John Cage

Analysis of John Cage's use of music to evoke emotional responses and question regularity

In this essay the life and work of John Cage shall be explored in detail. A comparison of his musical techniques and form will give an insight into why people characterize his music as polarising. Key concepts that will be explored will include those of originality, inventiveness and quality. These key concepts will then be used to break down and analyse specific named pieces in order to better understand the use of techniques in order to convey emotional responses within work. 



John Cage’s Life


John Cage  (September 5, 1912 – August 12, 1992) was an American composer, music theorist, artist and philosopher ("John Cage - Concerts, Biography & News - BBC Music", n.d.). His use of non conventional instrumentation would propel him as one of the leading figures in the post war avant-garde era. His musical ideas, inventive compositions and unorthodox ideas profoundly influenced mid-20th century music (Lewis, n.d.).  The son of an inventor, John Cage briefly attended Pomona College before travelling around Europe. Upon his return to the USA he studied music with figures such as Richard Buhlig, Arnold Schoenberg, Adolph Weiss, and Henry Cowell (Lewis, n.d.).


 While teaching in Seattle in the time period of 1938-1940, John Cage organised percussive ensembles to perform his compositions. Under his teacher Schoenberg he explored the 12-tone method of music. 12-tone refers to the ordering of the 12 pitch classes. It was after this period under Schoenberg that he started to explore unconventional music and instrumentation. One of John Cage’s best known experimental instrumentation involved a piano with objects placed between the strings to “produce percussive and otherworldly sound effects” (Lewis, n.d.), this was known as the prepared piano. John Cage also experimented with other objects such as radios, record players and tape recorders as part of his vision of using unconventional instrumentation to step out of the boundaries of Western music. 


Following this Cage decided to turn towards Zen Buddhism which helped with “spontaneous expression of artistic or spiritual vitality regardless of context” (M. Bodiford, n.d.). Cage’s conclusion from such activities was “that all the activities that make up music must be seen as part of a single natural process.” (Lewis, n.d.).  He would naturally progress to the idea that all kinds of sounds are potentially musical, “ he encouraged audiences to take note of all sonic phenomena, rather than only those elements selected by a composer”(Lewis, n.d.). His use of randomness within his musical compositions would feature further going forward in his life, to ensure that the performer was removed from their own interpretation. 


John Cage produced several books such as “Silence: Lectures and Writings” and “ M: Writings ’67–’72”  (Lewis, n.d.). In relation to his musical prowess it can be said that his works influenced and developed traditions ranging from minimalist and electronic music to performance art. John Cage passed away on the 12th August 1992, in New York. 



Avant-Garde


Avant-Garde refers to any piece of music that is considered to be at the forefront of innovation. Words to describe this may include innovative, new, unusual, unworldly or not widely accepted. The idea behind Avant-Garde is to push the boundary of what is conceived as musical. In relation to John Cage, a phrase which is used a lot is “everything is music” (Reed, 2012). Avant-Garde pushes the boundaries as what is seen as music and helps to push creative innovation within compositions. John Cage’s use of unconventional instrumentation such as tape recorders can be seen as a type of Avant-Garde, and also compositions such as 4’33” helped to push musical expression and get people questioning their interpretation of music. In relation to originality this is the highest form that you can take when speaking upon originality due to the fact that inspiration is often limited due to ideas already being at the forefront of what is conceived as normal. 


John Cage’s idea of music looked at the use of silence, or the pronunciation of non conventional musical sounds such as traffic. He believed that a singer was just another sound that was trying to talk to him. He shows the example of how a street will become louder and quieter, higher and lower. John Cage explains how some people describe music as sounds with meaning, whereas Cage describes sounds without meaning (Pailthorp et al., 2012). 


Perhaps the work that most accurately represents this idea of sounds without meaning being produced to show music was his work “Water Walk”. Water Walk aired on TV as a composition where the presenter had been quoted to say to the audience that people may laugh, again highlighting the unusual aspect of his work. John Cage replied “I consider laughter preferable to tears” (Cage, 1960). Instruments that Cage used included a water pitcher, an iron pipe, a goose call, a bottle of wine, an electric mixer, a whistle, a sprinkling can, ice cubes, 2 cymbals, a mechanical fish, a quail call, a rubber duck, a tape recorder, a vase of roses, a seltzer siphon, 5 radios, a bathtub, and a grand piano. Apart from the cymbals and piano all of these are not conventional musical instruments. People laughed nervously at the proposition put forward to them as it was challenging the notion of what a composition had to include. When the presenter asks the composer if he considers the piece to be “music,” Cage responds, “Perfectly seriously, I consider music the production of sound. And since, in the piece which you will hear I produce sound, I will call it music” (Cage, 1960). Perhaps it can be seen that John Cage was lucky to have this opportunity to present this musical Avant-Garde on television as the two notions would previously not marry up well together. This form of Avant-Garde can be seen as a reason as to why people believe Cage’s works are so polarising. In this instance he has shown people unconventional musical instrumentation and produced an emotional response from it, albeit nervous laughter. It is from this use of non conventional instrumentation that his “sounds come from, and that his music derives from”. Again, this use of instrumentation helped John Cage evoke emotional responses and question regularity. In relation to the title, the use of unconventional instrumentation helps with the innovativeness of the work and the quality such as there being a theme that all the instruments have water or are themed around water, help to keep it within a certain structure. 


