Cage in the Mirror

This year is John Cage’s Centennial, which is really exciting. The stupendously influential composer, mushroom-expert, performer, poet, theorist, and author (among many other things) deserves an incredible amount of credit for developments of the avant-garde in the 20th century. He also deserves an extraordinary amount of credit for his influence in contemporary music – quite literally every composer has to come to terms with Cage’s ideas, and he is truly perhaps the most looming figure of post-war music. His ideas are ground-shaking and far reaching, much like an earthquake that inexplicably shatters a tectonic plate and causes all of north america to fall into the ocean. I’d like to spend some time highlighting some of his work in this post and a few more down the line.

He is most well known for his work, 4’33”…

and perhaps this is the work that summarizes the Cagian aesthetic most succinctly.  The idea that silence doesn’t exist – the idea that all sounds are valid, equal, and beautiful in their own way.

But Cage wrote some incredible music that uses pitch content as well. He wrote some pieces that (to me, at least) are incredibly sensitive and filled with emotion. It provides an interesting dilemma to look at this music in this way, particularly with the knowledge that this man swore off the influence of the ego, the personal, and thus, the emotional. But, almost in the way that looking at algorithmic visual art is sometimes the most touching, his reliance on sound as a spiritual practice can sometimes create the most striking music to me…

I’m thinking of Cage today, and I don’t know why. But I do know that the music is sublime. I hope you take some time out of your day to listen to it and really listen.