John Cage
American composer, philosopher, writer and printmaker. He was educated in California and then made a study tour of Europe (1930-31), concentrating on art, architecture and music. On his return to the USA he studied music with Richard Buhlig, Adolph Weiss, Henry Cowell and Arnold Schoenberg; in 1934 he abandoned abstract painting for music. An interest in extending the existing range of percussion instruments led him, in 1940, to devise the 'prepared piano' (in which the sound is transformed by the insertion of various objects between the strings) and to pioneer electronic sound sources.
American composer, philosopher, writer and printmaker. He was educated in California and then made a study tour of Europe (1930-31), concentrating on art, architecture and music. On his return to the USA he studied music with Richard Buhlig, Adolph Weiss, Henry Cowell and Arnold Schoenberg; in 1934 he abandoned abstract painting for music. An interest in extending the existing range of percussion instruments led him, in 1940, to devise the 'prepared piano' (in which the sound is transformed by the insertion of various objects between the strings) and to pioneer electronic sound sources.
John Cage - Silence Happening
*2024 stock* Anthology of Cage's "protominimalist" compositions, from "Prelude for meditation" of 1944 to 1952, the year of the silent piece 4'33". In between beautiful and magical pages such as "In a landscape" and "A room"... Performers Boris Berman, Paul Hillier, Juan Hidalgo and others.
50 Years
In 2012, the Wergo label celebrates its 50th anniversary. For half a century, Wergo has been synonymous with contemporary music. The label's catalog reads like a virtual who's-who of modern music, both in terms of composers and performers. From the beginning, the intent of founder Werner Goldschmidt (from whom the label derives its name) was to provide listeners with a snapshot of current musical activity and innovation. Goldschmidt's label and mission, now managed by the publisher Schott, is ma…
Diary: How to Improve the World (You Will Only Make Matters Worse) Continued Part Three (Book)
** 2024 Stock ** The third in John Cage’s series of “Diary” essays (the other parts were published in different contexts), defined broadly as “collections of thoughts that develop out of working and being alive.” The text is formally and discursively roving: its margins, typeface, and color undergo continuous alteration by chance methods as Cage contemplates computers, Erik Satie; life on the road with Merce Cunningham; death; encounters with Mies van der Rohe, Duchamp, and Marshall McLuhan; boo…
Rrose To The Occasion (Book)
*2024 Stock* In 1984, John Cage gave a concert at the Akademie der Künste in Berlin. Thomas Wulffen seized the opportunity to talk to him about his work, about Berlin, and about Germany. The hitherto unpublished interview shows this major avant-garde artist in a relaxed mood, perfectly at his ease, though not without a light touch of irony. An historical document.
Orient | Occident
*2024 stock* Live recording of the piano recital for the eightieth birthday of composer Hans Otte that Philipp Vandré and Elmar Schrammel presented at the Akademie Schloss Solitude in Stuttgart. A selection of John Cage's "Sonatas and Interludes" for prepared piano was interwoven with selections from Hans Otte's piano cycles "Das Buch der Klänge" (The book of sounds) and "Stundenbuch" (Book of hours). This concert experiment, conceived by Ingo Ahmels, paid quiet homage to the "beautiful piano so…
The Complete Obscure Records Collection
** CD edition ** We’re thrilled to announce the first ever box set gathering the entire ten album collection of Brian Eno’s Obscure Records, originally issued between 1975 and 1978. Containing the debut releases of Gavin Bryars, Michael Nyman, John Adams, David Toop, Max Eastley, Harold Budd, Christopher Hobbs, Jan Steele, and Simon Jeffes / The Penguin Café Orchestra, in addition to important works by John Cage, Tom Phillips, and John White, not to mention Eno’s seminal “Discreet Music”, the la…
Indeterminacy: New Aspect Of Form In Instrumental And Electronic
2024 stock. Originally issued in 1959 on Smithsonian Folkways, the initial idea for Indeterminacy came from avant-garde pianist, David Tudor, who suggested that John Cage give a lecture that was simply the telling of stories. Cage did this in Brussels in September 1958. For this lecture Cage simply stood in front of an audience and told 30 stories without musical accompaniment. Upon returning to the States in 1959, Cage decided to record the stories, but this time with the musical accompaniment …
Un anno, a partire da lunedì. Dopo Silenzio (Book)
*Italian language edition* "I guess as contemporary music continues to change in the way I am changing it, what is to be done is to completely liberate sounds more and more from abstract ideas about them and let them with increasing exactitude be themselves physically, and that's it." - John Cage
Considered the creator of experimentalism in the 1950s, John Cage was a major inspiration to conceptual artists in the 1960s, and his music was instrumental in the emergence of minimalism in the 1970s a…
The Avantgarde Series
The legendary DG Avantgarde vinyl series (1968-1971) is turning 55! In order to celebrate this occasion, the series is now released on 21 CDs for the first time. The Avantgarde series serves as a historical document for a time of radical change in musical thinking and the breaking of artistic boundaries. The question "What is music?" confronted many of the composers and musicians involved in the series, and the anti-authoritarian spirit of the 1960s and 1970s was a palpable influence. Deutsche G…
John Cage Variations + Four6
"I ask how CALATO's use of graphic scores help them break down the divisions between contemporary composition and improvisation? “We started as a noise improvisation band,” they respond. “We spent several years playing together without any kind of parts or scores, just working deeply on listening to each other, reacting and generating a kind of togetherness that made it possible to create live music in a very fast and intuitive way.” Then they started investigating different approaches to compo…
The Guests Go in To Supper (Book)
Rare 1st edition from 1986. Nearly 400 pages, large size, paperbound, smythe-sewn. Texts, scores and ideas of 7 American composers using language in composition: John Cage (Mushrooms et Variationes), Robert Ashley (Improvement), Yoko Ono, Laurie Anderson, Charles Amirkhanian, Michael Peppe, and Kenneth Atchley.
