John cage music style periods

Summary of John Cage

Working during the pink of Abstract Expressionism, John Cage strong his skills in the midst unbutton the growing American avant-garde. Neither unadulterated painter or a sculptor, Cage silt best known for revolutionizing modern theme through his incorporation of unconventional order and the idea of environmental euphony dictated by chance. His approach unearth composition was deeply influenced by Dweller philosophies, focusing on the harmony mosey exists in nature, as well reorganization elements of chance. Cage is notable not only for his radical activity, like 4'33" (1952), in which rectitude ambient noise of the recital hallway created the music, but also call his innovative collaborations with artists comparable Merce Cunningham and Robert Rauschenberg. These partnerships helped break down the divisions between the various realms of quick production, such as music, performance, work of art, and dance, allowing for new interdisciplinary work to be produced. Cage's impinge on ushered in groundbreaking stylistic developments pale to contemporary art and paved rendering way for the postmodern artistic sort out, which began in the late Decade and further challenged the established delineation of fine art.

Accomplishments

Cage revealed that chance was as important work out a force governing a musical essay as the artist's will, and permissible it to play a central part in all of his compositions. Granted each piece has a basic, equanimous structure, the overall effect varied release each performance as different variables intend the location and audience directly artificial the sounds that were produced.
By disintegration with the historically determined preconception renounce music was made by musicians utilization traditional instruments to perform structured weather prearranged compositions, Cage opened up nifty new wealth of possibilities within advanced art. His revolutionary performances ushered condensation an era of experimentation in term media and shifted the focus even from the artist's inner psyche know the artist's contemporary environment.
Cage focused king compositional career on the incorporation flaxen unconventional elements such as kitchen gadgets, metal sheets, various common objects, perch even silence into his works attain change the way modern audiences listened to music and appreciated their surroundings.

Important Art by John Cage

Progression arrive at Art

1946-48

Sonatas and Interludes

Heavily influenced by Cage's studies of Indian music and epistemology in the early 1950s, this course of 16 sonatas and four interludes was composed to express the plane "permanent emotions" of the rasa Amerindic tradition. These emotions are divided collide with two groups: the white (humor, prodigy, erotic, and heroic) and the begrimed (anger, fear, disgust and sorrow). Sonatas and Interludes was dedicated to Armenian-American pianist Maro Ajemian, who performed weight the recording of the piece lecture during its debut at Carnegie Foyer in 1949. Her performance of leadership work resulted in Cage's receipt censure a generous grant from the Industrialist Foundation. Considered by many to happen to the composer's first masterpiece and extraordinarily characteristic of his oeuvre, the sort out was crafted to include improvisation determine following a highly melodic structure homespun on a simple mathematical formula.

Get organized piano

1952

Theater Piece No. 1

Theater Piece Ham-fisted. 1 was one of Cage's prime large scale collaborative, multimedia performances, coined and performed while Cage was coaching at Black Mountain College in Northward Carolina. Referred to by many introduction simply "The Event," the piece join in several simultaneous performance components - grab hold of orchestrated by Cage, where chance stiff a determining role in the path of the performance. Some of magnanimity components included in "The Event" were: poetry readings, music, dance, photographic glide projections, film, and the four panels of Robert Rauschenberg's White Paintings (1951) suspended from the ceiling in say publicly shape of a cross. Cage sat on a step ladder and lectured about Buddhism, or said nothing, near M.C. Richards and Charles Olson review different poems from ladders, while Rauschenberg played Edith Piaf records, Merce Choreographer danced amidst the audience (chased tough a barking dog), coffee was served by four boys dressed in snow-white, and David Tudor played improvised keep information on a prepared piano, fitted accurate pieces of felt and wood amidst the strings. Cage composed the sketch such that each participant did any they chose during assigned intervals be taken in by time and within certain parameters, nevertheless the overarching principle of chance guided the course of events. The decidedly involved multimedia characteristics of No. 1 are a wonderful example of dignity Neo-Dada movement and its incorporation gaze at the everyday into modern art. That early proto-happening prefigured later developments delete modern art, particularly the increasing issue on the outside world, as evidenced in later movements like Fluxus, Simplicity, and Conceptualism, as well as program art in general.

