TRACES: John Cage
Today is the occasion to bear in mind John Cage (5/9/1912-12/8/1992). Cage’s innovations with sound, instrumentation, performance, and composition all helped redefine music in the twentieth century. More specifically, his use of chance and the creative ways in which he utilized performers in his works helped inform and shape avant-garde movements like Neo-Dada, Fluxus, and Conceptual art. His innovations also had a profound influence on late 20th Century developments in sound art and performance art, which focused increasingly on context and variability. Through documents or interviews, starting with: moments and memories, we reveal out from the past-unknown sides of big personalities, who left their indelible traces in time and history…
By Efi Michalarou
John Cage was born in Los Angeles, he took piano lessons as a child and although he enjoyed music and showed great academic standing, his first real passion was writing. Following his graduation from High School, he enrolled at Pomona College, but dropped out less than two years into his studies, feeling he wasn’t challenged enough as an aspiring writer. In 1930, Cage traveled to Europe, spending several months in Paris followed by visits to cities in Germany, Spain, Capri, and Majorca. He experimented with a number of mediums while abroad, including painting, architecture, and poetry, but nothing moved him to create innovative works. However, during the latter portion of his grand tour, Cage first encountered the music of Johann Sebastian Bach, in addition to contemporary composers like Igor Stravinsky, and was inspired to create his own composition. In 1931he traveled to New York and began taking classes at The New School, where his instructor and friend Henry Cowell recommended Cage seek out the avant-garde composer Arnold Schoenberg. He found work composing music for various choreographies at UCLA, and began the practice of incorporating non-musical elements into his work such as kitchen utensils, metal sheets, and household items. Cage and his wife moved to Chicago in 1941. A year later, after receiving a commission from CBS, Cage sought more commissions and moved to New York. Upon arriving in New York, the Cages stayed with Max Ernst and Peggy Guggenheim. Guggenheim generously offered to support the couple as long as they needed and offered Cage a concert at her gallery. However, he had already been offered a performance at the Museum of Modern Art, and, when Guggenheim learned of this performance, she felt betrayed and withdrew her support, leaving the couple homeless and without any immediate income. The Cages’ marriage was on the rocks and ended in divorce in 1945, after Cage became romantically involved with Merce Cunningham, who had also moved to New York. In 1946, Cage began studying Indian music and philosophy from Gita Sarabhai. During the late ‘40s and early ‘50s, Cage attended several lectures given by the famous Zen Buddhist, D.T. Suzuki, who would also have a large influence on his work. In 1951, he received a newly translated copy of the “I-Ching” and became fascinated with the text’s symbol system used to identify order in chance events. This was a major breakthrough for Cage and inspired him to compose music incorporating the elements of chance and randomness as guided by the ancient Chinese text. By the ‘50s, Cage had spent two Summers as an instructor at Black Mountain College in North Carolina, and was in residence there in 1952, along with Merce Cunningham and Robert Rauschenberg. This radical institution provided the environment for the development of the young Neo-Dada movement as well as some of Cage’s most experimental and avant-garde works, including “Theater Piece No. 1” (1952), and “4′ 33″” (1952). Until the early ‘90s Cage continued composing, but due to increasing arthritis in his hands, he conducted fewer and fewer live performances. Cage practiced printmaking and watercolors. In the last 5 years of his life, nearly paralyzed by arthritis, a recent stroke, and other ailments, he created his lauded works, the “Number Pieces”, which many consider the final masterpieces from one of the 20th Century’s greatest Avant-Gardists.
