An extended trajectory of Cage literature, from early critical
reaction to writing by contemporaries to current scholarship.
John Cage (1912-1992) defined a radical practice of composition that
changed the course of modern music and shaped a new conceptual horizon
for postwar art. Famous for his use of chance and "silence" in musical
works, a pioneer in electronic music and the nonstandard use of
instruments, Cage was one of the most influential composers of the last
century. This volume traces a trajectory of writings on the artist, from
the earliest critical reactions to the scholarship of today. If the
first writing on Cage in the American context, often written by close
associates with Cage's involvement, seemed lacking in critical distance,
younger scholars--a generation removed--have recently begun to approach
the legacy from a new perspective, with more developed theoretical
frameworks and greater skepticism. This book captures that evolution.
The texts include discussions of Cage's work in the context of the New
Music scene in Germany in the 1950s; Yvonne Rainer's essay looking back
on Cage and New York experimentalism of the 1960s; a complex and
original mapping of Cage's place in a wider avant-garde genealogy that
includes Le Corbusier and Moholy-Nagy; a musicologist's account of
Cage's process of defining and formalizing his concept of indeterminacy;
and an analysis of Cage's project that considers his strategies of
self-representation as key to his unique impact on modern and postmodern
art.
