John Cage

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John Milton Cage Jr. (September 5, 1912 – August 12, 1992) was an American
composer,music theorist, writer, philosopher and artist. [1] A pioneer
of indeterminacy in music,electroacoustic music, and non-standard use of musical
instruments, Cage was one of the leading figures of the post-war avant-garde.
Critics have lauded him as one of the most influential American composers of the
20th century.[2][3][4][5] He was also instrumental in the development of modern
dance, mostly through his association with choreographer Merce Cunningham,
who was also Cage's romantic partner for most of their lives.[6][7]

Cage is perhaps best known for his 1952 composition 4′33″, the three movements
of which are performed without a single note being played. The content of the
composition is meant to be perceived as the sounds of the environment that the
listeners hear while it is performed,[8] rather than merely as four minutes and 33
seconds of silence,[9] and the piece became one of the most controversial
compositions of the 20th century. Another famous creation of Cage's is
theprepared piano (a piano with its sound altered by placing various objects in the
strings), for which he wrote numerous dance-related works and a few concert
pieces, the best known of which isSonatas and Interludes (1946–48).[10]

His teachers included Henry Cowell (1933) and Arnold Schoenberg (1933–35),
both known for their radical innovations in music, but Cage's major influences lay in
 various Eastern cultures. Through his studies of Indian philosophy and Zen
Buddhism in the late 1940s, Cage came to the idea of aleatoric or chance-
controlled music, which he started composing in 1951. The I Ching, an
ancient Chinese classic text on changing events, became Cage's standard
composition tool for the rest of his life. In a 1957 lecture, Experimental Music, he
described music as "a purposeless play" which is "an affirmation of life – not an
attempt to bring order out of chaos nor to suggest improvements in creation, but
simply a way of waking up to the very life we're living".[11]

Contents

[hide]

 1 Life
o 1.1 1912–31: Early years
o 1.2 1931–36: Apprenticeship
o 1.3 1937–49: Modern dance and Eastern influences
o 1.4 1950s: Discovering chance
o 1.5 1960s: Fame
o 1.6 1969–87: New departures
o 1.7 1987–92: Final years and death
 2 Music
o 2.1 Early works, rhythmic structure, and new approaches to harmony
o 2.2 Chance
o 2.3 Improvisation
 3 Visual art, writings, and other activities
 4 Reception and influence
 5 Archives
 6 Cultural references
 7 Footnotes
 8 Notes
 9 References
 10 External links
o 10.1 General information and catalogues
o 10.2 Link collections
o 10.3 Specific topics
o 10.4 Listening
o 10.5 Media

[edit]Life

[edit]1912–31: Early years

Cage was born in Los Angeles. His father John Milton Cage, Sr. (1886–1964) was
an inventor, and his mother Lucretia ("Crete") Harvey (1885–1969) worked
intermittently as a journalist for the Los Angeles Times.[12] The family's roots were
deeply American: in a 1976 interview, Cage mentioned "a John Cage who
helped [George] Washington in the surveying of Virginia".[13] Cage described his
mother as a woman with "a sense of society" who was "never happy", [14] while his
father is perhaps best characterized by his inventions: sometimes idealistic, such
as a diesel-fueled submarine that gave off exhaust bubbles, the senior Cage being
uninterested in an undetectable submarine,[12] others revolutionary and against the
scientific norms, such as the "electrostatic field theory" of the universe. [n 1] John
Milton Sr. taught his son that "if someone says 'can't' that shows you what to do."
In 1944–45 Cage wrote two small character pieces dedicated to his
parents: Crete andDad. The latter is a short lively piece that ends abruptly, while
"Crete" is a slightly longer, mostly melodic contrapuntal work.[15]

Cage's first experiences with music were from private piano teachers in the Greater
Los Angeles area and several relatives, particularly his aunt Phoebe Harvey who
introduced him to the piano music of the 19th century. He received first piano
lessons when he was in the fourth grade at school, but although he liked music, he
expressed more interest in sight reading than in developing virtuoso piano
technique, and apparently was not thinking of composition. [16] By 1928 Cage was
convinced that he wanted to be a writer. That year he graduated from Los Angeles
High School as a valedictorian[17] and enrolled at Pomona College, Claremont.
However, in 1930 he dropped out, having come to believe that "college was of no
use to a writer"[18] after an incident described in the 1991 autobiographical
statement:

I was shocked at college to see one hundred of my classmates in the library all
reading copies of the same book. Instead of doing as they did, I went into the
stacks and read the first book written by an author whose name began with Z. I
received the highest grade in the class. That convinced me that the institution was
not being run correctly. I left.[14]

Cage persuaded his parents that a trip to Europe would be more beneficial to a
future writer than college studies.[19] He subsequentlyhitchhiked to Galveston and
sailed to Le Havre, where he took a train to Paris.[20] Cage stayed in Europe for
some 18 months, trying his hand at various forms of art. First he
studied Gothic and Greek architecture, but decided he was not interested enough
in architecture to dedicate his life to it.[18] He then took up painting, poetry and
music. It was in Europe that he first heard the music of contemporary composers
(such as Igor Stravinsky and Paul Hindemith) and finally got to know the music
of Johann Sebastian Bach, which he had not experienced before.

After several months in Paris, Cage's enthusiasm for America was revived after he
read Walt Whitman's Leaves of Grass – he wanted to return immediately, but his
parents, with whom he regularly exchanged letters during the entire trip, persuaded
him to stay in Europe for a little longer and explore the continent.[21] Cage started
travelling, visited various places in France, Germany and Spain, as well
as Capri and, most importantly, Majorca, where he started composing.[22] His first
compositions were created using dense mathematical formulae, but Cage was
displeased with the results and left the finished pieces behind when he
left.[23] Cage's association with theatre also started in Europe: during a walk
in Seville he witnessed, in his own words, "the multiplicity of simultaneous visual
and audible events all going together in one's experience and producing
enjoyment."[24]

[edit]1931–36: Apprenticeship

Cage returned to the United States in 1931.[23] He went to Santa Monica,

California, where he made a living partly by giving small, private lectures on
contemporary art. He got to know various important figures of the Southern
California art world, such as pianist Richard Buhlig(who became his first teacher[25])
and arts patron Galka Scheyer.[18] By 1933 Cage decided to concentrate on music
rather than painting. "The people who heard my music had better things to say
about it than the people who looked at my paintings had to say about my
paintings", Cage later explained.[18] In 1933 he sent some of his compositions
to Henry Cowell; the reply was a "rather vague letter",[26] in which Cowell
suggested that Cage study with Arnold Schoenberg—Cage's musical ideas at the
time included composition based on a 25-tone row, somewhat similar to
Schoenberg's twelve-tone technique.[27] Cowell mentioned, however, that before
approaching Schoenberg, Cage should take some preliminary lessons, and
recommended Adolph Weiss, a former Schoenberg pupil.[28]

Following Cowell's advice, Cage travelled to New York City in 1933 and started
studying with Weiss as well as taking lessons from Cowell himself at The New
School.[25] He supported himself financially by taking up a job washing walls at
a Brooklyn YWCA.[29] Cage's routine during that period was apparently very tiring,
with just four hours of sleep on most nights, and four hours of composition every
day starting at 4 am.[29][30] Several months later, still in 1933, Cage became
sufficiently good at composition to approach Schoenberg. [n 2] He could not afford
Schoenberg's price, however, and when he mentioned it, the older composer
asked whether Cage would devote his life to music. After Cage replied that he
would, Schoenberg offered to tutor him free of charge.[31]

Cage studied with Schoenberg in California: first at USC and then at UCLA, as well
as privately.[25] The older composer became one of the biggest influences on Cage,
who "literally worshipped him",[32] particularly as an example of how to live one's life
being a composer.[30] The vow Cage gave, to dedicate his life to music, was
apparently still important some 40 years later, when Cage "had no need for it [i.e.
writing music]", he continued composing partly because of the promise he
gave.[33] Schoenberg's methods and their influence on Cage are well documented
by Cage himself in various lectures and writings. Particularly well-known is the
conversation mentioned in the 1958 lectureIndeterminacy:

After I had been studying with him for two years, Schoenberg said, "In order to
write music, you must have a feeling for harmony." I explained to him that I had no
feeling for harmony. He then said that I would always encounter an obstacle, that it
would be as though I came to a wall through which I could not pass. I said, "In that
case I will devote my life to beating my head against that wall." [34]

Cage studied with Schoenberg for two years, but although he admired his teacher,
he decided to leave after Schoenberg told the assembled students that he was
trying to make it impossible for them to write music. Much later, Cage recounted
the incident: "[...] When he said that, I revolted, not against him, but against what
he had said. I determined then and there, more than ever before, to write
music."[32] Although Schoenberg never complimented Cage on his compositions
during these two years, in a later interview he said that none of his American pupils
were interesting, except Cage: "Of course he's not a composer, but he's an
inventor—of genius."[32]

At some point in 1934–35, during his studies with Schoenberg, Cage was working
at his mother's arts and crafts shop, where he met artist Xenia Andreyevna
Kashevaroff. She was an Alaskan-born daughter of a Russian priest; her work
encompassed fine bookbinding, sculpture and collage. Although Cage was
involved in a relationship with Don Sample when he met Xenia, he fell in love
immediately. Cage and Kashevaroff were married in the desert at Yuma, Arizona,
on June 7, 1935.[35]

[edit]1937–49: Modern dance and Eastern influences

See also: Works for prepared piano by John Cage

The newly married couple first lived with Cage's parents in Pacific Palisades, then
moved to Hollywood.[36] During 1936–38 Cage changed numerous jobs, including
one that started his lifelong association with modern dance: dance accompanist
at UCLA. He produced music for choreographies and at one point taught a course
on "Musical Accompaniments for Rhythmic Expression" at UCLA, with his aunt
Phoebe.[37]It was during that time that Cage first started experimenting with
unorthodox instruments, such as household items, metal sheets, and so on. This
was inspired by Oskar Fischinger, who told Cage that "everything in the world has
a spirit that can be released through its sound." Although Cage did not share the
idea of spirits, these words inspired him to begin exploring the sounds produced by
hitting various non-musical objects.[37][38]

In 1938, with help from a fellow Cowell student Lou Harrison, Cage became a
faculty member at Mills College, teaching the same program as at UCLA, and
collaborating with choreographer Marian van Tuyl. Several famous dance groups
were present, and Cage's interest in modern dance grew further.[37] After several
months he left and moved to Seattle, Washington, where he found work as
composer and accompanist for choreographer Bonnie Bird at the Cornish College
of the Arts. The Cornish School years proved to be a particularly important period
in Cage's life. Aside from teaching and working as accompanist, Cage organized a
percussion ensemble that toured the West Coast and brought the composer his
first fame. His reputation was enhanced further with the invention of the prepared
piano—a piano which has had its sound altered by objects placed on, beneath or
between the strings—in 1940. This concept was originally intended for a
performance staged in a room too small to include a full percussion ensemble. It
was also at the Cornish School that Cage met a number of people who became
lifelong friends, such as painter Mark Tobey and dancer Merce Cunningham. The
latter was to become Cage's lifelong partner and collaborator.

Cage left Seattle in the summer of 1941 after the painter László Moholy-
Nagy invited him to teach at the Chicago School of Design. The composer
accepted partly because he hoped to find opportunities in Chicago, that were not
available in Seattle, to organize a center for experimental music. These
opportunities, however, did not materialize. Cage taught at the Chicago School of
Design and worked as accompanist and composer at the University of Chicago. At
one point, his reputation as percussion composer landed him a commission from
the Columbia Broadcasting System to compose a soundtrack for a radio play
by Kenneth Patchen. The result, The City Wears a Slouch Hat, was received well,
and Cage deduced that more important commissions would follow. Hoping to find
these, he left Chicago for New York City in the spring of 1942.

