John Cage

John Milton Cage Jr. (September 5, 1912 – August 12, 1992)

John Cage
was an American composer and music theorist. 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 composers of the 20th century.[1][2][3][4] 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.[5][6]

Cage's 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 East and South
Asian 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.[7]
The I Ching, an ancient Chinese classic text and decision-making
tool, became Cage's standard composition tool for the rest of his Cage in 1988
life.[8] In a 1957 lecture, Experimental Music, he described music Born John Milton Cage Jr.
as "a purposeless play" which is "an affirmation of life – not an
September 5, 1912
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 Los Angeles,
California, U.S.
living".[9]
Died August 12, 1992
Cage's best known work is the 1952 composition 4′33″, a piece (aged 79)
performed in the absence of deliberate sound; musicians who New York City, U.S.
present the work do nothing but be present for the duration
specified by the title. The content of the composition is intended to Alma mater Pomona College
be the sounds of the environment heard by the audience during Occupations Composer · music
performance.[10][11] The work's challenge to assumed definitions theorist · artist ·
about musicianship and musical experience made it a popular and philosopher
controversial topic both in musicology and the broader aesthetics
Spouse Xenia Andreyevna
of art and performance. Cage was also a pioneer of the prepared Kashevaroff
piano (a piano with its sound altered by objects placed between or (m. 1935; div. 1945)
on its strings or hammers), for which he wrote numerous dance-
related works and a few concert pieces. These include Sonatas and Partner Merce Cunningham
Interludes (1946–48).[12] Signature

Life

1912–1931: early years

Cage was born September 5, 1912, at Good Samaritan Hospital in downtown Los Angeles.[13] His father,
John Milton Cage Sr. (1886–1964), was an inventor, and his mother, Lucretia ("Crete") Harvey (1881–
1968), worked intermittently as a journalist for the Los Angeles Times.[14] The family's roots were deeply
American: in a 1976 interview, Cage mentioned that George Washington was assisted by an ancestor
named John Cage in the task of surveying the Colony of Virginia.[15] Cage described his mother as a
woman with "a sense of society" who was "never happy",[16] 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;[14] others revolutionary and against the
scientific norms, such as the "electrostatic field theory" of the universe.[a] John Cage 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 and Dad. The latter is a short lively piece that ends abruptly, while "Crete" is
a slightly longer, mostly melodic contrapuntal work.[17]

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 James 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.[18] During high school, one of his music teachers was Fannie
Charles Dillon.[19] By 1928, though, Cage was convinced that he wanted to be a writer. He graduated that
year from Los Angeles High School as a valedictorian,[20] having also in the spring given a prize-winning
speech at the Hollywood Bowl proposing a day of quiet for all Americans. By being "hushed and silent,"
he said, "we should have the opportunity to hear what other people think," anticipating 4′33″ by more than
thirty years.[21]

Cage enrolled at Pomona College in Claremont as a theology major in 1928. Often crossing disciplines
again, though, he encountered at Pomona the work of artist Marcel Duchamp via Professor José Pijoan, of
writer James Joyce via Don Sample, of philosopher Ananda Coomaraswamy and of Henry Cowell.[19] In
1930 he dropped out, having come to believe that "college was of no use to a writer"[22] 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.[16]

Cage persuaded his parents that a trip to Europe would be more beneficial to a future writer than college
studies.[23] He subsequently hitchhiked to Galveston and sailed to Le Havre, where he took a train to
Paris.[24] 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.[22] He then took up painting, poetry and music. It was in Europe that, encouraged by his
teacher Lazare Lévy,[25] 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.[26]
Cage started traveling, visiting various places in France, Germany, and Spain, as well as Capri and, most
importantly, Majorca, where he started composing.[27] His first compositions were created using dense
mathematical formulas, but Cage was displeased with the results and left the finished pieces behind when
he left.[28] Cage's association with theater 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."[29]

1931–1936: apprenticeship

Cage returned to the United States in 1931.[28] 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 Richard Buhlig (who became his first composition
teacher)[30] and arts patron Galka Scheyer.[22] 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.[22] In 1933 he sent some of his
compositions to Henry Cowell; the reply was a "rather vague letter",[31] 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.[32] Cowell also advised that, before
approaching Schoenberg, Cage should take some preliminary lessons, and recommended Adolph Weiss, a
former Schoenberg pupil.[33]

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.[30] He supported himself financially by
taking up a job washing walls at a YWCA (World Young Women's Christian Association) in Brooklyn.[34]
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.[34][35] Several months later, still in 1933, Cage
became sufficiently good at composition to approach Schoenberg.[b] He could not afford Schoenberg's
price, 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.[36]

Cage studied with Schoenberg in California: first at University of Southern California and then at
University of California, Los Angeles, as well as privately.[30] The older composer became one of the
biggest influences on Cage, who "literally worshipped him",[37] particularly as an example of how to live
one's life being a composer.[35] 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.[38] 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 lecture Indeterminacy:

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."[39]

