preview

John Cages Research Paper

Decent Essays
The music of John Cage is highly criticized, yet highly revered within the same societal realm. The question that has yet to be answered, even after fifty plus years, is John Cages music really “music” or is it just noise? The dictionary definition of music is the following: “vocal or instrumental sounds (or both) combined in such a way as to produce beauty of form, harmony, and expression of emotion.” My personal version of the definition of music is a variant of the definition listed above. I believe that music is the combination of vocal, instrumental sounds, or silence (or all the above) produced in a way to express a feeling or emotion. Based on my own personal definition of music, I do consider John Cages pieces to be music.
A question
…show more content…
it is my opinion that this John Cage piece is considered music. John Cage talks about how all you need for noise to be music is for there to be sound created in some form and fashion and for the sound to create rhythmic patterns. I agree with him in that sense. Music is simply different sounds combined in different rhythms. However, simply because my definition of music similarly matches with John Cage’s definition doesn’t mean that the listener must modify their definition, because in any definition of music that a person creates they cannot argue the fact that music is varying sounds combined with rhythm. But John Cage music isn’t simply about the music itself, but he argues that it’s also about the performance. Each time a piece is performed the audience will be different, the performer may be feeling different, and therefore, the piece will be different. For “Water Walk” specifically, it doesn’t include any visual effects nor would they be necessary for the performance. There is a visual stimulant when watching him start a new contraption to create each sound, however it is not necessary for those visuals to be seen by the audience to listen to the
Get Access