Page 305 - (DK) The Classical Music Book - Big Ideas Simply Explained

CONTEMPORARY 303

See also: Pierrot lunaire 240–245 ■ Parade 256–257 ■ Gruppen 306–307 ■
In C 312–313 ■ Six Pianos 320 ■ Einstein on the Beach 321

Cage’s experiments in sound led to
his invention of the “prepared piano,”
in which the piano has its sound
altered by the placement of objects
on or between the strings.

view, espoused by Stravinsky,
that even interpretation was
unnecessary. The performer’s
only concern, it claimed, was
to reproduce the score without John Cage
interference. This attitude reached
its apogee with the advent of Born in Los Angeles in 1912,
integral, or total, serialism, in John Cage studied music
which virtually all the musical under Arnold Schoenberg and
parameters were controlled by Henry Cowell and used serial
the compositional system. techniques in his early works.
By 1939, he had started to
Cage the anarchist experiment with the prepared
For the American composer John piano, tape recorders, and
Cage, this imbalance of power other technology. His concert
music” was coined to describe toward the composer created at the New York Museum of
compositions in which chance a musical hierarchy in opposition Modern Art in 1943 brought
plays a significant role. Early on, to his socialist and anarchist him to the attention of a wider
musical community.
Dadaists—an avant-garde art beliefs. The only way this hierarchy In the years that followed,
movement—saw that chance could could be undermined, he thought, Cage explored Buddhism and
form a part of a new aesthetic. was if either the composer were other eastern philosophies and
French-American artist Marcel less or the performer more a part became fixated on the nature
Duchamp composed two aleatory of the compositional process. ❯❯ of music and its absence. His
works between 1913 and 1915, compositions brought fame
while Frenchmen Francis Picabia and infamy. Although he never
and Georges Ribemont-Dessaignes fully abandoned notated
wrote works for performance at the scores, his experimentalism
Festival Dada in Paris, in 1920. led to him becoming an icon
of the Fluxus movement,
The composer’s role If you develop an ear for espousing “found” sound and
Although aleatory music originated sounds that are musical, it is materials. Plagued by poor
in pure experimentalism, it was like developing an ego. You health, Cage suffered a fatal
stroke in 1992 at the age of 80.
considered a serious concept by begin to refuse sounds that
the mid-20th century, a reaction to are not musical and that way
what had gone before. Ever since cut yourself off from a good Other key works
composers had moved from figured deal of experience.
bass to full notation, performers John Cage 1946–1948 Sonatas and
had gradually lost a sense of being Interludes
1958 Concert for Piano and
actively creative musicians, and as Orchestra
improvised ornamentation fell by 1974–1975 Études Australes
the wayside, and scores became 1987 Europeras I and II
more detailed, there had been a

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