John Cage Essay

lav cage was whizz of the artists who moved the furthest past from tradition. detain himself says that he was trying to carry through what Ives wanted m any(prenominal) years in advance to be able to sit on the back doorstep at sundown, auditory modality to the melody. In continuing and expanding the Ivesian tradition, detain bust the antiquated nonions of euphony as put up sound consisting of melody, harmony, and rhythm (Nicholls, 2007). He wondered wherefore euphony had to be these things. His questioning conduct to sassy concepts of how euphonyal elements could be freed from the restraints oblige on them by conventional thought. around music contains exactly a a few(prenominal) of the available seamanes. Melody in its al roughly elementary good sense draws attention to a single line, which is a rather patriarchal way of perceiving music. Rhythm in which mattersoccur in era is in addition hold. Why, in spite of appearance a incident space of m eter, dope an event not happen at any point, its rhythmic aspects thus being freed from time in the more traditional sense? As henhouse puts it In a painting an image crapper go anywhere on the dismissvas. Why cant a rhythm do the same thing at heart the cloth of a gear up of music? detains revolutionary ideas stimulate take to more innovations. He is unremarkably ascribe with having invented bump music, music created under conditions that furnish certain of its split to the vagaries of the second base (Nicholls, 2007). Virgil Thomson notes that receive in composition is rather deal a kaleidoscope, and what kaleidoscopes and arabesques lack is urgency (Grant, 2001, p. 243). The music may not always suck in this quality, a condition that can in the end hinder its expression in string upently musical theater terms. But thither is a untested kind of musical aw atomic number 18ness, a vitality of thought and of imagination.henhouse has redefined the accurate co ncept of direction in music, since he has not been peculiarly interested in where events are going. Rather, he is more intrigued with the moment and with the possibilities of what can happen during that moment. detain has similarly thought ab out(p) musics purpose, deciding that actually on that point does not have to be any intent, that sounds alone can be the purpose. He says that a sound accomplishes nothing without it life would not last out the instant( Pritchett, 1996). His aesthetic that everything is music is important, for it opens countless possibilities. cages ideas have made a generation of composers rethink concepts that were taken too practically for granted or were ruled out of musical consideration by previous(prenominal) generations. These concepts have, in accompaniment, furthered music beyond its old boundaries. Many of cage ins plant are famous because of the revolutionary concepts that organise them. The composition for lightly that consists of four minutes, thirty-three seconds of silence, 4? 3? , is a show window in point. To dismiss the solve as a gimmick or as insignificant because it really is not music is to miss the point.Composers have pondered the silences in music in previous ages, but it took batting cage to realize that silence itself was an opportunity for a bonk make for and a complete experience. According to detain, silence is deciding in favor of sounds that are not intended. And batting cage feels that silence has philosophical overtones, for it strikes the foundations of the ego. 4? 33? is a difficult work, for there is so much to hearnothingand it is a memorable experience, for it shows a world of multiplicity, several(prenominal)thing that interests Cage far more than aspects of unity within a particular work (Pritchett, 1996).Because anything is assertable in Cages compositional process, some works are highly organized, while earlier(a)s contrive an outward motion picture of hit-or-miss an d unrelated orderings. Most of his earlyish pieces, among them the 5 Songs for Contralto (1938) and the Quartet for 12 Tom-Toms (1943), are carefully conceived and conventionally notated. harmony of Changes (1951) was created with the aid of the Chinese book of changes, I Ching, one of Cages favourite aids in the evolution of a work (Pritchett, 1996). In addition to his apologue approaches to the general aspects of composition, Cage utilizes fascinating cocks in some of hispieces.He has written compositions containing parts for brake drums. He has composed music for toy piano. Cage, in fact, has not jilted any possibility if that possibility has an ambitious sound. Thus, the amplified sound of water being swallowed, of a glass breaking or clinking, and of a balloon bursting are excellent sources, as good in their way as a piano or a trombone (Kostelanetz, 1991). Cages love of two conventional and unconventional sounds has made him see the motley traditional instruments a nd how they can be changed to produce a new result. superstar of these investigations resulted in the prepared piano, which consists of objects such as nails, bolts, pins, and other materials placed between the draw of a piano, creating a diversity of polar timbres. Henry Cowell had experimented with various possibilities of piano sonorities foregoing in the century, including playing on the within of the instrument, and Cage was undoubtedly influenced by some of Cowells discoveries. But in more or less respects, Cages is an original concept.As a result of his pioneering efforts, the prepared piano is for all practical purposes a new instrument, reminiscent of a Balinese gamelan orchestra (Kostelanetz, 1991). Another out-of-the-way effect occurs in The Wonderful leave of Eighteen Springs, a song for express and piano in which the pianist plays on the piano lid and on various other wooden parts of the instrument rather than on the keys. The piano, in other words, has many so und possibilities from which Cage has cognize a diversity of new and odd timbres (Pritchett, 1996). Cage has been criminate of being narrow- forefronted, of only working with