CAGE John (1912-1992)

An American composer born September 15, 1912 in Los Angeles who died August 12, 1992 in New York.
Passionately interested in architecture and painting, a pianist by training, John Cage studied composition notably with Henry Cowell and Arnold Schönberg. He was also initiated into Indian music and Zen Buddhism; in 1949, in Paris, he met Olivier Messiaen, Pierre Schaeffer and Pierre Boulez. John Cage subsequently became friends with Morton Feldman, Christian Wolff and Robert Rauschenberg in New York and then, in 1953, started a long collaboration with his friend, the choreographer Merce Cunningham. In 1958, in Darmstadt, his compositions and theories took everyone by surprise: he revolutionised the compositional process, basing it on an automatisation of writing through the use of computer programmes and on the ideas of indetermination and chance. John Cage integrated oriental approaches and silence, and rejected the traditional conception of a musical work. The inventor of the prepared piano and of happenings, he placed his work within experimentation and freedom. He had a predilection for the voice, percussion and the piano. His works include Imaginary landscapes no 1 (1939), The wonderful widow of eighteen springs (1942), Music of changes for piano (1951), 4’33’‘ (1952), Water music for a pianist with objects (1952), Speech for narrator and 5 radios (1955), Roaratorio (1979), Ryoanji (1984), Europera 5 (1991).