John Cage
John Cage (1912 to 1992) was an American composer, writer, philosopher and printmaker, and the figure who did most to widen the idea of what music can be. Educated in California and on a study tour of Europe, he studied with Henry Cowell and Arnold Schoenberg, gave up painting for music in 1934 and in 1940 devised the prepared piano, inserting bolts and rubber between the strings so that one instrument became a percussion orchestra. From Music of Changes (1951) he composed with chance operations drawn from the I Ching, so that his own taste would no longer decide the notes, and with 4'33" (1952) he framed silence and the sounds around it as a piece.
John Cage (1912 to 1992) was an American composer, writer, philosopher and printmaker, and the figure who did most to widen the idea of what music can be. Educated in California and on a study tour of Europe, he studied with Henry Cowell and Arnold Schoenberg, gave up painting for music in 1934 and in 1940 devised the prepared piano, inserting bolts and rubber between the strings so that one instrument became a percussion orchestra. From Music of Changes (1951) he composed with chance operations drawn from the I Ching, so that his own taste would no longer decide the notes, and with 4'33" (1952) he framed silence and the sounds around it as a piece.