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."[37] Although
Schoenberg was not impressed with Cage's compositional abilities during these two years, in a later
interview, where he initially said that none of his American pupils were interesting, he further stated in
reference to Cage: "There was one ... of course he's not a composer, but he's an inventor—of genius."[37]
Cage would later adopt the "inventor" moniker and deny that he was in fact a composer.[40]

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 relationships with Don Sample and with architect Rudolph Schindler's wife Pauline[19] when
he met Xenia, he fell in love immediately. Cage and Kashevaroff were married in the desert at Yuma,
Arizona, on June 7, 1935.[41]

1937–1949: modern dance and Eastern influences

The newly married couple first lived with Cage's parents in Pacific Palisades, then moved to
Hollywood.[42] During 1936–38 Cage changed numerous jobs, including one that started his lifelong
association with modern dance: dance accompanist at the University of California, Los Angeles. He
produced music for choreographies and at one point taught a course on "Musical Accompaniments for
Rhythmic Expression" at UCLA, with his aunt Phoebe.[43] 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.[43][44]

In 1938, on Cowell's recommendation, Cage drove to San Francisco to find employment and to seek out
fellow Cowell student and composer Lou Harrison. According to Cowell, the two composers had a shared
interest in percussion and dance and would likely hit it off if introduced to one another. Indeed, the two
immediately established a strong bond upon meeting and began a working relationship that continued for
several years. Harrison soon helped Cage to secure a faculty member position 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.[43] 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 several people who became lifelong friends, such as painter Mark Tobey and dancer
Merce Cunningham. The latter was to become Cage's lifelong romantic partner and artistic 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 (what later became the IIT Institute 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 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.
In New York, the Cages first stayed with painter Max Ernst and Peggy Guggenheim. Through them, Cage
met important artists such as Piet Mondrian, André Breton, Jackson Pollock, and 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. After she learned that Cage
secured another concert, at the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA), 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 Joseph Campbell. 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 had 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.[45] In 1944, he appeared in
Maya Deren's At Land, a 15-minute silent experimental film.

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.[46] Cage also attended, in
late 1940s and early 1950s, D. T. Suzuki's lectures on Zen Buddhism,[47] and read further the works of
Coomaraswamy.[30] 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".[48]

Early in 1946, his former teacher Richard Buhlig arranged for Cage to meet Berlin-born pianist Grete
Sultan, who had escaped from Nazi persecution to New York in 1941.[49] They became close, lifelong
friends, and Cage later dedicated part of his Music for Piano and his monumental piano cycle Etudes
Australes to her.

1950s: discovering chance

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 was Cage's chance encounter with Morton Feldman in New
York City in early 1950. Both composers attended a New York Philharmonic 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.[50] 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."[51][52]

In early 1951, Wolff presented Cage with a copy of the I Ching[53]—a Chinese classic text which describes
a symbol system used to identify order in chance events. This version of the I Ching was the first complete
English translation and had been published by Wolff's father, Kurt Wolff of Pantheon Books in 1950. The I
Ching is commonly used for divination, but for Cage it became a tool to compose using chance.[54] 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".[55][56] 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.[57]

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),[58] the I Ching opened new possibilities
in this field for him. The first results of the new approach were Imaginary Landscape No. 4 for 12 radio
receivers, and Music of Changes for piano. The latter work was written for David Tudor,[59] whom Cage
met through Feldman—another friendship that lasted until Cage's death.[c] Tudor premiered most of Cage's
works until the early 1960s, when he stopped performing on the piano and concentrated on composing
music. The I Ching became Cage's standard tool for composition: he used it in practically every work
composed after 1951, and eventually settled on a computer algorithm that calculated numbers in a manner
similar to throwing coins for the I Ching.

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.[60] Nevertheless, Cage managed to survive and maintained an active
artistic life, giving lectures and performances, etc.

In 1952–1953 he completed another mammoth project—the Williams Mix, a piece of tape music, which
Earle Brown and Morton Feldman helped to put together.[61] Also in 1952, Cage composed the piece that
became his best-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.[62] The
reaction to 4′33″ was just a part of the larger picture: 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,
e.g. Karlheinz Stockhausen and Iannis Xenakis.[63]

During this time Cage was also teaching at the avant-garde Black Mountain College just outside Asheville,
North Carolina. Cage taught at the college in the summers of 1948 and 1952 and was in residence the
summer of 1953. While at Black Mountain College in 1952, he organized what has been called the first
"happening" (see discussion below) in the United States, later titled Theatre Piece No. 1, a multi-layered,
multi-media performance event staged the same day as Cage conceived it that "that would greatly influence
1950s and 60s artistic practices". In addition to Cage, the participants included Cunningham and Tudor.[64]
From 1953 onward, 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 the summer of 1954 he moved out of New York and settled in Gate Hill Cooperative, a community in
Stony Point, New York, where his neighbors included David Tudor, M. C. Richards, Karen Karnes, Stan
VanDerBeek, and Sari Dienes. 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 from 1956 to 1958 he also worked as an art director and designer of
typography.[65] Among his 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,[66] and Variations I (1958).