Excerpt
from The
Wonderful
Widow of
Eighteen
Springs (1942)

Performed in
1958 by Arline
Carmen
(voice) and
John Cage
(closed piano).
This is one of
the rare
recordings of
Cage
performing his
own
instrumental
music.
 Problems listening to
this file? See media
help.

In New York, the Cages first stayed with painter Max Ernst and Peggy
Guggenheim. Through them, Cage met numerous important artists such as Piet
Mondrian, André Breton, Jackson Pollock, Marcel Duchamp, and many others.
Guggenheim was very supportive: the Cages could stay with her and Ernst for any
length of time, and she offered to organize a concert of Cage's music at the
opening of her gallery, which included paying for transportation of Cage's
percussion instruments from Chicago. However, after she learned that Cage
secured another concert, at the Museum of Modern Art, Guggenheim withdrew all
support, and, even after the ultimately successful MoMA concert, Cage was left
homeless, unemployed and penniless. The commissions he hoped for did not
happen. He and Xenia spent the summer of 1942 with dancer Jean Erdman and
her husband. Without the percussion instruments, Cage again turned to prepared
piano, producing a substantial body of works for performances by various
choreographers, including Merce Cunningham, who moved to New York City
several years earlier. Cage and Cunningham eventually became romantically
involved, and Cage's marriage, already breaking up during the early 1940s, ended
in divorce in 1945. Cunningham remained Cage's partner for the rest of his life.
Cage also countered the lack of percussion instruments by writing, on one
occasion, for voice and closed piano: the resulting piece, The Wonderful Widow of
Eighteen Springs (1942), quickly became popular and was performed by the
celebrated duo of Cathy Berberian and Luciano Berio.[39]

Like his personal life, Cage's artistic life went through a crisis in mid-1940s. The
composer was experiencing a growing disillusionment with the idea of music as
means of communication: the public rarely accepted his work, and Cage himself,
too, had trouble understanding the music of his colleagues. In early 1946 Cage
agreed to tutor Gita Sarabhai, an Indian musician who came to the US to study
Western music. In return, he asked her to teach him about Indian music and
philosophy.[40] Cage also attended, in late 1940s and early 1950s, D. T. Suzuki's
lectures on Zen Buddhism,[41] and read the works of Ananda K.
Coomaraswamy.[25] The first fruits of these studies were works inspired by Indian
concepts: Sonatas and Interludes for prepared piano, String Quartet in Four Parts,
and others. Cage accepted the goal of music as explained to him by Sarabhai: "to
sober and quiet the mind, thus rendering it susceptible to divine influences". [42]

[edit]1950s: Discovering chance

Sonatas and Interludes were received well by the public. After a 1949 performance
at Carnegie Hall, New York, Cage received a grant from the Guggenheim
Foundation, which enabled him to make a trip to Europe, where he met composers
such as Olivier Messiaen and Pierre Boulez. More important, however, was Cage's
chance encounter with Morton Feldman in New York City in early 1950. Both
composers attended a New York Philharmonic Orchestra concert, where the
orchestra performed Anton Webern's Symphony, op. 21, followed by a piece
by Sergei Rachmaninoff. Cage felt so overwhelmed by Webern's piece that he left
before the Rachmaninoff; and in the lobby, he met Feldman, who was leaving for
the same reason.[43] The two composers quickly became friends; some time later
Cage, Feldman, Earle Brown, David Tudor and Cage's pupil Christian Wolff came
to be referred to as "the New York school."[44][45]

In early 1951, Wolff presented Cage with a copy of the I Ching[46]—a Chinese
classic text which describes a symbol system used to identify order in chance
events. The I Ching is commonly used for divination, but for Cage it became a tool
to compose using chance. To compose a piece of music, Cage would come up
with questions to ask the I Ching; the book would then be used in much the same
way as it is used for divination. For Cage, this meant "imitating nature in its manner
of operation":[47][48] his lifelong interest in sound itself culminated in an approach
that yielded works in which sounds were free from the composer's will:

When I hear what we call music, it seems to me that someone is talking. And
talking about his feelings, or about his ideas of relationships. But when I hear
traffic, the sound of traffic—here on Sixth Avenue, for instance—I don't have the
feeling that anyone is talking. I have the feeling that sound is acting. And I love the
activity of sound [...] I don't need sound to talk to me.[49]

Although Cage had used chance on a few earlier occasions, most notably in the
third movement of Concerto for Prepared Piano and Chamber Orchestra (1950–
51),[50] the I Ching opened new possibilities in this field for him. The first results of
the new approach wereImaginary Landscape No. 4 for 12 radio receivers,
and Music of Changes for piano. The latter work was written for David
Tudor,[51] whom Cage met through Feldman—another friendship that lasted until
Cage's death.[n 3] Tudor premiered most of Cage's works until the early 1960s,
when he stopped performing on the piano and concentrated on electronic music.
The I Ching became Cage's standard tool for composition: he used it in practically
every work composed after 1951.

Despite the fame Sonatas and Interludes earned him, and the connections he
cultivated with American and European composers and musicians, Cage was quite
poor. Although he still had an apartment, at 326 Monroe Street (which he occupied
since around 1946) his financial situation in 1951 worsened so much that, while
working on Music of Changes, he prepared a set of instructions for Tudor as to
how to complete the piece in the event of his death.[52] Nevertheless, Cage
managed to survive and maintained an active artistic life, giving lectures,
performances, etc. In 1952–53 he completed another mammoth project—
the Williams Mix, a piece of tape music, which Earle Brown helped to put
together.[53] Also in 1952, Cage wrote down the piece that became his most well-
known and most controversial creation:4′33″. The score instructs the performer not
to play the instrument during the entire duration of the piece—four minutes, thirty-
three seconds—and is meant to be perceived as consisting of the sounds of the
environment that the listeners hear while it is performed. Cage conceived "a silent
piece" years earlier, but was reluctant to write it down; and indeed, the premiere
(given by Tudor on August 29, 1952 at Woodstock, New York) caused an uproar in
the audience.[54] The reaction to 4′33″ was just a part of the larger picture, however:
on the whole, it was the adoption of chance procedures that had disastrous
consequences for Cage's reputation. The press, which used to react favorably to
earlier percussion and prepared piano music, ignored his new works, and many
valuable friendships and connections were lost. Pierre Boulez, who used to
promote Cage's work in Europe, was opposed to Cage's use of chance, and so
were other composers who came to prominence during the 1950s, i.e. Karlheinz
Stockhausen and Iannis Xenakis.[55]

From 1953 onwards, Cage was busy composing music for modern dance,
particularly Cunningham's dances (Cage's partner adopted chance too, out of
fascination for the movement of the human body), as well as developing new
methods of using chance, in a series of works he referred to as The Ten Thousand
Things. In Summer 1954 he moved out from New York and settled in a cooperative
community in Stony Point, New York. The composer's financial situation gradually
improved: in late 1954 he and Tudor were able to embark on a European tour.
From 1956 to 1961 Cage taught classes in experimental composition at The New
School, and during 1956–58 he also worked as an art director of a
typography.[56] Among the works completed during the last years of the decade
were Concert for Piano and Orchestra (1957–58), a seminal work in the history
of graphic notation, and Variations I (1958).

[edit]1960s: Fame

Cage was affiliated with Wesleyan University and collaborated with members of its
Music Department from the 1950s until his death in 1992. At the University, the
philosopher, poet, and professor of classics Norman O. Brown befriended Cage,
an association that proved fruitful to both.[citation needed] In 1960 the composer was
appointed a Fellow on the faculty of the Center for Advanced Studies (now the
Center for Humanities) in the Liberal Arts and Sciences at Wesleyan,[57] where he
started teaching classes in experimental music. In October 1961,Wesleyan
University Press published Silence, a collection of Cage's lectures and writings on
a wide variety of subjects, including the famousLecture on Nothing that was
composed using a complex time length scheme, much like some of Cage's
music. Silence was Cage's first book.[n 4] He went on to publish five more. Silence,
however, remained his most widely read and influential book. [25] In the early 1960s
Cage began his lifelong association with C.F. Peters Corporation. Walter
Hinrichsen, the president of the corporation, offered Cage an exclusive contract
and instigated the publication of a catalogue of Cage's works, which appeared in
1962.[56]

Edition Peters soon published a large number of scores by Cage, and this,
together with the publication of Silence, led to much higher prominence for the
composer than ever before—one of the positive consequences of this was that in
1965 Betty Freeman set up an annual grant for living expenses for Cage, to be
issued from 1965 to his death.[58] But by mid-1960s Cage was receiving so many
commissions and requests for appearances, that he was not able to fulfill them.
This was accompanied by a busy touring schedule; Subsequently Cage's
compositional output from that decade was scant.[25] After the orchestral Atlas
Eclipticalis (1961–62), a work based on star charts, which was fully notated, Cage
gradually shifted to, in his own words, "music (not composition)." The score
of 0′00″, completed in 1962, originally comprised a single sentence: "In a situation
provided with maximum amplification, perform a disciplined action", and in the first
performance the disciplined action was Cage writing that sentence. The score
of Variations III (1962) abounds in instructions to the performers, but makes no
references to music, musical instruments or sounds.

Many of the Variations and other 1960s pieces were in fact "happenings", an art
form established by Cage and his students in late 1950s. Cage's "Experimental
Composition" classes at The New School have become legendary as an American
source of Fluxus, an international network of artists, composers, and designers.
The majority of his students had little or no background in music. Most were artists.
They included Jackson Mac Low, Allan Kaprow, Al Hansen, George Brecht,
and Dick Higgins, as well as many others Cage invited unofficially. Famous pieces
that resulted from the classes include George Brecht's Time Table Music and Al
Hansen's Alice Denham in 48 Seconds.[59]As set forth by Cage, happenings were
theatrical events that abandon the traditional concept of stage-audience and occur
without a sense of definite duration. Instead, they are left to chance. They have a
minimal script, with no plot. In fact, a "happening" is so-named because it occurs in
the present, attempting to arrest the concept of passing time. Cage believed that
theater was the closest route to integrating art and real life. The term "happenings"
was coined by Allan Kaprow, one of his students, who defined it as a genre in the
late fifties. Cage met Kaprow while on a mushroom hunt with George Segal and
invited him to join his class. In following these developments Cage was strongly
influenced by Antonin Artaud's seminal treatise The Theatre and Its Double, and
the happenings of this period can be viewed as a forerunner to the
ensuing Fluxus movement. In October 1960, Mary Bauermeister's Cologne studio
hosted a joint concert by Cage and the video artistNam June Paik, who in the
course of his Etude for Piano cut off Cage's tie and then washed his co-performer’s
hair with shampoo.[citation needed]

In 1967, Cage's A Year from Monday was first published by Wesleyan University
Press. Cage's parents died during the decade: his father in 1964,[60] and his mother
in 1969. Cage had their ashes scattered in Ramapo Mountains, near Stony Point,
and asked for the same to be done to him after his death. [61]

[edit]1969–87: New departures

John Cage (right) with David Tudor atShiraz Arts Festival 1971

Cage's work from the sixties features some of his largest and most ambitious, not
to mention socially utopian pieces, reflecting the mood of the era yet also his
absorption of the writings of both Marshall McLuhan, on the effects of new media,
and R. Buckminster Fuller, on the power of technology to promote social
change. HPSCHD (1969), a gargantuan and long-running multimedia work made in
collaboration with Lejaren Hiller, incorporated the mass superimposition of seven
harpsichords playing chance-determined excerpts from the works of Cage, Hiller,
and a potted history of canonical classics, with fifty-two tapes of computer-
generated sounds, 6,400 slides of designs many supplied by NASA, and shown
from sixty-four slide projectors, with forty motion-picture films. The piece was
initially rendered in a five-hour performance at the University of Illinois in 1969, in
which the audience arrived after the piece had begun and left before it ended,
wandering freely around the auditorium in the time for which they were there. [citation
needed]

However, also in 1969, Cage produced the first fully notated work in years: Cheap
Imitation for piano. The piece is a chance-controlled reworking of Erik
Satie's Socrate, and, as both listeners and Cage himself noted, openly sympathetic
to its source. Although Cage's affection for Satie's music was well-known, it was
highly unusual for him to compose a personal work, one in which the
composer is present. When asked about this apparent contradiction, Cage replied:
"Obviously, Cheap Imitation lies outside of what may seem necessary in my work
in general, and that's disturbing. I'm the first to be disturbed by it."[62] Cage's
fondness for the piece resulted in a recording—a rare occurrence, since Cage
disliked making recordings of his music—made in 1976. Overall, Cheap
Imitation marked a major change in Cage's music: he turned again to writing fully
notated works for traditional instruments, and tried out several new approaches,
such as improvisation, which he previously discouraged, but was able to use in
works from the 1970s, such as Child of Tree (1975).

