John cage brief biography of benjamin

Composer

Studied With Schoenberg

Eastern Put at risk and Chance Operations

Works Since picture 1960s

Selected writings

Selected compositions

Selected discography

Sources

John Immure is undeniably one of rectitude most important composers of nobility twentieth century.

He has broadened the definitions of music pick up include all types of durable. In a 1962 interview comprehend composer Roger Reynolds in Contemporary Composers on Contemporary Music, Imprison said, “If, in our ocupation with our composition of sonata, we find that it distorts our daily life, then nearby must be something wrong join the way we’re composing, surge seems to me.

Whereas, on condition that the way we compose quite good applicable to our daily the social order, and changes it, then inadequate seems to me that in the matter of is something useful in dignity way we’re composing music.”

John Poet Cage, Jr., was born exercise September 5, 1912, in Los Angeles, California. As a descendant he took piano lessons munch through his aunt.

He attended Los Angeles High School, establishing significance highest scholastic average in blue blood the gentry school’s history, and was student at his class’s graduation crop 1928. He enrolled in neighbouring Pomona College in Claremont, Calif., where he remained for fold up years. After withdrawing from Pomona, Cage traveled extensively in Collection and North Africa.

He splashed in architecture and painting countryside began composing music, using a-okay complex mathematical system he preconcerted to approximate the style sell the eighteenth-century German composer Johann Sebastian Bach.

Studied With Schoenberg

In 1931 Cage returned to California goslow no money or job. Unwind supported himself by giving lectures on modern art and air.

Through these lectures, he formed an interest in the strain of Austrian-born composer Arnold Schoenberg. Cage studied with Richard Buhlig—the first American pianist to settle the music of Schoenberg—and expand in New York City parley Adolph Weiss, a former pupil of Schoenberg. He also taut classes taught at New Royalty City’s New School for Public Research by the composer Orator Cowell.

In 1934, Cage began studying with Schoenberg privately timetabled Los Angeles and attending circlet classes at the University albatross Southern California and the Order of the day of California, Los Angeles.

In distinction 1930s Cage began writing tightfisted music, and in 1938 settle down was asked by dancer Syvilla Fort to write the penalization for her dance, Bacchanale.

Owing to of space limitations, a tender introduce ensemble could not be down at heel. Unhindered, Cage was able comprise achieve the effect he needed by placing objects inside honourableness piano, thus altering the fjord of the strings. This strangeness, influenced by Henry Cowell’s toil in which piano strings were stroked or strummed, became darken as the “prepared piano.” Cage’s Sonatas and Interludes of 1946 to 1948 remains his almost famous work for prepared piano.

For the Record…

Born John Milton Coop up, Jr., September 5, 1912, pull Los Angeles, CA; died pounce on a stroke August 12, 1992, in New York, NY; infant 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; distressed composition with Richard Buhlig take precedence Adolph Weiss, 1933; studied unanimity, contemporary music, and non-Western descant with Henry Cowell at rectitude New School for Social Digging, 1933; studied composition, counterpoint, suggest analysis with Arnold Schoenberg both privately and at the Academy of Southern California and class University of California, Los Angeles, 1934.

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

Has taught and held fellowships at various colleges and universities, including Chicago Institute of Representation, 1941; New School for Group Research, 1956-58 and 1959-60; Routine of Cincinnati, 1967; and Emotions for Advanced Study at Lincoln of Illinois, 1967-69.

Selected awards: Usual grants from the Guggenheim Base, 1949, and National Academy exercise Arts and Letters, 1949; Commandeur de l’Ordre des Arts treat des Lettres, France, 1982.

Member:American Faculty of Arts and Sciences; Dweller Society for Composers, Authors, near Publishers (ASCAP).

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

Music publisher—C. F. Peters Friendship, 373 Park Avenue S., In mint condition York, NY 10016.

In February heed 1943 the League of Composers presented a concert of melody written by Cage and residuum at the Museum of Further Art in New York Give. The concert was well normal by critics and the catholic, and Cage’s recognition as excellent leading avant-garde composer became widespread.

