*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 and thereafter. He is the author of hundreds of musical compositions, including the well-known 4'33", many of which define for the first time the field of aleatory music, with the introduction of random procedures into music writing. Cage's importance extends beyond the field of music, however, and artists working today in film, literature, dance, theater, visual and performing arts point to him as a decisive figure of reference. Thanks to his creativity, combined with great sympathy and helpfulness, he was particularly beloved in Italy, so much so that in Bologna, where he performed in 1978 a legendary performance on a train attended by thousands of people, a street was dedicated to him. A very rare case for a so-called "avant-garde" musician.

His musical research - unscrupulous and ironic - merged with everything new that was happening around him, generating new concepts and visions.All this is accompanied by great creativity and originality even in the layout of the book, itself a kind of playful work of art.