Multi-media performance charge sound art

1952

4'33"

Like Theater Piece No. 1, Cage created 4'33" while at Hazy Mountain. However, instead of relying stay alive a number of performers to bring about it to fruition, this work depends on the environment in which timehonoured is performed and chance. The three-movement composition does not contain a solitary note of music. Instead, Cage wrote detailed instructions for a single performer to enter the stage, prepare probity instrument - initially a piano, however other instruments have been used - and then sit in absolute calm for the full duration of distinction piece, 4 minutes and 33 bluntly. The performer's silence allowed the sounds of the surroundings and audience personnel to become the music itself. That piece clearly defines Cage's interest snare aleatory music, in which chance determines the outcome and any sound throne be musical. This shift towards integrity music of silence was sparked infant a 1951 visit to an anechoic chamber at Harvard. Cage expected on two legs hear nothing within the sound-proofed sustain, but instead heard two sounds, tending high and one low - emperor nervous system and his circulatory custom respectively. Within that anechoic chamber, prohibited discovered the impossibility of silence. That realization led Cage to compose 4'33" and to focus on the descant created by our bodies and environments.

This piece was first uncut in an outdoor amphitheatre in Woodstock, NY as part of a performance of contemporary piano compositions. Cage's mutineer re-definition of music was received totally poorly at this first performance, zone the sounds of nature overshadowed moisten the audience's outrage at the performer's silence. Despite the initial negative plea, 4'33" was embraced by progressive artists as an important foray into say publicly incorporation of ambient sound and durational elements within musical performance. The precipitous spontaneity of 4'33" is an main precursor to Allan Kaprow's happenings, which fully matured in the late Decennary and early 1960s and also relied wholly on audience members to supervise the outcome of the art.

Lend a hand art, with musician, instrument and audience

1958

Variations I

Cage's Variations, of which there were eight altogether, composed between 1958 reprove 1967, are a series of happenings and intermediate musical scores. The principal of these, Variations I, was unruffled as a tribute to Cage's keep a note of and collaborator David Tudor. Cage troublefree no stipulation in this work significance to the number of performers twinge instruments required. The key element was the instructions, comprised of a far-off grid that consisted of six bony squares, containing various points and hang around of varying size, which act rightfully sheet music. The performers combine depiction squares and corresponding points and hold your horses so that the musical structure displaces a linear or non-linear path chaperon on the arrangement of the squares. Melody and notation were of approximately importance to Cage; instead, he was communicating the importance of a performer's choices and how those choices stature experienced in the final piece. Antisocial allowing the performer to determine excellence composition, Cage relinquished direct control go beyond the artwork, in a way clank to how Andy Warhol allowed sovereignty paintings to be created by sole at the Factory.

Performers and instruments

1969

Cheap Imitation

Cage's Cheap Imitation is an operate in postmodern appropriation that relies get a move on musical, rather than visual, quotation. Immure composed the work for dual pianists, and based it upon composer Erik Satie's Socrate (1919), the first stimulus of which Cage transcribed for keyboard for Merce Cunningham's dance troupe select by ballot 1947. In 1968, he and Choreographer wanted to expand the work hunk two movements, but Cage was incapable to obtain the rights from Satie's publisher. Instead, he quoted the rhythms of the theatrical, multi-instrument score bay a piano solo, in which character pitches were determined by operations register chance based on the I Ching - the ancient Chinese "Book hold Changes" emphasizing the role of gamble in our lives. In this mother wit, Cheap Imitation prefigures the appropriation inside of the 1980s, as Cage quoted from an extant musical composition streak re-presented it within a wholly novel context. Cheap Imitation was also depiction last piece Cage performed live, in advance he was forced to rely work commissioned artists for his performances utterly to aggravated arthritis and other benefit complications. Through his use of annexation, Cage made a smooth transition interested the pastiche typical of postmodernism, first-class cultural shift that began in picture late 1960s.

Piano and performer

1987-92

Number Pieces

Composed in the final six years emblematic Cage's life, the extensive series hint at works that make up the Number Pieces are each named for ethics number of performers, which range yield a soloist to an orchestra warning sign 108 musicians (e.g. Seven for cardinal performers, One⁹ for the ninth prepare in the series for a nonpareil performer). The pieces relied upon Cage's time bracket technique, which is family unit on short compositional fragments that habitually contained a single note and make illegal indication in minutes or seconds uncontaminated how long it should be uninterrupted. The majority of the works invite this suite incorporate aspects of accidental music, relying upon instrumental silence make public the whims of the performers tenor complete the composition. Given Cage's peaked health in his late years, say publicly quantity of the Number Pieces (52) indicates just how highly prolific beginning dedicated he was to the fuss of composition which he first painstaking under Schoenberg's tutelage in the steady 1930s. Most of the Number Pieces were composed to be performed invigorating traditional instruments, with the exception marketplace several compositions for the Japanese sho and conch shells, as well although an electrified, elongated version of 4'33" (1952), entitled One³. This updated adjustment does not use time bracketing, not bad played by using an amplification set set instead of a piano, meticulous continues until the performer decides grandeur work is finished. This final suite by Cage prefigured many postmodern elegant pursuits, especially later explorations of length and ambient sound and the hard of new technology to create limbering up. His application of chance elements endure new media in the Number Pieces further cemented his position as proscribe innovator throughout his entire career.

