John Cage was an American musical composer who influenced the 20th century with his experimental approaches and unique philosophies to music. He was known primarily for the use of musical indeterminacy as a compositional device. He incorporated random operations into his solo piano composition “Music of Changes,” in which the toss of coins decides the next musical phrase from a series of prepared musical choices. His innovative musical invention also includes his compositions for the “prepared piano,” in which performers place objects such as screws, thumbtacks, bamboo strips on or between the piano strings with the intention of producing an altered timbre. Say no to plagiarism. Get a tailor-made essay on "Why Violent Video Games Shouldn't Be Banned"? Get an original essay Silence did not exist in Cage's world. He believed that “there is no empty space or empty time. There is always something to see, something to hear. In fact, no matter how much we try to be silent, we can't. His composition, 4'33'', reflects current philosophy in three movements of silence. It remained his most controversial composition. In his early years, Cage sought inspiration from several schools. He recognized Henry Cowell as “the open sesame for new music. Cowell was a leading figure in aleatoric music as he first introduced the concept of the "string piano" - the attempt to manipulate the strings of the piano in as many ways as possible. Cowell's open-mindedness to new music was a counterforce to Arnold Schönberg's practice of twelve-tone harmony in post-classical compositions. It was the counterforce that Cage was anticipating. In the 1950s, Cage was exploring the literature of Zen Buddhism. At the same time, DT Suzuki, a renowned Japanese practitioner of Zen Buddhism, came to the United States to lecture on "egolessness" and "freedom." At the heart of Suzuki's teaching was the Zen doctrine of “no-mind.” " He believed that true creativity comes from true solitude, and true solitude means the experience of "satori" in an artist's life - becoming aware of the unconscious. It was also during one of the lectures that Suzuki personally encouraged Cage to "let sounds were themselves" and to create music that broadened his audience's worldviews. Suzuki's encouragement resonated with Cage's deep love of noise. During an interview with Cage in his later years, he expressed: “ I love the sounds as they are. I don't need them to be anything more than they are. I just want it to be a sound of melodies, harmonies and textures in music as Cage perceived these elements as the workings of his ego. Therefore, the use of radio in Cage's music reflected his liberation from thoughts, ego and will, it was also an integral part of. a new musical experience that Cage wanted. Looking through Cage's complete works, there are four times in total where Cage integrated the use of radios. They are Crede in Us (1942), Imaginary Landscape No. 4 (1951), Speech 1955 (1955) and the focus of this essay, Radio Music (1956). It is worth noting that in Crede in Us only one radio is used as an accompaniment instrument, but the radios are the main instruments between the compositions. Imaginary Landscape No. 5 is a piece written for twelve radios; Speech 1955 is a piece written for five radio stations and a journalist; Radio Music is a song written for eight radio stations. Cage's increasing use of radio in music and his egoless approach to music had become quite evident by the 1950s.Radio Music (1956) is a revolutionary composition by Cage. Must be performed as a soloist or with an ensemble of two to eight artists each at a radio station. According to the database of John Cage's works, the composer indicated that the work includes four sections that must be programmed by the performer(s), with or without intervening silences. Eight musicians are needed to archive the most complex soundscape, and each of them immediately manipulates the radio during the performance. To show how Cage's Radio Music is different from random musical repertoires, I will compare Radio Music and three other random musical repertoires in the aspects of notation, musical construction and playability respectively. The three aleatory musical repertoires are Erratum Musical (1913) by Marchel Duchamp, Dynamic Motion (1916) by Henry Cowell and In C (1964) by Terry Riley. In the aspect of notation, Marchel Duchamp wrote Erratum Musical on staff papers. However, note values ​​and bar lines are absent, clefs and accidentals are present. Therefore the score includes note heads in black with the syllable under each note head. Duchamp annotated the dividers as crosses to draw a clear distinction between the three sections. On the other hand, all elements of traditional musical notation are absent in Cage's Radio Music. At the top of each score is an explicit instruction on how players should manipulate the radio, and then there is a series of amplitudes expressed in numbers. Here the amplitudes become note heads and the musician can decide the duration of each note head. Cage was suggesting that radio frequencies can be annotated. Therefore anything can be noticed except note heads. In short, the musical notation between the two songs is visually different. In the aspect of musical construction, Henry Cowell's Dynamic Motion is full of huge tone clusters and dynamic changes just as the title suggests. The original rhythmic motif (movement) appears in bar 9 after a chordal introduction. The motif then continues to repeat in massive clusters of tones throughout the piece. There is a bright base and climax design with a recognizable pattern. Radio music, in contrast, has no specific theme, melody, rhythm, or harmony that can be investigated. Cage wanted the piece to be a musical soundscape rather than a musical composition. It was conveying the message of the music itself to everything that was happening at the time, which is why the piece stands out among all the random music. He used the extreme unpredictability of sounds coming from eight radios at once. Even the artists couldn't predict the randomness and the noises. Undoubtedly, the musical construction between the two pieces is conceptually different. In terms of playability, In C by Terry Riley is composed of 53 musical phrases of short and medium length. Preferably, according to Riley, it is performed by 35 musicians. With the aim of creating a polyrhythmic performance on the spot, each musician has the autonomy to determine the tempo of the inputs, the dynamics and the amount of repetition of the assigned musical phrases. It required a certain level of self-control and mastery on the part of each musician in search of collective flow. Conversely, anyone who knows how to control an FM/AM radio or a portable device that connects to radio stations could potentially be the performer of Cage's Radio Music. Ideally, it is performed by eight people, which is about a fifth of the desired number of performers for In C. In this case, Radio Music has a higher playability than that of In C, and could arguably be one of the most playable songs. musical pieces. Please note: this is just an example. Get a custom paper from our expert writers now. Get a (1993).