John Cage

Introduction[]

John Cage was an American composer born in Los Angeles, California on September 5th, 1912. He is most known for pioneering electroacoustic music and being a leading figure of the post-war avant-garde. Cage was also credited with connections to the development of modern dance and indeterminacy in music.

Work Analysis[]

The piece I will be analyzing is "101" an orchestral work composed in 1988 and premiered April 6th, 1989 in Boston, Massachusetts. Cage looked deeper into the contradiction between standard compositional practices like time signatures and dynamic markings and chance operations and the Yijing an ancient Chinese text. These methods helped Cage to further his need to produce random musical results. "101" is written just as Cage wanted with only one specifically marked area is the duration of the piece. Three orchestral groups are to produce three different types of sounds sustained tones (strings, clarinets, flutes), percussion, and a loud brassy area (brass, double reed). Each group has its own score with no master score or composer.

John_Cage_101_(1988) — John Cage 101 (1988)

Comparisons[]

It is difficult to compare Cage to many other composers considering after he adopted the idea of chance operation most composers stopped having contact with him and he lost a lot of credibility. Composers who experimented with and used serialism dismissed the use of indeterminate music. He was easily influenced by composers such as Schoenberg, Marshall McLuhan, Mark Tobey and Erik Satie. Cage studied with Arnold Schoenberg and most of his work from 1931 to 1936 featured the use of the 25 tone row which was similar to Schoenberg's 12 tone row.

Observations[]

John Cage is one of the most rebellious and interesting composers I have ever studied. I enjoyed the constant unstructuredness of "101" and thought that the idea of having a looser style of composing was so refreshing. I admired that Cage had so much classical knowledge past down to him from amazing composers like Schoenberg and the 12 tone row but then used his knowledge to think outside of the box.