John Cage
John Cage
John Milton Cage Jr.was an American composer, music theorist, writer, and artist. A pioneer of indeterminacy in music, electroacoustic music, and non-standard use of musical instruments, Cage was one of the leading figures of the post-war avant-garde. Critics have lauded him as one of the most influential American composers of the 20th century. He was also instrumental in the development of modern dance, mostly through his association with choreographer Merce Cunningham, who was also Cage's romantic partner for most of...
NationalityAmerican
ProfessionComposer
Date of Birth5 September 1912
CountryUnited States of America
Out of the work comes the work.
One shouldn't go to the woods looking for something, but rather to see what is there.
Everyday is a beautiful day, Everything is pleasing
Art is sort of an experimental station in which one tries out living.
We are involved in a life that passes understanding and our highest business is our daily life.
One day when I was studying with Schoenberg, he pointed out the eraser on his pencil and said, 'This end is more important than the other.' After twenty years I learned to write directly in ink.
All God's religions ... have not been able to put mankind back together again.
We are living in a period in which many people have changed their mind about what the use of music is or could be for them. Something that doesn't speak or talk like a human being, that doesn't know its definition in the dictionary or its theory in the schools, that expresses itself simply by the fact of its vibrations. People paying attention to vibratory activity, not in reaction to a fixed ideal performance, but each time attentively to how it happens to be this time, not necessarily two times the same. A music that transports the listener to the moment where he is.
Percussion music is revolution. Sound and rhythm have too long been submissive to the restrictions of nineteenth century music. Today we are fighting for their emancipation. Tomorrow, with electronic music in our ears, we will hear freedom. At the present stage of revolution, a healthy lawlessness is warranted. Experiment must necessarily be carried on by hitting anything-tin pans, rice bowls, iron pipes-anything we can lay our hands on. Not only hitting, but rubbing, scraping, making sound in every possible way...What we can't do ourselves will be done by machines which we will invent.
An error is simply a failure to adjust immediately from a preconception to an actuality.
The responsibility of the artist consists in perfecting his work so that it may become attractively disinteresting.
There's no such thing as silence. Something is always happening that makes a sound.
The highest purpose is to have no purpose at all. This puts one in accord with nature, in her manner of operation.
The grand thing about the human mind is that it can turn its own tables and see meaninglessness as ultimate meaning.