John Milton Cage Jr.: The Most Influential American Writer

As the son of a percussionist for CBS radio’s Raymond Scott Quintet, Williams learned to love music early on in life. Early in his life, Williams moved from New York to California (to Los Angeles) at the age of 16 (in 1948). He started out as a young pianist, then as the leader of his own jazz band. When he was age 15 he decided that he was going to learn to play the concert piano, and by the time he was 19, he had begun to create his own musical masterpiece- solely from a piano sonata.

Milton Babbitt and John Cage were both composers who played pivotal roles in the post-World War II Avant Garde music scene and in the pioneering of electronic music. Both composers found their roots and were greatly influenced by German-Jewish composer Arnold Schoenberg, however they both adopted different viewpoints on the relationship between a composer and their audience . Babbitt believed that a composer or creator did not have an obligation to please his or her audience, and that his pieces were intended mostly for professionals capable of understanding the context and intention of his music. Cage on the other hand granted his audience more power and influence, believing that music was a platform on which audiences could utilize their creativity to adopt new ways of perceiving and being aware of the world around them. These stances, as well as the different techniques and methodologies of the composers pitted them on somewhat of a spectrum, with Babbitt and his systematic, modernist ideas that were largely based in the music schools of academic institutions on one side and Cage, with his uncontrollable, radical combinations of Avant Garde sounds on the other side. These ideas on audience construction and relations were also visible in rock music of the 1960’s, particularly in compositions of artists such as Jimi Hendrix and Bob Dylan.

John spent most of his 89 years at his home studio in Glacier Park. Every year when the

Felsenfeld takes his readers on a journey from being an uninspired teenager, into the world of an adult “rebel” composer. Although Daniel was in piano lessons at a young age, he just couldn’t seem to spark an interest in the classical music that was being put in front of him. He continued the lessons through high school, and only had enough skill to make minimal money in piano bars and orchestra pits. Daniel regularly hung out with a friend, Mike, whose house he would go

As Alex Ross describes, “Cage love[s] noise” (366). This should be why he decided to alter his piano in a “conceptually violent” and unusual way for Sonatas and Interludes. Though, Cage’s aim was not pure violence, as we are pleased by the “soft sounds” instead of being “battered by some unholy racket” (Ross, 366). I

“ He continued his music lessons after high school graduation, in 1921 he went to France to study at the American Conservatory in

Shortly after, he moved to Haig Point, North Carolina to live with his mother's father, the Reverend Walter Blaire. Walter Blaire would later on be a significant influence on Coltrane's music and spirituality. Coltrane's father, a tailor, served to be a source of Coltrane's interest in music through his fathers ability to play the clarinet, violin, and various other instruments. Furthermore, Coltrane's mother studied music. Both of Coltrane's grandfathers were ministers; and through their worship services, Coltrane began to build his roots. John's first encounters with music were through his father who played various instruments such as the violin, clarinet and ukulele. Other early influences included the religious music and preaching at his grandfather's community church. In 1938, his grandfather died and soon after, so did his father. At this time, Coltrane listened to the radio, which provided him with music by artists that would later become influences for his own music. These artists included Woody Herman, Lester Young, Johnny Hodges and Artie Shaw. At the age of 15, Coltrane began playing and studying the E-flat alto horn, the clarinet, and the saxophone at William Penn High School Orchestra, while listening to such artists as Woody Herman, Lester Young, and Thelonious Monk. It was in high school when John had his first girlfriend. John's friend Franklin was interested in one girl, but John stole her away with his

Barry Jenkins’s 2016 film, Moonlight, is a work that is characterized by its silences, both in what is unsaid, as well as the unresolved nature of many of its central tensions. In the film, silence functions to emphasize the interiority of the film’s subject, and to make the audience aware of itself. Such strategic use of absence recalls John Cage's groundbreaking composition, 4'33; a work that is distinguished by its lack of any audible musical accompaniment. For many, the piece is reflective of Cage's sexual identity as a gay man; the silence functioning as a metaphor for the “closet” (Katz 241). The scholar Jonathan Katz has pushed against such a totalizing reading of Cage's oeuvre, by noting that silence was part of his larger aesthetic and religious practices, and thusly cannot be considered as simply an aural manifestation of the closet (242). Katz argues that, "Silence was much more than conventionally unmusical; it provided a route toward an active challenge of the assumptions and prejudices that gave rise to homophobic oppression in the first place. For Cage, silence was an ideal form of resistance, carefully attuned to the requirements of the cold war consensus, at least in its originary social-historical context." (241).

He got into music at an early age and taught himself how to play the piano, guitar, and drums. Biography.com states that even from a young age he “always tried to be flashy and as noisy as he could”

The exploration of the timbral possibilities of the piano as a percussive instrument would be developed later in the 20th century by composers such as John Cage, for example, in his works for prepared piano in the 1940s.

"I think there 's just one kind of folks. Folks" (Lee 304). Harper Lee is one of America 's most famous and beloved writers of her time. She has inspired people with her unique down-to-earth writing voice and her presentation of the rawness of people and life in general. Because of Harper Lee, America has learned to appreciate the differences in others from ourselves because "you never really understand a person until you consider things from his point of view" (Lee 39).

The prolific Canadian pianist, Glenn Gould, was immersed in music early on in his life. Even before Gould’s birth his mother, a musician herself, played him music during her pregnancy. When he was still an infant he was known to hum along to music and wiggle his fingers in apparent chord patterns, leading a doctor to say he would end up ”either a physician or a pianist”(Ostwald 40). When Glen was three his mother realized that he possessed tremendous musical talent, including absolute pitch as well as the ability to read staff music notation. Gould was taken to his first live musical performance, a concert by pianist Josef Hofmann. As Gould described the experience in a 1959 CBC Radio Broadcast: “...it was a staggering impression. The only thing I can really remember is that, when I was being brought him in a car, I was in that wonderful state of half-awakeness in which you hear all sorts of incredible sounds going through your mind. They were all orchestral sounds, but I was playing them all, and suddenly I was Hofmann. I was enchanted”. This performance clearly had a lasting impression and led him to study at the Royal Conservatory of Music in Toronto at age 10. While there he studied music theory, organ, and piano.

His main interest, though, was with rhythm. He eventually got accepted into the organization, Groupe de Recherches de Musique Concrète, that studied electronic music . The architectural studio and the organization both played large influences on his works.

With his first piano lessons, his teachers discovered his unusual talent of ‘playing out of the boundaries.’ After his dream, becoming a piano virtuoso sink, he leaned more on to his composing skills.

He was inspired by his father to explore different musical instruments, Paul initiated his lifelong love affair with music as a young kid growing up in Liverpool. Although he took proper music lessons as a kid, he found it easier to learn by ear, teaching himself the Spanish guitar, piano and trumpet. The teenaged musician met John Lennon in 1957 at a church festival where