Originally trained as an abstract painter, Cage abandoned the medium in favor of composition, which he studied with Henry Cowell and Arnold Schoenberg. In the 1940s, becoming interested in expanding the range of percussive instruments, he developed the "prepared piano", composing works for a piano with various objects placed between the strings. After studying Zen Buddhism, Cage began to work toward a new theory of composition, focusing on removing intention and personal taste, with attention paid to the process and the element of chance. Regarding silence on equal terms as structured sound and noise, in 1952 Cage produced 4'33", a composition in which no sound is made. Cage was a strong influence and a collaborator with many visual artists.
Did scholarly research into the science of fungology (the study of mushrooms and other fungi).
His most (in)famous composition was 4 33", consisting of musicans seated in front of their instruments without touching them for three movements, totaling four minutes and thirty three seconds. The sheet music simply reads "TACIT" (silent) for each movement.
Once performed one of his pieces on "Ive Got a Secret," using among other items a grand piano, a duck call, a toaster, a transistor radio, and a bathtub.
Biography in: "The Scribner Encyclopedia of American Lives". Volume 3, 1991-1993, pages 89-91. New York: Charles Scribners Sons, 2001.
Life partner of dancer/choreographer Merce Cunningham for fifty years, from 1942 until Cages death in 1992.
Inducted into the Percussive Arts Society Hall of Fame in 1982.
I do the cooking, and Merce does the dishes. [in 1989, when asked,publicly for the first time about the "nature of his relationship" with,choreographer Merce Cunningham, who was also his frequent professional,collaborator.
There is poetry as soon as we realize that we possess nothing.
Freedom from likes and dislikes, the sudden sense of identification, the spirit of comedy.
All great art is a form of complaint,Art is sort of an experimental station in which one tries out living,What is the purpose of writing music? One is, of course, not dealing with purposes but dealing with sounds. Or the answer must take the form of a paradox: a purposeful purposeless or a purposeless play. This play, however, is an affirmation of life--not an attempt to bring order out of chaos nor to suggest improvements in creation, but simply a way of waking up to the very life we’re living, which is so excellent once one gets one’s mind and one’s desires out of its way and lets it act of its own accord.
If you develop an ear for sounds that are musical it is like developing an ego. You begin to refuse sounds that are not musical and that way cut yourself off from a good deal of experience.
The emotions - love, mirth, the heroic, wonder, tranquility, fear, anger, sorrow, disgust - are in the audience.
Remove God from the world of ideas. Remove government, politics from society. Keep sex, humor, utilities. Let private property go.
Value judgments are destructive to our proper business, which is curiosity and awareness.
Combine nursing homes with nursery schools. Bring very old and very young together: they interest one another.
If my work is accepted, I must move on to the point where it is not.
We, the garden of technology. We, undecidable.
Computer mistake in grade-giving resulted in academic failure of several brilliant students. After some years the mistake was discovered. Letter was sent to each student inviting him to resume his studies. Each replied he was getting along very well without education.
College: two hundred people reading the same book. An obvious mistake. Two hundred people can read two hundred books.
To accept whatever comes regardless of the consequences is to be unafraid.
An error is simply a failure to adjust immediately from a preconception to an actuality.
To accept whatever comes regardless of the consequences is to be unafraid.
An error is simply a failure to adjust immediately from a preconception to an actuality.
Ideas are one thing and what happens is another.
We are involved in a life that passes understanding: our highest business is our daily life.
It is not irritating to be where one is. It is only irritating to think one would like to be somewhere else.
We are involved in a life that passes understanding and our highest business is our daily life.
There is no such thing as an empty space or an empty time. There is always something to see, something to hear. In fact, try as we may to make a silence, we cannot.
When we separate music from life we get art.
I have nothing to say, I am saying it, and that is poetry. .
