John Cage

I love John Cage’s music. Probably the first several pieces of his music that I’ve heard are not too much in the “Zen” concept in yet. I think that hearing this first makes it easier for me to accept whatever kind of music he wrote later. Perhaps I don’t like some of his later works as much as the earlier things, but I still can find a way to appreciate what he had done. Some of the percussion works that he wrote have become standard repertoire for many percussion groups. I remember that I really liked his music and had a great impression of his musical designs when I first listened to it. Here is a link to one of my favorite works: (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6yGPAUcWyUU ). I also love the prepared piano sound a lot. The piece that Brad played for us on youtube was awesome. Of course, I’m not a “Cage” expert, but the music that I heard so far…I like it.

I think to be able to appreciate his later work, after his influence from “Zen” through Japanese scholar Daisetz Teitaro Suzuki, we probably should look at the meaning of “Zen. This would give us more ideas of why his later work sounds the way it does. I’m not an expert of Zen Buddhism, either. But where I grew up there is a lot of influence from Buddhism. Here is the Wikipedia definition of Zen: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zen . This might be one reason that I find John Cage’s works more accessible.

Meditation is the core concept for Zen. Generally, they think that the language or words will set up the boundaries of the thoughts. You have to use your body and mind to feel it. This also is reflected to the language, art, and music in Asian culture. Notice that the Chinese painting has fewer details than western style. Maybe just a few figures are present, but they carry the concepts or the thoughts from the artist. The artist might try to express the idea for a story, a poem, or a secret through a simple figure and leave a lot of room for people’s imagination.

For music, the spirituality is always more important than the details in the composition by Asian composers. That doesn’t mean that the details are abandoned, but if the players only focus on forms, notes, harmonies, and so on… He/she is missing the most important elements. Because the spiritual is hard to write down in words or in notation, so you have to “feel” and “think” about it. It is more focused on how to present the music to the listener.

Maybe 4’33” is too much for the people who don’t know a lot about Cage before they hear it. It is just like me not knowing much about Nancarrow’s music before. The first time I heard his music was the player piano composition. My first response was “I don’t like that at all” and I don’t understand why he was so important before I went a step further to hear his other compositions.

I don’t think that I would be able to argue for or give a new or better definition of “music” but I am just sharing my ideas of how I appreciate Cage’s music. If you are looking for melody, harmonic, sonata form, or any traditional composition techniques, you might be going to the wrong direction if you want to know John Cage’s later works.