Opening bars
of Cheap
Imitation (1969)

Performed by
the composer
in 1976, shortly
 before he had
to retire from
performing.

Problems listening to
this file? See media
help.

Cheap Imitation became the last work Cage performed in public

himself. Arthritis had troubled Cage since 1960, and by early 1970s his hands were
painfully swollen and rendered him unable to perform.[63] Nevertheless, he still
played Cheap Imitationduring the 1970s,[64] before finally having to give up
performing. Preparing manuscripts also became difficult: before, published
versions of pieces were done in Cage's calligraphic script; now, manuscripts for
publication had to be completed by assistants. Matters were complicated further by
David Tudor's departure from performing, which happened in early 1970s. Tudor
decided to concentrate on composition instead, and so Cage, for the first time in
two decades, had to start relying on commissions from other performers, and their
respective abilities. Such performers included Grete Sultan,Paul
Zukofsky, Margaret Leng Tan, and many others. Aside from music, Cage
continued writing books of prose and poetry (mesostics). Mwas first published
by Wesleyan University Press in 1973. In January 1978 Cage was invited by
Kathan Brown of Crown Point Press to engage in printmaking, and Cage would go
on to produce series of prints every year until his death; these, together with some
latewatercolors, constitute the largest portion of his extant visual art. In 1979
Cage's Empty Words was first published by Wesleyan University Press.

[edit]1987–92: Final years and death

See also: Number Pieces

In 1987 Cage completed a piece called Two, for flute and piano, dedicated to
performers Roberto Fabbriciani and Carlo Neri. The title referred to the number of
performers needed; the music consisted of short notated fragments to be played at
any tempo within the indicated time constraints. Cage went on to write some forty
such pieces, one of the last being Eighty (1992, premiered in Munich on 28
October 2011), usually employing a variant of the same technique; together, these
works are known as Number Pieces. The process of composition, in many of the
later Number Pieces, was simple selection of pitch range and pitches from that
range, using chance procedures;[25] the music has been linked to Cage's anarchic
leanings.[65] One11 (i.e. the eleventh piece for a single performer), completed in
early 1992, was Cage's first and only foray into film.

Another new direction, also taken in 1987, was opera: Cage produced five operas,
all sharing the same title Europera, in 1987–91. Europeras I and II require greater
forces than III, IV and V, which are on a chamber scale.

Already in the course of the eighties, Cage's health worsened progressively: he

suffered not only from arthritis, but also from sciatica andarteriosclerosis. He
suffered a stroke that left the movement of his left leg restricted, and, in 1985,
broke an arm. During this time, Cage pursued a macrobiotic diet.[66] Nevertheless,
ever since arthritis started plaguing him, the composer was aware of his age, and,
as biographer David Revill observed, "the fire which he began to incorporate in his
visual work in 1985 is not only the fire he has set aside for so long—the fire of
passion—but also fire as transitoriness and fragility." On August 11, 1992, while
preparing evening tea for himself and Cunningham, Cage suffered another stroke.
He was taken to the nearest hospital, where he died on the morning of August
12.[67]

According to his wishes, Cage's body was cremated, and the ashes scattered in
the Ramapo Mountains, near Stony Point, New York,[68] the same place where
Cage scattered the ashes of his parents, years before.[61] The composer's death
occurred only weeks before a celebration of his 80th birthday organized in
Frankfurt by the composer Walter Zimmermann and the musicologist Stefan
Schaedler was due to take place. However, the event went ahead as planned,
including a performance of the Concert for Piano and Orchestra by David
Tudor andEnsemble Modern.[3] Merce Cunningham lived another 17 years, dying
of natural causes in July 2009.[69]

[edit]Music

See also: List of compositions by John Cage

[edit]Early works, rhythmic structure, and new approaches to harmony

Cage's first completed pieces are currently lost. According to the composer, the
earliest works were very short pieces for piano, composed using complex
mathematical procedures and lacking in "sensual appeal and expressive
power."[70] Cage then started producing pieces by improvising and writing down the
results, until Richard Buhlig stressed to him the importance of structure. Most
works from the early 1930s, such as Sonata for Clarinet (1933) and Composition
for 3 Voices (1934), are highly chromatic and betray Cage's interest
in counterpoint. Around the same time, the composer also developed a type of
a tone row technique with 25-note rows.[71] After studies with Schoenberg, who
never taught dodecaphony to his students, Cage developed another tone row
technique, in which the row was split into short motives, which would then be
repeated and transposed according to a set of rules. This approach was first used
in Two Pieces for Piano (c. 1935), and then, with modifications, in larger works
such as Metamorphosis and Five Songs (both 1938).
Rhythmic proportions in Sonata III of Sonatas and Interludes for prepared piano

Soon after Cage started writing percussion music and music for modern dance, he
started using a technique that placed the rhythmic structure of the piece into the
foreground. In Imaginary Landscape No. 1 (1939) there are four large sections of
16, 17, 18, and 19 bars, and each section is divided into four subsections, the first
three of which were all 5 bars long. First Construction (in Metal) (1939) expands on
the concept: there are five sections of 4, 3, 2, 3, and 4 units respectively. Each unit
contains 16 bars, and is divided the same way: 4 bars, 3 bars, 2 bars, etc. Finally,
the musical content of the piece is based on sixteen motives. [72] Such "nested
proportions", as Cage called them, became a regular feature of his music
throughout the 1940s. The technique was elevated to great complexity in later
pieces such asSonatas and Interludes for prepared piano (1946–48), in which
many proportions used non-integer numbers (1¼, ¾, 1¼, ¾, 1½, and 1½
for Sonata I, for example),[73] or A Flower, a song for voice and closed piano, in
which two sets of proportions are used simultaneously.[74]

In late 1940s, Cage started developing further methods of breaking away with
traditional harmony. For instance, in String Quartet in Four Parts (1950) Cage first
composed a number of gamuts: chords with fixed instrumentation. The piece
progresses from one gamut to another. In each instance the gamut was selected
only based on whether it contains the note necessary for the melody, and so the
rest of the notes do not form any directional harmony. [25] Concerto for prepared
piano (1950–51) used a system of charts of durations, dynamics, melodies, etc.,
from which Cage would choose using simple geometric patterns. [25] The last
movement of the concerto, however, was a step towards using chance procedures,
which Cage adopted soon afterwards.[75]

[edit]Chance
I Ching divination involves obtaining a hexagram by random generation (such as
tossing coins), then reading the chapter associated with that hexagram.

Chart system was also used (along with nested proportions) for the large piano
work Music of Changes (1951), only here material would be selected from the
charts by using the I Ching. All of Cage's music since 1951 was composed using
chance procedures, most commonly using the I Ching. For example, works
from Music for Piano were based on paper imperfections: the imperfections
themselves provided pitches, and the I Ching was used to determine the methods
of sound production, or the rhythms, etc.[76] A whole series of works was created by
applying chance operations, i.e. the I Ching, to star charts: Atlas Eclipticalis(1961–
62), and a series of etudes: Etudes Australes (1974–75), Freeman Etudes (1977–
90), and Etudes Boreales (1978).[77] Cage's etudes are all extremely difficult to
perform, a characteristic dictated by Cage's social and political views: the difficulty
would ensure that "a performance would show that the impossible is not
impossible"[78]—this being Cage's answer to the notion that solving the world's
political and social problems is impossible.[79] Cage described himself as an
anarchist, and was influenced by Henry David Thoreau.[n 5]

Another series of works applied chance procedures to pre-existing music by other

composers: Cheap Imitation (1969; based on Erik Satie), Some of "The Harmony
of Maine"(1978; based on Belcher), and Hymns and Variations (1979). In these
works, Cage would borrow the rhythmic structure of the originals and fill it with
pitches determined through chance procedures, or just replace some of the
originals' pitches.[80] Yet another series of works, the so-called Number Pieces, all
completed during the last five years of the composer's life, make use of time
brackets: the score consists of short fragments with indications of when to start and
to end them (e.g. from anywhere between 1′15″ and 1′45″, and to anywhere from
2′00″ to 2′30″).[81]

Cage's method of using the I Ching was far from simple randomization, however.
The procedures varied from composition to composition, and were usually
complex. For example, in the case of Cheap Imitation, the exact questions asked
to the I Ching were these:

1. Which of the seven modes, if we take as modes the seven scales beginning
on white notes and remaining on white notes, which of those am I using?
2. Which of the twelve possible chromatic transpositions am I using?
3. For this phrase for which this transposition of this mode will apply, which
note am I using of the seven to imitate the note that Satie wrote?[82]

In another example of late music by Cage, Etudes Australes, the compositional

procedure involved placing a transparent strip on the star chart, identifying the
pitches from the chart, transferring them to paper, then asking the I Ching which of
these pitches were to remain single, and which should become parts of aggregates
(chords), and the aggregates were selected from a table of some 550 possible
aggregates, compiled beforehand.[77][83]

Finally, some of Cage's works, particularly those completed during the 1960s,
feature instructions to the performer, rather than fully notated music. The score
of Variations I (1958) presents the performer with six transparent squares, one with
points of various sizes, five with five intersecting lines. The performer combines the
squares and uses lines and points as a coordinate system, in which the lines are
axes of various characteristics of the sounds, such as lowest frequency, simplest
overtone structure, etc.[84] Some of Cage's graphic scores (e.g.Concert for Piano
and Orchestra, Fontana Mix (both 1958)) present the performer with similar
difficulties. Still other works from the same period consist just of text instructions.
The score of 0'00" (1962; also known as 4'33" No. 2) consists of a single sentence:
"In a situation provided with maximum amplification, perform a disciplined action."
The first performance had Cage write that sentence.[85] Musicircus (1967) simply
invites the performers to assemble and play together. The first Musicircus featured
multiple performers and groups in a large space who were all to commence and
stop playing at two particular time periods, with instructions on when to play
individually or in groups within these two periods. The result was a mass
superimposition of many different musics on top of one another as determined by
chance distribution, producing an event with a specifically theatric feel. Many
Musicircuses have subsequently been held, and continue to occur even after
Cage's death.[citation needed] This concept of circus was to remain important to Cage
throughout his life and featured strongly in such pieces as Roaratorio, an Irish
circus on Finnegans Wake (1979), a many-tiered rendering in sound of both his
text Writing for the Second Time Through Finnegans Wake, and traditional musical
and field recordings made around Ireland. The piece was based on James Joyce's
famous novel, Finnegans Wake, which was one of Cage's favorite books, and one
from which he derived texts for several more of his works.

