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Cage's philosophy of music
John cage musical style and composition
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John Cage and Revolutionary Music
An Avant-garde is someone who is ahead of his time. He is a person who is willing to cross new boundaries and to try new things. The meaning of an Avant-garde is a group or an individual who is active in the invention and application of new techniques in a given field. Who else could this definition fit better than John Cage himself? He himself believed that he was someone who wanted to invent new music. ?Cage considered himself a musical inventor? (Page 83, 20/20). John Cage?s art or experiment as you might see it, is definitely a great achievement is the field of music. His Sonata No 5 for prepared piano, which was written in 1948, was one of the greatest music he ever wrote.
Music, in most of the dictionaries is defined as sound that has rhythm and melody or harmony. Rhythm. When we listen to music we use this term quite often. In almost all the songs we appreciate we would attach the word Rhythm to it. Rhythm is defined as a regular repetition of a beat. It is also defined as the time element of music. When we hear John Cage?s Sonata No 5, we can clearly hear a repetition of sound. So we hear a rhythm.
Melody on the other hand is defined as sound in a pleasant order and arrangement or also a sequence of single tones organized rhythmically. It is very evident that Sonata No 5 is melodic since it is organized rhythmically. Therefore it definitely fits the technical definition of music. The surprising part of the first performance of such a relative new sound at the time was that when the audience first heard the Sonata they heard ?sounds of profound beauty? and also ?noises rich in sound? (Page 87,20/20). Which again proves that not only is the Sonata No 5 music, but it is good music...
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...elieved that people had to listen to their environment. He wanted music to be personal to each person. He wrote music for whoever wanted to here it. He is an Avant-garde and his motive was to bring new music and different kinds of sounds to our ears. John cage said "Experiment must necessarily be carried on by hitting anything -- tin pans, rice bowls, iron pipes -- anything we can lay our hands on . . . We must explore the materials of music." He is out there to explore to invent and to make us listen. It is truly a matter of opinion for a person to consider some form of sound as music, but overall most of the critics agree, John cage was a revolutionary and he revolutionized the field of music. As William Duckworth puts it ?a person so influential that he changed forever the way we write, hear, and understand music? (Page 81, 20/20).
Oxford’s dictionary defines music: as vocal or instrumental sounds or both, combined in such a way as to produce beauty of form, harmony, and expression of emotion. Music, as a form of expression and communication, comes in many forms and styles: classical, folk, country, rock, and electronic
Our heart and souls at all times sense rejuvenated and lively with every beat of finest music we hear. Music comes in a variety of diverse forms which are admired and renowned for their own unique styles. Classical music is one of the breeds of musical forms that exist since many years with its visible significance in the music industry. Classical music is a part of our globe from almost 1000 years and inspires millions of people with its liveliness and simplicity.
John Cage took a simple approach to music. While Cage believed that music can merely be found anywhere and within any sound, traditionally, music remains described as the art of arranging tones or sounds in a way that produces a composition having unity and continuity (Merriam-Webster). John Cage had a Zen Buddhism philosophy of music, meaning music is everywhere and anything can be interpreted as such (House of Solitude). However, I believe music is only the intentional arrangement of sounds.
Avant Garde is unusual and experimental art, styles, ideas, etc… Picasso’s Cubism is a good example of this. The Italian Renaissance was probably the single most avant-garde time in the history of painting and sculpture. Nudity became acceptable and recognized as a noble type of art. Impressionism also played a large role in Avant Garde. Suddenly colors became unorthodoxed, for example, grass could be red, the sky could be brown, People could be blue, etc… In the early 20th century Fauvism, the style of les Fauves (French for "the wild beasts"), a loose group of early twentieth-century Modern artists whose works emphasized painterly qualities
Rhythm is the pattern of music. It is one of the key characteristics to define music as what it is. Rhythm is valuable, and in both Cuban and West-African music, it is one of the most crucial parts of their music. Cuban music can be separated into many different sub-categories, one of them being the Son Cubano, a type of music that originated in Cuba, and is heavily influenced by African music. Son music has very few characteristics that fully developed by itself; the music has strong hints of Spanish guitar, melody, monophony and lyrical translation with African percussion and rhythms, all merged together to show that the music had developed traits that it had borrowed from other cultures, mainly Africa. This clearly demonstrates the distinct similarities between these two nations, and how one adapted a part of the others music. Another interrelation is how both culture's music is quite simple; no complex harmonies or complicated reading of music, but with decidedly trickier rhythms. In West-Cuban music, they have an element called polyrhythm, which means multiple or opposing rhythmic patterns played at the same time. Usually, there are multiple drummers to play the separate parts, so in the end it c...
...died hands buffet and slap His head and a scorner spits in His Face. The slapping hands are frozen in mid-air and thus trigger associations with regard to noise. This association with noise is also shown in the scorner’s spit and how it suddenly stops before it reaches Christ’s halo: In order to perceive a sound in its reality, we require the space of silence, not of carnival. Glasmeier believes that this is precisely what John Cage does in 4’33’’. There is a suggestion of noise in Cage’s work just like in Angelico’s. The performer of 4’33’’ approaches the instrument three times, giving the instrument the possibility of noise without the reality of that noise: the viewer becomes the performer, imagining how that noise may be articulated. This is just like how a blank sheet of music still embodies music without ever being played; it triggers associations with sound.
