I studied painting in my early years, but I was unsuccessful. I studied at Pamona University and the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA), but I didn't graduate. Later, he transferred to the famous composer Schoenberg to study composition. Cage couldn't afford the tuition, but Schoenberg was moved by Cage's obsession with music and agreed to teach him for free. But Cage, after all, lacks the sense of harmony necessary for a professional composer. Two years later, Schoenberg advised him not to devote himself to composing music. In the 1940s, Cage listened to a lecture on Buddhism and Zen by Japanese Suzuki Teitaro Daisetz at Heishan College in North Carolina, and was deeply influenced by it, and soon became a follower of Zen. He began to use Zen thought in his new attempt to compose music, imagining music as a kind of "aimless game", thinking that life is just life itself, and everything should go with the flow, without deliberately looking for any order from chaos and accident, thus becoming an early representative of the composer of "accidental music". He can break the established restrictions of "music" made by all traditional composition techniques, all standard musical instruments and their standard playing methods, and use a series of acoustic effects that he never expected and could not have expected at all as his works, creating artistic conception for the audience and showing philosophy. For example, a foreign body is sandwiched between the strings of a piano to create a new tone, and it is stated in the score that each player should turn on or off the radio at will according to his feelings at that time, and the pianist is invited to splash water on the stage. There is no doubt that these practices have made Cage a controversial figure from fame to today. However, with the great influence of his works, it is worthy of being recorded in the music history of the 20th century.
John Cage's most groundbreaking and of course the most famous musical work in his life is "4 minutes and 33 seconds" (premiered on 1952), which consists of three movements, with a total length of 4 minutes and 33 seconds. There are no notes on the score, and the only requirement indicated is "Tacet". The significance of the work is to ask the audience to listen carefully to the silence at that time and experience all the occasional sounds in the silence. This also represents an important philosophical point of Cage's music: the most basic element of music is not playing, but listening. A documentary of John Cage's 4 minutes and 33 seconds recorded his silent performance at the scene. He stepped onto the podium, picked up the baton, and then stopped there as motionless as wood, which puzzled the whole concert hall. After a while, he pretended to turn over a page of music and took out a handkerchief to wipe his sweat, which made people smile. Finally, at 4'33, the audience broke into thunderous applause, which lasted for a long time without looking at his watch for many seconds. John Cage greeted him like a gentleman. It's a bit funny, as if something epoch-making happened; Experiments, pioneers, like magic, have temporarily captured modern people who are a little tired and have bad eyes.
John Cage's other works include fontana Mixed Music, Toy Piano Suite and Empty Words. He also published many monographs and talks, such as "On Nothing" and "A Year from Monday".
In addition, Cage is an avid amateur mycologist and mushroom collector, and has joined the Fungal Society of new york. He also created a poetic genre called Mesostic, in which capital letters were placed in the middle of sentences rather than at the beginning.
1On August 2nd, 992, Cage died in new york at the age of 80.