John Cage Essays

  • John Cage

    4268 Words  | 9 Pages

    John Cage Defined in the 1950s John Cage is considered by many to be the defining voice of avant-garde music throughout the 20th century. Fusing philosophy with composition, he reinvented the face of modern music, leading composer Arnold Schoenberg to declare, "Of course he's not a composer, but he's an inventor -- of genius" (Kostelanetz 6). For Cage, the 1950s brought a series of critical events that both refined his message as a composer and brought him great fame, or infamy to some. His interest

  • John Cage Essay

    656 Words  | 2 Pages

    John Cage is a modern American composer who is probably the most controversial musician to ever live. Born in 1912 in Los Angeles, California, no one, not even Cage himself, thought he would become a composer. But he did have desires to create at a young age. He used these desires to later make some of the most revolutionary music of the century. But how did Cage begin writing music at all? What is so revolutionary about his music? Cage was born into an Episcopalian family and when he was young planned

  • John Milton Cage Jr.

    731 Words  | 2 Pages

    John Milton Cage Jr. John Cage became famous for his unorthodox theories and very experimental compositions. He was an American composer born in Los Angeles on September 5, 1912. Neither of his parents went to college, and John himself dropped out after a mere two years in college. His father earned a living being an inventor. Cage credits his father, being an inventor, as very influential to the way in which he wrote music. John also considered himself as an innovator and discoverer in the

  • Comparing Jackson Pollock And John Cage

    517 Words  | 2 Pages

    Jackson Pollock and John Cage were both very big influences in their art field. Jackson Pollock was a painter and John cage was a music composer. Jackson Pollock made paintings that were an expression of his ego while John Cage wrote music that removed himself from the decision making. Their artistic styles may seem very different but they also had similarities. They both came from a European background and they both wanted to drastically change the art styles they belonged to. John Cage sought to compose

  • Face Off: John Travolta And Nicolas Cage

    709 Words  | 2 Pages

    usage of slow motion. This film contains all of these aspects, as well as the addition of the two famous actions stars, John Travolta, and Nicolas Cage. As the film title states, the film starts with a soul of an FBI agent named Sean Archer (John Travolta) and his very young son getting shot and nearly assassinated by one of the mob terrorists named Castor Troy (Nicolas Cage). Sean Archer’s son persists dead from the gunfire. After a few years later, Castor and some of his mob crews

  • Critical Analysis Of Merce Cunningham's Rain Forest Dance

    1029 Words  | 3 Pages

    oversaw different interactions. Chance methods pushed Cunningham’s imagination beyond habit and helped him avoid clichés. He grew inspiration from his musical director John Cage, abstract expressionism, and Zen Buddhism’s eastern philosophy (pg. 57, Aperture). Cunningham and Cage worked side by side in using change procedures, Cage sustained them through the process of realizing a work in performance and Cunningham wished to use chance not in performance

  • What is Music?

    680 Words  | 2 Pages

    things that you can experience. Like John Cage said in the third video we viewed, we have become very narrow minded in our thinking, even in the things we love such as music. I believe Cage is trying to get us to realize the beauty in things that are around us. He believes we should all strive to have an open mind about everything that is going on and to slow down and enjoy what is around us already. My idea of music has been greatly challenged by John Cage. While I do not believe I am completely

  • Ever Heard of Chance Music?

    591 Words  | 2 Pages

    work, the possible exclusion of such sections, and subjective interpretation of temporal and spatial pitch relations. Also called “chance music,” aleatory music has been produced in abundance since 1945 by several composers, the most notable being John Cage, Pierre Boulez, and Iannis Xenakis. Aleatoric (or aleatory) music or composition, is music where some element of the composition is left to chance. The term became known to European composers through the lectures which acoustician Werner Meyer-Eppler

  • Ears Have Walls by Steven Connor

    1324 Words  | 3 Pages

    with noise is also shown in the scorner’s spit and how it suddenly stops before it reaches Christ’s halo: In order to perceive a sound in its reality, we require the space of silence, not of carnival. Glasmeier believes that this is precisely what John Cage does in 4’33’’. There is a suggestion of noise in Cage’s work just like in Angelico’s. The performer of 4’33’’ approaches the instrument three times, giving the instrument the possibility of noise without the reality of that noise: the viewer becomes

  • Critical Analysis Of John Cage's Music And Improvisation

    1832 Words  | 4 Pages

    John Cage’s Music and Improvisation Introduction Many scholars believe that there are connections between Cage’s music and the practice of improvisation because of the sense of unpredictability, and freedom in his music, and also both of them are related to pre-compositional strategy and liberation of the composition and performance. Consequently, scholars might tend to consider that Cage had close connection with improvisation and had only a one single view of improvisation, actually his idea