Avant-garde is a term referred to works or concepts that are experimental and 'cutting-edge' concepts (Avant-garde:2014). In the purpose of this study, Cezanné was part of early 20th-century art world’s avant-garde known as Impressionism. Clement Greenberg (1909: 755), identifies Kant as the first philosopher to describe Modernism as a self-critical tendency as he was the first to criticize criticism in itself. A modernist is said to be seen as a kind of critic, who criticizes according to a specific set of values and ideas about the development of art, thus a modernist is not necessarily seen as a kind of artist (Harrison 1996:147).According to Greenberg, Modernism self-criticizes itself differently when compared to the Enlightenment as the Enlightenment criticizes from the outside whereas Modernism does so from the inside (Greenberg 1909:755).
Because of human intention, people have music. So I think music should be related to human intention. The next thing is about human perception. The interesting thing of music 's origin is that there is no clear record to tell the public when and how people have music. The time period, about 60,000 and 30,000 years ago, is an indecisive period and it only came from speculation. So maybe music emerged in different ways in different places, just as now in the world every country or even every city have its own musical cultures. In this perspective, music is really subjective since it is inescapable tied to culture and the experience of the audience. Hence, music is all about personal opinion, which is corresponding to perception. Even though music does have some basic component, everyone has different opinion on music. The definition of music should satisfies the subjective of music. "To be successful, a definition of music must balance these various stories, defining music in terms of its traditions"(Davis 552). The HIP approach solve this difficulty by reserving the subjective of music and balance various musical cultures and traditions in the world. This definition lets the audience judge if they think the sound belongs to music. Therefore, a successful definition of music should be related to human perception since only in this way can balance the various cultures. From the analysis
The first thing I will talk about is the type of music he is know for which gave him that name. Most people listen to the type of music he composed but next to none know who or how it was composed. There seems to be an abundance of music fans who know little or nothing about the origin of their music. By discussing what he has accomplished it will explain why he is considered to be so important to his type of music.
Edgard was classed as a pioneer of the avant-garde movement in music; he experimented with electronic music and some highly original experimentation in the uses and organization of rhythm. These works for which he is best known are those in which he completely rejects traditional melody and harmony, but instead building these compositions from blocks of sounds, relying on tone color, texture and rhythm. (Janus 2008)
Music is far more than the sum of its parts. It can be thought of in a highly mathematical sense, which leaves one in awe of the seemingly endless combinations of rhythm, tone and intervals that a good musician can produce. Admiring music in this way is a lot like admiring an intricate snowflake, or shapes in the clouds; it's beautiful, but at the same time very scientific, based on patterns. All of the aforementioned qualities of music have one thing in common: they can be defined with numeric, specific values. However, the greatest aspect of music lies elsewhere, and cannot be specifically defined with words. It is the reaction that each individual has when they are confronted with their favorite (or least favorite) kind of music.
We begin with rhythm because it is basic to all music. Rhythm refers to the interrelationship between music and time. Music even in its simplest form, exists in time. Whether we are speaking of Beethoven's Ninth Symphony or just one note, there is a beginning a duration. and an ending.Although we often compare music and art, they are dissimilar in at least this one respect. When you look at a painting, your eve sees it all at once. Music is more like dance. plays, books, movies, and even baseball games. All of these develop through time.' We cannot listen to Beethoven's Ninth Symphony. read War and Peace, or watch the seventh game of the World Series in an instant. We must allow each to unfold over its own appropriate period of time. Furthermore. each has an internal pace of activity. with moments of exciting activity alternating with moments in which the action subsides.
What does music mean to you? Music is something that has been around for many years. It started out as just some drums and a few instruments, but has changed a lot over time. The dictionary defines music as “an art of sound in time that expresses ideas and emotions in significant forms through the elements of rhythm, melody, harmony, and color.” When I think of music I think of it has a story combined with instrumental sounds. Over the years, it has changed so much, some for the good and the bad. There are many different types of music and different emotions it will bring.
The following week, at a strategic point in a discussion on Cage's works and ideas, we listened as a class to the ambient sounds surrounding us in the room. As always, the variety and richness of these sounds was surprising. I asked them: "Is this music?" Most said no. I then handed out photocopies of my score discussed above and posed my question again. At this point, there was some discussion: now that there was musical intent in my creating a piece, about one third of the room felt that these sounds were in fact "music". Finally, we recreated the ambient sounds I recorded by "performing" the piece as a class. Dividing the parts up as one would for a choir, we assigned some students as the "chair-squeakers", some as the "sighers", some as the "inhalers", and one (who had been the student who had clicked his mechanical pencil during the actual dictation) as the "pencil-clicker".
Avant-garde mainly refers to a movement of artists and thinkers that oppose mainstream cultural values. This usually leads to an instantaneous rejection by the majority of society and a possible late recognition. It brings new ideas that society find hard to absorb. As described in his article “the Avant-garde, rarely love at first sight,” New York Times reporter, Margo Jefferson, new taste is rejected at first: “It may be that the viewer is a philistine or the critic a fraud. But it also may be that the brush with an unfamiliar theatrical form was too brief and too unexpected. Experimental theater, after all, is an acquired taste - like aged cheese or raw fish. It is an experience that needs some effort, some study and some time.” (Jefferson)