- Born
- 5 September 1912Los Angeles, USA
- Died
- 12 August 1992New York City, USA · aged 79
John Cage
The composer of “4′33″” – four and a half minutes of silence – shared his life and work for fifty years with the choreographer Merce Cunningham.
John Cage grew up in Los Angeles, the son of an inventor. He studied composition with Arnold Schoenberg, who told him he had no feeling for harmony. Cage answered that he would devote his life to beating his head against that wall.
In the 1940s he invented the “prepared piano”, with screws, rubber and other objects placed between the strings. Inspired by Zen Buddhism, he began composing with chance, using the ancient Chinese I Ching. His most famous work, “4′33″” (1952), consists of a performer who plays nothing for four minutes and 33 seconds – the music is the sounds of the room. Cage changed the way people think about music, noise and silence.
In 1935 he married the artist Xenia Kashevaroff; they divorced in 1945. Around that time he began his relationship with the dancer and choreographer Merce Cunningham. They lived and worked together for the rest of Cage’s life; Cage was music director of Cunningham’s dance company. In public both spoke little about their relationship.
Cage was also a passionate mushroom expert and a writer. He died in New York in 1992 after a stroke, a few weeks before his 80th birthday.