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Webster's bibliographic and event-based timelines are comprehensive in scope, covering virtually all topics, geographic locations and people. They do so from a linguistic point of view, and in the case of this book, the focus is on "John Cage," including when used in literature (e.g. all authors that might have John Cage in their name). As such, this book represents the largest compilation of timeline events associated with John Cage when it is used in proper noun form. Webster's timelines cover bibliographic citations, patented inventions, as well as non-conventional and alternative meanings which capture ambiguities in usage. These furthermore cover all parts of speech (possessive, institutional usage, geographic usage) and contexts, including pop culture, the arts, social sciences (linguistics, history, geography, economics, sociology, political science), business, computer science, literature, law, medicine, psychology, mathematics, chemistry, physics, biology and other physical sciences. This "data dump" results in a comprehensive set of entries for a bibliographic and/or event-based timeline on the proper name John Cage, since editorial decisions to include or exclude events is purely a linguistic process. The resulting entries are used under license or with permission, used under "fair use" conditions, used in agreement with the original authors, or are in the public domain. ... Read more

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Interkulturalitat ist seit den 1990er Jahren in der neuen Musik verstarkt zum Thema geworden. Diese Studie analysiert detailliert interkulturelle Konzepte ostasiatischer und westlicher Komponisten und stellt diese in einen historischen Kontext. Gesellschaftliche und politische Einflusse werden dabei ebenso hervorgehoben wie die Nachwirkungen bzw. die Kontinuitat der Stereotypen und Machtverhaltnisse von Exotismus und Kolonialismus. Nach Abschnitten uber fuhrende Komponisten beider kultureller Bereiche seit 1950 wird der chinesisch-amerikanische Komponist Tan Dun ins Zentrum geruckt, bei dem das groae Potenzial musikalischer Interkulturalitat sehr plastisch sichtbar wird. Dabei wird zugleich die erste umfassende werkanalytische Darstellung von Tan Duns Musik vorgelegt. "aein auaerordentlich kenntnisreiches Buch mit viel Quellenmaterial, das auch fruchtbar als Handbuch fur ostasiatische Musik herangezogen werden kann." neue musikzeitung "anicht nur auaerlich eine egewichtigeae Arbeit. Substanziell ist sie vor allem darin, das grassierende Modesujet "musikalische Interkulturalitat" kritisch zu hinterfragen und von gangigen Klischees zu befreien, die zweifellos wichtige Substanz des Themas vor popularisierender Verflachung zu retten." Osterreichische Musikzeitschrift "aeine hochwillkommene Dokumentationa Es ist dieser eigentlichen Pionierarbeit zu wunschen, dass sie dazu beitragt, den interkulturellen Dialog im Umfeld der Neuen Musik zu vertiefen und dass sie zum Ausgangspunkt einer breiten Auseinandersetzung mit dem Thema wird. [a] Insbesondere die Auseinandersetzung mit Cage, mit einem nahezu vollstandigen Uberblick uber den Stand der Diskussion und einer kritischen Gesamtwurdigung, stellt einen brillanten Essay in sich selbst dar." Dissonanz. (Franz Steiner 2002) ... Read more

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John Cage (1912-92) defined such a radical practice of musical composition that he changed the course of modern music in the last century and shaped a new conceptual horizon for post-war art. This book traces a path through the artist's career, from his initial works in the 1930s, pieces that broadened the parameters of percussion music by incorporating the most unconventional of instruments, leading to his 'prepared piano', moving to his famous theory on 'silence' (and the score 4'33"), his pathbreaking deployment of chance and then indeterminacy, and culminating his innovative multimedia work, which began in the 1960s and continued through the 1980s. With this book, the MACBA aims to capture the relevance of Cage's contribution to present day contemporary art. One of the sections will chart the network of repercussions as Cage's radical conceptual transformation of 'composition' entered the strategies of advanced art. A trajectory framed by dialogues with artists - Marcel Duchamp, Robert Rauschenberg, Robert Morris, Ellsworth Kelly, Fluxus among many others - and reacting to the same emergent media as Andy Warhol. ... Read more

