Download or read book Composition in Retrospect written by John Cage and published by . This book was released on 1993 with total page 208 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A superb introduction to the work of John Cage, celebrated minimalist composer, who died in 1992, aged 79 years. Printed in the style requested by the author, this book summarises his major works in one volume.
Download or read book The Music of John Cage written by James Pritchett and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 1996-03-14 with total page 244 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The first book to examine fully the work of John Cage, leading figure of the post-war musical avant-garde.
Download or read book John Cage s Theatre Pieces written by William Fetterman and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2012-10-12 with total page 302 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The experimental composer John Cage (1912-1992) is best known for his works in percussion, prepared piano, and electronic music, but he is also acknowledged to be one of the most significant figures in 20th century theatre. In Cage's work in theatre composition there is a blurring of the distinctions between music, dance, literature, art and everyday life. Here, William Fetterman examines the majority of those compositions by Cage which are audial as well as visual in content, beginning with his first work in this genre in 1952, and continuing through 1992. Much of the information in this study comes from previously undocumented material discovered among the unpublished scores and notes of Cage and his frequent collaborator David Tudor, as well as author's interviews with Cage and with individuals closely associated with his work, including David Tudor, Merce Cunningham, Bonnie Bird, Mary Caroline Richards, and Ellsworth Snyder.
Download or read book Notations written by John Cage and published by . This book was released on 1969 with total page 340 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "This book illustrates a collection of music manuscripts which was made in recent years to benefit the Foundation for Contemporary Performance Arts ... The text for the book is the result of a process employing I-Ching chance operations. These determined how many words regarding his work were to be written by or about which of two hundred and sixty-nine composers. Where these passages (never more than sixty-four words, sometimes only one) have been especially written for this book, they are preceded by a paragraph sign and followed by the author's name. Other remarks were chosen or written by the editors--John Cage and Alison Knowles. Not only the number of words and the author, but the typography too--letter size, intensity, and typeface--were all determined by chance operations. This process was followed in order to lessen the difference between text and illustrations."--Preface.
Download or read book John Cage written by Marjorie Perloff and published by University of Chicago Press. This book was released on 1994-08 with total page 302 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: John Cage: Composed in America is the first book-length work to address the "other" John Cage, a revisionist treatment of the way Cage himself has composed and been "composed" in America. Cage, as these original essays testify, is a contradictory figure. A disciple of Duchamp and Schoenberg, Satie and Joyce, he created compositions that undercut some of these artists' central principles and then attributed his own compositional theories to their "tradition." An American in the Emerson-Thoreau mold, he paradoxically won his biggest audience in Europe. A freewheeling, Californian artist, Cage was committed to a severe work ethic and a firm discipline, especially the discipline of Zen Buddhism.
Download or read book No Such Thing as Silence written by Kyle Gann and published by Yale University Press. This book was released on 2010-03-23 with total page 272 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: First performed at the midpoint of the twentieth century, John Cage’s 4'33", a composition conceived of without a single musical note, is among the most celebrated and ballyhooed cultural gestures in the history of modern music. A meditation on the act of listening and the nature of performance, Cage’s controversial piece became the iconic statement of the meaning of silence in art and is a landmark work of American music. In this book, Kyle Gann, one of the nation’s leading music critics, explains 4'33" as a unique moment in American culture and musical composition. Finding resemblances and resonances of 4'33" in artworks as wide-ranging as the paintings of the Hudson River School and the music of John Lennon and Yoko Ono, he provides much-needed cultural context for this fundamentally challenging and often misunderstood piece. Gann also explores Cage’s craft, describing in illuminating detail the musical, philosophical, and even environmental influences that informed this groundbreaking piece of music. Having performed 4'33" himself and as a composer in his own right, Gann offers the reader both an expert’s analysis and a highly personal interpretation of Cage’s most divisive work.
Download or read book Empty Words written by John Cage and published by Wesleyan University Press. This book was released on 1979-02 with total page 204 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Writings through James Joyce's Finnegan's Wake, Norman O. Brown, and "The Future of Music."
