John Cage Essay

John Cage lived a very interesting, non-traditional life that allowed him to form his outside of the box philosophy on music that questions the very definition of music. After exploring many different careers in the art world, he decided to compose music and through a winding, tumultuous road, he rose to the top of the classical music world. His life greatly influenced his music. His study of Buddhism and working with the choreographies of Merce Cunningham allowed Cage to discover the other side

John Milton Cage Jr was born on September 5, 1912 to John Milton Cage and Lucretia ("Crete") Harvey in Las Angeles, California. Neither of John’s parents went to college (Inamori Foundation , 1990). However, his father was an inventor and his mother was the founder of the Lincoln Study Club and later became the editor of the Woman’s Club for the Los Angeles Times. John describes his mom as a “sense of society.” John went to Pamona College for two years when he realized that college was not for

Modern Composers: John Cage Music is a very peculiar term. Everyone knows what it is, yet there are different interpretations and definitions of what it means to them as seen from the varying styles of composers over time. In Beethoven’s case, music to him was an escape from reality and his greatest ally in cooperating with deafness. However, there are other composers who sought to think otherwise. John Cage is an exemplary modern composer who believed that music doesn’t need to make sense. He simply

John Cage is a controversial composer. Some may say he revolutionized music composition and changed music history of the 20th century, yet others do not even acknowledge his compositional contributions as music. I believe John Cage was a brilliant artist, and his works push the boundaries of both sound and music to create a genre of his own by using the elements of silence and chance. Through his compositional development, one can track his changing music philosophy as it grew from a limited notion

John Cage – Music in Silence When the word music is heard, generally the first thing that comes to mind is how one would be able to relate to the piece. John Cage, a contemporary composer, expanded the normality of music by sounds with no meaning or emotional connection and silence. The propinquity between mind and music is difficult to sever, and to have music without an emotional connection is unfathomable. John Milton Cage Jr. is an American contemporary composer born September 05, 1912 in

John Cage, an American composer, once stated “There is no such thing as an empty space or an empty time. There is always something to see, something to hear.” In Cage’s musical career, he challenged the concept of sound by finding a compelling beauty in silence. His philosophy was that silence let people feel the sounds in the environment and that silence can give off a deep pleasure, which is shown in his piece “4’33”. However, silence isn’t viewed as a common conception of music, and at first

The music of John Cage is highly criticized, yet highly revered within the same societal realm. The question that has yet to be answered, even after fifty plus years, is John Cages music really “music” or is it just noise? The dictionary definition of music is the following: “vocal or instrumental sounds (or both) combined in such a way as to produce beauty of form, harmony, and expression of emotion.” My personal version of the definition of music is a variant of the definition listed above. I believe

radical composers in the 20th century, John Cage introduced new ideas of what music is. Breaking away from the traditional idea that music stems solely from the musician’s preconceived and structured arrangement of sounds from specific instruments, Cage’s philosophy of music is based on the idea that all sounds can work cooperatively to create music, including those from the environment. Strongly influenced by the principles in Zen Buddhism and Indian music, Cage began to explore new medians for music;

John Cage, an American composer and philosopher, was deeply interested in aleatory, or chance, music, in which musicians used non-traditional and random approaches in order to determine several factors of their pieces. This particular style of creating compositions is a sharp contrast to the methodic and precise style of Classical composers. Throughout his life and career, Cage adopted the use of intended sounds to create tension in pieces of work. One of his most famous conceptual composition that

John Cage (1912-1992) was an American composer whose most famous work is actually not music at all. The piece is called, 4’33”, otherwise known as “The Silent Piece”, is just that, four minutes and 33 seconds of silence. Since I didn’t know what to expect, I thought the sound on my computer was broken!!! I waited and waited for him to begin, then, just like that, it was over. The significance of the piece is its simplicity. It is meant to teach us that there is no such thing as “true silence”