John Cage's Philosophy Of Music Analysis

The definition of music has been a debated for millennia. Back and forth composers have argued about it’s qualities and have answered the question “What is music?” in many different ways. The basics of music were established through these answers, but there were always composers that challenged them. John Cage was one such composer. His definition of music is closer to the definition of sound than most other people; Cage found music in traffic, banging pots and pans, and any other noise but this wasn’t even the full extent of it. Later in life, he went so far as to not include the playing of any instruments in one of his compositions. The silence was the music in his piece, 4’33”. Cage’s radical idea of music forever affected all composers …show more content…
He dealt with sounds themselves instead of their relationship with each other. He believed in two kinds of listening, outer listening and inner listening. Outer listening is simply listening to the sounds; inner listening happens when someone tries to find meaning within the sounds. Cage created music for outer listening, not worrying about the deeper meanings of sounds. His philosophy differed from the norm by his lack of necessity in pitch and instruments that can be pitched. All other classical music up until that point had set instruments. He opened up the question, “Does music have to be more than sound?” to the world. This led him to try new ways to make music, and he eventually started to use random chance to add more possibility to his music. Dealing more with time and less with pitch, Cage used many different instruments in his productions. This allowed him to expand on the number of instruments he used. He used many different unpitched instruments such as pots, pans, traffic or even other people in the audience. He invented instruments such as the prepared piano, a piano with random objects put between the strings to create different percussive sounds. In essence, Cage believed music has a much broader …show more content…
She taught him the philosophies of eastern, Indian music while he taught her philosophies of western music. He also became very spiritual and found spirituality in silence rather than sounds. Slowly his music began having more silences and less sounds. In his most famous piece, 4’33”, a piece where the performer does nothing for four minutes and 33 seconds, Cage is asking the audience to observe silence. This song is regarded by many as the pinnacle of his composing. It is meant to show the power of silence. After realizing how important sound was too, Cage began adding random sounds in between silences. His ultimate creation was a piece with random blocks of sound and silence. He produced more works than ever in this time period, having more choices of expression than ever