Today would have been John Cage’s ninety-eighth birth­day, and it is sad he is no longer with us. It’s also sad that the sub­stance of his work and ideas is over­shad­owed by the myth and leg­end of the man. We could use more of the sub­stance, espe­cially to spread it like a balm on those who gov­ern us, to per­haps help them stop think­ing of the usual, short-term, zero-sum game tac­tics, and espe­cially to ignore the advice of the ignorant.

Cage wrote music and so he is known as a com­poser. He wrote a lot of music, a lot of which isn’t very good, some of which is decent and a small amount of which is great. He also made prints, wrote poetry and books, and was a mycol­o­gist. Schoen­berg called him an inven­tor, which is true enough, but he was mainly a philoso­pher of the applied kind, in the legacy of Emer­son. He’s per­haps more of a 19th cen­tury fig­ure, but one who needed Ives to pre­cede him to make his work possible.

I think Cage had a greater influ­ence out­side clas­si­cal music than inside. On the cut­ting edge of jazz and rock, musi­cians and fans have used Cage as a way to expand their think­ing about and mak­ing of music, of lis­ten­ing, of pos­si­bil­i­ties, which was his fun­da­men­tal idea. Can is I think impos­si­ble with­out Cage, and the pop­u­lar­ity of com­posers like Mor­ton Feld­man, Varèse, Stock­hausen, Ligeti and Xenakis with the jazz/rock pub­lic, the whole nexus of new and con­tem­po­rary com­po­si­tion and progressive/avant jazz and rock is one of Cage’s great lega­cies, via Brian Eno. The Bang on a Can All-Stars tran­scribe Music for Air­ports , and rock audi­ences dig it and bur­row into history …

His books are essen­tial read­ing for any­one who really loves what is pos­si­ble with music. The Sonatas and Inter­ludes are worth know­ing; the music is sur­pris­ingly con­ven­tional, although the rhyth­mic drive is ter­rific, but that’s the point; take con­ven­tional music and screw around with one aspect, the instru­ment in this case, and you have some­thing new. Dare to try. There’s a vast recorded out­put of that piece and much of Cage, and your mileage will vary. Per­son­ally, I’m fond of the Eur­op­eras , they are relaxed, good natured and, for some­one who has heard a lot of music, full of serendip­ity. That kind of sur­prise is refresh­ing in a world of overde­ter­mined mash-ups. There’s a record­ing by the S.E.M. Ensem­ble of Atlas Eclip­ti­calis , which is fab­u­lous, and there’s a brand new col­lec­tion of older pieces/recordings which I’m excited to have, it includes the hard to find “Williams Mix” and “The City Wears A Slouch Hat,” a radio drama Cage made with Ken­neth Patchen. Start with these, and you’ll go far.

And here’s a piece you can per­form your­self, at home, in more than one way. And that’s why the world needs Cage.

For more, excel­lent and com­pre­hen­sive Cage links here, Cage at UbuWeb here, here and here.

UPDATED:  Here’s my own iTunes list of 4’33″ tracks …