John Cage was a famous American composer, philosopher and music writer in the 20th century. He occupied an extremely important position in the history of modern American music development. For a long time, John Cage ·Cage’s status in the field of avant-garde art is almost that of a leader or prophet. In the highly liberal artistic atmosphere of the United States, he spent his whole life exploring new developments in music with serious thinking and unique behavior, and gained widespread attention and understanding.
I studied painting in my early years, but failed. I studied at Pamona University and UCLA (University of California, Los Angeles), but did not graduate. Later, he studied composition under the famous composer Schoenberg. Cage could not afford the tuition, but Schoenberg was moved by Cage's spirit of dedicating himself to music and agreed to give him free lessons. But after all, Cage lacked the sense of harmony necessary for a professional composer in the general sense. Two years later, Schoenberg persuaded him not to devote himself to composing. In the 1940s, Cage heard the Japanese Suzuki Daijo's lectures on Buddhism and Zen at Black Mountain College in North Carolina. He was deeply influenced by the lectures and soon became a follower of Zen Buddhism. He began to apply Zen thoughts to his new attempts at composition, imagining music as a "purposeless game" and believing that life was just life itself, and everything had to go with the flow, without the need to deliberately find any order from chaos and accident. , thus becoming an early representative figure of composers of "accidental music". He can break all the established limitations of "music" made by all traditional composition techniques, all standard instruments and their standard playing methods, and use a series of sound effects as his works that even he himself has not expected and cannot expect at all. Create an artistic conception and express philosophy to the audience. For example, inserting foreign objects between the strings of the piano to create new timbres, writing in the music score that each player should turn on or off the radio at will according to their feelings at the time, asking the pianist to splash water on the stage, etc. There is no doubt that these practices have made Cage a controversial person from the time he became famous until today. However, due to the great influence of his works, he is worthy of being included in the music history of the 20th century.
The most ground-breaking and certainly the most famous musical work in John Cage's life is undoubtedly "4 Minutes and 33 Seconds" (premiered in 1952), which can be played for any kind of instrument and any number of performances It is composed of three movements, with a total length of 4 minutes and 33 seconds. There are no notes on the score, and the only requirement marked is "Tacet" (silence). The meaning of the work is to invite the audience to listen carefully to the silence at that time and experience all the sounds brought by chance in the silence. This also represents an important philosophical view of music by Cage: the most basic element of music is not playing, but listening. A documentary of John Cage's "4 Minutes and 33 Seconds" recorded his silent performance live. He walked up to the podium, picked up the baton, and then stopped there as still as a piece of wood. The whole concert hall was a little baffled. After a while, he pretended to turn the page of the music score, and took out a handkerchief to wipe his sweat, which made people smile knowingly. Finally, when 4'33 passed, the audience burst into thunderous applause, which lasted for a long time. Breathing, not looking at the watch for a few seconds; John Cage's gentlemanly greeting. It's a bit funny, as if some epoch-making event has happened; experimentation, pioneering, like a magic trick, temporarily captured the modern people who are a little tired and have poor eyesight.
John Cage's other works include "Fontana Medley", "Toy Piano Suite", "Empty Words", etc. He also published many monographs and talks such as "A Lecture on Nothing" and "A Year Starting from Monday".
In addition, Cage was also an avid amateur mycologist and mushroom collector, and joined the New York Mycological Society. He also created a genre of poetry called Mesostic, which places capital letters in the middle of sentences rather than at the beginning.
On August 12, 1992, Cage died in New York at the age of 80.