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. 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,[67] 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 famous Lecture on Nothing that was composed using a complex
time length scheme, much like some of Cage's music. Silence was Cage's first book of six but it remains his
most widely read and influential.[d][30] 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 catalog of Cage's works, which appeared in 1962.[65]

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.[68] By the mid-1960s, Cage was receiving so many commissions and
requests for appearances that he was unable to fulfill them. This was accompanied by a busy touring
schedule; consequently Cage's compositional output from that decade was scant.[30] 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, Ben Patterson, 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.[69] 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 artist
Nam June Paik (Cage's friend and mentee), who in the course of his performance of Etude for Piano cut
off Cage's tie and then poured a bottle of shampoo over the heads of Cage and Tudor.[70]

In 1967, Cage's book A Year from Monday was first published by Wesleyan University Press. Cage's
parents died during the decade: his father in 1964,[71] 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.[72]

1969–1987: new departures

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 52
tapes of computer-generated sounds, 6,400 slides of designs, many supplied by NASA, and shown from
sixty-four slide projectors, with 40 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.[73]

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."[74] 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)

0:00 / 0:00

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

Problems playing this file? See media help.

Cheap Imitation became the last work Cage performed in public himself. Arthritis had troubled Cage since
1960, and by the early 1970s his hands were painfully swollen and rendered him unable to perform.[75]
Nevertheless, he still played Cheap Imitation during the 1970s,[76] 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 the 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). M was 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 late
watercolors, constitute the largest portion of his extant visual art. In 1979 Cage's Empty Words was first
published by Wesleyan University Press.

1987–1992: final years and death

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 Number Pieces, as they came to be known, one of the last being Eighty (1992,
premiered in Munich on October 28, 2011), usually employing a variant of the same technique. 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;[30] the music has been linked to Cage's anarchic
leanings.[77] One11 (i.e. the eleventh piece for a single performer), completed in early 1992, was Cage's
first and only foray into film. Cage conceived his last musical work with Michael Bach Bachtischa:
"ONE13" for violoncello with Curved Bow and three loudspeakers, which was published years later.

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.

In the course of the 1980s, Cage's health worsened progressively.

He suffered not only from arthritis, but also from sciatica and
arteriosclerosis. He had 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.[78] 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 had another stroke. He was taken
to St. Vincent's Hospital in Manhattan, where he died on the
morning of August 12.[79] He was 79.[2]

According to his wishes, Cage's body was cremated and his ashes
scattered in the Ramapo Mountains, near Stony Point, New York, at John Cage (left) and Michael Bach in
the same place where he had scattered the ashes of his parents.[72] Assisi, Italy, 1992
The composer's death occurred only weeks before a celebration of
his 80th birthday organized in Frankfurt by composer Walter
Zimmermann and musicologist Stefan Schaedler.[2] The event went ahead as planned, including a
performance of the Concert for Piano and Orchestra by David Tudor and Ensemble Modern. Merce
Cunningham died of natural causes in July 2009.[80]

Music

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."[81] 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.[82] 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).

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.[83] Such "nested proportions", as Cage called
them, became a regular feature of his music throughout
Rhythmic proportions in Sonata III of Sonatas and
the 1940s. The technique was elevated to great
Interludes for prepared piano
complexity in later pieces such as Sonatas 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),[84] or
A Flower, a song for voice and closed piano, in which two sets of proportions are used simultaneously.[85]

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.[30] 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.[30]
The last movement of the concerto was a step towards using chance procedures, which Cage adopted soon
afterwards.[86]

Chance

A 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,
coin tosses and I Ching hexagram numbers were used to
determine the accidentals, clefs, and playing techniques.[87] 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).[88]
I Ching divination involves obtaining a
Cage's etudes are all extremely difficult to perform, a
hexagram by random generation (such as
characteristic dictated by Cage's social and political views: the
tossing coins), then reading the chapter
difficulty would ensure that "a performance would show that
associated with that hexagram.
the impossible is not impossible"[89]—this being Cage's
answer to the notion that solving the world's political and
social problems is impossible.[90] Cage described himself as an anarchist, and was influenced by Henry
David Thoreau.[e]

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.[92] 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").[93]

Cage's method of using the I Ching was far from simple randomization. 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?[94]

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.[88][95]

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.[96] 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.[97]

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. The English National Opera
(ENO) became the first opera company to hold a Cage Musicircus on March 3, 2012, at the London
Coliseum.[98][99] The ENO's Musicircus featured artists including Led Zeppelin bassist John Paul Jones
and composer Michael Finnissy alongside ENO music director Edward Gardner, the ENO Community
Choir, ENO Opera Works singers, and a collective of professional and amateur talents performing in the
bars and front of house at London's Coliseum Opera House.[100]

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.

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. 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.[101]

Visual art, writings, and other activities

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 called plexigrams: 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.[102]

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 by Henry 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, Variations III, No. 14, a 1992 print by Cage
Thoreau's drawings informed the last works produced in from a series of 57
1978, Signals.[103]

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.[104] 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.[105] 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 (1949), 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.[106] He co-founded the New York Mycological Society with
four friends,[65] and his mycology collection is presently housed by the Special Collections department of
the McHenry Library at the University of California, Santa Cruz.