Download or read book The Selected Letters of John Cage written by John Cage and published by Wesleyan University Press. This book was released on 2013-10-22 with total page 673 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This annotated selection of more than five hundred letters by the groundbreaking composer and avant-garde icon covers every phase of his career. This volume reveals the intimate life of John Cage with all the intelligence, wit, and inventiveness that made him such an important composer and performer. The missives range from lengthy reports of his early trips to Europe in the 1930s through his years with the dancer Merce Cunningham. They shed new light on his growing eminence as an iconic performance artist of the American avant-garde. Written in Cage’s singular voice—by turns profound, irreverent, and funny—these letters reveal Cage’s passionate interest in people, ideas, and the arts. They include correspondence with Peter Yates, David Tudor, and Pierre Boulez, among many others. Readers will enjoy Cage's commentary about the people and events of a transformative time in the arts, as well as his meditations on the very nature of art. This volume presents an extraordinary portrait of a complex, brilliant man who challenged and changed the artistic currents of the twentieth century.
Download or read book Silence written by John Cage and published by Wesleyan University Press. This book was released on 2010-10-20 with total page 312 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: John Cage is the outstanding composer of avant-garde music today. The Saturday Review said of him: “Cage possesses one of the rarest qualities of the true creator- that of an original mind- and whether that originality pleases, irritates, amuses or outrages is irrelevant.” “He refuses to sermonize or pontificate. What John Cage offers is more refreshing, more spirited, much more fun-a kind of carefree skinny-dipping in the infinite. It’s what’s happening now.” –The American Record Guide “There is no such thing as an empty space or an empty time. There is always something to see, something to hear. In fact, try as we may to make a silence, we cannot. Sounds occur whether intended or not; the psychological turning in direction of those not intended seems at first to be a giving up of everything that belongs to humanity. But one must see that humanity and nature, not separate, are in this world together, that nothing was lost when everything was given away.”
Download or read book Talking Music written by William Duckworth and published by Da Capo Press. This book was released on 1999-05-07 with total page 504 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Talking Music is comprised of substantial original conversations with seventeen American experimental composers and musicians—including Milton Babbitt, Pauline Oliveros, Steve Reich, Meredith Monk, and John Zorn—many of whom rarely grant interviews.The author skillfully elicits candid dialogues that encompass technical explorations; questions of method, style, and influence; their personal lives and struggles to create; and their aesthetic goals and artistic declarations. Herein, John Cage recalls the turning point in his career; Ben Johnston criticizes the operas of his teacher Harry Partch; La Monte Young attributes his creative discipline to a Morman childhood; and much more. The results are revelatory conversations with some of America's most radical musical innovators.
Download or read book Tacet 1 written by John Cage and published by Les presses du réel. This book was released on 2018-03-02 with total page 257 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The first issue of the experimental music annual review. Dossier John Cage (headed by Matthieu Saladin): in depth studies and articles (Philip Gentry, Sarah Troche, Jean-Yves Bosseur, Xabier Erkizia, Seth Kim-Cohen, Michael Pisaro, Sophie Stévance, Mattin) and free reflection papers (Matthieu Saladin, Radu Malfatti, Toshiya Tsunoda, Jérôme Noetinger), documents, critical reviews and reports (Philip Thomas, Rob Haskins, Ivana Miladinović Prica, Cyrille Bret)...
Download or read book Where the Heart Beats written by Kay Larson and published by Penguin. This book was released on 2013-07-30 with total page 497 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A “heroic” biography of John Cage and his “awakening through Zen Buddhism”—“a kind of love story” about a brilliant American pioneer of the creative arts who transformed himself and his culture (The New York Times) Composer John Cage sought the silence of a mind at peace with itself—and found it in Zen Buddhism, a spiritual path that changed both his music and his view of the universe. “Remarkably researched, exquisitely written,” Where the Heart Beats weaves together “a great many threads of cultural history” (Maria Popova, Brain Pickings) to illuminate Cage’s struggle to accept himself and his relationship with choreographer Merce Cunningham. Freed to be his own man, Cage originated exciting experiments that set him at the epicenter of a new avant-garde forming in the 1950s. Robert Rauschenberg, Jasper Johns, Andy Warhol, Yoko Ono, Allan Kaprow, Morton Feldman, and Leo Castelli were among those influenced by his ‘teaching’ and ‘preaching.’ Where the Heart Beats shows the blossoming of Zen in the very heart of American culture.
