FREE ESSAY ON JOHN CAGE

JOHN CAGE

John Milton Cage Jr.
John Cage became famous for his unorthodox theories and very experimental compositions.
He was an American composer born in Los Angeles on September 5, 1912. Neither of his
parents went to college, and John himself dropped out after a mere two years in college.
His father earned a living being an inventor. Cage credits his father, being an inventor,
as very influential to the way in which he wrote music. John also considered himself as
an innovator and discoverer in the field of music. John Cage took traditional classical
music and turned it into a futuristic collection of sounds totally different from what
everyone was used to. He has expanded the idea of what sounds constituted music, and was
the influential impetus behind indeterminacy in music. He is credited with enhancing the
thinking of many other modern composers, Philip Glass being one of them.
By as early as 1937 Cage was introducing the use of intentional and unintentional noise
and electrically produced sounds in music. He did this by using your everyday household
items such as pots and pans even brake drums to produce sounds and turn them into music.
He was the first composer to give noise equal status to musical tone. He is said to have
created an early piece "Imaginary Landscapes No. 1" by using muted piano, cymbal, and
frequency test recordings. As if this doesn't sound weird enough the frequency test
recordings were played on variable speed turntables. This was John Cage's style. He later
went on to use the sounds of percussion on household furniture, he used various items
such as the human body, conch shells, and kitchen sounds like chopping vegetables. He was
also known for using amplified sounds like a crumpling paper, even a chess game being
played. He incorporated the sounds of toys and toy pianos into his works also.
Cage, in 1938, once conquered the challenge of creating percussion instruments for a
dance in a theatre that had no wings or orchestra pit, there was just barely enough room
for a small grand piano built into the front left of the audience. Being so limited on
space and not being able to neither find, nor fit an African twelve tone row, he invented
the prepared piano. The prepared piano he created by adding screws, bolts, rubber, wood
and weather striping between the strings of the grand piano. The piano was transformed
into a percussion orchestra, with the loudness of that of a harpsichord. Cage later went
on to earn awards for "Sonatas and Interludes" which was one of his most important works
for the prepared piano in 1946 to 1948.
Cage later went on to say "My favorite music is the music that I haven't yet heard. I
don't here the music I write: I write in order to hear the music I have [not] yet heard."
This quote summarizes his philosophy on indeterminacy. This belief led to the creation of
4'33'', his recording of the sounds around you. The only thing specified is the length of
the piece. It is said that he used 4.33 minutes which equals 273 seconds. And -273
centigrade = zero degrees where everything would be completely silent and atoms quite
moving. What do you think about this theory?
Later John went on studying Zen Buddhism and the "I Ching" which is what steered him more
so in the direction of indeterminacy. With this style he would orchestrate what was going
on, but leave the conditions open to the performer. A good example is the piece he
created by using 12 radios each and having 24 different people, two at each radio, one
controlled the volume and the other the tuning. He would then randomly select which
radios were playing when he told them. The undetermined condition here would be that he
never knew what was playing on each station as he selected them to play, or the volume.
And pieces were always overlapping each other with a variety of unknown music at
different times. This piece was titled "Imaginary Lanscapes No. 4".
Cage went all through life pushing the boundaries of traditional music. Opening people
and other composers minds to all avenues of new music through sounds and indeterminacy.
He had influenced everything from the use of silence as music, to how people view and
think about music and sound itself. Some refer to John Cage as the father of
indeterminate music. He died in 1992, where his obituary actually made the front page of
the New York Times. Not only during his life, but even after life, Cage was one of the
most influential and innovative composers of the 20th century.
In 1993, "A Chance Operation - The John Cage Tribute" was released. It included a large
variety of artists performing a tribute to John Cage. Not only classical artists either.
Frank Zappa actually does 4'33'' on the tribute. If you get a chance, I encourage
listening to it. 
Few Trivia bits
1. Extremely knowledgeable of Mushrooms
2. Liked playing bridge as well as other card games and board games.
3. He recorded vegetables being sliced, put into blender, then he drank the juice.
4. Spent some time in Europe learning to become a writer before becoming musician
5. The possible meaning of 4'33'' as talked about in this paper.
References
http://darkwing.uoregon.edu/~splat/Cage_Tribute.html
http://www.encyclopedia.com/articles/02127.html
http://www.xs4all.nl/~gaud/biobak/c/cagej.htm
http://wings.buffalo.edu/epc/authors/perloff/cage.html
http://www.edition-peters.de/cage/cage_engl.html
http://encarta.msn.com/find/Consise.asp?ti=01065000
http://newalbion.com/artists/cagej/autobiog.html
http://www.hnh.com/composer/cage.htm
John Cage List of Works
http://metalab.unc.edu/mal/MO/cage/cageworks.html