Reception and influence

Cage's pre-chance works, particularly pieces from the late 1940s such as Sonatas and Interludes, earned
critical acclaim: the Sonatas were performed at Carnegie Hall in 1949. 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."[107] 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."[108]

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.[109]

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."[110]

While much of Cage's work remains controversial, his influence on countless composers, artists, and
writers is notable.[111] 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 Changes and
David Tudor.[112] 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 by Pierre Boulez. Helmut
Lachenmann's work was influenced by Cage's work with extended techniques.[113]

Cage's rhythmic structure experiments and his interest in sound influenced a number of composers, starting
at first with his close American associates Earle Brown, Morton Feldman, and Christian Wolff (and other
American composers, such as La Monte Young, Terry Riley, Steve Reich, and Philip Glass), and then
spreading to Europe. For example, almost all composers of the English experimental school acknowledge
his influence: Michael Parsons, Christopher Hobbs, John White,[114] Gavin Bryars, who studied under
Cage briefly,[115] and Howard Skempton.[116] The Japanese composer Tōru Takemitsu has also cited
Cage's influence.[117]

Following Cage's death Simon Jeffes, founder of the Penguin Cafe Orchestra, composed a piece entitled
"CAGE DEAD", using a melody based on the notes contained in the title, in the order they appear: C, A,
G, E, D, E, A and D.[118]

Cage's influence was also acknowledged by rock acts such as Sonic Youth (who performed some of the
Number Pieces[119]) and Stereolab (who named a song after Cage[120]), composer and rock and jazz
guitarist Frank Zappa,[121] and various noise music artists and bands: indeed, one writer traced the origin of
noise music to 4′33″.[122] The development of electronic music was also influenced by Cage: in the mid-
1970s Brian Eno's label Obscure Records released works by Cage.[123] Prepared piano, which Cage
popularized, is featured heavily on Aphex Twin's 2001 album Drukqs.[124] Cage's work as musicologist
helped popularize Erik Satie's music,[125][126] and his friendship with Abstract expressionist artists such as
Robert Rauschenberg helped introduce his ideas into visual art. Cage's ideas also found their way into
sound design: for example, Academy Award-winning sound designer Gary Rydstrom cited Cage's work as
a major influence.[127] Radiohead undertook a composing and performing collaboration with
Cunningham's dance troupe in 2003 because the music-group's leader Thom Yorke considered Cage one of
his "all-time art heroes".[128]

Centenary commemoration

In 2012, amongst a wide range of American and international centennial celebrations,[129][130] an eight-day
festival was held in Washington DC, with venues found notably more amongst the city's art museums and
universities than performance spaces. Earlier in the centennial year, conductor Michael Tilson Thomas
presented Cage's Song Books with the San Francisco Symphony at Carnegie Hall in New York.[131][132]
Another celebration came, for instance, in Darmstadt, Germany, which in July 2012 renamed its central
station the John Cage Railway Station during the term of its annual new-music courses.[19] At the
Ruhrtriennale in Germany, Heiner Goebbels staged a production of Europeras 1 & 2 in a 36,000 sq ft
converted factory and commissioned a production of Lecture on Nothing created and performed by Robert
Wilson.[133] Jacaranda Music had four concerts planned in Santa Monica, California, for the centennial
week.[134][135] John Cage Day was the name given to several events held during 2012 to mark the
centenary of his birth.

A 2012 project was curated by Juraj Kojs to celebrate the centenary of Cage's birth, titled On Silence:
Homage to Cage. It consisted of 13 commissioned works created by composers from around the globe
such as Kasia Glowicka, Adrian Knight and Henry Vega, each being 4 minutes and 33 seconds long in
honor of Cage's famous 1952 opus, 4′33″. The program was supported by the Foundation for Emerging
Technologies and Arts, Laura Kuhn and the John Cage Trust.[136]

In a homage to Cage's dance work, the Bill T. Jones/Arnie Zane Dance Company in July 2012 "performed
an engrossing piece called 'Story/Time'. It was modeled on Cage's 1958 work 'Indeterminacy', in which
[Cage and then Jones, respectively,] sat alone onstage, reading aloud ... series of one-minute stories [they]'d
written. Dancers from Jones's company performed as [Jones] read."[128]

Archives
The archive of the John Cage Trust is held at Bard
College in upstate New York.[137]
The John Cage Music Manuscript Collection held by the
Music Division of the New York Public Library for the
Performing Arts contains most of the composer's musical
manuscripts, including sketches, worksheets,
realizations, and unfinished works. John Cage

The John Cage Papers are held in the Special

Collections and Archives department of Wesleyan
University's Olin Library in Middletown, Connecticut. They contain manuscripts, interviews,
fan mail, and ephemera. Other material includes 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 Notations collection.[138]

