Silence

Silence PDF Author: John Cage
Publisher: Wesleyan University Press
ISBN: 9780819560285
Category : Art
Languages : en
Pages : 292

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Book Description
John Cage is the outstanding composer of avant-garde music today. The Saturday Review said of him: “Cage possesses one of the rarest qualities of the true creator- that of an original mind- and whether that originality pleases, irritates, amuses or outrages is irrelevant.” “He refuses to sermonize or pontificate. What John Cage offers is more refreshing, more spirited, much more fun-a kind of carefree skinny-dipping in the infinite. It’s what’s happening now.” –The American Record Guide “There is no such thing as an empty space or an empty time. There is always something to see, something to hear. In fact, try as we may to make a silence, we cannot. Sounds occur whether intended or not; the psychological turning in direction of those not intended seems at first to be a giving up of everything that belongs to humanity. But one must see that humanity and nature, not separate, are in this world together, that nothing was lost when everything was given away.”

Silence

Silence PDF Author: John Cage
Publisher: Wesleyan University Press
ISBN: 9780819560285
Category : Art
Languages : en
Pages : 292

Get Book Here

Book Description
John Cage is the outstanding composer of avant-garde music today. The Saturday Review said of him: “Cage possesses one of the rarest qualities of the true creator- that of an original mind- and whether that originality pleases, irritates, amuses or outrages is irrelevant.” “He refuses to sermonize or pontificate. What John Cage offers is more refreshing, more spirited, much more fun-a kind of carefree skinny-dipping in the infinite. It’s what’s happening now.” –The American Record Guide “There is no such thing as an empty space or an empty time. There is always something to see, something to hear. In fact, try as we may to make a silence, we cannot. Sounds occur whether intended or not; the psychological turning in direction of those not intended seems at first to be a giving up of everything that belongs to humanity. But one must see that humanity and nature, not separate, are in this world together, that nothing was lost when everything was given away.”

Silence

Silence PDF Author: John Cage
Publisher: Wesleyan University Press
ISBN: 0819570648
Category : Music
Languages : en
Pages : 289

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Book Description
John Cage is the outstanding composer of avant-garde music today. The Saturday Review said of him: "Cage possesses one of the rarest qualities of the true creator- that of an original mind- and whether that originality pleases, irritates, amuses or outrages is irrelevant." "He refuses to sermonize or pontificate. What John Cage offers is more refreshing, more spirited, much more fun-a kind of carefree skinny-dipping in the infinite. It's what's happening now." –The American Record Guide "There is no such thing as an empty space or an empty time. There is always something to see, something to hear. In fact, try as we may to make a silence, we cannot. Sounds occur whether intended or not; the psychological turning in direction of those not intended seems at first to be a giving up of everything that belongs to humanity. But one must see that humanity and nature, not separate, are in this world together, that nothing was lost when everything was given away."

The Music of John Cage

The Music of John Cage PDF Author: James Pritchett
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 9780521565448
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 244

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Book Description
The first book to examine fully the work of John Cage, leading figure of the post-war musical avant-garde.

John Cage

John Cage PDF Author: Marjorie Perloff
Publisher: University of Chicago Press
ISBN: 9780226660578
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 302

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Book Description
John Cage: Composed in America is the first book-length work to address the "other" John Cage, a revisionist treatment of the way Cage himself has composed and been "composed" in America. Cage, as these original essays testify, is a contradictory figure. A disciple of Duchamp and Schoenberg, Satie and Joyce, he created compositions that undercut some of these artists' central principles and then attributed his own compositional theories to their "tradition." An American in the Emerson-Thoreau mold, he paradoxically won his biggest audience in Europe. A freewheeling, Californian artist, Cage was committed to a severe work ethic and a firm discipline, especially the discipline of Zen Buddhism.

Where the Heart Beats

Where the Heart Beats PDF Author: Kay Larson
Publisher: Penguin
ISBN: 1101572485
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 610

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Book Description
A “heroic” and “fascinating” biography of John Cage showing how his work, and that of countless American artists, was transformed by Zen Buddhism (The New York Times) Where the Heart Beats is the story of the tremendous changes sweeping through American culture following the Second World War, a time when the arts in America broke away from centuries of tradition and reinvented themselves. Painters converted their canvases into arenas for action and gesture, dancers embraced pure movement over narrative, performance artists staged “happenings” in which anything could happen, poets wrote words determined by chance. In this tumultuous period, a composer of experimental music began a spiritual quest to know himself better. His earnest inquiry touched thousands of lives and created controversies that are ongoing. He devised unique concerts—consisting of notes chosen by chance, randomly tuned radios, and silence—in the service of his absolute conviction that art and life are one inseparable truth, a seamless web of creation divided only by illusory thoughts. What empowered John Cage to compose his incredible music—and what allowed him to inspire tremendous transformations in the lives of his fellow artists—was Cage’s improbable conversion to Zen Buddhism. This is the story of how Zen saved Cage from himself. Where the Heart Beats is the first book to address the phenomenal importance of Zen Buddhism to John Cage’s life and to the artistic avant-garde of the 1950s and 1960s. Zen’s power to transform Cage’s troubled mind—by showing him his own enlightened nature—liberated Cage from an acute personal crisis that threatened everything he most deeply cared abouthis life, his music, and his relationship with his life partner, Merce Cunningham. Caught in a society that rejected his art, his politics, and his sexual orientation, Cage was transformed by Zen from an overlooked and marginal musician into the absolute epicenter of the avant-garde. Using Cage’s life as a starting point, Where the Heart Beats looks beyond to the individuals Cage influenced and the art he inspired. His creative genius touched Robert Rauschenberg, Jasper Johns, Andy Warhol, Yoko Ono, Alan Kaprow, Morton Feldman, and Leo Castelli, who all went on to revolutionize their respective disciplines. As Cage’s story progresses, as his collaborators’ trajectories unfurl, Where the Heart Beats shows the blossoming of Zen in the very heart of American culture.

