University of Virginia Library

Cage's 'Accidental' Music

Wesleyan University's Composer-Professor John Cage

John Cage, one of the more
unusual composers in the world of
music living today, will deliver a
talk on the topic "Diary: How to
Improve the World - You Will Only
Make Matters Worse (Continued)",
in Cabell Hall Auditorium,
Thursday evening, November 19th,
at 8:30 pm.

The Music Department and the
Special Lectures Committee,
sponsors of the event, have been
trying for years to get Mr. Cage to
visit the University on one of his
lecture tours, and are properly
gratified that at last the entire
University community will have an
opportunity to hear this
outstanding figure in the creative
arts this week.

Besides being a world lecturer,
Cage is musical director of the
Merce Cunningham Dance
Company in New York, and a
member of the faculty of the
Center for Humanities at Wesleyan
University. He is the author of
three books of essays on his musical
philosophy, "Silence", "A Year
from Monday" and "Notations".

'Mixed-Media'

In 1952, while teaching at Black
Mountain College in North
Carolina, Cage created the first
'mixed-media' performance or
'Happening' in America, and since
then a number of recordings of his
works have been released on the
Columbia, Nonesuch, and Folkways
labels, including his "Fontana Mix"
and "Variations IV". Early in his
career Cage invented the "prepared
piano", by which he first became
famous.

Nuts And Bolts

By placing bolts, nuts and strips
of rubber across the strings, he
turned the piano into
many-voiced percussion band. In
1937 Cage wrote prophetically, "I
believe that the use of notice to
make music will continue and
increase until we reach a music
produced through the aid of
electrical instruments which will
make available for musical purposes
any and all sounds that can be
heard."

'Indeterminacy'

Much of the credit for the
current 'electronic music'
revolution can be traced to Cage's
wide influence over the past thirty
years. His stated ideal in music is
"indeterminacy", and he has
adopted "chance", or aleatory,
methods of composition, where
patterns developed by accidental
means could be translated into
musical notation.

Silence

Cage also believes that silence,
which can never be absolute, is as
much a component of music as
intentional sound; therefore, all the
unintentional noises that arise
during a performance should be
part of that particular composition.
"If you want to know the truth of
the matter," Cage said recently,
"the music I prefer, even to my
own and everything, is what we
hear if we are just quiet." To Cage,
the most agreeable art is not only
just like life; it is life.