The Cambridge Companion to John CageDavid Nicholls John Cage (1912-1992) was without doubt one of the most important and influential figures in twentieth-century music. Pupil of Schoenberg, Henry Cowell, Marcel Duchamp, and Daisetz Teitaro Suzuki, among others, he spent much of his career in pursuit of an unusual goal: 'giving up control so that sounds can be sounds', as he put it. This book celebrates the richness and diversity of Cage's achievements - the development of the prepared piano and of the percussion orchestra, the adoption of chance and of indeterminacy, the employment of electronic resources and of graphic notation, and the questioning of the most fundamental tenets of Western art music. Besides composing around 300 works, he was also a prolific performer, writer, poet, and visual artist. Written by a team of experts, this Companion discusses Cage's background, his work, and its performance and reception, providing in sum a fully rounded portrait of a fascinating figure. |
Contents
Cage and America | 3 |
Cage and Europe | 20 |
Cage and Asia history and sources | 41 |
Sounds words images | 61 |
Music I to the late 1940s | 63 |
Words and writings | 85 |
Towards infinity Cage in the 1950s and 1960s | 100 |
Visual art | 109 |
Cages collaborations | 151 |
Cage and Tudor | 169 |
Cage and high modernism | 186 |
Music and society | 214 |
Cage and postmodernism | 227 |
No escape from heaven John Cage as father figure | 242 |
Endnotes | 261 |
| 268 | |
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American artistic Bauhaus Black Mountain Black Mountain College Boulez Cage wrote Cage's Cage's aesthetic Cage's music Cambridge Companion cells chance operations Ching clef collaboration composer's composers composition concert consists Coomaraswamy created Crown Point Press Darmstadt David Tudor Duchamp duration early Erik Satie Etudes Europeras example four gamut harmony Henry Cowell hexagrams HPSCHD Imaginary Landscape indeterminacy influence instruments John Cage Kostelanetz 1988 later lectures Lou Harrison macrostructure Marcel Duchamp materials measures Merce Cunningham mesostic method motives move Music of Changes Nattiez notation notes orchestra percussion performance phrase pianist Piano Solo pieces Pierre Boulez pitch played Player postmodernism prepared piano prints Pritchett 1993 radio rehearsal letters result Retallack 1996 retrograde rhythm rhythmic structure Ryoanji Satie Schoenberg score sense silence Sonatas and Interludes sources String Quartet Suzuki techniques texts third movement Thoreau time-bracket tion tradition units Variations Virgil Thomson Winter Music writings York