Shane: I think I understand, look for new and productive ways of going about bringing change to something that needs to be fixed or changed, while doing it in the most logical manner to get the best result. In this way, Cage is putting a frame around the sounds already present (from any source) and calling attention to them to encourage the listener to notice all the sounds already present around them and hopefully find value in hearing them even in their improvisatory, indeterminate nature. are all the music of the piece and are entirely non-determined by the composer. Sniffling sounds, footsteps, rubbing clothing, etc. The pinnacle of his conceptions is his infamous 4'33" in which an audience sits for four minutes and thirty-three seconds and listens to the sounds presenting themselves in the room. This continued use of new instruments firstly encourages the listener to pay attention to the timbre of sounds and not just the collection of tones, as well as encouraging the listener to hear music in the everyday motion of plants and human interaction with objects. Throughout his life, he continued utilizing seldom used instruments in his pieces including toy piano, conch shells, and amplified cactus. He also extended this view into developing the "prepared piano" which places objects such as bolts and rubber on the piano strings in order to reflect a percussion ensemble and achieve new timbres that had not been heard in music before. This expanded view of music starts with his earliest compositions which focused on percussion ensembles which were still seldom composed for when he was writing. " Throughout this utilization of indeterminacy in music, he is encouraging his listeners to care less about the personality of the composer and more about the sounds themselves (see also Death of the Author).Īlongside his work with indeterminacy, Cage also extended instrumentation itself. His love of chance manifests throughout his career from early works in which he directs performers to have a radio playing during the performance to later works in which he directs performers: "In a situation provided with maximum amplification, perform a disciplined action. In this way, he was beginning to remove himself from the music and simply let sounds be how they are. By 1951, this extended to utilizing chance as a compositional process as in his piano piece Music of Changes in which he applied I Ching (traditional Chinese divination) operations to select what to put in his music. This includes mathematical determinations, the establishment of specific proportions between different parts of the pieces, and composition based on metrical, rhythmic, or pitch patterns. John Cage's early music (starting in the 1930's) consists of compositional processes applied to traditional instruments.
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