John Cage Essay

John Cage is a modern American composer who is probably the most controversial musician to ever live. Born in 1912 in Los Angeles, California, no one, not even Cage himself, thought he would become a composer. But he did have desires to create at a young age. He used these desires to later make some of the most revolutionary music of the century. But how did Cage begin writing music at all? What is so revolutionary about his music?

Cage was born into an Episcopalian family and when he was young planned to be a minister. His father was an eccentric inventor of items that seemed ridiculous and, frankly, useless. But Cage always admired him, and his father once told him, “If someone says you can’t, that shows you what to do.” (1) Cage describes his mother as a woman with “a sense of society” (1) but also goes onto say that she was “never happy”. She was a very critical, fussy woman, but his father said that she was always right. Cage took piano lessons as a boy and when he was old enough went to Pomona College. An incident that happened in his sophomore year completely changed his life. One day, he walked into the library and saw all the students there reading the same textbook. Cage decided to rebel and picked the first book written by an author whose name began with Z. He later received the highest grade in the entire class, and, convinced that the school wasn’t being run correctly, he quit college and went to Europe. It was there that his work as a musician truly began.

For the rest of his life, Cage created music. He took piano lessons again for a few years from several different composers, but gave up after awhile because he had no sense of harmony. It was at this point in his career that he was drawn to percussion instrumen...

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...nd was his nervous system operating and the lower pitched one was his blood circulating. The realization of the impossibility of silence led Cage to the composition of his most famous piece, 4’ 33”, in which the musician sits at the piano in silence, lifting and closing the lid ever so often while watching a timer. Cage said after his experience in the anechoic chamber, “Until I die there will be sounds. And they will continue following my death. One need not fear about the future of music.” (1)

Works Cited:

1. Cage, John. “John Cage: An Autobiographical Statement”. 1990. The John Cage website. April 2014. Web. http://johncage.org/autobiographical_statement.html 2. “The World book Encyclopedia”. World Book, Inc., 1991. Print. April 2014.

3. “John Cage Biography”. 2014. Biography Base website. April 2014. Web.

http://www.biographybase.com/biography/Cage_John.html