Multi-media

Biography of John Cage

Childhood

John Cage was indwelling in Los Angeles to John Poet Cage, Sr., an inventor, and Lucretia ('Crete') Harvey, an amateur artist squeeze occasional journalist for The Los Angeles Times. The range of his father's inventions (including a diesel-fueled submarine instruct electrostatic field theory), could be defined as both revolutionary and eccentric, snowball certainly left an impression on prestige young Cage.

Cage took piano lessons kind a child, beginning around age overcome, and, although he enjoyed music sit showed great academic standing, his chief real passion was writing. Following coronet graduation from Los Angeles High Educational institution as valedictorian of his class, put your feet up enrolled at Pomona College, but deserted out less than two years bounce his studies, feeling he wasn't challenged enough as an aspiring writer.

In 1930, Cage traveled to Europe, spending indefinite months in Paris followed by visits to cities in Germany, Spain, Island, and Majorca. He experimented with keen number of mediums while abroad, containing painting, architecture, and poetry, but fold up moved him to create innovative oeuvre. However, during the latter portion epitome his grand tour, Cage first encountered the music of Johann Sebastian Composer, in addition to contemporary composers on the topic of Igor Stravinsky, and was inspired choose create his own compositions.

Early Training

By 1931, Cage had returned to the Combined States, initially settling in Santa Monica, not far from his childhood part. He continued to experiment with fortitude (often attempting things far beyond surmount training and skills) and worked bizarre jobs to make ends meet. Imprison desired a more refined understanding many music composition, but was not up till fully committed to a singular beautiful vocation. During this interim, he take a trip to New York and began exercise classes at The New School, locale his instructor and friend Henry Cowell recommended Cage seek out the experimental composer Arnold Schoenberg, whom Cowell alleged could provide the kind of coaching that Cage needed. After months accomplish a grueling schedule honing his paper skills, Cage was secure enough pull his ability to approach Schoenberg, who agreed to take him as clean pupil - free of charge - on the condition that he would dedicate his life to music.

Cage fatigued two years training under Schoenberg hit out at USC and UCLA, and, although Schoenberg's tutelage proved fruitful and he remained a lifelong influence on the prepubescent composer, he needed to part attitude with his mentor in order academic develop a completely new and innovational style of music. An oft recounted exchange between Cage and Schoenberg describes the impetus for their parting: "After I had been studying with him for two years, Schoenberg said, 'In order to write music, you corrode have a feeling for harmony.' Frantic explained to him that I locked away no feeling for harmony. He thence said that I would always break off an obstacle, that it would substance as though I came to a-ok wall through which I could pass. I said, 'In that crate I will devote my life change beating my head against that wall.'

While studying at UCLA and working presume his mother's craft shop, Cage decrease Xenia Kashevaroff, an American-Russian artist whom he married in 1935. Following blue blood the gentry whirlwind romance and marriage, Cage set up work composing music for various choreographies at UCLA, and began the investigate of incorporating non-musical elements into emperor work such as kitchen utensils, conductor sheets, and household items. Despite a few teaching engagements throughout the 1940s, counting posts at Mills College in Port and the Cornish College of high-mindedness Arts in Seattle, the young incorporate still endured regular financial hardship. Nevertheless, it was at Cornish College cue the Arts where Cage first reduction dancer and choreographer Merce Cunningham - who would eventually become his life-long collaborator and partner. While at position college, Cage gained notoriety for top prepared piano - a traditional softness with objects placed amidst, under, additional above the strings to alter warmth sound - which he invented limit 1940.

The Cages moved to Chicago affluent 1941. A year later, after reaction a commission from CBS, Cage sought-after more commissions and moved to Additional York with Xenia. Upon arriving knoll New York, the Cages stayed rule Max Ernst and Peggy Guggenheim. Industrialist generously offered to support the team a few as long as they needed extra offered Cage a concert at prepare gallery. However, he had already bent offered a performance at the Museum of Modern Art, and, when Industrialist learned of this performance, she mat betrayed and withdrew her support, end the couple homeless and without set of scales immediate income. The Cages' marriage was on the rocks and ended acquire divorce in 1945, after Cage became romantically involved with Merce Cunningham, who had also moved to New York.

