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Born in Los Angeles, he attended Pomona College in Claremont, and later
studied piano with F. Dillon in Los Angeles and with L. Lévy in Paris.
Back in America, his first teacher of composition was Richard Buhling. In
1933–34 he studied with Henry Cowell and Adolph Weiss in New York and
subsequently for two years with Schönberg in Los Angeles. In 1936 he
moved to Seattle to be composer-accompanist for dance classes at the
Cornish School. He organized several percussion groups there. In 1941–42
he gave courses in new music at the Chicago Institute of Design. In 1943
he moved to New York, where he wrote music for the modern dancer Merce
Cunningham, eventually becoming his company’s music director. In the
late 1940s Cage began a study of Zen Buddhism with Daisetz T. Suzuki, and
started collaboration with the painter Robert Rauschenberg and the pianist
David Tudor. The group of young composers working closely with Cage in the
1950s included Morton Feldman, Christian Wolff and Earle Brown. In
1948–52 he lectured at Black Mountain College, and in 1956–60 at the
New School of Music in New York. In 1958, at the International Darmstadt
courses, he outlined his ideas of music based on chance procedures. From
1960 onwards, he was active as an independent artist, giving private
lessons in composition and lecturing at various universities. In 1968 he
was elected to the National Institute of Arts and Letters.
Cage was a notable expert on mushrooms. In 1958 he won a major prize on an
Italian tv quiz answering questions on the subject. He taught courses in
mushroom identification and was a co-founder of the New York Mycological
Society.
Selected works: Quartet for percussion (1935), Metamorphosis for piano
(1938), Imaginary Landscape No.1 for tape-recorders (1939), First
Construction (in Metal) for six percussions (1939), Bacchanale for
prepared piano (1940), Second Construction for four percussions (1940),
Living Room Music for percussion and speech quartet (1940), Third
Construction for four percussions (1941), Imaginary Landscape No.2 for
five percussions (1942), Imaginary Landscape No.3 for six percussions
(1942), Credo in Us for four percussions (1942), The Wonderful Widow of
Eighteen Springs for voice and closed piano (1942), In the Name of the
Holocaust for prepared piano (1942), Amores for prepared piano (1943), She
is Asleep (1. quartet for 12 tomtoms, 2. duet for voice and prepared
piano, 1943), A Valentine Out of Season for prepared piano (1944),
Daughters of the Lonesome Isle for prepared piano (1945), Ophelia for
piano (1946), Music for Marcel Duchamp for prepared piano (1947), Sonatas
and Interludes for prepared piano (1948–50), A Flower for voice and
closed piano (1950), Six Melodies for violin and piano (1950), String
Quartet in Four Movements (1950), Sixteen Dances for chamber ensemble
(1951), Concerto for Chamber Orchestra and Prepared Piano (1951), Music of
Changes, four volumes for piano (1951), Imaginary Landscape No.4 for 12
radios (1951), Seven Haiku for piano (1952), 4'33'' (tacet) for any
instrument/s (1952), Williams Mix for tape (1952), Water Music for pianist
(1952), 59 1/2' for any 4-string instrument (1953), 34'46.776'' for
pianist (1954), 26'1.1499 for a string player (1955), 27'10.554 for
percussion player (1956), Radio Music for 1–6 radios (1956), Fontana Mix
for tape (1958), Concerto for Piano and Orchestra (1958), tv Köln for
prepared piano (1958), Solo for Voice 1 (1958), Solo for Voice 2 (1960),
Atlas eclipticalis for orchestra (1961), solo for one performer (1962),
Electronic Music for Piano (1965), Rozart Mix for tape (1965), hpschd (with
Lejaren Hiller Jr.) for harpsichords and tape (1967-9), Cheap Imitation
for various performance forces (1969), Song Books for one or more
performers (1970), Sixty-Two Mesostics re Merce Cunningham for voice with
microphone (1971), Etcetera for orchestra (1973), Etudes Australes, 32
pieces for piano (1974–5), Renga (1976), 49 Waltzes for the Five
Boroughs (1977), Quartets I–VIII for orchestral ensembles (1976-8),
Etudes Boreales I–IV for piano or cello (1978), Freeman Etudes for
violin (1977–80), Litany for the Whale for two voices (1980), Thirty
Pieces for Five Orchestras (1981), Thirty Pieces for String Quartet
(1983), Music for... (1984), Perpetual Tango for piano (1984), Ryoanji,
versions for different instruments (1983–85), Haikai for gamelan (1986),
two operas Europeras I & II (1987), two music theatres Europeras III
& IV (1990), One9 for shô solo (1991).
One9
As he approached his eightieth birthday, John Cage found himself the grand
old man of the avant-garde, a composer, writer, and artist who had
attained notoriety and visibility on a worldwide scale. Once only a small
circle of brilliant performers had been associated with his work; now
ensembles and soloists awarded him commission after commission for new
compositions. In order to keep up with the demand for new pieces, Cage
turned once more to his long-time assistant Andrew Culver, who developed
new software that enabled Cage to write music very quickly.
These new works, which occupied almost all of Cage’s compositional
attention between 1987 and 1992, came to be known as the Number Pieces.
Each work’s title consists only of a number written out as
a word (One, Two, Fourteen, etc.) that indicates the number of performers
for which the piece was composed.
The Number Pieces generally alternate single pitches and conventional
chords with inexplicable noises and dissonances. The transparency that
characterizes most of the works in the series even allows us to pay
attention – with an unusual level of awareness – to the attacks of
sounds, their tunings, or their particular timbre. All in all, they
demonstrate Cage’s quiet reconciliation with harmony, which he now
defines as ‘several sounds... being noticed at the same time’.
Cage first met Mayumi Miyata during his historic return to the 1990
Darmstadt Summer Courses; the composer was enchanted with the sound of her
instrument and produced in all three works for her. As was his habit, Cage
wanted to learn as many possibilities for a new instrument or medium as he
could before composing a work, and among his papers are copious notes
indicating all of the single tones and clusters (aitake) that the shô
could play, both familiar and unfamiliar. Once this material was in place,
he could then use chance operations to choose which of all these
possibilities would become the sounds for his new pieces, thus producing
results that he hoped would surprise and interest him when he finally
heard them performed.
Rob Haskins
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