Music or Noise? - John Cage

Posted by Chad Criswell Jul 14, 2006

If you ever listened to John Cage's compositions chances are good that you did not leave with a warm and fuzzy feeling. In fact, you may have finished the song wondering what the hell you had just been listening to. Cage and his contemporaries such as Philip Glass broke the mold of what people traditionally felt was considered to be music. If the American Heritage Dictionary defines music as: "The art of arranging sounds in time so as to produce a continuous, unified, and evocative composition, as through melody, harmony, rhythm, and timbre" then many of Cage's works would be treading a very fine line between music and noise.

To listen to a few of Cage's pieces please check out my article on this subject.