John Cage and Music as An Abstract form of Art

John Cage and Music as An Abstract form of Art
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John Cage and Music as An Abstract form of Art
Introduction and Cage's Background
In 1938, John Cage had regional fame on the west coast in two areas: percussion composer and composer for modern dance. He had a job in 1938 at a school in Settle Washington called the Cornish School, where he was functioning in both of the aforementioned areas of expertise. When a dance name Savvier Fort approached him about music cum dance that she was developing, dance on an African theme, there was a major problem detected. The problem is that the performance space where the dance was to be done was not large enough to bring in percussion and somber. They had small range piano, and there was no room for other instruments. Cage had studied earlier with Henry Cowell, who had experimented through stretching the piano strings directly by plucking them with either the flesh or nail of the finger. He also included stroking of strings by swaying them sideways in his experimentations.[Richard, Taruskin. The danger of music and other anti-utopian essays. Univ of California Press, 2008, 126]
Cage recalled all of these experiments and repeated them but found nothing that he perceived as adaptable for the African dance piece he was working on completing. He went one step further then and started to play objects on the strings of the piano. He recalled later putting pie tins on the piano, which was a promising step, but the piano strings vibrated with a considerable force, throwing the pie tins randomly. He also recalls welding nails on the strings, but the nails also vibrated and fell through the strings. He tried many improvisations, and another trial was to take a simple bolt, something wide enough to be placed between the strings and be held firmly with the strings. It was through the incorporation of the bolts into the strings that Cage invented the prepared piano. As a result, the piano would give different sounds using similar pitches, depending on whether the player stepped on the pedal. When the left pedal or soft pedal is depressed, the action of the piano string moves so that only the right two strings are stroked, leading to a deeper sound since they are the strings with the bolts. In addition, the placement along the length of the string is critical.[Diane, Nelson. "An Introduction to John Cage's Music for the Solo Prepared Piano." The American Music Teacher 36, no. 3 (1987): 42.]
By repeating the same noted and moving the bolts slightly towards the end of the string will result in a change of pitch and timbre. The other material that Cage found useful was a strip of rubber, which is woven between the strings of the piano. The improvisation creates a stop or a woodblock sound. There was also a combination of rubber, bolt, and strip of plastics to create a wide range of sounds when the same note is played on a single piano. Consequently, Cage realized that he did not just change sounds in a piano but rather created a new instrument. In general, the works of Cage demonstrate that a sense of flexibility guided his composition, for he perceived music as abstract art in which there is an infinite possibility of transformation of its form fr...