John Cage - Music Of Silence

The first part of this response is to try and identify why John Cage received so much criticism from lovers of traditional music and post war modernists. Cage adopts chance techniques in his compositions and this makes things go awry for him in regard to being referred to as a composer, most critics consider him more of a music philosopher than a composer. Especially after the 19-hour performance of vexations which sadly did not amuse many. The randomness of his compositions makes it hard for him to establish his authority as a composer.

Gabriel taught a number of prominent composers, who took all kinds of different approaches – a testament of Gabriel’s

John cage was an American composer, music theorist, writer, and artist. He was born in Los Angeles in 1912, studied for a short time at Pamona College, and then at UCLA. At that place, he realize that he music he wanted to make was radically different from the music of that time. That is the composition 4’33’’, which made Cage famous and well-known by the music and art area.

John Cage lived a very interesting, non-traditional life that allowed him to form his outside of the box philosophy on music that questions the very definition of music. After exploring many different careers in the art world, he decided to compose music and through a winding, tumultuous road, he rose to the top of the classical music world. His life greatly influenced his music. His study of Buddhism and working with the choreographies of Merce Cunningham allowed Cage to discover the other side of music, silence. Cage and his philosophies not only changed music for the better but also changed the path that all types of art for the good; without Cage’s philosophy on silence, musicians and composers would be doing their jobs differently.

Links from Fontana’s background can be seen to have influence upon the development of his practice. Fontana started his musical career in the 60’s as a composition student, attending the New School for Social Research in New York, studying both music and philosophy. It was here that Fontana became a student of John Cage’s ‘Experimental Composition’ course at the school.

John Cage is a controversial composer. Some may say he revolutionized music composition and changed music history of the 20th century, yet others do not even acknowledge his compositional contributions as music. I believe John Cage was a brilliant artist, and his works push the boundaries of both sound and music to create a genre of his own by using the elements of silence and chance. Through his compositional development, one can track his changing music philosophy as it grew from a limited notion of silence, to the enjoyment of the element of chance, to a redefined meaning of silence that reaches beyond the grasp of most innovators still today.

John Cage?s music was revolutionary. The music that he wrote or preferably invented was not always melodies or harmonies, in fact Cage pushed the boundaries of traditional music by eliminating harmony in a lot of his Sonata?s. The Sonata personifies his interest in the rhythm of the piece then in harmony. This was one of the first revolutionary concepts. Cage had quickly discovered that ?harmony was inhospitable to nonpitched sounds?(Page 86, 20/20).

Arnold Schoenberg believed that the developing harmonic language of the late nineteenth century had led to a musical crisis. He felt that tonality had been stretched to its absolute limits, and that what was to be said within its confines, was already best done by the great composers before him. Schoenberg believed that he existed within a lineage of composers, and therefore, was the successor to deliver the next big innovation in music. This idea of pushing music forward is not a novel one though; we have long observed similar acts of musical righteousness. Simply consider the first chorus in a symphony as in Beethoven’s Ninth, or a requiem text that is not in Latin as in Brahms’ Ein deutsches Requiem.

John Cage questioned all musical preconceptions inherited from the 19th century, and he flourished in an atmosphere of controversy. The teacher-composer Arnold Schoenberg once called him "not a composer, but an inventor—of genius." He received awards and grants; a few important music critics wrote perceptively and enthusiastically about his works. However, to most of the public and even to many musicians his compositions—especially the late ones—remain baffling and outrageous, an anarchic world of noise that

4 and 4' 33" by John Cage to be very interesting and enjoyable in a good way. In 4’ 33”, I felt that John Cage was trying to say that anything can be music, whether the music is coming from instruments, or even the nearly-quiet environment of a performance hall. Going along with this thought, I believe that 4' 33" is indeed music. 4' 33" is music that differs every place, time, and performance. It may not fit any certain category of music, but it is a sort of noise that is produced and then listened to by an audience. When it comes to chance music such as Cage’s Imaginary Landscape No. 4, I think that this type of music is an interesting idea. The fact that the composer does not have control of whatever noise happens, whether that be a radio or random background noise during a performance seems kind of scary, but also appealing at the same

In the words of Jewish Austrian composer and painter Arnold Schoenberg; or Schönberg, harmony was freed from “the tyranny of tonality”. Schoenberg's term is interesting in its suggestion that the tonal system exerts an overpowering pressure to conform. The carefully ordered hierarchal keys; with its singularity, central focus on each movement or work, and tonal centres that made up the tonality of “centuries–old harmonic basis of music” became of less importance and “had outlived its usefulness” as atonality; which is “a system without key” that is “deliberately avoided” gained popularity. This music utilizes several chromatic notes with the intention of hearing no tonal centers.

John Cage is not an outlier to this idea, yet his philosophy of music and outlook on the difference of music and sounds are very different than most composers today. For starters, “John Milton Cage Jr. was born in Los Angeles on September 5, 1912” (Nicholls 5). This fact may be insignificant at a face value, but it means that Cage grew up during World War I and World War II, and shortly right after the Romantic Period. He was blessed with talents of both music and academics, and saw his first symphony concert at the age of five which sparked his curiosity and awe for music (Nicholls 9). After graduating Los Angeles High School decorated as a valedictorian, Cage went on to pursue the further education in Pomona College in Claremont, California, but dropped out shortly after losing his interests (Nicholls 11). He then followed his curiosity in Europe, learning of all sorts of instruments and his passion towards composing was born (Nicholls 12). From childhood to adulthood, it is clear that John Cage had a late start to his composing career compared to composers such as Chopin, who was already a published composer by the age of eight (Michalowski and Samson 1). Through his later years, Cage developed an interest and idolized Arnold Schoenberg, the Austrian composer known for his innovations in atonality (Pritchett 1). Atonality refers to a style of music in which the piece

Imagine incessant unmelodious screaming accompanied by a tiny orchestra that seems to be playing out of tune. The sounds emitted by the performers, are, in a word, hideous. One cannot possibly stand five whole minutes of hearing a half-screaming banshee belch out what seems to be random notes. This cacophony is exactly what most of the audience at Schoenberg's Pierrot lunaire heard. Random, nonsensical clamor. In fact, the clamor is what most audiences heard at any number of performances of Schoenberg's work. Although Schoenberg’s musical compositions are excellent examples of contemporary art music within the music world, the audience thought differently, meeting the music with outcry and laughter, which ultimately led to Schoenberg’s exile from the world of music.

Postmodernism in music often follows characteristics that also adhere to other areas of postmodernism, like embracing the absence of a single defining structure or ideology. It is not seen as a specific style of music but rather music in the postmodern era. American composer John Milton Cage Jr, born on September 5, 1912 in Los Angeles and having died on August 12, 1992 in New York. Music for Piano, composed through the years 1952-1962, consists of 85 indeterminate compositions for piano. The works contained paper imperfections that were then turned into sounds using chance

Arnold Schoenberg was born on 13th September 1874 in Vienna. He started taking violin lessons at the age of 8. One year later he started composing music. He also took some counterpoint lessons but for the most part he was self-thought. He lost his father at the age of 15 so he had to provide for his family. He left school and got a job at a bank. At that time Vienna’s infrastructure was modernizing. Vienna became an industrial city and cultural life improved. Schoenberg could not afford the cultural venues because he was poor. He went to concerts and stood behind the fence so he could hear the music for free. Later he left the bank and started conducting and orchestrating