[edit]Improvisation

Since chance procedures were used by Cage to eliminate the composer's and the
performer's likes and dislikes from music, Cage disliked the concept of
improvisation, which is inevitably linked to the performer's preferences. However, in
a number of works beginning in the 1970s, he found ways to incorporate
improvisation. In Child of Tree (1975) and Branches (1976) the performers are
asked to use certain species of plants as instruments, for example the cactus. The
structure of the pieces is determined through the chance of their choices, as is the
musical output; the performers had no knowledge of the instruments.
In Inlets (1977) the performers play large water-filled conch shells – by carefully
tipping the shell several times, it is possible to achieve a bubble forming inside,
which produced sound. Yet, as it is impossible to predict when this would happen,
the performers had to continue tipping the shells – as a result the performance was
dictated by pure chance.[86]

[edit]Visual art, writings, and other activities

Variations III, No. 14, a 1992 print by Cage from a series of 57.

Although Cage started painting in his youth, he gave it up in order to concentrate

on music instead. His first mature visual project, Not Wanting to Say Anything
About Marcel, dates from 1969. The work comprises two lithographs and a group
of what Cage calledplexigrams: silk screen printing on plexiglas panels. The panels
and the lithographs all consist of bits and pieces of words in different typefaces, all
governed by chance operations.[87]

From 1978 to his death Cage worked at Crown Point Press, producing series of
prints every year. The earliest project completed there was the etching Score
Without Parts (1978), created from fully notated instructions, and based on various
combinations of drawings byHenry David Thoreau. This was followed, the same
year, by Seven Day Diary, which Cage drew with his eyes closed, but which
conformed to a strict structure developed using chance operations. Finally,
Thoreau's drawings informed the last works produced in 1978,Signals.[88]

Between 1979 and 1982 Cage produced a number of large series of

prints: Changes and Disappearances (1979–80), On the Surface (1980–82),
and Déreau (1982). These were the last works in which he used engraving. [89] In
1983 he started using various unconventional materials such as cotton batting,
foam, etc., and then used stones and fire (Eninka, Variations,Ryoanji, etc.) to
create his visual works.[90] In 1988–1990 he produced watercolors at the Mountain
Lake Workshop. The only film Cage produced was one of the Number
Pieces, One11, commissioned by composer and film director Henning Lohner who
worked with Cage to produce and direct the 90-minute monochrome film. It was
completed only weeks before his death in 1992. One11 consists entirely of images
of chance-determined play of electric light. It premiered in Cologne, Germany, on
September 19, 1992, accompanied by the live performance of the orchestra
piece 103.

Throughout his adult life, Cage was also active as lecturer and writer. Some of his
lectures were included in several books he published, the first of which
was Silence: Lectures and Writings (1961). Silence included not only simple
lectures, but also texts executed in experimental layouts, and works such
as Lecture on Nothing (1959), which were composed in rhythmic structures.
Subsequent books also featured different types of content, from lectures on music
to poetry—Cage's mesostics.

Cage was also an avid amateur mycologist: he co-founded the New York
Mycological Society with four friends,[56] and his mycology collection is presently
housed by the Special Collections department of the McHenry Library at
the University of California, Santa Cruz.

[edit]Reception and influence

Cage's pre-chance works, particularly pieces from the late 1940s such as Sonatas
and Interludes, earned him a considerable measure of critical acclaim:
the Sonatas were performed at Carnegie Hall in 1949. However, Cage's adoption
of chance operations in 1951 cost him a number of friendships and led to
numerous criticisms from fellow composers. Adherents of serialism such as Pierre
Boulez and Karlheinz Stockhausen dismissed indeterminate music; Boulez, who
was once on friendly terms with Cage, criticized him for "adoption of a philosophy
tinged with Orientalism that masks a basic weakness in compositional
technique."[91] Prominent critics of serialism, such as the Greek composer Iannis
Xenakis, were similarly hostile towards Cage: for Xenakis, the adoption of chance
in music was "an abuse of language and [...] an abrogation of a composer's
function."[92]

An article by teacher and critic Michael Steinberg, Tradition and Responsibility,

criticized avant-garde music in general:

The rise of music that is totally without social commitment also increases the
separation between composer and public, and represents still another form of
departure from tradition. The cynicism with which this particular departure seems to
have been made is perfectly symbolized in John Cage's account of a public lecture
he had given: "Later, during the question period, I gave one of six previously
prepared answers regardless of the question asked. This was a reflection of my
engagement in Zen." While Mr. Cage's famous silent piece [i.e. 4′33″], or
his Landscapes for a dozen radio receivers may be of little interest as music, they
are of enormous importance historically as representing the complete abdication of
the artist's power.[93]

Cage's aesthetic position was criticized by, among others, prominent writer and
critic Douglas Kahn. In his 1999 book Noise, Water, Meat: A History of Sound in
the Arts, Kahn acknowledged the influence Cage had on culture, but noted that
"one of the central effects of Cage's battery of silencing techniques was a silencing
of the social."[94]

While much of Cage's work remains controversial, his influence on countless

composers, artists, and writers is undeniable. After Cage introduced chance,
Boulez, Stockhausen, and Xenakis remained critical, yet all adopted chance
procedures in some of their works (although in a much more restricted manner);
and Stockhausen's piano writing in his later Klavierstücke was influenced by
Cage's Music of Changesand David Tudor.[95] Other composers who adopted
chance procedures in their works included Witold Lutosławski, Mauricio Kagel, and
many others. Music in which some of the composition and/or performance is left to
chance was labelled aleatoric music—a term popularized byPierre Boulez. Helmut
Lachenmann's work was influenced by Cage's work with extended techniques.[96]
Cage's rhythmic structure experiments and his interest in sound influenced an even
greater number of composers, starting at first with his close American
associates Morton Feldman and Christian Wolff (and other American composers,
such as La Monte Young), and then spreading to Europe. For example, almost all
composers of the English experimental school acknowledge his influence: Michael
Parsons,Christopher Hobbs, John White,[97] Gavin Bryars, who studied under Cage
briefly,[98] and even Howard Skempton,[99] a composer seemingly very different
from Cage, and one whose work has been described as "the emancipation of
consonance." Cage's influence is also evident in the Far East: one of Japan's most
prominent classical composers of the 20th century, Tōru Takemitsu, was
influenced by his music.[100]

Cage's influence was also acknowledged by rock bands, such as Sonic Youth (who
performed some of the Number Pieces[101]) andStereolab (who named a song after
Cage[102]), composer and rock and jazz guitarist Frank Zappa,[103] and
various noise music artists and bands: indeed, one writer traced the origin of noise
music to 4′33″.[104] The development of electronic music was also influenced by
Cage: in the mid-1970s Brian Eno's label Obscure Records released works by
Cage.[105] Prepared piano, which Cage popularized, is featured heavily on Aphex
Twin's 2001 album Drukqs.[106] Cage's work as musicologist helped popularize Erik
Satie's music,[107][108] and his friendship withAbstract expressionist artists such
as Robert Rauschenberg helped introduce his ideas into visual art. Cage's ideas
also found their way intosound design: for example, Academy Award-winning
sound designer Gary Rydstrom cited Cage's work as a major influence.[109]

Osho mentions John Cage as a great musician, one of the greatest of this
century. [110]

[edit]Archives

 The archive of the John Cage Trust is held at Bard College in upstate New
York.[1].
 The John Cage Music Manuscript Collection held by the Music Division of The
New York Public Library for the Performing Artscontains most of the
composer's musical manuscripts, including sketches, worksheets, realizations,
and unfinished works.
 The John Cage Papers are held in Special Collections and Archives
department of Wesleyan University's Olin Library in Middletown, Connecticut.
They contain manuscripts, interviews, fan mail, and ephemera. Other material,
including clippings, gallery and exhibition catalogs, a collection of Cage's books
and serials, posters, objects, exhibition and literary announcement postcards,
and brochures from conferences and other organizations
 The John Cage Collection at Northwestern University in Illinois contains the
composer's correspondence, ephemera, and the Notationscollection.
[edit]Cultural references

 Sonic Youth on their SYR4 album perform two realizations of Cage's

piece Six and one of Four8.
 "John Cage Is Dead" is a track on Mickey Hart's Mystery Box album.
 Who Put John Cage on the Guestlist? is the name of an album by Norwegian
electronic research group Hemmelig Tempo.
 "Jaune d'Oeuf en Cage" ("Yolk in a Cage") is a track by David Fenech on his
first album Grand Huit. It is a joke based on the John Cage / Jaune
Cage homophone in French.
 In the musical Rent, Cage's name is mentioned during the song "La Vie
Bohème" among other artists.
 In December 2010, 18 years posthumously, Cage made his debut in the UK
singles charts with "4' 33" (Cage Against the Machine Version)". The piece
peaked at number 21 on the Christmas UK chart.[111]
[edit]Footnotes
1. ^ Cage quoted in Kostelanetz 2003, 1–2. Cage mentions a working model
of the universe that his father had built, and that the scientists who saw it
could not explain how it worked and refused to believe it.
2. ^ Different sources give different details of their first meeting. Pritchett, in
Grove, implies that Cage met Schoenberg in New York City: "Cage followed
Schoenberg to Los Angeles in 1934", however, in a 1976 interview quoted
in Kostelanetz 2003, 5, Cage mentions that he "went to see him
[Schoenberg] in Los Angeles."
3. ^ Recent research has shown that Cage may have met Tudor almost a
decade earlier, in 1942, through Jean Erdman: Gann, Kyle (2008)."Cleaning
Up a Life". an ARTSJOURNAL weblog. Retrieved August 4, 2009.
4. ^ Technically, it was his second, for Cage previously collaborated with
Kathleen Hoover on a biographical volume on Virgil Thomson, which was
published in 1959.
5. ^ Cage self-identified as an anarchist in a 1985 interview: "I'm an anarchist.
I don't know whether the adjective is pure and simple, or philosophical, or
what, but I don't like government! And I don't like institutions! And I don't
have any confidence in even good institutions." John Cage at Seventy: An
Interview by Stephen Montague. American Music, Summer 1985. Ubu.com.
Accessed May 24, 2007.
John Cage: An Autobiographical Statement

What follows is John Cage's "Autobiographical Statement"(1990), which, in time,

will transform into a fully animated multimedia version. Hyperlinked words will take
you to a wealth of materials across media -- some drawn from the archives of the
John Cage Trust, some discovered within the folds of the World Wide Web, some
newly created. While we work to create these links (both content and access), we
ask that you consider submitting for consideration your own contributions, which
may take the form of text, video, music, and/or images (files or links). Like our
"Folksonomy," this aspect of the website means to infinitely expand.
I once asked Aragon, the historian, how history was written. He said, "You have to
invent it." When I wish as now to tell of critical incidents, persons, and events that
have influenced my life and work, the true answer is all of the incidents were
critical, all of the people influenced me, everything that happened and that is still
happening influences me.

My father was an inventor. He was able to find solutions for problems of various
kinds, in the fields of electrical engineering, medicine, submarine travel, seeing
through fog, and travel in space without the use of fuel. He told me that if someone
says "can't" that shows you what to do. He also told me that my mother was always
right even when she was wrong.

My mother had a sense of society. She was the founder of the Lincoln Study Club,
first in Detroit, then in Los Angeles. She became the Women's Club editor for the
Los Angeles Times. She was never happy. When after Dad's death I said, "Why
don't you visit the family in Los Angeles? You'll have a good time," she replied,
"Now, John, you know perfectly well I've never enjoyed having a good time." When
we would go for a Sunday drive, she'd always regret that we hadn't brought
so-and-so with us. Sometimes she would leave the house and say she was never
coming back. Dad was patient, and always calmed my alarm by saying, "Don't
worry, she'll be back in a little while."

Neither of my parents went to college. When I did, I dropped out after two years.
Thinking I was going to be a writer, I told Mother and Dad I should travel to Europe
and have experiences rather than continue in school. I was shocked at college to
see one hundred of my classmates in the library all reading copies of the same
book. Instead of doing as they did, I went into the stacks and read the first book
written by an author whose name began with Z. I received the highest grade in the
class. That convinced me that the institution was not being run correctly. I left.

