Silence In John Cage: The Role And Evolution Of Silence
Ananya Tanna
Professor Isiah Jackson
HIST
20 October 2017
The Role and Evolution of Silence
The Avant-garde composer, John Cage, created a space for silence as an important element in understanding the meaning of music and sound. According to Cage, when he is listening to ‘music’ it is as though someone is talking about their feelings or their ideas. When sound is presented in a raw, natural form for example, in the case of traffic, it is simply sound that is acting. This activity of sound is what caught Cage’s interest because of its transient ability to be loud or soft, long or short, high or low etc., leaving him satisfied, without having the need for sound to ‘talk’ to him. In this paper, I will be writing about the role of silence in John Cage’s compositions and the evolution of his changing perception of silence as seen in those compositions.
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