  • John Cage and Revolutionary Music

    1130 Words  | 3 Pages

    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

  • Terry Riley Research Paper

    1207 Words  | 3 Pages

    Varun Agnihotri Professor Isaiah Jackson History of Music in the Euro Tradition 29 October 2017 Terry Riley and Minimalism Composer Terry Riley, born on June 24th 1935, in Colfax, California, was among the most revolutionary composers of the postwar era and is also regarded as a minimalist pioneer. He is well known for his introduction of repetition into Western music motifs. He has also worked on early experiments in tape loops and delay system which have left a long lasting mark on the experimental

  • How Music Works

    1555 Words  | 4 Pages

    the period we might loosely call 'classical'- music whose 'primordial element' was 'euphony' (The beautiful in music, TAB, p.421). Hanslick's views cannot easily be extrapolated to the late 2Oth Century where even a period of silence (4'33" by John Cage) can claim to be 'music'1, a 'composition' which underlined, albeit provocatively, that silence, as well as s... ... middle of paper ... ...cohol and grape juice and its mysteries are not revealed by distillation. The essence of music, certainly

  • Lecture on Nothingness: John Cage

    1375 Words  | 3 Pages

    listener and enjoyed. Cage is fighting to have his readers enjoy his poetry at the same level at which they enjoy his music or the music of others – not by discussion, but by adopting his new poetic language that permits them to interact with the poem in the very reading and listening of it, abstaining from and negating the necessity of any later experience to grant it significance or, indeed, legitimacy. Works Cited Works Cited Cage, John. “Lecture on Nothing.”

  • An Approach to Introducing Ambient Music

    654 Words  | 2 Pages

    An Approach to Introducing Ambient Music John Cage (1912-1992) presents an attractive challenge to a music GSI teaching a class of non-majors. As much an idea man as a pen-on-paper composer, Cage proposed through his writings and artistic approach that all sound, whether deliberate or accidental, whether inside or outside of the concert hall, is in fact a macro-series of musical events. In effect, according to this way of thinking, all ambient sound is music. Considering the way most of us have

  • Edwin Morgan's Opening the Cage

    1163 Words  | 3 Pages

    Edwin Morgan's Opening the Cage The poem "Opening the Cage," by Edwin Morgan, is based on a quote taken from John Cage. Cage said, "I have nothing to say and I am saying it and that is poetry." Cage's quote contains fourteen words which are rearranged fourteen times by the poet to create a fourteen line sonnet. At first glance, the poem may seem to be random and senseless, and this interpretation could hold true, for Cage was known especially for his chaotic and seemingly mindless music. One

  • Trifles by Susan Glaspell

    581 Words  | 2 Pages

    under quilt pieces. The climax of the play is when the men return and county attorney sees the birdcage and questions the women a... ... middle of paper ... ... dialogue between the two women leads us to believe that Minnie’s husband broke the cage, representing Minnie’s life, and killed the bird. Both women take measures to make sure that the men do not learn this information and mislead the men in the existence of a dead bird. The idea of Mrs. Hale and Mrs. Peters being a panel of judges and

  • Escaping the Cage of Marriage in Henrik Ibsen’s A Doll’s House

    1839 Words  | 4 Pages

    Escaping the Cage of Marriage in A Doll House A bird may have beautiful wings, but within a cage, the beautiful wings are useless. Within the cage, the bird is not fulfilling the potential for which it was created - it is merely a household decoration.  In Ibsen's symbolic play A Doll House, Nora is the bird, and her marriage is the cage. Externally, Nora is a beautiful creature entertaining her husband with the beautiful images of a docile wife, but internally, she is a desperate creature longing

  • Symbolism in Trifles by Susan Glaspell

    866 Words  | 2 Pages

    remain and gather items Mrs. Wright. The kitchen too seems like a remote place and much resembles the marriage between Mr. and Mrs. Wright. The kitchen is the spot where Mrs. Wright (and most women of the time) spent most of their time in. Like the cage to the canary, ...

  • Observations of Women in "Trifles"

    511 Words  | 2 Pages

    Whose side are you on? The men’s? Or the women’s? In “Trifles” by Susan Glaspell, the women are more observant than the men. The women in the play discover Mrs. Wright’s motives for the murder of her husband. The sexist and rude men are preoccupied by the bigger problem when they should be looking for small details that lead to the bigger problem. The women in the play are observant. For example when the men are looking for evidence in the kitchen the women take notice of a quilt