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Customer Reviews (2)

A very intertaining and solid introduction
This is a very entertaining collection of interviews. Duckworth takes his time to explore the issues sufficiently deeply with his interlocutors. Hence, there is substance to the book: it certainly is more than a loose collection of freewheeling conversations. And I am grateful for the fact that Bill Duckworth expanded his survey beyond the obvious collection of Minimalists and Cage. I knew nothing about Pauline Oliveros, Glen Branca or La Monte Young and came away refreshed from reading all their stories. I was generally satisfied by the way Duckworth steers the interviews. The tone is relaxed, sometimes earnest, sometimes tongue-in-cheeck. He is at his very best in the long, sometimes rambling conversations with La Monte Young and John Zorn. But in other cases - such as with the more rigorous and perhaps intellectually more intimidating personality of Steve Reich - Duckworth rigidly sticks to his agenda and fails to capture a number of potentially interesting tangents. The interview with John Cage is outright funny in the way Duckworth fails to catch on with what Cage really tries to get across. He keeps asking the wrong questions whilst Cage, with dwindling patience, is making broad excursions in conceptual hyperspace. But if Duckworth fails to capture a number of interesting opportunities to dig deeper in some of the interviews, this remains a very valuable collection, at least for those new to the whole field of American experimental music.

great fascinating interviews on American creativity
Willian Duckworth is marvelous at asking questions,he is so natural at it that he makes you feel you have known his guests all your life. He allows everyone to feel at home, at ease,like catching more flies with sugar quip.Like asking John Cage for instance, "I don't have a very goodunderstanding of what your early musical training was like,". or to LaMonte Young, asking if he is the "father of minimalism", I guessit doesn't matter now, since most of what is discussed has played itselfout. Here Duckworth interviews creators of primary creative genres ofAmericana leaning toward the achievements of all the various,nefarious"isms", experimentalism, minimalism, well just intonation doesn'tfit, and the ubiquitously opaque post-modernity. And progressing from whoare considered the Mammas and Pappas to the younger generation.The genre ofInterviews seem to be occurring with greater frequency,speaking of one ofthe features of post-modernity. It is the most immediate way of knowingsomeone's art, aesthetic, how they feel about the world,about politics, orhow they don't feel. Obsessions are explored in these interviews,as withJohn Zorn's early buying jags of recordings,jazz etc.,and formative yearsas with La Monte Young and his obsessions with sound, listening totelephone generators,or machines, the inherent drone in these industrialobjects,Also professional associations, and disassociations with the NewYork scene,Fluxus which includes,just about everyone here interviewed isprobed, with nice discussions of the early years of performance art in NewYork City.Education away from academia was an important component ofAmerican music,sorry to say, with those of the post war-generation turningto the east, and World Music, as Steve Reich, Phil Glass,Lou Harrison,Pauline Oliveros and La Monte Young. Young in particular reflects on hiseducation with Pandit Pran Nath on intonation and improvisation andlearning it with Marian Zazeela.Professional associations, how to surviveby being a performance artist, Duckworth pursues and explores with MeridithMonk and Laurie Anderson, finding gigs in New York City or Europe again waseveryone's passion.How do you work? is also a wonderful question, Monkreflects that she has to work all the time to feel attached, whereas sheknows composers who don't work for months and claim to feel they don't loseanything. How creators get into ,what they get into, as Ben Johnstonreflects on his early education with instrument iconoclast Harry Partch,how Partch taught Johnston to sing fractional tones, an eleventh/sixteenth,and how Partch would devote mornings to music, and afternoons to physicalwork, building sheds,or home extensions,or gathering wood. Also Johnstonspeaks about his wonderful string quartets, the Seventh in particular whichis based on an 100-tone scale, and how we come to understand it via therelationships it represents rather than hearing 100 isolated tones. WithLou Harrison we have almost a history of American music, in that his lifetraversed through the primary achievements, the interests in World Music,Tunings, percussion music, and extended techniques,living on both coasts.But Harrison claims he was always a melodic composer, he had to singwhatever he wrote first, to attach himself to the world of sound, no matterhow complex his music became.Some interviews are boring however as the theone with Phillip Glass where he simply recounts his life, and hisinterests, there was not a spirit of adventure, of discovery.Whereas MiltonBabbitt has wonderful reflections on his early studies in music with RogerSessions, and how Babbitt felt he needed to start over. The interview withChristian Wolff was over before it got interesting,Wolff primarilydiscussed his early music, the pieces associated with the CageSchool(Cage,Feldman,Brown,Wolff)(nice photo of them)instead of traversingthe set of problematics of dealing with political imagery. That questioncame as the very last one."Are you still writing politicalmusic?".Duckworth admirably gives nice introductions to eachcomposer, and makes you feel the center of where creativity occurs, whatexcites an artist,and where challenge and repose occurs within music.Onegood question here always was"When did you first hear of JohnCage", or what was the first piece of "so and so" you heard.This makes for a marvelous discussion on what were the initial indeliablemoments on one's creative life. Not everyone is gifted at interviews it isa conditioned and practiced art. This work is a great model toward thatgenre. ... Read more