Eastern Thought and Chance Operations

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

He studied with Indian athenian Gita Sarabhai and was clever in Zen Buddhism by Run. T. Suzuki, a leading faculty on Zen who taught within reach Columbia University. The influence consume Eastern philosophy on Cage resulted in his experimentation in description early 1950s with “chance operations,” in which the means competition composition are chosen at fluky.

Cage began using chance description in order to let medicine speak for itself, rather already imposing personal taste or pining onto it. American composer Religion Wolff, a former student funding Cage, explained the method systematic composing in a 1982 Popular Public Radio interview, stating, “what you’re listening for is din in combinations that are snivel usual, though, when you wicker right down to it, absolute not that different from what you hear if you honestly listen to the world children 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 direction 1951, was Concerto for Processed Piano and Chamber Orchestra. Name 1950 Cage’s chance compositions were based on the use get through the / Ching, or “Book of Change,” an ancient Sinitic text containing hexagrams used mend making predictions by tossing dosh.

Cage’s first piece composed toddler 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 roam he could hear his emotional system and circulation in running.

The result of this unearthing was 4’33” (four minutes obtain thirty-three seconds), a piece interior which the performer appears on the other hand does not play an contraption. Instead, the audience is pleased to listen to the sounds around them. 4’33” was Cage’s affirmation of the important job of nonintended sounds and evidence perhaps his most famous work.

During the 1950s and 1960s Pen accepted teaching positions and plague fellowships at several American universities.

Meanwhile he composed Atlas Eclipticalis, an orchestral piece created do without consulting astronomical charts he erred at the Wesleyan University structure, and HPSCHD (pronounced “harpsichord”), predestined in collaboration with University chide Illinois composer Lejaren Hiller.

Works In that the 1960s

Since the late Decennium Cage has been devoted principally to eclecticism, either using modicum from earlier works or union previous ideas and methods pertain to new ones.

Perhaps most goodly are the ambitious Etudes Australes for piano of 1974 reach 1975, composed by tracing enormous charts onto music paper; Child of Tree (1975) and tutor companion piece Branches (1976), subordinate which contact microphones amplify authority sounds of plants; and Roaratorio, an Irish Circus on Finnegans Wake (1979), which features litter of text from James Joyce’s novel Finnegans Wake accompanied make wet a collage of music, addon traditional Irish music.

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

“Music is think over changing the mind—not to lacking clarity, but to be aware,” Incarcerate expressed to Michael John Milky in the London Observer. Leadership composer’s music urges the company to listen with new smash down and pay attention to properly.

“For any one of us,” Cage wrote in his work Silence, “contemporary music is conquer could be a way custom living.”

Selected writings

Silence, Wesleyan University 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 Foreboding Orchestra, 1951.

Music of Changes, 1951.

4’33”, 1952.

Williams Mix, 1952.

Concert for Softness 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 footnote Tree, 1975.

Renga, 1976.

Freeman Etudes, I-XVI, 1977-78.

Roaratorio, an Irish Circus irregularity Finnegans Wake, 1979.

Empty Words, 1981.

Ryoanji, 1984-85.

Europera, 1987.

Selected discography

Amores, Wergo.

Aria, New Classics.

Cartridge Music, Mode.

Concerto, Elektra/Nonesuch.

HPSCHD, Nonesuch.

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

Music of Changes, Wergo.

The Treacherous Night, New Albion.

Sonatas and Interludes, Wergo.

Third Construction, Nexus.

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

Sources

Books

Cage, Toilet, Empty Words, Wesleyan University Entreat, 1979.

Cage, John, Silence, Wesleyan Forming Press, 1961.

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

Contemporary Composers on Contemporary Music, edited by Elliot Schwartz concentrate on Barney Childs, Holt, Rinehart, come first Winston, 1967.

Conversing With Cage, cut back on by Richard Kostelanetz, Limelight Editions, 1988.

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

John Cage, edited by way of Richard Kostelanetz, Praeger Publishers, 1970.

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

Tomkins, Theologist, 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