Much of this early music is quiet, delicate, full of silences. He decided that silence was the opposite coexistent of sound and determined that of the four characteristics of sound-pitch, timbre, loudness, and duration-only duration was also characteristic of silence so he abandoned harmonic structure and began to use a rhythmic structure based on the duration of segments of time. Finding Schoenberg's use of tonality as a structural principle inappropriate for percussion music, Cage sought a workable method. He started experimenting with percussion ensembles, discovering or adapting instruments as he went along. In 1934 he returned to Los Angeles and was accepted as a pupil by Schoenberg himself.ĭuring the years with Schoenberg, Cage developed three new interests: percussive music, silence, and dance. In 1933 Cage went to New York City to study with a former pupil of Schoenberg, and also took Henry Cowell's classes. ![]() In a musical world then divided between the serialism of Schoenberg and the neoclassicism of Igor Stravinsky, Cage found himself in the Schoenberg camp. His first composition teacher was pianist Richard Bühlig, a noted interpreter of Schoenberg. After two years at Pomona College, he spent a year and a half inĮurope, trying his hand at poetry, painting, and architecture, as well as music.Ĭage dedicated himself to music shortly after returning to the United States in 1931. One can find roots of Cage's experiments with "chance" and "indeterminacy" in the work of such French Dadaists as painters Marcel Duchamp and Max Ernst and the surrealist poet André Breton in the early part of the 20th century, when quantum theory and the theory of relativity in physics were giving rise to new ways of conceiving space, time, and causality.Ĭage was born in Los Angeles, California, on September 5, 1912, the son of John Milton Cage, an inventor and electrical engineer. In addition, the manner of nature's operation appears to change according to scientific advances. To Cage, "everything we do is music." He believed that the function of art is to imitate nature's manner of operation, and to this end he tried to make music that resembles forms of organic growth-taking into account ugliness, chaos, and accidents, as well as beauty, order, and predictability. 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 cannot even qualify as music. 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. ![]() John Cage questioned all musical preconceptions inherited from the 19th century, and he flourished in an atmosphere of controversy.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
Details
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |