John Cage  

1912-1992 

"I certainly had no feeling for harmony, and Schoenberg thought that that would make it impossible for me to write music. He said, 'You'll come to a wall you won't be able to get through.' So I said, 'I'll beat my head against that wall.' "  

--John Cage 

        The most influential American composer of the 20^th century?  Or a clever charlatan?  Or perhaps a little of both?  One thing’s for sure – the controversy surrounding John Cage’s compositions continues to rage, sixteen years after his death. 

        The son of an inventor, Cage took piano lessons as a boy but never really showed a lot of interest in or talent for music as a young person.  He entered college planning to study writing, but ended up dropping out after the following incident:  

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. ^[12] 

After leaving college, Cage went to Europe and drifted around for a while, dabbling in various art forms.  Upon returning to the United States, he finally settled on music, because: "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 went to New York City in 1933, hoping to study with Arnold Schoenberg, the famous avant-garde composer known for his invention of the twelve-tone row.  Schoenberg  agreed to mentor Cage free of charge if the latter would devote his life to music.  Cage vowed to do so, a promise he appears to have taken to heart.  He studied with Schoenberg for two years.  The older composer later said of him, "Of course he's not a composer, but he's an inventor—of genius." 

John Cage was very interested in the experience of sound.  He was inspired by avant-garde visual artists such as Marcel Duchamp, who displayed everyday objects in museums as art.  Cage translated the “found object” idea into music through using unconventional “instruments.”  He invented the “prepared piano,” getting weird and unusual sounds from an ordinary piano by placing foreign objects like screws and wire nuts into the strings.  And he wrote pieces for everyday objects, such as “Imaginary Landscape No. 4,” a piece for twelve radios tuned to various stations. 

Perhaps Cage’s best known work is 4’33”.  This “piece” was “written” in 1952 for any instrument or group of instruments.  The performer(s) are instructed to remain silent for four minutes and thirty three seconds.  (You can perform this piece at home.  Just set your timer for the required amount of time.  Don’t forget to pay attention to the background noise – after all, that’s the real point of the piece.  Applause is optional.) 

Don’t laugh.  This piece was chosen by National Public Radio as one of the “100 Most Important Pieces of the 20^th Century.” 

Cage’s compositions were devised around two main ideas:  mathematics and chance.  He would frequently arrange his pieces into segments according to mathematical ideas.  And he would very often make use of “found sounds” – sounds with an element of chance, like the pouring of water, or just the everyday background noise all around us.  Thus the typical John Cage composition is a “happening” that can never be performed the same way twice. 

Needless to say, Cage’s compositions have been, and continue to be, the focus of raging controversy.  He has been hailed as “one of the most important composers of the (twentieth) century,” yet there are plenty of educated individuals who would violently object to labeling his compositions “music” at all.   

Regardless of opinion, one thing is for sure:  John Cage remains a hugely influential figure.  He broke open musical boundaries and allowed the musicians who came after him complete freedom to experiment.  As pop musician Brian Eno, who has himself influenced many musicians including U2, the Talking Heads, David Bowie and Paul Simon. puts it:   

        "I think without John Cage I wouldn't have been involved in music at all actually.  Because Cage created the atmosphere within which it was possible for a lot of other people to start thinking you could make music using this or that or no instruments or some instruments or people who could play or who can't play. Suddenly it broke down the boundary between the group of people called composers and the rest of the world."