John Cage

John Milton Cage (September 5, 1912 – August 12, 1992) was an American experimental music composer and writer. He is well known for his 1952 composition

Early life and work

Cage was born in Los Angeles. His father was a somewhat eccentric inventor of largely useless devices who told him "that if someone says 'can't' that shows you what to do". Cage described his mother as a woman with "a sense of society" who was "never happy." It was not obvious from his early life that he would become a composer; he was born into an Episcopalian family, and his paternal grandfather regarded the violin as the "instrument of the devil". Cage himself planned to become a minister at an early age and later a writer.

Related Topics:
Los Angeles - Episcopalian - Devil - Minister

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Although music was not clearly to be his chosen path, he said later that he had an unfocused desire to create, and his subsequent anti-establishment stance may be seen to have its roots in an incident while he was attending Pomona College. Shocked to find a large number of students in the library reading the same set text, he rebelled and "went into the stacks and read the first book written by an author whose name began with Z. I received the highest grade in the class. That convinced me that the institution was not being run correctly." He dropped out in his second year and sailed to Europe, where he stayed for 18 months. It was there that he wrote his first pieces of music, but upon hearing them he found he didn't like them; he left them behind on his return to America.

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