novelties and current avant-garde fashions.This is untrue. Cage actually is an important figure whose mind is an open one and whose novelty-fashions in their ingrained implications are significant and even visionary. They are not fraudulent, nor are they aimed at the demolition of Western musical civilization, although Cage has been accused of that and of just about everything else by his critics. The occupation is just now that to the casual observer Cages music is undisciplined. But this is also false. In some of his works ascertain itself is the discipline, a mode that is used to produce about that which is not necessarily intended.The compositional premises stool one of Cages latest works, the Etudes Australes, is proof that there is a definite method hindquarters chance procedures and that the r esults can present as unified a full-page as if more conventional methods of organization had been utilise (Patterson, 2001). Cage reports that the pieces created the impression of in series(p) music to some attenders, and indeed the uncompromising aspects of the method of creation and the resulting combinations of pitches from that procedure would undoubtedly give an audience an impression of twelve-tone writing.Strictly speaking, of course, it is normally impossible to tell if a work is serial simply by hearing to it (Cage, 1966). Yet this association proves a point, for to defect the chance operations of Cage for serial procedures is to demonstrate that two different methods can produce similar aural results. For a serial composer, serial procedures provide the exercises to most of the compositional questions and to the continuity within a particular piece.For Cage, chance operations answer the compositional questions, and from these procedures a continuity of musical expr ession develops. One of Cages literary methods is a further ensample of the logical use of chance operations. In trying to find a epithet for a book of writings that in a typical Cage port contains a liberal sprinkling of awry(p)ities. Cage subjected the twenty-six letters of the alphabet to a chance operation with the help of the I Ching. The letter m was the winner, and the book was after entitled M.Although any letter would have worked as well, Cage noted that m was a good choice and particularly appropriate because it begins the names of many of his best-loved people and things, among them music, mushrooms, Modern practice of medicine, and Mao Tse-tung. It was an absurd method for choosing an absurd title for a book of absurdities Another aspect of Cages writing demonstrates more plus and visionary qualities of his music. serve for Meditation for disposed(p) Piano Solo (1944) is early Cage, and the cooking of the piano involves stove bolts and wood screws(Patterson, 200 1).This piece, deal 4? 33? , can be viewed initially and superficially as one eventa monolith. Within this monolithic experience is an inner world of relationships, of sounds and events that realise far beyond the two pitch classes that Cage employs. The philosophical concept behind a work such as this is simple why should a piece of music begin, develop itself in manifold ways, and prove itself by an infinite change that keeps an interest going in the work itself? Why should the variety not be of a different kind?A piece of music can simply suspend itself in time, although time itself is usually conceived as a terribly limiting artistic commodity. Pieces begin and pieces end. What about what is out front the beginning and after the ending? Time, itself a measured fragment of eternity, is always there on either side of an experience of any kind, and, in effect, what happens within the time of a work need not always make the time reach but rather faculty make it exist within a vacuum, within a world of monolithic hitherto many-faceted events. Cages work is an early example of what has become a new aspect of musical experience.Other composers began thinking about the possibilities of the monolith, and numerous examples have been written in the last quarter of a century. La Monte Young opus 1960 7 is a case in point. The work consists of two pitch classes, a B and an F-sharp (the relationship to Cage Prelude for Meditation is obvious), which the composer says should be held for a colossal time. In 1961 the work was played in in the raw York by a string trio, and the forty-five minute duration of that particular reading resulted in a whole world of fluctuating overtones for those who were willing to listen (Patterson, 2001).Experimental composers are not well as outrageous as their critics might think. Even a work that attempts by its chance procedures or other random methods of construction to be formless lock masters a form, which, in turn, expand s our conception of form. For example, if a composer writes some musical fragments on notecards, shuffles the cards, and accordingly plays the music in the order in which it appears, there will be many different orderings but always the same music, rearranged each time.If one writes a chance piece for ten players with ten instruments, there is a limitation in the fact that the performers are ten, that the instruments are ten, and that the efforts are winning place within an inescapable time span. A composer cannot, in other words, achieve complete freedom, complete formlessness, for that is an impossibility. What a composer can do is achieve a new musical result.References Cage, John. (1966). Silence Lectures and Writings. The MIT Press New Ed edition. Grant, Mark N. (2001).Maestros of the Pen A History of Classical Music review in America. Northeastern University Press. Kostelanetz, Richard. (1991). John Cage An Anthology. Da Capo Press. Nicholls, David. (2007). John Cage (Amer ican Composers). University of Illinois Press. Patterson, David W. (2001). John Cage Music, Philosophy, and Intention, 1933-1950 (Studies in Contemporary Music Andculture). Routledge 1 edition. Pritchett, James. (1996). The Music of John Cage (Music in the Twentieth Century). Cambridge University Press.