In Europe, after being kicked in the seat of my pants by José Pijoan for my study of
flamboyant Gothic architecture and introduced by him to a modern architect who
set me to work drawing Greek capitals, Doric, Ionic, and Corinthian, I became
interested in modern music and modern painting. One day I overheard the architect
saying to some girl friends, "In order to be an architect, one must devote one's life
to architecture." I then went to him and said I was leaving because I was interested
in other things than architecture. At this time I was reading Leaves of Grass of Walt
Whitman. Enthusiastic about America I wrote to Mother and Dad saying, "I am
coming home." Mother wrote back, "Don't be a fool. Stay in Europe as long as
possible. Soak up as much beauty as you can. You'll probably never get there
again." I left Paris and began both painting and writing music, first in Mallorca. The
music I wrote was composed in some mathematical way I no longer recall. It didn't
seem like music to me so that when I left Mallorca I left it behind to lighten the
weight of my baggage. In Sevilla on a street corner I noticed the multiplicity of
simultaneous visual and audible events all going together in one's experience and
producing enjoyment. It was the beginning for me of theater and circus.
Later when I returned to California, in the Pacific Palisades, I wrote songs with
texts by Gertrude Stein and choruses from The Persians of Aeschylus. I had
studied Greek in high school. These compositions were improvised at the piano.
The Stein songs are, so to speak, transcriptions from a repetitive language to a
repetitive music. I met Richard Buhlig who was the first pianist to play the Opus
II of Schoenberg. Though he was not a teacher of composition, he agreed to take
charge of my writing of music. From him I went to Henry Cowell and at Cowell's
suggestion (based on my twenty-five tone compositions, which, though not serial,
were chromatic and required the expression in a single voice of all twenty-five
tones before any one of them was repeated) to Adolph Weiss in preparation for
studies with Arnold Schoenberg. When I asked Schoenberg to teach me, he said,
"You probably can't afford my price." I said, "Don't mention it; I don't have any
money." He said, "Will you devote your life to music?" This time I said "Yes." He
said he would teach me free of charge. I gave up painting and concentrated on
music. After two years it became clear to both of us that I had no feeling for
harmony. For Schoenberg, harmony was not just coloristic: it was structural. It was
the means one used to distinguish one part of a composition from another.
Therefore he said I'd never be able to write music. "Why not?" "You'll come to a
wall and won't be able to get through." "Then I'll spend my life knocking my head
against that wall."
I became an assistant to Oskar Fischinger, the filmmaker, to prepare myself to
write the music for one of his films. He happened to say one day, "Everything in the
world has its own spirit which can be released by setting it into vibration." I began
hitting, rubbing everything, listening, and then writing percussion music, and
playing it with friends. These compositions were made up of short motives
expressed either as sound or as silence of the same length, motives that were
arranged on the perimeter of a circle on which one could proceed forward or
backward. I wrote without specifying the instruments, using our rehearsals to try
out found or rented instruments. I didn't rent many because I had little money. I did
library research work for my father or for lawyers. I was married to Xenia
Andreyevna Kashevaroff who was studying bookbinding with Hazel Dreis. Since
we all lived in a big house my percussion music was played in the evening by the
bookbinders. I invited Schoenberg to one of our performances. "I am not free."
"Can you come a week later?" "No, I am not free at any time."
I found dancers, modern dancers, however, who were interested in my music and
could put it to use. I was given a job at the Cornish School in Seattle. It was there
that I discovered what I called micro-macrocosmic rhythmic structure. The large
parts of a composition had the same proportion as the phrases of a single unit.
Thus an entire piece had that number of measures that had a square root. This
rhythmic structure could be expressed with any sounds, including noises, or it
could be expressed not as sound and silence but as stillness and movement in
dance. It was my response to Schoenberg's structural harmony. It was also at the
Cornish School that I became aware of Zen Buddhism, which later, as part of
oriental philosophy, took the place for me of psychoanalysis. I was disturbed both
in my private life and in my public life as a composer. I could not accept the
academic idea that the purpose of music was communication, because I noticed
that when I conscientiously wrote something sad, people and critics were often apt
to laugh. I determined to give up composition unless I could find a better reason for
doing it than communication. I found this answer from Gira Sarabhai, an Indian
singer and tabla player: The purpose of music is to sober and quiet the mind, thus
making it susceptible to divine influences. I also found in the writings of Ananda K.
Coomaraswammy that the responsibility of the artist is to imitate nature in her
manner of operation. I became less disturbed and went back to work.

Before I left the Cornish School I made the prepared piano. I needed percussion
instruments for music for a dance that had an African character by Syvilla Fort. But
the theater in which she was to dance had no wings and there was no pit. There
was only a small grand piano built in to the front and left of the audience. At the
time I either wrote twelve-tone music for piano or I wrote percussion music. There
was no room for the instruments. I couldn't find an African twelve tone row. I finally
realized I had to change the piano. I did so by placing objects between the strings.
The piano was transformed into a percussion orchestra having the loudness, say,
of a harpsichord.
It was also at the Cornish School, in a radio station there, that I made compositions
using acoustic sounds mixed with amplified small sounds and recordings of sine
waves. I began a series, Imaginary Landscapes.
I spent two years trying to establish a Center for Experimental Music, in a college
or university or with corporate sponsorship. Though I found interest in my work I
found no one willing to support it financially.

I joined the faculty of Moholy Nagy's School of Design in Chicago. While there I
was commissioned to write a sound effects music for a CBS Columbia Workshop
Play. I was told by the sound effects engineer that anything I could imagine was
possible. What I wrote, however, was impractical and too expensive; the work had
to be rewritten for percussion orchestra, copied, and rehearsed in the few
remaining days and nights before its broadcast. That was The City Wears a Slouch
Hat by Kenneth Patchen. The response was enthusiastic in the West and Middle
West. Xenia and I came to New York, but the response in the East had been less
than enthusiastic. We had met Max Ernst in Chicago. We were staying with him
and Peggy Guggenheim. We were penniless. No job was given to me for my
composing of radio sound effects, which I had proposed. I began writing again for
modern dancers and doing library research work for my father who was then with
Mother in New Jersey. About this time I met my first virtuosi: Robert Fizdale and
Arthur Gold. I wrote two large works for two prepared pianos. The criticism by Virgil
Thomson was very favorable, both for their performance and for my composition.
But there were only fifty people in the audience. I lost a great deal of money that I
didn't have. I was obliged to beg for it, by letter and personally. I continued each
year, however, to organize and present one or two programs of chamber music
and one or two programs of Merce Cunningham's choreography and dancing. And
to make tours with him throughout the United States. And later with David Tudor,
the pianist, to Europe. Tudor is now a composer and performer of electronic music.
For many years he and I were the two musicians for Merce Cunningham. And then
for many more we had the help of David Behrman, Gordon Mumma, or Takehisa
Kosugi. I have in recent years, in order to carry out other projects (an opera in
Frankfurt and the Norton Lectures at Harvard University), left the Cunningham
Company. Its musicians now are Tudor, Kosugi, and Michael Pugliese, the
percussionist.
Just recently I received a request for a text on the relation between Zen Buddhism
and my work. Rather than rewriting it now I am inserting it here in this story. I call it
FromWhere'm'Now. It repeats some of what is above and some of what is below.
When I was young and still writing an unstructured music, albeit methodical and
not improvised, one of my teachers, Adolph Weiss, used to complain that no
sooner had I started a piece than I brought it to an end. I introduced silence. I was
a ground, so to speak, in which emptiness could grow.

At college I had given up high school thoughts about devoting my life to religion.
But after dropping out and traveling to Europe I became interested in modern
music and painting, listening-looking and making, finally devoting myself to writing
music, which, twenty years later, becoming graphic, returned me now and then for
visits to painting (prints, drawings, watercolors, the costumes and decors
for Europeras 1 & 2).
In the late thirties I heard a lecture by Nancy Wilson Ross on Dada and Zen. I
mention this in my forward to Silence then adding that I did not want my work
blamed on Zen, though I felt that Zen changes in different times and places and
what it has become here and now, I am not certain. Whatever it is it gives me
delight and most recently by means of Stephen Addiss' book The Art of Zen. I had
the good fortune to attend Daisetz Suzuki's classes in the philosophy of Zen
Buddhism at Columbia University in the late forties. And I visited him twice in
Japan. I have never practiced sitting cross-legged nor do I meditate. My work is
what I do and always involves writing materials, chairs, and tables. Before I get to
it, I do some exercises for my back and I water the plants, of which I have around
two hundred.
In the late forties I found out by experiment (I went into the anechoic chamber at
Harvard University) that silence is not acoustic. It is a change of mind, a turning
around. I devoted my music to it. My work became an exploration of non-intention.
To carry it out faithfully I have developed a complicated composing means using I
Ching chance operations, making my responsibility that of asking questions instead
of making choices.
The Buddhist texts to which I often return are the Huang-Po Doctrine of Universal
Mind (in Chu Ch'an's first translation, published by the London Buddhist Society in
1947), Neti Neti by L. C. Beckett of which (as I say in the introduction to my Norton
Lectures at Harvard) my life could be described as an illustration, and the Ten
Oxherding Pictures (in the version that ends with the return to the village bearing
gifts of a smiling and somewhat heavy monk, one who had experienced
Nothingness). Apart from Buddhism and earlier I had read the Gospel of Sri
Ramakrishna. Ramakrishna it was who said all religions are the same, like a lake
to which people who are thirsty come from different directions, calling its water by
different names. Furthermore this water has many different tastes. The taste of Zen
for me comes from the admixture of humor, intransigence, and detachment. It
makes me think of Marcel Duchamp, though for him we would have to add the
erotic.
As part of the source material for my Norton lectures at Harvard I thought of
Buddhist texts. I remembered hearing of an Indian philosopher who was very
uncompromising. I asked Dick Higgins, "Who is the Malevich of Buddhist
philosophy?" He laughed. Reading Emptiness -- a Study in Religious Meaning by
Frederick J. Streng, I found out. He is Nagarjuna.
But since I finished writing the lectures before I found out, I included, instead of
Nagarjuna, Ludwig Wittgenstein, the corpus, subjected to chance operations. And
there is another good book, Wittgenstein and Buddhism, by Chris Gudmunsen,
which I shall be reading off and on into the future.
My music now makes use of time-brackets, sometimes flexible, sometimes not.
There are no scores, no fixed relation of parts. Sometimes the parts are fully
written out, sometimes not. The title of my Norton lectures is a reference to a
brought-up-to-date version of Composition in Retrospect:
Method, Structure, Intention, Discipline, Notation, Indeterminacy, Interpenetration,
Imitation, Devotion, Circumstances, Variable Structure, Nonunderstanding,
Contingency, Inconsistency, Performance (I-VI).
When it is published, for commercial convenience, it will just be called I-VI.
I found in the largely German community at Black Mountain College a lack of
experience of the music of Erik Satie. Therefore, teaching there one summer and
having no pupils, I arranged a festival of Satie's music, half-hour after-dinner
concerts with introductory remarks. And in the center of the festival I placed a
lecture that opposed Satie and Beethoven and found that Satie, not Beethoven,
was right. Buckminster Fuller was the Baron Méduse in a performance of
Satie's Le Piège de Méduse. That summer Fuller put up his first dome, which
immediately collapsed. He was delighted. "I only learn what to do when I have
failures." His remark made me think of Dad. That is what Dad would have said.
It was at Black Mountain College that I made what is sometimes said to be the first
happening. The audience was seated in four isometric triangular sections, the
apexes of which touched a small square performance area that they faced and that
led through the aisles between them to the large performance area that surrounded
them. Disparate activities, dancing by Merce Cunningham, the exhibition of
paintings and the playing of a Victrola by Robert Rauschenberg, the reading of his
poetry by Charles Olsen or hers by M. C. Richards from the top of a ladder outside
the audience, the piano playing of David Tudor, my own reading of a lecture that
included silences from the top of another ladder outside the audience, all took
place within chance-determined periods of time within the over-all time of my
lecture. It was later that summer that I was delighted to find in America's first
synagogue in Newport, Rhode Island, that the congregation was seated in the
same way, facing itself.

