John Milton Cage: A Unique Combination Between Classical and Contemporary Composition

Born of English and Scottish descent, John Milton Cage’s birth place was Los Angeles; on September 5, 1912 he was born, and he became an experimental music composer, writer and visual artist. He comes from an Episcopalian family, with strict rules and a deep sense of society. Cage even planned, once, to become a minister.

He attended Pomona College. By the 1930’s, he went to Cornish School of the Arts, located in Seattle, Washington. He wrote for a wide variety of instruments, such as piano and percussion. He was influenced by one of his teachers, Henry Cowell.

He defined himself as an experimental composer because he indeed played with sounds and created new styles by chance, meaning that with the basis of the aleatoric music, several elements of it are given by chance, not planning them ahead. He used to combine Zen Buddhist principles, describing music as a “purposeless play” that helps us “wake up to the very life we are living.”

It would be pretty difficult to mention his best productions, due to two reasons; first, his compositions are too broad and too varied and the second reason is that they are more than two hundred and each piece of his music really pleases people with different tastes and shades.

Among his multiple talents, he had other sidelines too; he usually collected mushrooms and was the co-founder of the New York Mycological Society. He died on August 12, 1992.