See also
Opera portal
Classical music
portal
Music portal

Biography portal

An Anthology of Chance Operations

List of compositions by John Cage
The Organ2/ASLSP (a.k.a. As Slow as Possible) project, the longest concert ever created.
The Revenge of the Dead Indians, a 1993 documentary about Cage by Henning Lohner.
Works for prepared piano by John Cage

Notes, references, sources

Notes
a. 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.
b. Different sources give different details of their first meeting. Pritchett, Kuhn & Garrett 2012, in
Grove, imply that Cage met Schoenberg in New York City: "Cage followed Schoenberg to
Los Angeles in 1934". In a 1976 interview quoted in Kostelanetz 2003, 5, Cage mentions
that he "went to see him [Schoenberg] in Los Angeles."
c. 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" (http://www.artsjourna
l.com/postclassic/2008/09/cleaning_up_a_life.html). artsjournal.com. Retrieved August 4,
2009.
d. Technically, it was his second, for Cage previously collaborated with Kathleen Hoover on a
biographical volume on Virgil Thomson, which was published in 1959.
e. 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."[91]

Citations
1. Pritchett, Kuhn & Garrett 2012 "He has had a greater impact on music in the 20th century
than any other American composer."
2. Kozinn, Allan (August 13, 1992). "John Cage, 79, a Minimalist Enchanted With Sound, Dies"
(https://www.nytimes.com/learning/general/onthisday/bday/0905.html). The New York Times.
Retrieved July 21, 2007.
 3. Leonard, George J. (1995). Into the Light of Things: The Art of the Commonplace from
Wordsworth to John Cage. University of Chicago Press. p. 120. ISBN 978-0-226-47253-9.
"... when Harvard University Press called him, in a 1990 book advertisement, 'without a
doubt the most influential composer of the last half-century', amazingly, that was too
modest."
4. Greene, David Mason (2007). Greene's Biographical Encyclopedia of Composers.
Reproducing Piano Roll Fnd. p. 1407. ISBN 978-0-385-14278-6. "... John Cage is probably
the most influential ... of all American composers to date."
5. Perloff & Junkerman 1994, 93.
6. Bernstein & Hatch 2001, 43–45.
7. Lejeunne 2012, 185–189.
8. John Cage – Music of Changes (https://taniachen.com/music-of-changes). By David Ryan,
taniachen.com
9. Cage 1973, 12.
10. Kostelanetz 2003, 69–70.
11. Reviews cited in Fetterman 1996, 69
12. Nicholls 2002, 80: "Most critics agree that Sonatas and Interludes (1946–48) is the finest
composition of Cage's early period."
13. Mark Swed (August 31, 2012), John Cage's genius an L.A. story (http://www.latimes.com/ent
ertainment/arts/culture/la-et-cm-john-cage,0,3501401.htmlstory) Los Angeles Times.
14. Nicholls 2002, 4
15. Cage quoted in Kostelanetz 2003, 1. For details on Cage's ancestry, see, for example,
Nicholls 2002, 4–6.
16. Cage, John (1991). "An Autobiographical Statement" (https://web.archive.org/web/20070226
123315/http://www.newalbion.com/artists/cagej/autobiog.html). Southwest Review. Archived
from the original (http://www.newalbion.com/artists/cagej/autobiog.html) on February 26,
2007. Retrieved March 14, 2007.
17. Recording and notes: John Cage – Complete Piano Music Vol. 7: Pieces 1933–1950.
Steffen Schleiermacher (piano). MDG 613 0789-2.
18. Kostelanetz 2003, 2.
19. Swed, Mark, "John Cage's genius an L.A. story" (http://www.latimes.com/entertainment/arts/c
ulture/la-et-cm-john-cage,0,3501401.htmlstory), Los Angeles Times, August 31, 2012.
Retrieved September 2, 2012.
20. Nicholls 2002, 21.
21. Ross, Alex (September 27, 2010). "Searching for Silence: John Cage's art of noise" (https://
www.newyorker.com/magazine/2010/10/04/searching-for-silence). The New Yorker.
Retrieved July 21, 2020.
22. Kostelanetz 2003, 4
23. Nicholls 2002, 8.
24. Perloff & Junkerman 1994, 79.
25. John Cage, National Inter-Collegiate Arts Conference, Vassar College, Poughkeepsie (New
York), February 28, 1948.
26. Perloff & Junkerman 1994, 80.
27. Nicholls 2002, 22.
28. Perloff & Junkerman 1994, 81
29. Cage quoted in Perloff & Junkerman 1994, 81.
30. Pritchett, Kuhn & Garrett 2012
31. Cage quoted in Nicholls 2002, 24.
32. Kostelanetz 2003, 61.
33. Nicholls 2002, 24.
34. Kostelanetz 2003, 7
35. Pritchett 1993, 9 (https://books.google.com/books?id=riHo22Hi8QAC&pg=PA9)
