About the Book
Please note that the content of this book primarily consists of articles available from Wikipedia or other free sources online. Pages: 115. Chapters: Alexander Peskanov, Alexander Reinagle, Alfred Pease (musician), Amy Beach, Arthur Bird, Arthur Farwell, Arthur Foote, Benjamin Carr, Bill Russell (composer), Charles Martin Loeffler, Charles Naginski, Conlon Nancarrow, Daniel Read, David Baker (composer), Donald Sur, Douglas Moore, Dudley Buck, Eda Rapoport, Edgar Stillman Kelley, Edward MacDowell, Elmer Bernstein, Emerson Whithorne, Eric Whitacre, Ernest Bloch, Francis Boott (composer), Frank La Forge, George Strong (composer), George Whitefield Chadwick, Gottlieb Graupner, Harry Rowe Shelley, Henry Cowell, Henry Kimball Hadley, Horatio Parker, Howard Brockway, Howard Sandroff, Jascha Zayde, Jean Paul Kursteiner, Jerzy Fitelberg, John Adams (composer), John Cage, John Corigliano, John Harbison, John Knowles Paine, John Lessard, John Musto, John W. Bischoff, Judith Lang Zaimont, Kenji Bunch, Kevin Keller (composer), Lee Hoiby, Libby Larsen, Lockrem Johnson, Lori Laitman, Lowell Liebermann, Max Morath, Meredith Willson, Michael Nicolella, Michael Waller, Milton Babbitt, Mohammed Fairouz, Ned Rorem, Normand Lockwood, Oliver Shaw, Paul Creston, Peter Lieberson, Randall Thompson, Reginald De Koven, Richard Hundley, Robert Beadell, Rudolf Rojahn, Samuel Barber, Sidney Homer, Stephen Paulus, Thomas Pasatieri, Virgil Thomson, Walter Piston, William Bergsma, William Bolcom, William Clifford Heilman, Willson Osborne, Zhou Long. Excerpt: John Milton Cage Jr. (September 5, 1912 - August 12, 1992) was an American composer, music theorist, writer, and artist. A pioneer of indeterminacy in music, electroacoustic music, and non-standard use of musical instruments, Cage was one of the leading figures of the post-war avant-garde. Critics have lauded him as one of the most influential American composers of the 20th century. He was also instrumental in the development of modern dance, mostly through his association with choreographer Merce Cunningham, who was also Cage's romantic partner for most of their lives. Cage is perhaps best known for his 1952 composition 4 33, which is performed in the absence of deliberate sound; musicians who present the work do nothing aside from being present for the duration specified by the title. The content of the composition is not "four minutes and 33 seconds of silence," as is sometimes assumed, but rather the sounds of the environment heard by the audience during performance. The work's challenge to assumed definitions about musicianship and musical experience made it a popular and controversial topic both in musicology and the broader aesthetics of art and performance. Cage was also a pioneer of the prepared piano (a piano with its sound altered by objects placed between or on its strings or hammers), for which he wrote numerous dance-related works and a few concert pieces. The best known of these is Sonatas and Interludes (1946-48). His teachers included Henry Cowell (1933) and Arnold Schoenberg (1933-35), both known for their radical innovations in music, but Cage's major influences lay in various East and South Asian cultures. Through his studies of Indian philosophy and Zen Buddhism in the late 1940s, Cage came to the idea of aleatoric or chance-controlled music, which he started composing in 1951. The I Ching, an ancient Chinese classic text on changing events, became Cage's standard composition tool for the rest of his life. In a 1957 lecture, Experimental Music,
