You have to sympathize with Joel Sachs, the director of the Juilliard School's annual Focus! Festival. His task is to choose a subject rich enough for vigorous exploration, and then offer a survey that touches on major themes without getting tangled up in the fine details. That can be tough when the subject is a prolific, wildly imaginative...
Some music now considered transporting was simply too revolutionary for its time: Beethoven's late works often baffled his peers but inspire us. The music of some 20th-century composers, on the other hand, will probably never move the listener, which was not the goal of an artist like John Cage. Cage, a brilliant man with a mischievous sense of...
John Cage is an anomaly among contemporary composers for a great many reasons, not the least of which is that his name and some of his conceptual notions are more widely known than his music. His most famous score is silent -- or at least people think it is. Actually, that work -- ''4'33'' '' -- was composed for Maverick Concerts, a summer festival...
John Milton Cage (5. september 1912 - 12. august 1992) var en amerikansk komponist, filosof og musikteoretiker.
Han var den betydeligste fornyer af amerikansk kompositionsmusik i anden halvdel af 1900-tallet, og en afgørende inspiration for europæisk avantgarden-musik i 1950'erne og 1960'erne.
Han var elev af Arnold Schönberg og enkelte af hans tidligste kompositioner er baseret på tolvtoneprincipper, men han var fra begyndelsen optaget af klang og rytme som de vigtigste musikalske parametre. Han har gennem hele sit liv eksperimenteret og på én gang fascineret og forarget verden med sin musik.
Hans grundtanke er at musik er lyde. Alle lyde kan gøres til udgangspunkt for en musikalsk lytten. Med dette udgangspunkt har han konstant udfordret forudfattede ideer om musik, og forsøgt at skabe en højere grad af sensibilitet over for de lyde som omgiver os i hverdagen. Fold ud