Music Book Review: Silence by John Cage (50th Anniversary Edition)

Silence (50th Anniversary Edition with new Foreward by Kyle Gann)
by John Cage (Music 780.078 Cag)

Woodstock and hippies and much of “modern culture,” the shifts in art and in society that set the stage for the popular culture of today, have been celebrating 50th birthday milestones over the last few years. This applies in classical Art Music or New Music circles, too, in which books about “modern music” usually address a timeframe demarcated at post-1945 or post-1965. Of all of the New Music figures who rose to fame in the heyday of the 1960s, John Cage is likely the most familiar to folks outside of the classical music tradition, and he remains as polarizing a figure to people today as he was over 60 years ago.

There are two peaks in Cage’s career: the first occurred in August of 1952, surrounding the composition and premiere performance of his 4’ 33’’ silent piece. While he wasn’t the first to compose a silent or near-silent musical composition, early performances were met with some controversy—and that continuity with Woodstock comes up here, because the debut performance was by pianist David Tudor at the rural, barnlike Maverick Concert Hall in Woodstock.

Cage was busy with his gentle, quiet brand of innovation in 1952. Back at Black Mountain College in Asheville, NC, he staged his “Theatre Piece #1,” often regarded as the first “happening,” or contemporary multimedia event, which influenced both the “Acid Test” parties of the 60s, 90s rave culture, and multimedia approaches within academia over the decades. His public image grew slowly throughout the 1950s, as he focused on music involving chance operations, working as a teacher and lecturer and staging performances around the world.

However, the second and largest peak in Cage’s public persona came with the publication of Silence in 1961. A collection of his lectures and essays, Silence was anything but silent as it made the rounds among composers and the general public. Since its publication, it has sold around half a million copies, making it easily one of the most widely-circulated books by a modern composer. While the contents of the book date back as far as 1939, Cage’s lectures from earlier decades reveal a focus on Zen principles, rather than talking about the particulars of his periods of composition for percussion, piano, and prepared piano. Where he does get more technical about compositional approaches is to shed light on the application of Eastern philosophies to music, particularly Zen notions of silence and emptiness, and the use of the I Ching to introduce indeterminate elements into an outer framework of predetermined (composed) architecture.

While 4’ 33’’ is scarcely mentioned in the book (and only then as “my silent piece”), the title of the book itself manages to both acknowledge the work, and allude to broader Zen-connected philosophical concerns. In its way, 4’ 33’’ is the perfect illustration of Cage’s methods of using the I Ching mentioned above: the “composed architecture” of the piece is the prescribed lengths comprising its timeline, and the indeterminate elements dropped into its framework are left to those randomly occurring in the space of its performance. This also exemplifies Cage’s rather strict definition of “experimental action” as defined in the book: “an action the outcome of which is not foreseen” (p. 69). The word “experimental” is often controversial among modern composers who disagree with the appraisal of their own carefully considered work as such, but Cage’s definition gives us more nuance: one can compose thoughtfully and implement strategic forms of indeterminacy.

Perhaps the best part about Silence, though, is poetry. This is a book with lots to offer people who may know (or even care!) little about modern “experimental” or avant-garde music. While the titles of Cage’s lectures sometimes sound like a Seinfeld episode (“Lecture on Nothing,” for example), his gentle, playful writing style points to the joys one can find by simply paying closer attention to natural surroundings, a way of listening to and simply being with the sounds happening all around us. In its way, Cage’s philosophy can be applied to the practice of listening to music and sound as much as the discipline of composition, a practice not far removed from what composer Pauline Oliveros has referred to as Deep Listening. Even if abstract music and conceptual art aren’t your thing, the act of appreciating sounds for what they are, right in the moment, can be an illuminating way to interact with all kinds of music, whether you’re on the stage or in the audience. While we have a few other books about Cage in Polley Music Library, nothing quite matches interacting with these ideas in his own soft prose.

[If you enjoy this, you may also wish to try Deep Listening: A Composer’s Sound Practice by Pauline Oliveras, No Such Thing as Silence: John Cage’s 4’ 33’’ by Kyle Gann or For the Birds by John Cage.] 

[ Wikipedia page for John Cage ]

Recommended by Scott S.
Bennett Martin Public Library — Polley Music Library

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