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
So somebody has talent? So what? Dime a dozen. And we're overpopulated. Actually we have more food than we have people and more art. We've gotten to the point of burning food. When will we begin to burn our art?
There are some good people in it, but the orchestra as a whole is equivalent to a gang bent on destruction.
Some people take music too seriously, and some don't take it seriously enough, others take it just right...
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.
Which is more musical, a truck passing by a factory or a truck passing by a music school? Are the people inside the school musical and the ones outside unmusical? What if the ones inside can't hear very well, would that change my question?
What I'm proposing, to myself and other people, is what I often call the tourist attitude - that you act as though you've never been there before. So that you're not supposed to know anything about it. If you really get down to brass tacks, we have never been anywhere before.
People who aren't artists often feel that artists are inspired. But if you work at your art you don't have time to be inspired.
I have nothing to say, I am saying it, and that is poetry.
Food, one assumes, provides nourishment: but Americans eat it fully aware that small amounts of poison have been added to improve its appearance and delay its putrefaction
I have nothing to say And I am saying it And that is poetry
We are simple-minded enough to think that if we were saying something we would use words. We are rather doing something. The meaning of what we do is determined by each one who sees and hears it.
Beware of losing what isn't in your head.
I needed another basis for musical structure. This I found in sound's duration parameter, sound's only parameter which is present even when no sound is intended.
As McLuhan says, everything happens at once.