36. This conversation was recounted many times by Cage himself: see Silence, p. 261; A Year
from Monday, p. 44; interviews quoted in Kostelanetz 2003, 5, 105; etc..
37. Kostelanetz 2003, 6
38. Cage interview quoted in Kostelanetz 2003, 105.
39. Cage 1973, 260.
40. Broyles M. (2004).Mavericks and Other Traditions in American Music, Yale University Press,
New Haven & London, (p. 177).
41. For details on Cage's first meeting with Xenia, see Kostelanetz 2003, 7–8; for details on
Cage's homosexual relationship with Don Sample, an American he met in Europe, as well
as details on the Cage-Kashevaroff marriage, see Perloff & Junkerman 1994, 81, 86.
42. Perloff & Junkerman 1994, 86.
43. Revill 1993, 55
44. Kostelanetz 2003, 43.
45. Reinhardt, Lauriejean. John Cage's "The Wonderful Widow of Eighteen Springs", 7.
Available online (http://memory.loc.gov/ammem/collections/moldenhauer/moldtoc.html).
46. Cage 1973, 127.
47. Revill 1993, 108.
48. Cage 1973, 158.
49. Bredow 2012.
50. Revill 1993, 101.
51. Pritchett 1993, 105.
52. Nicholls 2002, 101.
53. Kostelanetz 2003, 68.
54. Cage 1973, 60.
55. Pritchett 1993, 97.
56. Revill 1993, 91.
57. John Cage, in an interview with Miroslav Sebestik, 1991. From: Listen, documentary by
Miroslav Sebestik. ARTE France Développement, 2003.
58. Pritchett 1993, 71.
59. Pritchett 1993, 78.
60. Revill 1993, 142.
61. Revill 1993, 143–149.
62. Revill 1993, 166.
63. Revill 1993, 174
64. Welch, J.D. (2008). "The Other Fab Four: Collaboration and Neo-dada: a plan for an
exhibition weblog" (http://www.jdwelch.net/writing/TheOtherFabFour.pdf) (PDF). pp. 5–8.
Retrieved May 31, 2014.
65. Emmerik, Paul van (2009). "A John Cage Compendium" (http://www.xs4all.nl/~cagecomp/).
Paul van Emmerik. Retrieved August 6, 2009.
66. Iddon, Martin; Thomas, Philip (2020). John Cage's Concert for Piano and Orchestra. Oxford
University Press. ISBN 978-0-19-093847-5.
67. "Guide to the Center for Advanced Studies Records, 1958–1969" (https://web.archive.org/we
b/20170314083709/http://www.wesleyan.edu/libr/schome/FAs/ce1000-137.html). Wesleyan
University. Archived from the original (http://www.wesleyan.edu/libr/schome/FAs/ce1000-13
7.html) on March 14, 2017. Retrieved September 4, 2010.
68. "The Many Views of Betty Freeman: Betty Freeman's Commissions" (https://web.archive.or
g/web/20110604143441/http://www.newmusicbox.org/article.nmbx?id=846). NewMusicBox.
2000. Archived from the original (http://www.newmusicbox.org/article.nmbx?id=846) on June
4, 2011. Retrieved August 8, 2009.
69. Ross, Alex (December 4, 1992). "S.E.M. Evokes John Cage as Teacher" (https://www.nytime
s.com/1992/12/24/arts/review-music-sem-evokes-john-cage-as-teacher.html). The New York
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Sources
Bernstein, David W.; Hatch, Christopher, eds. (2001). Writings through John Cage's Music,
Poetry, and Art. University of Chicago Press. ISBN 978-0-226-04407-1.
Bredow, Moritz von (2012). Rebellische Pianistin. Das Leben der Grete Sultan zwischen
Berlin und New York. Mainz, Germany: Schott Music. ISBN 978-3-7957-0800-9.
Cage, John (1973) [1961]. Silence: Lectures and Writings. Wesleyan University Press.
ISBN 978-0-8195-6028-5.
Fetterman, William (1996). John Cage's Theatre Pieces: Notations and Performances.
Routledge. ISBN 978-3-7186-5643-1.
Haskins, Rob (2004). "An Anarchic Society of Sounds": The Number Pieces of John Cage
(PhD dissertation, Musicology). Eastman School of Music, University of Rochester.
Kostelanetz, Richard (2003). Conversing with John Cage. Routledge. ISBN 978-0-415-
93792-4.
Lejeunne, Denis (2012). The Radical Use of Chance in 20th Century Art. Amsterdam:
Rodopi Press. ISBN 9789401207263.
Nicholls, David, ed. (2002). The Cambridge Companion to John Cage. Cambridge
University Press. ISBN 978-0-521-78968-4.
Perloff, Marjorie; Junkerman, Charles (1994). John Cage: Composed in America. University
of Chicago Press. ISBN 978-0-226-66057-8.
Pritchett, James (1993). The Music of John Cage. Cambridge University Press. ISBN 978-0-
521-56544-8.
Pritchett, James; Kuhn, Laura; Garrett, Charles Hiroshi (2012). "Cage, John (Milton, Jr.)".
Grove Music Online. doi:10.1093/gmo/9781561592630.article.A2223954 (https://doi.org/10.
1093%2Fgmo%2F9781561592630.article.A2223954).
Revill, David (1993). The Roaring Silence: John Cage – a Life. Arcade Publishing.
ISBN 978-1-55970-220-1.