John Cage Was

John Cage Was PDF Author: James Klosty
Publisher: Wesleyan University Press
ISBN: 9780819575043
Category : Photography
Languages : en
Pages : 0

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Book Description
Intimate portraits and remembrances of one of the most influential artists of the twentieth century It is difficult to imagine a world without John Cage. His playful, challenging spirit remains pervasive—a formative force in the lives of those in the forefront of today's arts. This special book combines iconic photographs of Cage by James Klosty with eclectic testimony the author commissioned from people the world over, each asked to contribute their thoughts on Cage's influence on their lives and work with one-hundred-word statements. These remembrances range from humorous to reverent, and are from artists including Laurie Anderson, John Ashbery, Gavin Bryars, Jasper Johns, Harry Mathews, Meredith Monk, Mark Morris, Ron Padgett, Yoko Ono, Yvonne Rainer, Steve Reich, Peter Sellars, Stephen Sondheim, Twyla Tharp, Michael Tilson Thomas, Anne Waldman, Robert Wilson, and many more. The evocative duotone photographs show John Cage alone and in association with Merce Cunningham, Marcel Duchamp, Octavio Paz, Aaron Copland, and many others. The book provides public and private glimpses into the man who transformed chance from an inescapable inevitability of life into disciplined creativity through music, writing, philosophy, printmaking, and, on the largest scale of all, living. John Cage Was gives us a privileged view of an irreplaceable man who had few enemies and innumerable disciples.

Notations

Notations PDF Author: John Cage
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Music
Languages : en
Pages : 340

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Book Description
Manuscripts by 269 composers, with accompanying texts determined by I-Ching chance operations.

Begin Again

Begin Again PDF Author: Kenneth Silverman
Publisher: Northwestern University Press
ISBN: 0810128306
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 497

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Book Description
A man of extraordinary and seemingly limitless talents—musician, inventor, composer, poet, and even amateur mycologist—John Cage became a central figure of the avant-garde early in his life and remained at that pinnacle until his death in 1992 at the age of eighty. Award-winning biographer Kenneth Silverman gives us the first comprehensive life of this remarkable artist. Silverman begins with Cage’s childhood in interwar Los Angeles and his stay in Paris from 1930 to 1931, where immersion in the burgeoning new musical and artistic movements triggered an explosion of his creativity. Cage continued his studies in the United States with the seminal modern composer Arnold Schoenberg, and he soon began the experiments with sound and percussion instruments that would develop into his signature work with prepared piano, radio static, random noise, and silence. Cage’s unorthodox methods still influence artists in a wide range of genres and media. Silverman concurrently follows Cage’s rich personal life, from his early marriage to his lifelong personal and professional partnership with choreographer Merce Cunningham, as well as his friendships over the years with other composers, artists, philosophers, and writers. Drawing on interviews with Cage’s contemporaries and friends and on the enormous archive of his letters and writings, and including photographs, facsimiles of musical scores, and Web links to illustrative sections of his compositions, Silverman gives us a biography of major significance: a revelatory portrait of one of the most important cultural figures of the twentieth century. !--?xml:namespace prefix = o ns = "urn:schemas-microsoft-com:office:office" /--

No Such Thing as Silence

No Such Thing as Silence PDF Author: Kyle Gann
Publisher: Yale University Press
ISBN: 0300163010
Category : Music
Languages : en
Pages : 272

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Book Description
First performed at the midpoint of the twentieth century, John Cage’s 4'33", a composition conceived of without a single musical note, is among the most celebrated and ballyhooed cultural gestures in the history of modern music. A meditation on the act of listening and the nature of performance, Cage’s controversial piece became the iconic statement of the meaning of silence in art and is a landmark work of American music. In this book, Kyle Gann, one of the nation’s leading music critics, explains 4'33" as a unique moment in American culture and musical composition. Finding resemblances and resonances of 4'33" in artworks as wide-ranging as the paintings of the Hudson River School and the music of John Lennon and Yoko Ono, he provides much-needed cultural context for this fundamentally challenging and often misunderstood piece. Gann also explores Cage’s craft, describing in illuminating detail the musical, philosophical, and even environmental influences that informed this groundbreaking piece of music. Having performed 4'33" himself and as a composer in his own right, Gann offers the reader both an expert’s analysis and a highly personal interpretation of Cage’s most divisive work.

Empty Words

Empty Words PDF Author: John Cage
Publisher: Wesleyan University Press
ISBN: 9780819560674
Category : Art
Languages : en
Pages : 204

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Book Description
Writings through James Joyce's Finnegan's Wake, Norman O. Brown, and "The Future of Music."