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excellent book for those wanting to know about Cage's ideas
This book is a collection of interviews with John Cage, the late avant garde composer who was one of the most influential composers of the 20th century. The interviews span nearly a half century and give a cogent idea of Cage's thought on music, art, education, politics, and social revision.

If you are curious about why a composer would write music that is "silent", why he would use chance, nonintention, and denounce music as communication, this is a good book to begin an overview of Cage's philosophy of art.

It also shows that Cage's musical thought was not monolithic, but changed several times in the course of his life, as did his music. ... Read more

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In this sweeping revision of avant-garde history, John Cage takes his rightful place as Wordsworth's great and final heir. George Leonard traces a direct line back from Cage, Pop, and Conceptual Art through the Futurists to Whitman, Emerson, Ruskin, Carlyle, and Wordsworth, showing how the art of everyday objects, often thought an exclusively contemporary phenomenon, actually began as far back as 1800.

In recovering the links between such seemingly disparate figures, Leonard transforms our understanding of modern culture. ... Read more

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Conversing with Cage draws on over 150 interviews with John Cage conducted over four decades to draw a full picture of his life and art. Filled with the witty aphorisms that have made Cage as famous as an esthetic philosopher as a composer, the book offers both an introduction to Cage's way of thinking and a rich gathering of his many thoughts on art, life, and music. John Cage is perhaps this century's most radical classical composer. From his famous "silent" piece (4'33") to his proclamation that "all sound is music," Cage stretched the aesthetic boundaries of what could be performed in the modern concert hall. But, more than that, Cage was a provocative cultural figure, who played a key role in inspiring scores of other artists-and social philosophers-in the second half of the 20th century. Through his life and work, he created revolutions in thinking about art, and its relationship to the world around us. Conversing with Cage is the ideal introduction to this world, offering in the artist's own words his ideas about life and art. It will appeal to all fans of this mythic figure on the American scene, as well as anyone interested in better understanding 20th century ... Read more

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"art is either a complaint or do something else"
i consider this book to be the most valuable resource, in terms of art (art being all artistic medium) theory, that one can find. richard kostelanetz is a superb editor, and the book is organized to the infinitessimal of degrees. the book consists of a compendium of interviews with cage, conducted by various peoples, spanning about forty years. this book is a precise method through which to understand the means that led to cage's understanding of art and life. in that regard it serves as a fundamental piece of learning material because he divulges what he knows and how he came to know it, rather than how he feels. ... Read more

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Música experimental. De John Cage en adelante fue escrito por Michael Nyman en 1974. Su brillante defensa de la música experimental y de sus principales autores (John Cage, Philip Glass, Morton Feldman, etc.) pronto se convirtió en un estandarte de este movimiento, que luchaba para hacerse un lugar al lado de la ortodoxia vanguardista encabezada por Pierre Boulez y Karlheinz Stockhausen. ... Read more