JOHN CAGE (1912-1992) was an American composer whose inventive compositions and unorthodox ideas profoundly influenced twentieth-century music. He was an early proponent of aleatoric music (music where some elements are left to chance), used instruments in nonstandard ways, and was an electronic music pioneer. LAURA KUHN (Millbrook, NY) is the John Cage Professor of Performance Art at Bard College and director of the John Cage Trust.
"The publication of a great artist's letters is always an important
event, but rarely is such a volume as thrilling to read as is The
Selected Letters of John Cage, which takes us from the 1930s, when
Cage was an eighteen-year-old college dropout traveling in Europe
and Algeria, to his robbery at knifepoint shortly before his sudden
death in 1992. In his published writings and even interviews, John
Cage was so naturally reticent, so unfailingly polite and formal,
that the letters, wonderfully informal and often surprisingly frank
and even severe, come as a real surprise. Anyone interested in the
development of the twentieth-century American avant-garde will want
to read Cage's week-by-week reaction to its twists and turns. His
life-in-letters emerges as a heroic tale of struggle and triumphant
survival."--Marjorie Perloff
"Cage's letters are invaluable in that they show us the day-to-day
life of a composer at work: organizing concerts, raising funds,
working with performers, worrying about getting the next piece
done. Essential reading for anyone interested in Cage's
music."--James Pritchett
"This book is an introduction to Cagean aesthetics to equal
Silence, his 1960 collection of writings In words, as in music,
Cage still opens our ears and minds."--Alastair Macaulay, The New
York Times
"The Selected Letters of John Cage, a wide-ranging selection of
correspondence edited by Laura Kuhn, may stand both as Cage's best
biography to date and an unfailingly engaging introduction to his
thinking. It demystifies Cage the far-removed guru and restores to
us an eternally curious human being with a sharp, original mind and
a gift for language that is apparent from the first letter in the
book."--Tim Page, The New York Review of Books
"Cage's letters are charged with the ecstasy of the found, the joy
of the unexpected, the unanticipated connection, and it spills over
into his relationships with his fellows and friends (including some
amazing women), among them the giants of music in his time."--Tim
Pfaff, The Bay Area Reporter
"Each decade of letters is introduced with un-precious biographical
narrative: how in the mid 1930s 'Cage was broke more often than
not'; how in the late 1950s he won an Italian TV game show with
mushrooms as his special subject; how in the early 1980s his
neighbours John Lennon and Yoko Ono recommended he take up a
macrobiotic diet."--Kate Molleson, Gramophone
"I might argue, from a Zen perspective, that music that says
nothing also says everything. And so does Cage's work."--American
Record Guide
"...these letters are important for those seeking a personal
understanding of Cage."--Jeff Simon, The Buffalo News, "Editor's
Choice"
"Cage's lifelong struggle to break down the European influence in
music and the arts--in his view a tradition that was totally
spent--is a tale engagingly told in his own words in a new 650-page
book, The Selected Letters of John Cage."--Michael Johnson, Facts &
Arts
"This is not a book that can be devoured in a biteremains an
indispensable source for Cage research and interpretation."--Gisela
Groneymeyer, MusikTexte
"John Cage created an offbeat gamelan-inflected, childlike,
percussive wonderland of piano works. This rich legacy was the
product of a long emotional evolution, as this vast compendium
indicates, reflecting Cage's ever-genial, ultra-collegial
personality."--Benjamin Ivry
"(Merce) Cunningham became Cage's great love and remained his
spouse for the remainder of his life. The correspondence from the
dawn of their uncommon and intensely beautiful romance, found in
The Selected Letters of John Cage, is on par with Nabakov's love
letters--that gold standard of the most intimate genre of the
written word--makes a crowning addition to history's greatest LGBT
love letters."--Maria Popova, Brain Pickings
"John Cage created an offbeat gamelan-inflected, childlike,
percussive wonderland of piano works. This rich legacy was the
product of a long emotional evolution, as this vast compendium
indicates, reflecting Cage's ever-genial, ultra-collegial
personality."--Benjamin Ivry
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