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 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 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 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 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.
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 A Year from Monday written by John Cage and published by Wesleyan University Press. This book was released on 2010-10-20 with total page 179 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Includes lectures, essays, diaries and other writings, including "How to Improve the World (You Will Only Make Matters Worse)" and "Juilliard Lecture."
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 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 M written by John Cage and published by Wesleyan University Press. This book was released on 2010-10-20 with total page 233 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Mainly mesostics inspired by music, mushrooms, Marcel Duchamp, Merce Cunningham, Marshall McCluhan, etc. and includes "Mureau"-composed from the writings of Henry David Thoreau.
Download or read book John Cage Was written by James Klosty and published by Wesleyan University Press. This book was released on 2014-10-31 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Intimate portraits and remembrances of one of the most influential artists of the twentieth century It is difficult to imagine a world without John Cage. His playful, challenging spirit remains pervasive—a formative force in the lives of those in the forefront of today's arts. This special book combines iconic photographs of Cage by James Klosty with eclectic testimony the author commissioned from people the world over, each asked to contribute their thoughts on Cage's influence on their lives and work with one-hundred-word statements. These remembrances range from humorous to reverent, and are from artists including Laurie Anderson, John Ashbery, Gavin Bryars, Jasper Johns, Harry Mathews, Meredith Monk, Mark Morris, Ron Padgett, Yoko Ono, Yvonne Rainer, Steve Reich, Peter Sellars, Stephen Sondheim, Twyla Tharp, Michael Tilson Thomas, Anne Waldman, Robert Wilson, and many more. The evocative duotone photographs show John Cage alone and in association with Merce Cunningham, Marcel Duchamp, Octavio Paz, Aaron Copland, and many others. The book provides public and private glimpses into the man who transformed chance from an inescapable inevitability of life into disciplined creativity through music, writing, philosophy, printmaking, and, on the largest scale of all, living. John Cage Was gives us a privileged view of an irreplaceable man who had few enemies and innumerable disciples.
Download or read book Conversing with Cage written by Richard Kostelanetz and published by Psychology Press. This book was released on 2003 with total page 348 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: First Published in 2003. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informa company.
Download or read book Writings about John Cage written by Richard Kostelanetz and published by . This book was released on 1996 with total page 384 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Distinguished composers, performers, and critics offer views of one of the most important figures in twentieth-century music
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 John Cage written by David Patterson and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2013-10-28 with total page 279 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: John Cage seeks to explore the early part of the composer's life and career, concentrating on the pre-chance period between 1933 and 1950 that is crucial to understanding his later work. The essays consider Cage's influences, his evolving aesthetic, and his movement toward ideology that would later shape his work.
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 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."
