In Cage’s 4′33″, the audience felt cheated by having to listen to no composed sounds from the performer.
What two composers influenced John Cage?
His teachers included Henry Cowell (1933) and Arnold Schoenberg (1933—35), both known for their radical innovations in music, but Cage’s major influences lay in various East and South Asian cultures.
Who was John Cage’s mentor?
Henry Cowell, the innovative California composer who would later become Cage’s first important mentor and champion, gave a recital at Pomona, hitting the keyboard with his fists and elbows and directly plucking the piano’s strings.
What silence taught John Cage the story of 4 33?
One way of looking at it is that 4′ 33″ represents Cage’s profession of his faith in silence. While Cage may have deemphasized 4′ 33″ as a work in itself, what he constantly wrote and spoke about was the importance of the silence to which he had been introduced through time structures.
What is the longest silent song?
4′33″, musical composition by John Cage created in 1952 and first performed on August 29 of that year. It quickly became one of the most controversial musical works of the 20th century because it consisted of silence or, more precisely, ambient sound—what Cage called “the absence of intended sounds.”
Who called 4 33 one of the most intense listening experiences you can have?
Tudor called it ‘one of the most intense listening experiences you can have’.
What is John Cage’s most famous piece?
Among Cage’s best-known works are 4′33″ (Four Minutes and Thirty-three Seconds, 1952), a piece in which the performer or performers remain utterly silent onstage for that amount of time (although the amount of time is left to the determination of the performer); Imaginary Landscape No.
What is John Cage’s philosophy?
In a 1957 lecture, Experimental Music, he described music as “a purposeless play” which 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”.
How long were John Cage and Merce Cunningham together?
They crossed paths again in New York in 1942 and Cage invited Cunningham, who was then a member of the Martha Graham Dance Company, to work on a project. Their collaboration turned into a life-long creative and romantic partnership, and they staged over fifty dance works together before Cage’s death in 1992.
What did John Cage do to the piano?
He wedged bolts and pieces of weather stripping between the strings of the piano, muting the tone and creating more complex, inharmonic timbres. After this discovery, “I wrote theBacchanale quickly,” Cage recalled, “and with the excitement continual discovery provided.”