The "New Grove Dictionary of Music" has said of John Cage that he "had a greater impact on world music than any other American composer in the twentieth century," and his musical thinking forms a whole with his writing. "For the Birds" is a book, a dialogue and an event all at once. The initial conversations were recorded in France between 1968 and 1978 and were then reconstructed, reedited and commented upon by Cage. The final text, with footnotes and asides added over the years, is prefaced by a typographical celebration of his ideas compiled by Cage himself.
This ebullient collection of questions and answers covers a wide variety of topics. Cage's great wit and intelligence are allowed to range across such subjects as his own music and texts, mushrooms, chess, James Joyce, Mao, Thoreau, Satie, electronic music, the prepared piano, Zen, the environment, technology, politics and economics.
John Cage was born in Los Angeles in 1912. He studied music with Adolf Weiss, Henry Cowell and Arnold Schoenberg, and he has shared ideas with Marcel Duchamp, Joan Miro and Max Ernst, as well as such prophets as Marshall McLuhan and Buckminster Fuller. He was music director of the Merce Cunningham Dance Company for decades and held a number of academic posts. Cage was a composer, poet, graphic artist, teacher and critic. He died in New York in 1992.
"He is not a composer, he's an inventor -- of genius."--Arnold Schoenberg

Silence, John Cage's first book and epic masterpiece, was published in October 1961. In these lectures, scores, and writings, Cage tries, as he says, to find a way of writing that comes from ideas, is not about them, but that produces them. Often these writings include mesostics and essays created by subjecting the work of other writers to chance procedures using the I Ching. Fifty years later comes a beautiful new edition with a foreword by eminent music critic Kyle Gann. A landmark book in American arts and culture, Silence has been translated into more than forty languages and has sold over half a million copies worldwide. Wesleyan University Press is proud to celebrate the fiftieth anniversary of the book's publication with this special hardcover edition.

(Limelight). Written between the late '30s and the early '90s, these pieces by John Cage here acquire the permanence they deserve. Some have never been published before. Many appeared only in magazines, journals, and catalogues; others in concert programs and on record covers. Also included are the texts of lectures and of crucial importance to the appreciation of his music Cage's notes on the performance of his compositions, courtesy of his music publisher, C.F. Peters.

Cage voices his concerns on the nature and future of music, they ways of dancers, the West's interpretation of Eastern ideas in this thought provoking collection of anecdotes and epigrams.

American organist Gary Verkade plays all of John Cage's works for organ: 'The Harmony of Maine', 'Souvenir', 'ASLSP', and 'Organ2/ASLSP'. Also included is a bonus performance of the composition '4'33'.

This scarce antiquarian book is a selection from Kessinger Publishing's Legacy Reprint Series. Due to its age, it may contain imperfections such as marks, notations, marginalia and flawed pages. Because we believe this work is culturally important, we have made it available as part of our commitment to protecting, preserving, and promoting the world's literature. Kessinger Publishing is the place to find hundreds of thousands of rare and hard-to-find books with something of interest for everyone

Documentary in which Percussion Group Cincinnati demonstrate Cage's use of instrumentation, techniques, vari-speed turntables and test-tone records. The programme includes performance footage as well as audio recordings of 'Imaginary Landscape No.1-5' and 'Credo in Us'.