John Cage, born as John Milton Cage Jr. was born on September 5th, 1912 in Los Angeles, California. He passed away just about one month before his 80th birthday on August 12th, 1992 in New York, New York. He was suffering from quite a few serious illnesses and he passed the day after his second stroke. Cage’s father, John Milton Cage, Sr., was an inventor who gave an explanation of the cosmos known as “Electrostatic Field Theory”. His mother, Lucretia Harvey was a journalist who, on occasion, worked for the Los Angeles Times. Music was introduced to Cage at a pretty early age from piano teachers and family members. His first real piano lesson was when he was in the fourth grade. Graduating high school in 1928, Cage knew he wanted to be a writer so he went to Pamona College, Claremont. He dropped out after two years of studying, saying that being a writer shouldn’t need a college education. The only thing that he believed to be beneficial was travelling, so Cage went on an 18-month trip to Europe. While on his travels, he studied many forms of art including music. While studying music, he discovered many different contemporary composers, such as Johann Sebastian Bach.
Upon returning to the U.S. he went to Santa Monica, California and earned money giving private lessons of contemporary art. Throughout the years he met many famous people, such as Richard Buhlig, a pianist, who became his first teacher. Cage determined that he was going to focus solely on music instead of other various forms of art in 1933 because he said “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.”5 Upon sending a few compositions to Henry Cowell, he got a response being advised to look into taking lessons from Arnold Schoenberg. However, Cage needed to first learn from Schoenberg’s former student, Adolph Weiss, to slowly introduce him into Schoenberg’s style of composing. When he was confident in his composition that was strengthened by the help of Cowell and Weiss, Cage finally went to study under Schoenberg at USC then at UCLA. When he began his early works, he followed in the footsteps of Schoenberg by creating 12-tone compositions. Throughout the years he held many jobs and met several very important people. He held one job in particular that completely influenced the rest of his career. He was a dance accompanist at UCLA and this job made him want to be associated with modern dance for the duration of his career as a composer.
During his career he actually “invented the ‘prepared piano’, a piano in which the sound is changed by objects placed on, under or between the strings.”5 These objects were put in these areas to create different percussive and spiritual effects on sound. He liked to use other objects such as a tape recorder or radio to try and step out of the usual boundaries of western music. When he was unemployed and didn’t have his percussion instruments, he began to play his prepared piano again to create some of his famous works. Cage collaborated with the choreographer and dancer, Merce Cunningham. They created a piece of work where the choreography and sound were made separately but were performed at the same time. Around this time, he was also inspired by Zen Buddhism and Indian music and philosophy. In the 1950s Cage was associated with the Wesleyan University, he worked in the Music Department with the other staff members until his death in 1992. He released many pieces during his time at Wesleyan University such as compositions as well as music, six books, and books of poetry and prose. Cage and his apprentices set up an art form called performance art in the late 1950s. In 1949 he was honored with a Guggenheim Fellowship, the National Academy of Arts and Letters also presented him with an award, and the California Institutes of the Arts awarded him with an honorary Doctorate of Performing Arts in 1986.
John Cage’s philosophy of music is rather a philosophy of the organization of sound. “A sound does not view itself as thought, as ought, as needing another sound for its elucidation, as etc.; it has not time for any consideration – it is occupied with performance of its characteristics: before it has died away it must have made perfectly exact its frequency, its loudness, its length, its overtone structure, the precise morphology of these and of itself.”2 Cage believes that there is no such thing as silence, he argues that every sound has the capability to show a feeling in an electronic or mechanical sense. He actually believed that if silence was nonexistent, then feelings could be shown to not exist. “Wherever we are, what we hear is mostly noise. When we ignore it, it disturbs us. When we listen to it, we find it fascinating. The sound of a truck at fifty miles per hour. Static between he stations. Rain. We want to capture and control these sounds, to use them not as sound effects but as musical instruments.”1 He also believed that any combination of any sounds in any sequence are able to be used in a musical continuity.
“It was he who fathers a whole generation (or two or three) of experimental composers in this country and the world, and who did more than anyone else to introduce the contemplative aura of Oriental religion and philosophy into the highly individuated, careerist sensibility of the Western artist.”9 John Cage was a very influential artist to the up and coming composers, the way he felt about music and composing helped them feel free to be free. They were able to create their own works with beliefs of what music is and were able to explore where their interests, instincts, and modern technology took them. He was not only influencing people to create music of their own, but he also influenced them to create and experiment with other forms of media. Cage was able to show everyone, especially the up and coming composers, that you can have an interest in one thing and can use other elements that will make what you pictured come to life.
Some of John Cage’s most well known works are 4’33”, the Sonatas and Interludes, Fontana Mix, Cheap Imitation, and Roaratorio. Among these famous works, the most well-known was 4’33” or four minutes and thirty-three seconds, which was also his favorite. This piece of work has a performer or performers that remain absolutely silent for the exact time of four minutes and thirty-three seconds. The amount of time can actually be determined by the person who is performing the piece. Upon the completion of this piece, most of the elements are carefully scripted but other sounds can be left to chance. When watching 4’33” you would think that it goes against what Cage believes in, that there is no such thing as silence. The performer makes very few noises upon getting on the stage and sitting by the piano, but when the performer is being as silent as they possibly can, the noises switch to the audience. While the audience is normally quiet when watching a show, they don’t normally notice any of the other sounds that are coming from the audience, but when the performer on stage isn’t making any sound these noises become more apparent. Some of the sounds could be sniffling, coughing, people moving around, etc. This just goes to show that silence cannot possible exist, you may be silent but your surroundings are not silent at all. Before researching about John Cage’s philosophy of music, I never would have questioned silence being nonexistent. However, if you think about it, silence really doesn’t exist because somehow, somewhere, someway, some noise is going to exist.