Musicage: Cage Muses on Words, Art, Music

by John Cage; Joan Retallack

Publisher:

Wesleyan University Press

, 2022

The pioneering composer and music theorist makes his final on the totality of his work and thought in these three wide-ranging dialogues.

“I was obliged to find a radical way to work ― to get at the real, at the root of the matter,” John Cage says in this trio of dialogues, completed just days before his death. This quest led him beyond the bounds of convention in all his musical, written, and visual pieces. The resulting expansion of the definition of art earned him a reputation as one of America's most influential contemporary artists.

Joan Retallack's conversations with Cage explore his artistic production in its entirety. Cage's comments range from his theories of chance and indeterminate composition to his long-time collaboration with Merce Cunningham to the aesthetics of his multimedia works.

In her comprehensive introduction, Retallack describes Cage’s lifelong project as “dislodging cultural authoritarianism and gridlock by inviting surprising conjunctions within carefully delimited frameworks and processes.” Consummate performer to the end, Cage delivers here just such a conjunction ― a tour de force that provides new insights into the man and a clearer view of the status of art in the twentieth century.

Product Details

• Title: Musicage: Cage Muses on Words, Art, Music
• Authors: John Cage, Joan Retallack
• Publisher: Wesleyan University Press
• Print Publication Date: 2022
• Logos Release Date: 2023
• Language: English
• Resources: 1
• Format: Digital › Ebook
• ISBNs: 9780819571861, 9780819552853, 0819552852, 0819571865
• Resource ID: LLS:9780819571861
• Resource Type: Monograph
• Metadata Last Updated: 2024-04-03T19:53:46Z

About the Authors

JOHN CAGE was born in Los Angeles in 1912. He studied music with Adolph Weiss, Arnold Schoenberg, and others, later collaborating with artists such as Merce Cunningham, Robert Rauschenberg, and Jasper Johns. He died in 1992. JOAN RETALLACK is the author of eight books of poetry including Afterrimages (also published by Wesleyan) as well as numerous essays on John Cage, four of which appear in her critical volume, The Poethical Wager. MUSICAGE was chosen for the America Award in Belles-Lettres in the year of its publication. Retallack is the John D. & Catherine T. MacArthur Professor of Humanities at Bard College.