Essential Cage

But John Cage was also a proper composer: he studied with Henry Cowell and Arnold Schoenberg, and while dissonance and uncompromising atonality characterize the work of his Serialist contemporaries, his own musical rebellion was quite different. Through his compositions, he changed the way music was perceived and performed, and his striking, inventive and often highly experimental music has had a lasting legacy on those who followed him, including La Monte Yonge, Steve Reich, Philip Glass, Gavin Bryars and Toru Takemitsu. His experiments with electronics and sampling were ahead of their time and paved the way for modern ambient music, while his chance-determined composition – in which the composer follows decisions made by tossing coins or dice, and later computer-generated random numbers – directly influenced the algorithm-driven music of Brian Eno and the like.

Alongside 4'33", Cage's music for prepared piano (an instrument into which nuts, bolts and other objects are placed to alter the sound) still feels new, despite being written more than half a century ago. Through the preparation techniques, the piano is transformed into a percussion ensemble and Gamelan orchestra. Other music for conventional piano includes In A Landscape, written for the dancer Louise Lippold, in which spooling, repeated patterns, combined with the constant use of the sustain pedal, create a haunting sensation of time suspended.

Above all, John Cage reshaped our ideas of what music is and what it can be – and his music is best experienced rather than explained……