The Roaring Silence: John Cage, A Life

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John Cage has been described as the most influential composer of the last half of the twentieth century. His work and ideas - about silence, indeterminacy, nonintention, art's role in bringing the everyday object to our attention, the singularity of performance - have had influence not only in the world of music but also in dance, painting, printmaking, video art, and poetry. As an exponent of Zen Buddhism since the early fifties, he has had an important role in introducing Zen spirituality to the American ...
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Overview

John Cage has been described as the most influential composer of the last half of the twentieth century. His work and ideas - about silence, indeterminacy, nonintention, art's role in bringing the everyday object to our attention, the singularity of performance - have had influence not only in the world of music but also in dance, painting, printmaking, video art, and poetry. As an exponent of Zen Buddhism since the early fifties, he has had an important role in introducing Zen spirituality to the American artworld and general culture. Among his friends and collaborators have been longtime associate Merce Cunningham, Jasper Johns, Robert Rauschenberg, Marcel Duchamp, Morton Feldman, Pierre Boulez, and Karlheinz Stockhausen. Those who have acknowledged his influence in their work range from minimalist composer Philip Glass to rock musicians David Byrne and Brian Eno. The Roaring Silence is the first full-length biography of John Cage. Written with Cage's full cooperation, it documents his life in unrivaled detail, interweaving a close account of the evolution of his work with an exploration of his aesthetic and philosophical ideas. David Revill never assumes specialist knowledge on the part of the reader, but sets Cage's work in the context of his personal development and contemporary culture. He draws on numerous interviews with Cage and his associates. Paying due attention to Cage's inventions, such as the prepared piano, and his pioneering use of indeterminate notation and chance operations in composition (utilizing the I Ching), Revill also illuminates Cage the performer, printmaker, watercolorist, expert amateur mycologist, game show celebrity, and political anarchist, and discusses his pronouncements on social and environmental issues. The biography includes comprehensive chronologies of his musical and visual works. Arnold Schoenberg once called Cage, his former student, "not a composer but an inventor - of genius." David Revill shows how this multifacete
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Editorial Reviews

Publishers Weekly - Publisher's Weekly
In this sympathetic biography, the late avant-garde composer John Cage is acclaimed as ``a man of joyous integrity'' who leaned toward the ascetic and the transcendent. Photos. (Sept.)
Library Journal
Arnold Schoenberg referred to the recently deceased Cage as ``an inventor--of genius,'' and indeed he was, as manifested through his musical and visual compositions. Avant-garde is a term that comes to mind when considering his complex gifts. Always the optimist, Cage focused throughout his life on an astonishing assortment of endeavors. Besides his never-ending quest toward perfection of sound (including a unique realization of silence), Cage delved into such eclectic areas as Eastern philosophy, edible wild foods (particularly the wild mushroom), printmaking, dance, and poetry. This book was written with Cage's cooperation and was to have been published to coincide with his 80th birthday. This definitive biography is a fine companion to Cage's Silence: Lectures & Writings (1961). It is recommended for academic and special libraries.-- Kathleen Sparkman, Baylor Univ., Waco, Tex.
Booknews
A major biography of the man and his work in music, dance, painting, video art, and poetry. Written with Cage's collaboration. Annotation c. Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com)
Ray Olson
John Cage, who would have turned 80 this month but died last month, was to twentieth-century American music what, say, Whitman was to nineteenth-century American verse, or what Picasso and Braque inventing cubism were to Western painting. He rethought the essentials of music--not just sound and time, but meaning. So at least from the day in 1952 when pianist David Tudor seated himself before the keyboard and did not touch it in any of three movements whose duration added up to "4'33"", attending a Cage performance was likely to be as much an ethical and metaphysical as an aesthetic experience. To most, including many staunch admirers, Cage's pieces didn't sound like music at all. They were and are experiences, and many find they teach how to experience or find an attitude toward experience that enables intellectual, aesthetic, even spiritual satisfaction. This biography is good at describing the hows and whys of Cage's music, considerably less successful at making a compelling story or interpretation of the man's life. Of course, Cage was notoriously reticent about himself, preferring to discuss his convictions and ideas. Acquire Revill's effort to meet immediate curiosity in the wake of Cage's passing, but expect better future biographies.
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Product Details

  • ISBN-13: 9781559701662
  • Publisher: Arcade Publishing
  • Publication date: 9/30/1992
  • Edition description: 1st U.S. ed
  • Edition number: 1
  • Pages: 375
  • Product dimensions: 6.37 (w) x 9.50 (h) x 1.37 (d)

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