![]() For the Record …īorn John Milton Cage, Jr., September 5, 1912, in Los Angeles, CA died of a stroke August 12, 1992, in New York, NY son of John Milton Cage (an engineer and inventor) and Lucretia Harvey married Xenia Kashevaroff, 1935 (divorced, 1945). ” Cage ’s Sonatas and Interludes of 1946 to 1948 remains his most famous work for prepared piano. This innovation, influenced by Henry Cowell ’s work in which piano strings were stroked or strummed, became known as the “prepared piano. Unhindered, Cage was able to achieve the effect he desired by placing objects inside the piano, thus altering the sound of the strings. Because of space limitations, a percussion ensemble could not be used. In the 1930s Cage began writing percussion music, and in 1938 he was asked by dancer Syvilla Fort to write the music for her dance, Bacchanale. In 1934, Cage began studying with Schoenberg privately in Los Angeles and attending his classes at the University of Southern California and the University of California, Los Angeles. ![]() He also attended classes taught at New York City ’s New School for Social Research by the composer Henry Cowell. Cage studied with Richard Buhlig -the first American pianist to perform the music of Schoenberg -and then in New York City with Adolph Weiss, a former student of Schoenberg. Through these lectures, he developed an interest in the music of Austrian-born composer Arnold Schoenberg. He supported himself by giving lectures on modern art and music. In 1931 Cage returned to California with no money or job. ![]() He dabbled in architecture and painting and began composing music, using a complex mathematical system he designed to approximate the style of the eighteenth-century German composer Johann Sebastian Bach. After withdrawing from Pomona, Cage traveled extensively in Europe and North Africa. He enrolled in nearby Pomona College in Claremont, California, where he remained for two years. He attended Los Angeles High School, establishing the highest scholastic average in the school ’s history, and was valedictorian at his class ’s graduation in 1928. As a child he took piano lessons from his aunt. John Milton Cage, Jr., was born on September 5, 1912, in Los Angeles, California. Whereas, if the way we compose is applicable to our daily life, and changes it, then it seems to me that there is something useful in the way we ’re composing music. In a 1962 interview with composer Roger Reynolds in Contemporary Composers on Contemporary Music, Cage said, “If, in our dealings with our composition of music, we find that it distorts our daily life, then there must be something wrong with the way we ’re composing, it seems to me. He has broadened the definitions of music to include all types of sound. John Cage is undeniably one of the most important composers of the twentieth century.
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