John Cage

ジョン・ケージ　/　じょん・けーじ

American composer

September 5, 1912 – August 12, 1992　・　Los Angeles, California, United States

California
composer
writer
poet

My Take

Honestly, the first time I heard about 4′33″ — you know, the piece where the performer sits at the piano and plays absolutely nothing for four minutes and thirty-three seconds — my reaction was somewhere between baffled and annoyed. But that's exactly the trap Cage set, and he got me good. The whole point is that silence doesn't exist: every cough from the audience, every creak of a chair, every car passing outside becomes the music. That's a genuinely mind-bending idea, and he spent a lifetime building the philosophy to back it up — through prepared piano (shoving screws and rubber into the strings of a Steinway and making it sound like a gamelan), through chance operations drawn from the I Ching, through his deep friendship with Merce Cunningham that blurred the line between music and dance. He was a Los Angeles kid who ended up changing how the entire world thinks about sound, won a Guggenheim at 36 and the Kyoto Prize at 76, and never once played it safe. A true original, and I mean that without irony.

Overview

John Milton Cage Jr. (September 5, 1912 – August 12, 1992) was an American composer, artist, and music theorist. A pioneer of indeterminacy in music, electroacoustic music, and non-standard use of musical instruments, Cage was one of the leading figures of the post-war avant-garde. Critics have lauded him as one of the most influential composers of the 20th century.

1. Profile

Name (English): John Cage
Name (Japanese): ジョン・ケージ
Reading: じょん・けーじ
Born: September 5, 1912 – August 12, 1992
Zodiac / Chinese zodiac: Virgo / Rat
Origin: Los Angeles, California, United States
Blood type: Private
Height: Private
Agency: Private
Occupation: composer / writer / poet / university teacher / musicologist

2. Background

Elementary school: Private
Junior high: Private
High school: Los Angeles High School
University: University of California, Los Angeles

Awards & achievements

1949 Guggenheim Fellowship
1989 Kyoto Prize in Arts and Philosophy
Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences
1949 Arts and Letters Award in Music
Honorary Member of the International Society for Contemporary Music

3. Relationships

Spouse: Private
Children: Private
Parents: Private
Siblings: Private

4. Personality

Motto

Private

5. Works & records

Category	Title	Role
Notable work	The Perilous Night	—
Notable work	Two²	—
Notable work	In the Name of the Holocaust	—
Notable work	Bacchanale	—
Notable work	4′33″	—
Notable work	Sonatas and Interludes	—

6. Links

Official sitehttps://johncage.org
Wikipedia (Japanese)https://ja.wikipedia.org/wiki/%E3%82%B8%E3%83%A7%E3%83%B3%E3%83%BB%E3%82%B1%E3%83%BC%E3%82%B8