Download or read book John Cage written by Rob Haskins and published by Reaktion Books. This book was released on 2013-02-15 with total page 182 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: American writer, composer, artist, and philosopher John Cage (1912–92) is best known for his experimental composition 4’33,” a musical score in which the performer does not play an instrument during the duration of the piece. The purpose, Cage said, was for the audience to listen to the sounds of the environment around them while the piece was performed. Groundbreaking pieces such as 4’33”, as well as Sonatas and Interludes not only established Cage as a leading figure in the postwar avant-garde movement, but also cemented the enduring controversy surrounding his work. In this new biography, Rob Haskins explores Cage’s radical approach to art and aesthetics and his belief that everyday life and art are one and the same. Scrutinizing Cage’s emphasis on chance over intention, which rejected traditional artistic methods and caused an uproar among his peers, Haskins elucidates the ideas that lay behind these pillars of Cage’s work. Haskins also demystifies the influence of Eastern cultures, particularly Zen Buddhism, on Cage, including his use of the Chinese text I Ching as his standard composition tool in all his work after 1951. Adding to our understanding of the art, music, and ideas of the twentieth century, this book provides an engaging look at a man who continues to challenge and inspire artists worldwide.
Download or read book Silence written by John Cage and published by Wesleyan University Press. This book was released on 1961-06 with total page 292 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: John Cage is the outstanding composer of avant-garde music today. The Saturday Review said of him: “Cage possesses one of the rarest qualities of the true creator- that of an original mind- and whether that originality pleases, irritates, amuses or outrages is irrelevant.” “He refuses to sermonize or pontificate. What John Cage offers is more refreshing, more spirited, much more fun-a kind of carefree skinny-dipping in the infinite. It’s what’s happening now.” –The American Record Guide “There is no such thing as an empty space or an empty time. There is always something to see, something to hear. In fact, try as we may to make a silence, we cannot. Sounds occur whether intended or not; the psychological turning in direction of those not intended seems at first to be a giving up of everything that belongs to humanity. But one must see that humanity and nature, not separate, are in this world together, that nothing was lost when everything was given away.”
Download or read book The Imagery of Chess Revisited written by Larry List and published by . This book was released on 2005 with total page 232 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Begin Again written by Kenneth Silverman and published by Northwestern University Press. This book was released on 2012-07-11 with total page 497 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A man of extraordinary and seemingly limitless talents—musician, inventor, composer, poet, and even amateur mycologist—John Cage became a central figure of the avant-garde early in his life and remained at that pinnacle until his death in 1992 at the age of eighty. Award-winning biographer Kenneth Silverman gives us the first comprehensive life of this remarkable artist. Silverman begins with Cage’s childhood in interwar Los Angeles and his stay in Paris from 1930 to 1931, where immersion in the burgeoning new musical and artistic movements triggered an explosion of his creativity. Cage continued his studies in the United States with the seminal modern composer Arnold Schoenberg, and he soon began the experiments with sound and percussion instruments that would develop into his signature work with prepared piano, radio static, random noise, and silence. Cage’s unorthodox methods still influence artists in a wide range of genres and media. Silverman concurrently follows Cage’s rich personal life, from his early marriage to his lifelong personal and professional partnership with choreographer Merce Cunningham, as well as his friendships over the years with other composers, artists, philosophers, and writers. Drawing on interviews with Cage’s contemporaries and friends and on the enormous archive of his letters and writings, and including photographs, facsimiles of musical scores, and Web links to illustrative sections of his compositions, Silverman gives us a biography of major significance: a revelatory portrait of one of the most important cultural figures of the twentieth century. !--?xml:namespace prefix = o ns = "urn:schemas-microsoft-com:office:office" /--
Download or read book Writings through John Cage s Music Poetry and Art written by David W. Bernstein and published by University of Chicago Press. This book was released on 2010-06-15 with total page 322 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This volume looks at the creative work of the great avant-gardist John Cage from an exciting interdisciplinary perspective, exploring his activities as a composer, performer, thinker, and artist. The essays in this collection grew out of a pivotal gathering during which a spectrum of participants including composers, music scholars, and visual artists, literary critics, poets, and filmmakers convened to examine Cage's extraordinary artistic legacy. Beginning with David Bernstein's introductory essay on the reception of Cage's music, the volume addresses topics ranging from Cage's reluctance to discuss his homosexuality, to his work as a performer and musician, and his forward-looking, provocative experimentation with electronic and other media. Several of the essays draw upon previously unseen sketches and other source materials. Also included are transcripts of lively panel discussions among some of Cage's former colleagues. Taken together, this collection is a much-needed contribution to the study of one of the most significant American artists of the twentieth century.