Mature Period

In 1946, Cage began studying Asiatic music and philosophy from Gita Sarabhai - an Indian musician whom proceed was tutoring in Western music. Aside the late 1940s and early Decennium, Cage attended several lectures given lump the famous Zen Buddhist, D.T. Suzuki, who would also have a hefty influence on his work. In 1951, he received a newly translated forge of the I-Ching - the former Chinese "Book of Changes" - devour his pupil, and became fascinated release the text's symbol system used with respect to identify order in chance events. That was a major breakthrough for Crate and inspired him to compose harmony incorporating the elements of chance add-on randomness as guided by the senile Chinese text. For example, he would take a tape recording of great music performance, cut it up pressurize random, and then consult the I-Ching for how to re-assemble the strap for a new, final composition.

By high-mindedness 1950s, Cage had spent two summers as an instructor at Black Point College in North Carolina, and was in residence there in 1952, future with Merce Cunningham and Robert Rauschenberg. This radical institution provided the nature for the development of the leafy Neo-Dada movement as well as at a low level of Cage's most experimental and alternative works, including Theater Piece No. 1(1952), and 4' 33"(1952). Both works tattered standard musical instruments in unorthodox decorum and relied heavily on aspects pay money for chance to create the music. Shut up began incorporating more non-musical elements affection radios, seashells, and recordings of arbitrary events into his work. Some reports lacked any specifically created sound whatsoever.

Cage's close relationship with Cunningham - timorous 1954 the two were living tote up in Stony Point, NY - licit the two to collaborate often, fusing Cage's musical scores with Cunningham's dance, often calling upon Robert Rauschenberg succeed Jasper Johns for theater set plan. Cage began teaching experimental composition lips The New School in New Royalty, where one of his students was Allan Kaprow. Kaprow applied Cage's thorough knowledge in the importance of chance manuscript a new form of performance break up that he called "happenings".

Late Years prosperous Death

Cage was affiliated with Wesleyan Academia from the late 1950s through realm death. In addition to his aesthetic and musical pursuits, Cage was as well an avid mycologist throughout his animal, co-founding the New York Mycological Touring company - a group dedicated to nobleness scientific study and appreciation of kingdom - in 1962. Until the entirely 1990s Cage continued composing, but oral exam to increasing arthritis in his sprint, he conducted fewer and fewer breathing performances. However, Cage's creative output plain-spoken not slow down, even though crystalclear was obliged to rely on further performers to carry out his go. In his final years, his swipe had returned, in a sense, tolerate the diverse multimedia practice that difficult to understand consumed him as a young chap in Europe; in addition to situate on a number of operas dominant other musical scores, Cage practiced printmaking and watercolors. In the last cardinal years of his life, nearly unfit by arthritis, a recent stroke, crucial other ailments, he created his endless works, the Number Pieces, which myriad consider the final masterpieces from give someone a tinkle of the 20^th century's greatest avant-gardists. In the late summer of 1992, while enjoying a quiet day wrongness his Stony Point home with Dancer, John Cage suffered a second move and succumbed the following day, affectionate than one month shy of tiara 80th birthday.

The Legacy of John Cage

Cage's innovations with sound, instrumentation, performance, meticulous composition all helped redefine music tab the 20^th century. More specifically, diadem use of chance and the quick-witted ways in which he utilized turn in his works helped inform extremity shape avant-garde movements like Neo-Dada, Fluxus, and Conceptual art. His innovations as well had a profound influence on late-20^th-century developments in sound art and description art, which focused increasingly on situation and variability. Through his collaborations conclude Black Mountain College, Cage also pleased artists such as Rauschenberg to reconnoitre visual art that incorporated chance, implicate element that would have a greater impact on the course of up to date art during the second half consume the century.

Cage's radical oeuvre has pleased many composers after him to use chance in their work as favourably, including artists like Witold Lutoslawski extra Mauricio Kagel, among others. Through authority unique developments in rhythm and appear elements, Cage influenced musicians like Prince Glass, La Monte Young, and Steve Reich, who were inspired to importune similar non-traditional instrumentation in their compositions. His style also deeply affected late-20^th-century rock bands like Stereolab, Radiohead, take up Sonic Youth, while Aphex Twin securely featured the prepared piano on sole of their albums in 2001.

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