The Selected Letters of John Cage by John Cage

The Selected Letters of John Cage by John Cage

This selection of over five hundred letters gives us the life of John Cage with all the intelligence, wit, and inventiveness that made him such an important and groundbreaking composer and performer. The missives range from lengthy reports of his early trips to Europe in the 1930s through his years with the dancer Merce Cunningham, and shed new light on his growing eminence as an iconic performance artist of the American avant-garde. Cage's joie de vivre resounds in these letters - fully annotated throughout - in every phase of his career, and includes correspondence with Peter Yates, David Tudor, and Pierre Boulez, among others. Above all, they reveal his passionate interest in people, ideas, and the arts. The voice is one we recognize from his writings: singular, profound, irreverent, and funny. Not only will readers take pleasure in Cage's correspondence with and commentary about the people and events of a momentous and transformative time in the arts, they will also share in his meditations on the very nature of art. A deep pleasure to read, this volume presents an extraordinary portrait of a complex, brilliant man who challenged and changed the artistic currents of the twentieth century.

His teacher, Arnold Schoenberg, said JOHN CAGE was not a composer but an inventor of genius. Composer, author, and philosopher, John Cage was born in Los Angles in 1912 and by the age of 37 he had been recognized by the American Academy of Arts and Letters for having extended the boundaries of music. He was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 1978, and in 1982, the French government awarded Cage its highest honor for distinguished contribution to cultural life, Commandeur de l'Ordre des Arts et des Lettres. Cage composed hundreds of musical works in his career, including the well-known 4'33 and his pieces for prepared piano; many of his compositions depend on chance procedures for their structure and performance. Cage was also an author, and his book Silence was described by John Rockwell in the New York Times as the most influential conduit of Oriental thought and religious ideas into the artistic vanguard-not just in music but in dance, art and poetry as well. John Cage's books, published by Wesleyan, are Silence (1961), A Year From Monday (1967), M (1973), Empty Words (1979), which Cage also regarded as a performance piece, and X (1983). John Cage died in 1992 at the age of 79.

SKU	Unavailable
ISBN 13	9780819575913
ISBN 10	0819575917
Title	The Selected Letters of John Cage
Author	John Cage
Condition	Unavailable
Binding Type	Hardback
Publisher	Wesleyan University Press
Year published	2016-07-07
Number of pages	656
Cover note	Book picture is for illustrative purposes only, actual binding, cover or edition may vary.