Further reading
Arena, Leonardo Vittorio. 2013. L'infinita durata del non suono. Mimesis Publishing, Milan
ISBN 978-88-5751-138-2
Arena, Leonardo Vittorio. 2014. Il Tao del non suono, ebook.
 Boulez, Pierre, and Cage, John. 1995. The Boulez-Cage Correspondence. Edited by Robert
Samuels and Jean-Jacques Nattiez, translated by Robert Samuels. Cambridge University
Press. ISBN 978-0-521-48558-6
Brown, Kathan. 2001. John Cage Visual Art: To Sober and Quiet the Mind. Crown Point
Press. ISBN 978-1-891300-16-5, ISBN 978-1-891300-16-5
Davidović, Dalibor. 2015. Branches (https://www.researchgate.net/publication/282239030_B
ranches), Musicological Annual, 51: 2, 9–25.ISSN 0580-373X (https://www.worldcat.org/sear
ch?fq=x0:jrnl&q=n2:0580-373X) (On Cage's notion of anarchy)
Eldred, Michael. 1995/2006. Heidegger's Hölderlin and John Cage (http://www.arte-fact.org/
heicagen.html), www.arte-fact.org
Eldred, Michael. 2010. The Quivering of Propriation: A Parallel Way to Music (http://www.arte
-fact.org/qvrpropn.html), Section II.3 New Music is the Other Music (Cage) (http://www.arte-fa
ct.org/qvrpropn.html#II.3) www.arte-fact.org
Haskins, Rob. 2012. John Cage. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. ISBN 978-1-86189-
905-7
Cage, John (2010). Jeremy Miller (ed.). Every Day is a Good Day – The Visual Art of John
Cage. Hayward Publishing. ISBN 978-1-85332-283-9.
Kuhn, Laura (ed). 2016. Selected Letters of John Cage. Wesleyan University Press.
ISBN 978-0-819-57591-3.
Larson, Kay. 2012. Where the Heart Beats – John Cage, Zen Buddhism, and the Inner Life
of Artists. Penguin Books USA. ISBN 978-1-594-20340-4
Nicholls, David. 2007. John Cage. University of Illinois Press. ISBN 978-0-252-03215-8
Patterson, David W. (ed.). John Cage: Music, Philosophy, and Intention, 1933–1950.
Routledge, 2002. ISBN 978-0-8153-2995-4
Smith, Geoff; Nicola Walker (April 1993). "20th Century Americans: John Cage" (http://www.
muzines.co.uk/articles/20th-century-americans-john-cage/5493). Music Technology. p. 62.
ISSN 0957-6606 (https://www.worldcat.org/issn/0957-6606). OCLC 24835173 (https://www.
worldcat.org/oclc/24835173).
Swed, Mark (Spring 1993). "John Cage: September 5, 1912 – August 12, 1992". The
Musical Quarterly. 77 (1): 132–144. doi:10.1093/mq/77.1.132 (https://doi.org/10.1093%2Fm
q%2F77.1.132). JSTOR 742432 (https://www.jstor.org/stable/742432).
Taruskin, Richard. 2005. Oxford History of Western Music. Vol. 5. Oxford: Oxford University
Press. "Indeterminacy" pp. 55–101. ISBN 978-0-19-516979-9
Ward, Phil (October 1992). "The Rest Is Silence: An Appreciation | John Cage" (http://www.m
uzines.co.uk/articles/the-rest-is-silence/1177). Music Technology. p. 42. ISSN 0957-6606 (ht
tps://www.worldcat.org/issn/0957-6606). OCLC 24835173 (https://www.worldcat.org/oclc/24
835173).
Zimmerman, Walter. Desert Plants – Conversations with 23 American Musicians, Berlin:
Beginner Press in cooperation with Mode Records, 2020 ISBN 978-3-9813319-6-7
(originally published in 1976 by A.R.C., Vancouver ISBN 978-0-88985-009-5).

External links
General information and catalogues

Official website (http://johncage.org)

