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JOHN CAGE/ 2009
(  Satoshi Kinoshita )
| Series: | Prints on paper: Portraits 2 | | Medium: | Giclée on Japanese matte paper | | Size (inches): | 16.5 x 11.7 (paper size) | | Size (mm): | 420 x 297 (paper size) | | Edition size: | 25 | | Catalog #: | PP_0135 | | Description: | From an edition of 25. Signed, titled, date, copyright, edition in pencil on the reverse / Aside from the numbered edition of 5 artist's proofs and 2 printer's proofs.
"I have nothing to say / and I am saying it / and that is poetry / as I needed it" --John Cage
-www.writing.upenn.edu/~afilreis/88/cage-quotes.html
John Cage -
John Milton Cage Jr. (September 5, 1912 – August 12, 1992) was an American composer, philosopher, poet, music theorist, artist, printmaker,[1] and amateur mycologist and mushroom collector. A pioneer of chance music, electronic 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] 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.[4][5]
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,[6] rather than merely as four minutes and thirty three seconds of silence,[7] and the piece became one of the most controversial compositions of the twentieth century. Another famous creation of Cage's is the prepared 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 is Sonatas and Interludes (1946–48).[8]
His teachers included Henry Cowell (1933) and Arnold Schoenberg (1933–35), both known for their radical innovations in music and coincidentally their shared love of mushrooms, 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 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".[9]
1950s: Discovering chance
Sonatas and Interludes were received well by the public. After a 1949 performance at Carnegie Hall 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, where the orchestra performed 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.[41] The two composers quickly became friends; some time later Cage, Feldman, and Cage's pupil Christian Wolff came to be referred to as "the New York school."[42][43]
In early 1951 Wolff presented Cage with a copy of the I Ching[44]—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":[45][46] 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.[47]
The first pieces composed using chance were Imaginary Landscape No. 4 for 12 radio receivers, and Music of Changes for piano. The latter work was written for David Tudor,[48] whom Cage met through Feldman—another friendship that lasted until Cage's death.[n 3] Tudor premiered most of Cage's works until early 1960s, when he stopped performing and concentrated on composition. 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.[49] 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.[50] 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 29 August 1952 at Woodstock, New York) caused an uproar in the audience.[51] 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.[52]
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, NY. 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 for Social Research, and during 1956–58 he also worked as an art director of a typography.[53] 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).
Notes
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. http://www.artsjournal.com/postclassic/2008/09/cleaning_up_a_life.html. Retrieved 4 August 2009.
4. ^ 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.
Sources:
1. ^ Davies, Hugh. "Cage, John", Grove Art Online, Oxford University Press (accessed 20 February 2007), groveart.com (subscription access).
2. ^ Pritchett, Grove: "He has had a greater impact on music in the 20th century than any other American composer."
3. ^ a b "John Cage, 79, a Minimalist Enchanted With Sound, Dies". New York Times. August 13, 1992. http://www.nytimes.com/learning/general/onthisday/bday/0905.html. Retrieved 21 July 2007. "John Cage, the prolific and influential composer whose Minimalist works have long been a driving force in the world of music, dance and art, died yesterday at St. Vincent's Hospital in Manhattan. He was 79 years old and lived in Manhattan."
4. ^ Perloff, Junkerman, 1994, 93.
5. ^ Bernstein, Hatch, 2001, 43–45.
6. ^ Kostelanetz 2003, 69–70.
7. ^ Reviews cited in Fetterman 1996, 69.
8. ^ Nicholls 2002, 80: "Most critics agree that Sonatas and Interludes (1946–48) is the finest composition of Cage's early period."
9. ^ Cage 1973, 12.
48. ^ Pritchett 1993, 78.
49. ^ Revill 1993, 142.
50. ^ Revill 1993, 143–149.
51. ^ Revill 1993, 166.
52. ^ Revill 1993, 174
53. ^ Emmerik, Paul van (2009). "A John Cage Compendium". Paul van Emmerik. http://www.xs4all.nl/~cagecomp/. Retrieved 6 August 2009.
-en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Cage
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