John Cage an Influential Minimalist
John Cage is the epitome of a cutting edge composer due to the fact that he has an elevated appreciation for music, unmatched by any other. Cage enjoys everyday, naturally occurring sounds because of their dynamics and their lengths, rather than the sounds constrained by musical instruments, something other composers usually overlook. This gives him the advantage to compose music in a unique manner. Cage has had an impact not only on musicians, but dancers and philosophers as well; His ideas and ways of thinking changed the mindsets of many in the world of music as we know it today. One significant reason why Cage is considered unique is because of his experimentation with unorthodox instruments such as …show more content…
Born to a middle class family in Los Angeles, Cages’ family was not one with a major musical background. As a child, during music classes Cage was more interested in sight-reading than his piano lessons, by the time he graduated high school, he was convinced he wanted to be a writer, like his mother had been. After attending college and receiving the highest grade in his class, he decided that the institution was corrupt and moved to Europe to continue his studies. During this time Cage has started experimenting with musical instruments. Cage stared putting metal screws behind the strings of the piano: eventually he realized he needed new instruments all together, this is when Cage decided to start using things like radios, for example, in his piece “imaginary landscape no 4” Cage used 12 radios playing at once. Each performance was different from the last because it depended on what happened to be playing on the radio that day, this goes to show to the exceptionality of Cages’ …show more content…
The way that John Cage views music has expanded my understanding on how music is created, produced, and appreciated. I started questioning what makes noise into music? Through Cage’s philosophies and readings, I have absorbed so much, I believe as a society we have distanced ourselves from individual sounds in music, we view sounds such as traffic a nescience, but the dynamics of the sounds of traffic can be beautiful too. Sounds from traffic significantly influenced Cage’s musical style, Cage is noted as saying: “ When I hear traffic I have a feeling sound is acting, and I love the activity of sound, I’m completely satisfied. I don’t need sound to talk to me “. When answering the question “what is music?” we need to consider what makes music. As a society we have limited ourselves to viewing music in a very restrictive way, many people don’t consider a sound music until there are lyrics. This is not true; a composer can convey emotions and ideas without any words or instruments, as proven by John Cage. I think when we realize all sounds have the potential to be music, we will start appreciating music more. The music that Cage wanted to produce was not normal for his time, he is once said “I certainly had no feeling for harmony, and Schoenberg thought that that would make it impossible for me to write music. After his Schoenberg said that he would do everything in his power to
John Cage is the epitome of a cutting edge composer due to the fact that he has an elevated appreciation for music, unmatched by any other. Cage enjoys everyday, naturally occurring sounds because of their dynamics and their lengths, rather than the sounds constrained by musical instruments, something other composers usually overlook. This gives him the advantage to compose music in a unique manner. Cage has had an impact not only on musicians, but dancers and philosophers as well; His ideas and ways of thinking changed the mindsets of many in the world of music as we know it today. One significant reason why Cage is considered unique is because of his experimentation with unorthodox instruments such as …show more content…
Born to a middle class family in Los Angeles, Cages’ family was not one with a major musical background. As a child, during music classes Cage was more interested in sight-reading than his piano lessons, by the time he graduated high school, he was convinced he wanted to be a writer, like his mother had been. After attending college and receiving the highest grade in his class, he decided that the institution was corrupt and moved to Europe to continue his studies. During this time Cage has started experimenting with musical instruments. Cage stared putting metal screws behind the strings of the piano: eventually he realized he needed new instruments all together, this is when Cage decided to start using things like radios, for example, in his piece “imaginary landscape no 4” Cage used 12 radios playing at once. Each performance was different from the last because it depended on what happened to be playing on the radio that day, this goes to show to the exceptionality of Cages’ …show more content…
The way that John Cage views music has expanded my understanding on how music is created, produced, and appreciated. I started questioning what makes noise into music? Through Cage’s philosophies and readings, I have absorbed so much, I believe as a society we have distanced ourselves from individual sounds in music, we view sounds such as traffic a nescience, but the dynamics of the sounds of traffic can be beautiful too. Sounds from traffic significantly influenced Cage’s musical style, Cage is noted as saying: “ When I hear traffic I have a feeling sound is acting, and I love the activity of sound, I’m completely satisfied. I don’t need sound to talk to me “. When answering the question “what is music?” we need to consider what makes music. As a society we have limited ourselves to viewing music in a very restrictive way, many people don’t consider a sound music until there are lyrics. This is not true; a composer can convey emotions and ideas without any words or instruments, as proven by John Cage. I think when we realize all sounds have the potential to be music, we will start appreciating music more. The music that Cage wanted to produce was not normal for his time, he is once said “I certainly had no feeling for harmony, and Schoenberg thought that that would make it impossible for me to write music. After his Schoenberg said that he would do everything in his power to