John Cage was born on September 5, 1912, in Los Angeles, California and died on August 12, 1992, in New York City. Throughout his long 80 year life, Cage transformed the way music was composed and performed, altering previously held conceptions about the art of music. Cage is characterized as an American “avant-garde composer”, which is one that works with experimental, radical, or unorthodox, techniques with respect to art, culture, and society. Works that are characterized as avant-garde could be classified as nontraditional and usually unacceptable when they are first produced, and Cage’s works throughout his lifetime perfectly fit this description. In his early years, Cage’s untraditional views were first sprouted by his father, John …show more content…
Cage and his wife ultimately became homeless, unemployed and penniless and had to eventually spend the nights with a close friend, dancer Jean Erdman and her husband. Cage was even more unfortunate following the divorce between him and his wife Xenia. The public rarely accepted his work and many colleagues of his had trouble understanding his music. Cage, however, was not dismayed. He continued to turn to music to serve as an outlook for his emotions. Now following the practices of Zen Buddhism, Cage produced “Sonatas and Interludes”, which was extremely well-received. Additionally, after reading the ancient divination text “The I Ching”, an ancient divination text that describes a symbol system used to identify the order in chance events, Cage began to compose music using chance. He started to create music in which sounds came freely from chance and at his own will stating that “When I hear what we call music, it seems to me that someone is talking. And talking about his feelings, or about his ideas of relationships. But when I hear traffic, the sound of traffic—here on Sixth Avenue, for instance—I don't have the feeling that anyone is talking. I have the feeling that sound is acting. And I love the activity of sound [...] I don't need sound to talk to me.” After 1951, Cage used the idea of chance for almost every single composition he …show more content…
Typical of those times, there was a great difference between the wealthy and the poor and this idea is displayed throughout Cage’s actions. His most famous work, albeit also his most controversial, was “4’33.” For four minutes and thirty-three seconds, Cage does not play the piano at all, and the piece is only consisting of the sounds of the environment that he hears while “performing” the piece. The reaction to 4′33″ was very negative; the audience, the press, and Cage’s peers all reacted negatively to the piece and criticized him tremendously. From 1953 onward, Cage switched mostly to composing music for modern dance and developing new methods to using chance in his works. His financial situation finally improved and he moved out of New York to a cooperative community in Stony Point, New
Nearly a century’s worth of compositions has earned Aaron Copland extensive recognition as the foremost American composer of his time. Ironically, Copland was raised the son of Russian Jewish immigrants and inhabitant of a colorless city environment, yet would become known for producing the music of “rugged-souled Americans” (Mellers 4). Unbounded by historical musical constraints such as those present in the culture of France, where Copland studied for many years, Copland found himself free to explore and experiment in pursuit of a unique, undoubtedly American sound.
During the Antebellum Period, the Texas war for independence was a rebellion from the Mexican-American colonists who settled in Texas. Texas declared its independence from the republic of mexico in 1836 after Sam Houston and the Tejanos, plus the help from America defeated president Lopez De santa Anna in the Battle of San Jacinto. This came after the Mexican Army killed colonel James Fannin in the Goliad Massacre, and defeated Texas in the Battle of the Alamo killing American hero Jim Bowie. Texas’ Independence was a very important part to America's legacy because it allowed Texas to become to the 28th state of America. Three American heroes who led Texas to earn their independence were Jim Bowie, William Travis, and Sam Houston.
John Milton Cage Jr. also known as John Cage was born in Los Angeles, California on September 5, 1912. Although he passed away on August 12, 1992 his legacy as an American composer, music theorist, writer, and artist lives on. Not only was he a participant in a wide variety of music genres but he became the father of indeterminacy in music, electroacoustic music, and non-standard use of musical instruments. Cage also became very active in a lot of contemporary and unique artistry and many of his influences can be found in the works of musicians globally. Every great artist has someone or something they can look to as a basis and guideline to start off their own work. In John’s case, he used South/ East Asian cultural components, largely implementing
John Cage traveled around the world and found that he particularly enjoyed most of the Asian cultures. “It was in the last three years of the 1940s that Cage also started to develop an aesthetic of silence” (James). He began to incorporate the ideas of Zen Buddhism into his life, as well as his music. Zen Buddhism stands as the experience in which you sit to become one
Balance can be a difficult characteristic to hold within one’s self as well as their pieces of work. To obtain this quality, an equal amount of time and effort must be put within the creation of any type of design. There should not be any form of emphasis towards a certain topic unless another placed on its opposite. Artists, musicians, and dancers alike have the option to convey these characteristics in their works; either having that balance clearly noticeable, or placing emphasis on other features or a specific one at that. The people under analysis; Pollock, John Cage and Merce Cunningham, all had constructions in which freedom, control, purpose and purposelessness are exhibited. The question, upon examination of these works is whether
John Wayne Gacy, an American serial killer also known as the “Killer Clown” was a rapist who sexually assaulted, abused, and murdered young men and children. John Wayne Gacy was not interested in women what so ever. John Wayne Gacy murdered about thirty-three young teenage boys and young men from the year of 1972 to 1978 where he lived in Chicago, Illinois.