From Rhode Island I went on to Cambridge and in the anechoic chamber at

Harvard University heard that silence was not the absence of sound but was the
unintended operation of my nervous system and the circulation of my blood. It was
this experience and the white paintings of Rauschenberg that led me to
compose 4'33", which I had described in a lecture at Vassar College some years
before when I was in the flush of my studies with Suzuki (A Composer's
Confessions, 1948), my silent piece.
In the early fifties with David Tudor and Louis and Bebe Barron I made several
works on magnetic tape, works by Christian Wolff, Morton Feldman, Earle Brown,
and myself. Just as my notion of rhythmic structure followed Schoenberg's
structural harmony, and my silent piece followed Robert Rauschenberg's white
paintings, so my Music of Changes, composed by means of I Ching chance
operations, followed Morton Feldman's graph music, music written with numbers
for any pitches, the pitches notated only as high, middle, or low. Not immediately,
but a few years later, I was to move from structure to process, from music as an
object having parts, to music without beginning, middle, or end, music as weather.
In our collaborations Merce Cunningham's choreographies are not supported by
my musical accompaniments. Music and dance are independent but coexistent.
It was in the fifties that I left the city and went to the country. There I found Guy
Nearing, who guided me in my study of mushrooms and other wild edible plants.
With three other friends we founded the New York Mycological Society. Nearing
helped us also with the lichen about which he had written and printed a book.
When the weather was dry and the mushrooms weren't growing we spent our time
with the lichen.

In the sixties the publication of both my music and my writings began. Whatever I
do in the society is made available for use. An experience I had in Hawaii turned
my attention to the work of Buckminster Fuller and the work of Marshall McLuhan.
Above the tunnel that connects the southern part of Oahu with the northern there
are crenellations at the top of the mountain range as on a medieval castle. When I
asked about them, I was told they had been used for self-protection while shooting
poisoned arrows on the enemy below. Now both sides share the same utilities.
Little more than a hundred years ago the island was a battlefield divided by a
mountain range. Fuller's world map shows that we live on a single island. Global
Village (McLuhan), Spaceship Earth (Fuller). Make an equation between human
needs and world resources (Fuller). I began my Diary: How to Improve the World:
You Will Only Make Matters Worse. Mother said, "How dare you!"
I don't know when it began. But at Edwin Denby's loft on 21st Street, not at the
time but about the place, I wrote my first mesostic. It was a regular paragraph with
the letters of his name capitalized. Since then I have written them as poems, the
capitals going down the middle, to celebrate whatever, to support whatever, to fulfill
requests, to initiate my thinking or my nonthinking (Themes and Variations is the
first of a series of mesostic works: to find a way of writing that, though coming from
ideas, is not about them but produces them). I have found a variety of ways of
writing mesostics: Writings through a source: Rengas (a mix of a plurality of source
mesostics), autokus, mesostics limited to the words of the mesostic itself, and
"globally," letting the words come from here and there through chance operations
in a source text.
I was invited by Irwin Hollander to make lithographs. Actually it was an idea Alice
Weston had (Duchamp had died. I had been asked to say something about him.
Jasper Johns was also asked to do this. He said, "I don't want to say anything
about Marcel.") I made Not Wanting to Say Anything About Marcel: eight
plexigrams and two lithographs. Whether this brought about the invitation or not, I
do not know. I was invited by Kathan Brown to the Crown Point Press, then in
Oakland, California, to make etchings. I accepted the invitation because years
before I had not accepted one from Gira Sarabhai to walk with her in the
Himalayas. I had something else to do. When I was free, she was not. The walk
never took place. I have always regretted this. It was to have been on elephants. It
would have been unforgettable...
Every year since then I have worked once or twice at the Crown Point Press.
Etchings. Once Kathan Brown said, "You wouldn't just sit down and draw." Now I
do: drawings around stones, stones placed on a grid at chance-determined points.
These drawings have also made musical notation: Renga, Score and Twenty-three
Parts, and Ryoanji (but drawing from left to right, halfway around a stone). Ray
Kass, an artist who teaches watercolor at Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State
University, became interested in my graphic work with chance operations. With his
aid and that of students he enlisted I have made fifty-two watercolors. And those
have led me to aquatints, brushes, acids, and their combination with fire, smoke,
and stones with etchings.
These experiences led me in one instance to compose music in the way I had
found to make a series of prints called On the Surface. I discovered that a
horizontal line that determined graphic changes, to correspond, had to become a
vertical line in the notation of music (Thirty Pieces for Five Orchestras). Time
instead of space.
Invited by Heinz Klaus Metzger and Rainer Riehn with the assistance of Andrew
Culver I made Europeras 1 & 2 for the Frankfurt Opera. This carries the
independence but coexistence of music and dance with which Cunningham and I
were familiar, to all the elements of theater, including the lighting, program
booklets, decors, properties, costumes, and stage action.
Eleven or twelve years ago I began the Freeman Etudes for violin solo. As with
the Etudes Australes for piano solo I wanted to make the music as difficult as
possible so that a performance would show that the impossible is not impossible
and to write thirty-two of them. The notes written so far for the Etudes 17-32 show,
however, that there are too many notes to play. I have for years thought they would
have to be synthesized, which I did not want to do. Therefore the work remains
unfinished. Early last summer ('88) Irvine Arditti played the first sixteen in fifty-six
minutes and then late in November the same pieces in forty-six minutes. I asked
why he played so fast. He said, "That's what you say in the preface: play as fast as
possible." As a result I now know how to finish the Freeman Etudes, a work that I
hope to accomplish this year or next. Where there are too many notes I will write
the direction, "Play as many as possible."
Thinking of orchestra not just as musicians but as people I have made different
translations of people to people in different pieces. In Etcetera to being with the
orchestra as soloists, letting them volunteer their services from time to time to any
one of three conductors. InEtcetera 2/4 Orchestras to begin with four conductors,
letting orchestra members from time to time leave the group and play as soloists.
In Atlas Eclipticalis and Concert for Piano and Orchestra the conductor is not a
governing agent but a utility, providing the time. In Quartetno more than four
musicians play at a time, with four constantly changing. Each musician is a soloist.
To bring to orchestral society the devotion to music that characterizes chamber
music. To build a society one by one. To bring chamber music to the size of
orchestra. Music for -----. So far I have written eighteen parts, any of which can be
played together or omitted. Flexible time-brackets. Variable structure. A music, so
to speak, that's earthquake proof. Another series without an underlying idea is the
group that began with Two, continued withOne, Five, Seven, Twenty-three, 1O1,
Four, Two2, One2, Three, Fourteen, and Seven2. For each of these works I look for
something I haven't yet found. My favorite music is the music I haven't yet heard. I
don't hear the music I write. I write in order to hear the music I haven't yet heard.
We are living in a period in which many people have changed their mind about
what the use of music is or could be for them. Something that doesn't speak or talk
like a human being, that doesn't know its definition in the dictionary or its theory in
the schools, that expresses itself simply by the fact of its vibrations. People paying
attention to vibratory activity, not in reaction to a fixed ideal performance, but each
time attentively to how it happens to be this time, not necessarily two times the
same. A music that transports the listener to the moment where he is.

Just the other day I received a request from Enzo Peruccio, a music editor in
Torino. This is how I replied:

I have been asked to write a preface for this book, which is written in a language
that I do not use for reading. This preface is therefore not to the book but to the
subject of the book, percussion.

Percussion is completely open. It is not even open-ended. It has no end. It is not

like the strings, the winds, the brass (I am thinking of the other sections of the
orchestra), though when they fly the coop of harmony it can teach them a thing or
two. If you are not hearing music, percussion is exemplified by the very next sound
you actually hear wherever you are, in or out of doors or city. Planet?

Take any part of this book and go to the end of it. You will find yourself thinking of
the next step to be taken in that direction. Perhaps you will need new materials,
new technologies. You have them. You are in the world of X, chaos, the new
science.
The strings, the winds, the brass know more about music than they do about
sound. To study noise they must go to the school of percussion. There they will
discover silence, a way to change one's mind; and aspects of time that have not
yet been put into practice. European musical history began the study (the
iso-rhythmic motet) but it was put aside by the theory of harmony. Harmony
through a percussion composer, Edgard Varèse, is being brought to a new
open-ended life by Tenney, James Tenney. I called him last December after
hearing his new work in Miami and said "If this is harmony, I take back everything
I've ever said; I'm all for it." The spirit of percussion opens everything, even what
was, so to speak, completely closed.

I could go on (two percussion instruments of the same kind are no more alike than
two people who happen to have the same name) but I do not want to waste the
reader's time. Open this book and all the doors wherever you find them. There is
no end to life. And this book proves that music is part of it.

Author's note: "An Autobiographical Statement" was written for the Inamori
Foundation and delivered in Kyoto as a commemorative lecture in response to
having received the Kyoto Prize in November 1989. It is a work in progress.
Editor's note: John Cage delivered "An Autobiographical Statement" at Southern
Methodist University on 17 April 1990, as part of the year-long celebration of the
Algur H. Meadows award for excellence in the arts given to Robert Rauschenberg.
It first appeared in print in the Southwest Review, 1991. It is reprinted here with the
kind permission of The John Cage Trust at Bard College, Annandale-on-Hudson,
New York.

