"Indeterminacy" is a collection of various anecdotes and short stories taken from life or books Cage read: the concept is to tell one story per minute, and to achieve the speaker has to either speed up or slow down, depending on the length of the story. "Where Are We Going? and What Are We Doing?" is presented in several types of typeface to better reflect the concept of the lecture, which was originally presented as four tapes running simultaneously. "45' for a Speaker" is similar to Cage's "time length" compositions: it provides detailed instructions for the speaker as to exactly when a particular sentence or a phrase should be said. The text of the first part of "Composition as Process" is presented in four columns, the text of "Erik Satie" in two. "The Future of Music: Credo" juxtaposes paragraphs of two different texts. Several works feature unorthodox methods of presentation and/or composition. Most of the works are preceded by a short commentary on their origins, some have an afterword provided. Eventually one discovers that it is not boring at all." "If something is boring after two minutes, try it for four.
Silence is a collection of essays and lectures Cage wrote during the period from 1939 to 1961.
Silence: Lectures and Writings is a book by American experimental composer John Cage (1912–1992), first published in 1961 by Wesleyan University Press. His mesostic on the text of James Joyce, Roaratorio: An Irish Circus on Finnegans Wake (1979), was also layered with the sounds mentioned in the text as well as traditional Irish music. Much of Cage’s writing was composed within a prose poem form he called “mesostic” (similar to acrostic, but led by middle rather than initial letters). PBS, in a feature on Cage for their American Masters series, described the ambition of Cage’s 4'33", in which the performer sits before a piano for four and a half minutes without playing a note: “Cage broke from the history of classical composition and proposed that the primary act of musical performance was not making music, but listening.”īeginning with Silence (1961) and A Year from Monday: New Lectures and Writings (1967), Cage used writing to pursue his investigations into the structure of syntax and chance. Influenced by the ready-mades of Marcel Duchamp, the design of Buckminster Fuller, and the philosophy of Ludwig Wittgenstein, Cage created inventive, nonintentional musical compositions with unorthodox musical sources, which often utilized elements of chance involving computer programs or the I Ching. Beginning in 1942, Cage lived primarily in New York. Though Cage invented the “prepared piano,” a piano with carefully altered strings, at Cornish, it was at Black Mountain College that he staged the first of his infamous “happenings” with Cunningham, painter Robert Rauschenberg, and poet Charles Olson. 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. The content of the composition is not "four minutes and 33 seconds of silence," as is often assumed, but rather the sounds of the environment heard by the audience during performance. 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.Ĭage is perhaps best known for his 1952 composition 4′33″, which is performed in the absence of deliberate sound musicians who present the work do nothing aside from being present for the duration specified by the title. Sometimes Cage didn't use instruments at all but used recorded voices and even radio static to help build his chance compositions. He later became one of first composers to use synthesizers and computers. By 1937, Cage created what he called the prepared piano, a method of altering the piano's tonal and percussive qualities by placing wood, metal or rubber objects on the piano strings. His radical ideas about composition led to equally radical experiments with instruments. He wanted to release his music from the limits of his own taste, memory and emotion.
John Cage began serious music studies in the 1930s, and quickly gravitated to the avant-garde and the idea of composing music through chance. Critics have lauded him as one of the most influential composers of the 20th century. 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. (Septem– August 12, 1992) was an American composer and music theorist.
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