What silence taught John Cage: The story of 4'33"

Essay from programme notes for an exhibition of Cage's work in Barcelona, by James Pritchett.

Critiques 4'33", examines the development of silence in Cage's work along with chance composition, with some very illuminating discussion of Cage's use of duration as a key to his work and the spiritual/philosophical significance of his music as well.

Cage in Life Magazine, 1943

Article in Life magazine on Cage's percussion concert given at MOMA in 1943. Text refers to "experimental composers". Lots of great photos of the performers, including Xenia Cage. These photos alongside the very quaint ads for vacuums and ham reminds us, says Alex Ross, that "Cage was in some ways the original ultra-bohemian artist, in advance of the Beats and the hippies. He, too, had his lineage—in Satie, Duchamp, the Futurists, Dada, Schoenberg, and Henry Cowell—but he really came from nowhere".

About Indeterminacy

Website containing many of Cage's short writings and essays by Cage and others about his lectures, including the compositional basis of them.

Paper on time as structure in aleatory

"Replicable Chance: Time as Structure in Aleatory Composition" (Olin)
Presenter - Dwane Decker

Abstract

Mike Batt/John Cage Estate controversy

Correspondence has been uploaded by the John Cage Trust on the Mike Batt "silence" controversy of a few years back - Lewis Hyde/Nicholas Riddle Exchange.

This correspondence was part of Hyde's research for his book Trickster Makes This World, which he says in the correspondance has a chapter on Cage. Riddle represented Cage's publisher. It has some interesting observations on the incident, as well as Cage's Buddhism and aleatoric practice.