Tag: cage
-
“To what end does one write music?” For a composer like John Cage, this was not just a question about the meaning of his work, it was a question about the meaning of his life. It is not surprising, then, that Cage would turn to sources that combined the artistic and the religious to seek…
-
John Cage’s “A composer’s confessions” tells the story of his professional ambition, its failed realization, and the resulting disappointment and self-doubt. Disillusioned in New York, he turned away from the world, looked inward, and began a search for meaning.
-
Introduction to a series of posts on John Cage’s musical and spiritual path of the 1940s and early 1950s. To understand his taking up of chance in 1951, you have to understand this journey, and to fully understand the journey, you must be able to see it as a journey into both musical silence and…
-
Essay presenting six different perspectives on Cage’s well-known early masterpiece.
-
The introduction to James Pritchett’s book ‘The Music of John Cage’ explains why we must consider John Cage to be a composer above all else.
-
This essay was written for the catalog of the exhibition “John Cage and Experimental Art: The Anarchy of Silence” at the Museu d’Art Contemporani de Barcelona. Copyright 2009 by James Pritchett. All rights reserved. Originally we had in mind what you might call an imaginary beauty, a process of basic emptiness with just a few…
-
I’ve been reading Irving Sandler’s book on the Abstract Expressionist painters, The triumph of American painting. I picked this book up also because I wanted to study how someone writes about that art. I’ve gotten other things from my reading, too, and it makes me think about why we write about art and music, the…
-
I recently listened to all five hours of the Cage/Feldman Radio happenings of 1966–67. Hearing them in conversation, I get a feel for a friendship and a collegiality that is more subtle than is usually described.
-
John Cage and the prepared piano: a twelve-year history in six parts by James Pritchett Copyright 2007 by James Pritchett. All rights reserved. Prologue (5 April 1944) “Dances by Merce Cunningham; Music by John Cage”, the concert program read. “April fifth, Nineteen forty-four, at nine o’clock.” The program, divided into three parts, consisted of: DANCE…
-
All composers endure bad performances of their music. It’s always demoralizing and undermines self-confidence. Some solace can be taken in the knowledge that this experience is universal: it happens to all composers, the famous and the obscure, and at all points in their careers. This point was driven home to me recently when I discovered…