John Cage

While influenced by Suzuki, Cage does differ slightly. In the above passage, John Cage would learn to remove the “as if” phrase in his personal philosophies on music. Through use of chance methods and indeterminate music, essentially John Cage removes himself completely from the music. He allows the performer to create the music themselves. He is not simply letting the brush be guided AS IF by someone else, he literally is letting someone else do the brushing. Chance music (aleatoric music) has been around since the time of Mozart. It is the art of creation of music by chance techniques (the most common technique is using dice). John…

John Cage was an incredibly impactful and controversial American composer of the 20th century. He was the forerunner for the avant-garde, significantly developing nonstandard styles of music such as electroacoustic music and aleatoric music (chance-controlled). His musical developments were largely influenced by Indian philosophies like Buddhism, and his internal anarchy was influenced by Henry David Thoreau. This and his works with modern dance, helped to distinguish him as a very pivotal…

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…

John Cage was an American composer that experimented with the very nature of sound and developed new ways of notating music. Cage’s ideas on composition influenced many artists such as painters, musicians, and chorographers. Cage questioned the musical preconceptions that was left from the 19th century. Arnold Schoenberg, a teacher of John Cage, called Cage “not a composer, but an inventor of genius” (Hicks, 1990). Many musicians, and to much of the public, thought Cage’s compositions…

When watching the video of John Cage's 4 "33", I was first confused on what William Marx was doing. I watched the video several times, to gain my focus on what he was doing. Finally, I understood why he was just sitting there and not playing the piano. Truthfully others probably have thought the same thing that I did when I watched the composition. William Marx sat down and opened the top cover of piano and set a timer, he never struck a key on the keyboard through three different movements.…

3: Excerpt from John Cages Water Music. Final page. The 10 pages are meant to be combines and displayed in full view of the audience. Source: Cage, John. Water Music. 1952. Henmar Press, Inc. Heile, Bjorn. "Ch.16 Toward a Theory of Experimental Music Theatre." The Oxford Handbook of Sound and Image in Western Art.340. Print. After the 1950’s John Cage began integrating elements of chance in both his compositional process and the performance of the works. His…

In the middle to late 1900’s Phil Spector was an American producer, musician, and songwriter whose popularity spiked to the top after developing the Wall Of Sound also called Spector’s Sound. Withstanding establishment of the common stereo and preferring to have various instruments combined in a single monaural track, Spector composed this technique at the Gold Star Studios in Los Angeles. Conforming relatively facile equalizations aided in his popularity because his approach was crucial to…

“10 Rules for Teachers and Students” by John Cage and Corita Kent lay out a baseline for necessities a designer, or people of any profession, must possess to be successful. There are three of these rules that are very important to me as a designer. These three rules deal with self-discipline, hard work, and happiness. These three helpful rules are implemented in my life every day, as a design student, as an older sibling, and as a practitioner of the Catholic faith. However, there is one rule…

Throughout the 20th century, John Cage was often considered by many to be the central voice of avant-garde music. Uniting composition with philosophy, he recreated the surface of modern music. For Cage, the 1950s brought him a sequence of critical events that both developed him as a composer and brought him much fame, or notoriety to some. He had a strong interest in Eastern Zen philosophy, a subject that is reinforced and incorporated in all of his musical works, which grew throughout the…

Cage proposed a complete opposition to the belief of the canon. He believed “we [should] stop listening to masterpieces and start listening to sounds, the music all around us, with new and open ears” (Burkholder, 131). His ideals focused on the understanding that all things in life are made of music. Cage argued that the structured design of the canon restricts the audience’s own belief of enjoyable music. As a result, the Cage’s perception of the musical museum becomes inconceivable with…