About the John Cage Trust

The John Cage Trust was established in 1993 as a not-for-profit institution whose
mission is to gather together, organize, preserve, disseminate, and generally
further the work of the late American composer, John Cage. Its founding trustees
were Merce Cunningham, Artistic Director of the Cunningham Dance Company,
Anne d'Harnoncourt, Director of the Philadelphia Museum, and David Vaughan,
Archivist of the Cunningham Dance Foundation, all long-time Cage friends and
associates. Laura Kuhn, who from 1986 to 1992 worked directly with John Cage,
serves as both a founding trustee and ongoing Executive Director. In 2008, Anne
d'Harnoncourt was replaced by Margarete Roeder, long-time gallerist to both Cage
and Cunningham; in 2009, Merce Cunningham was replaced by Melissa Harris,
editor-in-chief of Aperture.
The John Cage Trust functions as both a business concern and an archive and
repository for Cage's work. In the latter capacity, it maintains sizeable collections of
music, text, and visual art manuscripts. It also houses extensive audio, video, and
print libraries, which are continually expanding, as well as a substantial permanent
collection of visual art works by John Cage, which are made available for
exhibitions worldwide. The Trust is open year-round by appointment to visitors to
assist ongoing work involving, in diverse ways, the legacy of John Cage. As
Executive Director, Kuhn travels extensively, lecturing on topics relating to Cage's
life and work and conducting performance workshops. In 1998, simultaneous with
a performance of the Cage/Cunningham collaboration, Ocean, and the premiere
installation of Cage's Roaratorio at the Belfast Festival at Queen's, she was even
called upon to cook a post-performance macrobiotic meal for some 80 people in its
theater cafe! That same year, she delivered a series of lectures at the Shanghai
Conservatory of Music, where Cage's work, perhaps needless to say, is very little
known.
The John Cage Trust also works closely with others in the promotion and
placement of Cage's work. In 1993, after an extensive inventory was made and a
catalog prepared, the John Cage Music Manuscript Collection, numbering some
28,000 pages, was acquired by the New York Public Library for the Performing
Arts. The John Cage Trust works closely with Cage's long-time publisher, C.F.
Peters, in promoting new performances and recordings and providing licensing and
rights. It also works closely with the Margarete Roeder Gallery in New York
andCrown Point Press in San Francisco in the placement of Cage's visual art
works in museums and private collections around the world. And, of course, it
works intimately with the Cunningham Dance Foundation to assist its continued
use of live music for dance, a trademark tradition initiated by Cage and
Cunningham in 1953 with the formation of theCunningham Dance Company. Upon
Cunningham's death in 2009, Kuhn was appointed one of four founding board
members of the Merce Cunningham Trust.
In 1999, the organization embarked on a number of progressive, proactive projects
designed to contribute to the continuing relevance of Cage's work. A particularly
interesting example, from 2002, involved the sampling of prepared piano sounds
that were subsequently released by Big Fish Audio in a format suitable for MIDI
systems. This project, initiated with Cage's landmark composition for the
instrument, Sonatas & Interludes (1946-48), means to extend the life of both the
prepared piano itself and Cage's significant body of works written for the
instrument. In 2000, the John Cage Trust co-produced (with Double M Arts &
Events) a theatrical realization of Cage's whimsical 1982 radio play, James Joyce,
Marcel Duchamp, Erik Satie: An Alphabet, utilizing a sound score constructed from
materials in its archives by the New York composer, Mikel Rouse. This work, which
Kuhn directed, was seen in venues around the world, including Edinburgh, Berlin,
Dublin, Perth, Australia, and California, at both the U.C. Berkeley and U.C. Los
Angeles campuses. In 2007, the John Cage Trust also produced a theatrical
realization, again under Kuhn's direction, of Cage's Lecture on the Weather, seen
live at the Fisher Center for the Performing Arts at Bard College to commemorate
the residential place of the John Cage Trust, and, in 2008, at the Chelsea Art
Museum, co-sponsored by the Electronic Music Foundation. An installation version
of theBard College performances was also included in The Anarchy of Silence, a
significant art exhibition initiated by the Museu d'Art Contemporani in Barcelona
(2009).
As a natural by-product of its on-going archival restoration endeavors, involving the
digital transfer of works in various media, the first decade of the new millennium
saw a number of co-produced audio releases by the John Cage Trust with Mode
Records, of Cage's own text readings. The first, John Cage Performs Cage: The
Text Pieces I (The Artist Pieces), features a lengthy, little-known work, Series re
Morris Graves, in which Cage recounts in both words and song his formative
experiences while living in Seattle, Washington. Two other works are included: Art
is Either a Complaint or Do Something Else and What You Say, both utilizing
Cage's innovative "mesostic" poetry form and based on the words of his long-time
friend and associate, Jasper Johns. The John Cage Trust also works closely with
publishers who have a long-standing commitment to Cage publications, such
as Wesleyan University Press, who in the past few years has released
Cage's Anarchy, as well as the paperback edition of his important six-part lecture
as holder of the Charles E. Norton Chair in Poetry at Harvard University, I-VI. In
2010, the John Cage Trust began its annual publication of the John Cage Book of
Days, an intimate daily calendar filled with important Cage dates and pithy
quotations, and in 2011, Wesleyan University Press will publish the John Cage
Correspondence Collection, edited by Kuhn and the Pulitzer Prize-winning
biographer Ken Silverman. Silverman's Begin Again: A Biography of John Cage,
fully supported by the John Cage Trust, will be available later this year from Knopf.
On a more traditional side, in 2000, the John Cage Trust initiated work with
Munich's Schirmer Mosel Verlag on the "John Cage Catalogue Raisonné,' which,
with luck, will be available in time for John Cage's centennial year, 2012. And,
belatedly but worth the wait, johncage.org will launch this year, building on the
work of Andre Chaudron, whose johncage.info has served Cage enthusiasts for
well over a decade. In addition to a fully integrated and searchable database of the
holdings of the John Cage Trust, the site will feature many additional components,
including "The John Cage Folksonomy" (already up and running) – a roster of
some 6,000 anecdotally annotated Cage friends & acquaintances, to which the
public is invited to contribute.
In 2007, the John Cage Trust went into residential placement at Bard College,
where Kuhn serves as the first John Cage Professor of Performance Arts. That
same year, two commemorative concerts were given: the afore-mentioned Lecture
on the Weather, with an all-star cast that included Merce Cunningham, Jasper
Johns, John Ashbery, John Ralston Saul, and others, and "Nexus Live!", a full
evening of percussion works given by the celebrated ensemble. In 2009 the first
John Cage Trust sponsored symposium was given with "John Cage at Bard
College," with participation from Cage enthusiasts resident at Bard College.
 ACERCA DE JOHN CAGE

John Cage es una de las figuras más importantes del arte contemporáneo,
no solo por sus inovaciones en el campo de la música sino como pensador,
escritor y filósofo. Nacido en los Estados Unidos de Norteamerica el 5 de
Septiembre de 1912, hijo de un Inventor, hace sus estudios de preparatoria en Los
Angeles, y atiende despues dos años a la Universidad de Pomona en Claremont.
En 1930 hace un viaje por Europa en el que se dedica a estudiar Arte, Musica y
Arquitectura, y a su regreso a los Estados Unidos se dedica a escribir poesia, a
pintar, y a estudiar composicion con Richard Buhling. En 1933 va a Nueva York
por un año a estudiar con el compositor Adolph Weiss, y atiende a clases de
musica folklorica y contemporanea con Henry Cowell en la "New school for social
research". Al regresar a California en 1934, estudiará contrapunto con Arnold
Shoenberg. Sin embargo, la dirección que va a tomar Cage en la música va a ser
diametralmente opuesta de la de su maestro Europeo.

La faceta mas particular que va a convertir a John Cage en uno de los

grandes inovadores musicales de este siglo y que lo va a apartar de la tradición
Europea, es la búsqueda de la "obra abierta". Para Cage la obra de arte se tiene
que abrir a la vida, y esto trae como consecuencia la creación de obras en las que
el artista se hace a un lado y deja que los acontecimientos que existen en ellas
tengan lugar simultaneamente, sin que interfieran unos con otros. Para lograr esto
él compone su música usando técnicas de azar que determinan cada nota, cada
rítmo y cada silencio de sus obras. De esta manera, ninguna opinión personal del
artista altera a la obra, pues toda decisión es efectuada de manera aleatoria. Cage
afirma que para componer de esta manera es necesario que el artista aniquile su
ego, ocacionando de esta manera que las obras se vuelvan menos "expresivas"
con el fin de que las emociones surgan no de ellas, sino de la gente que las
escucha.

Cage no se conforma con expresar su idea de la "obra abierta" con sus

composiciones, y atraves de su vida va a escribir varios libros acerca de estas
ideas. Además, va a ser uno de los iniciadores del "Happening" cuando en 1952
hace un evento en Black Mountain College dentro del cual se desarrollan una serie
de actividades distintas que no tienen conexión alguna entre si (mientras una
persona baila, otra persona toca el piano, otra recita subida en una escalera, etc).
El fin que Cage perseguía al hacer este evento era involucrar al expectador con
una forma de expresión que lo acercara a la vida atravez de su filosofía de la "no
intención" (es decir que lo que sucede esta abandonado al azar, y no se pretende
comunicar algo determinado).

En una entrevista con Daniel Charles, Cage afirma:

"Lo que es importante es insertar al individuo en el flujo de todo lo que

sucede. Para hacer esto, el muro del ego debe de ser demolido; gustos, memoria
y emociones deben ser debilitados. Se puede tener una emocion, simplemente no
debemos pensar que es tan importante. Tómala de una manera en que luego la
puedas dejar caer. No la reelabores!".
 De esta manera, Cage espera que el expectador haga a un lado a su ego ,
para volverse más perceptivo hacia todo lo que sucede a su alrededor.
Probablemente uno de los fines mas importantes que él persigue con sus obras,
es lograr que abramos nuestros oídos a todos los sonidos exsistentes.

"Hay que considerar no solo la musica hermosa sino la musica que tiene
vida en si misma".

Para el entonces, es necesario romper con toda distinción entre vida y arte,
ya que su misión como compositor es hacer que su auditorio se vuelva mas
conciente del mundo en el que vive. Un ejemplo de esto es su obra 0'0'' (1962),
que consiste en preparar y cortar vegetales, introducirlos a una licuadora, y luego
beberse el jugo. Los sonidos de todas estas acciones son amplificados y
reproducidos atraves de bocinas distribuidas en un auditorio.

Otro ejemplo es la obra "Cuatro minutos, treinta y tres segundos"

("4 : 33") para piano solo o cualquier tipo de conjunto instrumental. Si

fuesemos alguna vez a un concierto en el que se interpretara esta composición,
veríamos a un músico o grupo de músicos salir a escena y con reloj en mano,
cronometrar cuatro minutos treinta y tres segundos sin tocar una sola nota de sus
instrumentos. Si no conociéramos el sentido de esto, probablemente creeríamos
que todo es una farsa, y abandonaríamos disgustados la sala. En realidad, esta es
una muestra más del intento que hace Cage para que el oyente comienze a
reparar en los sonidos y ruidos que lo circundan.
 En su libro "Silence" (1961), Cage escribe:

"Nuestra intención debe ser afirmar esta vida, no traer el orden fuera del
caos, o sugerir mejoras en la manera de hacer una composición, sino simplemente
despertarnos a la vida misma que estamos viviendo. Esto es muy placentero una
vez que nuestra mente y nuestros deseos estan fuera del camino, y dejan actuar a
la vida libremente".

Parte de la razón de esta actitud tan abierta y perceptiva tiene que ver con
una gran confianza que tiene Cage hacia la naturaleza, pues cree que solo
bastaría con dejarla actuar para que el equilibrio perdido por la injerencia del
hombre sobre ella fuera reestablecido. Esta idea la expresa de la siguiente
manera:

"La musica nunca ha existido como una entidad separada excepto en la

imaginación de los músicos profesionales. Siempre se ha abierto a la naturaleza,
incluso cuando ha sido estructurada en la dirección opuesta. El problema consistía
en que la gente ponía toda su atencion en su construcción. Hoy dia podemos
diversificar nuestra atención, y la construcción ya no esconde la ecología". Debido
a esta actitud, se ha dicho que la obra de Cage es una especie de "música
ecológica". Es claro que éste compositor tiene una clara preocupacion por un
mundo enajenado en el que un gran número de seres humanos (sobre todo los
que viven en la grandes urbes) estan cada vez mas alienados y no son capaces
de abrir sus sentidos y percibir el mundo en el que viven. Para lograr adoptar esta
actitud es necesario el poder del olvido:
 "....Si no tuvieramos este poder, estaríamos sumergidos y ahogados bajo
aquellas avalanchas de objetos rigurosamente identicos. No debe haber
costumbre y habito en un mundo en proceso de devenir. La función del arte en el
presente es preservarnos de todas las minimizaciones lógicas que estamos
tentados en aplicar al flujo de eventos cotideanos. De acercarnos al proceso que
es el mundo en que vivimos".

Podemos ver entonces que para Cage el mundo y la realidad no son un

objeto sino un proceso. Esta idea tan importante la va a articular a partir del
pensamiento del Budismo Zen, en el que sólo el presente es importante (en esta
filosofía oriental, pasado presente y futro existen en un mismo tiempo ya que la
vida se encuentra en un constante devenir).

Profundizaré ahora sobre esta idea Cageiana acerca de la música vista

como un "proceso".

Para Cage, en un "proceso musical" el compositor no debe intentar interferir

con los sonidos:

"Ellos existen, y yo estoy interesado en que ellos estan ahí, y no en la

voluntad del compositor. En un proceso musical no existe un "entendimiento
correcto" y consecuentemente no puede haber nungun malentendido con respecto
a la comprensión de este proceso. Entonces, un objeto musical (es decir una obra
musical) por si mismo es un mal entendido, y los sonidos no controlados por el
compositor en cambio, no se preocupan si hacen sentido o si van en la direccion
correcta. Ellos no necesitan esa direccion o no direccion para "ser" ellos mismos.
Ellos simplemente "son", y eso es suficientemente bueno para ellos y para mi
tambien".