Prepared Piano


John Cage could be seen to help to popularise unconventional instrumentation and the prepared piano can be seen as one such example, although Cage often cited American composer Henry Cowell and his use of a string piano as his main inspiration. String piano was one in which the pianist was instructed to manipulate the strings inside a piano whether that was by scraping or plucking at them. Cage’s version involved placing coins, screws, bolts and other objects like plastic and rubber in between the strings to create unworldly sounds. Cage had been working primarily with percussive elements at the time, when he was asked to provide accompanying music for dancer Syvilla Fort but felt the room on stage did not allow for a percussive ensemble. This is one of the main reasons for which Cage came up with the prepared piano. This inventiveness was brought about due to the physical room restrictions and allowed his creativity to show by effectively manipulating the 12 pitches of the chromatic scale. In relation to inventiveness it was more of an inspired piece of work due to Cage often directly citing Henry Cowell for his inspiration.


4’33”



Perhaps one of Cage’s most recognisable and controversial musical compositions is his 4’33” piece consisting of silence with a musician on stage sitting doing nothing for four minutes and thirty three seconds. Cage was fascinated in the sounds of every day and that there was no such thing as absolute silence.  In this piece Cage exploits the listeners’ expectations and points them to the proposition of the surrounding sounds as the actual compositional piece. On the surface this would mean that to each and every person the composition would have sounded different as we all interpret sound uniquely. Essentially it could be classed as unique since instead of people going to listen to music to drown out the outside life, here John Cage was specifically highlighting these sounds. Figure 1 shows the sheet music for 4’33”. 

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(Figure 1, John Cage’s 4’33” composition (Richardson, 2019))

His influence for this composition can be drawn back to Cage’s encounter with the so-called “white paintings” by his friend Robert Rauschenberg (Hermes, 2000). These paintings consisted of;



“huge canvasses of undifferentiated white whose surfaces vary infinitely with particles of dust and light reflections.” (Hermes, 2000)




You can see in terms of unique capability to present the objective with a different perspective, both the paintings and the compositions shift focus away from conventional methods such as normal compositions, but instead to focus more into what is already there. Another area of influence came from Cage’s exposure to an anechoic chamber, one which is designed to specifically create absolute silence. Upon entering the chamber Cage recognised two pitches, one high and one low. The engineer said that the one of high pitch was his nervous system and the low on being his circulatory system.  This can be seen as the true inspiration for his composition 4’33”. Cage is quoted as saying; 



"Until I die, there will be sounds," he wrote, "and they will continue after my death. One need not fear about the future of music. Any sounds may occur in any combination and in any continuity." (Hermes, 2000)



In relation to quality, 4’33” can be seen to be of a very high standard. Although musical techniques used within the composition are lacking and thus not able to be scrutinized, the object of the composition to be able to deflect attention to the surroundings and natural sounds is exemplary. Although controversial at first with some audience members simply storming out of the theatre, it became an iconic piece and used the controversial nature to further emphasise the idea of unity between sounds and nature. This would be used in the future with modern day songs in electronic and hip-hop using the sounds of nature and the streets within their work. Its success to incorporate nature and sounds into music is fantastic. As Pianist David Tudor called it;



"one of the most intense listening experiences you can have."(Hermes, 2000)



Cage believed that although it was a serious piece of work, it should be taken light-heartedly saying:



"I've spent many pleasant hours in the woods conducting performances of my silent piece, transcriptions — that is, for an audience of myself."'(Hermes, 2000)




Audio Tapes



John Cage can be seen as one of the earliest forms of pioneer to the electronic music genre. One of his most famous pieces of work was ‘Williams Mix’  which consisted of eight tracks of ¼ inch magnetic tape. Figure 2 shows the score for his mix but instead of it being in standard musical notation, it shows the cutting pattern for the tape 





Cage-1952-Williams.gif

(Figure 2, ("LISTENING SESSION: Williams Mix by John Cage - Black Mountain College Museum + Arts Center", n.d.))



Commenting of his score, Cage explains;



“This is a score (192 pages) for making music on magnetic tape. Each page has two systems comprising eight lines each. These eight lines are eight tracks of tape and they are pictured full-size so that the score constitutes a pattern for the cutting of tape and its splicing. All recorded sounds are placed in six categories ... Approximately 600 recordings are necessary to make a version of this piece. The composing means were chance operations derived from the I-Ching.” 

(Daniels, n.d.)



Williams Mix was the first time the splicing and cutting of recorded sounds had been used like this, and paved the way in the future to electronic looping and synthesis. 



The mix itself sounds very jarring and could potentially have been very disturbing to people in the 1950’s. Although the recordings were all natural such as frogs croaking and trees rustling, the piece all together is played in an unconventional manner for which all types of rhythm and musical melodies are redundant. The only changing parameter being that of which the speed of the recordings being played back. 



In relation to the essay points it can be seen as innovative as this was the first time that splicing had been used in such a manner and that recordings had been used primarily as the whole musical composition. This new innovation and pushing the technical limitations of magnetic tape can be seen as another reason as to why John Cage’s work can be seen as polarising. 




Conclusion 



In conclusion it can be seen that John Cage’s music was characterised as polarising due to its forefront message of directing the listeners towards that of sounds rather than conventional music. Cage’s idea of evoking strong emotions through the use of silence and unconventional instrumentation can be seen as his main driving point in relation to creativity and inventiveness. With this provocation to listeners there demanded a high quality which can be shown throughout the named pieces due to his use of philosophies such as Zen being used as inspiration. His bending of conventional musical language helped propel his ideas such as “everything is music”. This combination of both sounds and nature in pieces of work like 4’33” can still see ramifications in today's music using natural sounds such as waves on a beach with the genre of tropical house. His use of screws within a piano helped to further his idea of creativity and pushed further that music is, above all, just sound placed within time, no matter what the form of the sound is. John Cage’s ability to challenge the listener and their expectations and preconceptions is why he shall be known as one of the most inspiring and controversial composers of the twentieth century. 






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