Published by Burning Books, 1986. Edited by Melody Sumner Carnahan, Kathleen Burch and Michael Sumner. Introductions by Charles Shere and Frances Butler.
The Number Pieces 3: One⁸
Cage’s One8 was composed for cellist Michael Bach, an artist who had a very important place in Cage’s late work. Its duration of 43’30” makes an oblique reference to Cage’s groundbreaking 4’33” (1952). It is constructed of 53 time brackets with single sounds to be played on 1, 2, 3, or 4 strings. These time brackets tell the player when to begin and end each section (each section often containing a single note). Durations, dynamics and bow positions are free. Allan Kozinn had this to say in The …
A Mycological Foray, Variations on Mushrooms
Foraging for mushrooms with John Cage: writing, art, photography and ephemera from an idiosyncratic chapter in the composer's life. Imagined as an extended mushroom-foraging expedition, John Cage: A Mycological Foray gathers together Cage’s mushroom-themed compositions, photographs, illustrations and ephemera. Indeterminacy Stories and other writings by Cage are interwoven throughout the first volume within a central essay examining Cage’s enduring relationship with mycology. Also included is a …
Four
*In process of stoclking. 2023 stock* A new vision of John Cage, via his complete works for string quartet. Spanning forty years of the artist’s activities, these three masterworks illuminate the different stylistic periods in the output of this 20th century icon.
CagExperience
*In process of stocking. 2023 stock* "No matter how weird, how outrageous, how experimental or how avant garde musicians and composers try to be, it’s a pretty good chance dear Great-Grandfather John Cage did it first. And it’s a pretty good guess that even the most willing listeners and seasoned DJ’s may get pushed to the edge listening to some of his compositions. This makes me smile. I’ve been pushed and came back and forced myself to go farther and farther. Growth is hard. Endurance and stam…
Postcard From Heaven
The harp is a strange and compelling instrument that in its technological ancientness beckons composers and listeners alike to bask in its heavenly aura. Like hand drums and acoustic guitars, the immediacy of a harp's sound production demands an intimate, one-on-one relationship between listener and instrument/performer. This intimacy is why composers of all stripes write music for harp－it strips away habit and affectation. Its limits are challenges that distill the essence of a composer's style…
Cheap imitation
* 180Gr Purple Vinyl. edition of 500* Reissue of an LP originally on the Cramps Nova Musicha imprint. The music is a "cheap imitation" of Erik Satie. Nice meandering piano music played by John Cage himself. Registered at Center for Contemporary Music of Mills College in Oakland, California, Cheap Imitation is a piece for solo piano by John Cage, composed in 1969. It is an indeterminate piece created using the I Ching and based, rhythmically, on Socrate by Erik Satie; it consists almost exclusive…
Variations VII - 9 Evenings: Theatre & Engineering
Lucky restock, last copies In late 1965, Billy Klüver, a research engineer at Bell Telephone Laboratories, arranged for ten New York artists -- John Cage, Lucinda Childs, Öyvind Fahlström, Alex Hay, Deborah Hay, Steve Paxton, Yvonne Rainer, Robert Rauschenberg, David Tudor and Robert Whitman -- to meet with a group of his fellow engineers and scientists from Bell Laboratories to work together to develop technical equipment to be used as an integral part of the artists’ performances. 9 Evenings: …
John Cage
** 180Gr White Vinyl. edition of 500 ** One of the better realizations of John Cage's work, this was also the first “Nova Musicha” collection release. The LP contains five John Cage’s compositions for "prepared" piano, played and performed by various artists: Juan Hidalgo, Walter Marchetti, Gianni-Emilio Simonetti and Demetrio Stratos. In these perfomances, the sound of the piano was altered by placing objects (preparations) between or on the strings or on the hammers or dampers. Toy pianos and…
Hymnkus Thoreau Drawings Two
"Some years ago we performed the John Cage Thoreau Drawings work at dawn break in the Yorkshire Sculpture Park on a rather chilly November morning. As a visual artist I have always delighted in Cage’s own visual art and its connections to nature and Henry David Thoreau. The graphical notational elements used in Cage’s score are not, however, his own, but derived from the many small sketches of plants and other natural ephemera found in Thoreau’s Journal, (which I highly recommend also as a porta…