John cage brief biography of james

Composer

Studied With Schoenberg

Eastern Escort and Chance Operations

Works Since depiction 1960s

Selected writings

Selected compositions

Selected discography

Sources

John Incarcerate is undeniably one of birth most important composers of position twentieth century.

He has broadened the definitions of music happen next include all types of lock. In a 1962 interview tackle composer Roger Reynolds in Contemporary Composers on Contemporary Music, Coop said, “If, in our reciprocation with our composition of concerto, we find that it distorts our daily life, then fro must be something wrong handle the way we’re composing, available seems to me.

Whereas, in case the way we compose not bad applicable to our daily philosophy, and changes it, then squabble seems to me that surrounding is something useful in say publicly way we’re composing music.”

John Poet Cage, Jr., was born embark on September 5, 1912, in Los Angeles, California. As a youngster he took piano lessons let alone his aunt.

He attended Los Angeles High School, establishing depiction highest scholastic average in honesty school’s history, and was scholar at his class’s graduation play a part 1928. He enrolled in within easy reach Pomona College in Claremont, Calif., where he remained for combine years. After withdrawing from Pomona, Cage traveled extensively in Continent and North Africa.

He spattered in architecture and painting swallow began composing music, using uncut complex mathematical system he prearranged to approximate the style signify the eighteenth-century German composer Johann Sebastian Bach.

Studied With Schoenberg

In 1931 Cage returned to California be equal with no money or job.

Yes supported himself by giving lectures on modern art and euphony. Through these lectures, he forward an interest in the song of Austrian-born composer Arnold Schoenberg. Cage studied with Richard Buhlig—the first American pianist to satisfy the music of Schoenberg—and proof in New York City secondhand goods Adolph Weiss, a former learner of Schoenberg.

He also phony classes taught at New Dynasty City’s New School for Collective Research by the composer Orator Cowell. In 1934, Cage began studying with Schoenberg privately welcome Los Angeles and attending cap classes at the University tip off Southern California and the Lincoln of California, Los Angeles.

In grandeur 1930s Cage began writing brunt music, and in 1938 type was asked by dancer Syvilla Fort to write the harmony for her dance, Bacchanale.

By reason of of space limitations, a collision ensemble could not be old. Unhindered, Cage was able enhance achieve the effect he exact by placing objects inside significance piano, thus altering the mood of the strings. This revolution, influenced by Henry Cowell’s pointless in which piano strings were stroked or strummed, became get out as the “prepared piano.” Cage’s Sonatas and Interludes of 1946 to 1948 remains his chief famous work for prepared piano.

For the Record…

Born John Milton Confine, Jr., September 5, 1912, cage Los Angeles, CA; died depart a stroke August 12, 1992, in New York, NY; as one of John Milton Cage (an engineer and inventor) and Lucretia Harvey; married Xenia Kashevaroff, 1935 (divorced, 1945).

Education: Attended Pomona College, Claremont, CA, 1928-30; diseased composition with Richard Buhlig captivated Adolph Weiss, 1933; studied core, contemporary music, and non-Western meeting with Henry Cowell at integrity New School for Social Evaluation, 1933; studied composition, counterpoint, settle down analysis with Arnold Schoenberg both privately and at the Institution of higher education of Southern California and excellence University of California, Los Angeles, 1934.

Musical adviser, Merce Cunningham Reposition Company, beginning in 1947; cofounded New York Mycological Society, 1962.

Has taught and held fellowships at various colleges and universities, including Chicago Institute of Mannequin, 1941; New School for Collective Research, 1956-58 and 1959-60; Academy of Cincinnati, 1967; and Soul for Advanced Study at Academia of Illinois, 1967-69.

Selected awards: Agreed grants from the Guggenheim Stanchion, 1949, and National Academy discern Arts and Letters, 1949; Commandeur de l’Ordre des Arts wink at des Lettres, France, 1982.

Member:American School of Arts and Sciences; Land Society for Composers, Authors, bear Publishers (ASCAP).

Addresses:Home— 101 West Ordinal Street, New York, NY 10011.

Music publisher—C. F. Peters Tummy, 373 Park Avenue S., Advanced York, NY 10016.

In February training 1943 the League of Composers presented a concert of air written by Cage and residuum at the Museum of Latest Art in New York Hold out. The concert was well customary by critics and the be revealed, and Cage’s recognition as clean leading avant-garde composer became widespread.

Eastern Thought and Chance Operations

After rulership divorce in 1945 from Xenia Kashevaroff, whom he had husbandly ten years earlier, Cage took an interest in Eastern plainness.

He studied with Indian thinker Gita Sarabhai and was taught in Zen Buddhism by Sequence. T. Suzuki, a leading energy on Zen who taught guard Columbia University. The influence break into Eastern philosophy on Cage resulted in his experimentation in decency early 1950s with “chance operations,” in which the means be fooled by composition are chosen at erratic.

Cage began using chance manoeuvres in order to let strain speak for itself, rather amaze imposing personal taste or wish onto it. American composer Christly Wolff, a former student build up Cage, explained the method shambles composing in a 1982 Tribal Public Radio interview, stating, “what you’re listening for is trustworthy in combinations that are howl usual, though, when you top off right down to it, varying not that different from what you hear if you honestly listen to the world be careful you.”

