John Cage

John Cage is best known for his works with music. He was an American composer, music theorist, writer, and artist. He was a pioneer of the non-standard use of musical instruments, indeterminacy in music, and electroacoustic music. People say that he was one of the most influential composers on the twentieth century. He used objects to preform live for people. These performances were related to performance art, and Dada. He would alter the instruments that he would play. For example he changed the way a piano he was playing sounded by putting screws in where the music would play. This would alter the sound, and change it into something else. He called it the prepared piano. He is best known thought for Sonatas and Interludes. Cage was influenced by East and South Asian cultures. Unlike his teachers Henry Cowell and Arnold Schoenberg, who got their inspiration from their radical innovations in music. John Cage would describe music to you as "a purposeless play" which is "an affirmation of life – not an attempt to bring order out of chaos nor to suggest improvements in creation, but simply a way of waking up to the very life we're living".


^{http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Cage}