• American composer and son of an inventor.

• An important contributor to the avant-garde movement of the 20th century

• Challenged traditional ideas of classical music.​

• Helped in developing the practice of compositional indeterminancy (uncertainty or chance).

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John Cage

​(1912-1992)

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4'33"

The audience that witnessed the first performance of this piece in Woodstock, New York, in 1952, whispered, walked out, and burst into an infuriated uproar at the end.

Following the premiere, Cage had this to say:

“They missed the point. There’s no such thing as silence. What they thought was silence,   because they didn’t know how to listen, was full of accidental sounds. You could hear the wind stirring outside during the first movement. During the second, raindrops began pattering the roof, and during the third the people themselves made all kinds of interesting sounds as they talked or walked out.”

Water Walk

john Cage made the American debut of his composition Water Walk in 1960 on the popular game show I've Got a Secret. Water Walk is an example of musical indeterminancy.

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• A piano that has been altered by adding objects to the strings inside of the piano.

• This creates timbre changes to the piano and can make surprising sounds when the keys are hit.

• This practice is generally traced back to John Cage.

Prepared Piano

John Cage- Interludes and Preludes