John+Cage

John Cage was born in Los Angeles 1912. John Cage is known for his famous piece 4'33" in which the piece is created by the sounds the audience hears. Cage was taught by other famous 20th century composers such as Henry Cowell and Arnold Schoenberg and has worked with pianist Richard Buhlig and painter Galka Scheyer. As well as Cowell and Schoenberg another composers around that time were Igor Stravinsky and Aaron Copland. Cage also worked with dancer Merce Cunningham for many years in which Cunningham choreographed dances to Cage's pieces. Cage was described as one of the initial composers to use different techniques in music.

Cage's first experiments with music techniques was that he put things such as plates and screws between the strings of a piano in order to create a stranger sound. His experiments soon became larger as he realised he create the instruments he wanted to use. A piece called Imaginary Landscape No. 4 is entirely created by a collection of radio playing whatever station is on them. Cage then used a technique called 'I Ching' which translate to Book of Change and he would toss coins to see how his piece wold be composed.

media type="custom" key="25183540" This Piece is called Sonata V or Sonata 5. The instruments that is used in this piece is a prepared piano which has screws and other objects in between the strings. This makes the piano sound bell like and percussive. The notes are quite staccato and short which gives the piece a more sudden and jarring sound. There is a repeated pattern in the left hand that that keeps the time and makes this piece sound syncopated. The structure of this song is: A B A B C D E F E. The piece starts off moderately loud then gets quite then builds up to loud at the end.

media type="custom" key="25198218" This Piece is called Water Walk. This instruments that Cage uses to make the piece are actually household items. he uses a kettle, blender, bathtub, an iron pipe, rubber duck, a vase of roses a bird call instrument and five radios. He also uses a prepared piano on which he puts a fish on the strings. the only instruments that he actually uses are two cymbals.Even though this piece sounds like it is Cage just doing random stuff, it is actually timed and every sound planned. He uses organic tone colours which are created by the household items and percussion tone colours by the cymbals and iron pipe.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Cage http://www.52composers.com/cage.html http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Template:Timeline_Classical_Composers_20th_Century http://www.rosewhitemusic.com/cage/texts/worklist.html http://rosewhitemusic.com/piano/writings/introduction-music-john-cage/ http://www.pbs.org/wnet/americanmasters/episodes/john-cage/about-the-composer/471/