John Cage and Revolutionary Music

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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).

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