The Cambridge Companion to John Cage

by Edited by David Nicholls

• ISBN13: 9780521783484
• ISBN10: 0521783488
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2002-08-26
• Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Summary

John Cage (1912–1992) was without doubt one of the most important and influential figures in twentieth-century music. Pupil of Schoenberg, Henry Cowell, Marcel Duchamp, and Daisetz Teitaro Suzuki, among others, he spent much of his career in pursuit of an unusual goal: 'giving up control so that sounds can be sounds’, as he put it. This book celebrates the richness and diversity of Cage’s achievements - the development of the prepared piano and of the percussion orchestra, the adoption of chance and of indeterminacy, the employment of electronic resources and of graphic notation, and the questioning of the most fundamental tenets of Western art music. Besides composing around 300 works, he was also a prolific performer, writer, poet, and visual artist. Written by a team of experts, this Companion discusses Cage’s background, his work, and its performance and reception, providing in sum a fully rounded portrait of a fascinating figure.

Table of Contents

List of illustrations	vi
Notes on contributors	vii
Preface	ix
Acknowledgments	xi
Chronology	xii
Part I Aesthetic contexts
Cage and America	3	(17)
David Nicholls
Cage and Europe	20	(21)
Christopher Shultis
Cage and Asia: history and sources	41	(22)
David W. Patterson
Part II Sounds, words, images
Music I: to the late 1940s	63	(22)
David W. Bernstein
Words and writings	85	(15)
David W. Patterson
Towards infinity: Cage in the 1950s and 1960s	100	(9)
David Nicholls
Visual art	109	(19)
Kathan Brown
Music II: from the late 1960s	128	(23)
William Brooks
Part III Interaction and influence
Cage's collaborations	151	(18)
Leta E. Miller
Cage and Tudor	169	(17)
John Holzaepfel
Cage and high modernism	186	(28)
David W. Bernstein
Music and society	214	(13)
William Brooks
Cage and postmodernism	227	(15)
Alastair Williams
No escape from heaven: John Cage as father figure	242	(19)
Kyle Gann
Endnotes	261	(7)
Bibliography	268	(9)
Index	277