Word: cage
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Better known, perhaps, for the non-intention in his music than for the randomness of his "poetic" speeches, Cage, 76, has worked for more than half a century to develop a method of music that frees him from the bonds of likes and dislikes, allowing him to seek the "purity of sound and thought...
...Cage has developed his theories of chance and randomness over a long spate of work with music. After leaving Pomona College as a sophomore, Cage went to Europe intending to become a writer. Instead, he studied modern music and art and returned to the United States in the mid-1930s to pursue two years of study with composer Arnold Shoenberg. It was after this stint in New York and with a new conviction that he had no ear for harmony that Cage began to usher in a new era of music...
...Cage proceeded to butt his ideas against those of the traditional musical composers of the time...
...What was characteristic of modern music in the 1940s was that everyone was going in his own direction," says Cage. "There was a big split between the following of Shoenberg and that of Stravinsky. But the problem was that no one understood what anyone else was saying. It was understood that everyone would say something, but no one understood what that was. So I decided to give that...
...Cage says his first departure from traditional music was his focus on percussion instruments exclusively...