five Hanau Silence' (http://www.sterneck.net/john-cage): Articles and documents ona project of John Cage, Claus Sterneck and Wolfgang Sterneck in benefit of a squated culture center inHanau (Germany) in 1991, (English / German).Garten, Joel, "Interview With MoMA Curator David Platzker About the New Exhibition on John Cage"(http://www.huffingtonpost.com/joel-garten/interview-with-moma-curator_b_4806215.html?utm_hp_ref=arts&ir=Arts), The Huffington Post, February 20, 2014.

ListeningIn Conversation with Morton Feldman, 1966, Part 1 (http://radiom.org/detail.php?omid=C.1967.10.25.1),Part 2 (http://radiom.org/detail.php?omid=C.1967.10.25.2), Part 3 (http://radiom.org/detail.php?omid=C.1967.10.25.3), Part 4 (http://radiom.org/detail.php?omid=C.1967.10.25.4), and Part 5(http://radiom.org/detail.php?omid=C.1967.10.25.5)Excerpts from sound archives (http://www.musiquecontemporaine.fr/en/search?disp=all&query=Cage&exp_inl=on&exp_aud=on&so=ta) of Cage's works.

MediaJohn Cage at UbuWeb: historical (http://www.ubu.com/historical/cage/index.html), sound(http://www.ubu.com/sound/cage.html), film (http://www.ubu.com/film/cage.html).John Cage's etchings at the Crown Point Press website(http://www.crownpoint.com/artists/cage/index.html)Art of the States: John Cage (http://artofthestates.org/cgi-bin/composer.pl?comp=1), six works by thecomposerIndeterminacy (http://www.lcdf.org/indeterminacy/about.html), Cage's short stories taken from variouspublications and accessed in random order.FontanaMixer (http://www.essl.at/works/fontana-mixer.html): computer program by Karlheinz Essl whichgenerates a realtime version of John Cage's "Fontana Mix" (1958)Other Minds Archive: John Cage interviewed by Jonathan Cott (http://radiom.org/detail.php?omid=C.1963.XX.XX), streaming audioOther Minds Archive: John Cage and David Tudor Concert at The San Francisco Museum of Art (January16, 1965) (http://radiom.org/detail.php?omid=C.1965.01.16.A), streaming audio27, 2002 Suite for Toy Piano (1948) (http://radiom.org/detail.php?omid=OMF.1999.March) performed byMargaret Leng Tan at the Other Minds Music Festival in 1999 at the Cowell Theater in San Francisco.1982 performance of Speech for 5 radios and reel (1955) on YouTube (http://youtube.com/watch?v=IC6h1A6TEIE)Water Walk on YouTube (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7KKE0f1FGiw) from Cage's appearance onthe game show I've Got a Secret in January 1960.The Anarchy of Silence. John Cage and Experimental Art (2009) (http://www.macba.cat/controller.php?p_action=show_page&pagina_id=72&inst_id=23061), a lecture by Julia E. Robinson on occasion of Cage'sexhibition at the MACBA, BarcelonaNotes towards a re-reading of the Roaratorio (http://rwm.macba.cat/en/specials?id_capsula=599) thework of John Cage and his special relationship to radio at Rdio Web MACBAThe Rest isn't Silence... it doesn't exist! (http://www.thankyouoneandall.co.uk/letters/cage.htm) Analyticalmaterial and recordings going back to the first rehearsal and performance of Imaginary Landscape No 4 in1951.

FLUXRADIO (podcast) (http://rwm.macba.cat/en/specials/fluxradio_joe_gilmore_rhiannon_silver/capsula) An exploration of some of the concepts and ideas behind the music and performance practice of Fluxus.John Cage Journeys in Sound (http://www.accentus.com/en/media-detail/items/john-cage-journeys-in-sound.html) Documentary, Germany, 2012, 60 Min., Director: Allan Miller & Paul Smaczny, Written byAnne-Kathrin Peitz. Production: Accentus Music in co-production with WDR. Czech Crystal Award(Best Documentary) at Golden Prague Festival 2012.

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