Summary: "The Cage" by Ruth Minsky Sender is a book about a teenage girl who was separated from her mother and brothers when the nazis captured them and sent them to a concentration camp. While she was in the concentration camp, she got sick and one of the Nazi guards took her to a hospital, but they had to go througgh several hospitals because they didn't take jews. After her operation, the doctor had to teach her how to write with her left hand because she couldn't write with her right hand. A russian commander helped her out by giving her food and baths, and she gave her a job that wasn't as hard as the other "prisoners" had. She lived off her mother's quote, "When there is life, there is hope." She believed that and she got through the
Throughout this course, the composers we studied all had different approached to creating music, and that is why many of them are well known today. The three most notable composers who combine unusual elements with their music were Frank Zappa, John Cage, and Pamela Z.
During the 1950s music academies all over America were prominently concerned with a form of composition known as serialism. Serialism in it’s most basic and initial form can be characterized by twelve-tone rows, but is a much broader term that covers “series” that can be devised for other musical aspects such as dynamics and rhythmic duration. The alternative to this cerebral music was indeterminate music, which was being pioneered by John Cage during the 50s. Minimalist music throughout the late 50s and 60s developed largely as a reaction against the complexities of both serialism and indeterminate music.
...frican American Musicians as Artists, Critics, and Activists. Berkeley, CA: University of California, 2002. 54-100. EBSCOhost. Web. 8 May 2015.
Steve Reich was born in New York on October 3, 1936. His parents soon divorced, leaving Reich to constantly commute between New York and California via passenger train. Reich has stated that is was the sound of the wheels on the train tracks that helped to develop his strong rhythmic sense at an early age (Ross, 541). He studied philosophy at Cornell University with a minor in music before switching to composition full-time at Juilliard School and Mills College with Luciano Berio and Darius Milhaud (Mertens, 47). Although both great composers, Reich didn’t fit well within either of their styles. In the early seventies, Reich studied with a drummer of the Ewe tribe in Ghana and participated in a Balinese gamelan seminar where he began to develop a strong concordance with world music. This influence is clearly evident in many of Reich’s compositions.
At a young age, Maya Angelou’s parents got divorced. After the divorce was final Maya and her older brother, Bailey, were sent away to live with their grandmother. Angelou’s not so perfect life started when she was a young girl. “When she was about three years old, their parents divorced and the children were sent to live with their grandmother in Stamps, Arkansas. Angelou claims that her grandmother, whom she called ‘momma, had a deep-brooding love that hung over everything she touched’” (Burt). In the first chapter of I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings, the book starts with Angelou talking about her parent's divorce. “Our parents decided to put an end to their calamitous marriage, and father shipped us home to his mothers” (Angelou 5). After living with her grandmother, or as Maya begins to call her “momma”, for 4 years Maya Angelou and her brother Bailey are sent back to St. Louis Missouri. In St Louis they lived with her mother and her boyfriend Mr.Freeman. Mr.Freeman makes a huge impact on young Maya’s life. When she was only 8-years-old he rapes her, after being raped Angelou becomes mute and will ...
Django Reinhardt was born into the lifestyle of his gypsy parents on January 24th, 1910 in a village of Belgium known as Liberchies. Django, Romani for “I awake,” has inspired and astonished various generations of musicians and lovers of jazz with his remarkable control of the guitar and the story of his upbringing. At just the age of eight, his parents moved near the stretch of barricades that encompassed the streets of old Paris. Up until he was about twenty years old, he had never really set down roots somewhere, worn a suit, or lived in a real house. These French Gypsies, also known as Manouches, were living in a world of their own, primitive in their way of thinking and skeptical of popular science. Django was raised in a lifestyle that was one big contradiction, one moment he was in the swarming city of Paris and the next he found himself in the old fashioned life of a wandering gypsy. Although Django was born into a life of hardship, he had a righteous and honorable soul, which ultimately manifested itself into his music.
Cage was born into an Episcopalian family and when he was young planned to be a minister. His father was an eccentric inventor of items that seemed ridiculous and, frankly, useless. But Cage always admired him, and his father once told him, “If someone says you can’t, that shows you what to do.” (1) Cage describes his mother as a woman with “a sense of society” (1) but also goes onto say that she was “never happy”. She was a very critical, fussy woman, but his father said that she was always right. Cage took piano lessons as a boy and when he was old enough went to Pomona College. An incident that happened in his sophomore year completely changed his life. One day, he walked into the library and saw all the students there reading the same textbook. Cage decided to rebel and picked the first book written by an author whose name began with Z. He later received the highest grade in the entire class, and, convinced that the school wasn’t being run correctly, he quit college and went to Europe. It was there that his work as a musician truly began.
The years between the middle of the 1700’s to the early 1800’s was a time of immense value according to many music enthusiasts today. In this era the music was considered controlled and reserved. Many Sonatas, Symphonies, and Quartets could be heard in the homes of Vienna during the Classical Era. This era, like every other, had a unique style that has fascinated throngs of people through the ages. John Cage once said, “I can’t understand why people are frightened of new ideas. I’m frightened of the old ones.” The Classical Period at its beginnings was looked upon as unique from the Baroque Period.