A John Cage Compendium (http://www.xs4all.nl/~cagecomp/), website by Cage scholar
Paul van Emmerik, in collaboration with performer Herbert Henck and András Wilheim.
Includes exhaustive catalogues and bibliography, chronology of Cage's life, etc.
 Larry Solomon's John Cage Pages (https://web.archive.org/web/20190409160226/http://solo
monsmusic.net/Cage.htm), a complete catalogue of Cage's music and a filmography, as well
as other materials.
Edition Peters: John Cage Biography and Works (https://web.archive.org/web/20120821201
406/http://www.edition-peters.com/composer/Cage-John), Cage's principal publisher since
1961.
Guide to the John Cage Mycology Collection (http://www.oac.cdlib.org/findaid/ark:/13030/kt4
w10133d)
John Cage oral histories at Oral History of American Music (https://archives.yale.edu/reposit
ories/7/archival_objects/3183611)
Silence/Stories: (https://web.archive.org/web/20050419074317/http://www.lichtensteiger.de/
stories.html) related texts and poems by, among others, Lowell Cross, AP Crumlish,
Karlheinz Essl, Raymond Federman, August Highland, George Koehler, Richard
Kostelanetz, Ian S. Macdonald, Beat Streuli, Dan Waber, Sigi Waters and John Whiting
"John Cage (biography, works, resources)" (https://brahms.ircam.fr/composers/composer/67
9/) (in French and English). IRCAM.
John Cage (https://www.imdb.com/name/nm0128509/) at IMDb
Artist Biography (http://www.eai.org/artistTitles.htm?id=421) and a list of video works by and
about John Cage at Electronic Arts Intermix eai.org (https://web.archive.org/web/201204131
85404/http://www.eai.org/index.htm).
Interview with John Cage (http://www.bruceduffie.com/cage.html), June 21, 1987
An interview with John Cage conducted 1974 May 2, by Paul Cummings, for the Archives of
American Art. (https://www.aaa.si.edu/collections/interviews/oral-history-interview-john-cage
-12442)

Link collections

John Cage Online (http://ronsen.org/cagelinks.html)

Photographs of John Cage from the UC Santa Cruz Library's Digital Collections (http://digital
collections.ucsc.edu/cdm/search/collection/p265101coll25/searchterm/John%20Cage/order/
date) Archived (https://web.archive.org/web/20190430154253/http://digitalcollections.ucsc.e
du/cdm/search/collection/p265101coll25/searchterm/John%2520Cage/order/date) April 30,
2019, at the Wayback Machine

Specific topics

"Silence and Change / Five Hanau Silence" (http://www.sterneck.net/john-cage): Articles

and documents on a project of John Cage, Claus Sterneck and Wolfgang Sterneck in benefit
of a squatted culture center in Hanau (Germany) in 1991, (English / German).
Garten, Joel, "Interview With MoMA Curator David Platzker About the New Exhibition on
John Cage" (http://www.huffingtonpost.com/joel-garten/interview-with-moma-curator_b_480
6215.html?ir=Arts), The Huffington Post, February 20, 2014.

Listening

In Conversation with Morton Feldman, 1966, Part 1 (http://radiom.org/detail.php?omid=C.19

67.10.25.1), Part 2 (http://radiom.org/detail.php?omid=C.1967.10.25.2), Part 3 (http://radiom.
org/detail.php?omid=C.1967.10.25.3), Part 4 (http://radiom.org/detail.php?omid=C.1967.10.2
5.4), and Part 5 (http://radiom.org/detail.php?omid=C.1967.10.25.5)
1989 radio interview (https://soundcloud.com/cbcbravenewwaves/john-cage-interview) on
the CBC program Brave New Waves.
Media

John Cage at UbuWeb: historical (http://www.ubu.com/historical/cage/index.html), sound (htt

p://www.ubu.com/sound/cage.html), film (http://www.ubu.com/film/cage.html).
Indeterminacy (http://www.lcdf.org/indeterminacy/about.html), Cage's short stories taken from
various publications and accessed in random order.
FontanaMixer (http://www.essl.at/works/fontana-mixer.html): computer program by Karlheinz
Essl that generates a realtime version of John Cage's "Fontana Mix" (1958)
Other Minds Archive: John Cage interviewed by Jonathan Cott (http://radiom.org/detail.php?
omid=C.1963.XX.XX), streaming audio
Other Minds Archive: John Cage and David Tudor Concert at The San Francisco Museum of
Art (January 16, 1965) (http://radiom.org/detail.php?omid=C.1965.01.16.A), streaming audio
27, 2002 Suite for Toy Piano (1948) (http://radiom.org/detail.php?omid=OMF.1999.March)
performed by Margaret Leng Tan at the Other Minds Music Festival in 1999 at the Cowell
Theater in San Francisco.
Notes towards a re-reading of the "Roaratorio" (http://rwm.macba.cat/en/specials?id_capsul
a=599) – the work of John Cage and his special relationship to radio at Ràdio Web MACBA
The Rest isn't Silence... it doesn't exist! (http://www.thankyouoneandall.co.uk/letters/cage.ht
m) – Analytical material and recordings going back to the first rehearsal and performance of
Imaginary Landscape No. 4 in 1951.
Fluxradio (podcast) (http://rwm.macba.cat/en/specials/fluxradio_joe_gilmore_rhiannon_silve
r/capsula) – An exploration of some of the concepts and ideas behind the music and
performance practice of Fluxus.
John Cage – Journeys in Sound (http://accentus.com/discs/john-cage-journeys-in-sound),
documentary, Germany, 2012, 60 min., director: Allan Miller & Paul Smaczny, written by
Anne-Kathrin Peitz; production: Accentus Music in co-production with Westdeutscher
Rundfunk. "Czech Crystal Award" (Best Documentary) at Golden Prague Festival 2012.

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