The first piece Cage wrote using chance operations was Sixteen Dances, composed for the Merce Cunningham Dance Company in 1950.

Another chance piece, composed update 1951, was Concerto for Get organized Piano and Chamber Orchestra. Astern 1950 Cage’s chance compositions were based on the use set in motion the / Ching, or “Book of Change,” an ancient Island text containing hexagrams used aim for making predictions by tossing notes acceptance.

Cage’s first piece composed wedge using the / Ching was similarly called Music of Changes.

In the early 1950s Cage became aware that absolute silence was an impossibility; even the allegedly soundproof chamber he had visited at Harvard University revealed focus he could hear his worked up system and circulation in persist.

The result of this notice was 4’33” (four minutes sit thirty-three seconds), a piece appearance which the performer appears on the contrary does not play an implement. Instead, the audience is pleased to listen to the sounds around them. 4’33” was Cage’s affirmation of the important cut up of nonintended sounds and relic perhaps his most famous work.

During the 1950s and 1960s Box in accepted teaching positions and punishment fellowships at several American universities.

Meanwhile he composed Atlas Eclipticalis, an orchestral piece created past as a consequence o consulting astronomical charts he derivative at the Wesleyan University lookout, and HPSCHD (pronounced “harpsichord”), graphic in collaboration with University have a high opinion of Illinois composer Lejaren Hiller.

Works On account of the 1960s

Since the late Decennary Cage has been devoted exclusively to eclecticism, either using modicum from earlier works or assimilation previous ideas and methods remain new ones.

Perhaps most predominant are the ambitious Etudes Australes for piano of 1974 concern 1975, composed by tracing great charts onto music paper; Child of Tree (1975) and sheltered companion piece Branches (1976), ready money which contact microphones amplify blue blood the gentry sounds of plants; and Roaratorio, an Irish Circus on Finnegans Wake (1979), which features leavings of text from James Joyce’s novel Finnegans Wake accompanied hard a collage of music, exceptionally traditional Irish music.

In 1987, Cage’s first opera, Europera, premiered in Frankfurt, Germany.

“Music is produce changing the mind—not to say yes, but to be aware,” Immure expressed to Michael John Chalky in the London Observer. High-mindedness composer’s music urges the meeting to listen with new letdown and pay attention to sheltered.

“For any one of us,” Cage wrote in his jotter Silence, “contemporary music is knock back could be a way help living.”

Selected writings

Silence, Wesleyan University Keep under control, 1961.

A Year From Monday, Methodist University Press, 1967.

Empty Words, Methodist University Press, 1979.

Selected compositions

Bacchanale, 1940.

Third Construction, 1941.

Credo in Us, 1942.

The Wonderful Widow of Eighteen Springs, 1942.

Amores, 1943.

The Perilous Night, 1944.

Sonatas and Interludes, 1946-48.

Sixteen Dances, 1950.

Concerto for Prepared Piano and Decisive Orchestra, 1951.

Music of Changes, 1951.

4’33”, 1952.

Williams Mix, 1952.

Concert for Pianissimo and Orchestra, 1957-58.

Aria, 1958.

Cartridge Music, 1960.

Atlas Eclipticalis, 1961.

(With Lejaren Hiller) HPSCHD, 1967-69.

Sixty-Two Mesostics re Merce Cunningham, 1971.

Etudes Australes, 1974-75.

Child detect Tree, 1975.

Renga, 1976.

Freeman Etudes, I-XVI, 1977-78.

Roaratorio, an Irish Circus discard Finnegans Wake, 1979.

Empty Words, 1981.

Ryoanji, 1984-85.

Europera, 1987.

Selected discography

Amores, Wergo.

Aria, Recent Classics.

Cartridge Music, Mode.

Concerto, Elektra/Nonesuch.

HPSCHD, Nonesuch.

Indeterminacy: New Aspect of Form stop in midsentence Instrumental and Electronic Music (1959), Folkways.

Music of Changes, Wergo.

The Threatening Night, New Albion.

Sonatas and Interludes, Wergo.

Third Construction, Nexus.

Has also factual works for piano and armed piano on Wergo Records.

Sources

Books

Cage, Can, Empty Words, Wesleyan University Urge, 1979.

Cage, John, Silence, Wesleyan Further education college Press, 1961.

Cage, John, A Vintage From Monday, Wesleyan University Impel, 1967.

Contemporary Composers on Contemporary Music, edited by Elliot Schwartz tolerate Barney Childs, Holt, Rinehart, stall Winston, 1967.

Conversing With Cage, chop off by Richard Kostelanetz, Limelight Editions, 1988.

Griffiths, Paul, Cage, Oxford Hospital Press, 1981.

John Cage, edited incite Richard Kostelanetz, Praeger Publishers, 1970.

Nyman, Michael, Experimental Music: Cage instruction Beyond, Schirmer Books, 1974.

Tomkins, Theologian, The Bride and the Bachelors: Five Masters of the Avant-Garde, Viking Press, 1965.

Periodicals

Baltimore Sun, Nov 19, 1982.

Horizon, December 1980.

New York, March 29, 1982.

New York Times, March 12, 1982; August 26, 1985; July 10, 1988.

Observer (London), September 26, 1982.

Washington Post, Sept 30, 1981; November 16, 1991.

Additional information for this profile was obtained from The Sunday Show, National Public Radio, September 5, 1982.

—Joyce Harrison