De esta manera Cage justifica la utilización de métodos de azar que

determinan absolutamente todas las notas, los silencios, los rítmos, y la
instrumentación de sus obras.

La idea de la música como proceso va a tener su génesis en el rechazo del

compositor en cuestión hacia la música tonal (La música tonal es la música que
conocemos en occidente, con reglas muy específicas que nos limitan a la
utilización de ciertos sonidos y escalas). Como Cage introduce el mundo del
"ruido" en su música, se va a tener que mover en un espacio totalmente distinto, el
mundo de la temporalidad. Cage se va a oponer entonces a la repetición y a la
variación (dos de los recursos que más se han usado en la historia de la música
para la composición musical) valiéndose del uso del azar, ya que con la utilización
de éste van a existir eventos en el tiempo que no tienen ninguna conección entre
sí.

Por otro lado Cage va a ser uno de los primeros compositores que le van a
dar una gran importancia al silencio en la música. El se da cuenta que lo que
concibe como silencio en realidad no lo es, ya que durante los silencios musicales
en un concierto continúan sucediendo eventos sonoros (la tos del publico, los
ruidos en el exterior del auditorio, etc...). Entonces, sonido y silencio van a ser lo
mismo. Cage va a eliminar la dualidad con la que estamos acostumbrados a
percibir el mundo (sonido-silencio, bueno-malo, bello-feo, etc...). Así, él deja de
prescindir de la estructura y se deshace de ella. El sonido deja de ser un obstáculo
para el silencio, y el silencio deja de ser una red protectiva contra el sonido. La
eliminación de esta dualidad va a traer como consecuencia que cada cosa y
sonido tengan su propio centro. Esta es la base con la cual Cage se justifica para
no establecer conexión entre varios eventos sonoros, y esto va a permitir que una
enorme cantidad de sonidos entren en un solo evento singular y complejo sin que
exista ningun tipo de discriminación. Así, Cage opondrá al principio repetición-
variación que ha sido la base escencial en la música, un nuevo principio en el que
cada elemento, por pequeño que sea, es igual de importante que cualquier otro.
En este nuevo campo, conceptos como "desarrollo de ideas" no tienen sentido, ya
que cualquier tipo de juicio o fin, han sido destruidos por obra del azar.

Cage niega la existencia del silencio, pero nos habla de la existencia de una
nada o vacío entre los sonidos que hace que no se obstruyan entre si. Esta nada
debe concebirse fuera de la oposición ser-no ser.

"Tenemos una tendencia por olvidar el espacio que hay entre las cosas.
Nos movemos atraves de él para establecer nuestras relaciones y conecciones,
creyendo que podemos pasar instantaneamente de un sonido al próximo, de un
pensamiento al proximo. En realidad, nos caemos, y nisiquiera nos damos cuenta.
Nosotros vivimos, pero vivir significa cruzar atraves del mundo de las relaciones o
representaciones. Sin embargo, nunca nos vemos en el acto de cruzar ese
mundo, y nunca hacemos otra cosa que eso!".

Esto nos lleva hacia una concepción bastante profunda de lo que sería la
nada en la música . "La poesia aparece tan pronto nos damos cuenta de que
poseemos "la nada". Cage Adora el tipo de situaciones en que el arte va
desapareciendo poco a poco y se va sumirgiendo en la vida (esta concepcion de
"la nada" surge de la filosofía Zen). A pesar de la existencia de esta nada, Cage
no niega que las cosas se interpenetren : "Se perfectamente que las cosas se
interpenetran, pero pienso que lo hacen de manera mas rica y mas compleja
cuando no establezco ninguna conexión. Esto es, cuando las cosas se encuentran
y forman el numero uno. Pero al mismo tiempo, no se crea ninguna obstrucción
entre una cosa y otra, ellas son ellas mismas, y como cada una es ella misma,
existe una pluralidad en el numero uno".

La no-dualidad va a colocar a Cage en un lugar muy especial entre los

compositores contemporaneos. La música siempre se basó en principios
contrarios a este concepto, como lo es la oposición, el contraste, el drama tonal,
etc. La dualidad es un concepto escencial en occidente, que nos lleva a la lucha
de contrarios, a la discusión. Cage trata de salirse de la tangente para entrar a un
terreno completamente nuevo, un campo en el que es necesario que cambiemos
drásticamente nuestra propia manera de percibir el mundo.

Aceptar la total indeterminación en el mundo sonoro sin dar espacio a la

creación de sonidos preconcebidos nos hacen pensar si son necesarios la obra de
arte y el artista. Esto nos lleva a la idea Duchampiana del anti-arte. Si estamos de
acuerdo con Cage, que necesidad hay por "crear", si lo que sucede a nuestro
alrededor es suficientemente bueno e interesante y tan solo necesitamos aprender
a percibir la vida para establecer un equilibrio entre nuestra individualidad y el
mundo en que vivimos?. Cage piensa que su función como compositor es abrirle
los oidos a la gente, pero, no basta con escribir un libro que explique estas ideas
para lograr esto?.

El arte tuvo siempre una funcion social muy definida hasta que comenzó a
convertirse en un medio de expresion individual. El artista solía ser el chamán de
la sociedad, un sublimador que permitía que las tensiones sociales se canalizaran
a traves de la obra de arte. Tal vez Cage pudiera ser una especie de chaman en
ésta sociedad moderna, pero lo interesante es que el se convierte en el anti-
chamán, debido a su postura anarquista. Desde muy joven, Cage va a comulgar
con el pensamiento de algunos pensadores anarquistas como Thoreau, a la par
que con las filosofías de oriente. El anarquismo es tal vez una razon mas por la
cual a Cage no le interesa transmitir un mensaje al expectador, a el le interesa
convertir su obra en un gran espejo dentro del cual cada quien pueda observar y
mirar cosas distintas. Podemos pensar que de alguna manera esta postura está
implicando que la comunicación entre el compositor y el auditor no existe?.

Cuando se le pregunta a Cage si se molestaría si algun músico interpreta

alguna sus obras en publico de manera "incorrecta", el contesta que nó, pues no
es a él al que le estan haciendo algo, sino a la obra misma. El cree que cada
individuo tiene plena libertad de hacer lo que quiera siempre y cuando no interfiera
con los demás, y de esto surge que Cage no desee imponerle su musica a nadie .
Si esto es cierto, cuál es la necesidad de crear una obra de arte?. La inactividad
productiva del artista plástico Marcel Duchamp en las últimas décadas de su vida,
fue una consecuencia de sus ideas vanguardistas que lo llevaron a un punto en el
que seguir trabajando como creador plástico se convertía en un absurdo, y era
mejor guardar silencio para expresar su desacuerdo con respecto al "concepto de
arte" existente. Cage también está en desacuerdo con este concepto Occidental
de lo que es el arte pero no calla, y muy al contrario, va a ser un compositor muy
prolífico. Atraves de su vida no va a dejar de buscar situaciones experimentales en
las que nada es seleccionado con anticipación, en las que no existen obligaciones
ni prohibiciones, en las que nada es predecible. Situaciones de Anarquía.

Hacia donde nos lleva esto?. Tal pareciera que Cage ha descubierto la
libertad total del artista, pero a la vez, no es esto un callejón sin salida en el que
todo termina en la no-obra de arte y en el no-Cage?. Es posible que esta inmensa
libertad nos lleve al caos?, o mas bien intenta llevarnos al restablecimiento del
equilibrio entre el hombre y su entorno?.
 El pensamiento de Cage parece muchas veces contradictorio y nos
confunde, sin embargo, su pensamiento está abierto a la vida gracias a estas
contradicciónes. Por otro lado, cuando éste afirma que "la mejor música para
escuchar es la que tenemos a nuestro alrededor" (es decir, todos los eventos
sonoros que suceden en cualquier momento y en cualquier sitio), no puedo dejar
de cuestionar cuál es entonces su necesidad por producir obras musicales. A fin
de cuentas, Cage sigue siendo un occidental que no ha llegado al punto de dejar
de inventar y dedicarse tan solo a percibir (como lo haría un verdadero seguidor
del Zen). Sin embargo, el pensamiento de éste termina siendo una mezcla entre
occidente y oriente, y esto nos da como resultado algo totalmente nuevo.

Cage va a ser un crítico del Modernismo ya que en éste movimiento se va a

desarrollar en alto grado la objetivación de la obra de arte, y la completa
autonomía de esta con respecto a su entorno. Allí la obra va a vivir en su propio
espacio y en su propio tiempo, y esto va a traer como consecuencia una barrera
entre esta y el expectador. Al abrir sus obras, Cage se opone a este concepto. La
"no intención" va a colocar a cada una de ellas en un plano distinto. Cage se va a
preocupar más por el expectador y por el interprete que por la obra misma.

Aceptando el hecho de que no podemos juzgar a Cage tan solo a partir del
resultado de su musica (pues a fin de cuentas esta va acompañada de profundas
ideas que tenemos que tomar en cuenta para entenderla), me pregunto que va a
suceder en el futuro con esta nueva estética (o anti-estetica?). Que tanto tiene que
ver a fin de cuentas la obra de Cage con lo que se ha considerado como "arte"
atraves de la historia? Tal pareciera que él se quiere evadir de la jerarquisación
que existe en las sociedades de occidente para con los artistas y sus obras,
colocándolos en un lugar alto como conocedores de "la verdad". Para Cage todo
ser humano es un artista en potencia, y su propia idea del arte y del artista es
distinta, pues está influenciado por oriente. En una entrevista con Richard
Kostelanetz, Cage plantea que el arte no puede responder a las preguntas más
importantes que se ha hecho el hombre, ya que estas se plantean en una zona de
obscuridad en la que el arte no penetra (el arte estaría representado por una zona
de luz, arriba de una montaña, en el hexagrama de la gracia en el libro chino del I
CHING). Si recurrimos directamente a este hexagrama, podremos leer la siguiente
nota de Richard Wilhelm:

"Este signo indica una belleza quieta: en lo interior claridad y en lo exterior

quietud. Es la calma de la pura contemplación. Cuando calla la codicia, cuando se
sosiega la voluntad, el mundo se manifiesta como representación, y en este
sentido es bello y se sustrae a la lucha por la existencia. Es el mundo del arte. Sin
embargo, la mera contemplación no basta para aquietar definitivamente la
voluntad. Volverá a despertar, y todo lo bello no habrá sido entonces mas que un
fugaz momento de exaltación".

Una vez más Cage intenta identificar vida con arte, y no se concentra en la
zona de luz (que es el mundo del arte) sino que se situa en la obscuridad,
prefiriendo adquirir un papel de oyente (o vidente). Para Cage el arte no debe
constituir una manera para escapar de la vida ( Es decir, fugarse
momentaneamente de la realidad atraves de la vivencia de una obra de arte), sino
un medio para vivenciarla. Aquí el arte ya no es un objetivar apartándose de la
vida, sino una actitud hacia la vida mediante la cual debemos apaciguar nuestra
voluntad y todas nuestras emociones para percibir la belleza.

Este apaciguamiento de la voluntad y esta no-intención de la que nos habla

Cage nos van a meter en una paradoja sin fin, ya que para que haya "arte" debe
haber voluntad por parte del artista, y si eliminamos esta voluntad de crear y tan
solo contemplamos la belleza en la vida misma, la producción artística dejaría de
tener sentido. Sin embargo, tal vez ésta faceta paradójica de su pensamiento y su
obra sea lo mas positivo acerca de él, pues de éste modo no dejamos de pensar y
de reflexionar acerca de ellos, cuestionándonos acerca de una serie de valores
culturales cuya función actual es dudosa. A fin de cuentas, Cage nos formula una
"nueva" proposición para relacionarnos con la música y con la vida misma, que
definitivamente nos va a enriquecer volviéndonos más concientes del complejo
mundo sonoro en el que vivimos, para de esta forma devolvernos una actitud de
concentración y atención hacia lo que sucede en nuestro entorno.