Silence: Lectures and Writings, 50th Anniversary Edition

I always think of John Cage as "Klatuu" in "The Day The Earth Stood Still," arriving in a turn-table-shaped rig to deliver the truth about the future of music to the masses. He parks his space ship, and his buddy Gort, on the mall and goes out to make a point. At first only the smartest man in the world could understand the equations he and Billy left on the office black board, but soon everyone would be standing stranded on the streets of Paris and Beijing wondering what the heck's up, and what's all this noise about? Of course, Klatuu gets killed and brought back to life (Cage wisely skipped that), and flies back to wherever he came from (as did Cage a few years back), but our man Cage beats Klatuu by light years, because this MAN FROM THE FUTURE left behind a collection of lectures and writings on the nature of sound, art, literature and BEING that still resonates. This is a fascinating tool box to dig through, even though some of the most interesting selections pre-date Klatuu. One innovation that Cage pioneers in this book is the use of random processes to give form to his lectures. This results in timed "silences" in the texts (very similar to performance scores) and poem-like structures of words. Cage also adds the 20th century's plastic-fantastic Americanized (and therefore ever more elastic) concept of ZEN to the tool box of avant-garde poly-practioners, which results in yet another permission given to innovate. In fact, when I encounter new music, writing, art, one of the basic things I seek is PERMISSION TO DO, and that's exactly what Cage is up to in these lectures. Not only is PERMISSION GIVEN, but he hands over many of the tools to begin. That's why this book is vital, seminal (pun intended) and necessary for every experimentalist in the arts and in life. Cage also has a great sense of humor in these writings. YOUTUBE includes a wonderful video of a guest appearance that Cage made on the old "What's My Line." Before the barely comprehending black & white stares of Gary Moore, Bess Myerson and the crew, Cage plays mix-masters, toasters, and other appliances, watching the clock, as always, and with a straight face bringing the odd beauty of new sound and his own Houdini-like showmanship into America's living rooms, just as he unpacks his ideas in the minds of any attentive reader of this book to this day. As classic as a 1960 limited edition T-Bird guaranteed to bring wows if driven into the 21st century and on and on into the future of human thought.

To say that the always-iconoclastic John Cage was a musical revolutionary would be a bit of an understatement. He was a pioneer of indeterminacy in music, a precursor to contemporary electroacoustic music, an innovator of musical instruments, and, perhaps most controversially, a philosopher of sound and silence.He was much more than just a composer—he was a music theorist, a writer, an artist, and a thinker. This book holds incredible insight into the world of contemporary art, and looks far, far beyond the traditional Western music tradition. Cage took his inspiration from the ordinary and the uninspiring—but it was his uncanny ability to see the humor and the sparkle in the everyday mundane that makes his work truly exceptional.If you enjoy this book, please check out my 8-part series written on John Cage's "Diary: How to Improve the World (You Will Only Make Matters Worse)" on Second Inversion! [...]

John Cage's poetically philosophical treatise's intellectualizations, and verbalizations debunk and dissipate the creatively-stifling so-called academically established methodologies concerning the utilization & organization of sound. Thankfully, Cage desmifies the academically / self-induced misconceptualizations surrounding our concep of sound.E.g. according to Cage, silence does not exist, because in an anechoic chamber, which is a noiseless, or echo-free chamber one still hears a high, and a low noise (the two noises are our heart & blood respectively); therefore, silence, or noiselessness is non-existant, essentially blazing a new, and unexplored world of musical aesthetics, which sparks wonderment, and creativity, at least in my mind.Cage's Silence is necessary if you are desirous of obtabing a mind-bogglingly new, and revolutionary perspective concerning our conceptualization(s) of sound.

This is one of my favorite books on music, for sure, but the Kindle edition is making me crazy!!! I read on the iPad and have to magnify each page to get the type readable: each page is an image, so no highlighting, annotating etc. is possible, but there's a GIANT margin around the page, which if it had been utilized, would make a totally readable font-size. CRAZY-MAKING!!! a pdf version would at least be possible to mark up using the various PDF readers out there.what are publishers thinking?!?! PLEASE put some more effort into creating e-reader versions: or at least warn the buyer ahead of time that most e-reader functionality will be unavailable.okay, rant over. enjoy the book, it's life-changingly wonderful!!!

John Cage has been perhaps more widely appreciated in the year of the centenary of his birth than during his life.It would appear he needed silence between. He is an interesting, sometimes distressingly clever writer. Nonetheless his philosophical theory has held its value as a mediation of the soundscapes around us.

A critique makes as much sense as trying to explain what a tree looks like to another person with the tree standing in front of both of them. So I'll keep mine short and sweet.If you want to know the insight of the 20th century's greatest musical thinker -- or perhaps of any time -- then please read this book. John Cage said everything. And nothing.

Cage suggests we choose chaos over control, intuition over logic, freedom over attachment, chance over deliberation, and anarchy over tradition. Whether you agree with him or not, Silence gives one the opportunity to fully immerse oneself in the way Cage's mind works. I love this stuff! Both I and John Cage know/knew that most of the world doesn't. And that's just the way it is.

The most important work by one of the most important figures of the 2oth centuryEssential reading for anyone interested in Cage and his thought...this is the beginning and all that came after was a development of the ideas expressed here

This is a classic book of writings by John Cage, mostly about music and art. In Silence, he explains a lot of the techniques he used when composing, and discusses the value and meaning of music. If you're familiar with Cage's ideas, you'll want to read these texts, some of which can be a bit off-putting by their form. But this is the first collection of his works that is almost entirely about creation (with the exception of the stories from Indeterminacy); his later books include writings about many things, poems, etc.I don't agree with all of Cage's ideas, but I appreciate that, in this collection, he did try and explain so many of them.

Good but not essential; if you already have a copy of Silence you do not need this edition. Gann's preface is pleasant but hardly revelatory. Whatever editorial corrections have been made to the original text are of scant consequence.But if you don't know the book - which is an absolute classic of 20th century artistic thought - try it out. It deserves your attention.

Classic work, but su-uu-uch a presentation.

Of interest to those interested in the application of Zen and chance to art. Good to dip into from time to time.

Das Schreiben von John Cage ist eine logische Konsequenz aus seinem Komponieren. Er schreibt Texte so, wie er Musik komponiert. Seine Ästhetik treibt alle seine Äußerungen an, egal, ob er Sprache oder Töne verwendet. Jeder Ton ist Musik. Jede Sprache erzeugt Töne. Folglich ist Sprache Musik, und sie lässt sich ebenso organisieren. Cage beweist dies fulminant in der hier enthaltenen „Lecture on Nothing” („Vortrag über Nichts“, auch erhältlich in einer guten deutschen Übersetzung von Ernst Jandl), für mich das Kern- und Meisterstück des hier vorliegenden Sammelbands.