John Cage

1912-1992

John Cage (left) with Lejaren Hiller

John Milton Cage, Jr. was born on Septmeber 5, 1912 in Los Angeles, California. His father was an amateur inventor and his mother was a housewife. Although neither of his parents attended college, they emphasized the importance of learning to Cage. Due to his father's work, Cage moved from his hom e to Detroit and Ann Arbor, Michigan, but had returned to Los Angeles by his adolescence. Cage demonstrated such a level of accomplishment that by the time he was twelve, he had already secured his own radio show and was performing piano over the airwaves. He finished his public schooling by graduating as valedictorian of his class from Los Angeles High School in 1928.

Cage enrolled at Pomona College, but after two years was disappointed in the formal structure of the education which he was receiving. He decided to work as an apprentice in Paris for Erno Goldfinger, but left after Goldfinger told him that he must completely devote his life to architecture to become successful at it. During his study with Goldfinger, Cage for the first time encountered the works and writings of the Dadaist, particularly Marcel Duchamp, with whom he would become considerably more familiar. A performance by American pianist John Kirkpatrick inspired him to compose his first piano pieces. He returned to the United States in 1931 after a brief stay in Spain.

Driving across the United States, Cage met a pianist named Richard Buhlig who expressed an interest in Cage's music, due to its unique twenty-five note scale that also employed serial techniques. After studying with Buhlig, Cage studied at the New School for Social Research with Henry Cowell. Cowell, noting the serial elements in Cages music suggested that he study with Adolph Weiss in order to prepare himself for study with Arnold Schoenberg. Cage began his studies with Schoenberg, but Schoenberg felt that Cage had no sense of harmony and after a time decided that Cage was no longer worth instructing. Even after Cage began to become successful writing compositions for films and percussion ensembles, Schoenberg refused to listen to any of the works.

Cage moved to Seattle in 1937 where he accepted a position at the Cornish school in Seattle, Washington. It was there that he began to develop the prepared piano after wanting to write for a percussion ensemble but being presented with only a piano. He also developed his friendship with lifetime collaborator, dancer Merce Cunningham. Cage returned to California in 1938 after being offered a position at Mills College in Oakland, California. His works during these two years, although more adventurous were still primarily rooted in the twelve-tone system of music.

In 1939, Cage unveiled his prepared piano with a composition entitled Bacchanale. It was during this same year that Cage experimented with electronic music, composing Imaginary Landscape No. 1, the first piece to use electronics and live performer, as well as being one of the first significant compositions to employ electronics. The instrumentation of the composition was a muted piano, cymbal, and variables speed turntables, on which various sounds had been recorded.

Cage's work began to recieve regonition, and after brief stays in San Francisco and Chicago, Cage moved to New York, which became his permanent place of residence for the rest of his life. During the next several years Cage wrote numerous dance scores, including Credo in Us and The Seasons. He toured with Merce Cunningham's dance company and composed primarily for dance over the next ten years. In 1949, he received a Guggenheim Feloowship to study in Paris for a year. It was not until 1950, however, when Cage discovered the I Ching, or Chinese book of changes that his musical output significantly changed.

His discovery of the chance in this book forced Cage to reconsider his composition aethetic. After much thought and experimentation, Cage began to compose pieces employing elements of chance. Music of Changes, written in 1951, which used the flipping of coins to determine pitch, rhythm, dynamics, and duration. His Imaginary Landscape No. 4 employed the tuning of twelve radios to certain frequencies. The chance element lies in the location of the performance: for each different city there will be different frequencies that will contain sound, voices, music, or static. Cage's most recognized I Ching based composition, however, is 4'33", composed in 1952.

In 4'33", the performer stands silently on stage while the audience is forced to listen to either the sounds which they or external forces produce or the silence itself. Almost as well known and written during the same year is Water Music in which a performer pour one pot of water in to another. Both pieces created immediate controversy and critics agianst Cage's compositional styles and methods. John Cage immediately became a national figure in contemporary music.

John Cage's continued interest in electronic music was realized in his first tape work, also written in 1952. Cage, was offered a research stipend to generate electronic tape music. Cage immediately contacted Louis and Bebe Barron, who had established the first electronic music facility in New York. Cage involved Earle Brown, Morton Feldman, and David Tudor to generate electronic pieces. Cage's resulting work was Williams Mix, which employed the use of 42 phonograph recordings, which were recorded onto tape and spliced into small segments. The tape segments were then rearranged in an order determined by using the I Ching.

In 1955, Cage was offered a position at the New School for Social Research in New York, where his early compositonal studies began. His next significant electronic piece Fontana Mix for soprano and tape was completed in 1958. He left the New School for Social Research in 1960 to take a one year position at Wesleyan University. This was followed by a long hiatus from academic positions, and marked some of Cage's most prolific years as a composer. Many of his Variations were written during his abscence in a professorship, as was his Atlas Eclipticalis for orchestra.

Cage took a position as Composer-in-Residence at the University of Cincinnati in 1967. This was followed by a position as a professor at the Center for Advanced Studies atthe University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. During his two years at the University of Illinois, he was elected to the National Institute of Arts and Letters. It was also during his stay that he composed, along with Lejaren A. Hiller, Jr., HPSCHD for seven harpsichords, fifty one computer generated tapes, films, slides, and lights. It was by far the most ambitious electronic and live work in music to that point.

Cage's departure from Illinois was followed by recognition by almost every existing music organization for his contribution to music. The awards he received varied from an election to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences to the highest award for art and culture given by the French goverment, the Commandeur de l'Ordre des Arts et des Lettres. He continued composing electronic works, such as Roaratorio, written in 1979, and a series of Europeras, written from 1987 to 1991. Throughout his later years, he not only remained active as a composer, but also as advocate of new and electronic music. John Cage died on August 12, 1992.