Writings Through John Cage S Music Poetry And Art

Author : David W. Bernstein,Christopher Hatch
Publisher : University of Chicago Press
Page : 320 pages
File Size : 42,7 Mb
Release : 2010-06-15
Category : Music
ISBN : 9780226044873

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Writings through John Cage's Music, Poetry, and Art by David W. Bernstein,Christopher Hatch Pdf

This volume looks at the creative work of the great avant-gardist John Cage from an exciting interdisciplinary perspective, exploring his activities as a composer, performer, thinker, and artist. The essays in this collection grew out of a pivotal gathering during which a spectrum of participants including composers, music scholars, and visual artists, literary critics, poets, and filmmakers convened to examine Cage's extraordinary artistic legacy. Beginning with David Bernstein's introductory essay on the reception of Cage's music, the volume addresses topics ranging from Cage's reluctance to discuss his homosexuality, to his work as a performer and musician, and his forward-looking, provocative experimentation with electronic and other media. Several of the essays draw upon previously unseen sketches and other source materials. Also included are transcripts of lively panel discussions among some of Cage's former colleagues. Taken together, this collection is a much-needed contribution to the study of one of the most significant American artists of the twentieth century.

Author : Marjorie Perloff,Charles Junkerman
Publisher : University of Chicago Press
Page : 296 pages
File Size : 54,9 Mb
Release : 1994-07-13
Category : Music
ISBN : 0226660567

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John Cage by Marjorie Perloff,Charles Junkerman Pdf

When the great avant-gardist John Cage died, just short of his eightieth birthday in 1992, he was already the subject of dozens of interviews, memoirs, and discussions of his contribution to music, music theory, and performance practice. But Cage never thought of himself as only (or even primarily) a composer; he was a poet, a visual artist, a philosophical thinker, and an important cultural critic. 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. Following the text of Cage's lecture-poem "Overpopulation and Art," delivered at Stanford shortly before his death and published here for the first time, ten critics respond to the challenge of the complexity and contradiction exhibited in his varied work. In keeping with Cage's own interdisciplinarity, the critics approach that work from a variety of disciplines: philosophy (Daniel Herwitz, Gerald L. Bruns), biography and cultural history (Thomas S. Hines), game and chaos theory (N. Katherine Hayles), music culture (Jann Pasler), opera history (Herbert Lindenberger), literary and art criticism (Marjorie Perloff), cultural poetics (Gordana P. Crnkovic, Charles Junkerman), and poetic practice (Joan Retallack). But such labels are themselves confining: each of the essays sets up boundaries only to cross them at key points. The book thus represents, to use Cage's own phrase, a much needed "beginning with ideas."

Author : John Cage
Publisher : Wesleyan University Press
Page : 292 pages
File Size : 42,8 Mb
Release : 1961-06
Category : Art
ISBN : 0819560286

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Silence by John Cage Pdf

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.”

Author : John Cage
Publisher : Wesleyan University Press
Page : 204 pages
File Size : 51,9 Mb
Release : 1979-02
Category : Art
ISBN : 0819560677

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Empty Words by John Cage Pdf

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

Author : Kenneth Silverman
Publisher : Northwestern University Press
Page : 497 pages
File Size : 40,8 Mb
Release : 2012-07-11
Category : Biography & Autobiography
ISBN : 9780810128309

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Begin Again by Kenneth Silverman Pdf

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" /--

Author : Richard Kostelanetz
Publisher : Unknown
Page : 384 pages
File Size : 45,9 Mb
Release : 1993
Category : Music
ISBN : UOM:39015033092613

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Writings about John Cage by Richard Kostelanetz Pdf

Distinguished composers, performers, and critics offer views of one of the most important figures in twentieth-century music

Author : John Cage
Publisher : Da Capo Press
Page : 298 pages
File Size : 43,6 Mb
Release : 1991-03-21
Category : Music
ISBN : UCSC:32106016715168

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John Cage by John Cage Pdf

The monograph about John Cage is told mostly in his own words and writings, although pieced together by another hand; and, because the editor's theme is that Cage is not just a composer but one of the century's seminal minds who has burrowed through many arts and 'fields, ' materials of all kinds are included here-essays and reviews, scores and sketches, notes, and even designs by Cage himself, as well as photographs, reportage and criticism of his diverse work.

Author : John Cage
Publisher : Station Hill Press
Page : 116 pages
File Size : 41,6 Mb
Release : 1982
Category : Poetry
ISBN : UOM:39015008584412

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Themes & Variations by John Cage Pdf

Author : Kyle Gann
Publisher : Yale University Press
Page : 272 pages
File Size : 48,7 Mb
Release : 2010-03-23
Category : Music
ISBN : 9780300163018

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No Such Thing as Silence by Kyle Gann Pdf

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.

Author : Joan M. Marter
Publisher : Oxford University Press, USA
Page : 3140 pages
File Size : 55,7 Mb
Release : 2011
Category : Architecture
ISBN : 9780195335798

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The Grove Encyclopedia of American Art by Joan M. Marter Pdf

Arranged in alphabetical order, these 5 volumes encompass the history of the cultural development of America with over 2300 entries.

Author : James Pritchett
Publisher : Cambridge University Press
Page : 244 pages
File Size : 55,5 Mb
Release : 1996-03-14
Category : Biography & Autobiography
ISBN : 0521565448

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The Music of John Cage by James Pritchett Pdf

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

Author : John Cage
Publisher : Wesleyan University Press
Page : 179 pages
File Size : 45,8 Mb
Release : 2010-10-20
Category : Music
ISBN : 9780819570550

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A Year from Monday by John Cage Pdf

Includes lectures, essays, diaries and other writings, including "How to Improve the World (You Will Only Make Matters Worse)" and "Juilliard Lecture."

Author : John Cage
Publisher : Wesleyan University Press
Page : 312 pages
File Size : 40,6 Mb
Release : 2010-10-20
Category : Music
ISBN : 9780819570642

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Silence by John Cage Pdf

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.”

Author : Kay Larson
Publisher : Penguin
Page : 496 pages
File Size : 44,9 Mb
Release : 2012-07-05
Category : Biography & Autobiography
ISBN : 9781101572481

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Where the Heart Beats by Kay Larson Pdf

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.

Author : Sara Haefeli
Publisher : Routledge
Page : 277 pages
File Size : 51,8 Mb
Release : 2017-12-06
Category : Music
ISBN : 9781317399544

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John Cage by Sara Haefeli Pdf

This annotated bibliography uncovers the wealth of resources available on the life and music of John Cage, one of the most influential and fascinating composers of the twentieth-century. The guide will focus on documentary studies, archival resources, scholarly research, and autobiographical materials, and place the composer and his work in a larger context of postmodern philosophy, art and theater movements, and contemporary politics. It will support emerging scholarship and inquiry for future research on Cage, with carefully selected sources and useful annotations.