John Cage: A Guide to John Cage’s Life and Artistic Influence

John Cage (1912–1992) was an artist, philosopher, music theorist, and avant-garde composer of classical music. He was a pioneer of indeterminacy in music, a kind of open-ended approach to composing where aspects of a piece of music are left to the player’s interpretation. This inventive approach was a product of his interest in Eastern philosophies—specifically, the classic Chinese text, I Ching. The text inspired Cage to employ the use of chance operations in his compositions, and his work often left many musical decisions up to the performers themselves.

In the wake of World War II, John Cage emerged as a pioneer in avant-garde experimentalism. The influence of Cage’s work would reach far beyond the field of music, inspiring conceptual artists and playing a central role in the establishment of minimalism in the 1960s. Cage’s relationship with the famous choreographer Merce Cunningham led to his significant contributions to modern dance. His writings and contributions to philosophy and music theory have been applied to nearly every art form including dance, film, literature, visual art, and theatre.

John Cage’s career evolved to influence many artistic disciplines over the course of the twentieth century.

• Early years: John Cage was born in Los Angeles, California, on September 5, 1912, to an inventor father and journalist mother. His first experience playing music was during private piano lessons, and one of his high school music teachers was Fannie Charles Dillon, a pioneering American pianist. In 1928, he chose to study theology at Pomona College, where he found inspiration in the works of artists like Marcel Duchamp and writers like James Joyce and Henry David Thoreau. Two years later, he dropped out of college to travel to Europe, where he experimented with different kinds of art. He eventually landed in Majorca, Spain, where he wrote his first compositions.
• Apprenticeship: After returning to the United States and spending a brief stint as a lecturer on contemporary art, Cage traveled to New York at the suggestion of his mentor, Henry Cowell. In New York, Cage studied under Adolf Weiss, a former pupil of Arnold Schoenberg. He eventually approached Schoenberg himself for lessons. After devoting his life to writing music, Schoenberg agreed to tutor Cage for free. Cage studied under Schoenberg at USC and UCLA.
• Career accompanist: In the mid-1930s, Cage got a job as a dance accompanist at UCLA, where he produced music and choreography. At the insistence of Henry Cowell, Cage moved to San Francisco. There, he met and collaborated with Lou Harrison, who helped land Cage a faculty position at Mills College. After several months, Cage moved to Seattle, Washington, to work as a composer at Cornish College of the Arts. In 1941, Cage moved to Chicago, Illinois, to teach at the Chicago School of Design. A year later, Cage moved to New York City and met Merce Cunningham, who would become his lifelong romantic partner and collaborator.
• Discovering chance: In 1946, Gita Sarabhai, a music student from India approached Cage wanting lessons in Western music. In exchange, she taught him about Indian music and Eastern philosophy, and this led to Cage’s newfound interest in Zen Buddhism, which would be a catalyst for his work. Another one of Cage's pupils, Christian Wolff, gave Cage a copy of I Ching, which opened up new possibilities for Cage's music. These new possibilities can be heard in works such as Imaginary Landscape No. 4 and Music of Changes.
• The New York School: In 1950, Cage’s career started taking off after meeting the composers Morton Feldman, Earle Brown, and David Tudor. Along with Cage's pupil, Christian Wolff, this group would later be referred to as, "The New York School." The group of composers created experimental music together and launched the Fluxus art movement, which centered around minimalism and anti-commercialism. Cage spent his summers teaching at Black Mountain College during the early 1950s. There, he worked with the artist Robert Rauschenberg to create Theatre Piece No. 1, a multi-media performance that would influence many artistic disciplines throughout the 1960s.
• Finding fame: The 1960s were a time of great success and fame for Cage. His association with Wesleyan University garnered him a fellowship teaching experimental music. During this time he published his first book, Silence, which was a collection of lectures on various topics relating to music theory. It was well-received and earned him much acclaim.
• Later years: In the 1980s, Cage's health began to deteriorate. He had a number of ailments, including arthritis. He suffered from a stroke and broke his arm in 1985. During this time, he turned his focus to the visual arts. In August of 1992, at the age of 79, he suffered a second stroke and died.

John Cage produced many influential works throughout his career.

1. 1. The Sonatas and Interludes (1946–1948): This was John Cage's first cycle of pieces employing a prepared piano. Objects placed between the strings of the piano altered its sound. It was a revolutionary piece of composition and invented new ways of writing music.
2. 2. Imaginary Landscape No. 4 (March No. 2) (1951): This is the fourth of five pieces in the Imaginary Landscape series. A conductor and 24 performers executed this piece for the first time in 1951. The performers were paired up with 12 radios, with one in each pair controlling the tuning knob and the other controlling the volume. The piece was then left entirely up to chance and made up of music, talk radio, and static.
3. 3. 4′33″ (1952): For this piece, musicians took the stage with their instruments, only to sit in complete silence for four minutes and thirty-three seconds. Highly controversial, this piece gained Cage notoriety and pushed the boundaries of musical performances.
4. 4. Fontana Mix (1958): This piece was composed by superimposing transparencies over pieces of paper containing random dots, lines, and curves. When the transparencies were placed over the pieces of paper, a performance score presented itself to the performer. Cage used a similar technique for Concert for Piano and Orchestra, which he also composed in 1958.
5. 5. Cheap Imitation (1969): For this solo piano piece, John Cage applied chance operations to a piece by French composer Erik Satie. It was the last piece he played in front of an audience before his death.
6. 6. Roaratorio, an Irish circus on Finnegans Wake (1979): Finnegans Wake by James Joyce—one of Cage’s favorite books—inspired this electronic music composition.

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